Berti Blackfoot's page

In most campaigns players routinely see and combat evil. But not specifically serial killers or murder cults like in these scenarios. Given my love of "broken detective who has seen too much" noir, i am thinking of playing up that aspect and adding some light rules approximating ptsd.

I also sent this to the players to get their feedback before we start.

1. Firstly they are pretty inconsequential like "if fail Will save then Staggered 1d2 rounds", or Confused for 1 round, immune to beneficial or harmful mental and emotional effects for 1d4 rounds, etc. I have a short list of such effects.

2. I'd also follow the insanity rules allowing players to roll a weekly Will save to lower the DC until it goes away.

3. What I'm struggling with is how to determine initial triggering events. when the player acquires this disorder, for lack of a better word. I figure an initial Will save to see if it happens, and a few ideas for initial triggers I have are:
when reduced to 0 hp,
when they see what happens at the Dreaming Palace.
when they encounter the evils of the Skinsaw Cult.

what other places in the AP seem traumatic enough to trigger some reaction?
what should the will save DC even be?

4. finally I struggle with what triggers these small temporary debuffs.
Every time they enter combat?
when encountering a specific creature type that killed them?
when they see an npc die?
when they see x?

5. also i want to be careful to be sensitive in how it's presented. any tips for this is appreciated. I decided against adding anything re: alcoholism or drug use since some of us have that in our families. And even though half the group are vets they won't have a problem with the basic idea but more how it's treated. (We've played together for decades).

thanks.

The poison clause sounds like the codes for those elusive paladins of Asmodeus

No one mentioned this but also, the very name contains "charge", the intent of attacking while moving is clear. Not move-equivalent actions, but movement. There are plenty of other ways to get extra attacks, in fact, Sudden Attack is right below it, and is the appropriate champion ability to do what people want.

Also, if you could do it by "moving 0 feet" there would be no need for both Fleet Charge and Sudden Attack. Which makes the intent clear as well. They would not write two Champion's Strike abilities if one is redundant. You MUST choose whether your extra attack is while moving, or whether it is standing still. (or whether it is ranged) otherwise, players are trying to say they get both Champion Strike abilities for the price of one.

I would argue that having a rope around a dropped weapon doesn't keep it from being a dropped weapon. It just makes it easier to pick up.

I know you changed your mind but with this I can see hilarity ensue via one of two outcomes:

The weapon cord also shrinks, cutting off circulation.

The weapon shrinks but the cord doesn't, and so the weapon slips through the now much larger knot and falls to the ground.

I think the intent is anything that affects bluff "for feinting" would apply to the perform check. Diva Style is new so all the old material can't be retroactively updated, and Paizo doesn't update the PRD until they publish errata. But the exact wording says it only affects bluff so ... you might expect table variation. If a GM is particularly stringent we could hit FAQ to be sure.

I agree, spreading desert is one thing, but "dust" , whenever we think of dust problems it's always a result of human activity, usually related to widespread farming and razing of trees, resulting in the land turning from "soil" to "dust" which is not a sandy desert, just dirt with little ability to support life. worse than a rocky desert.

Deserts can spread as well without human activity, but the spell seems weird. maybe if it was worded differently but having more or less the same effect.. I guess because the word dust conjures up images of the midwestern US 80-odd years ago or what is happening near Beijing now.

Fatigue & Exhaustion will give DEX penalties which will lower it, Touch of Fatigue and Ray of Exhaustion have saves though.
Tanglefoot bags, nets, etc

the Prayer spell will give -1 to all saves with no save

Sometimes I take Weapon Finesse to help deliver touch attacks if the DEX is high enough and the character focuses on touch attacks. Though for full casters that could mean tradeoff of a much better spell related feat. If you use retraining rules you can retrain out of it at later levels.

hmm interesting. I thought maybe players did half damage with unarmed strikes but they don't. This appears to mean if you make 2 attacks even if your BAB is 5, you take the two-weapon fighting penalties to hit, but get full STR mod added to your offhand. that is nice. That would mean a brawler actually gets another "free" feat i didn't know about over another character that takes Improved Unarmed Strike.

You could argue the countersong is not really vs the cackle but vs the effect they are trying to extend, and thus probably something that allows a save (even though that other effect might not involve sound). That is a stretch, but since the FAQ changes cackle then maybe that is the intent. But I don't think RAW we really have a clear answer.

I don't know if I should be embarrassed but I saw a mule in real life for the first time last year, and I thought it was a horse. I realized something was odd about it, but not enough to think it's not a horse. I expected mules to look more like donkeys, but apparently mules are a lot bigger with smaller ears. So that could be an example of failing identification for a common creature.

An NPC might try to pass off a drafthorse as a warhorse, etc. Or warg hide among wolves or large dogs

We actually skip the first roll and just ask for the correct knowledge roll. That breaks some immersion but moves things along.

If they didn't name "racial traits" and "traits" the same it would be more clear. wow 2013?

Of course since most races don't share many racial traits, and all the options are replacing racial traits, there is not much that could be picked from another list so it's moot.

It only counts for effects ON the character, not racial traits, feats, etc. The racial traits are for that particular race only.

Look at racial qualifications for feats, they all say "human or half-orc" or "half-orc or orc", half-orcs do not qualify for ones that say "human" or "orc" only.

Even taking the Adopted trait as well only allows you to pick "race" traits for another race, not "racial" traits.

Now no SR? That makes no sense either.

I was thinking instead of +1 weapon attunement casters could take +1 on casterlevel checks or +1 DC to spells. But it would be a certain # of times per day, like 3/day. All day would be too powerful (Orange Ioun Stone is 30k , giving that at 4th is a bit much)

I am going to use it next campaign, my players won't even look at items that are not the big 6, calling them 'worthless' even when I carefully pick treasure to be things they could use. They don't even want them. And they spend all their gold on retraining for hp. Making the big 6 disappear might be a way to have players look at other things (unless they just sell and train more hp anyway :) )

What it says on the Cover wrote:

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas.

A gigantic nuclear furnace.
Where hydrogen is built into helium
at a temperature of millions of degrees.

Well, no.

The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma. The sun's not simply made out of gas. No, no, no. The sun is a quagmire; it's not made of fire. Forget what you've been told in the past.

Plasma: electrons are free. Plasma: fourth state of matter--not gas, not liquid, not solid.

wrong! It's a lot of fun.

There's no middle space where "immobile relative to Golarion" and "immobile relative to the Moon" are the same.

there are Earth-Moon LaGrange points, so if you can get to one, you could just stay there. BUT, I think you'd have to get to the point when the moon is directly overhead, as it's just a point, not a circle around the planet. So you couldn't climb to that point and "wait" for the moon, you'd have to wait below it and climb up as the moon approaches. The few feet of between the two rods should not be an appreciable difference. Even if you miss the timing and are too high, the moon will approach close enough where you switch between climbing "up" and climbing "sideeways" in front of the moon. At even then you are so weightless you might not even notice it.

i would think the rod would be immobile relative to whatever is the strongest gravitational force. So as you climb up, you are still hovering over the same spot over Golarion. But once you get high enough it will transition to being immobile relative to the moon. Then you being just climbing "down" to the moon.

After all, if you teleport to the moon, or one of the other planets, then use the rod, you'd expect it to be immobile relative to the planet you are standing on, you wouldn't expect to get suddenly whipped off/through the planet because the rod is only immobile relative to far-off Golarion.

The problem is not using them. The "problem" is that one player can get an AC of 20 depending on what he wants to do in the battle and another player sits at 14. (Level 4). Any enemy with power attack is going to tactically power attack against the hugely lower AC and would never power attack the 20 AC. [This is not asking for balancing help, just more of an example].

It seems weird to have enemies with different floating to-hit and ACs, despite the players being very obviously able to do the same thing.

this is a little different. This is where you have to judge if the enemy would know the one PC is harder to hit than the other. After one or two tries to hit it would know, but usually not before that unless it is familiar with humanoids and intelligent enough to know the difference between metal armor vs leather armor, for example.

I think "Picking up" might require you to move into the ally's square. You usually lift something straight up, it is difficult to imagine holding your arms out and lifting them up holding them away from your body (though I guess with 20+ str you probably could). Though looking in the encumbrance section I don't see any specific "lift" rule that says this, so... it might vary by table.

But dragging them is fine if you wanted to move them out of range of a coup de grace, for example. If you are not sure what your GM will rule, just drag them a few squares away. That way you are sure to never enter the ally's square.

No penalty, if someone is reckless the players can handle the one player, or maybe in character. Only one person in our group wants a penalty, but he's also the most cautious player, running away and even abandoning the group mid fight sometimes. He thinks that is NOT something that should be punished, because he's playing "smart" but I think that should be punished because it's just about as bad, it still can get everyone killed.

So no, it's just too cumbersome either way. If someone causes a problem being too cautious or too reckless then it's really more of player problem not a character problem.

however we DID start doing things like restrict the money/magic they can buy when creating the new character, otherwise it's easy to create a very overpowered character at the same level as other players.

wow i don't think i have ever heard anyone say "hold" does not mean "with a hand" I mean maybe if you have tentacles only, or prehensile hair. But it says held. That means held.

Yes I've never used it. I have just let the person go at the beginning of the next turn to free up arms to attack. That way the PC has one turn wasted trying to escape. Or carry the player away. But not use one arm/claw. I don't know how they came up with -20, especially for larger creatures.

i actually used alchemical ooze swarms in a sewer, they were byproducts of experiments by ratfolk alchemists living down there. My poor otyugh was one-shot though

sewers are great for pet classes, since they can't use scent (at least in my world's horrible sewers) you can actually sneak up on players.

They might also have just pasted it in since it said "companion" without really double checking if it made sense.

This is a pretty good video explaining the readings.

Alexander Augunas' explanation video

The difficult part is how to force them to keep going rather than decide they like it somewhere and stay. One mechanism i came up with when thinking of a similar idea is a god placed a geas on the party to find some ancient artifact. But the god is angry and cursed them to bounce between planes, via some sort of portal hole/gate. The gate goes to seemingly random planes, and only activates every couple days. If they don't leave when it's active they start getting affected by the geas (trapped would end the campaign right away). The geas forces them to keep going or they start being penalized. Each adventure could be a totally different plane where they get a piece of the puzzle on where the artifact is. Somehow i'd have to stop them casting plane shift as well, which perhaps was part of the curse.

Why the god is angry can be part of the first adventure or part of the party background. And the bouncing around could be random just as a way to pointlessly get the party out of his hair, or maybe there is a pattern and he knows clues to the location of his lost artifact are in all those places.

We talked about it but our group hasn't done it yet merely because surviving travelling planes would require a higher level party and our rounds take so long already at 10th level we're not sure we want to try.

But when going between alternate realities you could easily start at lower levels.

Wow i let them use it after i roll, my players usually only use it if a crit confirms. After all, immediate actions are declared "after" an event happens, but take place before it occurs in the game. I see no problem especially since the player is not going to have tons of copies of it to spam.

Otherwise the spell is pretty worthless to use without knowing and no one should bother with it under those conditions. I can handle one attack missing a caster once in awhile.

However according to my players I am even meaner, I only allow Sylphs to have it, unless a player of another race pays to research the spell. :)

My players like to be murderhobos and kill things. They don't want to play anything in Occult Adventures, use combat diplomacy, or investigate. They want to get big numbers and kill. So we're not going to be using Occult, Horror, or Intrigue books. I got them to play through some of Carrion Crown, but when I took them on a side quest through Feast of Ravenmoore, rather than figure out the mystery one said "screw this I'm sick of these children of the corn" and started killing people during the festival...

I'd love it, but I eventually found a Call of Cthulhu group to do that stuff with. We played 10 Candles last week which is an awesome game. But those aren't the types who will want to play math-finder either.

One of our local PFS players who plays OA classes all the time worked up a spreadsheet to track all the changes to his kineticist's stats as they accumulate burn. He swears it's the only way to keep his turn as short as the other players'.

Kinteticist is difficult to track, even the attacks change a lot level to level. I've heard even Paizo people complain about it on podcasts. I had to add special fields to track them and to create dynamic attacks on the Roll20 Pathfinder sheet so players can easily hit a button to attack, and not have to recalculate everything manually between levels.

A better question would be "Why doesn't everyone start at level one?"

Or "why do people keep making posts asking incredulously why other people have different gaming styles?"

It reminds me of the healing rock from the podcast Hello From the Magic Tavern. You hit someone with the rock and it heals them. it also hurts and does damage. "I'm hurt", "really? here let's use the healing rock", "no i'm goo- ow!"

He could be referring to the beta that Jason Bulmahn is doing: Edge of Eventide. But that is a campaign, not a new world setting, and Minotaur is publishing it I believe.

Since they just started putting Golarion content in the core RPG books I don't think they will go backwards. In fact in every interview they seem to indicate the opposite.
So I'd continue to expect any other worlds to be 3rd party

For me the fix was to get into board games. In board games you just die, die a lot, lose over and over. After awhile you realize it's more important to concentrate on having fun than surviving or winning.

Pack animals: they are the solution to encumbrance you mention. So use them. You can also just buy "<insert class> kit" which covers most needs. Remember there are other players too, they should have something

Skills: more fun to focus on a few and be good at those, cause other players will be good at their few skills. Except perception, everyone needs that.

Speed: think of this more as offense than defense. As they say "speed kills" Don't worry about being too slow to get away, desire to be fast enough to chase them down. Use a pack animal so you're not weighed down, get mithral medium armor when you can afford it.

Utility spells: take Scribe Scroll, make a scroll every day, they are cheap and easy to create even when travelling. To store them get a handy haversack: in case any are needed during combat they are only a move action away.

stat dumping: if 8 is the lowest you are good. penalties are already built in to your rolls, there is not much a GM can do to "punish" you for an 8.

I remember a thread about Occult Adventures where James, i think, postulated that only physical blasts could deal non lethal. It's not for sure you can do non lethal with a physical blast, but the consensus was definitely you can't do non lethal energy damage.

But Merciful does change things. I'd say if someone spends the $$ on Merciful, or the metamagic feat, then I'd allow it, since it's magic. It seems RAW is not clear.

An animal might try to run around it, assuming that the creature it smells or is attacking it is hiding behind the "wall". Since it's a circle it will fail to get to the "other side", and then try pushing at it with a paw/claw, then realizing it is not solid and try to get through as if it were closely packed leaves or something.

But yeah, eventually it will either get in or run away, it's just a matter of how many rounds does it take to figure it out. I'd say it would stop at edge, then 1-2 rounds max before it enters, just judging by how dogs behave.

(the above assumes the animal has a reason to get at the PCs, or food that they are carrying, etc)

I don't think "charging" at it before realizing it is not solid is something an animal would do. Most animals, like people, don't try running into walls just to see if it really is there :) (My dog head-butts doors to get in, but he knows what a door is, he doesn't head butt the wall). So a PC would have to "push" to get an animal to do so.

That's how'd I'd rule.

I used it with a flying familiar, works pretty well as a targeted cloud spell. But you have to have monsters that are susceptible. I'd say good if you have a familiar (one that's fast enough to get back and wont' die, like a faerie dragon) or an animal companion you can direct, and your campaign is not all vs undead.

I'd say no, but since usually the damage results in a DC that is far higher than the concentration to avoid an AOO that I would just let them apply it if they made a big deal out of it. It's not going to make a big difference.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

No, you just need to be unobserved; cover or concealment are ways to become unobserved.

Absolutely not. You need Cover/concealment AND you need to be unobserved. There is no rules interpretation paradigm where you can just vanish becomes a credible interpretation.

How, for the love of god, can you ever be unobserved in Pathfinder by a strict reading of the stealth rules? It clearly states that it is not limited to sight. Therefore we should acknowledge that hearing and smell also come into account. As well as shifts in the wind and even taste if one has a strong enough odor.

I believe the "usually by sight" but can use others refers to only creatures that have other senses listed, such as scent, blindsight, and tremorsense.

So you probably cannot use bluff to stealth against a dog or wolf unless upwind or in a sewer where strong smells overwhelm them. But a human or PC without the scent ability? there are no game mechanics to support humans using their nose to notice someone is there (even though in real life we know this happens, the archtypical sniper eating local food is an example). I think that line means other senses that are not strong enough to warrant their own entry in "vision/senses" are covered by the opposed perception stealth rolls. If he rolls higher, he is also quiet enough avoid detection.

Yeah you have to read both, which is annoying. For a number of conditions some information is only one section.

I don't understand why there are even two sections to begin with (I suppose it has something to do with the limits of paper publishing. Now a glossary can be built out of links or references to paragraphs so there is no chance of the two entries differing with each other)

Classes that have alignment restrictions also get benefits to go along with them. This places alignment restrictions on almost every class, but does not offer anything in return.

It sounds like it's good rules for NPCs, or factions players might join or work with, or prestige classes. Actually it's not even factions but more like guilds that control resources and training.

But as such it's far too limiting. Besides being fun for only a small percent of potential players, making them difficult to attract, putting this much restriction will be unplayable. Look at all the conflicts for Paladins alone, now imagine that much conflict and arguing with every single person at the table. Because that is exactly what will happen when their powers disappear.

Jonathon Wilder wrote:

Also, "the really funny thing about this is that it assumes that everybody’s going to automatically want to play a flat-chested, hermaphroditic David Bowie clone".

Hold it hold it. You're saying there's people who wouldn't want to play a flat chested hermaphroditic David Bowie Clone?

Most people would have been sold at David Bowie clone...

I only play Peter Murphy clones

I remember one game where I (ranger) saw a kitten with a hurt paw in the wilderness. I picked it up to treat it. apparently its claws were had paralytic poison. Then its buddie cats all come in and naw one you while you can't move.

I have an idea for a setting, every time you try to help someone in need you are punished by death. If you fail to help people in need you are punished by your gods. And every PC must play a Paladin.

you could have the chapel be still under construction, with portions not finished with holes the zombies can push through. or maybe a contractor cut corners and there are cave ins of some sections.
Giving some zombies more STR can help them push down barricades, esp if they are all mindlessly pushing at once.

Or maybe the stained glass windows are floor to ceiling. so they are difficult to impossible for the party to man or barricade them all.

maybe the roof is not finished, and it starts raining and so the floor is slippery, or maybe the floor is not finished and turns to mud, so it's either slippery or maybe difficult terrain, putting them on an equal footing.

but yeah, adding some templates to make random zombies different may be interesting too.

i found I tried something similar in a stone room w' 10' thick walls and one entrance and it was incredibly boring. Players don't split up and go out like in the movies.

A take 10 would certainly not be, but doesn't a roll indicate you are concentrating particularly hard on the task? I think it would only come up if you are supposed to be a bystander listening to two other people talk. One party might notice that you are listening in. Which would only be important if you are pretending not to.

Remember that show Lie to Me where the main character would turn his head like a dog as he listened to you? I think that would be detectable.

If she can't, or doesn't want to use alter self since it would result in death whatever plane she is on, then this could make an interesting adventure, a succubus as the X-Men's Rogue (esp the 3rd movie version where she decides to take the serum to lose her power).

Succubus actually loves some other being and wants to be with them, but cannot, and enlists the party to help her lose her draining power by finding a hidden artifact/set of components that will accomplish this. May even convince LG players to help if it means one less succubus in the multiverse, esp if they decide to instead keep the artifact and go on a demon-depowering rampage.

Gals? is there a consensus on how people feel about Gals?

IDK but I can't hear the word doll without thinking Guys and Dolls, and can't hear that without thinking, not of the musical, but of the fake "legitimate theater" musical in the Simpsons where they sing "guys and dolls" to the tune of "Hollywood"

Guys and Dolls
we're just a bunch of crazy
Guys and Dolls..

Prof Lowenzahn writes: (stuff)

If the question is "how do we get people to play if they are the people who historically have complained about bad treatment?" Then yes; absolutely, the answer is to tell players up front you will not tolerate bad treatment of each other, because only then will those players who are loathe to join feel comfortable enough to try again.

Having a game that is friendly for anyone to join is not a given. And even in many cases the women that have played with us have already been through a process that weeded out other women that wanted to play but stopped. Some have even said "I'm like one of the guys". So pointing to them, or to our own experience, means little, because we have created cultures/groups around us that we are not aware of doing. And not everyone has experienced the same thing.

There are a LOT of people out there that have been abused, harassed, who have quit. Already you can point to Cons that get a rep for not protecting women are seeing their attendance fall. As long as every time Paizo or WOTC makes an effort to be inclusive we see the internet explode with rage, there is still a problem. We'll know we don't "need" to do these things when the complaints about doing them stop.

We already writeup what we expect of characters, telling people what we expect of players is not a big jump. It's no different than managing expectations.

Bats are Chiroptera and Rodents are Rodentia and ne'er the twain shall meet.

You say chiroptera, and I say rodentia, let's call the whole thing off!

If it takes a whole round to apply to an unconscious creature, then I don't think it is possible to apply an oil against a conscious creature against its will without first at minimum pinning them. Even then, it would have to take at least 1 full round for pinned.