Black Harlequin's page

Are there no longer any drawbacks for flying while encumbered? I thought at one point, you couldn't fly if you were carrying more than a light load, but I can't find the rule anywhere. I did a search for both 'flying' and 'encumbered' in the pdf and came up empty.

Pg. 162 "Flying mounts can’t fly in medium or heavy barding."

Pg. 169 "A medium or heavy load counts as medium or heavy armor for the purpose of abilities or skills that are restricted by armor."

So, only for mounts that I have found, other than specific limitations under spells like Fly.

It could have up to a 23 Strength (an additional +2 from being a level 7 animal companion, and +1 stat increase at level 4), so up to a 346lb. light encumbrance carrying capacity, given its large size.

Black Harlequin wrote:

MoFiddy wrote:

One of my players created a cavalier and he wants a Roc as his animal companion.

According to the Bestiary a Roc starts out as a Medium creature, then is Large at 7th level.

The cavalier is human. Would he be able to ride the Roc at 1st level even though both are medium sized?

One issue you may run into with a Roc mount is that it cannot fly with anything more than a light load. (p. 167, A medium or heavy load counts as medium or heavy armor for the purpose of abilities or skills that

are restricted by armor. and p. 162, Flying mounts can’t fly in medium or heavy barding.)

Many medium cavaliers and their associated gear weigh in at a decent amount, although he can probably leave a lot of it with his ground-based friends.

Good point about the load. Where do you see that in the rulebook? Page 167 doesn't talk about encumbrance. I searched for heavy load, but I couldn't find what you are referring too.

Whoops, the page 167 reference should be 169, second column, middle of page. My apologies. The page 162 reference is accurate though. Had to double check.

One of my players created a cavalier and he wants a Roc as his animal companion.

According to the Bestiary a Roc starts out as a Medium creature, then is Large at 7th level.

The cavalier is human. Would he be able to ride the Roc at 1st level even though both are medium sized?

One issue you may run into with a Roc mount is that it cannot fly with anything more than a light load. (p. 167, A medium or heavy load counts as medium or heavy armor for the purpose of abilities or skills that

Many medium cavaliers and their associated gear weigh in at a decent amount, although he can probably leave a lot of it with his ground-based friends.

By the way, the text in the diagram in page 194 doesn't match the written rules. The text:

"#2. [..] The ogre has melee cover from her [Merisiel], but if it attacks her, Merisiel does not have cover from it, as the ogre has reach (so it figures attacks as if attacking with a ranged weapon)."
That's an error, as the the rule doesn't say that you use the ranged rules for cover if you have reach, but only if your enemy is not adjacent to you. So, Merisiek (#2) would have cover; and Kyra (#3) wouldn't.

But a large creature can choose any square it occupies for determination if the target has cover. In the above example, he could choose the upper left square, which would require reach to hit the target, thereby using the ranged rules.

At least that's how I'm looking at it.

*waves farewell* I had a lot of fun on those boards. I hope they've gone to a better place.

*sniff* Grow up big and strong Alchemist class.

I know how you feel, I miss them as well. May all the new classes return with renewed vigor and clarity!

Black Harlequin wrote:

Vic Wertz wrote:

Black Harlequin wrote:

Eric Stipe wrote:

Turns out it is just me.... again. OK, Thanks for the help!!! :)

Don't feel bad Eric, I have the same issue running version 9.3.0 of Adobe Reader, and there doesn't appear to be any more updates.

This is new to me. I see that 9.3 came out about two weeks ago... do you now have the problem with older Paizo PDFs that worked fine under the previous version of Reader?

The main rulebook looks fine, and the Cavalier/Oracle preview look fine. Using Win 7, I can mouse over the Cav/Oracle preview and the new page, and they look nearly identical, except that the a's in Cavalier disappear in the new version. The other A's disappear as well in the new pdf, not just in Cavalier, I just used it for primary testing.

So they're visible until you mouseover? Do they print?

Sorry, that was unclear. By mousing over, I mean back and forth between viewing the original Cav/Oracle document, and the new one with all the classes. In the new one, the A's are always missing. The A's are present in the initial 6 class document as well.

I tried copy/paste and the characters in those spots don't exist.

I'm also running Adobe 8.2 at home on a Vista machine, and 9.3 on a Win 7 machine and have the same issue with the new file. The APG playtest before the recent fixes worked fine on both machines.

Black Harlequin wrote:

Eric Stipe wrote:

Turns out it is just me.... again. OK, Thanks for the help!!! :)

Don't feel bad Eric, I have the same issue running version 9.3.0 of Adobe Reader, and there doesn't appear to be any more updates.

This is new to me. I see that 9.3 came out about two weeks ago... do you now have the problem with older Paizo PDFs that worked fine under the previous version of Reader?

The main rulebook looks fine, and the Cavalier/Oracle preview look fine. Using Win 7, I can mouse over the Cav/Oracle preview and the new page, and they look nearly identical, except that the a's in Cavalier disappear in the new version. The other A's disappear as well in the new pdf, not just in Cavalier, I just used it for primary testing.

Turns out it is just me.... again. OK, Thanks for the help!!! :)

Don't feel bad Eric, I have the same issue running version 9.3.0 of Adobe Reader, and there doesn't appear to be any more updates.

I was just looking through some of the changes to the Cav (Like the new challenge, hate the new animals) and noticed that the Cav's Order of the Sword ability "By my Honor" still includes oaths, which have been removed from the character class. I was wondering what was replacing that.

Also, the "Mounted Mastery" feature of the class still includes the reduced ride check penalty, but now the class just ignored that. Just wondering about these issues.

So noted here. :)

-Demanding Challenge now continues to affect the target if you are in their threatened area.

Demanding Challenge ONLY affects the target if in the Cavaliers threatened area.

The new text has an almost opposite effect of the original Demanding Challenge. If with a 5' step the target can get away from the Cavalier and attack a new target, he is better off doing so, as he will not suffer the -2AC until the Cavalier moves; which then forces the Cavalier to delay until after the target goes in order to keep the pressure on him.

So now we have a case of the mob running away from the Cavalier to avoid the penalty, whereas we had the Cavalier running away from the mob to keep the penalty on it in the prior version.

Perhaps give the Cavalier a free Step Up when dealing with his challenge target, so that if the target wants to get away, it actually has to move and not just step. This still doesn't give the feeling that the target has to pay attention to the Cavalier though.

How about if the Cavalier melee attacks a challenged mob (just attacks, doesn't need to hit), he inflicts a -2 AC on the target, until the beginning of Cavaliers next round, or until the target attacks the Cavalier.

Could even make the penalty to AC extend until the end of the Cavaliers next turn so the he gets the benefit of the debuff, as he is facing a cowardly enemy.

The "Mounted Mastery" wasn't altered either. Cavaliers now suffer no armor penalty when applied to ride checks, but the Mounted Mastery still states that the armor penalty for ride checks is halved. It is still a good ability, the first sentence just needs to be removed.

The no armor penalty refers to the Cavaliers particular mount, as it is within the Mount special ability. If the Cavalier is between mounts or has to borrow one for some reason, he would have only half the normal armor check penalty. This could definitely be more clear. If you are to read that statement that he has no armor penalty on any mount, the combat training, light armor prof. and bonus feat would also apply, which doesn't seem right.

Not likely to make a whole lot of difference to most, but it's there.

Cackle is listed as extending the duration of the Ward hex by 1 round. However, Ward really doesn't have a duration of it's own as it wears off once the target is hit or fails a save. Does this extend it one round past that? And if that is the case, will continuing to cackle keep Ward going indefinitely?

Ward Hex has no range listed, and touch is not implied anywhere in the text.

As it is currently stated in the write up, I see no reason it shouldn't be multiplied. Pretty much like Power Attack damage.

Great stuff! Why did the fluf for the Order of the Cockatrice and Order of the Dragon invert?

Also, does the Order of the Swords 8th level bonus of halving Ride check penalties seem defunct as a cavalier doesn't suffer from them now at all? Or am I missing something?

I thought about this too. I believe the Cav takes no armor penalty on his particular mount would be my guess (since it is under his mount section), and a half armor penalty on any ride check made while not on his particular animal companion.

One thing that strikes me as odd, is the Banner abilities.

At 5th level, I get: +2 morale bonus on saving throws against fear and a +1 morale bonus on attack rolls, and at level 10, these go up by +1.

But the Greater Banner ability, which I get at 14 gives +2 to other saves, and this: The morale bonus on attack rolls made as part of a charge increases to +2.

But aren't my morale bonuses already at +2 due to level from the original banner? And they will continue to go up by +1 at 15 and 20 due to the normal Banner ability.

It seems to make the Greater Banners attack boost useless

hogarth wrote:

In my campaign, casting Animate Dead ranks somewhat worse than cannibalism and necrophilia in the list of social faux pas. Anyone who did it on a regular basis would be considered crazy (at best) or evil.

A question. What happens when:

You have a 10' deep pit filled with (corpse) skeletons, which you then animate. Give them NO COMMANDS. Now lower some one (living) into said pit now full of animated skeletons.

I think most GMs would offer the result: another corpse in the pit - that's why Animate Dead is an evil spell - the products will MURDER living beings unless specifically told not to. Nearly all negative energy beings yearn or simply exist to do this sort of thing. This sort of thing tends to happen when you release undead under your control (usually to make more undead). Left to their own devices, zombies and skeletons will try to kill anything that lives. Zombies in the Bestiary EXPLICITLY do this.

Now repeat the experiment with a golem. Same results? Probably not - without orders, the golem will just sit there. They only do what they're told to, barring 'something gone awry' as with clay or flesh golems. That's why golems aren't inherently evil.

So now we do the same thing with a pit of tigers (wolves, bears, alligators, etc.). Same result, dead person. Pretty much anything with teeth and claws actually, since their primary purpose is to help kill and eat things. So are animals evil, or is it just their nature, like that of the undead? So in this case, creating a skeleton is almost like creating base life, it is just instinctual and would have no alignment.

I can tell you that a 2-H full BAB guy is going to do just as much damage as a TWF full BAB guy with a bunch of TWF feats. In fact, usually he'll do more.

If there is some independant damage (like Favored enemy, Sneak attack, or smite evil) that can turn the tide.

In general though, TWF isn't so hot.

Check out the DPR thread for some mathematical comparisons.

Actually, I'm looking at it to test out the Cavalier, figuring that those times he is challenging someone, it could be nasty. I'll go through that thread though. Thanks.

I haven't played anything of appreciable level in some time, particularly in a Pathfinder game. How useful are those 2nd, 3rd etc attacks that fighters and such get, given their decreased chance to hit?

I could probably run some numbers, but numbers don't match actual play experience in most cases. I'm mainly concerned because I'm looking at going down the two-weapon fighting tree, and if the high dex and feat requirements for the later don't turn out to be all that viable, I'll look at other options.

Thanks