Brenden Falke's page

In a Song Of Silver (Hells Rebels 4), the Bleakbridge was officially renamed to the Silver Span. I see that in the players guide it is once again called the Bleakbridge? Did the heroes that liberated the city fall out of favour? Why would they reverse the name change?

Devil in Plain Sight is printed in Ancestry Guide.

The Remaster does not overwrite or invalidate that feat. Use the Tiefling -> Nephilim errata and continue using the existing rules.

wow, I'm allowed to use tiefling feats with the nephilim ancestry (the ones not overwritten in the remaster, anyway)? Is this a common sense rule or did paizo make this official somewhere?

Tieflings have a feat called "Devil In Plain Sight", which allows a player to shift between their tiefling appearance and their ancestry appearance (human for example).

In the remaster, this feat was apparently lost. There is no Nephilim feat that does the same thing. Is there a reason why, it seems like it would have been easy for paizo to include this one?

"for example, Pathfinder Player Core will collect all the important rules for each of its featured classes in one volume rather than spreading out key information between the Core Rulebook and the Advanced Player’s Guide."

So will this be a regular remaster? As surely in future book releases, classes will receive updates that are then again spread between multiple books and you're in the same situation as we are now.

Also a shame to rename Bestiary to Monster Core. Bestiary was cool and made it sound like an old manuscript. Monster Core just sounds like you're trying to be like Dungeons and Dragons.

Fantastic!!

Those light up, pulsing pillars are amazing!

Thanks! It was my first time making a physical set like this, I'm very happy with how it works out.

Cotton wool looks really cool when lit up by LEDs, and if you use an RGB LED strip controlled via something like an Arduino (I used an ESP32 I had laying around) you can make a lot of very cool lighting effects. These were meant to be hellfire columns, but I noticed while developing it that changing the colouring to green or puple gave it a completely different, very cool feel.

Congratulations! What were some highlights?

Hm that's a hard question to ask about a 4 year campaign. There have of course been a great many little moments that were cool or touching. I made (some of) my players cry twice, once out of sadness, once out of happiness.

Every player has had a personal story woven through the AP which was very cool for them to go through.

I would say the one thing I might highlight was a relationship the group built up with a tiefling crime lord in the Devil's Nursery called Rator. I improvised this NPC early on in the game during the Murders In The Devils Nursery mission, when the players asked to go into a bar I had just made up asking for witnesses. I played the crime lord as a terse man who was a bit rude, since he really didn't have anything for my players.

However, especially one of the players for some reason took a liking to him, so this randomly improvised NPC became their go-to whenever they needed rumours about the kintargo underworld, or when they had stuff they needed to fence. So much so they as a group got a bit too comfortable in my opinion building a productive relationship with this crime lord.

So I wanted that relationship to backfire a bit. If you empower a crime lord, he's gonna have his own plans. He's not a nice guy, even if you act like he's your best friend. This all came to a head when his own plans were unveiled at the end of book 5. He'd been using all the things the players had provided him with (and even some favours they did for him) for his own dastardly plans, and the players were confronted with the fact they had been unwittingly helping this crime lord. They ended up fighting their way through his hideout and killing him.

It was our first in-person session after the pandemic, so I'd drawn an elaborate map in the old DnD style: https://imgur.com/a/vkbn8yf

After 67 sessions (most of them 5-7hrs) my players reached the Apex of Bone and defeated Barzillai. I'd built the apex of bone from foam and some electronics to create the hellfire columns, so it looked pretty good!

Some photos of the final fight: https://imgur.com/a/j5ooPAY

The heroes were:

- Zero the Hero, human reach cleric of cayden cailean (and champion of Thais)
- Dolores Fistweaver, human unchained monk with the drunken master archetype
- Ialon Holatris, elf conjuration wizard
- Majet Trig, gnome mastermind investigator (this character left after the end of book 4)

They were a very powerful group that worked together well, their only weakness was swarms.

Most of the AP I could run relatively unchanged (though usually adding details), with major changes being mostly driven by player choices. I added a completely re-written No Response From Deepmar module just before book 3. I also added an election after book 4 (which Zero won), for which I had to develop election mechanics I'm very happy with. So Kintargo has a different mayor than the books assume now.

The heroes have now been asked by Thais (the herald of cayden cailean) to recover her 6th wing from Hell, for when we want to play to level 20.

I've occasionally asked advice on this forum which definitely helped, as well as reading older posts when I needed inspiration or ideas, so thanks!

My group is about to start the haunting of Kintargo and it's been almost 6 months to the day (ingame). I did add a 4 week period for elections after liberating kintargo and some extra side adventures but overall I feel they've moved through the campaign at a reasonable speed.

Am I missing something? Bejakra's description says she "has also mastered the art of crafting portable traps that she can set up swiftly" and that they are detailed below but I cannot find any details on these traps.

I just started running this.

My PCs were just coming off their heavy handed win over the Chelaxian negotiators and happened to be in their manor on the northern border of Jarvis End and the Temple district. They heard muttering from the next room and entered the parlor only to see a pale old woman knitting on their couch. She was muttering to herself about the meddling Silver Ravens bringing doom upon the city. Eventually they heard enough and tried to wake her from her focused and despondent rambling. When they did her true nature became apparent; her skin immediately rotted and her eyes turned black. She floated above the couch and assailed the PCs with shrieks of agony. The Silver Ravens sent her back to death and her essence dissipated in wisps of incorporeality. Then, through the window behind where she sat in the parlor, the Silver Ravens saw dark churning clouds form above the Temple once dedicated to Asmodeus. I ended that session with the sound of hounds baying in a mournful chorus.

Mechanically speaking, I rolled my first random encounter of the haunting and it was a Banshee.

My best advice would be for you to ramp up your Random Encounters. Roll them long before your next session and create themes for them. You don't need to be bound by them. They're for inspiration only. Not every Random Encounter needs to be combat either.
•Have the PCs witness dottari fending off Shadow Mastiffs
•Have the PCs witness imps ripping slate tiles off of a roof in the markets of Redroof.
•Have a Hound of Old Kintargo ignite, snarl, chuff, and bay from a darkened alley only to disappear by way of dimension door. Then, have the PCs hear screaming from a crowd nearby. When they investigate (expecting the hound) they find two bone devils and a barbed devil binding a group of commoners in chains.

I have to preface this next part with reiterating that the corporeal outsiders the PCs face in this part seem to be summoned rather than bound. (The bodies return to their plane upon death)
That said, here's how...

Thanks, this is quite useful. As I understand it, you're planning to run the encounters in sequence rather than having them all activate at the same time?

What did you tell your players about the mechanical consequences of the negotiations? Did you tell them about the effect it has on barzillai's influence over the city?

I'm not sure how much to tell them since I worry they're currently just so hostile to cheliax they're likely to just tell them to piss off. Yet telling them about the mechanical consequences feels both very spoilerish and might lead them to negotiate just to limit barzillai's influence and they might feel forced by the game mechanics to do something their characters don't like.

Somewhat related: does anyone have a good justification for why the negotiations with cheliax affect barzillai's manifestations? Now that he's dead, there's not really any link between the empire of cheliax and barzillai. I can't think of an in-world explanation for why one affects the other, and I know my players are going to wonder about it.

My players are heading into book 6 so I'm doing some prep work and I realised I'm not sure how to run the Haunting of Kintargo.

There are basically 5 encounters for the players to defeat, one for every 1 or 2 district areas in the city. Once defeated the area is considered free of barzillai's influence. Every week, one of the areas where the haunts are still active increases in power.

But how do I run this in a way that's interesting? Even if my players only do one encounter a day (basically a 5 minute adventuring day, which tends to be way too easy), they can clear all haunts in 5 days - not even enough time to increase the power in 1 area. Even if I throw some random encounters at them it's not going to be enough to really make things interesting (and hordes of random encounters is going to get old really quickly).

Do I just do 1 encounter per week (explained by it only appearing infrequently or something)? I know my players will not be content sitting around, they'll be out and about trying to deal with this asap.

I like the general concept of the haunting and barzillai's fluctuating power of the city, but as-written I just don't see how it can work. How did you run this?

> so let us know what you want to see and we’ll try to make it happen.

If you could just make the maps in your adventures available as vector images instead of bitmaps, they could easily be imported into any VTT without looking terrible.

In the campaign setting book from 2008 it is described as originating in Abaddon:

> ...the waste of Abaddon stands as the source of the river Styx and is the native plane of the daemons

In Book of the Damned hell chapters it is described as originating in Avernus:

> The River Styx: The river of forgetfulness is born from Avernus and wends its way through several layers of Hell

and

> ...the ocean-sized marsh of Eridanos. Mingling with the souls of the damned, the refuse of the Maelstrom, and the eroded sediments of Hell, this noxious mixture forms the headwaters of the infamous River Styx

Except in the Book of the Damned, abaddon chapters it once again starts in abaddon:

> The so-called “River of Forgetfulness” is born in Abaddon at the Drowning Court, wends its way through several layers of Hell and numerous layers of the Abyss

Planar Adventures also places the source in Abaddon:

> Abaddon is a bleak realm—the source of the legendary River Styx

In the great beyond, guide to the multiverse we find this:

> The Drowning Court: At a juncture of eight branches of the River Styx, Charon, the Horseman of Death, rules over the floating, moving realm of the Drowning Court. [...] Lesser satellite islands routinely break away from the Court and f low downstream along the Styx’s tributaries toward the Abyss, Hell, the Maelstrom, Axis, or other portions of Abaddon

If all rivers from the drowning court are downstream, it must be the source. Except that lost omens gods and magic tells us:

> At the end of the River Styx await the rulers of Abaddon: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and their daemonic brood [...] at the end of the Styx within his sunken palace, the Drowning Court

Which implies the drowning court is the end of the river? Except the same book also says

> Abaddon A vast wasteland plane that is the source of the river Styx

So what is the actual source of the river Styx? The source books are all over the place :|

I read through this a few times and I just don't get how to run this mission or how it fits in the overall AP. I'm hoping you guys can help me understand this better.

1. Supposedly the players need to get the strix of ravounel forest area to sign on to the kintargo contract for their protection or whatever. Ok. But the kitkasiticka tribe is described of living in secret in the forest for a long time, and the strix are described as hating humanity, why would they in any way be representatives of that part of ravounel? Who made Solmestria that region's leader? People in cheliax or kintargo don't even know she exists!

2. The strix have been fighting the Grundlescorn sisters for 200 years. Apparently the Grundlescorn sisters eat young strix. The strix do 'raids on grundlescorn resources'. What are those resources? It's just 3 hags that the strix apparently can't defeat, what more is there?

3. On page 43 its described that the strix seem to be struggling to hold off the hags, but on page 61 it describes that the strix forced the hags to cede ground and that they 'leave the tribe in peace'. Which is it? Both can't be true.

4. Overall I'm struggling on how to make my players care about this random in-forest fued that doesn't seem to be concerning the people of ravounel at all, and only seems to be added to the book because the author needed an additional mission. It seems very disconnected from everything else.

Any help would be appreciated.

Regarding the attack on the hideout, I agree that made no sense (especially as my players had focused on secrecy).

I solved this by changing this to an attack by Norgorber cultists. This worked to explain why they knew the location (Hei Fen obviously knows where the lucky bones are), and introduced the norgober cult as an enemy in kintargo for later in book 4. It also made sense because my players actually exterminated a small norgorberite cult in Vyre as part of winning over Mantice Kaleekkii).

Yes: "Lead sheeting or magical protection blocks a scrying spell, and you sense that the spell is blocked."

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Divination

> What precautions would Hei-Fen have put in place to defend herself against such tactics?

She's a Trickery domain cleric, so has access to the spell False Vision. You could use this to mislead your players. Mind Blank and Screen are out as she's only CL12. She might use Nondetection as well.

If you want to prevent scrying into the area, you could make it lead-lined or rule that the monastery is warded against scrying (it was a secret location afterall).

So this came up in my group today and I'd like some feedback:

Do you automatically know what Conditions are active on a fellow character in your party? For example your friend becomes panicked from the Fear spell, or Confused from the confusion spell. Do you automatically what conditions people in your party are under, even before they've acted on it?

(first edition, btw)

Thanks for your response, but it doesn't quite address my question.

The magic section that I quoted and linked in my first post has the official rule from the CRB about spellbook valuation, yet the prebuilt spellbooks do not seem to follow those rules.

The rule for determining sale value of a spellbook is:

Captured spellbooks can be sold for an amount equal to half the cost of purchasing and inscribing the spells within.

(source: CRB)

Yet when I look at the listed values of the prebuilt spellbooks (here: https://www.aonprd.com/Spellbooks.aspx), it seems they only factor in the inscribing cost for the spells and not the purchasing cost for the spells as mandated by the rule I listed above.

What is the correct way to value a spellbook?

Thanks for your responses so far. I'd normally agree with thenobledrake that perhaps this trap is simply designed to be so deadly, however I agree Cellion that if the trap was designed to be deadly, the author would not specifically have mentioned Grab An Edge as if it would help you get out. The fact that they did leads me to believe the author did not understand how their trap would interact with Grab An Edge and falling damage. And because of that it would be great to get a response from Paizo regarding whether or not this trap is supposed to be as deadly as it is.

Personally, I'm inclined to houserule that the interior space of the trap is covered by a permanent Featherfall effect. This both prevents the massive damage from Grab An Edge and prevents players falling impractical/unreasonable distances very quickly. It does make the trap significantly less deadly, of course.

I'm writing this based on a reddit thread I saw where this issue is discussed and I'm hoping that perhaps we can get a paizo response on this matter.

The issue regards the Bottomless Pit hazard, which is a level 9 hazard. The effect of this hazard is described as follows (emphasis mine):

The triggering creature falls in and continues to fall, potentially forever. That creature can try to Grab an Edge to avoid falling (page 472). The DC to Climb the walls or Grab an Edge is 26.

The pit contains many handholds, so the falling creature can try to Grab an Edge again every 6 seconds. If the creature succeeds, it can start to Climb out from that point (though it might be a very long climb, depending on how far the creature fell). Since the creature falls endlessly, it can rest and even prepare spells while falling, though items dropped while falling are usually lost forever.

Reading this hazard seems pretty straightforward. If you fall into the bottomless pit, you have a chance every 6 seconds to grab one of its many handholds to stop your fall and start your long climb back to the top.

However, the falling rules say

When you fall more than 5 feet, you take bludgeoning damage equal to half the distance you fell when you land. Treat falls longer than 1,500 feet as though they were 1,500 feet (750 damage). If you take any damage from a fall, you land prone. You fall about 500 feet in the first round of falling and about 1,500 feet each round thereafter.

and the Grab An Edge rules say

Critical Success [...] You still take damage from the distance fallen so far, but you treat the fall as though it were 30 feet shorter.

Success [...] You still take damage from the distance fallen so far, but you treat the fall as though it were 20 feet shorter. [...]
Critical Failure [...] you take 10 bludgeoning damage from the impact for every 20 feet fallen.

So in reality, how this Bottomless Pit hazard resolves is as follows:

A player fails the saving throw to avoid falling into the Bottomless Pit and starts falling into the infinite pit. 6 seconds (1 round) later, they can attempt to Grab An Edge. In that time they will have fallen 500 feet. Depending on the outcome of their roll, they will take at most 250 and at least 235 points of damage. This is sufficient to kill most characters outright. Additionally, if they fail or neglect to Grab An Edge the first time, they get another attempt 6 seconds (another round) later. At this point they'll have fallen 2000 feet. Grabbing an Edge will now deal between 750 and 735 points of damage. This will almost certainly kill every character.

Is this the intention of the design of this hazard?

bottomless pit: https://2e.aonprd.com/Hazards.aspx?ID=11
grab an edge: https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=95
falling rules: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=402
Reddit thread in question

Q: The are precise, imprecise and vague senses. I've seen senses marked as precise and as imprecise, but never as vague. What are vague senses?

Q: If a sense doesn't mention if it is precise/imprecise (like lifesense), which is it?

Many gods have an Obedience specified. For example Nethys has

Obedience

Inscribe blessings to Nethys, arcane formulae, and lines of prayer on a blank parchment. Don’t inscribe a complete spell—only notations sufficient to potentially spur a reader to study magic in an effort to complete the incantation. At the culmination of your obedience, cast any spell or spell-like ability or activate a spell completion or spell trigger magic item. Gain a +4 sacred or profane bonus on concentration checks. The type of bonus depends on your alignment—if you’re neither good nor evil, you must choose either sacred or profane the first time you perform your obedience, and this choice can’t be changed.

Can any religious character invoke this, or is this only for the Exalted, Sentinel and Envangelist prestige classes?

I'm just gonna turn the area between D8 and D10 into an airlock with double doors. That makes the system work (broadly speaking).

So, my players will soon enter the submerged tunnels, the lowest level under the lucky bones.

But I just don't understand the layout of these tunnels, specifically how they are laid out so an active pumping room can keep those tunnels dry.

Based on the descriptions, I can make out that area D9 eventually leads up to an area that's higher than the tunnels. D1, D2, D5, D6, D7 are all at the same level, D3 and D4 are slightly higher.

D8 is... at roughly the same level as D1, perhaps slightly lower (the dock at least should be the same level as D1)?

D12, D11, D10, D13 are all lower apparently.

But the tunnels are described as being below sea level, so naturally they flood when the pumps are shut off. But when the pumps are active I don't understand how they keep the place dry.

Do they pump in high pressure air to push the water out? If so, that would cause the whole area to have uncomfortably high air pressure, and any time someone would open the hatch in C16 the pressure would drop and water would rush in (making the hatch impossible to close).

And where is the water pumped into? All the water areas are connected, the pump can't move water from one reservoir into another, it can only move it around within the same body of water.

I feel like I must be missing a crucial part, but right now I feel I just can't describe this area in a way that will make sense to my players (or myself).

Hi guys. I'm preparing the fight of blosodriette in book 1. It lists she has a poison attack, and even the Swift poison ability. But I can't find anywhere what exactly her poison is? Where can I find this information?

I'm preparing to DM hells rebels, and just finished reading through the entire AP for the first time. I was wondering how other DMs ran the final Tower Of Bone encounters, as well as the Barzillai encounter. Specifically I'm not really wowed by Barzillai's mythic stats (and his non-mythic form seems frankly just weak), and I feel like I might be missing something.

Some questions I have:

1) Did you allow your players to rest inside the tower of bone? How do you feel this affected the difficulty of the final encounter?

2) Barzillai (assume his mythic stats) himself seems... alright, power wise. Not great though, just ok. What makes him a challenging encounter? Is it primarily the hounds and pit fiend allies that make it a difficult encounter, or is there something about his abilities to really be a danger to the PCs? Is he designed to be fought by a full strength party (all spells available, fully buffed, etc), or a party that's already spent a chunk of their resources?

3) How explicit were you about the soul points mechanic? I feel that being too open about this might lead to players simply making choices because they are trying to reduce the soul points, turning a cool thematic part of the adventure into a mere mathematic optimization exercise. And since the soul points appear much sooner in the adventure, sharing their existence or significance with the players seems like it would spoil too much. On the other hand, keeping the players in the dark about the soul points seems like it would make them pointless. How did you handle this?

4) How much did you tell your players about barzillai's flaws? How did you portray, illustrate or explain them to your players?

I think I found conclusive evidence that you CAN use knowledge arcana on auras to determine the spell effect, from James Jacobs himself:

Quote:

Must Knowledge (arcana) be used in conjunction with detect magic, i.e., the 3-round situation I posited above, or can a PC use it "on the fly" if he has reason to believe someone might be ensorcelled without taking the time to cast the spell?

As long as the spell effects are visible, no. That's why identifying a spell that's being cast requires Spellcraft (since that assumes a knowledge of actual spellcasting, not just theory), while Knowledge (arcana) is used to know about spell effects already in place.

Many spell effects are not observable without detect magic, but for any effect that IS visible or observable, you wouldn't need detect magic to make an identification check.

The above post shows that for spells with a visual effect, you can immediately attempt to recognise the spell effect, while spells that do not must be made observable first through 3 rounds of detect magic, or spells that achieve the same like Arcane Sight.

The second part only applies to spells with a visible effect

I've seen this before, but I can't find anything in the official rules that says it needs to be visible. Do you know where I could find this?

In this way, the determination of an aura, as described with Cat's Grace above, may lead to a second check (with a higher DC) to determine the actual spell that aura emanates from.

Right, this is the heart of my question. Because with Arcane Sight you'd see all auras. Does seeing the specific aura of a spell (knowing the school, strength and location) count as it being visible, and allow you to do a knowledge check to identify the spell effect? And does that give you the specific spell ("Mage armor") or only a general effect ("an abjuration spell that gives an armor bonus")?

I've been looking how all the different knowledge skills can be used after realising I wasn't aware of many of their uses, and so I came across knowledge arcana that has:

Identify auras while using detect magic DC 15 + spell level

Identify a spell effect that is in place DC 20 + spell level

I've been reading up a little and I think I've found a few things but I'm not sure I understood it correctly.

1. What is the difference between an aura and a spell effect?
2. Does identify a spell effect that is in place mean I can use knowledge arcana to identify what buffs are active on an opponent?

I read that in order to identify spell effects I need to be able to see them. I also read that you can use Detect Magic (after 3 rounds of study) to see these spell effects.

Which brings me to my final questions:

3. Given that Arcane Sight allows the player to just see magical auras as if having studied them for 3 rounds with Detect Magic, does this allow the player to attempt a Knowledge Arcana check to identify the spell effect immediately?

4. And if so, am I correct in understanding that a player with Arcane Sight can attempt an Knowledge Arcana check for every spell effect active on an opponent they can see in the same round since Knowledge Arcana doesn't take an action - effectively allowing them to know the full list of spells active on an opponent as soon as they see them (provided they made their knowledge checks)?

Thanks guys!

A version of this for Starfinder would be not only highly awesome, but an incredible flavor bit.

I'm not familiar with starfinder, but the code should work just well for that if someone sets it up with the starfinder data. If starfinders want to fork the project that's fine by me :)

"Alexa, ask Stat Finder for the range of magic missile"

Hey all! Some of you might remember my thread looking for beta testers for my Amazon Alexa skill. Between here and reddit I got almost 150 beta testers, and with their help I've been able to refine the skills and release them to the public!

Based on beta feedback I have released two skills for US and UK configured devices:

Stat Finder for Pathfinder (previously called 'Irori')

Stat finder allows you to quickly get a stat of almost any spell, item or monster in Pathfinder.

Spell Finder for Pathfinder

Works exactly the same as Stat Finder, but is limited to spells only, which means its object recognition may be slightly more accurate in certain cases.

These skills are free, do not require logins or accounts, and all the software running it is publicly available on Github! If you want to help improve these skills I encourage you to start tinkering with!

I'd like to thank all the beta testers that helped me improve these skills and hope you find them useful!

If a summoned creature's duration keeps running while in an AMF then the same should be true for a Fireball. It's instantaneous, so it fizzles in the AMF.

It's not truly instantaneous though. From fireball:

"A glowing, pea-sized bead streaks from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the fireball at that point."

Clearly it travels ("streaks") from your finger to its target. This means it is not instantaneous, but it has a duration (the time it takes to streak from your finger to its target) - though likely one one that is very brief. If it was instantaneous it would either have to be a ray that instantly appears between your finger and the target, or simply an effect that happens at the target.

Given then that it has a duration, during which it travels from your finger to the target, would it not follow that the AMF does not cause it to fizzle out, and instead only suppress it while its traveling (fast but not instantaneously) through its area? Or does the AMF also suppress the travel?

is suppressed, which would mean it ceases to be

does it though?

suppressed isn't the same dispelled. Something that is suppressed still exists, just in a suppressed state. It doesn't cease to be just because it's suppressed.

You can see this because spells with duration continue to function after the AMF disappears. They clearly did not cease to be because of the AMF, they were only suppressed.

I looked for similar questions but the discussions I could find focussed on casting from an AMF or into an AMF. My question is regarding casting a fireball through an anti magic field, but with the caster and the target both being outside said anti magic field:

caster ---- [ AMF ] ---- target

anti magic field:

"An antimagic field suppresses any spell or magical effect used within, brought into, or cast into the area, but does not dispel it."

Since it only suppresses magical effects, does this mean the fireball leaves the casters hands, flies into the AMF where it is temporarily surppressed, reappears at the edge and continues towards the target as normal, or does it enter the AMF and simply wink out of existence?

Does it do price checks? PLEASE tell me it does price checks. As in "Alexa, ask Irori the price of a Cat's Eye Crown" and then it says "The market price of a Cat's Eye Crown is 18,000 gold pieces". Or similar. It's incredible how much doing price checks on magic loot slows the game down.

price information is part of the items, so you can ask it for the price of items :)

"alexa, ask irori for price of a dagger"

It is the buy price though, so you'll need to half it if you want the sell price.

There are alexa apps for your phone (like Reverb), if you don't have an alexa device :)

also: update 16:30 CET processed all beta requests so far

update 10:00 CET: processed all beta requests I have received so far, you should have gotten your invites :)

"Alexa, ask Irori for the range of magic missile"

I have created an Alexa skill for Pathfinder. This skill is backed by a database containing all stats of all (well, most) items, spells and monsters in Pathfinder, and allows you to find out what the value of a stat is of a particular object.

"Alexa, ask Irori for the hit points of a goblin", "Alexa, ask Irori for the target of Chain Lightning" or "Alexa, ask Irori for the description of a Quarterstaff of Entwined Serpents", etc. I have a little demonstration video as well!

It works fairly well, but there are still issues with object and stat recognition. As such, the skill is not certified yet, since it needs to be beta tested first, and that is where I need you help! If you have an Alexa device and want to help out, shoot me a message with your email address here or at irori@mindsoup.net.

If you're interested in helping out with development, check out the project on GitHub!

The module is awesome but I have no idea how it could be a one shot. My group's been working through it over the course of 4 or so days - unless you want to cut everything really short, but that seems to me like it would remove what makes this module great.

That aside, we played it as a group with 3 level-8 characters (bard, sorceress, paladin) who leveled up to 9 midway through and did just fine.

Prayer (cleric/paladin lvl 3) will reduce an opponents saving throws by 1

Basically as the title says. If someone is compelled/forced to sign an infernal contract, or agree to modifications of an existing infernal contract, is that contract or the modifications valid?

As a GM who deals with a player who both wants to craft and enjoys powergaming: What's your intention?

Clearly I have misunderstood the crafting information I read, since I thought it was a crafting system intended for players to use (and I was quite impressed with paizo's thoroughness). I loved the sandbox feeling I got from it. Making my own mark on the world and adding new things to it is something I really enjoy. Afterall, if I am a wizard it would make sense (from an in-character point of view) that I would create a personal staff that exactly fits the style of my character. I feel that any attempts to create unfairly cheap magical items are inherently prevented by the rule "The correct way to price an item is by comparing its abilities to similar items" (so no cheap bracers of continuous true strike).

But from the consensus here it appears that it is not a crafting system for players but for GMs, so it appears that my wizard would be limited to creating items that other wizards before him invented. Copying items rather than creating them, in effect. No originality or surprise. Which for my character is just boring.

Thanks for the clarification guys, I'll avoid the item creation feats!

This is something I previously discussed with my DM, and we appear to have a difference in opinion:

He claims that you can only craft magic items that exist in the source books. I have not been able to find anything in the magic item creation rules to support this, and in fact if this was the case, why provide a detailed table with magic enchantment costs (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Estimating-Magic-Item-Gold-Piece -Values) rather than just go by the price of the item as listed in the source books.

So can I combine any item with any magical effects (from table http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Estimating-Magic-Item-Gold-Piece- Values), provided I have the right feats, skills and pay the appropriate amount (including taking into consideration the price of similar items), or can I only craft items that have been described in the source books?

Metamagicked spells cast by an Arcanist require a full round action like a Sorcerer. The Metamixing exploit doesn't increase the casting time.

I understand that. My question is what happens when I use metamixing to apply the metamagic feat Quicken Spell.

The effect of quicken spell is: shorter casting time. Metamixing says: the metamagic feat does not affect casting time. Only one of these two can be true.

What happens if I use metamixing to apply Quicken Spell to a spell?

The arcanist can expend 1 point from her arcane reservoir to add a metamagic feat that she knows to a spell as she casts it without affecting the casting time (though using a higher-level spell slot as normal). She can use this ability to add a metamagic feat to a spell that she prepared using a metamagic feat, although she cannot add the same metamagic feat to a given spell more than once.

Casting a quickened spell is a swift action. You can perform another action, even casting another spell, in the same round as you cast a quickened spell. A spell whose casting time is more than 1 round or 1 full-round action cannot be quickened.

Read as written it appears nothing happens beyond the level increase, because metamixing says "add a metamagic feat that she knows to a spell as she casts it without affecting the casting time", but it feels like metamixing was intended to allow you to apply metamagic feats without the increase in casting time, and the whole point of Quicken Spell is to affect casting time. I guess this also applies to Spell Perfection, which contains a similar casting time clause.

What happens?

I'm working on an Arcanist, and looking at the School Understanding exploit. I find its wording and function a little ambiguous, and searching on here for similar threads only showed me a few short debates but no conclusion.

School Understanding: The arcanist can select one arcane school from any of the schools available to a character with the arcane school wizard class feature, but does not have to select any opposition schools. The arcanist gains one ability of that arcane school as though she were a 1st-level wizard, using her Charisma modifier in place of her Intelligence modifier for this ability. The ability must be one gained at 1st level and is limited in its use per day to 3 + the arcanist's Charisma modifier. As a swift action, the arcanist can expend 1 point from her arcane reservoir to bolster her understanding, allowing her to treat her arcanist level as her wizard level for the purpose of using this ability for a number of rounds equal to her Charisma modifier (minimum 1). During this time, she also gains use of the other ability gained at 1st level for her selected school. She does not gain any other abilities when using this exploit in this way, such as those gained at 8th level.

The confusing bit is this: The ability must be one gained at 1st level and is limited in its use per day to 3 + the arcanist's Charisma modifier.

Does this mean that I can only choose the level 1 school abilities that are limited in their use (as most schools have one active and one passive ability), or does it mean I must choose a level 1 school ability, and when I have done so that I can use that 3+CHA times a day? I feel the latter is the more likely interpretation, based on the wording in this sentence.

I am personally hoping that it is legal to pick Divination for School Understanding, and then pick up the Forewarned ability:

Forewarned (Su): You can always act in the surprise round even if you fail to make a Perception roll to notice a foe, but you are still considered flat-footed until you take an action. In addition, you receive a bonus on initiative checks equal to 1/2 your wizard level (minimum +1). At 20th level, anytime you roll initiative, assume the roll resulted in a natural 20.

In my personal interpretation of School Understanding, I am able to pick this ability, and because it is always on, I always get +1 to my initiative, and can always act in the surprise round. Then, at most 3+CHA times a day, I can boost my initiative with 1/2 my Arcanist level as well as gaining Diviner's Fortune which is the other level 1 ability for this school.

Am I right or wrong?

To recap:
1) Can an Arcanist pick either of the level 1 school abilities with School Understanding, or only the activated one?
2) If an arcanist can pick either, if he picks one that is passive/always-on, does that remain so? If not, how does this affect the surprise-round mechanic of Forewarned?