Brotato's page

Back in 3.5 Larloch had over 40 ioun stones floating around his damn head. How he saw anything through that mess was anyone's guess.

Assault Leader is a 1/day ability. Hardly worth a talent even if you allow for intentional misses. It's a trap talent, I'd suggest pretending it doesn't exist.

Tiaximus wrote:

Any class that knows how many hit points my BBEG has at any given time is going to give me a sad face.

"What, you wanted him to be a recurring villain? Well, I know he started the round with 58 hit points and the barbarian just raged his face with a 62 point crit. Too bad, bud. Maybe he has a twin."

Gygax forbid players actually achieve a flawless victory, right? It’s a GM’s right to keep a fight going until you judge they’ve suffered enough.

But seriously, if Paizo ever publishes a class or archetype that forces GMs to roll their dice in the open, I will play that and nothing else forevermore.

They already did, it was Dual Cursed Oracle with Misfortune. (Need to be able to see the d20 roll to know if you want to force the reroll or not.)

After I posted I saw a few others on this as well, personally I don't like it. I always treated SA as a weapon penetrating the body and striking vital orgns inside therefore delivering more damage. It is kind of wierd that before the weapon even penetrates a critter it already does damage :-(

Like the example with the werewolf, if you are using a normal dagger which will not penetrate the skin of the critter due to its DR 10/silver, I find it that because you plan on punturing the spleen that it now can penetrate the skin and get to the juicy parts inside.

I know I can always rule 0 this in my games if I want, but just find it ironic that a rogue can penetrate the skin of a critter that is almost toatlly immune to that type of damage (as in the example with a dagger and a +2 strength).

Just my opinion, even though rules say otherwise :-)

Even in folklore, damage reduction didn't always mean that you literally couldn't break the skin, it just normally meant that the wound was far less serious to that creature. For instance bullets didn't bounce off of werewolves in folklore, they just healed so incredibly fast that it made no difference. Off tangent, they were also immune energy damage in folklore, which they are not in PF. Anyway, the DR issue is further supported by the Universal Monster rule entry:

Damage Reduction (Ex or Su) A creature with this special quality ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks. Wounds heal immediately, or the weapon bounces off harmlessly (in either case, the opponent knows the attack was ineffective). The creature takes normal damage from energy attacks (even nonmagical ones), spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. A certain kind of weapon can sometimes damage the creature normally, as noted below.

So we see that a character with sneak attack just knows more effective ways of dealing damage to things with anatomies, and doesn't break the fact that those attacks are just less serious to certain things.

As far as other riders, the case can be made that if you don't penetrate DR with a poisoned weapon, the wound is healed so fast that the poison literally has no time to make it into the bloodstream, and is therefore ineffective.

Riders do not activate if the damage needed to attach them does not beat DR. The most common form of this is poison. If you are attacked by a poisoned weapon (or a creature with poison), and that poison is injury based, then you must take at least one point of damage before the "rider" (poison) can affect you.

Sneak Attack USED to be like this in 3.0 (and maybe 3.5 as well) but has since been changed in Pathfinder to simply be increased damage as long as certain conditions are met, and so that damage is added to weapon damage before reducing for DR. Furthermore, sneak attack damage is always of the same type as the weapon used to deliver it (sneak attack with a ray of frost is cold damage, for example).

EDIT: So in your example, the rogue would deal 11-5=6 damage to the zombie, not zero.

If the proper conditions are met, Contingency will activate, triggering the Teleport spell, which will then fail if within the Dimensional Lock (Anchor is used to prevent extraplanar travel in one creature, not an area).

I just use the actual rules. Not even Metropoli have a 36000gp base limit. That means even something as minor as a +6 stat item either has to be specifically commissioned (meaning getting a crafter to devote 36 days to one item), rolled as part of the random major items of the month, or just found.

Magic Mart Syndrome is largely a product of not using the settlement rules correctly.

Skills and Powers also allowed you to make characters so overpowered there's really no comparison in Pathfinder. I find it humorous every time I hear a cry of "______ in Pathfinder is so OP, we need to get back to 2nd Ed!"

Every time I hear about a RotRL adventure party without a wizard, I cry a little inside. Free spellbooks figuratively fall out of the sky. It's a wizard's wet dream.

To stay on point, perhaps life oracle with fcb in channel energy? With life-link, you could actually provide a lot of sustain.

Jehova's Mass Suffocation Diviner, Vacuum, kills One without taking a point of damage unless One rolls a 20 on his Fort save. (DC 47 Mass Suffocation)

Vacuum was able to complete the first Beastmass in a single day, without re-memorizing spells or taking a single point of damage. No other Beastmass contestant really comes close.

Prot vs _______ spell line does not make you immune to spells that do not provide control over a character. Therefore it has no effect on Slumber.

I don't have an opinion on the power level of the Hex, just bringing that up.

DM is not a great counter to Invis. Let's stop pretending like it is.

It's a bit of a fine line, but the two rulings are actually not related. A lance may be wielded with one hand on the back of a mount, but it always remains a two handed weapon. The second FAQ is referring to abilities like Titan Mauler's that allow you to treat 2 handed weapons *as* 1 handed weapons.

It's admittedly confusing.

FAQ from last year outright states you can sunder as an AoO.

FAQing out of the hope that SR gets clarified to be more an advantage than disadvantage.

Just a quick note here, this is no longer true. Spell Resistance was errata'd to work exactly like saving throws vs. spells with the Spell Resistance Y (harmless) descriptor, meaning that Spell resistance no longer interferes with most beneficial buffs.

Do you have a link to said errata? The PRD says nothing about this change.

I disagree on a fundamental level with the writers, and I didn't claim to be coming from the book when I answered. I don't care what you think of that. The book is wrong. His GM is right in my opinion.

Seeing as how this is in the Rules Questions forum, you need more than just "I disagree because I don't like it" to back up your assertions. People want evidence not opinions.

I, Wraithstrike, and several others have both shown how DM detecting Invis is both RAW, RAI, and not an optimal way to counter the spell.

Seriously, it's a concentration duration cone that takes 3 rounds to actually find something. It's not a game breaker.

I agree with your GM as well. I'd never let Detect Magic detect an illusion. An invisible person is invisible because they have a mind effecting enchantment that makes you not notice them.

No matter your stance on DM and Invis, this is patently wrong. If it were true, Invisibility would be Enchantment (mind-affecting), not Illusion (glamer).

Being able to pinpoint a creature that's invisible after 3 rounds of concentration (not negating the 50% miss chance, still can't hit them with a targeted spell) isn't terribly broken. And if the creature gets outside of the cone? Those 3 rounds start over.

DM is not a great counter to Invis. Let's stop pretending like it is.

Searching one 5-foot square for a trap is a move action. A 10x10x10 cube has 24 5-foot squares (4 on each side of 6 sides), sift searches with a standard action what would otherwise require 12 full rounds' worth of Perception checks to check for traps.

There is absolutely nothing in the rules of either traps or Perception that support your assertion. Actively using Perception is a Move Action. There is no mention of how much area you perceive with that action. The DC simply increases by 1 for every 10 feet between you and the stimulus.

Regardless of how difficult returning to life is, the goal of any death mechanic is to create a sense of risk and danger.

I don't disagree with this.

Easier rez translates to less risk and danger for a given encounter. A giant dragon in a world where any cleric of the parties level can casually restore life isn't as scary as that same dragon where the cleric better have a 5,000 gp diamond at hand. And he's even scarier in a world where returning from the dead requires a Wish spell cast in the very presence of the soul of the departed, trapped deep in the underworld.

I do disagree with this, however. At least as far as my GM experience is concerned. I GM with no 5kg component for raise dead, though you do get the negative levels. I also play with Hero Points. My players are still terrified of dying. They horde 2 points at all times to auto-stabilize. They thoroughly plan every encounter to minimize their danger. They consider retreat whenever it even looks like even a single player might die. They don't kick down doors and run in heedless of danger because raise dead is suddenly less expensive. There's the matter of escaping a conflict with a dead member's body. No body, no raise dead. There's the ever present threat of a TPK. I've never had a player shrug indifferently when their character has died and just say "No biggie, you can just rez me in town." Death still means something to my players, even with all these safeguards. Maybe my players are outliers, but that's been my experience.

So I'm going to be completely honest and say that I didn't take the time to read through 5 pages worth posts, some of them incredibly long. I read the first page, got the gist of the OP, and decided to respond. So if what I'm about to talk about has already come up, I apologize.

First off, I feel the OP misrepresented SKR's entire argument. He was not saying that dying should carry no penalty. He was stating that the completely arbitrary 5000g material component for a spell that was no stronger mechanically than any other 5th level spell created an environment that contributes to the "PC revolving door," or the concept that it's more efficient and downright smarter (if coldly logical) for the player whose PC has died just rolled up a new character. He argued that it devalues emotional attachment to a PC when it is a detriment to your party to raise you when they can just recruit someone new, and make some money off the deal.

Second, and more personally, I'm seeing a lot of responses that talk about making raise dead a big, quest worthy deal. Disregarding the fact that this is a magical campaign setting where people can teleport instantaneously across continents and create matter literally out of thin air, where flying lizards breath fire, acid, and all sorts of other chaos, and where actual physical manifestations of ethical and moral concepts exist, what does the player whose character died get to do while the rest of the party is on this grand quest to resurrect him/her? Do they just sit their twiddling their thumbs? Do you allow them to participate in some way in the campaign or just make them spectate?

I used to GM no rez games. I used to think that death should mean something, should be permanent. But then I remembered that it's not a competition. I'm not out to "beat" my players. I want them to have an fun, engaging story. I want them to be invested in their characters. I want them to feel like they're heroes, because they're supposed to be. Making death arbitrarily more difficult to overcome in a fantastic magical universe than anything else doesn't accomplish that. At least, not for me, and not for my players.

I think the +4 Int comes from taking #46 on variant tiefling abilities table, trading out Darkness for a +2 racial bonus to Int. Not sure where the penalty went, and by my math Vaccuum's Dex should only be 28 (16+2=18-6=12+6=18+6=24+4=28). That was the only issue I found that others haven't already mentioned.

I made this thread to see über builds, not so you can attack someone who isn't here to defend themselves. I want to see builds that can beat beast mass!

I think what people are trying to point out is that without some dubious choices on the part of the monsters involved and the edge given by the conditions of the trial itself, it's not really possible to win. In essence, the trial itself is just a bit of a theorycrafting solitaire where you get to peek at a couple face down cards every now and then.

Interesting find Kthulhu. So is this bad design when Paizo does it, or is there a double standard?

No double standard, at least here. It's bad design to ignore established rules for arbitrary reasons regardless of who does it.

A different take on sniping I always found interesting was not relying on maxing out your Stealth so much, but instead pushing your Perception so high that you can simply attack from so far away that your quarry has little to no chance of spotting you, even while full attacking.

I can Power Attack as part of an Attack Action.

Guess that means it's standard action only.

Power Attack doesn't use that wording at all. Your argument is a red herring.

There's a very nice clarification block at the end of this page.

Blah.

I <3 you btw, Cheapy. You, Grick, and Jiggy are among my most respected posters.

Last point and then I'll stop derailing the thread. I also take issue with JJ's reasoning behind why DD shouldn't work with TWF. His claim is that the intent of the feat was to make 1 weapon fighting more attractive. The issue with this reasoning is that the feat actually does nothing of the sort. STR is still by far the better option even if a person wishes to only 1 hand a weapon. There is no feat tax associated with it and all one handed weapons are available. What DD actually did (regardless of its intent), was make Dex based melee *slightly* more viable (I say slightly because it still had the feat tax and applied only to a single weapon), which, when combined with TWF with unarmed strike (thus not giving the benefit of Weapon based feats [i.e. Weapon Focus]) and yet a 3rd feat, allowed a very specific build to output damage that wasn't completely obliterated by a standard THF with far less feat investment. The advent of the Agile weapon enhancement further diluted the power of DD, and if the restriction JJ mentions is taken into account, it's pretty much a dead feat (barring a specific Magus build).

Try as hard as they can, a Ranger can never get some of the best options for an Animal Companion either. Having a full progression companion of one of the weaker AC choices isn't really OP, IMHO. Personally I think the idea of a Ranger having more limited choice AND having a weaker companion is a little silly. I don't see people take Boon Companion because they think it's awesome. They take it because they see no other way for part of their class to not drop dead every combat. That certainly indicates to me that something is broken, but broken is not overpowered.

I'd just like to mention, Ashiel, that while I wholeheartedly share your view of summoning, binding, and possibly other spells with the [Evil] descriptor, I've found that the one area where Pathfinder seems to be rather narrow-minded is that repeatedly casting spells with the [Evil] descriptor makes you evil, regardless of what you do with that spell. I actually debated James Jacobs over this about Infernal Healing and Paladins (specifically an example of a Paladin with no healing left but a scroll of Infernal Healing and a dying child), and he was unwavering on the issue, which I always found somewhat absurd.

When you make the choice of playing a spellcaster, you are expected to put in the time and effort needed to keep the game running. That means spell cards for your prepared or known spells, and easy reference (through hyperlinks or bookmarks) to all others. Spellcasters are easily the biggest source of slowdown in the game. I don't think it's unfair to expect a little more responsibility on the part of a player that wishes to play one.

I'll just throw more weight behind the "Players who GM have more respect for GMs" theme. In the group I game with, we all have had experience GMing, and while some put more effort into it than others, we all know how much work even just a simple dungeon crawl can be for the GM behind the scene, and we try to respect that the best we can.

I almost always go human, because I'm a feat #$%&.

Brotato wrote:

Nothing exists in a vaccum. Every single other opposed check in the game has potential mitigating factors to it. Stealth vs Perception, Bluff vs Sense Motive, Disguise vs Perception, I could go on. Seems illogical to insist that mitigating factors (something covered in the rules under GMing I might add) don't apply in this one case.

I'm not saying they don't apply. I stated previously I would use modifiers on the roll. However, when it comes time to discuss actual game mechanics, things like houserules, fiat, custom items, they all have to be discarded.

Why? Because they are not strictly RAW. For instance, I myself would allow a Command Word Ring of True Strike in my game, barring someone having some super 1-hit wonder class that I don't know of. So far, I haven't heard of anything that can slay any creature in 1 hit, though AM BARBARIAN comes close, but he needs a lot of GM allowance in the first place.

Applying a modifier to an opposed check is up to the GM and the GM alone. The modifier could change depending on the GM, and since it can change, it can't be counted on when discussing the rules and mechanics of the spell.

I will state again. In my own personal games, I have actually applied modifiers to the opposed Charisma Check.

I would argue that modifiers ARE RAW, because they are powers specifically given in the rules of the game to the GM, since the designers, in foresight, understood that they would never be able to think of every single situation in which a spell, ability, or skill would be used and apply a proactive modifier to it.

It seems to be a view not held by the majority, however.

Nothing exists in a vaccum. Every single other opposed check in the game has potential mitigating factors to it. Stealth vs Perception, Bluff vs Sense Motive, Disguise vs Perception, I could go on. Seems illogical to insist that mitigating factors (something covered in the rules under GMing I might add) don't apply in this one case.

Bard: Probably the most underrated class in Pathfinder.

Anybody? I'm surprised more CC players aren't looking into this.

I'm pretty sure Anburaid's interpretation is RAI. If the undead is corporeal and came from something that used to be humanoid, then any mind affecting spell that affects humanoids works on said undead.

Is anything stopping Jhavhul from using Change Size on himself to become Gargantuan?

I was wondering the same thing the other day and I came to the conclusion that the only thing stopping him is the DM's whim. He's intelligent enough to recognize if it would be to his benefit to enlarge instead of trying to shrink an opponent. Also, it occurred to me that if the dominated Fire Giants aren't dealt with before encountering Jhavhul, it is completely within reason for him to force them to wish to restore him to full health, depending on how evil you want to be as a DM. I plan to roll 1d4-1 when my players encounter him to see if he has managed to use his wishes for the day. Considering the PCs are the most dangerous threat to his plans he's faced up to this point, it's safe to say he'd be willing to delay his final transformation for a day if it meant killing the troublemakers.