Bunktavious's page

Interesting topic to me, as I'm currently playing a Neutral character. So far, my approach has been simple: make the logical choice over the emotional one. Most "Good" or "Evil" acts tend to either be done as a reaction to, or as an attempt to create, an emotional feeling.

Just glancing at a tree and noticing it doesn't cast a shadow, therefore getting a save, would be a considerable nerf of the spell compared to having to "interact" with it before getting a save.

See, here is the where the question gets tricky. I'm not trying to use the figment to lower the light level of the area or to "create" darkness - I know it can't do that. The question is, if the area is lit by a single light source, and I put an opaque figment in front of that source, does it block light and therefore cast a shadow?

This matters, because if the figment can block light, then it create a "real" area of shadow - which matters when it comes to other things such as Tenebrous Spells, Shadow Jump, that sort of thing.

There's been lots of threads on how figments work and what you can and can't do with them. One thing I haven't seen discussed is how figments interact with light.

Take this as an example - outside, sun low in a clear sky. Everything is brightly lit on the sunny side and casting a long shadow on the opposite side. I create an illusion of a ten foot high pillar with silent image. If that pillar isn't casting a shadow, its going to immediately be obvious to anyone that its not real. So does it? Or do I create the shadow as part of my illusion?

Technically, the rules don't allow me to "create the shadow" as a shadow is not a creature, object, or force - rather, from a visual perspective, it is a darkening of the surface of whatever the shadow is cast on. Since you can't use an figment to change the appearance of something (darkening it), technically, you can't create a shadow.

Since the rules don't say that figments are useless in well lit situations, that suggests to me that illusions must interact with light as if they were real objects. If that interpretation is correct however, that would mean that if I put a silent image of a 20' cube around someone, it would be pitch black inside unless they had their own light source.

This has some fairly significant game implications. Can I create an illusion of a big umbrella above me to block out light and give myself partial concealment? If an illusion can block light, is that effect different based on whether or not a given creature disbelieves it, as illusions become transparent to those that make the save?

I'm leaning towards the opinion that illusions do block light, and that overall it's not that unbalancing. I just want other people's opinions on it before I take it to my current GM. I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to munchkin out a low level spell, just because it would have a big benefit for the character I'm playing (a Fetchling - 50% miss chance in low light).

If this was referenced some where in 3.5, I would love to know where. As it seems, pathfinder has nothing that I know of, but if I am wrong on that please let me know.

From the d20srd:

"Long Jump
A long jump is a horizontal jump, made across a gap like a chasm or stream. At the midpoint of the jump, you attain a vertical height equal to one-quarter of the horizontal distance. The DC for the jump is equal to the distance jumped (in feet)."

Lots of good advice here - make sure everyone knows the initiative order and encourage them to think things through before their turn. For characters with multiple attacks and buffs, get them to calculate and write down their attack matrixes for all the various situations. Make sure anyone who summons regularly actually prints out stats for all his common summons.

That all being said, I find the original post funny, complaining about one hour fights.

Our session yesterday, doing Sins of the Saviours, five players + one NPC and one follower. Fight was basically in three stages - party vs. four creatures, who retreat at under 50% health. Intermediate fight when the party goes to chase them and runs in to five guards. Final confrontation with the survivors of the first part, along with the actual boss.

Was essentially one long uninterupted fight. Roughly 18 rounds in total.

Took five and a half hours.

I had an awful recent experience with loot distribution. A player(and eventually one other) were advocated a highly complicated system that involved a party pool that would be used to buy equipment based on rank and contribution...

I'm guessing the player was an MMO Raider, used to using a DKP system. Great for a group of strangers online - terrible idea for the gaming table.

My advice to the new DM is this - get the whole group to discuss an approach ooc before your next session. Advise them that most experienced groups use a simple approach - party member who can best use the item gets it, generally if you got a good item recently, the next one goes to another player. If there winds up being a miss balance, suggest that they give the short changed player an extra share of gold to balance stuff out.

As the DM, you can help out as well in a couple ways - try to drop in items on occasion that are tailored to suit the player you think is lagging behind in loot.

I also recommend, as you get up higher in levels, occasionally have the party calculate their character's current wealth level. Have them add everything up. This will allow you to see if the party has loot inline with where their Character Wealth should be (see the rules) and it allows the party to quickly compare an notice if anyone is getting shortchanged.

"Realistically" the pit would actually split the cloud in to two clouds. For simplcity, I wouldn't try calculating out any sort of "divot" created by a pit as the cloud hits it, but I would reduce the size of the main cloud by the pit's volume. So if it's a ten foot across, thirty foot deep pit, it would reduce the cloud volume by 3000 cubic feet.

Cloudkill's volume is Pi x 20^2 x 20 = roughly 25,000 cubic feet. Reducing that by 3000 gives us 22,000 cubic feet. Then the question becomes, would it only reduce the main cloud's diameter, or it's hieght as well? Let's stay simple and keep the hieght at 20 feet. That gives us Pi x (X^2) x 20 = 22000. X = 18.7

Therefore, after dropping in to the pit, the cloud on the surface would have a new Radius of 18.7 feet. So just keep moving the emmanation point of the cloud along, but reduce the radius to 3.75 squares instead of four.

That was fun. Not very useful, but fun.