Is it possible to get a final answer and clarification of the Paladin capstone ability Holy Champion? This has been FAQ buttoned to death, with no official reply regarding the rules. Pretty much EVERYONE, including James Jacobs thinks that it is a bad idea as written.
Holy Champion (Su): At 20th level, a paladin becomes a conduit for the power of her god. Her DR increases to 10/evil. Whenever she uses smite evil and successfully strikes an evil outsider, the outsider is also subject to a banishment, using her paladin level as the caster level (her weapon and holy symbol automatically count as objects that the subject hates). After the banishment effect and the damage from the attack is resolved, the smite immediately ends. In addition, whenever she channels positive energy or uses lay on hands to heal a creature, she heals the maximum possible amount.
After reading TONS of people asking for a clarification and FAQ of the issue, no one from Paizo has given an official response. It is rather frustrating to have the culmination of an almost 2 year game result in a character that is now worse at fighting demons than he was a level ago due to the way that the smite effect is now worded for Holy Champion.
As written the Holy Champion ability forces you to attempt a banishment upon an outsider and whether or not the banishment is successful, the smite ends after 1 single successful melee attack. Was that intended??
Or was it intended to read "After a successful banishment effect and the damage from the attack is resolved, the smite immediately ends. (italics and bold are my edit)
The question is you cast a quickened spell, move and then try to touch a person and miss with that touch attack, can you use your standard action for that round to try and touch the person again?
I am pretty sure the answer is yes, but would like to get input.
Our Magus decided to spellstrike with his new Staff of Power, and used a charge from the staff in order to "do double damage". What is the ruling for which part of the damage would be doubled, since it is like using a charge to auto crit, but it doesn't specify.
Spellstrike:
Spellstrike (Su): At 2nd level, whenever a magus casts a spell with a range of “touch” from the magus spell list, he can deliver the spell through any weapon he is wielding as part of a melee attack. Instead of the free melee touch attack normally allowed to deliver the spell, a magus can make one free melee attack with his weapon (at his highest base attack bonus) as part of casting this spell. If successful, this melee attack deals its normal damage as well as the effects of the spell. If the magus makes this attack in concert with spell combat, this melee attack takes all the penalties accrued by spell combat melee attacks. This attack uses the weapon's critical range (20, 19–20, or 18–20 and modified by the keen weapon property or similar effects), but the spell effect only deals ×2 damage on a successful critical hit, while the weapon damage uses its own critical modifier.
Staff of Power paragraph of interest:
The staff is also a +2 quarterstaff, and its wielder may use it to smite opponents. If 1 charge is expended (as a free action), the staff causes double damage (×3 on a critical hit) for 1 round.
Would the spell damage be doubled? Would just the staff damage be doubled? Would his strength or other fixed damage be doubled?
Ran into a situation this weekend where we were fighting some vampires. The vampire was reduced to zero hitpoints and assumed gaseous form. Per the PRD the vampire defensive ability says this:
If reduced to 0 hit points in combat, a vampire assumes gaseous form (see below) and attempts to escape. It must reach its coffin home within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed. (It can normally travel up to 9 miles in 2 hours.) Additional damage dealt to a vampire forced into gaseous form has no effect.
So, while the vampire would take no additional damage, can they still be destroyed by a disrupting weapon?
Disruption: A disruption weapon is the bane of all undead. Any undead creature struck in combat must succeed on a DC 14 Will save or be destroyed. A disruption weapon must be a bludgeoning melee weapon.
Long story short, our band of adventurers has been treading through the lost city of Tsar and have come into a huge horde of gold. About 350k gold to buy items with.
We have a paladin (me), a staff magus, and an oracle/sorcerer mystic theurge. We all have primary weapons and armor as well as stat boosting headbands, as well as such things as a gem of trueseeing, instant fortress, portable hole, bags of holding.
What I am asking is...what would you buy with that much gold???
For the most part we are fighting undead, demons and the like...if that matters.
I am curious if there is any input on whether or not an animated shield would strip a monk of its abilities while it is hovering in front of the monk.
Currently the SRD says this about the animated quality:
Animated: As a move action, an animated shield can be loosed to defend its wielder on its own. For the following 4 rounds, the shield grants its bonus to the one who loosed it and then drops. While animated, the shield provides its shield bonus and the bonuses from all of the other shield special abilities it possesses, but it cannot take actions on its own, such as those provided by the bashing and blinding abilities. It can, however, use special abilities that do not require an action to function, such as arrow deflection and reflecting. While animated, a shield shares the same space as the activating character and accompanies the character who activated it, even if the character moves by magical means. A character with an animated shield still takes any penalties associated with shield use, such as armor check penalty, arcane spell failure chance, and nonproficiency. If the wielder who loosed it has an unoccupied hand, she can grasp it to end its animation as a free action. Once a shield has been retrieved, it cannot be animated again for at least 4 rounds. This property cannot be added to a tower shield.
And says this about Monks:
When wearing armor, using a shield, or carrying a medium or heavy load, a monk loses his AC bonus, as well as his fast movement and flurry of blows abilities.
The question is, when you have an animated shield activated for 4 rounds hovering in front of you, is it still considered being "used"?
If you have just cast fly, and then go underwater, are you flying or swimming or a combination of the two?
I would think the same power to push you through the air and negate gravity would allow you at least the same movement through water, but there was nothing that I could find on the subject either in the PRD or on the boards.
I am a playing a halfling witch that has banded together with several other free halflings in order to subdue the greenbelt in the adventure Kingmaker. Below are some of the things he might think or have performed:
I treat all races other than halflings in a kind manner because I know eventually they will all be halflings due to my forced reincarnation hex at 18th level.
I am kind and friendly and don't steal.
I have performed human sacrifice in order to ensure that the elves left our forest, and that an evil demon was not summoned. Bummer, less future halflings.
Anyone in the adventuring group, I would gladly help and risk death for each of them.
I try and smooth things over when others in the group are too boisterous for their own good.
(Basically we are creating a free state for all halflings to have sanctuary, and taking our former imprisonment out on our past captors)
Under the ready an action portion it says that you can ready an action as a standard action. It also says that you can ready a standard, move, swift or free action.
My question is if you ready your action for something that would be an attack action, can you use a free action at that point?
Example from our session last night.
The party is being attacked by an wraith. Since it is incorporeal, it is attacking through the ground (50% miss chance), but after its attacks the group is unable to attack it. The barbarian readies an attack action to attack the wraith if it attacks any of the party members in reach. The wraith is about to attack, triggering the readied action. The barbarian seeks to rage and take their attack, but as this was a readied action, I ruled that only the attack action was readied...and not the free action as well.
So...can you ready a move or attack action and perform a free action along with that readied action during the triggered portion of readied action?
We had this come up last night, if a caster summons a monster down at the bottom of a well shaft and then commands the celestial dog in this case to attack the "enemy", how does the celestial dog know what/who the enemy is?
In this case, there were undead below which in my mind makes it a bit easier. But what would the case be if the group of heroes were fighting a group of theives of the same basic racial makeup? How would the celestial dog know without being directly commanded by the caster? And since the caster cannot directly see who or what the enemies are....how would the caster be able to convey all that information in 6 seconds?
Ponies are smaller breeds of horses better suited to halflings, gnomes, and dwarves, but they also make fond pets for humans as well. They stand 3 to 4 feet tall and weigh about 600 pounds.
A light load for a pony is up to 100 pounds, a medium load is 101–200 pounds, and a heavy load is 201–300 pounds. A pony can drag 1,500 pounds.
The statistics presented above are for a typical pony. Tougher ponies with the advanced simple template exist, but are relatively uncommon and, unlike horses, these creatures are not generally called “heavy ponies.” Like horses, ponies can be trained for combat with the Handle Animal skill, and such mounts often serve halflings, gnomes, and other small races as steeds in combat.
I was trying to calculate the carrying capacity for a druids wolf animal companion. Based on the fact that it starts with a 13 strength, its carrying capacity would be 50 lbs as a light load, but because it is a quadraped, that amount is multiplied by 1.5 based on the fact that it is a medium quadraped, making the total 75 lbs for a light load.
Net conclusion is that the Horse, Pony has an incorrect description at the bottom, and should only be 75 lbs (light load), or is there some rule that I am missing?
Carrying Capacity:
Table: Carrying Capacity Strength Score Light Load Medium Load Heavy Load
1 3 lbs. or less 4–6 lbs. 7–10 lbs.
2 6 lbs. or less 7–13 lbs. 14–20 lbs.
3 10 lbs. or less 11–20 lbs. 21–30 lbs.
4 13 lbs. or less 14–26 lbs. 27–40 lbs.
5 16 lbs. or less 17–33 lbs. 34–50 lbs.
6 20 lbs. or less 21–40 lbs. 41–60 lbs.
7 23 lbs. or less 24–46 lbs. 47–70 lbs.
8 26 lbs. or less 27–53 lbs. 54–80 lbs.
9 30 lbs. or less 31–60 lbs. 61–90 lbs.
10 33 lbs. or less 34–66 lbs. 67–100 lbs.
11 38 lbs. or less 39–76 lbs. 77–115 lbs.
12 43 lbs. or less 44–86 lbs. 87–130 lbs.
13 50 lbs. or less 51–100 lbs. 101–150 lbs.
14 58 lbs. or less 59–116 lbs. 117–175 lbs.
15 66 lbs. or less 67–133 lbs. 134–200 lbs.
16 76 lbs. or less 77–153 lbs. 154–230 lbs.
17 86 lbs. or less 87–173 lbs. 174–260 lbs.
18 100 lbs. or less 101–200 lbs. 201–300 lbs.
19 116 lbs. or less 117–233 lbs. 234–350 lbs.
20 133 lbs. or less 134–266 lbs. 267–400 lbs.
21 153 lbs. or less 154–306 lbs. 307–460 lbs.
22 173 lbs. or less 174–346 lbs. 347–520 lbs.
23 200 lbs. or less 201–400 lbs. 401–600 lbs.
24 233 lbs. or less 234–466 lbs. 467–700 lbs.
25 266 lbs. or less 267–533 lbs. 534–800 lbs.
26 306 lbs. or less 307–613 lbs. 614–920 lbs.
27 346 lbs. or less 347–693 lbs. 694–1,040 lbs.
28 400 lbs. or less 401–800 lbs. 801–1,200 lbs.
29 466 lbs. or less 467–933 lbs. 934–1,400 lbs.
+10 ×4 ×4 ×4
Lifting and Dragging: A character can lift as much as his maximum load over his head. A character's maximum load is the highest amount of weight listed for a character's Strength in the heavy load column of Table: Carrying Capacity.
A character can lift as much as double his maximum load off the ground, but he or she can only stagger around with it. While overloaded in this way, the character loses any Dexterity bonus to AC and can move only 5 feet per round (as a full-round action).
A character can generally push or drag along the ground as much as five times his maximum load. Favorable conditions can double these numbers, and bad circumstances can reduce them by half or more.
Bigger and Smaller Creatures: The figures on Table: Carrying Capacity are for Medium bipedal creatures. A larger bipedal creature can carry more weight depending on its size category, as follows: Large ×2, Huge ×4, Gargantuan ×8, Colossal ×16. A smaller creature can carry less weight depending on its size category, as follows: Small ×3/4, Tiny ×1/2, Diminutive ×1/4, Fine ×1/8.
Quadrupeds can carry heavier loads than bipeds can. Multiply the values corresponding to the creature's Strength score from Table: Carrying Capacity by the appropriate modifier, as follows: Fine ×1/4, Diminutive ×1/2, Tiny ×3/4, Small ×1, Medium ×1-1/2, Large ×3, Huge ×6, Gargantuan ×12, Colossal ×24.
This past weekend, we had a gaming session where a question of alignment came up (yet again). I was curious what others thought.
Situation:
Our band of heroes encounters a new city. When entering the new city, we find the normal layout of a standard city, with one notable difference being a very long line of people eagerly waiting to be served some food from a certain restaurant. We do some investigating and find that something peculiar is going on. I even cast an illusion of thousands of roaches flooding out of the door of the restaurant, which does nothing to dissuade those lined up from wanting to eat at the establishment. We go in and order food, detect magic and poison and find nothing. We collect a sample to examine, which yields nothing other than it decomposes more quickly. We talk to a competing barmaid and find that everyone in town lines up to get food and are quite upset when they cannot get in each day. This barmaid also has lost almost all of their business since the new restaurant has opened up.
We decide to try and get one of our group into the restaurant disguised as a waiter. I create a diversion by pretending to be a traveling spice salesman, offering to sell saffron at absurdly cheap prices. While I do this, the other sorcerer disguises himself as a waiter and he makes his way in. The plan works, and in the confusion, a real waiter and myself are ejected from the restaurant. I cast color spray on the waiter in order to keep him detained, as he was heading back around front in order to complain and possibly ruin our plans and find our disguised sorcerer.
Question about morality is this.
Is casting a spell that would cause no physical harm and is used to temporarily detain at all evil?? In this case, I am a neutral good sorcerer, and felt as though doing this was perfectly within the bounds of what a neutral good person would do.
According the the PRD, the required level is 17th. However, there is actually no spell listed for creation of the pearl of power, and the requirement simply says that you must have craft wondrous item, and be able to recall the spell of the pearl of power being created.
Would the DC to create the pearl simply be higher if I was a level 5 wizard? Or am I unable to create a pearl of power myself until I am level 17?
I am currently playing a (wizard 7, shadowcraft mage 4) shadow craft mage and will heighten a silent image into a scorching ray. Say I shoot the ray(s) at a NPC that has fire immunity, would they still take damage if they fail their will save?
What damage if any would the NPC with fire immunity take if they make their will save? I am assuming that it would be 20% of whatever it is that I rolled due to the fact that part of the illusion is imbued with shadow...
Also, does the fact that a NPC does or does not have spellcraft change how they would interact with an illusion? If the person is able to identify that I am casting a heightened silent image spell and yet they see a fireball, would that help them, or does it just not matter because they are going to interact with the effect no matter what?
Thanks in advance for some clarification and help!
We are playing in the Council of Thieves adventure path, and my character up to this point has been a neutral good to chaotic good gnome (with typical pranks and fun times thrown in). With the onset of me taking the shadowcraft mage prestige class, I felt that the study of shadow brought on a bit more menace, and more than playing practical jokes, I was going to carry it a bit further and try and get a bit more gritty. With that said, I was researching who had some valuable items in town to sell, and when I found someone that was evil, I would steal the item. I did not steal it to be mean or cruel, but just to teach them a lesson in crime and being evil does not pay.
I am normally very adept at determining my alignment based on actions, but this one is throwing me for a bit of a loop.
