Chrion's page

My PCs are about to get into a situation where they might have to fight a mini-boss style combat with no armor or weapons. I want to give the PCs a chance and so I am trying to think of some kind of alternate win condition they might make use of.

I'm tempted to do something like the videogame style "you see three obvious glowing weak spots on the boss" but that seems super lame to me.

I have also considered allowing them to find some improvised weapons, thick tree branches, baseball sized stones, things like that. I'm not sure that's going to do the trick though as far as them being able to overcome the encounter using them.

The encounter is taking place underground in a more or less standard stone dungeon room. One main, slow moving enemy, and a few little adds to support the main baddie.

What might be a fun and satisfying alt-win condition for the fight?

Thanks everyone for your posts!

I don't have a plan for how things are going to go, as some have suggested I should. How it's going to play out (combat, non-combat, etc.) is almost entirely going to depend on the decisions the PCs make.

The PCs made a decision and the enemies made their decision too. The PCs could have figured out that it might be a bad idea to sleep in this place, but they didn't for a bunch of reasons. But that's like...a feature, not a bug. This is what makes it fun and the PCs are gonna feel like gods if they make it our of this alive, which is also great, that's kind of what you want.

That doesn't mean, however, that I can't *guess* at what might be coming up. Maybe the PCs will try to talk their way out of it, maybe they will go along with the cultists until they feel like have an exploitable advantage, or maybe someone will just immediately swing on the guy with the knife at their throat.

In thinking about that eventuality (if someone swings at the NPC with the knife), I was unsure how to be fair to the PCs but also "fair" to the NPCs. I just didn't quite know how to adjudicate things fairly, i.e., what bonuses, penalties, and conditions to assign to everyone. I'm fine with playing a little fast and loose with things when need be, but I didn't know if this was a case where that was needed and I didn't know exactly how fast and how loose I would need to play things.

But, I think I have a better idea of how things should go if things go immediately into active combat.

Combat starts when the one of the parties (or individuals) become aware of the other. That is further reinforced by the surprise rules. If both parties decide they are not fighting it drops out of combat without anything happening. If one party is doing something like sneaking up and putting a knife to their opponent’s throats combat is still going on.

Can you say a little more about this please? Simple awareness of another party can't be what starts combat. This makes it sound like if a PC is walking down a street and sees an NPC walk around a corner, then combat would start because one of the party\parties has become aware of the other.

Maybe I could ask this a different way. The PCs go to sleep and then the bad guys decide that it is time to capture them. When does combat start? When the bad guys make the decision to take unwanted action against the PCs? When the particular bad guy with the knife lays eyes on the sleeping PC who's throat he is going to put his knife to?

Just to be clear, I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just trying to understand more what you are describing would mean and how it would work.

Thanks!

I think it's important to consider that Helpless is a rules-defined condition. Much like a lot of other rules don't necessarily best reflect "real life" experience, Helpless in the Pathfinder sense is distinct from helpless as we understand the word.

From Conditions:

Conditions said wrote:

A helpless character is paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent’s mercy.

Logically, then, "completely at an opponent's mercy" cannot include a character that is able to move, that is unbound, or (if not one of those first two) that is conscious. Waking up to find a dagger at your throat is certainly a dire situation in Pathfinder, but it's not Helpless in the game sense.

Thanks for your reply! Yeah, there is a sense in which the PC is "at their opponents mercy", but the PC doesn't seem to be "at the opponents mercy" in the relevant sense of the rules in this case. But, again, flat-footed doesn't seem to capture the direness of the situation. So, I'm trying to figure out how best to adjudicate the situation in such a way that will reflect the danger the PC is in, but, at the same time, will be fair to the PC and faithful to the rules.

Thanks for this reply! I can understand you're take on this. I have a few issues with it but, at the very least, its not clear to me that you can ready an action outside of combat. The "ready" rules don't explicitly say you can't but it is pretty heavily implied that you can't.

You can wait for, say, an orc to come around a corner and then bonk him, in which case you will get a surprise round, but that's not a readied action.

It doesn't seem to make sense to give the enemy, in this case, a surprise round either since the the PC and the enemy are both fully aware of each other.

It seems to me that the life of the PC is in immediate danger due to the knife at their throat. People wouldn't do this to other people unless this posed significant risk to the other persons life. And, while I agree that it is possible to surprise the person holding the weapon or even to come away entirely unscathed, both those things seems pretty unlikely to me.

Looking forward to your reply!

There may be specific rules about this that I just haven't come across but it seems like this kind of thing happens often in adventuring media but it doesn't seem like there are clear rules for how to handle this in game.

There is more than one PC in this situation in my game, but for simplicities sake let's just say it's one PC.

The PC is sleeping, no armor or weapons within reach, but their gear is in the same room. They are awoken to find that a group of enemies has surrounded them and one of them has a blade at the PCs throat. The PC is utterly outnumbered.

First of all, its not clear to me whether this PC should be considered helpless or not. They do seem to be "completely at an opponent’s mercy", but not in such a way that would allow for the enemy to, for example, spend a full round to coup de grace them.

Flat footed, on the other hand, just doesn't seem right either. It doesn't seem to appropriately reflect the disadvantage the PC is at relative to their opponents.

So, how screwed is this PC? How would you rule this? Maybe if the PC tries to get away the enemy gets an auto crit but not a coup de grace?

Hopefully I haven't simply overlooked rules that address cases like this specifically but if I have I'd be happy to learn about them.

Thanks!

Antimagic field primarily, I think. A SU ability doesn't work in it.

Could that really be it? The original thread was active for like a year and a half. How often do people run into antimagic fields? I could probably count the times on one hand in my playing/DMing experience.

Sorry to zombie this thread but after reading through all this I was wondering:

1) What are the stakes? That is to say, why does it matter if it is Su or Ex?

2) Did this ever get resolved?

Okay thanks!

There are these Fungal Eyes that give permanent 30 ft. blindsight at the cost of normal sight for only 18000. The benefit of the blindfold would be that you can take it on and off, and of course the the extra 30 ft. of distance. But lets say you knocked the blindfold down to 30 ft. and made it a move or a standard to shift it onto and off of your eyes. It would need to be more than the 18k but not as much as 70 or 80k, don't you think?

The Blindfold of True Darkness was an eye slot magic item in the 3.5 Arms and Equipment Guide that gave you 60 ft. of blindsight at the cost of your regular vision. It was priced at 9000g. What do you think would be a reasonable price for this in Pathfinder 1e?

Ok, here is a somewhat left-field idea...

At level 1, take Combat Expertise as your regular Feat and Pack Flanking as your Teamwork Feat from Tactician. If you use Tactician to give your mount Pack Flanking on turn 1 of combat (when you don't have the drop on your foes) you will always have flanking when you charge in riding it. Take the Order of the Blossom.
At Level 2, the Order gives you Sneak Attack at 1d6.
At Level 3 you can take Accomplished Sneak Attacker for +1d6 to sneak attacks. You now have the sneak attack of a 3rd level rogue as a pure Cavalier- and always get sneak attack when charging a level before a pure Scout would get it! (In fact you don't even need to charge as long as you are mounted, but with the flanking bonus you now have +6 to hit when you do).

This is a fun idea I think I'll use it. Thanks!

If you're following PFS rules then the horse master feat still works for a vermin tamer cav. If not then you'll need the boon companion feat, and you're more or less limited to rogue 4. You probably want to take 4 cavalier levels first so that you qualify for one of those feats ASAP, then rogue levels, then back to cavalier if you're using boon companion.

The basic mounted combat feats are mounted combat, ride-by attack and spirited charge. You want them all. Trick riding and some others like mounted skirmisher are icing on the cake, not essential. Power attack if you're a lancer, piranha strike if you're trying something heavily dex-based are also going to be wanted.

The giant beetle is the second-worst flying mount I've seen BTW. 20' fly (poor) is slow and also bad at hovering in place.

Thanks! This is great info. I know its not a good mount but, again, silly character, not super worried about stuff like that.

TL:DR help me build a Vermin Tamer Cavalier\Scout Rogue built around charging on his flying Giant Beetle.

Because I think this silly pun name is funny I've decided to make this Cav\Rogue guy. I didn't think it would be much of anything except a silly character to play and RP, but once I got down to actually making it, it seems like you could actually do something cool with a Cav\Scout Rogue built around charging. Because its kind of a silly character I want to make him a Vermin Tamer Cav as well, make him a small size race and take the Giant Beetle for a flying mount at lvl 1. I've never built a mounted character before, nor one built around charging and, generally speaking, I don't multiclass that often so I don't know what the best cadence for taking which class at which level would be, so I am looking for advice.

Are there any good resources for playing Pathfinder (1e) by post?

My PCs are about to enjoy a carnival put on by the folks at their HQ (they are agents of a larger organization) but they are also pretty high level so I want the carnival prizes to be pretty good stuff. I had in mind stuff ranging anywhere from like 500g to 5000g, but I don't really want them to be just +X weapons. So I was thinking things like:

Pearl of power
Pathfinder pouch
Bag of holding
Figurines of wonderous power

So, things like that. What might be some other fun stuff for super high end carnival game prizes?

These are all great suggestions!

My players and I are about to get back into a game that we have been playing for a very long time (over a year at this point), but that we have taken a significant break time-wise from. In addition, some new characters will be joining the party. I want to make something that will give them a chance to reunite, so to speak, with each other, to get to know the new characters, and to get reacquainted with the major NPCs that they have been dealing with in their HQ. The obvious setting, I think, would be some kind of party that would be going on at their base, but I want something more, some interesting thing to happen to make it more than just kind of a meet-and-greet, but I also don't want it to be negative or conflicting in any way. The players have been through a lot of negative stuff in the game and I want them to have a chance to have a fun time together with each other and with the NPCs. I'm struggling to come up with anything though besides the general party\festival setting. The PCs are also lvl 13 at this point, so they are pretty powerful. Anyway, I'm looking for some fun, low stakes, RP stuff to do to kick off the next leg of the game.

Neither works, just as scrying either of them does not cause their effects to trigger, neither would being able to see through a wall.

Oh yeah that makes sense.

I were to use some magic to be able to see through a wall and, on the other side of the wall, there was a creature using a gaze attack as well as a symbol spell set to trigger when someone looks at it, would I be affected by them?

My PCs are about to hit lvl 13 and they have just been through a bit of a dungeon crawl grind with a lot of doom and gloom stuff going on. So, I want to lighten the mood for them for a while and give them the chance to do some fun stuff with relatively low stakes. Is there a module or something that would be level appropriate for them that is kind of light? What would be a good way of going about doing something like this?

Not sure if this should go in the rules questions or advice forum, but I'm wondering how magical healing works with large wounds. For example, my party has come across some poor souls who have had their flesh stripped partial off by demons. If they cast cure spells on them, are they just healed, and restored to their previously completely covered-in-flesh normal state? I have had DMs in the past require a restoration spell to reattach recently severed limbs but the spell doesn't say it does that, so it must have been a house rule.

Sorry to zombie\derail this thread but the Mystery Magic ability says that you get the Stars subdomain. Does this mean you get the Void domain as well? I know you usually have to have the main domain to take the subdomain, but if that were the case I would think the ability would read something like "you gain the Void domain with the Stars subdomain". It's written so specifically that it makes me think you would only get the subdomain. And since specific rules overrule general rules etc...

Is anyone familiar enough with this module to know when the PCs are supposed to hit level 12 and 13? It says the PCs should start at level 11 and reach 13 by the end of it, but it doesn't say when they should gain the levels. Calculating up the XP doesn't seem to work out right either. My players are about a third of the way through the module and are only about half way to level 12 XP wise.

I seem to remember there being an official module published that was tuned specifically for only two PCs, but I can't seem to google up which one it is. I know there were a few solo modules published, but I could have sworn there was at least one for two PCs also. Does this exist or am I misremembering?

I seem to remember there being an official module published that was tuned specifically for only two PCs, but I can't seem to google up which one it is. I know there were a few solo modules published, but I could have sworn there was at least one for two PCs also. Does this exist or am I misremembering?

It would be nice, if your plan is to get hit a lot, to maximize your survivability: get a Miss Chance; maximize your AC; get DR; get Fast Healing.

Yeah, the weird thing is that if I want to get hit a lot, miss chances and a high AC are going to work against that. DR and fast healing seem like good routs to take though.

Caustic blood is 1d6/level damage (Ref half, +half as much again next round Ref negates) each time you're hit. Not just once, or once/round, each time. That's a potentially ridiculous amount of damage. It scales up to 15d6, more with metamagic.

Geez, you're totally right. For some reason I have it in my head that like, only Fire Shield and Thorny Body exist.

The get hit to deal damage plan is looking less and less viable. When I first had the idea I thought for sure there would be a ton of spell support for something like that, but there just doesn't seem to be, and the spells that do it are just don't do that much damage because they don't really scale. I am really interested in this AoO build that seems to be coming together here though so I've been trying to figure out what class would be the best fit for it. UcMonk seemed, prima facie, like it would be the best, but now I think Warpriest would be a total beast.

I know you've probably put in a bunch of work toward this bloodrager, but you should consider taking a look at kineticist...in particular the combination of fire and earth.

All told by around 7 or 8ish? you should be able to do 1d6 + 2.5X your level to anyone who hits you, and 1/2 level in dr/adamantine.

I've been looking at this and I am admittedly not super familiar with Kineticists, but I don't see how you are getting to this. A lot of it looks like it requires them to hit you with natural or unarmed attacks. Can you say more about what your were thinking?

Pouncing (pummeling charge, polymorph spells, etc.) gives you movement which provokes AoOs and a full attack. An odd magic item called the batrachian helm can give you swift action movement which provokes.

Drawing a blank on exactly what you're after tho'.

Panther Style says, "when an opponent makes an attack of opportunity against you for moving through a threatened square". It would be cool to be able to take your full attack and then provoke an attack with a five foot step so you can get another swing in, especially once the retaliatory strike becomes a free action with Panther Claw.

I know you've probably put in a bunch of work toward this bloodrager, but you should consider taking a look at kineticist...in particular the combination of fire and earth.

All told by around 7 or 8ish? you should be able to do 1d6 + 2.5X your level to anyone who hits you, and 1/2 level in dr/adamantine.

No to much to totally scrap it for a cooler build. I'll check it out!

So I've been building this Bloodrager and I've got him pretty well fleshed out. The question now is, is there a way to take a five foot step, and thus preserve your full round action, but still provoke and attack of opportunity due to moving within threatened squares?

Actually, a lot of these spells are on the Bloodrager list. Bloodragers also have the Black Blood bloodline. This looks promising.

I had an idea for a build that would be built around maximizing the concept of dealing damage when you got hit. When I first had the idea I thought for sure that there must be a ton of spells like Thorn Body and Fire Shield that you could use to do something like this but there just doesn't seem to be that many spells like that and those spells don't seem like good candidates for focusing on since their damage is so small to begin with. I started looking around a little more and found that Barbarian has some stuff that can do this like Come and Get Me and the Fiend Totem, but that was about. I know there are some other feats out there that allow you to leave yourself open to attack or attacks of opportunity in order to gain some damage or punish creatures taking AoO, but I don't know what they are. Does a build already exist around this idea of taking damage in order to deal damage?

VoodistMonk wrote:

Easy.

Take 3 levels of Weapon Master Fighter, because that's all you need for Weapon Training.

Take Accomplished Sneak Attacker.

Go back into UnChained Rogue/Ninja.

Enjoy.

Just take accomplished sneak attacker and move back and forth as you feel you need to for either feats, skills, or class abilities. I'd personally get my 4 to 5 levels of urogue in for debilitation, and dex to damage and put the rest in fighter, using that accomplished sneak attacker feat to keep the progression going.

The problem is, as I understand it, is that you can't take Accomplished Sneak Attacker more than once.

If the main thought is 'rogue knife thrower', I probably wouldn't use scout. Throwing knives is a short range thing and keeping improved uncanny dodge could be very handy. Here's how I might do it:

** spoiler omitted **
It first really comes together at level 5. False opening will hopefully get you sneak attack when you can't otherwise arrange it. After that dazzling blade gives you another means of setting it up, and sniping maybe another.

A flying blade swashbuckler might use the startoss chain instead for reliable damage without sneak attack, and it's possible to make knife throwing work for a vigilante, warpriest, fighter or even a magus.

Well, the idea wasn't Rogue knife thrower, it was just knife thrower, and I figured Rogue would probably be the best class to do it with. Also, like I said, I narrowed down my options because I knew that I didn't want to play a divine class and the Swashbuckler doesn't really appeal to me, so that kind of left me with Rogue and Rogue adjacent stuff.

But a knife throwing Rogue does sound super fun to me. I'm not looking for something super optimized. I was just hoping there was a way to use Scout to set up SA damage somewhat reliably. Giving up your extra \ iterative attacks is kind of brutal for your damage output though, so I went looking for a way to get those back somehow.

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

Claxon wrote:

It's also worth noting that sneak attack is really hard to pull off on ranged attacks, so making a ranged attack build on a class that relies on sneak attack for damage...isn't going to synergize well.

I feel like I've done it, but with knives.

There are builds that can do it, but to do it reliably required you to be around level 10 IIRC. It involved some length feat chains to do, but I can't remember the build off the top of my head.

It just always felt too late to come together in my opinion.

Well this is one of the reasons I wanted to take Scout. It gives you a way to guarantee sneak attack at least on one attack. But losing the rest if your attacks is a pretty big bummer. That's why I was trying to find a way to maintain the multiple attacks while still exploiting the benefits from Scout

Well, like I said, the idea was to make a knife thrower. I know that a lot of different classes can do something like that, but I want to play a rogue for a number of reasons. Swashbuckler doesn't really appeal to me for flavor\RP reasons, I don't want to play a divine class because I play a lot of divine classes, and the party right now doesn't really have a stealth-er or a lock picker. I like to do something interesting with my builds also, try something I haven't done before, try to put something janky together and try to make it work, so the Scout\Knife Master build looked pretty interesting and could be made into a cool knife throwing build.

I've wanted to build a knife thrower for a really long time and I am taking the time to do it now. The build I am looking to try to make work is a Knife Master Scout UC Rogue. The issue (and trick) of the build is that, whenever you charge, and later whenever you move more than 10 feet, you get your sneak attack on one attack. However, when you charge, or move more than 10 feet, you can only make one attack, so you lose the benefit of all your off hand, extra, iterative, etc attacks. So, I've been scouring the books looking for a way to get over this, that is to say, I've been looking for a way to get something close to pounce for my knife thrower. The best I've found is the Rapid Attack ability that the Mobile Fighter has, but you need to take 11 levels in the archetype to get to it. Taking that many levels in fighter is really going to nerf my sneak attack damage, which is kind of what the whole build it built around. So, I am trying to find a way to make this all work!

I am looking to build a rogue\fighter but I would really like to find a way to somehow maintain the rogues sneak attack progression while taking the levels in fighter since that is probably where most of the damage output is going to come from. Is there some way to do this, even if it is at a reduced rate? The only thing I am aware of is the Accomplished Sneak Attacker feat, but it doesn't look like you can take it more than once (which I would be happy to do if I could). Is there any way to do this?

I think I tend to agree with you.

Chrion wrote:

avr wrote:

How: 'The rogue cannot choose a ninja trick with the same name as a rogue talent.' in the current version of the rogue talent 'ninja trick'

But you are not choosing a ninja trick with the same name as a rogue talent, you are choosing a ninja trick called "Rogue Talent".

And then use a Rogue trick to buy a rogue talent you already have.

So you are trying to use a rogue trick to buy a trick that you can't buy twice.

Right, but generally speaking specific rules override general rules, which might be the case here since the more specific rules within the tricks\talents seem to allow you to take it a second time.

How: 'The rogue cannot choose a ninja trick with the same name as a rogue talent.' in the current version of the rogue talent 'ninja trick'

But you are not choosing a ninja trick with the same name as a rogue talent, you are choosing a ninja trick called "Rogue Talent".

Some of those old builds may have utilized a loophole by taking the Ninja Trick Talent to grab another copy of Combat Trick. That has since been closed.

Sorry to zombie this thread but can anyone point out where \ how this "loophole" closed?

Related question - how many concentration checks do you make if hit by magic missiles?

General consensus seems to be that you must make one check for each separate thing that damages you. However, with a spell that causes multiple projectiles to hit you, the projectile damage is combined into one.

This is a pretty good conversation about the topic. It's too bad it got muddled by Magic Missle. All three missiles hit simultaneously so even though you roll for each they all "impact" at the same time, thus the need for only one roll would make more sense.

Chrion wrote:

But even you pass the check on everything but the roll of a 1, if you did really have to roll 40 times, chances are you are going to roll a 1 somewhere in those 40 rolls. In other words, even if the DC is low, having to make more rolls against it increases the chance of not passing, so if you are trying to stop an enemy spellcaster, it is beneficial to the players if the enemy has to make multiple rolls. On the other hand, having to pass one really hard check is also...really hard. So adding the ongoing damage together doesn't make things super easy either.

I do not see anything saying that rolling a 1 on a concentration check is a failure.

Nat 1 is auto fail on a save and on an attack, but I don't see it listed for concentration.

/cevah

Right, I wasn't trying to argue that. What I meant was that, there are situations where you will beat a DC if you roll anything other than a one, but fail when you roll a one, not because it is a crit fail, but because it is the only number where your bonuses plus roll of a one wouldn't be enough to pass the DC.

Bumping this to hopefully get more eyes on it.

Concentration checks also include your casting stat mod, so which makes that DC 11 an auto pass at around level 5 or 6.

Oops! Yes you are right. But, again, that is the easiest possible scenario.

Man I didn't realize my last post was just riddled with typos and i can't fix it now. Arg! Anyway...

It's a little weird that taking 1 damage from each of 40 sources is trivial to concentrate through but taking 40 damage from one source is nearly impossible, though.

Even taking only one damage you would need to be pretty high level to make this an autopass. The lowest the DC can be is 11 if you are casting a 0 lvl spell. So to make this an automatic success you would have to have at least a caster level of 10. But even you pass the check on everything but the roll of a 1, if you did really have to roll 40 times, chances are you are going to roll a 1 somewhere in those 40 rolls. In other words, even if the DC is low, having to make more rolls against it increases the chance of not passing, so if you are trying to stop an enemy spellcaster, it is beneficial to the players if the enemy has to make multiple rolls. On the other hand, having to pass one really hard check is also...really hard. So adding the ongoing damage together doesn't make things super easy either.

Hopefully there is a real answer to this but if blahpers doesn't know...to whom are we to turn?