Search Posts
Right, but even at level 10 the bonus damage you get from natural attack weapon spec bonus is so much that even though your damage dice would be behind, it's still better than virtually another other weapon. Even two-handed energy weapons. The benefit energy weapons have is lower AC target, which shouldn't be overlooked. But it's just kind of lame if you can't combine it with other things.
The default rule is, if it requires activation and doesn't specify it's a standard action.
No consensus on how it works. The issue has been raised before. The bonus weapon specialization damage from natural weapons, power armor damage dice, and unarmed strike bonus damage are all a question on how they interact with one another. Unfortunately, the 1.5 weapon specialization is so good that until weapon damage dice really start to jump you're typically better off just relying on weapon specialization damage.
My experience with Starfinder, with not starting with an 18, is that it's been perfectly fine. It the difference of a +1 to some things at some levels. Because of the way increasing stats works after you get above 16 you only increase by 1. So it's more effective, IMO, to start with 16 and have what would have been a lower stat at a higher amount, making more well rounded characters. I love how it works and I don't think an 18 is at all essential. At best the character that started with an 18 will be +1 better than you at some things, but you character will be more well rounded and general better overall.
Consider the way NPCs are built in Starfinder, I have to agree that an NPC codex isn't that useful. I'd rather have a setting book that includes stats of specific NPCs of importance, rather than generic thugs or cultist, etc.
Keep in mind there is a ring that reduces the time to attune by 1 round. So you can make up for the imbalance. Edit: Ring of Cosmic Alignment doesn't do quite what I remembered it doing. Please ignore. Still, I think Zenith revelations are far enough away that most characters needn't worry about it. For a melee Solarion there are very few attractive Graviton abilities. Photon mode has very straight forward uses. Graviton mode is much more situational. It doesn't mean it's not useful, it's harder to know when it will be useful compared to the very straight forward abilities in the Photon mode.
Yeah, if Calm Emotions only suppressed it would be different. But it goes out of its way to say removes. The Heal spell is similar though it says "ends" instead of removes. Heal and Calm Emotions should have the same effect with respect to the confusion spell, unless you want to argue that end and remove have different meanings within the context. And if anything, "remove" would be a stronger effect than "end", so if you want to argue that route I would expect Heal to ultimately do nothing to the Confusion spell under Cevah's argument and Calm Emotions to succeed at getting rid of the effect. There is no logical process in my mind where you could say Heal deals with the confusion spell but Calm Emotions doesn't. Either both work or neither does. Not working is definitely against the intention in my opinion.
To clarify, while I do think it's metagaming I do agree that it's forced metagaming by the GM and the GM should simply take everyone out of combat which makes it a non-issue in practicality. Although I've known GMs who do such things( which ispoor GMing, in my opinion) such as continuing to run the game in "combat mode" when their is no obvious reason for the players or characters.
I hate this idea. It sounds like a min-maxing tool where people will dump things not mechanically relevant to their character to maximize other things. It will become the default character creation method. If they wanted to eliminate the problem of certain races being not suited for certain classes, I would have preferred they give every race two sets of ability score boost to choose from or have an option to choose where you ability flaw is. If you can chose what stat you're flawed in then basically ever race can be open any class without significant barrier. But I hate the tit for tat system of stat dumping.
While the Barbarian can use a person as an improvised two-handed weapon, that doesn't make them an improvised weapon. Though improvised weapons are weird, since anything you grab and try to swing is an improvised weapon. But generally people aren't weapons. I probably wouldn't let the spell work, but just because the idea of making people work like objects...is just weird. It's one thing for the purpose of Body Bludgeon, but extending it beyond that just doesn't sit right with me.
I think the spell confusion causes the confused condition, and the duration of the spell is how long that confused condition would last. It doesn't have the ability to reimpose the confused condition multiple times. So, if you were affected by confusion and then by calm emotions, calm emotions should completely remove the effect and there would be no need to concentrate. Otherwise, spells like Heal also wouldn't save you from the Confusion spell. Heal says it immediately ends a list of conditions including confusion. If the confusion spell reimposes confusion for its duration then heal would remove it, and then the confusion affect would be reimposed by the confusion spell. Because heal removes the condition, and does nothing to the confusion spell. So I can only conclude that Cevah's argument doesn't hold water, in my opinion.
I'm not going to argue about how you can interpret the mounted combat rules to make them work, I agree that you should. But don't pretend it's clear cut that the rules work as written. There's no special rule about mounted charges that specifies its not a problem to charge when the rider and mount have different reach. But it's problem people often ignore because we know it should work. Different tables have different ideas about exactly what that entails. Please note, that you absolutely don't count as being in the center of your mounts squares though.
You are assumed to share your mounts entire space. For all the good and ill it creates for the rules.
However, it seems clear that you should be able to charge with your lance and attack, even if your mount doesn't.When your mounted character takes the charge action, both the companion and the PC are charging. You cannot take other types of actions while the other makes a charge action. I didn't say you could. What I am saying i:s MOUNTED COMBAT RULES ARE BROKEN WHEN APPLIED RIGOROUSLY. A level 1 character without any of the mounted combat feats cannot perform a mounted lance charge because of the rules. You and your mount charge together. You both occupy all the same squares. So you determine your reach from the edge of your mounts squares. Mounts (commonly) have only 5ft reach. You with your mount have 10ft reach. Your reach is longer than your mounts, but if you're both charging (and an FAQ makes it clear that you are) then both you and your mount can't attack, because you have to make an attack and stop in the first square from which you are capable of doing so. Which probably means your mount stops short of being able to make an attack and you use your lance, and your horse...does nothing. Maybe. Again the rules are broken if you apply them too staunchly, so you have to make some leaps to get them to a place where they make sense. At no point did I indicate that you get to do other things with your or your mounts actions, I simply was saying that your mount might not attack even though by the rules it should have to in order to charge.
They may have attempted to do so with the Hybrid classes, but since we've already noted in this thread at least a half dozen ways to do it, it seems like a bad mechanic that wasn't specifically aimed at Sneak Attack, or that the Slayer's sneak attack description should have included a line saying it stacks (the most likely thing to me, I think it was simply omitted).
Mounted combat rules get a little weird, especially because common mounts don't have reach and lances do, and riders count as occupying all squares of their mount's space. However, it seems clear that you should be able to charge with your lance and attack, even if your mount doesn't. Ride by attack is probably necessary for you both to attack. But again, the rules for mounted combat are a mess if you delve into them. Otherwise the answers are straightforward and I agree with Syries.
I feel like the "impossible -20" penalty is something like "Hey guys, did you see the unstoppable force moved the immovable object!" But if you try to lie about something that's immediately observable people will just see the thing and say "No, you're clearly crazy or lying". But, you are right that lying creatively can accomplish much the same thing as a more forward and direct method might. Example 1
Example 2
Really, the best way for game cohesion, IMO, would have been to make a blanket rule that all sneak attack progression basically stacked like a Vivisectionist, which is you look only at the overall character level. The only problem that develops with that is with certain archetypes that change the level progression of obtaining sneak attack dice. The only one I know of of the top of my head is the Rogue Eldritch Scoundrel.
I don't think anyone is trying to be vitriolic, at least not in this thread and at least not yet. And I actually think I still haven't crossed the line into argument. My previous post was to (in my opinion) clarify what was being stated and understood. Though I could see where I might cross the line. Obviously I am following this thread because the topic interests me. But I guess I'm about to cross into argument anyway...so.... I don't think any game has ever explicitly stated you need to state your actions prior to performing them, and that you only need to account for what was done at the end of the turn to ensure you didn't violate action economy. But I do think there is a strong argument to be made that its a built in assumption of the game, much like the "two hands of effort" ruling or the "magic is super obvious" ruling. The dev team may have never thought it needed to be written down because they never imagined you might not do it that way. The specific issue of defining how you spend your actions is however a separate topic form the specific topic of this thread. And the ruling for that wouldn't also answer this question so the debate on this is still...valuable. Maybe. I'm not sure on that. Time will tell I guess.
Sandpoint is a small town run by an elected mayor. So becoming the ruler would involve making everyone like you better than whoever else is running for mayor. So you should be spending both money and influence on winning the race. But it doesn't make him the "ruler". It would make him the mayor. And while he could probably get approval to do something like build an air field he's still going to have to pay for it.
This, I agree with 100%. The problem is that if you don't have to declare your action as you're taking it (which is essentially before) then you can just say you always intended to trick attack. And no one, except you, would know otherwise.
For an NPC I'd build him as a large sized human (bloody-knuckled rowdy, maybe) bloodrager, that focuses on grappling. He's an NPC, so he can be large. Not everyone needs to follow the rules. I chose bloodrager so he has a use for charisma beyond being a leader of a gang. Or you could forgo charisma and just give him a crime syndicate (which is reasonable) and have him be a brawler as suggested above.
To summarize my point where this was previously discussed (but I myself am hoping not to be drawn into this argument): In my opinion Trick Attack requires awareness of (but not necessarily sight of) a specific enemy to be used. So you would be unable to perform a trick attack without being aware of any enemies. Normally such a thing wouldn't come up, unless a player wants to try to metagame the turn based system by saying they move by Trick Attacking everywhere just in case there's an unknown enemy that reveals itself.
I feel slightly insulted at your point 2, but moving past that I understand since this seems to be something coming up in standardized play format that you would want to nail down exactly how it functions. And yes, it is easier to get an FAQ if the first post has the question clearly stated.
And Scott Wilhem's post actually exemplifies why I feel Slayer might be an oversight. There are at least 6 classes and archetypes alone that grant sneak attack progression that stacks. So if the concern was allowing classes to front load too much sneak attack...I'm not sure it's really a fair concern since you could use other classes to do exactly that.
That only covers interactions of Slayer with other classes. Their are a myriad of classes and archetypes that gain sneak attack. And I would venture to argue that potentially sneak attack was an overlooked feature, and that the general language regarding hybrid classes while a general rule about class feature, wasn't meant to cause sneak attack not to stack. Although certainly by the rules as written it would appear slayer's sneak attack wouldn't stack with anything that calls itself sneak attack or that says it functions like sneak attack*. However, this doesn't really help clarify which classes versions of sneak attack would stack with each other, except that slayer doesn't stack with any. * Because you could end up with an ability that works like sneak attack without being called sneak attack and doesn't use the phrase "functions as sneak attack".
Because I needed to search for the phrase "alchemical reagents" that was my problem. As far as I can tell, you would treat the focus or material component part of it much like you would normal foci or material components. You would need a free hand to manipulate it while casting the spell. Normally you can manipulate the components in your pouch as part of the casting with your free hand. Foci, like divine foci, are often worn as a necklace or something similar. I would imagine if you have the flask available where you can freely manipulate it (like a bandoleer) you could do so without needing to spend an additional action. If you had the components or foci somewhere not easily accessible, like a backpack or material components not held in a component pouch (or if that pouch were someplace inaccessible) then I would rule you would require additional actions (which would provoke) to cast it.
A lack of wording on a class or archetype to explicitly say "it stacks" doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't stack. Unfortunately editing isn't perfect and not all classes/archetypes are written consistently. Different people write them, and sometimes even the same person will write something differently months later. As far as I'm aware, all instances of sneak attack stack with all others, unless they have wording to specify that it doesn't stack. But I have no source for that. If you never looked at the vivisectionist would you have reason to believe sneak attack doesn't stack?
Can you post a link? I know the alternate spell focus rules exist but I can't get to them on d20 or AoN.
I'm not going to argue in this thread BNW, because you already know where I stand. But I'm curious, what made you want to rehash this argument?
What is this Fallout? Or Elder Scrolls? Or any Bethesda game? That depends on your GM. I for instance don't allow skills to approach anything near that level, not unless the rules explicitly allow such as use. As a for instance, I never would have allowed a PC the effect of the Power of Suggestion trait no matter how high their roll. But if they select the trait...well I'm not going to override that. But good luck convincing people that the sky is filled with dragons when they can look up and see its not.
B I G L E A KNo its B I G H O O k
I've always run each monster on their own initiative. I pre-roll for expected large groups/back to back encounters. The combat just works better, and PCs can actually respond to enemy focus fire and tactics. You might think so, but unfortunately my experience has been a bit different. But it's more just bad luck with dice. It seems like despite the fact that the GM will roll initiative for each individual enemy, the mooks often end up clumped together. But yes, its best to roll for each enemy. Having an encounter building tool, like Hero Lab (it can do encounters, most people don't use it for that though), definitely makes it easier.
Most of the skills have some wacky antics you can get up to once your rolls get into the sky high ranges. I once had a character who had sleight of hand high enough that he could literally steal your underwear right off of you, through your outerwear, without you or anyone else noticing. I loved stealing peoples weapons right out of their hands and hiding them away in my bag of holding. What is this Fallout? Or Elder Scrolls? Or any Bethesda game? Though thinking on this Starfinder needs a sleight of hand feat that lets you place an activated grenade in someone's pocket.
Guys, I don't think this is going anywhere. Probably time to go ahead and wrap it up.
Considering that it only suppresses the magic for 1d4 rounds, it's probably not an issue. I assume the water and air production systems don't need to operate continuously, so 24 seconds of unexpected downtime probably isn't an issue. I also assume they have more than 1 source for the entire station. And that they're also guarded. So yes, it's dangerous to have someone on board a space station that wants to disrupt it and kill people. But presumably a single individual attempting to do so wont be particularly effective.
I was thinking more along the lines of a Cave Druid turning into a Carnivorous Crystal and using monk levels with Fercal Combat Training to flurry its high damage natural attack. Although I think something about the combo was errata'd so it doesn't work anymore. But yes, I didn't mean actual cheating but more finding specifically exploitable combinations.
As a side note. Stars continue fusion past iron. All known elements are the product of fusion or are synthetic. Iron is the point where fusion consumes energy rather than releasing it however. As far as I'm aware only when a star goes Supernova does the circumstances for fusion of iron nuclei occur. Otherwise the internal conditions are such that their is not enough localized energy to sustain iron fusion. So yes, it happens but only in stars that go supernova. But you are correct that these occurrences, though rare, are the source of larger nuclei elements. But this is also why they occur in smaller quantities comparatively.
Bear in mind, you're only going to get one die of size increase, which simply isn't going to be worth taking the to hit penalties. Weapon damage dice have always been the smaller portion of damage once you get past low levels. Heck, once you're using power attack and have a moderate strength bonus your static damage will exceed your average weapon damage roll. And that's before you add any other special abilities or magic weapon enhancements. In general, unless you have a way to cheat the normal rules, increasing your weapon size is usually a net loss to damage, not an increase.
Uh...just so you know that's a 3rd party archetype. Not that there's anything wrong with 3rd party stuff, just wanted to make sure you knew that. Also, for some reason this is in the playtest forum instead of the PF1 forum. Also, for what its worth the Weapon Sworn Archetype is like a way worse Warpriest. I strongly suggest if the "weapon sworn" is the sort of thing you're after that you simply play a warpriest. They are the official Cleric-Fighter hybrid class. They don't get full BAB but their self buffing abilities make them better than having full BAB. And they still have access to the first siz levels of cleric casting, which the weapon sworn archetype loses. And they still get an ability to boost both their weapons and armor, while the armor sworn only gets an armor boosting option.
So it just turns them into Iron then? The energy well for fusion ends at iron, so you would just have big chunks of iron that slowly cool down and slows down (the sun spins a lot but it's hard to tell) and lose their magnetism. As a point of order though, if it maintains the same mass the orbit of the planets shouldn't be affected. Gravity depends on mass. If the mass is unchanged the gravitational strength shouldn't change and the planets should orbit around a big hunk of iron where a star used to be.
Pharasma is the most powerful deity and apparently the one who created this particular iteration of the multiverse (according to one of the latest splatbooks, can't rememebr the name though). As the goddess of birth, death, and prophecy (although that has likely been broken) she is probably the most widely worshiped and definitely the most important in terms of the universe's continued existence.
I think a feat that allows access to the basic Solarion revelations is fine. However, I think you should only be able to take it once, that it should grant access to both revelations, and that it should take a time to charge up just like the Solarions. But I think it can grant a mote, that doesn't transform into a weapon or armor and gain stellar mode, that never advances beyond the 1st level Solarion eequivalent. Allowing you to spend a standard action to just use it is better than what a Solarion can do. Or Solarions take it to get extra revelations, which is something they can't currently do. So we need to think of something else for it to do, because several of the revelations are quite good (and I think it would be imbalanced). Instead it should offer feat replacement options. Nothing is a particularly thematic, so I'd offer maybe Weapon Focus, any of the feats that improve a save, or Fleet.
I think based on the story line (and there could be parts that I'm confusing) that this was more a "channel the energy of a star into a beam weapon" type deal that just obliterated whatever was in the way. So there would be nothing left, practically speaking. Maybe some debris.
It's tiny, for how many people it says it holds. And still has a small population considering its importance within the Pact World. Honestly I suggest changing the size and population of the city, to actually be a city sized structure in space. New York City, which is pretty densely packed city, has a flat surface area of about 300 square miles. But this only includes the "proper" city of New York which has a population of about 8 million. The New York metro area includes about 20 million people and a foot print of 13,000 square miles. This actually ends up probably being not dense enough for a space station. So I would scale things to be 750 square miles of area for living space, with a population of about 20 million. Assume about 15 ft per "deck" of the city and let ignore the general shape in favor of estimating things as a cylinder. If we make each deck about 1/2 mile in raidus we have each deck be about 1 square mile of area. Which would be 750 decks. At 15 ft each, that would be about 2.1 miles tall. So a cylinder of about 2 miles height and about 1/2 mile in diameter gives a reasonable size space station, in my opinion. Then you add some additional size for all the additional support structure for ships and other things. That seems to be most of what the disk at the top of the space station is. And there also appear to be a domed "city" space at the "top". So I would estimate that disk is about 1 mile is radius, but that it's not living space at all, and use for space travel stuff.
Can we all just agree there isn't a one size fits all solution and that there is nothing in the rules that directly covers such a situation, and that a GM will need to decide how they prefer to adjudicate the situation? Some of clearly prefer to run things like mounted combat and think it makes more sense. Some prefer to run it like a vehicle and think it makes more sense. We can provide a myriad of arguments each way as this thread proves, but neither is supported by the rules over the other. Ultimately we will have to agree to disagree.
Maybe right at the first time encountered, but Karzoug should be aware of the repeated failure of his minions. He's also the Runelord of Greed and not Pride, so while prideful he shouldn't be so prideful to ignore the repeated failure of his team. At a certain point he should really say to his generals, "I want you to go and kill them and bring me their heads yourself".
I can agree to disagree agreeably on the weakness part. But I absolutely agree that time travel opens up a Pandora's Box worth of problems and solutions. As far as how plane shift works with demiplanes....I have to assume it works since the spell (Create Lesser Demiplane) calls out returning via plane shift, despite the 5 mile minimum error in arriving at a specific spot. I assume you just end up at the edge of the demiplane. Unless you have a demiplane larger than 5 miles.
I don't agree that you encounters would have to be "impossible" for the level you encounter them. But often within the greater context of a story you are right. Why does Karzoug not order his generals to go and kill the PCs directly the first time they're on the radar for the Rune Lord in ROTRL? Well, because that'd make for a s$~%ty story. So we come up with in story reasons and kind of ignore the issue.
Keep fighting the good fight Kailas
Oh heck, if we're talking about a time travel story then he simplest solution is to go back in time to before the wizard got the McGuffin (because the goal is to get the McGuffin, not necessarily to fight/kill the wizard) and intercept it. Presumably, the wizard will be weaker. Subverting the wizard ever having had the McGuffin is far easier than fighting the wizard....probably.
I'm going to have to hugely disagree. A wizard will not have a portal to his private demiplane, unless its an antimagic demiplane. Why? Because that's a weak point. A 20th level wizard can firstly leave his demiplane via astral projection, without actually leaving the plane. For most purposes of interacting with the material plane this will be sufficient. But more importantly, the wizard can leave and return via plane shift. Opening a permanent portal would be inviting people into your plane. Something most wizards absolutely wouldn't want. And ever since Planar adventures specified that it take a tuning rod spending a week on the specified plane to attune itself so it can be used to plane shift to a plane makes it basically impossible to reach a wizards demiplane unless he wants you to. Or in the case, unless the GM wants you to. Those are simply the rules. The GM is free to make up reasons or ways, allows spells and such, to make it possible. But via the rules there is no compelled reason to provide the players means to access the wizard.
|
