Dahnakris's page

Thank you everyone for your advice. I will take a look at each of the choices you mentioned. Except perhaps, the Gripli Druid with the pet piggy! Although...that is weirdly awesome in it's own way. I think my main concern is the lack of certain spells, lack of a real frontline fighter, and of course battlefield control (which of course can tie into spells or martial abilities.

@blackbloodtroll it was a random roll set for the stats. I ended up with 16,16,13,13,12,12...yes pretty wild.

Books sources:
Core
Advanced Player's Guide
Ultimate Magic
Ultimate Combat
Advanced Race Guide
Inner Sea
Gods and Magic

Starting at first and it looks like it will be an Adv Path. Possibly Carrion Crown.

I need some advice for a character class choice in a new pathfinder game starting up soon.

The party make up is: Life Oracle, Paladin (holy gun), Ninja, Magus. It's one healer, one range and two melee so far.

Can the Magus do nearly all of the spell casting necessary or does the group need a wizard/sorcerer? Would this group do better with another range of front line fighter you think? As long as it's a Pathfinder source it should be acceptable unless it's incredibly obscure.

Thank you in advance

Player 2 sounds like he just wants to do something different. Some players are like this, even experienced ones. Sometimes they want to really get into their RP and other times it's just to mess with the flow of the adventure. Either way, in this particular situation, he's doing nothing useful.

Best case scenario: Player 2 goes to the white tower and throws down their burning holy symbol. Some guards raise a few eyebrows and shrug. One of them probably goes over and stomps it out, and tells the player to be on their way. If they make a big deal about it they get arrested for awhile. Unless these are some very stupid guards, they will handle the situation without just jumping up and killing the offender.
After all why make a bad situation worse, their lazy, let their superior officer deal with it.

Worst case scenario: Player 2 goes to the white tower and throws down their burning holy symbol. The guards attack immediately and kill the lvl 3 character very quickly. The locals gasp and go "Wow that was stupid! Glad I don't worship whatever diety that was."

Case closed and nothing really gets resolved except handing Player 2 another character sheet. Perhaps you should mention to the GM that they should offer some friendly NPC advise to Player 2. Being a Martyr is only purposeful if they have some notoriety. A Lvl 3 character, doesn't really shine as being a pinnacle of their diety. They should go out and see how things really work (Adventure). Then one day if they are called to lay down their life for their diety, it will be with a purpose.

@Arden. Your questions regarding Summoned creatures and their level of material plane interactivity, looks to be a GM prerogative. There is not a fleshed out description of Summoning in RAW that I can find.

I was curious so I took a good look at Binding and Summoning in the main Pathfinder books. There is a wealth of info on Binding in Ultimate Magic starting on page 101. There is a lot there that I remember from old AD&D editions. Stuff like Binding and Alignment ideals, True names etc. If you read between the lines for Summoning and Binding it appears Pathfinder rolls like this. This is my personal take on it of course. There is simply Summoning and Calling. If the creature isn't 'Called' to the caster's plane, then it cannot obtain 'native' gear and would not retain damage after being dismissed or killed.

Summoned creatures are brought to the material plane (or the plane the summoner is on) and they do what you tell them to as long as they understand you. They are not bound to the plane you summon them to. They are there for a few brief moments (rounds). If the spell ends or they are killed, they simply go back to their home plane.

It does not state they arrive with the gear in their stat blocks, but it is not implied one way or the other. I believe most would consider their gear to be part of their CR and give it to them though when summoned. Edit - Thank you Gauss, apparently they do by the old 3.5 rules. :)

The GM can decide if summoned creatures can bring/take stuff back with them or not. The summoned creature isn't bound to the plane they are summoned to, so it is debatable if they could take things that were bound (aka native) with them. You could reach on this as well into the whole 'the creature cannot use their teleports/summons'. Well why can't they...perhaps because the magic holding them to the casters plane isn't a strong enough to link for the creatures to use them. If the link isn't strong enough for them to even do that, how could they take items back with them. They are tentatively there at best and only for a short time.

Of course if the creature were Called then yea pretty much anything goes. Give them a nick name, hand them that Greatsword +3 to keep etc.

In game terms exactly what Wraithstrike said. In lore terms, and this is open to interpretation, the concept was metaphysical. Summoned creatures are the 'essence' of a creature. Like a copy or image, but you are only summoning part of their being. Most outsiders are creations of ideals hence the use of alignment subclass. This seems to be an old AD&D thing.

1.) You cannot give them equipment "to take back" as they are not entirely 'there'. They can use equipment while summoned though. They could eat/etc whatever as well, but unless they just want to get overly detailed with that, most DM's will say that's all they take with them.
2.) Summoned creatures just poof when duration or dmg destroys the 'image' of them. The connection is destroyed between that plane and their home plane.

There used to be a thing about summoning the same outsider in older systems. If you could summon the same outsider perhaps the 24 hour thing is to stop people from using spells like Lesser/Greater Planner Ally spells more than once a day. If the summoned creature was destroyed that day, etc.

To the OP, there are a few things pointed out in the posts above and all of them are good advice. I have run several mix of alignments in groups before.

In the way you describe the situation, the Necromancer PC obviously wants to have fun with his character. Unfortunately it sounds like he is not going to be a group player. You will definitely have to put your foot down on the rules here. But there are some ways to go about it without having to totally 'out' his character.

Since the Cyst spell says clearly, (Target: Living creature touched). I would let the player know that the use of it on grain (i.e. non-living creature) was a one time thing. Alternatively let him keep thinking it does work that way, until you let him have a Spellcraft check to realize he was wrong. Remember you are the final arbiter on actions in the game. He can believe whatever he likes, it's up to you to describe how actions affect the game environment.

Also in game it is very obvious what an 'evil' spell is after it is cast. Note, classes with Spellcraft or Paladins would know this during the casting. Unless the PC has some Silent/Still Spell metamagic to get away with it, he is in for some issues with the locals/fellow players. Diplomacy and Bluff, only goes so far. Yes he can sway opinion, but it only works on NPC's (not the players), and...it is really only useful out of combat. An angry mob of locals (guards or otherwise) will attack first and ask questions later.

I see there are two good characters in the party. Chances are they know quite well what the Necromancer is. No Good character is going to be ok with his actions thus far. If he endangers the locals, make it apparent to him there will be repercussions. Playing an evil character is fine, but it needs to be more subtle in certain situations. Especially if the group he is with is not onboard with evil actions. I would not allow alterations of spells either. Stick with the rules or you won't have much to go back on afterward.

Thank you all for the responses. As FranaticRat mentioned it was dmg taken for the most part I believe. The reason for the problem was dmg taken before the 'ingestion' and then the constriction. The bite/grapple added on and then two rounds of internal constriction dmg and that was that. The pc didn't have the appropriate weapon...and I vaguely remember the creature having DR or perhaps the character just rolled very low dmg to escape. It should be noted yes, other characters did have the right weapons and escaped alive with little issue the same combat. I was just curious what items/spells would be beneficial to a swallowed character.

Thank you everyone for the ideas. I thought gaseous form would work, but your right there are issues there. It seems Freedom of Movement is the way to go if there are enough 4th lvl spells to go around. I'm thinking Enlarge Person is a bit easier for those with less spell power. I 'think' most of those type of creatures can't eat things unless they are two size categories smaller? That might be a 3.5 thing. Grease is also a great one (ty awp832 I never noticed it) is a good +10 bonus to grapple CMD, which still may not be enough to beat some of these crazy giant grapple DC's but I'm sure it would help.

On a related note, would Shield-Other work to split dmg on someone swallowed? Would Line of Effect be an issue with that?

In the past few sessions a party member has been swallowed and killed by giant monsters that like to grapple and eat their prey. Both times the pc 'snack' gets eaten and usually can't do the dmg required to escape (or has a light weapon). The party healer cannot heal them as there is no line of sight and Channel Energy is a burst (won't go through obstructions). The party's level is 7-8ish at the moment.

Dimension door does not work as there is no line of sight. Unless I'm reading that wrong? The only sure fire way I can think of to not to get swallowed (often because the CMB/CMD of giant monsters is ridiculously high)is to always cast an Enlarge spell on melee characters before a fight.

Can you think of any magic items/spells that would save a character that's been swallowed? I know there is an Armor enchantment that can be added which causes monster nausea...yuck...but the Fortitude save is DC 14ish? It seems any giant creature would laugh at that kind of Fort DC. Items that can turn people ethereal or use teleportation, seems to high for the current party level as well. I was just curious if anyone had any ideas as this situation seems to keep happening to this group. :)

Thanks all, I will dig into the cleric and life oracle. :)

Hey all, I'm pretty new to Pathfinder and I need a new character to bring into an existing campaign. The character would need to fit into an established group (lvl 7-8).

The group composition is currently:

Samurai
Monk
Summoner
Rogue
Wizard

There was a cleric but they are apparently out of the picture now. I've been reading that Clerics are not optimal though? Any PF core, and PF published works are useable for character creation. Thanks in advance.

If I remember right, DR/- means that nothing overcomes that DR. However keep in mind that DR is only for weapons, not spells. You need SR (spell resistance) for spell defense.

@Hendelbolaf
Definitely in the wording there and up to interpretation. In the core it lists spell-like as "the user activates it mentally". (SP) does take 1 standard action (usually) and does provoke AoO, but they can be used even in heavy armor etc. They require no verbal, somatic, material, or...wait for it...focus. (aka holy symbol). Where if you look at Supernatural abilities (SU) you still need pretty much all of the above, although they do not provoke AoO. In the game we were in, it seemed like the distinction between the two led to the idea that Channel Energy could not be used while held or paralyzed.

This actually came up in a game I was in just this weekend. We played it out like this. Basically being paralyzed does say that purely mental actions are allowed. Look up how Supernatural (SU) abilities and Spell like (SP) abilities work in combat. SU states there is an "action" done. SP states they are purely mental. Which means you could definitely use a (SP) ability paralyzed/silenced/etc. Channel Energy is (SU) ability though, and would be right out sadly.