Dan strother's page

I was in a party that did this sort of thing a couple of years ago, we cleared out nearly everything in a fortress that we sacked. Now I can understand taking valuable art, even the booze from the wine seller, all of these are reasonable items that can sell well to the right people, but our monk, yes I said monk, even took the drapes. Unfortunately, the wagon's wheel broke on our way back down the mountain and the driver failed the handle animal check from hell, so not only did we loose the wagon full of riches, but the wagon as well. At least the horses' harness broke before they fell over the cliff....

This approach basically lets the PCs have their way, only to undo themselves later (in this case, by failing the check). If all else fails, remember that for an item to have any value, they must find someone to buy it. An entire armoury of adamantine weapons and armour is worthless if you can't find someone to pay for it. The local alchemist might be interested in a dozen or so acid flasks, but is he really going to buy 600 of them?

All good questions, lets see what I can do.

1. The vast majority of acids don't eat through glass, so unless it especially says it does, it's safe to assume it won't. That being said, I see nothing at all wrong with using acid to eat through various other substances, like walls of stone, iron, etc. I regularly use acid splash to eat through locks when the rogue is down.

2. Considering that acid dissolves a substance rather that breaking or smashing, I would say that it would be reasonable for it to ignore the hardness factor, though the rules say otherwise if you simply treat ti as an energy type. If you treat it as a substance rather than a simple energy type it could work, but you would also have to take into account that not all substances are vulnerable to all types of acid. Truly exotic materials, like mithril or adamantine, might be immune to altogether. Ultimately this would have to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

3. Usually, if a great deal of acid is present in a natural environment, the source of the acid is often near by. There aren't alot of real world references for this, but there are areas of the world were water takes on acidic (or basic) qualities due to the presence of a particular combination of minerals. In these instances, similar minerals are usually also present in the surrounding rocks, which can grant them a sort of resistance to the effect and allow the formation of "acid pools". This is EXTREMELY circumstantial, but it does happen. It's also true that acids don't usually dissolve every part of a given substance. In many cases certain minerals survive the acid and, even if they are too small to be viewed by the naked eye, they can build up, producing a "protective lining" that prevents acid from dissolving the stone or other substances beneath. This can also allow the formation of "acid pools". This is a good excuse if the source of the acid is a creature that lived in the area for a really long time, such as an ancient black dragon.

Hope that helps a bit.

One must keep in mind that there is a vast difference between ruthlessness and evil. Ruthlessness, while often a part of many evil actions, is not itself evil. Your assassins were following their orders for reasons that they honestly believed to be just, regardless of the cost. I have worked for the U.S. Dept of Defense for many years and I can honestly say that there have been a great many soldiers in the real world that have taken that particular stance. So long as they took no personal pleasure in the act and did whatever they could to avoid killing more than was necessary (silencing witnesses are usually considered "necessary" in clandestine actions like this, especially if the operatives, i.e. assassins, can be identified as having been sent from their nation of origin) then they are firmly Lawful Neutral, and I commend you on organizing such an event, it's always fun tricking paladins into wasting a smite.

Get yourself a succubus cohort for that Profane Gift. You know you want to. Yes, nothing at all could go wrong...

Yeah, I'm sure there won't be any long term side effects or drawn backs to that little ability. Still, I'm LE in this one, and I would prefer an Erinyes' martial and tracking assets to a Succubus' errrrrr..... ummm..... other types of assets...... Besides, brutal violence is much more attractive than the more mundane forms of seduction.

Bother. I suppose it comes down to: Don't use monster cohorts.

Simply unacceptable......

I had hoped that this would eventually attract James or someone with similar credentials to clarify, but that notwithstanding, I called in a meeting of our three regular GMs, they all agreed that, as far as any of us can tell, the numbers on the chart are for determining if your leadership score is sufficient to attract such a creature, and to use the rules for monsters as PCs for determining ECL (as well as that bit about carefully judging what types of monsters will be allowed). This puts an Erinyes at lv 8 base, so now I get to have fun sticking ranger lvs on to bring her up to par. Thanks for all of the input guys.

Yep, I know that (as I mentioned, I've been doing a LOT of work with this feat, the table and the numbers within for an upcoming project ...)and I'm pretty sure the OP does as well. I think he was saying that he understands that the Erinyes is indeed already listed on the Monsters as Cohorts table. He was asking how exactly one arrives at the effective character level listed for the Erinyes, as well as the others listed on the table, since there is obviously not a one to one, straightforward formula evident. He says he'd like to know in case he instead decides on a creature not on listed in the table as well as for the future.

That's actually why I gave my observations earlier in the thread on the apparent theory behind those effective character levels when applied to the Leadership feat.

It's cool though - I could have misread his original post.

That is pretty much the ideal of what I'm after here. As I understand it, the "cohort level" refers more to the leadership score needed to attract the creature than its actual ECL as per:

"their effective cohort “level”
corresponds to the level available to the PC as afforded
by his Leadership score" (p316)

Unless I'm greatly misunderstanding that point. But honestly, an Erinyes with no character lvs or any other form of enhancement would stand very little chance against any creature that the party would encounter at 16th level, much less 18th and they don't possess many abilities that are useful outside of combat, so if that is indeed their ECL as a cohort, I fear that they would be next to useless, as would nearly everything else on that list at their appointed levels.

That's not quite right.

The actual section is this: "For monsters with racial Hit Dice, the best way to allow monster PCs is to pick a CR and allow all of the players to make characters using monsters of that CR. Treat the monster's CR as its total class levels and allow the characters to multiclass into the core classes."

Note that the intent here is that all players in a group start with monster of the same challenge rating. This is to keep the party balanced within itself. The dm can adjust xp as needed to achieve appropriate progression. And that counting the CR as class levels only works when all players start as monsters with the same CR.

It's different when you're introducing a monster character into a party of class-only pcs.

Also a quote from the same section, which is on page 314 of the bestiary.

"GMs should carefully consider any monster PCs in their groups. Some creatures are simply not suitable for play as PCs, due to their powers or role in the game. As monster characters progress, GMs should closely monitor whether such characters are disruptive or abusive to the rules and modify them as needed to improve play."

Yes I see your point there, but I was referring to this paragraph:

As for which creature, I'm mostly considering an Erinyes, one of my all time favorites, and one from the provided list. Even if I do go with that one, I would still like to have a fairly standardized formula for the others for future use.

The Hellknight actually covers all three lawful alignments, but it works VERY well as a lawful evil paladin variant. Since Hellknights are such a big part of Golarion, we didn't want to double up with the antipaladin being LE as well. Also... CE is a lot more "anti" to LG than LE is.

I have been thinking of the CE vs LE thing alot since I first learned of the impending Anti-Paladin. While I certainly understand your point with the true opposite issue, I much prefer LE as for my BBEGs. Alot of what I see here points to the fact that they won't really be dependent on the chaotic portion of their alignment, so will it be possible to make a LE variant?

Sorry for the late reply, unless I'm mistaken, the Bestiary (p314) states that when using a monster as a PC you should consider it's CR as it's starting level, how are cohorts any different?

I'm finally going to get to be a player again! Yay for me! That being said, I'm considered using the leadership feat to attract a monster cohort, and I have several candidates at the moment. My question here is two fold: 1. Aside from just using the chart in the beastiary as a guide, is there any real formula for determining the necessary leadership score for attracting a monster? 2. Just to clarify, the ECL for a monster cohort is equal to its CR correct? Thanks alot everyone, this is pretty fresh territory for the whole group, apparently even though most of em have been playing since 2nd Ed, no one has ever used the Leadership feat........

Thanks alot guys, our DM decided to rule that it removes the actual movement limitations of armour, but nothing else, probably part of his ongoing "use spell that do more than just blow stuff up" campaign. This should be fun paired with expeditious retreat....

Any takers on this?

I've been searching around the forums for this for a while, but aside from the 2007 thread, I really haven't found a discussion on this, so I'm very sorry if I missed it.

Does freedom of movement remove the movement penalty for wearing heavy armour? If so, does it remove any other penalties such as armour check penalties, arcane spell failure, etc? I know the question about max Dex has been raised before, but I wouldn't even consider allowing that lest I risk the wrath of the fighters complaining about losing the specialness of their armour training.........

Many thanks all, it's kind of sad that the cost has become so prohibitive, but I suppose that helps to lessen the "wish economies" of old. It's still enough to get a nice suit of adamantine full plate, and after all, what more does an adventurer need than that?

I searched around for this but found nothing, so I apologize if it has been addressed before.

Our resident wizard just got his wish spell, yay for him, so this is really the first time that i have looked at the Pathfinder version of the spell. I notice that it no longer mentions anything about being able to create items, magical or otherwise. So my question is can the spell still be used to wish for items, magical or not, and if so, what are the current limitations for using it as such? Thanks alot guys.

So I'm guessing he joined with a lvl 10 character, and dumped his money all into that weapon. Two problems with this. One, no character can spend that much money on a single item when generating characters above level 1. You can spend MAX half your gold on one thing. Second is that any foes at level ten should be competent, heck they made it to level 10 after all. So sunder his sword. Heck most players learn to sunder a BBEG's weapon by level 5 so why shouldn't the NPC's.

Thats pretty much the case. He asked my permission to suspend that rule, which I granted, so this is ultimately my fault. As I stated before, I have played with him on many occasions, and nothing this bad has ever occurred before. I was pretty impressed with his story for it (the weapon has a great deal of importance to his character out of combat), and I never really thought it could be this bad. Now that I have the rules in hand, I can fix this without having to kill off the character or completely destroy his little plot device.

EDIT: Gotta love that search feature with PDFs

Many thanks, I'm old fashioned in most of my gaming, so I don't usually get the PDFs. This certainly helps to tone it down, but i think I'll find a way to remove at least one of those entirely, probably the double damage one. That should solve the problem while still keeping the weapon mostly intact for story purposes. I think the "ancient heirloom that isn't quite as epic as it once was" ideal is pretty flavorful anyway. Thanks again for all of the help.

Double damage plus x3 damage equals x4 damage. It's in the "multipliers and stacking" section, somewhere in the book.

By the way, both of those enchantments seem kinda broken by themselves... I hope they were at least +2 worth each.

What is the page number for that section? I have had the entire group looking for that since this issue arose.

As for the power gaming, that is an issue with him, but its more of a sub conscious thing with him rather than intentional. As for the enchants, they add up to +5, considering the characters are lv 10, he burned all of his starting gold on that one weapon. Honestly, I thought he would have died by now.....

An old friend has recently joined our campaign and he brought with him an unusual weapon. It has two enchantments from the Tome of Secrets book, which I allowed. The problem is that one of these enchantments causes double damage on any roll of 16 or higher and the other increases the crit range by 2 and the crit multiplier by 1. He put these on a bastard sword, which adds up to a 17-20 X3 weapon that deals double dmg on any roll over 16. He argues that this double damage multiplier stacks with the X3 crit, which basically puts him hitting for about 150-180 dmg on a crit (hes a barbarian). Nothing in that particular book states that such damage doesn't stack, so is there anything in the core rules that would prevent this? As is, this thing is far too broken, but he actually built a very nice background for the weapon itself, so I would hate to just disjunction it, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ah, so it would be on highly dependent on circumstances then? I think I can agree with that. If you left a vampire locked in a small cell with a large, barred window facing west just before morning it would seem reasonable that he might be a bit more cooperative without actually being afraid.

I would say the PC could not demoralize him, but if he shared a common language with him, he could intimidate him to improve his attitude to friendly.

Ok, but how would that play out exactly? As I view it, that particular function of intimidate is basically frightening someone into acting against their nature, which, I assume, is why there is a note about the subject turning you over to the authorities after the effect wears off.

Hello all, Im a fairly new GM so Im still working my way through some of the more confusing rules. Tonight's session involved a relatively non-violent confrontation with a powerful sentient undead. One of the PCs attempted an intimidate check against the creature, which I allowed to be on the side of caution, but I honestly wasn't sure if it was possible. Undead are immune to all mind altering and fear based effects, so does intimidate count as either in this instance? Thanks alot for the help.