Delphince's page

Question:

Is it intended that you can't speak or cast spells while in Dragon Form, despite Dragons being able to do both?

How would you rule it if you were a GM (as per the clause in the polymorph section)?

my question would be what causes you to lose your spell-casting?

rules aside you need a little bit of common sense when ruling on stuff

Sorry that you asked a legitimate question about reasoning and got the usual slew of "because the rules say so" from folks that have lost their curiosity about why rules are in place.

You can't cast spells in dragon form because combat is supposed to be about options; choosing what's best for the situation. If you could perform as your normal caster self while in your dragon form, you'd be at a flat disadvantage any time you're NOT in dragon form. The game tries to avoid that situation. Any time you have a spell that gives you a bonus for a period of time with no disadvantage, generally the bonus is rather small to encourage you to keep your options open. Dragon Form is intended to give you a temporary trade-off.

As for the lore behind why you can't speak, the way we rule it is that dragons have a LONG youth to learn to speak clearly with such an outrageous mouth design. For a mortal that just picked up the form, it's like trying to talk through two sets of plastic vampire teeth. "Risha reereh kark ta sheek araark kashaw!"

While I appreciate the time and attention taken to place responses, at this point I'm just moving on. As Jared Walter 356 said, people are just giving RAW answers, which in this context is not seeing the forest for the trees. No matter how I try to explain the broader picture, I'm just getting definitions of individual components of the explanation. When I feel like I need to include a picture of an arm hitting something to try and get a point across, things are past the point of efforts in absurdity I'm willing to go to to express a grievance with what I consider to be an exchange of common sense and in-universe functionality for equipment balance.

My GM has long since come to see the discrepancy I've been explaining, and it's up to her whether to keep it in place in what is presumed to be the spirit of Paizo's intent to limit the boons granted by HoMB, or give in to common sense because she knows how much I hate when a ruling only exists to keep people from extracting too much versatility.

Let me reiterate my original post in a more concise way:

Handwraps of Mighty Blows state they convey the function of runes to unarmed attacks. That wording is used because handwraps can't be attached to a weapon like an axe, so the term is used to specify attack rolls made with the character's person, but they are attack rolls all the same. The Trip maneuver reads that the thing doing the tripping, if it is capable of tripping, can use bonuses that benefit attack rolls with that same thing will also benefit the Trip action.

If your unarmed attacks have the trip trait, yes.

Unarmed attacks aren't even in question. Bringing them up is a straw man that leads to a circular argument of its own sort. The thing in question is why runes that apply to maneuvers in one case do not apply to maneuvers in a similar, but functionally identical parallel case. The answer is simple: because the devs haven't defined what the character body that performs both maneuver and unarmed strikes to be, except in the case of very specific attacks, like a Brontosaurus Tail attack, because it normally seems extraneous to do so. But in this case, it's very relevant, and people seem to be accepting a contradiction of logic with no thought or support to WHY that contradiction exists beyond "I guess the developers thought it would be balanced?"

I'm just seeing iteration without consideration. If a potency rune directs a weapon to strike with more accuracy and trip with more accuracy, and it also directs your hand or handwraps (considering they are the thing that makes foreign contact) to strike with more accuracy, it logically stands to reason that it directs your hand to trip with more accuracy.

Unarmed Attacks

However, unarmed attacks aren’t weapons, and effects and abilities that work with weapons never work with unarmed attacks unless they specifically say so.

Because unarmed attacks aren’t weapons.

-

Your hand does not have the Trip trait.

Then a "free hand" shouldn't be able to perform a trip action, despite it being written as a requirement. The rules on how traits work seems fairly clear.

And your hand doesn't have the Agile, Finesse, Nonlethal, and Unarmed traits, your Fist does, which in the event of considering your hand to be a transforming weapon, would not have the Trip, Shove, Disarm, and Grapple traits while in "Fist form".

I would have thought this would come up sooner, but c'est la vie. The consensus seems to be that item bonuses to Handwraps of Mighty Blows applied to Trips and Grapples in 1e, but not in 2e, and I can find no reason why--more importantly, it defies common sense to say they wouldn't. Before you just hit "reply" without reading further, hear me out.

A weapon potency rune increases a weapon's accuracy to strikes. When making an unarmed strike, your body is the weapon; to say otherwise is a logical fallacy. Your hand, foot, tail, or face is being used as a formed shape and product of leverage to perform damage. Since you can't tattoo a weapon rune on your skin, you put them on handwraps, that go over your skin.

So here we go:

A Hook Sword with a +1 potency rune gets a +1 to its ability to Strike a target.
Handwraps with a +1 potency rune gets a +1 to your hand's ability to Strike a target.

A Hook Sword has the ability to be used to trip a target, because it has the Trip trait.
A Free Hand is normally used to trip a target, so while not listed, it is directly inferred that your hand has the Trip trait.

The Trip maneuver states that a weapon with an item bonus to attack rolls applies that bonus to the maneuver.

A Hook Sword with a +1 potency rune that is used to Trip instead of Strike applies the bonus to the Trip maneuver.
Handwraps with a +1 potency rune where your hand is used to Trip instead of Strike SHOULD apply the bonus to the maneuver.

The logic is sound. It's fundamental, and not in any way convoluted. So why is it thought otherwise? My GM has tried to explain with definitions of Unarmed Strikes and the like, but nothing contradicts the fundamental posit that you body must be regarded as a weapon, with traits, when performing an attack roll or maneuver with it, and therefore subject to the item bonus rules.

That said, I do think 'push' & 'pull' matter though maybe went overlooked as it's a new factor. And also maybe not for Whirling Throw which I think needs more clarity all around. Ex. throwing your opponent upward (which does not decrease the distance...?) does a disproportionate amount of damage for an Athletics Check on a level 6 feat.

That's why I have fun throwing mooks into each other. There's a lateral collision to make the damage more meaningful and a reflex save comes into play, turning things into a dance party. It's essentially two actions with three places to fail for a melee and ranged attack with the same cumulative damage as if I spent one action doing a Flurry of Blows, but it's a lot more fun, and really captures the sensationalism of "the Big Guy has entered the fray".

Your GM is under a mistaken impression.

The activity rules are among the most clear rules in the game and lay out that you do all the things listed without costing additional actions beyond what is listed by the activity itself.

Thank you to you and the others (this is just the most clear and concise to quote); whatever stumble she was having in the wording has burped its way out, and she's calling herself a moron for thinking otherwise.

From Forced Movement:

"If you’re pushed or pulled, you can usually be moved through hazardous terrain, pushed off a ledge, or the like. Abilities that reposition you in some other way can’t put you in such dangerous places unless they specify otherwise. In all cases, the GM makes the final call if there’s doubt on where forced movement can move a creature."

Unfortunately Whirling Throw is not a push or pull effect, nor does it "specify otherwise" re: tossing opponents into "dangerous places". Yes, this has horrible ramifications for the feat and subvert every expectation of players taking it! Essentially (for mechanical balance of a 6th level feat?) the Xulgaths should've stopped just shy of falling in anyway (w/ whatever narrative means necessary I suppose).
So while it might be a poor GM reading of one rule, she did go w/ Rule of Cool re: tossing them down in the first place*. And I'm not sure what else she should expect putting that shaft there in the first place.

*Or she didn't know, at which point you might want to check with her re: future usage. And if she's choosing a stricter reading you might ask whether you can swap for a different feat since Whirling Throw deceived you (and many others).

I understand where you're coming from with the whole as-written interpretation of the rules, that's the whole core of my initial question, but one thing I've come to respect about Pathfinder is that the game is meticulously crafted to simulate practical reality (except falling 500 ft in one round, that's over two and a half times terminal velocity on Earth). So you have an ability that can throw a creature 30 ft through the air before they hit the ground. The very notion that the ground ending in a shear drop 10 ft away like a cliff, would, without the Rule of Cool, result in the creature hitting an invisible wall and falling straight down early is utterly nonsensical.

My interpretation of the last two lines of the rules for Forced Movement is "There are way too many creative situations involving this rule to attempt to list, so here's the default; if common sense dictates otherwise, your GM will notice."

2. When you Grab an Edge, you can pull yourself onto that surface and stand

- When you use the reaction Grab an Edge you can pull yourself onto that surface and stand. That's a pretty big buff to the reaction, and fits the name "Rapid Mantel" rather well. This seems to be the main benefit of the feat

So you're under the impression that it DOES mean this feat permits it as a single action, even though that text is missing? My GM is under the impression that without such notation, grabbing the edge (a reaction) and pulling yourself up (an action, Climb) are still two independent actions. Indeed, AoN is normally very good about being clear when there is a change to how many actions are required as the result of a feat, through particular wording and not interpretation.

Hmm, looking around, I'm noticing it missing in other places. The Shove action notes you're allowed to stride after your target with a success, and nowhere in the text does it mention actions, either, though it's accepted to be part of that shove action, or why mention it at all. I'll wave that in front of her when she wakes up.

(Honestly, I think she's just still peeved that my character killed all three of her Hooklimb Xulgath by honking their noses to burn their reactions as attacks, then hurling them one-by-one down a 150-ft shaft with Whirling Throw.)

The only concrete alteration from base rules provided is that you can roll Athletics instead of a Reflex save to Grab an Edge, but both the name and the description strongly imply that you can pull yourself up more quickly than normal. Even the short description in the General Feats table on Archives of Nethys uses the limited space to mention how quickly you can pull yourself up, rather than the change in roll.

Is the declaration "--as a single action" missing from the description "When you Grab an Edge, you can pull yourself onto that surface and stand", or is this feat just incredibly misleading in how it's advertised?

Religion is a wisdom-based roll, so why wouldn't an additional lore about a god and their teachings (like Aroden Lore or Sarenrae Lore) be wisdom-based as well? Isn't that just a specific religion? Pathfinder seems to try very hard at maintaining sensibility in its RAW, even when it means confusing wording and exceptions, rather than just have sweeping rules for rules' sake. So why does this detail feel overlooked?

Then you multiclass in barbarin to take Furious Sprint to move 8 times in 3 actions, be quickened for another. Then try to trigger one of the reaction moves. Not a bad land move for a turn.

Since it has to be in a straight line and not an exploration activity, I have serious issues imagining a case where the board would be 720 5ft-squares across.

My GM: When you fail to stop the Big Bad from teleporting away, and chase him down anyway!

Really loving these towers. Our group started the Old Forest Tower backwards, by climbing up the outside between patrols and going down through the shaft at the top. We got badly mauled by the three hook-limbed xulgath in Thessekka's sanctum, and before we had the chance to lick our wounds and fix any wounded conditions, we heard the headless xulgath climbing up the shaft to reach us from the floor below. After discovering the hook-limbs' grab-an-edge reaction in the previous battle, the monk had intentionally strode adjacent to the lizards or performed a manipulate action like honking their noses, in order to draw their attack of opportunity and burn their reaction, then grapple and throw them down the shaft one at a time. While the landing at the bottom ate a huge chunk of their respective HP, it apparently got the attention of the four-armed behemoth, and he was on the verge of arriving once the fight had concluded.

Assisting each other to perform a single group action each round, the party barely managed to shove the stone alter in the room across the floor and into the shaft. It fell atop the beast inside and like a stone plunger, broke his grip and shoved him back down the shaft to the floor 150 feet below, whereupon he was sandwiched between the falling alter and the sharp crystal monolith at the center of the room, cleaving him in half.

Good times.

But seriously, the idea of a level 20 monk just looking at an iron golem and sighing because they can't punch it but a level 20 wizard can... is amusing ;)

Yep. Mystic Strikes was one of the first things to cross my mind. So this all has clarified a bunch of stuff, mostly in the sense that "the particular wording is SPECIFIC." Potency runes and mystic strikes are magical, but they imbue magical TRAITS while not being magical ABILITIES. A stone golem could stand in a natural snowstorm without issue, take normal damage from an alchemical frost vial, and get wrecked via its AntiMagic if hit by a Ray of Frost spell.

Sounds like a stupid question, but we ran into the seemingly-common golem conundrum. They're listed as immune to "magic", except within the purview of their Golem AntiMagic, but only energy types are listed under the latter. Nowhere in the damage rules is something listed as "magical damage", only types like physical, mental, energy, etc, with the latter occasionally having magic listed in the flavor text, like Force being made of pure magic.

Trying to sort through this has had my GM trying to qualify whether damage is done from an attack based on whether it has the "magical" trait on it or any of the schools of magic in the traits, like Evocation. So in the case of a stone golem, it would be immune to damage from a fire rune or fireball, but take damage from a fire bomb. It would take AntiMagic damage from conjured water, but not from being submerged in a lake.

So are the listed energy damages (acid, cold, electricity, fire, sonic, positive, negative, force) considered inherently magical, or is the concept of magical vulnerability needlessly complicated?

When someone asks how an internal combustion engine works, simply quoting the laws of thermodynamics is a very lazy answer. Gnoams asked how WoB functions with the rules of the game, and I too was curious for an answer from someone familiar with it. Looking up "pathfinder counteract" takes far less effort than working out an example from the sweeping counteract-check-modifier-difficulty-check-spell-check-check.

Spoiled myself with this thread more than I expected to; if I was to play by "fair is fair", I'd offer the Xulgath the majority of the Isle of Erran as a safe haven for those willing to move forward from the past. It's unpopulated except for two settlements (Escadar being a pretty important one), and is so because it was considered "Aroden's stomping grounds" and off-limits to everyone but his most devout. Welp, he's dead, so...

This is amazing. I want to read more of Riobux's, but my GM is intervening on grounds of spoilers for anything after Book 2.

Really appreciating the Xulgath chapter. It's led to a lot of interesting twists to roleplaying Cavnakash (which my circus recruited with a crazy Diplomacy check, and some convincing circumstances); like teaching him to bath himself in a river to get the natural skin oils that stink up places out of his skin for a moment and a weird roleplay moment when he made a tent out of a tarp and was creating a small fire within it and the players were confused about smoke inhalation (which he saw as a rite of passage to cull the weak). It's definitely made Cavnakash a party favourite the last two or so sessions, complete with running jokes (like refusing to translate for the fighter in the group, because they're trying to convince Cavnakash to be LESS warlike).

It's so cool to hear someone else pursued this concept! In our case, it was Ashagith, rather than Cavnakash (the thought crossed my mind about the boss, but I didn't have the audacity). As she and her group were the penultimate encounter after having slain everything else in the tower, our GM changed her personality and had her issue a challenge for a duel, rather than fight the group that had just systematically annihilated the tower's defenses. If she won, the rest of our group would be allowed to live but must leave the tower, and if we won, her warriors were instructed to let us pass. My lawful good monk took particular interest in the idea of a xulgath with a sense of honor (even though in reality it turns out she was just overconfident and invented a deal she herself wouldn't refuse). Much to my--mostly neutral--party's dismay, my monk only knocked her out after a narrow victory, and took her back to the circus.

While your Cavnakash sounds like he was intelligent enough to be swayed by the merits presented in a diplomatic overture, Ashagith was not. Despite her clever streak, she was a strong product of nurture. Initially, she remained quite violent, and only her grievous injuries kept her submissive. The only way to hold her attention in the early days of the long acculturation process was to spike her charred food with the pollen of a yellow musk creeper that our GM had planted as a loot ingredient in the kitchen of the hermitage, and present it to her bit by bit personally to encourage a bond. Honestly, it was like taming a pet raptor that could talk in very broken Common. She was introduced to utterly alien concepts like what a friend is, and that the cows and horses around the circus weren't meant for eating. While she revered Zevgavizeb, her underlying terror of being consumed by him after her death was used as leverage to convince her she could choose a life that would let her escape the Gluttondark god by rejecting his teachings. When my monk made her aware of Irori, a mortal that achieved his own godhood, she latched onto the idea immediately, convinced that if she could become a god herself, Zevgavizeb could no longer consume her. After that, she became far more attentive and amicable, working to help the circus by hunting and acting as a butcher in the kitchen. To everyone's great relief, she even learned to emulate the Stalker's trick of suppressing her scent, with the help of herbs she observed Lakkai One-fang using. She doesn't really understand even the basic tenants of Irori as anything but a means to an end, and they along with most surface-dweller behaviors seem overly-complicated and "dumb," but the life has been growing on her. She's taken a budding affection for my monk, who has been her primary teacher, even though, again, she has no concept of the emotion, having come from a culture where it was natural for everyone you know to stab you in the back the moment you displayed a sign of weakness and they had something to gain. She built a nest on the roof of his wagon, and for a few days was under the impression that so long as she went to sleep after him and rose before, he'd be none the wiser. She was discovered rather quickly to his amusement; as if the pile of leaves and sounding like a dog on linoleum wasn't enough, she slept in one day with her tail hanging in front of his wagon door.

It's been 20 or 21 8-hour sessions since then, and she's showing a strong interest in joining our adventuring party. The problem is, above-game she's still technically an NPC with her acculturation incomplete. Therefore, she's only LVL 3, even through the rest of us are LVL 9, and has yet to choose a class. Released from the cage of a xulgath mindset, she looks at the world with a childlike mix of enthusiasm, frustration, and impatience, so it's both easy and difficult to insist that she's not yet ready. But in the epilogue of Dusklight's defeat and our final show on the Isle of Erran, we're making a trip back to the Aeon Tower, to see if she's willing to accept the blessing of Aroden and his ancient controversial decision, thereby determining for herself which world she'd committed to defending.