It had some interesting ideas.
I liked particularly "Exposure to magic reduces fertility. Spellcasters have few descendants, and even exposure to a single spell will reduce your fertility by a perceptible percentage."
It explained why you had high birth rate, barbarian populations with very few spellcasters that weren't conquered by their neighbors with high magic technology.
A thing one of my players pointed out yesterday (their characters are currently in the area and I am using some parts of Iron Gods for inspiration): the heat for the reentry should have made the hull searing hot. As the area was covered by ice, it probably melted a hole through the ice till it reached bedrock. But then the ice reformed above the ship, stopping people without magic and a lot of levels from reaching it until the ice started to melt.
It is possible that some of the lesser vessels and especially the smaller debris weren't embedded so profoundly in ice, making them accessible to the ancient Kellid.
Hasbro was rattling sabers about finding a way to cancel the Open Game License, so Paizo decided to move to a new system that is less vulnerable to challenges in court.
It is an age-old story, sadly. Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was killed by a cause from TSR (owned, at the time, by Lorraine Williams). It had no merit, but they had to defend themselves and spend money. At the end, they were forced into an out-of-court settlement. After that, they closed.
I have a law degree and used to practice. It is hard to see any way of cancelling an open use license or even seriously trying to. My legal knowledge is Australian and hardly up to date but it sounds far fetched.
Which is all kind of irrelevant as the financial resources of Paizo and Hasbro are so imbalanced.
TSR brought GDW to the tribunal, claiming that Dangerous Journeys, Gary Gygax's new game, infringed on D&D's copyright.
Besides the author being the same and both being high fantasy there was no similarity between the games.
From what I know, the out-of-court settlement had GDW cede all rights to was published of the game in exchange for an undisclosed sum.
The complete game should have been something similar to GURPS, with multi-dimensional universes and parallel worlds with different rules.
As the settlement didn't include what was programmed but not printed, Gygax refused to work with TSR on it. He made some of that available on his website.
I have all the books and had some of what Gygax made available online. Probably in the 30 or so years old 3.5 disks that I threw away recently.
Dangerous Journeys was interesting at the time, but the system was cumbersome, from what I recall. Probably it wouldn't have been a great hit.
The closure of GDW was a sure loss for the gaming world, they had several interesting products and ideas.
The spaceship fell about 9000 thousand years ago and during this time all the technology was not completely plundered.
Consider the timeline:
- Earthfall -5293 AR.
- Age of darkness, from -5293 to -4294 AR
The Age of Darkness was a thousand-year period in which the sun's light was blocked by the ash knocked into the atmosphere by the meteoric impacts of Earthfall. It began with the impact of the fragmented Aeon Star in -5293 AR and lasted until the sun's light was restored around -4294 AR. During the Age of Darkness, all major civilizations across Golarion were destroyed, ushering in a time of anarchy and destruction.
- Rain of Stars - 4363
In -4363 AR, a gigantic metal vessel from outer space on a collision course with Golarion broke apart in the atmosphere, creating a meteor-like shower that spread across the land. Chunks of the vessel fell to the earth across Numeria, some the size of fists and others as large as cities. The largest piece impacted in the central plains and is now known as Silver Mount, while the next best-known site is called Scrapwall, located near the Sellen River in eastern Numeria.
So, Divinity fell during an ice age caused by the meteorite. Probably the whole area was covered by a kilometer of ice, like Antarctica.
People living there at the time probably had little or no metal. Cutting a hull made of skymetal with stone and bone utensils isn't feasible.
Then:
Effects on Numeria
Many of the events following the Rain of Stars have had lasting negative effects on Numeria. Thousands of years after its impact, the ship's radioactivity continues to mutate, stunt, or kill the region's flora and fauna.
The local Kellid population explored many of the crash sites soon after the Rain of Stars, a practice that changed soon after an unknown tribal chieftain in the Felldales triggered a catastrophic explosion in -3116 AR. The blast destroyed his tribe, sent a mushroom cloud and shaft of light into the sky, and poisoned the region for miles. Now fearful of the technological items, most Kellids subsequently buried or destroyed any new discoveries.
The Kellid explored what was easily accessible and mostly stopped when they discovered that it was more dangerous than hunting monsters.
The Silver Mount was finally opened in 4512, only 202 years before Iron Gods' date of 4714 AR.
The Technic League traced its history to 4501 AR, when the low-ranking Androffan soldier Sidrah Imeruss, sole survivor of the crash of the starship Divinity, was awakened from a stasis chamber where she had been in suspended animation since the ship crashed on Golarion in the Rain of Stars in -4363 AR.4
...
The Technic League grew as a secret society for several years, accumulating new members and resources as it planned an expedition into the Silver Mount before eventually setting off in 4509 AR. However, shortly after the League arrived and encamped, Sidrah was betrayed and assassinated by her second-in-command, a wizard named Mulrach-Zeer, who then declared himself the new leader of the League.
Following Zeer's betrayal, it took the League three years to cut a passage into the Silver Mount, a period during which they first began experimenting with the intoxicating fluids that ooze from the Mount.
If you look at Golarion's history, most advanced and populous civilizations born after Earthfall were based between the Equator and the Tropics, not in the far north, whose ice cap probably had been slowly receding for millennia. So there wasn't a steady line of ants slowly picking at the mostly buried starship. There were a few exceptional individuals plundering lesser vessels or accessible parts of the main starship and, at the same time, trying to stop other people from doing the same to keep what they discovered exclusive.
Add the other "little" problems the area had in the last millennia: the Whispering Thyrant, the work of Belkzen, a lesser faerie lady who likes to kill civilizations, the recurring plagues from Iobaria, and you see why it is still mostly unplundered.
Personally I still think Pathfinder 1e ended too soon. There were a lot of things I would have liked to have seen(see various wish lists). We didn't even get any compilation books like one that has all the classes(and their variants), a bestiary that has all the remaining monsters from the APs/modules, "Ultimate Equipment 2", etc. We still haven't gotten all the pocket versions of the hardcover books.
Hasbro was rattling sabers about finding a way to cancel the Open Game License, so Paizo decided to move to a new system that is less vulnerable to challenges in court.
It is an age-old story, sadly. Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was killed by a cause from TSR (owned, at the time, by Lorraine Williams). It had no merit, but they had to defend themselves and spend money. At the end, they were forced into an out-of-court settlement. After that, they closed.
What I find even more sad is that the English-language version of Wikipedia has been sanitized, saying only, "The company disbanded February 29, 1996, after suffering financial troubles." The Italian version still has the whole story, one that people playing at the time know very well.
BTW, a year later, TSR was bankrupt and was bought by WoTC.
Considering the above, Paizo's move is understandable, even if we don't like it.
so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.
And early 3e had very little of this, and when it did it was mostly per day stuff, not per encounter. Later 3.5 and then especially Pathfinder added a lot of the "dissociated" mechanics.
3e (and previous editions) had facing. The 360° sight is one of the things is one of the things that always feel a bit off, together with the "6 seconds round" that allows you to do more than the old 1 minute round of AD&D.
When articles presenting it sprouted with great fanfare: "You have abilities like XX, that trigger once a day when you die", my reply was "What? A mechanic who assumes that you die regularly?"
Or "Every character does the same damage, an X level fighter does X damage, a X level wizard does X damage. Everyone can do out of combat rituals for magic", my thought was: "Where is the difference between the characters?"
Probably, they were examples taken out of the contest, but presenting them as great and central features instantly killed my interest.
I never tried it.
It creates 2 US gallons every 6 seconds/level.
Based on what I did find on the Internet and a bit of math, a 1st-level caster would need to cast the spell about 40 times to cover the needs of a square yard of wheat during a drought, and repeat that every few days. So 4 minutes for each square yard of wealth.
The caster output will be 1,200 gallons/hour.
As a comparison, a small irrigation pump priced at a few hundred of € has an output of 17,760 gallons.
An acre is 4,840 square yards. 322 hours, i.e. more than 32 days, to create the water for 1 acre of wealth, while casting a spell for 10 hours every day.
Put another way, 1 first level caster can maybe water 1/10 of an acre during a drought.
Unless every person on the planet has Create water, it is practically impossible to counter a drought with it. It is a spell to create enough water to keep people and animals hydrated, not a spell to irrigate farmland.
I started wit AD&D 1st ed, alternating with D&D Basic, Expert and Companion, then AD&D 2nd, and 3rd ed., Rolemaster, Ars Magica, and trying a bit of other systems, plus Scence Fantasy (Shadowrun), Science Fiction (Traveler, Gamma World), and Superheoes (the DC version, ouch) plus a few others.
I tried D&D5 and PF 2, but I feel that they lack something.
PF1 has its limits and would have benefited a lot from a remastered edition, but my group and I have enough experience that doing that isn't really difficult. Some of the more unbalancing factors are some metamagic and metamagic rods.
Spellcasters aren't exactly more powerful in 3.x/PF1 than in AD&D/BECMS, but their focus has changed. In the older editions, failing a save at high level was a rarity, but the characters had fewer hit points, so damage-dealing spells were the norm; now, resisting spells from focused spellcasters is way harder, so spellcaster focus on (small) battlefield control and disabling powerful targets.
3.x/PF1 spellcasters don't have a large impact on large battlefields, instead, they have a large impact in removing enemy commanders.
AD&D 1st ed. spellcasters had larger impacts on armies (with my druid, I was very fond of flying through enemy formations in sparrow form while maintaining a circular wall of fire around me).
The most striking difference is in recovering spells. In the older editions, you needed 10 minutes of preparation to recover 1 level of spells (so 60 minutes for a 6th-level spell). In a day, you could recover, at most, 48 levels of spells. Now, in 1 hour (or even less), you can recover all your spell slots. That makes a lot of difference in character management, and even in creating a story plot.
There was a big playstile change between 3.0 and BECM/AD&D. 3.0 and derivatives have a more detailed and slower combat, while having a faster character progression.
The difference between D&D 5 and D&D3/Pathfinder is smaller but still noticeable. I haven't played enough Pathfinder 2 to know how large the difference is.
So Pathfinder/3rd ed. isn't Old School, but it isn't Current School either. Middle School sounds bad. You will need to find an appropriate name.
One of the problems of Chains of light is that there is no reason for it to paralyze someone. What it does is Binding the target with chains made of light (or darkness for the evil version).
The condition it imposes should be Pinned, not Paralyzed. Some author has the bad habit of using Helpless or Paralyzed as a catch-all category, even when there are more appropriate conditions.
Pizza Lord rant is appropriate, the spell reflects a lot of bad habits in creating spells. "The writer assumed that it would work as ..." has no place in a rulebook. Either there is a general rule to which it defaults (and there isn't one, the rules have examples all over the place) or the author explains how it works.
@eyelessgame
Against Chains of Light there is a relatively simple and inexpensive counter: Heightened Reflexes. The bard in my group is using and abusing it.
It can't be made into a potion (it has no target), but it can be made into an inexpensive wand (especially if it only with a few charges) or a scroll and added to the enemy equipment, if someone has the UMD to use it.
A rule question.
It says:
"may attempt a new saving throw each round to end the effect."
OK, when?
It doesn't say that the target takes the save at the end of his/her/its turn, nor that it costs any actions, so my interpretation is that he/she/it takes the save at the initiative at which the spell was cast, probably when the caster turn come up if that hasn't changed, and before the caster act.
I would like to know what other people think.
BTW, a spell that has a very good chance to paralyze most opponents for, at least, a turn, in middle-high games is powerful, as the other characters almost certainly will kill the target.
Wery few creatures are immune to "held in place", even if they are immune to paralysis.
At least half a dozen sets of MW thieves’ tools (this felt silly)
After the first set, MW thieves' tools are money. Selling one of them you get 50 gp, and, RAW, you can sell an unlimited amount in almost any settlement. It seems silly that a town of 4,000 would have enough buyers for 6 MW thieves’ tools, but the GM can justify that by saying that the merchant sells the components separately. A good screwdriver, drill, or wirecutter is easier to sell than a set of instruments meant to open locks or disable traps.
A MW thieve’s tools set weight 2 lbs, while a common one weight 1 lb, so the difference in quality is mostly more and different tools, not simply better quality tools.
- * -
The large number of classes and builds makes generic loot, especially weapons and armor, problematic. The writer of the adventure will often go for thematic stuff, as he can't be sure there is someone in the party who will use it.
Numeria has a large population of barbarians, so I would expect a good number of greatswords or grataxes. No one in your group uses them.
You are small in a human land and the crew of the alien ship probably was medium-sized. Again, it seems that most of the advanced weaponry you will find would require taking feats your group members weren't meant to take or selling them.
Your GM should adapt some of the items, but probably taking a crafting feat or two will be useful.
1) Boro beads should follow the same principle as the Pearls of power, the one explained in this FAQ.
Note the Boro bads requirements:
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, creator must be able to prepare extracts of the extract level to be recalled; Cost 500 gp (1st), 2,000 gp (2nd), 4,500 gp (3rd), 8,000 gp (4th), 12,500 gp (5th), 18,000 gp (6th)
That is what matters.
2) What area Minor, Medium, and Major magic items is determined by the Random Magic Item Generation tables, table 15.2 and following in the CRB.
To make an example, the table for Armor and Shields: Table 15-3: Armor and Shields.
+1 and +2 armor and shields are Minor items.
The tables for the other books aren't available on AoN.
Boro Beadsare in Ultimate Equipment, level 1 e 2 Boro Beads are minor items.
3) There is the "Base value" for the community too. Barring modifiers, a Large Town has a base value of 2,000 gp.
Quote:
Each community has a base value associated with it (see Table 15–1). There is a 75% chance that any item of that value or lower can be found for sale with little effort in that community.
In theory, you have a 75% chance to be able to find a level 1 Boro Bead or Pearl of power.
Evangelist is another class that allows you to retain almost all of the original class abilities.
You lose a single level in your starting class, and you need to do your daily Obedience, but you get more skill points than most classes, faster and generally better Divine boons, add 2 skills of your choice to your class skills, and a few other things.
If your initial class had a 1/2 BAB progression it can even give a better BAB.
Not all Obediences are equal and they work better with some classes, but generally, it is a good choice.
The description says they are spectacles. Mundane ones made of smoked glass.
Safely removing them while fighting or doing any strenuous activity would require more than a free action.
You could remove them with a free action, but then they would be in your hand (occupying it) or on the floor, not in a safe position on your forehead.
I It's more that it doesn't give you a big combat advantage over not using the archetype, and it is behind the curve if magic item crafting is available to you.
Not being able to add some ability to the weapon by crafting is a limit, but a magus has a large pool of variable abilities if he is willing to spend a few arcana. What he lacks most are the fixed price abilities (several of them are nice for the cost).
What really makes a difference is how easy it is to have the time to craft or how easily is to buy a weapon in the specific campaign.
A +3 weapon requires 9 or 18 days (depending on the crafter's Spellcraft skill), a +4 16 or 32, and so on. If the one crafting the weapon is a party there will be competition for that time (especially if he crafts other items too).
If the weapon is brought from a merchant there is no guarantee it will have exactly the abilities a player wants. RAW, in a metropolis, a buyer has a 75% chance of finding an item he wants if it is worth up to 16.000 gp or is a minor item (i.e. a +2 equivalent weapon). Beyond that, he would find 4d4 random medium items (at most +4 equivalent weapons) and 2d4 random major items (at most +5 equivalent weapons).
Considering that weapons are only 10% of the medium and major items and that there are several kinds of items, the chance of finding the +2 holy scimitar that the magus wants is pretty low.
Most GMs would allow PCs to order specific weapons, but those will require time to be crafted. Some will handwave it and allow the character to buy whatever they want as soon as they set foot in a major marketplace.
It is extremely campaign-dependent.
In the right campaign, the Blackblade can be a nice timesaver. In a different one, it can be a vanity item.
Personally I don't think that the cost of the archetype is negligible. Being unable to take an arcana before level 6 (as you trade away your level 3 arcana you lack the feature and can't take Extra Arcana) isn't that small a hindrance. On the other hand, you get all the other features of the class, and those are very nice.
Dong that would normally fall under the rules on p. 296 of Bestiary 1: Adding Class Levels.
Those rules don't speak of archetypes as they didn't exist when Bestiary 1 was printed, but I see no reason why they couldn't be used.
Determining the effect on the dragon CR is tricky. It is even more difficult if he is meant to be a player companion or a PC.
Pathfinder doesn't have clear rules to add character levels to a creature with racial HD and get a player character (what the player has done, even if starting from a character race). The existing rules are for NPC, where what matters is the creature CR, not the level.
That notwithstanding, she is now an 11 HD dragon with what, 20 levels in character classes? That is a CL of 31.
To increase her level by one using the rules for Beyond 20th Level in the CRB she would need 2,150,400,000 xp. "Only" seven million CR 20 monsters.
Her class advancement should have stopped as soon as she had completed her trick, as no single world can feed her the xp she needs to advance.
Oh, I forgot she had added 25 HD too. That would make her a 56th-level character. 72 million of billion of XP to increase her level.
All that riding on a Polymorph spell that somehow has become permanent.
Guess what?
It is still a Polymorph spell and it can still be canceled with a Dispel Magic spell, without save or spell resistance.
Mage's Disjunction would remove the need for a caster level check against the level of the Polymorph.
You should remember that the PC will not get the dragon BAB, feats, and skills even if he has a legitimate way to become a dragon.
Polymorph is very different between Pathfinder and 3.5.
Then there is the problem of stacking Ioun stones. For almost all of them duplicates are the "same source", and so don't stack.
CRB wrote:
Stacking: Stacking refers to the act of adding together bonuses or penalties that apply to one particular check or statistic. Generally speaking, most bonuses of the same type do not stack. Instead, only the highest bonus applies. Most penalties do stack, meaning that their values are added together. Penalties and bonuses generally stack with one another, meaning that the penalties might negate or exceed part or all of the bonuses, and vice versa.
There are several spells where that line was omitted because of the "there is no need for it" reasoning and players have found a way to abuse it, so it is refreshing to see it even if there is no apparent reason for it.
About the voluntary failing the save, when an object is attended, you are making the save if the item is non-magical, and without a doubt, you can voluntarily fail it.
It depends on why he is denied his Dexterity Bonus to AC.
1) The opponent is Flat Footed (i.e. it was surprised and hasn't yet acted during the first full combat round).
- He doesn't regain his Dexterity Bonus until he acts.
2) The target isn't Flat Footed but you are attacking from stealth or you are using Invisibility.
- Both stop working as soon as you make your first attack. The target regains his Dexterity Bonus to AC after your first attack.
3) You are using Greater Invisibility. It persists even after you attack.
- The target doesn't recover his Dexterity Bonus.
4) Other abilities: you need to read the ability description.
DerricktheCleric wrote:
I'm just trying to find out if I need to be jumping my NPC's AC in the middle of every single full attack, or if a Full Attack is a single cohesive action the same as a standard attack.
A full attack isn't "a single cohesive action". You can change targets with each attack in a full attack, take a 5' step, drop a weapon and draw a new one (assuming you have Fast Draw), or add any other kind of action that can be made as part of a full attack.
No, by that logic the Corset of Delicate Moves and Borrowed Time should not work either. The text you cite is just explaining that you have 1 swift action during your turn by default. Also, readied actions get to take place outside your turn.
Azothath, the rules are clear on this: readying is a standard action and only a standard action. At the moment it triggers, it provides the action you chose to ready. You do not spend an extra action if you decide to ready a move action or swift action.
Read the text of the item and of the spell:
Corset of Delicate Moves wrote:
Once per day as a move action, the wearer can take an additional swift action.
Borrowed Time wrote:
For the duration of this spell, you gain an extra swift action you can use only during your turn.
Both are specific exceptions, allowed by the specific rule of the item and of the spell. They don't change the general rule.
It is Istantaneous, so it works once and moves your spellbook to the Ethereal plane while giving you the ability to recall it.
After you recall it, the spell hasn't any further effect.
Useful for a backup spellbook, but less useful for the one you use regularly.
I don't get if you are speaking of some creature that has an SU constant Freedom of movement effect, a guy with a Ring of Freedom of movement, a guy with a permanent Freedom of movement spell, or a creature with a constant Freedom of movement spell.
As a general rule, the sadistic weapon will work if the creature is the target of an Abjuration spell or spell-like ability, and it is in effect when the one wielding the weapon attacks.
The problem, as usual for a lot of Knowledge checks, is what the player knows against what the character knows.
RAW, "A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information."
So, with a successful check, you should get something like: "It is a barghest, a creature from Hell." In reality even that gives several useful information, not only one. As a minimum, it translates to: "It is a LE outsider." and those are 3 useful pieces of information.
Knowing its plane of origin you know that it is an outsider with the Lawful and Evil subtypes, and that allows you to know 2 kinds of bane weapons that work against it and that Anarchic and Holy weapons do extra damage.
Knowing that with a basic check can be acceptable, but a lot of players will know way more, as they read the different bestiaries. They will recall what type of DR it has, probably have some idea of its spells and attack routine, and other special abilities (if any).
The best solution I have found so far is to give out information without giving the name of the creature.
"It is one of the canine creatures from Hell."
The players still know that it is a LE outsider, but are unsure if it is a Hell Hound, Barghest, or some other creature.
Your speed tells you how far you can move in a round and still do something, such as attack or cast a spell.
Humans have a movement speed of 30' per round but can move twice (for a total of 60'). So the spell's movement speed/rate isn't necessarily the limiting factor.
Humans have a basic speed of 30', and a Flaming sphere moves 30 feet per round.. They are two different statements.
CRB wrote:
If you use two move actions in a round (sometimes called a “double move” action), you can move up to double your speed.
The Flaming sphere doesn't have a speed at all. It has a distance it can move in a round.
Check the rest of that line too:
CRB wrote:
As part of this movement, it can ascend or jump up to 30 feet to strike a target.(1) If it enters a space with a creature, it stops moving for the round(2) and deals 3d6 points of fire damage to that creature, though a successful Reflex save negates that damage. A flaming sphere rolls over barriers less than 4 feet tall.
(1) The sphere moves 30' even if it is vertical movement. Normally going up reduces your movement.
(2) The spare stops moving if it enters a creature's space. Again, not what normal movements do. With normal movement, you can't stop in another creature's square.
Confusion is a big problem, I think. You are constantly attacked, so you have to attack back, you never get to choose your action. As I see it, you should attack the creature (so it's total hp), and you will not be trying to cut a way to escape, so you would not be opening a way to escape.
After the creature dies it can change, as you will be damaged only if there is an acid effect or other environmental effect, not by muscular action.
Also, the party should have been able to notice the fact that it was healing. It’s wounds closing up should have been a clue that it was not dead.
Not all healing is automatically recognizable, especially in a creature so different from a human as an ooze.
With humans:
"That guy has stopped bleeding, it is because his heart has stopped beating, or because he is healing?" "Check his pulse."
Ozee:
"It has stopped leaking fluids, it is dead?" "Eeeee.., no idea."
The typical adventurer solution is to apply unnecessary roughness to the enemy's body after he fell.
Just for a laugh about the in-game and out of game definition of what is a Falchion:
Wikipedia wrote:
A falchion (/ˈfɔːltʃən/; Old French: fauchon; Latin: falx, "sickle") is a one-handed, single-edged sword of European origin. Falchions are found in different forms from around the 13th century up to and including the 16th century. In some versions, the falchion looks rather like the seax and later the sabre, and in other versions more like a machete with a crossguard.
AoN wrote:
Category Two-Handed; Proficiency Martial
Weapon Groups Blades, Heavy
Description
This sword has one curved, sharp edge like a scimitar, with the back edge unsharpened and either flat or slightly curved. Its weight is greater toward the end, making it better for chopping rather than stabbing.
You only need a free hand if the spell has Somatic components right?
So any spell without an S component works
anything with Still Spell works, If you have a Cleric with Blessing of Fervour you could even get the Still on low level spells without the feat.
Unfortunately very few inquisitor spells lack an (S) component. And since the inquisitor (and zealot) are spontaneous casters, Still Spell would bump a standard action cast up to a full-round, in addition to taking a higher level spell slot. At that point Quick Draw is a better feat choice than Still Spell.
A lot of divine spells have a Divine Focus (DF) component and there are several ways to make your weapon or shield a DF. The hand with the DF can fulfill the Somatic (S) components of a spell, so it is possible to resolve the problem of S components that way.
If we apply the technical aspects, I would make a permanent Mage's Magnificent Mansion. It comes with its servants, food production, and climate control.
The different versions of Create Demiplane would require a lot of castings of it and of Permanence to get something with a decent size without half of the features.
The only advantage of Create Demiplane is that the Greater version allows you to add planar traits.
Managing people requires work. If I were to create my own demiplane as a leisure place, having to manage people wouldn't be one of my goals.
A work demiplane would be another matter.
My idea of a private demiplane is of a place to rest, study, and think.
Thanks, it is not the one I was searching for, but it was a huge help, as it pointed out at what I was missing. I was searching my digital books, but almost certainly she is one of the few I have only in paper format.
In my group, while adventuring people use what is available, caring only about utility.
When is time to sell the loot, we make a spreadsheet with the items sell value and how much money each character will get from the sales. Then people "buy" whatever interests them as a selling price.
If multiple people want an item, there is a friendly discussion about utility or why the characters want an item, usually, we can reach an agreement. If not, we roll a die.
If something cost too much the character can be into a negative balance that will be covered by future loot.
No idea why it costs 50% more (not an appropriate location, maybe?).
Or the PC can add the powers of a Cloak of Resistance to the Cloak of Displacement:
CRB wrote:
Adding New Abilities
Sometimes, lack of funds or time make it impossible for a magic item crafter to create the desired item from scratch. Fortunately, it is possible to enhance or build upon an existing magic item. Only time, gold, and the various prerequisites required of the new ability to be added to the magic item restrict the type of additional powers one can place. The cost to add additional abilities to an item is the same as if the item was not magical, less the value of the original item. Thus, a +1 longsword can be made into a +2 vorpal longsword, with the cost to create it being equal to that of a +2 vorpal sword minus the cost of a +1 longsword.
If the item is one that occupies a specific place on a character’s body, the cost of adding any additional ability to that item increases by 50%. For example, if a character adds the power to confer invisibility to her ring of protection +2, the cost of adding this ability is the same as for creating a ring of invisibility multiplied by 1.5.
Then there is the Unchained book and the Automatic Bonus Progression.
What I dislike the most is almost all of the specific bonuses you mention and almost all of the spell effects give Resistance bonuses, so they can't stack.
Holy Aura (and the similar spells for the other alignments) is an 8th-level spell. It gives a +4 deflection bonus and a +4 resistance bonus (plus SR and a special effect). At level 15+ the PCs and most NPCs will already have items that give a +4 resistance and +4 deflection bonuses. If they have low wealth they will have +3 items.
Unless you have a veritable horde of NPCs with lover levels and less equipment it is a waste of a high-level spell slot.
Nicholas Alkemade suffered a sprained leg from a fall of 18,000 ft. Seems a high-level character taking 20d6 of damage, né?
And people who survived lots of wounds:
Roy Benavidez received 37 different bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds and survived.
Even assuming an average of 1d4 of damage for each wound, it is more than 90 points of damage, like a 10th level fighter with a constitution of 16+.
It can be:
There is magic on Earth, but the different governments and powerful people monopolized it. Most successful politicians are spellcasters, men of faith have divine powers, star athletes have body-enhancing classes, great artists are bards or something similar, and so on.
So, to sum it up: a Schroedingen wizard who knows every spell, has always the right spells available, and can spend them freely while still having the needed combat spells available, will always win.
I suppose you are part of the group that says that "using magic is evident" is wrong, and that magic use is easy to hide.
Considering the number of people that Trump can influence at the same time, yes, he is high level.
"Outside of Ukraine earth has not seen a conflict in a large enough scale to create many such characters." Afghanistan? Israel and the Near East, with a low-level war going on for 70 years? Mass genocide in Africa? Spy games that extend to all the world?
Most NPC in Golarion are and haven't been in big or little wars, nor hunt monsters, but they still have levels, sometimes even high levels.
Working your job for forty generates experience.
Legal enforcement and crime will be some of the fast tracks, but well-drilled armies, air forces, and navy will train people to higher levels.
Same thing for universities and specialist schools.
Stuff that can generate high-level NPCs:
- scientific research;
- worldwide trading;
- big engineering projects;
- organized armies and firms with hundreds of thousands of people
- athletic world competitions;
- regular state and nation wide competition to get government positions.
The wizard is not going to be the “weirdly dressed man with the foreign accent”. A 12th level wizard will be a genius because they need to be in order to cast their higher-level spells. They will also be investing in magic items to boost their INT. Assume a NPC stat array, so the wizard starts with a 15 INT and bumps that to 17 with racial adjustment. 12th level gives him 3 bonuses to boost that to 20, and a headband of +2 puts that to 22. Divination spells are going to mean the wizard is not going into the situation blind.
You seem to be a genius means that someone has common sense, knows how to meld into a crowd, knows how to interact with people, and is wise. Can you give us some examples of that?
Geniuses often are more arrogant, forgetful, or socially inept, than common people.
PCs wizards often have average wisdom and average to low charisma.
A guy like that often makes intricate plans that rarely survive contact with the "enemy".
"Ears of the city": your wizard speaks English, Russian, Hindi, or whatever is the local language? You need to be able to communicate to use diplomacy.
You continue to say that Earth people will saves will be low, but not why you think so. Are you aware that Wisdom increases with age? The "average" leader will be in his forties or behind.
Rasputin Must Die!:
Quote:
POLKOVNIK LAVRENTI - Male variant dullahan gunslinger 7
A Cossack from the Tzar guards, after death.
Quote:
RUSSIAN RIFLE TROOP CR 11
XP 12,800
LN Medium humanoid (human, troop)
Init +3; Senses Perception +23
DEFENSE
AC 24, touch 14, flat-footed 20 (+3 Dex, +1 dodge, +10 natural)
hp 152 (16d8+80)
Fort +11, Ref +13, Will +8
Defensive Abilities gas masks, troop traits
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft.
Melee troop +20 (4d6+8)
Space 20 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Special Attacks fusillade (DC 23), grenade volley (DC 21)
TACTICS
During Combat These troops are veterans of the Great War, and even when faced with fantastic foes (such as armored, sword-wielding, or spellcasting PCs), these hardened soldiers maintain a steely resolve, concentrating their rifle fusillades on flying opponents or supernatural threats, or readying actions to launch grenade volleys at charging opponents. In the absence of armor, troops seek any scrap of cover they can earn—particularly trenches, fortifications, and walls.
Morale A troop disperses when reduced to 0 hit points or fewer.
STATISTICS
Str 26, Dex 17, Con 18, Int 11, Wis 12, Cha 11
Base Atk +12; CMB +20; CMD 34
Feats Ability Focus (fusillade), Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Great
Fortitude, Iron Will, Skill Focus (Perception), Skill Focus
(Stealth), Toughness
Skills Climb +15, Craft (firearms) +4, Knowledge (engineering) +1,
Perception +23, Profession (soldier) +6, Stealth +10, Survival +8
Languages Russian
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Fusillade (Ex) Rifle troops can fire a fusillade of rifle bullets as
a standard action. This attack takes the form of up to four
lines with a range of 200 feet. These lines can start from the corner of any square in the troop’s space. All creatures in one of these lines’ areas of effect take 6d10+6 points of bludgeoning and piercing damage (Reflex DC 23 for half).
The save DC is Dexterity-based, and includes the bonus from
the troop’s Ability Focus feat.
Gas Masks (Ex) The soldiers of a rifle troop are all equipped with gas masks. This makes the troop immune to inhaled poisons and other nonmagical airborne attacks that require breathing, and grants it a +2 bonus on saving throws against magical cloud or gas attacks.
Grenade Volley (Ex) Rifle troops are equipped with grenades. As a move action, a rifle troop can target a single square up to 60 feet away with a volley of fragmentation grenades. A volley deals 12d6 points of piercing and slashing damage in a 30-foot-radius burst (Reflex DC 21 for half). The save DC is Dexterity-based.
Immune to spell that target a specific number of creatures, i.e. most spells that mess with the mind.
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RUSSIAN SOLDIER CR 5
Human fighter (trench fighter) 6 (see page 67)
A veteran soldier, not even an elite, is a 5th level NPC.
Quote:
Viktor Miloslav (LN human expert 10)
A scientist.
From what I see, Earth people don't seems low leveled.
I would say that, at least in the Western Hemisphere, witch hunts and the Inquisition would have eliminated most sorcerer bloodlines. The Eastern Hemisphere probably would have more of them. The few that remain in the Western Hemisphere will generally hide their power (but in the XIX and XX centuries there have been groups interested in magic).
Saints and other religious figures will be divine spellcasters, but most clergy have focused on the mundane side of work, so they are experts.
Note that Rasputin is an Oracle (from what I gathered playing Rasputin must die), so he wasn't "taught" his magic.
- * -
Regarding the original question, I would say that is not something that will be known "casually". To know about Earth you have to have researched information about a related topic, like "From where Baba Yaga and her daughter originally come?"
Finding the answers to that question by researching the topic in libraries or with spellcasting will be very hard, in the DC 50 range.
Access to more direct methods, like analyzing an item coming from Earth or searching for information on one will be slightly easier, but still in the 40-45 DC difficulty.
Essentially the question wouldn't be "How hard is it to know about Earth?" as it is equivalent to asking "How hard is it to know about Pandora (the Avatar film planet)?" before the film was made. You have to "ask" a question that would lead to getting the reply "Earth".
I think one thing that needs to be taken into account when assessing a conflict between Earth and Golarion is means of access. I'm assuming you have a portal that is linking the two worlds. Something for maybe a dozen people at a time to go through at most. Something that most military vehicles wouldn't fit through. No ships. No airplanes.
To me the battle is Earth starts invading Golarion (for completely unknowable reasons) and a high level adventuring team shows up and figures out how to get rid of the portal.
Winning isn't always about completely eliminating your enemy's supply of soldiers.
Edit: Well, it is but that doesn't mean killing them. Sometimes it means closing the magic portal allowing passage between your two worlds.
That is what adventurers do and what Golaronians will be the best at doing.
In that scenario, they will win even against Earth's best troops.
Why Earth will invade? Besides the usual stupid imperialistic reasons (Why Italy invaded Somalia? It was a big expense with very little return.), Golarion seems to have a lot of gold when compared to Earth, plenty of unknown metals, spices, animals, and other resources (magic included). All "good" reasons to want to get a piece of it, and in 1920 colonialism was in its declining phase, but there was still a strong push to expand into new territories and exploit them.
Give 1920 Italy or Japan a way to reach Golarion and they will try to see pieces of it to be "on par" with other colonialist nations. Other nations probably will try a more commercial approach to acquire pieces of Golarion.
I've always personally considered the published numbers of people in cities to be too low.
I agree (but those numbers don't include plenty of intelligent species).
My calculations, considering that during the Middle Ages, the rapport between the urban population and the rural areas was 1:9, say that the Inner Sea region has 1/2 the population of Europe after the Black Death in an area that is 2x that of Europe.
Considering that Golarion culture and technology seem to be that of the late Renaissance, those are very low numbers.
I usually multiply the population of large settlements x5, the available cash by the same margin, but keep the "magic market" at the base value.
In the current campaign, I am adding "everyday" magic and magic items. That too would increase the population.
An interesting concept introduced by Gary Gigax in a different setting is that the use of magic reduces fertility, so barbarian tribes that use few or no spells or magic items reproduce faster, while civilized people that use a lot of magic reproduce at a slower rate.
To be clear, Earth is on the same plane as Golarion. Not another one. Just separated by the vastness of space. Reign of Winter sets the Golarion calendar date to the Earth calendar, but I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head.
From what I gathered playing it, Reign of Winter is at the end or just after the end of WWI, 1918 or 1919. It is after the killing of Nicholas II, so not earlier than 1918.
I agree with Mysterious Stranger. A person can register as both alignments when the Detection X spells are used.
Note that it requires a true intention to do Evil or Good, not simply bad or nice thoughts.
Note that the ruthless merchant that routinely squeezes every penny from his clients, never does a good act, pays his workers as little as possible, and beats people mercilessly for misbehaving or errors, probably will ping evil if he is above 5th level, but, probably, everything he does is (barely) within the limits of the law.
Probably the sadist surgeon that loves the pain he inflicts while doing surgeries will ping evil, even if he actually helps people.
...However, the quicksilver becomes unstable once the stone is opened and loses its potency within 24 hours, so all transmutations must take place within that period.
The quicksilver found in the center of the stone may also be put to another use. If mixed with any cure potion while the substance is still potent, it creates a special oil of life that acts as a true resurrection spell for any dead body it is sprinkled upon.
"while the substance is still potent"... sure sounds like a time limit...
oil of life (the phrase is not italicized, whereas philosopher's stone and true resurrection is) shows it is really just descriptive to give the thing a name.
You need to mix it while the quicksilver is "still potent", but that doesn't automatically mean that the oil of life has the same duration as the quicksilver. In RL several chemical products are unstable until they are combined with other products, but the final product is stable.
The "oil of life" has a limit that True Resurrection hasn't: you need a body, or, as a minimum some piece of the creature, while True Resurrection can resurrect someone even without his body, as long as you can "unambiguously identify the deceased". The oil needs to be sprinkled on the dead body.
@Senko: It is a McGuffny, but if needed I would price the oil a bit above a scroll of True Resurrection. It is a bit more limited but easier to use, so 30,000 gp seems about right.
