Domestichauscat's page

Alright I’ve been playing in a home brew game for a few months or so. We have four players and we have flirted with the idea of getting another player in the group if we found someone who was interested. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve got all our bases covered in terms of abilities and are well balanced. So really I think a new player can do whatever they want at this point and the party would still be well set. However as a thought experiment I’d like to hear what you guys think the best fifth party member for this group could be in terms of build. I for one have put some thought into this and I’m not quite sure. I’ll give general descriptions of the four characters seeing as I don’t have all their sheets. Oh and we are all level 12 and know the game fairly well, but we aren’t optimized to the max. Though we build to do what we can efficiently. I applologize in advance for the wall of text.

Character 1: Human Ranger with archery style and a wolf companion. His role is to shoot enemies till they are dead. We consistently fight lawful elves and evil outsiders, so 95% of the time he and his wolf are fighting their favored enemies. When fully buffed he does 6 attacks per round for 20+ to hit and 20+ damage per hit. His main weakness as of right now is his AC, it is in the low 20s. Since he is an archer this is mitigated somewhat as he is out of the action, but we do fight archer elves as well that do send arrows his way at times. Overall he is the DPS king of the group.

Character 2: Human Investigator with a high focus on potion making via his feat and utilizing alchemical items. He is perhaps the most clever player in the group, as such he has molded himself a few roles.This player is extremely good at finding niche cheap items in the books and making them work well. Like using fireworks as a weapon while staying invisible because the dm ruled it as not an attack. So he’s got a good solution to weird problems by using items. He buffs the party a bit with haste as well as keeping emergency potions when we need them. He is an excellent splash damage dealer, similar to an alchemist and in addition deals a lot of damage when hit via the acid blood spell. Likewise he has the feat that directs splash damage blasts away from allies. Lastly as an investigator he is the skill monkey of the group and is a good source for information on the world. Very useful character overall, I call him the Batman of the group.

Character 3: Pixie Oracle that exclusively buffs and heals the others. Before a fight, this character buffs the others up and casts the spell that lets her heal from a distance. Then she stays out of the fight and keeps the rest of them going. In addition she also prepares spell steal and prevents enemies from casting spells when successful. She’s got the whimsy mystery, so she specializes in disguising herself exceptionally well despite the size difference. Using this in addition to having a butt ton of stealth when at normal tiny size, she is excellent at infiltrating fortresses and gathering intel. As well as eavesdropping and sabotage. She has also picked up unconscious characters (via enlarge person and ant haul) and put them in a safer place. As with the Ranger, this character has a low AC of 19 so that’s something that needs work. The doctor of the group.

Character 4: My character is an Elf Mystic Theurge Sorcerer Oracle. Elves work differently in this game so I got a buff to my Cha and a hit to my Str at the start which was fine. He has the starsoul bloodline and the lunar mystery. He has the inflict wounds spells and has the touch of the moon ability which has the chance to confuse enemies when hit with inflict spells assuming they fail a save. This ability is a bit gimped by his lower Oracle level, but it has worked a few times. He has a few nice buffs he gives to the party before a fight and has the animate dead spell. So when a fight breaks out he dumps out four undead from his bag of holding as meat shields. He’s got some debuffing spells like Stinking Cloud and Black Tentacles that he starts out with and afterwards goes to damaging spells like fireball and the inflict spells. The dm rules that I can use spring attack after doing touch spells which is nice. Having prophetic armor I add my 7 cha mod to AC and Ref saves, plus I cast windy Escape to negate most attacks. So his survivability is very high. Overall he is a buffer/debuffer/blaster that dabbles in necromancy and divination.

So I’d say it’s a very effective party, our big weaknesses being the lack of AC on two characters. I think for the campaign it would be fun and thematically appropriate to have an assassin added in. Maybe via the magus class, that would be a good combo. And also a straight up wizard or sorcerer coudl work but might be a bit redundant. What are the thoughts of you guys?

So here's a thing that happened in my previous session. Our android ninja snuck up behind a necromancer and missed him with a nat 1. The necromancer's turn comes up, he casts invisibility and the ninja takes an aoo to hit him and misses. I then rule at that point that the necromancer could then move past the ninja because the ninja used his aoo to attack the necromancer instead of keeping him in the same square. My players disagreed, so at the time I compromised by having the wizard go around him through difficult terrain. Keep in mind on the other side of the necromancer was a wall of fire and the other pcs, so he wouldn't want to go backwards, but instead past the ninja.

So for future reference, if a character does an aoo on someone can they still prevent enemies from moving directly through their square in the same round?

Alright so I'm going to start gming a game in January. The idea for this campaign is that I've got nothing planned yet. But we're all gonna meet (probably six players) up and do a world building session. My plan is to hear out the concepts they have for each of their characters and their back stories. Then we will all collaboratively make a game world based around these six created pcs. After this world building session I will take the reigns and start gming in this game world. Has anyone ever done this? What opinions do people have for this? I'm looking forward to it, should be a fun time. Oh and also, I think I'm gonna bring a big piece of graph paper to help us draw the world map.

And now for the rules. I've got some house rules I want to put into this game also and I'd like to hear some thoughts on them. A couple of them are based on my experience with 5th edition and making it more fluid like that game.

1. Elimination of Full Attacks: When you can do more than one attack in a round, you may move as much as you want before using all of your attacks. In addition, you can attack as many times as you want while moving till you run out of attacks. For example, if your level 14 fighter wants to kill three goblins that are all pretty spread out. You can run 10ft, attack the first one, run 10ft, attack the second one and then run 10ft and attack the last one. When it comes to spring attack, everyone is considered to have this feat when it comes to prerequisites for other feats. But they don't have mobility and dodge, those feats will have to be taken if those benefits are desired.

Reasoning: It's always bugged me that Martials always had to stand still when fighting. And it punishes characters that rely on multiple attacks like dual wielders and monks. Monks especially will benefit from this because their high movement will be combined with their multiple attacks. Also, it's a common thing to see in movies where the hero will charge against the antagonist, taking out mooks in his way. And it's lame that the only way I can think of in which you can do this in pathfinder is via the Greater Bladed Dash spell. <_< On a final note, it will make getting feats like Whirlwind Attack a little easier to get because of the free spring attack prereq.

2. On Power attack and Combat expertise: All characters who have the required strength and intelligence can use these feats. They are also treated as having the feat(s) for prerequisite purposes for other feats.

Reasoning: I've seen this rule proposed a lot on the forums and I generally agree with it. Also I like that it makes getting certain feats a lot faster.

3. Higher Base Attack Bonus for all: All classes with 1/2 bab now have 3/4 bab. In addition, the Rogue, Monk and Ninja classes will have something akin to a 7/8 bab. These three specific classes will be treated as having a full bab progression with the exception of not getting a point in bab at levels 6 and 11. So in the end these three classes will have an 18/13/8 bab at level 20. The Monk will have something similar for his flurry mechanic.

Reasoning: It's always bothered me that Wizards and Sorcerors couldn't really hit much of anything if they tried. And so I'm putting this rule in in case anyone wants to play a Gandalf type of character if they wanted to without much multiclassing. Also I don't think it buffs wizards and sorcerers that much anyways. Their main power comes from spells, this is just being put out there as another reliable option for the player. I'm thinking that increasing the Rogue, Ninja and Monk Bab will give them a nice buff to make them better overall as classes. But not make you turn away from the pure martials.

4: Critical hits and sneak attack work on everything: Nothing is immune to critical hits or sneak attacks.

Reasoning: This is a rule I've always used because I've never liked immunity to critical hits in the first place. It takes a lot of fun out of rolling that sweet 20. Plus, I think it's reasonable for a Rogue to say, sever a zombie's head with his back turned or something like that for other creatures. Although for sneak attack, I'm thinking of making this only work on immune creatures if they're using a weapon that bypasses damage reduction. Not sure if a rapier should ever do sneak attack to a skeleton for example.

5: Crossbows are more powerful: Heavy crossbows do 2d8 damage, light crossbows do 2d6 damage and hand crossbows do 1d8 damage. These rules apply to all other non core crossbows and repeating crossbows. In addition, hand crossbows can be attatched to the wrist ala assassin's creed style.

Reasoning: Crossbows suck compared to other forms of ranged attack. And it's lame because they're pretty brutal in real life. This rule is meant to make them more competitive with other ranged options. And also a couple of my players are big crossbow fans in these games.

For now that's it for rules, but I think I'll think of more. Also I'm banning summoners and arcanists and unchained classes. What do you guys think?

Alright so I'm adding a new magic item to a very relaxed style campaign. It's a pick up game where we all take turns dming one shots. Mainly we play this one when someone can't make it to the regular real game. Anyways, here is the description of the item in question:

Item name: Dog of Holding

Description: The Dog of Holding has the same shape and size of a small bag of holding. Although, it runs around on four points, and barks like a dog. It will pant in excitement with its opening as if it were its mouth. It also has a small tongue that droops out of its opening when panting.

The Dog of Holding is very friendly and will run to the nearest high HD character class he sees in adoration. For example, if he sees a wizard and a fighter next to each other, he would run to the fighter and make friends with him as a dog would. If he sees a barbarian and a fighter he would run to the barbarian. If there is a tie on who rolls the highest hit dice, the dm decides whom the dog would run to. Once it has found a companion, the dog will follow him or her wherever they go unless the companion is overly rude or cruel.

Rules of use: The Dog of Holding is a cursed magic item that will vommit up anything that the players put into it. He cannot store any items. However, the Dog of Holding holds an infinite number of weapons already inside him.

A character may pull out a weapon from the Dog as a swift action. Before drawing, the character may choose whether this weapon is a ranged or melee weapon. However other than this, the weapon selected is random. The character is always considered to be proficient in this weapon even if he or she doesn't have the required feat or class to use it. In addition, the weapon is always of masterwork quality. In the case of drawing a weapon that needs reloading, such as a crossbow or a gun, the character is considered to have the rapid reload feat only with this weapon. Lastly, for weapons that use ammunition, you are considered to have unlimited normal ammo. Though this isn't the case for thrown weapons such as a javelin.

If the weapon is drawn and the character does not use it to attack something, it will disappear into non existence after one round passes. However if in a fight, the character will be able to wield it until combat is over as per the gm ruling. When the dm confirms that the combat ends, the weapon disappears into non existence after one round.

You may only have one weapon taken from the Dog at a time per character. For anyone but the companion of the Dog, drawing a weapon from it is a move action instead of a swift action. (Anyone who is not an ally of the companion must roll a dc 20 cmb or 20 sleight of hand check to steal a weapon from the Dog. The Dog cannot fight back in any way during this, or otherwise attack at any time.) If you lose your weapon via a disarm, sunder, or throwing it somewhere or otherwise, you may draw a new one from the Dog after one more round has passed and the lost weapon disappears.

Determining the random weapon drawn: First, the character declares whether he wants a ranged or melee weapon. If a melee weapon is chosen, roll a d2. If 1 is rolled, the weapon will be from the main weapons list. If a two is rolled, the weapon will be selected from the eastern weapons list. Next, roll a d3. If a 1 is rolled, the it will be a Simple weapon, if it's a 2, a Martial weapon and An Exotic weapon if a 3 is rolled. Lastly, roll percentiles and approximate where on the list that percentage is and select that one. For example, if a 25 is rolled you approximate what weapons are 25% or 1/4th down the list and you select one of those for the character to wield.

So, if a 1 is rolled on the d2 and a 1 on the d3, then a 25 on the percentiles, a good choice for the dm is to give the player a Cestus, Brass Knuckles or Dagger because at a first glance they are about 1/4th down the simple weapons list. (At least to me.) For using ranged weapons, the rules are mainly the same however you roll a d2 first to determine whether it is a medieval weapon or a gun of some sort. If it is a gun, a d3 does not have to be rolled.

End of rules description.

Alright so that's the item. Any advice on how to reword this or change the rules? Cause I will submit it soon to a document for them to see today. And if you guys in the group are reading this, hi!

So I was just playing a session on Sunday and I realized then just how odd the PCs are. Not as characters mind you, but the builds and actions the PCs take are so far from the norm.

For one: We've got an elf Magus (me) that focuses more on spell combat than spellstrike. I use a battle axe as a go to weapon instead of a scimitar. But sometimes I use a blunt greatsword that the DM ruled as having the same stats as a greataxe but with blunt damage. The dm allowed me to take the draconic bloodline and powers at the price of learning spells at the rate of a sorceror and the rate of spells per day as the Magus. Mainly, I want to go into dragon disciple. And oh yes, charisma is the casting stat for this PC and its spontaneous casting.

Second: The twin brother of the Magus, an elf Bloodrager with the archetype that replaces spells for Spell Resistance. Also, he's rather cautious for a Barbaric type. He more often than not is never the first one to rush into a fight. He's used his crossbow more than his falchion actually so far. And half the time he chooses not to rage. The dm even joked once that he was the most cowardly barbarian he's ever seen. Also this character has the second highest Intelligence of the party, mainly for the feat combat expertise though. However, the PC is far from being useless and does dish out big damage when it is needed.

Third: A human archer Rogue that has somehow done more damage than anyone else so far. I don't think it's even close. This is mainly because he keeps rolling nat 20 crits on his composite shortbow. But still, wow, the rogue is out damaging everyone like crazy. There have been a few tight spots where I was glad we were blessed with his luck. His sneak attack does a lot to add it up too. He also does the other typical rogue things like breaking open chests and checking for traps and such.

Fourth: A human Monk that uses his crossbow and sword a lot more often than his fists. This group tends to favor attacking from a distance before closing in or waiting for enemies to come to them. So I can understand the reliance on the crossbow. But the sword? Well, it's his choice I guess. He doesn't have an archetype. So far this character has been average in combat, but helped us get out of a bad spot via opening up a portcullis to escape a keep among other things.

Fifth: An undead Oracle wraith. Technically it's not a wraith in the bestiary. It's a homebrew race based on the Ringwraiths. This character has more HP than anyone, even the Bloodrager. And that's not going to change anytime soon because he gets HP from charisma due to his being undead. He doesn't even have a Con stat. He doesn't have any healing spells yet, but we just leveled up so he may have just picked one up. He used harm spells to heal himself of course. This guy uses a longsword and a heavy crossbow, probably the crossbow a little more. He says he's got 14 in most stats, and a 16 in charisma. Clearly he values a balanced character.

Here's the thing though, we all work together and get the quests done! Anyone else have played in a game this mixed up in terms of stereotypes and builds? I would love to hear about them.

Hey you guys have been great helping me as a gm here. And now I'm back for one final question for you peeps.

The players right now are headed for the final boss in my game. I'm gonna have it happen next session. They are at levels 15-17 right now and I'm sure they can kill him pretty good. But here's the problem.

The baddie in question is a supremely powerful lich. And I already decided that he knew all the spells in the book. My question for you guys is how do I make this a fair fight? Thing is, what's stopping the lich from say, teleporting the fighter into space. Or entombing the sorcerer, or spamming weird or horrid wilting on everyone till they die? Or hell, what's stopping him from wishing them all to die?

I do plan on having him toy with them for a little bit with disintegrates and fireballs here and there. But when he gets tired of them then what? The thing is, so many super high level spells are essentially save or die. And hell some non combat spells can be used like that anyway like the teleport into space idea. I don't want to be a gm that just up and starts killing off the players in cheep ways turn after turn like that. Even if it is the final battle. I want to give the players and the lich a fair chance at winning though.

Here's the general abilities of both sides:

Lich:
AC: 40
SR: 28
DR15/epic
HP: 666
Fort: 25
Ref: 30
Will: 37

Knows all spells

Players consist of a battlefield control/summoner wizard, a blaster sorcerer, a sword/board fighter, a cleric and a casting bard.

The fighter averages about 150 damage a round and has around 200 HP, so he's gonna be invaluable in this fight. The cleric can dish out 90 or so damage a turn himself with his hammer, but of course doing heal on the Lich would do almost twice as much. And the player has healed undead before so he knows this. The others have equipment designed to protect them from death effects. Plus, the fighter and cleric have the auto "5d8 healing if they get less than 0 hp" effect on their armor. Oh yeah and the fighter has the shield of Aroden that they all got from a quest.

So yeah, how can this work to be a fair fight without the lich coming off as stupid? That's the main thing. What should he do on his end of things? I don't want to rely on super cheap spells, but at the same time yeah he Lich ain't dumb. What's a dm to do?

I have all the bestiaries and have given a good look to a lot of the monsters. I don't think I saw any of them with piercing damage reduction. I find this weird for a weapon balance reason.

If there aren't any piercing dr monsters, then what point is the Piercing damage option on a gladius? Since it has slash and pierce, but a 19-20 crit rate, why would anyone use this over a scimitar? Aside from style I mean. Same thing with the scythe, it has piercing and slashing also. Granted the scythe does have the X4 crit thing going for it so I can see it being used. But the piercing doesn't do anything for the weapon because it can do slashing damage anyways right?

Ok maybe I missed something in the weapons description for the gladius that may give it a bonus to something that the scimitar lacks. But still I find it weird that there doesn't seem to be dr piercing monsters. The only reason I could think of is that it's to nerf ranged attacks a bit. Cause you know, they're ranged.

Can you guys help me out on this one? It's weird.

A simple query really, but honestly I'm curious. Even numbered stats have the benefit of giving you that solid mod right at the start. Whereas an odd number gives you the satisfaction of knowing that you can level it up at one of the 4th interval levels.

I personally like making three of my main stats odd. Because I like to set it up so that on levels 4, 8 and 12 I'm gonna get a brand new modifier number. It just lets me down when I level up and just get halfway to a new mod instead of just getting a full mod. Also there's the points you save in a point buy when going with a 17 instead of an 18 that can be put into other places.

What do you peoples prefer?

K so I'm having a new player join my game who is gonna be a 11 level Druid. Here's the thing. He has this crazy hilarious idea for an attack.

First off, he turns into a small bird. Then he flies pretty high into the air, maybe 100 feet or 50. Then he turns into a whale (whale are huge sized right?) and slams onto a horde of grounded unlucky enemies. (Alternatively he could just jump off of a high ledge and then turn into a whale, skipping the bird part.)

Now my question here is, how much damage should this do? I'm thinking it would do more damage to the enemies the higher the fall is. But it would also hurt him more the higher up he does it too. So there is a trade off here.

I find it kind of weird that there are topics all the time about whether a Paladin should or should not fall. But I've never seen a topic discussing whether any other class character should fall for violating their deity's teachings or whatnot.

Barbarian I can understand. Seems like it would be extremely easy to keep in character in a nuetral or chaotic alignment when compared to lawful. Monks less so because of this, but I suppose even if a Monk did go chaotic they would still have thier previous powers. So I figured for this case it just wasn't worth talking about all that much.

But what about Clerics and Druids? I think ultimately the Paladin has it worst in this situation of course. Though honestly I don't think Clerics are that far behind. They are restricted to three alignments so there is more wiggle room here. However they still are in the same boat as Paladins because a good Cleric could violate his god's values and do a grossly evil act just as easily as a Paladin could. In the same way a Druid could do an extremely lawful or chaotic act as well and lose their powers.

I've never seen a topic dedicated to the falling of any class besides Paladin like I've said. This makes me think that DMs go easy on the treatment of classes falling aside from Paladins. Or heck, they may even forget or even outright ignore these rules. I've seen it happen in a game I'm in. One of the PCs is the most chaotic Monk you could ever see. I even brought it up once that by the rules I was surprised the GM kept allowing him to progress in Monk levels. The GM just chuckled.

I'm not mad or anything at this finding. I'm just confused is all. What do you guys think?

Or hell, maybe I just missed out on a ton of Cleric/Druid/Monk/Barbarian falling topics. You never know.

I have a slight problem for GMing my group's next session.

There is going to be a huge battle that the PCs are going to be involved in. They will be fighting alongside men against armies of orcs and undead. Now the thing is that the PCs are all level 9 and they've fought these monsters before when they were in the early levels.

The intention of mine is to have them slaughter tons of dudes that used to give them trouble in the past. This is of course to show them how powerful they have become over time.

What I have planned here is thus:

Each round lasts a minute instead of 6 seconds. And when a PC acts, the total damage he delivers is how many orcs/undead he has slain in that minute. For example let's say it is the fighter's turn. He rolls to hit and then rolls for damage. He does say, 30 damage. In this situation, that means he killed 30 orcs/undead in one minute. Same thing will be done for the spellcasters. They roll for damage or their area of effect attack to see how many they killed in one minute.

The enemies are rather weak compared to the PCs now and the PCs have nice AC at this point. So I rolled percentiles to see how much times the PCs were hit when it was the armys' turn. For every 10 in the percentiles I rolled, that's how many times the PCs were hit. But I divided that number by 2 for PCs that have more than 20 AC.

For example, let's say I rolled a 76 percentiles for the armies. That means that every PC got hit 7 times in that minute. (Sure it seems unrealistic, but I'm going for a 300 Spartans kind of vibe here.) But the Fighter would only take 3 hits that minute because he has awesome AC. I then would roll for damage for every hit on them.

Now I beta tested this system last session in a big skirmish encounter the PCs took part in. The problem however is that this system is wildly imbalanced in the PCs favor.

The Fighter actually kills way more guys than the spellcasters in this system. Even though the area of affect spells are powerful in a normal fight, they were only rolling around 15-45 damage/kills with their fireball spells and black tentacles. But the fighter has a STR mod of 7, so he rolls for about 25-45 damage a round, getting that many kills. Logically this doesn't make much sense seeing as the area of effect spells should be killing way more guys.

I think an easy fix for nerfing the fighter would be to just halve his damage rolls. I don't think he'd be too mad about that, so we should be good. However there are a few other problems I need to work on.

There are gonna be around 20,000 baddies and around 9,000 good guys. The good guys are all holding up in a capital city. I will be keeping a tally of how many dudes are being killed on both sides. Percentiles will be rolled to see how many peeps die on both sides per minute.

Over time, I plan on having the baddies break into the city itself and begin to force everyone to retreat. I plan on doing this after a good amount of good guys die. Like say, when there's 6,000 good dudes left then the city's walls are breached or something.

Thing is this won't be the entirety of the battle. The PCs will be fighting various Trolls and other big threats using a grid system as well. After all, it would be pretty boring if they simply just rolled dice without strategy. And alleyways/shop tiles will be added when they fall back into the city.

So now you know the plan, now for the questions. I still think the system for how many dudes they kill each round needs some editing. If you guys can help me balance that system, I'd appreciate it. I guess what I could do is keep throwing tough big enemies at the PCs until they have to retreat. And that could just be when the entire army falls back. But I don't think they know when to run. They haven't ever run from a fight this game in any case.

All in all, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to do this. I'd be happy if anyone proposes a different system than this one or simply edit mine. After all mine is rather imbalanced right now.

Ok so I've been DMing a game for about a month and so far everyone's having fun and things are great. However there is a bit of a problem that I found in our last session.

Now the team is as follows, all characters are level 4 except the Wizard who is level 3.

Hammer/Shield Cleric
Sword/Board Fighter
Great Sword Barbarian
Celestial Blasting Sorcerer
Battlefield Control Wizard
Archer Ranger

Now everyone is fine, except the ranger is underpowered compared to the others. The fighter does about 10-22 damage a round (and he's a tank), the barb does 15-27 when power attack and rage are in effect. The cleric heals for about 2-24 damage when channeling and doing quicken casting. (Plus he's got other spells and is a decent tank.) The sorcerer launches burning hands and holy fires, doing tons of splash damage. And the wizard is doing great at rendering foes useless via color spray, glitterdust and other useful spells.

Now sadly all the ranger can do right now is 1-8 damage via the longbow. It was especially saddening last encounter when they fought against 30 orcs (they were a bit stronger than in the book). Everyone was decimating enemies, the casters taking them out in hordes, the meleeers taking dudes out and tanking for the party and the cleric keeping everyone alive. And here we have the ranger taking two shots to kill a single orc. And I could just hear the disappointment in her voice when she rolled for damage, "I did only three damage?"

If this keeps up I'm thinking our ranger player will get bored fast, or at worst annoyed with me. I was thinking I could have her change one of her feats to rapid fire seeing as archer rangers at her level could have it by now. That would up her dps a bit. Also I could add in some of her favored enemies to fight. However those two things won't change much for her when compared to the rest of the party.

Her damage would go up from 1-8 to 2-16, (4-18 favored enemy) but that still isn't saying much when the barbarian gets 15-27 damage when he's raging power attacking. It's not even much compared to the fighter who does 10-22 damage per round because of his shield bashing. And the casters are doing a ton too. Oh and heck, I forgot to say that the wizard is fond of enlarging the melee warriors, making them even stronger.

Overall, is there a way to make our ranger better? Even more importantly, is there a way to make her better without making the other players feel like I was playing favorites?

Forgot to say that they just leveled up at the end of last session, so they just got to level 4.

Don't post often here at all, but I do lurk here regularly. In any case, I just GMed the first session of a game last Friday and it worked out great. But there's a few things that came up both in that session and in my preparation for tomorrow's session.

1: Does the spell magic missile always hit or something? We were reading the rules of this spell when our Sorcerer chose to attack three goblins with it. The rules for it don't say there's any saving throw for the attack and doesn't even say that it's a touch attack. It only says that it hits unerringly, which seems to mean that it never misses. But that did not make much sense to us because that sounds overpowered. What kind of attack roll is involved when casting magic missile?

2: In the description of the composite longbow, it says that it can be used while on horseback. Does this mean that a composite longbow can be used on horseback without penalties? Or does it mean that the composite longbow is the only bow that can be used on horseback, but you still take the -4 penalty?

3: How does the CR system work? The way I see it in the bestiary is that a CR 5 monster is a fair fight for four level 5 PCs (for example). But what about a mix of weaker monsters? Would two CR 2 creatures and one CR 1 creature be a CR 5 encounter because they all add up to 5? Or would it just be a semi hard CR 2 or 3 encounter? It's rather confusing.

Thanks for the help in advance, hope you all had a great time this week with the families!

Ok so I've been playing my first ever pathfinder game for about half a year now. Since then I've been lurking here for fun every now and then to learn something interesting about the game. And now I think it's time for me to step in here. (Sorry if this post is in the wrong section.)

So I'm playing a level 6 Ranger Archer archetype and plan on making him an arcane archer after he is taught how to do arcane magic. In the meantime, I'm able to do the ranger spells. This leads me to my first question:

How many spells does a ranger know for every level he gets after 4th? Note that I'm not asking how much he can cast per day. The rules are very specific on that front, given that there's a whole chart dedicated to it! But it's not very clear to me on how much spells that a ranger knows how to do for every level above 4. The only thing I can get out of the rules is this:

"A ranger may prepare and cast any spell on the ranger spell list, provided that he can cast spells of that level, but he must choose which spells to prepare during his daily meditation."

Does this mean that at level 4 a ranger could potentially cast any level one ranger spell on the list if he prepares it? (If he has the wis to do it?) Cause it does seem like that, but I can't think that's what it means. Cause that's a whole lot of spells for a martial class right when he hits that level. If not, then how much?

Now my second question has to do with when my guy does class into an arcane archer. I'm thinking that I will take one level into wizard before the arcane archer because of the magic prerequisite. One spell I definitely want is animate rope, because I have a few cool attack combination ideas I can't wait to use here!

Picture this. As an arcane archer I could attach one arrow to the end of a rope. Let's say I got our party's alchemist to put copper all over this rope also. I then fire the arrow and as it hits someone, I use the spell animate rope to make it tie the poor sap up. Now let's say I had the arrow be a lightning arrow for this attack. So in this instance, not only would he be getting an extra D6 damage by the magic, he'd be tied up by the rope and would have a tough time getting out of it.

Also, I could attach two arrows to a copper rope, one on each side. Using the rapid fire feat, I could fire them both in two directions in front of me. The electrocuted rope could then hit up to a total of ten guys if they were standing in a line! This would do 1D6 damage to all of those dudes and 1D8 + 1D6 for the two guys on the ends of the line who got shot by the arrows. Now sure there won't be a lot of times when there are that many enemies clustered up so close, but the potential is there.

Crazy stuff like this could be done in addition to just plain firing away at one dude for a full round attack. I talked to my gm about this idea a couple times and he says he'd be ok with it. But it would be a full round action for sure. I was wondering if you guys would agree with him on these rope attacks being full round attacks or not. Cause I think since the arcane archer gets imbue arrow at second level, doing the animate rope spell while firing is arguably something like a swift or free action or something. I say this cause it would be nice to move afterwards.

Again, sorry if this is in the wrong place. I'm a noob here after all. Also as a first character, you guys think I'm doing ok?