Drakli's page

I was looking to find NPC opponents to fill a role in various encounters; so I hit up Archives of Nethys and I ran into a problem.
For the context of my target, I was looking for a wizardly NPC opponent around 5th level or so... and I ran into a problem because the NPCs listed by character name usually didn't tell me much of anything in most cases. There was no Creature Family for "Wizards." The Mystics family was a mix of priests and arcanists, mostly diviners and holy-folk types, so a chunk didn't fit. Necromancer worked in a pinch, but needed re-flavoring.

I understand that in Pathfinder 2e, NPCs and Monsters aren't built the same as PCs and don't have to have classes and that's cool! But is there a better way to search if you have specific combat needs for your NPC opponents?

I'm trying to create a custom werecreature for my PCs to battle, a wererat; but I'm running into a discrepancy. By the rules of building werecreatures, under Curse of the Werecreature: "Saving Throw Fortitude DC is the standard DC for the werecreature's new level – 1."

The DCs for Curse of the Werecreature in existing werecreatures are all over the place.

The Werebat, Wereboar, & Werecrocodile all use a Level 2 moderate DC 15. The Wererat curse uses a Level 2 high DC of 18

The Werewolf uses a DC of 19, which would fit a Level 3 high DC 20-1

The Weretiger uses a level 4 moderate DC 18. The Werebear uses a DC of 22, which doesn't fit any of these formula as far as I can see.

Does Standard DC mean Moderate DC or does it mean whichever I prefer? Is there a reason the wererat and werewolf are high DC? And only Werewolf uses the DC -1.
What's with Werebears? High DC would be 21, and moderate would be 18. It seems to be high +1.

If I'm making a wererat midboss, should I base the DC on a wererat of the creature level (like DC 21 for a Creature 4 wererat,) or creature level -1 (DC 19) Or moderate DC -1 (DC 17.)

Is this one of those things where I should still just eyeball the DC?

Greetings,

I need to cancel my subscription to the Adventure and Adventure Path subscriptions, please. I'd like to keep my Rulebook subscription.

Thank you for your assistance.

I have a concern. I've looked through the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary for 2E, and I can't find any rules for building monsters or NPC for that matter(adide from building NPCs long form, which I don't think we're doing anymore.) I looked at the Pathfinder rulebook schedule, and it looks like the next release is the Gamemastery Guide in mid January. Do we have to wait 5-6 months before we learn how to craft npcs and custom monsters?

The game doesn't seem ready to play without that, since not all of us run the APs.

I'm a player in a Doomsday Dawn playtest, so I wanted to post this here instead of in one of the forums for Doomsday Dawn to avoid spoilers.
I think there should be a Player's Guide for the module-set. There are a set of Backgrounds in the module that don't appear in the playtest Rulebook (the GM noticed this after we'd already created our characters and chosen our backgrounds.) If we'd known about it ahead of time, we may have chosen BGs tied to the story.

Personally, I nominate the three Azi from the final volume of Legacy of Fire; dragon-fiends inspired from Persian mythology.

Azi, Gandareva
Azi, Sruvara
Azi, Zahhak

I particularly like the lore and feel of the multi-venomous Sruvara, and the serpent-shoulder'd Zahhak has a great Final Fantasy super-tough secret-boss look to it that I appreciate.

I just finished listening to the Glass Cannon Playtest and... was falling damage really something that needed to be fixed?

For reference, falling now does one point of damage per foot, as if the PF2 Playtest.

The GM said they did research and falling usually kills people. Well, getting attacked by a fire-breathing dragon usually kills people. How many people in recent history have survived being bitten by a fire-breathing dragon? Zero.

... realism is overrated anywhere you need to survive fire-breathing dragons.

But more seriously... I'd really rather not have twenty foot pits become save-or-die effects for first level characters. Frankly, pits are the pits as it is. When you're at the bottom of a pit, you can't affect the battle above you, and you're a sitting duck for things like alchemist's bombs. The DCs for climbing out of pits makes you waste time and possibly take more damage falling back in again. Perhaps climbing is more forgiving in PF2. If not, that can really take you out of the fight unless you have a flight effect, and that's if it doesn't kill you outright.

Um... re-reading that paragraph, I'm starting to realize how much my perceptions (as a GM) have been colored by 'Create Pit' being my players' go-to-tactic. Hum.

I'm stuck in a sort of if/then loop when it comes to this feat.

Dampen Presence says "You may use the Stealth skill to hide from any creature attempting to perceive you using blindsight or blindsense, even if you are clearly in that creature’s perceptual field."

But then it says "This feat does not confer any advantages against other forms of perception, such as scent, vision, or tremorsense."

And then we have creatures like the Banshee, with the "hear heartbeat" ability, which says "banshee can sense the beating hearts of living creatures within 60 feet, as if it had the blindsight ability."

Does this mean we should view the banshee as having blindsight for the feat, or should we think of "Hear Heartbeat" as an "other form of perception?" I'm inclined to think the entries for monsters with such abilities reference blindsight to avoid taking up space more than anything else.

I have a draconic bloodrager for a game I'm in and I'm little unclear on certain elements.

Do I only get the claws when I bloodrage? How about the energy resistance? A sorcerer gets the energy resistance all the time. How about the natural armor bonus? Can I only use the breath weapon when I'm bloodraging?

The shorter version of the question, I guess, is, "Do only the abilities that say 'when you bloodrage,' you get x, apply when bloodraging?" Some of the abilities with some of the bloodlines have that, some do not.

My character is a white dragon bloodline bloodrager in the Reign of Winter adventure path and I wonder if I'm going to have to bundle up against the chill through the whole of my level progression or if I'll get my cold resistance for good at some point.

I'm a little fuzzy on certain elements of how the Lycanthrope Template works.

It says that while in hybrid and animal forms, lycanthropes get a +2 Str & Con, and that lycanthropes use the base creature or the base animal's physical ability scores, whichever are higher. I would assume that the +2 applies whether or not the were uses the base creature or the base animal's physical ability score (whichever's higher.) However, the stats for existing were-creatures don't always bear up, so I guess it doesn't?

The weretiger has a 23 Strength and a 17 Constitution from the tiger, which don't integrate the +2. Same for the werebear, with the 21 str & 19 con. The werecrocodile has a 19 str, which suggests they don't get the +2, as crocs have a 19 strength, but the werecrocodile has a 16 con, which is less than the 17 con of a croc.
Maybe that last part is an error?

I'm not sure why the wereboar gets a 23 Strength & Constitution in hybrid form, since the starting human barbarian had a 19 & 18 respectively while raging. Boars have 17 str & con. I thought it might have been based on a dire boar... except the hybrid is medium, so that's clearly not the case, and dire boars have a 17 con anyway.

For that matter, weresharks in hybrid form don't gain a swim speed. I assume it is because the template says lycanthropes in hybrid form use the base creature's movement... except that hybrid werebats and wereraptors have a fly speed and hybrid werecrocodiles get a swim speed. Honestly, I'd rather assume the hybrid werebat, raptor, and croc entries are correct because they get to be more thematic of the animal. I think hybrid weresharks deserve the same treatment. Whatever the case, it isn't consistent.

Trail of the Hunted contains several references to hobgoblin soldiers being paid in gold for services or bounties. There's even an army payroll that comes up at one point.

Where do they spend it?

I thought that in Golarion, hobgoblins raid and pillage and use slave labor (and the downtrodden non-soldier hobgoblin underclass) to get the goods and services they need. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wasn't under the impression that there was a well established enough goblinoid civilization for them to have their own economy and commerce (except Kaoling in Tian Xia and maybe in the Darklands) and most cities don't really welcome hobgoblins (at least not in army platoon form.)

What's the point of coin, if you don't have anywhere to spend it?

I can think of a couple few places where they could, like Kaer Maga and Urgir, but it seems like a long way to go to spend your foot-soldier wages.

Honestly, I could copy/paste this query for most situations involving "monster-folk" carrying coin pouches when they don't seem to have an opportunity to participate in trade and commerce.

I'm running a game of Iron Gods.

This might sound a bit odd, but I stumbled across a set of Five Nights at Freddy's vinyl figurines. Well, two sets: One with Foxy, Chica, Golden Freddy, and an unnamed exoskeleton. The other had Freddy, Bonny, Spring Trap, and Balloon Boy.

I'd link to pictures of them from google search, but I'm not sure if it violates any paizo message board policy.

They were all about the size of large D&D miniatures... roughly. They were just small enough that you could fit them into one space as medium minis, but big enough to tower over medium D&D figures and fit as smallish Large minis. And since all of them are jointed and obviously artificial, and many of them are visibly damaged and show mechanical parts underneath, I figured it would be opportune to use them as defective robots with which the PCs have an eerie/amusing/memorable encounter. So I bought them.

What I'm still trying to figure out, though, is where in the adventure path the party should encounter them. Right now, the party is about 3/4s of the way through Lords of Rust, exploring the haunted wreck, so anything from that time onward would be viable.

Any ideas or suggestions?

The big problem I have with the autograpnel is that according to the entry, when it hits a target, the wielder gets a free Pull Combat Maneuver Check with a bonus of +16. Pull is a monster special ability that is supposed to have distance pulled upon a successful CMB check listed in its entry on the creature stat-block. There is no distance listed for the autograpnel. I assume it isn't "as far as the PCs want," because it takes a full round action to reel in an object weighing no more than 100 lbs for 20 feet of distance. I also assume this because it would be gross and overpowered to pull someone right to you from across the battlefield in addition to dealing 1d6+6 damage and bypassing DR & Hardness as an adamantine weapon.

Also, what kind of an action is it for the wielder to detach the grapnel from a creature, and is there any way for a victim to extract it other than snapping or destroying the cord?

Weresharks, for example. They can't breathe under water and don't even have a swim speed... which kind of spoils the shark part of being killer-shark hybrids. I assume this is because lycanthropes use the base creature's speed (and not the animal's movement rates) and don't gain the subtypes of the base animal (like aquatic.)

Compare this to werebats who can fly which is a pretty iconic element of being a bat in the same way as breathing water and swimming are to a shark. They also have claw attacks, which aren't evocative of bats inherently but are of giant bat humanoids in media (like the Man-Bat.) Arguably, they shouldn't get that because dire bats in PF don't have claw attacks. And werecrocodiles, which have a swim speed and the sprint movement ability, (and can hold their breath for a long time, though that's a special quality, so I suppose that bypasses the rules.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that werecreatures can't always capture the essence of the animal they're lycanthropes of unless you're willing to bypass the rules and the wereshark could stand to gain from the example of the werebat and werecrocodile.

Seriously, if one of the Stretch Goals were "We'll start working on a Mac version immediately (or a close approximation thereof,") I'd actually have a major reason to contribute to the Kickstarter.

I'm sorry, I know I do this every time I place an order and it says "unavailable" in the item's listing page afterwards, but did my order for the "Desert of Desolation Blade Spider" go through?

I'm just concerned because it says "unavailable," is all.

Okay, I've seen at least three Pathfinder modules so far in which a powerful Lawful Evil antagonist elbow deep in (a) villainy and/or (b) personal investment with the status quo of a malevolently orderly nation; makes a deal with a devil exchanging their soul for some kind of Hellish service to help them conquer the world or a chunk of it. And in two of those modules, the villain is worried about it and trying to beat the devil or escape the deal.

Now I understand why a devil might be inclined to enter a deal with a powerful or significant Lawful Evil mortal to garner influence on the Prime Material and so he/she gets that potent soul instead of a rival.

What I don't understand is what the villain has to lose. I mean, the whole cosmology of Golarion involves going to the plane of your Alignment... and in the case of Lawful Evil villains, this means going to Hell and being tortured by devils for all eternity or until you get broken down for raw materials or to make more devils. How is that different than if you make a deal with one? They are actually damned if they do and damned if they don't.

I guess what got to me is reading about a module where (without naming names) an influential Chellish Thrune-ite niece and grand-uncle duo make a deal with an arch-devil promising him the soul of whichever of them dies first. The two of them are banking on the other one expiring before they do, and it seems really pointless and foolish, because it isn't as if the winner of the reverse death race goes to heaven. I know the archetypical defining character flaw of Lawful Evil Villainy is hubris and the idea they're going to get away with something when making Faustian deals, but really? It's the state religion of Cheliax and one of the two characters is an inquisitor for crying out loud! They oughtta know better! You go to Hell when you die. It's a thing that happens. They actually preach it! What's to get away with?

Okay, so... when a creature uses Fly-By Attack, "when flying, the creature can take a move action and another standard action at any point during the move."

What if that attack allows the monster to grapple someone as a free action, such as with the Grab ability or the Snatch feat? Is it then able to continue its move, while carrying its snatched/grabbed victim?

Or does it need to stop there and wait until its next turn to spend a standard action to use grapple to carry the victim half its speed? If that's the case, how do I represent those monsters who swoop in and carry off victims rather suddenly?

I'm running a game of Carrion Crown that just got to Wake of the Watcher.

I've been sorting through my D&D Miniatures, weighing the options of using a Treant from Giants of Legend against a Beholder Ultimate Tyrant from Dangerous Delves to represent the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. The Treant captures the tree-like aspects and has the thick trunky legs; and the Beholder has the body shape, and the the eye-stalks pass for tentacles.

But it wasn't quite gelling, so I went online and did a search.

Then I happened across Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror Monster Miniatures and found they have a Dark Young figure.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the figure line and could tell me how well the fig would work in a Pathfinder game. I read that it was the right size to be a huge creature for a 25mm game. I can't remember if the D&D and Pathfinder Battles minis are 25mm or 30mm scale... well... no, to be honest, I know nothing about Mini scales.

I was also considering grabbing a Gug and perhaps a Mi-go or two, but the bases look a bit big... at least for the mi-go it looks like it'd be large for a medium creature.

Anyone have experience with their figure line in general and their suitability for use in the Pathfinder RPG? Thoughts on the look of the figures would help too. Everyone has a different idea of how Mythos monsters look.

While we're on the topic, does anyone have suggestions on what I should use for minis for:

Hounds of Tindalos

Shantak

Moit of Shub-Niggurath

Gug

Dimensional Shambler

Mi-Go

Dark Young

Any other Mythos Monsters from Wake of the Watcher I forgot.

Wizards of the Coast miniatures are the ones I have the most of, and I'm toying with Fantasy Flight figures, but I could swing other ones in a pinch if they were good.

So, I'm reading an encounter in a module that involves a giant octopus.

The During Combat section says "The octopus stays in the water, attacking enemies on shore with its tentacles. It tries to grab as many victims as it can and then pull them into the water to bite and poison before it feeds on them."

How does it do this?

I assume that it makes a grab attempt on every character it hits, and if it hits more than one character, it may take a -20 penalty to its grapple checks so it can hold each character in a single tentacle instead of needing to focus all of its limbs on grappling one victim. (Hopefully this assumption is not wrong.)

If it succeeds at this, that's where things get fuzzy for me in terms of the octopus's subsequent actions.

A grapple check is a Standard Action. Does that mean that the Octopus can only pull one victim into the water at a time, and the rest just sort of dangle there from its tentacles? Or because it's taking a -20 to its grapple checks, can it use the move grapple option to move all of its grappled victims into the water at the same time with one Grapple Check? (or one for each victim?)

Assuming the octopus gets someone into the water, does it have to release them from the grapple to do a bite attack (since grappling is a standard action,) or to attack them with any tentacles that aren't currently holding victims; or can it just not elect to make grapple checks for additional constrict damage and whatnot? I know the rules pretty much state (with the grapple being a standard action,) they can't make the grapple checks and bite them at the same time.

Honestly, creatures with multiple attacks and grab are confusing and sometimes frustrating for a lot of reasons.

For one thing, with ones like octopuses and scorpions... grabbing prey and holding them tight while biting or stinging them is kind of what they do, but the rules aren't set up to parse that kind of behavior. For another, a giant monster with lots of tentacles, like a kraken, grabbing a bunch of people and waving them around and dragging them to their doom is rather iconic, but I don't know why any tentacled creature would try and grab more than one person and take the massive grapple check penalty if there's not really much they can do with multiple people in their tendrils all at once. And if they can't, well, there's an iconic fantasy/monster scene that flat out just doesn't work in Pathfinder.

My collegues, if you'll refer to the slides, I think you'll discover the size increase from huge in 3.5 to gargantuan in PF granted an unexpected benifit to the tyrannosaurus. According to the universal monster rules for swallow whole, "Unless otherwise noted, the opponent can be up to one size category Smaller than the swallowing creature." in the entry for the tyrannosaurus, there is no such noted limiter.

Gentlefolk, I trust you can all see what this means.

It can now swallow a triceratops whole. Or an ankylosaur. Or any hadrosaur.

Dear gods, what have we done?!

Our only hope is to equip every Parasaurolophus in Pathfinder with poisonous back spines to poison this monstrosity from the inside out, so we can curtail its swallowing rampage throughout all of the duckbilled dinosaurs and ankylosaurs of Golarion! (The triceratopses will be okay, their horns count as light piercing weapons.)

Or we could just say the Tyrannosaurus's swallow whole only works on creatures three times smaller than it (or maybe two.)

This may be a simple question. Might even be one that was asked before. If so, I apologize, as there are a lot of threads to wade through.

If a creature with grab; such as, say, a large-sized constrictor snake drops in on and successfully grabs another creature, say, a medium-sized human... can the constrictor snake attempt to pin the human, while still doing grab damage (and constrict damage, because it has that ability too?)

Or does the constrictor snake need to use the Damage Other grapple option to damage its opponent?

Intuitively, it seems like it should be able to pin and damage its opponent at the same time because that's what constrictor snakes /do./ They don't let their prey fight back, they pin them down immobile and squeeze the life out of them.

It seems to many predators' disadvantage to grapple someone and make CMB checks at them if their foe can make full attacks back at them while only taking a -2 to hit. Grant you, constrictor snakes only have one attack, and this would allow them to double their damage output, but for creatures like giant octopi or giant squid, it seems like there'd be a better use of their time... like making full attacks back.

Also, the grab rules don't state what a creature with grab must be doing with the grapple in order to deal damage, simply that "If the creature does not constrict, each successful grapple check it makes during successive rounds automatically deals the damage indicated for the attack that established the hold. Otherwise, it deals constriction damage as well ."

As far as I can tell by reading the rules, a creature with grab can pin (or do whatever it likes with a grapple) and deal grab and constrict damage at the same time.

Am I reading it wrong, or have I got the rules right?

So, I thought of a cool opponent for my players the other day; a Vegepygmy Witch, serving as the tribal fungi folks' witch doctor or shaman.  Kind of makes sense, considering what passes for their culture.  Then I ran into a problem; Vegepygmies have no spoken language.  They can't talk outside of rhythmic beats and some clicks.  I was intending a low level caster, so I'm thinking Silent Spell might not have enough oomph.  Anyone have any thoughts on how I can approach it.  Grant you, I can just change how Vegepygmies work, because this tribe is the only one my players are likely to meet, but this post is about brainstorming in the framework.

Grant you, again, I think the Witch uses intelligence and Vegepygmies aren't too intellectual, so Druid or Sorcerer might be better, but the muteness is still a potential issue; and Vegepygmy Witch just sounds cool!

I have a player in one of my games whose PC will be getting the Leadership feat and an NPC cohort soon. Now I presume that the cohorts are supposed to be built using the elite array like the section in the Creating NPCs chapter of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook outlines... but I wanted to pick peoples' brains on the matter.

For example, my roommate is against that idea. All the NPCs in his game have always gotten their stats the way his players' characters do, by rolling the dice and making the best of what life gives you.

I know in the pre-Pathfinder days, when my players started experimenting with the ability score arrays, I always built NPCs on the same array as the players (32, usually.) Only since Pathfinder have I started using the Elite array because that seemed to be what I was supposed to do.

So I'm wondering what you all do with your npcs? Elite array? Different arrays? Roll their stats? Whatever seems most fitting for the character?

Just recently in a game I'm running, the party ranger took a critical hit from a chupacabra. The result from the Critical Hit Deck was "Bone Masher: Normal Damage and 1d3 Str damage (arm.)" Essentially, it broke his arm or sprained it or something like. The part I'm uncertain of is that it says "Limb useless until healed." Is that until the ability damage is healed or until the hit point damage is healed?

Please cancel the pre-order I did (a while ago) for the case of Pathfinder Battle Miniatures.

I've replaced it with the subscription I placed for the Pathfinder Miniatures just tonight. Leave the pre-order I've done for the brick and the individual Beginner Box 4 Hero minis in place, please.

Essentially, I should only be getting one case plus the other stuff, not two cases.

Please let me know if I need to clarify anything.

What are the dragons of Tian like? Do they have a spell-casting progression? (I hope.)

I admit I've always been disappointed by the Oriental Dragons as presented by D&D, primarily because unlike the Chromatic and Metallic dragons, they lack a spell-casting progression. Seeing as the Eastern dragons are oft-to-usually portrayed as wise mystical spirits and potent embodiments of nature, I've always felt spell-casting is even more fitting for them than for Western style drakes like the classic D&D ones (except the Golds, which used to be Eastern-style dragons.)

It might be cool if they drew from the Druid or Cleric List more than the Wizard/Sorcerer.

I'm coming within breathing distance of paying off my car loan, but I need to figure out how to manage it. Reluctantly, I realize something's got to give. Unfortunately, that something has to start with ending my Map Pack and Pathfinder Module Subscriptions. I don't want to do it, but I've got to do it. Please assist.

Also, is it possible to skip an item in a subscription? I really don't need a Pathfinder Beginner's Box, but I don't want to miss the Bestiary 3 or Advanced Races Guide.

I'm running the Carrion Crown AP. My players just played through Hergstag, and I was looking for impressions from anyone else who's already gone through this part of Trial of the Beast.

Put simply, it drove my players to distraction. They found it to be a slog-fest. Doing 1-4 damage per round, 6 if they got lucky, was very frustrating for a team of 4th level characters with few ways to bypass half-damage-from-everything incorporeality. This was compounded by the fact that the wraith children could use terrain and obstacles to deny several party members the ability to attack in a round and that they were going to be fighting six such monsters in a row plus a super-version of them. It was so daunting that eventually, they just went, "We want to tear the houses down and kill the wraiths while it's still light out and they're helpless. Please just say we can do it."

I let them do it because they clearly weren't having fun anymore.

Ironically, Brother Swarm was easier for them because they felt they could afford to spend more resources annihiliating him.

My thoughts are that a lot of this could have been avoided by giving the children-wraith-spawn less hit points. I think if I had it to do over again, I probably would have used the stats for Shadows (giving them 19 hp as opposed to the 37 hp they have now,) but with the wraith-children damage output and made up the XP difference elsewhere if I needed.

I have a character with scent in my game.

His player kind of uses it as an excuse to say "Wait," anytime anything tries to ambush them, "Didn't I smell it? Scent specifically says "A creature with the scent ability can detect opponents by sense of smell, generally within 30 feet. If the opponent is upwind, the range is 60 feet. If it is downwind, the range is 15 feet.""

Theoretically, I could say this makes scent way too powerful as a PC ability, but frankly, every 1st level druid and 4th level ranger potentially gains scent as a bonus ability with a whole pet animal attached as a bonus.

What bugs me the most about this is that lots of animals hunt by stealth. It's what they do. Since all animals have scent, how do they even catch anything if everything worth catching knows they're there?

I suppose I should just remind him that lots of creatures instinctively stay downwind and intelligent hunters learn to do the same; but does anyone else have tips for keeping scent from overwhelming their games?

Also... what kinds of illusions and self-alteration spells does scent penetrate?

I picked Order 1732660 up at the post office yesterday, but found it was missing my map subscription item, "GameMastery Map Pack: Shrines Print Edition." In its place, was the Pathfinder novel, "Master of Devils," which I did not order. It looks like a cool novel, but I was really waiting for the map pack. Is there any chance I could still get it, please?

I just read the brief blurb about him in the lich article of Shadows of Gallowspire, (but I posted here because he's in Numeria, not Ustalav,) and was blown away.

I would like to know more about Allig Third, please, as he is clearly the coolest lich in all of Golarion... and maybe everywhere.

Two of the items in the list for order #1746246 read as Unavailable on my receipt.

D&D Miniatures - Lords of Madness: Elder Blue Dragon
D&D Miniatures - Lords of Madness: Rot Grub Swarm x 2

May I assume I got the last ones and the website was just tallying the total available to reflect the new totals?

I'm sorry, I know I've asked this kind of question before with a previous order. I just like to be sure, is all.

I guess I'm not sure there's much else that needs to be said.

I'd think you can only be damned once. I mean, once Asmodeus already has your Hell planned for you, what's the point of a second or third?

Assuming turning power over Cheliax to the devils was one; I'm curious what things Thrune did that meant it not only got in once, but thrice.

I guess it could (probably) be a figure of speech, but it's not as fun that way!

The Adventure Path says that he's a human, but looking at his portrait and reading his name, it seems pretty obvious to me that he's a gnome. Either an elderly one or a bleachling.

My co-GM (I'm running this with Hexcaliber,) was skeptical at first, thinking it might make players not take him seriously... but he trusted my instincts, and suddenly, Father Grimburrow's one of the most resonant characters in Ravengro for my players. He's also a character my co-GM decided he had to claim for himself. He does a great job with him, too, but then Hex is great at this kind of role.

There's just something about this grim little gnome with a stern and looming presence who doesn't take anyone's crap and doesn't hold with any adventurer fiddle-faddle that no-one can stay neutral about. Not that they like him ICly, (in fact, at least one of the characters really wishes very hard that the Father is secretly behind everything so she can kill him.) But he's super-memorable.

I'm just wondering if anyone else, like me looked at his portrait and his name and thought, "He's totally a gnome. The most awesomely grim, stern, no-nonsense gnome ever."

If so, how'd that work out for you?

This might be an odd question, but it seems like I've had one or two of my D&D minis sport a gray-green tinge to the paint job, with a haze of similar, sometimes blotchy discoloration on the base. When I apply a dry tissue to the base, this stuff wipes away cleanly like dust that's too translucent or light to show on the tissue, (except between the toes of barefoot sort, where the tissue can't quite reach.)

The minis seem dry, not damp, so I wouldn't think it's mildew or anything, and it (fortunately,) doesn't seem to spread to any of the other minis stored with them under the same conditions. So far, one of my Carnage Demon minis from Night Below and Verdant Reaver from the same set seem to exhibit this.

Is it a bad paint quality on the minis breaking down or... oh, frankly, I just don't know what to think it might be. I'd like to ask the advice of anyone with more expertise than I. I'm pretty sure it's not all in my head, but I hope it's something harmless. I also wouldn't mind hearing from people who've experienced the same thing.

Also the Kuo-toa Hunter, also from Night Below, come to think of it... so maybe it is a problem with that set.

The Daemons of Golarion have a very different groove going for them than the Daemons of the Book of Fiends.

This is especially true compared to Demons and Devils... who in D&D, are always rather clearly defined. You know where they stand and what they want with... souls, the universe, and everything. No one ever worries if their D&D demons are going to be unoriginal, because they're such a tradition.

Painting something Lawful or Chaotic might be a broad strokes thing, but it enables them to keep longstanding concepts with solid traction... the more untethered evil of Daemons seems to kind of make them like gnomes. Everyone who takes a stab at them seems to have to re-invent their Daemonic Thing.

Erm... this may have been a long way around in asking, but since the Daemons of Golarion differ so much from the Daemons of the Book of Fiends, to what degree do the Daemons of the Book of Fiends have a place in Golarion... and if so, how have they changed?

I've already seen a Glomeray in one of the APs, but there wasn't much time spent on what his place in the oblivion-factory of Abaddon. I'm curious since I've been just been working on reading Book of Fiends lately, (I got through the Demon section a while back, but stuff got in my way before I got to Gehenna,) and I've been wondering if and hoping we'll see more of some of the delightfully horrible things from that book. There are some precious gems in there.

...A Bag of Rats!

Seriously, though, would a swarm of rats... or better, a colony of ants; suffice to feed a Color Out of Space into adulthood as well as stalking more complex and larger, but less numerous organisms, like farmhouses of humans?

Is there a minimum... I don't know, life force required from a creature to fuel an actual growth point?

And... do the Star Spawn of Cthulhu really lack damage reduction?

But other than those odd questions, I love seeing Lovecraft-ian monsters in Pathfinder. Speculating how The Color Out of Space might work has taken up a lot of my time in the past.

I've already snagged the Haunted Mansion & Graveyard map packs, they seem like cinches for this kind of thing. I kind of wish the Dungeon Sites one was still around, that looked like a good one for

Another thing I've been wondering about... how do you'all as GMs try and spruce up the battle maps when the dungeon in a module or AP volume has a clear layout that isn't laid out like any flip-maps you own? I know the whole sell point of the Paizo maps is not using a bland dry erase grid-board... but whotcha gonna do if what you got doesn't match the layout of what's in the AP?

I have a player in my new Serpent's Skull campaign (though the path isn't important to this discussion,) playing a young half-elven ranger who fought a war in a nation heavily covered in wilderness. He's boarding the ship to try and escape his painful memories.

Now, understanding that I don't keep up well with Golarion Geography that hasn't appeared in an adventure path (unless it's super awesome like Numeria,) I decided with him that he probably came from the River Kingdoms, since there's a lot of nations that want a piece of the place...

It's still early in the campaign though (3 sessions in,) so there's still time to amend things... so, does anyone have better ideas for war-torn wildlands for him to escape? Or should I be good, running with the River Kingdoms?

When I went to snag the black dragon with a sorceress rider, it let me. When I placed it in my side-cart for the next subscription shipment, it immediately went "unavailable."

Was I actually lucky enough to snag the last one, or was it already gone and the system hadn't updated? Am I a winner? Or too little, too late?

Wait. What?

Gnomes of Golarion came out May and Orcs of Golarion came out in August, both of 2010. Neither of them have been out for one full year and they're already out of print and almost "out of stock for good?"

I thought I wasn't supposed to think of Paizo products as if they were magazines anymore. I thought there were second printings and stuff.

So... I'm running a Pathfinder game and I have a player who wants to play a man cursed by being transformed into an intelligent gorilla. I love the concept and the idea... it's in the fine tradition of comic books, action cartoons, and pulpy stories everywhere. Smart apes and monkeys make everything cooler.

My problem is trying to figure out how to make it work. There really aren't any playable races that support the concept in PF and the play-as-monsters-rules are very wan.

I looked through a bunch of my D20 books, and found the Weren in D20 future, but they aren't really attuned to the PF standard races. (And they seem a mite bit stronger than something only EL+1 would be.) So far, we've been tinkering with that race and planning on using a modded version of that.

I've also toyed with the notion of the fact that the Druid get to be a class and have an animal at the same time. If there's a way to play a druid who doesn't have an animal companion (extracting the animal and giving domains, for example,) why can't we work the other side... extracting the druid from the animal companion and letting the player just play the companion?

I was hoping someone might have other suggestions or input on the thoughts above. Mostly the guy is looking to play with the Big, Frightfully Strong, yet civil and intelligent aspect of the smart ape thing...

An ancient Red Dragon at a CR of 19 has an AC of 38, but to a gunslinger within 30 feet (or 60 with the right grit,) that's an AC of 5.

I know that's at the extreme end of the meter, there... but monsters at certain CRs are supposed to have certain ACs (plus or minus based on their type & role,) and if we're mostly discounting the natural armor bonuses for them, are they the CR they're supposed to be?

Part of the reason I'm asking this is that I'm running a steampunk game and three of my players opted to take just one level in gunslinger because of the 'free guns.' Sooner or later, there are going to be big monsters with high natural armor bonuses... which won't do much good against a solid percentage of my party.

P.S. I know there's a thread on whether or not guns are a Tarrasque's nightmare, but that seems to mostly be a discussion on whether or not guns automatically bypass DR, and that seems to have mostly resolved at 'no.'

Seriously, it's always one of my peeves about the D20 system that:

1) The divide between Aberrations as opposed to Magical Beasts and Monstrous Humanoids is so arbitrary and ill-defined and yet...

2) It's often used as world-building excuse for choosing "Sides" in a way that're often neither consistant or sensible if...

3) an Aberration, to quote the Bestiary 2, is so simply defined as something that "has a bizarre anatomy, strange abilities, an alien mindset, or any combination of the three," without there being an overarching origin for them.

For example, the Lovecraftian-esque nightmares with bodies like tentacled stalagmites and warped alien mindsets known as Ropers that are Magical Beasts (at least originally in D20) because... well... as near as I can guess, because they're combat monsters and need the D10 HD and full attack bonus to do their jobs. Meanwhile, a snake with a human head (Naga) or a dark elf with a spider abdomen (Drider) is an Aberration. On the other hand, a horse with a fish-butt (Hippocampus, Magical Beast) or human with the same (Merfolk, Monstrous Humanoid) is not.

Targetting Aberrations for whatever in D&D just doesn't make sense when Aberrations don't give off a consistant thematic vibe that sets them apart from all the other weird-crap-creatures-that-don't-make-sense-outside-of-bending-the-rules-of- nature in D20.

What brought this all up fresh in my brain was reading about the First World being hostile to aberrations in the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing entry of Misfit Monsters. What is an aberration? Stuff that's weird? Baby, the whole First World is weird. Is a

I have no problem with the idea of xenophobic characters, organizations, gods, or even places, in D&D or Pathfinder. But a Mothman is at least as weird or weirder than a Guardian Naga, and it shouldn't get a free pass from slayers of aberrant life for being a Monstrous Humanoid.