Cutting your way out of a monster after being swallowed requires dealing damage equal to 1/10th of the monster's HP. Does healing or temporary hitpoints interact with that at all?
I can think up a couple of possible interpretations... Which would you go with?
a) Temporary hitpoints must be removed before counting damage required to escape. If the monster gets an opportunity to gain temporary hitpoints or heal lost actual hitpoints before the damage reaches the 1/10th threshold, that healing counteracts the damage done to escape.
b) Temporary hitpoints are treated the same as actual hitpoints - add temporary and actual hitpoints together before calculating the damage required to escape (at the time of swallowing? Seems iffy with pools of temporary HP that have durations measured in rounds). If the monster gets an opportunity to gain temporary hitpoints or heal lost actual hitpoints before the damage reaches the 1/10th threshold, that healing counteracts the damage done to escape.
c) Temporary hitpoints are disregarded when calculating the damage required to escape. If the monster gets an opportunity heal lost actual hitpoints before the damage reaches the 1/10th threshold, that healing counteracts the damage done to escape. Gaining temporary hitpoints does not counteract any damage done to escape.
d) Temporary hitpoints are disregarded when calculating the damage required to escape. Gaining temporary hitpoints or healing lost actual hitpoints after swallowing does not affect the damage required to escape.
1: Can a PC occupy the same space as friendly troop?
EDIT: I would say NO. However, the troop could shape around the PC to protect them.
(...)
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1b: Is the PC's reach unimpeded if he's standing within a troop?
I'd think so.
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1c: Can friendly troops share their spaces with each other?
I don't see any rule which would allow this. Moving past each other is appearantly not an issue, even if a whole troop passes multiple squares of another troop, but at the end of either troop's turn, they can't share squares.
The one thing that gives me pause here is this sentence in the "Troop attack" paragraph: "Instead, they deal automatic damage to any creature within reach or whose space they occupy at the end of their move, with no attack roll needed."
This suggests that a troop acts like a swarm with regards to sharing spaces, but it is the only mention of it in the troop subtype rules. Since swarms are typically made of creatures that are small enough to share spaces with enemies/allies anyway, it might make more sense to turn a blind eye to the bolded part.
EDIT: Although, come to think of it, maybe it's only there to cover the case of a troop fighting tiny creatures...
I'm writing up a character that uses the 3rd party Spheres of Might rules to have an allied troop of kobolds under his command, and I'm running into some rules questions about that subtype. Without going too much into Spheres of Might rules for building cohorts, let's just assume we apply the Troop subtype onto a kobold rogue 1 for the following.
1: Can a PC occupy the same space as friendly troop?
1a: Does this provide soft cover for the PC and/or his enemies?
1b: Is the PC's reach unimpeded if he's standing within a troop?
1c: Can friendly troops share their spaces with each other?
2: If a troop doesn't have a special ability to make attacks at range, can a troop ever make ranged attacks, even if equipped with ranged weapons? How would damage and possible area be calculated?
3: Troops are not subject to flanking, but can they flank others?
3a: If the troop shapes itself so that it is on both sides of a target, can it flank with itself?
I think the standard ageing penalties/bonuses are set from the perspective of the standard player races.
Monsters who naturally have ability scores much higher than humans or elves or dwarves or gnomes should perhaps take proportionally larger physical penalties - or not, as their physiology may change in ways completely different to what's normal for a human (as already mentioned with dragons).
I've never heard of alcoholic beverages being weapons. Though if you can convince your DM that a bottle containing alcohol counts as a weapon while a flask of acid doesn't, go ahead.
Well, my GM rules that Quick Draw applies to things other than just weapons (which includes alcohol). I mentioned this in my first reply to you.
Anything can be an improvised weapon, I suppose...
Still, it seems your GM is willing to give you a little wiggle room to make things work out. If he's otherwise on board with the mechanical effects you're going for, maybe try working with him to homebrew a feat or magic item that does what you want it to?
The metamagic feats section on the SoP wiki at least mentions the classic metamagic feats in its example and even explains how Quicken Spell is supposed to work, so I assume sphere abilities are supposed to work with already published metamagic feats.
2. RAW, nothing stops you from continuing to attack the swallowed enemy, but that's silly, so don't count on your DM to allow it. They are unambiguously still grappled as per the Swallow Whole rules, though, so you can definitely make Grapple checks to deal damage to them as a standard action.
I've been racking my brain on this point, 'cause while the victim still has the grappled condition, the swallower loses it, so I do see an argument for "not being in a grapple"... and the swallower would presumably have to use his gut muscles to affect the grapple check. Since the victim doesn't automatically escape if the swallower neglects to maintain the grapple, I'm on the fence as to whether the swallower still has the option to "maintain" the grapple as a standard action.
With that ambiguity in mind, I was looking at what talents in the Wrestling sphere could apply to swallowed opponents. Chokehold and Hammerlock both seem to be useful in any case. I'm a bit leery of all the talents that hinge on "maintaining" a grapple (therefore including all the (slam) talents).
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For build advice, I would primarily recommend that you get the Constrict ability, which allows you to deal damage when you make a successful grapple check (including to maintain an ongoing grapple). The Anaconda's Coils are a good way to get it when you can afford them, but you might be able to find an easier way.
I was browsing through the Alteration sphere and noted the Tentacles talent to grant Constrict and the Undead Traits talent for stomach damage reduction and the Blood Drain ability. I'm still reading over the Transformation feat line to see if I can somehow make those traits permanent, but concept-wise I'd rather have the character stay in his base form and just add those traits.
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Since acid resistance is common on higher-level monsters, I would also suggest eventually finding a way to bypass or mitigate it.
Lastly, bear in mind that your build is contingent on making three consecutive checks against an enemy- one to hit, one to grapple, one to swallow whole. Focus on getting your accuracy and CMB as high as possible. Unfortunately, being big will hinder the former as much as it benefits the latter.
I think the Destruction sphere has some resistance/immunity-bypassing options, but I guess it will be a DM call as to whether touch spells can target a swallowed opponent. Again depending on whether the swallower can make grapple checks against the swallowed victim, I was looking into the Improved Cryptic Strike and/or Spell Attack feats to add more rider effects along the lines of Constrict.
I came across the Famine Spirit archetype for the Shifter class, and I want to make a build focused on eating enemies via its Swallow Whole ability.
First I have a couple of rules questions...
1) The Famine Spirit can explicitly swallow enemies larger than his own size category upon reaching level 7. What happens to the character's space in this case? I assume the Famine Spirit's size category, reach, etc. remain the same, but... Suppose a Medium-sized Famine Spirit swallows a Large creature. Will the Famine Spirit still take up one 5x5 square, or will it take up a 10x10 ft. square?
2) Can the Famine Spirit target swallowed enemies with, say, touch attack spells? Can a Famine Spirit actually do anything further to a swallowed foe aside from waiting for it to expire?
Lastly, I'm interested in build advice. What sort of character options facilitate using the Swallow Whole tactic?
I have my eye on the Oversized Goblin race and the (Greater)Permanent Size Change bestial traits. With the Martial Shifter archetype, I figured the Wrestling sphere might be useful, but I'm not actually sure you can perform grapple checks on swallowed foes...
Being flat footed does not prevent provoking an attack of opportunity. It usually prevents someone from taking an attack of opportunity. This may seem like the same thing but is not. The feat combat reflexes allow a person who is flat footed to take an attack of opportunity. If being flat footed prevents you from provoking the attack of opportunity this would not happen. Since the combat reflexes specifically allow an attack of opportunity while flat footed, being flat footed cannot prevent an attack of opportunity from being provoked.
I fully concur with your statements, but I'm confused by them all the same.
A creature using the Scale Foe talent is (as far as I can tell) not flat-footed, but the target that is climbed onto is flat-footed against the climber's attacks.
My questions hinge on whether the target is considered flat-footed only against certain actions ("attacks") taken by the climber.
I'm currently playing as a Tiny character - an imp using the monster class from Dreamscarred Press - that intends to be a nuisance by making use of the Scale Foe talent. The character has some racial spell-like abilities as well as spellcasting abilities via Spheres of Power talents, and I have a boggle regarding the following clause in Scale Foe:
Scale Foe wrote:
"The creature is also flat-footed against your attacks."
Flat-footed characters cannot make attacks of opportunity.
If the imp climbs onto an enemy and uses a magic sphere ability without casting defensively, does he then provoke an attack of opportunity?
What if the sphere ability targets the enemy (which would usually count as "an attack", would break standard Vancian invisibility etc.)?
What if the imp attempts to use its racial Invisibility spell-like ability while clinging to the foe?
The way that the quoted line is written seems to give rise to some inconsistency in what magic provokes AoOs while clinging to someone...
If you're open to 3rd party material, the Fencing sphere in Spheres of Might can give you the equivalent of sneak attack if you invest some feats in it.
The bonuses to Stealth are untyped and would seem to stack.
By default, I don't think (total) concealment stacks with other sources of concealment, so if the coat-and-cloak user spends the standard action to gain total concealment, s/he would not gain a greater miss chance from remaining stationary.
I don't have PRD access at the moment, but from what I remember:
Other than finding spellbooks with preparation rituals in them as loot or for sale, I'm not aware of any rules for actually getting them. As I understand them, you gain the benefit each time you use the book to prepare a spell within its pages (for abilities that are limited to one or a couple uses after preparing your spells, I imagine you'd regain the uses next time you prepare your spells).
As for moving pages between spellbooks, I don't think it's covered explicitly anywhere, but I don't see why not. You might need to succeed on a Craft (Bookbinding) check, and it may be impossible or more difficult if the two books are made of different materials (I seem to remember one of the special spellbooks being made of metal with metal sheets for its pages). It may also become fiddly and complicated to keep track of which pages count as a "borrowed" spellbook - I seem to remember a rule about needing to succeed on a Spellcraft check to decode and memorise from other wizards' spellbooks.
Scribing spells (and paying the scribing costs) from one book to another might be the more traditional avenue, and I'd probably recommend that if the cost isn't going to break the bank for your character.
I love it. The premise hits that sweet spot for me where it acknowledges the comparatively widespread availability of certain magics in Pathfinder, but not to the extent that society breaks down or becomes alien.
What happens to heads that are taken down after the minimum 21 days? Is there some sort of skull pit on the outskirts of town?
You quoted the answer. You add all your levels in Sphere Casting together to get your total pool. To use the above example, an Incanter would have a pool of 3(2 Incanter, 1 Conscript w/AMT) plus their casting modifier.
I think it's important to note the difference here between caster level and level in a Sphere casting class. Single-classed low-casters get just as many spell points as single-classed high-casters.
Magical Skill is your total levels in Spell Casting classes, It's not directly connected to Caster Level, just class level. By taking Advanced Magical Training your non-caster class now counts as a Caster class.
So the Incanter 2/Conscript 2 has a Caster Level of 3 and a Magic Skill of +4
Cheers, that puts the Counterspell feats back on the table for me.
As a follow-up question, does the same principle apply to the amount of spell points a caster gets?
Spell points wrote:
Each caster gains a pool of spell points equal to their class level plus their casting ability modifier. Just like with caster level, a caster adds together all their levels in Sphere casting classes when determining the size of their spell pool.
Just missed the editing window...
Another option with the Incanter 2/Conscript 2 character is that he has an MSB of 4. Since the AMT feat reads "Treat your levels in non-casting classes as low-casting classes when determining your total caster level.", does that make each Conscript level count as a "low-casting class" when determining MSB?
I'm writing up a character with material from a bunch of different sources, one of which being Spheres of Power, and while things like the Advanced Magical Training feat or the Gift for Magic trait can help make up for caster levels lost to multi-classing, I'm unsure if they do anything for a spherecaster's MSB.
Under the Magic Skill Bonus and Magic Skill Defense section, there's the following line:
"Any feat or ability that would normally call for a caster level check instead calls for an MSB check. Any feat or ability that normally adds to a creature’s caster level for the purposes of one of the caster level checks listed above instead adds to their MSB for that purpose."
Does this mean that anything adding to a character's general caster level also adds to his MSB? As a concrete example, would a character with 2 levels each in Incanter and Conscript and the Advanced Magical Training feat have an MSB of 2 or 3?
Lastly, are there any feats, traits or abilities that outright boost MSB?
I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly, but if you're asking whether necrocrafts count for the maximum number of undead HD that a character can control, I would say yes, based on this sentence:
Creating a necrocraft wrote:
As with animate dead, the necrocraft is under the creator's control when created.
Since it references the animate dead spell directly, I would assume that the rules therein apply to necrocrafts the same as more conventional undead.
A favourite of mine is the Hoard Gullet spell from the 3.5e book Dragon Magic: http://dnd.arkalseif.info/spells/dragon-magic--62/hoard-gullet--1080/index. html
In a previous Pathfinder game, my goblin magus researched a variation of the spell that allowed for retrieving specific items:
Spoiler:
Hoard Gullet
School: Transmutation
Level: Bard 2, Magus 2, Sorcerer/Wizard 2, Summoner 2, Witch 2
Components: V, S, M (a watermelon seed)
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 24 hours
You gain a magical second stomach, which can be used to transport objects securely.
You can safely swallow and transport any object you could normally swallow (including items at least three size categories smaller than you). The capacity of your hoard gullet is 100 pounds and/or 10 cubic feet per caster level (up to a maximum of 2,000 pounds and 200 cubic feet).
You can’t expel individual items from your hoard gullet, but you can expel its entire contents into your square as a full-round action. It otherwise functions as a bag of holding. At the end of the spell’s duration, anything still in your second stomach is immediately and instantly brought up, falling to the ground next to you.
The contents of the hoard gullet are expelled through your mouth; if their egress is blocked, and the hoard gullet contains more than can fit in your mouth, the spell attempts a Strength check to expel or burst the obstruction with an effective Strength equal to your caster level plus the modifier of the ability score that governs your spellcasting (see Damaging Objects for example DCs). If this Strength check fails, you take damage equal to 1/10th of your maximum hitpoints as some part of your anatomy bursts instead.
You can’t have more than one hoard gullet active at one time; casting this spell while under the effects of an active Hoard Gullet refreshes the duration of the previous casting.
As a full-round action, you may attempt to remove an individual item by succeeding on a DC 15 Dexterity check to reach in and manually grab something. If you are willing or helpless, another creature with a suitably sized appendage may make the attempt.
Research parameters
Cost: 2,300 gp (Base cost 2,000, +300 to lower DC by 3)
Time: 1 week
Skill: Knowledge (Arcana) & Spellcraft
DC: 19 (Base DC 24, -2 for material component, -3 for extra research materials)
The "normally swallow" clause was applied rather loosely because of his big mouth. Through judicious use of Enlarge and Reduce Person, the spell was also used to transport the party's dwarf, when it became apparent that we were one person over the limit for Teleport at the goblin's caster level at the time.
I was also looking into a ratfolk alchemist with a tumor familiar with the Mauler template.
Just spoke to the author of the Illusion sphere handbook. Here are his answers:
1) You need Illusionary Touch x2 to deal extra damage from an Enhanced Illusion. Unless your illusions are already dealing lethal damage (be it through the Shadow Infusion talent or Tactile Illusion feat), all additional damage will be nonlethal damage (nonlethal fire damage, nonlethal bleed damage, etc).
2) Only illusions that are dealing lethal damage (such as with the Shadow Infusion talent or Tactile Illusions feat) may have their attacks poisoned (be it contact or injury).
3) Illusions of objects are not objects, as such, they are not legal targets of such abilities or effects. Objects created with the Shadow Magic feat however are objects, and as such are legal targets for Animate Object (and similar effects), although they will have reduced stats as normal.
Thanks for the answers, which all make a lot of sense. :)
The following is just musing on corner cases for its own sake:
If I'm not mistaken, the Solid Illusions feat predates the Illusion handbook, so my impression is that some of its functions may have been restricted by the new rules in that book (though these functions would have behaved weirdly - see question 3, for example). If a caster has only taken Illusionary Touch once as per the feat's prerequisites and doesn't use Shadow Magic, which enhancements can then actually be used on illusions with the feat?
Magic Sink seems like it would work as protection vs. counterspelling. Could Increase Speed add to the speed at which a figment can be moved?
Going off on a tangent from my previous thread about SoP illusions, I'm wondering about how a couple of other talents and feats interact.
1) The Solid Illusions feat lets a caster enhance his illusions as though they were real. If the caster has only taken Illusionary Touch once, will an illusory soldier be able to cause damage if its weapon is enhanced with, say, Enhance Equipment or Energy Weapon? Would this damage be non-lethal, even if it is elemental or bleed damage?
2) Can the weapons of illusory creatures be poisoned? In my particular case, I'm interested in the poisons from the Alchemy sphere. Would it...
a) require taking Illusionary Touch once or twice,
b) require the Tactile Illusion feat,
c) require using Shadow Magic to give the creature substance (and attacks in the normal sense) by emulating the Conjuration sphere, or
d) is it just impossible for an illusion to use injury/contact poison?
3) Just what would happen if you try to use Animate Object (and its dependent talents and feats) on an illusory object...?
"The first time you gain a surreal feat you also gain a shadow pool as the fey adept class feature, except it only contains a number of shadow points equal to the total number of surreal feats you possess. This stacks with any other shadow points."
But you can spend spell points if you have Shadow Infusion. That's mostly there for non-Fey Adepts who want to do a lot of shadow magic. XD
Just spoke to the author of the Illusion sphere handbook.
When dealing exclusively with the Shadow Infusion talent, all it is intended to do is allow you to choose to deal lethal or nonlethal damage, and only have a reduced effectiveness on a successful Will save to disbelieve. The part about objects and creatures of the (shadow) descriptor is not meant to apply outside the Shadow Magic feat (decreased hit points with objects from the Creation sphere, companions from the Conjuration sphere, etc. This is because illusions are neither objects nor creatures.
Many thanks! This does seem to bring Shadow Infusion in line with the individual usefulness of other talents.
I'm left with one little niggle: Taking the Shadow Magic feat requires having either Shadow Infusion or a shadow pool, but actually using the Shadow Magic feat seems to necessitate having a shadow pool. Is the intent that a caster with Shadow Infusion can use a spell point rather than a shadow point to grant herself talents from Shadow Magic?
Off-hand it seems like Shadow Infusion has some of the same functions as the Create Reality ability of the Fey Adept class. But where Create Reality has rather specific rules for how its illusory creatures and objects work, since they reference other spheres directly, Shadow Infusion has some general principles: Shadowstuff objects are as hard and heavy as shadowstuff (rather than being completely intangible), shadowstuff creatures have 1/5th the HP of their fully real counterparts (rather than being intangible figments), and other shadowstuff effects are half as effective if disbelieved (rather than being typically negated outright).
My boggle arises in the case of making illusory creatures and where to pull base numbers from. Suppose Nebulor the Inscrutable has an illusion caster level of 3, and whips up a mighty minotaur as a shadowstuff creature:
1) Should I look up the minotaur in the bestiary and give it 20% of its regular hitpoints?
2) Does the shadowstuff minotaur deal the damage listed in the bestiary by default (halved if disbelieved) - or can it not deal damage despite having "mass", if Nebulor neglected to take the Illusory Touch talent twice?
3) Can a shadowstuff creature perform combat maneuvers (at half CMB if disbelieved)?
4) If a shadowstuff creature is disbelieved, is it still able to flank opponents?
5) If Nebulor wants his shadowstuff minion to perform ability or skill checks (say, busting down a door or picking a lock), should the ability/skill modifier come from the bestiary entry or be based on Nebulor's caster level/casting stat/skill ranks somehow?
Reading the whipwood description on aonprd.com, it seems to me that it's intended to be used where most of a weapon's length is wooden, thus giving it special properties when that section is attacked.
If you try to sunder a whip, I don't imagine that you'll be attacking the handle, but rather cutting the long, flexible leather segment, so that's an argument against being able to get the bonuses from whipwood construction added to a whip.
Still, it's a fairly specific bonus for a modest cost, and from the name alone, I could imagine an whip made of some exotic wood that's closer to a bundle of vines spiralling around one another. It's pretty flavourful, and your GM might go for it.
I'd choose the witch, since, IMO, it would fit the 3rd faction of caster better than sorcerer, and the original witch already gets her spells from a patron. The sorcerer would better fit in the "Established Arcane Caster" faction (i.e. Wizards, Sorcerers, Bard).
I second this notion. Witches have some distinct mechanics for making covens and have altogether more sinister elements baked in from the get-go - this seems like the kind of thing that would be appropriate for your setting.
Maybe snag the spell-like abilities from the various gnome racial features? Or give players a catalogue to choose from at character creation, since some of the gnomish SLAs always struck me as being of quite limited utility.
Has anyone ever named items that were not weapons?
My first instinct is that it would seem weird, which in itself is sort of interesting. You do sometimes see names for objects, but they're often in the definite form (The Worldstone, The One Ring, The Dark Crystal, The Infinity Gauntlet) and often attributed to or referencing something else instead of having their own identity (The Tools of Kagrenac, Azura's Star, a Circlet of Netheril).
I risk restating what's already been said by Firebug and Val'bryn2, but it's a really important consideration for sword-and-pistol builds: You only need to invest in the Two-Weapon Fighting feats if you want extra off-hand attacks in a full-round attack. I.e. Two-Weapon Fighting as a style of fighting represents using two weapons 'at once' - not necessarily switching from one to the other.
Pathfinder characters are ambidextrous by default. If you simply hold a one-handed weapon in each hand, you can choose to use either one for a given attack.
Really? Huh. I haven't played one, but I have the impression that both the benefits and the problems for this PrC kick in right away. What were you waiting for -- and, more generally, what was your experience?
I'm going on subjective experience and hazy memories here, so I can't rule out that I just wasn't playing to the strengths of the class.
However, in the early levels I recall feeling that I didn't really have enough blood points to make a dramatic difference in spell availability. It certainly improved when I was able to use the Bloat ability twice per day (with twice the dice), but that's already level 9. What I really was looking forward to was the capstone of being able to drink blood in order to use bloodline abilities - but by then the character would be level 15, and those 10 levels would be without progress in wizard school abilities.
My impression was that the class doesn't truly become distinctive until level 3 and 4 (with Corpulence and a quadrupling of the Bloat ability respectively), and it was vexing to see the wizard class abilities (in my case) atrophy in return for something that felt rather less gradual.
I never did get to play a character that gained enough experience to get the capstone, though.
For me, it's more tied to narrative milestones than number of sessions. Once the characters have reached (or made definite progress toward) some goal and have a chance to sit down and reflect, that's when it feels most appropriate to level up. It feels a bit awkward when a level is gained in the middle of an expedition into a dungeon - even more so if it's in the middle of an encounter.
I've not seen one either, which I lament to no end.
I'm guessing the problem is a lack of punch and/or versatility (oddly enough). I've played a few bloatmage characters (never past character level 10), and it always seemed like I was waiting for just another few levels before it could really shine. Ironically, I suppose it's a top-heavy class?
Can a tower shield be used as an improvised weapon, rather than using the shield bash rules? The Catch Off-Guard feat chain, the Surprise Weapon trait and the Gloves of Improvised Might might at least put it on par with an actual weapon.
At one point I played an indolent bloatmage transmuter with an imp familiar, and other than having the imp take care of a whole host of mundane tasks, it served as a good vehicle for the various touch spells of the transmutation school. The imp's invisibility and other defenses meant that it could survive as a striker/debuffer while larger, more imposing party members generally drew the attention of enemies.
T hough it's not on the cleric spell list, the Hellmouth Lash spell was particularly useful.
There's not a particular moment that comes to mind, but I have had sessions where the tone was jarred (from my perspective, at least) by a player with a more gamist mindset than a storytelling one. The character in question soured my mood less by boisterously blurting out GET REKT SCRUB, and more by not really reaction with much emotion at all.
As I understand it, the dwarf would retain his 20 ft. movement speed, but he would still incur the -3 armour check penalty (which possibly stacks with the ACP from any armour he's wearing - not sure on this point) and have a +3 maximum Dexterity bonus to AC.
I'd say if the magic item's effect is to cast a transmutation spell on you, the feat would apply, but not if the item has a constant transmutation effect that doesn't correspond to a spell.
As such, wearing the Eyes of the Owl would not cause your natural armour bonus to increase - they provide an ability, but it is not from a transmutation spell or spell-like ability. Using a Greater Hat of Disguise, however, would.
The saddest I personally got was when a particular game, which had amazing intra-party interaction and plot, ended unresolved due to scheduling issues.
I like to play characters with tragic aspects, so when sad things do happen to them, it actually feels satisfying to have that part of their story interacted with and/or resolved.
In a years-long game of Planescape (before Pathfinder was even a thing), I played a goblin bard that sang laments of his dead tribe, exterminated by adventurers. He was joined by the tribe's guardian spirit, a giant ghost raven that watched over him as the last remnant of the clan. Toward the end of the game he found out which adventurers had done the deed, and he began setting up an elaborate revenge scenario in an old opera house. The raven spirit started communicating its concerns to the other PCs, speaking against this vindictiveness over preserving the tribe's legacy. My character went ahead with it despite protests. Appalled by what had been done, the guardian spirit - in effect the last remaining member of his family - abandoned him. I didn't cry myself, but my character sure did, and another player shed a tear too. :V
It's going to vary from situation to specific situation, but as a rule of thumb, I would apply the penalty when the sense is the primary means of detecting something, i.e. if hearing it is the easiest way to sense it. When trekking through a dense jungle, it would be easier to hear a waterfall in the vicinity before seeing it, say. You could also handle these things with circumstance modifiers to perception checks, but then you're probably getting so granular that it makes more sense to use the Spot and Listen skills from 3.5th edition.
In the case of "an ambush" without further qualifiers, I would probably not apply the penalty, as catching sight of a bandit darting behind a tree could be just as decisive as hearing one sneeze.
I had an arcanist character who'd lived an evil life and, now that he was old and wise in the ways of the planes beyond, was terrified of the fate that awaited him beyond death. He was visited by Shelyn in a garden mindscape to set him on the way toward redemption. The encounter was framed humbly in pleasant surroundings, so as not to overwhelm the repentant mage, but knowing whose image he was conversing with, he reacted with fear, shame and tears of hope as the path to salvation opened for him.
No autographs were handed out - it didn't seem appropriate to ask. I bet Cayden Cailean would be pleased, though. :V
It seems relevant only for the first couple of levels. After a character gains a couple more hit dice, the difference is within the margin of the subsequent random HP rolls.
Seems like a fussy thing to keep in mind for a marginal advantage, so it's simpler to just go with the first hit die for simplicity's sake in order to avoid having an unlucky 1st level character with just 1 HP.
Thread necromancy! Because this deals with the nitty-gritty of the archetype that I'm wondering about...
If a Spirit Binder takes 4 levels of some other class and the Boon Companion feat, does he lose out on any benefits of the Soulbound Familiar or Lost Talents abilities? What about prestige classes like the Diabolist, which specifically calls out stacking of levels for familiar abilities?
At the risk of descending into rules lawyer and semantics territory, Lost Talents in particular doesn't say that the master loses one bonus feat in order to grant the familiar a feat - only that "At 1st level, 5th level, and every 5 levels thereafter, the spirit binder’s familiar gains a new feat for which it meets the prerequisites".
After concluding an adventure and becoming filthy rich, my old tiefling bloatmage character retired to live a lazy life of luxury. Now I want to send his imp familiar on adventures on his behalf.
Taking cues from the Stay-at-home Wizard thread, I'm looking for methods to use the Glove of Familiar's Touch across planar boundaries. Since a wizard can cast spells "with a target of “You” on his familiar (as a touch spell) instead of on himself" via Share Spells, that opens up all the wizard's personal and melee touch spells for use by the familiar... if only the wizard knows when to cast them. To be useful in combat, the cues have to be pretty much instantaneous.
Most telepathic communication options I've found are limited to working on the same plane. Reading another thread on the Succubus' profane gift ability, I noticed that it includes an unlimited range telepathy option, so a Planar Binding might solve the issue... except the gifts can only be bestowed on humanoids.
Is there a way to make an outsider (an imp in particular) count as having the humanoid type? Is there another way to enable interplanar telepathy?
As a tangent question: If a wizard uses Planar Binding and targets his own familiar, does the familiar then necessarily count as having its master's HD, or does it allow for using the familiar's actual HD for a summoning (to exchange items and report in person every now and then)?
The giant slayer/titan breaker feats don't look like they'd stack with the giant and titan talents anyway, I think the feats you found are better for this character.
I'd love to see the end result, especially your take on how the different abilities interact. Some of the feral gnasher's class abilities and the rage powers seem to either overlap or enable some sort of free action bite-grapple-release-bite loop...
Sketching out a feat and rage power plan, I came up with this for an oversized goblin feral gnasher:
1: Extra Talent (Brute Sphere) (Spheres of Might)
2: Throw Anything (bonus feat)
3: Improved Grapple
4: Rage Power - Tyrant Totem, Lesser
5: Giantslayer (Spheres of Might)
6: Rage Power - Animal Fury
7: Greater Grapple
8: Rage Power - Tyrant Totem
9: Rapid Grappler
10: Rage Power - Strength Surge
11: Titan Breaker (Spheres of Might)
12: Rage Power - Tyrant Totem, Greater
13: Sleeper Hold
Unfortunately, the build doesn't seem to have room for more talents in the Brute sphere to get the Muscular Surge, Giant and Titan talents until really late. I would have liked to include Sleeper Hold even earlier too, though I'm not sure if it interacts with Swallow Whole like I think it does...
Some claws would have been nice too.
