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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.

e) None of the above?

Hi, all

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 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...

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:

"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...

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?

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...?

For a long time I was confused as to what the Shadow Infusion talent actually did, but reading the (shadow) descriptor and special material descriptions for shadowstuff, I have a somewhat better idea.

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?

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)?

Looking through character options for a Feral Gnasher barbarian, I came across the three Tyrant Totem rage powers. Notably, the 12th level greater power gives the barbarian the Swallow Whole ability.

Since goblins are small-sized, that rather limits the usefulness of Swallow Whole by default. My question is thus what ways there are of increasing the size of eligible targets for swallowing.

There are a couple of avenues, like the Abyssal blood rage power, for increasing the goblin's actual size, but any "counts as larger" abilities would add to the fun. Third party and 3.5e material suggestions are welcome.

I'm playing in a campaign using the Spheres of Power system 3rd party system, where my character's spellcasting tradition has the "Galvanized" drawback - he must be wielding a weapon in order to cast spells.

My character build is a pretty overwrought lizardman warpriest that focuses on natural attacks, so I want to keep his hands free to use his claws. Armour spikes have thus far sufficed to fill the requirement of "wielding" a manufactured weapon, being able to attack with them, etc. I'm wondering if there are other weapon options I could use, however, that don't get in the way of using claws.

Any ideas? Bonus points for weapons that are in any way subtle enough to not turn heads if taken into a bar...

Hey, all.
I'm playing in a homebrew game, where my Warpriest character worships a dark and mysterious deity, which I and the DM haven't fully fleshed out yet. The character hasn't been inducted formally into the faith, instead going by guesswork and scattered scraps from the cult hideouts he himself helped to purge.

A new PC with alignment detection powers joined the group recently, however, so it might become relevant very soon just where on the chart this deity is located.

"Iku-Turso is the thousand-headed dweller in the deep. Cast down by Ahto, he once set the great farms ablaze, so that a new order would rise. He is the god of violent upheaval, the cleansing flame, and rebirth from the ashes - but in new and terrible forms. Unless quenched, he would burn the world in a cycle of destruction - or so the Hierarchy says."

I took inspiration from this figure in Finnish myth, particularly the first verse quoted from the Kalevala: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iku-Turso. I'm aiming for themes of revolution and bringing down the established order through violence and skullduggery, ultimately in order to impose Tursas' own oppressive rule (as the great oak strangles the starlight). We're firmly in the Evil camp at this point, but I'm not sure where to place him on the Law-Chaos axis.

Can a transmuter with a pair of annihilation spectacles spontaneously convert a transmutation spell into a metamagic'd version of another transmutation spell he knows?

Example: Could an 11th level transmuter convert a memorised Disintegrate spell into a persistent Irregular Size, provided he has the Persistent Spell feat?

I recently read the text regarding the chain coat medium armour, and when I saw it allowed you to wield spiked chains as one-handed weapons, all sorts of campy badass imagery popped into my head. So many chains it'd put Ghost Rider to shame.

Now, dual-wielding two one-handed weapons is its own can of worms optimisation-wise, but I'm envisioning using two whip-like lengths of chain, which implies reach. Trouble is that, unlike ye olde chains of 3.5th edition D&D, Pathfinder's spiked chain doesn't have reach, much less 15 feet of it like whips do.

I delved into the notion of using Large or larger spiked chains, but then I hit the handedness nightmare, and whether a two-handed chain that gets turned into a one-handed weapon by the chain coat could be wielded in two hands by making it Large, then apply levels of Titan Mauler to make it one-handed again... made my head spin.

Any suggestions for how to get as much reach as possible out of a pair of spiked chains for the least amount of investment?

I'm currently writing up a wizard with an item crafting focus, and I'd like to get Craft Staff at some point. He's slated to start out at level 9, and Craft Staff has a prerequisite of "Caster level 11th".

However, this wizard has a couple of means of increasing his caster level - but not for every school. Do caster level increases from the likes of Varisian Tattoo and Bloatmage Initiate count for satisfying blanket caster level prerequisites?

Taking the idea further, what about an arcanist with the Potent Magic exploit? How about someone with an orange ioun stone?

I'm trying to doodle up a bloatmage, and I've once again trapped myself by wanting to do too many things at once.
My starting point was "transmutation-focused bloatmage", and since the intended campaign is ostensibly going to revolve around a PC-run tavern or inn, I tried to bend it toward being more about selling magical wares and services than outright fighting. Then I thought "well, polymorph spells are the hallmark of transmutation", and the concept meandered in a bunch of different directions from there.

I'm not sure whether to ditch either the crafting aspect or the hopes of polymorphing into other forms when combat *does* happen. The crafting approach would suit the indulgent and lazy mindset I have in mind for the character, but it would also be fun to flip that on its head when the character is finally impelled to get out of his floating chair.

What I have is the following:

I seem to remember a rule about this from *some* edition of D&D, but I can't seem to find it in Pathfinder:

Can a creature choose to deal less damage with an attack?

Example: Grobgar the Mighty has a strength score of 20 and wields a longsword. He is pitted against a young aristocrat with delusions of grandeur, but he would rather wound the man's pride than kill him outright or knock him out cold with non-lethal damage. Can he opt to deal less than 1d8+5 damage with his sword?

My question also extends to supernatural attacks: If a 9th-level antipaladin with the curse Cruelty simply wants to bestow a curse on someone rather than injure and possibly kill them, can he voluntarily reduce the 4d6 negative energy damage from Touch of Corruption?

If no rules exist on the subject, what do you think would be a fair implementation? Corner cases welcome!

I'm currently playing a character with the Craft Construct feat, and one of my ambitions is to have a sizeable crew of general manual laborers suitable for construction, mining, lumberjacking, or whatever large-scale odd job one would need laborers for. But which construct is best for this purpose?

I rather had my eye on the Dedicated Wright from ye olde D&D 3.5 Eberron book, but seeing as they're homunculi, I run the risk of taking 2d10 damage per worker if some evil wizard decides to fireball them all.

I basically need to find the cheapest constuct capable of having ranks in the Craft or Profession skill. Any suggestions?

If a Blade Adept arcanist takes one of the available magus arcana as an exploit, can s/he then take the Extra Arcana feat to gain other magus arcana?

Can s/he select arcana that are not arcane accuracy, close range, critical strike, dispelling strike, or hasted assault?

The toxicant alchemist archetype gets the ability to secrete poison from her skin and gather it up to apply it to weapons:

I'm not sure exactly how to read the ability, though.

A) Does it allow her to create a dose of poison in item form, which can then be applied like any other poison (or put in a backpack for later use)?

B) Or does it take the toxicant one swift action to poison her weapon, allowing her to use a standard and move action in the same round?

C) If delivering the poison as a touch attack, does that take another standard action, or is it included in the swift action?

D) Are A and B mutually exclusive?

Finally, how does it interact with certain alchemist discoveries? Does Sticky Poison essentially make the secretion usable IntMod^2 per day? Does Malignant Poison allow the toxicant to take a full-round action to boost the secretion ability for 10+ minutes? Does Concentrate Poison work at all?

I browsing the Archives of Nethys for magic items that would let me cast Shield Other without having it on my character's spell list, and I was somewhat surprised to find an option in the form of a weapon instead of a wondrous item: http://archivesofnethys.com/MagicWeaponsDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Whispering%20 Shrike

That got me wondering. What are some other neat weapons characterised by abilities you'd tend to use before/outside of combat? In fact, the less combat-oriented, the better!

I'm enamored with the flavour of the vexing dodger rogue, but there are a few things I'd like cleared up before I toss my character into the fray:

#1:
Does a vexing dodger enter the same space as the creature he attempts to climb onto?

#2:
Contingent on #1, does a vexing dodger flank if he climbs onto a creature that's threatened by an ally? If he was flanking before climbing onto the creature, does he cease flanking if he's in the same space as the creature?

#3:
In the case of creatures that take up multiple squares, should the vexing dodger make new Climb checks to move around on the creature?

Sometimes there are things in the Pathfinder system that don't make sense from the perspective of the characters in the game.

In my particular case, I have a character who's come into possession of a golden gun that makes enemies bleed gold coins - every point of damage is bled out as 1 gp. Naturally, I've started making plans already:
Having a level in Spellslinger, the character can put the Wounding property on the gun, causing it to deal bleed damage. My current master plan is therefore to capture a troll and have it perpetually bleed gold for me. But how do I know when to stop putting bullets in it?

Trolls have regeneration 5, so damaging the troll enough to make it unconscious, then applying 5 bleed damage from a series of Wounding attacks would seem to strike the right equilibrium.

But how would my character come to know this?

PS: As an aside, I know this would tip over the wealth by level balance, but my DM has a knack for turning such things from get-rich-quick to horrible disaster - which is all part of our fun. :)

I was pleased to see a spell in the Advanced Class Guide that's pretty much the opposite of Grease, by the name of Glue Seal. There's something I'd like to have clarified, though:

Glue Seal says: "You cover a solid surface with a layer of sticky glue. Anyone in the area when the spell is cast must attempt a Reflex save. Those who fail become entangled, but can break free by succeeding at a combat maneuver check or an Escape Artist check as a standard action against the DC of this spell."

The Entangled condition says: "The character is ensnared. Being entangled impedes movement, but does not entirely prevent it unless the bonds are anchored to an immobile object or tethered by an opposing force."

Most entangle effects I've come across so far don't use the function of sticking a target fast. Are creatures affected by Glue Seal stuck to the floor, or just entangled and slowed down?

I'm looking at the siege weapon rules from Ultimate Combat, and something's boggling me.

If I understand things correctly, when using siege weapons, you need your crew to take a number of full-round actions to aim, after which the crew leader takes a standard action to make the actual attack. This usually means there's a turn between the aiming action and the attack action.

What happens if you're aiming a cannon at a creature, and that creature decides to move during its turn? Is the aim broken, necessitating another full-round action or more to re-aim (thus possibly never allowing you to attack, if the target keeps moving)? Or have you "locked on" once you've taken your aiming actions, following the creature's position until you make your attack?

Musings: Indirect fire siege weapons target specific squares, so if a creature moves out of such a square, the attack will miss the creature regardless. Should that principle be carried over to direct fire weapons? Catapult crews could potentially anticipate where a creature would move to and then target that location, but cannon crews wouldn't be able to.

I'm in a game where I want my character to eventually build a cannon, and I'm talking to my DM about the prospect of putting the Sizing enchantment (from the D&D 3.5e Magic Item Compendium) on it for ease of transportation. As I thought about it, though, some possible rules complications came to mind: What happens to a siege engine's numbers if it's not at its default size?

Size-changing spells, like Enlarge Person, usually have the stipulation that projectiles return to their regular size once launched, and so deal their default damage - the Sizing enchantment doesn't specifically call it out, though. Either way, the situation could get iffy: If damage isn't affected, a pocket cannon deals full damage. If it is affected, you could tell it to turn Colossal and explode a mountain with it or something.

Do the crew requirements change for an oddly sized siege enge? Would a Huge cannon require Large crewmen instead of regular Medium ones (or twice as many Medium crewmen?). Does a character with ranks in Knowledge (Engineering), like with a regular siege engine, take no aiming penalties for leading the crew of a Colossal cannon?

I'm in need of some technical advice about breaking into a magic vault.

The background is this, which might be a little tl;dr, so the next three paragraphs can be skipped in a pinch:

I'm playing in a Planescape campaign at the moment, and the party has been named heirs to a castle that, as it turns out, can jump between planes by using a magic orrery. The castle contains also a huge vault, which, according to the late baron's will, will unleash all manner of unpleasantness if opened.

We have managed to open the vault once, however, by accidentally shunting the castle into the anti-magic zone at the base of Sigil's spire. While working on a way to get home, we took the opportunity to open the vault in hopes of avoiding whatever mystical hell it would release, were its magic to function normally. We've looted some sundries and some gold, then closed the vault before getting the castle out of there with a macguffin, but here's where it gets interesting.

I'm playing a goblin with no name, a gun in one hand, spells in the other, a black hat on his head and insatiable greed in his heart. While looting the vault, he went straight for the pile of gold, which was encircled by a string of magic runes (rendered inert by the dead magic in the area). He managed to identify them as the edge of a portable hole, but kept that fact to himself, thinking that the pile must then be just the top of an even bigger pile in a suppressed extradimensional space underneath.
---

Here's where I could use some advice. I kept hold of the vault key, and I want to sneak back inside to snag that portable hole and all its riches, but I'm sure all the magic horribleness alluded to in the will has now reactivated. At present, I have no concrete idea what the consequences might be - could be anything from fireballs and lightning to opening a portal to a Blood War battlefield. I hope to find out with copious use of Detect Magic, Spellcraft and Knowledge (Arcana), but I'm playing a Spellslinger 1/Magus 4 and thus don't have trapfinding. I otherwise have a high Disable Device skill and will be summoning a familiar shortly.

I'm thinking I could get an Unseen Servant to open the vault for me while I take cover behind a shelf. I could wait for 3 levels until I get Dispel Magic, but that'd be too long for such a greedy soul. Depending on what further examination yields, I might have to ask the party's Detective for help, but that would no doubt involve sharing the money. What other options can I make use of?

PS: In the spirit of sportsmanship, I'm sure the character will slip up somehow and reveal the fact that he found all the extra money to the party. Not trying to cheat the other players' out of their wealth here, even if my character definitely would. :V