FamiliarMask's page

PC is a U-Rogue 5 with the Trap Spotter talent. I don't have her full build right here in front of me but I know her Perception is +11. I'm running pre-written material for a megadungeon loaded with mechanical and magic traps.

On the mechanical ones... avg Perception DC is a 15-20. SOP for this player is to scout ahead of the party, clearing the way before the group proceeds. Even when I spontaneously add traps to a fight scene this PC is often close enough to the front line that she senses something unless I'm cheating or I roll really poorly on her secret Perception checks.

In short; most of my mechanical traps are no more interesting than a speed bump.

I've been running games in PF1 for 11 years now and this is honestly the first time traps have gotten THIS boring. No one ever plays Rogues in my games and folks with Trapfinding haven't been this religious about scouting ahead.

Do I just have to crank the DCs on all the traps sky high? Turn all the traps to Magic traps? How do I make the environment more engaging with a PC so focused on finding/disarming traps. Please note: this player is one of 4 that are obsessed with RAW, so just homebrewing a new way of running traps will be a non-starter. Also, I'm not looking to be a killer GM here either.

Personally, I say let the player and their party benefit from their focus on dealing with traps. They chose to be good at that over something else.

Countering players' investment in what they want to excel at by raising the difficulty makes them feel like their choices don't matter and they're at the mercy of your whims. I don't think that's a good way to keep the game fun for all involved.

The trap expert will fail to detect or disarm a trap occasionally, and it will be all the more shocking to the party when it happens.

Ryze Kuja wrote:

I've heard other people say that having smartphones out is bad table etiquette. Personally, it doesn't bother me. I just pretend that they're looking up something on d20pfsrd :P

I think it depends on the group. In my group, some people actually store their character data that way. The rest of us just have the phone handy in case someone close to us needs to contact us for emergency reasons (and such interruptions do indeed tend to be true emergencies).

I don't mind people using their phones as tools as part of playing the game. I am very irritated by people using their phones *instead* of playing the game, however. Sadly, the person I have to yell at the most for this is my wife...

I'm not seeing the problem. Is it just an issue with the way it was written or the location?

** spoiler omitted **

Well, I didn't really bring it up as a problem, but to inform people of a benefit of low-light vision that many players seem to be unaware of.

Really though, I do think it's a problem that not all descriptions of the effects of low-light vision include the same information, so that depending on where you look, you think it has different benefits.

I realize this is a derail, so I'll leave it at that.

Low light should be a night-vision thing Sysryke, but by the rules it's not really. A house rule could change that but it shouldn't be a surprise that people roll with it.

"Characters with low-light vision can see outdoors on a moonlit night as well as they can during the day." CRB pg. 564

This line is often missed when discussing Low-light Vision, because it's only listed in the Special Abilities appendix, rather than in the race descriptions or the Vision and Light section.

It's also interesting that most descriptions of low-light vision in the book, including the one there, only list it doubling the distance you can see in dim light, while the entry in Vision and Light says "can see objects twice as far away as the given radius. Double the effective radius of bright light, normal light, and dim light for such characters."

The rules are really kind of a mess...

Short of building something custom with ARG and race points, are there any rules which let one hybridize the races, or mix and match more than one racial feature?

I'm not super clear on how the heritage feat/trait works. I know changelings can get some pieces through alternate racial traits.

But say I wanted to blend an Undine with Kitsune. Really any potential combo.

Tangent: Are there any rules that allow for variant ability bonuses on any ? Not above houserules, but like to see if there is something published (and theoretically balanced) first.

Bastards of Golarion has a "Distant Heritages" section on pages 30-31 that tells you to use the race builder rules from ARG.

"Characters with diverse racial heritages can be created
by using the race builder rules found on page 214 of the
Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide. Simply begin with 9
Race Points (RP) and purchase racial traits appropriate for
the races that make up your heritage."

The rest of the section provides suggestions for various heritage combinations, but no new mechanics. I think that's about as official as you're gonna get...

Hello all!

I am about to create my first character for a pathfinder campaign and I was hoping for some advice. I have a character idea for a magic-user who is essentially a Librarian who has become bored with reading the adventures of others and so has chosen to go adventure and learn about the world.

My question is; which class would best represent a book nerd seeking knowledge and adventure?

May I suggest the Antiquarian or Questioner Investigator archetypes? They've both got Int-based spellcasting, lots of skills, and reasonable combat ability.

Hey guys,

So I have a group of 5 friends who want to start playing Pathfinder.

Around 6 months ago I purchased the Beginners Box, Core Rulebook and Rise of the Runelords.

We played through the Beginners Box and had a great time, even tho we had no idea what we were doing.

I'm just starting my preparation to start the Runelords campaign but I am wondering - we are all brand new to roleplaying games - should I be starting with PF1 or PF2?

Cheers

I'd start with PF1, because you already own the book, and Rise of the Runelords is written for PF1 (assuming the Anniversary Edition). It would take a fair bit of work to adapt RotRL for PF2, which I wouldn't recommend trying as a new DM. Personally, I prefer the PF1 system to PF2 or D&D5 anyway, but that's a matter of opinion...

Melkiador wrote:

The hands of effort only applies to two weapon fighting. If you aren’t two weapon fighting, they don’t matter. If you have 4 fully functional arms you can attack with all of them as written under multiweapon fighting.

There are ways to get extra arms. Polymorphing is the most obvious.

As far as I know, even if you have 4 fully functional, natural arms... you still can't TWF with 2H weapons, even with Multiweapon Fighting... even though you have the "handedness" fully covered...

Your main hand has two hands on a 2H weapon, and your off-hand has two hands on a 2H weapon... TWF, here we come!

But no, you apparently still don't have enough "hands' worth of whatever" to actually swing both swords using your four arms...

It's stupid.

Whoever published a 4-armed playable race without accounting for this is quite feasibly blind and or illiterate... otherwise the glaringly obvious pattern involving playable characters and the number of arms would have presented itself long before the attempt was made to publish the Kasatha.

How it got past the editing staff, I don't know.

Just want to throw two points out there:

1. Paizo published a Kasatha NPC in the Iron Gods AP that uses two weapon fighting with a pair of two-handed chainsaws.

2. Unless you're playing PFS, you can completely ignore this ruling and run things however your table likes.

In my games, if someone wants to invest in getting two Vestigial Arms, I'm happy to let them swing around their pair of greatswords or whatever.

BITING WORDS

It occurs to me that since Biting Words is a spell with "you" as the target, you can cast it on your familiar and let them attack with it while you use your bow or cast other spells.

I guess it's also worth noting that Iomedae and Caylen were both heroes before their ascension. Iomedae at least would have been pretty well known (I don't know Cayden's pre-goodhood story as well), so the test of the Starstone would have just been the jext chapter in an existing legend.

Once again Norgorber really doesn't fit this. A god of secrets should be really good at not being found out, but apparently isn't ...

Presumably, Norgorber wants to be worshiped and have minions to use in pursuing his goals. He likely recruited followers to grow his cult out of thieves' guilds and other shady organizations. He's erased his mortal past from even the minds of the gods, so what the world knows of him is how he wants to be known.

Because it takes levels for that to come into fruition and they where level 1 just because you manage to get good stats in the right places doesn't mean that you can actually function as a front liner when you have 3/4 bab and a d8 hit die.

At 1st level, I can't imagine the +1 to hit and +2 HP really make the fighter that much better a frontliner, or that the 1 extra feat is more effective than the cleric's spells...

Well, first time that has been brought up in this entire argument. Fine, Blackmail is a form of coercion. Coercion is one form of Oppression. Ergo therefore, Blackmail is a form of Oppression, and one of the three listed acts of evil in Pathfinder.

"Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others"

By the above Pathfinder definition of Evil and what seems to be your interpretation of it, nearly everything a typical adventurer does is Evil.

A Paladin of Sarenrae tells a mass-murderer "Repent or Die". She is using coercion, which you equate to oppression, and thus she has committed an Evil act. Context and justification don't matter. The Paladin falls from grace.

A party of good-aligned adventurers attack a Giant lair, slaying the vicious evil monsters who have been laying waste to the countryside. They have all killed others, committing multiple evil acts. Now all neutral, they continue their inevitable descent into evil.

A good party is guarding a caravan, which is attacked by bandits. The party defends the caravan, careful not to actually kill any of the bandits, capturing them and healing them of their wounds after the battle. They have still hurt others, and thus are behaving in an evil fashion.

The party Witch single-handedly takes out a thieves' guild that has been terrorizing a city. He charms, slumbers and otherwise hexes and spells them into submission, capturing them and turning them in to local authorities. He physically hurts or kills no one, but is still committing evil, because he is using magic to steal their free will and thus engaging in coercion and oppression.

If you ask me, none of the above examples are actually Evil, and thus we might want to consider a more nuanced view of what evil is.

Fabius Maximus wrote:

Are there wizard NPCs around? If yes, you could copy spells out of their spellbooks. It's significantly cheaper than scrolls and you should be able to requisition the materials. Or is there a reason why your GM would not allow that?

Mainly the fact we never have downtime. Maybe a week and a half after 2-3 months in-game. In fact I'm getting the impression that my wizard is one of the few in the country not working for the previously-mentioned magical manhatten project. Which, we have a side-quest to stall as long as possible since we're really trying to keep this from turning into a Fallout scenario.

Acquire a Ring of Sustenance. Spend the extra 6 hours you used to spend sleeping scribing spells into your spellbook. Downtime problem solved. Now you just need access to scrolls/spellbooks with new spells...

Also for scribing scrolls yourself, you can do crafting without dedicating uninterrupted time to it. CRB pg. 549...

"If the caster is out adventuring, he can devote 4 hours
each day to item creation, although he nets only 2 hours’ worth
of work. This time is not spent in one continuous period, but
rather during lunch, morning preparation, and during watches
at night."

I might even let you use that system to scribe spells into your spellbook, if I was your DM...

James Vincent 507 wrote:

I was also wondering about the Ashiftah's veil in particular and if it had any particular stats (esp. regarding how durable it is) or if it followed any of the other rules for Familiars (bestowing Alertness, etc)?

It's a very nice version of a Battle Witch alright and made me think also of Sarak from Robin of Sherwood, the black-veiled "Saracen assassin".

It functions exactly like any other familiar except where specified otherwise.

Wait, so does that mean it's intelligent, has its own senses, has an empathic link, half its master's hit points, shares its master's skill ranks, can eventually speak to its master, etc...?

NielsenE wrote:

Base type: dullahan. (Which should not have physical immunity, but I don't know if it was modified by the scenario)

They are undead (which shuts off cold damage)

Where do people get the impression that being undead makes you immune to cold damage? Is it a holdover from 3.5? There's nothing under Undead Traits for cold immunity...

NN959 showed above where the rule is that the player runs it. And a cohort by its very nature is a bond that shouldn't be broken. It is Batman and Robin, Lone Ranger and Tonto, and Chewy and Han Solo.

I love how this implies that Han Solo is Chewbacca's cohort. ;-)

Neothelid. Only because I only ever glanced at the name and for YEARS, I called it the NeoLITHid. It made sense!

<headdesk> This is the first I realized it WASN'T NeoLITHid.

Hey, guys. I'm relatively new to Pathfinder and this community. I've learned a lot from you all ready.

To get to the point, my friends and I are rolling characters for a new campaign:
-25 point buy
-starting at lvl 1
-using any official sources

Personality and Motivation
-Lawful (believes and follows a code of honor and works well with others to achieve his goals.
-Evil (acts selfishly when he can without discovery, sees others as disposable)
-Seeks personal power through money, influence, magical power

The vision for my character's abilities is as follows:
-Lawful Evil (I've already approved this with the GM)
-Can keep his true identity (alignment, goals, personality) a secret from NPC's and PC's alike.
-Doesn't necessarily need to be the party face, but would help to manipulate events
-Has the ability to cast without detection so he can manipulate environmental or social events while the party is interacting with them (will be avoiding most direct PC manipulation)
--Examples: mentally influencing NPC's, starting a fire, making illusions (all without other PC knowledge
-Relatively competent Blaster/utility in combat
-Ability to gather intel on others (including PC's through mind reading, surveillance)

The GM is okay with these shenanigans, as long as it doesn't destabilize the party. To prevent an meta info about my character being revealed to the other characters, any of these shenanigans would be texted to my GM in secret. My intent is to play a puppet master, not a "steal from the players and be a general jerk."

I was thinking sorcerer because I like the flavor, but I'm open to suggestions.

Any advice on class, magic items, feats, archetypes, traits, spells, and Attribute allocations would be appreciated. Thanks!

The only truly reliable way to conceal your spellcasting is to play a Bard and use the Spellsong feat.

Never...ever...Ever...EVER...EVER...EVER SPLIT THE PARTY UP!

I swear to Arshea I'm going to TATTOO THOSE WORDS UNDER THE EYELIDS of my fellow PC's.

Ugh. (goes back pulling my hair out while trying to figure out how to get us all out the mess the other PC's got all of us into before tomorrow's game)

Tell you what, when the rest of the party all agree to take Darkvision and Stealth and not clank around in full plate making my abilities completely useless, I'll be happy to stick with them all the time. ;-)

In the new Horror Adventures there is an archetype for Investigator called Grave Digger. Among other things, it allows you to use grave digger equipment as improvised weapons with out penalty. So I am looking for suggestions on how you would stat a lantern and a shovel as a weapon.

The rules for using a shovel as an improvised weapon are actually in the CRB pg. 157.

"Shovel: If a shovel is used in combat, treat it as a onehanded improvised weapon that deals bludgeoning
damage equal to that of a club of its size."

I'd probably have a lantern do 1d4 Bludgeoning, maybe plus 1 point of Fire damage if lit, similar to a torch...

SmiloDan wrote:

There are a few other weapons in Pathfinder that causes 2 different damage types.

Just curious, which are those? I've looked, just for reference, and I'm only seeing the one weapon that does two types at the same time.

The ones I can find are the Hurlbat, Flindbar, Chain Spear, Shoanti Bolas, and Bite and Claw natural attacks.

It seems fairly obvious what the problem is. You are optimizing more than your GM is comfortable with. I think you already know this, though, and just don't want to adjust your play style.

If you really want to solve this, you could try making a character who is not quite so optimized, min-maxed and focused on mastering their "thing".

Try making more of a jack-of-all-trades character who doesn't have to be the best at anything but can contribute to the party's success in multiple ways.

Or even just a bit more well-rounded character. Don't put everything into achieving "utter destruction" level DPS on your fighters. Put some of your resources into other things that fighters want, like those HP and armor you talked about sacrificing.