| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If you have a fly speed or a swim speed, I believe it's possible to take a 5-foot step. Source (last line).
My understanding of the thread you linked to suggests that the penalty does apply to flat-footed AC. I looked through the Bestiary as well to check ACs of beasties with dex penalties (not very many of them), and they seem to also have their dex penalty applied to flat-footed AC. I asked a rules question about it, so we can move on until that gets answered.
Spirit Sense (Sp): At 1st level, a menhir savant can detect the presence of undead; fey; outsiders; and astral, ethereal, or incorporeal creatures. This ability functions like detect undead, and the druid detects all of these creatures rather than trying to detect one kind. Can a menhir savant determine what types of creatures this ability might pick up? As written, it doesn't seem that way, since the detect undead spell doesn't have this functionality, but that spell also wasn't written to allow for the detection of creatures other than undead ones. It seems to me that a menhir savant ought to be able to determine what creatures he/she is picking up on with this ability- undead, fey, outsider, etc- but that doesn't seem to be how it's written, which is a shame because I feel that it takes away from the usefulness of the ability. Has this particular functionality of the ability been clarified anywhere? Thanks in advance.
Normally, Selective Channeling would be pretty much a must-have at first level... but in Carrion Crown, you can afford to delay it a little. If you don't take it at first level, then take it at third for sure, but you won't need it as much at first level in this AP compared to other APs. If you channel to heal, undead- your main foe throughout most of the AP- won't be healed along with your party, so you won't need to exclude them. If you use your channeling to harm the undead, your party members won't be harmed (unless you've got a dhampir in the group, I guess). Scribe scroll isn't a bad idea. It can come in handy for all those remove spells you'll need, but don't necessarily want to prepare every day. Also, don't count on getting a ton of use out of Miracle. The AP might be over by the time you're high enough level to cast it, even if you go straight Cleric. If you do decide to dip, get at least 3 levels of cleric before doing so. You'll need your channeling abilities right out of the gate for Carrion Crown, and the spell Ghostbane Dirge (a second-level spell) will be a big help in some of the tougher fights. As nice as the armour and weapon proficiencies might be, channeling and that second-level spell will do you more good in this particular AP.
Looking at it again, yeah, the Bad Touch Cleric probably won't work, here. I thought the emphasis was more on debuffing than touching. In my defense, it was late when I wrote my post. :P Thinking on it more, I don't think there really is a build suggestion in the Cleirc optimization guides I read that really puts the focus on casting, which is weird since Cleric is a full casting class. The stats Zark suggested look good, though I personally would increase Charisma a bit more. Yeah, yeah, healing's not important, yadda yadda, what kind of campaigns are you guys playing in where you can afford to sacrifice on in-combat healing? Personally, I find that healing is important and sometimes quite necessary to ensure the survival of yourself and your party members. As the cleric, you'll be expected to fill this role, and if your party is the sort that needs healing, Charisma will be more important. More Charisma means more channels, and more channels means less dropping spells for cures. Dropping spells means you're dishing out less wrath, and who wants that? Plus, channeling lets you heal from a distance, which is good for a build that doesn't want to get into melee. You can afford to dump Strength a little more, if need be. (My Cleric is rocking an 8 Strength, but my group rolls stats.) You don't need heavy armour, since you won't be entering the fight unless you absolutely have to. Regarding the Cloud subdomin, Air Walk (one of the spells replaced) is on the Cleric spell list already, and the Air domain doesn't give it to you early. Solid Fog, on the other hand, is not on the Cleric spell list. Losing Elemental Swarm might suck, but I think a caster Cleric will get more use out of a domain power available at level 8 than a ninth level spell. Unless your DM likes to zap people with lightning, I don't think the electricity resistance offered by the Air domain is all that useful. Plus, a no-save area-of-effect deafness is gonna come in handy. Someone mentioned the Guided Hand feat but neither it nor its prerequisite (Channel Smite) are going to be very useful to a caster Cleric, as they're both weapon-attacking feats. I picked Channel Smite for my own Cleric, and I've never used it. I took that feat so I could grab Guided Hand, but I haven't, because I never use my weapon. I strongly recommend taking Heighten Spell and Preferred Spell, especially if your DM lets you pick a domain spell as a preferred spell, and drop a non-domain spell slot to cast said domain spell. Pick your favourite wrath spell with this feat, and go to town. Plus, you can apply metamagic on the fly, which is always handy. I also highly recommend the Birthmark trait. A Cleric never wants to be without their holy symbol. Personally, my Cleric is Shoanti, and her holy symbol is tattooed to her face. The Reactionary trait offers an imitative bonus, so it's worth considering, too. Your spell selection is going to be a bit limited, I'm afraid. A Cleirc's spell list focuses on support for the most part, not divine wrath. This is why I think domain choice is so important. I'm looking over the spell list on the PF SRD, though, and I'll try to give some suggestions: 1) Burning Disarm (target drops their weapon or takes damage, useful on an enemy's weapon or holy symbol)
2) Admonishing Ray (non-lethal damage)
3) Bestow Curse (not damage, but a powerful debuff if you don't mind touching; mess up an enemy caster's day by using this spell to give them a spellblight)
4) Aura of Doom (anyone who gets too close must save or be shaken)
5) Boneshatter (how is this not evil? Bones shatter and splinter, dealing damage, target is exhausted on failed save)
And that should take you up to level 9. I figure the Summon Monster spells can go without saying. You know what, I that that back, there are a good number of offensive spells for Clerics; not as many as support spells, and some of them aren't great, but they're there. In fact, I think I need to go over the spells I prepare for my own Cleric, as I'm missing some goodies.
Variety. Bodies of different shapes and sizes. Much easier to make sure everyone's happy, that way.
A chainmail bikini doesn't offer protection. I would imagine it's also very uncomfortable (and that might affect mobility just like wearing lots of armour might). It doesn't cover vital organs. If a character wants to wear a bikini (or a loin cloth, or just a few strips of leather to be decent and stop the boobs from bouncing around while you beat stuff up), then fine, but don't pretend that it offers any real AC benefit. Because of the amount of cleavage that generally shows when wearing a chainmail bikini, it's arguable that even the breasts are adequately protected! Now, if you got your chainmail bikini enchanted, the magic would add to AC the same way a ring of protection or an amulet of natural armour or bracers of armour or armour-adding spells might. There would be no AC benefit from the actual chainmail itself, however, because it just isn't covering enough of the body to matter. Anyone seen Women Fighters in Reasonable Armour? There's some boobplate, which is a bit rage-inducing because it's not realistic, but at least boobplate protects. There is a place for an armoured kilt in my fantasy (even if it's, as some are saying, not a Real Thing), because I can see an actual benefit to it. It protects the legs and groin, and offers really good mobility. It's practical.
I honestly don't know if the statistic is true, and I'm unable to find data to either support or refute the claim made. What is true is that DC's female readership is abysmally low. Numbers aren't the reason why I linked to that comic in this thread, though. The reaction the male character made was the reason I felt the comic was relevant. The idea that the criticisms women bring up regarding comics (and games, and other geekery) are dismissed as being unimportant, sometimes aggressively so. I can understand why someone might initially get defensive of the things they love, but if that person has sat and thought about the issue and still says that women (and those who sympathize with them) need to shut up about them? Those people are part of the problem, quite frankly. Also: Curvy women are sexy. So are thin women. Just sayin'.
Relevant to this conversation. No, I don't have a newsletter. I keep thinking about blogging, but every time I try to start, I get distrac- oh, shiny thing!
Okay, first off, men might have more testosterone than women, but women are more sensitive to it. You keep mentioning the relationship between testosterone and a man's brain verses a woman's brain, but you don't seem to know how testosterone actually affects the brain. The main difference? Men have bigger brains. No surprise there, since men tend to be bigger than women, in general, so having a bigger brain makes sense. As for the effects of testosterone on mood? Citation needed, in many cases. There's been a lot of bad science conducted in this field, and plenty of assumptions made which add bias to the studies that have been conducted. Other than the differences in size, about the only thing that's conclusive when it comes to testosterone and the brain is that more research needs to be done. tl;dr? The study you linked to doesn't prove your point at all, you can't draw conclusions about the behaviour of men based on a study conducted on women, and more research needs to be done before solid conclusions can be drawn on how testosterone affects the brain. The pseudo-science used to claim people are being overly politically-correct is what's pigging me off, for the record.
I'm sorry, but objecting to the statement that men have higher testosterone levels than women pushes political correctness to beyond ludicrous levels and strait into plaid. I never objected to the statement that men have higher testosterone levels than women. I passed high school biology, I know about sex hormones. Nothing I said had anything to do with political correctness (though I could go on about the subject at length). You're extrapolating, and incorrectly so. Men and women are different, and those differences extend well beyond the plumbing. Okay, and if this is true, then why are you citing a study done on women as proof that men are anti-social? It's completely false to draw that conclusion, and that's definitely not what the study proves. Also, what Evil Lincoln said.
It's not just about the amount of boob showing, but also how it's displayed. Seoni's a good example of this. With the outfit she's wearing, there's no support for her breasts. They should sag more. They also shouldn't look pressed together. Her breasts are drawn as if she's wearing a push-up bra, only she's clearly not. I find that to be a more sexualized image than if Seoni were to be completely topless, but her breasts actually looking and hanging the way naked breasts actually look and hang. Someone mentioned that there isn't a lot of variation in the images of men, and that's a fair point as well. Though, there's still more variation in the men than the women. The iconic wizard and summoner, for example, are both older men. The samurai looks like he's packing quite a few pounds underneath all that armour. I don't know of any artwork depicting older or heavy-set women. I think greater variety in body type (and age) for both male and female artwork would be great, especially considering the variety of shapes and sizes athletic men and women come in (and one would expect adventurers to be reasonably athletic).
The deference between the way men and women are displayed in some artwork is that while men might sometimes have more muscle than is typical, the artwork of women is downright impossible. The link I posted, Boobs Don't Work That Way, has plenty of examples of the kind of stuff I'm referring to. There are boobs that defy gravity, for example; even Seoni's breasts have that problem. There are also breasts as smooth as the ones you'd find on a Barbie doll, lacking nipples or areola. Clothing clinging to boobs so as to perfectly outline their shape, even though the clothing would have to be painted on to actually get them to cling that way. Poses that are designed to show off boobs and ass, as the same time, even though it would require a rubber spine to pull off. (I have an exaggerated curve in my own spine, and even my ass doesn't stick out that far!) Clothes like this one, where if it was made of cloth, it would fall off, and if it was hard, the breasts would fall out. You just don't see the same degree of impossibility in artwork depicting men as you do in art depicting women.
I think she is my favorite: Crane SamuraiAll the awesome, no skimpy. Very nice. Those pictures are awesome.
First: Boobs don't work that way. (Link contains some images that might not be safe for work.) When it comes to the way women are depicted in comic book art, video games, anime and so on, the problem isn't just that it's objectifying, but that it's more unrealistic than a porn magazine after Photoshopping. Boobs don't work that way. Spines don't work that way. Butts don't work that way. The images are designed solely to sexualize the woman being depicted, realism be damned. I'm astonished that some people don't seem to find that problematic. But that is not a problem. Women are not hurt in the slightest by the existence of media that appeals to men, just like men are not hurt in the slightest by the existence of media that appeals to women. Actually, you're very, very wrong about this. Women are absolutely hurt by certain media that is made to appeal to men. Women are hurt, for example, when men compare real-life women to the impossible women depicted in comic books and games, and when they find those impossible women more sexually appealing than real women. Women are hurt when violence is depicted as sexy, because it in turn normalizes sexual violence (read: rape). In the Second Life game, you could "buy" a rape. Then there's the RapeLay game, the goal of which is to, you guessed it, rape women. These are some of the things marketed to men. Don't tell me that this s**t doesn't harm women. It absolutely harms women. Also, it's worth noting that the original author of the article linked to in the first post has absolutely no clue what the phrase "male privilege" refers to. he is completely misusing the term. Now I personally don't agree with feminist arguments about male privilege -- I think that its just another example of feminists stealing the work of minority advocates and trying to clumsily substitute gender for race as if they were perfectly equivalent of each other (i.e. "white privilege" is a very real thing, while "male privilege" is an attempt to equate being male with being white, which works much better in theory than in practice) -- but that is rather beside the point. Even if we agree that male privilege exists, the existence (and glut of) of video games featuring tough stoic badass male characters and sexy scantily clad female character aimed at a juvenile male audience is not an example of male privilege in any way, shape or form. ^This? Shining example of male privilege. I think this paragraph alone is enough for a Bingo. The author absolutely knows what male privilege is. Here, look up the word. The author of the article linked to in the first post has a pretty good understanding of what privilege is, at least according to a well-understood definition.
Cure wands. Lots and lots of cure wands. Depending on the level of the party, lots of diamond dust, too.
Wizards get Scribe Scroll as a free feat. Pick up this feat for yourself, and trade scrolls with wizards. I'll occasionally ask for a scroll from the wizard in my party, and offer him one in return. We both win. |