Firewarrior44's page

FAQ'd

When it comes to modifiers that affect weapon damage rolls, or simply “damage rolls” (such as the bonus on damage rolls from Point-Blank Shot, inspire courage, and smite evil), special abilities that deal damage on a successful attack roll, apply them on hit point damage only...

Flat out doesn't work

It's not ambiguous, it's poorly written. Dazing spell explicitly says making the spells normal save negates the rider, cherry blossom does not. Good stuff

Firewarrior44 wrote:

Ethiric shards (or spike/stone growth) is nasty. Ready an action, suddenly 12 stat damage out of nowhere, no save.

It would be 6 stat damage (two each in the three attributes you picked) and they do get a save. But repeated applications as you try to move out of Etheric Shards would be awful.

I meant 12 as you're hitting them with a readied action as they move up so 6 instances of damage assuming they're moving 30 feet (one per square).

Also they only get a save if the spell the meta-magic is attached to does not allow a save. which etheric shards and trial by fire and acid do. Which means if you take any damage from the spell you always take the ability damage regardless of your save. hence the "No save"

When a living creature takes damage from the affected spell, that creature also takes 2 points of damage to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution or 2 points of damage to Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma (your choice). If the spell does not normally allow a save, the target can attempt a Fortitude save to negate the effect.

Compare to dazing spell

If the spell allows a saving throw, a successful save negates the daze effect. If the spell does not allow a save, the target can make a Will save to negate the daze effect.

Ethiric shards (or spike/stone growth) is nasty. Ready an action, suddenly 12 stat damage out of nowhere, no save.

Also trial by fire and acid.

There's an item Here that allows you to even if there's no vegetation

Rallying strike is where it's at. Allways full hp never die as you basically vampire them on every sneak attack. That or Severing strike, great for a disarm build.

The only things I can think of that I'd actually think to class as or near legitimately broken are Heroic defiance + feat mastery as it's 16 rounds of immortality and un cc ability at level 11. And Selective spell antimagic field as this shuts down roughly 90% of monsters abilities Not to mention most of the Numen on an NPC (disregarding it shutting off spell casters entirely).

Also the at-will mages dis-junction on dispelling strike is fairly silly

Less than a standard action if you have a way to get a sneak attack as you can apply strikes to that no?

Also Heroic defiance is what you want. Preferably with feat mastery for total immortality / unstoppable at level 7 or 12 depending on what type of condition Dead is (permanent or critical).

RE -Immune to mind-effecting : Noticula Simulcarum for her mind effecting removal aura

RE -Same Race : Instant enemy to treat it as my favored enemy (which happens to be my race) for all purposes

Worth noting this lets you effectively become whatever you want

You could greater mind swap it to claim it's body for your own and effectively "kill" it. Requires a semi elaborate setup tho.

I'm pretty sure they're made of some sort of fleshy matter

Check the Combat Chapter (newly released, ch7) for an explanation of the new action economy system

No it doesn't, It doesn't address or interact with Ability damage at all, it addresses temporary increases to an ability score.

Ability Damage does not lower or change an ability score. It applies a penalty to specific things for every 2 points of damage you have.

Ability Drain does lower an ability score and would reduce Ability DC's. This is not the point in contention.

I just want someone to point to a rule that expands a Charisma damage penalty to the DC's of special abilities.

Without such a rule Cha based supernatural abilities besides channel energy are not affected by Charisma damage only Drain.

See here for the source, but what I quoted then clarifies that there is a explicit list of things it changes

For every 2 points of damage you take to a single ability, apply a –1 penalty to skills and statistics listed with the relevant ability.

Specifically for Wisdom and Charisma:

Wisdom: Damage to your Wisdom score causes you to take penalties on Wisdom-based skill checks and Will saving throws. This penalty also applies to any spell DCs based on Wisdom.

Charisma: Damage to your Charisma score causes you to take penalties on Charisma-based skill checks. This penalty also applies to any spell DCs based off Charisma and the DC to resist your channeled energy.

Neither mentions special ability DC's outside of Channel energy Specifically for Charisma. If it was intended to apply to all special abilities would it not just say that (as that would also catch channel energy as it's a supernatural ability)?

Ability damage doesn't change a score. It inflicts a penalty per 2 points accrued.

Ability Drain actually modifies the ability score.

Diseases, poisons, spells, and other abilities can all deal damage directly to your ability scores. This damage does not actually reduce an ability, but it does apply a penalty to the skills and statistics that are based on that ability.

For every 2 points of damage you take to a single ability, apply a –1 penalty to skills and statistics listed with the relevant ability.

Ability Drain: Ability drain actually reduces the relevant ability score. Modify all skills and statistics related to that ability. This might cause you to lose skill points, hit points, and other bonuses. Ability drain can be healed through the use of spells such as restoration.

OP was asking about damage not drain, unless I misunderstood. Which as far as i'm aware (per what I've quoted so far) Cha damage does not lower the Mummies abilities unless there's some other rule that people are referencing.

Charisma: Damage to your Charisma score causes you to take penalties on Charisma-based skill checks. This penalty also applies to any spell DCs based off Charisma and the DC to resist your channeled energy.

Special Abilities are not listed as a thing that is reduced / takes a penalty. it appears to me, RAW it has not effect.

Is there another source someone can cite?

I assume he means if they want to reposition a creature with either grapple or the reposition maneuver said creature mush fall into the repositioners max load

I like the Part where "Protection from Alignment" wards against the Phantom in it's entirety as it's a summoned creature and lacks the ignores Protection from Evil clause of the Eidolon.

You could have a number of 'free' spells known equal to the spells known table.

I like that idea mechanically (because it's easy to reference an existing table) however that works out to basically the same number of free spells / level as Pathfinder which is 4 of each spell level (assuming specialist). Which is almost certainly too many by your standards :P

It's roughly 40% of a wizards Wealth at level 9 to have an extra 2/4/4/4/4 Spells known, the base known for a Pathfinder wizard is 14,400 nu. So it's not insignificant.

HOWEVER that Being Said that is roughly the equivalent to a Fighter Having a +3 Weapon ~18,000 nu.

So yea it sucks but it's basically the same crap characters that actually need tools to function have to put up with imo.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I feel like meaningfully interacting with the world outside the context of combat shouldn't really require anything beyond "talking to NPCs" and "making choices about how one course of action is preferable to another."

Amen to that.

I am now wondering quite how atypical my player group is, in that so much of this argument feels like "Player A can do X and Y and Z and player B can only do W and that makes the game broken and less fun", while mine very much start from the position "We can do X and Y and Z and W, how best can we synergise this to achieve the campaign goals in a fun way." And sure, there are games that may more naturally tend to the latter direction than Pathfinder necessarily does, but there's only so much Pandemic Legacy in existence.

A point of the Disparity argument is Player 1 can do X Y Z and W while player 2 can only do W.

Basically the claim is player 2 is sort of redundant and unnecessary / adds nothing new to the parties abilities.

I might be able to convince my online group to play if/when our current Campaign concludes. But I have no idea how soon in the future that will be.

+1 to Sympathies. You have my gratitude for continuing to work on this.

Also while I have your ear I have 2 more questions

1. Sp and Su abilities. Normally Sp and Su abilities have no components (Somatic, Verbal, Material or Focus). Has this changed?

"Spellcasting in combat: Spell-Like and supernatural Abilities" page 6 seems to allude to them now having somatic's but does not outright state it. (this might be stated elsewhere and I've missed it), could you provide some clarity on this? I.e do they still follow the core rules on special abilities

1.And a thing about Aoo's I think I may have found an error (or just slightly confusing language) In "Griddless Combat: How do Attacks of Opportunity work?" page 13 it says:

"Moving into or out of an enemy’s threatened area (see Reach, above) provokes an attack of opportunity as normal"

This is contrary to core aoo rules (in which only the act of leaving a threatened area provokes when moving) Has this changed and does approaching a foe now provoke as well?

So until one acquires the skirmisher feat (or spring attack it's one of those two) the only way to move at full speed and strike is to utilize the rush action.

Are the Run Withdraw and Charge actions (all full round actions) Still the same (move 4x/2x speed) despite the overall decrease in speed?

Question what is the action economy of a level 1 commoner?

Move Partial actions: 1 (1 base, +0 bonus)
Partial Actions In a Standard Action: 1
Immediate Actions: None

Total: 2 partial action (1 reserved for "move" actions exclusively)

or

Move Partial actions: 1 (0 base, +0 bonus)
Partial Actions In a Standard Action: 1
Immediate Actions: None

Total: 1 partial Action

Oh wow didn't know you were in the hospital. Hope you're doing well!

I'm wondering if Mythic Vital strike is involved in those numbers at all

Except for the part where the spell explicitly denotes Scrying (including a hyperlink) as being sufficient to teleport (with a ~25% chance of error).

Familiarity: “Very familiar” is a place where you have been very often and where you feel at home. “Studied carefully” is a place you know well, either because you can currently physically see it or you’ve been there often. “Seen casually” is a place that you have seen more than once but with which you are not very familiar. “Viewed once” is a place that you have seen once, possibly using magic such as scrying.

It's not a misunderstanding. It's them trying to nerf the tactic without having to do a reprint.

I think that's still a work in progress

Didn't older D&d editions have different exp curves for different classes?

nighttree wrote:

It may be an uncommon opinion....but I don't see anything that needs to be fixed.

A high level caster is supposed to be more powerful than a melee character. It's a fundamental part of a fantasy setting.

I agree.

To my mind comparing casters and fighters is like comparing apples and oranges. I think it's more important to ensure that the various fighter classes are in balance with each other. And that the spellcasting classes are in balance with each other.

Then Why is a 20th level caster and a 20th level fighter the same CR? the System assumes they are the same (or near equivalent) challenge rating.

If this is not the case (which it is) then something is most definitely broken.

Check Kirth's profile for This link

"They aren't overpowered because I take steps to mitigate their power"

Isn't saying they are not too strong it's conceding that they are too strong but that strength can be mitigated.

What Gallant listed are also valid but so is Ominus' approach in the given scenario.

Simply avoiding a fight is totally a valid way to defeat an encounter, especially if the goal isn't to explicitly kill or beat up those enemies it's just get to the end and kill the BBEG.

Because hey now with their leader dead it's probably a lot easier to use that 4th option Gallant presented (Which is the only one that's not a variation on kill everything in the rooms, instead being incapacitate)

IF there's bandits every few hours you're doing the wizard a favor in a roundabout way. As you'd level insanely fast if that was the case.

@William

That line is in reference to the dead condition

Dead characters cannot benefit from normal or magical healing, but they can be restored to life via magic.

As without it the spell would not function.

You can target spells on dead things all you want but if it restores HP and doesn't have an exception it's going to do nothing despite the spell being on the body.

A dead body is still a creature, it's just a creature with the dead condition.

Various spells seem to indicate that a dead creature is both a creature and an object (assuming a corpse is an object)

Darksol, you do get the point I'm making though right? You're assuming that the Dragon knows all the exact spells needed to counter a wizard who knows Aroden's Spellbane. First off the only Ancient Wyrm from the Chromatic Dragons that even gets 9th level spells is the Red Dragon. And it only gets exactly 2 9th level spells.

Do you really think that nearly every Evil Ancient Wyrm in existence that a party could face will be a Red Dragon with Gate and Aroden's Spellbane as it's exact 2 9th level spells known?

Edit: For completions sake I looked through all the dragon entres I could find to see what other evil dragons could cast 9th level spells. Only other ones I could find were Void Dragons, Rift Dragons, Infernal Dragons, and Forest Dragons. All of which also know only 2 spells and most of which are less likely to be encountered than a Red Dragon.

Or to say it more more generally the way for your lizard to beat the wizard is have more wizard on your lizard. :P

Wizards are strong because they can potentially have an answer solution or contribution to any scenario. Many of those solutions require the GM to plan around then in order to make a specific narrative function just because they could potentially break it. In contrast the degree of narrative changes that many other classes require are significantly less involved or complex.

Well resistance is redundant in an anti-magic field as it's suppressed by the field. Although if the field is suppressed with spell-bane they'd be useful.

The effects of instantaneous conjurations are not affected by an antimagic field

School conjuration (creation) [acid]; Level sorcerer/wizard 7

Duration instantaneous and 2 rounds; see text

The acid would not linger and would get suppressed but the initial burst would not be blocked. But if you insist that it is then the Wizards can use another instantaneous conjuration to deal damage like wall of iron (drop anvils on it's head) or clashing rocks, Acid Spray.

Gate has a range of 300 feet at CL 20. the Archon's can be dropped on top of the dragon. As it's a standard action they all get to shoot the turn they appear, instantly killing the dragon.

So the wizard now actually has to optimize and boost their CL by 3 levels which is doable. Dragons CL would Be 22 so Wizard would need a Caster level of 23 which is obtainable.

1) Caustic eruption is blocked by neither spell-bane nor anti-magic field as it is an instantaneous conjuration creation effect, it's real acid.

2) The Archon's do enough damage in 1 round to instantly kill the dragon on account of there being 120 of them.

3) Wall of suppression can suppress an anti-magic field and or spell-bane so long as their caster levels are lower or equal to that of the casters. Unless said spell-bane is key'd to wall of suppression at which point it must be first brought down with another spell-bane

@Darksol I'm fairly certain an arbitrary number of wizards has a better chance at killing a dragon then 12 archers. Heck take 12 wizards they all cast caustic eruption assume the dragon makes every save, that's 420 damage on average, Gold Great Wyrm only has 465 HP.

If the dragon has defenses vs that like resistance and energy protection then you maximize the eruption with say a rod. Assume every save is made So 60 damage per wizard. 2 of them get rid of energy protection leaving 600 damage which is halved effectively by resistance 30 so 300 damage. This is absolute worst case scenario (Dragon making all saves and having full resistance/protection spells up somehow despite being in an anti-magic field) and the dragon's almost dead.

You could also just gate in an arbitrary number of lantern Archons. Let's say 6 wizards analogous to your gunslinger's at CL 20 they can bring out 120 Lantern Archons without any specialization, which is 240 beams which have a 95% hit rate for an average 798 damage (ignoring critical's). That's a dead lizard. (note via time stop a wizard could potentially produce that number of archon's on his own)

I'm also fairly certain a single wizard has the capacity to strip both spell-bane and anti-magic field off of a Dragon or any other foe. Via their own casting of spell-bane and then either mage's dis-junction (if they want to roll the dice) or with a wall of suppression at your CL -1 (Dragons CL's cap out at CL 19 as far as I can tell so you don't even need an orange Ioun stone).

All i'm getting from this is only a wizard really has the tools to adequately deal with a CR 22 Dragon sporting a spellbane and antimagic field :/

I believe fighter would retain his attack bonus from his weapon unless the fighter's bow was also inside of the anti-magic field.

Barbarian should be able to spell sunder just fine (he can only do it outside of the AMF (it's SU)), which means he's retaining all his magical bonuses as none of his gear is suppressed. But assuming he has strength surge he's still getting all of his bonuses that's automatic success at a level you'd be fighting said dragon. And the DC is Only a 35 assuming CL 20

And the wizard could/should teleport everyone unless he's being a dick. And even if they do all die he could just bring them back with clones he made for them before, or maybe he just astral projected everyone.

edit:

I see This is level 20, and i misunderstood the Dc he needs to target.

But yea Yea barbarian basically auto succeeds at sundering that antimagic field

20 bab + 20 str surge + 4 rage + 9 Strength (this is without any tomes and starting with 16 base) + 7 Weapon (furious op) + 2 improved sunder = 1d20 + 62 vs a DC 67 (to dispel).

Those are pretty good odds, only a 20% failure chance.

This is going to be a fun thread.

The short of it is their utility and adaptability is unmatched and they can theoretically have an answer to literally any problem you present them with.

Also there are several spells which are so powerful that an adventures needs to plan around their existence them or be ruined

I'd say fighter's 'suck' in E6 only insofar as their main thing is bonus feats who's value gets diminished somewhat the further you progress into epic levels. As everyone accrues a glut of feats eventually having 4 more then everyone else is less significant imo.

Yes because there's basically no limits on the spell in Pathifnder

Lucifer's 3rd Party so i don't think he counts

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:

I mean you could just do the leadership thing and get a load of buddies doing a similar thing.

At 20th? Leadership gets you one person who can do the spell at all. And she's gonna make the Save a fair portion of the time (the above build loses 10 Save DC by not being Mythic, so she saves on a 5...possibly less if she has any item that boosts saves).

Fair point. I don’t use leadership so I wouldn’t know.

Could do the Simulacrum thing, what creature would you make? Do Solar pitri shed light constantly? Is that a thing?

Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:

I’m avoiding the Dazing thing because RAW I think she can 5ft step and stealth through Daze. Although I think not RAI.

I'm still not buying that, for the record.

I mean I don’t like it but as written she ignores things that reduce her movement speed or prevent her taking a 5 ft step

Daze does prevent one taking a 5ft step. Sooo
I don’t think it’s RAI though.

So does unconsciousness and by extension death :/

Fighter (Crossbowman) 7 / ??? 13

Over-watch Vortex - 6 feats

Pinpoint Targeting - 2 feats

Point blank master - 2 feats

Quick Draw - 1 feat

Deadly Aim - 1 feat

12 feats total.

Get a ton of masterwork double crossbows with bolts coated in shiver. Overwatch vortex readied actions.

Pew pew 4 times delivering 8 bolts. Ignoring her Dex, Armor, Nat armor to Target an AC of 19). So we can hit this even when inside an anti magic field. As or to hit roll is at least a +26 (20 bab, 7 Dex, 1 mwk, 1 wf, -2 ow vortex).

I assume you can play with the wording on our readied actions in such a way as to stop shooting once she falls asleep. And once she's out I assume we've considered the battle won?