Fractured Jester's page

So... I have this encounter I want to do.

I have a super agile 16th level halfling scout who is the intel officer for a thieves guild the party is trying to take down. He will be prepping an area in town with several 3 story buildings, throwing stuff down at them, shooting from cover, and being a highly mobile menace. He knows the party inside and out so I can use meta knowledge to plan counters to my party but one of them is quite the munchkin.

She used polymorph and clone to turn herself int a young red dragon and has a lot of ioun stones that have boosted her CMD all the way up to 71, mostly through her new 48 strength and equally high dex.

I need to have a counter for her flight, but I'm a bit stymied. I have tons of 3e books and 3rd party books but most of what I have can't account for something this ridiculously high.

I prefer to use mundane items, traps and the like. I can even have this scout bring in a monster or a caster to help.

But I need something guaranteed to ground this character.

I was thinking some gnomish net launchers with something that could shut her wings down, contact poison or some enhancement I can't think of, or maybe a spell combined with it.

I saw elsewhere here someone posted 3e's rules on tripping fliers, but I wanna hear second opinions from other people.

A player has asked me about this portion of the spell:
"Spells and spell-like effects targeted on you are turned back upon the original caster. The abjuration turns only spells that have you as a target. Effect and area spells are not affected. Spell turning also fails to stop touch range spells. From seven to ten (1d4+6) spell levels are affected by the turning. The exact number is rolled secretly."
We're a little lost on the 'Effect' part of 'Effect and area spells.'

We know it doesn't effect ranged touch attacks, AOEs, spells that target more than one person, but that part is throwing us for a loop. All spells have effects, so what does that entail?

the books aren't really clear on the progression of acquiring bonus spells so I'm asking for some clarification.

My group's pretty heavy on rogues and fighters, but one of them wants to play a wizard and managed to roll really high and through some house rules stat exchange system he got a 20 Int.

But I'm a little confused on whether he gets all of his bonus spells at once or as he progresses; IE: he gets his higher level bonus spells as soon as he gets a spell slot open in that level. None of my players could find a clear answer either.

I took a gamble on making him excessively powerful and said 'you get them all available now' but was that what the core rule book meant to happen?

So I found this book at my local Half Price Books, and if you aren't aware, its a book full of random tables that allow you to make backstories for characters and NPCs for GURPS and DnD (with some leeway in the wording) and I've made some interesting characters with it.

Since my friend has a new game coming up I want to draw up a class I don't normally play, Paladin and with his permission I used the book to roll up a random backstory and hoped to get a few quirks... and maybe some sweet bonuses. Here's what I got:

From a Noble family, -1 on survival checks
Born with a curse: Berserk Curse [see below]
At age 4: became apprentice to a bard: +2 to Perform (singing)
At age 5: Child is prodigy: +6 Craft(Paintings)
At age 8: learns an usual skill: Swordplay (interpreted as free sword proficiency)
Age 10: Apprentices as poet.
age 12: 2 Tragedies: character is banned from writing poems/painting in his home town and all his works are destroyed. Lost favorite item. (I haven't come up with the details of WHY this happened yet)
age 13: Character has a Religious Experience. He joins the Shelyn church. His level of faith is 'all-consuming' and begins the path of a paladin.

Here's the part that made me even consider posting this: The details of the berserk curse. I won't write it word for word, but here's the jist of it:

roll 1d100 vs a DC 1d10
Make the above check at:
-the start of combat,
-Each time you are injured,
-Each time a companion is wounded or killed
-Each time you or a companion is insulted in combat.

If you fail, you enter a berserk state and will actively engage all enemies present with these effects:
-Current HP is doubled (temporary)
-All damage is set aside for when the curse ends (wherein your HP returns to normal and you suffer all the damage received at once)
-Immune to all mind-affecting spells/effects
-All attacks increased by 1d4 +1
-30% chance to attack adjacent allies.
-Character will not use shields or dodging skills of any kind.

This state lasts for 1d6 rounds after all foes are dispatched.

Character is afterward depressed due his unnatural rage, all skill ranks reduced to 50% potency for 1d10 days.

Thankfully the book does state you do not intentionally attack allies, but I'd like to hear more veteran player's thoughts on these mechanics. The book is not strictly D20, and states it needs to be altered to fit the game mechanics of Pathfinder/DnD here and there. Maybe it should be tweaked?

Would this make a paladin of Shelyn completely unplayable?

For the Inquisitor that takes the Conversion Inquisition:

"Swaying Word (Sp): At 8th level, once per day you may speak a word of divinely inspired wisdom that causes a single creature to switch its alliance to you. The target must be within line of sight and able to hear you. If he fails his Will save, he is affected by dominate person, except the duration is only 1 minute."

This seems a bit overpowered as written. I've seen a question posted abut this ability elsewhere on this message board that helped to limit it down to just targeting humanoids as suggested by the dominate person spell, but this ability seems vague and ripe for PC abuse.

I don't see a duration if the enemy fails, or any limitation other than what can be hinted at other than what I stated before. I could see this being a game over for any humanoid villain that the party encounters unless declares it fails by GM fiat.

I'm just not sure how far this extends. Would the target become a cohort? Wouldn't this create a huge amount of plot/character issues for the target? As worded, it looks very much like a instant and permanent 'underling' spell.

I've tried to pull as much information about these deities(or deity) but they seem to be undefined.

This player is one of my oldest, and he likes to test limits and play unusual types. Recently he's created a cultist of the Speakers and wants to try a storyline where he's trying to apotheosis into a god of chaotic magic. Thankfully he's the player who works with the GM (me), and I know chaos magic because I introduced him to Mongoose Publishing Chaos Mage class. My favorite class, btw.

We did work out that Chaos and luck would be obvious domains he could pick, as well as the subdomain of Protean.

But I'm having some trouble deciding what this god would push him toward. I know the proteans seek to 'restore' the world to primal chaos, but interpret their god's words in radically different ways. I was thinking of having a protean lord be his character's intermediary, but its hard to get into the head of a CN entity without morals.

My question is what should I have him define his clerical role? I don't want to say 'do whatever' because that's lazy, and just makes his character a jerk to other PCs. the only thing I come up with is him radically opposing lawful outsiders like Axis's outsiders, devils, and lawful celestials. Any ideas?