Frostgoblin's page

Sorry to bother you all again.

I know it had already been discussed, but came up during a discussion with friends and couldn't help to clear all of this ( couldn't also find the thread I previously discussed and asked for advices ).

Quote:

You and your eidolon act as one. Either you or your eidolon takes an action or activity using the same number of actions as Act Together, and the other takes a single action. For example, if you spent 2 actions to Act Together, you could cast burning hands (2 actions) and your eidolon could Strike (1 action), or your eidolon could use its Breath Weapon (2 actions) and you could Stride (1 action).

2 things were pointed out.

The first one is that Act together says that

Quote:

Either you or your eidolon takes an action or activity using the same number of actions as Act Together, and the other takes a single action.

which means that it has to be a single activity which may cost from 1 to 3 actions, meaning separate actions can't be taken.

For example

Using act together with the eidolon toperform a strike would result in the summoner getting 1 action from act together, loosing 1 action.

Using act together with the eidolon to cast Dragon's Breath would result in the summoner getting 1 action from act together ( 3 actions total, as any other character ).

Using act together with the summoenr to cast a 3 action summon spell would result in the eidolon getting 1 action ( 4 in total ).

This way, nobody is going to use act together to achieve the first example, obviously.

It also means that you won't be able to use 4 separate actions ( since it's a single action ).

So, for example, no Strike + Strike + Stride + intimidate. or any other similar action sequence involving 4 separate actions.

The second one is[ about the tandem trait

Quote:

Actions with this trait involve you and your eidolon acting in concert. You can't use a tandem action if either you or your eidolon can't act, if

...

You ultimately misunderstood how act together works, act together is basically a better version of those feats that martials to do three things with two actions, you use actions to activate act together with either the summoner or the Eidolon and the other gets an extra action, and since the Eidolon shares actions with the summoner you effectively get 4 actions (same number as other characters with a minion or animal companion, but more flexible), so the summoner can act together to cast burning hands and the Eidolon attack, and then there is a last action that can be used by the Eidolon to attack again, or the summoner strides away or intimidade.

Secrets of Magic is out and my dreams of an immortality ritual are squandered.

The only thing in the entire book that makes you "young again" is the ritual Bathe in Blood, that requires you to be at max level 16, and gets harder to cast each time you do it.

Anyone found anything on the book that makes you eternally young that I might (hopefully) have missed?

The Rare level 20 item Sun Orchid Elixir from the world guide has you covered:

When you drink this elixir, you physically become as you were in whatever phase of your youth you desire. Your new body begins in peak health, regardless of what your actual condition was at that age. Any physical or mental imperfections— including scars, lost limbs, and curses, diseases, poisons of 20th level or lower— are removed, and you regain your full Hit Points. You immediately begin to age normally again, with your natural lifespan extended as if you had never aged past your new apparent age. You retain all your memories.

Unlike Crafting most items, brewing the sun orchid elixir takes 1 month’s time. While an individual vial of sun orchid elixir isn’t unique, the formula is unique, and it’s known only to Artokus Kirran of THUVIA.

Acording to the wiki, every year six vials are made to be sold each one on the nearby city states of Thuvia on an auction.

Missed that part since it wasn't in the Eidolon section of AONPRD.

My statement about Beast and Plant Eidolon still stands, which is a weird case. Also everything else still stands.

Yeah, I don't know how this interacts with the beast and plant Eidolon, what happens when you encounter your own unmanifested Eidolon just "living" their life (using the broadest sense of living since the majority of the Eidolons available aren't really alive)? But about the dragon Eidolon that has an explanation as Creative Burst very helpfully pointed out:

"Because dragons have a strong connection to magic,

their minds can often leave an echo floating in the
Astral Plane. Such an entity is extremely powerful but
unable to interact with the outside world on its own.
Dragon eidolons manifest in the powerful, scaled forms
they had in life;"

Each Eidolon types gives a description of what it is or how it came to be.

So it is less a dragon from the astral plane and more of a dragon's psychic impression left on the astral upon death.

My cell phone messed up my comment so I am remaking it:

The reason I said that is because the reading and Eidolon entry has this:

Home Plane This is the eidolon's home plane, where it goes when unmanifested. This can help you determine the effects of abilities dependent on a creature's home plane, such as banishment.

So technically the Eidolon IS "banished" when the summoner goes unconscious.

Reading the entry on Eidolon on the Archives of nethys reveal that each Eidolon has a home plane where they return to when unmanifested (thus making Eidolon eligible for banishment on the material plane), so technically the summoner DOES summon the Eidolon even if it is not tagged as a Summon.

Frostgoblin wrote:

I don't have enough confidence in my monster building skills to help mechanically, so I am going to point towards official monsters of similar design as inspiration,

If you have mechanical thoughts, please feel free to share them, but those pointers should be a big help, so I appreciate them, too!

OK I am back and after looking at your mindflayer's Stat block more carefully, I felt like something was off about it (also the spell DC apear as "0," you should get that fixed), so I opened the Archives of Nethys and gave a look at other monsters of the same level, then looked at the official creature building guidelines and checked the level 7 numbers, and I found out what was off (beware wall of text):

The stats are too flat, with the mental aspects being too low and physical ones being too high, let me elaborate a bit.

When looking at the level 7 part of the tables to build creatures it seems that your converted mindflayer has most of the stats range from moderate to low, and this should not be the case, if I am not wrong the illithids are at their most basic, classic speciallized squishy spellcasters, using their minds and powers rather than their bodies, they have mind control to deal with physical tasks.

For example skills: for a level 7 creature an extreme skill modifier is +20, high is +17, moderate is +15, and low is between +13 and +11, for your mindflayer, I recommend to make occultism between estreme and high, the social skills between high and moderate (but always lower than occultism), stealth as either moderate or low and remove athletics.

For ability scores it is basically the same, for a level 7 creature an ability score modifier of +7 is extreme, +6 is high, moderate is +4 and low is +2,for your mindflayer you should bump up the intelligence to either high or extreme, wisdom should be moderate, leave charisma as is, increase dexterity to moderate and put constitution and strengh in low.

The rest seems to be good enough for what you are you are trying to accomplish, although the attacks need to list the modifiers used when attacking with Multi Attack Penalty at - 5 and - 10, that is missing and can save quite the headache with calculations on the heat of combat.

Edit: sorry if I end up sounding too aggressive or something, those numbers where bothering me more than they should, maybe it is because I watched Ilithid lore videos (and read The Monster Knows What They Are Doing) a bit too much in the past.

I don't have enough confidence in my monster building skills to help mechanically, so I am going to point towards official monsters of similar design as inspiration, one monster that might interest you is the Brain Collector which fulfills a similar niche as an "alien brain eating aberration" (it even has a level 8, pretty close to your mindflayer) they are proficient in ALL lores and take heavy mental penalties when they lose brains, for the flavor of a "memory consuming monster that form organized groups and can turn you into more of their own" I would recommend looking into the Leng Ghoul, which has an ability to eat a bit of a corpse and getting some bonuses AND a check to see some of the memories of the person when they where alive, while neither of these creatures fully fulfill the role of a mindflayer, they should be good inspiration to capture both of these core flavors of the mindflayer.