Gargs454's page

Hopefully quick question:

If I use simulacrum to create a "duplicate" of a known creature, like a fire giant for instance, does the duplicate I create retain the memories and knowledge of the original? The spell doesn't explicitly say, but there's logical arguments that it could. Ultimately I realize this might be up to my GM but just looking to see if there's any official rulings or clarifications on this.

Thanks in advance for any insight!

Just looking for everyone's thoughts on good general feats for a 3rd level human draconic barbarian.

As the primary frontliner in an AP game (don't want to name the AP to avoid potential spoilers/metagaming) I'm mulling over the options for the 3rd level feat. My current feat selection is:

Sudden Charge
Raging Intimidation (ancestry feat)
Fleet (from human heritage)
Battle Medicine (from Field Medic background)
Medic Dedication
Continual Recovery

My initial thoughts are as follows (no particular order):

Incredible Initiative -- self explanatory
Canny Acumen -- Boosting Ref would be nice, but I also have plenty of HP.
Ancestral Paragon -- Humans have some nice feats to choose from, though would likely choose the skills to help round out the party.
Toughness -- Self explanatory but at this point 3 HP don't matter a lot.
Ward Medic -- Could be good for dungeon delves
Untrained Improvisation -- Would not be much help at this point.
Assurance Athletics -- Though currently at +11 in Athletics so will usually get better than the Assurance amount.

I'm certainly open to other ideas as well. Obviously my Barb took a bit of a healing bent to help cover areas in our group (had no cleric for a bit) but we do now have a decent array of in combat healing. Still the only Continual recovery choice though. Using the human feat to gain more training could help with some Recall Knowledge checks, but it will be a while before he's particularly decent at them given that Wisdom was not high on the priority list initially. FWIW, I'll be expert in Athletics and Medicine, and will bump Intimidation to expert at 5. I could do Intimidation at 3 to set up for Intimidating Prowess but still not a great option yet given a 10 Cha. Figured it was better to at least be really good at Athletics (trips with the guisarme are nice), etc.

As always, thanks in advance for any insight!

Normally barbarians are known for picking the biggest, baddest weapon they can find. Makes sense as they are more or less glass cannons but with a lot of HP. However, I'm curious with PF2 since it is so much more tactically oriented if it might not be better to take a slight step down.

The thinking is that rather than grabbing one of the d12 weapons, perhaps a reach weapon like a guisarme might be better? The idea being that a) you get reach, allowing you to attack without being right next to the baddie, which might take up an action on their turn as well, and b) with trip you could start by knocking the creature down (hopefully) then following up with an attack when the critter is down (mitigating the MAP a bit).

The downside is you are giving up some damage potential by using the trip action first, but you also set up your teammates nicely too. Especially if you have a fighter nearby it can be handy I would think. Thoughts?

I'm actually getting a chance to be a player for a change (instead of the GM like normal) and have decided to embrace the largely support role of a Bard for a variety of reasons. Now, the only problem is that while I have been playing RPGs for over two decades now, this will be my first foray into PF2, so I'm still flipping through the book trying to get my bearings on the rules, etc.

So with that said, my goal is to be the support player and a bit of a skill monkey (not sure yet if anyone is picking up rogue). What are your favorite ancestries for a Bard? We'll be playing an AP but don't want to divulge which so as not to generate bias based on knowledge of the AP (i.e. I don't want spoilers lol). My thoughts:

Gnome/Halfling: The most obvious choices (along with Goblin which I don't want to play). Gnome probably a little bit better given the extra language and the extra hit points, though both are likely to become less and less important over time. Gnome does offer more flexibility in ability boosts though since it automatically gets Cha as opposed to halfling requiring you to use the free boost on it.

Elf: Not as obvious but still strong. The penalty to Con hurts but with luck, I shouldn't be targeted overly often.

Human: Typically strong, but not as many initial boosts, but also no penalties.

Really, it seems like a lot comes down to the ancestry feats and that's the part that has me struggling as trying to wrap my head around those while still learning all the spells, feats, skills, etc. is a bit of a challenge.

What ancestries do you like? Does one offer particularly strong feat choices for a support/skill role? Initial plan would be to probably start with Maestro Muse and pick up Polymath at level 2, but frankly, I'm likely to want to pump into all the social skills anyway, even with the polymath benefit since its still somewhat situational.

As always, any help is greatly appreciated!

So when creating/modifying monsters how much do things like immunity and resistance etc., affect CR?

The question is because in my current game I have an upcoming villain who has been dabbling in technology, both magical and mechanical. The idea I had was that as part of his dabbling he's been mucking around with golems and trying to create the "perfect" golem. He's been trying to combine the various types of golems with the hopeful (though likely not entirely fulfilled) end goal of creating a golem with all of the benefits of multiple golem types without any of their weaknesses. The idea would be to combine say Clay, Iron and Stone golems to get their advantages (and any healing from certain damage types) without suffering the susceptibility to slow and the like.

Now obviously you would start with the highest CR of the three and go up from there, but not sure how much that would affect CR. It would start with the base stats of the highest CR for instance. I obviously don't want to make it too powerful for the party level.

Anyway, any help would be much appreciated!

So it seems the old forum topic on this got lost in the shuffle. Or at least the link to it no longer works.

Anyway, my question revolves around the final encounter with the Graveknight. While I like the addition of a bodyguard to this encounter a lot, I'm a bit concerned at the potential damage output of the knight.

If I'm reading this correctly, with his Flash of Insight, he can Smite Good with a guaranteed Crit Threat while power attacking at 3d6 + 30, plus 3d6 fire, which equates, essentially to 18d6 + 90 if he confirms (albeit 9d6 of it is fire). Even the +90 is likely to drop anyone, with a good chance of outright killing them. The variable damage then averages out to another 56 points.

So 1) Has anyone run this conversion and 2) What did you do/How did it go? I like the idea of upping the challenge for the party obviously, but I'm just afraid that might be a bit much. Frankly, if I were a player and I saw a PC take 146 points from a single weapon attack, I'd be running.

In area W12, there is the Stygian Fires trap that is triggered by opening the door on one side. It's bypassed by lighting the fires and donating blood. My question is, where do the PCs need to search in order to detect the trap? The door? The altars? Either?

Obviously this is one that could easily be ruled differently by different GMs, but just curious what others have done.

Hopefully quick question. In the Universe of Pathfinder 1st Ed., where would Cthullu, the Great Old Ones, and similar aberrations be from? In 4th Ed D&D terms I know they'd be from the Far Realm, but did not know what the planar equivalent (if any) was in Pathfinder. Any help would be most appreciated as always!

So in the game I run, one of the PCs is a cleric of Desna. Said PC has discovered an item that I want to have slowly become better over time (its a holy symbol). The idea is for it to slowly unlock more abilities as the cleric continues to follow the path of Desna (and levels up of course).

The question is, what would be some cool abilities to grant the PC that are also in character? They don't necessarily need to be powerful, just things that seem to fall in line with a cleric of Desna. (I mean I get that more healing or a boost to Wis, etc., is always good for a cleric, but was wondering what ideas you all had for stuff that would be particularly cool for this PC). And yes, I know that cool is in the eye of the beholder. :)

Thanks in advance!

So my group has successfully(?) navigated their way through RRR, defeated Hargulka's Kingdom, and started expanding their own while building and maintaining their network of allies and minding their Venture Capital, etc., etc. A couple of months have passed since defeating the big H and during that time they have mostly finished exploring the Greenbelt and continued to work on their kingdom -- which is, momentarily, running a bit low on funds, though will be easily taken care of with a month or two of no new building. About the only thing they haven't really resolved yet is Grigori, in part because they believe that he has the right to speak his mind and as such don't really want to discourage it.

All that said, among the things I've done since, literally, Day One is foreshadow Book 3 by having occasional interactions with a certain expedition leader. Near the end of the last session, after receiving a friendly communique from Varnhold, the party decided it would be a swell idea to travel to Varnhold to meet face to face and to deliver a gift to the leaders of Varnhold as a sign of good faith.

So my initial reaction of course is: Eureka! Plot Hooked without any fishing!

On the other hand though, I'm also thinking "Hmmm, is it really cool to have the events unfold so quickly after the messages back and forth?" (it would likely be roughly two weeks after the messages were exchanged that they arrive in Varnhold).

So the basic question is, what would you do? On the one hand, letting the plot hook itself might give a sense of urgency to the party as, obviously, it couldn't be all that long since the events began -- and it makes it easier and more logical that certain parties might still be around (I really don't want a certain someone to necessarily be killed off screen for instance).

On the other hand, I'm also thinking that if I give them the chance to really build up a friendly relationship/alliance, it might make the events of the book all the more poignant.

In the end I think its a bit of a win-win as I don't think I can go completely wrong, I'm just curious what others would do. FWIW, the decision has definitely been made and the party ended the last session in Restov as they saw it as a) the easiest road to travel and b) gave them a chance to resupply.

As always, thanks in advance for any advice/ideas/assistance!

Quick question on the Dancing Lady's abilities.

On Captivating Dance, it says that the baobhan sith can move and act normally while maintaining her dance, including using spell like abilities. Does this include attacking, especially things like grapple to lead up to the blood drain? From a "realism" perspective, that seems like a stretch, but the text seems to imply that it can work.

I don't mind this being a challenge for my players (though they've struggled quite a bit already) but I also want it to be fair. On the flip side, I also have 7 players so its still likely that a number of them will make their saves anyway.

Thanks in advance for any help!

My group is currently progressing through RRR at the moment and although they have currently signed a treaty with Hargulka's Monstrous Kingdom, that may fall apart as a certain bard has taken to the streets to add this latest insult to his list of grievances (stolen in large part from Jason Nelson's email he sent out to his players -- hopefully got the name right).

At any rate, I am in the process of painting a mini to represent Nagrundi and this particular two headed troll has a snack hanging from his belt which I can't help but think looks more than a little like the infamous Rubber Chicken of my childhood. I can't help myself but to make this a magic item for my players to have fun with. What I have come up with is the Rubber Chicken of Wonder.

Obviously this is based in large part on the Rod of Wonder, but rather than having the fairly powerful effects of that item, I'm more looking for very minor effects that are potentially somewhat useful or somewhat annoying. Nothing game breaking though. So things like "You squeeze the chicken and a crowbar appears." Or "You switch places with another PC". Obviously some of the effects of the Rod of Wonder still work "like grass grows, etc." Mostly I'm just looking for fun ideas to stock the table of possible results with.

Any and all suggestions would be most welcome!

First off: I just want to thank everyone for all the great threads on this tasty little nugget of the Greenbelt. I've been reading as many as I can find and loving a lot of the ideas that people have had for it.

That said, my group is about to encounter Candlemere for the first time (technically they made landfall at the end of last session at which point I called the session due to time constraints). I am definitely wanting to expand on Candlemere as I think it is just too juicy not to expand. The question is trying to figure out how to expand it.

DM Dudemeister posted a map created by somebody else for underneath Candlemere Tower and I am definitely liking that idea. I'm a bit torn on how to inhabit the tower itself though. I like the idea of a Cthullu-esque approach to it with assorted abberrations, but am struggling on a story behind that. I know a lot of people have mentioned the use of elf gates here but I'll confess I'm a bit confused as to what constitutes an elf gate (probably just looking straight past it in the books I have and quick searches here give me references to the gates, but not explanations of them). This is an issue primarily because I specifically do not want Candlemere to be elven. On of the PCs jumped all over the hook from Lily about the elven ruin and so was adamant at checking out the ruined tower. I don't want to confuse the player by having it be an elven ruin but not THE elven ruin.

I also like the haunt idea posted elsewhere and may steal that. My only issue there is not really game/story related but rather that two of my players are currently going through RotRL in another group, so that might feel a bit monotonous.

So all that said, what I am currently thinking is that Candlemere sits upon a "thin" spot in the planes that allows for relatively easy access by the aberrations (what realm/plane would a Cthulluesque creature(s) be from?) I know D&D 4ed it was Far Realm, but not sure of the PF equivalent off the top of my head. Regardless, the Tower is home to a portal to that realm (elf gate works if it need not be specifically elven) and creatures have started to migrate over. This would explain in part the Will-O-Wisps. I would also like to add in some creepiness factor and so was thinking of having the insides of the tower morph as the party explores (i.e. when going back into the first room from the second room, the first room is completely different). Near the bottom of the Tower I plan to put a magically sealed door that references Skywatch as a hook to the Observatory (and as a reason for my PCs to come back to Candlemere at some point).

But all that said, it feels a bit . . . empty. I don't know, just struggling to wrap my head around the ideas. I'm also not sure if leaving the sealed door in the bottom of the Tower will just annoy the players rather than giving them something to look forward to. I'm all for throwing out a multitude of seeds and seeing where they want to go with it, but I also don't want anything to come off as just plain annoying.

Anyway, what am I missing? How can I improve on this fun little locale? How can I better wrap up a Cthullu-esque plot thread here? Help Me KM Forums, you're my only hope! :)

As always, thanks in advance for any help you can provide and feel free to ask questions since I know this was a rather rambling post. Stupid headache.

Hey all, just a quick question on our good ole undead friend Davik. As written, he automatically knows that the PCs are not aligned with Staggy. However, my question comes from the fact that my PCs have all gathered on of the amulets that the Stag Lord bandits have a tendency to carry and each is currently wearing the same so as to be able to show it to other bandits in an effort to gain their trust before capturing/killing them.

That said, would it be reasonable for Davik to notice the amulets as well? If so, would that not make him think that they are in fact his tormentors? Or is he only interested in seeing Staggy dead and doesn't care about his followers? If its the latter then the story of him going after the bandits when they came back after killing him doesn't fully make sense.

Just curious as to what everyone's thoughts are on this. As always, thanks in advance for any advice!

So the reincarnate spell states that when a character is reincarnated she receives two negative levels, but if they are first level, they instead take -2 Con. What about a 2nd level character though? Won't two negative levels kill the character?

Obviously as GM I can always Rule 0 it how I want, but was curious as to whether or not there was an official ruling in that regard.

As always, thanks in advance for any help!

Random question. Has anyone found a decent miniature for sale to represent our favorite dim-witted but lovable oversized bandit? Its obviously not super important but everything I've found when looking is either in the realm of an ogre or giant, or just too small to give a fair depiction (imho). Obviously I can use anything to represent him, I just have a feeling he might last a little longer in my campaign than your average bandit as I could see the party falling in love with him.

Does such a thing exist in Pathfinder (officially anyway)? I know some earlier editions of D&D had rules for it, and I believe there are anti-magic areas in Pathfinder but didn't find anything for wild magic on a quick search. I can obviously come up with some rules on my own of course, but was just curious if there is an "official" system in place already (why reinvent the wheel if I don't need to).

As always, any assistance would be much appreciated.

Does anybody know what the default assumption (if any) is for the character creation guidelines/party composition in Rappan Athuk? I ask because I am considering sprinkling much of RA into my Kingmaker campaign and its my recollection that the Adventure Paths presume a party of 4 and a 15 point buy for character gen. Obviously RA will greatly up the challenge but I didn't want to minimize it too much by allowing for overly powered characters as a result of char gen. For the record, the plan is to have the players level at appropriate times as opposed to tracking XP.

Pretty much as the title says. Given that the map folio is now only in downloadable format is it worth it (in your opinion) to purchase if you are running KM?

My KM campaign is kicking off next month and the biggest issue I have found so far is finding a map of the Stolen Lands that doesn't have a bunch of markings on it already. I was thinking the Folio might well have that, but didn't know how well it would show up on a tablet. I'm not the greatest at extracting and such, but that's a possibility I suppose. Still more hoping to be able to simply flip over the tablet when needed to reference something. Only other thing I have is the pdf maps from the Golarion Campaign Setting which are much larger in scale than simply the Stolen Lands of course and which wouldn't be all that helpful at that point.

Not sure if this is exists, or if I am just missing it somewhere, but one of the members of my group said there is a feat that allows you to stop an enemy's movement when you hit with a AoO. Anybody know what feat that is? FWIW, I have an Enlarged Polearm user, so my reach is pretty nasty and being able to stop movement would be pretty awesome. :)

As always, thanks in advance!

For those of you who have run, or are running, Kingmaker, how has the easy ability to craft items affected the campaign? Are you finding that the encounters are too easy (especially when combined with the "5 minute work day" that is so prevalent in the AP). Are the encounters scaled up a bit to account for the likelihood of more player crafted items?

Just to be clear, I am NOT looking to eliminate crafting (or even limit it -- other than probably not allowing my players to take from the Kingdom treasury in order to craft), but rather, looking to make sure that there is still an appropriate challenge for the players. Personally, I think that the ease of crafting is a good thing for this campaign, but just want to make sure that the resources available to the party will end up being appropriate to the challenges. If need be, I can of course up the challenge of the encounters.

I've been mulling over a new campaign idea for a while now. The idea is to run a semi-steam punk campaign. In other words, technology is starting to emerge as sort of an alternative to magic but technology is still relatively new. Larger nations, naturally, have more use of it, but its certainly not an everyday use everywhere.

All of this of course leads to the idea of firearms as they would be a natural inclusion for an emerging technology. My question is, have you found the current firearm rules/weapons as written to be fairly balanced? My main concern is that I would still like to keep bows relevant in the campaign for those that wish to use them. Initial thoughts are that guns should certainly be capable of greater damage, but should also carry some sort of a drawback (either in terms of cost, rate of firearm, potential for malfunction, etc.) Most importantly though, I don't want anything to too overpowered.

Certainly I can make house rules if needed, but thought I would check and see how the default rules are. As always, thanks in advance for any help!

Quick question: I know that generally speaking, features of parent classes and hybrid classes do not stack should you multi-class between the two (i.e. Cleric 1/Warpriest 1). However, are the base saving throw bonuses considered class features (such that you take the better of the two) or do they stack (similar to BaB)? My gut reaction would be that they do not stack, but that's mainly because it seems like a bit of a cheesy way to boosts some of your saving throws.

For story related reasons, my monk has become interested in learning to use a non-monk weapon. He has already been given proficiency as a reward, so that part of the problem is out of the way. My question is whether or not there is a way to be able to flurry with it through means other than the Crusader's Flurry feat? Taking the feat (and the required cleric dip) is not out of the question, but was just curious as to if there were any other options.

For informational purposes, he is currently level 7 and has the Quinggong and Drunken Master archetypes. As always, thanks in advance for any help!

I'm curious as to what people think is the best way to use the limited enhancement slots on the AoMF for a strength based monk? Obviously, Agile would not be needed for a Str build. Is it better to simply go with the straight up +5 to hit and damage (assuming you get it maxed out) or do people prefer to sacrifice a bit of accuracy in favor of properties (likely designed to avoid DR).

I'm a bit on the fence myself. On the one hand, getting past DR doesn't do much if you don't hit in the first place. Additionally, the monk can obtain other weapons to help with those DR's that he can't bypass by virtue of his ki strike.

On the flip side, it gets awfully expensive awfully quick to be buying extra weapons just to get around DR. Additionally, certain properties might be able to provide particularly nice damage boosts in certain situations.

In any event, just trying to decide in what direction to look as my monk is finally getting around the level where he can start investing.

Pretty sure I understand this, but wanted to make sure I had it right. Brass knuckles allow a monk to use her unarmed strike damage in place of the damage the knuckles would normally do. However, this would not count as an Unarmed Strike correct?

In other words, a monk's attacks with brass knuckles would not necessarily count as magic/silver/cold iron/lawful/etc. just based on her level as her regular unarmed strikes would. It also means the enhancements from an Amulet of Mighty Fists would not be applied to attacks made with the knuckles correct?

This would seem to make sense as otherwise it would get fairly cheesy fairly quick with enough coin, but just wanted to make sure. Of course, its still useful to have both as the knuckles could, for instance, be used to get around DR that the monk does not normally get, or to apply extra effects that you cannot afford to put into the Amulet (given it can only get a +5 enhancement).

Ok, so I realize there's a bunch of threads on this already, but hadn't found one that was perfectly on point yet.

I'm curious as to the efficacy of multi-classing a monk. Currently I'm a level 4 Quinggong/Drunken Master Monk. I'm looking into possibly multi-classing into either Ninja or Brawler.

The appeal of the ninja is that it continues with the monk's theme of versatility through both the skill points and the assorted ninja/rogue tricks. On top of that, the sneak attack damage is a nice little bonus, but not sure if it gets evened out if I take too many levels of ninja.

Brawler on the other hand would be a straight 4 level dip, which would net me 3 bonus feats as well as a +1 to hit and +3 to damage. With those feats I would certainly be taking Weapon Focus and Specialization, and likely Power Attack for the last one.

My goal is to remain versatile while also adding damage as best I can. Given that I am playing a monk, I'm obviously not concerned with total min-maxing, but at the same time I do not want to be completely ineffective in combat. I do; however, plan to continue with the Unarmed Strike flurries though for the flavor aspect, while using weapons when needed.

As for my current build, I have 18 Str with the added bonus of consistent access to Bull's Strength and Enlarge Person. Dex/Wis are both 16 with everything else falling behind a bit. Party consists of a Sorceror, Druid and Fighter, which is one reason I was leaning toward Ninja for the skill monkey aspect (realizing I give up the Trapfinding of the Rogue).

The Brawler dip seems to be best from a pure combat outlook, but will going into Ninja cripple me? If I do go Ninja, has anyone found whether its better to stick to just 4 levels or go to at least 10? Obviously the more levels of ninja, the more I restrict the number of flurry attacks unless I go through the TWF chain which seems to defeat the purpose a bit.

Feats so far: Improved Grapple, Fast Learner, Dodge, Combat Reflexes, Dragon Style. Dragon Ferocity at 5th level seems a given.

Quinggong: Have taken Bark Skin in place of Slow Fall. Also like the look and flavor of Gaseous Form and Dragon's Breath. Possibly Scorching Ray and/or Restoration.

For Ninja Tricks: I'd be looking at Vanishing Trick, Fast Stealth and maybe Pressure Points and Darkvision. Obviously if I go to 10 or 12 I'd look at Unarmed Master and/or Invisible Blade.

All in all, is it doable to combine Monk/Ninja or will I be suffering too much? I don't mind not having massive DPS, but being a constant flurry of misses isn't much fun either. Any advice is appreciated!

This is the story of the adventures of an unlikely mix of . . . adventurers in the the Blue Kingdoms, as seen through the eyes of one of those adventurers. Obviously, this journal will be colored by the fact that it expresses the experiences and views of just one member of this motley crew. Hopefully it will prove entertaining to some.

First, here's the slightly modified background for our "hero" (a term used rather loosely as you may soon come to realize).

So in a few short sessions the party is going to be entering into the dream of a long-slumbering god. The idea behind the adventure is to have a lot of fun with the concept of dreams (think Inception) and allowing the PCs to really play around with the environment, their abilities, etc. The catch is, the god is long-slumbering because he is locked into a nightmare from which he cannot escape.

So the question becomes: What sort of things would constitute a nightmare for a god. The god in question is good-aligned with the Travel, Sun, and Good domains. Since this will take place on the Dream plane, I am not concerned about level as I can simply adjust anything to be level-appropriate. As always, any help would be much appreciated.

So I've a bit of a quandary. My current campaign is entering the closing stretch and I'm starting to look into my next. In doing so, I started to develop a world that has discovered industry. A bit of Eberron but with more of a Zeitgeist (from Enworld) spin to it. Rather than magic driving everything, its technology. So things were going great until I stumbled across Kingmaker and fell in love with the idea.

So now I'm looking to mesh the two (sadly I simply do not have the time to run two campaigns). By and large, this will not be a problem. Most of what the AP describes can be easily translated to the homebrew. However, as I was envisioning the use of railroads (admittedly relatively new and scattered) I was curious as to what people thought that railroads should cost in terms of BP? Are there any other problems you envision with introducing higher speed travel to Kingmaker? Obviously PCs will be able to travel faster (as will their armies) but are there any other problems?

Naturally, at the start of the campaign, the Stolen Lands would remain an unsettled wilderness, so the PCs would have to build these improvements in order to utilize them.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

So, the entry on Stunning Fist in the Core book states that you can make a Stunning Fist attack once per day per 4 levels. The Special section notes though that monks get it for free and can make one attack per monk level plus 1 per every 4 levels in non-monk classes.

However, what if you take an archetype, like Hungry Ghost, that gives up Stunning Fist but still want to spend a Feat on it (for Dragon Ferocity for example)? If a monk gains Stunning Fist through a feat selection, does he still get to use it once per day per monk level? Or is it treated as though he were a non-monk?

Hey All, I'm going to be rolling up a monk here soon and I was just curious as to whether there was any consensus on archetypes for the monk. Specifically, I'm looking to continue to be able to Flurry, which eliminates a lot of the archetypes right off. With that in mind though, do any of the archetypes stand out as being clearly better (from a tactical standpoint) than the standard monk?