Ghostalker's page

Obviously Asmodeus was looking out for his own.

The Prince of Law knows what Tagn Attano can do for him. Of course he looks out for his own.

Qlippoth-spawn paladin that hides his hideous tiefling deformities behind an iron mask. Wears heavy armor all of the time and lives in the convent of Sarenrae in Magnimar (in our game, there is one!). Oath Against Fiends and Oath of Vengeance, so he's not someone to mess with, especially if you're an evil outsider.

I am playing a very fearful DM

:(

I love to do accents when my group finds the one I've chosen tolerable. Ha!

Consider reading his post again and reviewing the party composition. That particular party is fairly well balanced and doesn't include a wizard. If the oracle doesn't happen to have daylight then his points are all fairly valid. That monster was neigh unassailable short of having the paladin.

In the morning, the wind was still and the heroes set off through the forest again, lending Rhakis' wagon horses of their own to pull it. After some time, they came across a naked man's corpse tied to a tree up ahead. The heroes went to investigate-- they found that his mouth was stuffed with purple flowers and that he had been stabbed in the chest with a silver dagger. Nathaniel went in close to see how he had been killed and triggered a volley of crossbow bolts from an elaborate trap set nearby. He would have been peppered with arrows had he not instinctively heard the whistle of the bolts and fallen prone, and as such, they recovered several arrows smeared with a strange substance. The heroes identified the bolts as covered with silversheen-- and soon, the owner burst from the woods.

That was totally Samuel Crowe, who ever heard of a summoner instinctively diving prone!?

Ghostalker - So, is it worth getting Penetrating Strike? Does that mean it can go through creatures with DR10/- ? I think I read that it's impossible to use it on something without a specially assigned Damaged Reduction. If so, I guess it'd be a good idea to go for that too. :)

Thats why it requires such a high bab and fighter only, it's the only thing in the game that bypasses such DRs.

Not all damage reduction can be overcame with the exception of said penetrating strike, many monsters will have DR/- which can't be overcome by any other means.

I feel my friend really covered the issue very well in his rant in another post down in the Serpent Skull forum.

And yeah, alchemists, like inquisitors, are a huge grab bag class. No class in the game should have what they have and also get spellcasting. A bard has 6 dead levels-- 3 where they just get spells, and 3 where they just get inspire competence, which I consider extremely difficult to use considering a lot of skill checks you'd need the bard to prance about for a large amount of rounds, often exceeding 10, and the bard doesn't want to do all that to give you a +2 on a check where you have a +15 and the DC is 30. An alchemist gets something every level, often many things, and spellcasting. An inquisitor is the same.
1st level, 1d6+5 single-target damage is better than any other offensive spell, and it only gets better when he does 5 splash to everyone around that guy. I mean, this is the level where burning hands can do 1 damage reflex save DC 14 for 1 damage. He can likely do it 5 times a day. Can apply the selective trait to his bombs as soon as 2nd level. At level 10, a wizard dropping a maximized fireball can do 60 damage with a reflex for half. At level 10, an alchemist full-attacking with bombs can do 15d6+36 (15d6 + 36 ⇒ (2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 2, 5, 2, 6, 6, 4, 5, 6, 2, 2) + 36 = 91) and then, on their turn, 1d6 fire 1d6 ⇒ 2, and then 36 damage on that target again at the beginning of his next turn thanks to the sticky bomb discovery. He can hit a similar amount of people with his bombs since he's applying the explosive bomb discovery-- the save is similar, but the damage is only 17. As a bomb alchemist, that's 3 out of 17 bombs. He has to hit touch for the primary target instead of making them make a save.

Just saying, it's really annoying that the alchemist has a higher to-hit bonus to me, does more damage, attacks touch, and attacks at range. He didn't take precise shot. Why? Because the highest touch AC we've ever fought was 26 (at level 13 he had like +9 from BAB and like +8 from dex, +1 from throw anything, +1 from haste or something for like +19. +19/+19/+14/+9. That AC was not impressive to him).

A lot of the adventure path is the party scrambling around and fighting and missing pretty often and the alchemist just killing every single person in the room for us in like four rounds.

I should note that Ultimate Magic really didn't help the issue, there are a bunch of feats only improving the alchemist's abilities.

Hey, we hate spells.

I suppose when my wizard was reincarnated as a kobold in kingmaker it helped alot that I traveled in the king's company. That and when people talked poorly of me well, I was a wizard of short temper.

Uh, Looking at the PDF, why are all the maps so huge? We don't really have the map space for such shenanigans when we get there, likely going to have to improvise a great deal.

Name: Garth Lebeda (RAISED)

Race: Kobold
Classes/levels: Wizard 16
Adventure: Sound of a Thousand Screams
Location: The bridge into the House at the Edge of Time
Catalyst: Bad contingency
The Gory Details:

So, after the party engaged Ithuliak, were extremely threatened by him, did a paltry 38 damage to him and then hit him with enough Dex drain to bring him to 0, paralyzing him and then coup de gracing him, I felt a little... miffed.

So I put the players up against a real linnorm-- colossal sized CR 20 and everything, and I had him surprise them.

A massive acid breath and the party was hit for well over 100 damage-- except for the fighter, who bore a ring of evasion. The creature won init after the surprise round with it's amazing check and then landed and full attacked. People were rent and slashed and hurt, but then the linnorm went specifically for poor Garth with his poison-dripping bite.

One bite later, and Garth had taken enough damage to activate his contingency-- a resillient sphere settled on his location.

He spent the next round unconscious, dying from poison and Con drain, with an oracle with Spell Perfection (heal) and no dispel magic, greater standing 5 feet away.

The party then dispatched the linnorm very swiftly-- because placing itself directly in melee also placed it base-to-base with the fighter, who chewed it up despite failing his save versus poison.

Sadly, no one was death cursed.

Garth was reincarnated from a kobold into a half-elf again! With a polymorph any object he's turned himself back into himself, and the party has made their first foray into the House. Game should be ending next week-- let's see how they fare.

In my defense, that contingency has saved me before...I just gotta tweak the health value it kicks in at!

Don't you talk s&@# about my free hand!

I see you there fighting, well I'm sipping my tea while fighting using my free hand !

Just as a sort of note, it was like, the only monster that I rolled on random encounters.

Repeatedly.

The official ruling by Nethys a while back was that power attack and flurry don't combine powers for great justice. I imagine combat expertise is the same.

Haha, my group is the exact opposite. We've explored the top part of the "hook" of the island-- where you land all the way to the west to the end of the peninsula and then all the way down until you reach the river. It's taken us a week of exploration and we've got 1600xp as a 5 person group. We might be level 4 or 5 before we even leave Smuggler's Shiv if we keep this constant exploration up, though, CR 1/3 monsters can only support you so long.

I would just hit them with CR 2 or 3 creatures if they wander into them. There's also the fact that they're leaving the NPCs and running to the other side of the island, which could honestly take days. Each inch of the map is two hour's travel, so by my count it will take them about 40 hours to walk to the Red Mountain, counting roads and such.

What time do they go to sleep? What time do they wake up? Our group moves out at 4am and rests at 8pm, so that's about 12 hours per day of travel. It'll only take them 4 days to reach Red Mountain, but:
- none of the random encounters that attack their camp are pre-dealt damage.
- they have the full 20% chance to contract disease
- random encounters are at full 15% chance

Random monsters attack at night, too. If anyone's a prepared caster this could ruin the next day for them. Any failed DC15-17 fort saves during 12am-3pm does 1d4 nonlethal and fatigues, and if they don't have someone able to heal, that 1d4 could knock a character out. 1d4 nonlethal after a battle could render someone unconcious.

Just hit them in the fact full force with what they want. They asked for it.

>:| You can't be in this forum!

Ghostalker wrote:

I don't suppose you could enhance your bracers of armor heh. Alright.

Actually,

That's started quite a few flamewars. Off hand, I think logically you should be able to, since enhancement enhances underlying armor. If you claim it though, you'll have a hundred people with pitchforks posting on the thread demanding your first born. And a hundred others flaming back at them.

Basically, it's up to your GM. It's a really really expensive way to go no matter how you rule on it.

Eh, monks!

FallofCamelot wrote:

I would agree. One is an enhancement bonus and one is an Armour bonus. The two stack.

You can't have an enhancement bonus all by itself. It enhances an underlying bonus.

Let's take natural armor for example. A human has a Natural Armor of +0 for purposes of an amulet of natural armor. Therefor, his natural armor total is 0 (his natural armor bonus) and if it's a +3 amulet, a +3 Enhancement to natural armor. If a human wasn't considered to have a 0, you couldn't have him wear an amulet of natural armor and get benefit, because an enhancement bonus is just that, an enhancement of an existing bonus.

In the above example, the clothing is the armor bonus being enhanced, they have an armor bonus of 0 (per the spell) for purposes of the spell. So you are enhancing 0 to something else based on the caster level.

Bracers of armor have a built in armor bonus all their own. Armor bonus is enhanced. And armor bonus from two different sources don't stack. It would be the same has having say, a set of mithral chain and a set of +2 leather armor on at same time. The +2 enhancement bonus on the leather armor enhances the leather armor, not the mithrel chain. Therefore it's +5 Armor Bonus is better than the +4 from the mithrel chain, and so you get the +5, not +4 mithrel and +2 from leather armor.

I don't suppose you could enhance your bracers of armor heh. Alright.

If I'm wearing a bracer of armor, and someone casts magic vestment on my clothes (no armor worn), do they stack?

The weirdest thing is, our lvl 14 party would tear that hydra a new one, even just two or three of us.

My favorite thing about Spring Attack is the 10ft movement necessary to do it.

Makes monsters with reach with Step Up pretty annoying.

Or slow.

Slow hehehe

Council of thieves.

Yea they are viable but keep in mind that CoT only goes until 13th level, so the max levels you'd have of the prestige class is 6.

DM_Blake wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Allowing a creature to lower SR as a free action and to activate it as a free action is a very very very good house rule. I use it in my own games all the time after having run into this exact problem playing a drow in Jason Nelson's game for a few years.

While I tend to agree, I think this approach should only be used on innate SR. Drow, yes. Monks, yes. Anyone that is born with SR or learns to "evolve" SR as their own innate ability.

But for everyone else who simply straps on a magic item, or casts a spell that they don't really control innately, I think I like keeping the SR rules as written, and make it a bit harder for them to turn their SR on and off. Heck, a if we can't turn our flaming swords on and off as free actions, why should we get to do any better with SR items?

Maybe making it so you can switch it off as a free action until the beginning of your next round, when you then get the opportunity to turn it back on. Leaving something of a danger gap for "Bringing the shields down" so to speak?

I honestly think this here is how I'd handle it if I were a dm, kind of a "Do you have SR this round? Choose."

You now know why I don't generally like SR on my characters. Then again, if I'm a caster, it doesn't now affect my own spells, which has been nice in our current campaign. I suggest you get used to either A) dropping it and leaving it down, or B) not getting spells cast on you during combat.

I suppose my larger issue is that, if my resistance to spells is due to my daily training and diligence, why can I not let that fall for a moment without giving so much of my concentration?

I cannot accept heals.
Ghostalker does not approve.
What do you guys think of this?

I imagine it really just stemmed off of an argument we were having over it.

psionichamster wrote:

Ice Titan wrote:

Tikael's numbers are correct. Our sorceror had a 30 charisma and leadership, so he made the check pretty easy. We got the best possible result on a four or better-- he rolled a 7. For most groups, it'll be 50/50 between them owning Westcrown and them still being under Cheliax's partial thumb.

or, like Turin's group, sitting on top of a burnt out ruin, Fallout style.

-t

I can't WAIT to see that happen - the burned out "Fallout style" remnants of Westcrown being brought under the hobnailed boots of Egorian's C.I.C. (Admiral whatshisface?), the 'heroes' exiled to the Stolen Lands ... good times ... good times...

I'm telling you, without that contract Liebdaga is gonna break out and oh man, almost a worthy campaign idea in it's own lol.

The legend of the Wolfguard will be remembered throughout history, as they did everything in the campaign flawlessly (almost).

Hockey_Hippie wrote:

Hi there folks,

I'm fairly new to this game so it is probably that I'm repeating something that has already been said. If that is the case I apologize in advance.

First time I've seen these questions...

Quote:

First off is the range. Now I'm no athlete (if you saw me you'd agree) but even 300 pound ole me can throw something weighing one pound, streamlined or not at least 20 feet with pretty good accuracy.

But can you throw it 10' with even more accuracy? I would wager you could. You can throw a dagger 20' within the rules, but you take a -2 modifier compared to throwing it 10', which seems reasonable to me.

I'm currently sitting about 10' away from my front door, and the far wall I would guess is in the 20' (ish) range. I could potentially throw a knife to the far wall and hit a mid sized target, but I'm certain my odds would improve if that target was on the front door instead.

Quote:

Secondly, it seems rather strange that strength plays no part in the distance you can throw a hand thrown weapon.

Strength certainly affects how far you can throw things, but if you have two people capable of throwing a weapon to a target, I'm not convinced the stronger person has an advantage to hit it.

Remember the rules give you minuses to hit for every factor the weapons range is exceeded, but they aren't actually limiting your maximum range until you reach 5 range increments (or 50' for a dagger).

I would say a strong person may be able to throw a dagger further than 50' (and likewise, a weak person may not even be able to throw that far), I would suggest there aren't rules for that because it would complicate rule that are not likely to come up very often (once you've reached a -10 to hit due to range, your likely wasting your time anyways)

Another part strength kicks in is damage, while the dexterous guy can hit the target, he won't do much more than blunt off where the strength gifted man will benefit from his better physique through a higher damage roll.

A question: In Pathfinder, the grappled condition does not deny the dexterity bonus to a person grappled any more, instead it applies a -4 to their dexterity.

However, it is unclear if this makes the grappled person vulnerable to sneak attacks, particularly from their grappler. It can be argued that while they are not denied their dexterity bonus, they still cannot defend themselves adequately, much as a person who is flanked does not lose his Dex bonus but is still vulnerable to sneak attack.

So is someone with the grappled condition vulnerable to sneak attack?

You'd need to pin first.

Just as a clarification to keep this on topic, I don't intend, nor did I even consider warforged juggernaut.

Good to know - I shall "revise" accordingly. ^_^

From what I've seen of your obituaries, just remember that until this point the synergy between my players had dominated a great deal of the game. I see that you've had alot of deaths, I only had one. Just something to keep in mind.

hogarth wrote:

I have to admit that sounds less cool than fighting Demogorgon or Kyuss, but it sounds like you had fun! Kudos on finishing!

Considering that PCs are about 10 levels lower than the finale of AoW and ST in this one... one would HOPE they don't face something like Demogorgon! :)

Well the issue is more that he wasn't a challenge for my players, whether due to the set up or his class/gear composition he went down pretty easy.

Name: Rhino

Race: Horse
Class: Divine Bond Horse 15
Adventure: Descent into Midnight
Location: The Blood Basilica in the Grand Temple of Abraxas
Catalyst: Not above petty villainy, Allevrah used Destruction on Bartholomew Daytiger's trusty steed when she realized the party cleric had doubled up on most of the same spells Allevrah had pre-buffed herself with.

Bartholomew Daytiger, too pretty to ever wear a helmet, picked up Rhino's namesake dragon-skull helmet (Razorhorn's skull from Armageddon Echo) and put it on the next round as a tribute to his fallen friend.

After the campaign ended, he was true ressurected as part of the epilogue.

Rhiiiinoooooooo

Yes, you have had 3 PC deaths and 2 NPC/Cohort deaths. Putting you at 5 posted deaths. Technically since one of my player deaths did not actually go through (he got to -11 and had a 12 Con, forgot that the summoned creature that knocked him down to that point had 4 extra Str from augment summoning.) we are tied for PC deaths. Did almost lose another player last night to the behir in the spiral though, we will see how they fair against Leibdaga next session.

I believe Cralius also has 3 notches on his belt in CoT so far.

The thing that I think will push you below his count is that I fear to even THINK of that module without the contract.

Name: Bruce Whitetiger

Race: Human
Classes/levels: Oracle of Battle 8
Adventure: The Infernal Syndrome
Location: The Infernal Engine Chamber
Catalyst: Liebdaga the Twin!
The Gory Details: We ran in fully prepared, fully buffed to fight Liebdaga in the final showdown.
** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **

My Death
So, Liebdaga decided to get serious and began to full attack us over and over again with no remorse, casting quickened greater dispel magic to remove Protection from Energy before dropping quickened fireball after quickened fireball. Within three rounds we had him on the ropes, but a quickened fireball dropped the cavalier to -1, Gustav the ranger to -8 and Bruce to 11. The pit fiend swung again, reserving a claw for the downed cavalier! We were worried for the cavalier with his Con of 12, but Bruce took both a wing and a claw. The claw dropped him to -8 and the wing brought...

You mean SEAR your way out.

I suppose it would be interesting to rule that you could potentially parry with the offhand weapon. Could add alot of variety to the class.

Other possibilities/alternatives could include making a TWF build, or opting for some feats like Fleet, Lunge, Wind (and Lightning) Stance, Step Up, or Stand Still for more mobility and battlefield control. (Some of which could also be added to the above with the characters 4 final levels)

Ghostalker: The opponent will care when he can't get away from that guy with the "stick" who is using that stick to...

The issue is that he's not running, and his choice to ignore you compared to the fighter is a very valid one. You just simply don't do enough damage to threaten him. Also from the SRD:

Precise Strike (Ex): A duelist gains the ability to strike precisely with a light or one-handed piercing weapon, adding her duelist level to her damage roll.

When making a precise strike, a duelist cannot attack with a weapon in her other hand or use a shield.

Duelists cannot TWF ever, which is what makes them do bad damage. Also hampers their parry attack availability.

It's not that I don't have an appreciation for very high mobility classes that do fancy things, but can't a rogue already do that? The rogue class with it's focus on dex and versatile skill choices can still outperform a duelist at most of what he wants to do. The issue I take is that while running around and harrying your opponent may be an interesting role, how does that help your party when you're only marginally helping? By using your parry class ability you have to stop hurting the opponents which is by far the most effective method of aid.
On the topic of issues I'll present one of my largest though:
Why should an opponent care about you and your parry? The fighter is much more dangerous and likely much easier to hit, not to mention you have that little stick you claim you'll poke me with? I'll stick with beating on him for now friend.
How can you meaningfully contribute to combat?

Edit: In response to poster above.

Consider this, to have a decent use of your duelist skills, you must have a good int.
In addition to this your dex must be high as to keep your AC and to hit high enough to be effective.
Meanwhile keeping these two stats high keeps your strength at mid to low.

A fighter will have boosted his strength to the moon, and with his 1 1/2 str to damage, greater weapon spec, multi critical feats and weapon training, he will hit hard and often, meanwhile you are wielding a one handed piercing weapon, only allowed to take mainhand attacks, and to parry, once again, you must sacrifice those precious few attacks.

Duelist is supposed to be an intelligent fighter, not a damage outputter.

You should be tripping and disarming, using precise strike damage to make up some of the bad damage output, the ability to use AoOs in situations that people usually can't, stacking initiative modifiers, intelligence mod to AC.....this guy is cool.
I submit that this class, if played badly, can be lacking in combat. I really don't see a problem with the PRC here. He has his Shtick and he handles it well-enough.

The issue here is that the fighter can do all that, tripping, disarming, better because his main stat is used for damaging and CMB. The duelist has to spend a feat to use his main offensive stat to add to his CMB, so he has to waste valuable resources. On top of this the duelist is only allowed light or one handed weapons, and only one of them at that. The precise strikes damage bonus is such a small amount because by the time you get your actual +10 you're already at about 15 or 16th level. Assuming a normal str of about 14 with maybe a few items you MIGHT have a +16 to damage.

So over the last several weeks my group has been going back and forth about how to make this class be combat effective. While much of their flair can be fully realized I find that it's borderline impossible to make them effective melee combatants with the severe limitations placed upon their class abilities. A fighter of equivalent level is near impossible to match, I understand that the fighter is SUPPOSED to be the best at what he does, but at the same time many other classes can find a niche in combat, where the duelist is forced to forego nearly all their offensive capability to be capable of using even their most basic class ability - Parry.

So I'd like to hear some thoughts on the current state of the class, have any of you had any success in overcoming their shortcomings, or perhaps I'm just missing some cog in the machine that makes them tick.

I just want a quick confirmation, my group for some reason thinks the DR15/Magic AND bludgeoning functions the same as OR.
I know this has to be wrong, can I get some confirmation?

My good man from the looks of it you've done us all a great service.

Please hit me up with a set as well manwesoa@GMail.com

First time GM running this module, in the past I've been too lazy to design my own things, so I went with something I could pay for other people to do for me! So far has worked fairly well.

Most of my party consists of one of the new classes (Cavalier/Oracle/Summoner) so things have been fairly interesting going in. Due to my incompetence, I ended the sewer portion of the game fairly quickly, which turned out alright. The PCs pretty much stepped on all the encounters pretty well so I'm aiming to ramp up the CRs in the future.

Going into the rescue mission, my group took a unique approach. The wizard in the group climbed a tree and used a silent image to make the bridge look like it was out of commission, inside the illusion half the party waited silently while two members stood as guards using arminger armor repaired by one of the NPCs, overall it was a well done ambush, through some creative bluffing and well timed interference by Janiven, the horse mounted hellknights were drawn off and the group struck midway through the wagon turning around. In the matter of two turns they had dealt with the entire group without killing a single one through the use of grease, sleep, and many subdual hits. I was amazed at how fast my knights fell, it was far too early to justify the horsemen coming back from chasing the decoy so the PCs got away fairly unopposed.

Overall we had a great time, and I'm considering how I'm going to fill the area between now and the bastards with something interesting.