PF2 has a normal statblock of it as well.
And yes, it looks like it can do all those things you said. Mental Invader is (unsurprisingly) a mental ability, and so should be fair game to use while possessing a target.
Thank you!
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I’m writing a rather long adventure for my home brew, and wanted to confirm if I have a good understanding of the rules around this creature, and specifically what it can and can’t do. First, with the Mental Invader ability, it can pretty much monitor any of its 10 connections wherever they are as long as they are on the same plane. This isn’t something that is done at all times, but when the worm casts the appropriate spell. There are limitations based on the spell being used such as scrying.
However, this gets me to the next point. With the possession spell, the worm can possess one of its minions from anywhere and from that point cast spells through the possessed body, and by all effective purposes it will appear that the minion cast the spells. Does this sound accurate so far? Further, if the worm possesses someone under the Mental Invader ability, can the worm then cast Mental Invader from the possessed person? For example, the worm encounters someone and controls them via Mental Invader. The worm would prefer to not be known among the population so to get close to key members of society, the possessed slave travels to potential targets. Once the possessed slave is near a potential victim within range of the Mental Invader ability, most victims are going to fail against the save. If the victim resists the attack, they know that a powerful being has attacked them, BUT they do not truly know the source. If the worm so desired, it could also make sure the minion was left feebleminded if the encounter didn’t go as planned. Does it sound like I’m on track here?
The rules on the Astral Projection spell states that anything that happens to the duplicate happens to the original as well, but it focuses on things that are lost. If a party that is exploring the astral plane happens to gain treasure, does that automatically appear on the material plane, assuming they return safely?
Thanks. I thought I was being overly generous with my interpretation.
The spell states that the target is one shield and one willing target, but in the description it states that the sheild orbits around one willing "ally". Can the caster be his own ally? My PC is a fighter with the cleric archetype, using a two handed weapon, and I thought it would be interesting to have use the option to use this as a buff spell in some circumstances.
This has been a great capstone for the AP so far. I would mention that I thought I was going to have a TPK with the assault on Breachill, especially with the lesser manifestation. The PCs resources were very low, and they could barely hit him. They also had no hope of closing with him well due to his greater speed. Their saving grace was the fact that the dragon's breath was not effective against the two rangers, so after two breath attacks, the dragon closed for melee. One ranger got in two hits with distracting shot, which then allowed the the rest of the group to contribute with some good rolls. Right now the group has just started investigating the Golden Citadel. I was glad to see their were no wards against Ethereal Jaunt or Teleport, so the PC's relied heavily on these to scout the building for clues. It is very neat seeing all the story pieces come together. I think through most of the AP, my players have just been in the mindset that there wasn't much more to the story than killing off slavers. They didn't really react to most of the sub plot elements other than to say "well that's odd, but OK, where's the next slaver outpost". Right now they are suspicious of Emaliza, but failed to see through her deception. I have a feeling they will play along with her until she finally betrays them.
Yeah, I agree, and I don't have an issue with the rule. I just have 20+ years of other rules rolling around in my head, so it's hard to break old habits. I also don't stop the game much to look up rules. I just make a note to research later. In this case, I waited a while.
Ugh. I've been allowing this spell to trigger when a PC is knocked into negative HP numbers! It didn't occur to me that "death" was Dying 4. I kept thinking that there must at least be a loss of actions or something. I think there have been at least 4 combats where the battle would have been far different except for the fact that the fighter didn't go down when reduced to zero.
My group is currently in Katapesh and they know about the upcoming secret slave auction. Rather than do a heist, they want to pose as slave buyers and simply buy her. Is there any reason they couldn't do this? It seems more direct than the heist option. It makes me wonder who these buyers would be anyway. They wouldn't sell a guild leader to a local slaver because it would reveal their crime.
Money also isn't a problem for this group. They've been channeling some funds into rebuilding the citadel, but they've also been primarily using equipment they find in the adventure rather than buying new items.
And yet they never do it after module 1.Not fully true, it is mentioned in multiple places that the Scarlet Triad is aware of the gate and specifically don't use it because they might alert Mengkare.The current state of the Scarlet Triad, their plans to establish operations near the gates, and their reasons for not seizing Alseta's Ring are also explained in detail in the first book. There's an entire section of the Adventure Toolbox dedicated to the Scarlet Triad. Explaining it once in book one was fine with me. I'd rather they didn't take up space in every book reminding me of the basic plot points.
EDIT: To be more helpful, here’s a concrete example of a Elven Wizard (Illusionist) built to have lots of third option choices. It maxes Int, has a 16 Dex, and a 14 Cha (to boost the skill checks to conceal spells certain Wizards feats provide). They can cast electric arc/a spell for two actions. And they’re built to have a lot of effective third action options. They can: cast the Shield cantrip (if in danger of attack), fire their bow (proficiency from Elven Weapon Familiarity, and no MAP since it’s the first attack roll this turn, and they have a high Dex), recall knowledge (high Int), Demoralize (trained in Intimidation, decent Cha), move, or Sustain a spell. I like the idea of this, but can a wizard cast spells with a bow in hand? I thought they would need to have hands free, thus rearming a bow would take up their 3rd action.
Is there a chance the ranger missed the four free boosts at character creation, or the boost from their class? They should be able to get a 16 or 18 Dex along with 16 Int pretty easily. Unfortunately, no. I double checked everyone's sheets in the beginning (and still do), since I am most familiar with the rules. He just really wanted to be good at a lot of things. At the time I had a hunch that wouldn't work well, but didn't have enough experience with the new rules. I ended up mentioning that I didn't think it would work that well, but thought why not give it a go. Keep in mind the PC doesn't stink. It's more that expectations didn't really get met.
I have a player who has struggled a bit with a Ranger with the Arcane archetype. It's not a horrible concept, but I think he's maybe spread too thin / trying to be great at too many things. He started with his highest stat being in Int at 16, but the rest of the stats were just too low. We are at 14th level in the AoA AP. He pulls off some useful things occasionally. However the dedicated fighter with a great ax seems to land a crit most rounds and is dealing 75 to 100 + in damage. The ranger is rarely getting a crit and is lucky to do half that damage. He will use spells as a back up, but his saves just aren't very threatening. He falls back on Frost Ray a lot. In addition, the bird companion is a bit underwhelming.
So what did you end up doing? I would have leaned toward having Ilssrah just leave.
I'm pretty happy with the format. I sometimes wish the extra articles were more player friendly. I have one player who loves getting into the background of whatever area is being explored. I accidentally shared an article (AoA) which had some spoilers.
I may have missed it, but do we know what level this AP goes up too?
I just wanted to express some gratitude toward Paizo and this community. One of the bright spots of this year has been a weekly game I started DMing in April with some old friends. One friend in particular had been asking me to run a game for a while in 2019. I was really resistant due to a few factors; time constraints (I used to travel a lot for work), distance (none of my friends live nearby), and I wasn’t certain I wanted to learn yet another set of new rules. Too give some context, I’ve been playing since the old red box came out and just celebrated my 50th birthday. I also was not excited about any online gaming platforms I had looked at. Most weren’t very intuitive, at least to me, or the learning curve seemed to be more than I had time to invest in. With the pandemic, and spending all my time at home, I decided to give it a try. After a few trial games, we ended up using Discord for video calls, and Google Jamboard for maps and combat grids. As much as I wanted to run a homebrew, I knew I certainly didn’t have time to create my own AP. We decided to go with Age of Ashes, which has been great so far. We’re currently at 12th level. With the help of these forums, learning the new rules was much easier than I anticipated. I love the fact that I can get an answer to most questions by doing a forum search. As a GM, second addition is much easier to learn, and run. Looking back, I think my biggest hurdle was grasping the new CR system and its simplicity. I just felt that I had to be missing something. But a few folks on these boards got me back on course. Thank you!
We haven’t always been running a perfect game by the rules. For example, I forgot about using the Wounded condition for quite a while. However, we’ve been having a great time. With all that said, we’ve been running a weekly 2 hour game since mid-April, it’s been a lot of fun so far, and its helped some old friends reconnect and retain some sanity. Thank you for all that you do.
I've been running a 2e game for a few months now, and I'm just wondering if I'm running Death and Dying correctly. I'm reading the rules that as long as a PC doesn't die of massive damage, they really just need to make a flat save and they are at zero. It really doesn't matter if you were at -2 or -20 as long as you didn't hit the massive damage threshold. Am I missing something? Our game experience so far has been that it is really hard to permanently die, With most of the PCs invested in Medicine and a full time healing cleric, the PC survivability is greatly expanded, at least that's our observation so far, which we're actually enjoying. We really don't miss having to pause the game so much to take care of healing.
I'm a little confused on why this feat allows someone with a two handed weapon to use trip, but by the wording, someone with a sword and shield would not. It doesn't appear to be game breaking to allow this. What am I missing? In my last game, I did allow it to see what would happen. He used it on several low moderate opponents and his actions were typically, Move, and two actions for Knock Down. Or if he was already close, he would Knock Down and then have Strike for his final action. He normally got an AoO when they stood up. He obviously did not have his shield raised so it provided no AC benefit. This did seem really strong, though it was against moderate Medium sized enemies, with low Reflex DCs. With that said, is a Reflex DC really just the creature's reflex save +10?
Thanks for the pointer. I was going with Precision, but may go with Flurry instead. I'm not sure why I thought Flurry only pertained to two weapon fighting. Thank you. It appears that we will have two strong front line fighters. I'll most likely be hanging back with the dedicated caster and trying to get off as many shots as possible.
Thanks for the pointer. I was going with Precision, but may go with Flurry instead. I'm not sure why I thought Flurry only pertained to two weapon fighting.
Yes. Thank you!
Hunted Shot appears to be a single action that allows a range to take two quick shots, but multiple attack penalties apply. Does that mean that this only takes up one single action, the first strike is at no penalty, the second is at -5. However does that mean the ranger then has two more single actions at -10 each?
Does anyone know the name of the artist who created this piece?
I run everything using a laptop with tabs open to PDF's for the adventure, rulebooks and monsters. I sometimes type up a summary of the adventure on one page for easy reference. I also have a one page cheat sheet on rules I always forget. However, we still draw out maps on graph paper and move combatants around with pencil and eraser.
Does it feel like the damage output for higher level monsters is too low? For example, a 20th level moderate encounter does 37pts of damage. Against PC's who have upwards of 200+ HP, that doesn't seem significant. But maybe that is the intent? Is the design constructed to have creatures with higher HP and AC? Thus, the monsters last longer, and lower damage output doesn't really matter?
I guess it is still a surprise for me regarding AoO's. They were so central to tactics in my games, it will be interesting to play out this new dynamic. That's not a complaint. It will just take some getting used too.
AOCs ? Sorry, I meant AOO, attack of opportunity.
Unless I'm reading things incorrectly, the following has surprised me. Incorporeal creatures are now different. It appears there is no longer 50% damage, but instead resistance is applied. Giants don't have AOC's like they used too. Demons don't summon in the same way. They now use Abyssal Pacts.
The new way is far smoother, elegant and liberating than PF1. It's one of the biggest strengths of the new system, IMHO. Thank you. I think at first glance, I was thinking "just show me how to add a class level to a centaur!" I was clearly looking at it the wrong way, so I'll read through it again. I appreciate the feedback.
I'm slowly introducing myself to 2e, and I would really like to convert my homebrew, and possibly the AP we are currently playing (Shattered Star). If I'm following this discourse correctly, the new system isn't like 1e where if I wanted to add class levels to a monster, I followed a certain set of rules. Rather now with 2e, I take whatever creature I had thought up, and compare it to the appropriate challenge on the grid, and adjust the stats accordingly. I read through the free excerpt, and I'll admit I'm still a little confused. I feel like I'm either missing something or I'm complicating the new process way more than necessary. For example, in my last home brew, I had a lot of monsters with class levels, and I felt like I eventually had a system down for the process. You can find some of those here. I'm not sure if I'm going to update those stats soon, but I would like to eventually. Gray's Homebrew Stats
When you mentioned the "Run around and attack multiple targets" I couldn't help but to think of this ability Yeah, that's a little crazy. I really thought it was going to read, something like the rogue can make an attack against anyone who would normally have an AOO against him. But attack themselves?
Has there been any indication that Sudden Charge will be expanded in power? I noted that someone indicated that Paizo did a lot of research on what real world athletes can accomplish. Building on that I'm wondering if we'll see a fighter eventually being able to do things like;
Considering that if a round of combat equals roughly 6 seconds, and that most professional football players can do the 40 yard dash (120ft) in under 6 seconds, it isn't a stretch of the imagination having a now master or legendary fighter who can sprint through a battlefield dealing damage as he goes. Which then leads to a question; Has it been revealed if the new base speeds have changed? Maybe an old base speed of 30ft is now 40 feet since there are only 3 actions in a round, or in other words allowing a full round move of 120ft is now achieved in three actions.
Awesome stuff Thank you! Can't wait to see your work!
Nice! Has he talked about this anywhere? Not that I'm aware of. I'm taking this information from the early announcement and FAQ. "We're proud to announce that Wayne Reynolds has been designing new concepts and characters for Pathfinder Second Edition for more than two years now, including updated art for the iconic characters from the Core Rulebook, detailed illustrations of all the key player races, and more (including a new goblin iconic!)." http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest/faq#v5748eaic9we0 He also mentions working on this project for years on his FB page. I'm looking forward to seeing what he's created.
If you're a fan of Wayne Reynold's art, I hope you also caught that he's been working on art for the new edition for quite some time now, 2 years if I recall correctly. I'm also looking forward to seeing new works from him.
I believe, I'd have to say never. In the early 80's we might have done so with the black boxed set, but we were pretty fast with the rules. I believe we had a campaign hit close in the early 90's. I had a homebrew campaign that was meant to hit 20, but the group fell apart around 19th. Had another one stop at 17th, but plan to pick up back up if I can write up a decent continuation for Rise of the Runelords. And I currently have a campaign at 18th, with plans to go to 21st just to see how those capstone abilities play out. I'm tempted to write up some mythic stuff if the group wants to keep going.
Have them each play two characters. It's not that hard, and is the best way to handle action economy issues, etc. I occasionally play with an old friend, who will run four PC's for an adventure path. Really there are no rules saying one person must only run one PC.
You have to remember that troop don't have to roll to hit. As such your high damage is quite overpowered. I feel the damage on troop is low because of that. Thanks for the input and this is a valid point. Unfortunately, RL got in the way of me responding sooner. I have access to troop stats from RoW, so I'll compare those and see where this CR should most likely fall.
I'm going to assume you are the GM, and not a player designing his own toy, and by "best fit in canon", you mean that you want it to fit well within Golarion. With that said, if you're caught up in the "undead can only be evil" mindset, by pass that and pick something else. It could be the previous owner's actual soul or spirit, not undead, but actual life force. There are angelic spirits that inhabit helmets, why not a saint's life force lingering around a sword? Maybe this person died, went to Erasti's realm after death, but really wanted to be a mentor and guide to others still in the material plane. He's granted his request, and now lingers in his weapon. Remember that when you do this, you're basically adding an npc to the campaign. What does it know? What type of personality does it have? Is it opposed to certain things or actions?
Your damage looks way too high. Bestiary 6 would indicate it should be more like 4d6+4. Thanks for the input, and I really should have given more details on how I came up with that. Here's my reasoning behind the damage. When I look at the Bestiary 6 blocks, I think 4d6+4 is way too low for this type of troop. Take into consideration, the CR11 drow cultist troop also has many other things going for it such as;
The centaur troop doesn't have any of that. I should have added in the first post that I tried basing this troop off of a base centaur/ fighter 3 which was CR6. The single fighter is very low AC, very high damage from a two handed weapon and power attack. They have a ranged option, but are really dangerous when they charge in formation. When I compare this to the monster creation charts from the Bestiary, I'm within the average damage range, which actually makes me want to boost up the damage (except for the fact that I put the Trampling Charge damage so high). Dang, as I'm writing this, I'm convincing myself that they aren't packing enough punch.
I post a lot of things for my homebrew in well, the homebrew section, however, feedback there can be a bit spotty. I'd love advice on whether I'm hitting the target on some troop stat blocks that I'm writing up. Please let me know if you think the following is accurate as far as the troop sub-type is concerned.
Trying my hand at some troop stat blocks. This one in particular would represent a unit of centaur fighters.
Thank you both. I should have mentioned the BBEG is a unique race to my world, closely related to tieflings in a way. I think I'll end up making an artifact for this particular guy.
I'm running a game in which I want one of the BBEG's to have a colossal eidolon. I'd like to stick to OGL/RAW to build this rather than just creating a unique rule for my home brew. I can see the eidolon getting to huge via the large evolution. Then getting to gargantuan via enlarge person and then permanency. Any thoughts?
And one of the final bad guys for this chapter in the story.
Here is a centaur champion in the enemy army.
I know I already have a CR14 harpy archer posted earlier, but I wanted to tweak the troops which will face the heroes soon in a harpy army.
As of this weekend, I'm writing up stats for my homebrew and reviewing PC sheets for 18th level. I've been posting stats here; Gray's Home Brew Stat Blocks and I'm always open to critiques. And writing some fiction for the world. In a nutshell, a reptilian spears and sandals type empire rules much of the world, and non-human city states rule the rest, while humanity survives on the fringes while gods and immortal beasts play petty games with both. If we keep going, I expect to play to just shy of 21st level. Just enough to enjoy using some of those capstone abilities.
Are you taking this from the Dragonlance boxed set with the map of the burning sea? I always wanted to use that as a framework for a campaign. Too many ideas, not enough time to develope all of them. Sounds familiar. :) |