GreyFox776's page

To contribute to the discussion:

one method i have seen is a breakdown into 4 levels of success.

level 1 - roll is equal to DC
You know the general gist of the monster, which is achieved by reading the monster description to the players (editing if necessary, if say the descriptions mentions the monster's SLA by name for example)

level 2 - roll = DC+5
You get level 1 plus, you get an overview of the monster's typical offensive and defense, any special resistances/weaknesses etc. but not their actual values

level 3 - roll = DC+10
You get level 2 plus, you get the full overview of all the monsters stats and special abilities

level 4 - roll = DC+15
You may have the bestiary open to the monster's page and read it's stats during combat

My favorite identification moment was in a game of Changeling. Our combat guy went into combat with something big and nasty. I tried to ID it. Botch. GM: "It's a cockatrice." Me, yelling to combat guy: "It's a cockatrice!! Don't look directly at it!!" Another player tried to ID it, and also botched. He added, "It's a cockatrice!!! Don't look directly at it!!!" The combat guy's player kind of looked at us, shook his head, and said, "OK, I don't look directly at it. What kind of penalties do I take?"

I have a similar story:

The Barbarian with no knowledge skills wonders off during a dungeon (for reasons) and runs into a Chimera. Manages to escape and get back to the party and as a pure roleplaying gaff claims he has seem a Hydra in the dungeon (it had multiple heads after all, and he had low int and wis). Party then prepares for the Hydra, enters the room and slays the Chimera reasonably quickly. Party wizard with uber knowledge checks (played by myself), looks at the creature and begins speaking "Silly barbarian that's not a Hydra its a.." Rolls dice, natural 1 "...Hydra". Party Rogue looks at the corpse "Are you on crack wizard that is clearly..." rolls a natural 1 "...a Hydra". GM shakes his head, NPC lord which is present "Are you all mad that is most certainly..." (players demand the GM roll) natural 1 "...a hydra!". Party travels back to town and triumphantly tells the story of how they slew a Hydra! LMAO

Edit: It is worth noting for any new players, that we had a house rule that a natural 1 on any d20 roll was a critical failure for comedic effect. Technically in PF a 1 is no different than any other number when it comes to skill checks.

Time to invoke Godwin's law:

Is killing Hitler in his sleep evil?

Yes, so is torturing him. Doing evil things to evil people does not change the act to be "non-evil". As human beings we feel its more justifiable to do evil to evil people as that is a way for us to appease our anger at them and guilt for doing horrible things to them, but that still doesn't make it right.

In regards to the original post though, I would say the actions of your party were dishonorable and evil (murder [and possible murder of innocents, being evil is not a crime nor does it mean you have committed any evil at all, just that you are more likely to], deception leading to injury and death of others, mutilating corpses, pre-meditated murder [of the rest of the temple]).

However context is king and if I was the GM I would not call for alignment changes for it, the characters did not commit the evil for its own sake (i.e. they didn't murder them because it was just more fun that way) and they only acted dishonorably because doing otherwise could have easily (and probably) lead to their deaths.

The Paladin however is a sticky case and it depends on exactly what he did and why, and how literal the God he follows is with the code.

I am about to join a new campaign that will be starting at low-mid level and hopefully going to high level by the end. Our characters will be in close with a local ruler from the beginning of the campaign, and I will be playing the party wizard (typical "God" build, with some RP fluff thrown in).

This will be a RP heavy game and so I have decided that to add some flavor to my wizard by making him a bit of a visionary inventor type who wants to make the world a better place using magic and knowledge (so basically Leonardo da Vinci with spells :P).

Which brings me to my first question, does anyone have any suggestions for things from our world that would improve a stereotypical D&D world (either magical or mundane) that a wizard with the right skills and magic could create?

I have already had a read through the "Tippyverse" stuff which is right up the alley that I want with things like using permanent teleportation circles to join the cities of a kingdom for super fast travel and trade.

and the second question, does anyone have any ideas for things that could be invented in a D&D style world using magic that could not possibly exist in our world due to lack of magic and physics?

"the greater good" or

"evil is good"

basically: there is a threat so horrible, either a natural force or enemies that the only way to combat it is to turn to dark arts.

Hellbound.
The concept I'm going for is something more like the warhammer 40k setting. Maybe the world itself is unravelling and the only way to avoid the decline is to sacrifice magicians. So until we find a better way, we hunt them and sacrifice them in an ongoing grand ritual at the worldheart. most people don't know about this and only know of the holy (if your faction of choice responsible is religious) or stalwart adventurers that are fighting to protect the land. the borders are patrolled harshly to avoid knowledge about the end to spread.
the further you travel from the know lands the more the world is broken: bits of land floating in the air, crazy weather, worse monsters and beasts. weird people travel in the outskirts, some say that the key to saving us all is lost outside the known land in the cataclysm.

-so it's basically the plot from bastion through the eyes of darker than black with a sprinkle of cheliax.

As an adaption of this, if you wanted to take advantage of players that live by the creed "Spell Casters = Win!" you could make it that it turns out that magic is finite and all those casters casting all those spells has lead to the unraveling of the world, now secret squads are being sent out to hunt down and kill any spell caster they can find meanwhile other heroes must venture out into the cataclysm in search of the dingus that will refill the worlds magic reserves

and in certain cases they make short-lived scouts and self-propelled campfires.

lmao, i know you probably are refering to fire elementals but i cant get the image out of my head of summoning a lion and then lighting it on fire for some reason......there may be something wrong with me.