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Sorry if the rules forum isn't the best place for this. We had a situation come up in our game last week and weren't sure if the rules cover this or if we need to leave it to GM prerogative.

The Situation
A PC was surrounded by eight gargoyles. They were having trouble getting their attacks through, so they decided to team up and try to grapple the PC. Since the PC had been tough to hit, their tactic was that the first 7 of them would perform an Aid Another assist the eighth one on his grapple. Since none of the gargoyles had Improved Grapple, all eight of these actions provoked attacks of opportunity.

The PCs Response
Since the PC only got one AoO per round, his response was to opt not to take an attack of opportunity on the first 7 Aid Another actions. All 7 were successful against a CMD of 10, resulting in a +14 bonus for the eighth gargoyle.

Then the eighth gargoyle then attempted the actual grapple with his +14 bonus. When the gargoyle provoked an AoO, the PC opted to take it. The PC hit and dealt 19 points of damage. This resulted in a net -5 to the gargoyles grapple attempt, which ended up missing the PC's actual CMD of 30.

The Question
After the session ended, the DM wondered if all this was kosher. Can the PC tell which actions are Aid Another actions and which are Grapple actions? At first read, we thought so since Aid Another says you are "distracting or interfering" and that sounds different from "grappling." However, since Aid Another provokes an AoO if and only if the underlying aided action type provokes, that implies that Aid Another isn't some generic distraction but is instead like trying the actual action that is being aided.

Hey Paizo folks! I'm sure your feature roadmap is already overflowing, but I have another suggestion to put on the list.

It would be awesome if paizo.com contained a centralized place to list helpful gaming tools: character generators, character sheets, treasure generators, etc. Further, if the community could provide ratings of the tools, it would be easy for us to find links to the collective "best" tools.

This way, we won't have to have so many duplicate, Does anyone know of a good software tool for... threads.

If you want to get really fancy, the list could allow filtering so that users could limit to their personal preferences: free/pay, windows/max/*nix, desktop/web-based, etc

Hey everyone! Has anyone had any luck (positive or negative) with the Item Generator? I'm trying to figure out if it's useful enough that I should continue publishing public releases.

Thanks for any feedback you can give!

Option 1: Any surprised character get a -20 penalty to their initiative roll. This will mean that most surprised characters will get their turns after the aware charaters. If that's true, at any point in time, the expected number of actions taken by the aware character will be 0.5 greater than that of the surprised character. This is exactly the same as what you get with the RAW.

Option 2: Any surprised character can take only a single move action or standard action (but not both) during her first turn. This results in the same expected number of actions, but it has a significant change to both the RAW and Option 1. The surprised characters are no longer flat footed unless they also happened to lose initiative.

Option 3: A combination of 1 and 2. Perhaps with a lesser initiative penalty like -10.

Hey Paizo folks. I just downloaded the PDF for the new fourth printing and I noticed that the size of the single-file PDF has jumped from 79MB to 122MB from the 3rd to the 4th printing.

A 50% increase is pretty substantial and the new errata can't possibly account for all those new bytes. Are the graphics compressed less or of a different format? Perhaps there has been a change to the personalization engine or something didn't get compressed?

There are a lot of threads out there related to the stacking rules for poison, but I have what is hopefully a much more basic set of rules questions. After re-reading the rules several times and scouring the threads, I just don't get how initial and secondary effects work for afflictions. My interpretation was that whenever you failed your first "real" save, the initial effect took place. Whenever you fail any saves after that, the secondary effect took place. I use the term "real" save to distinguish between afflictions with an onsite time versus those without. For example, here's my interpretation for a poison with no onset and a frequency of 1/rnd:

1. When hit with the poison, the character rolls a save
2. If he fails, he immediately suffers the initial effect
3. On his next turn, character makes another save. If not cured, he suffers the secondary effect
4. Repeat step 3 until cured

Similarly, for a poison with an onset of 1 rnd and a frequency of 1/rnd:

1. When hit with the poison, the character rolls a save
2. If he fails, he is afflicted, but doesn't yet suffer any effects
3. On his next turn, the character makes another save. If not cured, he suffers the initial effect
4. On his next turn, the character makes another save. If not cured, he suffers the secondary effect
5. Repeat step 4 until cured

Here's why I think I must be confused. I don't see how this interpretation can be correct given the RAW for Drow Poison or Green Prismatic Poison.

Drow poison has no onset and a frequency of 1/min for 2 min. Initial effect unconsious for 1 min; secondary effect unconscious for 2d4 hours. Cure: 1 save.

So, by my interpretation, the 2 minutes of frequency are irrelevant. When you are hit, you fall unconscious for 1 min if you fail your save. One minute later, you get another save. If you fail again, you are unconscious for 2d4 hours. So, the second minute in the frequency has no purpose since by minute 2 you are either cured or already unconscious for 2d4 hours.

Green Prismatic poison is even stranger. The initial effect is death, but it also has a secondary effect, a frequency, and a cure option. But, none of that matters since as soon as I fail my first save, I'm dead. Secondary damage to Con is of little consequence.

I must be missing something.

The Eschew Materials feat has quite a long history. From my research, it's been printed in at least eight different sources from v3.0 to v3.5 to PFRPG. In all of the v3.0 printings, it was listed as a Metamagic feat. Then in the v3.5 PHB it was changed to a General feat. PFRPG kept this v3.5 classification as a General feat.

2001 - Tome and Blood - Metamagic
2001 - Lords of Darkness - Metamagic
2001 - Magic of Faerun - Metamagic
2002 - Dieties and Demigods - Metamagic
2002 - Faiths and Pantheons - Metamagic
2002 - Epic Level Handbook - Metamagic
2003 - Player's Handbook - General
2009 - Pathfinder Core Rulebook - General

Rules-wise, it seems pretty clear that it is no longer a metamagic feat. Does anyone have any good theories as to why the change? Is it just because the level adjustment is zero instead of a positive number?

What seems strange to me is that the similar feats for easing casting components (Still Spell and Silent Spell) are still Metamagic but the corresponding feat which removed the material component requirement (Eschew Materials) is a General feat.

Of course, it's very easy to have a house rule changing it back to a Metamagic feat. I'd just like to hear theories as to why the change was made by Wotc in v3.5. It was pretty clearly a conscious decision after six separate printings as a Metamagic.

First off, thanks for the very quick update on the PDF bookmarks and hyperlinks. It makes it much more usable and certainly adds a greater sense of "polish" to the final product.

For the next time you are making updates, it would be awesome if the bookmarks for the spell descriptions could be expanded. One bookmark for each letter of the alphebet should be sufficient.

Thanks!

With the 3.5 skill set, a player typically needed to make two different skill checks to avoid detection. He would make a Move Silently check opposed by a Listen Check. He would also make a Hide check opposed by a Spot check. The concept of smell based checks wasn't formalized so they typically only happened in the case of the Scent ability.

With PRPG, the Perception skill encompasses hearing, site, smell, and taste (I'll ignore touch for now). We also have Stealth to encompass both moving quietly and staying hidden. So the question is, how many opposed checks does it take to move by someone without being noticed? Do I need to make just one opposed check or do I make three independent checks for sight, sound, and smell?

My initial guess is that you need to make three independent opposed checks because the circumstance modifiers may be very different, depending on which of the senses you're talking about. For example, while the rules don't explicitly say this, I assume that the +20 bonus from Invisibility only applies against sight based perception checks. If there's a silence spell in effect, that shouldn't make it any harder to actually see someone or to smell an Orge in the room.

If this assumption isn't correct, how do you adjudicate the different opposed rolls when all you want to do is just detect someone's presence? The smell DCs make it seem like it's easier to detect an sneaking Ogre than a sneaking elf. An Invisibility spell shouldn't help me to sneak around against a blind opponent. Nor should a Silence spell make any difference against a deaf opponent.

However, if you my assumption of independent checks is correct, there is a potentially unintended side-effect to adding game mechanics for the sense of smell. By mechanizing a third sense, we've now made it harder for someone to remain undetected. Having multiple opposed checks to remain hidden are weighted towards the detector rather than towards the hider. This is because the hider must succeed on all checks and the detector only needs to succeed on one.

Of course, smell is likely to be the least reliable method for detecting someone, but that will be up to DM discretion. Your chances to remain undetected are basically zero when you can be seen (but not heard or smelled), their slightly better when you can only be heard (but not seen or smelled), and I would rule that they are better yet when you can only be smelled (but not seen or heard). All that said, it will definitely be tougher for to remain undetected and the new axis of detection (smell) has no improvement route in the rules as they are today. The Stealth skill doesn't say anything about hiding your smell.

Thoughts? Am I interpreting the rules correctly? Am I overreacting to the new method of detecting someone? Would you include the third opposed roll or just ignore it for simplicity and speed?