Insufferable Smartypants's page

Excellent. Now instead of one great game I desperately want to play but lack the means and opportunity... there will now be two.

It states under the walking dead entry that wandering undead are usually the result of necromancers creating more undead than they can keep control over, and that these uncontrolled undead will attack the living more or less on sight.

If you turn a corpse into an animated corpse, and then that corpse turns around and (for example) eats a baby, have you committed an evil act?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say yes - regardless of whether the necromancer was in control of the zombie, or if his ineptness led to the zombie breaking free of its master, a kid died as a direct result of the necromancer's actions.

Had he simply summoned monster, this would not have happened.

…That implies they are evil from birth, which means they should have the [Evil] tag attached to them. Nothing without the [Evil] tag is inherently evil, per the core rules.

I'd be very interested in brushing up on this subject and read the entire writeup, but I am having a spot of trouble finding this rule. Anybody happen to have it handy?

This might be an opportunity you can keep on the back burner until you need some levity to break a period of serious, dark, or depressing play. If you decide to swap him to another diety, this might work well as a comedic scene.

I would wait on it until you felt that you needed to create a light moment, and then pull it out unexpectedly:

After many liasons, the paladin is visited by a lantern archon or other celestial messenger (perhaps in a vision) that informs him that he has been traded to (name of appropriate diety). It might work best if no further information or explanation is forthcoming. If the paladin bears any emblem of his god, that emblem is different the next time he looks at it. Nobody but himself notices that anything is different. As far as the rest of the world knows, he has always followed the tennets of his new god. Ideally, his powers remain unchanged.

Make it as impersonal as a Football draft swap. :-)

Speaking on behalf of all heterosexual males, I think it's a safe bet to say that there are plenty of women that we as individuals just don't feel attracted to.

If the guy wants to say that his character isn't surprised that the handsome bard ended up being a woman, that's fine. If he wants to say that his character was never attracted to her, that's fine. If he wants to say that he saw through the disguise simply because his character is gay... then he's only fooling himself.

It was explicitly stated by Jason Bulmahn in discussion of the recent Stealth Errata that successful stealth does deny Dex and thus make sneak attack possible.

Er... no. That's not precisely what he said.

What he said was: "It was our intent that if you are unaware of a threat, you cannot react to a blow."

That doesn't clear up this question at all. If you've not made your presense known, the enemy is unaware of you, but what if you've sniped an enemy and alerted them to your presense.

Even a group of deer will react if you shoot one of them, and they don't have any signifigant intelligence scores! Try it out one day. Shoot at one deer out of a bunch and then tell me the rest of them don't get their DEX bonus on your 2nd shot.

Insufferable Smartypants is basically 100% wrong on all counts. Just ignore his post.

Saying it doesn't make it true. If you want a character to be invisible, take an invisibility power. Hiding just doesn't cut it.

I'm sorry if I broke your little heart. :-P

Incorrect.

Skills do not autosucced on a nat 20. This is why you can take 10 or take 20 with skills. Otherwise on a 5% chance, I can see into the enemy's lair and count how many goblins there is.

You're taking the example beyond extreme to be silly, and the action of taking 20 assumes that you will fail many times before succeeding, which is why you cannot use the action if you're stressed, in danger, or pressed for time.

If you wanted to get this rules lawery on this..

The player is observing himself. Therefor the player cannot hide. Ever.

Insects are observing the player. The player cannot hide.

Micro-organisms are observing the player. The player cannot hide.

More of the same extreme sillyness, but if you want to use those examples, then you are correct: The player is not hidden from himself, from the insects, or from the micro-organisms.

I have a situation that I need advice on, and I'd be most grateful if one of your Pathfinder/D&D veterans can supply said advice.(1)

...Halfling Rogue with optimized levels of Stealth ... after his Halfling Wizard was killed to ensure that it doesn't happen again. (2)

His typical strategy involves either beginning every encounter already in Stealth, or stealthing as soon as the opportunity presents itself - he's never far from cover, and he prefers to spend as much time as possible in trees or bushes. (3)

He then starts sniping every enemy in range, repositioning himself through cover as necessary. He took the alternate Racial trait that Halflings have available, "Swift as Shadows", which lets him reduce the penalty for using Stealth while moving by 5, and the Stealth check penalty for sniping by 10 (4)

Thanks to his optimized Stealth skill, CR appropriate enemies have little chance to detect him even as he pokes them full of arrows (he essentially has to roll close to a 1 for enemies to spot him) (5), and he argues that since the enemies haven't spotted him, they shouldn't get their Dex bonus to AC versus his attacks, and therefore he should also be able to get his Sneak Attack bonus every round. (6)

... intentions to take even more Stealth related items and feats - for example, he plans on taking "Hellcat Stealth" - or a level of Shadowdancer - so he can enter Stealth even while directly observed (7), and he plans on making use of Invisibility spells and effects as well to make himself even harder to detect. (8)

I'm doing my best to be reasonable and understanding, but I fear his powergaming tactics are taking a lot out of the game, as the player of a character that virtually can't be detected is unlikely to be threatened by anything short of some rather contrived situations, such as having every enemy spellcaster come equipped with Glitterdust, or having a dragon burn half the forest down to get him out of his hidey-hole (and even then, he has Evasion!).

Am I misinterpreting the rules and letting him get away with murder(usually literally)(9)? Or is he right in apparently believing that Stealth at extreme levels really does equal near invincibility?(10) I told him that I need to take his character under advisement, but I can't seem to be able to find a satisfactory, and fair, solution thus far. Or am I merely blowing things way out of proportion, and a nigh-undetectable Rogue isn't really that big of a deal in the long run?

Any sage advice will be most appreciated, and I would like to thank you all for reading through this post and taking the time to answer!

1) Longtime DM here of many years and have had an unfortunate turnover of many players due to deployment conflicts (was in the service for part of my DMing career). What I'm getting at is I've seen a whole lot of players as some come on and off deployment, and every player brings his own baggage.

2) Sounds reasonable. Sometimes losing a character stings.

3) I'm going to ask a question here because the devil might be in the details. I can't tell if you're exaggerating or not. Do you mean that he begins every *combat* encounter stealthed? Or virtually every RP, trap, hazard, and combat encounter? Does he hide under a table at the local bar? Does he stealth in the market square in the center of town? If it sounds like I'm trying to be funny, I'm asking honestly here.

Now, if he's starting every combat encounter already stealthed, why are you letting him get away with this? Why is the party tolerating this guy trying to hide from them?

If he is actually stealthing all the time, I would probably have a private talk with him and ask him why his character is an insane person. I would explain to him that unless he's specifically trying to roleplay a character with advanced paranoia, he should stop hiding while the party is camping for the night. If that doesn't sink in and the behavior continues, I would probably take further measures. Maybe dock him XP. Maybe something more peer-related. NPC's will slowly begin to avoid him because they're beginning to doubt his stability. Maybe people start to think that he's dangerous. It doesn't have to be a mob with pitchforks and torches - that is... unless he really does do something crazy.

4) Let me stop you there. He's highly skilled at hiding. Got it.

5) I can help you here. There's no way to sugarcoat this. He's wrong, and you've been letting him get away with it. It sounds like you both have studied the rules of stealth as they're written and are reading them to the letter while missing a couple of gems that favor you and screw your halfling buddy.

Stealth is *not* invisibility. Stealth is concealment. In fact, if you end your turn out of concealment you are no longer considered to be hiding. I'm sure you already know this too - I'm more stating this for emphasis and for the inevitable post by somebody in the peanut gallery.
This is important: If you are being observed *in any way*, you are not hidden. It doesn't matter what he rolls if you let him roll his stealth skill. Barring special feats to the contrary, if eyes (ears or nose either) are on him, his stealth roll won't change that.

I'm going to make an example here of just your halfling rogue and an encounter, and I'm going to structure it as if the rest of the part does not exist so that nobody is distracted.

Your halfling begins a combat encounter stealthed against 18 orcs. Since he is hidden, and the rest of the party does not exist in this encounter, the orcs are blissfully unaware of him. He can snipe one of them for standard unmodified damage, or he can attempt to close to within 30 feet for a sneak attack (sneak attacks at range are normally limited to a maximum of 30 feet).

Now, regardless of how many attacks he makes or how many orcs he kills in his opening volley, I'm going to bet that he didn't get them all, and here is where it gets interesting for you.

This isn't the PC game of Skyrim, where you can fire an arrow at somebody and then 30 seconds later they forget about it and go back to their routine. He just shot (and maybe killed) one of these orcs. The other 17 of them are now aware that there is an archer around here somewhere. They also are not stupid. They get behind cover and start watching for movement. If they have missile weapons available, some of them will ready them and wait for an opportunity to shoot at their attacker. If he takes a 2nd shot, their cover grants them all an additional +4 AC. If they have a defensive caster, that caster starts casting abjuration spells to buff everybody's defenses.

Now if things stay as they are, your halfling has to beat about 17 perception checks per round just to maintain the status quo, and he won't be able to do this for long because each hobgoblin has a 5% flat chance to spot him on a natural 20 - but this almost doesn't matter anymore, because I've yet to meet a player that will just stay hidden round after round and won't try to take another shot or action of some kind.

Back to what I said above. Stealth is much less powerful than you're both giving it credit for. Stealth isn't invisibility, it's *concealment.* He didn't turn dark or transparent, like you see in a computer game. He's just ducked down behind a trash can or a light pole. It doesn't matter if he rolled a 15 to hide, or a 150 to hide. The stealth roll vs perception check doesn't determine degrees of success or failure - it determines only success or failure. Failed a check? The hobgoblin didn't see where he shot from this round. He still knows that the arrow came from somewhere, and if he witnessed the hit he even knows from what direction.

What is concealment? Well, by the rules... it's a 20% miss chance. That's it. Once they know he's out there, his huge stealth advantage is pretty much used up. Now they're trying to figure out where exactly he is. All they need to do is figure out where he *could* be or wait for him to peek out at them again. Obviously you're not playing in dense jungle, because if you were you'd be giving your hobgoblins cover bonuses and concealment of their own. How many possible hiding spots are available? And here's where you look at how you've been designing your maps. Are you granting too many hidey-holes?

If the Hobgoblins note that they can see everything but behind the rock to the left, the tree straight ahead, and the shrub to the right, guess what 17 pairs of eyes are now studying intently. Now that they know they're under attack, nobody's going to fail to notice somebody popping his head and bow out to take another shot. That rule of maintaining stealth exists to give him the chance to evade and escape - not to continue an assault with impunity. Basically, the stealth skill is what you use when they *are not* looking for you - and you use it to avoid arousing suspicion. Hobgoblins certainly understand ambushes and can react appropriately.

From the Stealth Check description: "If people are observing you using any of their senses (but typically sight), you can't use Stealth." and "you can attempt a Stealth check if you can get to an unobserved place of some kind."

So if 34 hobgoblin ears are straining to hear movement and 34 eyes are watching all possible hiding places, the player cannot use stealth! What he can do is sit there quietly and maintain his concealment. If he pops out from concealment to make another attack while being observed, it doesn't matter what he rolls, the hobgoblins will see him.

Now your hobgoblins have some options available. They can send out a few hobs to investigate the rock, the tree, and the shrub one by one, knowing that if anything tries to sneak away it will certainly be seen. As soon as the hobgoblins have gotten around the object concealing him, they will see him. If the group advancing is sufficiently large, they can surround the halfling and that'll pretty much be that, so lets examine another option and say that they all stayed behind and readied crossbows and javelins.

With 17 hobs, you can easily designate 2 hobs to watch each hiding spot (out of the 3 in the example) while the other 11 choose one location and bombard it with missile fire. They don't have to actually see the halfling in order to hit him, and he'd better hope that crossbows and javelins are all they're packing. Being military types, they might have access to flasks of oil or greek fire, or hostile potions or poisons. Whatever the mode of their attack, they will attack normally.

Hopefully, the halfling thought ahead and chose either the rock or the tree to use as his hiding spot, because a bush isn't going to grant him a cover bonus. Such concealment gives him a flat 20% miss chance. If you feel like being very generous, you can rule that it's a big, dense bush he's hiding in and grant him total cover for a 50% miss chance, you old softy.

Now, the rock or the tree would be better options. Both of them will give him a flat +4 AC bonus due to cover.

Sorry for how long number 5 was. I will be brief from here on out.

(6) It stands to reason that with the distraction of an entire group of adventurers, he might remain unobserved for several rounds before somebody sees him - remember, his hide rolls no longer really matter once they're actively looking for a hidden archer. Until then, If he's within 30 feet he can sneak attack at range.

(7) Ever play hide and seek? Nobody "enters stealth." You hide. If you don't have a good hiding spot, you're seen. Even a man wearing a ghillie suit is pretty clearly visible once he's been identified. The stealth skill is what you use when the enemy is NOT looking for you.

That hide-in-plain-sight skill is pretty much the ninjas trick you see in movies. Sure, it looks like the ninja dissapeared, but when the camera pans up he's always straining against two beams on the ceiling, hoping that somebody moves on before his arms give out.

(8) I think this is actually a good thing. Invisibility seems easier to adjucate, and hiding while invisible has got to be more effective.

(9) Yes. You are misinterpretting the rules, and so is he.

(10) No. Stealth equals concealment. Stealth rolls of 10 are the same as stealth rolls of 1,000, as long as nobody saw (or heard) you roll. 20% miss chance.

Okay, enough bulletins. Let's put this into perspective. One guy playing a relatively low-power class, specializes in not being seen and then uses those skills to not be seen. All in all, this could be way worse. He could have played a sorcerer and be nuking the crap out of your encounters, or he could be wading through your enemies and whirlwind attacking from within their lines.

Remember that while he's off hiding, things are happening in the group that he isn't a part of. He might miss important conversations in the group. He will fail to see actions that he might wish he had (like if the fighter pockets the occational potion off the fallen enemies after a battle). Enemies that don't see him will focus their attacks on the rest of the group, which means damage he isn't taking is adding to everybody else's burden. Focus fire on the mage or the healer a few times when it will really inconvenience the party and you might have your own players yanking him out of his hidey-hole.

If he's always hiding, treat him like he's hiding. Turn to the other players more often, and him a bit less. Have NPC's fail to address him. Try to remind him that his character is being... well, weird, and remind him of it through gameplay.

I really hope that this helps you with your situation.

I do not understand anything in this post after "We began play with characters that have died."

I am my group's cleric. I'm usually pretty prepared to front-load defensive magics and prevent damage before it happens, so I spend most of my time during combat either meleeing with the fighters or harrassing enemy casters/archers if they are present.

So far, only one guy has managed to get himself seriously injured on my watch, and he was a gnome. Screw gnomes.

If somebody that mattered got hurt, I'd drop anything I was doing to save them - that's just my character.

Now, our GM didn't recommend any particular party composition. We just all picked what we wanted (I tend to gravitate toward clerics) and started playing. We could have adventured without a healer, but I don't think we'd be nearly as well off as we've been making out.

Last post before bed. I'm not reading the entire forum - I just wanted to answer the OP.

Dwarves are alive and well in Pathfinder. I just got back from my bi-weekly game in which I play a dwarf, and am easily the most powerful PC in the group (although to be fair, a lot of that is because I'm the cleric).

Shrugged off a devil's poison today specifically because of race (made the save by 1).

Took heavy plate proficiency at level 8. Why not? I'm already carrying most of the party treasure and heavier armor on top of that will never slow me down.

Nobody tried to push, trip, or bullrush me this week. Maybe that was the DM using out-of-character knowledge about my +4 CMD bonus against those maneuvers. Maybe our enemies are just getting smarter.

Killed several goblinoids today with my axe. A few of them I hit due to my +1 racial bonus to hit them.

Oh, and I survived an incoming flame strike largely due to my bonus hit points derived from my rather impressive constitution score.

Good times.

One of my favorite old characters was a "misunderstood hero" - basically a villain that kept performing good acts.

The whole campaign my guy was metaphorically placing his chess pieces for a future takeover of the kingdom. Everybody knew he was a bad guy, and that his motivations were completely selfish, but that was part of the fun.

The fun thing with alignments in this game is that motivations don't account for much. Like Rachel said in Batman Begins: "It's what you do that defines you." Over the course of the game we played, my character was always thinking and saying evil, but only very rarely could his *actions* be considered evil - and the DM kept him firmly placed in the realm of Lawful Good. Now... eventually that would have changed, but we never got to that part of the story.

Ogres have raided a village and taken the townsfolk as slaves? Those are *his* future slaves! He can't have them stolen by ogres... so he slaughters the ogres and tells the villagers to go home.

He wants this kingdom to be very rich when he rules, so he cleans out the bandits that are hitting the trade routes.

He'll need plenty of reliable, loyal talent after he secures his rulership, so he funds an orphanage and visits the children regularly, hoping to find a few future followers that can help him maintain his power one day.

Good times.

236. Sitting on the porcelain throne and reading Swords Illustrated.

237. Sitting in his throne room. The same villain walks up to the throne and claps twice. The villain in the throne flickers, and dissapears, and the 2nd version of him sits down in the throne.

238. In the middle of a bubble-bath, singing quietly to his rubber ducky.

239. Watching porn with his evil girlfriend.

240. Scraping gum off the bottom of his boot and muttering.

241. Walking past his latest giant doomsday weapon, he spies a curious unlabelled button that he's never noticed before. He moves as though to press it, but then thinks better of it and waves down an underling to find somebody that can tell him what the damn button does.

242. Reading his fan mail.

243. Writing fan mail to his favorite athlete, duelist, musician or higher ranked villain.

244. Composing a love sonnet with witch to woo a virtuous maiden that normally won't give him the time of day.

245. Putting the last finishing touches on wedding plans that involve him wedding one of the more charismatic players.

246. Brushing his teeth and gargling.

247. Wearing sweats, and out for an evil morning jog with his minions.

248. Reading 50 Shades of Grey Wastes.

249. Wearing a party hat and watching his minions play "Pin the Tail on the Centaur."

250. Looks both ways to make sure that absolutely nobody sees him do it, then bends down and pets a cute puppy and calls him a good boy.

251. Reading a stolen copy of the DM's Guide.

Disregarding minotaurs as angry man-beasts is like writing off elves as effeminate and anemic weaklings. It may be true in some cases, but it's still an ugly stereotype.

In the Dragonlance setting, Minotaurs are people, plain and simple. They're people that appreciate straight talk, honesty, and common sense. They're like the beast races in the Elder Scrolls in that they're different than most people, and will generally want to keep mostly to themselves, but they have a whole civilization and a very strong naval tradition.

Personally, I love being able to play a minotaur - partially for RP reasons, but also partially for mechanical reasons. It's a nice alternative to a half-orc or half-ogre if you want a fearsome, beefy (no pun intended) non-human warrior.

Playing a minotaur gives you an excuse to take strange feats like "Scent" that you normally have to really grasp at straws for a valid concept reason to select. You get to be the scary guy that nobody wants to meet in a dark alley. A minotaur always has a thick fur coat on him, so if your DM gives you cold weather hazards you're already ahead of the curve. Depending on your campaign, they're often portrayed as having wide angle vision - bad for archery, but GOOD for spotting somebody trying to sneak up on you (A minotaur is never considered to be flat-footed).

Also, there is a racial ability that most people overlook and I've seen some DM's actually *disallow* because they thought it was too useful:

A minotaur is *never* lost. Ever. He always knows where he is, and how to get home. If you had this ability, you might choose to build labyrinthine lairs like they do.

I let the gods reward the presense or lack of morality if it makes sense for them to do so (and it usually does not), but that's their business. As DM, I prefer to simply let the dice fall where they will.

If I want to get right to the juicy bits I'll just narrate until we're where I want them to be.

Example: "You breeze through some minor traps that were so obvious that you wonder why they bothered. Then you foiled an attempted ambush by some minor adventurers that reminded a few of you of yourselves a few short levels ago - (fighter's name) rounded up their paltry pocket change and shouted "Next ales are on me!" Honestly the dungeon was beginning to look like a bust but then, thankfully, you find *insert destination or target here*"

I give fighters 4 skill points per level and d12 for hit dice. In all the years that I've been running Pathfinder, none of the many, MANY fighters in our games have ever requested additional balancing for their class.

I forgot to mention this, but in for a penny, in for a pound...

Though the setting is far from the "Knights in shining armor" stereotype that people think of when they imagine paladins, I think that Kevin Sorbo's character from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys would actually be a pretty good example of a paladin with some daddy issues.

The alignment system is one of the most misinterpreted concepts ever thought up in the long history of this hobby, and it will probably never be fixed or properly understood, so I say go ahead and make paladins of any alignment you need in order to feel right about your characters.

That said, I really think that if you *need* to make a paladin that can't be LG without being a moron or a complete ass, then you probably don't understand the alignment.

These guys are all about charisma and doing the right thing. Any "rule" that somehow encourages you to do the wrong thing is an incorrect rule, probably written by a guy who didn't understand alignment or paladins.

Once upon a time, there was this woman I had the hots for, but I found out that she was dating this guy that I knew (I really am going somewhere with this). I'd known this man for years, and jealousy got the better of me and I really wanted to dislike him or say something terrible about him... and I couldn't. At least, I couldn't if I were being honest. He was just that kind of guy - dealt fairly with people, had strong convictions but didn't force them down your throat, didn't judge, but also avoided spending time with people of questionable morals. Truthfully, he was exactly the kind of guy you'd want your daughter to date.

THAT is what a paladin is like. He may be a determined, crusading warrior against evil, but he's also the one that's so steadfast in his conviction that *simply having him nearby gives you courage*.

He may not approve of your intention to pickpocket every poor commoner in the local tavern. He'll forcibly object if you suggest gang-raping the farmer's daughter, but if you've proven yourself, you'll never have somebody more reliable or more formidable than him watching your back.

At the end of the day, if his high charisma score and willingness to put his money where his mouth is hasn't at least won over some grudging respect from you - if indeed you don't find yourself wishing that you could be a *little* more like him, then somebody is playing the paladin wrong.

Just sayin'.