Zolerim

Ipslore the Red's page

1,535 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 2 aliases.




1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

So, here's a couple of hypothetical situations. A witch uses misfortune to force a battle oracle with war sight to reroll initiative.

The relevant text:

"Anytime the creature makes an ability check, attack roll, saving throw, or skill check, it must roll twice and take the worse result."

"Whenever you roll for initiative, you can roll twice and take either result."

What happens? Does the witch force me to reroll what I would normally roll, meaning the 2d20 I normally use? This interpretation seems to result in me rolling 2 sets of 2d20 and taking the worse result of whichever two dice I choose using war sight. Or possibly picking either one of the worse two dice, depending on what order they apply in.

Does one negate the other, since they both tell me to roll dice and choose a specific one? If so, which one wins? This doesn't seem like a specific/general issue, since they're both specific about what I do with my roll.

Interpretation 1A: I roll 2 sets of 2d20 and get 11, 9 and 3, 14. With war sight, I pick 11 and 14. Then I must pick 11, since it's worse than 14.

Interpretation 1B: I roll the same, but misfortune applies first and now I must pick between 3 and 9.

Interpretation 2A: War sight negates misfortune. I roll 2d20 and pick which I like as normal.

Interpretation 2B: Misfortune negates war sight. I roll 2d20 and pick the worse one as specified by the hex.


What's the favorite non-equipment thing you've received or seen as loot? I've had fun reading the UE table, which has "gold and mithral baby rattle- 500 gp", "platinum baby rattle- 1000 gp", as well as an "ethereal tapestry" and impossible objects like a mithril Penrose triangle and am adamantine devil's fork all being more valuable than a god's breath. I haven't actually had occasion to use them, but the image of a great wyrm red dragon having a hoard entirely of baby rattles or an adventurer being told that the solidified breath of Norgorber, laden with secrets beyond mortal imagining, isn't valuable enough to buy back his family's tapestry Uncle Ben put in hock is just excellent.

My favorite vendor trash loot that I've actually used was probably the giant hoard of copper that required the players to figure out how to haul it all and who to sell it to, as well as the sugar-free not-Haribo gummi tigers that gave the druid severe diarrhea.


So, there's another thread about overpowered monsters that are no fun to fight due to cheap tactics like the sceaduinar's deeper darkness, lifesense, antilife shell, and enervation.

What powerful monsters are fun to fight? I've had good results with low-CR humanoids or PC races with class levels, especially themes spellcasters. The whip of insects line of spells was really cool.


So, long story short, my PCs have gotten their hands on 30 to 40 voidworms, and the current plan is to sell them to a magic university they're on relatively good terms with.

Voidworms are known to work as familiars, and they have: blindsense 30 feet, constant detect law, fast healing, immunity to acid, resistance to electricity and sonic, constant freedom of movement, moderate fortification, immunity to polymorph effects they don't want, a host of SLAs including commune, and the ability to change shape. The downside is their personality, which can be likened to an extreme case of ADD and solipsism.

Pseudodragons are 200gp a pop, have telepathy and better blindsense, and are tiny dragons. Parrots, falcons, and other such valuable mundane birds are 40 to 50 gold pieces. As far as I can tell, a voidworm would be somewhere between these two, but I'd like more opinions on this.


Rays have been stated to be a valid selection for Weapon Focus, and the Snap Shot line of feats lets you use a ranged weapon for an AoO. It seems to follow that selecting Weapon Focus (Ray) and then Snap Shot would allow you to cast a ray spell as an AoO within your minuscule threatened area.

Making one attack is a standard action, and casting one ray spell is usually a standard action. It seems to fit.

Any counterarguments? And would Combat Reflexes allow you to cast multiple spells for multiple AoOs?

Edit: The most important part of the question seems to be whether or not you're considered to be wielding your ray attacks.

Do you wield your rays only when you cast it, or whenever you might be capable of casting it? You could argue that they only exist when they're cast, or you could argue that you wield an ordinary weapon even when you're not swinging it.


Halloween's coming up, and my group is interested in some quick horror. What do you recommend? I hear Doom Comes to Dustpawn might be suitable.


The three spells I'm asking about: Spiders, centipedes, and ants.

Long story short: The effect is a whip, it's not target: personal or anything, and the spell doesn't explicitly say you have to be the one to wield it. The whip deals fixed damage and can't make a few combat maneuvers, but the real point is that it's a melee touch attach with 15-foot reach that nauseates foes, seemingly using the caster's save DC. It also poisons foes, but that's just frosting.

Can my theoretical druid Steve cast this spell and hand the created whip to Larry, his whip magus buddy and have Larry use it like he would a normal whip?


Exact rules text:

Quote:

A creature with immunities takes no damage from listed sources. Immunities can also apply to afflictions, conditions, spells (based on school, level, or save type), and other effects. A creature that is immune does not suffer from these effects, or any secondary effects that are triggered due to an immune effect.

Format: Immune acid, fire, paralysis; Location: Defensive Abilities.

Let's say we have a hypothetical cold-descriptor spell that explicitly deals no damage but inflicts the staggered condition. It is cast on a creature immune to cold but not immune to staggering, which fails its save. The immunity text specifically says that it only blocks damage, specific conditions, and secondary effects triggered due to an immune effect.

The cold-based staggering is neither damage, a specific condition that the creature is immune to, nor a secondary effect. Based off of the rules, would it be staggered or not?

And, in your own games, if the spell didn't explicitly have the cold descriptor but was based on cold in the fluff and said the target was... say, covered in ice, would you rule cold-immune targets immune to it? Just looking for opinions on the second one, not strictly rules.


For example, greater magic fang has a mythic version and states it can be made permanent. If I cast mythic greater magic fang, then use a scroll of permanency, what happens? Is it wasted? Does it just refuse to activate? Does only the non-mythic version get permanencied? Does the whole thing get permanencied?


I'm aware of the ripsaw glaive, but I mean the type powered by diesel/electricity/other fuel of choice without reach.


Let's say I decide to go crit-fishing TWF with a kukri and a pick, and use Pummeling Style. I'm sure people are familiar with the crit benefits of the feat- and if not, check out the ACG kneejerk thread- but what happens if I threaten and confirm a critical hit with my light pick? Do I multiply the entire damage by 4?


Tired at the moment, so I don't have much to work with right now. So far, here's what I have for a PF version of Väinämöinen:

A Words of Power bard/Loremaster PrC with 10 mythic tiers and Divine Source. Bard gives him his longsword proficiency, the ability to be a decent melee fighter, and his legendary performance. 10 mythic tiers and Divine source give him some of his stronger abilities without having to multiclass, such as immortality, Artifice domain SLAs, and so on. Loremaster gives him full spellcasting progression, lore, greater lore, and secrets.

I don't think he's very high-level compared to a 20th-level character, but his mythic tier is probably high. I think he'd be an Archmage, maybe Dual Pathed into Champion. He'd probably have Display of Intelligence.

From what I've seen, he used a little conjuration, illusion, divination, and abjuration, plus a lot of transmutation and moderate amounts of necromancy, more in the separation of body and soul aspect than the undead aspect. He didn't use evocation or enchantment, relying purely on his legendary performance to convince people.

Anything else? Can't think of a specific build, but he was skilled in melee and probably set in E8.


I allow Dreamscarred Press' version of psionics in my games. One campaign limits magic to up to 6th-level spells because of the story and because I wanted to see if full casters were still ridiculously powerful at higher levels compared to aprtial casters when they no longer had 7th-9th level spells. Two players in this campaign use psionic classes, with one PC being a psion.

Recently, it came up that this means that eventually the psion will come into 7th-9th spell level territory. 7th-9th level powers are nonfunctional, like spells are. That was the simple bit. The other bit is augmentation. Most of the case, augments are meant to allow powers to scale like spells would. With the rules I'm using, a level 20 wizard still has CL 20 for duration, CL-dependent variables, and the like. It seems to make sense to allow powers to augment like they normally would, then. But a few powers' augments effectively upgrade them to equivalents of higher-level spells, like psionic dominate person (mind control) becoming dominate monster.

How should I handle this and why? Ban augments, allow augments, allow augments on a case-by-case basis? I'm currently going to do the last one if it comes up, but I'm not absolutely confident. I'd like to know what people with experience with high-level psionics think, and I'd like to know if there are any other augments like mind control's I should know about.


Vital Strike, Improved Natural Attack, and all the other options that modify natural attacks and attack actions. Which, if any, can modify a witchfire's attack?

Created this so as not to derail the over/under CRed thread.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

What on Earth is this?
I'm shamelessly stealing this concept from Landon Winkler and Ashiel. It's a bit of a misnomer, I admit. The goal isn't to make more oversexed woman. The goal is to share stories of women who managed to be attractive without being cliche or flashing their cleavage, and to make more.

As GMs, we add NPCs all the time. Nameless faces in the crowd become important parts of the plot, even in APs.

But adding a female romantic interest takes a different sort of finesse, especially if the GM isn't part of the target audience.

So, I propose we start gathering some examples of ones that we've used that have worked. That way, even those of us who find the idea of being attracted to men faintly confusing, can drop them in like any other NPC.

Build a Cheesecake?
Okay, maybe "cheesecake" isn't exactly right here. After all, the point is to avoid cheesecake and still remain viable romantic options.

You can't go wrong with the name, though. Thanks to Ashiel and Landon Winkler for the name :)

Keep in mind when you're showing off your creativity that these are for APs. Have a great romantic rival pirate captain you added for Skull and Shackles that inevitably led to romance? Did your PCs pair off with ambassadors from neighboring kingdoms in Kingmaker? Does your party keep inexplicably falling in love with shopkeepers?

Cheers!
Ipslore


I'm not sure if this belongs in Suggestion/Homebrew or here, but since I haven't thought of a solution yet and I'm asking for input, I think it fits better here.

Shadow barbs, flame blade, icicle dagger, and the like. The flavor is great, but they tend to be, well, crappy. Almost always cleric/oracle and sorc/wiz, almost never for the magus, and usually too high a spell level to come in handy at low levels.

The characters that get access to them have almost no use for them. The characters that could use them can't get access to them. They might see use if a melee cleric or oracle needs a backup weapon, but that requires sacrificing a spell known and memorized or a spell slot.

You could make a magic weapon based on them, but since all they do is make a temporary magic weapon permanent versions of them tend to be somewhat boring.

How would you make these spells viable without making them must-have? I've considered making them options for certain races' SLAs or feats, but they seem too good to be SLAs or prerequisite-less feats, but not good enough to warrant level prerequisites, especially since they'd have to be 1/day with a duration of only 1 minute a level.


5 people marked this as a favorite.

Specifically, PrCs being the best options forever, 100 base classes and 500 PrCs, a zillion special materials, and so on.

I ask because of the paper-bound abomination known as Inner Sea Gods and the monstrosity known as Evangelist. From what I have seen of the book, namely Walter's guide to it, it seems to be almost universally terrible from a balance standpoint. Especially evangelist. You lose one level- one fricking level-of your class, and it's easy to get a feat to bring class features back to hit dice. Then you get 100% free features for another 9 levels.

And then exalted has straight spellcasting progression, permanent protect from ______, AND a free domain.

Sentinel is disgustingly cheesy as well. Bonus feats, free +1s to hit and damage, fricking LEADERSHIP for free, +4 to initiative DR, Diehard, and cure critical wounds as a swift action on yourself?

Am I overreacting or should this book never have been written and its authors terminated posthaste?


5 people marked this as a favorite.

After all, thanks to equality, there should be one of these too.

Post your stories, thoughts, opinions, and anything else about being heterosexual and playing games.

I'll start: Today, I played a game. My sexuality did not affect my enjoyment of the game in any significant way. I made a post about it anyway.

Does anyone else have something to contribute?


Is there any way to get wild empathy without dipping Druid or Ranger? A class that can use Charisma would be preferred for optimal diplomacy.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Much like the X spells thread, Youthful Appearance is the only Y spell. This is deeply and inherently bigoted. To fix the issue, let us make our own.

Same rules:

- It has to be a real, correctly spelled word. "Y Live", "Y Are You Screaming", and "Yvebvrhgthrfvdvdf Ray" are not valid.
- It can't be a name. "YAHWEH's Glare" does not count.
- It has to be relevant. "Yellow Beam" is not valid for a spell that has nothing to do with the color yellow.
- It can't reuse words. If someone already posting something with "X-Ray", you can't use "X-Ray".
- It doesn't have to be balanced, but if you can make it balanced-ish if you're in the mood and stuff.

I'll start.

Yielding Prison
School: Conjuration Sorcerer/Wizard 5
Components V, S, M (a cube of grapefruit Jello)
Duration 1 round/level
Target: Targeted creature
Range: close (25 feet + 5 feet/level)
Save: Reflex negates SR: No

A five-foot-square cube of grapefruit Jello appears around the victim, taking up all free space in the square. It has hardness 10, 10 HP/CL and is immune to bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage. The imprisoned creature takes half of all damage taken by the prison. The imprisoned creature must hold its breath or begin suffocating as gelatin floods its lungs.

The prison takes half again damage from bite attacks and its usual resistances do not apply. The imprisoned creature does not take damage from bite attacks. However, the creature making the attack must make a Fortitude save or take 1d6 Constitution damage as it swallows the goo.

The gelatin created is not kosher.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

I don't have a problem with anything, I just wanted to reassure concerned posters that yes, sometimes parties do just fine. They're faffing about in the City of Brass, and having some fun with not speaking the language, a running gag of throwaway gag gnome NPCs, a baby ebony cube, and trying to impersonate a, and I quote: "much-feared league of spies and torturers."

The last one was not particularly well-thought-out, but fortunately the other PCs were able to stop the PC in question, and all is well.

Discuss lack of problems here.


Does the witch's child-scent hex detect fetuses, even if the mother isn't obviously pregnant?


What's your favorite D&D critter that didn't make it into 3.X, 4e, and/or Pathfinder?

I'm fond of the scalamagdrion.


So a NPC now has a baby ebony gelatinous cube as a sort of pet. As of yet, the only name I can think of has been "Simon".

What would you name a pet ooze? No need to mention Japanese adult films, those are already assumed.


What adventure path or modules would you recommend for someone more interested in puzzles, mysteries, and investigative work than straight combat? I remember there being a find-the-werewolf mystery in carrion Crown.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm trying to introduce a friend of mine to Pathfinder, and we're planning on doing a solo campaign of Shattered Star. We're starting with the first book, and if that goes well, continuing to the rest of the path. No details at the moment, but I plan on having him be about 2 levels above what's suggested for a full party- starting at level 3, progressing to 4 when it suggests level 2, and so on.

I might also use the mythic rules for his character. If I do, would adding some mythic templates, ranks, or tiers to a few encounters overwhelm a single character, or do you think an overleveled optimized PC could handle it?

All Paizo-published stuff on d20pfsrd is acceptable.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

So. When summoned, Kelpie's Wrath the herald of Besmara the Pirate Queen demands recompense, of course. One way to pay seems... odd, no?

Skulls and Shackles 1: The Wormwood Mutiny pg 97 wrote:

When called by mortals, it demands treasure as payment

for its services, preferring chests full of gems and gold
coins. It has a lecherous, voyeuristic streak, however, and
has been known to lower its price if arrangements are made
for mortals to perform carnal acts on its decks—while it
telepathically murmurs approvingly.

I'm told that despite various threads on succubi and poorly disguised ribald jokes, these are still family-friendly boards, so I won't spell anything out. I'm sure most posters are old enough to figure things out for themselves, so the question to discuss is "How does that work for a living ship?"

I personally have no idea. Portholes, maybe?


I saw a post some time ago about how a mythic blaster is significantly more powerful thanks to Mythic Disintegrate. I'm not entirely sure I agree, especially since Channel Power applies to an Intensified Maximized fireball just as well. Let's say you cast that at 13th level.

The channel power maximized intensified fireball does something like 145 damage in a spread, half if your target(s) somehow make their throw. This is most of a CR 13 creature's hit points, and equal to a CR 11 creature's hit points.

The channel power disintegrate deals, on average, 204 damage and maybe some Con damage if it's not immune to that to one target. 24 of that is overkill and wasted, especially if you did enough Con damage to lower the HP per HD. If it makes the save, then it takes half da-- no, sorry, it takes 33 damage and 1 Con damage, which does nothing per RAW on ability damage.

So, if you're facing one CR-equivalent opponent and you're absolutely certain that it won't make its save, then the disintegrate will deal more damage, and more than likely overshadow the rest of the party when you one-hit the bossfight or whatever it was. The fireball makes you look awesome while you take out the mooks or leave the BBEG just enough HP for the rest to deliver a nicely gory deathblow.

What's so great about disintegrate, mythic or not, and more generally, is building a mythic blaster any different than "take Brewer's blaster and slap Channel Power on it"?


To avoid derailing the Succubus Profane Gift thread, does charm person make a target forget or otherwise forgive past offenses including but not limited to sleeping with attractive relatives of theirs such as spouses, attempted murder, larceny, and theft of favored foodstuffs while they were eating lunch? Or do such acts count as threatening the charmed person and breaking the spell?

Personally, I suspect that they don't, otherwise the clause about currently being threatened by the caster or the caster's allies would automatically make the spell null and void instead of merely providing a +5 bonus.


For boredom's sake, I am building a character for maximum retaliatory damage. Stuff that goes "Anyone who strikes the character with a melee weapon, unarmed strike, or natural weapon takes 1d6 damage."

The hyperboreal robe, bloodflame ring, and hamatula hide are what I've been able to find so far.

All Paizo books are open, PC races only, assume unlimited wealth.


A player with the Beyond Morality universal path ability is interested in becoming a demon in the future. The rituals needed to do so can be found here. Beyond Morality's exact text can be found here.

The problem is that the first demon transformation ritual specifies that you must be or become chaotic evil and Beyond Morality explicitly says that you have no alignment whatsoever. It specifies that you ignore alignment limitations for spellcasting and classes. The demon transformation ritual is not a class.

Now, by strict RAW, the player is ineligible to become a demon. I'm aware of RAW. I want to find out how others would rule this in a non-PFS home game.

The argument for it is that it's likely RAI that Beyond Morality is meant to let you ignore any and all alignment requirements, not just classes, and this is an extreme corner case.

The argument against it is that outsiders, such as demons, are literally made of their alignments, which is why they have the chaotic and evil subtypes. The chaos and evil to make a demon has to come from somewhere, so a non-chaotic evil character is literally incapable of undergoing the transformation.

Which one do you favor, and if you favor the second argument, would you be open to the idea of adding external sources of chaos and evil, such as spells with the chaos and evil descriptors, like chaos hammer and unholy aura, or creatures with the chaotic and evil subtypes or alignments?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

So, I was thinking about the mysterious stranger as a NPC, remembered that a mysterious, charming stranger is often exactly what succubi start out as, and decided to go TWF just for kicks.

It's starting to seem somewhat viable, since succubi are always relevant, and they have decent Dex and high Cha. Would the Mysterious Stranger archetype actually be worth it with grit, Focused Aim, and Stranger's Fortune being Cha-based, or should I use a different archetype?

EDIT: Focused Aim eats swift actions desperately needed for reloading, so Mysterious Stranger is looking less and less viable.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Why does everyone insist on my character giving a bloody speech every time he does something important? He's a barbarian, actions are more important than words. Why shouldn't I be able to do nothing but smash baddies, grab treasure, and bask in my rightfully-deserved adulation and wenches? It's perfectly "in-character", and video games work just fine with that model, after all. I'm a heroic fighter, not a wussy talker.

I just feel that people shouldn't be able to try to ruin my fun by making me think about anything other than how to optimize AM BARBARIAN and which spells to sunder first.


How would you try to build a viable non-tetori grappler at higher levels? For the purpose of this exercise, ignore things like freedom of movement and at-will teleportation that many monsters have. I'm more concerned about how to counteract the ever-rising CMD.


So after all the recent threads, I decided to save everyone time. Now you don't have to worry about your griping being relevant to the thread or pretending you care about other people's opinions, because they're not relevant either.

I'll start- I don't like that the only really cool Paizo prosthetic limb system is evil- demonic implants.

Also, I'm having a lazy Sunday and when I use only my sheets I'm too cold and when I use my blankets I'm too hot.


Since I don't feel like taking up space in the thread about falling damage, here's a new thread. Flesh to stone, as an example, says that it turns you into a mindless, inert statue, which does suggest that you become an object. The important part is whether you gain a hardness of 8 and reduce damage by half but lose the ability to make saving throws and Acrobatics checks like a normal stone object would.

As an example, let's say that someone is petrified, then somehow he triggers a trap that requires a Reflex saving throw to avoid some damage. You could argue that since sleeping characters and characters who unknowingly drink a harmful potion also get to make saves, a petrified character still can even though he is mindless, since being able to react doesn't seem to be required to make a save. On the other hand, he's an immobile statue now, so you could argue that he doesn't get to save, he just halves the damage and deducts his hardness.


One of my players would like to play a caster based around cold spells and dispelling. He is relatively new and hasn't developed the concept beyond the theme.

Since I'm lazy and busy with a homebrew campaign, does anyone have any particularly effective or flavorful ideas? There'll be a lot of fire-based encounters, if that helps.

We're discussing attempting to counter [fire] spells with [cold] spells, so if anyone knows if there's any RAW ways to do that it'd be a great help.


One of my players is trying to use the minor metamorphosis psionic power to give himself a burrow speed and investigate a sand dune.

Given that it explicitly doesn't make tunnels unless the description specifically says it doesn't, it doesn't seem like it does. On the other hand, none of the burrowing creatures that I can think of have no breath or hold breath. If it doesn't, then it seems like they'd all suffocate or have to surface very often, which seems to defeat the point of a burrowing creature.

Edit- Burrow doesn't grant the ability to breathe underground, so it looks like the psionic power wouldn't either. Still curious about creatures with a natural burrow speed, though.


I am currently running a Skype campaign in a homebrew setting where the gods have left Golarion in the distant past, the face of the world has changed, and the PCs have to find or become the new gods. Mature themes may appear, especially since one of the players is currently pregnant and planning on becoming a succubus.

Is anyone interested in such a campaign?


Since a search of the forums didn't turn up anything:

Adamantine allows you to ignore 20 points of hardness when "sundering weapons or attacking objects".

Gloves of Shaping allow you to treat anything with hardness 8 or less like soft clay, or, and this is the relevant bit, treat an object as having "half as much hardness when attempting to damage or reshape them."

Now, my question: if you made a pair of the gloves out of adamantine, would you ignore 20 points of hardness, since "attempting to damage" is logically the same thing as "attacking" objects? If so, would you apply it before or after determining whether the gloves ignore or halve hardness?

And since a wall of force and similar effects have a hardness of 30, would you say that it goes (30/2)-20, in which case it would become 0 and therefore able to be shaped like clay, or (30-20)/2?

Gender

Male