Please help me understand the math for the telekinetic talents that allow you to perform combat maneuvers. The telekinetic maneuver and steal talents allow you to perform a maneuver at close range with a CMB equal to caster level-5 plus caster stat.
Why the -5?
Standard spells like hydraulic push that grant similar effects don't have that. I understand that you can use these talents all the time and with little risk since they won't be provoking AoOs due to the range, but being able to do something poorly every round is not much of an advantage.
Peasant Yangsheda grew up toiling in the fields beside his brothers and sisters where her grew up strong and happy. Possessed of a thirsty mind and wandering spirit, he balked at the idea of a lifetime of growing turnips and rice, and so when the local lord came recruiting soldiers, Yangsheda was the first to step forward.
As a young man Swordsman Yangsheda was too smart for his own good. While he was as skilled as any of the other conscript-soldiers but his sharp wit and laughing tongue saw him into much trouble with peers and officers alike. After an ill-considered incident involving a bottle of brewed reek and General Li’s saki, the disgraced Yangsheda found himself riding a pack mule to one of the frontier monasteries to begin his new life as a monk.
Accolyte Yangsheda took to his new role better than most expected. Philosophy and alchemy engaged his keen mind more than farming or soldiery ever had. It was during this chapter of his life that he learned of the prophecy of the sword of kings. His curiosity and wanderlust rekindled, he left the cloisters and libraries of the monastery and set out in search of the sword of kings.
After much searching and many adventures Yangsheda found the Seven Swordsmen, and was instrumental in foiling a plot to steal the sword, though the conlfict feft one of their members dead and Yangsheda gravely wounded. The remaining swordsmen saw the value in Yangsheda’s contribution and methodolgy and offered him a place in their order, presenting him with the slender blade Heaven’s Eyes.
And so for twenty years Scholar Yangsheda has been the archivist and teacher of the Seven Swordsmen, protecting the Sword of Kings with his intellect. His relentless pursuit of information has kept the group ahead of their enemies for decades. His network of contacts and informants let the Swordsmen come swooping down on potential thieves before their plots were even fully formed, and seemingly fade from existence before enemies can respond. Now in his fifties, Scholar Yangsheda sits his condsiderable girth upon his steed and rides into the field once more, deeply shamed by the sword’s recent theft.
Heaven's Eye:
A narrow Jian with glyphs of secrets kept and truths discovered carved up and down its length, it is said no man can hide his true self under the the reflection of Heaven’s Eye.
Suggested powers: Inspired sword-cane with powers to detect various things like magic, alignment, invisibility etc. I like the visual of planting the sword in the ground and setting up zone effects like alarm. Or abilities drawn from oracle’s revelations/domains/ schools of knowledge, lore, glyphs etc.
Feedback welcome, especially around crunch, and suggestions for special material for his sword.
Hrmm... I've hit a roadblock. The polymath has access to rather unappealing disciplines: Primal fury doesn't really fit the image of an intelligent and measured investigator, the poison themed steel serpent seems an odd choice for an archetype that gives up its poison based abilities, and solar wind doesn't help mesh with this particular campaign
Doesn't look like anyone's come to the table yet with a support character, so I think I'll try my hand at an investigator ( maybe polymath - still trying to figure out if getting a handful of POW maneuvers is worth losing an extract per level) or a monk(sensei)/fighter(lore warden) mashup
I've been eager to try E6 for a while now, and this campaign sounds really intriguing ... also a good excuse for me to finally check out the paths of war system. Might take me a few days to get a character concept posted though.
Metamorph question: The enhanced natural attacks ability states that it receives an enhancement bonus to natural attacks gained through evolutions. So, a 3rd lvl metamorph who gained natural attacks from another source would not be able to count them as +1 weapons?
The reason I ask is that at 2nd lvl metamorphs receive a bonus feat. One of their choices is aspect of the beast, which could lead to claws. So even those these claws were granted by another class feature they would mot benefit from the enhanced natural weapons class feature.
I'm curious to know if that was then intention of the design?
Thank you for running a fun and interesting game. You kept this boat afloat for almost three years!!! By far the longest PbP I've ever participated in. While I'm disappointed to see Johan's story come to an end, I want to thank you for all the hard work you've put into this game, and for helping me create one of the most memorable characters I've got to play in pathfinder.
Right, so creatures can't provide concealment, just cover. So the archer takes the -4 firing into melee penalty and the +4 to target's AC. The reach fighter has to deal with the +4 AC for cover. In both cases the cover is soft, so no ref save bonus
Now if the intervening PC were small size The GM could adjudicate it as partial cover and reduce the AC bonus to +2 right?
Okay lets imagine a situation where one character(PC1) is engaged in melee with a zombie. PC2 is standing 10 feet directly behind PC 1 and wants to take a ranged shot at the zombie. PC3 is beside and behind PC1 and armed with a reach weapon and wants to stab the zombie...
Relevant rules snips...
d20pfsrd wrote:
Shooting or Throwing into a Melee
If you shoot or throw a ranged weapon at a target engaged in melee with a friendly character, you take a –4 penalty on your attack roll.
d20pfsrd wrote:
Concealment
To determine whether your target has concealment from your ranged attack, choose a corner of your square. If any line from this corner to any corner of the target's square passes through a square or border that provides concealment, the target has concealment.
When making a melee attack against an adjacent target, your target has concealment if his space is entirely within an effect that grants concealment. When making a melee attack against a target that isn't adjacent to you, use the rules for determining concealment from ranged attacks.
d20pfsrd wrote:
Cover
To determine whether your target has cover from your ranged attack, choose a corner of your square. If any line from this corner to any corner of the target's square passes through a square or border that blocks line of effect or provides cover, or through a square occupied by a creature, the target has cover (+4 to AC).
When making a melee attack against an adjacent target, your target has cover if any line from any corner of your square to the target's square goes through a wall (including a low wall). When making a melee attack against a target that isn't adjacent to you (such as with a reach weapon), use the rules for determining cover from ranged attacks.
So, In a situation like the current one where PC2 is shooting directly through PC1 to attack the zombie he is fighting, a strict application of the above leads to a -4 to hit for firing at someone engaged in melee with an ally, +4 to the zombie's AC because it gets cover from PC1, and a miss chance because PC1 is partially concealing the zombie from view. PC3 would also suffer the AC bonus and miss chance because her reach weapon is treated as a ranged attack with regards to cover and concealment.
Now I know there are feats to mitigate some of the ranged penalties but it all seems rather punitive and restrictive, and I don't think I've ever played at a table that has enforced all those modifiers, but rereading the relevant rules seems that that is how it is intended.
I'm curious to know if I am interpreting the rules correctly and how other tables handle situations like this.
Yes, some of the zombies look positively shabby - badly rotted and mouldered.
Yes, the posts holding the logs could be pulled likely causing quite a bit of chaos.
I've been a bit generous with the info considering the current range. No one is lose enough to the barn right now to make out any of the voices within.
right, got it. Thanks for the math - that really helps put it in perspective. I was getting hung up on the fact that if I fail a save I suffer an effect but if I pass I take extra damage. Seems counter-intuitive at first.
So if I'm using a 20/x3 weapon and rolled a crit with a total of 21 against an opponent with an AC of 14, Id then roll...
severity:1d20 + 21 - 14 + 4 ⇒ (4) + 21 - 14 + 4 = 15
... which means I draw a bludgeoning card and use the light severity entry.
So the card I read said if the save was successful it instead deal bonus damage, which in this case would be 3d6. On top of max damage? That seems like a lot for a failed save. Especially at the character level we are playing at. Did I miss something?
The seeming description is in there, down at the bottom of background: "Tyv’s seeming is that of a wide eyed 15 year old human boy with a thick shock of untameable golden hair atop his head. This face he wears is that of the boy whose dreams he followed into this world. There is an ethereal innocent beauty to this boy’s face, which hints at the man he will now never become."
I figured survival +5 would be enough to handle water needs, but I can add a water skin or two to equipment and a rucksack or something for good measure. (I'll use the 10 gp from the reek accounting error to cover it).
However you want to roll with the wild magic is fine by me, as long as I'm not slowing down things for everybody else, nd getting some perceivable benefit from the trait choice I'm happy.
I think your "Minnesota Nice" and my "Canadian Sorry" are going to get along just fine :>
No objections about using an expanded source for the wild magic drawback. The Pandemonium's Pilot trait seems like it would be perfect, but I worry about slowing things down unduly; me triggering the trait, then you rolling some options, then waiting for me to choose one of those options could be pretty cumbersome in a PbP.
Re-examining the death sphere, I'm not really liking the options there much. I might just drop it altogether and reinvest in nature or Enhance. Just seems wrong to make a soul weaver without the death sphere though. I'll try to have everything finalized after work by end of day.
Background for my fey soul weaver is done. I'm having some trouble connecting him with the adventure and the rest of the group (part of that is me knowing nothing about Midgard), some any help there would be welcome.
Crunch, and a current personality sketch should be done soon. This is the first time I've really sat down and made a spheres of power character and I gotta say, it makes for a dizzying array of possibilities for character design.
Tyv:
The creature stared down at the boy with expressionless eyes. The boy exhaled his last breath; a steamy wisp in the cold night air. The creature grasped at it with long thin fingers but could not catch it. It cocked its head, confused. The boy had dreamed it into being and now the boy was dead – that couldn’t be right. It reached out and gently stroked the boys face. Slowly its translucent grey skin flushed pink. Its featureless face rounded into lips and nose and ears. The boy stood up from the frozen corpse at its feet and wandered deeper into the wintery woods, his blue eyes sparkling with wonder at all he beheld, as if it was his first night on earth.
Ten years after Ata and Borge’s son had vanished into the deep woods on a cold winter night, rumors of the Fair One had become more and more common amongst the scattered farms that bordered the wood. Some called him the Cobwebbed Child, or Breath-Stealer. Helga had even taken to calling him the Prince of Dolls when she told the story of how the flaxen haired imp had crept into her home and stolen her children’s playthings. she had seen him moving amongst the cairns of the western ridge. When Lars Skagson the logger was deep into his cups would rant about how he had awoken one morning to find the apparition hunched over the dead body of his old hunting dog. Frede the tanner swore to his grave that he had seen it, all claws and cobwebs, cavorting amongst the cairns on the western ridge with his wife Elga – who had died of palsy the previous spring.
But for every morbid, fearful tale there was another of hope or wonderment. Skagi the trapper should have died after that accident with the faulty bear-trap, but was found on the edge of the wood alive and well and babbling about the fair haired boy who, with nothing but leaves and forest silks to protect him from the cold, had come from the trees and saved his leg with a touch. The little Gunderson twins were lost in the deep woods for over a week then, against all common sense, were found tucked into their beds warm and well, each clutching a beaten and bedraggled wooden doll. When questioned, the children swore on Wodin’s beard that the dolls had guided them from the wood.
...can you guess where I'm going with loyalties based on the background? :>
Awesome, I'll have a finished submission by Friday, latest.
Given that it may be a 6 person group, I'll drop the demiurge idea in the interests of not cluttering the battlefield too much :>
What about a Fey ( In the Company of...) - hey, can't be the only human in the group! - soulweaver (life, death, darkness, warp) who is fascinated with what he will never have - a mortal soul, treating them alternately like child's playthings and the most delicate gifts in the realm?
Thanks very much for extending the deadline on this - would love a chance to apply if there is still room. Glancing through the thread I'm having trouble telling what the classes of the already selected characters are...What does the party still need?
I'd love to try a Taninim from In the company of dragons ( could have some cool RP potential with any Jotun in the group), or a Demiurge from Libre Influxis Communis ( though I'm not sure if the platonic philosopher vibe fits with the campaign setting - perhaps a thirteenth warrior angle?). However, if the party really needs a full caster or healer/buffer, I'd be happy to step into one of those roles instead.
Johan, I don’t think we can use such dice expression: 1d1d8 xD
Strangest thing about that. I noticed that it came up funny when I previewed, so I went back in and changed it but it wouldn't correct! I event pasted into a new post and rewrote the whole thing and IT WOULD NOT go away!
yep, yep, but what encounter in this campaign would be complete with out me nitpicking :>
We also, typically it seems, started out with some terrible rolls while the enemy managed to succeed on all of theirs. They managed to hit both of those dispel checks, and most of the concentration and saves checks we've thrown at them for example.
kevin_video, I'll second Lord_Hyperion's praise! I've enjoyed your recent blogs in particular. Sound's like you run a much higher powered campaign than I'm used to, but your changes have been insightful and enjoyable to read.
I started setting up an E6/P6 but then realised the completeness of the work you've done so far makes mine pale by comparison, and I don't really want to launch a campaign without seeing your conversions of at least the remaining base classes first!
Fingers crossed your'se still working on this awesome project!
Some feedback:
Jr. Annalist wrote:
1) I'd always felt the pair of ability improvement feats (ability training/ability advancement) fit nicely in the standard E6 and cleverly helped avoid the min-maxing of trying to get all odd ability scores (because it takes two feats to get +2). But I guess it can be viewed as just switching the min-maxing to trying to get all even attributes? Does it matter?
I don't think it matters. Someone wanting to min-max is going to find a work around no matter which way you go.
Jr. Annalist wrote:
Is the ability training too weak if it doesn't give some other advantage (the one currently in the P6 Codex rules seems cludgy)?
I like keeping it deliberately weak then having the payoff on the second investment. I'd even suggest weakening it further by removing the option to move the bonus from day to day ( this removes some "cludgyness" and simplifies bookkeeping)
Jr. Annalist wrote:
Do all of the abilities need to be treated the same? (Could some take one feat to advance, while others split the bonuses between two feats?)
My gut says yes. Treating them all the same allows players to design characters more freely and sets an even board for future system growth.
Jr. Annalist wrote:
What about giving an ability advancement every 10 epic advancements, like a signature feat, but without using up the signature feat slot?
ooh, I like this even beter! Frees up those advancements for more interesting thing, which since characters are growing so slowly, might be key in maintaining long term player interest
Jr. Annalist wrote:
2) <druid stuff>...Is it best to just go in and modify the advancement table here and make the signature feat be getting either the 7th level advancement or the 8th level hd/skill/feat, but not both?
That's a tough one. I think you've got the right of that they should be separated out.
Thanks for all the hard work you have put into this so far! Eagerly awaiting an update.
Hi, just finished reading through Fen of the Five Fold Maw and really enjoyed it, but I have some questions about the chase scene...
spoilers:
1: The initial setup. How far ahead of the horde does the party start?
2: Enemy movement. Does the horde automatically move forward 1 card per round or does it have to pass the challenge tests as well?
3: What happens exactly if the horde catches a PC, and how does a PC choosing to 'sacrifice himself for the greater good' actually slow the horde down any. Since each turn represents an hour, it seems like overrunning a single PC wouldn't make a dent in their overall travel time.
4: It states that characters with movement speeds higher or lower than 30 take a cumulative +/- 1 adjustment to challenge checks. The chase is at least 21 challenges long. That means that by the half way point, all those dwarf, halfling and gnome characters will be working with a -10 penalty! Conversely, the 7th lvl monk will be sailing through with a +20 bonus ?!? How did this work out in playtests?
I've been bouncing around various character ideas and I've got a hankering to play something I haven't had a chance to try before. So, at the risk of not heeding your warning on tasteful 3PP, what are your thoughts on making one of these: Rite's Draconic Exemplar
