Jamesui's page

Is there any chance the data can be released after the survey is done? I'd love to see what insights might be gleaned.

I took a long break from Pathfinder in general and painting minis and PFS in specific. As a semi-regular GM, I'd like to get back into both by painting up the critters I'm liable to use at the table. Once I get through my backlog of skeletons, zombies, goblins, and orcs, I'd like to paint up some iconics for pregen players and humanoid opponents as necessary.

With that in mind, I'd like to know if anyone has a feel for the most commonly-played iconics/pregens in PFS. Kyra's obvious, particularly when run by GMs for a three-person table, but beyond that, I'm less certain than I hope you guys might be.

I think that allowing a casting of mage armor to cancel out the incorporeal creature's ability to pass into solid objects is too powerful. If I can just cast Mage Armor on a ghost to "lock" it in a room, then I've used a first level spell to defeat a powerful ability.

This especially becomes an issue when a necromancer PC or a shadowdancer with a shadow companion wants to buff his incorporeal pal. I do not think that allowing mage armor to work "normally" on a shadow companion breaks the game, considering how few buffs you can give your pal.

Mage Armor can't be used offensively though. It's a harmless spell. If you don't want it, it fizzles, full stop.

Suppose we have Gary the Ghost. He, like most ghosts, most of the time, is incorporeal, so he can move through walls and such.

Suppose a friendly caster sets up Gary the Ghost with some Mage Armor. This force armor is decidedly not insubstantial, and can indeed ward off all sorts of physical attacks. Does this armor, which can rebuff arrows and blades, suddenly let walls and the ground to pass unobstructed?

RAW, there's nothing to say it should get in the way, but common sense, and the intent of spells like Force Anchor would suggest that force effects manifesting in physical forms should anchor incorporeal subjects within a fluid medium (i.e. air or water).

Secondly, do attacks made with ghost touch weapons wielded by incorporeal foes resolve as touch attacks, and if not, do ghost touch weapons similarly anchor their wielders? They are called out as effectively being both corporeal and incorporeal. Ghost touch armor lacks that bit of language and specifically says that its wearers can still move through solid objects.

Liking the new guide. One question so far which I can't yet see the answer to:-

With GM Star rerolls - is it one reroll per star per scenario or one reroll per star which when used are then gone? Also I assume you can never reroll the same roll more than once?

Surely it's one per star total. I've only got two stars, nearly three, and I can already see it being really hard to deal with a PC who can reroll even thrice per session. Imagine dealing with a character who can reroll six bad saves or confirmation rolls or whatnot every scenario!

Now that I've a timeline for how long the Beginner's Box backorder is scheduled to take, I would like to remove the Inner Sea Faiths book from this order so I can order it from another source. I can wait plenty on the modules. I'd prefer to have this particular book sooner.

To be clear, I wish it removed and not moved to its own order.

Thanks in advance. You guys have always been amazingly helpful.

I've seen this come up in a few scenarios where other players assured me their optimized skill character could use their modifier in the disguise skill to disguise other players' characters. I was a little iffy on this as a player, and iffier still when I ran the same scenario, but I didn't really want to argue the point because we didn't have the time for it.

I'm running a similar scenario soon, and would like a clearer answer on this. Nowhere in the description of the disguise skill does the CRB mention disguising other characters. Everything refers to the user of the skill as the disguised party. Is there some expansion or errata that makes disguising others kosher?

Thanks a bunch, all. Much appreciated.

Hello Jamesui,

We have sold down on the Beginner Boxes we have right now. A reprint has been ordered and right now we estimate we will have it and be fulfilling orders in May.

I understand. I'd combined the Beginner's Box freebie with a standard order before I realized how delayed the Box would be. So as to not delay the standard order, I'd prefer to fork the Beginner's Box back to its own order so that the main course arrives in a timelier fashion.

Whoops! I forgot to mention that I had also already added the Blood of Elements book as well. :) I'll go ahead and send you an updated confirmation email for the order so you can look over it to verify that all the correct changes have been made. If anything needs to be fixed, just let me know and I'll get it taken care of right away.

Otherwise, you should be all set! The order will remain pending until we receive more of the Beginner Box, and then everything should ship out all together. If you need the order changed any time before shipment, just let me know and I should be able to assist you. Otherwise, I'll be glad to help with any further questions you may have.

Thanks again, have a great weekend!
Katina

I'm afraid I misrepresented my intentions.

If possible,knowing now how back-ordered the beginner's box will be, I'd prefer to re-split it off and just pay the separate shipping.

Thanks for the help and the heads-up.

The Beginner's Box is a bit of an accidental acquisition - didn't realize there was a physical add-on in the humble bundle. The box is of limited use to me, and I've been drawing dead so far asking friends if they knew anyone new to Pathfinder who'd appreciate it, so it's not a high priority at all. We can let that order sit for a long while.

I will confirm I only wanted one of the miniature cases. I don't know how I picked up two. I still want the second unit replaced with the Blood of the Elements book.

Thanks again for your assistance.

Thanks. I wasn't aware.

Unfortunately, I also wasn't aware when I did fire off the piggybacking order that I'd ordered an item in duplicate and that one of the items had a dreaded 4-18 business day ship estimate on it. I've had bad experiences with such items holding up large orders before, so I was wondering if there was some wizardry that could be done to swap out those items for different ones (in order to maintain the $100 threshold for discounted shipping).

On Order #3852420, could the Gemini dice and the second chessex miniature case be swapped out for a hard copy of Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Elements and a set of the red frosted chessex die? If I've crossed my t's and dotted my i's properly this time, that should be everything on an estimated 1-7 day schedule and the total for the tangible goods should still be above $100.

Is there any way to combine Beginner's Box from the Humble Bundle with standard order to save on shipping? If so, I'd prefer to load up on a few things before firing the Beginner's Box off.

As a relatively new PFS GM and player, I almost always like running into missions that expand on past successes, where the story told in the prequel can really enhance one's enjoyment of the follow up. Good examples, even if not direct sequels, would be playing the Horn of Aroden after Library of the Lion, in which you...

Are there any other scenarios that pull this off well, whether playing the scenarios in question with the same character or with a low-tier alt before the higher-tier main?

Additionally, and specifically, is there a follow-up to the Horn of Aroden? If so, I kinda want to see if I can't integrate it and other scenarios dealing with the Crusades into a "heroes of another story" style side-campaign for a runthrough of Wrath of the Righteous I'm organizing for some friends.

Hail Mary bump before the newer order ships unaltered.

So sometime in the last two weeks or so my order #3723674 went from "4-18 days to ship" to "unknown time frame."

I've just placed another order #3764354 in the waning hours of the non-mint sale. Is there any possibility to peel off the items responsible for the shipping delay into their own order to be delivered as a happy surprise in some unknown time frame and splice in the items from #3764354 onto the earlier #3723674?

With the exception of the messageboards, I'm having incredible difficulty doing anything on the Paizo website right now. Most store pages are taking thirty seconds to a minute to even load, and anything behind the sign-in wall (e.g. 'My Downloads'), in addition to my shopping cart, simply errors out when I try to sign in.

I was really hoping to order a few more things from the non-mint sale before it ends today. If this is not isolated to me (doubtful, considering the rest of the web seems to be doing fine from my vantage), is it a known issue? You guys getting DDoSed or something?

Thanks for looking into that. Apologies for the testiness. I'm good with cancelling that one mini for now.

With an expected ship time of 1-18 business days, this order is sitting at day 16 with no updates. I'd rather not wait until Wednesday to sort out if there is something in particular holding this up. If it's going to take much longer, I think I'd prefer to just cancel it and resolve to submit orders only for items I'm willing to wait a month for.

So I signed up to run a few tables at Pacificon this weekend, one of them for children 12 and under. Does anyone have experience with or advice on running such a game beyond watching my language? I imagine a full table of children poses novel difficulties in terms of keeping things simultaneously focused and on point but also animated and engaging. I know I wasn't exactly a paragon of attention span at 12.

Or at 21. Or now, ya doofus.

So, yeah, pointers?

EDIT: I don't think this belongs in the PFS forum because I hope that the same principles for running a Society table for kids should apply outside that context as well.

1) The Experiment
2) The Professional
3) The Vengeful
4) The Ambitious
5) The Artist
6) The Leader

Le point, le RSS.

Ack. This is embarrassing. I ended up biting the bullet and booking a trip to PacCon, so I'll be doing this live. Gonna have to withdraw my name so someone else can play.

Sure Jamesui. One question though: it seems that Karovna Sorex is a Core character, isn't she? This is a non-core game, so if she's core you'll need another character to apply.

Core start, more like. Gives me more flexibility in signing up to the low-tier games. My FLGS runs Core and Non-Core each monday in tandem, and the latter tends to fill up quicker. Wrote her up core here because that was the game I was applying for. My current Warhorn signup schedule shows her breaking core heading into L2.

The intent is to go Dark Delver for flavor, anyway. Decidedly not core.

It'd be easier to grok this if the line in the Acrobatics definition said something like "you provoke an AoO from that enemy" or "you provoke as normal." But it doesn't. It's just a naked "you provoke." So what I'm really wondering is whether this is a case of specific overriding general, and in the specific case that an enemy blocks you from tumbling through his square, that naked provoke lets everyone have at.

All that being said, the same thing applies to your quoted text. You try to use acrobatics to move through an opponent's space but fail the Acrobatics check so you provoke from the opponent and from everyone else who threatens your space.

I think this more or less addresses what I'm asking.

There is no reason to think you would provoke for "failing to enter".

Please read the quoted text in the OP.

If we were tumbling past everybody, that would hold without question. That is not the situation I outlined. Per the quoted text, it seems that when you fail to tumble through a square, you don't provoke for leaving the threatened square. After all, it is entirely possible the occupier doesn't threaten that square. You provoke for failing to enter the occupier's square. The question is not whether you provoke from the adjacent enemy for leaving his threatened square. It's whether you provoke from the adjacent enemy for failing to enter the occupied square.

I acknowledged that. The question is whether the provocation noted in the quote in my OP is limited to the occupier of the square or is free for any threateners to capitalize on.

The ambiguity comes from the middle ground this character's check fell in. Against two abreast enemies, he tried to move through one of them. Failed that check, but he beat the CMD of the other defender. Does the other defender still get an AoO, i.e. does he provoke for failing to tumble through even when he doesn't provoke for tumbling past?

...

If you attempt to move through an enemy’s space and fail the check, you lose the move action and provoke an attack of opportunity.
...

Is that provocation only from the enemy occupying the space you attempted to move through or do you provoke outside the normal moving-through-threatened-square paradigm from anyone who threatens you? RAW, I'd lean towards an open-ended provocation. RAI, I'd lean towards only provoking an AoO from the occupier. This came up just now in an online PFS scenario, so there's that usual extra level of rules stickler-ing to account for.

I'm on board, though I'll need to figure out Roll20. If it's easier than cluster engineering, I should be fine.

Can I take PJP's slot?

I've only one char in tier now (Canpa One-Eye, Warpriest of Milani, ranged spec), but I imagine in three months she'll be a tier up and another character (Karovna Sorex, less-dumb barbarian) solidly L3 or possibly L4.

Added. Definitely looking forward to this.

Dotting. I don't know if I'd be up for the entire length, but I'd definitely like to dip my toes into the PbP pool. I will commit to all parts of a numbered arc if I start one, though.

I've 3 core characters spec'd in HeroLab that I still need to export here in part or in full. Human Barbarian, Elven Archer Cleric of Desna, or Gnome Illusionist, and if I've got a foot in the door will choose once I've got a better sense of the characters depending on what I think will be most interesting with my comrade's characters and builds.

I've done statless PbP ages ago when my prose was purpler, but I may need some handholding for the technical details during the first scenario.

I'm five years into Pathfinder but only five sessions into PFS. Suffice to say, I'm hooked, and now I find myself in a compounded conundrum. At each of my local dealers FNGS's, I'm midway into a multipart series (Devil we know part 2, quest for perfection part 1), and a sudden business trip has me unable to make the next one, and future volatility at work might see me cut off from my supplier anyway. I think an online campaign would be perfect for at least the withdrawal. If by chance anyone's running either of Quest for Perfection 2 or Devil We Know III, I'd be delighted.

Alternatively, a decent second prize would be to buckle down and GM a scenario or three. I'd be comfortable with either of the two one-offs I've done (the Infernal Vaults or From Under Ice, particularly the latter) or running through Quest for Perfection or The Devil We Know, provided the former not progress to part two before I can play and then prep it on and around the 28th and the latter similarly not progress past the second part before the 27th.

Mapping would be based in gdocs. I'd roll initiative and trust you guys with the rest of your character sheet. I'll strive to keep things brisk during evenings and weekends, but if things go at a more leisurely pace, it'd still be better than the status quo, and might allow us the temporal freedom to inject role playing into our roll playing if the players would like it.

Any takers?

(Any providers? I'm shaking here, man.)

Regardless, I'd appreciate words of warning or encouragement.

For quick reference:

I see a lot of Warpriest guide posts about quickening the travel blessing for a teleport pounce. While I'd love to build towards that (full disclosure - for PFS), I don't see that flying per RAW. Dimensional hop normally requires a move action, not a standard action to activate. The weird interactions between the costs of quickening and the variable costs of the teleport also make me thing the Devs had this in mind and were aware the combo wouldn't stick. For example, to travel 40 feet, would you expend two uses of fervor plus one to quicken or do you expend 4 uses total, doubling the base cost? On the other hand, this interpretation does lead to the perverse outcome that the ability would be better if it were more strenuous to activate normally.

I'd love to hear the hive mind's thoughts on this. While a "yay" would be strictly mechanically superior to what I'm building towards now, it would also require dropping some fluff I'm rather attached to.

So I've been doing tabletop games off and on for about 7seven years and pathfinder for fourish, almost always as a GM in some pretty heavily houseruled settings/rulesets. I've recently started as a player in PFS and signed up to GM a scenario (3.19: The Icebound Outpost) at the end of August.

I imagine I'll have about ten scenarios as player under my belt by then. Combined with a couple years of on-off GMing, should that prove sufficient experience to run a PFS game?

What sort of preparation goes into GMing a PFS scenario above and beyond what you'd do for a home campaign? I've never actually run premade scenarios before, meaning I could always make stuff up if anything went off-rails.

In short, o veteran pfs GMs, help me not suck in my pseudo-debut in two months.

Here is the thread for homebrewing the subterranean race that should be haunting/stalking my players

So I'm crafting some critters to act as the main, and probably only, enemies in an upcoming trek my players will be taking through an uncharted road built by ancient Dwarves in a time predating all current records. I kinda want to make it scary.

These creatures derive from a mutant strain of dwarves born deformed and savage of parents who had fled their ancestral keeps when their experimentation in the arcane unleashed something upon the world.

I'm calling these things Childers.

For (relative) simplicity, I'm opting for only two critters (for now), a childer male and childer alpha. The obvious omission will find a way into the story in a slightly less near future.

The males are horde attackers with stunted legs and long, powerfully muscular arms who pin their prey with claws before tearing the throat with teeth dripping with anticoagulant saliva. It is my intention that they be most dangerous against isolated targets but otherwise easily dispatched when players cover for each other (i.e. their attack-grab-pin-bite routine allows ample time for the grapplee to escape or an ally to knock off the grappler). Furthermore, I went one-up on the standard light blindness by making them outright afraid of the light, so that a wave can be slowed to a trickle with the right amount of daring and planning.

The Alpha, larger, lankier, and yet stronger, possesses more of a savage cunning, and skirmishes with its prey, rending weapons, armor, and light sources so that its smaller kin can attack without reprisal, before fleeing to recuperate via fast healing.

Without further ado, my first attempts at statting these things:

Childer Male
CR ? XP ?
N Medium Monstrous Humanoid
Init+1; Senses Darkvision 60 ft., Scent; Perception +1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----

DEFENSE

AC 15, Touch 12, Flat-footed 13 (+2 Dex, +3 Nat)
HP 15 (2d10+4)
Fort +2, Ref +4, Will +2
Weaknesses: Light Blindness*, Photophobia

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., Climb 20 ft.
Melee 2 Claws +5 (1d4+3 plus Grab), Bite +0 (1d6+1 plus 1 bleed)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----

STATISTICS

Str 16, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 3, Wis 12, Cha 5
BAB +2, CMB +5 (+9 Grapple), CMD 16
Feats: Sure Grasp
Skills: Climb +15, Perception +1, Stealth +5 (+11 underground)
Language: Barely. A gutturalpidgin derived from ancient dwarven not readily mutually comprehensible with contemporary dialects.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----

SPECIAL ABILITIES
Fast Charge (Ex): Can move triple ground speed for a charge or 5x ground when running.

Photophobia: A Childer Male must make a will Save to enter a square more brightly lit than its own. The DC is 20 for bright light, 15 for normal, 10 for Dim. Creatures may take a standard action to brandish a light source to increase the DC of the Will Save to enter any square the source illuminates. This save is made only once per turn and applies to all movement in the round. A Childer Male can approach any creature that has attacked it in the last minute without needing to make a save.

Vicious Bite: The childer male's bite deals damage to pinned or helpless opponents as if he had scored a critical hit.

Anticoagulant Saliva: Any creature taking damage from a Childer Male's bite takes 1 point of bleed damage This damage does not stack with itself or any other bleed damage but is doubled on a critical hit. It can be stopped by any effect that heals hit point damage or by a DC 15 heal check.

Rocky Camouflage: +10 Racial to Stealth underground. Can hide without cover or concealment underground if unobserved and stationary.

=========================================================================== =====

Childer Alpha
CR ? XP ?
Large Monstrous Humanoid
Init +1; Senses Darkvision 60 ft; Scent; Perception +11

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----

DEFENSE

AC 18, Touch 10, Flat-footed 17 (+1 Dex, +8 Nat, -1 Size)
HP 63 (6d10+30); Fast Healing 5; Ferocity
Fort +7, Ref +6, Will +7
Weaknesses: Light Sensitivity*

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----

OFFENSE

Speed 40 ft.
Melee 2 Slams +10 (1d6+11) [PA already factored in]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----

STATISTICS

Str 25, Dex 12, Con 21, Int 6, Wis 15, Cha 8
BAB +2, CMB +5 (+9 Grapple), CMD 16
Feats: Power Attack, Improved Sunder, Weapon Focus (Slam)
Skills: Climb +15, Perception +11, Stealth -1, Survival +6
Language: See Childer Male

*: In the context of the campaign, I'm modifying the dazzled aspect of light sensitivity and blindness to trigger in normal light.

Any suggestions? Any idea as to properly setting the CR for these things?

For reference, it's a non-magical party of five gestalt L3s with a few minor SLA's gained from the first exposure of man to magic in millennia. Injury/Strain variant rule to offset crippling lack of curative magic.

One important thing to work on as a GM is to make it scary, not annoying. Something that often happens in cramped dungeons is to have a lot of 5ft corridors. Then you get a fight, and only one PC can actually fight with enemies; the rest are in each others' way. This may make dramatic sense, but it's hugely annoying to players who spend several rounds just not being able to do anything because of the way the game board is set up. If you like your players, don't do this.

If a fight should involve peculiarities in terrain, I'd try to ensure that it not be purely a one-sided benefit. A choke point may prevent flight or hamper party movement, but it also guards against surrounding and, once through, prevents massed pursuit. My players have been pretty dang good about using terrain wisely.

Instead, you can have a fight in a room with stalagmites/stalactites/pillars/rubble, so that although there's multiple routes through the room, there are also a lot of cover objects to hide behind or to provide cover against AoOs and such. Quite some opportunities for tactical combat, but it's less likely that the PCs will get all bottled up in an annoying way. When you place enemies in the room for the encounter, do so in a way that actually lets the PCs move into the room; don't choke them off at the entrance.

I hadn't reflected on the pitfalls of mechanically featureless rooms. While the bulk of the adventure is travelling a wide road, there might be, I dunno, some sort of rest stop analogue I can throw in both to provide a break from the monotony and shelter for camping. As for general encounter map design, including features for cover is important even if only for stealth. Anything subterranean will have darkvision or similar.

The mechanics for Squeezing will be powerful here. If the PCs have to fight while stuck in a narrow tunnel, the significant Squeezing penalties will make the combat much harder. Then again, sometimes they'll be able to hide in tunnels too narrow for their enemies, so that the PCs can fight normally-too-hard-enemies who now have the -4 to AC and To Hit that Squeezing entails. This gives you the opportunity to use weaker (kobolds and tinier ones) and stronger enemies (trolls) than you'd normally feel comfortable using.

I'd largely intended to use squeezing and EA checks less to spice up combat and more as en encounter of its own. There's a scene in the film the Descent where the protagonists have to move through a very narrow tunnel on a spelunking trip. The last one through becomes stuck, and all around her, the rock begins to shift. The terror she feels as tons of rock threaten to crush her transfers to the audience very well, and I think the scene is one of the scariest in the movie. Moreover, it set the stakes for the rest of the film - she makes it through, but has to leave behind her rope bag to do so, and the cave-in she barely escapes traps the protagonists in an unknown cavern with little hope of getting back out alive even before things start trying to eat them.

Analogous constraints apply in-game. In an emerging-magic campaign, haversacks aren't available, and everyone's eating a -3 ACP to carry everything they need, dropping the pack when combat is imminent. Do our players drop their packs to make it through the tunnel on time? Even if they don't need to, imagine the situation. If they face this challenge after their first encounter with the beasties, they must surely realize that in avoiding the crush, they are moving further into their predators' territory and must press on through it towards some hoped-for exit now that the original entrance is cut off.

Mine gases can be interesting; the risk of massive detonations if anyone uses open flame, can really change a combat. Sparks created by metal weaponry might also set things off.

This works better if the players anticipate the danger, so that they're trying to play around it, than if you spring it on them as a surprise. If the PCs smell gas, and then notice oncoming enemies, they might use unarmed strikes or wooden weapons instead of steel. That can make a combat interesting and different.

I'm going to make sure they'll be identifiable, by experience if not by skill. Maybe include a toned down version before things go pear shaped so they recognize it later. I kinda see this one as more opportunity than threat in the grand scheme of things, frankly, particularly because the party has a means of setting off timed fires.

Be careful with cave-ins. The Cave-In hazard found in the CRB is brutal against even high-level PCs. Make sure you know those rules before you accidentally TPK the party. (TPKs should never happen because the GM wasn't aware of the severity of a rule.)

I know! Problem is it's so iconic. So I gotta figure out how to ride that razor's edge between believable threat and manageable one. I'd done a ceiling collapse before that I think someone spotted with KnowEng and handled by going prone along a very thick pillar that had already fallen. When the floor above them fell, it buckled on the pillar, leaving the party dusty and scraped but otherwise healthy enough to crawl out when the dust settled. I think a similarly effective idea might be to break the cave-in up into smaller segments, i.e. 4 rounds, 1d6 outer/2d6 inner per round with a progression of effects if you fail your save (standing to prone to entangled in place to buried). Then, one failed save won't doom you, and party members will be able to help each other out /before/ anyone is hopelessly buried.

I recently used Fey Mist. Basically mist/fog that caused confusion like the spell for one round unless they were a Fey. Pick a DC. You could have some fogs that hide foes and replicate one spell or the other.

The most magic they've been exposed to so far is a sort-of after-image of a ruin at its full glory and the general who made his last stand there. I'd prefer to reserve actually threatening them with magic until later. That said, I'll now be using an underground fog to conceal foes and to combine with...

Some ghosts, friendly or not. This could help guild them in thin/correct path.

... because I like the image of ghostly shapes forming from the fog as "imprints" of the people who fled or invaded via the tunnel long before.

And hordes. Massive low CR creatures.

Yuuuuup. I'll be posting two wip homebrew critters to the homebrew forum eventually for help in tuning to this purpose.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

Pre-emptive TL;DR: Need suggestions for hazards and atmospheric touches for an ancient underground highway populated by savage creatures who would very much like to have the party for dinner. Also want help coming up with thematically relevant and mechanically useful rewards, whether (first) magic items, new SLAs, or other special acquired Su abilities.

Spoiler alert: I don't think any of my players are regulars here. If you are, go read about puppies instead or something.

First of all, a little background. The campaign can be briefly disguised as the 18th century three-way lovechild of Dr. Strangelove, 24, and the X-Files. The party are a group of plausibly deniable contractors for the Western nation's intelligence services who discovered on their first official mission that we are not the first batch of races on this planet, that a great war was fought in time unrecorded, and that magic is a thing that exists. They decided to keep the specifics close to the chest and not report them to their superiors.

In a more recent outing, they accidentally-on-purposed the Eastern nation's ambassador to the Dwarves and all but turned the cold war hot. Rather than undertake their assigned punitive all-but-suicide guerilla/sabotage mission behind enemy lines to buy the Western forces time to prepare, they decided to GTFO and go revisit the place they discovered magic. There, they had discovered a great underground road, and while they could not perfectly make out the language on the signs, they suspected them to be mile markers with distances to other locations not known to modern historians. They didn't dare to delve further before, what with the threat of dying of cave-in or starvation or thirst, but in light of the current alternative, they've opted for the relative safety of the dark.

I want help making the Deep Road more horrifying than any mortal army can be. Up to now, I've been easing them in mechanically. They were super bad-butt special operatives and played that role well. But, apart from the ruin and the monsters it housed, everything they faced was familiar - Urban environments and humanoid enemies, susceptible to manipulation or ambush. They're gearing up to spend the next two weeks several hundred feet below ground to see where the Road goes. Backstory-wise, none of them are spelunkers. Only one of them has Darkvision. None has higher than +5 in Know(Dung). In the coming adventure, I want them to feel less like action heroes and more like the cast of a horror film.

I'm want the characters anxious and claustrophobic. I want them to see the Road as an entity itself, wielding suffocation, cave-ins, and deadfalls as the party wields bow, blade, and tongue. I want them to want most desparately to flee when it is least feasible. I want them to feel some relief when they face their threats because, hey, at least I can see it now. The trickiest part is I want all this, but I want more that through guile and a modicum of luck they prevail, unbroken if not unharmed.

There is a line of critters that will be the main antagonists. Heavily inspired by a combination of the Descent's Crawlers and the Metro Series' Nosalises, I've drawn up some homebrews I'll be cross-linking from the Homebrew forum soonish. If you've had the superhuman patience to read through this much bloviating. I'd love your help both with designing actual challenges/encounters and with flavoring the journey.

Mechanical deets: L3 Gestalt. E6. No magic classes (yet), but each party member has one SLA of each of levels 0 and 1. Most thematically appropriate options here are create water and swift expeditious retreat. Sunrods in this campaign have been nerfed to burn brighter but shorter by far - they're basically battlefield illumination. One Dwarf, one Half-Elf, three humans. Respectively a rifleman, Swashbuckler, Unarmed fighter, archer, and Face/Disarm Fighter. Recent cameo by past member playing a role not dissimilar to Q in Bond films has left the party with some nifty homebrewed toys, like short-duration breather masks.

Current Ideas: Atmosphere
- Shattered Lantern
- Blood stains of varying freshness.
- Droppings containing remains identifiable as humanoid (Finger bones, etc.)
- Echoing growls in the far distance. Low pitched, drawn-out, and thunderous.
- Shriller growls, shorter, quieter, much closer. Just out of LoS or lamplight, really.
- Abandoned equipment packs (with rations, climbing gear, lamp oil, etc)

Current Ideas: Challenges/Hazards
- Areas of dead (i.e. no O2), live (breathable, duh), or explosive/suffocating air, distinguished by the types of mold/lichen growing in each area.
- Cave-in's a standard, but I'd need a mechanism for spotting, avoiding, and bypassing. It's just one road so far. Maybe side routes through natural caves? Maybe the cave in cuts them off from going /back/?
- Water infiltration. The road is ancient. It's very possible whatever seals existed have eroded and certain sections are now buckled and submerged.
- Breaks in the road from seismic activity. Yay! They need to scale X0 ft. up or sideways to continue onwards. Also an effective way to block off hasty retreat.
- Previous cave-ins. Put that Escape Artist skill to use!
- Some supernatural anomaly. My best idea is supernatural darkness with a critter attack, but anything that can't be Scully-ized works.

Current Ideas: Rewards
Regardless of what the party chose as its next mission, I was going to figure out a way to work the mytharc into it and give them some combination of more SLAs, some other non-EX added ability, and/or their first magic item or two. The way the campaign works, giving any sort of new special items implies implies "Get this to the right person and in a few in-game weeks you could buy anything within its family." Our local mercenary murderhobo opted not to kick the mithral shirt on which he called dibs over to R&D, so the rest of the party is stuck with the mundane variety much longer than otherwise.

Now, there are already locales whose backstories make them ideal spots for the discovery of certain classes of magic items, like stat boosters and magic arms. I'd prefer to leave that reveal for later, but can be flexible if you guys think it's best to get the bread and butter on the table now.

What would be mechanically useful and thematically appropriate for a road used to connect the old Dwarven strongholds and into which the Dwarves fled when their experimentations with the arcane made their homes too dangerous to inhabit? I'm thinking persistent illumination would be both useful and relevant, but loldwarveshavedarkvision. One thing I'm including regardless is a magic journal that basically keys and archives entries by password, i.e. a pen-and-paper interface to a dictionary data structure. The obvious benefit would be that it can contain important lore for the campaign which I can delay writing until they've figured out how to research important keying passphrases.

If you've read this far, I love you. If you have any suggestions, having read this far give you ample authority to all but demand I use them. Pre-emptive thanks.

I don't know where I stand on this, but I can offer an analogous question.

Should a caster be allowed to cast a quickened or otherwise swift action spell in the middle of a move?

Doorbell disguised as a puzzle on the entrance to a dragon's lair. Mr. Green knew he had inquisitive guests.

So far in my current campaign, each time the ranger player tried to down a target for interrogation with blunt arrows, he'd rolled a critical and then high on damage. Because of superfluous subdual damage becoming lethal, this put one baddy so far into the negatives as to preclude waking him up for days (non-magic campaign) and outright killed a night guard they were trying to bypass without killing him.

It's become a running joke that he'll tease the idea of using a blunt arrow if he really needs to accidentally a tough opponent.

Quote:

There's a similar precedent in Protection From Arrows' DR 10/Magic against arrows.

I'm not sure what correlation you're inferring from that spell. Is it more to the point about what it does than quilted cloth armor? Sure. That in no way means that the limitation imposed on quilted cloth's armor DR is less than clear.

In hindsight the inference is unclear. I mean there's precedent for using DR (Amount)/(Bypasser) against (Target damage source). If the designers had wanted bludgeoning or slashing to bypass the cloth's DR, they could have written "DR/Bludgeoning or Slashing against ranged attacks."

Per the relevant Weapon Quality entry, quilted armor either provides protection against both Types or not at all.

Both. DR/- has everything covered.

Quote:

A non-piercing ranged weapon doesn't bypass the DR. It's just never subject to it.

Correct.

Then the bullet, as a piercing weapon, is subject to DR 3/-, which it cannot bypass.

Feel free to ask the game's designers. Absent their feedback, though, the rules are clear.

Apparently not.

IIt does not, because its DR is qualified to small ranged piercing weapons, and, as specifically stated in the Type entry under Weapon Qualities, DR must protect against both damage types.

I appreciate and understand the point and distinctions that you're trying to make, but the fact remains that your approach takes the exact opposite tack of what is stated in that entry. You argue that, because one of the bullet's damage Types is covered by quilted cloth, that both of its damage Types are protected against. The relevant entry specifically states, however, that the DR must address both damage Types. In this case, it doesn't.

I argue the bullet is subject to the DR per its classification as a piercing ranged weapon. The DR incurred mitigates both piercing and bludgeoning (and, yes, slashing damage).

A non-piercing ranged weapon doesn't bypass the DR. It's just never subject to it.

Why else would it not be written as DR 3/Bludgeoning or Slashing against ranged attacks? There's a similar precedent in Protection From Arrows' DR 10/Magic against arrows.

Does quilted cloth armor protect against both piercing and bludgeoning damage? It does not. Ergo, it does not protect against bullets.

It doesn't protect against piercing damage either. It protects against ranged piercing weapons. If you could somehow deal piercing damage with a sling, the DR still wouldn't apply.

Also, see Damage Reduction, page 561 of the Core Rulebook:

Because quilted cloth explicitly only affects attacks by small ranged piercing weapons, weapons that are not small ranged piercing weapons ignore the DR in question. Bullets are small ranged piercing and bludgeoning weapons, and by the rules in order for DR to apply against them need to protect against both their types of damage.

I am a mammal and I am a 100 kg organism. Not all mammals are 100 kg organisms, but some are. Not all 100 kg organisms are mammals, but some are. So it is with bludgeoning and piercing weapons. The two qualifiers are independent and non-contradictory.

All mammals have hair. Am I not a mammal because I am a mammal and a 100 kg lifeform? Do I not have hair because I am also a 100 kg organism? No, I still do. All 100 kg organisms weigh more than 50 kg. Do I not weigh more than a 50 kg organism because I happen to be a mammal and a 100 kg lifeform? No, I still do.

The fact that firearms deal bludgeoning damage do not preclude their being small piercing weapons. They are still subject to the DR 3/-- quilted cloth provides, and that DR 3/-- applies to whatever damage the weapon deals, whether piercing or otherwise, in the same way that I still conform to all mammalian traits despite also bearing other descriptors. If you argue that a firearm is not a P weapon because it is BP, by the same logic you can and must argue that you can enchant a morningstar with neither keen nor disruption, because keen applies only to piercing or slashing weapons, and BP does not imply P, apparently, and disruption can only be placed on bludgeoning weapons, and BP does not imply B by the same logic.

As for choosing which damage type is most advantageous as others have mentioned in-thread, that only applies when the damage dealt is an exclusive disjunction of types.

Type: Weapons are classified according to the type of damage they deal: B for bludgeoning, P for piercing, or S for slashing. Some monsters may be resistant or immune to attacks from certain types of weapons. Some weapons deal damage of multiple types. If a weapon causes two types of damage, the type it deals is not half one type and half another; all damage caused is of both types. Therefore, a creature would have to be immune to both types of damage to ignore any of the damage caused by such a weapon. In other cases, a weapon can deal either of two types of damage. In a situation where the damage type is significant, the wielder can choose which type of damage to deal with such a weapon.

Second bolding added by me. The "such a weapon" phrase clearly identifies the ability to choose as applying only to weapons dealing either of two types of damage, i.e. P (x)or B, so you can't take that particular attacker's advantage in this case.

Its from the Core Rule Book. pg 144, (Damage) Type, in the Weapon section (and the SRD, as I noted in the quotation).

SRD, Damage Type wrote:

In other cases, a weapon can deal either of two types of damage. In a situation where the damage type is significant, the wielder can choose which type of damage to deal with such a weapon.

This is usually the case for things like double weapons, where each end does a different type, and is noted as (S or P) like a Halbred rather than (B and P) like a musket, for example

This is a bit apples and oranges-y. The "either of two types" implies an exclusive disjunction of damage dealt with an attack. The morningstar does both simultaneously. It doesn't bypass skeleton DR because it's not doing piercing damage but because it /is/ doing bludgeoning. Vice versa with the swarm. You can't choose not to deal either type of damage. You can't choose to shoot a bullet that only does bludgeoning damage, and the fact that it does bludgeoning does not bypass DR/-. (Ranged^Piercing) -> DR applies. (Ranged^Piercing^Bludgeoning) -> DR applies follows.

Let's say a guy gets pulled over for drunk driving. He can't defend himself by saying he was also speeding and that his trial should proceed on that charge alone. He'll be strung up for both. If you model conditional effects as implications from a predicate to an effect, i.e. P_i(x) -> E_i(x), then each E_i whose P_i holds for an attack x will be applied, with normal stacking rules to sort out overlap.

It's not readying to lower miss chance. It's readying to equalize miss chances. If Alice is the subject of the blink, she has a 20% miss chance no matter what Bob is doing and whether or not she's readying a synchronized attack, because the miss chance is based on whether /she/ is material or ethereal. If we allow (big if, but I would) that the attacks are properly simultaneous, then either Alice is material when she strikes, and so Bob hits (assuming he makes AC) and Alice hits Bob (assuming the same), or Alice's attack passes through Bob harmlessly but so does Bob's through Alice.

Again, not RAW, but I think it's a reasonable allowance. I don't see this as being too overpowered a counter. You're readying an action each round for the ability to hit whenever your opponent would, but only for one attack each round.

I think it'd be fair to ready to attack when the subject of blink does and so reduce your miss rate (and roll!) to his - 20%. If he's solid when attacking/casting (i.e. rolls 1-4 under modulus 5 on whatever die), his attack makes it through, but yours does as well because he's solid both for attacking and defending purposes.

Of course, this is very house-ruley. I think it's a reasonable interpretation of the in-universe implications of the subject's own miss rate, but it isn't RAW.