Kakitamike's page

First off, the player in my game who brought these questions up said he already searched around and couldn't find any answers, so I'm taking him at his word as I post this. So if the answer already exists, I apologize.

Two questions.
1. Can a shaman take improved familiar to augment his spirit animal?

2.How does an animal spirit change when the shaman gains the true spirit ability.

animal spirit reads

By communing with the incredible powers of her spirit, the shaman forges a cherished bond with one specific servant of that spirit—known as a spirit animal. A spirit animal is a creature chosen by a shaman to serve as a conduit, allowing her to more fully access the magic of her spirit on a daily basis. The shaman’s spirit animal also grants her special powers. This ability uses the same rules as the wizard’s arcane bond class feature and is treated as a familiar, except as noted below.

A shaman uses her level as her effective wizard level when determining the abilities of her spirit animal. A shaman can select any familiar available to wizards to serve as her spirit animal, although her spirit animal is augmented by the power of her chosen spirit. Once selected, the spirit animal cannot be changed. Although a shaman’s spirit animal uses the statistics of a specific animal, it is treated as an outsider with the native subtype for the purposes of spells and abilities that affect it.

The bold part would make me think improved familiar has no interaction with this ability. Or does this mean the appearance of the animal spirit remains unchanged, but it can still gains the abilities of the improved familiar.

true spirit ability reads

Companion Animal (Su): The shaman’s spirit animal takes the form of an animal companion of her choice, using her shaman level as her effective druid level. The animal retains all the special abilities and the Intelligence score of the spirit animal, but also has the statistics and abilities of an animal companion. If the animal is dismissed, is lost, or dies, it can be replaced in the same way as a normal spirit animal.

How the above reads to me, the spirit animal retains it's int score, and still gains any benefit listed in the special ability column of familiar, but everything else is based off the animal companion table, including hit points, saves, atks, etc. It would lose the familiar armor class adjustment, for example.

Someone mentioned a familiar always has half the hit points of its master, but the wording above felt like it would supersede that rule.

Does anyone have any links or resources for facing rules for pathfinder? Googling around I found:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/combatFacing.htm

But I was curious if anyone else had come up with some options for it.

A search turned up many dominate person questions and answers, but none to my particular query.

My players were escorting a dignitary through a king's treasury, and while there, the dignitary stole some money from the treasury. THey tried to question the dignitary about it, but when that failed, one of the pc's cast dominate person and made the dignitary empty his pockets, then they proceeded to have a little fun by making the dignitary slap himself.

When they returned from the treasury, the only order given the dignitary was to go to his room and stay there, at which point they left his presence.

On his walk back to his room, I had the dignitary tell passing guards and servants that he was being mind controlled and he needed help, which eventually led to the spell being removed and the pc's getting in trouble.

My question is, how specific do you have to be when instructing someone who is dominated? If you tell them to speak to no one, can they write people messages? It seems like there'd be a tedious default list someone casting the spell would need to rattle off after each casting to make sure they didn't get caught during the spell's duration.

It doesn't seem like there's any rules for pre-empting someone who has been dominated so the caster can stop them from doing something to tip off they aren't under their own control.

I've been playing with the same 8 or so players for the last 15 years, so we're pretty used to what to expect out of a game.

Another friend of mine recently started playing in a campaign with 3 other friends. They were told they would be in a somewhat urban area, acting as spies. They were also told they could come up with background stories if they wanted.

The group decided to all play rogues. Apparently only one of the players gave themselves and background information, so the GM changed where the came started based on that one characters background. The campaign changed to essentially start in a frozen desolate region, but they still had to play the characters they had created based on what they had previously been told.

My friend then wrote up a fairly generic backstory for himself, and the GM told him, well, your character can believe that, maybe that's what he tells people, but what actually happened is 'blah', the gm then telling him what his background story is.

They start the first session, to find out 2 of the players are slaves owned by two of the other players. The players that were the slaves had a little issue with that, and by the end of the first session, one of the slave pcs was out on his own because there had been no real reason given why he'd want to continue to travel with his owners.

Now, none of the above sounds remotely close to anything I'd ever do as a GM, but I haven't played with many new people over the years. Does this sound par for the course with player experience and how GMs handle things, or should my friend be a little skeptical on the GMs methods of running a game.

Was told about this spell. It has the following description.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/sky-swim
This spell grants the target the ability to swim through the air. Creatures with a swim speed can move through the air at that speed. Those without a swim speed must make Swim checks to move as normal. Still air is treated as calm water, light or moderate wind is treated as rough water, strong or severe wind is treated as stormy water, and stronger winds cannot be swum through. This spell does not grant the ability to breathe air to creatures that normally can’t.

As worded, would the target begin falling the moment they stop swimming in the air, or would they sink? If they sink, would they take the standard underwater penalties for melee attacks? I could see -2 ranged penalty for the initial square as well.

If they would just fall, I don't see the attack penalties, as it's probably a gamble to begin with, getting one attack at most.

The same would go if they fail the swim check by 5 or more. I guess it really comes down to whether the air around them is only treated like water when they're actively swimming, and it's treated like air the rest of the time, or if they essentially move through the air like water.

For instance, if i were listing all the residents of a dungeon i was making

old elven hermit
wounded human adventurer

minotaur zombie
hobgoblin
gelatinous cube
ochre jelly

rat
lost cat

Would 'NPC List' be an intuitive heading? Are monsters and animals or monsters with 0 int considered to be npc's? Or, as a GM, would you be thrown off by the monsters in an encounter showing up under the NPC list and not a separate bestiary section?

Assuming I have a +1 attack bonus;

have a halberd and light shield equipped (phalanx fighter 3+)

drop the halberd as a free action, 5 foot step and draw a longbow

move action drop shield

Standard action attack with bow?

We weren't sure about things you were allowed to do during movement vs during a move action.

Thanks.

Every so often I try to get my playgroups homemade system out into the interwebs to see what a wider audience thinks of it.

http://pinwheels.org/

This is not a system we made over a weekend/week/month. I think we've put a little over 10 years into it as this point. TSR was still making dungeons and dragons, if that's any indication. It's nothing we've ever really thought about trying to publish, just somethign we've developed for our own group.

Points of Interest people usually ask about first:

-It's a skill based system, not level based
-there's 11 attributes
-7 races
-45 skill 'pinwheels' each of which have 5 skills associated with them, some connecting to other skill pinwheels, some not
-over 400 spells, levels 1-10
-spells draw from a magic pool that refills over time

-there's no art in the book
-no premade monsters (yet) we usually just create them as needed
-no premade magic items (though there are rules for creating them)

As you increase the level of your skill pinwheels, you unlock perks, which are basically cool new abilities that your character gets access to. They're one of the things that really make me feel like characters can be powerful without glowing like a christmas tree months into a campaign.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling. You were either interested when you clicked on the link or you weren't. I'll try to check this thread at least once a day, if anyone has questions.

Every time I sit down to make a non spellcasting character, I feel like the mountain of extra feats that a fighter get allow them to take a better combat role than either of the two mentioned classes. And that the sideline abilities of those two classes are always met or provided by another caster in the party. In practice, I find the paladin to be a bigger problem than the ranger, but i'll get to that below.

My most recent run in with this was contemplating playing a sacred shield paladin, but then upon examining the shield variant fighters, that the feat acquisition was too useful to outweigh the other perks from the paladin, especially considering what the paladin has to give up for its archtype as compared to what a fighter has to give up.

Looking at a ranger for a two weapon fighter or archer, the class does provide some decent perk benefits, but nothing that a fighter can't pick up as well. And again, any additional skill selection is usually provided by another character in the party.

My biggest problem with the paladin, and this problem is usually only a bit noticeable in small parties, but the problem seems to grow exponentially in bigger parties, is the strict adherence to lawful good.

I think a party should have as little infighting as possible, and that a GM should provide as many ways for a party to overcome an encounter as the party can come up with sensibly. A character that must adhere to the lawful good stance of the paladin always seems to create more problems than it solves.

Now, I've only DM'd for maybe 30~ different people over my 24 some odd years of experience, so maybe it's just the people i've seen play them, but i've never said to myself, "Oh, so and so is playing a paladin. That'll make the party run better." It's almost universally the opposite, thinking what aspects of a campaign i have to change so there isn't an argument every other session amongst the party members.

Again, I say this is only in big groups. One of my most memorable campaigns was, in fact, a paladin, a ranger and a monk. The paladin and ranger really shine in these situations, as their jack of a few trades nature is a strength.

Does anyone else feel this way? I know the alignment change is as simple as stripping the alignment requirement, but I'm talking from a strictly as presented by the rules experience.

How much more powerful would you consider an eidolon when compared to an animal companion or special mount of the same hd/level. This is not counting prestige classes, just base level classes, so summoner/druid/paladin.

Are there no longer any drawbacks for flying while encumbered? I thought at one point, you couldn't fly if you were carrying more than a light load, but I can't find the rule anywhere. I did a search for both 'flying' and 'encumbered' in the pdf and came up empty.

Under the combat chapter, a rule states:

Minimum Damage: If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of nonlethal damage.

Are things like energy absorption, DR, improved evasion successful saves considered penalties? Or is it only referring to if you have a strength penalty? Also, do spells that use a touch attack benefit from this, as they require an attack roll to hit.