Kavren Stark's page

It's fairly obvious for constructs and other beings whose DR comes from having an exterior made of exceptionally tough material -- the weapon that fails to penetrate the golem's DR just bounces off its hard surface. But what about flesh-and-blood beings whose DR is a magical property that doesn't make their skin look any different from that of a humanoid or animal with no DR, such as lycanthropes, fey and outsiders?

For example, let's say Merisiel throws a dagger at that succubus that's draining Kyra* on page 52 of Demons Revisited. Say her player rolls a 20, then confirms the critical hit, and rolls two fours on the damage dice, but unfortunately it's not a cold iron dagger, just an ordinary steel one.

The succubus has DR 10/cold iron, so she doesn't lose any hit points, but if I'm GMing and trying to be a good, dramatic storyteller, how do I describe what Meri sees happen? With a roll like that, attacking from behind, I'd say the dagger hit the demon in the lower back, just below the ribs, and (if it were an ordinary humanoid with no DR, or a cold iron dagger) sank in to the hilt. With DR, does the dagger fail to break her skin (similar to natural armor)? Does it penetrate, then fall right out again, spilling no blood and leaving no wound (like super-fast regeneration, similar to Wolverine's healing factor)? And how does the succubus react? Did she feel it as pain comparable to a real wound, as slight pain like a pinprick, as a painless impact like a pat on the back, or does she not feel it at all? (Is there anything more intimidating than a monster that doesn't even notice your attack?)

Obviously, this is ultimately going to be up to the individual GM, but I'm interested to hear how other people handle it.

*Kyra, seriously? I would think she'd have more sense than to get into a situation like that. I'd have chosen Valeros or Alain for that illustration -- they seem just the type to fall for a succubus's wiles. I suppose it might happen if the succubus disguised herself as Merisiel, though...

I'm planning a game to start around the end of January or early in February, hosted by a friend of mine who has a projector mounted over his gaming table. The GM for the game I played in there before used MapTools, but I wasn't terribly impressed with its interface or its stability, so I'm considering one of the non-freeware VTT programs, such as Battlegrounds RPG Edition, Fantasy Grounds 2, or D20Pro.

I'd be very interested in hearing from people who've used one of them in this context, especially if you've used more than one and can compare their performance. I'm leaning somewhat toward D20Pro, for its system specificity and ability to interface with Hero Lab, but I don't like the lack of the dynamic fog-of-war feature that all the others, even MapTools, offer.

A scenario occurred to me: a rogue with UMD shoots off, say, a Fireball from a wand -- that's a standard action, of course. Then, as her move action for the round, she hands the wand to the wizard standing next to her. Accepting the wand from the rogue is his move action, and he then uses his standard action to discharge a second Fireball from the wand. Is this possible? I don't see anything in the rules that states a wand can't be used by more than one character in a round, but that might just be because none of the designers thought of it.

Could an evoker who took Necromancy as a prohibited school use Shout instead of Blindness/Deafness to craft a weapon with the Thundering enhancement? It seems on the face of it that Shout would make more sense for crafting such an item than Blindness/Deafness, since the item does sonic damage, while the latter spell only causes deafness (or blindness, which isn't a sonic effect at all).

Is there a reason the Abjurer gains Energy Absorption at 6th level when every other specialist wizard and the generalist gain their greater school power at 8th level, or is it simply a typo to be corrected in the next errata release?

Suppose my character casts True Strike, then fires his crossbow the next round and rolls a natural 20. Would the +20 bonus for the True Strike spell apply to the critical confirmation roll, since it applied to the hit roll that generated the critical threat? It seems to me it should, but I'd appreciate a citation, or a ruling from the designers if not such citation exists.

I'm wondering if my Wiz2/Brd1 character can take Brew Potion as his third-level feat, or does he need to have three levels in a single arcane class to do so? I assume arcane and divine caster levels wouldn't stack, but it seems like levels in two different arcane classes or two different divine classes might. I'm also curious as to how that would work for the damage increase you get for every five caster levels with Arcane Strike.

The analytical martial arts technique employed by Sherlock Holmes in the new Robert Downey movie gave me an idea for a really nifty new combat feat: Perceptive Dueling. It would allow a character to add his Intelligence bonus to his attacks, damage rolls, and armor class (in the form of a dodge bonus) against a single enemy once he's had a chance to observe that enemy's fighting style.

On the third round of melee combat against an opponent (defined as the opponent making at least one melee attack against the character on each of the previous two rounds, while the character either attacked that opponent or fought defensively, wasn't flanked, and neither attacked nor was attacked by any other creature), the character could add one point to each of the three affected stats; on the fourth round, he could add two points, and so on until he was applying his full Intelligence bonus. Note that these bonuses would be applied in addition to, not instead of, the normal bonuses from Strength and/or Dexterity. They would only apply only against the one opponent on which the character focuses his powers of observation, and should he attack or be attacked by another opponent, or be flanked, all the bonuses would be lost until he had a chance to concentrate for two rounds on a single opponent again.

Since it's a fairly powerful feat, I'd also give it some fairly strict prerequisites. To take it, your character would need a Base Attack Bonus +6, Intelligence 15, Combat Expertise, and at least one of the following feats or class features: Weapon Focus, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Training, and Improved Unarmed Strike. The Perceptive Dueling ability could only be used in conjunction with the weapon(s) associated with the prerequisite(s). I might also use it as a class feature, without prerequisites, for a Pathfinder upgrade of the Swashbuckler core class from The Complete Warrior, in place of the original Swashbuckler's Insightful Strike feature.

We could even make it a feat tree: Improved Perceptive Dueling would require Perceptive Dueling, BAB +11, and Int 17, and allow the character to maintain the feat's bonuses while flanked by one creature in addition to the opponent on which he focuses, ignore any attacks from other creatures that don't hit him, and begin adding the bonus points on the second round of melee instead of the third. Greater Perceptive Dueling would require Improved Perceptive Dueling, BAB +16, and Int 19, and allow him to ignore flanking and all attacks by any number of creatures, and begin adding bonus points on the first round. Finally, Epic Perceptive Dueling would require Greater Perceptive Dueling, BAB +21, and Int 21, and allow the master duelist to apply his full perceptive dueling bonuses (of at least +5, given the prerequisite) to all creatures engaged in melee with him from the first round of combat.

I might restrict it further by having the bonuses for the original feat apply only to the first attack made by the character and his opponent (for the AC bonus) each round. The Improved version would apply them to the first two attacks each round, Greater to the first three, and Epic to all attacks.

Given the requirements, I think this feat sequence might be most valuable to an Eldritch Knight whose core arcane class was Wizard or another Intelligence-based class, to the aforementioned Swashbuckler update (which could have these feats as its core class features), or perhaps to a Pathfinder version of the Factotum class from Dungeonscape -- the latter's combat-related class features are already based on the same essential concept. (I hope I don't start a flame war by mentioning the Factotum; it always struck me as one of the most broken of the 3.5 splatbook classes, and if that makes it taboo on these boards, please accept my humble apologies and forget that I brought it up.)

What are your thoughts? Too powerful? Too esoteric? Too many prereqs? Do your one-on-one duels at level 6 often last long enough for a bonus that starts to kick in on the third round of combat to be worthwhile? Does this sound like something you might use in building a character you'd actually want to play, or is it too impractical? I'd love to hear any input the readers here may have.
Thanks,
Alex

I learned recently that WotC shut down Ema's Character Manager earlier this year. Given that his tools made the game easier and more fun to play, thus helping them to sell more books, this seems like a remarkably stupid business decision, but obviously they see it differently. In any case, I contacted Ema to see if he would consider doing a version of his character sheets, generator, and database compatible with Pathfinder, using only the open content therein; he said that that was unlikely, as he had created the software mainly for his own gaming group, and they weren't interested in playing Pathfinder (silly of them, I think, but there's no accounting for taste). He concluded that it was unlikely that he would work on a Pathfinder Character Manager "unless Paizo hires me."

And I thought, "why not?" The tool he created is incredibly useful: it let you store complete stats for up to 100 characters in a database, where updating any one value automatically recalculated all related values (e.g. increase your strength, and your base attack bonus, damage, strength-related skills, and so on went up with it), and dynamically generate the most attractive PDF character sheet I've ever seen from that database, with all stats, equipment, spells, etc. included. I'd gladly pay a subscription fee to have that functionality available on Paizo's site. Ema is still reachable at charsheets@emass-web.com (I don't think I'm violating his privacy by posting that address here, as it was publicly available on his own site up until he took it down); Paizo could contact him about doing a Pathfinder version of his software, or just seek to obtain it as is and edit it for Pathfinder yourselves -- since it's based on the 3.5 rules, it shouldn't be all that much work to adapt, especially as you'd only be working with the parts that fell under the 3.5 OGL.

Just a suggestion.
Best Regards,
Alex