Kegnar Fellhammer's page

I'm running a game that sprung from Carrion Crown and just kept going. The party is 8th level now. In the course of the CC module, they took some books from the library of one of the cultists and the sorcerer has been reading it. I believe I called it "The Space Between the Stars" or some such. I don't recall if that was named in the module or not.

I want this to have an effect on the character, and I think the player is kind of nudging this way as well (if I'm reading the signs right). So I took a look at the corruption rules, and I like the idea of granting a little bit of power at a price. However, none of the corruption types given really sound like the kind of effects you might get from the creeping madness from reading up on the secret Elder Things from Beyond.

In addition to this, the sorcerer has the aberrant bloodline, and was the one PC affected by the

Obviously, based on this alone, Deep One sounds like the perfect corruption. But after taking a look at it, those are all about turning into a Deep One, which doesn't make a lot of sense for what's going on. Growing gills and craving the sea isn't the end result of reading about the secret ancient horrors of the void.

I took a cue based on a podcast interview with (I think) Jason Buhlman, and let the player cheat when he failed a Will save, saying that the knowledge gained from the book his character had been reading let her break the mind control. That was at the end of the last session. Now I want that to have a lasting effect and a taint of corruption, but none of the types I read really fit.

So I'm wondering if anyone has any house rules Corruptions, or has ideas, or knows of any 3PP products (that aren't on the d20PFSRD) for a more Lovecraftian corruption, like a sliding slope into madness.

That subject pretty much describes what I just did. I have some ideas for how they get out of it, but their souls have been placed in dolls. I was thinking of giving the stats for soulbound dolls, but with a few arcane spells for the sorcerer, a "mend" for the cleric, a few skill boosts for the investigator, and a STR bump for the martial.

I have a few things in mind, but to make sure I give them the most interesting game possible, I'd like some suggestions for ideas for what they can encounter in the castle on their quest to restore themselves to their bodies. They're each about a foot tall, and their magic will be limited. The castle is mostly clockwork stuff, but there could be some organic threats as well.

Thanks in advance!

I put this in advice because I allowed 3PP (Path of War from Dreamscarred Press) in this game, and I'm seeing numbers bigger than I expected. I'd like to know if others think it's TOO MUCH damage, though.

Anyway, the party is 5th level, built that way. I have a half-giant Warlord. So right off the bat, she has a large greatsword (3d6). As a Warlord, her 5th level stance is Primal Warrior Stance (Ex).

So with her large greatsword, this stance makes her every attack hit like a Gargantuan greatsword (skipping Huge altogether). With power attack, a 20 STR and a +1 weapon, she's doing something like 6d6+15 (give or take, I forget all her bonuses). And with an Enlarge Person cast on her, she'll do Colossal damage: 8d6+more.

Is that on par with what you should expect from a 5th level DPR-melee character, or is this way beyond normal?

ETA: cited 3PP title

Do alchemists always clink whenever they move? Because they've got to have packs and packs full of bottles. Any time they get hit should shatter about half of their supply. How do they replenish them in a dungeon? Or do alchemists have a gland that secretes bottles?

I'm making up a Pathwalker as a candidate for a PBP, and I'm finding it hard to fit one phrase in the Pathwalker description into the rules. I'm using this page to make it up.

The phrase I can't figure out is the third sentence in the first paragraph of "Maneuvers" (emphasis mine).

A pathwalker begins his career with knowledge of three martial maneuvers. The pathwalker may select any two disciplines from the following list: Broken Blade, Iron Tortoise, Primal Fury, Scarlet Throne, Solar Wind, and Thrashing Dragon. These two disciplines will determine which warrior paths he may select as he makes his journey to martial perfection, selecting one to be his primary path and the second discipline path as his secondary at the appropriate level.

I can't find anything in the rules about what it means for a discipline to be primary or secondary. And I can't find anything in any rules about being limited to taking maneuvers from only one discipline until you reach a particular level.

Does this mean I have to only take maneuvers from one discipline at 1st level? When can I choose from other schools? Does a discipline's status as a primary or secondary affect my manifester level?

I have looked in all the Path of War classes, and the Disciplines and Maneuvers page, and the Systems and Use page, and can't find these definitions.

Second question: the table below the archetype description says that the Pathwalker knows 3 maneuvers and one stance. The text says nothing about stances. Does this mean three maneuvers, one of which must be a stance? Or 3 maneuvers AND a stance?

I'm playing a synthesist summoner shark-man in a homebrew game for a while now, and I've been enjoying it. One of the other players is a bit min/maxy, and I've taken a couple sub-optimal evolutions to further emphasize the shark theme (keen scent, for example). In the first couple levels, I was clearly doing too much damage, and it was fun (and kind of funny) to see it in action, but that advantage tapered off around level 4 or 5 and became more in line with the rest of the melee characters in the party. The min-maxer has far surpassed me at level 10, our current level.

This next sentence will lose a lot of you, but bear with me: I've felt that the synthesist was a decently built class with a lot of front-loaded power, but the only thing I've actually felt guilty about accepting was the hit point total. From level one, I had essentially two sets of hit points, because Life Link let me feed the eidolon when it ran low, and that hasn't changed or tapered off at higher level.

So I wanted to add a fix, in case the GM (my son-in-law) decides that the eidolon is just too tough to threaten. Unchained is out of the question. It just doesn't fit here.

I propose changing the first level power so:

Life Link (Su)

The manifestation of the eidolon on the same plane of existence as the summoner is powered by a link between the life forces of the two. The summoner and the eidolon always maintain separate hit point totals, but damage to one is always reflected as damage to the other, including ability damage (but not ability drain). If damage is incurred simultaneously from the same effect (such as a single fireball or breath weapon), the damage is only applied one time, using the greater* damage total suffered in the effect. If the eidolon is reduced to 0 hit points, the summoner may instantaneously transfer his own hit points to the eidolon without using an action, as often as he has hit points remaining, to keep the eidolon at 1 hit point.

Although the summoner is capable of natural healing, the eidolon must still be healed by magical means to restore hit points. Magical healing performed on one will heal damage to the other. Rejuvenation and restoration spells that specifically target eidolons will only heal the eidolon.

*or greatest, in the case of summoners with multiple eidolons, but that would be noted in the archetype modification for Life Link.

Applying damage once for a fireball would keep (non-synthesist) summoners from being unfairly vulnerable to area attacks.

The question, or discussion point, I wish to raise with this is: Is this a good fix? Is it adequate? If you are one of those GMs who ban the summoner entirely, would this alteration change your mind and allow someone to play one? Or are the other class features of the summoner still too much for you to accept in your game?

The party is level 13 and just got their first mythic level.

I've just prepped the BBEG for the next stretch of adventure the party is going into. Using the NPC elite stat array and Wealth by Level charts resulted in a BBEG that was so weak, I don't think he'd even get a turn. I moved stuff around. I gave him max HP, 150K in gear for a CR 16 M3. I gave him no stat lower than 16. And I'm still looking at these numbers and thinking that while now he might get a turn, he's not going to last to a second round.

And I look at his numbers. Three attacks that will almost certainly hit, with a 17+ crit, x3 multiplier, and he does 1d8 + 34 + 2d10 damage. Granting that this is a crit fishing BBEG, he'd outright kill 2 of the PCs with a hit and a crit. And while I want them to feel the threat from this guy, a single bad roll or a good roll will determine whether I'm being unfair to them or they barely notice the speed bump.

This is the culmination of one of the PC's backstories being resolved in a final fight where he gets to take over a whole barony in Hell by defeating this one guy.

While these numbers are pretty high, this doesn't really sound... epic. I want him to have his sneery bad guy posturing in the middle of the fight. I want players to get hurt without being brutally murdered without warning. I envision having to feed him more HP just to get some good sneering in. It might even come to the point where I'll DOUBLE his base HP just to keep him around long enough for them to remember he was there at all. And I might pull punches on the crits just to have the players feel I wasn't cheating. Which, of course, I will be.

Does anyone else feel that they have to adjust numbers on the fly, to the point where the numbers as they were originally generated really don't matter at all anymore?

How do you keep a game of Rocket Tag interesting?

First this is my 1000th post under this ID. So I would like to use that milestone to announce that my grandson, Osric, was born yesterday morning, and I got to meet him last night. His parents are both gamers, so I have high hopes of bringing this one into the fold pretty soon. He's not ready, yet, though, he just sleeps a lot.

I've been trying to cut back a few of my gaming expenditures, so I keep looking at the upcoming releases. I figure Paizo will start to spiral down into mediocrity any month now. But every time I look at what's coming up, I realize I can't miss it.

So I would really appreciate it if you guys would start making some really terrible stuff in the near future so I can save a few bucks. Just sayin'.

I have a player that has a very hard time finding things on the character sheet. It seems like every time I ask for a roll, he has to figure out how to read it all over again. He's a good guy and a fun role-player, but in a fight, drags the game down, and I think it's making him dislike Pathfinder in general. I made this tonight. I tried to distill all the info he'll need in a fight to be front and center on the character sheet. The back has more information and he'll still need his regular PF sheet for skills, but I think this will help. It's really intended as a front page for his sheet. It's untested at the moment. I'm wondering of other players have had to make similar adaptations.

Simple Front Page

I posted this in the facebook group, and one suggestion was space after the attack lines for temporary modifiers, and I think I might just leave it blank for now. For this player, I think extra cards to lay over that part of the page would work better.

I'm also curious what the minimum of information you can put on a sheet to make it playable by someone who doesn't know all the rules. What's the simplest playable but complete character sheet out there?

Hey, all, a couple friends of mine are kickstarting a game setting they made for the Ubiquity game system (the same one that runs Hollow Earth Expeditions). We'd appreciate people coming by and taking a look and seeing if they'd like to get in on it.

Quantum Black: Cosmic Horror Kickstarter page

I didn't get to play this one at Origins, but I got to play a scenario called The Adventures of Tesla and Twain on the Planet Mars, run by the same group of people using the Ubiquity system, and it was a blast. So I have high hopes for this one.

I was wondering why an order I made 2 months ago still hasn't been shipped, and has since been lumped into the next month's order. Oh, and the authorization on the order form says it expires tomorrow, so I'm wondering if I'll get another "We had trouble processing your payment" message which will push it back yet another month.

This initially started as order 3467532 on February 24th. The following day I added a subscription to my account and figured it might or might not get added to the current shipment, but that was immaterial. That became order 3480371. I had a concern about the shipping and contacted customer service via email and communicated briefly with Diego, who said that the order was being "pushed through." That was on the 26th.

Now I see that the things I ordered then have been moved to order 3479617.

If this is what happens when a customer orders a shirt, let me know that that is the reason and I will never order another one.

That stands for Over Powered On Purpose.

Has anyone ever done this? I don't know how long the interest would last, but I think it would be at least a little amusing to run through an Adventure Path starting at 10th level. I don't mean starting at the 10th level module, I mean starting the PCs at 10th level and going through part 1 of the AP without any adjustment to the module.

I mean, there are powerful adventurers out in the world already, and occasionally they're in the kinds of places that 1st level adventurers find themselves in. Can you really believe that not a single experienced character goes back to Sandpoint every year for the Swallowtail Festival?

"OK a bunch of goblins are running toward the stables with torches."
"Chain lightning."
"OK, moving on..."

I think making the module a timed event would add some challenge to it and make it more interesting than a brutal smackdown on the bunny slope.

Anyone still playing this? I know it's been out of print for a few years, but I hadn't played it since it came out, and I remembered it being quite good. I recently got the craving to play again and through various lot auctions on ebay managed to get about 3300 cards for about 6¢ per card.

I'm just curious what kind of popularity and means of play that the game still has these days.

I'm playing in a pirate campaign and my synthesist summoner is CN in alignment. I'm not playing CN as completely amoral or insane as I've seen some people describe the alignment. The way I play it, he's not a bad person, but he's got no use for the law, in fact it's done him more harm than good in his life, and his backstory declares him as an outlaw despite his circumstances being entirely beyond his control (pressed by pirates at a young age). On the good and evil scale, he is neither prone to altruism nor cruelty, and sees little profit in either.

Now, the situation is that an evil woman has set herself up as the pirate queen, with the means at her disposal of an entire fleet of outlaw allies. In her public identity, however, she is of noble birth, and has managed to become betrothed to a Duke who is next in line to the imperial throne. The wedding is in two days, and our party has no hope of convincing enough people that she's secretly the evil pirate queen. And she more or less told us that she's marrying to get close to the throne to kill those between her and absolute rule.

So the party has met her fiancé already, and he isn't willing to see us at this moment, but it's possible he might again. He's certainly more accessible than she is. So, while the rest of my (good and neutral) party is planning to sneak in and get close to the Duke and convince him of our testimony, which is the only evidence we have that she's the pirate queen. However, my character is planning to get close to the Duke along with the rest of the party, but is then planning to go against the party's plan and kill the Duke. No wedding, no line of ascension. He really doesn't want to do it, but doesn't see any other way of stopping the pirate queen from becoming absolute monarch over the civilized world.

Do you think a Chaotic Neutral character would have the ability to go through with this plan?

I've been ragging on bards for years for being worthless. But I'm curious how damaging you can make a bard in combat. I saw a build where most of the damage came from a Leadership cohort (which had summons and an animal companion). I've seen a Dawnflower Dervish, and at low levels, it took a few rounds to spin up to being really deadly (after it has a +Dex belt and Haste shoes, it's pretty frightening). I'd like to see a build that can keep pace with the appropriate damage at each level.

Because I know this is what most people will say as soon as they see the subject line, I add the disclaimer that I KNOW bards have other ways of being awesome, and damage is not the best, but I'd like to see how well it can be done.

The build is for level 9. But future feat choices would be welcome suggestions.

The restrictions: Paizo only. PFS legal is preferred, but for a really awesome build, if anything flags PFS-Banned just cite it as such on the build. I'd prefer the DPR to be gear-independent, but if a particular item would increase the awesomery, and falls within WBL guidelines, include it.

The recommendation: Being at full strength on the initiative roll is definitely a plus. Taking more than 3 rounds to achieve target DPR is not valuable.

This came up recently in a Legacy of Fire game. One of the NPCs had it listed in her stat block, and I expected to use it for her escape. A Sylph PC also used Windy Escape, which I have the same problem with.

This spell, used in combat, is not an escape. It is effectively a suicide. DR 10/magic from a 3rd level spell might as well be no DR at all. I have little problem with the rest of the spell, but that single factor makes the spell pretty worthless on an NPC stat block.

I recall it being way more relevant in D&D. I was sure this was a Pathfinder change, but looking back, I see it was that way in 3rd edition D&D as well. I hadn't seen the spell come up since I changed over to 3e 15 years ago, so I never noticed the change. In an effort to make the spell relevant without making it unfair, I have house-ruled the first paragraph to say:

The subject and all its gear become insubstantial, misty, and translucent. Its material armor (including natural armor) becomes worthless, though its size, Dexterity, deflection bonuses, and armor bonuses from force effects still apply. The subject becomes immune to weapon damage (i.e., bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, regardless of source, so wind blades will not work, for example), and is immune to acid, cold, and sonic damage. The subject is immune to poison, sneak attacks, and critical hits. It can't attack or cast spells with verbal, somatic, material, or focus components while in gaseous form. This does not rule out the use of certain spells that the subject may have prepared using the feats Silent Spell, Still Spell, and Eschew Materials. The subject also loses supernatural abilities while in gaseous form. If it has a touch spell ready to use, that spell is discharged harmlessly when the gaseous form spell takes effect.

For the Windy Escape spell, which seems to emulate Gaseous Form, I simplify.

This becomes:
You respond to an attack by briefly becoming vaporous and insubstantial, allowing the attack to pass harmlessly through you. You are immune to any bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage; cold, acid, or sonic damage; poison, sneak attacks, or critical hit effect from that attack.

Does that seem acceptable? Or does it suddenly swing the other way from being useless to too powerful for the level?

I just started a new podast, where we talk about fantasy movies. We did our first episode about Eragon, and we just recorded a talk about Dragonslayer. I'll be putting up Episode 2 before the weekend is out, but I invite everyone to come and check out the first show, and see what they think.

www.dragonreel.com

Hydra Traits (Ex) A hydra can be killed by severing all of its heads or slaying its body. Any attack that is not an attempt to sever a head affects the body, including area attacks or attacks that cause piercing or bludgeoning damage. To sever a head, an opponent must make a sunder attempt with a slashing weapon targeting a head. A head is considered a separate weapon with hardness 0 and hit points equal to the hydra's HD. To sever a head, an opponent must inflict enough damage to reduce the head's hit points to 0 or less. Severing a head deals damage to the hydra's body equal to the hydra's current HD. A hydra can't attack with a severed head, but takes no other penalties.

Regenerate Head (Ex) When a hydra's head is destroyed, two heads regrow in 1d4 rounds. A hydra cannot have more than twice its original number of heads at any one time. To prevent new heads from growing, at least 5 points of acid or fire damage must be dealt to the stump (a touch attack to hit) before they appear. Acid or fire damage from area attacks can affect stumps and the body simultaneously. A hydra doesn't die from losing its heads until all are cut off and the stumps seared by acid or fire.

Why in the world would anyone do this? Nothing else in the game allows you to sunder a creature's natural weapons, so without a knowledge check or metagaming this knowledge, why would cause someone to suddenly attempt it on a hydra? Because anyone who knows about the mythical hydra knows one thing about them: don't cut off their heads! If you make the knowledge check, why would you do it, knowing that it will create more heads? Since there are no called shots in Pathfinder, a party that doesn't know this information is attacking it as a normal monster, unless the GM says "Are you targeting the heads for a sunder?" At which point, players would say "Why is the GM asking that? That doesn't even make sense with everything else I know about Pathfinder."

At CR4, it feels like a speed bump. If it gets the drop on a party, it might take someone down, but what 4th level party can't burn down 50hp in a single round? With that +1 init, I would imagine most of the time it doesn't even get a turn. If I left it as it was in the module (made for 9th level PCs), it wouldn't have outlived the first player's turn.

When I ran it in my last session (Legacy of Fire Book 4), I took a page from 5th Edition D&D, which says that doing 25 points of damage in one attack will sever a head. I also used the Advanced template, added some HD (and heads), gave it max HP, and increased its size. I felt that with those modifications, it was an interesting fight. It hurt the party, but not too badly. I think it hit about half the time and lasted 3 rounds.

Does anyone else find the hydra to be a jarring disjunction from the rest of Pathfinder?

The next AP I run is at least a year away, but I want to get this idea out there and thing about any responses I get.

I'm considering opening up options for players who want to use the race builder. But having read the ARG, the purpose of point values for races, beyond comparing them to each other, is still a little unclear to me. So I'm considering allowing a single point pool from which players can build their own race, race variants, or choose based on the stated point values, and use the remainder of the points for their stats.

Considering most of the standard PC races are around 8 points, and I prefer to give a 15-point build for APs, I was considering allowing a 23-point build, but you have to purchase or build your race with those points as well. So you could play a Tiefling, but you'd only have 10 points for stats.

I'm posting this to ask if anyone has tried this in their own game, and if so, what was the result? Also, is this just asking for trouble? Is it unnecessarily penalizing races that have higher costs? I suppose I'd have to have some minimums like spending at least 5 points on race, and giving pre-racial-mod maxes of 18 in all stats, just as a couple examples. I have already decided to say that if anyone makes up a complete race from whole cloth, I will make sure they do a write-up for the race regarding their culture, history, and role in the world. I don't really expect anyone to do that, though.

Thoughts? Opinions? Experiences?

It seems that there are a lot of countries that don't really get along, and a lot of countries that separated themselves from other countries. But it seems to me that the peace in Golarion is reasonably stable. Where would one go to find a great barbarian horde sweeping the plain threatening civilization as we know it? Where are there massive armies campaigning across foreign territories for glory of god(s), king, and country (and the domination of the Oxford comma)? I took a peek at the wiki, and under Conflicts, the most recent was the Goblinblood war, which was years ago, and was evil goblinoids against the PC races. Don't humans fight humans en masse? Is imperialism truly dead on Golarion?

River Steward (Ranger)
In the politically turbulent River Kingdoms, many rely on the fleeting stability between wars and upheavals to eke out a mundane existence. River stewards make this possible, becoming guardians of their local regions, protecting both its land and its people. Their bond to the land is so strong, it becomes a form of symbiosis.

Stewardship (Ex): The river steward selects one named region of the River Kingdoms. Within that region, the river steward gains +1 to all attack and damage rolls against natural threats of this region. Natural threats include creatures of the animal, fey, humanoid, magical beast, monstrous humanoid, plant, and vermin types.

At fifth level, and every five levels thereafter, the river steward may choose another region. At these intervals, the bonus within any one region (including the one just selected, if so desired) also increases by +1. Alternately, instead of adding a region, he may add a creature type to the list of threats this ability affects.

This ability replaces favored enemy.

Steward’s Vow (Su): The river steward swears an oath to protect and guard over each of his chosen regions. In return, the land itself assists him against his enemies while the steward is fighting outdoors in any of his chosen regions. If the river steward deliberately causes harm to his chosen region, he permanently loses these abilities.

At 2nd level, the steward can cause the ground at one target's feet to clutch at the creature. On a successful combat maneuver check, the target is flat-footed until the start of the ranger's next turn.

At 6th level, branches and grasses interfere with his opponent's strikes, bestowing a -2 penalty to any attack aimed at the river steward.

At 10th level, the land aids him on a charge, granting the river steward the ability to charge over rough terrain and through friendly creatures in his path.

At 14th level, he can make a Stealth check to vanish in natural surroundings, even while being observed. He does not need cover or concealment to use this ability.

At 18th level, the river steward can make a pounce maneuver after a charge, as the pounce ability in the universal monster rules in the Bestiary.

This ability replaces all combat style feats, camouflage, and hide in plain sight.

River Mastery (Su): At 3rd level, the river steward can cross any river within one of his chosen regions at his regular movement rate.

In addition, he gains +1 on Climb, Knowledge (geography), Knowledge (local), Perception, Stealth, Survival, and Swim checks within these regions, and can make such Knowledge checks untrained. This bonus increases by +1 at 8th level, and every five levels thereafter.

This ability replaces favored terrain.

Icon of Aspects
Aura moderate conjuration; CL 10th
Slot none; Price 9,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.
Description
Although cleric chooses domains that resonate with the way he worships his deity, he still acknowledges and venerates the other aspects of his god, as represented by the deity's other domains. With the use of the icon of aspects, the cleric can tap into the power of those other domains, if only briefly. By expending a use of his channel energy ability, the cleric (or other character with the ability to channel energy) can activate a domain power of any domain granted by his deity. This may only be used to activate domain powers that do not have a level requirement. When activating a domain power with a duration longer than instantaneous, the power lasts until the beginning of the cleric's next turn or the power's normal duration, whichever is shorter. The cleric must be able to present the icon of aspects in the same manner as an ordinary holy symbol in the use of channel energy. Activating the icon of aspects is a standard action regardless of whether or not the domain power activated requires an action.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, creator must be a divine caster and must worship the god represented by the icon; Cost 4,500 gp

When my players reached the end of the first installment of Legacy of Fire, they were about halfway from 4th to 5th level. I decided to give them a side adventure to get them to 5th level before starting the next module. It went against my "Grand experiment" notion of running the AP in the first place, which was to do all AP content, since for 30 years I've been running home-brew settings. But I figured I could find something within the context of the setting itself and place it before the heroes. In previewing the 2nd module, what stuck out to me as the obvious choice was Onyx Hall. It was close to Kelmarane, outside of the Brazen Peaks, and had a brief adventure hook in its writeup.

I've talked about it a lot in the latest episode of the podcast but I'll post some info here for those who are interested.

I didn't have a lot written down, and I made this up after the adventure was over, but here is what I had for the cursebinder. As I say in the podcast, these abilities might seem overpowered for the CR, but it was effectively a "bottled" monster, and I knew what I wanted it to do.

I recommend checking out the podcast for a more detailed account of what happened. The discussion starts at around 20 minutes in, after our talk-in and news segments. Let us know what you think.

I apologize if this has been posted before but a search didn't turn up something obviously relevant in the rules forum. I recently decided to try out the Summoner for what little PFS I can find, and I had a couple questions.

First of all, for a first level character, you start with the max HP for your hit die. Does this apply to the Eidolon as well? Or does my Eidolon actually start with fewer hit points than the summoner (6 vs the meatbag's 10)?

My other question is about healing. The text of the summoner class says this:

A summoner can summon his eidolon in a ritual that takes 1 minute to perform. When summoned in this way, the eidolon hit points are unchanged from the last time it was summoned.

The way I read that, I summon it with full HP every time. That doesn't seem right. I could understand if the text read "the eidolon hit points are unchanged from the last time it was dismissed (or otherwise left the summoner's plane of existence)," which would indicate that its hit points remain constant the last time you had it out. But the first time I summon it, it has full hit points. The next time I summon it, having the same HP as the last time it was summoned would mean full HP. Is this just a poor wording on the rule, and does everyone play it as if it said "last time it was dismissed"?

Thanks for the help.

I'm doing a mental inventory of the D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder minis I've gotten so far, and I can't think of any that fit the bill for what I'm looking for. Are there any large-sized (4-squares) female humanoids? I can think of a huge one (the Storm Giant), but no large figures come to mind. I prefer prepainted plastic, but if there's an available metal one that looks to be worth the time, I could break out the paints.

Thanks in advance.

What is she FOR? How did you use her in your campaign? Did the party befriend or offend her? Was she at all relevant? The party in my campaign just arrived to investigate where she's living, but I'm really not sure how to use her in the story.

OK, Superstar readers (and judges), I have a hypothetical. And I apologize in advance if this was asked in previous years. I realize the RPG Superstar judges are busy right now, so the rest of the community should take over and put itself in their shoes.

Here's the hypothetical situation:
Everything in the game exists as it is, except - there are no wondrous items. Now you have a contest to bulk out that section of the book (in hindsight it was a bad idea to make an entry for wondrous items in the book, but you thought it might be useful some day).

The submissions come pouring in. Tokens! Amulets! Belts! Cloaks! Even a Wyle-E-Coyote-style hole you can fold up and stuff in your backpack (clearly a gag item - reject).

Assume you receive every wondrous item in the Core Rulebook. Which of these items, submitted in a vacuum of such items, is Superstar material? Which items do you reject out of hand? Let's ignore the word count restrictions for this one. Is there a clear winner? Which item shows the kind of promise and creativity that make you think you'd like to work with that designer? Which items are just under par, but you'd like to hear more from the writer and hope he or she submits next year?

I guess I accidentally turned this into an online campaign on the boards. I hadn't intended to. So, reposting in Gamer Connection:

I plan on running this adventure path starting in the next few weeks. I had so many people, I'm actually running two groups, in parallel timelines (no crossover, so you won't be competing for resources like XP or treasure). But as it turned out, the majority of the people ended up in my Saturday game, and now that's full, and my Sunday game is short. We have three in the group already, so we have room for two or three more.

I expect to be able to run at the Family Game Store in Savage Mill in Savage, MD. I have not secured a table there yet, but if that fails, my place in Laurel will work just as well.

The schedule will be every other Sunday. I'll have a start date as soon as I have a group, but I'm all read up. I would prefer that you not have played through Legacy of Fire already.

The character build will be point-buy, 15 points. Characters are allowed to be any race in the Core Rulebook, or any of the elemental PC race humanoids in the Bestiary 2. Other races (except Drow) will be considered if requested.

Usable Sources: Core Rulebook, APG, UM, UC, or Psionics Unleased (Dreamscarred Press).

If you're interested, write me at my gmail account, for which my user name is c.j.dudley at.

Apologies for ending the previous sentence with a preposition.

I plan on running this adventure path starting in the next few weeks. I had so many people, I'm actually running two groups, in parallel timelines (no crossover, so you won't be competing for resources like XP or treasure). But as it turned out, the majority of the people ended up in my Saturday game, and now that's full, and my Sunday game is short. We have three in the group already, so we have room for two or three more.

I expect to be able to run at the Family Game Store in Savage Mill in Savage, MD. I have not secured a table there yet, but if that fails, my place in Laurel will work just as well.

The schedule will be every other Sunday. I'll have a start date as soon as I have a group, but I'm all read up. I would prefer that you not have played through Legacy of Fire already.

The character build will be point-buy, 15 points. Characters are allowed to be any race in the Core Rulebook, or any of the elemental PC race humanoids in the Bestiary 2. Other races (except Drow) will be considered if requested.

Usable Sources: Core Rulebook, APG, UM, UC, or Psionics Unleased (Dreamscarred Press).

If you're interested, write me at my gmail account, for which my user name is c.j.dudley at.

Apologies for ending the previous sentence with a preposition.

I looked for the answer in this forum, but so far haven't found it.

I plan on running this one soon and have told my players. Since they want to be prepared for the AP but don't want to waste focus that they could spend elsewhere, they've been asking me questions about survival. Because a few of the traits and background concepts mention it, they're wondering how often the ability to survive in the desert is going to come up.

I'd like to be able to answer them sooner than later. Without reading through the entire AP, how often does desert survival become a challenge facing the player characters?

Thanks in advance.

Since Paizo announced at GenCon a revision and update of Rise of the Runelords as a hardcover compilation, I'd like to make a request. I encourage others to add their own to this thread. As the release is at least 9 months away, I would hope that there would be room for additions to the plan if the company got enough support for such an idea.

I was getting set to run a RotRL campaign with a new group. However, as I was re-reading the first volume of the AP, I listened to the Know Direction podcast where the announcement was played. As the release would be timed to come out next summer with the miniatures, I decided to change my plan and run Legacy of Fire for this group, and in June, pick up the hardcover RotRL and either start it then and there, or wait til we finish LoF and put RotRL in the queue.

I've run two AP volumes shoe-horned into another campaign, and found some issues with the module as written. Most of these issues centered on the fact that I had 7 20-point characters playing the AP (I hadn't made the char-gen rules, I took over from another GM who needed a break), which resulted in the party steamrolling over most the adventure which ought to have been over their heads.

Now I'm looking at my new AP group rather suspiciously. I gave them a 15-point build, but I have had 8 players sign on to play. While I'll take my lessons learned from the previous AP and buff up Legacy of Fire as I run it, I would really like to see this reprint of Rise of the Runelords include helpful information on running the AP for large parties. Perhaps there could be a chapter detailing what groups of monsters to raise the number of, and which to individually buff up to make a good challenge. I would also like to see options for additional treasure and opportunities for XP (more PCs leads to slower advancement, as there are more shares to divide by).

Ideally this information could be included as a sidebar in each encounter, or perhaps a box at the bottom of the encounter stat block entitled "For Large Parties," which could include additional monsters and treasure the party could be challenged with.

This was the first thing that occurred to me as something I'd like to see in a reprint, and I hope that it's been brought up in planning for the product. As I think of more suggestions, I may add them here. Until then, I offer my thanks to Paizo for thinking this product was a good idea. I can't wait for the figures and the hardcover to come out.

EDIT: Plussing the posts with requests might be a good way for the company to evaluate demand for a feature, rather than sifting through replies.

Copied from the "know about pathfinder" thread. This has been discussed before, but I personally would really love an official rule.

Grapple is still impossible to play without house ruling something. They say the grappler (and the grapplee) takes a -4 penalty to AC. Went to great pains, it seems, to remove the fact that grappling gives you an automatic sneak attack target. However, the Armor Class Modifiers table on page 195 of the Core Rulebook has a footnote on Grappling. That says that you lose your Dex bonus to AC. Which in fact means that you are still vulnerable to sneak attack.

So... which is it? According to the rulebook I have, if I use every rule in it as faithfully as possible, grappled, and grappling characters both still lose their Dex bonus to AC (and are sneak-attackable). However, the only place I can still find this information is in a footnote in a table I never would have thought to look at after reading all the grapple information. It is not listed in the 2 pages on grapple (except for pinning a target, which, stupidly, makes the PINNER lose his dex bonus). It is not listed in the "grappled" condition in the condition summaries at the end of the book.

Further complicating matters, the table on page 195 again states for pinned targets that they are flat-footed (which is a different footnote than simply losing their Dex bonus to AC) WRT melee and ranged attacks, which also isn't mentioned in the text. Pinned in the text is doubly broken, because it says it's a more severe form of grapple, then it says the pinned target suffers an additional -4 penalty to Dex, then it says that grappled and pinned condition modifiers don't stack. Wait... what?

Summary? This needs errata. Either remove those footnotes from the grappled and pinned entries on the table, or add those effects to the text.

Hey, folks. A friend and I just put together a podcast. We have two episodes up so far. We talk about gaming all the time with each other, and we figured we'd share some of the opinions and insight we've gained through the years.

The theme is gaming in general, and we don't talk about any one system. We've both played quite a few, and we'll talk about any and all of them in due course if we can. We don't have plans for actual play recordings, but we'll give our impressions of the strengths and weaknesses of new systems we try out as we go on.

You can get the show from our web site: www.rulezeropodcast.com

Or from our iTunes store link: RZP

Follow us @RuleZeroPodcast on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

Thanks for reading, and sorry for spamming, but this IS the target audience. Hope to hear from you!

I have an item that an evil orc army is using to make a hole in the sky during the day to make it night time in a large area. The item is about the size of a medium-sized tree trunk, and works like a pyrotechnic device. What it does is fire a beam into the sky that opens a hole in the day time area and effectively makes it night. Like if the people in the area of effect look up, they'll see stars in the sky. They're using them in groups to make an even larger area of the sky night time. Gets rid of that pesky daylight sensitivity, and some other things they're relying on. This is a plot-dependent item that's being used to affect a battlefield. But being plot-dependent doesn't mean it's player-resistant, so I want to have it detailed when the players run across it.

So, if the players manage to find one, how do I stat it out? What school of magic does that sound like? The effect is out of the range of a dispel, it's very high in the sky that the hole opens up. You can see the hole in the sky from miles away. It's not just scrying the night sky from the other side of the world, it really is night in that area of effect. So would that be transmutation or conjuration?

I'm looking for some suggestions here. My players know the books pretty well. I want to keep the idea of a vampire and keep the template at about the same CR, but I don't want it to be straight out of the book. I don't mind SOME overlap of abiltiies, enough to keep the flavor. But running monsters out of the book, once the players know the way around the monster's special defenses, the monster might as well not have that special defense.

I want to keep the idea of an intelligent undead creature that drinks blood to survive. I want to keep the notion of creating spawn. I want to keep the sunlight vulnerability.

I want to dump the "drain on a slam attack" That never made sense to me, anyway. I'd prefer to deliver the level drain with the bite, since seems to me that drinking someone's blood is a way to absorb his life force.

The vampire in question is an orc warlord who has used his unholy influence to gather the scattered tribes into a single army. Some mechanic to reflect this would be good.

So, core powers:
Level drain on bite/drink
Creates spawn
Extra strength
Some kind of DR
Some kind of influence effect
Vulnerable to sunlight

Beyond that, I'm open to suggestion.

I haven't actually played or run any APs all the way through. This question is for those who have.

How long did it take you to complete the entire AP? How often did you play and how long was each session? Did you keep all the same players all the way through?

I'm just curious.

I know there already is one in the Spell Compendium. I hate it. I think +10 for the whole encounter is way too powerful, and makes a BBEG's SR into a joke. Turns a challenging encounter into a cake walk. But I do like the idea of extra help overcoming SR for particularly powerful foes. I'm not ashamed to say I was inspired by the idea of Assay Spell Resistance (Spell Compendium), but I think this makes for a more manageable spell.

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

Precision Casting

School: Divination

Level: bard 3, cleric 3, druid 3, sorcerer 3, wizard 3

Casting Time: 1 swift action

Components: V, F

Range: Personal

Target: You

Duration: 1 round

Saving Throw: None; Spell Resistance: No

When casting precision casting, you focus your magical energies to make your spells more effective. This spell helps you penetrate the magical defenses of a target. After casting this spell, any other spell you cast for the duration of precision casting allows you to add your spellcasting ability score modifier to any caster level check you make to overcome spell resistance. If you are capable of casting multiple spells during the duration of precision casting, the bonus applies to each of them.

-----------

Any thoughts? Is it still too powerful? Is the wording ambiguous or unclear? Can you break it?

I felt like challenging myself to make up a TWF ranger in spite of the evidence against it being mechanically worthwhile. I don't know whether I'll play it or not. This is the 20-point build I came up with, taking roughly 16,000gp worth of gear as a 6th level character. What I'm really wondering is whether this is just a noob trap, if a fighter could do it better, whether it looks like a min/max stat-fest... I guess whether this is a waste of time.

Name: [tbd]
CG Human Ranger 6
S: 21 (16 base, +2 racial, +1 at 4th level, +2 belt)
D: 10
Co: 14
I: 10
W: 14
Ch: 10

AC:19 (+2 Breastplate, +1 Ring of Protection)
Saves: Fort 8, Ref 6, Will 5 (+1 Cloak of Resistance)

(No real dump stat, I hate negative modifiers)
Skill ranks (total modifier): Climb 2 (+7), Handle Animal 5 (+8), Heal 4 (+9), Knowledge (dungeoneering) 1 (+4), Knowledge (Geography) 1 (+4), Knowledge (Nature) 3 (+6), Perception 6 (+8), Ride 2 (+2), Spellcraft 4 (+7), Stealth 6 (+6), Survival 6 (+11), Swim 2 (+7)

Feats: Power Attack (level 1), Toughness (Human Bonus), Two-Weapon Fighting (Ranger Bonus), Endurance (Ranger Bonus), Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword (level 3), Weapon Focus: Bastard Sword (level 5), Double Slice (Ranger Bonus)

Trait (one in this game): Dirty Fighter (+1 damage when flanking)

Class abilities
Favored Enemy 1 (Monstrous Humanoid) +4, Favored Enemy 2 (Aberration) +2, Favored Terrain (Underground) +2, Hunter's Bond (Wolf)

Gear: +2 Breastplate, +1 Bastard Sword, +1 Light Pick, +1 Ring of Protection, +1 Cloak of Resistance, Belt of Physical Might +2

Melee options:
One attack: +1 bastard sword, one handed (+13, 1d10+6)
One attack: +1 bastard sword, two-handed (+13, 1d10+8)
Full attack: +1 bastard sword (+11/+6, 1d10+6, 19-20/x2), +1 light pick (+10, 1d4+6, 20/x4)

Spells: 1st level - 2/day (ranger list)

I'm looking at a two-bladed longsword with one blade made of mithral and the other of adamantine. How would you price it before any enchantment raises the price? The mithral price is by the pound, but the adamantine price is a flat rate. Does the price by the pound apply to the weight of the weapon before or after it is converted to mithral (and the weight is halved)? If the weapon weighs 10 lbs, but I'm only putting mithral on one end, am I paying 5000gp for a 10 lb weapon, 2500gp for a 5 lb weapon, or 1250gp for a 2.5 lb weapon? Does the final weight of the weapon become 7.5 lbs? And would the fact that one end of the weapon now weighs half the other's weight, does that make the weapon unwieldy (and unwieldable)?

I'm DM'ing a group with a paladin who is not motivated by treasure. She refuses to loot the dead, and if someone were to offer her a magic item as a quest reward, I'm not sure she'd take it. In her character's ethos, the pursuit of material wealth is... Well, not quite a sin. More like vanity. She'd feel that if she took the item as a reward then the reward was the motivation, and she didn't actually perform her god's will. But I wouldn't call it a vow of poverty, because she's perfectly fine with wearing the armor she started wtih, and using weapons, and she keeps enough gold to live on. Through RP I have given her a magic sword that will increase in power with her (it contains the soul of a paladin NPC comrade she had to kill because he was possessed by a parasitic aberration, and acquiring it involved an emailed story about going into the afterworld to try to rescue him).

So, basically, I'm looking for suggestions. I'm looking for a way to set her up in some better armor, and the methods I know to do so are unlikely to work. Loot from a monster is out. Saying, "Do this job for me and I'll give you this magic armor" is also out. Crafting is out. Purchasing is out.

What are some ways you can think of to get her a nice suit of armor?

Well, not any, but I'm finding my players getting way too much use out of this.

If they start a detect magic and concentrate for a couple rounds, they can effectively Find Traps, and See Invisibility. These are both second-level spells. They recently encountered an open field they had to negotiate with a minefield of magical traps randomly scattered around. The DC for finding the traps was relatively high, so even if they had a rogue, he might not have detected them. A couple rounds of concentration with a 0-level spell, of which they have infinite uses, and the high-level challenge is not a challenge at all.

The rogue searches a door for traps, and misses the roll. A player casts Detect Magic, and in a couple rounds, tells the rogue, "You missed it. Check it again." So much for skill. He can even tell the school of magic and logically deduce a good spell to prep the rogue with in the event he fails the disarm.

Walking into a room later on, there was a lurking invisible creature maneuvering into position. Since they had Detect Magic active already, and all the players who had it were maintaining it, they not only know it's there, they pinpoint its location, the second they walk into the room. It's a standard action to maintain concentration, but they designate one player to point out where it went, and the invisible enemy's a piñata.

They find a pool of murky water. Anything in it? Detect magic. That character with all the ranks in Search feels pretty redundant about now.

The fact that it's usable at will means there is no consequence to keeping it on constantly, only dropping it when you need your standard action to fight. Which makes Arcane Sight, a 3rd level spell, nearly totally worthless.

Those are just the uses I've seen. I suppose one could argue this is a clever use of a spell to solve a problem. I think it's an exploit, and a pretty damaging one, at that. It negates a few of the trademark tricks of some monsters, and makes it pointless to put magical traps (or at least to bother concealing them) in a dungeon.

Is anyone else finding this to be a problem?

This came up in another thread that contained spoilers. With the introduction in Adventurer's Armory of the wooden stake as a weapon, the idea of staking a vampire in combat came up. Currently, the rules to do so assume the vampire is helpless. Since there are no rules to target a creature's heart, I threw this together.

VAMPIRE HUNTER
You are adept at fighting and killing vampires quickly.
Prerequisites: Weapon Focus (wooden stake), Undead favored enemy.
Benefit: On a critical hit with a wooden stake against a vampire, vampire spawn, or any undead that suffers a special condition from a wooden stake through the heart, your attack has a chance of striking the undead's heart even if the undead is not helpless. After confirming the critical hit, make a combat maneuver check that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. If it succeeds, the stake has pierced the undead's heart, and it suffers the effects of such an event as detailed in the monster's description.
Normal: To drive a wooden stake through an undead's heart, the undead must be pinned (as by a grapple) or helpless.

Would anyone take it? In a normal campaign it probably would only come up once or twice in the campaign, but you could say the same of a lot of favored enemy choices. Who favors oozes? I'd assume that a Ravenloft campaign would see more use out of it.

Comments? Does it exist? Is it useless? My first posted version had Weapon Finesse as a prereq because the feat implied precision over force, but as I said there, if you have focus in wooden stake, you probably know what you're doing. What do you think?

Late June in Columbus, OH. I'm probably going. Anyone else going to be there?

Will there be an official Paizo presence at the Con? Any presentations or even a booth in the vendors' room? Or are any staffers going as regular attendees?

I don't have any organized play characters at the moment, but I might like to start one up if someone's running. And if anyone is running non-OP Pathfinder adventures with pregens, I'd like to know to look for it. I've only been to one Con in my life, and it was Origins last year, and I'll probably try a bunch of new game systems I've never played before, but I'd like to at least get in one Pathfinder adventure.