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A friend and I were discussing the problem of our group mostly having full system mastery in P1 and we hit a fun comparison: Superman writers over the decades had to either reduce his power to tell a good story or change the nature of their story writing. The end we settled on is that at his peak, Superman doesn't struggle to win, so the writers can't wring much suspense out of that, but the best Superman stories come from his internal decisions of how to win and what to do with each victory. Does this track with the experiences of other players and GM's?
Greetings all! I'm looking for some ballpark numbers of how a full offense caster can shape a combat. Looking at paced spell output -- so say a full dungeon with at least six moderate combats and one to two difficult combats, something where casting from your mid to high level resources is the smart decision -- what percentage of the enemies would they likely debilitate or eliminate in the first one or two rounds? For context, we have an all melee party and I'm trying to run the numbers on how many party buffs are too many buffs from my combat oracle given that we don't have a caster on offense. Thank you everyone for your ideas!
I’ve run into this issue consistently and I wonder what our collective thoughts on the matter might be. First, I’ve never been a fan of prepared casters, so my first solution to the problem of having so much player experience that it conflicts with PC experience — which is to be super knowledgeable about all kinds of situations and backed by thorough studying, both me and my PC can produce an exceptional plan. The fall back I’ve used is to play super wise characters who work exceptionally well on an intuitive level, so maybe hours in meditation each day or an extraordinary knowledge of the natural world flavor the solution to the problem at hand. But now I’m playing a charisma character and have landed only on the idea that they are a more than decent story teller and that this imaginative play allows outside the box thinking that surpasses intellect and wisdom. Do physical stats work as well? Your hammer itself knows when to swing, your body moves first as if it knew what to do before your mind? (No idea about Con).
The spell has a primary target, but also secondary targets of the caster's choosing within 15' of the first target. In trap form, what are the different ways of deciding who gets hit in which order? Burning Arc: This spell causes an arc of flame to leap from your fingers, burning a number of enemies nearby. It deals 1d6 points of fire damage per caster level (maximum 10d6). For every additional target the discharge arcs to, reduce the number of damage dice by half (rounded down). Therefore, at 9th level, your burning arc deals 9d6 points of fire damage to the primary target, then 4d6 points of fire damage to a secondary target, then 2d6 points of fire damage to an additional target. Each target can attempt a Reflex saving throw for half damage. The Reflex DC to halve the damage of the secondary bolts is 2 lower than the DC to halve the damage of the primary bolt. You may choose secondary targets as you like, but they must all be within 15 feet of the primary target, and no target can be struck more than once. You can choose to affect fewer secondary targets than the maximum.
I had a character a while back who studied combat as a profession, but I just got to thinking, the fact that the Platonic solids constitute most of the dice and societies are capable of doing their own data collection for thousands of years, it seems like there should be a cult that worships d4’s to d20’s as the ultimate arbiters of fate. Does this already exist?
Not sure if I'll actually get to do this with our own adventuring party, but it could be fun to plan out and then have the NPC's use it for dramatic effect: Symbol of Healing (Permanent 10k gp, CL 10)
Are there other ways to up the effectiveness against undead?
Hi all! I am repeatedly failing my save against Decision Paralysis so I'm looking to crowd source as many combinations as I can for the following party comp and the abilities that follow! Warpriest
I'm playing the Oracle and (mainly) for utility spells the GM has greenlit Dreamed Secrets to open Wizard arcane spells as an option, but there are two catches. First, at lvl 10 I will have access to Lesser Spellcasting Contract which will allow 1st and 2nd level spells to be shared with the party indefinitely, as if with Imbue with Spell Ability, without the school/tradition limitations. (We have reworded it to allow spontaneous casters to use it.) Second, by lvl 10 I will have Echoing Spell on Channel the Gift at only a +1 spell level, so each 4th level slot (or higher) can be split into two sharable castings of 3rd level or lower spells, with the limitation that the 'free' spell cast after Channel the Gift has to have a casting time of one full round or shorter. It is a resource light campaign, so my first thoughts are to pump our gear with Magic Vestment and Greater Magic Weapon (either off Dreamed Secret or Paladin 3), then see if the Paladin will choose Good Hope for 3rd level Unsanctioned Knowledge as a prebuff. For Lesser Spellcasting Contract I have very few ideas of what to suggest other than Shield and a pocketful of pearls of power. Thanks in advance and if you have ideas on the party build itself, that's great, just throw in some spell combos with that as well!
I thought I would start a thread for whichever questions might come up later, but right now I am wondering if anyone has knowledge ranks to answer this: Ruina Montium was a gold mining technique of digging chambers inside a mountain side then flooding them to cause the whole side of the mountain to crumble and fall, which I now desperately want to do in game with Polymorph Any Object, but it occurs to me that water isn’t the only option here. What if the spell instantly filled large chambers inside the side of a mountain with mercury? Would it cover a larger area? Could it break thicker sections of stone? Also, rules related, can dispel turn it back into stone or a different casting turn the mercury to water? Flooding a valley with thousands of cubic ft of toxic metal seems bad all around.
Has anyone played or run with a house rule similar to this? Dice Distribution - Killable Zone TLDR of it is that enemies have die rolled HP that is either only determined once they reach that threshold for GMing fudging purposes or becomes part of combat variety giving insight that some enemies of the same type might have more or less HP than others. The input and output is simple enough and the only change to a statblock could be giving a range of HP instead of a static value, so no need to actually roll and keep track of each individual number in advance. Some ideas from the author on the HP range is that among the same enemy type:
It will be a while until I'm running another campaign, but my imagination is running wild with things to tinker with such as
[just solved this after I wrote it, but it could be interesting for a home-setting game] Were there ever any products that talked about the ratio of gold in one gp or silver in one sp? Looking to make holy water and an easy way is to grind up silver coins, but historically gold and silver coins were only a fraction of those metals so it would take more than 250sp to create the 5 lbs of powdered silver for the component. Oh nevermind, just looked at the price of 1lb of silver and it's 5gp and 50sp = 1lb. If it were any different, a crafty investor/counterfeiter could run some arbitrage on the currency buying one and selling the other, which is against the rule of 'no infinite money'. Edit: A table with enough econ credit hours could have fun manipulating the monetary supply tho since there is not elasticity which debasing coins provides.
Looking at this spell for my character for casting a healing version through the Phoenix bloodline arcana, but placement will mostly be determined by where our archer needs line of sight. He is new to PF1, so simpler is better, but not altogether necessary. He will also have Improved Precise Shot by then if it changes anything. Any solutions? Thanks!
Looking to dip Sorcerer on my Halfling Oracle to be able to fly on one of these (Magic Trick) but I would like a second one to carry loot as well. How much more is out there?
So far to boost CL:
Mostly ruled out:
Hiyall! I'm looking for a deity for a disgruntled healer/fighter that wouldn't smite one of their own followers for calling all of the deities of all of the pantheons 'sky-wizards' or 'magical overlords' or 'specialized and stylized warriors of the highest level stuck in a small town setting'. Alignments flexible, but character is definitely jaded or naturally cynical.
Aside from the practical demonstration of casting a high level spell, how would you determine that a wizard has mastered the conceptual framework of their craft and guarantee that the work is their own, with no outside help or input from notes or others of any kind? Lead lined walls? Telepathic silence? What is everything that is needed to give a secure exam to a wizard (spell level by spell level)?
Looking to do a Helpful Halfling bodyguard (+4 AC as AoO) character that goes into Blundering Defense with Osyluth Guile (additional +4 or +5 later), but I'm not sure when I want to increase their damage output in between. It's good advice is to strike first and strike hard, but the mental sketch is that of a professional dancer thrown into the adventuring world, so I won't start the build with top tier attack and damage. (And also my friends might be tired already of my shenanigans in our games that end combats quickly.) So with all this mind, what benchmarks would you set for yourself for such a character in terms of To Hit and Damage by levels 4, 8, and 12? Thank you all!
I’m considering the different planar traits as a roadmap for what changes could be made to areas of the first world, if only temporarily. What range of DC’s would you consider for all of the different planar traits covered in the create demiplane spells? (From changing mild alignment, to altering the shape of a combat area so leaving one edge puts you on the opposite side, to altering the flow of time and enhancing/deadening magic.)
So not one out of the four of us has a caster as their first pick to play in our next adventure path, but the GM could be game for adapting Tyrant's Grasp to run smoothly without them (there might be a paladin or bloodrager, but likely not even a 6th level caster). What advice would you have for the GM to keep things interesting in and out of combat with the usual setbacks possible, but no 'you've failed before you started' moments? What advice would you have for players as we plan out our builds? Thanks!
So my Kingmaker campaign is going to the First World soon (played the video game up to that point, then stopped immediately when I heard we had a GM for it, so no end of AP spoilers). My Gnome Medium has played the role of Grand Diplomat but also has charisma checks with a 30+ modifier with the right spirit and buffs, which I understand can shape the First World (from the Realm of the Fey player book, avoiding the AP rules right now). What kind of mischief/nonsense would you be up to in this situation? What would you do with the power to sway the fabric of a plane and the resources of an entire nation behind you? Thanks!
What all feedback can you give for this scenario? Can a stone construct be awakened and hit with stone to flesh to make it into the equivalent of a humanoid? (looking more spirit of the rules / rule of cool than a legal reading of what the spells can do) The scenario: I've been running a support Medium through Kingmaker, but when our Barbarian/ defender of the Cleric moved out of state, my character has had to move from the mid-line to the front. I've managed it well by possessing various monsters and animals then polymorphing back into a small/medium size humanoid, but as we have progressed, powercreep has set in pretty hard. Without enough hit points, the possessed body is a liability to the party, but creatures with enough HP have very high physical stats -- to the point that our GM has bumped bosses out of the range that the party could take on without this front liner. A potential solution: We have designed and built a number of various constructs and golems to defend our settlements from magic attacks while the party is out adventuring, so I'm thinking this is the perfect way to balance the physical stats of a possessed body with the hit points that are in line with the level: Awakened Angelic Guardian:
Material: Irespan Basalt (+50% HP), HD increased from 6 to 9
I'm thinking by all of these spells, it has lost almost all of its construct traits except for the fact that it does not have a soul, so would be immune to magic jar and such (but fortunately a mind so I can still possess it with Mindswap!) Potential Problems:
So we are going on a dragon hunt and I want to get a feel for how many rounds we can prepare as it approaches (assuming not invisible and flying out in the open at 200ft fly speed). With a +30 perception, the rules state I auto succeed seeing him at 300ft, but for every 10' beyond that, there is a chance I don't until I can't at 500ft (or about there depending on ambient conditions). What kind of modifiers would be in place to account for the fact that it is as big as a house and flying right at me? (rules as written would be great, but also reasonable interpretations you would make as a gm)
These two posts seem to contradict each other. Using just the spell Scorching Ray, the first indicates that inspire courage effects both the attack and damage on each ray, but the second indicates that only one ray receives the damage bonus. How would you rule this for PFS and then, what about for a home game? Ray: Do rays count as weapons for the purpose of spells and effects that affect weapons?.
Long story short, the party rescues a Changeling child and decides the best way to protect her in the long run is to help her form her own coven. Now we are level 11 and she is a grown up 9th level witch with another witch and shaman as mentors, and is searching for an Iron Collar of the Unbound Coven to eliminate the need for an actual hag. Will she be too powerful an ally at this point having access to these coven spells? dream,
It's assumed that she is not directly adventuring with the party, but if she were asked to help, there is no reason in the plot yet that she and the other members of the coven wouldn't help. Should we roll with the coven rules as is or say that there is only a defective Iron Collar of the Unbound Coven with more restricted access to spells?
Seasons Greetings! I have an updated Kingdom and Army Tracking Sheet based on one of the best designed kingdom sheets I've found. This sheet is based on the work of codebrunch.de which includes a full description of the original sheet, which features city tabs which automatically populate images of city buildings. Added kingdom building features include a turn tracking page, a place to record buildings/improvements from the Promotions phase, as well as an automated kingdom event roller. For kingdom planning, there is an automated cost-benefit calculator to show the relative value of one building/building chain against others, as well as a tab to manually sort different buildings, and a tab is included for an at-a-glance view of which common buildings are already in which cities. The army features include a description of each class' benefits and a place to build armies which automatically figures into kingdom expenses and shows the room available in the kingdom to keep each army in reserve. Last, an optional homebrew mini-game is included in the Leader Influence tab. This tab has no automatic effect on the kingdom but is designed to give a PC individual options for how they direct their most dedicated followers.
Our Kingmaker campaign has a lot of downtime which my PC has turned into a lot of wealth by establishing a charitable Non Government Organization. What infrastructure, services, spells, and magic items for purchase or construction would most improve the lives of everyone in different parts of the kingdom (some rural/developing, other urban)? We have several thousand gp/turn right now and will soon have tens of thousands of gp/turn. Our current projects include:
My group just hit upon an idea to make choosing between these more interesting. As far as we could tell, for every hill hex there is no reason not to build a mine with a corresponding foundry instead of a quarry. Our reasoning: A hills hex with a farm, a mine, and foundry in a connected city reduces consumption by 2 and produces 1 Stability and 3 BP. (2 BP directly and +3 economy which is 1 BP using the UC calculation for economy)) for a total of 26 BP. (We ignore the unrest penalty because we are expanding quickly and houses reduce it in addition to allowing for other useful buildings.) The hills hex with a farm and a quarry on the other hand reduces consumption by 2 and produces 1 BP and 1 Stability for the total cost of 10 BP. The 16 BP savings of the quarry is then negated after 8 turns because there is no building you can buy for 16 BP that will get you 2 BP income per turn. The savings on the quarry is just a trap. But we came up with two rules (one by accident) that make for more interesting decisions: 1) Mines can only be built where an ore vein has been found already. The party can pay BP and wait one turn to see if a suitable spot is be found (the Kingmaker AP lists a few as part of hexploration, but our GM has picked other secret sites where there are veins). Each time we pay a team to search a hex for ore, the GM rolls a dice in secret to see if any is found, with a cumulative bonus for repeatedly searching the same hex. 2) Quarries on the other hand can be built on any hills hex, but any farm built on a hill with a quarry has its output reduced by 1. The immediate result is that we are now much more interested in hexploring nearby hills first and then debating how long do we want to send teams to find ore before we give up and build a quarry. Is there an optimal solution that we haven't found yet or do these rules create a solid mechanic for creating more investment in team decisions?
I’ve mistaken the rules about terrain improvements for our Kingmaker game, but I see a potential upside to it. Has anyone played it further to know how this would effect the Mid to Late Game? Inadvertent House Rule: Mines can only be built on locations where a resource is known to exist. (Either as stated by the AP or the GM) I may have confused this with the AP listing two sites early on or from various kingdom/civilization video games, but I think it will provide a throttle to how fast the economy can expand, so I’m not sure if we should change it. Another mechanic that we have agreed on is that the divisor for economy checks will increase as the kingdom grows (d20+Econ score divided by 3 to start, then by 5 and maybe higher as the kingdom expands. Do you think these will make the kingdom too ineffective later in the AP or will they help avoid the runaway economy score that makes some games too easy and ultimately uninteresting?
I'm brainstorming mass combat situations in case our GM throws them at us later down the road in our Kingmaker campaign. Not sure if we will follow the rules exactly for the actual combat, but he does encourage theater of the mind and out of the box solutions. One thing I'll have at my disposal will be a set of casters with level 3 spells from the leadership feat (other players are thinking about the feat too, so there could be a lot of these casters), so of course the first idea is to spam fireballs. But what happens when the GM turns around and brings his own unit of casters? The description of the spell makes me think there should be a low tech or low level solution to defending against Fireballs: You point your finger and determine the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst. A glowing, pea-sized bead streaks from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the fireball at that point. An early impact results in an early detonation. If you attempt to send the bead through a narrow passage, such as through an arrow slit, you must “hit” the opening with a ranged touch attack, or else the bead strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely. Are there ways to throw something in the path of the spell and cause it to detonate early?
My group is soon doing our session zero, but we are all underwhelmed by the campaign traits offered, but not so much for their relative power, but for their lack of variety. Would you be able to suggest some traits that tie a larger range of backgrounds into the story arc?
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