But if he heals himself for 3 damage, leaving him at -1 HP on the first turn, does he take an hp of damage, does he take an hp of damage and go unconcious, or is he fine until next round?
Once per day, when a half-orc is brought below 0 hit points but not killed, he can fight on for one more round as if disabled. At the end of his next turn, unless brought to above 0 hit points, he immediately falls unconscious and begins dying.
Disabled: wrote:
A character with 0 hit points, or one who has negative hit points but has become stable and conscious, is disabled. A disabled character may take a single move action or standard action each round (but not both, nor can he take full-round actions, but he can still take swift, immediate, and free actions). He moves at half speed. Taking move actions doesn't risk further injury, but performing any standard action (or any other action the GM deems strenuous, including some free actions such as casting a quickened spell) deals 1 point of damage after the completion of the act. Unless the action increased the disabled character's hit points, he is now in negative hit points and dying.
Scenario:
The brave half-orc cleric uses a move to walk past a vicious looking bugbear. The bugbear lashes out with a morningstar, dealing enough damage to put the half-orc at -4 HP. The half-orc responds by triggering his orc ferocity.
I'm trying to figure out how this works. I don't think that our half-orc protagonist gets to heal himself, then take a move or standard next round as if disabled. If he takes a standard action to complete his turn, does he fall unconscious with the strenuous activity? If he doesn’t do anything strenuous, does he stay on his feet until the end of the next round or slightly before that?
Fiery Shuriken is a ranged touch attack, which functions as a ray. If you have a flat-footed opponent and are within 30 ft. (or have something like sniper's goggles), you get sneak attack damage for every shuriken that hits. If you wanted, you can throw the max 8 (if you've got caster level 15) at the same target, getting 8 sneak attacks in.
With arcane trickster 10, wizard 7, rogue 3, magical knack (+2 caster level), and an orange prism ioun stone(caster level +1), you've got the potential for an intensified, empowered fiery shuriken through a maximize metamagic rod for 15d8(120)+105d6 damage before any feats or other tricks.
Fair enough. The best use of this feat is versus archers who five foot away to make a full attack, or the Step Up and Strike to hit them.
Side question:
Step Up and Strike wrote:
Benefit: When using the Step Up or Following Step feats to follow an adjacent foe, you may also make a single melee attack against that foe at your highest base attack bonus. This attack counts as one of your attacks of opportunity for the round. Using this feat does not count toward the number of actions you can usually take each round.
Does this mean that you don't use up your immediate action to move in and hit the person?
Step Up was intended to screw over casters, I believe. But of course... they can just make concentration checks and shrug it off anyway.
The concentration check for injured while casting is 10+damage dealt+spell level. That's pretty difficult curve for anyone with a two-handed weapon and power attack.
Remember that a will-o'-wisp has a strength of 1 and is small. Even if they could manipulate the door, they can only "lift" 7.5 pounds. They can DRAG 35 pounds.
If you attack with anything else that round, you'll drop to the -5 and 1/2 Strength bonus (but really your Int bonus due to prehensile hair's benefits). If you attack with only the hair, it's at full BAB and 1-1/2 Strength.
Prehensile hair is the strangest but most flexible hex in the witches arsenal.
It allows you to pull off touch spells (beneficial and harmful) from range. You can pull allies out of danger with your mighty mustache. You can disarm, trip or sunder from range (though I'd love to see the face of someone who sees a ponytail reach forward and snap his bow in half). It can be used as a temporary hauling technique (particularly that unconscious fighter with full plate and all the loot). It can reach through the bars of the prison cell and grab the nearby keys. It can trigger traps (especially ones that send out guillotine-style blades that cut mere regrowable hair).
I asssumed we were talking about what antics you could get up to, since you had a very open ended question that didn't mention unsactioned knowledge in the text. You'd have to UMD to get shapechange, meaning more investment of money to get this ultra game-breaker.
Number one ring of continuation spell: Shapechange.
Shapechange, PF Core wrote:
This spell allows you to take the form of a wide variety of creatures. This spell can function as alter self, beast shape IV, elemental body IV, form of the dragon III, giant form II, and plant shape III depending on what form you take. You can change form once each round as a free action. The change takes place either immediately before your regular action or immediately after it, but not during the action.
Think about the possibilities. Rotate in Form of the Dragon to find the perfect energy breath weapon for your foes, Elemental Body to get an air elementa's whirlwind and 120 ft (perfect) flying to regroup, then jump over to a Plant Shape to get your regen 5 after the fight.
The rest of the available choices are slim and situational.
Glibness is my second favorite choice for the ring. Make the impossible lies possible. Not recommended for a paladin.
Echolocation, as you saw, is an okay choice. There will be invisible creatures throughout your career, as well as wizards who use displacement or blur.
Bloodhound is reasonable, but not fantastic enough to warrant purchasing the ring.
Veil of positive energy (paladin spell from the APG) is nice if you know you're up against undead.
Not having played Wake of the Watcher, I recommend a few interesting areas that I like.
The Hold of Belkzen - Home of orc tribes and barbarians. Interesting way to show off the peaceful aspect of orcs, right before the raiding party comes back to murder you.
Geb & Nex - Just bouncing back and forth between these two countries chock full of magic would be interesting. Start in Geb, where small pockets of undead are "out of control", follow leads to Nex wizards who are interfering, and do some adventuring in the Mana Wastes.
Spell resistance and saves still come into play when it comes to potions, but there are a few potion tricks you could get away with. Potions of sleep or of blindness could put a creature in a bind. However, there is a class that could make someone miserable with an injection spear.
Alchemists.
A skinsend infusion has no save, so a hit with the spear knocks the person into a terrible situation.
Alternate:
(Barbarian 11, Sorcerer 4, Dragon Disciple 4, Alchemist 1)
Base 18 + Racial 4 + Enhancement (sacrificing a wordspell "Enhance Form (Body)") 8 + Inherent (blood reservoir) 8 + Levels 5 + Greater Rage 6 + Blood Vengence (orc feat that triggers when an ally is taken down) 2 + Amplified Rage (teamwork feat that triggers when an adjacent ally is raging) 4 + Moment of Greatness 12 + Furious/Couragous enhancement 3 + Succubus 2 + Form of the Dragon III (from a scroll, I suppose) 10 + True Mutagen (purchased from a 20th level ragechemist with the infuse mutagen discovery) 10 + Dragon Disciple 4 = 96
Very, very temporary bonuses, but during normal rages, without a downed friend, a fellow raging orc, and without the one-round duration buffs, he has 74 str.
I think I can bump strength up even higher.
(Barbarian 11, Druid 8, Alchemist 1)
Base 18 + Racial 4 + Enhancement 6 + Inherent 6 + Levels 5 + Greater Rage 6 + Blood Vengence (orc feat that triggers when an ally is taken down) 2 + Amplified Rage (teamwork feat that triggers when an adjacent ally is raging) 4 + Furious/Couragous enhancement 3 + Succubus 2 + Wild shape (into any huge animal. Not picky there) 6 + True Mutagen (purchased from a 20th level alchemist with the infuse mutagen discovery) 8 = 70
That's a +30 modifier, an unbuffed 817,152 pound LIGHT LOAD, a 2,457,600 pound HEAVY LOAD, the ability to drag 12,288,000 pounds. (Muleback cords and a casting of ant haul increase this to a hilarious 110,592,000 pounds, which even of the cheapest item [firewood, 1 cp for 20 pounds] would be 55,296 gold pieces in value, more than the wealth by level of a 9th level character. In firewood.)
If this is a strength check, you can have a strength domain cleric use his "Strength Surge" domain power to replace your +6 enhancement from the belt with a +10 enhancement bonus, and you can use your own barbarian "Strength Surge" to get a +5 bonus, plus a friendly "Good Hope" for an additional +2, creating a strength modifier of +39 on any one check,. More bonuses are out there, but since it's not part of this challenge, I think we can all agree that we're good with a +39 on a straight strength check, enough to burst 3 inches of iron or a foot thick reinforced masonry wall with a standard action.
Fair enough, and the players know that killing all giants is a bad idea. The characters, however? Blood-thirst for some, fear at being trapped with an army behind for others.
Our magus is NG, cleric is NG, shadowdancer CN, archer is N, sorcerer is LN (with the occasional slide towards LE).
We've explored the cave system in-character, and do not suspect cave system connection. Metagame? Sure, there's probably a hole or something in there. Can we re-convince the characters to investigate where they've investigated? Not really.
Have you ever had a party get so stuck, they start killing stone giants by the dozen?
Our party initially tried the blunt force method of culling the giant threat in the Valley of the Black Tower. Using several types of hit-and-run tactics, we've killed somewhere between 30-40 stone giants, 2 rocs, 3 red dragons, 4 night wyverns, 2 mammoths, and a fist-full of ogres and hill giants. We've also checked the three cave systems, finding what looks to be the dragon nests and a undead spiders' lair.
However, the party is not content to explore the giant gaping hole in the ground while there's still juicy targets above ground. Mokmurian has been clued into what the adventuring party is doing, and the last time we raided, he dimension doored in with a lamia and disintegrated our sorcerer.
The party is currently all 13th level, and has a sorcerer who specializes in save or die/lose spells, a black-bladed magus of Sarenrae, a cleric of Shelyn, a rogue 5/shadowdancer 8, and an archer fighter.
Here's the question: What could I do as the cleric to help get us inside? My proposals have been to capture and charm/quest, control weather to mask our stealthy entry, scry and teleport directly to Mokmurian's location, and a wind walk with (the sorcerer's) invisibility with a rushing plunge down the pit all seem to be rejected by the party.
I'm at a loss, and your ideas could really help. I'm trying to stop a catastrophic loss of giant life, and the avoidance of a green-bolt-of-death from the big boss would be ideal.
What can you think of?
What about the question of interaction between the Ethereal Plane and Material Plane? Essentially, does the demiplane actually behave like the plane it's inside, or does it behave like a separate plane?
I have a question about the initial creation of a demiplane using the spells Create Demiplane (Lesser and Greater).
The spell descriptions specifically states "You must be on the Astral or Ethereal Plane or on a plane that has access to one of those planes (such as the Material Plane) to cast this spell.
When you cast the spell, you decide whether the demiplane is within the Astral or the Ethereal Plane."
If the demiplane is within either the Ethereal or Astral Plane, do they take on the qualities of the plane they're based in?
The Ethereal and Astral Planes:
Ethereal Plane
The Ethereal Plane is coexistent with the Material Plane and often other planes as well. The Material Plane itself is visible from the Ethereal Plane, but it appears muted and indistinct; colors blur into each other and edges are fuzzy.
While it is possible to see into the Material Plane from the Ethereal Plane, the latter is usually invisible to those on the Material Plane. Normally, creatures on the Ethereal Plane cannot attack creatures on the Material Plane, and vice versa. A traveler on the Ethereal Plane is invisible, insubstanial, and utterly silent to someone on the Material Plane.
The Ethereal Plane has the following traits:
•No Gravity
•Alterable Morphic: The plane contains little to alter, however.
•Mildly Neutral-Aligned
•Normal Magic: Spells function normally on the Ethereal Plane, though they do not cross into the Material Plane. The only exceptions are spells and spell-like abilities that have the force descriptor and abjuration spells that affect ethereal beings; these can cross from the Material Plane to the Ethereal Plane. Spellcasters on the Material Plane must have some way to detect foes on the Ethereal Plane before targeting them with force-based spells. While it's possible to hit ethereal enemies with a force spell cast on the Material Plane, the reverse isn't possible. No magical attacks cross from the Ethereal Plane to the Material Plane, including force attacks.
Astral Plane
The Astral Plane is the space between the Inner and Outer Planes, and coterminous with all of the planes. When a character moves through a portal or projects her spirit to a different plane of existence, she travels through the Astral Plane. Even spells that allow instantaneous movement across a plane briefly touch the Astral Plane. The Astral Plane is a great, endless expanse of clear silvery sky, both above and below. Occasional bits of solid matter can be found here, but most of the Astral Plane is an endless, open domain.
The Astral Plane has the following traits:
•Subjective Directional Gravity
•Timeless: Age, hunger, thirst, afflictions (such as diseases, curses, and poisons), and natural healing don't function in the Astral Plane, though they resume functioning when the traveler leaves the Astral Plane.
•Mildly Neutral-Aligned
•Enhanced Magic: All spells and spell-like abilities used within the Astral Plane may be employed as if they were improved by the Quicken Spell or Quicken Spell-Like Ability feats. Already quickened spells and spell-like abilities are unaffected, as are spells from magic items. Spells so quickened are still prepared and cast at their unmodified level. As with the Quicken Spell feat, only one quickened spell or spell-like ability can be cast per round.
Obviously, the spell does eventually blossom into letting the effects and more exist (gravity, time, alignment, enhanced magic). However, if you base your demiplane on the astral, will it start as a timeless plane? Will an ethereal demiplane start close enough to the Material Plane to see but not affect it?
I know this is a simple question, but I need to confirm before I try doing this in our campaign.
If using a cleave as a standard action, can I trigger a cleaving finish during that round?
For instance:
1.Two goblins are standing next to each other. My fighter walks in, starts a cleave, kills the first goblin. Do I get one attack on the second goblin or two (one from the cleave triggering from the hit and one from cleaving finish)?
2.The same two goblins are high-fiving each other from being reincarnated. I see them and move in, cleaving. The first attack hits, triggering my cleave. I hit the second one, killing him. Can I use a cleaving finish attack on the first goblin?
3.A pile of goblins are added to this post, since someone keeps killing all the goblins stationed here. Each are adjacent to each other (in an empty box shape). I great cleave, triggering one attack after another, striking each. Since I've got huge strong fighter muscles, each hits. The great cleave kills every other one, letting me use improved cleaving finish to destroy the last ones.
1. 2 attacks. Each feat has separate conditions, and you have met both (1st attack hit->Cleave is triggered. First hit reduces goblin A to 0 or fewer hp->Cleaving Finish is triggered.) Flavor-wise I would rule that your entire Cleave/Great Cleave action needs to be finished before you take any cleaving finish attacks, but that doesn't really affect the outcome.
2. Yes. The text of cleaving finish states that the feat only cares about you reducing an enemy to 0 or fewer hit points with a melee attack. It doesn't care that it was a cleave.
3. Correct. Cleaving Finish and Improved Cleaving Finish do not care where the enemies you are attacking are as long as they are within range (In contrast to cleave and great cleave, which requires that the enemies also be adjacent to each other.)
Thanks for the quick reply. Do you have any erratta/quotes that confirm that cleave and cleaving finish aren't connected in triggers? We've avoided trying this combo in my game for now, as we do for all new and unclear feats, but I'd be happy to start murdering mounted riders.
I know this is a simple question, but I need to confirm before I try doing this in our campaign.
If using a cleave as a standard action, can I trigger a cleaving finish during that round?
For instance:
1.Two goblins are standing next to each other. My fighter walks in, starts a cleave, kills the first goblin. Do I get one attack on the second goblin or two (one from the cleave triggering from the hit and one from cleaving finish)?
2.The same two goblins are high-fiving each other from being reincarnated. I see them and move in, cleaving. The first attack hits, triggering my cleave. I hit the second one, killing him. Can I use a cleaving finish attack on the first goblin?
3.A pile of goblins are added to this post, since someone keeps killing all the goblins stationed here. Each are adjacent to each other (in an empty box shape). I great cleave, triggering one attack after another, striking each. Since I've got huge strong fighter muscles, each hits. The great cleave kills every other one, letting me use improved cleaving finish to destroy the last ones.
