Kiraes's page

If a fighter uses Vital Strike, and it is enough to kill his opponent, can he use Cleaving Finish to make a second attack against another opponent, and if so, can that second attack be another Vital Strike? I know that Cleaving Finish triggers "if you make a melee attack," which I'm fairly sure that Vital Strike qualifies for, but I'm not sure whether the second attack would be allowed under Vital Strike's rules, which state that you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus.

So... given that Bestiary 4 officially confirmed that Time Travel is in fact possible in Golarion (Time Dragons - more powerful than a Wish spell), I've noticed that there is a distinct lack of rules related to traveling through time, or for that matter, much to do with interplanar travel at all either. I've been coming up with a sort of awkward set of houserules to make things consistent should things consistent should this all come up in any of my games, but I think I'd like some feedback. The rules are as follows:

The universe can be seen as having 8 dimensions

Three dimensions correspond to actual space. We can recognize them as the width, height, and length of the universe. In terms of geometry, we might call them the x, y, and z axes

Another two dimensions correspond to planar dimensions. We will call these axes w and v for now. Where one is on axis w might more or less correspond to which plane one is on. For simplicity's sake, w=0 will always be the prime material plane. But if one were to, for example, travel 20 kilometers in the positive w direction, one might end up on, say, the fire elemental plane. The v axis would also be a planar dimension, but would be used to represent planes that might intersect each other or be inside each other. If I had created a demiplane within the elemental plane of fire, I might be at w=20 km, v=5m, instead of w=20 km, v=0.

Altogether, the physical dimensions of the universe without respect to time might resemble a hyper-hypersphere... or something.

As for time, it should take 3 dimensions. One set of dimensions is concerned with causality. If you go back in time to change something, you are traveling along this axis. The next is concerned with alternate timelines. Strictly speaking, if a player goes back in time to change something, he should be placed in a different timeline so as to not create temporal causality loops. Otherwise a sufficiently bored CE player with a high enough charisma might just Dominate Monster a Great Wyrm Time Dragon, and force it to go back in time to kill its own grandfather, and destroy the universe from the resulting paradox.

In any case, when a player travels in the negative direction on the causality axis, they will also travel along the timeline axis until they reach a destination where no timeline exists. This timeline will be a copy of the timeline he just came from, with the exception that he is now in a different spot. It also stands to reason that since the desired goal of time travel is to change the future (or relative present), that a character who then decides to travel forward in time to see the results of what he has done will remain in the timeline he just came from. If other players were waiting for them to finish what they were doing after time traveling, one can assume the game will then pick up where they left off in the new timeline. The players in the other universe... well let's just say they'll never see their friend again. A time traveler can never return to their own native timeline.

This leaves one last axis unmentioned. This axis is the time traveler's own relative time axis, in which one cannot ever travel backwards in. A time traveler must age (unless they don't), and time stops exist, so time must be passing for someone, even if it isn't for others. The character will continue to progress along this time axis for eternity, even when they're a corpse.

In any case, this would be my house rules for interplanar/interdimensional travel. Thoughts? And also, why doesn't Paizo make an "Ultimate Planes" or something, considering the relative lack of resources we have on it. Maybe I want to run a campaign in floating rocks in the Elemental Plane of Air, or caverns built inside the Elemental Plane of Earth. Maybe I want to send the players to the ends of the Earth to get the spells to be able to safely travel to the Positive Energy plane and obtain some artifact that the King lost to a celestial in a drunken bet. These things could definitely use more depth, don't ya think?

Welp, I've been meaning to create a Mythic Adamantine Golem. Kinda wondering what abilities would be "thematically appropriate" for what is effectively a giant nigh-indestructible walking killbot.

Druids cannot cast Interplanetary Teleport, your argument is invalid.

A party of 3 druids and one Wizard, however, might just be balanced.

Kiraes wrote:

RAW regarding spellcasters beyond 20th level:

Quote:

A spellcaster's caster level continues to increase by one for each level beyond 20th level. Every odd-numbered level, a spellcaster gains access to a new level of spell one above his previous maximum level, gaining one spell slot in that new level. These spell slots can be used to prepare or cast spells adjusted by metamagic feats or any known spell of lower levels. Every even-numbered level, a spellcaster gains additional spell slots equal to the highest level spell he can currently cast. He can split these new slots any way he wants among the slots he currently has access to.

A Magus at 25th level would have a 9th level spell slot. Unfortunately, his Greater Spell Access ability does not state that he has the ability to learn new Wizard/Sorcerer spells beyond the 14 that he receives from it. Sorry, you cannot cast Interplanetary Teleport to travel to Mars, full attack the king of an alien planet while he is giving a speech to his people, and then return to Golarion in time for tea.

What is the source for this? Do you have a link?

It looks like the 3.5 epic rule which does not apply in pathfinder since pathfinder does not go above level 20.

A link? Certainly.

Just scroll down a little bit until you find "Advancing Beyond 20th Level"

Alternatively, if you have a copy of the Pathfinder Core Rules at hand, it's in the Gamemastering section just after "Ending The Campaign"

Magus uses the 3/4 BAB, Majuba, so at 29th level he would have

+21/+16/+11/+6, not +20/+15/+10/+5.

Also, pretty sure once you have a BAB of +16 or higher you automatically get your fourth attack. Although that might just be RAI.

We need rules for "My Little Pathfinder" for those that think the bad guys just need a hug

Oh, you mean like Ponyfinder?

The point is level 20 (mythic 10) is the physical cap according to rules. Not time cap, physical cap. And that's more obvious when consider you can have a 20 years old human wizard level 20 side by side with a 500 elf ranger 8.

There is no physical cap in the rules regarding levels. You can advance as far as you like with one character class, and stats will advance according to the way beyond 20th level rules work. Unfortunately, you will find yourself receiving diminishing returns, as for most classes, you gain no real benefits beyond 20th level except for extra hit dice, and extra boosts to BAB and saves.

If beyond 20th level characters were illegal, there would be no way for characters to defeat some of the 25+ CR monsters out there without perhaps Mythic Ranks (and even then it'd be difficult). Also, one of my NPCs (Starsoul Sorcerer 20, Time Oracle 20, Mystic Theurge 10) would be highly illegal, even if he is designed never to encounter the players ever, and to just do weird stuff behind the scenes

RAW regarding spellcasters beyond 20th level:

A spellcaster's caster level continues to increase by one for each level beyond 20th level. Every odd-numbered level, a spellcaster gains access to a new level of spell one above his previous maximum level, gaining one spell slot in that new level. These spell slots can be used to prepare or cast spells adjusted by metamagic feats or any known spell of lower levels. Every even-numbered level, a spellcaster gains additional spell slots equal to the highest level spell he can currently cast. He can split these new slots any way he wants among the slots he currently has access to.

A Magus at 25th level would have a 9th level spell slot. Unfortunately, his Greater Spell Access ability does not state that he has the ability to learn new Wizard/Sorcerer spells beyond the 14 that he receives from it. Sorry, you cannot cast Interplanetary Teleport to travel to Mars, full attack the king of an alien planet while he is giving a speech to his people, and then return to Golarion in time for tea.

Well... the catfolk in the Advanced Race Guide are covered head to toe in fur and have the faces of wildcats. Them purring would be obvious. The catfolk as they debuted in Bestiary 3, however, could be tricky, as they are mostly human-like, just with a tail and ears, and skin that looks like it has a leopard pattern on it. They may be significantly less like cats, and unable to purr.

Personally, I'd say they should be able to, as it fits well in theme. It's all up to the GM though, as rules do not dictate one way or the other.

Words of Power isn't a bad system IMO. I'd definitely like to see some extra words thrown into some book, even if it's only maybe 10-20 extra pages. At the very least, make it so that there's a word of power equivalent to a disintegrate spell. I want to wall of disintegration.

Okay, this thread is a necro, but why not.

I used to do 4d6 as my stat generation method, as that is what my parents used to do for AD&D 2e games. After my sister managed to get a fair stat spread of 18, 18, 17, 17, 14, 14, and after I'd been noticing a certain one of my players kept getting low rolls except when it didn't matter, I stopped dice rolling all together. Instead, I exclusively require all characters be generated with 25 point buy. It's high enough that I can optimize my villains a little bit without worrying if the players will be able to take them (I always point buy the NPCs with less than the players, but I'm better at Min-Maxing than most of my players, so...), but not so high I'm going to be stuck with stupidly high stat players (I consider stupidly high if it has two 18s and the other stats don't suck).

A Nightmare Lord gets both increases, for a total of +6, +4, +6.

Thanks. And now to build a Nightmare Lord Great Wyrm Black Dragon. This will be fun.

Hey, I was just going through my Bestiary 4 and came across Nightmare creatures, which, when applied to a creature with 10 or more hit dice, will have the Nightmare Lord template instead. I know that Nightmare Lords are written as having "all of the abilities of nightmare creatures" plus a few extras, but does this apply to the ability score increases as well?

Nightmare creatures are written as having +4 Dex, +2 Int and +4 Cha among other things. Nightmare lords have +2 Dex, +2 Int, +2 Cha written for their ability scores. Is it safe to assume that this is in addition to the bonuses for nightmare creatures? Or is this in place of it.

TL;DR: If I make a Nightmare Lord creature, does it get a total of +6 Dex, +4 Int, +6 Cha, or just +2 Dex, +2 Int, +2 Cha?