Levi's page

AS long as my players aren't doing something silly like the beginning of Shad's video, or a bandolier of goblin alchemists, I'm not too worried about where they put things.

Other than the intelligent sunblade that's afraid of the dark (she REALLY doesn't like being put in dimensional pockets)it's only come up a few times and we've been playing the same campaign since 2e went live.

My Saturday night game ran with only the rogue's medicine skills until level 9. At which point they got some supplemental magical healing in a new party member, but it's the medicine checks that still do most of the party healing.

Just ignore the unconscious bit.

No heroic drive to survive if they're unable to act the instant their air runs out.

I see it as a misapplied synonym. As far as PF2 is concerned, snare =/= trap hazard.

You could craft and sell traps and or trap components, which would then need to be properly set up. This contain mechanical and or magical components.

Those aren't snares.

Snares are when your ranger grows a mullet and makes something from a paperclip and some random thing out of the wizard's component pouch. It works, it shouldn't work, and it can't be moved.

I'd rule no.

A "paralyzed" character has no muscle control and was quite possibly caught in an excited state (combat) and would have been using their mouth to take in more air meaning it would be open.

The act of holing one's breath is partially sealing apertures, and partially pressurizing the system to keep out invasive fluids.

Being paralyzed means that such muscle control is unavailable and even if they were to stop breathing (assuming they could) there's nothing keeping the cube from invading through the mouth or sinuses.

That kicks in the drowning rules. Which are fine, outside of going unconscious. I ignore that part, paralyzed or not.

it was such in 3/3.5 D&D. 5e made it concentration which is something new (and something they did to a lot of their spells severely nerfing casters) but in prior versions it has always been permanent once cast.

Although in D&D1.0 and AD&D it could be dispelled.

Ravingdork wrote:

Salamileg wrote:

Are you having all of your enemies go at once? That's a recipe for player death no matter what.

Been doing it for decades without any issue whatsoever.

If you pull some punches and don't focus fire, it works. But if you don't, then all the enemies get to pound down on a single PC without giving anyone the chance to react.

It really helps with bookkeeping, but at the same time you have to be more careful with your use of flanking abilities, target selection, and things such as trip.

That said I usually break up mobs by type, and roll initiative by group.

Special/Unique/significant threats still get their own initiative, but if there are 6 orc scouts, those get grouped.

I tend to use Trip, Shove, Grapple when I think it makes sense or lends drama to a situation. Or as teaching moments so a player may learn a new trick for their own character after having it done to them. I don't tend to use those options on whim or just because the mob is trained in athletics.

Or they may have an attached ability that plays off a prior strike, such as Grab or Rend. Those are automatic (no attack/athletics roll), but they still require the creature to spend an action.

A Necromancer with just a dip into Rogue for Nimble Dodge can be much tougher than you may expect. Their 4th lvl Focus spell, and spamming of Vampiric Touch through a spectral hand can keep them topped off for a decent time even going solo vs an on lvl party of 5.

...and you still get to play with Wiz abjuration and battlefield control spells.

Bulk is my least favourite thing about 2.0

At first I liked it for simplifying things, but once we dug in it seems to actually over complicate things as bulk is largely subjective and gets even more so as things get larger.

Now for the issue at hand, have you ever tried to throw a feather? We can pretend that the lifting belt is negating mass, this means that there's no inertia to keep the object moving. The instant the object is released, it regains it's mass, but at the same instant it's inertia is tested against air pressure and it instantly stops, and then gravity pulls it to the ground. Hopefully not on your foot.

These situations are why my players get concerned when I bring in an old rule book for some archaic rules set.

There are many, many printed and home brew rules for aquatic vehicle combat of various types, they're almost all flawed in one way or another. Most have little to nothing to do with the base systems they were printed in.

Your best bet is to just use some google-fu and see which ones can be converted to fit your scenario, or just come up with logical solutions for yourself.

One thing I'd add is that a Dragon Turtle's capsize ability isn't really about capsizing a 16' launch in a river, it's talking about flipping a large ship with a move action that counts as a strike. There's nothing that says a Kraken which is much larger, and stronger can't roll over a ship just because it doesn't have a specialized ability for it, it would just require multiple actions.

I brought this thread up tonight at our table, they were aghast at the idea of being handed multiple Hero Points per session. I left out the spat between Ravingdork and myself, and that's been handled via PM.

I've long been a fan of fate points, but taken in a form closer to the old Warhammer fantasy. Where you get X amount for the life of your character. They were more powerful and could be used on anything, but you had a finite number of them, which made them valuable.

Thus the one per session isn't in itself a huge stretch for me or my groups, but we all find the idea of multiple per session would lessen the risk/reward of their character's actions.

That said, I'm still running a homebrew (a converted homebrew DnD campaign in Greyhawk) and it seems as if the AP's are balanced around the use of them to keep the party going from what I see on the forums. This may be where there's a disconnect.

How many people using hero points conservatively, like myself, are running homebrews where we control all the encounters vs those who are running the AP's?

I kinda like Kainite101's hero point pool idea:

We changed it to a shared pool using poker chips on table in a pile next to the map and started "remembering" to use them and also make it likely someone would use it to do something heroic, rather than hoard that only point for a bad save roll or getting crit hit... And sometimes RNG is just nasty to someone all night, and the blessed player never needs them, so sharing the pool helps out on that for us anyways...

I may try implementing this, as the party gets into more heroic grounds and the costs of failure and the danger of sudden death increases.

Levi wrote:

Disappearance, then meld into stone buys 10 minutes. Hopefully you already had remove aroma and fly going so you can't be tracked to your rock.

Congratulations. You've only succeeded in frustrating Treerazer, but not keeping him from finding you (or rather, the absence of you). But can your Stealth beat his Perception DC? If not, he knows you're nearby and can take Seek actions to find you despite your wards (and they'll very likely succeed).

How does TR know you're nearby?

Seek can be used to notice the absence of something to foil effects like disappearance, but with meld into stone there's no absence to be felt. You become one with the rock, there's no gap in TR's perception. Meld itself would almost be enough except that we're looking at something with supernatural senses.

Yet if it only said "increase their proficiency" than that could be argued as disallowing the acquiring of a new skill.

That increasing a core skill is more relevant than acquiring training in a skill you may never use, thus balancing the mechanic, has merit though.

My gut still tells me that I should allow it (if it does come up) but I want to remain consistent. Just because it wouldn't be an issue now, doesn't mean it won't be one later.

Thank you for your input.

Nice. Is there anything actually indicating that a flying creature can't be tracked?

Not directly, but if they're flying there's no foot tracks. This leaves smell (remove aroma) and incidentals like broken branches and such. Significantly increasing the DC to track. Thing is only tracks suddenly stopping at a rock would be reason to investigate further, a broken twig, or bent branch just means they passed that way and may have continued further.

edit: iirc you can cast personal spells in this version of Meld Into Stone and you have some awareness of what's outside. Which means as long as you have remaining spell slots you could stay in and undetected by recasting the spells before they expired.

You don't get to attack me and then tell me to not bring it up again.

The term "cheat death" isn't to be taken as "cheating" unless you're just trying to be obsequious for the sake of your straw man. Nowhere did I say I tried to kill the player, he's still in my campaign and he knows he should have died there. He was rather ambivalent about using the hero point.

I don't kill players, bad GM's kill players. The whole dynamic isn't GM vs Player, its GM AND Players to tell/experience a story. It's about adventure, and danger and overcoming obstacles and risks with a table of friends. Sometimes that means a character dies, and that's part of the story. Some of the best stories come from a character's heroic death.

If you need hero points to cover up your failings as a GM that's as much on you being a bad GM as anything else. Maybe encounter build better, maybe plan better, maybe use a DM screen like we've been doing for the last 30 years.

Every table I've GM'd or played at for the last 25 years has had the understanding that the GM screen is there for the protection of the players, so the GM can mitigate the spikes to allow a fun game to progress.

Hell, you can't even run some systems (Rolemaster for example) with out it otherwise your PC's will all be maimed or dead after a handful of fights.

This is an open topic, and why a GM is sparing with Hero Points is just as valid as why a GM feels the need to hand out dozens as seen in some of the house rules regarding them. Every table is different and discussing how or why we do things can help other tables through their own choices. Telling other members on these boards to not partake in the discussion because you don't like what they say is the only unproductive thing in this topic other than out little spat.

Dimensional space antics aside.

Disappearance then Meld into stone buys 10 minutes. Hopefully you already had remove aroma and fly going so you can't be tracked to your rock.

Yeah, but that doesn't explicitly disallow it either, and going from UT to trained feels like a larger jump than Expert to Mastery. It feels like it was an oversight one way or another.

None of my players have tried this yet, but they should hit level 10 after next session, and I see the wizard looking to give it a spin. Skill raises are so few and far between for non-rogues anyways.

If at 10th level or so a character increases it's intelligence must that be spent on a new skill at the trained level, or can it be applied to increasing an already trained skill to a higher proficiency rank? I lean towards the latter, but can't find anything that explicitly allows for it.

I don't.

I allow for the one per session and that has already lead to an occasion of outright cheating of a deserved death.

Discussion on the value of hero points (or lack there of) or how you don't use hero points at your table is both unhelpful and off-topic.

Fellow GM's discussing the merits or the lack there of of a mechanic in relation to why they do or don't award them is entirely on topic, and your dismissal of them comes across as extremely snobby.

Going UP level is hugely punishing in PF2 where in 5e it means next to nothing barring a couple exceptions.

With out doing real math you could easily look at PF2 scaling as +/- 10% combat effectiveness, where for each level of difference, penalize the underdog and award the favourite.

Level -1 or lower are filler, no real threat on their own

Equal Level are interesting fights which may take some condideration.

Level +1 is going to give them a run for it

Level +2 should be limited to Boss level fights

Level +3 or higher is an Endcap fight, where the party goes in prepared and knowing EXACTLY what they're doing and party members still get killed.

I ran into this immediately after converting my current campaign over to PF2. I wound up completely scrapping planned encounters and changing the dynamics of fights on the fly just to avoid TPKs.

With my players there seems to be a lack of interest in creating/obtaining their own specific magical gear/buffs. They just aren't used to the idea of being that proactive since they mostly only know 5e and being locked into 5e modules at that. This makes some encounters even more difficult since they haven't taken gear options that I think the game assumes they have.

I'm sure some of the encounter issues in the first printed adventures fall into the same learning curve.

(I locked down a party of 5 9th level characters with a single 10th level necromancer on a nightmare this weekend. Nearly taking out 2 of them even after they nuked the nightmare in 2 rounds)

That extra actions from haste can't be used for spell casting...

Druid mounts and all that silliness.

Mounts (flying and otherwise)have always had the liability of not directly leveling up, it's part of the rider's job to protect the mount or replace it.

So thanks to Wheeldrake I just read the passage on minions again.

"Sapient minions act as they please"

...which basically falls in line with my original post. Thank you.

(On a side note I am counting the Nightmare and the Wizard as two entities for XP, not that the Nightmare is worth a whole lot by itself at this point.)

20 cubic feet is the average volume of a modern kitchen refrigerator.

Still useful, not game breaking.

I'd ignore the bulk of displaced fluids (air, water) as long as there's no increase in pressure. In a sealed chamber, they would be able to unshrink items and blow out a door or wall (and probably kill themselves) if there's no outlet for the fluids.

How'd your character die?

I dispelled several shrunken items in a sealed chamber to escape by blowing out the door before I suffocated. I died in agony from catastrophic decompression.

It doesn't, really.

I mean, keeping things consistent and there's always the chance that a player comes up with a way to get an intelligent mount, and I won't have a good way to put the kabosh on it. That kinda matters, but otherwise it really doesn't. I can hide behind GM fiat all day every day if I choose, although that may lead to a lack of players.

So the party is coming up on an encounter with a 10th lvl CE Wizard. The Wizard has the Ride feat. The mount is a Nightmare, they've been a team for several years.

I'm planning on having him riding the Nightmare (it looks cool and free concealment) and while I'm fine with using the normal mounted combat rules, the Nightmare itself has a 12 Int and 18 Wis. This makes me think it should be able to act on it's own within parameters set up by the 2 in prior engagements. This frees up the Wizard's actions at the cost of precise movement. This would be suboptimal for a mounted melee combatant build, but for a Wizard who cares only for being in range of spells, not a huge deal.

AoO would still be provoked by the mount moving, in so much as that the mount's movement would be the triggering action and the AoO could be taken against the mount or the rider.

Really just wondering if anyone has seen comment on this situation yet. RAW rules seem to imply that when ever you turn a creature into a mount they immediately lose all individual thought and initiative and you might as well reduce their mental stats to 2.

We could also go back to having non humans be their own class, so every elf is a fighter/mage capped at level 12. Every Halfling is a thief. Every Dwarf is a axe and shield fighter.

It seems a silly complaint to knock additional classes. They'll all have multiclass dedications if you want to dip. Variety is fun, if you don't want to take advantage of it just play a vanilla fighter.

Pet Cemetery.

I look at the mechanical issues differently.

It's not the hardness/durability situation that's the issue, it's that they're priced as permanents, where most shields are borderline disposable.

You can take AC as long as you want, but you only get so many shots absorbing the damage.

As I said, I'm fine with bulk normally, if anything I think it's a bit too punishing in regards to normal gear if you're anything below average in STR.

My players have taken to it though, which should have been a warning.

This came up after they fought a cave bear and the fighter explains how he non-nonchalantly picks up and tosses the dead cave bear away from their campsite.

I quickly corrected it, but I was taken aback as the application of bulk to that situation hadn't occurred to me.

Should a LvL 5 fighter be able to military press a cave bear?

I'm generally fine with bulk, but I kinda wish we still had hard numbers, maybe in Gamemastery.

OH?

We definitely are, non of us saw that line anywhere.

That would skew the math to a much better place, he's still going to get tripped 55% of the time currently, but he could in theory get that down to 40% fairly easily.

Active skills targeting a static save seem to be far too successful. Unless we're doing it wrong, which is why I'm posting.

My current campaign features a 6th lvl Dwarven Fighter. An on level threat that attempts to trip him on it's first attack action generally succeeds on anything but a natural 1. Thing is, since the math is pretty steady as you level, that won't get much better. If the generic threat were to only get it's level and never increase str or mastery in athletics the Fighter will still be tripped around 70% (this isn't hard math, this is in my head) of the time at level 20.

(LVL+[Athletics Proficiency]+STR+1d20) vs (LVL+[Reflex Proficiency]+DEX)

Tripping isn't much damage, but it's a nuisance and an action loss that will very quickly frustrate a player who can't ever not be tripped.

(I made it a contested roll by DM fiat, as it feels like this is the correct mechanic)