Sheyln (Symbol)

Linea Lirondottir's page

152 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists.



1 person marked this as a favorite.

Suggestion: Don't make magic just trump non-magic. It widens the already-present gap between spellcasters and non-spellcasters and trivializes a lot of otherwise neat abilities.

In this particular case I'd suggest that, at the very most, the invisible character can make a stealth check to move away without being noticed... and then, if they succeed at said stealth vs perception they only have a minor advantage if they do something loud. (For example, if they start casting a spell with a verbal component, the martial character can step up and make an AoO with a -2 penalty for poor timing, or whatever)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

An occultist's Saint's Holy Regalia panoply (Psychic Anthology Pg 27) can start healing ability drain at 10th level.

An autodoc (Technology Guide pg 60) can be used to remove ability drain, amongst other things.

Cureall (Technology Guide pg 33) can cure ability drain from a disease or poison.

Metabolic Molting (Blood of the Beast pg 19) can cure ability drain.

Greater Neutralize Poison (Dirty Tactics Toolbox pg 28) can cure all ability drain caused by poisons.

Overall, I think that the Healer's Satchel is the best option. Renewable, relatively inexpensive, and can be applied to multiple people at the same time. Unfortunately, it's not very fast.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

A witch with the Healing hex is good for anyone who needs positive energy to heal. One use per person each day, so that's a good healing option, and it scales up very well as you level up. (2d8+5 at fifth level, for instance, and then 2d8+10 at 10, at which point you can also get Regenerative Sinew and Major Healing hexes for even more healing awesomeness. (Regenerative Sinew should work on people w/negative energy affinity, too, which is nice)

A Kinetic Chirurgeon is probably one of the best options for an adventuring healer. Can heal people multiple times/day, can deal with most status effects very effectively... the burn inflicted can be a problem, but much less-of-one than leaving the damage alone.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/e/early-judgment/ <Possibly more-useful and convincing than the detect-alignment spells.

I think it's also worth noting that which deity you worship can have an even greater effect on a person's afterlife than their alignment.

For example: If you worship Torag and commit suicide, regardless of how lawful or good you were, you're going to Avernus. (Unless this was retconned?)

Shelyn probably brings in a fair number of neutral souls to herself, and even a few evil ones...


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Murashi (Surname that fits in with the local grippli tribe) is a second-generation halfling fiend keeper (though seventh generation overall for this fiend, a daemon of significant power and ambition). The tribe is largely grippli and halflings, and they have found some impressive synergies with each other.

Worships Shelyn (focusing primarily on art and platonic love of all sorts); her focus is one of the reasons she was selected from the pool of volunteers to bind the fiend as those aspects directly oppose a great deal of the daemonic mindset. Generally draws from the spirit's power with the guardian aspect.

Able combatant, though she refuses to kill without a very good reason against that particular person and works with a team that works likewise.

Composes positive songs designed to best utilize grippli and halfling singers and happily sings them, too, to help keep morale up and for the sheer joy of it.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Another way to have a good-aligned succubus equivalent: Figures out what people want and why they want it... and then they provide good-aligned methods to find fulfilment. (As such, it's generally not going to be precisely what they were thinking of, but something that satisfies their cravings anyway)

So such an outsider is present with somebody who's really lusting after (this person here) but the G!Succubus knows that it's because they are deeply craving emotional intimacy and don't know how to get it. So the G!Succubus gives a hug and helps talk her into renewing her lapsed family bonds and friendships, encouraging her every step of the way, and after all that is done providing some advice on dating people appropriate to the culture she's in and the good alignment.

The goal is to make people better off than they were before, to have their underlying desires fulfilled so they're no longer tempted toward evil (or at least not nearly as much), and to make sure that they're making the lives of the people around them better at the same time.

Desiring something can be dangerous, but it is not in any way inherently bad, wrong, or evil.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Something to note: Evil is about hurting people (for the satisfaction, for empowerment, whatever) even when it's difficult. Screwing people over is something actively encouraged by Evil deities.

As a whole, worshippers would probably strongly distrust each other and be ready to annihilate each other even if they were working together, provided they were not teamed up against another force that was much more threatening... and even then they'd probably be prepared to be betrayed for the lulz, power, vengeance for a quasi-imagined slight, etc. This is before you start getting into clashing philosophies encouraging them to work against each other. The qlippoth have genocidal hatred toward demons, and Rovagug is crazy enough to want to destroy everything. (Not quite like the daemons; I think Rovagug is driven more by a never-ending love of destroying things rather than a hatred toward everything in existence)

However, individuals could easily be extremely trusting and even loving toward each other. Priests are more than the deity they worship and their alignment, and there are countless things that could influence the relationship between groups that generally wouldn't get along. For one thing, they might not actually care about their deities' actual goals and just not mind doing their small part to advance it in exchange for the power to accomplish their own goals. They might not even be evil.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

The premise of the thread is basically "If you can communicate with somebody who has information you want and is cooperating, 20 questions is a perfectly reasonable way to narrow down the results really far and surprisingly quickly, provided no assumptions on the part of the questioner are blatantly wrong. Commune allows you to play 20 questions with a deity who presumably likes you."

As such, it being a useful spell makes perfect sense. It's not perfect; if the premise is wrong (for example, space is folded in such a way that one cannot properly say if it's closer to one side or another because it changes depending on the time, who's leading the effort to find it, or some other property). And it can take quite a few questions to narrow things down in some situations. As such, I continue to be more of a fan of more direct "ask entity a question" options like "planar inquiry". (Which is also something available at levels 5/6 instead of 7+)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Anyway, ArthionAtWar, I'm fairly sure there are no rules specifically for or against this point. What was intended is a matter of interpretation, unless a developer has actually chimed in somewhere.

Regardless of RAW and RAI, though, this is more a matter of gaming group negotiation. Which path leads to the most fun for people involved? How does having this ability make the rogue more fun to play, and how would it being barred make the game more fun to play?

Internal consistency can certainly help a game remain fun, provided it's something that the group actually cares about, and maybe this is something that's needed for it to be internally consistent. Only your gaming group can decide this.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

"Rogue can write a spellbook off of other spellbooks (or, if they're feeling wasteful, scrolls)" wouldn't really make them anything like a wizard, knock-off or otherwise. It's a really, really minor ability that the class is not defined by.

The most it actually does is stop a rogue from having to hire an appropriate caster to do it for him/her, if they'd even bother doing that instead of just using the things they'd otherwise acquired.

As for "you cannot do anything that isn't explicitly allowed"... I'm almost certain that following this literally would mean that a lot of things flat-out do not work. (For example, psychic spellcasters recovering spell slots. Not something that they've said they can actually do yet, IIRC). To the best of my knowledge, RAW doesn't actually cover the carrying capacity of anything other than bipeds and quadrupeds.

It's a roleplaying game. The rules cannot possibly cover every single thing that can happen, and sometimes things are poorly written. Not allowing that kind of thing get in the way of a fun game is important. (What counts as getting in the way of fun would definitely depend on the gaming group and possibly the campaign, of course)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
Witches are a good example. They can not use spellbooks despite having access to the spellcraft skill. So it's a fair conclusion to assume that the spellcraft skill by itself is not sufficient to scribe spells in a spellbook.

You claim that there is a rule supporting your argument here.

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
Again... there is no rule that they CAN.

And then you claim that there isn't a specific rule saying that they can, so they're forbidden by default.

I don't see any problem with a game deciding to disallow it, but I also see no reason to discourage allowing it.

Also: The "divine magical writing" section exists, despite there being no divine spellcasting classes with the spellbook class feature, at least at the time it was created. This indicates that classes without the spellbook class feature are intended to be able to write spells into a spellbook.

Whether non-spellcasting classes are intended to, or not, I don't think it breaks anything mechanically regardless of how you rule.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Witches can't learn/cast spells from spellbooks, but I don't know of any rule saying that they cannot make, read/understand, or copy spellbooks. Source?

And of course the rules are written under the assumption that a spellbook-using class would be the one doing it; they're the ones the rules were initially built for and who are most likely to use them.

PS: Why would people copy spells into a spellbook from scrolls? That's horrendously wasteful when you could copy from a spellbook instead and NOT destroy scrolls in the process.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I don't see any particular reason for only people with the spellcasting class feature to be able to copy spells into a spellbook.

I suppose I'd have to ask you: How do you think disallowing non-spellcasters from copying spells into a spellbook improves the game?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/p/planar-inquiry <If a servant of a deity is going to know the answer, this is generally a better method of finding it out.

Commune search trees can certainly work, but it seems like a fairly bad first resort unless you already have an improved familiar and that's the best use for commune you can think of. There are almost certainly far better uses for it.


4 people marked this as a favorite.
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
Jatembe wasn't a god.

And even without being a deity he's far more awesome than Aroden.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Have you considered making your crossbow magically conductive? If you did you could shoot holes into them AND set them on fire at the same time.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Path of glory at CL 3 versus extended infernal healing
Path of glory at CL 3 will give four squares for three turns, four squares for two turns, and four squares for one turn. A grand total of 24 hit points healed, provided there are at least 12 people, though the healing cannot be concentrated. This is without any efforts to make people end their movement in the same squares on the same turn, which I am aware of a few ways to achieve.

Extended infernal healing will heal up to 20 hit points from a single target (taking a full two minutes to achieve). It cannot be shared in any way, and does not work against damage from silver or good-aligned weapons, nor good-aligned spells.

Conclusion: Even at CL 3 Path of Glory does better than Extended Infernal Healing in total hit points it can heal and it's always better at types of damage it can heal. Now, what's actually better in a situation can easily switch between the two, but it is very much not firmly in favour of Infernal Healing. Path of Glory becomes superior to Infernal Healing under a greater percentage of situations as caster level increases.

It also doesn't require people to keep track of how much damage is caused by silver or good-aligned attacks, so that simplifies bookkeeping a fair bit.

And yes, I suppose good-aligned clerics are forbidden from using infernal healing. I'm far more used to considering oracles since I prefer spontaneous casters by a very large margin.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Aroden. He was a lawful neutral human-supremacist jerk. He encouraged conquest, empire building, and other sources of extreme misery, often at the expense of "less civilized" humans and non-humans in general. He discouraged building positive bonds with other species and instead pushed for dominance.

For all of my complaints against her, Iomedae is still a great many steps up from Aroden. Him dying also got us Milani, a fairly neat deity. Cheliax collapsed and created a neat setting of infernal temptation instead of conquering some more peoples.

As for the Worldwound and the Eye of Abendego I don't think Aroden's death was more than mildly associated with them at all. The Worldwound was Areelu Vorlesh and Deskari working together (along with a few dupes) to bring their planes together, while the Eye of Abendego is, I think, Gozreh containing and bleeding off the energies of a link to Abaddon. Sacrificing what is now the Sodden Lands to save the rest of the planet seems very fitting for them.

Also: Jatembe is more awesome than Aroden in basically every way, I think, and I would much rather have him be focused on than Aroden.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

What's that, Handsome Devil? You want people to start using more silver and good-aligned weapons so that their opponents' Infernal Healing cannot heal the wounds inflicted? Certainly! We'll get right on that!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:


You're not being "stabbed with a sword" unless that strike represents the last of your hit points. Hit points are an abstraction of near misses, bruising, etc.

I've always hated that explanation for several reasons. First, somehow whatever "luck" it represents is directly healable via fast healing, cure light wounds, and the like. Second, every single hit is a hit. Poison is inflicted, a touch attack definitely connected and discharged into the person, falling damage is inflicted etc, and this explanation seems to run counter to that. Third, it minimizes the fact that these people are superhuman. These are not "our world people, but some of them have magic". They're all superhuman from level 1 and on and they can achieve absolutely amazing things.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

My view: Yes, casting an aligned spell will push your alignment in that direction. However, alignment is descriptive rather than proscriptive, and doing one (aligned) thing does not make you particularly more likely to do (other aligned thing).

If you walk old ladies across a street that doesn't make you more likely to donate money to (insert good cause here). If you cast Infernal Healing that doesn't make you more likely to torture people.

So, casting Infernal Healing matters. It makes you more likely to get sentenced to one of the fiendish afterlives, other people (including your deity) might disapprove and bring about consequences that way, and it significantly increases the risks that you'll use an evil spell again if it seems useful. It will not make you a mustache-twirling villain any more than casting good spells would make a lawful-good cleric of Torag any more likely to forgive people.

Personally, I think infernal healing is a bit overrated (healing hex, kinetic healer, and path of glory FTW!) and likely to backfire on devils if they're behind it. After all, if infernal healing is a common healing spell, then clearly using good-aligned damage, silver weapons, etc is good since damage will stick to your opponent's more readily, and these measures simultaneously make people better-armed against devils.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Alni wrote:
Possibly, also there is the possibility that the town guard won't be able to keep them for long, like with an especially powerful opponent who could even endanger the guard or the city. Still it should be considered, I doubt most groups of adventurers would agree out of battle that killing someone is preferable to sending them to prison, and if they do it would be nice if it was a conscious choice, a stance they are taking.

Oh, full agreement there. Killing somebody should always be something done with deliberation, I think, and considering whether other options are viable is important to anyone who respects life. (Which is one of the major tenants of being Good, of course)

Alni wrote:
No, it was a not possible under the circumstances.

Unfortunate, that; it would probably have been a brilliant roleplaying opportunity.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I will point out that in some areas "give them to the town guard" is far, far worse than killing them. No effort made at rehabilitation, horrendous living conditions, sometimes actual torture is used... all in all, it's something that can readily drive people deeply into evil on top of being an utterly miserable experience.

@Alni, did your character investigate the cultist in question? Find his name, family, etc, consider the viability of reincarnating him?


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Seems like what they really need is a strong alliance with others. Magaambya, lizardfolk, elves, Zenj tribes, etc. who will respect what the grippli need and their rights as individuals and as a group, and who will use the resources they can spare to help them stand for their mutual benefit. (Even if the grippli never gave them explicit aid, them holding territory in an environmentally sane way and not letting evils through alone would be enough to make it worth a lot to keep them going, much less them binding evils long-term while corrupting them toward good, trading opportunities, and whatever information they're willing to share)

Really, the fact that grippli and lizardfolk, amongst other peoples, aren't already being seriously courted for an alliance makes me lose a fair bit of respect for the peoples in the area. Finding as many allies as possible and doing what one can to build them up and keep them strong is only good sense.

Anyway, humans being less well-suited for the techniques in question (or at least how they're taught to a human who did not grow up in their tribe) leading to failure would certainly explain a lot. Halflings, gnomes, dwarves or elves might be better suited.

An idea I had: Only in a community does a Fiend Keeper stand a solid chance of keeping their prisoner bound and resisting temptation. Without encouragement, reminders about what they're fighting for, and how things can and will get better people tend to succumb to temptation, despair, or otherwise stop fighting the good fight.

And the number of fiend keepers is very useful knowledge. :) Thanks again!


2 people marked this as a favorite.

First of all, utterly brilliant archetype, I think; makes the Medium extremely interesting.

However, I am a bit confused; is the spirit a Fiend Keeper bonds with different from the astral echoes that a Medium normally bonds with beyond being a single individual? (With each of the six Legends being different aspects of the entity in question for the Fiend Keeper, as the fluff says) If so, how different? Are they actual fiends (like, say, a daemon, div, deivl, etc)?

Thank you for your time and consideration, and I hope that this is the right place for this.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Desna and Calistria are fairly likely inclusions if it's in the Inner Sea. Milani, Cayden Cailean are two other likely inclusions. As for the demon lords... I think they're mostly focused on evil as a goal with chaos as their method, meaning that they wouldn't fit in as well as Asmodeus fits in with the Godclaw.

I'd say the general focus would be on freedom, much like the Godclaw pushes for stability.

Personally, I'd pick Ashava, Immonhiel, Keltheald, Kofusachi, Thisamet, Milani, Hembad, Pulura, and Yuelral. You might notice that these are all Chaotic Good deities, since I am obviously extremely biased in this regard. :P (Though I'd also include a bunch of NG deities too, like Mazludeh, Shelyn, and Sarenrae)

Anyway, there are thousands of ways you could construct such a group since, even so far, there are over a hundred deities/"demigods" with a chaotic alignment.

The biggest differences would probably come down to "acceptable means". "We want people to be free, but what's acceptable/preferable as a way of making such things happen?" Is it best to inspire people and encourage them to break free on their own? Assassinate those who are holding people away from freedom and letting the dice fall where they may? Taking down the worst defiers of freedom as a lesson to everyone else?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Something to note: Each skill rank represents a huge amount of learning effort. First level characters with any PC class (and arguably at least most NPC classes) are superhuman and continue growing moreso as they gain levels.

So yes, every single skill rank in linguistics gives you a new language known as a bonus. That's a huge thing, but so is every single other skill.

If you want realistic you'd need to drop everyone down below first level, never let them get beyond it, and require dedicated effort to not decay even further below first level.

A reasonable houserule to use is that people cannot level up without several weeks/months of downtime that they spend in dedicated training.

Something that can be really annoying about this kind of attitude: It focuses almost exclusively on nerfing skill-focused and "mundane" characters and thus widening the gap between them and the more fantastic classes. I wouldn't be surprised if enough of this attitude pushed everyone into being a supernatural-type class so that they can play awesome characters rather than ones arbitrarily restricted to what our-world humans can achieve and maybe a bit beyond.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Klorox wrote:
brad2411 wrote:
We do not know if the elementals used in the creation of golems are sapient. We do not know if the spirit is sentient in its normal form. the spirit could be as smart as an animal and we enslave (domesticate) animals now. A lot of this stuff depends on how you look at it. Yes the elementals could be sentient and as smart or smarter then humans but with out more info we don't know that as of yet.
Actually, given how notoriously stupid and mindless golems are, I doubt that a sapient spirit is used at all.

As I understand it the elemental provides the power to move the golem around; when it comes to personality and intellect it's uninvolved. Kind of like the fiend-enginers or whatever-they're-called that are used in Cheliax.

Part of the evidence is the fiend-infused golem. Despite having what is generally a superhuman intellect fueling it, the resulting golem's intelligence score is a measly 4. And the fluff about them.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/fiend-infused-g olem-cr-2 <If you're interested.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Knight who says Meh wrote:
How often are golems used? Is this setting specific? I've rarely seen them used other than BBEG servants/minions.

I haven't done an exhaustive study or anything, but I think they average more than once per adventure path.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Bob Bob Bob wrote:
Linea Lirondottir wrote:
Anyway, "the youngest elementals are barely sapient" doesn't make it less horrible in my book. Much like deliberately using babies to fuel your magics is at least arguably worse than using adults to do it.
What if it's not the whole baby?

Not using the entirety of the baby at least arguably makes it even worse. :P


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Majuba wrote:
Bob Bob Bob wrote:
UnArcaneElection wrote:

Wait . . . just how is it supposed to be okay to use puppies to make Golems?

Because they're being used as pilots, not part of the golem. And they look adorable with tiny aviator's caps.

Besides, we make coats with puppies, why not golems?

An elemental spirit isn't necessarily a sentient creature, and if it is, it isn't necessarily in torment being bound to an elemental. FWIW, elementals don't have souls, their bodies and spirits are one.

Edit: That's *smallest* elementals, not youngest.

The main elemental lines, and which I'm fairly sure are all that were out when golems received that write-up, grow in size and intellect over time.

Confirmed: The four main elemental lines and the golem writeup are in the first Bestiary book.

I'm not aware of any canon evidence for non-sapient (much less non-sentient) elementals, either, though it's entirely possible that I've just missed them or forgotten about them.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I can see non-evil uses for even non-consensual compulsions. For example, against somebody who's actively hostile, forcing them to go home or something else to end a fight with relatively little harm. At least arguably less force than beating them unconscious with nonlethal damage.

Using them for your own advancement is probably sketchy at best, though, especially things like forcing them to kill their friends/family/allies/etc.

Dominate spells are kind of overkill for basically every non-horrible use I can think of, though, so it's a pretty sketchy spell to learn/prepare for anything other than countermeasures or consensual usage.

Non-consensual charms are... far worse, I think, and it'd need a REALLY convincing argument.

Anyway, "the youngest elementals are barely sapient" doesn't make it less horrible in my book. Much like deliberately using babies to fuel your magics is at least arguably worse than using adults to do it.

Anyway, the "they might be elementals that have not been statted out before (or possibly mentioned at all)" is certainly a viable possibility... but I think it's unlikely. Especially since there are fiend-infused golems which are explicitly full demons, devils, divs, etc. Plus, the "elemental that survived the golem they were bound to being destroyed) write-up that I partially remember is not mindless or of 1-2 intelligence, if I recall correctly.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm really confused by this. Even good and chaos-aligned individuals seem to have no problem making/using golems of various types despite them being utter abominations requiring the long-term enslavement of a sapient being (an elemental). To make it worse, I remember seeing a bestiary entry about what happens when a golem is destroyed: that most of the elemental spirits are killed as well, while a small number are maimed. If anyone could point out where this is it'd be appreciated; I haven't found it again yet.

Given what I know, I'd rate the creation and usage of golems as far worse than the creation and usage of mindless undead from non-sapient creatures. A skeletal goat is a lot easier to stomach fighting beside than a golem.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

"Characters with low-light vision can see outdoors on a moonlit night as well as they can during the day." Core Rulebook, page 564.

Low-light vision allows for a character to see without penalty in what would be dim-light to a character without low-light vision. You are correct that in light that is dim-light to them they still have the 20% miss chance. Still, the "double the radius of light effects" is a matter of point-source illumination and not ambient light illumination.

Anyway, considering that the character can use HiPS even when standing in bright light as long as there's dim-light nearby (not even in line with them and the observer, just nearby) I think that the "must be within 10 feet of dim light" is just a matter of the circumstances being right to draw upon the Plane of Shadow and hide that way, or something along those lines, and it might even partially conceal from blind-sight, scent, and various other forms of perception with neither trumping either; just forcing a straight-out perception versus stealth check. (No +20/+40 bonus for being invisible or anything)