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The reason Weapon Versatility can't apply to a Ray attack is not because it's not a weapon, it clearly is according the errata posted here. However, you are not "Wielding" a ray under any circumstances. Weapon Focus applies to Rays, without a doubt, but because Weapon Versatility requires you to be wielding the weapon to activate it, you never can. You also can't use a swift action DURING a standard action, and Rays pretty universally occur instantaneously, so there's no window of time when you can apply the effect while firing a ray.

Do enhancement bonuses on your natural attacks apply to Ki Arrow?

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/k/ki-arrow/

By the way it's worded, it seems to me that it wouldn't apply on the attack roll, but will it apply to the damage roll? More specifically, if you have Magic Fang on you permanently, would it add the damage or attack bonus to the arrow?

If I'm a wizard who weighs less than 5 pounds, let's say I'm either a hamster or on a very effective diet, And I stand on an object who's combined weight, with mine, is still below 5 pounds. Can I lift and move the object I am standing on?

Less silly scenario, say I tied a mouse to a rock with a string. Can I use mage hand to move it around?

Let me be more specific: Say I'm a Kineticist of level 7. I spend 1 point of burn, and can now lift 7000 pounds. Can I lift a stone that people are standing on? If I'm lifting a 7000 pound stone, and someone...Throws a grappling hook and hooks it, does it instantly fall from the sky? Like...I'm just trying to get a feel for what EXACTLY the limit would be?

It could work, but do note that magical aging does not bestow the experience that would normally be gained in those times. Successfully aging your new friend would make him in effect a young child in an adult body. This is much more dangerous than it sounds. Furthermore, magically aging someone to such an extent is drastically shortening their lifespan. I don't know whether I'd call this an evil act, but it most certainly is not good.

For sure, in this case they'd be willing, and for a lot of dragons, especially the less intelligent White dragons, trading a lot of their vulnerable, younger years for an early adulthood would probably be very attractive.

And I mean, arguably, their MIND would still mature at the same rate, it would jsut be their level of experience that would be left behind? I don't know. Maybe you're right.

So I've been running a game recently. We ran the 3e module Sunless Citadel, and it has a dragon in it, a white wyrmling. The party are all half dragons, and went to great lengths to both set it free, not harm it, and befriend it, even firmly stating they would take no action to make it follow them, but it has been, for a while now.

After some discussion, my party asked me: If we magically aged him, would he get stronger? I searched around a bit, and found out that Greater Bestow Curse can inflict a Curse of Ages, causing you to age 1 year each day if you fail a save.

So I guess my question is...Would this work, to age a small dragon suddenly into a larger and more powerful form? Could you get a wyrmling into an adult in the span of a few months using this?

More than anything, I'm curious what y'all think of this just in concept, maybe a very clever blue dragon using this method to increase his power disproportionately. I also thought it would be clever and interesting to have the same dragon fight one party over and over, but every time they meet him, he's an age category older!

Realism-wise, it's stupid.

But I don't think I want my high-level characters to be instantly killed by a rock (whether thrown by a giant or rolled off a cliff by kobolds). And I don't want "drop an anvil on it from a flying carpet" to be an instant win technique against dragons, etc. So game balance might be better the Pathfinder way.

I suppose. I guess I just preferred the rules before, and it seemed like a lot was lost from 3.5 to here, and for no clear reason.

I am also gonna talk about the "Instant win" thing below, i jsut didn't want to repeat myself.

Poor representation of the physical world... ish. Good game rules? Oh @#$% yes.

So you're absolutely right, objects should do more damage based on weight... and shape, and rigidity, and probably a dozen other factors. It might be worth modeling it but I can't imagine it comes up enough that it'd be worth the dozen pages you'd need for full rules. Their version (does damage for size, does more for denser, falling farther) is a nice quickie version. Now, that being said, it actually makes sense that people would take more damage from falling than from falling objects. "Falling" doesn't mean you jumped off and landed on your feet. It also includes compound fractures, neck and spine injuries, or just going head first into the ground. Honestly, those are probably all more damage than "large object falls on you". They'd probably also best be represented with separate conditions and not just damage but that's a different "realism" problem with HP. Oh, and if you're going to complain here then you also need to complain that a higher level "rolling boulder trap" doesn't actually have to use a larger or heavier boulder but still somehow does more damage.

Why they changed it was because of Hulking Hurler (and did it have any ilk?). If you can get infinitely scalable damage based on weight then Major Creation and an engineer is a tactical nuke. You could actually do the "rods from god" thing (make a giant heavy object in space, bombard planet) but hilariously it would only hurt the single target you aimed at (instead of destroying the entire area around it). Either way it was awful for game balance. I'm quite happy they did away with it even if it makes the game less realistic. Instakills are no fun for anyone.

So here's the thing. In 3.5, Damage is not INFINITLY SCALEABLE. it caps out at the same distance falling damage does, 200ft. Objects would deal 1d6 damage per 10ft fallen for every 200lbs in their weeight, assuming they were relatively hard and dense. So any object from 200-399lbs would DEAL the same damage as a person would take, if both fell the same distance.

And you're ignoring all the other rules. Purposefully dropping an object on someone from above is a ranged touch attack, with a range increment of 20ft. That means the maximum falling distance is also the max distance you can actually make attacks from above with falling objects, Before it literally becomes impossible to accurately attack, and is left purely up to chance. That means, besides the hurdle of making something in space somehow, you also can't attack from that distance, any more than you could shoot someone with a longbow from space. It's simply beyond the max range.

So that means the maximum scale for damage is 20d6 for every 200lbs of the object's weight, And that's assuming that it has the 10 range increments of a ranged weapon, not the 5 of a thrown weapon. That also means, you have a -20 to hit.

So...I'm not sure where you get the infinite thing.

The problem, for ME, was not so much that the Pathfinder rules are that bad, but that they're so much WORSE than the 3.5 rules, a rare exception, and for no visible reason.

And as a random last note, Giant's who throw stones aren't dropping them, they're throwing them, with a fixed damage. Being hit with a ranged attack obviously doesn't also take into account falling object damage. That's absurd.

I was just curious if it WOULD use falling object rules, and yes, after some cursory comparisons, it's never going to really be worth it unless it's very situational.

Probably shouldn’t attempt to use physics (or derived damage from what SHOULD happen) in the Pathfinder (D&D) game setting. Aside from approximating certain aspects (like strength needed to kick open a door) of how things work in the real world, it is not designed to mimic real world physics. At least, without taking into account other factors, like an average person (real world equivalent) would have between 4 to 7 HP (level 5 and 6 are about maximum human potential) and forces that you are describing would utterly obliterate them either way.

I think falling damage is perfectly ok as it is, keeping the other factors in mind. If you, as the GM, think the damage is too low then change it.

Well, I guess I was more asking what other people think of it. I do understand what you're saying, I don't want, or need, the game to mimic real physics. I think what bothers me is how much WORSE of an approximation it is than in D&D 3.5e. In that version, Objects do 1d6 damage per 200lbs of weight, AND per 10 feet fallen, which feels like a really GOOD approximation. And then the Pathfinder one is so much worse, in my opinion, that it seems almsot ludicrous? Do you actually like it, in some way or for some reason?

Your ten ton stone is being dropped from above 150 feet so damage is doubled. You're also making a ranged touch to hit, so you could potentially crit. 32d8 seems like good max damage for a 10 ton stone, enough to destroy our cube at least.

Smaller than small gives you an object that's getting more out of your strength than gravity, so it would be used as a weapon rather than a dropped object. It really should still do damage without your help though, but 1d6 doubled to 2d6 for the height is probably fine.

Your 2x2x2 stone cube is small height but large weight. James Jacobs recommends here:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2m2hg?Creature-size-and-heightweight
using this chart: http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/SRD:Table_of_Creature_Size_and_Scale
to figure general weights and sizes. I think your stone, since we're only looking at its mass, should probably get the large size damage rather than the small one.

It's not perfect, and I don't roll if survival is impossible, but it works as well as anything in a game where you can survive being immolated multiple times.

By the normal rules of size, a ten ton stone would be large sized. So it would deal 4d6 normally, but a maximum of 8d6, or if I got extremely lucky, 16d6. But yes, you're right!

I do like some of those rules, I'll look over them again in a bit. I am also fond of the rules from 3.5e itself, as I said. IT feels like a way better approximation.

Does anyone else feel like the falling object rules in Pathfinder are...Really bad, and nonsensical? Like, they were simplified and abstracted to the point of making absolutely no sense, at all?

Here's an example; A 2x2x2 foot cube of stone would weigh, approximately, 900lbs. This is the VERY BARE MINIMUM to be considered a small object, meaning dropping it from 30ft...Would deal less damage than if you FELL from thirty feet, even thought your character is a lot lighter than 900lbs (I hope).

How about the opposite extreme? Say your character falls 100ft onto the ground, they'd take 10d6 damage. Sounds reasonable and it's not hard to follow the logic. But if you drop, say, a massive battleship that weighs 200 tons onto a character from a height of 100ft onto a character, they would...Also take 10d6. But if you fell from 140ft, say, you'd take 14d6 but a battleship dropped from that height would only deal 10d6 still.

And the maximum damage you can take from falling AND From a falling object is 20d6. On the surface this seems okay, but it's also tied to size, not distance, for the object! So if I drop, literally, a ten ton stone onto you from a thousand feet in the air, the best I could hope for with rules as written is a WHOPPING 8d6 damage for being a large object, even though that amount would turn any human sized being into red goo even if GENTLY RESTED on them, let alone dropped.

Am I insane? Are these rules unbelievably bad and beyond any relation to reality? Fore god's sake, object's smaller than small do NO DAMAGE EVER? So if a cannonball hits you at terminal velocity, it bounces off harmlessly? A sword dropped from an airship that hits you directly won't even scratch you, no damage rolled whatsoever?

What do you think about the falling object rules? Do you use house rules, or come up with your own values on the fly? Do you like them?

All right, this is a simple mechanical question about how this ability might be used outside it's listed rules. Specifically, it's about damage from falling objects.

Say I have a level 5 Kineticist with Aether and Telekinetic Haul and Extended Range. Therefore, he could lift a 500lb object, move it 30ft per round, and move it as far away as 150ft (100+10lvl), right?

So let's say I lift a boulder (A cursory search of size of stones per pound tells me that would almost definitely be small sized, at most), and bring it straight up to my highest height, let it go, and it strikes someone on the head after falling 150ft. Will it deal...Zero damage? Blast damage? Will it deal 4d6 damage(the damage of a small object falling 150ft)?

More specifically, it can be said that, rules as written, it will do damage either as a blast or as a "Thrown object" thrown by you, but using CON not STR, if any at all. But since it's not, necessarily, an attack against someone or an activation of telekinetic blast, would there be any reason why environmental rules shouldn't apply in this case?

(Sorry for the absurd necromancy)

I think a lot of people who posted here are being overly stringent. Cure spells, effectively, cause "Positive Energy Damage", it's jsut that for any normal, living creature this causes a GAIN of hit points instead of a loss. Likewise, this is why a cure spell does damage to undead. It's damage both ways, as far as I am concerned.

By the same logic used here, Fireball spells don't cause Damage, if you use them on a Red Dragon. Well, obviously the dragon does not TAKE any damage, but Fireball still very much CAUSES it.

There is an exception in that Shifters get an ability called Shifter's Fury, which lets them use a single Natural Attack for iteratives as if it were manufactured.

FAQ wrote:

Shifter’s Fury (Ex): At level 6, a shifter gains the ability to make several ferocious attacks with the same natural weapon. Instead of attacking with all her natural weapons, the shifter can choose a single natural weapon and make a full attack with that natural weapon, gaining a second iterative attack at a –5 as if it was a manufactured weapon. When she does so, all her other natural attacks count as secondary attacks and don’t benefit from shifter’s claws. At 11th level, she gains a third iterative attack at a –10 and at 16th level, she gains a fourth iterative attack at –15.

This will be reflected in the next errata.

Wow. Holy crap, lol, thank you. These two responses have cleared this up pretty well for me. No one but shifters can do what I described, and shifters can due to this class feature.

Thanks. ^_^

Okay, now, I'm already pretty familiar with these rules, and I'm looking for a little clarification on one SPECIFIC element:

Is it possible to use a single natural attack in place of a manufactured weapon, using your BAB normally?

Some detail: I have a Shifter in the group I am running a game for, and I am trying to figure out some details of how his build will shake out. If he's level 6, Can he swing his single claw twice, treating it as a manufactured weapon? Or is that simply disallowed? I know he can make two attacks with, say, a club and then one with his other claw at a -5 if his hand is free.

If he DOESN'T use his off hand claw as a weapon, say he's holding a shield or a torch or something, Can he just take his normal two attacks, a Claw at +6 and a claw at +1, or is that simply not possible? If it is possible, can he take both attacks and still use his off hand claw?