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Just to put a bow on this package, in the end I allowed the PC to escape otherwise-certain death by casting the Giant Form I spell he had memorized as his "final" standard action, taking the form of a troll before toppling over. Since he now had an active regeneration effect in place before the bad guy's next turn, he didn't automatically die from his injuries; however, since he was unconscious, at negative HP, & with a 2d10-round wait time until his heart grew back, he was effectively out of the combat anyway. A bit lenient on my part perhaps, but it just didn't sit well with me to pull a Kobayashi Maru on the player just because of one poorly-worded spell.

Abilities such as immunities, regeneration ect, have to trump spell effects. Otherwise you have fire immune creatures taking fire damage and creatures immune to mind effecting being dominated.

I'm inclined to agree here; to me, the regenerate spell duplicates (or at least fills in for) the regeneration ability for qualification purposes.

After reading through the responses on this thread, 2 things have become apparent:

1. Death clutch is a poorly-written spell, & in light of that I would not have used it in this situation without some revisions;

2. Unless I decide to roll back the last couple of rounds of the current combat (which I really don't want to do -- complicated final boss fight & all that), the PC it was cast on is toast (however fair or unfair that may be).

Last night I tried out the death clutch spell from Horror Adventures on my players, & it quickly became apparent that the spell is either broken as written or we're missing some key understanding of its function.

Per the spell's description:

Chanting an unholy litany, you reach out with a grasping motion toward your target and cause its heart to leap out of its chest and into your hand. A target with 200 or fewer hit points remaining that fails its saving throw is instantly reduced to a number of negative hit points equal to your caster level or its Constitution score – 1, whichever is less negative. The creature is staggered until the beginning of your next turn, at which point it dies. If the affected creature receives a regenerate spell before the beginning of your next turn, the creature gains the normal benefits of that spell and, thanks to its heart’s regeneration, it doesn’t immediately die when your next turn begins. If a creature that dies from death clutch is brought back from the dead by a breath of life or raise dead spell, it must also be targeted with regenerate on the following round to restore its missing heart or be unable to return to life.

The questions that arose are:

1. How is it possible for the target to receive a regenerate spell before the beginning of the caster's next turn, when regenerate has a casting time of 3 full rounds? Is it enough for the victim to simply have been targeted by regenerate before the next round to qualify, as long as the spell's casting is completed in the subsequent rounds?

2. Per the regenerate spell, missing body parts take 2d10 rounds to grow back; what is the victim's status during this time? Are they able to act normally as long as they have positive hit points, or are they incapacitated until the process is completed?

Fair enough; my table has been misinterpreting the spell/ability as requiring 5 rounds to shift at all times vs. just shifts subsequent to the initial one triggered by the casting (previously this hadn't been an issue since it had never come up in a combat situation before).

Thanks for the clarification!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a wendigo wants to abduct a victim using wind walk, it has to first establish a pin on a victim it currently has grappled, then maintain that pin for the entire 5 rounds it takes to shift to gaseous state (incurring attacks from the victim's allies the whole time) before it can finally fly away with them?

If that's the case, it hardly seems worth the effort IMO; even allowing for the wendigo's dual damage resistance & regeneration, 5+ rounds of unanswered actions from a skilled group of PC's of comparable level (particularly ones savvy enough to know of a wendigo's vulnerabilities) can be enough to turn the tide before it can carry out its intentions against its single opponent. It seems to me like it might be better off simply maintaining a grapple, flying into the air with its victim, & then dropping them (or carrying them off to strand them later as in the creature's description).

Am I missing something? Does a wendigo's wind walk ability let it shift states more quickly than the spell version, or is there some other modifying influence I've overlooked?

bugleyman wrote:

Oceanshieldwolf wrote:

I'm not impressed by the art though. Please get WAR front and centre. ;)

No thanks...it's past time for a new direction in RPG art. Besides, a distinct game deserves a distinct look.

Like I said, I understand that feeling. But his work on Iron Gods (and Eberron back in the day) is very good...

I'm a huge fan of Wayne Reynolds' work myself, but I agree it would probably be a better move to let a different artist spearhead the visual design of Starfinder; WAR has well-established himself as the visual "face" of PF (much like Tony DiTerlizzi did with Planescape, or Todd Lockwood with 3rd Edition D&D), so I think maybe rather than dilute Starfinder with "more of the same" (excellent though it undoubtedly would be), we should be looking towards a new creative vision to discover & explore together.

My group just started their battle against Arkrhyst tonight, and it's not going too well for them; for reference the party is currently 13th level (+2 mythic tiers earned during the AP just because we were curious about how it would affect play overall), consisting of a half-elf paladin, fetchling rogue, halfling oracle (life with the clouded vision curse), gnome sorcerer (sylvan bloodline with a tiger companion), and human wizard (transmuter).

The PC's have survived the first 4 chapters without any deaths so far (slow as it may sound, we've been playing this AP 3-4 hours per week for the past 2 years now!), and have honestly steamrolled about 80% of the things they've encountered, due to a combination of experience (this group has been together since 1996), shrewd char-op choices, and the boost from the mythic tiers has certainly helped as well.

Anyway, the party had just finished retrieving the 7 keys from the Sihedron Circle & the 2 arcane casters were still messing around with the statues trying to see what else they might do when the dragon struck, opening up in the surprise round with a flyby breath weapon from invisibility on the rest of the party. Because of Arkrhyst's poor maneuverability, they had a little time before his next pass, so they started laying on the energy resist/protection spells and taking cover behind the statues, and the paladin powered up his bonded weapon, wisely opting for keen/flaming/bane (dragon).

On the dragon's second pass he snatched up the gnome sorcerer and just flew away, leaving the rest of the party dumbfounded on the ground. The plucky gnome tried launching a couple fireballs down the dragon's throat, but really ended up injuring himself more than the dragon, and the dragon simply responded by breathing with the sorcerer still clutched in his jaws, all the while remaining airborne well out of reach of the other PC's.

As of right now (the start of round 6), the wizard has transformed into a young red dragon ("the ancestral enemy of white dragons!") in an attempt to draw Arkrhyst's attention away from the badly injured gnome, while the rogue has activated his celestial armor to fly after the dragon and the oracle managed to successfully hit the dragon with a debilitating portent spell to mitigate some of his damage output. Still, with both the party's healer and their heaviest hitter still helplessly landbound, both squishies drawn away from the party and into direct aerial melee with the dragon, and even the flying rogue unable to match the dragon's flight speed, I'm honestly kind of doubtful about their chances at this point.

The way things are going now, this may end up being my first legitimate TPK since I started GMing way back in '77!

A Manowar reference this time? Nice.

Glad I'm not the only one who caught that! :)

Hi Nick,

Just wondering if you had an alternate delivery method for your calendar files? Your Dropbox links are down (apparently due to heavy traffic).

Whenever introducing new players to RPG's, I try to initially keep things fast & loose rules-wise, introducing new rules and concepts gradually so they don't feel overwhelmed & get frustrated (if your concept of "tabletop gaming" is Monopoly & Trivial Pursuit, the average RPG can have a fairly steep learning curve by comparison). I'd also recommend keeping the actual play groups to a reasonable size (4-6 players) if at all possible; the more players you have at the table, the more things get bogged down & individual players lose interest waiting for their turn to come up. Evil characters & really exotic races should be off the table, at least until everyone has some play experience under their belts. Regarding things like gods, that's an individual judgement call based on your players & the local community; some players (or in the case of students, their parents) are uncomfortable even playing make-believe with fictional deities outside their own real-world religion, so you'll want to take that into consideration as well.

I couldn't agree more; having licensed support for Golarion in RealmWorks would be a tremendous asset & a win/win for everyone involved from where I'm standing!

Hail! Hail! Hail and kill!

Yeah, Manowar seemed appropriate for this book. Glad you guys caught the reference!

It's awesome to know there are Manowar fans at Paizo (just one more great thing about them), and the book itself sounds great as well; can't wait to pick it up!

All well and good. Do I use the melee fumble from the card (hit adjacent ally) for the melee AND spell? Or do I use the melee fumble for the weapon and the spell fumble for the spell (melee: hit adjacent ally/ spell: hit self with spell)

If it were up to me (& soon enough it will be, mwah-ha-haa), I would rule it that when you crit or fumble, you draw a single card, & both results (weapon & spell) are then applied; in this particular instance, the weapon fumble was that you hit & crit an ally, so a separate crit card would be drawn for the weapon crit, while the spell fumble was that the spell discharged into you (with no crit), so the spell effect would end at that point. This is kind of an unusual occurrence IMO, as usually a fumble won't trigger a crit, so in this case the weapon & spell effects diverged momentarily; normally if you crit or fumble with the weapon you do likewise with the spell, so both effects would apply from a given card. Granted, this can potentially result in some unusual combinations, but no more so inherently than drawing a separate card for each half of the attack; I'm still not sure how this will all tie together with the introduction of the called shot rules in Ultimate Combat, however.

Sorry I'm late to the discussion, but if you're still looking for rules on called shots, broken bones, severed limbs, etc. you should check out the book Torn Asunder by Bastion Press. I guarantee it will cover what you're looking for (& then some!), but you may find the level of detail & complexity a bit off-putting (my table was very enthusiastic about it until they realized how much it could slow down combat in games if all the rules were employed).

Rope trick never gave me much trouble, as I've generally always found random nighttime encounters to be a tedious addition to the already-scheduled action of the planned adventure; to me, their only purpose is to a) eat up game time when you're not as prepared as you'd like to be for the session, and/or b) force the PC's to operate at a diminished capacity for a set period of time (which will always feel like an undeserved punishment to the players unless you have a solid reason for depriving them of their abilities).

The spell that's giving me the most trouble right now is wind walk; my PC's have gotten into the habit of using it as a catch-all utility to bypass enemies & traps (even entire dungeons), etc. Most of the ways I can think of to counter it feel contrived to me, but since the current campaign is almost over it's not going to be an issue again for quite some time.

Players who run casters will always be thinking of creative new ways to apply their spells, & for the most part I have no interest in penalizing them for doing so, unless it genuinely threatens game balance. Back in the day I had a problem with the combination of levitate and summon swarm (back when an unwilling target could be levitated); when the player first thought of it in a battle against a major villain, I thought it was a clever spell combo so I allowed for it. Unfortunately, the player then began to use it at every possible opportunity, against enemies who had no defense against it. I finally had to rule that the PC was risking an alignment shift as his opponents were essentially helpless (the vast majority of the time) & therefore the spell combo could be construed as torture. Fortunately, it's a rare occurrence when I have to resort to such a heavy-handed response.

um.... LAME!

I think has been charmed by a Mind Flayer... wth! really!?!?

Wasn't me... ;)

As much as I've been a fan of both GB & Favre over the years, sooner or later you've got to make that hard decision to hang it up & stick with it. To keep riding the fence (or in this case, the revolving door?) isn't fair to the team, the fans, the league, or the sport as a whole, and someone with as much love for the game as Favre is credited with should realize that. As much as I would have liked to see Brett remain on in either a backup or advisory capacity, by leaving the Packers altogether it a) lets Favre find out just how much of his success was due to his own ability and how much was due to having a strong team around him, and b) lets the Packers finally go into their long-delayed but inevitable post-Favre rebuilding process. It's going to to be really interesting to see how this all plays out in the coming season. While having a QB of Brett Favre's caliber could be considered a feather in any team's cap, I just don't see the Jets getting their money's worth this time, as all of Brett's record-setting prime years were with GB & thus in the past now.

The real question for all the Packer Backers out there now is: have you been a Packers fan, or a Favre fan? Now that the two are no longer synonymous, will you be glued to every one of Brett-the-Jet's games now, or are you going to give Aaron Rodgers the support he needs to help rebuild Green Bay into a great team "post-#4?"

Me? I'll probably do both, at least in the short term; Favre's been a fantastic player & I'm sure he still has some gas left in the tank, but it just won't be the same for me if he's not on the frozen tundra surrounded by green & gold...