Lvl 12 Procrastinator's page

Neat! Never seen Neocraft before. Interesting.

I would like to create a CR 12-13 encounter involving the monsters from this image. (Source unknown)

In my setting these creatures roam the blasted landscape of a hellworld collecting the unfortunate souls who find themselves magically transported there.

I was thinking about starting with Retriever as a base and making modifications from there, but I was wondering if maybe someone here might have a better idea.

Cheers!

Just....just pretend it is that scene in Disney's Hercules where he swings around the tornado titan.

That...actually helps, thanks!

I had never seen this before, and just now checked it out. It is, of course, utterly preposterous, but it also gives me something I can point to.

It's all in the subject. As far as I can tell RAW, he's still grappled.

This came up in play a few weeks ago where he was flying around as a crow hitting enemies with chain lightning when a winged lion slammed into him and initiated a grapple. He tried to wild shape into an air elemental to escape the grapple, and everyone at the table hit the rules to see how it should play out. I ruled that since an air elemental can grapple, it can itself be grappled. The player protested (mildly, as he's a good sport) on the grounds of the ridiculous imagery it conjured. It would have been even more awkward had he been grappled by something without wings. You could end up with, say, a monk doing a flying leap onto the crow, crow turns into swirling mass of air, and somehow the monk manages to hang on.

I did allow the wild shape to occur without a concentration check as it is a supernatural power. Was that correct?

Now the druid is using his air elemental form to carry party members to safety across hazards, which I am inclined to allow. It would be unfair of me to allow an enemy to hang onto him but not an ally.

Have we played it according to the rules, and if so, how would you describe it in a way that doesn't sound ridiculous?

Hey everyone.

I'm running a session where the characters are going to be traveling through an area with a mist that makes them listless and apathetic. Functionally I want it to impact initiative and will. There will be saves of course.

Obviously this will be easy to make from scratch, but rather than reinvent the wheel, I was wondering if there's already some kind of spell or something out there that has similar effects.

Thoughts?

EDIT: APL is 9.

The Status spell might work.

That would work. Will negates, so not as guaranteed as casting something on an object, but if he fails it gets the job done.

Nesa's Coin works, though the baddies don't have 24 hours to prep. I suppose I could break the rules and reduce the time requirement (it's not a PFS game), though I was hoping to find something that would work as written.

Instant Summons only returns an item marked by a caster back to the caster. It does not appear to impart any information about the whereabouts of an item. I probably didn't communicate the situation clearly.

I'm the GM. One of the PCs is in a prison cell. His armor and weapons are outside his cell, out of his view. The rest of the party is coming to rescue him, but it will take about 6 hours for them to get there.

The bad guys wish to use this time to prepare a way to track him once he escapes. They intend to arrange for a bit of resistance from their minions to put on a good show, but ultimately they want the party and the prisoner to escape so they can find out where their hideout is.

Is there a spell or item in Pathfinder I could use as something like a homing device? I'm pulling the ol' Death Star let them escape and follow them to their base routine. Specifically I'm looking to put something on a PC's armor or weapon to track his location. The PC in question is in a jail cell for the next 6 hours so there's some time to prep.

• I start with a setting and some terrible stuff about to happen or already in progress.
  
• I add a villain.
  
• I add another villain who hates the first villain.
  
• I let these guys concoct schemes against each other and anyone else who might stand in their way. These schemes usually come to me while I'm doing yard work in the form of monologues. You learn a lot about villains by the monologues they would give if given half a chance.
  
• I create an adventure for the party based on the above.
  
• Over the course of the first adventure, the PCs screw up everything, jumping completely off the rails, usually by accident.
  
• The campaign goes a totally different direction than planned.
  
• I adjust by looking at the party's various actions, and consider unintended "natural" consequences, with an eye toward favoring worst-case scenarios. Thus the destruction of everything they hold dear is on their heads.
  
• I also consider what might have happened between major NPCs in the absence of the party doing what I thought they were going to do. This gives the world that illusory depth that makes it feel more "real," i.e., their actions aren't happening in a vacuum.
  
• The PCs attempt to fix what they broke.
  
• In the process, they achieve various levels of success, while spinning off new horrible consequences (usually due to their murderhobo ways).
  
• Rinse and repeat.
  

I also borrow heavily from what I call a J.J. Abrams / Lost approach, i.e., I introduce dozens of random details that don't seem connected to the main thread at all, and that I don't care if they ever get properly explained. These serve as little plot hooks. I don't worry about whether they all fit together; I simply make them just vague enough that they don't conflict. Later on - sometimes months later - I'll think of interesting ways some of these little plot hooks might be connected to each other and to the party. This creates the illusion of grand DM master planning when it all seems to fit together later.

All this planning happens on an ongoing basis about three sessions ahead of the party...on good days. More often it happens the day of. Which means I often find myself winging NPC stats.

Ah hell, who am I kidding? I always wing the NPC stats.

Thanks all for the great input!

As to the weight not being apparent, I think you're misunderstanding

Correct, I was misunderstanding. This will definitely inform my description of the ship and what various skill checks will reveal.

The GM is the players eyes and ears on the world. Unless there is a darn good reason you shouldn't fool your players with wordplay like your last idea. They have to be able to trust you to relay the world as their characters perceive it.

"Large" is a temptation I will avoid...just thought it was kind of funny as I was typing it out. Neutral terms are better, like it's a sloop or galley, number of sails/masts, what standards it's flying, etc.

That said, your first concept isn't a bad one at all. Size and Weight don't scale the same, so a bigger ship would be heavier, and each part of the ship would be heavier as well. I'd have the first roll be a profession(sailor or skysailor) do notice that the ship doesn't move/handle etc. the way it should.

This is good. Being that they're in the air, nothing will give their weight away unless they turn, which could very easily come to pass, in which case they'll turn slowly.

I'm also thinking that if the party tries to hail the crew, their own voices might not carry at the distance they think they're at relative to the opposing ship. And when a hail finally is returned, the voices will be deeper than their own.

I'm still not sure what distances to apply various rolls at.

I am designing an encounter where the characters are on a sky ship and see another sky ship way off in the distance. The distant ship belongs to giants, and is built proportional to the giants' size. There are no objects or landscape features that the party can use as a frame of reference to determine the size of the ship; therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that until they close within a certain distance, the size differential will not be readily apparent.

Technically the giants are Large (based loosely on fire giants). These giants otherwise look human.

Questions:

• At what distance should I allow perception to reveal that the other ship's size may be different than their own?
  
• What should be the DC of that perception roll?
  
• At what distance should it be pretty much obvious without a roll that the ship is giant-sized?
  
• What (if any) relevant questions have I failed to list here?
  

I am tempted when asked to describe the ship by saying something like, "It is a large ship with two masts" etc., then later, "I told you it was large!" Suggestions are welcome here.

A gnoll bard. He's the kind of character that you hate before you even get to know him, just because of the way he looks. Then, when you interact with him, you find his personality to be absolutely revolting, and that's when you really start to hate him.

But the worst part of him is the taunting, schoolyard-style bullying songs he sings. The rhymes are stupid but somehow they get under your skin. And he won't be winning any awards for his musical talent, but that's part of what makes his shtick so effective.

I'd go vow of truth myself, it's easier (and more fun) to RP and doesn't interfere with anything a monk is likely to want to be doing.

I have a player right now who is on a side-quest seeking atonement because he couldn't keep the Vow of Truth.

That great moment when he went to spend ki and found he had none, followed by several sessions trying to piece it together (thinking some other event had perhaps magically robbed him of the ki). Then, when realization finally dawned on him, he said, "But I never lied!"

That's when I pulled out the notes from the key encounter in which his character told not just one but several egregious lies, in addition to aiding other members of the party to deceive and mislead a group of NPCs.

"Oh yeah." Dejected look = priceless.

He has since decided that after he gets his atonement, he will not be retaking the Vow of Truth. "I realize now that my character is just not capable of never telling a lie."

That's a good idea.

A mob that is not explicately hostile to the party should be difficult terrain. A mob that is hostile to the party ought to use the swarm rules.

The perception to notice a mob? Very very low. -10 maybe?

I was thinking about the perception to notice something small going on within a mob. Like, someone attempting to pick your pocket during all the yelling and jostling going on.

I'm running a game where the party is caught up in a city descending into total anarchy. Roving gangs of looters, spontaneous mob formation, etc. I've put together some custom rules for formation of the mobs, how quickly they grow, etc., but I could use some advice for answering some general questions:

• What should a PC's movement rate through a mob be? Treat is as difficult terrain, or something more complicated? If the former, should a monk really be able to disregard it?
  
• In the case of the mob being hostile and openly attacking members of the party, I'm inclined to treat the mob as some sort of swarm (else these lvl 8+ characters could just walk through the crowd and ignore it like it wasn't even attacking them...I want it to be a very desirable thing to be as far from the riots as possible).
  
• Perception: with all that yelling and screaming and jostling going on, I'm inclined to think perception is reduced...but by how much?

Any other thoughts/ideas/suggestions welcomed.

Would True Seeing allow a caster to determine the true identity of someone who has undergone a Mind Switch?

There is disagreement at my table over the scope and meaning of this phrase:

sees the true form of polymorphed, changed, or transmuted things

My opinion is that no, True Seeing would not reveal that a person is under Mind Switch. Thoughts?

To be fair, Procastinator, DR does tend to ruin the output of two-hander wielders as well. Enemies with any kind of significant DR make it more than worth your while to find a way to bypass DR altogether; defeating such an enemy by just plowing through their resistance is a last-ditch effort, as by that point the damage average of your actions is crippled either way.

It may become more worth your while to try and crowd control the target instead, or bring it down with magic damage.

That's what I'm hoping. I'm the GM in this case, and I'm trying to create encounters where the solution is something other than a slugfest/ race to see who can reduce the other side's hit points the fastest.

It was one of my players who asked for this rules interpretation. As a monk who enjoys punching people in the face with Stunning Fist, he was disappointed to learn how helpless he was to harm my black panther-shaped stone golem. But the point of the encounter wasn't to kill the golem, it was to steal the gem it was guarding. They succeeded, but not through brute strength, and the golem took no damage.

Yep. DR pretty much ruins any attempt at "death of a thousand cuts" style characters, sadly.

That is sad.

I assume it does not. I see nothing about it in the rules. We're talking about multiple attacks in the same round, of course.

Just like it says in the title: would a 9th level monk's ki strike allow him to overcome DR 10/Adamantine?

What if he had magic gauntlets? (+2)

I swear I looked right at the entry and didn't see that. It does cover what I was asking. Thanks!

Specifically, I want to understand what spells are needed to capture the spirit of an earth elemental. My search powers have proven too weak.

Yes...although if you make traps like that you should be clear with your players up front and tell them that the Disable Device skill isn't very useful for disarming traps in your campaign.

Agreed...and Disable Device still has its uses. The darts mechanism in the back room, for example, was booby-trapped. The rogue disabled it. And when there is some element of a trap within grasp of the rogue (like a groove in the wall where a blade might slide out), I will rule that a successful Disable Device roll means the rogue can jam it.

I also agree with Adamantine dragon, Odraude, and Kolokotroni above: involving the whole party makes it way better.

I run a lot of traps in my game, and my players love them. They ask me for more. My traps are often better and more memorable than the monsters. Yes, I admit it: I am bragging. This is one of those exceedingly rare cases where I am justified in doing so.

Some folks on here are going to say that my way is like puzzles which are like riddles which are only fun for people who like solving riddles but their characters are smarter than the players playing them so they should just get a skill roll representing their superior in-world skillz blah blah blah. My response: haters gonna hate.

Here's how I do it.

First, get rid of this notion of two skill rolls. If you go that route, you don't even need to describe the trap. Why bother, right? You're just wasting our time with flavor, Mr. DM: let's get on with the good stuff. So it's effectively like this, plus a bit of flavor: the rogue rolls well, "You find a trap," rogue rolls well again, "Ok, you successfully disarm it." Blech.

Make your traps so the characters absolutely know there is a trap. Just put it out there for everyone to see. Neon lights, -->TRAP HERE<--. A hallway with spikes poking out of the walls on either side, and a lever at the far end next to a ladder going up. Rogue rolls to detect trap. "Yep, it's a trap, folks." Duh. Ok, but how to disarm it? Roll a skill roll, and if he succeeds, he pulls the lever? Is this before or after he walks past the spikes?

This is an unfair example, of course, because the spikes are just there for show and the ladder is the trap. The monk pulls a ridiculous acrobatics stunt, jumps past the spikes without a scratch, gets on the ladder, goes halfway up, and - hoping to disarm the spikes for his friends - pulls the lever, which releases a lock that was holding the section of wall that the ladder is on in place. His weight makes the wall segment spin him around upside down to the other side where he is unceremoniously dumped into an underground lake 70' below, assuming he fails a reflex roll. Swimming rolls and lake monsters are always good for some instant high drama, amiright?

Subterfuge. Misdirection. These are the tools for good traps. Now, if you're a merciful DM, you could rule that the rogue's trap check revealed that the spikes or the walls they're on can't possibly move. So what on Earth is that lever for, then? Make them sweat.

Another fun trap trick is what I call "the second stage." Example: the room is roughly conical in shape, with the floor serving as the base, and the ceiling is so high up your light source doesn't quite penetrate the shadows up there. In the center of the room is a dragon's egg, held tight in a gold stand shaped like claws that's bolted to the floor. Ooh, you think this room is trapped? Maybe? The rogue rolls a '1', but c'mon, everyone knows it's a trap.

The dumb fighter steps closer into the anti-gravity field and takes a bunch of d6's damage from the fall to the ceiling. What he finds there, and what the party would have found had they figured out a way to get some light up there, is some skeletons in rusty armor. The key word here being "rusty."

...because a panel halfway up opens up and water starts pouring in. And because of the anti-gravity, it falls up. Now the party is in a race against time to figure out how to get their wounded warrior buddy out of there before he drowns. And as DM, you drop this on them (heh) only after the laughter regarding the anti-gravity fall dies down. They think it's over. Ok Mr. DM, that was a good one! Now how do I get back up- er, down? "Well, that's the thing, see, because OH HEY HERE COMES WATER!"

So what role does the rogue play in this trap system with fewer rolls? Great question! He's the guy who stocks up on all the right supplies! This kind of trap trains players to stock up on pebbles, rope, iron spikes, 10' poles and the like. He specializes in knowing what kinds of supplies to bring (and here is a place where the DM, through NPCs, can give helpful hints back in town). He also puts points in Climb and Acrobatics. These skills tend to come in handy with these kinds of traps.

As does Perception. You don't use the rogue's successful rolls to solve the trap; instead, you reward him with clues. Like informing him he doesn't think the spikes would move, or that the fact that the stand is bolted to the floor gives him a funny feeling.

Ok, so the next thing to think about is how to make the traps make sense. Why would such a trap be in this dungeon? What possible purpose would it serve? How would the locals avoid setting it off? This helps with the verisimilitude thing. And I have also found that limiting myself by asking these questions in advance - and by thinking about who would have designed the trap - actually enhances the creative process. One final trap as an example.

The party comes to a cylindrical room 30' across. 15' below the ledge where the party is standing is a pool of centuries' worth of waste material teleported from a bunch of magical chamber pots in the detention cells of an elven supermax prison. The depth of the foulness cannot be fathomed: the pool covers the entire bottom of the room. In the center of the room is a stone column, 2' across, that rises up out of the muck to the height of the party's ledge. On top of the column is a bizarre sci-fi-looking gizmo that the party still has no clue what it could be. Hanging from the ceiling a few feet above the gizmo is a clear globe in which floats a large brain. Keen perception will reveal tiny holes in the wall on the far side of the room.

So...is this a trap? I think we all know the answer by now.

The rogue reasons that the holes may be for darts. The mechanism must get loaded somehow, right? He searches and finds a secret door to a corridor that leads around to a chamber containing the mechanism. Free poison, anyone? Yay. And this is what I'm talking about: it has to make sense. Darts coming out of a wall without a way to put them in the wall makes zero sense.

Ok, we still have to figure out how to get the gizmo. We need the gizmo, of course. We don't know why, but we're an adventuring party, and so we must have the gizmo. Never mind that the elves thought it would be a good idea to lock it away safely in this weird locale. So... the concept behind this trap from a fun-for-the-DM perspective is to tempt the monk to make an acrobatic leap for the column. After all, the darts have been disabled, right? I meant for the darts to be disabled so the monk would feel secure enough to jump. And when he jumps, he'll go SPLAT! up against the invisible wall halfway across, and slide into the muck. Hello, acid damage anyone?

But by this point the monk's player is wise to my ways, and he tosses a silver coin across to the column, revealing the presence of the invisible wall. Am I disappointed? Not in the slightest, because by now everyone has a clear visual about what might have happened and it is hilarious. After that it was just a matter of figuring out the dimensions of the wall and a way around it. Obscuring Mist to locate its contours, and a combination of Entangle for vegetation on the ceiling and some nifty climbing and rope work by the rogue. Strictly legal by RAW? Who knows. I allowed it because traps are supposed to be fun and theirs was a creative solution.

And if they hadn't disabled the darts first? Then when they did manage to get to the gizmo, that's when the second stage of the trap would have hit. It works both ways.

Which brings me to one more thing. Afterwards, the monk's player asked me if they had found my solution. "My solution?" I asked. "I had no solution in mind." This confused the player and he was angry for all of one minute while I explained to him that this trap was made for a purpose by the elves: to keep the gizmo safe (from a very specific race, actually). The elves did not design it with this particular adventuring party in mind. But - and I have found this to be repeatedly true - the players will always find a way. You can count on it.

So...that's it. I got a few score of these traps. To me, preparing traps is way more fun than statting up monsters in Hero Labs.

Just sayin'.

NOTE: No PCs were killed in the exploration of these traps. The monk made his reflex save, the fighter was hoisted up/down, and we already saw how they got the gizmo. But I'll add that I prefer traps that inconvenience or wound the characters if sprung, rather than insta-killing them.

Midichlorians.

How about ancient Egyptian culture? Also, they should be aloof. Like Morris.

Dear lord, yes. The game I ran on Thursday had the dwarf barbarian (played by Josh) shattering chests (thereby destroying healing potions), charging through unlocked doors so he could shatter them, attacking the heads of fire breathing statues (which exploded, injuring both himself and "Abby," the female version of Valeros, who had been injured by the trap originally...

Josie (a cute little blonde haired, blue eyed nine year old, who probably weighs 60 pounds soaking wet), playing Abby, was able to recite Josh's (10 yrs old, 115 lbs) litany of offences as she then proceeded to announce, "I am going to come over there and physically kill you. Not your character, Josh... YOU."

That's awesome.

My kids played it for 8 hours straight yesterday. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, since it was such a beautiful day outside. Good for their minds and a positive sign for Paizo, of course, but not so good for their growing bodies.

Things I have learned by playing with kids:

• No tinder box? Then no fire.
  
• Type of armor and whether it fits or not is not enough info. Cut, color, design, etc., are all important factors when "shopping" for armor (my kids are all girls).
  
• They have terrible poker faces.
  
• They can rationalize looting at a very early age.
  
• Spell components count. Better stock up, and better keep any living components secure (they don't exactly want to be spell components, after all).
  

We learned that the pre-generated characters do not come equipped with tinder boxes or matches, despite having torches. My 11-year old daughter, showing her true colors as a troll GM, laughed maniacally as we were unable to see where we were going.

A quick return trip to town for tinder boxes, followed by someone finally agreeing to play the wizard (light), fixed things.

Has anyone else noticed that when kids play, the tiniest details become important?

Christopher Rowe wrote:

The bard is already in play in the Council of Thieves AP, and as things turned out he would have lost his mule at the very first as we wound up fleeing a bunch of Hellknights down a sewer.

Sure, the mule would be lost, but a slave--er, I mean unskilled hireling--could have jumped right down that sewer with you!

+1. Henchmen. Old school. They weren't just window dressing.

I agree with Evil Lincoln that Pathfinder gets slower at higher levels. It also seems clear to me that the more participants in a combat, the longer it takes to play. The worst case I have seen was an 11-round combat with 20 participants (6 PCs, four allied NPCs, and 10 opponents, at APL 8) that spanned three sessions. At three hours a pop, that totaled up to 9 hours of play to resolve 66 seconds of action. Now we're not the fastest group of gamers by any stretch of the imagination, but we're not exactly dragging our feet either.

Savage Worlds is the other system we use and it flies. Mass combat in particular has been a revelation (yes, I know this isn't comparing apples to apples). We ran a proof of concept test using the Battle of the Hornburg (Helm's Deep). I can't remember the exact numbers, but it took something like 20 minutes to set up (that included creating the NPCs Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and a Uruk Hai commander from scratch!), and 10 minutes to run. The inclusion of "Wild Cards" (PCs) actually did impact the final outcome: the forces of Rohan lost the battle, but Saruman's forces were significantly reduced. Not bad for 30 minutes.

On the upside for Pathfinder, the long combats buy me time to figure out what comes next after the fight.

Does it marginalize the contributions of the rest of the party, assuming an average party?

If so, it is overpowered.

True. I think at the heart of what I'm looking for, though, is how to determine if a character is overpowered compared to how powerful he is supposed to be.

For example, say a character in my group marginalizes the contributions of the rest of the party, as you say. But then the player takes that same PC and plays with another group, and fits in without dominating. Maybe the party at my table is below average.

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

I see the term "overpowered" (and "OP") get tossed around quite a bit on this forum, but I'm curious as to where people draw the line. Has anyone put together anything that shows average DPR by level?

I'm sure my question begets many more questions (like how to factor in rising ACs), and I expect the subjective nature of the topic to give rise to a wide range of opinions, but I really am interested in seeing if there's any kind of consensus out there.

In my own campaign, I can only tell that a PC is overpowered when he seems way more effective than the other PCs. Or maybe it's just the others are underpowered? And I gave up on trusting APL vs. CR long ago.

Might I suggest some cold resistance?

Mr. Cold Miser.

Mr. Heat Miser.

EDIT: Added link and fixed spelling.

You know such characters shouldn't be accepted into the ranks of a group of proffesional killers (adventuring party) but they are let in because they have PC engraved in their forehead.

When there's a job to be done, real life professional teams take the best talent available. The "ideal" (i.e. optimized) person isn't always available, so you take the best that you can find. Why does it have to be any different in RPGs?

If you're going to look at this as some kind of team sport, then you should consider that the best team is the one that makes the most of the resources it has. This is far more productive than pointing the finger to assign blame for losses. If someone at your table wants to explore the possibilities of playing a character build that doesn't meet your own stringent quality control standards, then that's the talent your team of "professional killers" has to work with. Make the most of it. Relax, kick back, and enjoy the ride.

I think if another player at my table looked down on me and told me I need to optimize, I would make a point of building an unoptimized monk sporting the Vow of Poverty the next time I died.

I have used that once or twice in extreme circumstances to demonstrate that everything a PC is allowed, NPCs are also allowed

This.

Just the threat often deters players from exploiting certain loopholes. The conversation usually goes as follows:

Player: Hey, I can do this, right?
GM: Sure. So can I.
Player: Never mind.

I'll chime in here too late to really impact the discussion, but I like the sound of my own keyboard so whatever.

1. I hate level dipping too.
More in practice, though, than in principle. If a character takes some time to train to pick up a level in something, or perhaps if they experience some life-changing event, then that's fine. It makes sense story-wise (at least potentially) and satisfies my own personal sense of verisimilitude.

What ends up happening, though, is players level up in the middle of adventures (mine are long...not much time is spent "in town"), and oh, hey! Suddenly they want to be able to rage, or read magic, or disable devices, despite the fact that they haven't been exposed to anything that would impart that knowledge upon them or practiced any of those things. This violates my sense of verisimilitude. But...

2. It's just a game.
Relax. Take a deep breath. You're playing a game with (presumably) friends, and you're all very different people with differing ideas of what the game should be. Their verisimilitude is different than yours, assuming realism or believability is even important to them at all. For some people it really is just a game, and they want to be able to exploit all the options afforded them by the rules to meet their objectives. This may not be how you view the game (and it's not how I view it either), but as GM you are responsible for fostering an environment where everyone, including yourself, can find some enjoyment.

To this end I recommend what many others on this thread have already said: initiate the conversation about level-dipping up front, before the campaign starts. Just say, look, when you take a level in a different class, you must do the following: [insert criteria here, such as provide a GM-approved in-story justification, commit to taking additional levels in the same class later on, etc.]. If you allow it at all. That way, if players aren't interested in playing your kind of game, they can get out while the getting is good.

If you've already started the campaign, suck it up and enjoy the ride. Your game won't be ruined, it will just be different than what you expected or hoped for. There is still enjoyment to be had.

Just...be laid back. Players in my game frequently do stuff that rubs me the wrong way. There is give and take. We compromise all the time. It's not the story I wanted it to be, but it's our story, and a damn good one. Good enough that we keep getting together for three hours once a week and have a blast.

That's all that really matters.

I too, were I GMing, would say that the first vertical square you enter does not count... because you are already occupying the cube that that square is one side of. However, that would not put you 5' off the ground, you'd effectively still be "on the ground" in terms of height. If/when you move UP one square you are exiting the square (or in this case, cube) that you are occupying. This is just my interpretation however.

Well put.

Would love to hear what the rules aficionados say about this. I would rule No at my table, but what do I know?

@lvl12: Sweet sarcasm bro, how about I paint you a picture real quick. In this scene the party walks into a room and Bob, who plays the barbarian who has trouble so much as tying his shoes properly, spends the next hour checking every single piece of wall for minute changes in the wood grain and knocking on walls to indicate the presence of a false wall, sure the barbarian has no idea that would show there's a false wall but metagaming totally makes the game MORE fun and immersive right?

I'll allow it. I spend a ton of time on my settings, I'm not gonna let some player throw that away with a 5-second die roll. There are multiple levels of immersion, and when you play for one you sacrifice another.

Let's switch it around and consider it from the perspective of the INT 12 DM role-playing his INT 30 super-genius villain. Can he simply roll dice to outsmart the characters? NO WAY! The DM is on his own. He must match wits with the players' dice.

As a DM, I appreciate the players being able to solve riddles with the roll of a die based on their characters' abilities. It makes my job as DM waaaay easier. Allow me to illustrate:

DM: The mural has a riddle on it, written in the common tongue. It says--

Player: What's the DC of the riddle? I have 26 INT, that gives me +8, and I <rolls d20> rolled 17, that's 25.

DM: You solve the riddle!

Traps are more of the same. Players can put ranks in Perception and Disable Device and get a nice little return on their investment:

DM: The room is 30' long and 40' wide--

Player: Rolling perception <rolls>...35! Does my rogue find any traps?

DM: Uh, I suppose...

Player: <rolls again> Ok, I rolled 28. Does that disable the trap?

DM: <sighs> Sure, whatever...

Notice we don't know anything about the riddle or the trap, because we don't need to know! The player solves it all with dice, and the details are meaningless. The DM shaves hours off his prep time and enjoys a vibrant social life.

</sarcasm>

Does the tree get an attack of opportunity?

White Plume Mountain. Has three main paths to choose from inside the dungeon. I have found that each of these three paths separately makes for a fun one-night adventure.

Cool to hear....kinda what I thought too. Really makes it fun to do with them what you will....and then they scratch they're heads and wonder what just happened.

It also helps if you don't give away to the players that you can't possibly explain it all. That way they'll keep guessing what the method to your madness is.