Lvl 12 Procrastinator's page

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!

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.

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 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.

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?

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)

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

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?

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.

How would I handle a PC's attempt to

I'm assuming some kind of acrobatics check, but I'm not sure. This hasn't happened in play yet, but if I know my players, it's about to.

I'm running a game in which the characters have temporarily split into two groups: those who were willing to leave their weapons at the door (Group 1: 4 players), and those who were not (Group 2: 2 players). The characters who remained outside went off to explore another part of the setting.

I've been running games since '79, but oddly enough in all that time not once have I had a group separated for longer than a single session (usually the split-ups are the results of intra-party disagreements, and then I pick off the lone, rebellious straggler like predators do on Discovery Channel). So far I think I've been handling it ok: when one group reached a cliffhanger moment, I switched to the other group. Unfortunately, this resulted in one group getting a disproportionate amount of play time. I have considered time-boxing each group, maybe half an hour at a time for each group, but I worry that this will quash the cliffhanger dynamic we have achieved.

The other challenge is the classic time warp problem. Group 1 is embroiled in a vicious melee with a dozen total participants, while Group 2 is exploring. Group 1 is crawling at a snail's pace at six in-game seconds every half-hour (estimating here: I've never timed our combat), while Group 2 covers a lot of in-game time very quickly.

The players haven't complained about any of it. In fact, I received a lot of positive feedback last session (even though I was completely unprepared for Group 2 to go off the reservation). I'm just trying to think ahead to avoid any potential pitfalls.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

Just a little thought exercise. My group and I are always kidding around about the concept of the "inside fighter," i.e., a fighter built around the ability to fight his way out of a monster which has engulfed him or swallowed him whole.

Now we're toying around with the idea of an inside sorceress. What bloodlines and spells would be good for such a character? To what extent does being cramped inside a creature's stomach limit the spells you can use?

When casting summon monster to summon, say, a pony, can you specify that it appear above your enemy so that it falls and crushes him?

I feel like an idiot for posting this, but it keeps coming up in my games and I've been ruling in the players' favor. When a monster has multiple melee attack, can it use them all in one round as its full-round action?

PRD example[/url]]

Melee 2 claws +6 (1d6+4 plus grab), sting +6 (1d6+4 plus poison)

Assuming the scorpion has a full-round action, can it attack with both claws and its sting, or just the claws or the sting?

I am looking for ideas for a magic item I created on the fly during last night's session.

Background: Og the half-orc inquisitor is wearing giant-hide armor (stone giant) in a place where stone giants have been sighted. One of the stone giants is pretty upset seeing as how he recognized a mark on the armor that looks exactly like his lost brother's birthmark. So Og has been looking for a robe to cover himself up with.

While searching the bodies of some recently killed baddies, the player said, "I need a robe of any style."

"A Robe of Any Style, you say?" I replied. "Because this guy has one."

And so was born the Robe of Any Style. So far all we know is that the robe has a mind of its own. It changes styles randomly.

Here's what I'm looking for:

• Backstory ideas: Who created this thing, and why?
  
• List of styles to add to a table. Serious and ridiculous ideas both welcome.
  
• How might it be controlled? Need something logical flavor-wise, as well as mechanical. There should always be a chance control attempt will fail.
  

Cheers!

Can a magic trap be devised that would be triggered by Detect Magic?

The two centaurs aren't wearing armor, but they are harnessed to a chariot. A centaur's speed is 50' (35' in armor), and they have the Run feat:

Run

You are swift of foot.

Benefit: When running, you move five times your normal speed (if wearing medium, light, or no armor and carrying no more than a medium load) or four times your speed (if wearing heavy armor or carrying a heavy load). If you make a jump after a running start (see the Acrobatics skill description), you gain a +4 bonus on your Acrobatics check. While running, you retain your Dexterity bonus to your Armor Class.

I'm thinking the harness and weight of the chariot slow them down to armor speeds (so 35' x 4), but since there are two to share the load, they wouldn't be penalized any further than that.

The chariot has two passengers, a driver and an attacker. And no, the centaurs aren't thrilled with this arrangement.

Thoughts?

How do I tell if a character's words and actions provoke an attack from an NPC? Is it wrapped up in one of the skills?

I have a cavalier NPC that one of the PCs (a fighter) is trying to provoke into a fight. The cavalier sees the PC as beneath his station, but at some point he has to deal with this jerk who is all up in his face.

Naturally I can just role-play it, but, well, I am easily provoked in real life. I would have run my sword through this guy long ago, or died trying, and I can feel myself being drawn in by the PCs taunts. I want the NPC to react the way he would, not the way I would.

Any rules cover this? Any good house rules out there?

When a character gets a chance to make a saving throw each round, when does that happen?

In our session yesterday, the monk got caught in the smoke breath ("black cloud") of an achaierai. This is the description of the black cloud:

An achaierai can exhale a cloud of choking, toxic smoke three times per day. All creatures within 10 feet of the achaierai immediately take 2d6 points of damage as their flesh melts and rots away. The cloud erodes sanity as well as flesh, and anyone who takes damage from the black cloud must also make a DC 15 Fortitude save or become confused. Every round, the victim may attempt another DC 15 Fortitude save to recover from the confusion; otherwise it persists, lasting indefinitely until the condition is removed or the victim eventually makes her saving throw. The confusion element of a black cloud is a mind-affecting effect. The save DC is Constitution-based. This is a poison effect. Achaierais are immune to this ability.

The creature ran up adjacent to the monk and used the black cloud attack. The 2d6 damage was rolled, then the monk attempted the fortitude check and failed. Therefore he was confused. When his turn came up in the initiative order, he rolled again and made his save. Effectively, the confusion had no game impact. It's like he was never confused at all.

I'm thinking I ran this incorrectly. Is it the case that the subsequent saving throw attempt should have come on the achaierai's next turn? Or perhaps the initial saving throw should have been made at the monk's next turn, not immediately during the achaierai's attack?

Also, there's no mention of a reflex saving throw to avoid the acid damage, so I ruled damage was automatic. Was this correct?

Please advise.

Introducing a Lawful Good Paladin PC into the party paradoxically increases chaos at the gaming table. Discuss!

Too tired for complete sentences. Homebrew setting and adventure. Started characters at level 5. They are approaching level 8. Playing since January. Only about two weeks of in-game time have elapsed. Using medium advancement schedule. On pace to reach 27th level in one year of in-game time.

Was hoping this adventure would be one part of larger campaign, but it's a big place and they're just hitting the tip of the iceberg. Could conceivably spend the entire campaign (up to level 20) without ever heading back to civilization. Had to make up a "rod of summon merchant" to compensate.

I am disappoint (from verisimilitude angle) with in-game rate of advancement, but happy (and so are my players) with real-world rate of advancement (every 5 or 6 sessions or so). Feel characters shouldn't go from heroes to demi-godlike in matter of weeks. Should take years.

Anyone else feel this way?

Got an NPC concept, trying to figure out how to make it work. If you need more details than I'm providing here, I'll have to wait until I get home to fire up Hero Labs on my home machine.

I ruled half at the table, but I'm having second thoughts.

Looking through the rules, I can't find any reason to have a helm. Heck, looking at the PRD I don't even see prices for helms.

I was thinking a helm would allow you to use an armored AC against called shots aimed at your head, but I can't even find any rules on called shots. Is it simply that my search-fu is weak, or are helms truly worthless in PFRPG?

Had the idea when responding on another thread. The problem it solves for my group is that the characters are perpetually far from civilization. They have all these things they want to buy as they level up, but there is nowhere to purchase anything. They are in the middle of an epic scale (not to be confused with epic level) adventure out in the middle of nowhere.

I'm still figuring out how I want it to work, but the idea is that it's the same merchant every time, and he(or she) has a knack for getting you what you want. I might create a "wish list" mechanism so he's ready to deal when he arrives.

What I'm looking for on this thread (other ideas always welcome), is what race/class is this merchant? Looking for flavor.

From Stephen R. Donaldson's "The One Tree." If you've read this book and "White Gold Wielder," then you remember the Sandgorgon whose name I dare not utter. I would like to make a race of creatures with similar qualities.

Thoughts? Ideas?

A grell has the paralyzed rogue in its tentacles. Meanwhile, an undead skeletal claw* from beneath the muddy water has the rogue by the legs. A tug of war ensues.

How do I adjudicate this? How would it differ if the rogue wasn't paralyzed?

* Undead skeletal claw = combination of skeleton template and Stephen King's "The Moving Finger."

TL;DR Skip to Spoiler below.

In my campaign, most magic items have a drawback. This is especially true of wondrous items. I try to tie the drawback to the world somehow, so I tend to shy away from standard curses from the books. Some examples: a fighter has a sword that was once a gift from an evil elf queen to a human king. The possessor of the sword must make a will save to use it against her or her minions, and other fighters crave it. A monk has a tent which sleeps four, speeds healing, and is invisible when assembled, but takes one random item each use. That item is then delivered to someone evil who is in need, and used to create mayhem. The item is then returned after the subsequent use of the tent. Sleepers within have dreams that reveal the uses to which the items have been put (this tent, by the way, has proven to be the perfect adventure hook generator. I roll to see what was taken, then I have to figure out how that would be used for evil. Candles missing? A female assassin seduces her quarry, using the candles to set the mood. A civil war results).

Basically the more powerful the device, the worse the drawback. I see the drawback as a necessary ingredient in the creation process (inspired by Kasreyn of the Gyre, the thaumaturge in Stephen R. Donaldson's The One Tree, who worked with circles but always needed to introduce a flaw for the magic to be effective). Some folks put in a drawback on purpose, while others who try to bypass this requirement accidentally infuse their own character flaws and vices into the finished product. But I digress...

Mine are evil.

We've had a game going for half a year, but recently nothing's been happening. They're girls, all three of them, ages 12, 10, and 7, and role-playing nothing but "shopping" is fine with them. Even that went south, though, when an altercation broke out in a weapons shop and the shopkeeper took down Ol' Bessie to deal with them. One of the PCs put him down with a sleep spell, then they talked the 7 yr old - the one who always tries to stay out of fights - to coups de grace him. She chose to do it with a knife to the throat (I was shocked by this announcement). Then when the city guards came calling, she covered their retreat with a summoned fire elemental. We had a long talk after that about ethics, and their characters have been hiding out ever since for fear of the consequences.

So it's gotten kind of slow and they asked me to help them speed things along. I decided that in this case, a little railroading might go a long way. They were separated when we last left off, so I wrote them separate little vignettes to connect their current situation to the beginning of a new adventure, as well as to reunite them. One of them was approached by a shady character accompanied by city watchmen. He offered to have the city drop the charges of attempted murder (the coups de grace failed, and help arrived before they could finish the shopkeeper off). He told them of a legendary treasure belonging to a queen of a city believed to be buried beneath the one they are in. If they bring back proof of the treasure and a map to get to it, they can go free. They are free to roam about the city in the meantime, but they will be shot on sight if they try to leave.

When asked what their share of the spoils would be, he said, "Zero percent." He told them they're lucky not to get the chopping block for what they did.

We read these little vignettes at the dinner table tonight, and here were their reactions:

Middle child: "Zero percent?! Zero?! I am so going to kill him."

Oldest: "Yeah, but after we keep the deal, so we can leave the city."

Middle: "Yeah. He didn't say we couldn't kill him after we keep up our end of the bargain."

Oldest: "Right! We find the treasure, we tell him where it is, then we kill him. And we keep the treasure and anything else we find along the way."

Youngest: "Daddy, one problem. None of that happened." (She meant, what I wrote didn't happen when we played last time. She was unclear about the purpose of the vignettes.)

Hmm, methinks our ethics conversation didn't sink in.

I've been thinking about picking up the Pathfinder campaign setting, but I'm not sure of the homebrew campaign I'm running would fit in it.

Pretty much everything has taken place within a 60 mile x 60 mile grid, almost completely forested. The forest was once home to a proud elven civilization. A magical disease has ravaged the elves, as well as all fey and quite a few magical beasts within its confines. The disease doesn't kill; it transforms its victims into twisted, sadistic fiends. Races outside of the forest have no idea what has transpired within it, though it happened 500 years ago. Those who venture in do not return. Some among the shorter lived races don't even believe there ever was such a civilization.

This is my take on the creation of the drow. If I ran it in Golarion, I would have to rule out drow as a race unless they were played as elves infected with the disease.

Is there a place within the setting where I could run this scenario? This will drive whether I buy the setting now or wait a year or two for when I start a new campaign.

I'm not sure if "Advice" is the right section for this thread, since the combat turn described here already happened and we're all happy with how it turned out. I'm just not exactly clear on where I diverged from RAW, and would like to know, RAW, how I should have adjudicated it. I am fairly certain I did it wrong, and in multiple ways.

Context: the fight against Orox and his slaves.

Situation: Orox - a large (10') four-armed, spiral-horned beast - was on a 20' wide ledge and surrounded by five adventurers. A druid controlling a Flaming Sphere moved it onto his square. The spell says he gets a reflex save to negate. He made his save. The players asked, "If he dodged the ball and the ball is on his square, where did he go?" The only unoccupied square (and not big enough for him) was the one through which the flaming sphere was let in.

I said I thought he would dive through one of them, charging horn first. They thought that sounded cool so that's what we did. He charged through the fighter's square. The fighter asked if he would get an attack of opportunity against the beast. I said sure, that seams fair. Orox rolled a hit and put a hole in the fighter's abdomen. The fighter rolled a 1. Something bad always happens on a 1, so I said "You fall prone one square behind you." Problem was there were two morlocks swarming him from behind. Fighter asked what would happen to them? I said attack of opportunity. He asked if he could try to pin them as he fell. It sounded unlikely to me, but we were so far off the reservation by then that I said sure, go ahead and try. I gave them a +2 bonus to CMD because they were working in concert. One of them hit him with its club, but he managed to take both of them down with him and had them grappled.

In subsequent rounds he bonked their heads together like the three stooges. For his part Orox took advantage of the fighter's grappled condition and ran him through with his swords. This is the same fighter who would later go on to slay the medusa. He was down to 6 hp out of a total of I think 70 by then.

A medusa hits the ground, rolls up in a ball, covers her eyes, and begs for mercy. In her defense, she's having a very bad day: she has just given birth to the abominable offspring of her mutant beast enslaver. She's naked and exhausted. She is suffering third degree burns from a fireball. She hasn't harmed anyone.

Despite her pleas, the lawful neutral monk spends a ki point and wails on her. She has not violated any laws that he can cite, but he's in a bit of a snit because her foul baby petrified him, and he's just been restored. Is his attack on the medusa an evil act?

It matters, because there's a Forbiddance he has to pass...

I could use some suggestions about how to turn this concept into a map. What should be my approach?

The adventurers are heading to a lost elven city. That gaming session is 22 days from now. I know who is in the city, what is in the city, the general state of the city. I even have a mental image of the city. What I don't have is a way to capture it on paper.

The following is a description of the city.

The challenge: this is a true three-dimensional setting with no real "levels," except for the caves. Every time I start to map it, I get hung up on little things, like the fact that many of the corridors wouldn't be flat (think about looking at the branches of a tree from the side...especially one with large branches that droop). Plus the sheer scale of it, and my utter lack of artistic skill.

Obviously I need a way to break it into manageable chunks, but I don't really have a clear conception of what those manageable chunks should be.

Ideas?

Just like the title says, what is the alignment for the character called the Operative in the Firefly movie Serenity?

I've heard good cases for lawful neutral, lawful evil, and neutral evil. For the people I've spoken to, the varying positions on the Good vs. Evil axis are due to the dependency on the overall alignment of the Alliance. For those who think LN, it's because it wouldn't matter to the Operative whether the aims of the Alliance were good or evil: he is only interested in furthering those aims because the Alliance is "bigger than" himself.

Another friend makes a case for moving away from lawful on the Law vs. Chaos axis because the Operative breaks the laws of the Alliance itself in order to further the Alliance's aims.

I see him as lawful neutral, but I understand this is subjective and I'm curious about how other people interpret him.

Secondary question: does his alignment change by the end of the movie?

Tertiary question: what class is he?

The final encounter of a dungeon is too much for the characters to handle. Barring a series of ridonkulous rolls in their favor, they cannot win. The encounter is designed to force them to think differently: retreat, live to fight another day, and draw the enemy out rather than facing him where (and when) he is strongest. The odds should appear overwhelming at first glance: there is no surprise that I'll be pulling out midway through the encounter. All the facts will be on the table from the onset.

I have been clear with the players about my dungeon design philosophies, especially that the world around them isn't shaped to their level. They have taken this as a dare and nearly gotten themselves killed two times in this dungeon already. They may be thinking I'm bluffing, or that I'm a virtuoso at the fine art of designing encounters to bring them just to the brink of TPK. The truth is that I'm new to the system and we both got lucky: one or two rolls the other way and they'd all be dead. Or, more likely, enslaved.

So, by intentionally presenting an encounter that is impossible to beat head-on, does that make me a jerk GM? I'm curious what other people think.

Will the Identify spell work to identify a

The wording of the spell: