Great repository names are short and memorable. Need inspiration? How about animated-octo-wight.
Just thought this was worth keeping.
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Here's a little tool I made to help me properly format magic items. It's output types are currently fairly limited, but perhaps it'll still be useful to someone. https://sites.google.com/site/archmageomega/home/item-formatter One question though. I'm slightly confused between the OGL and the Community Use license whether or not I've got the right notices in the right places.
Any suggestions on how a mythic character who doesn't already have one could gain an animal companion, or something very close to one at least? There's the option of awakening it and then taking the Loyalty path ability. Or there is the Animal Ally feat, but that requires three feats to get up to a full progression. I would have expected there to be a mythic path ability that would grant an animal companion somehow, but I couldn't find any. Would a path ability that granted Animal Ally (and possibly Boon Companion) be about on par? I think that'd make the most sense as a Marshal path ability, but I could see Guardian (who gets lots of animal companion related abilities) or Heirophant (as the druid favored path) too.
Once again, if you're one of my players, don't read this thread. I posted a few days ago looking for some advice about a series of trials my players were going to be going through soon. Since then, I've rethought the details and reduced things to one large trial that I think should make more sense story-wise. I still need a bit of help though. For the trial I need two objects for each deity. One is something that deity would appreciate as a gift/sacrifice and the other is something that would be related but wouldn't be appreciated as sacrifice. The list of deities is over here. Finally, each object will trigger a short vignette that the players will have to work through, but since there are so many of them, I don't mind if they can be dealt with with a just skill check or two. I've got a few things, but I'm running out of time to prepare, so any advice or suggestions are appreciated.
If you're one of my players, don't read this thread. I need some help with some ideas for an upcoming session. The players are in an ancient temple looking for some divine artifacts. I plan on them having to get through three trials to get to those, but I'm stuck on what those trials should be. These trials were designed and built a long time ago to grant access to only worthy individuals. I was thinking of a trial of power, a trial of cunning and a trial of intelligence. Unfortunately, that's about as far as I've been able to get. There's plenty of combat without putting more into these trials, so I'd want to add something more if the was the main point of a trial of power. Riddles and the like sound like obvious candidates for a trial of intelligence, but those are notoriously unfun in practice. (I don't think my group would enjoy a straight-up riddle.) I also don't want the trials to devolve into just, for example, a few skills rolls like a stealth trial probably would. Any help, ideas or links would be appreciated.
If you're one of my players, stop reading now. It'll be much more fun if you find this stuff out as you go. So, I've written myself into a bit of a corner. Or more accurately, a wide open field. I need to come up with 14 different artifacts, one for each of the gods in my pantheon. On the one hand, I want each artifact to be somewhat unique. On the other, having some general template would make filling in the details much easier. The one thing they'll definitely all have in common is that they'll grant the players their first mythic tier. My best idea so far is to do something based on each deities' favored spell, but that still leaves a lot of conceptual room. I was also thinking that it might help if the full range of abilities aren't unlocked immediately, but appear as the players gain tiers (if they ever do). BTW, I'm counting on my players only taking one of these artifacts each, but I'm pretty confident in that assumption, and I can always throw in some conscious lightning bolts if they try anything too funny.
I'm trying to stat up an item and I keep getting stuck trying to decide how to handle of couple of the specific but less common details in pricing it. I'd prefer to work out some general pricing for each of the details rather than just a good price for the item as a whole though. First, the item in question is a pair of weapons. Part of it won't work unless you weild both of them. I feel this is worth some discount but I'm not sure how much. One one hand it doesn't seem like a huge drawback because you'd almost always just keep using them as a pair. On the other hand, it forces you to use up your off hand to get the full benefit. While it's not directly applicable to this item, making a general decision here is further complicated by the differences between, for example, the enhancement bonus going up (obviously this should count once for each weapon) vs. some extra abilities that apply as a whole rather than for each weapon (which probably shouldn't count twice). I'm also somewhat curious about item sets more generally, but that's probably a can of worms better opened in a separate thread. Second, the item grants a specific subset of the beast shape II spell, but it grants part of it all the time and part of it once per day. I'm also trying to decide if and how to divide up the duration. While I think it's fair to do so, I do agree with someone that said dividing a 7 minute duration into 7 one minute uses is worth more than dividing 7 rounds into 7 one round uses, but the latter is not worth anything according to several existing items. On the other hand, dividing 7 minutes into 70 rounds doesn't sound like a great idea for several reasons. BTW, if you want some specifics to work with, the items are a pair of +1 tekko-kagi. While wearing both, you gain low-light vision, scent and grab on attacks made with these. For 7 minutes per day (division still to be decided) you can transform into a Large bear gaining +4 strength and natural armor and -2 dex as per the spell. Again though, I want to apply both of these details to other items independently, so I'm not looking just for a price for this one pair of items.
Would it be worth the extra bookkeeping to have weapon or armor properties that weren't just +1 or +2, but maybe +1.5? I mean, the math is really simple (it's still n * n * 2000, or 4500 for a +1.5) so it doesn't seem like that much extra bookkeeping to me. I keep coming up with ideas that should definitely be a plus-equivalent bonus, but they often seem to not fit well with the current whole numbers. Anyway, this is mostly just for discussion. Unless I see some official items using such numbers, I probably wouldn't try and use them myself. (If you happen to be interested in math, there are several other fractions that will still give whole numbers for the price and cost.)
I'm trying to work out what a fair price for elemental enchantments over the base +1d6 damage. My first thought is that you'd just stack, for example, flaming twice or three times (or four or five), but by the time you get to +5d6, you're doing significantly more damage (most of which bypasses DR) than someone with a +5 flaming weapon, even taking in to account the fewer hits. Now, that doesn't take in to account the relative rarity of various DRs and energy resistances, or a number of other things. So, my question is, theorycrafting aside, would you (your current, most recent or just favorite martial character) pay 32310 gp for a +1 flaming flaming sword? (Or a frost frost, or whatever.) Similarly, what would kind of extra elemental damage would you expect from a +5 sword with another +5 of elemental enchantements? (Would you be satisfied with 3d6 extra damage for 200,310 gp? 4d6?) While I'm interested in what people feel such things are worth, I'm also interested in doing some math, so theorycrafters are welcome too (but it might help if you mentioned what is and isn't theorycrafting). Edit: Oh yeah. If there are any official weapons that do more than +1d6 elemental damage (on every hit), that'd help quite a bit.
I have an idea for something interesting to throw at my players a bit later, but I have no idea how they might react to it, so I want to ask what you would do in this situation. Imagine somewhere in the forest you find a plant. It looks like some common, otherwise uninteresting plant growing in the area except that this one is glowing slightly and seems to exist at all of its stages of growth simultaneously. It's completely free of any blemishes and basically seems to be a perfect specimen. In fact, your party bard or wizard informs you (or you make your own knowledge check) that this is an ur-object. It's the prototype that all the other plants of that type follow. You are also informed that making changes is not a simple matter and destroying it completely is especially difficult, but doing so would alter all the other plants of that type. Why it's here, you have no idea.
First, if you're one of my players, you shouldn't be reading this, at least not until after the next game. For everyone else, I need an extra set of eyes to help me make sure I've got everything set up to run a festival smoothly. This is a celebration of Rak, goddess of hunting, knowledge, feasts and shadows. I've written up most everything on the wiki except for the final event, the grand hunt, and I've got separate plans for that (not that it needs much in the way of mechanics anyway). The players are minor nobles, so before things begin, they'll have to go around settling disputes and helping plan. The festival itself consists of an eating contest, an archery contest and a fantasy version of paintball. I wouldn't mind having another contest, but three is a good number and I'm out of ideas. (There's nothing celebrating Rak as a goddess of knowledge though.) Now, the reason I need some help here is because I'm going to be away from the internet for over a week. I'll be back the night before the game, so while I've got a plan, I won't have a chance to go over it myself (or reply to any suggestions yall make, unfortunately). But hopefully if yall do see something terribly wrong, it'll give me a chance to fix it. Since I won't be able to say so later, thanks in advance. (One thing that just occurred to me is that participating in the events should probably be worth a little XP, but I don't know how much. A wild guess would be a CR 1/2 equivalent each, or maybe just a flat 100 XP per character since they wouldn't be cooperating. Sorting disputes should definitely be worth something.)
In my current campaign, we've had our first character death. They managed to get things together for a raise dead spell, but it got us thinking that that's a bit too easy. On the other hand, we don't want to just ban the spell or give random reasons why it just doesn't work. Instead, we're working on a table of things that happen to you on the way back. You can look at the table here. Almost all of the results are purely RP effects, though a couple do have some mechanical effects too. I'd like to get some extra eyes to look over this and see if there's anything that stands out as odd or out of place. In particular, the results should be from best case to worst case as your modifier for the roll increases each time you're raised. (Also, the modifiers are more-or-less off the top of my head at the moment.)
Is there any information on how to handle such a combination? I'm tempted to just allow Gunsmithing to include Master Craftsman since it'd otherwise be a nearly useless feat tax, but either way, what would skill would you roll once you tried to actually enchant something? Actually, I'd love to make this an FAQ-worthy question, but I'm not sure how to phrase it in a clear, concise way.
I'll preface this by saying that it's entirely possible none of this will actually come up in game so it may end up being a lot of theorycrafting. I'm somewhat interested in making my current game higher-magic than the average PF game, but not in a big showy way. Instead, there would be a lot more "mundane" magic. Things few adventurers would bother learning really, but I'd like to be able to offer the options to the PCs if they are interested. I think this would mostly take the form of feats that let mundane characters do things normally reserved for spells. Spellcasters could take the feats too, but since they can also get the spells, they usually wouldn't bother. For example: Grandmaster Craftsman:
Any suggestions on other feats that might be interesting to both PCs and NPCs in such a setting? Any suggestions for other ways of handling this besides feats?
I've been thinking about crafting in Pathfinder and all of the crafting threads I've read, and what I (and everyone else) actually wants out of crafting. To work that out, I think I should start by collecting a series of examples of how the current crafting system fails. That is, how it works now, what's wrong and vaguely how it should work. (Most of these examples are things other people have mentioned in other threads. I just wanted to get them all in one place for easier analysis.) Now, before the usual "this isn't Merchants & Moneylenders" arguments, the current system makes the following characters fairly difficult to play and still be fun:
Almost all of these characters eventually stop and say "That's going to take how long?" and then give up and do something else. Not exactly fun. (Again, if your argument is just "why play such a character" this thread is not for you. You're not going to convince the rest of us we're wrong for wanting to play such characters.) Example 1: A copper, silver and gold band (relatively plain, DC 10), worth 1 sp, 10 sp and 100 sp (for simplicity's sake), take someone with Craft (Jewelry) +10 (57 sp per day) 8 minutes, 1.5 hours and 2 days to complete. I've heard that gold is harder to cast than silver, but that's really a question of skill and care, not time, or at least, not that much time. Now, material can make a difference in realistic crafting times, and realism isn't exactly the goal here, so any fixes shouldn't necessarily focus on this problem specifically, but will hopefully at least mitigate it somewhat. Example 2: A commoner with Craft (Painting) +0 and a master with Craft (Painting) +20 are given identical raw materials and the commoner is asked to spend as much time on the painting as the master painter does or vice versa. Under the current rules the commoner and the master end up with identically valued paintings (3x the materials), with the master finishing first and being unable to use the remaining time to do anything meaningful. The master can't even make it a masterwork because that would require more materials. In this case, it seems like the best solution is probably a separate refinement option. It could potentially replace the existing masterwork rules. Another option would be a DC increase to reduce the material costs. As long as that was balanced against the DC increase for working faster, it shouldn't unbalance anything. Example 3: A master smith with Craft (Armor) +30 making full plate makes 1560 sp per day. This means it'll take 11 days to complete a normal suit, 13 days to complete a masterwork suit or 106 days to make an adamantine suit. Again, materials can make a difference in time, plus adamantine isn't real, so we can't use any real-world intuition here, but the size of those two gaps don't seem quite right. The constant price difference for masterwork items may be acceptable for game purposes, but I feel like making it a separate roll at a separate DC is just awkward. The 106 days for the adamantine suit is a bit much, but it's another instance of the same problem as example 1. Example 4: A master smith with Craft (Armor) +30 spends 11 days in the shop hammering away on a suit of full plate. A level 3 wizard spends an hour to skip the rest and makes it masterwork. Now, the smith can do it in 2 days, for 50 gp whereas the wizard needs 150 gp, but it's still odd. Worse, once the wizard levels up some more, he can invalidate the whole process with fabricate. I think magic should be capable of stuff like masterwork transformation and fabricate, but there really should be some downside. It would probably be more obvious what that downside should be if the rest of the crafting system worked a little more smoothly. The other (not necessarily exclusive) option is to leave the spells alone, but quite trying to impose "mundane" on high level non-casters. A high level smith could potentially reproduce the effects of masterwork transformation or fabricate through sheer awesome (and possibly a feat or two). Example 5: A master alchemist with Craft (Alchemy) +30 is only capable of brewing a single dose of poison at once without the Master Alchemist feat. (Of course, if you've gotten your alchemy that high, you should probably take that feat.) Even something like hemlock, with needs almost no processing takes 17 days to prepare (2 with the feat). The issue here is fairly obvious. Poisons are priced the way they are for game balance, which throws off the assumptions that make the existing craft system (more or less) work. The Master Alchemist feat does help quite a bit, but it's a fairly obvious band-aid over the real problem. Maybe other crafting feats would be help round things out. Example 6: A smith (+30) spends all month preparing a mithril greatsword (4350 gp), then a wizard comes along with a cart full of reagents and turns it into a +3 flaming greataxe (32000 gp) in another month. I think the problem here is that the magic item rules are completely separated from the crafting rules. I feel like using Spellcraft like any other craft skill wouldn't be inappropriate (although that would rely on doing something about example 3 first). So, before I try to actually analyze any of this, does anyone else have any examples of issues not covered by these 6?
I've started a Pathfinder game using Minecraft in place of a virtual tabletop. One of my players suggested that since it's available, the characters should be able to use some of Minecraft's features, namely the ability to build stuff, which sounds like a great idea to me since it'd mean I didn't need to build it all myself. So now the players are minor nobles sent to the area to help develop a growing town. Now, what I'm posting to ask is if anyone has any suggestions on ways of balancing building stuff, adventuring, etc.? That is, while they're there to help build the town, they don't have unlimited resources. They'll also be expected to do some adventure-type stuff (although I need to come up with some justifications for why the nobles were sent out instead of the guards). I am currently planning on using the Stronghold Builders Guidebook to compile a list of common buildings with sizes and prices and then giving the players a separate fund to build from. So, any thoughts on other ways to keep things moving? Any city-building details that I've overlooked? Has anyone else tried this or something similar?
If any of my players are reading this, stop now. .
Ok. I started a new thread rather than continue the previous one, since here I want to get thoughts for my adventure down while the other thread was supposed to just be for everyone to post their own mythic adventure seeds/ideas. Anyway, I'm thinking of running a mythic one-shot based on Yuu Yuu Hakusho. Now, if you haven't watched or read it, and you're interested in the first couple of arcs, there will probably be too many spoilers here so I'm not going to try and put everything in spoiler tags, so fair warning. I haven't made or run a one shot before, so any advice on how to make that work more smoothly would be appreciated. Right now, I'm thinking that the story begins with the players as level 2, non-mythic characters. They've gone in to some dungeon for some reason (still working on this bit) and it quickly ends in a TPK. Now they find themselves standing in line to be judged by Pharasma when one of the angels (does Pharasma use angels?) waves them out of line. It's explained to them that they're needed (I need to think of a good reason why they are needed though) to return to Golarion and help hunt down some demons that are stealing souls preventing them from being judged and sent to the appropriate afterlife. Assuming they accept, they wake up outside the dungeon each with a unique artifact that will grant them their first mythic tier. They then have to find these demons (an investigation section) and stop them (a combat section). Now to make the investigation section work, I need to work out what the demons are doing and why. Well, they're stealing souls to increase their power. I'm currently thinking of having three demons (not specifically to duplicate the anime; it's a nice number) who only loosely work together, but mostly go about stealing souls on their own (ok, so that's pretty much just straight from the show). So three demons. One steals souls from children because they're the tastiest. Of course, that's the blatantly obvious route and it shouldn't take long to find this guy. Still, I need to work out three clues that would lead them straight to him. The second one could be stealing the souls of the strong. That would usually mean adventurers, which means he'd be luring them somewhere out of the way before dealing with them. Three clues here will be a little trickier, except that as adventurers the players would also be targets. The third one could steal the souls of those least likely to be missed. If he's careful, he could be pretty hard to track down. I'll have to think about what kind of clues he might be leaving. I need to make the investigation sections fairly painless as my group isn't big on investigation (or at least gets stuck easily) and I want to keep the adventure as a whole short enough to finish in a session or two. Three or four combats (if it's a fight that kills them in the beginning) should be doable as long as they don't need to spend an hour or two finding each demon. I'll have to wait for the mythic rules before making the demons, but I figure 3 APL+0 or +1 fights should be fine for a one-shot. So any suggestions based on what I have so far?
I'm (vaguely) planning on running a one or two shot mythic adventure once the beta begins. Rather than wait until then though, I'm trying to get some ideas together for the adventure itself (since I don't think that'll depend too much on the rules details). I don't have any mythic ideas of my own though, so I'm planning on stealing the plot from an anime. Then the question is what anime would make for a good (and fun) test of the mythic rules? My current best idea would be Yuu Yuu Hakusho (roughly the second plot arc, which means the players all start dead :) ). Anyone else have any ideas for short mythic adventures?
Short question: is there any reason why a character couldn't take arcane builder for a crafting feat they haven't qualified for/taken yet?
The rules text on cylinder spells seems somewhat contradictory:
So, if you cast a cylinder shaped spell inside a room, will it effect things outside the room (ignoring the walls) or not (no line of effect)? Or is it saying you need line of effect to the floor within that radius?
Ok, before I get started, I just want to give you fair warning that this is going to be a bit ranty and rambling. I see a lot of posts on here about the interaction of mundane things and magical things. How, for example, a 100 foot free-fall should kill any human outright without magic. How evasion shouldn't let you dodge a fireball if there's nowhere to dodge to. (I'm sure there are tons more examples, but my memory's not all that great.) What I think a lot of people are overlooking is that in a world with actual magic, there's really no such thing as "mundane" by our definition of the word. It's observable that all life force comes from another dimension of pure light (the positive energy plane to those that actually study this stuff). Dragons can still fly despite their size. And none of this glows when a wizard casts detect magic. Except that it probably does glow, just slightly, just as much as everything else so that it can't really be seen. So those roots and herbs carefully combined create a tiny connection to the plane of fire, thus alchemist's fire. Or high level people have a stronger connection to the positive energy plane and really can take more physical punishment than lower level people. And none of this is Magic-with-a-captial-M. It's background, everyday stuff, but it just might be magic-with-a-little-m compared to our world.
The Solidify spell: http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Custom_Earth_Spells#Solidify I think I've made this spell slightly too weak. As in, I can't actually think of anything useful to do with it as is. So I want to bump up its power just slightly and I have three ideas for doing that. I want some feedback on whether any of these ideas are open to abuse. - I could remove the "no fine details" restriction, which would allow me to preserve writing in clay and make (non-masterwork) stone weapons if it came to that.
Are there any existing weapon properties that add sonic damage on a regular hit? (Thundering only adds on a critical.) If not, would 1d4 sonic be about right for a +1? (Thundering is 1d8 instead of 1d10 like the other bursts.)
Ok, this is a bit of a silly idea, but has anyone made a dungeon meant for one character with no GM, so that different character builds can be compared? Would you use such a thing (at home or on the boards)? Assuming there isn't one already, what kind of challenges would you want to incorporate so that a wide variety of characters could be fairly compared? Besides GP and XP, what else could you score a run on? What character level would be most appropriate to test at? (I'm not sure, but I think most other character comparisons are around level 12.) The idea makes me think of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge and Ninja Warrior. (You'd know what the challenges are likely to be ahead of time, but they're still a challenge.)
Ok. Pretend for a second that you are a player in a group of (moderate) min/maxers. You're playing the craft-everything wizard and your GM, in a fit of laziness, has said "Just use the magic item creation guidelines. I'll look over it later. But:"
So, what's the most overpowered item you can think to build? Remember, the WBL guidelines do apply in this hypothetical game, so your character level matters. For now, we'll assume that time isn't an issue.
I'm curious if anyone knows how the Sparkwake Starknife (from the APG) is priced. It's price is given as 21,324 gp, which seems very specific. The magic item guidelines give:
(Also, it doesn't match the command word price, which would be 21,284 gp.) I wouldn't bother asking if it wasn't so close, as I know the usual response is "Eh, it felt right." I'm just curious where the extra 1,400 went.
Would you let someone craft acidic weapons? That is, as a general weapon enhancement that does the same thing as flaming/frost/shock? Or would you lower the die type? (Or does this option already exist somewhere?)
What character options exist that create difficult terrain and what level are those available at?
Just a quick question: If you were buying a cheap PDF containing a bunch of magic gear, would you rather have something very focused, like 100 Magic Blades, or something a little more general, like 100 Magic Weapons? (Or maybe something else?)
I'm working on some new spells for my wizard. Solidify is looking pretty solid, so I'm making a new thread for the next spell. As a GM, would you allow someone to take this spell? As a player, can you think of any way to abuse it? Are there any existing spells/feats/class abilities/etc. that would be cheapened by including this spell? For comparison, there's the barbarian's ground breaker rage power, the cleric's earth channeling, a stone oracle's shard explosion, and the spells obsidian flow, tar pool and earthquake. I think this may be a little strong as is. I also need to change the wording to make it clearer that Reflex/SR only applies if you target a square with a creature in it. BTW, I had to look it up, but the biggest threat from difficult terrain is that you can't 5-foot step through it. (The second biggest is that you can't charge through it, I think.)
As a standard action, while this spell is in effect, you can point to a 5ft square and cause the earth there to shatter into jagged shards. The square becomes difficult terrain and any creature standing there must make a reflex save of fall prone. Every time you do this, the remaining duration of this spell goes down by 1 minute.
I'm trying to plan my character out in advance for a change. This one's a dwarf wizard that'll be taking the Eldritch Heritage (Shaitan) feats and focusing on earth and acid spells. So my main question is, what feats would you consider for this character? The first open feat is at level 5. (I need Skill Focus at level 1 to take Eldritch Heritage at level 3.) I'm also using my 5th level bonus feat on Craft Wondrous since I have an amulet for a bonded object. Alternately, I could push EH back a couple levels to get Brew Potion at 3. Thanks.
I'm working on some new spells for my wizard. The other thread's become more about new ideas rather than balancing the existing ones (my fault). So, I want to go back and focus on each spell, starting at the bottom. As a GM, would you allow someone to take this spell? As a player, can you think of any way to abuse it? Are there any existing spells/feats/class abilities/etc. that would be cheapened by including this spell?
This spell causes a small dirt, mud or clay object to solidify into stone. The stone can be of any type, but never anything of value. The resulting object retains a moderate amount of detail, but cannot hold an edge. This spell cannot be used on a creature composed of dirt, mud or clay, nor on any substance currently under the effect of any other spell.
There's a chance we'll be starting a new game soon, and I have an idea for a character: a wizard with earth elemental blood. I'll take the earth school and the eldritch heritage feats. I haven't picked a race yet, but dwarf sounds appropriate. Anyway, general advice is appreciated, but this is in the homebrew section for a different reason. I need some spells for my spellbook. Of course I'll take existing acid and stone spells, but I really want to try and make at least one new spell per spell level. I'll run these by my GM later (as in, once we actually start making characters for the game). I'm also not interested in trying to powergame anything and would prefer flavorful and balanced spells (which should also make it easier on the GM). Ok, so I need one cantrip and one 1st level spell to get started. Is there an existing spell that creates difficult terrain? If not, would a cantrip that makes a single square of stone or dirt into difficult terrain be too powerful? Thanks.
A while back I asked what people wanted out of a magic item system, but that didn't get many responses. This time, I want to ask something different. If you assume that the current system is fairly well balanced, but somewhat incomplete, what would you change or add to make it more usable? I'll give a few examples:
First, what this thread isn't. It isn't about whether or not the current magic item system works. It isn't about whether or not the crafting feats should be nerfed or buffed. It basically has nothing to do with the existing system. So no need to post that the current system is or isn't working. Obviously, if you hate magic item crafting, then you shouldn't bother with this thread. Now, my question is, assuming everything else was left alone (the classes, races, CR system, enemies, magic, WBL, etc.) but they completely redesigned the magic item system (potentially including the distribution of the crafting feats), including rebuilding all the items in the book (no cut and paste issues), what would you want out of such a system? Personally, the biggest thing I'd want to see would be that the system was designed from the beginning with the idea that the players could make use of it (though of course the GM retains veto rights). The second thing I'd like to see would be that the system has some flexibility to handle different campaign assumptions regarding the availability of spellcasting. Really, I suppose it'd be better to say that the system should include a guide for what assumptions need to be made for a high-magic world vs a low-magic world, or a high-level world vs a low-level world, and some info on how to adjust things. A less important aspect I'd like to see would be for the system itself to be built to encourage more colorful items. Ok, have at it. I doubt this will actually last more than 5 posts before it goes up in flames. :D
I just want to get this down on (virtual) paper and see what other people think. It seems (to me at least) that most of the really broken magic items are made using the continuous option. Cure light wounds once a day (arguably) isn't too overpowered at 400 gp, but a continuous cure light wounds (effectively Fast Healing 5) would be cheap at 20x the price from the table. Obviously, there are lots of ways of handling this, from noting that there is no price multiplier given for instantaneous spells to noting that the entire table is just a guideline and that the GM always has final say (something I wouldn't disagree with). I had a slightly different idea that might make the table a little more useful for pricing such items. Basically, change it so that the charges per day version is the base price, and anything continuous would multiply that value by the number of charges needed. So those rows of the table become:
The ring of continuous CLW would then become 1 x 1 x 400 x 86,400 or 34,560,000 to cast every second of the day. An example of something a bit more doable would be an amulet of delay poison. At 3 hours per cast at level 3, it'd be 2 x 3 x 400 x * or 19,200 gp. Ok. So maybe this makes things a bit too expensive. Maybe the base price shouldn't be 400 gp. What would you price an item that automatically cast a 1st level spell at CL 1 every morning?
At 24 HD, this thing should have 12 feats. I don't even know where to begin. I suppose I could take Ability Focus 3 or 4 times. (Any other suggestions would also be welcome.) Thanks.
In my other thread, I considered making this a summoner feat or archetype (and the archetype seems ok to me, but I haven't gotten many comments). I wanted to ask though, is there any other way to go about this? Are there any already written material (feats, spells, archetypes, etc.) that can do something similar (first or third party)? Thanks.
How would you balance a feat that let you release your eidolon? I was thinking that the eidolon would gain the native subtype and you would no longer have any control over it (but it starts with a friendly disposition), and you wouldn't be able to summon a new one for a week (or maybe a day but require an expensive ceremony). Any advice on tweaks or prerequisites? (I mainly intend for this to used by the bad guys, but I thought it might be more interesting if it was just a general feat.)
When making a new, high level Mastermind type creature, do you prefer them to have lots of hit dice to reach the appropriate CR or to have fewer HD but add class levels? For example, let's say I wanted a CR 16 monstrous humanoid to fill a Mastermind role. Let's say it'll have an 18 INT either way. For straight HD, the chart suggests a CR 16 monstrous humanoid should have about 21 HD. This gives:
On the other hand, we could give it 13 HD (about CR 10 by itself) and 6 levels of Alchemist (or something, assuming whatever class stacks well with its other abilities). This gives:
So I guess my question is, which makes a better Mastermind monster? (This is just one example. You could easily replace Alchemist with just about any other PC class, though Masterminds tend to be casters of some type.) Would the creature type have much effect on your answer? I used monstrous humanoid here, but I'm thinking more about an intelligent ooze. Thanks.
I'm working on some new monsters (just for fun) and I want a good, suggestive name. Rather than ask which name fits best, I thought I'd first ask what these potential names suggest/sound like to you:
I'll ask about the specific monster I'm working on a little later. Thanks.
I'm currently playing a trapper ranger and would like some advice on how best to make use of craft (traps) and the ranger traps (which I haven't quite gotten to yet). As far as I can tell, the numbers in the book are only valid for traps built into dungeon walls. Any suggestions?
I'm brainstorming ideas for a custom adventure path, though I'm not expecting to actually finish it/write it up/use it. For this idea, I was thinking of an overall goal of having the players construct a dungeon. Now, the question is, why would they? My first thought was to house some Sealed Evil in a Can, or house an evil artifact, but in either case, their time would usually be better spent actually trying to destroy the thing. (Though it occurs to me that perhaps the method of destroying the artifact involves it sitting in some specific environment for a year and a day or something.) So, what justification could you give the players to encourage them to actually build and stock a proper dungeon, rather than just use/abuse/destroy/bury the MacGuffin?
How would you run an encounter with a trapped chest so that the non-rogue party members remain interested (assuming the party has a rogue, or someone else with disable device)? Specifically, the idea of a time limit (such as holding off the monsters) doesn't seem to work, since they'll likely just kill all the monsters then deal with the chest. (Making it so the chest is gone when they get back just seems cheap.) Similarly, the rogue's the most likely character to climb out on unstable terrain to get to the chest, if a mage doesn't just move it for them. Finally, a related question. Would you include something like a trapped chest at all if there was no rogue (or rogue-like) in the party?
Does anyone have any suggestions on permanent magical items for under 500gp (for a high magic setting of course)? If I understand the pricing table correctly, a 1/day command-word item should be about 360gp, which gives some possibilities. Also, +2 skill or +1 unslotted skill bonus would fit (400gp and 200gp). |