Mammon's page

Druid animal companions are able to gain stats, meaning that it's possible for the animal to go from a 2 intelligence to a 3. There are a few sources that cite special rules for animals that gain this intelligence bump being able take additional feats and skills, rather than those that animals are typically limited to.

The bestiary, though, states that animals can't have an intelligence more than 2. Does this mean that when an animal companion gains this intelligence bump that they become magical beasts or some other creature? Or do these animals merely break the rule for animals presented in the Bestiary.

I'd appreciate any answers/opinions you could give, as well as documentation (if possible).

A gm changing a module without playtesting it? That can be disastrous. I don't think I'd feel very confident in a GM changing a scenario on the fly on any level.

There's always an option to play up if you need more of a challenge, especially when there are seven players at the table, and this way there's a reward for the players CHOOSING to take that risk. Also, playing down is often an option if you feel like the party won't be able to handle it, and they will be rewarded for the level of play that they were able to accomplish.

It's not really fair to the players to up the difficulty of a module if you aren't able to increase their rewards as well. Organized play is balanced for a reason, and it'd be a shame to see a group of players miss out because of one or two overzealous gms.

We were discussing these two feats from the APG last night and I was wondering... even if the person is only moved five feet, the movement still provokes, right? Since it's not a five-foot-step but rather five foot movement that is specifically named as provoking according to the spell...

Also, does this movement provoke AoOs as per other movement (i.e. you have to leave a threatened square) or does it simply provoke against anyone who can reach a square the person is dragged to/through?

It is black and white. The caster is being affected by a spell. The spell has no saving throw, nor does it do damage. The rules on page 206 CLEARLY allow for such a spell affecting a caster. And if you look up affect in the dictionary, it says to act upon or produce change. Sounds like create water is acting upon or producing change in the caster (as in dousing him in 2 gallons of water/level).

Let's go through some other arguments.

Oh, well it's not the spell affecting the other caster, it's the water the spell created. OMG GOOD POINT! So I guess when a caster is in the middle of a stinking cloud (another conjuration-creation spell) he's not being affected by the stinking cloud spell, he's being affected by the cloud itself, therefore CLEARLY doesn't have to make a concentration check.

You can't cast conjuration creation spells in space! Oh wait, the spell description says you CAN, and spell descriptions override general magic information every time.

But there's a rain rule! Oh, wait, maybe the rain rule is applied to... *GASP* rain! Like as in RAIN. Precipitation that falls from the sky. I don't know if you've ever stood in, oh... say... Hurricane rain, but I have, and I got wet in six seconds, but not nearly as soaked (or impeded) as when I got a water cooler that contains -maybe- five gallons of water dumped on me, which is effectively what the spell is doing.

Stop being stubborn because you (any of you) don't like something. Make a move to have some errata released on it, or if you don't care to play in any official campagins or organized play events, just houserule it and be done with in. Constant insistence upon the same old tired argument that had no life in it to begin with isn't moving the discussion forward.

I'm done with this thread. It's gotten as ridiculous as the other questions I've asked. Wish I could lock it.

On another tack, the DC of concentration while being damaged in an attack is 10+damage+spell level. Some here seem to think that Create Water should exceed this. Are you therefore implying that the spell also does damage?

The bit on the cloud was for comments saying conjurations cant affect people/interfere with spellcasting.

And no, i'm not saying the spell does damage, i'm saying that's the wrong bit of rules to use... page 206 of the core rulebook says non-damaging spells affecting casting call for a concentration dc equal to the dc of the spell (or what the spell's dc WOULD be if it doesn't have one) plus the level of the spell being cast.

The rule's there, plain and simple. Really don't understand what the problem is.

Alright, I have no clue where people are getting this six second rule, but the spell's description says the duration is instantaneous, meaning it all happens in an instant, a single second, not six seconds. The water drops all at once, hence the downpour, not over several seconds as a mist or normal rain. The spell also says that the water can be made to appear in as small a space as will hold it or in an area three times as large, which is the size that refers to a downpour. Which means that if a 1 foot cube contains 8 gallons of water, per the spell description, you could instead make that into a 3 foot cube and be a downpour. That is a lot of water to be dumped into a 3 foot by 3 foot area and would have more than enough force to disrupt a spell caster or an archer or anything that requires concentration to accomplish.

The actual dimensions of a gallon of water is 0.13368055556 Cubic Feet, which is about a one foot wide and one foot long and 1.5 inch think layer of water.

Just thought I'd point it out :-)

Mammon wrote:

What happens when you drop 16 gallons on a fire elemental? Can we assume that a steam cloud, possibly as big as obscuring mist, occurs? Probably, in real world mechanics, it would... but in organized play, it's just too wild an assumption to make if it's not written into the module (CMON INTERACTIVES, WHERE THESE KIND OF RULINGS ARE SUPER FUN TO MAKE! It's so hand when the module writer is on hand to make that sort of call).

16 gallons of water on a fire elemental gets you a lot of steam and an angrier fire elemental. These are creatures that require real spells to take down... not cantrips and orisons.

Perhaps I was unclear on the goal of the use of the 0th level spell... no, nevermind, I was clear, but I suppose I assumed a reader would have more knowledge of the game than perhaps some do. I'll clear it up:

Obscuring mist is a spell... it causes an area granting concealment around a specific point, you can look up the spell yourself in the core rulebook if you need further explanation... I was pointing out that dumping that much water might create such an effect around the elemental, giving it a miss chance in combat (or if you summoned it, giving those trying to hit it a miss chance) as a possible tactic in the fight, if you were missing the appropriate spell to do what you wanted.

Mammon wrote:

Dump two gallons of water on your head just to see how disruptive it is. We tried it to great effect :-). As far as I'm concerned, this works, incredibly well.

The spell may be overpowered, but the mechanics are sound until an errata is released that fixes it.

2 gallons falling at once on approximately 1 square foot (your head) is definitely distracting.

2 gallons falling over 6 seconds over 25 square feet (5x5) is less so.

The spell's duration is instantaneous, not 1 round. The effect of the spell is applied during and only during that instant. In this case, the water (all the water) is created the instant the casting of the spell is complete.

As for conjurations affecting people, stinking cloud is a conjuration (Creation) just like create water, and I really hope you'd make any caster inside of the cloud trying to cast a spell need a concentration check to succeed.

Dump two gallons of water on your head just to see how disruptive it is. We tried it to great effect :-). As far as I'm concerned, this works, incredibly well.

The spell may be overpowered, but the mechanics are sound until an errata is released that fixes it.

Sorry, this and my other thread put me in a bad mood when I woke up...

Anyways, yes, I'd love to see what happens when I dumped 4, 6, 8, etc gallons, but there really comes a point when that much water coming down on someone could actually hurt them. Water is 8 lbs a gallon and when dumped from just a foot or so above someone's head, that's a lot of force dropping down on someone's head, neck, and shoulder area... I try to be smart, even in my stupidity.

Anyways, the increased water would certainly have an effect, but it's outside the scope of organized play for that sort of ruling so I wasn't even going to bother, as I know how I handle it in home games and I just wanted to know if the basest use of this ability was good for organize play.

What happens when you drop 16 gallons on a fire elemental? Can we assume that a steam cloud, possibly as big as obscuring mist, occurs? Probably, in real world mechanics, it would... but in organized play, it's just too wild an assumption to make if it's not written into the module (CMON INTERACTIVES, WHERE THESE KIND OF RULINGS ARE SUPER FUN TO MAKE! It's so hand when the module writer is on hand to make that sort of call).

When I was in Lubbock organizing for another organized play campaign, the game shop managers/owners would let me post flyers with my contact info in their store. Hit it up about two weeks in advance and you're fairly likely to get some response. Gamers are pack animals, and while they may only send out a scout to forage for new materials, that scouts fairly likely to report back to the herd that there's something fishy going on, then it's just a matter of an email (works best, they're skittish creatures) to get the details.

Make sure you pay the managers back by holding the events in their stores, though! They need the money from books, minis, concession, and dice purchases.

I appreciate the offer, AT, but Jason (was that his name?) made a clear ruling that Paladins following Asmodeus aren't allowed in Pathfinder Society organized play, so even if it was clearly allowed by the rules (to me it is, others it isn't) I wouldn't play the concept because it's been nipped in the bud.

And Enevhar, that's kind of my point. It seems that if the Cheliax faction ever did come to power or prominence over absalom due to the work of the pcs, the pcs would be shifted to evil (and thus be unplayable). I realize they're probably trying to spice things up a bit, but from what I've seen none of the factions are all that "good"... in the two missions I've been on people had to rob graves, bribe, steal, and lie. It seems rather ridiculous that such things would be done by people who were pursuing a goodly goal.

I think PFS needs to rethink the whole faction concept anyways. The game world is huge, and if they really want to pit factions against each other, it wouldn't be hard to use the pathfinder society as one faction, and the numerous other factions described in the factions guide as others (there are 24, by the way). Remove the evil ones and tell the module writers to stop trying to change the alignments of the ones that exist.

A couple of things:

First, we did an experiment yesterday, just to see how this works out in real life. A person reading a song was dunked in 2 gallons of water at some point in the song (random) to see if it messed them up or if they got distracted. They knew they were going to get dunked but didn't know when. Guess what! They (sometimes) messed up horribly. They usually messed up a little. Keep in mind the dunkee is very opposed to my creative use of create water, so I'm pretty sure he wasn't just being agreeable, despite his agreeance with my interpretation of the rules... (youtube video to follow?)

Second, the caster choses the size of the downpour, up to three times the necessary area. 1 gallon occupies something like 3 and a half liters, a liter is a cubic decimeter... so after some math we realize that EACH gallon occupies a space that is 1 foot by 1 foot by 1.56 inches of solid water. That's the minimum space required to create the water. The maximum space to create the water is 3 times that (per gallon)... essentially, you can fill the square at .06th of an inch per gallon... but you don't have to!

Anyways, these rules are made to imitate life as closely as we can while assuming for magic and other things we can't recreate, but it's pretty easy to see what happens when you douse someone in two gallons of water and they aren't expecting it.

Lastly, this whole affect/effect nonsense is a rather silly argument. The paragraph says affected... the definition of affect is to act on OR produce a change in (according to dictionary.com), create water obviously affects them, and it's obviously a spell... so we obviously have to use the rules provided for that situation.

I'm kind of annoyed by the repeated responses of "Well I don't like it so I wont allow it." Seriously? Why do we even have core rulebooks, then? Why do we have any rules at all? This is not your home game, folks. It's organized play. Stick to the rules or stop judging, it's an integrity of the game thing at this point, an integrity that gets violated when people decide to go off the beaten path because they're trying their best to beat a table full of pcs. Let the module do that, you're just there as an intermediary between the pcs and the adventure you're running. Make it interesting, make it fun, but stop trying to house rule things... you don't have the authority.

Hey all,

I'm looking at sinking my teeth into some more PFS play. If anyone is interested in forming a group with/taking on three new people between San Marcos, Tx and south Austin, Tx, I'd like to hear from you. We're looking for a location still, and we're trying to make sure our gamedays don't step on the toes of the North Austin Pathfinder Society and the San Antonio Pathfinder Society so we'd prefer weekday or sunday play. Anyway if you're interested let me know.

Okay... this is another one of those voluntary blindness things but I'm pretty sure it's easy to explain...

Being a member of the Cheliax faction has nothing to do with being Chelaxian, OR being from Cheliax, OR supporting the government of Cheliax, OR supporting the nation of Cheliax. You can be an Andoran diabolist in the Pathfinder Society who is a member of the Cheliax faction because he favors Cheliax's goals within the society. You can be a Chelaxian cleric of Abbadar (sp?) who favors the Taldoran faction because his god is from that land (or whatever other reason you can think of).

Now, as for THE FACTION, the faction within the pathfinder society which plans to take over Absalom (As they all do...), by force if necessary(which others aren't prepared to do), of which the characters are a part (if they have Cheliax listed as their faction) and therefore clearly support. And yes, as it is clearly listed as LAWFUL EVIL, helping them is helping evil, and violates the Paladin's code of conduct.

You're right, they're not in the same league, it's worse. Obvious... simple... well, I'd make jokes here but I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings and I'm not sure they'd be taken in good fun so I'll just say... ARGUE ON, BROTHER!

I asked the question, I had the concept, and I have to say that I'm completely fine with the ruling. I see it from the standpoint of it being too complex a concept to lay in the hands of the dozen or so dms that my character will likely see in the course of his career, despite it being a fun thing to pursue. Just reading here, there's too much conjecture and too much voluntary blindness on the issue, where people are either making rules up or flat out ignoring rules that exist. Very annoying but not at all uncommon in organized play, unfortunately. It's why we have people to make hard and fast rulings to begin with.

That being said, these interpretations of the rules have made one thing very clear: The Cheliax faction cannot have paladins. If paladins violate their oaths by venerating an evil god, they certainly violate their oaths by actively assisting in the goals of an evil organization. I guess if I ever judge a Chelaxian paladin I'm just gonna mark his AR noting that he's now an ex-paladin. Hopefully the campaign documentation will soon be updated to reflect this interpretation of the core rulebook's entry on paladins.

Of course, re-reading the paladin's code of conduct I'm convinced more than ever that Asmodeus should have paladins and paladins should DEFINITELY have Asmodeus. They like to punish the wicked, and that's Asmodeus's primary job function as the supreme ruler of hell. :-)

I had a great time playinsaturday, and things like this wouldn't stop that. I just posted here to get an idea of what would make a dm not let it count. Unfortunately it seems to be based on preference rather than actual text (which should be reserved for home games rather than organized play) but eh, what can you do?

I guess I'll continue to keep trying it and take the ruling every time :-\

Btw, I know that the other organized play campaign I played in had the Spell Description trumps all else ruling but I haven't seen anything like that in pathfinder. Is that a standing rule or just an understood practice here at the PFS?

So yesterday was my first Pathfinder Society experience, but I came across an all-too-common ruling concerning disrupting casting.

Simply put, I wanted to ready an action to cast Create Water over a caster when they began to cast a spell. According to page 207 of the Core Rulebook, I thought this was entirely reasonable. The judge, however, disagreed.

Now at the time I didn't feel the need to press for a reason, considering we were already sitting seven players and the combat was taking quite a long time and I didn't want to draw it out and was able to take other actions, but I was hoping other judges out there might be able to point me to a reason why the use of Create Water would not be a reasonable disruption for spellcasting, requiring a concentration check.

Also, beyond stopping play or taking the time to discuss (or argue, as the case may be), is there another recourse for pursuing such a dispute in PFS? An official ruling on various controversial or difficult topics or a FAQ listing anywhere?

Sol Kurpt wrote:

In the organized play document it even has this passage:

"Character Class versus Faction
Some classes are harder to play in some factions than others. In the list of factions that starts on page 10, we’ve endeavored to advise you before you make your faction choice as to what classes are suited more specifically to a faction and what classes might be quite difficult to play in a faction. These are by no means hard rules—if you have a great idea for a Paladin of the Cheliax faction, by all means play that character. Just know that you might have a harder time than most achieving the faction’s missions."

If that does not say "play a paladin of Asmodeus" I am not sure what it says.

Maybe it says if you want a challenge try to play a paladin of Iomedae or Abadar, who are both worshiped in Cheliax?

Based on many of the statements made here, a paladin of the Cheliax faction could only be played as an ex-paladin, as they would be benefiting a lawful evil organization, and the Paladin would lose all of his class features. Indeed, if service to the Church of Asmodeus has been ruled as unplayable by a paladin, then the Organized Play documentation needs to be amended to exclude paladins from belonging to Cheliax alltogether, as the premise of the argument seems to be that serving an Evil entity is what makes the concept unworkable (note that both Asmodeus and Cheliax are of the Lawful Evil alignment).

Read it , do not agree with it as it brakes the code. It allows LE paladins that could NEVER fall, why would a LE god who grants you power care if ya broke some silly LG code after all you still serve him faithfully. So no I would not allow

You rather continuously seem to have this idea of paladins garnered from another D20 system. Perhaps you need to closely examine the Paladin as presented in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook.

First, in PATHFINDER, Paladin's do not need a god, and their power does not come from a god. The concept was for a Paladin who is Lawful Good who has remained in service to a church who's faith has been around as long as he remembers, and who is focused on seeing that church put back onto a more goodly path. There was never any mention of a level of devotion to the deity beyond checking "Asmodeus" on his Chelaxian Census Form (which almost certainly exists). Simply put, the deity was for flavor and challenging roleplay, based entirely off an idea presented in a passage published -apparently in error (Errata? Refund??)- that described how challenging such a character could be. It was not intended to garner everyone's opinions, just a place to gather the facts for myself or input by someone who's word was law.

Second, there was never any mention of a Lawful Evil paladin, and never any implication that they could not fall. The paladin could CERTAINLY be tempted to step out of grace, possibly giving in to peer pressure or frustration. I've no idea where you got the idea into your head that we were trying to change paladin's alignments. Paladins are not Clerics in this roleplaying game, I do not understand how even a quick skimming of the Core Rulebook does not make that perfectly clear.

More than once I rolled my eyes while reading this nonsense and thought of my father, who used to tell me what opinions were like, adding that everyone has one and they all stink. I think it's good advice to remember in the future when a new player comes asking for information.

To me by the core and setting rules worshiping an evil god auto brakes your code.

Worshiping an evil God does not, by any ruling I've read, make you evil. Especially in the case of a god like Asmodeus, I would consider it completely within the scope of his personality to portray himself in a more moderate form to coerce more numerous followers. Hell, for all we know Jesus is CE but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that all the sweet little old grandmas in church are committing evil acts by being good little Christian widows.

Additionally, the only "code" paladins have now is to maintain a lawful good alignment, not willingly commit an evil act, act with honor, respect legitimate authority, help those in need, and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

I am fully aware of how organized play experiences often go, which is why I came to the forums hoping to get an official ruling (which has, of yet, not been forthcoming) before I sat with the character, as often DMs turn overzealous in their desire to strike down the evil cheater rather than realizing that they, just as much as the players, are subject to rulings from a higher power, and they're not free to interpret those rulings to the detriment of a player's fun.

In fact, as I stated recently, the character would be entirely legal for play if not for the typo in the organized play document (referenced earlier) which Joshua has said needs to be updated and corrected. Continuing to debate something that is clearly spelled out seems like a waste of effort... so onto my previous request...

does anyone know if and where it's stated that Joshua's rulings on the forums are considered table legal?

also, somehow the link above is broken...

Fixed here

Well, this is fun... stirred up a mess I think.

Anyways, the debate seems rather silly concerning Paladins following Asmodeus in the core rule set, as #29 Mother of Flies explains that it is possible and explains in detail the how and way. Home campaigns can have their own rules, of course, but for those of us who try to stick to print cannon for rulings, it's been cleared up.

As for the Society rule set, it looks like until the typo concerning alignment is cleared up in the rules document it's not possible, but neither is any character who has a deity listed on their character sheet that is two steps or more from them on the alignment axis...

That is, unless someone can point me to a place where forum rulings are considered valid rulings for table play, in which case Joshua's clarification here:

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderS ociety/general/pathfinderSocietyOrganizedPlayRulesV22FAQ&page=4#155

would indicate that they are, in fact, completely legal.

As James stated he would have killed the thing if it had been sense he didn't think it was possible , did not support it and has said before CG gods can't have paladins. The I place it in a editing error really.

Er... what?

Heh, caught me Enevhar...

Appears there are a couple of different opinions as to what counts and what doesn't... can anyone point to a reference?

As of 3.0 the language doesn't appear to have been fixed yet... so do we go by Joshua's ruling or do we have to wait until the campaign documentation has been officially changed?

I'm just asking because I've seen the question posed more than once, but haven't seen any real answers...

If I show up at a table with an Asmodean Paladin is there any reason that I wouldn't be allowed to play with that character?