Merric Varethian's page

Even if the actual diagetic name were "Riders of the Apocalypse" someone would probably still prefer "Apocalypse Rider" for the singular.

Like "Szuriel is an Apocalypse Rider" scans better than "Szuriel is one of the Riders of the Apocalypse."

I wholeheartedly disagree, the latter is structured better and more spaced out, it conveys a grand title ('Rider of the Apocalypse') rather than a mere creature type ('apocalypse rider').

At the end of the day, the 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' are a well-recognised staple in the soup that is Western mythology. Most people are even aware of the line "Behold, a pale horse, and its rider was Death".

I doubt people in-universe would use 'apocalypse rider' for the same reason that no one in our real world uses 'apocalypse horseman' for 'horseman of the apocalypse' (outside of modern fantasy worldbuilding, like in Marvel). The cadence and inertia of the phrase is what gives it weight.

Odd question - is the spine of this book and the Pocket Edition red or black? The pictures are different on different parts of the site. This page shows a red spine, but the 'Second Edition Rulebooks' page shows a black spine (which, IMO, looks cooler).

What's the DC for the dreshkan's needle spray? I plan to just infer from its stats (L4, Dex +5, probably trained, so DC 21) or just a level-based DC, but isn't it usually listed in the attack?

Even if you can get close to it, it can emit 100 ft confusion aura that it can maintain as a move action, while vomiting swarms as a standard action. Also it's immune to swarms, so can stand in the middle of them. Also it has at will blur which lasts for 8 minutes a pop, so if it is even close to expecting combat that is probably active. And it has a gaze to cause Shaken. And it has DR and SR.....

This thing should be at least CR 7.

For funsies, this particular wihsaak has the swarmblooded template from Advanced Bestiary, meaning it automatically creates a wasp swarm whenever it bleeds, is slashed, is crit'd, or dies. >:D But you're right, it already has a slurry of defenses already, maybe the swarmblooded is overdoing it?

My hope is they use a bit of thinking in this battle, instead of 'bashy bashy done'.

Still a one round action to Summon Swarm.

I was sure that all SLA were a standard action, but I'll be damned:

"A spell-like ability has a casting time of 1 standard action unless noted otherwise in the ability or spell description."

Nobody tell my players!

So that and the AoO make it quite a bit more costly for him to create swarms.

So one of the upcoming mini-bosses in my campaign is a wihsaak sahkil - these guys get vomit swarm as an at-will spell-like ability (CL 8th).

To me this seems very OP - he can have up to 8 swarms going all the time, or 7 if he stops to make a full attack every now and then.

Am I missing some rule that limits summons, or some weakness of swarms? Otherwise I'm thinking of making it the SLA 3/day.

Excellent book, gorgeous art, massive source of inspiration.

I do have a question though:

Nulminds gain PE if a nearby creature casts spells (especially psychic spells), so would 3 nulminds be an unending source of magic? One casts a psychic spell, the other two get PE, so if they each cast spells, they'd never run out of PE. Is that right, or is there some clause I've overlooked?

I know this thread is 4 years old, but I found a solution which might be of use to people who have the same problem and find this thread via Google (as I did).

Extract the PDF page as a separate PDF, then save that PDF as a Word document (saving the original PDF may crash some PCs!), ungroup the desired image from the page's other images (right click the desired image, go to 'group', click 'ungroup', repeat as necessary), then just copy and paste as normal. Inexplicably, it worked! I copied it into Word (where I write up my notes), and I couldn't see it - because it was merging with the text weirdly, so 'format --> wrap text --> in line' fixes it.

Again, apologies for the extreme necro-thread, hopefully this solution helps some people! Paizo art is god-damn gorgeous, and I love it in my notes.

Another DM here, your review is worth its weight in astral diamonds, my notes are now covered in your additions and re-writes!

"Are you ready to challenge a perfect, immortal machine?" - Oh hello again, SHODAN!