Mijoszew's page

The pathfinder online system would clearly mark batman as chaotic good. He disobeys the laws of his land (vigilante) but he's constantly trying to stop people from hurting others (without even killing them).

If I were talking PnP pathfinder I would label batman as LG to NG. He has a moral code that he strongly adheres to with little compromise (particularly the not killing people thing which he attempts to maintain in all versions so far as I'm aware.) though in some incarnations he kind of otherwise has a ends justify means attitude

Wildebob wrote:

Not necessarily, BigNorseWolf. Being beholden to the law of the land or of the church or whatever are only possible options. A lawful character could be sworn to a code of conduct entirely his own which dictates what he should do and still be VERY lawful. He thinks things through and decides which action is within his code.

If someone makes up a code on their own there's no reason they can't amend it as the situation warrants, resulting in either chaotic or neutral behavior.

And hence the principled/unprincipled distinction I like. Such amendments would be ad hoc and would shift the character towards neutral or chaotic.

The biggest hurdle for people playing evil with depth is finding a reason to work together aside from "we're all evil so we're going to go do evil stuff together.... For Evil!" Hopefully with the settlement/kingdom mechanics certain evil actions(undead use/slavery) will allow serious advantages enticing groups to go evil if just for greed of gold. After that I think kingpen type characters will arise naturally in order to coordinate a defense of all those taking those advantages (and thus gaining the heinous tag) from all the do-gooders out there looking for things to kill without taking the alignment hit.

The best way to think about the law-chaos alignment axis is principled vs unprincipled.

Your neutral good is actually a lawful good because the character has a code or set of principles guiding their action. I personally think Lawful characters are the most interesting to play independent of position on the good-evil axis.

Neutral in regards to the law-chaos axis would be a character that may have a few guidelines but they recognize these are only guidelines.

Chaotic characters view any set of principles as irredeemably flawed or just aren't interested in reflecting on their actions at all. Though most players tend to view the chaotic alignment as an excuse to behave randomly/irrationally. (players tend to have the most trouble rping chaotic or evil, they often have trouble working with others which shouldn't necessarily be the case)

PFO uses the lawful as law of the land because otherwise its too abstract a concept to code for. Similar to how the good-evil distinction is entirely action based instead of taken the entirety of circumstance into consideration.

For your example a lawful good person would probably be forced to move to a new settlement(assuming characters take alignment hits for officially associating with those that commit heinous acts) with slavery outlawed or encourage the settlement's leaders to change the law. A PnP lawful good character would also have the option of leading an secretive resistance or underground group assuming one of their principles isn't obeying the law of their land (as it was in the aforementioned Javert case)

I'm a fan of options for players and of the four variations on druids outlined I like the 4th the best. Though I do think that if any particular role gets emphasized for druids it should be that of divine caster that uses its magic to advantageously alter the battlefield by reaching out to nature(in AD&D days druids were after all just a subset of the priest class [with no buffed up animal companion])

However, the initial question motivating this thread remains. In light of what will the game consider a character a druid? Some number of archetype skills or possibly something else entirely? Or will class restrictions be lifted/can't do things in game like teach anyone Druidic such that there will be no in game actions for which this matters?

Could a druid grove be a specialized type of wilderness hideout?

Of course it could but I don't think the hide-out mechanics properly capture what a druid grove is supposed to be. Hide-outs are places bandits wait to waylay fast traveling caravans. The vast majority of the time druids would have no interest in this(though some druids let their more predatory instincts rule and would want to do this) In my mind druid groves are more or less hidden communities of druids and so a special type of settlement seems a closer analog to me.

There would at least be less metalworking capacity. Due to the metal armor restriction druids have there would be less demand for metal objects in a druid grove. I likely suggested it due to the more draconian restriction my PnP group has been using as a houserule keeping druids from using any metal. That said upon reflection none would probably be too much of a restriction but I think the overall capacity for metal working should be scaled back in druid groves.

I've started a new thread for the druid grove issue that's been raised here it seemed talk was lively enough on that to support a new thread: What should a druid grove be

Back on topic: I understand that druids can be quite diverse that's part of the reason for the question. I don't we can use ability access to determine whether or not a character is considered a druid partly because the classless system will give access to at least some abilities to nondruids and partly because things can be imitated. For instance the ability to shapechange can be copied by a sufficiently high level wizard type character with access to the polymorph spell (maybe also requiring a PFO equivalent to still and silent spell to perfect it) Druids need something to be able to tell if a person they meet is a druid because they are supposed to behave differently with a druid. Once again with the Druidic language issues and also in older edition druids were restricted from directly harming other druids.

I'm starting this thread because of another thread: What makes a druid, a druid exploring what kind of requirements PFO should implement for whether or not a character is considered a druid that wandered into this question.

To summarize the previous thread (in relationship to this topic) so far there seems to be two camps. The first is that druid groves are settlements populated mostly by druids. (maybe rangers and an occasional guest) The main motivation for this I think is that lore-wise druids tend to live out in these groves and this would provide some structure for a area spanning druid organisation to be based off of. The negatives to this seem to be that the restrictive practices of who is allowed in druid groves would make them less competitive with other settlements.

The second conception is that druid groves are more akin to some type of special hide-out. The motivation for this appears to be that druid groves are hidden in a manner similar to hide-outs and keeping druid groves on a scale similar to hide-outs means that druid groves don't have to compete as directly with settlements and those that may want to wipe a small druid grove just for fun. The negative for this is that druids tend not to be interested in way-laying random travelers (most of the time) and to me does not capture that druid groves are generally a gathering place/community of druids

So the question is what should a druid grove be in PFO? My inclination is a settlement with various benefits and restrictions.(such as no metalsmithing buildings and restricted membership) Perhaps the two thoughts could be combined somewhat and druid groves start out hidden as hide-outs to outsiders. This would give druid groves a slight edge to make up for their relatively low membership levels(if restricted in membership). Additionally I would not worry too much about competitiveness of druid groves directly with settlements because such conflict would not occur in isolation. I hope that druid groves would provide unique buildings and benefits which may be valuable to a kingdom on good terms with a grove, thus giving incentive to protect groves from predatory practice.

One concern given PFO's classless system is that there won't be a clear distinction between druids and non-druids. This is a real concern. Druids don't let just anyone live in their groves(I would like to see these as player settlements with some unique building/environmental impact effects but limited to only accepting druids as members) and they certainly don't go about teaching non-druids how to speak Druidic since doing so would be grounds for expulsion from the order or worse. Given these two concerns there needs to be a real in-game distinction between druids and non-druids.

I foresee two obvious possibilities. The first is just having trained a particular set of skills. This would be akin to saying that a druid is just someone that can do some set of things. To me though that doesn't capture the entirety of what a druid is. In my opinion a druid is foremost a member in the overarching druid organisation. Given this it seems to me that druid should not be a title given to characters with a certain set of skills but instead a title given to the members of a particular faction. (Incidentally the rep system may be a good way to limit who could qualify for the title of Archdruid and lead a grove) Perhaps the best(and most restrictive so far) would be a combination of the skills known and faction membership, however, both suffer the disadvantage of slightly separating from lore since most druids are raised by the order to become druids since early childhood, while both of these proposals would see all PC druids starting out in their adulthood as something else.

The Enflading Fire feat only grants a +2 on attack, it does not provide a flanking bonus(which includes the ability to sneak attack if you have the class ability, a benefit the Enflading Fire feat fails to grant). As for the feat Marc is recalling I believe there is a 4.0 feat which has that effect but there is no such feat in pathfinder.

My main issue with this is that, as I take it currently to be described, it allows a completely mundane approach for instantly healing wounds, which I think is rather miraculous. Flavor wise I don't think any application of non-magical medicine should have the effect of instantly closing and healing wounds, we certainly have not found any such method in real life yet. However, if the game-world had many magical plants I could see allowing a heal check to identify(but not necessarily find) and know how to use the ones that may be used to imitate healing spells as above. But I certainly would not want those plants to work in an anti-magic field, as a good part of the reason to cast such a field would probably be to inhibit instant healing.

The thing is that the ability to sell dungeon keys would only encourage the kind of dungeon locking grief behavior that was worried about earlier in the thread as such behavior would restrict the frequency people stumble on open dungeons thus driving up the price for keys. Even restricting the number of dungeons an individual can keep locked I can see a larger guild implementing a widespread dungeon lockdown and selling 2-3 keys at a time.

Not that I see anywhere, though I imagine being in melee combat or focusing on an activity which requires a skill check should count.

Now it depends on how we interpret the word "interrupted." I was just taking it to mean that the interrupted character's turn is put on hold while the readied action is resolved, thereby not being an exception to the sentence which occurs before it. As for the readied action which is triggered in mid-charge that opens up a whole other can of worms which I have yet to find any official rules which address the situation. There are other threads on that issue. (most are couched in terms of readying an action to move out of the way of a charged based on how close the enemy gets but it's the same issue I think)

There's also this in the Beast Rider entry

The animal chosen as a mount must be large enough to carry the beast rider (Medium or Large for a Small character; Large or Huge for a Medium character).

Which directly contradicts the list of 4th level selectable mounts

I think both positions are wrong according to RAW, as the readied action occurs just before the action which triggers it. Therefore, in this case the rider is knocked off its mount before it begins charging. This means the rider actually still had all its actions left as none were actually spent.

The distracted penalty is in the skill description for perception checks. It adds +5 to the DC by the way.

This issue has been brought up before here: http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz4x1r?Battlemind-Link
There's an obvious problem and there does not appear to be any official ruling on it. For now I'd just bring up the issue with your dm and see how they'd run on it. I personally would have you both take the higher initiative die roll then add it to the lower modifier (putting you on the same initiative)and further say you must make your attacks at the same time to get the benefit so that issues with delaying an action don't come up.

In the Kingmaker rules building a blacksmith costs 6BP as does a fort. To put that cost in context a house costs 3 BP however it should be noted these are not individual buildings but essentially city blocks devoted to that function(each one of these buildings add 250 people to the city's population). Additionally according to the rules you can convert gp to BP at the ratio of 4000:1 but BP to gp is only 1:2000. Given this I think I would convert BP to 3000 gp. Given this information there are a number of ways the cost for a single building could be calculated depending on how you want to justify kingmaker adding 250 people when you build a smithy.

In short the Kingmaker rules are more for building cities rather than individual buildings and would take a lot of working to adjust them to that purpose.

I think a reasonable dm would only allow the proposed extra size increase for large characters.(as the similar one which occurs at 7th level, in the beast rider archetype entry, is only for medium characters) Barring that restriction there would start being concerns about what a medium character can reach with a weapon from on top of a huge mount.

Ossian, that's the kind of approach I've been anticipating. It just seems odd that the official rules would be totally silent on the issue, and with the way the animal companions have changed from 3.5 that means no possible companion mounts for large characters without house rules.

Sadly Cavalier animal companions specifically do not posses the share spell ability. I am hoping that there are general rules somewhere for large characters that take the Cavalier class and possibly specifically the Beast Rider archetype, though paying for a second casting is a worse case scenario method to make it work.

I am currently playing a level 5 human Beast Rider Cavalier. I currently have a horse and have been planning on switching to a bear by 7th level. But that's all irrelevant, aside from the class, in regards to my question.

I have recently contemplated having Enlarge Person cast permanently on myself once I can afford the gp for the casting. The problem with that is there is a complete lack of rules for what mounts are available to Large Beast Rider Cavaliers.(the entry for the Beast Rider archetype only lists possible companions for Small or Medium characters) This is especially a problem since the largest animal companions only reach the Large size category. As it is, it appears that if I were to become a large character I would loose the ability to have an animal companion mount due to lack of rules handling the topic. The most obvious solution is to reiterate the possible size increase rule for Beast Rider companions that occurs at 7th level but to make it increase the companion size to Huge.

I hope one day to be able to ride a huge Mastodon animal companion into battle but currently the rules simply don't allow it but currently the rules don't allow for it. In short if anyone knows of any official rules that would allow this(or even disallow if it must be so) to happen I'd appreciate it if they could point me in the right direction