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Morgan Coldsoul's page

Organized Play Member. 33 posts. No reviews. No lists. 1 wishlist.


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Worst... Character... Ever!
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This thread made my day, seriously. XD Love the Cockatrice cavalier idea.

I did an NPC for a game who wasn't intentionally meant to be annoying, but wound up that way because the party totally bit too hard on the drama that came along with her. They went to rescue a village under siege, and one of the generals of the enemy army was a dread necromancer (3.5 class updated to PF) who actually has her own reasons for being there, is secretly out to kill the BBEG, blah blah blah.

Since she has spies embedded in the village, she knows adventurers are coming and does what anyone who wants adventurers to stick around would do: Tells them to leave. She doesn't do anything they can't overcome or aren't capable of, themselves, but stuff like sending a polite (threatening) letter treated with contact poison, etc., to give them reasons to come after the enemy officers out of personal revenge as well as altruism/greed/whatever.

Later, when she's apparently on their side, they have to suspect her because she's already betrayed one previous employer and admitted she feels no remorse for it, and will totally betray them, too, if they turn out to be useless or to interfere with her own plans for stopping the BBEG. They're wary, but they don't dare let her out of their sight, for fear that she turns on them to maintain her cover (since the BBEG thinks the heroes killed her along with the rest and doesn't know she's turned traitor yet).

Because she's a dread necromancer, and they have that crappy 5-foot fear aura and a lot of other thematic but (sometimes) ultimately useless abilities, I played up her image as half-undead, cold, calculating, but ultimately true neutral with lots of "she is beautiful, but like a statue--inhuman" and "the light around you seems to dim and even the sky grows gray as her glowing green eyes lock onto yours," etc. Just fluff, but everyone got way too caught up in it, taking it for more than what it was and interpreting it as GM implication that this was one mean lady not to be messed with (I guess). Even though she was capable of following as well as leading and is actually a pretty solid team player, they stayed terrified of her and hated her because she was so pragmatic and amoral, but nearly always right and effective, and combined with the atmosphere, they developed this assumption of tremendous, dark strength.

Best part? She's 2 levels lower than everyone else. :D
Help with construct armor?
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I know there have been plenty of questions asked about construct armor since it became available in UM. A FAQ/errata was released here to answers some of it. For convenience, it's under the spoiler.

FAQ:
Construct Armor (page 114): How do attacks target the construct armor? Do I gain its resistances, immunities, and other defenses? What are the "benefits" and "hindrances" mentioned in this section? Does wearing it affect your speed?

The construct armor is treated as breastplate for the purpose of AC. If something targets you, it must first hit your AC. If it hits you, the attack has to get through the construct's DR or hardness and its hit points. In effect, the construct armor acts much like a pool of temporary hit points: you don't take any damage from attacks that target your AC until the construct is destroyed.

Attacks that bypass your AC bypass this protection and affects you normally (this includes most area effects). If the construct is resistant or immune to a particular attack, the attack bypasses this protection and affects you normally. Basically, the construct armor is good at mitigating damage from melee and ranged attacks, but doesn't protect you like you were the actual construct.

For example, a wood golem is immune to and healed by cold; if you're wearing wood golem armor, hitting you with a ray of frost doesn't harm the armor, heals the armor if the attack deals at least 3 points of cold damage, and deals 1d3 points of cold damage to you. Fortunately, you don't gain the construct's weaknesses; just because a wood golem has vulnerability to fire doesn't mean you take 150% fire damage when wearing wood golem armor.

The "benefits" in this section refer to the construct armor counting as breastplate and to its hit point buffer against melee and ranged attacks. The "penalties" in this section refer to the construct armor counting as breastplate.

Because the "counts as breastplate" section doesn't say it affects your speed (presumably because the construct is partially animate and able to help you move), it does not affect your speed.

Update: Page 114—In the Construct Armor modification, in the first paragraph, in the second sentence, change “first target the construct” to “damage the construct.” In the third sentence, change “regains all the hindrances” to “retains all the hindrances.”

—Sean K Reynolds, 11/16/11


I'm still having a bit of difficulty with utilizing these rules, but I'd like to use a suit of construct armor for a major NPC in an upcoming campaign I'm writing, and so would appreciate any help I could get in adjusting and dealing with the variant.

My goal is to use an iron golem shield guardian for the base construct, but I need to reduce it down to Medium size, as per the Bestiary adjustments; so, firstly, I need to make certain I've got the hang of that. Do I just reverse the stat alterations for increasing a Medium creature to Large? The entry seems to imply so.

Secondly, I need to figure out how that's going to affect the price, overall. Of course, the actual construct armor and shield guardian mods have their own costs that are described separately, so no problem there. But, I'm having trouble figuring out the cost of a Medium iron golem, what with all the talk of special abilities and costs per ability but this ability is actually two, and so forth. I don't want to do anything else special to the base golem, other than reduce its size by the one category.

Any tips would be appreciated.

(edited briefly for spelling)