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Starting this as the GM soon and a few thoughts on everything here. The summary of all this could really be "Your players have agreed to an adventure path that is a fighting tournament. If they didn't want to be in a fighting tournament, why are we playing this?" - There was nothing in the rules precluding exploring at night. In fact page 26 explicitly says you can travel all hours of the day (as Luke said just above this). This does mean any event that depends on them being in a place simply gets moved to them. - For intentionally seeking an opponent, page 45 mentions teams should be able to find an opponent within about 4 hexploration activities. - I don't see it explicitly stated anywhere, but I'm treating each team's attendant as a neutral enforcer. They never issue challenges or engage in combat, but are wandering referees so teams are always "in the presence of an enforcer". Otherwise wandering the island to issue a challenge would be silly. - I don't see the Necklace's abilities explained anywhere except the items page, so I'm running it as the Enforcers that Sending them (after they clear the temple) explain the properties of the necklace, or at least hint they should try to identify it. - I'm calling challenge distances at about 200 feet. The idea being you need to be able to throw something at them (I'm thinking about baseball as a *rough* reference for long throwing distance). The team's attendant simply being present should make things tricky to hide from an encounter, so this is more to prevent challenging from miles away with a spyglass. - I'm agreeing with this thread's treatment of "no looting/stealing/cursing" as part of the general "no lethal action against other teams" rule. Stealing feathers could potentially be interesting, but would devolve the module into a long discussion of how each individual team is protecting their feathers with what enchantments, not to mention what other teams would do to take the PC's feathers. Even if stealing were allowed, there's a corner case of a team has 10 feathers, and therefore cannot challenge the thief trying to steal their feathers, and cannot take violent actions against the thief...so then what? Those rules could be changed too, but I'm opting for outright No Stealing. - There are a few posts about waiting around safe sites, challenge-then-rechallenge, and other "tournament rule abuses" in this thread. If any group does something against the spirit of the rules like this, the enforcers give them a warning, eventually escalating to challenging them and refusing to award a prize (to include not recognizing challenges from the group as coming first, unless both sides are begging for the match). The enforcers intentionally waste the offending party's time and allows the "fouled" team a chance to leave. - I love the idea of "every time the party uses a spell (or any daily resource), take the same % of spell slots away from NPC teams" as a balancing factor. - I like the "random amount of time from setting up for a match until a match begins" way of dealing with Buffs cast before a match, even if cast with some sort of "stealthy" ability. - I'm going with positioning before a match is completely up to each team, since both sides would be staring each other down waiting for an official start signal. The challenged team decides which half of the arena each team takes formation on, including if it's a north/south or an east/west (or whatever else) half. There could even be a coin flip to decide a number of buff rounds or a side to defend like American Football. Buff rounds could also be used to build cover from flying opponents. - Flying opponents certainly need to be dealt with, though there's still the number of times you can cast fly a day as a limit. I'm considering each team as having an extra quirk to handle flying opponents (portable total cover, counter spelling, giving someone boots of flying, granting some sort of defensive action, etc). There's also lots of cover in these arenas, so a completely flying party would need to deal with opponents just "waiting it out". Savvy opponents could have a goal of taking an unconscious party member hostage for the rest of combat, potentially eating into the PC's feathers for revive if they try to play the distance game and let their team mates be killed. In theory other teams should have had just as much time to strategize as the PCs, so if your players can think of it, so can the NPCs. (A rare exception to the "Don't intentionally build encounters to foil your PCs strategy" heuristic, though it's much more relevant to book 2 when the entire city of Goka knows your party's tactics).
Guide looks awesome, but it does not have a product spot on its AP page. <3 Player's Guides not needing an account!
Except you're not casting Insect Form directly. You're casting the first level Focus Spell Wild Shape, which the feat specifically adds the list of forms from Insect Shape to those available. The base text if Insect Form puts no level restrictions in place. Is this intended? Almost certainly not. But it is what's written. I was a little surprised this wasn't in the first errata.
See, this does not seem to be clear (to me, at least). You do not cast the respective spell, you gain forms of that spell to your wild shape list, but you are using the feat to change into the respective forms. As such, the diminished spell level from form control should have no meaning for changing into the form of an insect for an hour with lvl 6 (or a dragon for an hour with lvl 12). But you can not use the hightened benefits of these forms untill much later (because of the diminished spell level). That's how I read it. I agree with this. As written, there is no rule saying a spell must be cast as its printed level if another spell says it allows you to replicate it. I also agree the intention is probably for this to not be allowed...but what actually says it? As is the only thing this does is prevent you from using Form Control with "Animal Form" until 7th level. Focus Spells state Focus Spells must be the minimum level even if you somehow gain access to it, but there is no mention of other spells (such as the ones Wild Shape casts)
I'm still not sure what to make of the constant number of spell slots. Lower level utility slots were always great in bulk. Resist Energy, extra Mage Armor for the Monk without worrying about Scorching Ray (which itself was still a nice 12d6 fire), lots of good buffs down there. I can see it as "oh hey we want you to need these less", but then that needs to be followed through on, or the complexity of gaining fire resistance just went to everyone else picking a class feat instead of the Wizard saying "hocus pocus fire nope-us"
Except you can only have Diviner Sight 1 active at a time
Assuming that monsters have even numbered stats is not especially difficult or onerous.Unless it's actually a 21.It comes down to wanting a stat block that covers 99% of the time, while this stat block covers 85% of the time. Why do I need to know the ogre's carrying capacity? Most of the time I don't, but what about if the PCs charm it, or talk to it and make it an ally? And then ask it to carry or lift stuff cause it's strong? Unless that gets codified, many GMs will declare monsters have odd numbered stats, making any level of -(odd number) to a stat less effective.
Simplified monsters work fine for plug and play, but if you want to do any level of modification to a stat block, it's still nice to know where things came from. Even if as GM you simply declared a monster to have an ability, you inevitably get into a discussion about how a monster is allowed to do a thing. Not that you can't invoke rule 0, but it's nice to be able to back things up
I'm a little put off by the lack of ability scores. I saw a few posts (this thread is way too long to dig through now) about ability damage, but it seems like that is an entire suite of spells/poisons/abilities that need to get tweaked if we don't know the monster's ability scores. If the game wants to go to just using modifiers, why have ability scores at all? The only purpose left would be to make a player gain 2 ability score points (assuming a PF1 every 4 levels thing) to get a +1 modifier. Other little things:
If there is errata, can the wording of Mythic Combat Reflexes be clarified? Benefit: You can make any number of additional attacks of opportunity per round. As a swift action, you can expend one use of mythic power to, until the start of your next turn, make attacks of opportunity against foes you've already made attacks of opportunity against this round if they provoke attacks of opportunity from you by moving. In the rule as written, expending mythic power is useless; You can already take multiple attacks of opportunity for multiple opportunities (spell casting, moving, greater trip), and this does not explicitly override the rule of 1 AoO per move (it only says you can make attacks against people that move, which you can already do by RAW). Many posts of the forums and my own interpretation of the rule as intended is that this should be 1 AoO provoked per threatened square left, as opposed to the normal 1 AoO cap from movement per turn. Is that in fact the correct interpretation?
(Zombie thread revived by suddenly needing this answer myself) The base class for Magus also says "Like any other arcane spellcaster, a magus wearing medium armor, heavy armor, or a shield incurs a chance of arcane spell failure." at first level. But at 7th level, it says "At 7th level, a magus gains proficiency with medium armor." and it overrides the original 1st level statements. As written, it sounds like the Kapenia Dancer gains Medium Armor at 7th level since nothing says you lose that ability. There's no mention of the feat, only "You're proficient", so I see no reason to mention pre-reqs to that feat. Is that intended? Almost certainly not, but it's definitely what's written. I also just checked the PDF of the book in My Downloads. Last update is from before the original post here was made. No errata that I see either. Where is the errata?
So let's take these three feats, give them (and combat reflexes and a reasonable dex bonus) to 3 medium sized PCs all standing in a line. They walk up to a medium sized thing s they all are adjacent to each other and all threaten it with a scimitar (a non-reach weapon). The PC "in the middle" (and as such adjacent to both alies) swings and crits to set off the proposed chain. They all have Gang Up, so all are considered flanking. They have Outflank, and are Gang-up-flanking, so the PCs on the outside get an AoO (it actually doesn't matter who makes the original attack, they're all flanking anyway so they all get an AoO). This gives the original attacker an AoO because of Paired Opportunists, because they are adjacent to an ally that the enemy provoked an AoO from. This is where the immediate chain ends because of the wording of Paired Opportunists on d20pfsrd. Enemies that provoke attacks of opportunity from your ally also provoke attacks of opportunity from you so long as you threaten them It doesn't say "If an ally gets an AoO you get an AoO". It says an enemy that provokes from an ally also provokes from you. That single provocation can't grant two AoOs to any ally, because no second opportunity has arisen (until one of your allies crits on their AoO, causing Outflank to trigger all over again as long as everyone has enough Combat Reflaxes to keep this going). All three would receive the +4 bonus from Paired Opportunists on all AoOs.
Looking at some things, maybe you're not asking the correct question... Simply posessing another diety's holy symbols does not prevent you from casting spells with your own holy symbol. That said, you cannot actually use another diety's holy symbol to cast a spell by RAW. Anything otherwise, good or bad as an idea, is a house rule. I suppose someone could also create some sort of cursed holy symbol that would allow other things to happen, but these would be custom magic items and not "just a holy symbol".
Many things that take a swift action take that action for balance purposes. If you want to chang ethat, you get to examine all of those cases and decide which ones you can only do once in a round, like casting quickened spells (which already says you only get one because multiple spells in a round can be broken. The ones that aren't as broken are already less than a standard action anyway).
Just seconding what a lot of people here have already said. Strength is the damage melee combat stat. Dex is the dodge things move quickly stat. Part of game balance is that these are two different stats. Although I guess one could argue that it's unfair that strength is useful for
Definitely not unless you want it to. Artifacts are meant to be hard to get rid of. Your campaign, your rules for ridiculously powerful items. Even if he wants to make the argument that Mage's Disjunction is there, the same rules as disjunction would apply - it's still a small % chance (minimum for a 9th leel spell in fact), and the chance of an interested outsider noticing would definitely be in play. Plus the artifact would get a will save. What's an artifact's will save? Technically I guess it's 2 + half its caster level. Since artifacts are insanely powerful and up to GM fiat anyway, it's easy to say its CL 40, so it has a +22 bonus on a DC 23 save and that artifacts can pass saves on a 1, or otherwise get to roll twice. It's also easy to make the % chance rolls secretly. You could allow its destruction and have a demon lord get pretty pissed at the party. You could easily say it fails to disjoin the artifact anyway. This is countering a ridiculous argument with an even more ridiculous one though and I suppose we should be civil. Simply put, you are well within your rights to straight up tell the player "It's not going to work".
The key part here is "As long as he can find a Pally who crasts for him". One of the reasons you normally find wands priced at the Wizard/Cleric/Druid caster levels in the game world is that typically only full spell casters will spend feats on item crafting. Members of other classes will spend feats on more combat oriented things. Otherwise Everyone would get lower level wands of things, as you are suggesting here. Typically allowing this should be reserved for a PC paladin, or at least a cohort or other follower, who spends the feat to craft wands. Otherwise we start muching with item pricing balance. There's another thread out here somewhere that lists the prefered class for creating an item as Wizard if the spell is on the Wizard spell list, then Cleric otherwise, then Druid, and some combination of "the rest". It would follow that Golarion typically functions like this unless something interesting has happened. But then, the GM is always right, so as long as the group has fun, it doesn't matter.
I believe it is a 3rd party product. Nope, it's in Adventure Path #74, Sword of Valor. Blood of Baphomet:
The Blood of Baphomet is on page 89, and under various circumstances, grants "The Man-Eating Template". The section for Creating a Man-eating animal is on the same page. Since the template does not change the number of hit dice, only the type of hit dice, use the creature's original hit dice number before scaling CR as described in the CR section of the template. Many templates scale CR according to the creature's hit dice, so this is normal.
Good point! The wish does at least still save the cost of the base masterwork weapon though. Those 308 gold pieces might come in handy! Of course this assumes someone has craft magic arms and armor, and has 50 days of free time to enchant the new weapon (minus the time whatever coperative crafting feats they have might have saves). The wish is instantaneous. Alternatively, in a pinch, you could cast wish and make a foe's oversized weapon one size category larger and now he can't use it :P As an attended object, I'm guessing the opponent's weapon would receive a save against this effect.
The PRD says the touch attack that's part of the spell is a free action. "In the same round that you cast the spell, you may also touch (or attempt to touch) as a free action." A free action is an action, and you can take no more actions after Dimension Door, so no Shocking Grasp until your next turn.
It should probably depend on the spell. Use your judgement as GM, and remember that it's a fantasy game. This doesn't mean people don't occasionally break out the laws of thermodynamics to determine if create water cast at height X in temerature Y at pressure Z will cause the created water to become a block of ice before it strikes the frost giant's head, but it's best not to bog down the rules with exact scientific answers. Do what makes sense and is fun for everyone. Floating disk can probably only carry by weight. Spells that specifically carry things are probably stuck with the weight of an object by gravity. That said, in 0 gravity, does the spell actually "tie down" the item? Shatter probably only works by mass. Otherwise you could shatter asteroids and stray planets, which would be silly. Telekenisis applies force, which accelerates mass. This should only work by mass, since otherwise someone will start arguing they can move planets around in 0 G where the planet doesn't really have weight. I leave explanations as to what a planet's weight is relative to its star up to astrophysicists. That said, continuous telekenisis on an asteroid would eventually set it on the right course if nothing else was imparting force upon it.
You could have created a new, appropriately-sized +5 weapon for nearly the same price. Actually, a new +5 weapon would cost twice as much at 50K. Spending a pidly 25K on a Wish to change the base weapon seems like a good idea economically. Really it's up to you if you want to allow it. That said, permanently changing the size of a weapon seems like a reasonable thing to do with a wish.
From Deciphering Magical Writing in Core Rule Book chapter 9: To decipher an arcane magical writing (such as a single spell in another’s spellbook or on a scroll), a character must make a Spellcraft check (DC 20 + the spell’s level). If the skill check fails, the character cannot attempt to read that particular spell again until the next day. A read magic spell automatically deciphers magical writing without a skill check. If the person who created the magical writing is on hand to help the reader, success is also automatic. (emphasis mine) I would take that to mean you can always decipher your own scrolls. That said, saying the character immediately uses Read Magic on their scroll works just as well for most character that can prepare any old spell. Quick edit/addition - "Divine spells can be written and deciphered like arcane spells (see Arcane Magical Writings)." So Clerics can also decipher their own scrolls.
This is where the GM is supposed to step in and politely tell the creative player they're doing something wrong. - The moment the Druid declares the animal not its companion, it is a wild animal that will likely rebel against its capture with 0 training. This could easily backfire on the Druid. - In order to do this daily, the Druid is likely in an area where said animal is common, making it less common. If the Druid is telepoting around, it's posible a local conservationist group hears about it and sets out to stop the Druid from poaching. - This would likely be considered, at the very least, a Not-Good act. Hope your alignment is in order. - Lastly and perhaps most importantly, selling animals sounds like something that would go against the general ethos of a Druid. A GM would be within their rights to give you a warning and strip you of Druid-dom.
It should be noted that "combat trained" horses fetch a better price than non-combat trained ones. If you really wanted to flex those Handle Animal skill ranks, you could take a some downtime and train the horses for battle and make another 50 gold on the sale price of a horse. It stands to reason a small allowance could be thrown on top of half price for some training as a house rule, but there is no listed price I can see for an animal trained with any other tricks.
By the most technical reading of the rules, it would be attended. On the other hand, you can willingly fail a save, or not try to dodge an attack, in which case the item's attendedness in the case of shackles actually works against it; the wearer would hold the shackles out to be hit, not move them out of the way of an effect that allows a save, etc. In that case, the item is probably more vulnerable to an effect than an unattended item.
You have to really want the flavor of the PrC to go into it now, instead of it just being "What you do after level 5." It's now actually a choice where you give something up either way. Remember when Assassin got arcane spells in 3.5? Those were the good old days...
Technically, the table is correct. No where does say that 30 ft is a max speed. What the table says is that a character with a speed of 30 feet can move 30 feet in light armor, which it true. It doens't say anything about a character with a move speed of 40 feet (a barbarian), 35 feet (I think there's a feat that gives you an extra 5 feet), or 60 feet (haste). It could probably be worded better, but the table itself is fine.
Technically allowable? Probably. but the animal has free enough will that it would eventually possibly resent what's going on. This would basically be an end run around the leadership feat that many GMs would shoot down early on ad not allow. That said, a funny idea might be to talk to a group of friends ahead of time and have friends playing animals with free will not "under your control", but otherwise working with a Druid you are playing as a normal party.
Yeah...to not allow Diehard to affect Non-lethal damage as a knockout point is silly. That said there's some updates to be made to the rules here. You shouldn't be able to poke someone for 1 non-lethal to knock them out when they're in the negatives already. Acting while in the "non-lethal negative" range, for lack of a better term, could possibly deal lethal damage as the cost for acting. That said, there would also need to be another limit for damage. Someone shouldn't be able to stay concious, forever immune to falling unconcious from non-lethal, just because of the Die Hard feat. I guess HP + CON is the way to go, but we are in uncharted RAW territory here.
Symbol of Death states "When triggered, a symbol of death kills one or more creatures within 60 feet of the symbol (treat as a burst)". As a burst effect, "It can’t affect creatures with total cover from its point of origin (in other words, its effects don’t extend around corners)." (Chapter 9, Aiming a spell, Area section) So nope, it won't affect the party through the door.
It's already been covered a lot in here, but here's my 2 cents, which involves the words "house rules" a lot. This would be treated as a feint, so you would be rolling bluff against either 10 + your opponent's Base Attack Bonus + Wisdom, or 10 + your opponent's sense motive modifier. If you fool them, you are prone, but they believe you to be unconcious. I would probably also give the opponent a circumstance bonus if you still had high HP for you still looking healthy (if they scratched you for 1 HP and you had 90% of your HP left, you're not exactly a bloody mess). This would probably only work once per combat too, to avoid having players do nothing but claim to be unconcious. Worst case, an intelligent monster would simply "make sure" the second time around, and swing the axe one more time on the prone "dead" opponent. That said, this is also allowing an action out of sequence in exchange for an escape. The balancing factor is that you're prone...which works for a while before not being much of a balancing factor at all to the full BAB classes. This type of ability might make for an interesting feat, but isn't core rules right now. So in the end, you probably just end up prone and might be able to trick the opponent into thinking you're unconcious, but nothing more. House ruling it, they would probably be surprised enough to not swing when you get up, but then be aware of you and be able to hit you. There is nothing stopping you from grappling while prone, though you would have a -4 penalty on the roll (prone says -4 on attack rolls, and combat manuvers call for "an attack roll" in da rules). Unless it was a particularly dexy character, you would likely be taking the bigger penalty. Moreover, if they had uncanny dodge, you would just have a -4 penalty and they wouldn't lose dex.
From the section on Carrying Capacity in chapter 7 of the core rule book: If your character is wearing armor, use the worse figure (from armor or from load) for each category. Do not stack the penalties. Emphasis mine. So you don't get slowed down an additional 10 feet, you just use the slower of the two speeds - speed after encumberance from armor, or speed after encumberance from carrying a lot of stuff.
Lots of magic traps have a trigger of being seen. Eh hem: Only the Rogue (or something else with trapfinding) can approach this trap without triggering it. So if the thing with trapfinding is searching for it, it doesn't go off! See also - Symbol of Death. It's a long spell description so I won't paste it here, but it can be set to trigger upon being seen, and it can be disarmed by a character with Trapfinding.
RAW and RAI readings and rulings are accepted. ;) The RAI would be that a troll that was nothing more than a puddle of sliced and diced green mush on the ground will get up as soon as its regeneration restores enough HP for that to happen. As a fantasy game, strict adherence to biology is not the intent. Otherwise, trolls wouldn't regerate at all. Want to kill a troll? Find out if it blends, then touch it with a torch. Or mix its remains with some acid. Don't have fire or acid sources available? I hope your hungry, hit it with stomach acid.
I'm wary of players trying to exploit the abstraction of movement on a grid in rounds to game the system like this. A character that tries to duck around a corner for cover or jump out of the way would still realistically either be exposed to an attack before moving, or suffer a penalty on their own attack from moving away too soon. That said, letting the character continue to move, or still attack as part of a charge regardless of the other chracter's movement, works almost as well.
Leaning towards keep. The damage is a little light though, even if this does appear to be more of a story monster than something most parties will actually come into conflict with. Going after the good fey that grants wishes would be a great thing for an evil party to attempt.
Torc of Ample Remedy When I originally read the item during voting, I passed on it a lot because I didn't like the potential for abuse. I'm taking a look at this now and making an effort to make a better case for that. Looking at the example given again, Remove Paralysis, Remove Disease, and Remove Poison are all decent spells for a low level cure spell to be swapped out for. It reduces the GM's bag of tricks for trying to catch the PCs off gaurd though, since usually part of a monster's challenge can be the unexpected poison, or another special ability. In the end though, I guess that's not that bad of an idea. When getting into higher levels or things beyond status ailments this might run into unexpected things. This turns a Cure Moderate into a Lesser Restoration to heal Strength damage. This turns a level 6 Mass Cure Moderate into a Heal spell, restoring at a minimum 110 HP instead of 2d8+11 AND healing many conditions and ability damage. If either of these parties have more than one of the torcs, this is now a Mass Heal or a Mass Lesser Restoration. How does the spell affect spells with an expensive material component? Does a Cure Critical Wounds become a Restoration without a diamond? Greter Restoration from a level 7 cure spell? I think you have a good concept here for the low level spells that just remove bad status ailments like poison or paralysis. Just keep an eye out for the higher level tricks, or at least mention that expensive material components must somehow be provided. Also keep in mind that an item like this suffers from the same problem 3.5 Polymorph did - the more books that get published, the more power this item gains from new healing spells getting published. This item didn't stink, it just needs to be thought out more. I like what you said in your comment about the 24 hour limit meaning it's not a "give me your ring for a second" item, I didn't even think of that. Enter again next year!
Thanks for entering all the same (said someone who doesn't work for Paizo). I did see your item while voting. Now, this item. I'll admit I didn't really look at the pricing of it because it's a little too simple to be Superstar material. This is akin to a ring of wizardry combined with a bag of holding. It's not a bad item honestly, and itmight be an interesting choice whether a Wizard buys this item or a headband of intelligence, but it just doens't have the umph for the contest. I voted for it a few times over the much more obvious spell/feat/ability in a can items, but in the end it was average. Reach beyond pure numerical boosts, and definitely keep trying next year! |
