Mudfoot's page

Which is basically why I don't see how it can be Torag. It's just too inconsequential. If even the dwarves aren't that bothered, who else is going to care? Blacksmiths and engineers (who aren't a major constituency) can go to Brigh, for example.

I'll pick Gorum or Gozreh.

1) sounds like it, in that undead seem to turn up from many cases where the creature died in 'improper' circumstances. Though there are a lot of criminals that become undead, with no obvious indication of whether the burial rites affect it.

2) Yes and no, in that it seems to be a matter of what the creature thinks is important at the time. For example, ghosts want what they want, religion notwithstanding.

3) Maybe. I imagine it makes some corporeal types much harder to manifest.

4) Depends on the CR you want. I think you'll need to roll your own, and it will depend on how much of a story you want to make out of it. I might take the vulture and buried aspects and have a vulture/human shadow/ghost that arises from a Gravebound or Immured. The ghost haunts the PCs until they return to the burial to dig her up, whereupon the Gravebound tries to bury them to see how they like it. Both will keep reappearing until the body is exhumed and left out for the vultures with proper ceremony.

Judge Dredd would be an absolutely stereotypical Hellknight. I'd be surprised if he wasn't one of the inspirations for them.

Homunculus. Cheap, disposable, make as many as you want, no control or alignment problems. They're barely any use in a fight but that's not the point. They're more like movie Minions in that they're small and stupid-intelligent. You can even make them look distinctive and the GM can endow them with individual personalities.

The only downside is that you're short 2 feats (Craft Construct and Craft Magic Arms & Armour).

I want to run a campaign based on the other bits of the Starstone that must have been produced when Acavna and Amaznen "shattered the world-killing projectile into thousands of pieces" (wiki). I figure that there must be loads of little pebbles scattered all over Golarion, and these things have magical properties, which make them useful for making magic items.

The plot would be that the PCs find such an item, and Bad Guys (tm) try to steal it off them. The PCs uncover a plot by said Bad Guys to collect enough Starstone pieces to attain divinity, which would be a Bad Thing. Cue a race to find lots of magic items which are, naturally enough, in the possession of assorted monsters, nobles, temples, libraries and extra-planar weirdos of all CRs.

It would probably make a passable AP.

Is there an in-universe justification (plot aside) why Karzoug et al had to create their own pocket demiplanes to hide from Earthfall rather than simply teleporting or plane shifting or gating to somewhere safe and relatively comfortable like Castrovel or the Elemental Plane of Air?

I'm still betting on Asmodeus for the chop. Too much D&D.

The Commoner Railgun isn't magic but breaks physics.

For those who missed the lesson, the railgun works by lining a lot of commoners up in a row and getting the first to drop (free action) an object in the neighbour's square and him to pick it up (readied move action). Rinse and repeat. Potentially infinite movement speed for that object.

The first link "Index of articles (1E)" on this page links to that list.

If you know what subject you're looking for, the PF Wiki will have a reference to any sources it has for that, which should include the APs. Might be quicker than trawling through the 200 AP pages.

IMC, the PCs rescued a (now-orphaned) girl. They took her to the local temple of Erastil and left her in the care of the priest with a suitably fat donation to ensure she was looked after. It's not as though it's sensible to go adventuring with an 8-year-old kid.

I would say no, because it doesn't do fire damage unless it's spitting out fireballs. Your GM might allow you to craft some extra gimmick like this as an added function of the wand, but given that it's just a short and flimsy stick, it's hardly going to do any damage anyway. Like 1d2 or something. And unless you make it out of metal, it's going to be very fragile so it's very risky.

You're a wizard. Stick to spells.

Regarding that wand, you might consider whether it's value for money. Assuming 13 encounters per level, it will last 4 whole levels [i]if you use it once in every single encounter.[/] In practice you'll barely manage half that unless you like blowing your party up (hope they're fire-resistant too) meaning that it's likely to last until you're 15th level, and long since obsolete.

Worth doing. As you say, FCBs badly need some balance.

What does 1/3 confirm on SA mean? An increase to the chance of confirming a crit on a sneak attack? If so, that's almost worthless. Or is it a chance in 20 that any SA is a crit?

For the spontaneous casters, 1 spell known is far better than half a 1st level power. They tend to be junk by 4th level, and if your casting stat is significant you have all the uses you need anyway.

Paladin: is that 1/2hp every time? That adds up quite fast. At 8th level, 2 FCBs give +1 hp some 7 times per day (at 16 Cha) against just 2 hp as normal FCB usage for hp.

Ranger dodge: Is this against all FE? One FE? Weaker than the usual 1/6 of a feat anyway as Dodge is a mediocre feat and this is situational. I would go for +1/2 or +1/3 of a normal FE bonus against one type (so 2 or 3 points gives +1 against undead, for example) with some limit.

Nitpick: the original name for J* in the 1e Monster Manual and 1e DMG was Juiblex, not Jubliex or Jubilex. Which is odd, because I distinctly remember people calling him Jubilex in the early 80s. Maybe it's phonetically more familiar.

Otherwise, Yahoo tells me that Jubilex is "an up and coming dubstep artist", whatever that means.

The Greek pantheon spawned dozens of mortal or demigod offspring. I imagine many other RL religions have been similar. So what about on Golarion?

Aroden and Cayden probably had kids before apotheosis and quite plausibly afterwards. Norgorber? We'll never know. Irori and Nethys? I doubt it. Iomedae? Sounds very unlikely. And then there are people like Kurgess and Milani and so on. And that's just the ones who started on Golarion. Lamashtu must have bred with humans at some point. Ditto Calistria, but she probably wouldn't have had kids.

All I can find on PF Wiki is Godling which says they exist but gives no examples.

So if these gods did leave descendants, where are they?

I've never been in a situation that was not improved by the addition of more "hot, dark and tragic goth" goddesses.

There's also Naderi and (a bit less gothic) Arshea. Somehow I can't imagine that's all.

The RL price of books in the past varied enormously based on the technology available. Imperial Rome had ample supplies of papyrus, so cheap books were common (even to the extent of what amounted to trashy paperback fiction). But after the fall of Rome and the loss of Egypt to the Muslims, Europeans used parchment (= vellum, ie sheepskin) which was vastly more expensive so literacy plummeted until paper turned up from China.

So arguably the cost of a journal should vary greatly depending on where you are: countries adjoining the Inner Sea or the Sellen can probably get papyrus from Osirion, but others around there use parchment. The far east uses paper. Other technologies may exist, such as writing on leaves (as in South Asia).

But quite honestly, in this case it's just flavour so it need not cost anything significant.

I think Gozreh is pretty safe for the same reason. He/she has to exist because nature and whatnot, but makes no effort to be memorable.

Alkenstar City - gunslinger. Obviously.

Fighters could be anywhere, but maybe Tymon because of the gladiators.

I'm expecting Asmodeus to go, just because he's a D&D refugee with only minor mythological fame beyond RPGs.

I imagine that Cayden's ritual involves beer.

RAW, the rituals can't get too complicated or involve too much equipment, as the casting time for Raise Dead or Resurrection is only 1 minute. So while you might like Torag to need a forge, or Norgorber to need a murder to substitute for the death, or Gozreh to need the body to be exposed to the weather, it's not happening.

But that aside:
* Calistria will expect a) sex afterwards and/or b) revenge on whatever killed the victim. Not sure about the trickery.
* Zon-Kuthon expects a lot of pain. The poor sod getting raised might not appreciate it.
* Asmodeus. Paperwork as above will probably involve a contract for something unwelcome.

Mirror Image is broken in oh-so-many ways. For example, if a Gargantuan dragon casts it, are the images in his square? He covers many squares, so if you're shooting said dragon with an arrow, the presence of the images isn't going to make you miss. And if they're not in his square (which is pretty much required if the spell is going to mean anything) they might not fit into the same room.

It was fine in old D&D and 1e AD&D when people didn't look at verisimilitude very closely, and all wizards were human-sized. But in 3e or PF it makes a lot less sense.

Sounds reasonable to me. I'll go with that, in the unlikely event that it ever comes up.

As a related question, does a swashbuckler regain panache if her critical hit is negated by Fortification armour? I'd assume not.

The same crossbow will always do the same damage regardless of who shoots it (feats like Deadly Aim, etc aside). But a crossbow with a stiffer bow or a longer draw will do more damage, and (all else being equal) require a stronger user to draw the thing with the same ROF. Why is that so hard to understand?

I suspect that the average peasant and his wife have no ranks in Profession: Cook, but somehow they seem to survive. It's a mystery.

You can certainly make a stronger crossbow; it just needs more strength to cock it. It's probably heavier and maybe larger, but otherwise the same as the equivalent type with the same mechanism.

PF doesn't describe crossbows very usefully. Something with the rate of fire in PF would be something like a stirrup bow or gastrophetes (for a light crossbow) or a goats-foot bow (for a heavy). A windlass bow is much slower and couldn't possibly be used in melee, AoO or not.

The presumption here is that Prestidigitation takes no skill in itself other than casting it. Sure, you can give the guy a haircut, but is it a good haircut? Is he clean, or have you missed a bit, or tried to remove a tattoo and scraped him raw? Is the 'dirt' that you removed from his clothes actually a wax-print Batik pattern that's supposed to be there?

And likewise, if you want to flavour food, how appropriately did you flavour it? Basil and garlic ice cream is flavoured, but I suspect it's not nice. And so it goes.

As it's just a 0th level all-purpose spell, I'd think that it's a case of Jack of all trades, master of none. It's just providing the tools to do a job, but none of the skill.

Not bad, but I don't like the clunky +10 at levels 10, 15 and 20. I'd just allow you to take the feat twice to get extra metamagics and extra Sacred Insight pool. And I'd also give you your Int bonus in SI points (not doubled for two feats).

Squared is rather harsh; you might change it to an additional 1d6 per effective spell level; if you don't have enough, the pool is exhausted and the spell fails and is lost. It means you can do it a couple of times with your better spells if you invest in a rather useless skill.

For example, at 9th level and 24 Int, 9 ranks gives about 28+7=35 SI points. Empowered Fireball (5th) is 5+5d6 is about 22. You can probably still do a Toppling Magic Missile (2 = about 9) or maybe a Persistent Charm Person (3 = about 13) with what's left.

I suspect it escaped negative comments because TLDR. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Most people are less than 2.25 cubic feet in volume.

Er...no. A typical adult human* weighs about 75kg and is slightly less dense than water (we float). So that's about 80 litres, or 0.08 cubic metres, which is 2.825 cu ft. So once you've included the big 250lb half-orc, his armour and pack you probably want to allow at least 5 cuft.

Though in any case, that's still well within the 10 cuft capacity of the spell. A horse is a different matter.

It's a bit odd that it's dependent on volume. You'd think surface area was the important factor.

* I admit that Ravingdork said 'most people' not 'a typical adult human' so arguably he's right if you include children and halflings.

Glamered armour, so you look like a soft target?

Chant as though you're casting a spell; with a decent Bluff roll you might make it look convincing enough, especially with a few ranks of Spellcraft thrown in. It depends on the opponent, of course (such as if they have Spellcraft too). You'd need some other M/V/F/DF components to make it look really good, and that would imply an action.

More broadly, Bluff should let you look vulnerable, but there's nothing RAW for that. IMHO there should be a way for Bluff to draw an AoO which you can defend against, but again there's nothing in RAW.

If you can research a spell to do what you want to do, and make a wand of that, go ahead. But it's a GM decision what the spell level would be, or if there are any other requirements.

Fighters can already fight. They don't need much, or maybe even any, help in fighting. They need help with things that aren't fighting. Start with skill points, some way to bolster will saves and something to help them move about at high levels where full attacks become properly important.

PBS is just attack bonus and damage. You can surely elect to do less damage by not pulling the bowstring back so far, and you can elect to be less accurate by rushing the shot or jumping up and down or otherwise doing it badly. This is independent of PBS, and applies to anyone, feats or not. Likewise you could ignore Precise Shot or Weapon Focus or Spell Focus or Skill Focus or Improved Bull Rush or Combat Casting in the same way.

I started my campaign there, but it's really based around the Lumber Corporation, Chelish espionage, interplanar conspiracies and Treerazer. It starts with a theft, goblins and a fire in a lumber yard and probably won't help you very much.

The only published scenario in Bellis is The Fellnight Queen, but that's 7th level and wasn't much use to me.

I had to flesh out the area quite a bit. From a strategic POV, Bellis is important but very vulnerable, being on a wide and indefensible river with a vaguely hostile neighbour and surrounded by Fey of no reliable alleigence. So it needs fortification, a series of watchtowers on the river, a land route west to the rest of Andoran and a bunch of local villages for farming, mining, logging, fishing and so on.

So there's a small castle on a bluff overlooking the town, a fort protecting the harbour and the usual walls. There are two sawmills (copy that from Sandpoint or Magnimar); logs either by the Bellis Brook (a smallish creek) or floated down the Sellen, roped together in rafts and are processed here.

Fields and farms surround the town (aside - have you noticed how fantasy films forget this? LOTR stands out here; what do the people of Edoras or Minas Tirith eat?).

Main road (starts as a half-maintained muddy track, gets much worse) goes W to Carpenden through a series of villages:
8 miles: Witlow. Small, boring
12 miles: Essenby. Big lumber yard, top end of Bellis Brook.
16 miles: Purford: Small, boring
20 miles: Tacken’s Bridge. Bridge over a river, toll. The inn is a fleabitten hovel - avoid. West of here it's not very safe, especially at night.
27 miles: Hazelford. Copper mines, ford, charcoal, hazelnuts
32 miles: Ridgefoot. Copper mines, ford, bottom of big hill. Dwarves maintain the road and have a toll booth.
35 miles: Barten: Fort and small town controlling ferry over Dragonfly River. Suspiciously excellent inn.
(the road continues, but I've not written anything)

Details aside, the point is that it's not simply an isolated town in the middle of nowhere. So you can set any adventure here if it fits with a river or forest, and even that's not 100% necessary.

Two other ways to make a tripping paladin:

1) Dump Dex and put no skill points into Acrobatics

2) this

Paragon Surge.

Not that any of these have ever come up, but these are the ones that would be pre-banned automatically, off the top of my head.

Chained summoner. Sacred Geometry. Leadership. Finding Haleen, Magical Lineage, Wayang Spellhunter. Dazing Spell. Come And Get Me. Fate's Favored.

More to the point, multiple small attacks relies on multiple attacks which relies on a Full Attack action, and that's often not happening.

I (and other people) scale Aid Another by the DC you beat, so DC10 = +2, DC20 = +3, DC30 = +4, etc. Which gives something like the same effect you have, but less on/off, and also allows more people to give meaningful help.

Advantage is a very non-linear thing, and averages out to +3.35. But it's effectively +5 if you need a 10 and +1 if you need a 20.

The other way to use multiple skill rolls is to have multiple effects; the wizard in the above example could have come up with a useful fact the bard didn't get. In a Diplomacy situation the bard might persuade the duchess but the paladin impresses her general.

+2 50% of the time and +1 50% of the time equal +1.5 on average.

You know you get to do both attacks, right? So it's not +1.5 per round on average, because there's no averaging. It's +2 + +1 = +3.

Obviously this assumes that you get a full attack with exactly 2 attacks, vs a single-weapon user who gets exactly one attack, and it all changes if you have BAB 6+ and don't have ITWF/GTWF so you're not getting the other secondary iteratives so 2H @ BAB+6 = +6+6 = +12 vs TWF = +4+4+2 = +10, etc. Which is in its turn muddied by the second +6 and +4 being at -5 to hit.

And then you get into complications of Furious Focus which is (for reasons that escape me) only for 2H weapons, and even if you house-rule that away is presumably no good for the off-hand strike.

But otherwise, PA is in all ways as good or better than Piranha Strike unless you don't have the 13+ strength to qualify for PA. This is notably because PS doesn't work for 2H or non-light weapons and is not a prerequisite for any feats.

I suspect it would happen more at low levels than high, plot requirements aside. At high levels, the PCs are likely to have unpredictable and powerful spontaneous abilities, so taking them prisoner is very risky. Conversely, a 2nd level character without gear isn't much more dangerous than a bury peasant, so slavery is a plausible option. Sure, there are some tricksy ones like sorcerers and oracles, but a wizard is nothing without his book and a fighter without a sword is just another strong back to carry rocks.

Ultimately, it depends on the opponent. Bandits will take your stuff and expect a ransom. Hobgoblins will enslave you. Bugbears will imprison and psychologically torture you. Ogres will capture you to keep your meat fresh for later. Daemons will capture you to sell your soul. The town watch will throw you in jail for sentencing. Fey might do anything.

Then there's the Bond Villain scenario where the BBEG wants to crow over the PCs who have been thwarting his plans for 15 levels before throwing them into the inevitable deathtrap.

AD&D 1e was...odd. So I'm not defending the 1% rule any more than I'd defend the 1 minute melee round or the 1e Bard of any of a vast array of other weird brainfart that Gygax came out with...while gratefully thanking him for the hobby he created.

(after being booted from TSR, he created Lejendary Adventures. Yes, it's spelled like that. And it's...also odd. And flopped like a soggy omelette)

But the gist of it is that stock RAW PF1 NPCs, even 1st level commoners with 13 12 11 10 9 8 + racial stats are vastly more capable than the typical AD&D 1e NPC. They have skills and feats and traits and stuff. AD&D 1e NPCs had a personality (there are lots of tables) and a pitchfork.

IMHO, most NPCs are entitled to a modicum of combat ability as reflected in their levels. A 35-year-old farmer (4th level commoner) has probably had a good few pub brawls, mugged or been mugged, seen off some wolves and goblins, wrestled a cow to the ground and done a couple of campaigns of feudal service. He may have done compulsory archery practice. He's entitled to his 4d6 hp and +2 BAB. He's still no match for a well-built 2nd level PC.

It can get a bit more problematic with, say, a 4th level Expert watchmaker having +3 BAB, but he's probably dumped Str and Con for Int and Dex so that's OK.

The Alexandrian's 5th level standard is generally OK, but it comes from some dubious assumptions. He claims, for example, that Aragorn is a Ranger 1 / Fighter 1 / Paladin 3 because such a character could beat the DCs and do the individual things that Aragorn does. Nope. That R1/F1/P3 could not fight 5 Nazgul with a burning torch and a broken sword, nor face down Sauron or the Paths of the Dead or the assorted armies he does. Alexandrian is trying to impose 3e rules on a singular situation in Middle Earth rather than comparing Aragorn to everyone else around him. He need not be 20th level, but he's a lot more than 5th. And likewise for Conan or Elric and the rest.

Those spellcasting services are really so that the PCs have someone to cast Remove Disease or Raise Dead and so on. It's a sop to players who want to continue with the PCs they've raised from low levels, rather than any sort of attempt at reality.

In AD&D 1e there's a rule (DMG p35) that about 1% of human and half-orc NPCs are capable of class levels; other races get 2%. The other NPCs are level 0. Now suppose that for every character of level N, there are 2 of level N-1 down to 1. So for a 7th level NPC to exist, there are 2 6th level, 4 5th level, 8 4th, 16 3rd, 32 2nd and 64 1st. Total 127 levelled NPCs, plus some 80 level 0 for each of them (assuming a mostly-human settlement). That's a population of 127x80 = 10160.

Of course that 7th level NPC is probably (44%, DMG p35) a fighter type. 1 in 6 is a cleric. So for there to be a 7th level cleric, you need a population of 61000. If you want a 12th level MU to cast Stone To Flesh, you need a city of (2^12-1)*80*6 = 1965600.

Now I think maybe that's taking it a bit far, but the resulting numbers of casters aren't totally silly (maybe 5x too low). In PF1 you'd let everyone get levels, but most would be NPC classes and they'd have a flatter ratio like 3:1, though the ratio varies by class (maybe 8:1 for commoners, 1.5:1 for adepts and aristocrats, though these are very unevenly distributed).

If I cared enough I'd model it in software.

That's all fine if you want to build a tank, but a tank without offensive punch can be ignored and isn't that much fun to play. So by the time you've sunk 3 feats and a trait into it, you're starting to miss out on the fun.

In the NPC thread I gather that your characters are going to be quite high level so maybe they can soak that feat tax and still have enough options to spare, but at lower levels people need the basics like Power Attack and Combat Reflexes more than Combat Expertise. And if you are going for a CE build you're probably going to want the feats like Improved Trip that come from it.

One good thing that PF2 does is take the shackles off the GM, allowing an NPC to be built with the abilities as required, rather than fitting into a neat and tidy class structure. Obviously you can do that in PF1 (for example, having a town guard who is essentially a Warrior-3 that can cast Hold Person 3/day, but has no other special abilities) but it's not enabled in the RAW.

Mudfoot wrote:

The change to DCs makes lower-level opponents irrelevant even for cannon fodder, and conversely makes higher-level opponents more dangerous. In other words you've broken the CR system. Is that what you want?

The CR system is nothing but a measuring stick. It serves no purpose beyond, thus, as long as monsters are classified to a CR consistently, then it can't be broken, even if the CR number is drastically different from the APL of the party they are set against.

The existing CR system assumes that, for example, EL8 = 1xCR8 = 2xCR6=4xCR4 and so on. You've broken that. You've also changed the CR of casters and other creatures that have DCs (eg poison) but not greatly changed that of monsters that don't.

Quote:

The risk you've exacerbated is that a single BBEG has sufficiently high DCs and saves that a) it takes out a PC every round and b) the PCs can't affect it. And conversely a horde of mooks go down like ninepins while achieving nothing.

I'm not seeing this at all. The range of levels a party can fight is narrowed a bit, but still more than 5 levels in either direction, and I haven't met a GM in over 15 years that would even consider pitting a party against enemies even 3 levels different.

YMMV, I guess. I see it a lot. A variety of mooks make fights a lot less swingy and more dynamic.

Additionally, I actually like that a lvl 10 is almost irresistible to a level 1. I ascribe to the philosophy that most of the game's subsystems align with level 5 being the maximum a real world human ever achieves. So a level 10 is a supernatural being and therefore should feel supernaturally powerful against level 1s.

I can accept that...but I wonder if you should then be changing things like skills and AC in a similar way. It does also stretch worldbuilding a bit, as (for example) most Fey become (even more) unbeatable by your average villagers.

The change to DCs makes lower-level opponents irrelevant even for cannon fodder, and conversely makes higher-level opponents more dangerous. In other words you've broken the CR system. Is that what you want?

The risk you've exacerbated is that a single BBEG has sufficiently high DCs and saves that a) it takes out a PC every round and b) the PCs can't affect it. And conversely a horde of mooks go down like ninepins while achieving nothing.