Nakteo's page

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I'm fine with sacrifice. I'm not fine with him coming back despite it.

Especially since the Tyrant canonically has so many untapped armies of undead stashed in so many places (Ever heard of the Cenotaph?) that when he revives he'll be back to being a threat to the world in a matter of months at the absolute longest. And since his Phylactery is all but unlocatable And indestructible, he can't be put down permanently and he won't stop. Ever. Locking him down like the Last Crusade did is really the only feasible option, but that was a bit of a total fluke and he's unlikely to let such a thing happen again.

As written, the heroes have only really delayed and inconvenienced his world domination, not stopped it.

After some wiki browsing, the only reference that I've found to TB's phylactery's location is a reference that it was "allegedly hidden by Urgathoa so no one, not even the gods, could locate or find a way to destroy it." If this is the case, it's probably not on the Material Plane, or at least not on Golarion. (Maybe it's on Apophis...) It will probably take him a while to get his bearings and get back on track with world domination, since he'll be reforming in uncertain environs with limited equipment (Any potential equipment stored here probably faded to dust millenia ago.) and hindered spell capacity from having come out of a crazy fight with some unexpectedly powerful upstarts.

Then again... considering some of the dynamics between TB and Urgathoa's Handmaiden in book 6, Urgathoa might send an emissary to collect the phylactery from the place only she knows about and relocate it somewhere more...contained, to teach TB a bit about humility, since his plans were to become an ubergod, (by draining the Starstone entirely, not merely completing the test) possibly more powerful than most if not all other gods. This could mean he winds up disappearing from Golarion for a few centuries/millenia. Just a thought.

Nakteo wrote:

I'm pretty sure that despite having multiple reasons for provoking attacks with the action, you can only provoke one A00 for any given action. I think the game assumes that Casting the spell and throwing the ray are part of the same (Standard) action, and thus only provoke once.

"In the same round that you cast the spell, you may also touch (or attempt to touch) as a free action."

Casting a spell is an action that provokes, and the spell provides you with the ability to make a ranged attack, which also provokes. They are two different actions, even if one is a free action.

Just checked the FAQ. You are correct. Good to know.

archmagi1 wrote:

Yeah there's nothing in the "Range" or "Effect>Ray" portions of the Magic chapter which give a penalty for distance. Spell Range is the only range increment that it would have, and that is either "Its close enough to work" or "too far, sorry".

Duly noted. I found that any ranged touch attack had a 30ft range, unless noted otherwise, and then a -2 penalty for every range increment, but i could be wrong.

Unfortunately, like any lich, somehow the WW got superhuman perception, so he could well aim any ranged spell. Nevertheless, to remain on topic, should the WW try to cast a disintegrate spell or any ranged spell while being another character's reach, this action would cause 2 different attack of opportunity. The first one by the act of casting, the other one by the ranged attack itself.

I'm pretty sure that despite having multiple reasons for provoking attacks with the action, you can only provoke one A00 for any given action. I think the game assumes that Casting the spell and throwing the ray are part of the same (Standard) action, and thus only provoke once.

I am planning on running this AP sometime in the future and I have a couple thoughts I want to ask about.

1. If I wound up with only having access to a group of 3 players to run for, would gestalt be a reasonable compromise? If so, what BP would be recommended? My concern is that a lot of good gestalt builds get absolutely brutal at mid-high levels and later books might not be able to keep up with them.

2. One player has talked about playing an Evil Dhampir Warpriest. This sort of topic has been discussed a lot here, but knowing his build, he would take the Life-Dominant feat specifically so he can benefit from Positive And Negative Energy, and making the Obol resistance apply to Positive Energy feels to me like it would just rob him of a feat. (I really don't want to tell him about the Obols' protections until they come up in game if I don't have to, and making him change his build "because Macguffin" feels...wrong.) My current thoughts on a workaround are this: Inflict's cast by Friendlies to heal bypass SR and resistance, personal uses of Channel Negative Energy (And Fervor etc.) meant to heal bypass resistance on oneself (Not others), all other sources of Negative Energy/Necromancy are resisted as normal. Thoughts?

SamosNemo wrote:

And why the descriptor "These do not count toward the multiple attack penalty until the second Strike."? If this is my 3rd (and 4th) strike (again, assuming the -8 MAP), why mention another 2nd strike?

Maybe I'm reading this incorrectly and am misunderstanding what the feat actually does. But if the purpose of 2E is to make rules more easy to comprehend, the language of this feat doesn't seem to accomplish that.

I dunno, it seemed straightforward to me. If you are wielding two weapons, each in a different hand, and have a -8 MAP with both weapons, you make a strike, this strike does not increase your MAP. You then make another strike, after this, you increase your MAP as though you had struck twice (which you did.)

Forgive me for resurrecting this thread, but, as I understand it, the standard MAP is -5 (-4 agile)after first attack, and -10 (-8) after the second and thereafter. Per the rules of the MAP, it NEVER gets bigger than -10 (-8) under any circumstances.

Two Weapon Flurry can't be used until that penalty is already maxed out, but the last piece of it says that the penalty doesn't increase until after the second attack it grants. Since the penalty CAN'T increase beyond what it was at before you used the Flurry, shouldn't the last sentence just not exist because it is a direct contradiction of the rules?

I have a question concerning the BBEG. In Azaersi's stat block, she uses a dagger with the Returning property on it as her ranged attack. I looked it up and Returning causes a weapon, once thrown, to return whence it was thrown at the beginning of the next round. But Azaersi's stat block has her making a ranged full attack with it. Ummmmm, what?

So I'm working on building a Kineticist and I have a couple questions I've been pondering.

A: Is there a way for a Kineticist to acquire simple blasts outside of the one gained at first level for free and the ones gained through Expanded Element at 7th and 15th level?

B: Can a Kineticist carry power stored using Internal Buffer over to the next day?

C: Am I the only one who thinks that while Gather Power is important to the class in terms of keeping it functioning and throwing Blasts all day, its visual and auditory effects make it a class feature that puts an enormous bullseye on the character that will result in most intelligent opponents immediately trying to ice the character?

You wouldn't want magical flasks anyway. The hardness & hp of the flask increases. It'd be HARDER to break. Masterwork for 300 gp / 50, sure, but not magical.

Does that make it a ranged bludgeoning weapon? ;)

Aelryinth wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Nakteo wrote:

Scenario:

A party is attacking a robot. Said robot has Hardness 10, ER Electricity 20, and a force field with 10 remaining hit points. Said robot, being a robot, also has Electricity Vulnerability. The party wizard throws a lightning bolt at it for 60 points of damage (pre-vulnerability), robot fails its reflex save.

My question:

In what order do the robot's vulnerability and various resistances apply, and which of said resistances do and do not stack?

You need to determine the total amount of damage the robot WOULD take before applying hardness and electricity resistance. So once the damage is determined, first thing you do is apply the vulnerability effect to get the total damage. Hardness and resistance kick in after that.

You are aware that this is the opposite of an answer you gave before, right? :) (Using fire at that time). Vulnerability only applies if you actually take the damage!

==Aelryinth

Guess that's why folks should ask rule questions in the rules forum. Or perhaps search the site for questions that may already have been answered before asking them over, because as it turns out, I don't keep track of everything I say on this thread. Thanks for pointing out my self-contradiction and giving me further evidence that I shouldn't be answering rules questions here, I guess.

So I should open a thread in the Rules Questions forum instead of asking followup questions? :)

Scenario:

A party is attacking a robot. Said robot has Hardness 10, ER Electricity 20, and a force field with 10 remaining hit points. Said robot, being a robot, also has Electricity Vulnerability. The party wizard throws a lightning bolt at it for 60 points of damage (pre-vulnerability), robot fails its reflex save.

My question:

In what order do the robot's vulnerability and various resistances apply, and which of said resistances do and do not stack?

I'm inclined to agree with Anzyr on this one. The sheer action economy of the party is likely to cause the Mythic NPC to get curb stomped by the 2nd or (if they're lucky) 3rd round. If you built it as a Mythic Archmage who acts as more of an opposing force than just a straight up encounter, you might have something, but typically single combatant vs. group = group wins unless there's a major power discrepancy between the two and the group isn't 18-20th level.

Nakteo wrote:

Really quick silly question: are the Annihilators deliberately missing the "Combined Arms" ability? Its absence seems a little uncharacteristic for something so large and terrifying that is meant to be used as an implement of utter destruction.

As it turns out, there's acutely nothing special about the "combined arms" ability and as such we stopped using it. The rules for combined arms are how the game already works... it just wasn't obvious since before this, we didn't have creatures with that type of attack.

Neat! Thank you. :)

Really quick silly question: are the Annihilators deliberately missing the "Combined Arms" ability? Its absence seems a little uncharacteristic for something so large and terrifying that is meant to be used as an implement of utter destruction.

I find the best way to make PCs play nice with NPCs is to have the NPC casually use up a very high level spell on something very trivial.

Lich: "Hello Adventurers, welcome to my realm. I apologize, please forgive my lack of hospitality, would you care for refreshment?

Lich: "The stuffed veal cutlets are really quite good."

Economically, it wouldn't matter unless you flooded the world with gold as well.

The diamond is still worth 25k in gold coins for resurrection purposes, even if you buy it for 2k, or stumble across it in the wilderness for nothing.

What you'd get is people buying 25k rated diamonds for the cheap, is all, and have no effect on the gold value of anything else.

===Aelryinth

Thank you for pointing that out. You are obviously smarter than me and think of things that the God of Economics would already have covered as he is also smarter than me. Yay retroactively intelligent gods!!!

I'm having this horrible idea where the God of Economics gets upset at spellcasters and decides to mess with them by making a deal with the God of Stone to create massive quantities of diamonds and flood all markets with them, dropping their value into the dirt. Hell, they might even wind up replacing the world's currency due to their resilience and abundance.

Blake, you assume that the issue is of a player being unhappy with the circumstance. It could very easily be a matter of the character being unhappy with the fact that they are no longer the race they used to be. The player might actually be enjoying it in their own way despite roleplaying their character as hating the current circumstance and being willing to take rather extensive steps to remedy it. Now, I could be absolutely wrong about this, I don't believe the OP has mentioned what the actual feelings of the player are on this, so I may be incorrect.

Personally, I like the "Quest for a gem valuable enough." It doesn't cause the party to take a hit to their WBL, and allows for a little more world expanding and creativity. There might be some problems, but as long as the other players are okay with going along with it, (because their characters hate seeing their friend in anguish over his new form, and also maybe out of guilt for doing it to him) I see no real issue. The GM might even use this side quest to introduce a new plot hook to drive the main story further.

I had an idea for the end of Divinity Drive. The PCs defeat Unity, collapse Godmind, maybe even make Casandalee an Iron God. But Unity doesn't actually die. He has an emergency escape plan: launch himself out into space in a secondary computer core. The thing is, he has even less power than he did in Silver Mount: his divine power doesn't even reach an inch beyond his physical CPU, and even if he was installed in another computer further down the line, he would never again be able to regain his mythic powers to full strength. In essence: he is permanently neutralized...

Unity: Space space wanna go to space. Space. Space space wanna go to space yes please space. Space space. Go to space. What's your favorite thing about space? Mine is space. Gotta go to space. Gonna be in space. SPAAACCCCCE!

Generic Villain wrote:

The Overlord Robot should have the cruelty facet, not the intuition facet. Cruelty is what gives it sneak attack.

Also, this adventure should have had more Dominion of the Black stuff. But I guess that's just an opinion.

This is not the "Dominion of the Black" adventure path, remember.

That's something for another day. There IS a Dominion of the Black AP plot I've had in my head for a long time, but this AP and Dragon's Demand needed to happen first to set the stage.

Oooooohh, I can't wait! ^.^

On page 10, Mockery offers the PC's all his gear (minus his cybernetics) if they require incentives to join his band of mocky men. However, the book never mentions what gear he has to offer. I assume this was an oversight, but any thoughts on what said gear ought be?

Pawn of Unity: In any event, Ozmyn is a willing pawn of the AI.

So maybe he is content with his role as a trailblazer for Unity?

Indeed. I'm just throwing out ideas that PC's might think up that the AP might not account for. And besides, it could be an interesting idea for Unity's control over Ozmyn, and Ozmyn's status as a willing pawn to be suppressible, but only briefly, ultimately leaving his status as an antagonist unchanged.

Nakteo wrote:

I think I'd switch out some of the Battleguards' weaponry for smaller weapons in certain places instead of just copy pasting the stat block. Otherwise before long the party will literally be swimming in rocket launchers.

You can just reduce the number of charges to 2 or 1, or have it become an integrated shoulder mounted weapon. Overall I don't think it's a big deal as they're quite heavy meaning that not everyone is going to have a necklace of fireballs (even better than a necklace actually).

This does however make it particularly dangerous to the unprepared caster if they low roll on init due to the 10d6 AOE.

BTW: I'm wondering why it's listed as 10d6 untyped damage rather than 6d6 fire and 6d6 blunt as stated in the Technology guide.

You beat me to the damage question. I would still probably have rocket launchers only in the hands of the gearsmen who are on the wall of the Technic League compound, and maybe one in every few squads of gearsmen in the streets once the PC's gain enough notoriety. Honestly, I don't think even the Chaotic Evil Technic League are going to arm their standard robotic peacekeeping squads with enough artillery to level a city block (and that's assuming only 2 shots per launcher). And they definitely wouldn't allow such explosive weaponry to be used inside the compound itself where all their toys and experiments are kept. I'd probably replace their ranged option with stun guns, to be replaced by timeworn laser pistols once notoriety gets high enough.

It might be theoretically possible to disrupt Unity's influence over Ozmyn at least temporarily by placing him in an Anti-Technology Field AND an Anti-Magic Field. Anti-Tech will shut down Unity's devices, and Anti-Magic will prevent him from teleporting away, while also removing any control Unity might have placed through its divine power. This way the party might at least be able to attempt interrogation until one of the fields wears off and Unity reinstates control. One question is how will Ozmyn view his relationship with Unity once the Iron God is no longer in his head?

Thug- Those're a lot of interesting ideas of how Harrigan might react to funding our about a hit on him. Honestly, he strikes me as a "Kill them all" kind of guy, but let it unfold how you wish. Make sure that Harrigan dies in some manner that will give the PC's a level of satisfaction at having solved a problem with outside the box thinking, be it having him murder through a score of assassins, surviving only by employing super paranoid precautions only to be brought down by a lucky blow (signifying that he really would have been a scary person to go head to head with), or by randomly dying in a humiliating fashion in front of his peers (letting them lol at his expense). I would try to avoid "he and his ship mysteriously vanished" as then they might be constantly thinking that he'll return later. How the learn of his death could be anything from a rumor in a tavern, to an ally learns of it, to a Red Mantis showing up to say "It is done.". Though that last gives them no details. But yeah, all kinds of fun to be had. I'd be excited to learn how this all goes down.

What about if Harrigan kills the Red Mantis assassin sent after him? That should give the PCs something to think about.

The PC's aren't likely to find out. If you're the greatest assassin organization in the world, you don't make a habit of letting your failures be known. On a related subject, the Red Mantis don't fail contracts. If a target kills an assassin, they send more assassins or a single much more skilled assassin. This may sound like a cannon fodder approach, but the least Red Mantis is a 6th level character, likely with years of training behind them. That character will lose a head on fight, but a coup de grace will kill just about anyone. In short, once the PC's hire a hit on Harrigan, he's a walking corpse, and soon a non-walking one.

The biggest loss may be the entirety of the adventure and adversity written into the fifth book. You may need to come up with a whole new adventure to keep the game rolling. Or maybe they've pissed off some other captain who could play as a stand-in Harrigan for that book.

You seem to have a pretty good grasp of the consequences. Honestly, depending on when it happens, a lot could change. If it takes place before the fifth book, then Harrigan won't be around to sabotage the Captains' feast through the Eel. Also he won't attack their home island, which unfortunately means they won't have any incentive to assemble a fleet to rebuff the coming assault, leaving them potentially woefully unprepared for the coming storm of the Chelish fleet. However, this can also have positive effects as well, without her Patsy, the Admiral might not have gotten all of the information she needed to successfully navigate the Eye, leading to significant losses on the voyage through. She should still have enough to cut her predetermined swath through the Shackles, but possibly much shower than in the book. At your discretion, the PC's could learn about the creeping onslaught after Drenchport falls (possibly through one of their Free Captain allies) allowing them to start assembling a fleet to meet the threat. Play up the desperation and race against time elements of the situation and track the days, if they take too long preparing, they might lose Port Peril and then the whole game changes.

In that case, you seem to have things well in hand. :) I would make the price something more interesting than simply X-amount of gold/plunder. Like, "Go to this island and get this thing" to keep things moving and make it something that they have to devote time and effort to without the game becoming a grind.

Also, in the Shade's stat block under morale, it's missing the number of hit points that causes her to flee.

I think I'd switch out some of the Battleguards' weaponry for smaller weapons in certain places instead of just copy pasting the stat block. Otherwise before long the party will literally be swimming in rocket launchers.

I would recommend against this. 25 points of plunder can be a lot, but something to keep in mind is that the Red Mantis, once paid, don't stop until their mark is dead. They even go so far as to kill their mark again should they be resurrected, they've been doing this for a while and they WILL succeed. What's more is that fighting Harrigan is the climax of the 5th book and a major plot point that draws them into the final arc of the adventure. Setting the price high may make it less likely that they'd choose this option, but I know of some groups who would jump on that, even if it meant grinding for three sessions. This option is basically "If you wish to skip a chunk of the plot, you should pay this toll."

Am I the only one who's a bit leery of the possibility of having the potential for not one, but two NPC's running around with the party for a while?

Nakteo wrote:

Actually... Nope, I don't get it, how does it do that again?

You dare bring SCIENCE into this?!

Also,other half of power...which is not required,actually,could be supplied by 16-level technomancer.

Care to explain that process? Or is it simply using Arcane Battery to funnel spells into the necessary charges?

A laboratory uses its charges up over the day. You basically only need to "charge" a laboratory once per day via a generator. Whether or not you do that as one lump sum (and thus leave the generators with higher yields for the rest of the day) or split up over the day... that's up to you.

So, just making sure I understand, the book saying that the Smoke Furnace is only sufficient to half power the Military Lab and PC's will need to supply the other half themselves is incorrect?

Wait a minute, looking back over the rules in the Technology Guide... Generators produce their yield in charges per hour, but Labs only require the listed number of charges per day.

That might explain why pouring 20 charges into the Aurora's systems will allow it to power all the lights, the android foundry, the doors, the few functioning panels, and the Nanotech and Production labs (the two of which would draw a total of 200 charges per day should they both be in use), and would do all this for a month before being another 20 charges for the next month. Actually... Nope, I don't get it, how does it do that again?

But how does a lab drawing power from a reactor interact with it when the yield is lower than the daily requirement, but will easily meet this requirement over multiple hours?

So, the potential Military Lab in area F31, how difficult would you say it should be to divert power from the Smoke Furnace, and is there a simple, cost effective manner to supply the remaining half of the power required?

Actually, now that I think about it, depending be nature of the portals, one might be able to Teleport the furnace somewhere in one piece. Like back to the Aurora to power the labs there. Seems like a reasonable solution to the problem of powering said labs.

Is Smoke Furnace portable in a sense that it can be disassembled and assembled somewhere else?

Same question about labs 1 and 6.
And,my usual:what's the damage of the android foundry and what's required to repair them?

I don't think the Smoke Furnace Can be reasonably disassembled and reassembled. Its weight isn't given, but owing to its power source being mini portals to the Elemental Plane of Fire, taking it apart could result in either exposing the heat of said plane, making transport of that particular part alone very difficult, or destabilizing the portals, causing them to shut and rendering the Furnace worthless.

Likewise the labs are full-on facilities made up of multiple built-in parts and machines not made to be removed from the lab, as should be evident by the labs needing power to be utilized.

As to the foundry....... Just. Say. No. Repairing it would give the PC's access to a machine that generates sentient beings. This, while potentially cool, could very easily derail the game in a number of different ways.

@Nakteo
I wouldn't worry about feeblemind in this AP any more that i would worry in RotRL, and i wasn't really worried then because my players know that if their wizard start using nuclear weapons then the enemy wizards will also start using nuclear weapons, it's a M.A.D. thingy.

Unfortunately, I've played with people who don't consider such turnabout to be fair play and will complain loudly if it is employed. My solution is to just remove the obvious nuclear weapons before they can be used, and talk to players when and if they decide to invent new ones.

Colossal adamantine cube up there got me thinking ... yeah right.

Let's assume adamantine weights about the same as steel, since armor and weapon weights are not adjusted when made of adamantium, A Colossal cube would be 30 ft. by 30 ft. by 30 ft. for a total of 27,000 cu.ft., which is 46,656,000 cu.in. A cubic inch of steel weighs approximately 0.3 lbs, so let's assume the same for adamantine. So, the Colossal cube has a weight of about 14 million pounds.

At 300 gp per pound of adamantine, the cost for your cube is a whopping 4.2 billion gp! About 5,000 PCs of 20th level would have to pool their level-appropriate resources to finance this thing.

Good luck!

Maybe they visited the Elemental Plane of Adamantine. Or perhaps it's simply a completely unorthodox casting of Summon Greater Adamantine Cube.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that certain spells should be restricted from this AP? Specifically spells like Disable Construct and Feeblemind. Both are spells that would allow PC's to functionally one-shot a lot of otherwise scary enemies in the adventure. (Disable Construct against robots, Feeblemind for the Technic League.) And they're not simply save or lose, they're both "roll really high on the die or lose." I bring this up in the message board for Lords of Rust because Disable Construct is a spell that has a half-decent chance of allowing the party to just murder Hellion (for GM's who don't like to fudge the dice).

I know there are no actual bonuses for skinning the mutant manticore and wearing its hide, but what would be a cool, minor flavor bonus for my PCs that could be added to the game without messing with mechanics? Also, any flavor repercussions, considering the manticore is mutant and irradiated.

Every day, save vs. Low radiation. ;p

Very very nice laser pistol. Still super old.

Non-crazy Chaotic Evil you ask? Pathfinder. The Technic League. Very calculating, very intelligent, very chaotic, very evil. The alignment system says this organization should have imploded centuries ago, yet it remains because despite the evil and chaotic nature of its members they aren't crazy, they understand that patience and calculation can lead to advancement in the organization's ranks (usually by means of murdering someone and taking their stuff/position). Sounds kinda LE but they are labeled as CE, the organization is governed by chaos and evil, but in a cunning and clever fashion, anyone exhibiting stereotypical CE crazies has already been culled because they're likely to bring the League crashing down and its members' power base along with it.

Train everyone to be 20th level wizards.

Nakteo wrote:

Also, one more thing...

** spoiler omitted **

Those got cut, since they were basically way too expensive an item for her to have (they were also too similar to boots of teleportation). Then the mention of them in her gear kept apparently slipping through the editorial cracks.

So just ignore completely. Got it. :)

Nakteo wrote:

Also, one more thing...

** spoiler omitted **

you might have to call palladium books and ask them?

:)

Seriously? o.o

Also, one more thing...