Nerdsamwich's page

As for the Tarrasque, its entry states that the only way to kill it is to bring it to -50 HP, probably with disintegrate or death magic, then use a wish or miracle to erase the body. Watch out for its 50 SR. You could try gating it into the Negative Energy Plane and hope it runs afoul of a patch of voidstone, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

I say lose the sword, and dual wield shields with Imp. Shield Bash and TWF. If you're human, you can get them both at lvl 1. Take one as your bonded weapon, and become the greatest bastion of defense ever seen!

Imagine the weapon you could make out of a large number of Endless Decanters with only a single narrow opening for the water to escape. One could fairly easily make a fire hose big enough to drown an airship.

Also note: slashing and piercing are the ones that can get the keen weapon property. Whether this is important to you, I cannot say. Still something to consider. These types of weapons also tend to be the ones with the wider critical threat range.

If you really need that sort of thing, there's the "impact" quality. It's keen for maces!

IIRC, Quick Draw also lets you stow a weapon as a free action. As long as your saddle has a lance rack, you're covered.

@ BerserkerRed: Yes and no. It's a loot system devised because we're Lawful Evil. If we were a Good party I'm sure it would not function exactly in the manner I described.

On the plus side, it does prevent party members from hogging all the loot.

You do realize that Evil does not equal Stupid? An evil character is allowed to have friends, and more importantly, associates with whom he will cooperate for mutual benefit. The big difference is that an evil character is expected to be willing to betray his fellows if the reward is great enough. This is all to say that it is perfectly reasonable for a group of LE PC's to decide to distribute items and gold on an as-needed basis, with the understanding that if one member gets too needy, that member is not likely to survive the corrective action that will be administered by the rest of the party.

Unless he's an elf, he's gotta sleep sometime. *Cough*rogue*cough*

The increasing power and availability of firearms and the nature of large, state-supported infantry led to more portions of plate armor being cast off in favor of cheaper, more mobile troops. Body armor remained in use throughout the 18th century with cavalry units, especially cuirassiers, including front and back plates that could protect the wearer from distanced fire and either helmets or "secrets", a steel protection they wore under a floppy hat.

I think, if you look more carefully, that the supremacy of the armored knight was really ended much earlier than that, by Flemish pikemen and Swiss halberdiers. Hiring even a single Swiss mercenary still constitutes a war crime in every nation in Europe. That sounds like a fun character concept, actually, Swiss halberdier. I'll have to work on that one.

Very cool. Though the "no on saw the floating rocks in the sky before" lacks continuity. It would be interesting if parts of the former landmass rose up after the mist cataclysm. No one is sure why or how they rose, but they did.

This way you can also have some elements of the former civilization. Ancient caves, chunks of cities, etc. You could have buildings floating that weren't designed to be floating. Just my 2c.

I read a book once where the flying islands were held aloft by "air coral", a coral-like organism that gave off large amounts of hydrogen that was trapped in bubbles throughout the structure of the coral. In this setting, perhaps the air corals were intentionally created by desperate wizards seeking an escape from the Mist. They could be (carefully) mined for gas to float the airships, as well. The players could even work for a visionary sorcerer who believes he can alter the corals to feed on the Mist itself.

ciretose wrote:

Doomed Hero wrote:

MrSin wrote:

Doomed Hero wrote:

What is it about the undead that makes them evil?

Is author appeal a viable answer?

Absolutely. Ciretose mentioned a game earlier where the PCs didn't want to deal with the ethical complexities of what they were doing.

Some games are supposed to be simple beat-em-up fun. Others are supposed to explore human nature. Both are enjoyable as long as everyone is on the same page.

It just depends on what a group wants out of a particular game.

Yes, but the game isn't set up with traveling murder hobo as the default.

If you want to do that in your home game, great. Have fun.

But the company bread and butter is the setting. And the murder hobo setting doesn't take a lot of effort to pull off...

Huh, I was under the impression that Golarion rewards racist murder hobos, since its perfectly okay to go around brutally slaughtering or Dominating (read: enslaving) free-willed mortals based on their race (dragons, mummies, orcs, goblins)...

sounds a heck of a lot like a murder hobo setting to me.

I am totally going to refer to player characters as "murder hobos" from now on. To a kobold, that's exactly what they are.

Ilja wrote:

One issue with the "mindless undead are just animated corpses and corpses are just objects" is that in that case, skeletons and zombies should be constructs, not undead to begin with. And animate dead should be a transmutation spell like animate object.

Follow this line of thought, though, and you almost entirely destroy the entire school of Necromancy. For example:

•Fear effects (such as the Cause Fear spell) should be Enchantment.
•Negative Energy spells (Harm, Inflict line, etc.) should be Evocation.
•Anything related to mindless undead, as well as physical debuffs (such as the Weaken spell) should be Transmutation.

There is even an argument to be made that willful undead should be Conjuration, though personally I think "soul manipulation" is unique enough to warrant staying in Necromancy (creating vamps, soul jar, etc).
It, however, would hardly be enough spells to warrant an entire school. =P

It could easily become a subschool of Conjuration, since it largely involves moving the souls from one place to another.

Nerdsamwich wrote:

MrSin wrote:

I Hate Nickelback wrote:

On a side note, what makes the best minionmancers?

According to this 3.5 Handbook its clerics. I have an affinity for clerics myself, because wading into combat as a death knight among your undead army is a glorious feeling to be had.

There's also the True Necromancer prestige class from Tome and Blood. Sure, you need to be level 10 to qualify, but it can be pretty awesome.

The guide itself says to stay away from true necromancer. I don't have a copy of tome and blood on me, is it any different from the 3.5 version? Those lost caster levels are pretty killer imo.

Lord Pendragon wrote:

I blame all this "good necromancy" on the sparkle vampires, myself. :p

Undead have great charisma scores... just sayin'.

I stand corrected. It's been a long time since I actually read the class description. Still kind of a fan of the Pale Master.

I'd go with more than one Craft skill, as well. Most constructs require sculpting, and you're going to want to make all kinds of crazy stuff. I suggest rolling Human for the extra skill points.

Used to be, when a familiar died, you had to make a rough Fort save or lose 1000 xp. Guess they got rid of that, eh?

Neo2151 wrote:

So the one glaring weakness with being a Wizard is the phrase, "If only I had prepared X today!"

So a familiar grants you some sort of bonus, usually very minor (+4 Init and, arguably, +2 Fort being the exceptions), and allows you to cast your touch spells through it.
Improved Familiar replaces the list with more powerful creatures, but you lose out on the minor bonus for... what exactly? A CR 2 creature instead of a CR 1/2? That's still not very impressive after, what, 4th-5th level?

Bonded Object allows you to bypass that one weakness I just discussed. On paper, that seems 1000x times better than a familiar. And yet, when I look around on the forums here, familiars almost always tend to be more popular.

Am I missing something?

Yes, you are missing the "Improved Familiar" Feat.

This allows you to take a familiar who has hands and can (potentially) use wands, throw tanglefoot bags, do healing checks, aid another, throw a net, etc. It's like an extra action every round.

On top of that many improved familiars have very nice spell like abilities, and often make great scouts (sometimes with natural invisibility, good stealth scores and flight)

Monkeys have hands. At 10th level, they even gain enough intelligence to become wizards! At which point they gain their own monkey familiars. Wizardception!

@Set: Indeed, I've thought it's a shame that Sorcerors can take Eldritch Heritage to gain powers of other Bloodlines, but there is no Feats which let them expand upon or enhance their existing Bloodline, "Bloodline Plus" as it were. Closest thing to that theme is Dragon Disciple as a PrC, which is also a shame that there isn't similar PrCs for other Bloodlines, e.g. Demonic, Elemental, Celestial, etc. Also, that there haven't been any new Revelations released for existing Mysteries, to broaden their scope a bit while still staying true to the Mystery.

Sounds like you need to fill the gap: write some! The Dragon Disciple abilities should translate very easily into Demon Disciple, Angelic Disciple, etc.

I Hate Nickelback wrote:

On a side note, what makes the best minionmancers?

According to this 3.5 Handbook its clerics. I have an affinity for clerics myself, because wading into combat as a death knight among your undead army is a glorious feeling to be had.

There's also the True Necromancer prestige class from Tome and Blood. Sure, you need to be level 10 to qualify, but it can be pretty awesome.

Absolutely. That's how you add more features, right? You add the features you want, and figure the cost in points based on that, not the other way around. I was wrong about the SBG--it has rules for making a building that can burrow like an earth elemental. In any case, have fun! The only limit is what your DM will put up with.

Make an iron golem version of a bullette, with acid secretions instead of poison gas breath. Hell, go with a brass golem, those are caster level 5. A bullette should be big enough to ride around in. If not, give it an extradimensional smugglers' hold. Didn't I see a dwarven burrowing machine in the Stronghold Builders' Guide or some such? You could animate one of those.

As long as the undead you create consist of just the body, without a soul involved, they're basically tools. Icky tools, but so is a manure shovel. If you use skeletons to pull a wagon, how is it evil? Unless you murdered someone to get the skeleton. Now, vampires, mummies, and all the incorporeal undead all involve the of the deceased, so those would be off the table. Skeletons, on the other hand, are mindless, and so can't be evil in and of themselves. I'm a huge fan of skeletal draft animals and menial laborers, especially in dangerous jobs like mining. I've always had a problem with the official line that positive energy is always good, and negative energy is always bad. If skeleton labor keeps your peasants from dying in a stone quarry accident, that seems to me to be a good act.
Likewise, using positive energy to heal a bloodthirsty warlord should be evil. That's the argument I'd make to my DM, at least.

Adventuring kit:
I'd leave out the pair of clubs. Anyone with a dagger and 10 minutes can make one. Scrivener's kit and journal seem like RP, rather than utility items. Why two slings? Isn't a belt pouch included in a standard Adventuring Outfit(tm)?

AKA:
The same as above, plus I'd consider leaving out the extreme weather clothing unless it's specifically needed for the adventure. Such things can usually be purchased easily anyplace a traveler is expected to stop.

Party Kit:
Bottles seem like a way worse option than a couple of extra waterskins. Vials come in the relevant crafting kits, otherwise, when would you need an empty vial? A mapmaking kit is only useful if your party includes a cartographer, which seems highly unlikely. Consider moving light sources from personal to party kits. Of course, my favorite light source is a continual flame spell cast on a small object glued to the inside of a scroll case. All the convenience of a flashlight, none of the batteries! If your party is going to use a cart and mules, how about a chest or two? And as soon as you hit level 5, I'm all about replacing the live mules with skeletal ones. They can pull your wagon 24/7 with a rotating shift of drivers and a couple of hammocks in the back. Since the travel rules assume 8 hours on the road, that can triple your overland movement speed.