Ninja in the Rye's page

Hey all, I’m about to run the back half of Stones over Sandpoint, and my party is engaging Teraktinus at the beginning of next session (I’ve got about a week, don’t worry lol). While I was looking at his stats, I noticed some very strange things; I’ve been referencing the SRD stats because I heard that the book version has his attack bonus calculated incorrectly, but if I remember correctly these problems are present in the book as well; https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/unique-monsters/cr-10/teraktinus/

1: His HP seems inflated. Normal giants have 102 HP, and he has 151, after only 2 levels of ranger. Where did these 49 HP coming from?
2: What’s up with his attack damage? His heavy pick does 1d8+11, but his strength bonus is only +8, and it’s only a +1 weapon. Where are the additional 2 points of damage coming from? He does not have weapon specialization either, which is what I initially thought must be the case.
3: He has way too many feats! After 2 levels of ranger, he would gain 2 additional feats, one of which is a TWF style feat from the Ranger style ability. So why does he have 5 more feats than the normal stone giant?

There may be a good explanation for these things! But I don’t know it (this is my first Pathfinder campaign). So, does the math check out and I just don’t fully know the rules behind it? Or is the statblock busted and I’m better off stating him up myself?

Simple, the entry you're linking to is an attempt at a fan conversion of the 3.5 version of T to the PF rules and has his stats listed incorrectly. Possibly a copy and paste error.

In the book T's strength is 31, his Con is 23. He is also receiving 2 additional HP from having Ranger as his Favored Class.

Those make up for the difference in their HP and attack bonus. His +10 STR mod and the +1 Magic from the weapon, likewise, add up to 11 damage with his Heavy Pick.

Why are his stats higher? Important Monsters and NPCs (those with PC class levels) are built using the Elite Array as their base (15/14/13/12/10/8) for their stats, while most monsters and NPCs without class levels are built using an array of 13/12/11/10/9/8) as the base this is already accounted for in their CR calculation (an Elite Array Monster 1 CR higher).

As to feats, I'm not sure where you're counting 5 more feats. T has 8 feats listed, a normal Stone Giant has 6. The official version in the AE has some different feat selections than what this linked version has.

There is indeed a mistake (or possibly misleading line)in his stat block that list iterative attacks with his light pick, which he should not receive when Two-Weapon Fighting as he does not have the Improved or Greater TWF feats. So when he makes a full attack he gets the 3 listed attacks(+20/+15/+10) with his heavy pick AND 1 attack with his light pick at +20.

For the record his attack bonuses already have the -2 penalty for two weapon fighting added in, so if you make a standard action attack with either of his Picks it would be at +22 (the official version has the Vital Strike feat, so would roll an extra damage die).

He should also have the option to make 2 slam attacks instead of his weapon attacks, they would be at +20 to hit and deal 1d8+10 damage.

I think you got what I'm saying, but I guess the sort of faux 3d art is throwing me off. I just haven't seen vertical drops depicted like this on a map very often where the art is a sort of 3/4 angle rather than straight down from above

Does anyone know if the1 square = 5 feet scale on the Dead Man's Drop map is a mistake? The Map references 50 and 30 foot waterfalls but the map doesn't seem to even come close to depicting them as that big unless I'm just reading it all wrong somehow.

I moved the fight into the church so the PCs could kill it by collapsing the building on it.

If I was going to bring it back in to the story after it got away, I'd have it show up early in book 5, and have it attack Sandpoint as the PCs are leaving the shrine, having been drawn there by the Runewell/Lamashtu.

In area A9, Outer Sanctum, the Scribbler's Suggestion trap creates a suggestion spell effect. Suggestion is language-dependent, but the trap doesn't specify what language is used. However, the only languages that the Scribbler speaks are Abyssal and Thassilonian, so whichever one is chosen, it's unlikely that many of the PCs will be affected by this trap. How have other GMs handled this?

I think the person writing the adventure forgot that he wouldn't speak common at all, or forgot to add it to the stat block, since he's written to RP with the party and has a town guard corpse in his room that he's been using Speak With Dead to talk to.

I'm probably just going to move a skill rank to linguistics and assume he used lesser planar ally to get a Quasit to teach him common or something so all the RPing with him is available for the whole party.

Would The Scribbler recognize the Sihedron Medallions? Know about their scrying properties? Would he see them and assume the PCs are working for K?

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Am I missing something or just really bad at counting on the Warriors of Wrath statblock? They should have 8 feats + Scribe Scroll (4 from hit dice, 1 bonus from being human, 1 Fighter Bonus, 1 Wizard bonus, and 1 Eldritch Knight Bonus) but I'm counting 7 in the stat block in addition to Scribe Scroll.

You're absolutely correct. For those wondering what type of feat it should be based on the warriors' levels, it can be either a general, combat, or wizard bonus feat, depending on how you outline their feat progression.

So I wasn't crazy, I'm giving them Arcane Armor Training so I won't have to worry about making spell failure rolls.

Dumb question but since Big K is now aware of the PCs I'm unsure how the Sihedron Medallions "sense the world through the wearer's senses" thing works. Is this an auto success for K or do they get a save against it?

Another question, Mok's club is listed as his Arcane Bond, normally any abilities added to an item via Arcane bond go away when the wizard dies.

Are the magic abilities on the club from the Arcane Bond meaning the party will find a Masterwork Club after he dies, or is it a normal magical weapon and retains its magic?

Does the book cover the watch schedule for the Giants in the Watchtowers?

I don't recall any mention of what happens when they need to sleep or where any replacements come from.

Am I missing something or just really bad at counting on the Warriors of Wrath statblock? They should have 8 feats + Scribe Scroll (4 from hit dice, 1 bonus from being human, 1 Fighter Bonus, 1 Wizard bonus, and 1 Eldritch Knight Bonus) but I'm counting 7 in the stat block in addition to Scribe Scroll.

I'm prepping to run an encounter from RotRL and the map is drawn so there are smaller pillars centered on grid intersections. If you need to see what I'm talking about google Lamashtu's shrine map and it should be the first image that comes up.

Would these count as obstacles for 2x movement in that square. Would moving between two of these pillars be enough to count as squeezing for a medium creature?

I think it is fair enough to teach it a trick to fly. However, given that flying is far beyond anything it would naturally do, the DC to succeed would be very high. Top of my head I'm thinking 4 weeks with a DC30 would be appropriate.

It's DC25 and it takes 1 week.

Sounds good, thanks for chiming in everyone

The entry for slings say that you can fire a sling with one hand, but that reloading requires two.

Light shield hand IIRC can't use weapons but can hold items.

In the case of Lucrecia I think she ultimately wants the Ogres dead anyway as sacrifices to fuel the Runewell, she'd use them to try to kill the PCs but is also perfectly happy if the PCs slaughter their way through them as long as she herself gets away.

My PCs plan was to sneak in to the fort via the secret door into her room anyway, so they actually encountered her first while the Ogres upstairs were still dealing with the Lizards. If they'd gone another route and she'd heard combat from above first then she'd have probably gone to investigate and join them against the PCs.

I had the lizards kill one of Ogres in the armory who are wearing Medium sized armor (lower reflex saves) and knock half the HP off the other, and one Ogre in the courtyard tried to chase one when it ran into the secret tunnel between B5 and B15 smashed it when the animal tried to turn around becaue of the Spectre's unnatural aura then he went to investigate B15 and was killed by the Spectre, so was added to that encounter later as a fresh Spawn. Otherwise I'd knock a d8 or two off the HP of a few random enemies on the first floor and the ground floor.

Lucrecia was tipped off that something was up by all the smoke and the noise, so she went invisible and just stayed out of their way and buffed up and waiting to see who was coming.

That's what I was thinking, thanks for the reply!

Assuming that you start combat in range of the enemy with a Gaze and it is aware of you. You know that the creature has a gaze attack, either from previously encountering it or someone else making a knowledge check.

Can you do it against the initial saving throw at the start of your turn in Round 1, or do you have to wait and do it later in your turn, so you'll only be protected starting in rou8nd 2?

I'm a bit confused about the shining child/door to the library hallway.

First there are things written on the walls that, if read, hit the player with calm emotions, there's no mention of a save? So just reading it causes the PC to be under calm emotions?

Then there the door. What is the DC to open the door? It's closed by an Arcane Lock, in 3.5 Arcane Lock simply locked something and made it impossible to open, but in PF rules AL says it creates a DC 20 lock or increases the DC of an existing lock by 10. The text mentions a key, which Mok has stolen. No mention of what the DC here is.

My players have the password from the Black Monk, so are going to use it. This doesn't seem to actually open the door though just turns off the Shining Child for one attempt to "force" the door?

So what is "forcing" the door open? Just trying to open it at all while it's locked? OR is it only if they're trying to pick the lock/break it down? Does attempting a dispell on the Arcane lock count as forcing it?

Yes, that's what's keeping them there, and angry as well.

Makes sense, thanks!

A 50% price increase for PF2 PDFs? Well, there goes my plan to grab the PDFs to see if the hardcovers would be worth buying and the system would be worth switching over from PF1.

You guys had some good ideas but, my Monk got beat in two rounds mostly due to the party crushing their saves against his Despair and Breath Attack and having the action economy advantage.

If anything I probably should have added a few Juju zombie monks to the encounter.

So the Hounds of Tindalos seem like a really interesting monster, but if I'm reading the room description correctly they'll be completely incapable of using their Angled Entry ability. Is this correct?

How did it play? I'm a bit worried that giving it flying kick might be a bit much.

If you have the statblock on hand, would you be willing to share?

Is this a feat or a tactic anyone can use?

"Default no spells, with add an option to get spells like monk" option won by a landslide (and that'll guarantee we add that option at the soonest possible juncture we can fit it in),

I mean, I picked this option because I assumed that what I was saying is, "It's very important to me that Rangers have the option to cast spells, but it doesn't have to be mandatory for all Rangers."

I didn't pick it because I wanted spell-less Rangers in core and to just get some spell options tacked on in some future splat book.

I had planned on testing out shields later in the playtest, specifically seeing how they held up against people using two handed weapons, but never really got the chance for various reasons.

My main concern was that, beyond low levels, the defensive boost was just not going to be enough compensate for the smaller damage dice on one handed weapons once magic +X weapons entered the equation.

Just hoping to see what experiences everyone else had.

"Focus Spells"? Just ... why?

People, as least as far as I've noticed in the playtest, just do not want to call things spells unless they're actual spells being cast using the normal spell casting mechanics. It's just a confusing overuse of a particular term for no benefit that I can see.

Powers was a fine enough name, what threw people was calling the resource used to activate them "Spell Points" and them all being lumped in to the spells chapters. Now they have Focus Points, but are calling the abilities they activate "Focus Spells?"

What's with the desire to call everything slightly mystical a "Spell" in one way or another?

Half the character creation time was spent figuring out what mundane gear to buy or not and how the bulk all added up. It really bogs down character creation IMO.

Just give us a few set of options with thematically appropriate mundane items grouped together along with their bulk (both individually and as a total) and the price so people who want to just get started adventuring can have an easy option to copy quickly to their character sheet.

Five months and was there not a single question on whether we should keep or remove Vancian style prepared casting?

gwynfrid wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

Really? Where does it say that?

(To be clear, I mean specifically not getting better at a specific skill. I don’t mean stuff like “scared of heights”).

"Voluntary flaws", p19. This is about ability flaws, though, not skills.

Ah, cheers. Yeah that’s not what I meant.

While the section in the book is specifically talking about ability scores, it's pretty easy to infer that if you can voluntarily give yourself a penalty on an ability score so you can roleplay a flaw then you could do the same with skill checks.

The year is coming to a close and with it discussion of the PF2 playtest. This past month has seen the most productive and civil discussion and some of the best updates (unofficial 1.7 from the video stream).

Can anyone share a link to this "unofficial 1.7" video?

Unicore wrote:

Overall, this is just a change that doesn’t make sense to me, but I know it has made a lot of folks happy. I would love to hear why.

For me it’s simply because I like the idea of remaining bad at something forever. Nearly all my characters have some weakness/phobia/blindspot in this way and looking at how things were in the playtest book, I couldn’t really recreate any of them at high level.

The playtest rules say that you can give your character flaws for roleplaying purposes if you desire, so I'm not sure why you felt you couldn't make a character who is bad at a particular skill.

Edge93 wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

Dante Doom wrote:

And then we come back to the days that nobody can sneak, since we can have a gap of 28 points.

Only if someone has gone twenty levels studiously refusing to learn how to sneak even a little bit.

Minimal effort closes the gap by twenty two.

This is true, but that only actually means anything if classes get enough Trained skills to tag all of the skills that one mght expect to be used in group checks without sacrificing the stuff they want to be specializing in. This brings us a little too close to "skill taxes" for my liking.

To me it’s not a huge difference to give everyone the +1/level to everything or to give them more skill choices and letting them buy a small proficiency in most of them over time. It does change the incentives when building a PC - it’ll be a higher price if you don’t give any attention to some of those “group skills”.

The difference is that if you give players choices then they will choose other things that better fit their character concept.

With a skill like Stealth is that there's no point in investing in it if you're not maxing it out, especially if you already have low DEX and/or armor penalties. You'll be mediocre at best at it with a 'minimal' investment. You're better off investing in the skills that either make you better at fighting/exploring or social skills that have broader applications. Why would I invest in Stealth when I could make myself an expert at Intimidation ASAP?

In the old system your Paladin who would otherwise never invest in stealth is at least capable enough to be willing to give it a try and had a non-zero chance of success when the Rogue comes up with a plan that requires sneaking around. Now the Pally will just laugh at the idea that he could hope to accomplish this and draw his sword.

Edge is saying that if you have expressed a distaste for those effects and talked with your GM about not including them, only a bad GM is going to not at least come to a compromise with you.

Many GMs simply choose to stick to the rules in the books for valid reasons.

They're not bad GMs because they stick the rules of the game that they paid for.

Many of the people responding to me in this thread have made it pretty clear that they wouldn't remove such effects from the game, and even that they would consider doing so a 'disservice' to the player.

Then there's also PFS play where they simply aren't allowed to make such compromises, which is, for many, the only reliable game that can be found.

EDIT: Also, your second statement makes no sense. Adding new things to a game is vastly harder than removing them, because creating balanced game elements is hard. Otherwise why would Paizo even have jobs?

I mean, which of these is harder:

A) Saying that goblins don't exist in your setting.

B) Designing stat blocks, ecologies, and cultures for goblins from scratch and fitting them into your setting.

Breaking something might be easier than building it, rebuilding something that is broken is often just as difficult as building it was in the first place, if not more difficult.

If I remove Goblins from my Rise of the Runelords game I'm really going to mess up the first book of that adventure, so that'd make things quite difficult.

If I remove paralyzed forever from monsters/spells then I have to figure out something to replace it with. Removing an ability from a creature/spell throws off the balance of that creature/spell so you still have to do the work of adding something in to the game.

TL;DR I'm for these effects staying because if they are removed it is extra work for those who want them to exist and if they stay it should never come into play for those who hate them existing UNLESS you are playing with a GM who is probably going to screw you over regardless.

A GM who is running monsters/abilities by the book and having them use the abilities the professional game designers gave them is just going to screw you over regardless? That's quite a leap.

I'm also not sure how it's any more difficult to add such abilities into the game than it is to take them out?

The unrealistic thing about volley is thinking that it should be more accurate at long range. If you think a longbow is shooting at an arc like you see in battles, they aren't aiming at anyone, just shooting at an army and figuring it will hit a target because there are so many.

This is true, when I first saw that there was a volley property on long bows I assumed that it meant that you'd be able to link up a group of archers and fire an area effect attack volley of arrows that worked like a fireball. Which would have been an interesting way to allow, say, large groups of low level soldiers to pose some level of threat to higher level enemies.

I think The DM Of is less saying "oh just houserule it" and more saying that the chance of Paizo deciding to remove permanent negative status effects from the system is effectively nil.

I don't know that I should even bother to repeat myself on this at this point, but once again I'm not asking for the complete removal of permanent negative effects. I'm saying that they're terrible and, accordingly, that I'm against the ones that effectively remove a player completely from the game AND require only a single critical fail on a save.

Something as simple as say, paralysis/stone/whatever for 2 rounds then give another save against the effect becoming permanent would, at the least, give a second chance AND be more in keeping with the double/increase by an extra step on a critical paradigm we see elsewhere in the rules while still leaving the possibility of eternal Negative effects in the game.

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

The vast majority of people playing Pathfinder are not the GM and/or not running a home game, and, thus, have no actual power to house rule something.

So run a game then.

I do, thanks.

I currently GM for two different groups, actually.

Shockingly enough I sometimes like to actually participate in games as a player instead of as a GM, at which point I have no power to house rule anything.

I'm also in the playtest forum giving my feedback on what I consider to be an issue in the playtest rules that will negatively impact the game, which, as I understand it, is the primary point of the playtest in the first place.

if you dont like the lich's paralyzation touch, well remember that the monster manua;/Beastiarys, creature codexs , etc are all guidelines.

find a different power to give it and make the lich more unique.
but dont make it under powered though as nobody likes a wimpy challenge

The vast majority of people playing Pathfinder are not the GM and/or not running a home game, and, thus, have no actual power to house rule something.

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Quote:

But expecting the devs to take out all the possibilities of anything bad happening to your character in case you ever have to sit out is unreasonable to me.

Good thing that I'm not suggesting that or anything at all close to it, but keep fighting that straw golem.

Except you have suggested that, in this very thread.

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Quote:

I don't see this as any worse then failing a save vs disintegrate and not having that many hp left.

Which is also awful and should have been removed from the game, but at the very least has to actually reduce your HP to zero to take you out.

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

It's horrible, illogical design that does nothing to enhance the game.

Are you intentionally trying to misrepresent what I'm saying or did you just not read what you're quoting?

Saying a save or die effect should be removed from the game is nowhere near the same as "expecting the devs to take out all the possibilities of anything bad happening to your character in case you ever have to sit out".

There is a world of difference between a game where you nothing bad can happen to you and a game where it takes more than 1 bad saving throw roll for your character to be completely removed.

Trying to characterize my position as if I'm saying that nothing bad should ever happen to characters is ridiculous.

In Monopoly, every player but the winner has to eventually sit out while everyone else continues to play.

And, as we all remember, if you roll a natural 1 in Monopoly you are automatically bankrupt and out of the game, no matter how much money or property you have left at the time!

But expecting the devs to take out all the possibilities of anything bad happening to your character in case you ever have to sit out is unreasonable to me.

Good thing that I'm not suggesting that or anything at all close to it, but keep fighting that straw golem.

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

There are forms of consequence that do not force players to do nothing for hours or more in the real world because of one bad die roll that they can do absolutely nothing to mitigate or defend against because all Natural 1s are critical fails regardless of how much you invest in raising your defenses, to the point that they might as well not even bother to be at the game.

"Fifteen to twenty minutes" What game do you think we're talking about? A single round of combat can easily take that long or longer to resolve.

If you get paralyzed in round 1 of a combat due to a single bad roll on a save you're sitting there for an hour or more while the rest of the party chips away against high ACs and the mountains of HP the monsters have.

Crits do double damage. Most crit fails do double damage or advance negative conditions an extra step. These things make sense and hold to a pattern. Then you get situations where a crit fail does, literally, infinitely more of a negative effect than a normal fail. It makes no sense.

It's horrible, illogical design that does nothing to enhance the game.

Look. This is bogus.

...

The moment you accept that character death is permissible, then anything less is permissible. Argue for removal of character death and we can revisit this then.

Okay.

Characters should not go from 100% health/statuses to dead on a single Critical success or failure.

A character dying because their health was depleted over several rounds or several combats is fine.

A character being paralyzed because they failed a series of saves over a round, rounds, or combats is acceptable.

A character being paralyzed forever because they rolled low on a single save is not.

If weapons with the Deadly property instantly killed on a Natural 20, I'd argue that the Deadly property was bad design even if cheap Phoenix Downs were part of the game.

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

So basically it's there to punish newbie players and/or veterans who don't metagame and make the game less fun for them?

In my humble opinion, it is you that is asking to punish the newbie, by removing consequence from the game. Having a monster or spell that does something non-fatal to a PC that the rest of the party works together to fix is a story-driving thing. Sure, one player has no agency for the fifteen to twenty minutes it takes to roleplay getting the paralyzed character back to town to get fixed, but the up-side is a story hook, and a character-building tale.

There are forms of consequence that do not force players to do nothing for hours or more in the real world because of one bad die roll that they can do absolutely nothing to mitigate or defend against because all Natural 1s are critical fails regardless of how much you invest in raising your defenses, to the point that they might as well not even bother to be at the game.

"Fifteen to twenty minutes" What game do you think we're talking about? A single round of combat can easily take that long or longer to resolve.

If you get paralyzed in round 1 of a combat due to a single bad roll on a save you're sitting there for an hour or more while the rest of the party chips away against high ACs and the mountains of HP the monsters have.

Crits do double damage. Most crit fails do double damage or advance negative conditions an extra step. These things make sense and hold to a pattern. Then you get situations where a crit fail does, literally, infinitely more of a negative effect than a normal fail. It makes no sense.

It's horrible, illogical design that does nothing to enhance the game.

I don't see this as any worse then failing a save vs disintegrate and not having that many hp left.

Which is also awful and should have been removed from the game, but at the very least has to actually reduce your HP to zero to take you out.

So basically it's there to punish newbie players and/or veterans who don't metagame and make the game less fun for them?

Watching a game on Youtube.

Level 12 Barbarian rolls a natural 1 on a Fort save against a Lich, is permanently paralyzed and the player is then left to sit there doing nothing with no chance to shake the negative ability off and nothing their teammates can do to help them, even after the fight is over.

Who is this good for? How does this make the game more fun for anybody?

Why isn't there a new save each round?

The normal failed save is just 1 round, why is the crit fail INFINITELY more than that?

Sebastian Hirsch wrote:

I am personally not a huge fan of all the dice, as I have seen players taking excessive amounts of time to calculate the final result.

If gentle pressure to "count faster" doesn't suffice for your group, may I suggest an app?

What if using an app to roll your dice for you is not fun?

Nothing is more fun than being reminded how weak your character is!

Gaterie wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

But as the GM your job is not to "run the antagonists as though they have perfect knowledge of game mechanics, and are trying to win at all costs."

Of course the monsters should try to win at all cost. If they don't win, they die, and nobody wants to die.

Quote:

After all, the monsters are supposed to lose so logic like having sunder be unattractive for the monsters for the same reason it is for the players (i.e. less loot) is totally valid. I mean, there are not currently rules for sunder at all, from what I can tell.

Why should monsters bother about loot? Any level 5 NPC deals 2d of damages with mundane weapons (or even his bare hands); and the same damages with a PC's magical weapon. Why should he bother about the weapon of the PCs?

Magical weapons is a PC thing. PCs can't afford to sunder enemies weapon, because they need the loot to be somehow relevant in combat. NPCs don't care, they don't need this to be cool.

Magic Weapons aren't the only thing that matters here, so saying it like nothing else is a factor makes this a disingenuous argument.

Having Gold to purchase items they may want goes poof if they destroy those items. It might be solid tactics for animals and similarly dumbed-down creatures, whom don't care for such things, but smart BBEGs would sparingly do this.

That PCs usually worry more about protecting the loot at the cost of an increased risk of being killed probably speaks to the fact that this is a game and not an actual life or death battle for the players.