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In the description of a Temple type building on page 112 it says the temple consists of "1 Altar, 1 Bedroom, 1 Common Room, 1 Confessional,
Why should a temple have a common room and not a ceremonial room (page 96), which seems designed for this exact type of building?
Thanks! That is a good suggestion and I may use it and tweak it so it fits my game. To clarify: in my game, money isn't the issue. My group can pretty much buy most things if they save up a little. But you can only earn so many build points/so much capital per day of downtime, in terms of what the character is physically capable of, and this is why my player wants to be able to earn more with a cohort. If you have a cohort he or she is going to agree with you on some larger issues (helping people, earning money for a business maybe, or squashing some common foes). I can't really see them abandoning those to get their kid a present that they could have just bought anyway. :P
So I have a player with a cohort who's looking at some downtime because he needs to be away from the group IRL for a month. His question was if both his character (cleric) and cohort (ranger) can earn capital separately during downtime or if they have to pool their efforts. I can't find any rules for using cohorts in this way, only for running businesses. As far as I can see I should propose one of the following solutions: 1. No. The cohort is and extension of your character and doesn't operate on her own. However, when picking skills or special talents to earn capital with, you can use either yours or hers, or whichever skill is the highest. The one who doesn't have the skill/other ability is considered helping the one who does. 2. Yes. Your cohort is a separate person who can dowhatever she wants like a normal character. However, this seems a little overpowered... 3. Something else. Not too complicated. Help?
Thanks guys! Although not all replies were directly helpful they were interesting to read. The way I interpret Sending, it's telepathic and doesn't require speaking. The target must be a "known" target, however, if the target is a person the PC hasn't seen since he was a toddler, would he then "know" him well enough to successfully contact via Sending? Even if that wouldn't be enough I've decided to roll some dice to see if the prisoner is conscious and able to respond at any given time - meaning I will reward PC cleverness eventually, unless the dice really hate the group. ;)
But if the person receiving the Sending tells them where he is? Which he could well do, since he can reply in 25 words. Assuming he knows, of course. Also, the best would be if they didn't know he was alive. :P
I'm a GM and my group is using Sending to find a missing person. It's supposed to be harder than that to find out if this person is alive or not, so how can I block the spell's function? I thought about Mind Blank, but Mind Blank has nothing in its description about blocking messages, just that you can't divine anything about the creature who is mind blanked. Are there any rules/erratas on this?
I don't think you can hear anything even if you're outside the spell yourself.
Have you considered an Oracle?
My question would be: how could this PC be overpowered compared to the rest of the group? Because it sounds like he is. If this is the result of house rules, then I'm sorry, but you brought this on yourself. The best way to solve it now is to either throw out the plot you had in mind and create a new one (promoting non-railroad gaming), or to yoink the particular PC character sheet and allow the player to create a new ally for the party while you take care of the villain (promoting a quick fix). If you allow this player to continue his villainous ways and smush the rest of the party then you have an opportunity to make the other players roll up new characters allied with the villain and run your adventures from there. Might be fun! If you don't allow this, make sure you are being diplomatic when you explain why - and take into consideration what the entire group wants. Having the rest of the players behind you on this will make it easier to convince the one player that you should run his villainous PC as an NPC. If the other players don't mind it could be more difficult and you'd have to consider if it's worth it to mess up the villainous PC's accomplishments just because you don't want to change your plots. BUT: the game should also feel right to YOU. You have a hard job as a GM and should have some fun too - make sure that you balance your wishes to those of the players and all will be well. Good luck.
Okay, thanks for your advice so far, guys! As far as Acidic Spray goes I suspect my player wouldn't want that- he wants something that requires ranged touch, because he wants to be able to deal sneak attack damage with his spells (Arcane Trickster). So far I'm leaning towards the solution of not allowing custom spells anymore. I'll leave the one already in use (but check if it should be modified) and then just close the book on that practice. The "is Haste a damage spell" discussion is less interesting in this instance because the advice I asked for has nothing to do with Haste or anyone else but the caster in question, so it doesn't really help me. :P A discussion around customised spells, spell levels, and game balance in general could be interesting though.
I have a player who has a reputation as a bit of a munchkin and in my game he plays a budding Arcane Trickster (Wiz/Rog). He's started cooking up his own spells and already it has gone a bit sideways. His first spell was called Shocking Ray and is supposed to be a ray version of Shocking Grasp (at the same level). I allowed this off the bat but have later understood that it was a mistake for me to do that, because it allows him to do far too much damage from afar without having to close in on the enemy. Also I think he has neglected the cap on the number of damage dice (5d6 like the original spell), but I'm not quite certain. (I'll have to check up on that.) This time, however, he wants to construct a spell that merges two existing 2nd level spells (Scorching Ray and Acid Arrow) into a single 3rd level spell. This is the result: Acidic Ray (Sor/Wiz 3)
In my opinion this is far too good on such a low level, and my second problem with it is that it merges two spell schools in a way that I don't find compatible with the rules. If the acid lingers, it should be conjuration, but then it should not have SR and also should not do this much damage. I reckon there's a reason why Acid Arrow does d4 and not d6. A friend suggested I raise the spell level to Sor/Wiz 4, but there are no good damage spells on spell level 4 and I'm betting that, too, has something to do with power levels and game balance. What I'm looking for is not advice on how to handle the player - I know him and if it comes down to it I'll just tell him he has to stop designing his own spells. What I AM looking for, however, is advice on how to change the spell so that it isn't so overpowered and so it fits better with how other spells are designed in Pathfinder. I've read the chapter on spell design in Ultimate Magic, but without clear cut rules I'm honestly pretty confused.
This. Also, I don't understand what kind of setting you're in where certain things can transform PCs into random zombies and tieflings... there was a lot I did NOT understand of this game, and I think (from what I've heard) that both GM and players are being unreasonable here. Try talking together about what you'd like to do. :)
RAW only requires damage done. But since it's called quivering PALM I'd say it should have to be an unarmed attack.
What about the Cleric's channel energy ability? And then there's Wild Empathy.
Sp what if the stealthing thief rolls, but his check is opposing the constant vigil of the guards? They started their active perception checks when they went on duty, long before the thief decided to sneak in. But the thief did take the initiative to sneak in so he is the aggressor. Who wins? Also, a lot of what is being stated as "obvious" here is obviously (no pun intended) not obvious, since people are still discussing how to interpret it. So a clarification from the game designers would not go amiss, I think.
But Pathfinder differs between sentient beings and vermin. In any case, helpless beings that sren't posing any threat because they're bound? It may not be evil to kill them but it isn't good either. To comment on the justice system and pirates vs. pally codes: The pally could probably execute the goblins himself were they given a fair trial where they were sentenced to death. ;)
Thanks! Maybe the Vampiric Touch thing should go to the FAQ or errata.
I agree that pally is okay. Were he exalted (have those rules been converted from 3.5 yet?) it would be another story, but he isn't. Wizard... well. I would definitely not change his alignment based on one occurence. But I would warn him. Were he to do something like this more often I might force him to shift alignments after a few more occurences. I would also ask the group to RP noticing how the wizard seems to be on a slippery slope. The pally especially. Also: just because stepping across the line has worse consequences for a pally than anyone else, it does not mean the pally gets off easier, or even as easy as anyone else. The alignment requirement is there for a reason.
Cool. Thanks, I'll avoid the cheese (I usually do anyway). :D But the final stupid question then: Does the ghost do only 50% damage with spells (except force spells)? And how would spells like Vampiric Touch work?
Personally I would rule that the character could stand up as a move action if they succeeded on an Acrobatics check (DC 10) as per how regular movement is handled in the spell description. But is doesn't say specifically what happens if you stand up, no.
1) If you kill the summoned creature it disappears, so you'll need to eat parts of it while keeping it alive. I'm pretty sure some Good aligned people will have a problem with this. :P
@Abe: thanks for giving me a clear answer. This means that if the ghost valued his components then he can actually use them, right? What you quoted there reads very clearly and I must have missed that. So it doesn't have a miss chance with its spells... but it does cause only 50% damage with the spells then? If I understand correctly?
@Abraham spalding: Sorry, but I have read that entry and when something is neither stated clearly nor stated at all I tend to still be confused. Do you mean "if it doesn't say he casts spells as normal then he doesn't cast spells as normal"? Is this default? It doesn't say that he doesn't cast spells as normal either... so maybe he does. This is what I mean by "unclear". :P Thing is, ghosts are affected normally by spells (although damage is halved) so why shouldn't they affect corporeal creatures with their own magic? Does the magic become incorporeal as well? @LazarX: The component thing I understand!
OK, it might be that I missed a memo or something, but I really wonder about this: If a spellcaster becomes a ghost, can he use his spells as normal, or would his spells have a 50% miss chance against corporeal creatures? I can't find any rules clarification on this.
My gut instinct says this trait won't be stopped by SR. But since this is a rules question: The text on the trait suggests that this ability comes from being exposed to positive energy at an early age, so I checked the "Channel Energy" ability, which says Supernatural. Then I checked the description of Supernatural abilities: Supernatural abilities are magical but not spell-like. Supernatural abilities are not subject to spell resistance and do not function in areas where magic is suppressed or negated (such as an antimagic field). A supernatural ability's effect cannot be dispelled and is not subject to counterspells.
How old is this guy? I want to repeat this question, because I really wonder the same thing.
On "dump stat is cheese": It so is if all the player wants out of it is munching his stats to be powerful. If the campaign is about RP and interaction as much as fighting, you'd need a character that isn't going to be useless for that. (Or if your concept is being useless at that you'd need a talented player and some... Point 1: Yes, I completely agree. Sadly you are right. But I suppose that also in a group of children, some will not play nice until you set at least a couple of limits that in some way enable them to find out that playing nice can be fun too and that everyone else will also benefit from this. A notorious min/maxer will not try anything else unless forced or talked into trying. So why the heck not make an attempt, if min/maxing results in a playing style you wish to avoid in your group? Point 2: Because some people, me included, feel that we want a focus to our campaigns that is less on firepower and more on well-rounded or at least partially rounded characters who are also powerful. Hence 25 PB, which enables you to build nearly whatever you please and build it well, and (as the GM clearly should have stated from the start) no stats below 8 (or 10, if you'd prefer) to avoid idiot savants. A lot of people playing RPGs seem to ignore the part about role-playing and focusing on the part that is a game which can be won (by having high fighting stats, for instance, and ignoring role-playing stats). I say of course they can do that, I'm not the boss of them, but if they were playing in my campaign min/maxing would in the very least be frowned upon and I would like a story reason and know that the player can handle it. The games I play with my different groups are all story and character focused and people are allowed to be powerful as long as it "makes sense" and is not just done for the numbers. To sum it up: IMO, that something is RAW doesn't mean it will fit everyone's style of play. The rules also give examples on other ways of doing abilities, so there's no one single way that is absolutely "true". What is beautiful about the Pathfinder rules is that it enables all playing styles - you actually have a choice. I won't decide for you unless we're in the same group at some point, at which I might try persuading you not to min/max. That's all.
am I being a jerk for saying no when a big part of the jade regent is having a character that's somewhat likeable so the NPCs dont kick them out of the caravan? A comment on the skill rank vs. stat issue: Being liked is not about Diplomacy. Diplomacy +8 is being skilled at negotiating a friendly interaction despite the impact (or lack thereof) your negative charisma has on people. While CHA +2 is just being generally liked to begin with. If I had a CHA of 7 I would probably not want to be in a negotiating mood all the time and thus would slip up. I still agree that this isn't enough to be thrown off the caravan, though. I have friends who I can say might have negative charisma, but they're still my friends. --- On "dump stat is cheese": It so is if all the player wants out of it is munching his stats to be powerful. If the campaign is about RP and interaction as much as fighting, you'd need a character that isn't going to be useless for that. (Or if your concept is being useless at that you'd need a talented player and some understanding of how to keep the character out of it without ruining the fun for the group.) The stats asked for were 8/14/16/20/9/7. This sounds like a weak, but overweight and hyper-intelligent guy who has no idea what is going on around him and doesn't care. His WIS 9 and CHA 7 make it sound like he should be diagnosed with some social disorder, and with a whooping 20 INT this sounds like Sheldon Cooper (who is a great TV show character, but I wouldn't imagine him being very playable as an RPG character unless the player was particularly skilled). If this player wants these stats for RP reasons, then let him explain how this will be RP'd. I'm kinda curious. Anyway, what does NOT make this GM a jerk, is that he's given a generous point buy to discourage min/maxing, and when someone min/maxes anyway, he wishes to stop that. That is okay, but Mr. GM, you probably should have told your players this in advance. If you tell them now, make sure you set limits that everyone needs to follow and make sure everyone follows them. By the way, "stoic" in my opinion would require not only a minimum of 8 CHA, but also a better WIS, because I tie calm/stoic to having the willpower not to freak out. If this guy wants these bad stats he should play to them and not make them out to be positive, because they're not. Cheers.
I still think that one shouldn't stay with groups that make playing NO FUN. I would rather take up knitting than fly to another city and game with this bunch of a**hats. That said, if you can get them to change their minds about the playing style, that's probably the better solution. If they don't... run. ;)
This sounds like a horrible group. To be fair, I'd rather not game at all, than game with them. If you still insist on staying in the group, either be the GM yourself (I turned to this solution after no one else seemed to want to run a game that I wanted to play in), or ... I really don't know.
So, basically, there's no way to cure lycanthropy once past the three-day mark?
Spoiler alert!: I played in the Falcon's Hollow adventures (as a wizard) until, after this one, the whole group was so demoralized by the entire thing that we decided to quit playing it. That aside though (since there is no accounting for taste), I found myself more upset about the game balance in the adventure than about the goriness. The adventure comes with a ready-to-play set of level 4 characters. Our group was a level 5 group of characters with better stats and equipment, and ... man, we struggled! Had we played the ready characters we would have been dead twice over. This group is supposed to manage all (or most) of the encounters in a limited time, without opportunity to rest for spells and without necessarily owning any cold iron weapons. One can argue that it's possible to talk the carnival owner into helping, but who wants a higher-level NPC upstaging the group anyway? Also, the nymph who blinds people in the peepshow shouldn't really be able to use the blinding beauty ability while glamered by the illusion set up around the entire carnival, should she? In the end, the GM ended up handing us free loot (a wand of CLW, a scroll of Remove Blindness/Deafness) and cutting short a few villain abilities and encounters, only in order to have us survive at all. I think I would have enjoyed playing this as a sort of "Game of Thrones"-ish campaign starter, where the first group dies horribly and then you make a second group who are actually the heroes. That could be very cool.
Can you spend a standard action in one round and then another in the second round to complete a full round of casting? Let's say the character moves, then starts casting Summon Monster by spending a standard action. The round passes as the other people do their stuff, and on the character's next initiative, she completes casting by spending a standard action (thus the monster appears), then moves again. Like this?
But casters are also squishy.
I roll behind a screen, but only because I keep my notes behind a screen already, so it's sort of there. But I tend to roll huge amounts of damage in the open, or save-or-die spell hits, or rolls for randomness (like which direction your sword flies when you're disarmed or if all the characters are the same distance away and the enemy will attack one of them randomly).
I actually WAS this person in another d20 system campaign. I was a Dex animal in a game where not much armour existed at all, and the GM eventually approached me asking me to make life easier for him. We then made a deal: the character did the equivalent of "finding Jesus" after a huge battle where he was mortally wounded, allowing me to retrain the character over time without it going against the character, swapping some Dex for some Str without gimping the character too much. His AC went down by 2 I think, and that evened things a lot in the party, and he became better at hitting things with swords. IC we also explained the Dex/Str swap with him having been so injured that he started to limp, thus making him less agile. (I know, the rules don't cover this kind of thing, but in our groups we like to have drama play a bigger part than the rules anyway.) So there can be agreement about changing the character. But overall I think I prefer the solution where enemies can actually think tactically enough to not keep attacking the tank when they realize he's gonna make Sloppy Joe's out of them. Rather withdraw and attack again from behind or whatever. I realize the campaign path is already set, so don't bother changing the enemies too much, just optimize their tactics.
I've seen that one and it's unclear to me: at what point during the round do you shoot then? 1.) Either before or after the horse moves, or 2.) anywhen in the round while the horse is moving? What I want to know is; do you make an attack as you would on your feet - with the standard action on either "side" of the move action - or as you would a shot on the run, with the attack being made somewhere "during" the move action?
If your party has a monk: have the monk grapple the feared character and force the potion into him. We've done that successfully in our games.
To avoid the hassle of killing the other PCs too easily with your tailored kill-the-AC-beasts encounters, get monsters or enemies that are out to get one or more of them specifically. Someone they killed has a brother, a mother, or a cousin who is really powerful and can have "unpleasantnesses" arranged.
I think CdG should not have a limit on weapon used, but rather a range limit. You can't be sure the enemy is dead until you've stood close enough to check. If you're standing over someone and firing a crossbow bolt in their face, they're pretty dead.
I agree that it should be raised to level 3 for Paladins. It's a good spell.
It's very similar to Dirty Trick, where they must spend actions to remove the condition or keep suffering from it. This is exactly my point: if Dirty Trick needs a feat to be effective and net does this nearly for free, how come EVERYONE isn't dropping Improved anything to just chuck nets around? I think that if a cheap non-magical item can be likened to a feat, then the feat isn't really good enough or the item is too good.
The bard actually has a STR score of 16, so he can carry quite a lot. But tracking encumbrance might be an idea. BUT: Can you attack the net as a standard action? I thought you needed a full-round action for that? (Either a STR check to break it or Escape Artist to untangle.) Just hitting the net isn't described in the entry for it.
So I GM a campaign and I have a bard in the party who is always using a net. He isn't proficient with it, but he still only needs to hit the touch AC of his enemies, so it's pretty effective. My grief with this, though, is that I think it's getting TOO effective. Every single encounter I set up, he's entangling enemies left and right and they have to spend a full round getting rid of the nets. And yes, he has SEVERAL nets since I don't feel comfortable restricting the number of nets he can buy (the campaign is set in a huge trade city). Am I being too paranoid, or is this a flaw in the rules?
Thanks. I WAS looking for just such a feat, since there is a feat reducing limitations/penalties for melee attacks from horse back. But if there is none, I might just create one.
For shot on the run there is a feat, and for ride-by attack (melee) there is a feat, but what about ride-by shooting? Is there a feat for that?
Sorry about the blank post. I've not seen anything about visibility, but I always assumed that the cleric needed to speak the name of the god.
I love the Leadership feat because it creates so many opportunities for role-playing. And to those people here saying "don't hate the player, hate the game"? I say the game is NOT boiled down to what the rules say but what playing style the group as a whole think is okay. As a GM I would assume that my players aren't morons and will treat their cohort well. If they then stuffed the cohort in a room and told it "make magic items for us" I would RP the cohort as being a bit... disappointed at the very least (pissed off at the worst). When the cohort gets sick of being treated like a factory, maybe he leaves? Maybe he decides to stop being a cohort and go off on his own adventures? This is perfectly viable and is not abuse of GM power - it's simply playing NPCs as non.player CHARACTERS with personalities. If, however, your group plays hack'n'slash and don't really care about RP, feel free to just ban the feat after having a talk with your group. Because in a game with virtually no RP focus, this feat is the equivalent of several other feats, as you say.
I agree that not using anything evil is just mean towards the pally player. Also the group is mostly good-aligned (one CN character) so they are likely to seek out evil stuff they can thwart. I did like the idea of a TN big bad summoning evil creatures or an evil big bad summoning neutral creatures, or using guard animals/neutral henchmen. Also, an orc horde could do the trick. ;) 20 Orcs means 20 attack rolls a round. One of them is bound to hit something. I also like the hostage thing.
@Sarcon: It's a melee pally. Though she can shoot a bow it's generally not how she rolls.
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