Plausible Pseudonym's page

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Sir Thugsalot wrote:

Worst class: CRB Ranger (TWF).

Discuss.

Not so much so. Combat Style means they don't need to have high Dex to take the chain. That lets them increase their Str for more attack and damage.

They died like mice in PFS. (I forgot 'em on my list of most-likely-to-die; I'd put 'em second, after barbarians.)

Statistics: Army paratroopers die at higher rates than personnel clerks.

Sir Thugsalot: Personnel clerks are more effective at combat!

Can Paladins use hair dye or makeup?

It's never too early to start planning for the future.

Other than meaningful Solarion choices, high level envoy abilities, and a drastic change in the economy, especially for the cost of expendable items, what do people want to see in Starfinder 2.0?

How does this rod work? If I am 5th level and use the rod to cast Sleet Storm would I essentially be spending two spell slots (both 3rd level spells, 1 for Sleet Storm and another one for the Rime effect)?

Note that Sleet Storm doesn't actually cause any cold damage, and therefore can't be modified by Rime Spell. It would work with Ice Storm.

Ok I did find something. On page 206.

Starfinder Core Rulebook page 206 wrote:

"BACKUP GENERATOR: You can connect charged electric items such as batteries to this miniature generator to recharge them. The electricity comes from the kinetic energy of your movement, which generates 1 charge every 10 minutes of movement. No more than one item can be plugged in at a time, and the generator doesn’t produce charges when you’re resting or otherwise stationary."

Someone do the math and figure out how laughably little power this is and how expensive this makes the average US electric bill in Starfinder credits.

I have consulted the spirits, and accordingly am setting the over/under on the publication of an Envoy Unchained at 11:59pm, November 17th, 2020. Place your bets!

So what this something about torture related mystic ability associated with Zon-Kuthon and Devourer also being associated with Iomedae?

Like, is that a typo, or is Paizo seriously going with "LG and Torture goes together!"? :D

Iomedae granted power to that LN inquisitor in Kenabres who tortured people looking for demonic infiltrators.

The Redemption Engine featured rogue LG angels who stole evil souls and forcefully turned them into angels. The various empyreal lords maintained plausible deniability, neither condemning nor assisting.

Inflicting pain and spiritual kidnap is apparently ok for LG as long as it's in the service of good or fighting the really bad evils.

Singing kumbaya or being a peacenik hippie is more a NG or CG thing, tbh, and in a world of objective morality you can push the limits to find out where they are. There's no point in arguing about whether you think something should be evil or good, it just is. If you can torture potential demons with a certain error rate and still not slip to evil, you don't have to worry about morality, only practicality and usefulness.

I applaud Iomedae for her embrace of all eggs in the war for better omelets.

MageHunter wrote:

I actually really like the new direction with Half-Orcs. They have formed their own true race now. Like the Chelaxians formed by Ulfen & Azlanti crossbreeding.

I guess then the Half-Orcs might just need a new more appropriate name then.

They could just drop the hyphen as Halflings did and become Halforcs.

Note that nobody seems to remember what Lings were. ;)

It's a corruption of Lengs, as in Denizens of Leng.

At 4th level, the phantom blade can use her phantom weapon to aid her in casting spells with thought components. She can center herself as a swift action. At 12th level, the spiritualist can center herself as a free action.

It helps with this.

Thought Components: Thought components represent mental constructs necessary for the spell’s function, such as picturing a wolf in vivid detail—down to the saliva dripping from its jaws—in order to cast beast shape to transform into a wolf. Thought components are so mentally demanding that they make interruptions and distractions extremely challenging. The DC for any concentration check for a spell with a thought component increases by 10. A psychic spellcaster casting a spell with a thought component can take a move action before beginning to cast the spell to center herself; she can then use the normal DC instead of the increased DC.

Instead of requiring a move action to remove the concentration penalty, a 4th level phantom blade can use a swift action. At 12th level they can use a free action, essentially eliminating the penalty for thought components. This is a big advantage they have over the Mindblade Magus, although outside PFS a cheap Centering Jewel can help, especially if you can craft the effect onto your +Int headband.

I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:

Rules Police wrote:

Read the feat. Unarmed Strike, Rays, and Grappling are special things that you can take Weapon Focus for.

So as a rule, you indeed can't take Weapon Focus in combat maneuvers, but grappling is an exception? Kinda weird.

Where is the general rule that you cannot take weapon focus in combat manoeuvres? It is not an exhaustive list, and the presence of grapple means it would be kind of hard to argue against that you can actually take e.g. weapon focus:trip without an explicit rule saying you can't

Read the feat, citizen. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Choose one type of weapon. You can also choose unarmed strike or grapple (or ray, if you are a spellcaster) as your weapon for the purposes of this feat.

You can take WF for any weapon. This includes natural weapons, which, as the name indicates, are weapons.

You can take WF grapple. You cannot take trip, or bull rush, or dirty trick, or any other maneuver.

You can also take WF ray. You cannot take it for ranged touch attacks that are not rays.

You can also take it for unarmed strikes.

You cannot take it for anything else not listed in the quote above.

Someone should probably start a potential errata thread to post things you think are errors and assist the staff to compile them for potential FAQ clarifications or eventual errata.

It's in Occult Adventures.

Many of these alternate class rewards add only 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, or 1/6 to a roll (rather than 1) each time the reward is selected, or add 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, or 1/6 to a class ability (such as adding to a mesmerist’s number of mesmerist tricks per day or the total number of points in a psychic’s phrenic pool). When applying such a benefit to a die roll or class ability, always round down (to a minimum of 0). You may thus need to select such an option several times before the benefit takes effect. If an alternate favored class option modifies a class feature or ability, it can’t be taken before the character has that class feature or ability. For example, if a class gains a class feature at 6th level, a character couldn’t take a racial favored class option that applies to that class feature until 6th level, even if the benefit from that option wouldn’t be high enough to add a bonus until a later level.

Murdock Mudeater wrote:

Dr Styx wrote:

Would Ectoplasmic Spell Feat added to the Summon Monster Spell not work?

Effects of Metamagic Feats on a Spell wrote:

Metamagic feats cannot be used with all spells. See the specific feat descriptions for the spells that a particular feat can't modify.

The Feat says nothing about not working with this spell.

I think, yes, you could apply the feat, but I'm not sure what it would do. The spell just summons a specific monster. This metamagic feat doesn't affect the damage that the specific monster deals, nor does it affect any other, normal aspects of the spell.

The Feat turns your spell effect ethereal...

The Summoned Monster is the effect, and now would be ethereal...
The ethereal Monster would do ethereal damage...

What aspects of a spell do you think the Feat changes?

The Feat does not change one part of the spell, it changes the whole thing.

The feat does not "turn your spell ethereal."

Benefit: An ectoplasmic spell has full effect against incorporeal or ethereal creatures.

So it's target or effect works on ethereal creatures.

Effect one summoned creature

Congratulations, Ectoplasmic Spell lets you successfully summon an incorporeal or ethereal creature, I guess. If one is on your list of allowed creatures...in which case you could do it anyway.

I'm looking forward to the really dumb and inappropriate character ideas for this one, people will have to be a little more creative than usual.

I'm thinking a half Ulfen, half Qadiran CE Vigilante (Brute) who worships Kostchtchie and has infiltrated the Ulfen Guard nominally on behalf of his Qadiran masters, but really because he hates the idea of a female ruler and wants to assassinate Eutropia if she ever gains the throne. Edgy!

If you follow the Devourer from Starfinder you can have a head like a hole, black as your soul.

Murderous Command + Deja Vu = 3-round-long Murderous Command (Deja Vu has no save).

Deja Vu doesn't work like that.

Whatever full-round, standard, or move actions the creature takes on its first turn after you cast this spell, it must repeat on the turn after that.

After being hit by the spell you act freely for one round, then repeat that on the second round. With appropriate timing (surprise, ally coordination or quicken) you can get a two round Muderous Command, but that's a lot of trouble, Extend Spell is easier.

H.P. Makelovecraft wrote:

After reading this PDF all I have to say is my favorite weapon is the Grindblade

I have no idea what that is but I love it already.

It works best wielded by the Bumpgauntlet.

Mighty Strike wrote:

Whenever the heritor knight makes a melee attack as a standard action, she can apply the effects of Improved Vital Strike to that attack. If she has Greater Vital Strike, she can apply that feat’s effects instead.

Are you making a melee attack with the second attack in cleave?

Yes
Did it come as the result of a standard action?
Yes

You can apply the effects of improved vital strike to that attack.

You are inventing "as a result of" a standard action. It has to be made "AS a standard action." Bonus cleave attacks are not made AS standard actions, they are extra attacks that don't use an action.

It's a problem with level inflation on the NPC Codex and the adventure paths. In theory, for a fantasy world to make sense, 95% to 98% of people should be BELOW level 5. Just normal regular people.

Have you seen how much xp you need to reach level five? You need to go through some very difficult problems to reach that level. It is basically impossible to reach that level without killing a lot of things.

Nah, you have to "defeat" not kill an opponent, and APs always give you full xp for talking or sometimes even stealthing or decoying your way past challenges. Every time I got drunk at a party in college, had three belligerent guys threaten to beat me up, and then defused the situation with a joke (something that happened more than once) I would have earned xp for defeating them in combat in that encounter if life worked via Pathfinder rules. There are also story awards for accomplishing plot points, an Expert merchant would get xp for hitting certain profit thresholds.

I suspect the various religions preach about it, but some will lie. Unless you have really high Knowledge skills backed up with Plane Shift to go do some confirming field research, I don't know that you can approach objective knowledge about your fate. Evil people might believe they will be rewarded with power over others.

zergtitan wrote:

Um he Barnes & Noble in my area already has the book on the shelves! I am not kidding, I am reading the hard copy right now! Still going to wait for my copy to ship, but I'm going to spend some time reading this one here for now.

Uh then that's breaking the street date which is hella illegal (for them, not you). I would contact Paizo about that.

Breaking a contract isn't "illegal" (there's no law forbidding you to break a contract, and you can't be fined or punished for it), it's just a breach of contract, for which there may be remedies you can get in court.

I mean, it might be a better world if poorly trained or misinformed clerks at B&N could face a year in prison or a $5,000 fine for breaking a street date, but I personally don't think so.

Etheric Shard + toppling magic missile

You can make Etheric Shards itself toppling, it has the force descriptor. Now add Fear. "Stop knocking yourself down!"

Fear + Etheric Shards along the path they have to run through.

there's always time to craft during a campaign

Your world always sounds like such an interesting place.

I think the item was more meant to be used with the user stuffing his face with hors d'oeuvres in the corner, then winking at someone in the crowd to follow him/her *a few moments later* :)

It could summon a custom succubus to do the deed right there and then with perfect imitation of anyone else and it would still be hilariously overpriced at 3,500 gp. I guess this is what happens when you ban or suppress the Calistrian prostitute market and you get weird black market work arounds like this.

Can the Energy Scientist create sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads?

LOL x 1000 at this item:

These magical baubles were originally created to aid Chelish nobles in slipping away to engage in trysts with fellow partygoers, but the Silver Ravens have seized upon them as an excellent way to baffle

foes in public areas without resorting to combat.

It's a single use item that costs 3,500 gp!

Him: "Let's make an arrangement to meet tomorrow afternoon at a discrete, luxurious inn I know, we can lie to our spouses about where we are."

Her: "Or, we could burn 7,000 gp to create an illusion of the two of us standing in this corner talking for ten minutes, which will only hold up if no one actually comes over and talks to us. Then we use 30 seconds of invisibility to sneak off and have a quickie in a broom closet before coming back and explaining why our illusions suddenly vanished in a room full of people."

Him: "Genius!"

Mindlink obviously inspired by this famous line: "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

Summoned creatures cease to exist. They can't move out of the spell or continue on to the other side. They reappear once the the antimagic field is gone.

Assuming it doesn't just end immediately, if anything the fireball spell would do the same. It stops existing as soon as it hits the field. Once the field is gone, the fireball resumes traveling to its original target point.

If summoned creatures disappear and can't keep moving, so does the fireball.

If a summoned creature's duration keeps running while in an AMF then the same should be true for a Fireball. It's instantaneous, so it fizzles in the AMF.

It's an instantaneous spell, its suppressed and cannot move through the AMF, so its duration expires and it ends

It would be nice to see spells/extracts that repair(and even revive) constructs.

The spells already exist.

Greater Make Whole - Doesn't work on golems, but those usually have a spell that heals them anyway.

Memory of Function - This one should actually work on a golem, since it should lose its immunity to magic once it's destroyed.

Spell Turning works. As do Rod of Absorption and that Ioun Stone that does the same thing.

For some weapons there will be probably nonlethal ammo clips

Magazines

Plausible Pseudonym wrote:

I have a minor stroke every time I see them believe there's a distinction between physically and mentally seeing something.

Really? I'd say a hallucination is something you see mentally but not physically.

Everything you think you see is a mental hallucination generated from neurological input, whether its impulses via your optic nerve as a result of photons hitting your retina, or weird neurochemical interactions caused by a drug or organic brain disorder. Your brain is constantly editing out things your eyes can see (your nose) or inventing things they don't (the blindspot from the optic nerve), and can predictably create false visual illusions that misinterpret what is happening for certain nonstandard geometric shapes. Depth perception and color (is that dress white and gold, or blue and black?) are purely artificial artifacts of the brain doing some aftermarket processing of received signals. Then there are dreams, where you see made up internally generated images rather than the backs of your eyelids.

Both a phantasm and a divination are necessarily inputting something new into this fake mental picture. They aren't doing different things. You can say one trumps the other via fiat, but you can't say one is doing something substantively different that trumps the mechanism of the other.

So much for neurology and metaphysics. From a balance perspective this is bad because there should be room for phantasms, which have plenty of limitations already (always require an upfront save, SR: yes, mind affecting and subject to immunity, usually single target) to give high level illusionists a useful tool against high level creatures that have True Seeing.

This ruling also just doesn't work with lots of phantasms. True Seeing doesn't let you hear or smell what's really there, which becomes a problem for multisense phantasms. There are also phantasms that do a lot more than just give you an image. If you're sleeping, have True Seeing, and get hit with a Nightmare, does the blackness of your closed eyes overpower the image of the nightmare? Does it overpower your normal dreams? Apparently not. And Mindscapes make this a particular cluster with all kinds of issues and weird/undesirable interactions.

The real problem is that Phantasmal Killer is a badly balanced legacy spell that shouldn't be a SoD at that level (compare to all others that switched to 10 points of damage per CL or like Psychic Crush give save bonuses and don't straight out kill) and the designers wanted to pare it back. The problem is Phantasmal Killer, not all phantasms.

I dunno, the one that says there are perceptible manifestations to all spells--even ones with still and/or silent metamagic applied--making it utterly impossible to cast on the sly unless you are a psychic is pretty wretched.

I think you meant "even if you are a psychic."

I think both the spell art and especially the text of the Spellcraft skill, which requires that you see the spell being cast, not components like somatic waving around, and certainly never hearing verbal components, as sufficient evidence that it should work this way. Otherwise spellcraft by its own langauge could never identify a V only spell, there'd be nothing physical to see.

This FAQ strongly infers that you can discern the presence and effects of an illusion.

There is not FAQ I hate more than that one. I have a minor stroke every time I see them believe there's a distinction between physically and mentally seeing something.

Plausible Pseudonym wrote:

Enemies know when they make saves, not when they fail.

Only if they don't know that you are casting the spell on them. If you are reading surface thoughts, you won't get any useful information unless you are somehow "eavesdropping" on a verbal conversation or the situation is somehow directing the enemy to think the relevant thoughts.

If you are being interrogated, an intelligent enemy would presume that interrogation involves mind reading and act accordingly (which is what I was referring to when I said that they "know they failed the save" -- I should have said they will know that mind reading magic is being employed. -- and if the interrogation is ongoing and they "don't know" they have succeeded, they can presume via deduction that they have failed.

Describe the educational system providing this anti-interrogation training and magical awareness (complete with ranks in Knowledge: Arcana, one hopes) to the average NPC of all races in your campaign. Having read a Bestiary I'm not sure how relevant "intelligent enemy" is as a matter of general applicability

That picture of Historia-7 confirms that you definitely can have an Android made to resemble a Lashunta.

Those look like add-on supports for the data screen bolted on her forehead (have we learned nothing from the original Google Glass??), rather than integral antennae.

I like the Vilderavn. It's a nasty melee bruiser (unusual for a fey) with some rare immunities and some pretty good hex and SLA support, plus flyby attack bleed effect that's hard to stop if you want it to play skirmisher role. At the same time, other than SR it doesn't have practical defenses against elemental attacks and no fast healing or regeneration means you can drive it off or kill it if you use the right tactics.

And Baphomet is absolutely a third rate demon lord. Now if it was Abraxas or Pazuzu, then we may be having a conversation.

While not the most powerful, not only is Baphomet the most intelligent demon lord every statted up (Int 37), I'm pretty sure he's the most intelligent demigod ever published. He edges out the top Archdevils (Baalzebul and Mephistopheles), Great Old One (Tawil at’Umr), and Horseman (Charon), who are all Int 35, as is Nocticula.

The Drakainia is cute in a kind of maternal way. I just want to hug her.

Lovelorn

Psh. Psh, I say. XD ...But okay, we DO have links! (They don't always go up for products that haven't been released...)

As for Yog-Sothoth, neither. He's an Outer God, not a Great Old One. 8D

I'll put you down for "greatest."

Yog Sothoth isn't a great old one, he is an outer god. If I'm not mistaken.

Yog Sothoth: Great Old One, or Greatest Old One?

Fardragon wrote:

The NPC wrote:

IonutRO wrote:

Lashunta sexual dimorphism from Pathfinder got retconned into a metamorphic subspecies system. Damaya get what used to be female stats in Pathfinder.

Why?

So the GM didn't have to say to players: "if you want to play this subrace you must choose that gender".

Also, in RP terms, major life decisions are more interesting than genetic inevitability.

It's only genetic inevitability that makes you think that and makes me disagree.

Changelings work fine as Seducer archetype witches.

The idea that certain deities have been demoted or become less important in an overall sense between is sadly very parochial. The Pact Worlds are one system out of perhaps 100 billion (if a galaxy the same size as the Milky Way) systems out of perhaps 100+ billion galaxies. In Starfinder some decent proportion of those have intelligent life.

The only thing that ever made Golarion interesting in a cosmological sense was that Rovagug was imprisoned there. The deeds of its inhabitants, the gods who have worshippers there, and the proportions of worshippers simply don't matter in a cosmological sense. There may be more gods in the multiverse than there are sentient creatures in the Pact Worlds.

And as the story of Aroden told us, most gods probably don't matter at all in the end. Iomedae is a brand new flash in the pan known to at most a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of mortals. The only gods who seem to definitely matter universally across all the epochs of existence are Pharasma as the ultimate referee of everything, eventually Groetus as the eventual destroyer of it all, and maybe Asmodeus as the only single entity who has grabbed authority over all an alignment's souls not otherwise pledged to a specific god and who seems to have been playing at the highest levels since very early in the multiverse's existence. At least 20 other gods have more followers than he does in the Pact Worlds? Who cares, you can be assured he's doing just fine across the rest of existence, and even in the Pact Worlds he's picking up most of the LE souls who don't follow a god.

These guys are like immortal dictators of the nations on the UN security council. Most gods in the Pathfinder/Starfinder universe are like the tribal chief of 500 people in the Amazon who don't have contact with the outside world.

Who's up, who's down? Who cares. Vote Team Groetus or Team Four Horsemen, they're the only ones with a viable and defensible long-term philosophy of existence.

Angel's Trumpet is also pretty decent. It can outright shut down some nasty mind affecting spells and effects. The short-medium term downsides are pretty heavy, but as a silver bullet versus mind control it is amazing. The other bonuses are gravy (who doesn't love +2 to initiative and some skill bonuses on top of soft countering all compulsion and fear effects). Just remember to keep some lesser restoration potions around to remove the wisdom damage.

Angel's Trumpet sounds awful, there are plenty of lesser fear and compulsion effects that are less bad than being dazed!

Scenario 1:

GM: "You fail your save against the Aura of Doom spell, you are Shaken until you can leave leave the radius."

Smug PC: "Not so fast, I'm on Angel's Trumpet, so I'm not shaken."

GM: "Oops, I missed that. Congrats, you're dazed until he moves away from you or the 10 minutes/level duration runs out. Good luck."

Scenario 2:

GM: "You fail your save against Fumbletongue."

Confused Barbarian PC: "What does that do?"

GM: "Well normally it would make it hard for you to talk or say command words, but since you're on Angel's Trumpet to protect against a Dominate Person, you stand dazed for 5 rounds. Good luck."

An image has to look like the caster and update based on his current appearance because otherwise once you hit and injured the caster his images would look unharmed and you could ignore them. So blur (and a later invisibility) works with the images.

And despite what the rules say, figments and glamours also have some mental component even if the aren't mind-affecting per se. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to see them as transparent when you disbelieve them while others still see the illusion. Something other than photon and sound wave manipulation (and heat that mysteriously doesn't heat anything up or inflict burns) is going on.