PookaWitch's page

@Kryzbn That does sound like a good idea! Possibly leaving the unhallowed, evil deity statue for a time to find another who can take care of it to make better art. ^_^

Thank you so much for your input, both of you.

@David, that's the main thing we've been trying to figure out if it works with the code or not.

@kryzbn it's a group of pretty much all warrior types and rogues, no stone shape for us. (ETA: But that is an awesome idea! I wish we could do that.)

I'm hoping that I can get some input on a topic that is baffling both myself and my DM.

I'm playing a paladin of Shelyn who is helping to eradicate an evil temple. The problem we're facing is that there are evil works of art of evil deities. So far for the valuable unholy symbols she has been going by the part of the code that says you may destroy art if more art arises from it by having the symbols melted down to be used by an artist.

But they encountered a large statue to a very evil deity in an evil temple. We're both stumped on what she should do she's been praying for advice and we're hoping for some insight.

Can paladins of Sheylyn destroy evil art when it's not to be used for more art? There is another paladin in the group she's been talking this over with and the topic has come up that if they leave the statue it may be a source of more inspiration for other evil worshippers. It's too large to carry out all of the stone to use for other artists to make different statues. It also does have a large emerald she's thinking could be used, but that does nothing about the statue itself.

I babbled on, but we've hit a philosophical problem. Could I please get some input that may help?

Thanks for the help. ^_^ This still has us discussing the concept offline, but going forth trying to use the RAI as best as we can for now - which could change in the future if something ever clarifies it more.

I could see the spell itself being cold so the energy/magic of it doesn't quite affect them. It's a bit less 'physical' and more on the 'metaphysical/magical' side of explanation.

Just a note again, that this wasn't an argument with my GM (who is my wonderful husband. ^_^ ) more of something that we looked at and went 'uh... wha... wait a minute' and one of us saw it one way but the other way did make sense too, and vise versa. So we were left confused and he made a temporary ruling that it wouldn't work until we were able to find out for sure what the answer was.

So unless somehow there's something found/pointed-out that really clarifies it, I'm thinking that we're going to keep it as cold immunity includes cold spell effects (unless the damage somehow gets through and it's attached to taking damage), giving the reason as the magic of the spell itself is shrugged off... kind of like spell resistance just fizzles it.

So, now off to prepare my spells to face frost giants and white dragons with a better idea of what to choose.

In a group that is focused more on the character and roleplaying then rules tweaks, playing a paladin can be a very rich experience.

Usually it's just my husband and myself doing our own games, and we love, love, love RPing paladins. We're more on the RP/lax side of things, but still enforce that a paladin is being lawful and good. Sometimes this takes a moment of thought before doing something (ie. trying to rescue somebody who was taken by the law... but in a corrupt, tyrannical town where they just abused their power and made up some false claim to torture the man)... my paladin had to do that brief self-affirmation before breaking in the door to the guard station to rescue this person. She stopped to think that this would actually be breaking the law, a false law that was set up more so that bullies could make up whatever rules they wanted to terrorize the people. She thought of how this innocent and good man would be tortured to death if she didn't intervene, and that goodness, and doing what was right trumped trying to play within a corrupt and evil law. So she broke the door down and rescued the man, even if it was literally breaking the law, but still a very good action, and one that in a non-evil town wouldn't have been necessary anyhow.

We very rarely have paladins break their codes, and there are some traps that are frustrating.

The topic of 'what is good' and 'what makes a good action' are frequently things that we wind up philosophizing in and out of character. (We have a Dragonstar/plane-hopping/dimension-skipping RPG going where the captain of the ship is a cowboy, marshal paladin.) The paladin leader of the ship (more like huge adventuring company) has things like 'philosophy club' where people get together to discuss these things.

We finally came to an epiphany during one hard choice in a game that included all good characters to what we believed made an action 'good' (at least for our games and philosophies)

Basically it came down to a game where the characters were killing evil, evil giants who were kidnapping people, eating people from the nearby town who they kept in prisons for their chopping blocks, etc. It wasn't just a group of adult giants though, they were a whole tribe, with families, children.. and a nursery.

So with the evil, horrible, baby eating adult giants killed, the characters stood around not sure what to do about the giant children. Killing them felt, well, rather evil. They were innocents. But would letting them live on with nobody to take care of them and letting them slowly die be better then a merciful death? What if they were left and grew up to start another tribe of baby eating giants, with their leanings to become evil?

Would it be a good action for the good characters to kill the evil infants of the evil child eating giants so that you stopped the menace from occuring again? Would it be a good act to leave them alone? Would they need to find a way to take care of the orphaned giant infants? The characters weren't set up for the option to take them in, and who knows what the locals would do to the children of the monsters who killed their loved ones.

What we finally came to, for our conclusion, is that some varying characters may argue that another one wasn't being 'good' for not taking on their side of what should be done... but that all of the options were basically still in the way of goodness. The BIG difference between if it was an evil action or not was that the characters themselves were actually bothered by this, trying to think of a solution, and it wasn't just a callous/cold killing without thought, empathy or care for the situation.

We decided that what made their final decision good was that they were actually troubled over it, fretting over what the 'good' way to do things was for quite a bit of time (both in game time and out of game time), and actually tried to make the best out of the situation for the infants. (They had decided to kill the infants in a mercy killing rather then let them slowly die, they didn't have the means to take care of them and handing them over to the locals would mean death anyhow.)

It was decided with our roleplays that a big part of goodness (and good intent) is not doing things to be selfish, or to be cruel, but actually trying to do what is right, for that time, and situation, with the knowledge that you have at hand. If it was the wrong decision, but you did spend time fretting over it, and really trying to do what was best and right, it's usually going to be a good action.

Mind you this is just more on the side of 'good' actions, but not 'lawful' actions which is another pitfall for the paladin.

That totally clears it up! Thank you so much. ^_^

So now I know that it's not worth the extra few CL (for targeting more) if they're going to make them immune to it anyhow. lol

So this would mean the spell Frostfell (Transmutation (cold)) that has the effect of:
'Living creatures caught within the area when the spell is cast instantly turn to ice (as per the flesh to ice spell). (note that the 'flesh to ice' spell is just transmutation, no cold descriptor.)

If a creature successfully saves, frostfell deals 1d6 points of frostburn damage per caster level (maximum 20d6).'

So a tribe of frost giants who had Frostfell cast on their area would be immune to the flesh to ice part of it due to the spell being cold (even if the spell it's mimicking isn't) but since they automatically skip that part they would go to the next effect and would take half of the frostburn damage.

I think I see how this works now. Thank you again!

(edits) And then Fenny's reply (and some from earlier) still makes it confusing! Gah! By the one side they should be immune to the entire spell (this example, boreal wind) since it's cold.. so somehow the wind pushing over wouldn't effect them since it's a cold spell. O.o

Boreal Wind:
All creatures caught in the area take 1d4 points of cold damage per caster level (maximum 15d4).
A successful Fortitude saving throw negates the gust's effects.
Those that fail the save are pushed away from the caster a distance of 3 feet per caster level.

It's evocation (cold)... so this makes it a cold spell, and by the RAW, somebody without something like unearthly cold couldn't push a cold creature with the spell. @.@
Something just doesn't seem right here.

It's the non-damaging part that is confusing us though. For the exact example using snowcasting to turn suffocation, mass into a cold type spell. Frost giants are immune to cold, and it says under immunity that it would grant immunity to all spells of that type, and it's now a cold type spell. It does no damage, so there is nothing to get half past the immunity, but according to the RAW they would be immune to the spell due to it now being a cold spell, and thus the spell effects of suffocating and dying. It just seemed very odd to me to have that happen, since they may be immune to cold, but not having the air pulled out of their lungs and not being able to breathe.

But it does say that immunity includes all spells with that type, so it looks as if with the RAW that the spell just wouldn't work on them at all in the first place since 'unearthly cold' only affects cold damage. O.o

So would unearthly cold be RAI that if used with a non-damaging cold type spell (only cold type due to a feat that turns any spell into a cold type, even non-damaging ones) that those immune to cold wouldn't be immune to the spell or effects? Or is that just normal rules that even without unearthly cold that a frost giant could still be affected by a cold typed suffocation spell since the effect isn't cold, even if it does no damage?

(I'm trying to figure this out before they attack a frost giant tribe to fight a white dragon today. ^^; I was thinking of casting Frostfell on the area to turn as many baddies into ice as possible to make it easier to get to the dragon.)

But what about cold spell effects? An Unearthly Cold, say Boreal Wind spell that does cold damage, and pushes whoever is caught in it. Unearthly Cold just says that half the damage is normal... so would a cold immune creature just take half cold damage and still shrug off the other, non-damaging, effects because it is a cold spell?

Even without unearthly cold, would say, a cold immune creature hit by a cold type spell that does cold damage, and has a secondary effect to push the creature (due to it being a very strong cold wind) just be able to ignore all aspects of the spell, cold damage and non-damaging, because the spell has a cold descriptor?

I'm facing a rules problem/question with the Winter Witch prestige class.

The WW ability.
Unearthly Cold (Su): At 8th level, a winter witch’s spells,
spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities that deal cold
damage become horrendously cold. Half the cold damage
caused by these effects comes from an otherworldly
power and is not subject to being reduced by resistance or
immunity to cold-based attacks.

The monster having Cold Immunity

Immunity (Ex or Su)
A creature with immunities takes no damage from listed sources. Immunities can also apply to afflictions, conditions, spells (based on school, level, or save type), and other effects. A creature that is immune does not suffer from these effects, or any secondary effects that are triggered due to an immune effect.

Format: Immune acid, fire, paralysis; Location: Defensive Abilities.

or

Energy Immunity and Vulnerability
A creature with energy immunity never takes damage from that energy type. Vulnerability means the creature takes half again as much (+50%) damage as normal from that energy type, regardless of whether a saving throw is allowed or if the save is a success or failure.

So the question we're debating here, is that I have a winter witch character with snowcasting from Frostburn. She tried to make a spell that does no damage, just effects (suffocation) on frost giants as a cold spell. The DM ruled that because immunity says that they are immune to all spells with the cold descriptor, they would be immune to any spell that she made 'cold', even if it did no damage. (snowcasting basically just gives any spell the cold descriptor, which gives her a CL bonus due to her prestige class) My side of the debate is that they are just immune to cold DAMAGE, not side effects from cold spells, and unearthly cold should probably get past that for effects anyhow. (ie. boreal wind is a stronger, cold gust of wind. Even without Unearthly Cold they would just be immune to the cold damage it caused, but not immune to the wind pushing effects.)

Also, technically, by that logic Unearthly Cold would be a total waste since any spell with the cold descriptor they would be totally immune to anyhow and it wouldn't even do damage in the first place, so half of the damage not being cold would be a moot point.

This isn't a heated, angry debate, just one where we're both confused and don't really know what the answer is. It happened a couple of days ago in our game and we need to figure this out before we start again. His ruling for that day was that he let me re-choose my action saying how the giants just would laugh off the mass suffocation spell since it now had a cold descriptor (so I chose to cast it normally instead).

(edited out)

I had tried to show the picture I drew of the character, but apparently I can't get images to work on here. Ah well.

That's great. ^_^ Thank you for the advice and help.

I do like the idea of trading out the first hex for the familiar, especially because with spon. casting there would be less risk with losing the familiar (ie. you wouldn't lose your spells).

I think I'll go ahead with it.

Hi, I've been avidly reading and looking over these forums for many years now, but finally am posting a question that hopefully I can get some help with.

Basically, the bit of a back-story, is that my home campaign has been the same setting/worlds/cross-overs for over 20 years now. We love Pathfinder and have been translating older characters into it for years now.

It's mostly just my husband and myself, but we GM back and forth, so a house rule is that we both need to agree on any adjustments/changes. We have a base rule of 'Character First' meaning that character concept/history/fun should come before rules... so we're pretty easy going about what is played and how characters are created.

So I'm currently wanting to translate a character I've had for over a decade. Her class was the Green Ronin Witch, and compared to the PF witch it falls fairly short. Normally I would just directly translate her over, but the GR witch has spontaneous casting (with a familiar, bonus feats, etc... nearly like a wizard) but had spontaneous casting (with the list of spells known, like a sorcerer/oracle)... with a spell list that was pretty comparable to the PF witch spell list.

My husband said that I should just use the PF witch base abilities (hexes/familiar) but give her the spontaneous casting and spells known from the GR witch.
My first instinct is that I thought that may be too powerful, but I wasn't sure.

I've been digging around for hours now trying to find if anybody had figured out a decent translation for say, using a wizard base with sorcerer spontaneous casting for a guide for home-brewing this... but came up short while looking.

So I rambled on, but basically I'm looking to see if the GR witch spontaneous casting used with the PF witch base (same saves/BAB/HD/skills/etc) would be too powerful, or balance out around the same.

If not, what would be a good trade in? Taking out some of the hexes? Maybe using a preparing a small list of 'spells known' per day with spontaneous casting? (somewhat like the Shaman from the Minatures Handbook). I'm kinda stuck on how to proceed.