Quaternion's page

and that's where the contradiction lies.
the rules for reconstructing a spellbook say it "uses the procedure for learning a new spell", not preparing a spell from a borrowed book. But it then says that he can "prepare it from a borrowed book" and copy it into the new book. He can't prepare it from a borrowed book, without first knowing the spell and having it in his spellbook. thats the paradox.

Actually it says "can use the proceedure for learning a new spell." Those rules are for reconstructing a spellbook using spells you have already prepared and haven't used yet. Presumably you prepared them earlier using the lost book, and there aren't any friendly wizards around.

its referencing learning a new spell, from a borrowed book. So when your spellbook is gone, the wizard doesn't know any spells anymore, and has to re-learn everything. according to the PRD passages.

"using the procedure for learning a new spell" doesn't mean that you are in fact learning a new spell. You need to transcribe it somehow. In fact,

Duplicating an existing spellbook uses the same procedure as replacing it, but the task is much easier. The time requirement and cost per page are halved.

So duplicating is the "same procedure," but obviously nothing is lost in the duplication!

Quaternion wrote:

I don't think that is correct. You learn a spell from having written it in a spellbook. You can't actually forget spells, can you?

it seems you can forget spells by having your book destroyed. if you have to rebuild your spellbook, you use the process for learning a new spell.

It doesn't follow that you are learning new spells.

Can Bob prepare Magic Missile from Clarissa's spellbook? Its a spell he had previously known and jotted down in his spell book. But without that spellbook, thanks to Theo, Bob doesn't really know Magic Missile anymore, since it doesn't exist in his spellbook (yet).

I don't think that is correct. You learn a spell from having written it in a spellbook. You can't actually forget spells, can you?

Isn't "learning a spell" entirely equivalent to having written it in one of your spellbooks?

Wizards can add new spells to their spellbooks through several methods. A wizard can only learn new spells that belong to the wizard spell lists.

You can reconstruct a spellbook using a spell that you prepared, but you can't prepare a spell you haven't learned i.e., written at least once in a spellbook. Is that correct?

I would assume that the two free spells gained per level are "learned" i.e., written by you in a spellbook.

I love the book, but I predict that the taxation rules will be about as popular as they are in real life!

The relevant text from the rules is as follows:

While under the effects of a polymorph spell, you lose all extraordinary and supernatural abilities that depend on your original form (such as keen senses, scent, and darkvision), as well as any natural attacks and movement types possessed by your original form. You also lose any class features that depend upon form, but those that allow you to add features (such as sorcerers that can grow claws) still function. While most of these should be obvious, the GM is the final arbiter of what abilities depend on form and are lost when a new form is assumed. Your new form might restore a number of these abilities if they are possessed by the new form.

Mothers gift would to me be something tied to your physical form as it is a racial feat. So I would rule no at my table. But check with your GM.

Heh, I wouldn't have thought that, in general, you would lose racial feats as a result of wildshaping. On the other hand, the hag's claws bonus is an extraordinary ability, and the polymorph language is pretty clear that you do lose extraordinary and supernatural abilities tied to your original form.

Too bad!

I'm contemplating createing a changeling druid. The Mother's Gift feat, available to changelings, has as one possibility:

Hag Claws (Ex): You gain a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with your claws.

Would this bonus still apply if the changeling was wildshaped into an animal form with claws?

Quaternion wrote:

It seems to me you are ignoring that, even though the two-weapon rogue gets -2 on the attack roll, she gets to make the roll twice. If the probability of getting a hit on one roll is .65, then the probability of getting a hit in two rolls is .8775 (2*p - p*p). Assuming the rogue can get in a full attack, her chance of hitting is better than the fighter's.

Or am I totally off base?

It's the flurry-of-blows fallacy, I'm afraid. You are attacking at -2 for TWF, yes. Then you are losing out because of 3/4 BAB (in the case of the monk, MAD and lower enhancement). These stack up. So the target the fighter could hit 65% of the time, you hit 40% of the time - before you factor in iterative attacks. While the fighter's iterative attacks add to a significant boost to hit, multiple attacks for a TWFing rogue or a flurrying monk don't add significantly. In the above example, the fighter's second attack hits 40% of the time, while the rogue's hits 15% of the time. Then say the fighter gets a third hit, at 15%. So the fighter gets 120% hits, and the rogue 55% hits. Now the TWFing rogue would get two hits at 30%, and two at 5%, for 70% hits. That's only an extra 15% to hit, for the investment of two feats, and that's on top of Weapon Finesse because you need a dex build for TWFing.

Now that looks like an improvement, but now take a boss-fight that the fighter hits 50%/25%/5% of the time, and the rogue will get 25%/5% or 15%/15%/5%/5%. The higher the target AC, the worse off the TWFer/flurryer is. Fewer attacks for almost as many hits and for higher damage work better.

In short, multiple attacks just add up to multiple misses against the targets you really want to hit, and they only make a difference at all if you can get a full-round attack in - not something a glass cannon wants to do!

I don't doubt that a given TWF build is less effective than a single weapon build with some other weapon and character class. I said "better than the fighter's" because there was a specific example of probabilities to hit for a fighter and TWF rogue.

if a single handed rogue has a 75% to hit an average creature of appropriate CR, then a two-weapon rogue would have a 65% chance to hit. Assuming the fighter has +8 to hit over the rogue with a minus 4 penalty from power attack. The Fighter flanking with the rogue would have an 85% chance to-hit with his first attack.

Assuming no haste, same ability modifier, rogue has 10 strength and is using dex to hit, Both have the same enhancement bonus on weapons.

And ignoring criticals.

It seems to me you are ignoring that, even though the two-weapon rogue gets -2 on the attack roll, she gets to make the roll twice. If the probability of getting a hit on one roll is .65, then the probability of getting a hit in two rolls is .8775 (2*p - p*p). Assuming the rogue can get in a full attack, her chance of hitting is better than the fighter's.

Or am I totally off base?

Edit:
Perhaps more interesting than the chance of getting at least one hit in two strikes with TWF would be to also calculate the probability of getting two strikes and the resultant damage:

Only one hit (2*p - 2*p*p): .4225
two hits (p*p): .455

Expected damage: .4225*d + .455*2*d = 1.3325*d

So, in this case, the expected damage for a two weapon attack is 33% greater than one attack with the same weapon, everything else being equal.

Now my kids have found the Basic Rulebook and want to try it out. Unfortunately, this is all I still have of the original D&D (we won't count the stack of AD&D boat anchors).

Wow! Some really good feedback here. I appreciate the honesty in every reply.

From what I'm reading, I think I'd enjoy the Beginner Box, but not so much the Core Rules. That's a shame, because I like that Pathfinder has a large library of well written Campaigns and Modules, as well as a great community.

Since your original question was in the context of your kids trying it out, you might want to ask yourself what they will enjoy most. Obviously they won't have a good time if you are not, but my 11-year old son loves the complexity and system mastery aspect of the full Pathfinder rules. He can go on for hours about the relative merits of great swords, much to the annoyance of his mother :)

thejeff wrote:

Stats are available at 1st, 7th and 12th level. They may not be fully optimized, but they're not deliberately crippled. No casting stats at 11, no Str 10 melee characters, etc.

So far I've reviewed (quick review while at work) a few of the Icons. The Cleric and Ranger seem deliberately crippled. Out of the ones I looked over, only the Druid seems competent; that is a far stretch from efficient.

Ranged Ranger with a Xbow without the ability to fire rapidly. Am I missing something? Improved Crit and PpT. were taken, but not Crossbow Mastery? So a level 12 ranged character has only 1 shot per turned? I must be missing something; otherwise that is deliberately crippled.

I'm not qualified to say whether or not these characters are weak, but they are built using only the CRB. Crossbow Mastery comes from the APG. It would be interesting to come up with "improved iconics" that use all available feats, weapons, spells, etc, but then they wouldn't be iconic anymore.

I think the core of the question is about strength checks, and assisting those strength checks?

That is what we are talking about, right?

Yes, but I am also curious if a strength check is the appropriate mechanic for a group lift or drag challenge.

Last night I encountered a situation where the party has to drag a heavy object. The AP calls for a "strength check with DC of 15":

I handled it by having each character try the strength check on their own, with the happy result that the weakest character dragged the weight away by herself, with a growl and a snort. In retrospect, it seems that Aid Another would be a better way to handle the check, but I'm not sure of the mechanics of it.

First of all, is a "strength check" a skill check, to which Aid Another can be a applied?

Second, Aid Another doesn't seem too satisfying in a situation where each character really can help more-or-less equally. Would it be better to assign a DC for each subtask e.g., a quarter of the load, and make each character pass that check by themselves? Or, even better, determine how the load compares to their maximum dragging capacity (5 times their maximum carrying capacity) and determine a straight yes / no based on that?

In this case, the characters had a better chance to move the weight by each giving it a go individually than if they had all made their Aid Another rolls and helped the strongest! Obviously the result would be different if the weight was much heavier.

Claxon wrote:

How did this thread escalate into "The GM now controls your animal companion"?

In a way, it's a huge semantics issue.

Fundamentally, I see the issue as this. If an AC owner is using the trick system to control the pet, which I think most people agree should be the case, who is the final arbiter of what the pet actually does in the game?

The "Animal Archive" seems to have been the catalyst for a lot of the recent interest in animal companions, tricks, etc. It actually says something about this issue:

Questions To Ask Your GM

3) Do I control my animal directly in combat the same way I control my PC, or is it treated as an NPC under the GM's control?

I assume that the authors, editors and developers of this Pathfinder Player Companion are not suggesting that you play "stump the GM" or start a debate at the table by posing a rhetorical question, but that there are different, legitimate play styles not covered by the rules.

Nobody appreciates what a true GM goes through anymore. I spend hours creating a living, breathing world, of which the PC's are merely one small part. The world doesn't revolve around you.

If a dungeon collapses in the woods, and no players are there to hear it, is there any sound?

After having last played Basic D&D when I was 11, I'm having a great time playing Pathfinder with my own 11 year-old son. We tried the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set over the Christmas break, but some research led me to propose getting into Pathfinder instead of 4e. One of the issues is the availability of the products in French; we live in France and, though we've only used the English language products so far, any friends of his that join us are more likely to be comfortable in French than in English. The newer 4e products aren't being translated, whereas the translator for Pathfinder here does seem to be keeping up.

Anyway, we just finished "Masters of the Fallen Fortress" with him controlling two characters and me GM'ing, handling two others, and generally providing tactical advice. A good time was had by all, but one thing I'm still wondering about is the general course of events for bursting into a room with bad guys. The party rogue checks for traps, sees if the door is locked, attempts to pick the lock, and then opens the door. If that doesn't work, the ranger kicks in the door :).

At that point, how does surprise work? Are the monsters within tipped off by the attempts to open the door? In retrospect, a perception check for them would make sense. How about if the door is kicked in in one try? I could see ruling either that the monsters are alerted by the noise, or that they are totally surprised by the brutal entrance.

I ended up not running any surprise rounds, but I'm wondering about how to do this "properly."