Ramanujan's page

I was expecting to find solutions to the issue with the core rule book in that the best/sometimes only way of increasing AC was to take the Champion dedication, which has very specific thematic consequences or constraints. The same could be said of the Fighter and weapons, but the theme of a Fighter is very simply and directly 'weapon master', so the same thematic issues don't occur.

I like the APG - and am still very glad to have it, but for me this is probably the single biggest disappointment/hope dashed.

I was also expecting uses/improvements/progressions to the rather odd situation with the general feats weapon training and armour training. Or something at least that explained/clarified their existence as not-traps.

Edit: Just re-looked at Champion. Sentinel does cover the same functions as Champion, so that complaint is addressed - I apologise. But there is still no way to gain even one step better than what your base class gives you.

One of my players is a storm Druid with a backstory of being trained by Druidic assassins, or at least assassins who included a number of druids.

A reflavoured version of The red mantis assassin archetype looks nearly perfect for the player (they also like it). However there is one major aspect to the dedication feat that is rather useless: The sawtooth sabre weapon proficiency it grants.

As a result, I was wondering if people thought replacing that part of the dedication with the following would be balanced:

When dealing damage with a spell, if at least one of the targets is flat footed, then once per spell you may deal 1 additional precision damage per Assassin feat to one of those targets.

We are about to start an Age or Ashes campaign, and one of my players is wanting to be an initiate in the Order of the Godclaw (They are lawful good).

The wiki pages indicate that their citadel was conquered recently in another adventure path. Can someone give me (I don’t mind any and all spoilers- I’m an eternal GM) or point me to a summary of the order’s current situation, particularly in Isger?

Additionally, one of my other players is looking at playing an escaped slave from Nidal, with an understandable hatred of the entirely legal practice of slavery. Thankfully we aren’t talking order of the chain. But if any of you have any suggestions on how I can help those two characters function together in Age of Ashes, that would be appreciated!

A suggestion to add greater differentiation between armours, and between light, medium and heavy armour in general:

Add resistance to a specific physical damage type to all armours based on quality level.

For example, all/most light armours have resistance X to one of Bludgeoning, Slashing or Piercing, all/most medium armours have resistance X to two of the same, and Heavy armours have resistance X to all three.

Where X is something like 0/2/3/4/5 for Poor/Normal/Expert/Master/Legendary armours.

As examples:
Padded Clothing: 2 resistance against Bludgeoning
Expert Chain Shirt: 3 resistance against Piercing
Master Breastplate: 4 resistance against Slashing and Piercing
Legendary Full Plate: 5 resistance against Bludgeoning, Slashing and Piercing.

You could also have traits like thermal, which would apply the resistance to an element - possibly with an equivalent penalty to the inverse type.

This might allow low level players to have more interaction with the resistance/weakness rules. Not only because they'd now be on the receiving end - and the GM can interact more with it, but also because it would provide thematic explanation for things like a small fire weakness on a Guard at a hilltop fort, or even just archers on a wall with a small piercing resistance.

It would also make armour do some of what I expected armour to do when I first encountered D&D — reduce damage. AC feels like your heavy armour is helping you dodge. Now I'm familiar with it, it feels normal, and I can see the thematic arguments for it — the blow bounced off the armour, or failed to puncture it. But as a newbie to D&D it certainly felt odd.

In practice this might be too much to remember if it was applied to all armours. So might work better as just an additional trait that can be applied to differentiate armours — certainly the game seems to be lacking interesting armour traits at the moment.

Damage might need to be increased slightly as a result, though I'm imagining most level 1 mobs will have poor equipment, and except against heavy armour, slightly more thought/planning by the players would avoid the problem.

I'm trying to grok stealth, and am writing it out here as part of doing so...

There are four conditions; Seen, Concealed, Sensed and Unseen.

Seen is as normal.
Concealed is they know where you are, but can't see clearly and have a 25% miss chance to hit.
Sensed is they think they know where you are, but could be wrong and have at best a 50% chance to hit.
Unseen is they have no idea where you are.

You have a single one of those conditions versus any particular creature.

If you have cover and/or are concealed from creatures, you may sneak or hide from those creatures.

The benefit of hiding is that it has no risk of making the situation worse.
The benefit of sneaking is that you get to move.

If you are *ever* without at least one of cover and/or concealment from a creature then you are automatically seen by that creature for the entirety of your turn. The same thing happens just before you do anything except hide or sneak or an action the GM permits.

In other words, you cannot stealth and attack an unsuspecting foe (This is why Rogue, and Rogue Dedication treat targets as flatfooted if they haven't acted yet), unless there is some pervading effect that prevents you from being seen, such as being invisible, or darkness, in which case you are merely sensed. Even rogues cannot run away, hide and come back mid encounter to surprise attack someone — and you can't surprise attack someone you came on who is in the middle of an unrelated fight.

I have not yet found anything about surprise rounds. You can almost still create one by use of the delay action — while unseen, all players would delay their turns to initiative 0, then spring the trap, thus allowing them one full turn before the opponents get to act. But this would then guarantee that all living targets go before you on the next round. What it does do though is guarantee all players go first (I'm not sure this works RAW, as delay might require encounter mode, and encounter mode might not start until you attack).

I have hunted all over the web for a RAW answer to this, originally posed here; http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/65219/does-an-incorporeal-creature-t ake-half-ability-damage-from-corporeal-sources/65235#65235.

Incorporeal creatures take half damage from corporeal sources. Or if not dealing damage, corporeal sources have a 50% hit chance.

Does ability damage count as damage for the sake of Incorporeal creatures?
Or does ability damage have a 50% hit chance?

What about ability drain?