Rauðúlfur's page

If we are going with non-3rd party, I'd have to say that I like the concept for Clockwork Armor. Not necessarily the execution, but the concept is great. At one time I reverse calculated out what the "clockwork" modification cost so that it could be applied to other, non-plate armors, and I liked using that a lot.

If we are allowing third party (and going all the way back to 3.5 3rd party at that, I really like the Arms and Armor from Bastion Press, how you can just layer on multiple different component pieces. Since the rule was that only one piece of enchanted armor provides its enchantment, it isn't too cumbersome, it just ends up being a concept where you have your core armor, and keep tacking on different items and layers until you feel secure enough.

Ectoplasmic Fireball with Alchemist's fire Alchemical component. Level 4 + 30 Gold (less if you have Craft Alchemy). Just the thing for making Spirits Bright.

How would you go about making Alfred Pennyworth as a PC?

Summoner with the eidolon being batman.

Permanency is the sticking point here, but I think why is also important. Why just hair and/or eye color? Is this just a fluff thing, or are you looking for even an extremely situational mechanical benefit?

If it's just a role-play thing, I feel like the hour duration of prestidigitation should be enough. Some folks used to call it "least wish". Even if the goal is a tiny bit of disguise or social benefit, and you don't want to appear magical, is getting out of sight for the six seconds it takes to refresh that troublesome? I guess it could be, but in a situation where your being scrutinized that closely, I don't think a dye job is going to get you that far anyway.

for two feats and a spell you can get extend and magic trick prestidigitation for a one hour per level of casting. Since it requires it as a prerequisite, but technically isn't the same effect, you could possibly apply Extend to the prestidigitation as well as the lasting changes effect to cast prestidigitation for 2 hours per level and a 1st level slot. At 8th level you can just cast it once as part of your daily preparations and you have effective day long effects.

This was a supreme example of the Magical sin of gluttony.

Interesting event interaction happened in this module for my group, and I was wondering if I ran it right or if I missed something. Since we are in the GM thread, I don't think I have to spoiler anything, but if I'm wrong, let me know and I'll change it if I can.

Tl;dr at the bottom.

My players were done with the whole thing, and had just enchanted the first Commanding Weapon (they had enchanted a Sadistic and a Liberal one before these) and the statue animated. One of the players (a magus archer) scored a few quick shots with her bow, and another player, the warpriest, zerg rushed the statue. I had ruled that no one was surprised, so Attacks of Opportunity were open. The Warpriest figured that they could tank one and get in for a good shot.

The statue crit on its slam attack. She activated her Buffering Cap (Once per day when struck by a critical hit, the wearer can spend an immediate action to convert the bonus damage of the critical hit into nonlethal damage. The cap has no effect if the wearer is immune to nonlethal damage.) and the extra damage was reduced to non-lethal. Then the Dexterity drain hit for the slam. Six points for the first die and 5 points for the second. This reduced her down to -1 Dexterity.

She failed her saving throw by over six. She petrified right there. It was tense until the monk with the Golembane Scarab flurried the thing (he had taken pummeling style and strike) into oblivion. We had the Stone to Flesh Scroll from Fat Thanos's throne, so we changed her right back, and her life wasn't in immediate danger. Problem was, she was the only one available who could cast the Greater Restoration Scroll, which meant that she was still paralyzed from the Dexterity Drain, since I didn't see anything that said that it went away when the person was de-petrified.

They still had one weapon to enchant (another Commanding, so that was why they had waited), but the players all voted to stay, saying that the Monk would look over the Warpriest while the Gunslinger got his rifle enchanted. It was an interesting bit of back and forth that actually got them scared. I may have rolled some dice for no reason behind the screen They didn't have anymore encounters and got back to Sandpoint (and a follower who could read the scroll with little issue) without many issues, but it made me think:

Tl;dr, should the Buffering Cap have maybe reduced the extra ability drain from the critical to ability damage, or was it good to play it as it was. I don't want them to be screwed the next time something as unusual as this happens (likely in another campaign) but I don't want to overly expand the powers of a very cheap (2000 gp) magic item.

Quasi-seconding Rauðúlfur's post above. In the Kingmaker campaign I'm running, the party encountered these crystals with souls/spirits in them underneath one PC's childhood village. TL;DR: when shattered, some of the spirits entered the party's weapons and armor to enhance them (and I just had one PC's axe also 'swallow' up a Belker that it killed last encounter), but one crystal which remained unshattered actually contains the soul of the crystal-trapper-creator dude. And the next time our Wizard (who hasn't crafted anything since this arc) sits down to craft, he'll find that he can transfer enchantments from one item to another similar item (weapon to weapon, armor to armor, ring to ring, etc), or he can break down an enchantment into a reservoir that can be used for later enchantment. So if they don't want to use the +2 warhammer they found, or place the +2 on another item, they can break down the +2 enhancement into 4000gp worth of weapon enhancement-equivalent energy to be used at a later date.

Thank you. I know it is also verboten, but there is also the concept of residuum from the dark edition. A similar ritual to that could be used to infuse it into a weapon. If you take the residuum from a +1 flaming weapon, maybe the residuum has a fiery essence?

I stole something from 2nd edition for my group, Steal enchantment. It's a one hour ritual that allows you to transfer the enchantment from one magical item to a non-magical one. The character that has access to that ritual is an elf, so they have the hours available to do some during the night.
This allows them to keep the items that they might have personally bonded with, but still has some small amount of time requirement for them to swap out, but YMMV.

You make a good point. However, pretty silly to make it the same name and the same price.

First one does seem a little too good vs vampires.

Thank you!

I can see what you are saying, but they are really not the same price. The enchanted item is basically a (non-standard) wand of Dream Feast with a specific type of creature that it can effect. Even if the spell used is a third level clerical spell, the effect is basically the same as the 1st level bard, i.e. providing sustenance. The additional effect is not only not really that harmful against the vampires (see the above, even on an accident, will save success), but the feeding properties is actually removed if the save is successful, not just the effect ending for the undead that made the save, but anything else in the area as well.

The Alchemical item is priced for 200 gp for a single use item. It is priced similarly to many of the higher tier alchemical items, and more than double the price of many universally useful alchemical weapons.
The fact that it is especially useful against vampires really does seem to be an edge case. It is also technically requiring at least four (if not six!) standard actions to perform, two or three to prime the two or three bottles, and two or three to smash/throw them. That is a LOT of action economy just to get the drop on one of the children of the night, and for the first round it is just staggered, where it can take a single move or standard action to escape.

Honestly, this isn't even a real tactic that solitary vampire hunters can utilize, and even groups of them would be hard pressed to utilize it repeatedly. Add in the fact that it will take much larger amounts of resources to accomplish, and even for that it needs to be utilized on cooperation of at least two people, you are getting an edge case scenario. If I was playing in Carrion Crown, or a similar undead heavy scenario, I might pick up a couple of bottles, but for a regular character I don't know if I would spare the weight.

The magical item is needed for subterranean adventures for those photosynthetic races, and as such might be reduced in price to reflect this.

This wouldn't be the first time that two different, yet similar items, were given the same name. I would wonder if it was just that two different authors worked on the items and the name was appropriate to both of them.

I know that they both have the same name, but one is an alchemical item and the other is a magical item. From what I can tell they are clearly intended for different purposes, i.e. the alchemical one is intended to be primarily against undead and illumination, while the second one, the wondrous item, looks to be a magical item to offset the issues with photosynthetic pc's. I would also point to the fact that the enchanted item creates its own item, which is a "vial of sunlight" while the alchemical item is in and of itself bottled sunlight.
Also, the enchanted item has 50 charges, which tracks to 4 gold a charge, or roughly 8 times the cost of regular trail rations, or twice as much as the racial trail rations that were offered in another book. Coupling it with the fact that they eliminated the weight, it would be an easy offset.
If you would want to look at a similar item for cost, maybe the goblet of quenching, offering up 2 gallons of water a day for 180 gp?

So stuff like:
Slow Turtles and Haste Cheetahs, Jumping Jackrabbits, Daze Kittens, Dancing (lights) Fireflies, and Drenching Puppers?

I haven't done that yet, but I have tried to reskin Animal Companions to be "drakes" by just swapping out a feat to the additional traits feat to get a "cantrip" castable three times a day and something else appropriate.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

DeathQuaker wrote:

That's funny because I think monsters with levels were possible.

I don't know about 1e, but it was sort of possible in both BECMI and 2e.

We were playing a pretty straight 2e in Forgotten Realms, so to the best of my recollection (it has been 20+ years) it was either not possible or extremely uncommon...at least with "standard" Forgotten Realms. Or maybe it was one of those things I ignored until I determined I could surprise the players with it. ;-)

Not to be cross, but there was an excellent Forgotten Realms second edition sourcebook for the giant-kin that gave rules for running them as player characters, specifically the verbeeg, Voadkyn, and I believe the Firbolg, but I'm away from book at the moment.

I only mention it because I loved the Waterdeep and bought as much as I could about the Sword Coast and the North.

Back in second edition, a group I played with had a disease called "blue funk" which caused adventurers to become insubstantial blue shapes that followed the party around. Eventually it was discovered that items could be tossed into the mist and they would be incorporated into it. Eventually that stopped working, as everything was being tossed into the mist for later.
When running my own campaigns, I usually try to end games on notes of being done with at least the current combat, so that if one of the players can't make it to the next game, the character won't be a disappear in the middle of combat. I've run n.W.o.D. games where characters ended up getting stuck with "the Living Web" as an email virus, that caused them to spend inordinate amounts of time researching the stupidest of information on Wikipedia. In D20 systems, I've used the "blue funk" sickness in on campaign, I've also had characters thrown in jail, get teleported out to find a cat stuck in a treant (thanks Milo), or something loosely based off the real life reason why they are not able to show.
If more than half of the group can't make it, I generally try to run the others through something else, to give them a benefit for showing up or cancel. Especially if I am driving an hour to get there.

How does being incorporeal affect a kineticist's kinetic blasts, and by extension any spell that uses an attack roll?

Per Incorporeal: "An incorporeal creature’s attacks pass through (ignore) natural armor, armor, and shields, although deflection bonuses and force effects (such as mage armor) work normally against it."

Do physical blasts ignore physical defenses, or are the subject to them?

What if I use kinetic blade on an attack action?

What about other spells an incorporeal character may cast?

There is a metamagic feat that you can take that allows your blasts to effect incorporeal foes. When you take the expanded Metakinesis Feat, you can pick ectoplasmic spell.

I believe that there was, in fact, a song regarding this very thing...
"It's no surprise to me,I am my own, worst enemy.
'Cause every now and then, I kick the living **** out of me..."

So at least the bards have sung about someone being their own foe.

True but a freezer sort of works. You could perhaps modify it with insulation around the siccarite to regulate the cold somewhat. Of course freezing things with a few exceptions is generally better for long term storage than a fridge. Even if your waiting awhile for the beer to thaw.

If you are open to non-first party sources there are a few more options. Back in a dragon magazine from the 3.5 era there was an alchemical item called an ice crystal that, when placed in a liquid, turned as cold as ice, basically an eternal ice cube. It was extremely cheap, like one silver piece each. If you are not willing to have small quartz crystals in all of your liquid items, but are willing to go third party, there is a first level druid spell called constant heat that does fire damage based on contact, but also heats up an area the specific effect. Using the Energy substitution meta-magic would increase the level to two but could change it to cold from fire and have radiating cold effects. You could probably pay a druid about of sixty gold to get it done. It’s a second level wizard spell, so that would require one-hundred-fifty or so. Third option is something even further far afield, but a mongoose publishing book for 3.5, the Quintessential Elf. It lists a non-magical wood that items can be made out of that increase lifespan. I can’t remember the price, but I put it similar to the wizard price on a guess.

I had an elven archer that used obsidian tipped arrows because they were lighter, cheaper, and not metal.

Ketchup is not evil! Stop spreading those slanderous rumors!

But what about Horseradish? Is that Evil or just Chaotic?

"Aboleth" -

That will be fun, one of my players told me years ago that they would walk out if they ever faced an Aboleth in a combat. I'll check to see if they are still as dead set against them or if that has decreased at all.

"a nice bridge between Books 2 and 3."'

That looks to be a very useful incident in between the adventures. I'll check back on it as we get closer to that point. If there is sufficient in game time (3 is set in the winter, right?), then that would give a good place to have them spend some of the time in between adventures.

So far, they've done fairly well in the first part of the adventure. I started them back in Windsong Abbey and had them all collect there before being sent to Sandpoint for the festival. I'll find a place to put all of the backstories up for all of them, but suffice to say it came down like this:

Elf Magus (worships Pulura): A time displaced person from a village from the time of Thassilon (they took the Elven Arrogance alternative racial trait that removes common from their spoken languages). She was an apprentice to the village mage and ended up in some time hijinks. Lots of Language and Knowledge skills.

Half-Elf Warpriest of Iomedae: A resident of Windsong Abbey, an orphan of crusaders who went forth to fight in the Worldwound. Kind of pissed off that she wasn't sent to go fight there after coming of age. She was a groom/groundskeeper while she was learning to be a holy warrior (Maxed out Handle Animal and Ride skills).

Half-Elf Skinwalker (Witchwolf): Alright, so here comes the crazy one. He took the character trait that allows you to only need sleep for two hours every night. His backstory is that he woke up in a cloning tube somewhere else (in space). He saw dozens of tubes where there were duplicates of him. This is a bit of a riff on the thought of him previously always playing the same type of character. His captors were entities that he did not know (Denizens of Leng) and they flushed him down into the world in a beam of light, right into the courtyard of Windsong Abbey. Not high on intellect, but an insane level of Perception.

Human (Modern) Investigator: Take Ash from Army of Darkness, Nitro from Down Periscope, and Macgyver and combine them all. Not much in the way of offense at first, aside from his Pistol, and his Rifle, and his Machete, and his camp axe, and his knives. Apparently the player decided that he was a prepper and wanted to drive his car into the and of Golarion. He gave me a list of .pdf's that he wanted his character to have. I looked over the list and found it mostly everyday stuff, except I noted that he had some documents that were titled as research papers. I think that he is going to push his crafting to the extreme.

They've managed to do some good with the first few combats. The Human was having a problem with communicating with everyone else, but I think that I might have a solution for that as well, ala Nisk and a language swap "potion".

Let me know if there are any other suggestions or thoughts.

I hope that this answers everything that was brought up. They are in Burnt offerings, so I'll let those who want to know more when they get done with it. Thank you for all of the responses.

So... it's rather hard to gauge the balance of such an unusual party, but there are some stand-out details.

Investigator - So, they'll have guns, which can be a rather big problem in this AP (especially the second half, when Touch ACs are clearly not rising and you're starting to auto-hit). However, they won't be gaining any Gunslinger abilities that make using guns viable, and they're giving up their armor proficiencies... it mostly looks like this is a good collaboration to get this character killed as soon as possible. Perhaps there's some mitigating factors that I'm missing, but it looks to me like a rather weak class got nerfed here in exchange for... two weapon proficiencies? I can't recommend that, especially with the goodies your other PCs are getting here.

I should have specified that the Investigator is starting out with a modern Pistol and rifle, not just the proficiencies, and that their starting equipment is all modern. Also, if he does choose to multiclass, he'd get armor prof. immediately, as far as I remember. I think I will take your suggestion in allowing them to utilize any modern knowledge that they might be able to bring to bear in the fantasy realm. As an aside, do you think that including the Path of War modifications to the class would help give it a bit more balance? I don't want to nerf the guy too hard. He will be using the Craft Mechanical & Electrical timeframes for creating items when he has the proper tools.

Monk/Kineticist - I personally don't understand what gestalt classes are, but I know people use them for APs to increase the power level of characters, so my assumption is basically double-class progression, which seems wildly powerful. Would they consider the Elemental Ascetic kineticist archetype acceptable? If they're already going to be armorless and losing the mystical abilities of a monk, this would reduce how MAD they are a bit, make them more combat viable, and doesn't rely on gestalting. This would also firmly put them in the "Hammer" role with pseudo-full BAB.

Gestalting is basically looking at whatever each class has to offer, the BAB, Saves, Skill Points, Hit Points, and Special Abilities. Anything that they have the same, such as BAB, they take the best, while anything that only one class has (Elemental Blast or Flurry of Blows), they get both.

Nothing really stands out as an issue with the perks you gave your magus and warpriest, and I have more experience with those two classes. That said, the thing that tips me off that there may be some balance issues comes down to the class choices themselves: you've got 4 3/4 BAB classes. While that'll be totally fine early on, like you've noted, there could be some issues in the second half:

Askar Avari wrote:

[spoiler=Spoilered Comments]

1)remove curse, remove disease, or neutralize poison - Those will be big issues. I know that the Sandpoint focused book lists several options for purchasable potions. If the Magus is making things at half price for the group, maybe this can offset the lack. I will be asking the Investigator if he intends on splitting off from investigator or going full class. Maybe he has something planned to help out more.

2)Restoration/Breath of Life - Seeing this issue, I know that the Kineticist was talking about getting the Kinetic Healing Chain, with the Kinetic Restoration. This isn't full Restoration, but might take some of the load. He might also be looking at Kinetic Revivification later on as well, but that comes online even later. I'll look into seeding some magic to compensate for this if it starts getting close.

3)I think that I'll work a bit more with the Investigator to ensure that they can contribute.

Thank you for looking over this. I'll talk to the Investigator and maybe the Kineticist.

Greetings,
I’m in the beginning phase of a new Rise of the Runelords AP after having run through some of the others, and asked the players if they would be willing to consider running some lower tiered adventurer classes. The players all agreed when I offered them up the following benefits scheme. These benefits accrued as follows: if you would be considered a tier 1, you get nothing. If you are a tier 2, you get one minor benefit. Tier 3 gets 2 benefits, tier 4 gets 4 benefits, and so on. These benefits were judged kind of like a wish spell, in that the player made the request for what they would want, but the effects were decided by me. I told the PC’s what the effect would be, so they could change their minds if they didn’t like it. I know that this is a very large deviation from the core rules, but it seemed like a good way to get some variety in the characters, as we were having a lot of the same party composition, adventure path to adventure path.
I am hoping that I could get some feedback from the forum on the party as to how they should be able to fair later on, as they have been fine so far in the Burnt Offerings.
Our first player is an Elven Magus Archer.

My question is, how badly will they fair in the second half of this adventure path? I figure that the first half should be easy, because it looks like they are four hammers, with one of the group is a secondary Anvil, another is a secondary Arms, the third is a very minor Anvil and the fourth is a selfish Arms. I worry that they will not do well at all after things become less about pure damage and more about strategizing and piling on or removing of effects mid encounter.

Any will do, just make sure everyone has a 15 point buy as that's the benchmark for what they design APs for.

Have fun!

Thank you for the response. I was under the impression from most that I have seen that some require higher level spells that most of those classes don't gain access to.

Hi all,

I was wondering if there would be any way to gestalt a Kineticist to get it up to the level of general utility (read tier) as a Bard or a Magus?

A Kineticist could dump up to 3 stats relatively safely. Is there any non-tier 3 class that a Kineticist could be gestalted with and make up the difference in power and utility?

Thanks

Hi All,
I've got a quandary that I'd like help with. If there was a group of all Tier 3 and/or 4 classes, which AP could they reasonably be able to accomplish without a large amount of deviation from the printed AP? As a point of reference, the tier 3 and 4 classes are:

Tier 3:
Alchemist, Bard, Inquisitor, Magus, Investigator, Warpriest, Paladin (Sacred Servant), Hunter, Skald, Mesmerist, Occultist, Spiritualist, Bloodrager (Monstrous Physique UMD/Urban Bloodrager), Medium (Spirit Dancer), Vigilante (Warlock/Zealot)

Tier 4:
Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger, Adept, Brawler, Slayer, Fighter (Eldritch Guardian/Lore Warden/Mutation Warrior/Martial Master/Drill Sergeant), Bloodrager, Medium, Unchained Monk, Unchained Barbarian, Monk (Properly Archetyped - namely Qinggong Monk), Vigilante (Stalker/Avenger), Unchained Rogue
(above from ktown forums)

If the point was to get away from the overly restricted or unrestricted classes and put everyone on a mostly equal footing at the start, could any of the published AP's be accomplished without DM Fiat with a group that was composed of 4 people from the above classes?

Bard, (for 0th level spells and luck bonuses to ANYTHING) and Oracle (for 0th level spells and Charisma to AC/Reflex), but only for a Synthesist Summoner.
Otherwise Rogue (skills), Fighter (Feat), or Ranger (Flavor).

I did a search of the forums and I could not find out the answer for this quandary. I checked the information on the PRD and it did not have an answer, and since I am playing a Hideously Multiclassed Half-elf(TM), I could use an answer to this question.
Do Multiclass Oracles get any benefit from the Haunted Curse as their total levels get to the appropriate HD for curse advancement?
I.e. If I have one level of Oracle, and a total of 8 levels in other classes (say another spontaneous charisma caster type), I would have 5 effective HD of Oracle, entitling me to the spells Levitate and Minor Image.

Since I couldn't cast 2nd level spells in the Oracle class in this example and I'm pretty sure I would not add them to another spellcasting class that CAN cast spells of that level, do I:
I get them added as 1st level spells, since they are the highest spell level I can currently cast as an oracle?
Get them as phantom 2nd level spells for if I ever find a way to cast a 2nd level spell, unlikely as it might be?
Not get them at all, and have no effect from the curse's eventual mitigating features?
Only get them in terms of activating wands and such?
Or is it something else that I haven't thought of?

So I turn these questions over to you, forum. What gurus are out there who can answer this question?

What about the wild stalker archetype for ranger, would that be a good bridge?
As for fighters, from the very start they are supposed to be capable of using heavy armor, right? Not something the movie really presented as a capability or training for him. Everything he wore could easily be medium.
If I had to guess, I might think a skirmisher/wild stalker ranger, maybe with fighter later on.

Well, the party is gonna get treasure from the encounter, right? The BBEG is intelligent, right? why not have it use useful items?