Rinegar's page

My first thought was yes, but after some thought I agree with Skylancer4. In real life, where we don't have to wait our turn to act there would be no reason for someone to "bullrush" you if you were going to let them do it unless you were immobilized.

If you were engaged in a melee with an enemy and then your ally calls out "I'm going to run up and push you out of harm's way. Hold Still!" and then you stopped dodging your enemy and let your body go limp when your ally hit you so he could easily move you, you would most likely have time to just run out of the way yourself (if you didn't have to wait for your turn).

In the game, which uses turns to make things manageable, you generally don't get to do even simple things when someone else is taking a turn except a few immediate actions. Just as going on "Full Defense" requires an action, relaxing your defense should also take an action on your turn so that if you are letting yourself be pushed by your ally then you also are not doing your full defense against any enemies so your CMD and AC would be lower for the whole round. I would also have to consider whether doing this provokes an AoO from threatening enemies because you are not applying your full attention to defense, or at least makes you vulnerable to sneak attacks because you are not using your dexterity that round.

And furthermore, consider mounted combat. If you are riding a mount and it moves you, you are only able to make a single attack. Allowing yourself to be moved is the same as moving.

Let's say an enemy is 15 feet away from you. Your ally standing behind you has the turn before you, so would it be fair to have the ally bullrush you, pushing you next to the enemy so you could have a full round attack on your turn? I don't think so.

I'd say it makes the most sense if allies bullrush against your full CMD because you don't have the time to think about what's happening before they slam into you. Or, on your turn, you could go on "minimal defense" as a move(?full round??) action to drop your dex/dodge bonuses until your next turn (or simply move on your turn).

I think this question is related enough to be added to this thread as it gets to the same basic idea of how magic affects regular creatures also affects construct creatures. If it should be posted separately, I apologize.

Constructs are immune to Ability Damage and Drain, but does that also mean they are immune to spells that enhance ability scores: Cat's Grace, Owl's Wisdom, etc.? Presumably Bear's Endurance would not because constructs have no constitution score to enhance, but what about the rest?

Logically it seems that if you can't decrease those abilities, the reverse would also be true, but I can't find any evidence in the rules that substantiates that at all.

This one ALMOST happened in the game I ran last week. I couldn't suppress the giggles I got thinking about what was going to happen, which tipped off the party to change their plan and avoid an embarrassing (nearly) TPK.

The party follows these Fey-cursed wererats into one of several tunnels that they rats have magically bored straight down into several spots around the PC's town. They kill the wererats and find this mysterious arcane energy bubble that the Fey have been planting underground to suck all the magic out of the land.

After Detect spells and Knowledge checks and much debate about the best way to handle this, they decide to simply try hitting it with something hard. They agree the tank fighter should hit it with his big bad sword but nobody else wants to stand close to it while he does that in case it, you know, explodes or something. The space at the bottom of the bore is too small to get away from danger without going back topside and leaving the fighter to the uncertainty of this questionable experiment alone at the bottom of a hole.

So they decide that everyone except the fighter will jump inside their bag of holding while the fighter chops this magic sucking bubble. Now what I have planned is that if they destroy the bubble physically, it goes away, but will implode, sucking the magic out of any items within 10 feet (with a saving throw, of course) making them non-magical.

I couldn't help but laugh when I imagined the look on the face of the INT 9 fighter when he opened the (now) non-magical Bag to find nothing inside; scratching his head while the party wizards, cleric and bard suffocated to death in the airless extra-dimensional space whose exit had just been demagicked.

If you are flying by means of the Fly spell and you fail your Hover check, you fall. Correct? Does the Feather Fall effect that saves you when the spell ends or is dispelled come into play or does that only work if the magic ends?

That doesn't seem like the intention of the spell and would make the Fly spell fairly dangerous to use.

I'm inclined to think that either the Feather Fall safety effect activates whenever you fall, or that perhaps when you fall you can choose to immediately end the spell and thus activate the "parachute" landing.

Is there something official on this that I missed or some other way to handle it?

I think it's 25 words or less in the language you speak at the table, translated to be correctly interpreted by the recipient.

A wizard sends a message to a dog (Int 2) that says something like "Bring the red bag in front of you to my house" and lets say they dog knows where the wizard's house is. Would the dog "understand" that the wizard wanted him to grab a red bag and bring it there? Normally, you'd need a Handle Animal check to try and get it to do something like this. Can the Sending spell make an animal "know" the meaning of the message in a way that overrides the need to use a skill check?

Does "it's ability to respond is limited by it's intelligence, as normal," suggest an animal without language capability would not be able to respond in words? That doesn't make sense if the reverse is true, in which case it could act as a long distance Speak with Animals.

I never realized just how vague this spell is until I started dissecting it.

Anyone have thoughts on whether a Sending message, either mental or audible, comes in language dependent words, or whether it's magically translated in transit. The 25 word limit is very specific and implies the actual words are delivered in a language chosen by the caster. But it also says the recipient will "understand the sending" and can be used on creatures with animal intelligence, which most likely wouldn't understand any words.

You can't craft a Spell Trap. A Spell Trap simply means there are certain spells that, when cast, act as traps. There's nothing to do to create a spell trap other than cast the spell (or have someone else cast it). All the details of how that "trap" works are in the text of whatever spell that may be.

A Magical Device trap, as it says, requires the appropriate Craft item feat.

Great feedback, everyone. I agree that Weapon Finesse and Agile Maneuvers should be combined. I know not everyone will agree with AM as an alternate prereq, but my main concern was if doing so would break something that I hadn't thought about.

The larger arguments about how things should be done differently are all quite interesting, but from the comments, I am feeling pretty good about going ahead with this as a house rule in my campaign.

Thanks!

Before CMBs and CMDs, Combat Expertise sort of made sense as a prereq. for the various special attacks like Improved Disarm and Improved Trip. But now, C.E. doesn't seem to have anything to do with those attacks: why is learning a defensive move necessary to know how to knock weapons out of your enemies hand?

I suggest using Agile Maneuvers as the prereq. or maybe allow either one, to make for more variety of choices. Seems like focusing on your quickness would prepare you for Improved Steal, Disarm, Reposition, Trip, etc., just as much, if not more so, than Combat Expertise.

Anyone see any problems with this before I add it as a homebrew rule in my campaign?

Thanks.

Just downloaded the Bestiary PDF and there seem to be missing text everywhere. The abbreviation for feet, ft., is blank, the double ff in "effect" seems to be missing throughout, and the CR numbers are missing from the header bars. What's the deal?

EDIT: I see it does read correctly with Acrobat Reader. Apparently "Preview" on my mac doesn't like it...

Perfect. Lots of good stuff there. Thanks!

I'm interested in running a scenario for my group that involves being caught in a burning building with a large crowd of NPCs. No monsters, no enemies, no "traps" just the hazard of fires, falling debris, panicked crowds, etc. Most likely it will involve helping NPCs survive as well, since simply getting out won't be that difficult.

Anyone have any ideas, advice or experience with this? Any modules that do a good job with something similar that I could draw from?

I've read up on smoke dangers, heat, catching on fire etc. in the "Environment" section and just need a way to tie it all to together so that it's exciting, dangerous, challenging and really outside the norm of "there's a monster, attack!"

All help appreciated. Thanks.