Gav

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First and most obvious: it's a 200-square-foot building or property... so, it's a shed. I mean that literally: 10 ft by 20 ft is one of the standard sizes for a backyard shed. Put a couch, a table, and a cot in there and you've already filled the place up; you might need to rearrange the furniture if you want to give your party enough places to actually sit.

Second, it's statically placed. Great, cool—so that makes it basically useless in the vast majority of campaigns. What's the value of spending a class feat on a cool hangout that's the size of a shed and that can be mostly replicated through rituals? By the time you can spend a second class feat on it at level 20 (out of eleven total, just to make this one shed do something useful), the wizard in the party has been casting magnificent mansion since level 13, and the only downside in the comparison is that when you stay in the mansion you have to take some time to dump all your stuff back into bags of holding when you leave.


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Many of us already deeply dislike the preponderance of secret checks and the critical failure effect of Recall Knowledge (and extra burden that both issues put on GMs). Automatically getting Dubious Knowledge exacerbates both issues (not to mention it immediately being self-contradictory because you need to know the real result to know whether you can use Esoteric Antithesis), and it really makes me feel like Paizo hasn't bothered to look at the complaints that people have already had about this stuff.


Let's take a look at the Sneak action.

Quote:
At the end of your movement, the GM rolls your Stealth check in secret and compares the result to the Perception DC of each creature you were hidden from or undetected by at the start of your movement.
Quote:
Success You’re undetected by the creature during your movement and remain undetected by the creature at the end of it.

So, when you Sneak, you roll at the end of your movement. and this determines if you're undetected during your movement.

Consider the case of a creature with a reaction that interrupts movement (similar to the Stand Still monk feat). If you Sneak past it and are successful, you're undetected and it can't use the reaction against you... but despite the movement coming from the Sneak action, you only roll to see if you're successful at the end of your action, after reactions have already resolved.

How is this supposed to work? Did the writer of Sneak just forget that reactions exist?


When you Sneak, you roll Stealth at the end of your movement, but the hidden or undetetected condition granted by it applies "during" your movement, e.g., retroactively.

Consider the following time paradox:

- You're in concealment and hidden, and Sneak through the melee reach of a enemy with Attack of Opportunity, towards a square where there's an effect that (unknown to you) gives you a penalty to Stealth.

- The Attack of Opportunity enemy attacks you, succeeds on the flat check against hidden, and hits you for X damage. He uses a secondary ability with AoO to make you stop your movement in that square.

- The Stealth roll for Sneak is successful, making you undetected—"during" your movement. Which means that the Attack of Opportunity guy can't have hit you and made you stop, because he wouldn't have been able to trigger Attack of Opportunity in the first place.

- This means you take your full movement, ending in the square with the Stealth penalty. You fail on your Sneak attempt, making you only hidden again—"throughout" your movement.

- This means that during your movement, the Attack of Opportunity attacks you, succeeds on the flat check against hidden, and hits you for X damage. He uses a secondary ability with AoO to make you stop your movement in that square.

- Without the Stealth penalty, the Stealth roll for Sneak is successful, making you undetected—"during" your movement...

Maybe Golarion blows up from the feedback loop? Groetus is probably pretty annoyed that somebody's stolen his job.

Is there an intended resolution for this kind of thing that was never printed? Did the designers just forget about reactions when writing up the Sneak action?


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Hero points allow all characters to reroll d20s. The problem is, many skill uses have the secret trait, so you never actually see your skill roll to know if you should reroll it. Hide and Sneak are probably the most prominent of these, since they'll be happening regularly for ranger and rogue characters. Is it intended that these skill uses just can't benefit from hero points?


This idea came to me when I looked at the Shield Master feat and realized something.

Quote:
You do not suffer any penalties on attack rolls made with a shield while you are wielding another weapon. Add your shield’s enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls made with the shield as if it were a weapon enhancement bonus.

So... what if you only wield multiple shields? Lots of them? Lots and lots of them?

Here's a very simple try at a build demonstrating this, put together to maximize the number of multi-weapon-wielded shields, assuming:
- a 20-point buy
- that synthesist eidolon BAB can be used to qualify for feats (albeit ones that will only work while the eidolon is active)
- that retraining has been used to select multiple feats that require BAB +11
- that the extra attack from Improved Two-Weapon Fighting applies once to each off-hand weapon (e.g. multiple times with extra sets of arms)

Spoiler:

Super Confused Power Turtle (with eidolon active)
Half-elf fighter 2/summoner (synthesist) 11
CN Large humanoid (elf, human)
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent; Perception +4
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Defense
--------------------
AC 30, touch 15, flat-footed 24 (+6 Dex, +12 natural, +3 shield, -1 size)
hp 115 (13 HD; 11d8+2d10+41)
Fort +11, Ref +11, Will +11 (+1 vs. fear, +4 morale bonus vs. Enchantment spells and effects); +2 vs. enchantments
Defensive Abilities evasion; Immune sleep
--------------------
Offense
--------------------
Speed 30 ft.
Melee (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+21/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20) and
. . (L) +1 heavy shield bash +19/+14/+9 (4d6+11/19-20)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Summoner Spell-Like Abilities (CL 11th; concentration +16)
. . 8/day—summon monster VI
Summoner (Synthesist) Spells Known (CL 11th; concentration +16)
. . 4th (3/day)—lesser planar binding (DC 19), overland flight, thaumaturgic circle
. . 3rd (5/day)—charm monster (DC 18), displacement, evolution surge (DC 18), protection from energy
. . 2nd (5/day)—detect thoughts (DC 17), lesser evolution surge (DC 17), haste, resist energy, see invisibility
. . 1st (7/day)—endure elements, enlarge person (DC 16), infernal healing, protection from evil, snowball (DC 16), unseen servant
. . 0 (at will)—arcane mark, detect magic, light, mage hand, mending, read magic
--------------------
Statistics
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Str 36, Dex 22, Con 17, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 21
Base Atk +11; CMB +22; CMD 41
Feats Bashing Finish, Greater Two-weapon Fighting, Improved Critical (shield, heavy), Improved Shield Bash, Improved Two-weapon Fighting, Power Attack, Shield Master, Shield Slam, Skill Focus (Use Magic Device), Two-weapon Fighting
Traits shield bearer (ulfen), shield-trained
Skills Craft (baskets) +10, Knowledge (arcana) +18, Knowledge (planes) +11, Perception +4, Spellcraft +18, Use Magic Device +27; Racial Modifiers +2 Perception
Languages Common, Elven, Halfling, Sylvan
SQ devotion, elf blood, fused eidolon, fused link, maker's jump, shielded meld
Other Gear +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, +1 bashing shield spikes heavy steel shield, belt of physical might +6 (Str, Dex), headband of alluring charisma +6

(Incidentally, pop Enlarge Person and those attacks go up to 6d6 base each.)

Of course, one complication here is that buying magic shields by the dozen gets really expensive, on top of the cost of keeping Dex high enough to qualify for Greater TWF with the eidolon active.