RustyShackelford's page

Errr edit here due to wrong copypasta. The reason this is an issue is the wording of Aid Another which states:

In melee combat, you can help a friend attack or defend by distracting or interfering with an opponent. If you're in position to make a melee attack on an opponent that is engaging a friend in melee combat, you can attempt to aid your friend as a standard action.

Bodyguard allows you to aid another using your AAO. So, bodyguard triggers AAO when anyone is attacked adjacent to the player allowing you use to aid another, but you can only aid another to defend if you threaten the opponent.

So literal rules seem pretty clear on this, but I don't think it's as bodyguard is intended to be used.

We're having a disagreement on this in my game. RAW, I think it lends to not being able to use bodyguard unless you threaten, but RAI I argue that you don't need to threaten, just have an adjacent ally that is attacked, given behavior on similar buffs for defense like Blundering Defense.

Does anyone have insight on this?

It's steampunk. Are you going to have constructs? Magical beasts? Outsiders (Faustian deals with the devil, you know!)?

There will be constructs and some mutations, I am allowing alchemy, but nothing else really. The story is that this is basically our world but Charles Babbage was able to complete the Difference Engine, a fully mechanical computer in 1860, and that led to a much more rapid and steam powered industrial revolution. Magic does exist in this world, but it's really, really rare. I'm only allowing one player to have magical abilities and I've banned people from playing Sorcerer, Druid, Wizard, and Cleric. People can have magic like abilities but they must explain it through either alchemy or technology.

Keep favoured enemy bonus and have it only apply to members of a specific organisation or alignment. Another option would be a specific racial group, but only if you are comfortable with representing the more racist society that existed then.

Yeah, I had thought about creating classifications for characters, like factory worker, infantry, engineer, etc, and then applying it to that. It may end up being my best option

So, I'm running a very different kind of game set in a very steampunk 1890s London with low magic. One of my characters really wants to play a Trophy Hunter Ranger from Ultimate Combat. The problem is adapting some of the rangers abilities such as favored enemy bonus and Hunter's Aim for a world where there are only humans.

I was originally planning on changing favored enemy bonus to favored terrain bonus and giving him a +2 to various skill checks in that terrain, but I'm not sure how to adapt Hunter's Aim. Applying it to everyone in that terrain would seem a little too powerful.

Any thoughts or suggestions?