I was scouring the FAQ to see what changes have been made over the past year when I was surprised to see the change to the Pulse caster. Now don't get me wrong, it was a cheap way for PC's to get High-Cap batteries, but the change is a little confusing for a number of reasons.
The first is that the Pulse caster is stated as having full capacity of 40 charges, and the Weapons section clearly states that a weapon comes preloaded with its standard ammunition (arrows, charges, bullets, etc). So according the RAW it should come with the full 40, but the FAQ states that it comes only with 20. Also to note, the Pulse caster's use is stated as Use 2, but the FAQ also clarifies this as Cap 20 use 1, which leaves me with a couple of important questions.
Is this FAQ a permanent change to the Pulse caster's capacity, or will players later be able to upgrade the pulse caster to HiCap later (if for some reason they're still using it)?
Is this a complete change to weapon starting ammunition, in which case just how much ammo does a weapon come with?
If I purchased a Pulse Caster Rifle at level 1 (Cap 20 use 1), and upgrade to a High Cap at level 5, will my charge use go back to being use 2?
Does this affect other weapons and their ammo capacity/use, if so how?
There have been a lot of questions regarding grenades, and explosives in general in my group, and since a lot of the questions for grenades also fall under explosives, I would like to keep this discussion about explosives, and set charges using the Engineering skill.
What is currently known: Explosives count as the same price, effect, and weight of grenades. A detonator can be used to prime and detonate explosives using the engineering skill to set a charge. An explosive charge that has been successfully set on a stationary object ignores half of the objects hardness.
So here are the questions:
What is the DC of a set charge? A grenade is stated as DC 10+half i.level+dex, so do Explosives have the same DC?
If I wanted to set a breaching charge on a door to blow it down, then what is the typical health/DR of a door that I would need to bypass?
Going off the last question, can I set multiple charges to a singular detonator, and detonate all simultaneously?
As with the last question, could I set explosives to detonate the door, and a single flash grenade to blind those behind the door once detonated?
What happens when a creature swallows an explosive charge, and the charge is detonated? Does it still get a reflex save? Do the creatures around said creature still take grenade splash damage? Does the grenade do increased damage for being localized entirely within the stomach of said creature?
An explosive goes off (lets say a shock explosive) near multiple enemies who also have explosives on their person. Does the shock detonate those explosives, damage/destroy them, or have no effect? Is there an explosive that could potentially have an effect?
What's to stop a player from spending credits on multiple level 1 fragmentation explosives, daisy chaining them to 1 detonator, and then creating a satchel charge that is cheaper, and just as effective as higher level grenades? ie. Player A spends 2000 credits on 50 Frag I grenades, he then spends 50 minutes setting each explosive to a single detonator, and puts the entirety of the explosives into a single backpack (essentially creating said satchel charge)
and then uses said backpack to turn a group of enemies into pink mist.
So according to the feat Deadly Aim, I can take a -2 to my attack bonus during an attack or full attack to deal additional damage equal to half my BAB bonus. The feat specifically includes the Solarian solar manifestation, and excludes spells or other special abilities, but doesn't note to exclude Grenades.
Now on 183, Grenades specifies that penalties to your attack roll also decrease the DC of your Grenades.
If I understand this right, that means a level 4 soldier (16 dex), with a "Frag Grenade I" could use deadly aim to throw his grenade at a -2 into a square, which would then deal 1d6+2 damage to all targets in a 15ft range with a Reflex DC 12 (10+1 (half Item level) +3 (dex)-2 (Deadly Aim)) for half damage.
This also means that if I full attack (same character situation) with deadly aim, and throw 2 grenades at 1d6+2 damage each, and the enemies would have to save twice: reflex dc 8 (10+1 (half item level)+3 (dex)-2 Deadly Aim - 4 Full Attack) or take full damage per failed throw.
Am I understanding this correctly, or is there anything I missed?
So a couple nights ago I was running 4-16 The Fabric of Reality, and the PC's got to the part where they
Spoiler:
finally meet the Aspis agents, and got into a small argument about evil acts. Now the long part of it is:
The Aspis Agents are tired, they've been in this plane for weeks, and they just exhausted their last bit of rations. Now in the module it states that the leader only wants one person alive, but I decide to go against that since I feel like he wouldn't want to risk killing the only person with the way out, so instead he goes for non-combat option first.
Because they're Aspis immediately things are pretty tense, but not yet hostile. As they're talking, the party Cleric casts Protection from Evil, both the sorcerer and the evil cleric make their spellcraft check and realize that he's only being defensive so they also cast defensive spells (Mage Armor, and fly), but are still open to discussion (surprisingly no one has even attempted diplomacy). Suddenly our Magus draws his sword and we go immediately into initiative because of the aggressive action.
A fireball, a Spiked Pit, and a couple Immolations later, the Cleric is dead, and the sorcerer is now backed against the wall with no where to go, so he (bluffing) surrenders, throwing down his dagger. The PC's start talking to him again, and ask me how long they have to wait for the Pit to end, I then ask if they're going to go out of combat to wait for the pit to end and they say yes, and I allow time to escalate until that point. Things carry on, questions are asked, but as I'm roleplaying the Aspis agent apparently I say something that urks the Magus enough to want to kill him, he rolls for an attack (crit threat). Now at this point, no one had made any attempt at a sense motive, and no one had still made any attempt for diplomacy. Meaning that their characters still believe his surrender to be completely legit.
The short version is, if an enemy combatant surrenders, and the PC's accept the surrender long enough to go out of combat, but one of the PC's attempts to reinitiate combat against someone they know surrendered, with intent to kill, would that be an evil act? Before you mention the Helpless/Defenceless part, yes I know about that being a major qualifier, but I wasn't sure about this unique scenario.
After talking to other DM's, some seem to agree, others not so much that this would be considered evil. The ones who agree have stated that the moment combat ended, and we spent a single round out of combat (we spent 3 to end the Spiked Pit), that him reinitiating combat against a (to his knowledge) surrendering foe would in fact be evil. At the very least it would be evil, but not enough for an alignment change.
So I'm building a "Big Game Trophy Hunter" for PFS, unfortunately the Trophy Hunter Archetype isn't available for play, but it doesn't mean I can't still fluff it as a Gunslinger. I've never played a gunslinger before, but I did read the Gunslinger guide.
Basically what I'm trying to accomplish is to become something like the character Roland Tempo from the Lost World of Jurassic Park. To have the gun skill of a gunslinger, but the hunting and tracking skill of the Ranger.
My thoughts is I'd use the Ranger to get to Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain, and then take the rest as Gunslinger. Now, I'm not trying to go for a min/max build, but I'm also not trying to gimp myself.
I'm building an elemental focused Arcanist, everyone seems to do fire so I'm doing electricity (this is a flavor build, not a min/max build), but I've never multi-classed two arcane casters together and am not really sure how it works completely.
So far I know they operate on their own spell lists (i.e. If I had 4th level wizard spells, then took a level in Arcanist I'd only have access to 1st level Arcanist spells), but I'm not entirely sure if Arcanist abilities such as Potent Magic work on spells cast from the Wizard Spellbook, or if an Evocation focused Wizard can change the elemental properties of the spells cast from the Arcanist spellbook.
I don't want to create anything illegal, so I figured I'd come here and ask.
I was just curious about the legality of a multi-archetype character. I've seen players do it, but I'm not sure if the DM's are allowing it, or if it's legitimately legal. What I was thinking of making was a Bladebound Kensai (Magus), I felt like the two went hand in hand with each other perfectly.
I don't play Casters often, but when building a particular archetype I randomly got curious, and a little confused on how Arcane casting works when you dabble in multiple arcane classes.
For example: Lets say I'm a level 5 wizard with access up to 3rd level spells, but then I decide to take 5 levels in Sorcerer. How would that work? Would the spells continue to advance giving me roughly 7th level, or would you only be advancing your spell level in Sorcerer spell slots (and as such have to start all over again from scratch) allowing you to prepare a certain number of wizard slots, but then allowing yourself the ability to spontaneously cast a different array of spells at will?
I love the Summoner class, the amount of fun that can be had with the pair can turn anyone into anything from a pokemon trainer, to a dragon rider. That being said, after looking over some of the fun combinations I could make, I came up with a few questions about the rules.
1) After giving the Eidolon the ability to burrow, can he breathe while burrowed, or does he need to come up above the ground every now and then for air, and if so how long can he remain under ground before needing breath?
2) Can a burrowed Eidolon with the Bite, Grab, and Pull evolutions pull a creature (of appropriate size smaller) under the ground with an appropriate combat maneuver check?
3) Is there a way to add ranged attacks to my eidolon (aside from spells, weapon proficiencies, breath weapons), if not would it be an issue if my eidolon were to evolve to gain a single 30 ft ranged attack?
4) If my Eidolon has flight, can he hover, or can he only hover if I invest in the extra flight?
5) Is there a way to give my eidolon multiple attacks outside of additional appendages? To clarify: Say I had a bipedal Eidolon whom I'm trying to turn into a follower/squire like character. However he only gets 1 attack/round with his chosen weapon, is there a way to change this, or would this be a house rule by DM discretion?
