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Why do you think she will win initiative? She only has a +12 initiative which isn't a certainty.

I agree with you, which is why I'm trying to find the best way without it feeling like cheating.

I think what is frustrating is that it is an extraordinary (ex) ability that can somehow be given to others? Being an (ex) ability limits a lot of what can be done against it magically.

Thanks for the suggestion Phntm888 I'll check it out. Here were some of the other options I was thinking of:

- House rule that mythic spells overcome the ability, which would allow some of them to get through at least.

- House rule that it can't be granted to allies.

My group is in the middle of character building to start the adventure path. One of the PCs wants to create an Inquisitor with the Spellbreaker archetype. Seems to fit the theme pretty well but I'm a little concerned with the capstone:

Impervious (Ex)

At 20th level, a Spellbreaker becomes immune to the effects of a single school of arcane magic. That school of magic must be the first one she picked for defense against magic (see above). Neither harmful nor helpful arcane spells of that school have an effect on the Spellbreaker. If a spell of that school is an area of effect spell, the spell goes off as normal, but the Spellbreaker is untouched by its effects. Once per day, as a swift action, the Spellbreaker can grant this imperviousness to all allies in a 60-foot burst for 1 minute.

I could see it potentially trivializing the final encounter in the game if they pick the "correct" school, especially the effect of applying it to your party for 10 rounds.

Am I being too concerned about this? If not, any suggestions on how to handle it?

By choosing the Bomber research field, my bombs don't hit allies. The Uncanny Bombs feat requires Precise Bombs feat as a prereq which, as a bomber, I don't need because I get the same effect from my research field. So does the bomber research field satisfy that condition or do I really need to throw away a 6th lvl feat?

I believe the implication there is the person targeted with Maze is also a caster, and either plane shifts themselves or dispels the maze effect that they're inside of.

If that is the case than I agree they could work. Having someone else get them out seems to add a wrinkle though

Totally up to you as the GM. I'd have allowed it.

For comparison, the 5th-level cleric spell plane shift can get the player out but not necessarily to where they were before. Dispel magic also works but requires a dispel check.

The only problem with those solutions though are:

- Dispel magic. Similar situation, what exactly are you targeting to dispel?

Had a situation come up in a recent game. One PC was targeted with Maze and so off he went into the maze. Another PC then cast Limited Wish to bring him back.

The argument he used was "Undo the harmful effects of many spells". At the time I was on the fence but ultimately ruled that it would work and brought the PC back from the maze.

Did I overpower Limited Wish? Or is there something else about Limited Wish that would make it work. Or should it not have been able to bring the other PC back?

Thanks everyone!

If a creature has Wisdom drain to the point where it has 0 Wisdom, they are "Incapable of rational thought and unconscious". The table on d20pfsrd has a dash for 0 wisdom. This table is a collection of official information, except for some of the description column, but I haven't been able to find where in the rules that it states "0 wisdom: -". I believe there isn't such a place in the rulebook and that is why it is a dash in the table.

The reason why the dash is important is because another player is claiming that means a creature doesn't get a will save if a spell is cast on it, that it auto fails the save. I don't believe that is true and that instead you would take a -6 to your save. Anyone have any official rulings on the matter?

Thanks for the clarifications everyone

That is the general rule. Specific rules can and do override the general rules. So the specific rules of Raging Vitality and Superstition should take precedence.

Ok great. That was my reasoning as well. Any thoughts on the barbarian being allowed to drop out of rage?

I have a few questions on a situation that my group ran into recently.

The PC in question is a Barbarian with Raging Vitality and Superstition. He recently was attacked and had his Wisdom drained down to 0. This means he is "Incapable of rational thought and is unconscious."

First question: Because the barbarian has raging vitality, he is still raging. According to the "Aiming a Spell" section of the rules, it says "Unconscious creatures are automatically considered willing" but Superstition says "While raging, the barbarian cannot be a willing target of any spell". So which one would take precedence? I think he wouldn't be a willing target but any confirmation would be nice.

Second question: Would the barbarian be allowed to purposefully drop out of rage on his turn as a free action? I can't decide if that would be consider a "rational thought"

That makes a lot of sense. He has indeed been watching them so he would know when they are about to open the door. That's a solid idea

First, I want to write out the rules as I understand them in case I'm not reading the correctly. Then I'll get into my question.

Summon Monster takes 1 round to cast. If that creature is attacked/damaged before the beginning of it's turn in the next round, the creature must role a concentration check of DC (10 + spell level + damage dealt) every time it is hit. If they fail then the summon doesn't work and it loses the spell. Does this sound correct?

If that is correct, I'm interested to hear how other GM's encounter with Jordimandus turned out. For me, it seems that he is going to try and summon monster and the Barbarian on the flying carpet in my party is going to charge in and hit him. He has pounce and does minimum 40~ points of damage per hit so no way summon monster works.

Anyone have any ideas? The only chance I see is one of the jellies grabbing him on his charge which seems unlikely as well.

Background: Currently in book 5, my group is almost half way through the Runeforge. I have tied in a lot of the PCs' backstories into the story and some have "completed" the goal of their backstory but still maintain the motivation they need to continue. I've tried to give some type of fitting reward for those that completed their backstory. Rewards like giving them a powerful magical weapon or a free additional trait that fit their character.

Problem: One of my PCs has a pretty broad backstory, he is essentially a gnome sorcerer that went out looking for powerful magic. I regretfully haven't really done anything with his backstory up to this point. My thought was to either have him find some "powerful magic" in the Runeforge (seems pretty applicable) or a journal/log entry stating the minions discovered/crafted something already and sent it off to Xin-Shalast so that he could find it there. Anyone have any good ideas on what that "powerful magic" could be? I was thinking something that might boost his magic, or a free high level spell, or some powerful item. Something tangible that they will be able to use for the rest of the AP.

There are specific maneuvers to separate characters from their gear. Grapple is not one of them.

Certainly. Its not just the grapple that is separating them from their gear, its the moving them part that separates them.

Unless the Dragon has some special ability, the Dragon gains the Grappled Condition when its Grapple Check succeeds. The Dragon would stop moving, and both would fall.

I'd recommend the Dragon Bull Rush the wizard (or whatever) off the Flying Carpet instead. That will accomplish exactly what the Dragon is looking for--moving the victim off the carpet so that it will fall--and so complicated.

The dragon doesn't stop moving, it just can't move out of its space (until its next turn if it maintains the grapple and decides to move both it and the creature its grappling). Or at least that's how I interpret it. I don't think a flying creature would stop flapping its wings just because its grappling someone.

Still, good call on the bull rush.

You can certainly speak commands to tell it what to do whenever you want, but it cannot move until your round in the initiative order. The carpet is magical and does not move unless given commands.

If someone is on a skateboard, their friction is enough to move when the skateboard moves but that doesn't mean that it will come with the person if I pick them up. In this case, the dragon is literally grabbing the character in its mouth (or claw I suppose) so I don't see how the carpet would move as well

I would also argue for the sake of balance of the game that knocking a character off a carpet needs to be allowed

Why do you think that the carpet doesn't come with the character?

The way I understand the carpet is that it is directed via voice commands, it is in no way attached to the character. The dragon is grappling the character, not the carpet, and so it would not come with when the character is moved closer due to being grappled.

Ok thanks. Also, is there any ruling in regards to how far away a dragon could be and still attempt a grapple? For example, an ancient white dragon has 10ft reach, but 15ft with it's bite attack. I could see it being ruled either way.

I was wondering if the following scenario works the way I think it does or if I'm missing something:

- Character is on a magic carpet in the air
- Huge dragon attempts a grapple with his 10ft reach(does or doesn't provoke AoO?)
- Succeeds, which pulls the character next to the dragon, minus the magic carpet (extra attempt to free the grapple due to moving into hazardous condition?)
- dragon uses a free action to release the grapple
- Character falls

I haven't found anything that would suggest this would work in a different way.

I like it. Would definitely give him incentive to keep going. Can you expand on what you mean by "eating alive with greed"?

I'm running the RotRL AP for my group. They're just finishing up book 4 and will be looking for the runeforge very soon. I had an idea of how to incorporate one of my PC's backstory but now looking at the logistics, I don't think it makes sense lore wise. I'm hoping to get a little bit of help.

The PC: he is a dwarf and, long story short, he believes he is a leprechaun. He is greedy (which fits well into the AP), got ridiculed for his belief, killed someone and basically got kicked out of his village due to his delusions. That's the highlights of his backstory.

I planned on adding it in by having them find a list while researching things in the Thassilonian library. It was a list of Thaassilon slaves that were sent to the runeforge as test subjects before earthfall that had his last name on it. My thought was they were tested on and greed was basically etched into their genes and passed down generation to generation. One of his ancestors somehow escaped and here we are.

The problem (or at least one of the problems) is that dwarves didn't even come to the surface until after earthfall so it doesn't make sense for them to be slaves in Thassilon.

Anyone have any ideas to make this work? Or some other ways to incorporate his backstory at the point of the AP were in?

Thanks everyone

I'm reading over the fly skill and it seems a little ambiguous about this. Is a creature allowed to do multiple maneuvers in the same move action (example: make a 45 degree turn left, then a 45 degree turn right like a s-bend or something) and if so, do they make multiple fly checks? one check?

Cloud spells can absolutely be overlapped with each other.

** spoiler omitted **

It's funny you mention that because that may or may not be the reason why I was wondering about this question :)

The big limit is whether you still have line of sight to where you want to create your second cloud spell.

For spells you only have to have line of effect, not line of sight, if I'm not mistaken?

Perfect. Thank you!

I've tried looking for an answer to my question but have been unsuccessful so now I'll just post it. Can a single space be affected by multiple cloud spells? Or does one somehow take over the other? For example, if Solid fog is in effect and a creature casts stinking cloud in the same location, are both in effect?

Honestly the Swashbuckler seems kinda on the low side what did he multiclass into?

2 levels into Magus. I'm not very familiar with "good" swashbuckler builds but I get the feeling that he kind of regrets it now (I believe he did it more for story purposes than anything)

Yeah swash multiclassed so he won't get 3 attacks until next level.

Question -

Are your monsters hitting yhe PCs?

If the answer is 'yes', everything is working as it should. AC always scales slower then the bonus 'to hit'.

The real trick is your smart monsters need to play smart. Have them try to avoid Full Attacks from the PCs. Dumb monster play, well, dumb.

Also, most Adventure Paths are designed for 4 players with 15 point buy.
Stronger and more characters does change the balance.

The monsters don't have a guaranteed hit on their first attack but I suppose they have been getting their shots in.

The biggest problem in avoiding full attacks has been the barbarian has pounce and a flying carpet making it difficult in a lot of scenarios.

If I could go back I would do a point buy system, instead we did a 4d6 x 7 dropping the lowest die and the lowest group. This has resulted in some beefy characters.

Sounds like I'm on the right track then and their numbers are to be expected. To your point Dave, yes I have also been following a chart I found for CR to adjust the encounter due to having 5 PCs instead of 4, most of the time it results in adding one more creature to deal with.

I was worried I was going from one extreme of encounters being too easy "out of the box" to the other of encounter too difficult (trying to get over the "fear" of killing a PC due to me adjusting the encounter). But based on the comments here it sounds like I'm not too far out of line by applying the advanced template. Thanks everyone

A lot of times they have haste, blessing of fervor, or bless so it could be +1 or +2 more depending. I put 30 as part of the range because they will occasionally find a monster with an AC that high. But I would say most of creatures are on the lower end of the range (off the cuff numbers just by looking at some of their recent and upcoming encounters).

I'm a first time GM running RotRL AP with some friends. We are nearing the end of book 4 and they have now reached level 12. The group consists of 3 martials and 2 spell casters. The martial characters are the ones I'm interested in. At this point, it seems that the only time they even have a chance to miss is their last attack in a full round attack. Certainly aren't missing on their first attack. Is this expected for this level of characters? To give some numbers:

-I'm already putting the advance template on the creatures they're facing. This is putting the average AC to somewhere around ~25-30 depending on the creature
-The players attack bonuses are (raging Barb: 27/22/17), (Swash: 20/15), (Slayer: 21/16/11)

I guess what I'm trying to figure out is if I should be adjusting the encounters more because they obliterate monsters due to always hitting, or if this is just how the encounters are supposed to be? Or maybe there is something else entirely that I'm missing.

I am trying to fit one of my PC's backstory in to the AP. He is a swashbuckler that has been looking for his master for the campaign and eventually spotted him in fort rannick right before Lucrecia used dimension door to bring her and his master to hook mountain peak.

My thought is to make his master a frost wight just like Lamatar and have them fight both (5 PCs). However, Hero Lab is saying that this is going to be a CR 14 encounter. Is this going to be too much? Are there other adjustments I need to be making? For reference, I currently have given his master 4 frost wight levels and 7 swashbuckler levels.

My group has been using the critical hit deck (and fumble deck) and I think it adds a lot to the game. The other night we got the "Decapitation" card. According to the rules provided in the deck, when a card has a save listed without a DC (like the Decapitation card), the confirm crit roll by the creature becomes the DC. Even though the player made the save, they feel that it is too high of a DC and it has sparked a discussion to decide if a house rule should be implemented.

So, what are other people's opinion? Have you made a house rule? I don't even know what other cards don't have a DC listed (we like not knowing what kind of cards are in the deck) but I don't want to make it so easy that there becomes no point in even using those cards.

Adventurers don't need day jobs. That is their day job.

The adventuring part is the reason why I might think the rule is talking about the rest of the day because it says you can't do any adventuring while retraining. It seems obvious that you couldn't be retraining with someone while you're out adventuring which to me implies that it must be talking about the rest of the day.

For retraining, the rules state "You can't perform any other strenuous activities while retraining, such as marching, adventuring, or crafting magic items." Does this mean that you can't do any of those activities during the 8 hours that you're retraining, or you can't do any of those activities during the other hours of the day while you're not training (Like you're too exhausted to do those things after training sort of thing).