SebastianC's page

At the absolute very most the guard's blow should be 1 point of non-lethal damage and an attack roll should be made. You should also be very clear in your description that the guard is attacking non-lethally; something along the lines of "amazed at your impertinence the guard admonishes your rudeness by striking you in the face, do you wish me to roll for attack or do you let the guard strike you for 1HP of non-lethal damage?"

This. Because the attack by the guard is within the non-combat part of the narrative, I believe the player should be given the opportunity to determine whether they want to keep to the non-combat part of the narrative, or "take it to the flip-mat" and move into the combat part of the story.

Another idea is to not have the physical blow do any damage, but instead be part of the narrative description of an Intimidate check by the guard, resulting in a Shaken condition for the character.

In my mind at least, any guard/watchman would have Intimidate in their social skill set.

Outstanding!!!! Both eagerly awaited in my groups. Will have to roll d2 to decide which to play first.

I told myself I wouldn't cry... :'-)

So glad this is being reprinted. Finding a copy of this one was an exercise in Grr.

Fun question, and really hard too. So many of our modern-world disciplines are highly specialized yeah? But to distill it to the essence of what my company does and what I specifically do I would say Profession:Miner with a daily use of the Scribe Scroll feat.

Or maybe I'm the guy that writes the holy words on the scraps of paper you put in the golems before sending them out to work in the mines. :D

Dang my bad. Those are APG spells. :(

You can always use summoned monsters to block escape routes and then bowl a flaming sphere. Explosive runes on a paper, hand it to your earth elemental, and have it burrow next to enemies and read the paper.

Magic mouth, combined with silent image or other illusion spells can increase believability and fun for roleplaying. True strike when you expect an AOO, maybe even with that Falchion mentioned above?

Don't give up, hehe. Think outside the box.

Grease, Stumble Gap, Create Pit... always fun options. Summon Monster can be a real hoot... Flank for your friends, menace enemy casters. Be creative and abuse the limits of the creature types and their abilities.

Summon swarm , stinking cloud... battlefield control and terrain denial. Enemy harassment. So much more fun to be had than spamming Acid Arrow and Magic Missile.

When life gives you lemons, create a pit behind your enemy, grease the ground around it, and summon a earth elemental to bullrush him into it. Then throw the lemons in. And then a couple of summoned dolphins because why not.

Obviously that's all a bit over the top but you get the idea. Wizards, even Core, are incredibly versatile. With some cheap wands and a variety of hindering and helping spells you can have a lot of fun and not get bored.

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These are freakin' awesome!!!! You know what else would be cool? One featuring Grand Master Torch. :-D

Oh happy day! I just got my Monster Summoner's Handbook in, and wouldn't you know there is now a Variant Summon Monster feat which allows you to apply a selection of different Simple Templates to your summoned monsters. Among them.... Dark. :'-)

Low investment too, for what you get. You just need a rank in Knowledge(planes) and one in Knowledge(arcana).

Wayangs are pretty cool. I've done some Googling into the RL background in Asian folklore, and seen some of the videos of the shadow puppetry plays. Have to say, some really amazing stuff!

In game terms the race has some great potential. Size small with no strength penalty, some really neat racial abilities like moving around in shadows etc. The class archetype described in the Advanced Race Guide is for Bard archetype called a Shadow Puppeteer. This makes sense because the Wayang race in game lore is said to have originated in the Plane of Shadow, and still has strong ties to it.

Another shadow-themed race is the Fetchling. Fetching have a really cool Summoner archetype which allows the summoning of shadow-based creatures. I think that makes sense from an RP/flavor perspective.

I think it would be logical and non game breaking in any way to add a shadow subtype for Eidolons, and further allow the Wayang summoned to select the Dark Simple Template to the Summon Monster line of spells, or at the least to their Summon Monster spell-like ability. The Dark Template stats are very similar to the existing Celestial /Infernal templates. Any thoughts?

In a homebrew game I'd rule that a no-brainer and allow it. Alas, in Society play there's no way to rule such things and get away with it. :-D

Who knows maybe someone will read this and put some text to the effect in an upcoming rules revision.

Alchemist.

Dispelling bomb. Dispel all enemy buffs, on all the enemies in area of effect, all at once.

Stinking Bomb. Nauseate them. Nauseate them all. They can't do anything whilst retching.

Smoke Bomb. Screw up their aim. Hide your team's movements.

Grease Bomb/Tangle Bomb. Trip 'em up.

Confusion Bomb. Hilarity.

Plague Bomb. Give 'em a disease.

Poison Bomb. Like Cloudkill in a bottle. Deny them their chosen terrain.

Cursed Bomb. Being cursed can make them suck somewhat at things they are trying to do to your team.

Levitate or fly, and do all of the above in style our of melee range.

For extra laughs you can throw things like bottled Mephits, Stirges, and Oozes into their midst.

Combine several of the above for good times.

-Fizz

Ooh, forgot to mention that there is a healing-based Alchemist archetype now too. Splash-area healing bombs, can give party members fast healing temporarily, etc. Gives up some traditional damage stuff to do so, but there you go.

Edit- spelling!

Well I would suggest an Alchemist.

1. Utility- Extracts for loads of utility effects. Respectable skill points as well, although admittedly not approaching the bard or rogue levels. You could always dip a level into something rogue-ey for a bunch of knowledge skills. You can use Cognitogens to raise the mental attribute du jour as needed for the particular knowledge or social skill you need. You make your extracts at the beginning of the day typically, but if you leave a slot or two free and you have an in-game hour or so of downtime you can make whatever you need to meet a challenge that raises its head, as you come to it.

2. Buffing- with the right discoveries you can use your extracts on other people. You can also self-buff amazingly well with discoveries and feats such as Eternal Potion, Diluted Extract, etc.

3. Crowd Control (not familiar with Arm/Anvil games theory but with dicoveries such as Stinking Bomb (nauseate enemies), Dispelling Bomb, Force Bomb (knockdown effect, harms incorporeals, etc.)

4. D8 hit dice! Buff and damage (at least in terms of versatility and multi-target effect) like a caster, survive like a rogue, especially if you load up Con and Dex, and then use Dex mutagen in combat.

5. While talking about damage, you start with basic Fire damage for your bombs, but you have discoveries available for Cold, Acid, Force, and even Good/Evil "bane" damage eventually.

6. Wanna melee? Use Str mutagen and use some of the mutagen discoveries like Feral Mutagen and go toe to toe like Mr. Hyde.

7. Wanna hang back and lob bombs? Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot feats and Precision Bombs discovery let you lob into melee and call which squares you want to exclude from splash damage, without taking terrible penalties.

8. Throw Anything feat for free! This one is fun. Basically proficient with any splash weapon, not just bombs, and any improvised thrown weapon. You might surprise yourself the things you realize you can throw, especially if you get creative with combat mutagens and extracts like Enlarge Person, Fly, etc.

9. You can use discoveries to increase your survivability. Effective poison immunity comes as you level, the Preserve Organs ability protects you from sneak attacks and the like.

10. Capstone discoveries are really neat. Philosopher's stone can be used to transmute stuff or to give you a True Resurrection elixir once a month. (If you can afford the cost, but at that level shouldn't be an issue.)

11. Lots of flavor and fun RP potential. I admit I was skeptical at first of the class's place in fantasy setting, but there are many ways to flavor the class. True mad scientist, wide-eyed natural philosopher, lab experiment gone wrong, reluctant academic, Batman-style "I've got just the thing for this!-gadgeteer.

12. Action economy. Can do things regarding extracts, bombs, and potions as shorter action types than normal.

I have fun with my swiss army gnome. I feel like I will always be useful no matter what comes up. I'm a newb though so take whatever I say with a bushel of salt.

-Fizz