Seraphimpunk's page

if i'd written this adventure, i'd have made Garen a girl and named her Tina Faun

your arms must be tired

I've got an issue with the wear-for-24-hours-items.

I'd rather have seen all of the wear-for-24-hour-first items be categorized as "wearable lesser -cursed" items. Give them a game mechanic descriptor, allow them as the only cursed items that are commonly traded in PFS. The benefit: You can put them on and gain their benefit immediately, but you can't remove them for 24hrs without a remove curse. That at least front-loads the utility and wonder, with the caveat that you won't be able to gear-swap without wasting spells. It stops the gear swapping nonsense that creeps in from ( in generations past ) things like 3.5's Belt of Battle.

I'm sure there were plenty of items you had to wear 24hrs to get a benefit from before, but now there's a lot that have no benefit whatsoever until you've worn them for 24 hrs. At least with headbands of vast intelligence, you get a benefit within the first day.
these items that you have to wear for a day before you can use their magic, i's just... underwhelming. It fun-deflating too, to find them as part of loot in game now: "great, found an item i like! awww, can't use it at all this scenario because we don't have 24hrs to rest". womp womp.

Hatch's instructions, told over firelight last night before bed, while planning, Nadya tranlates. here's a summary of those. With her coaching or if you speak Skald you can remember the phrases by taking 10 on a DC 10 int check. in combat you can't take 10 on it. if you don't speak skald or have her coaching its a DC 15 int or linguistics check. it will probably be best if Nadya goes last, so she can coach everyone with the phrase in Skald. If you can't remember, you can hold the blue snowflake crystal and just step in the area to go to the dining hall (without speaking)

These take you up one level to the dining hall. First he says you will probably want to go to the top, but he doesn't know the pass phrase to get you there. The crystal you need to get to though he can tell you. You need to take the doors opposite the main windows of the dining hall, into the Mirrored Hall. That is the teleporter that leads up two levels to Nazhena's chambers. Hatch doesn't know that pass phrase.

if you take the doors north out of the dining hall, past the conservatory, there is a telporter that will take you up one more level to the aerie. the raven-tender lives and works there. its the crecent maw 50 ft. off the ground where the light-red guard shot his warning bolt. to get there say: "Take wing, soar and fly,
let me view the winter sky."

to get back down say "Down a level, to the halls,
leave this cage without walls."

to get down to the entry hall, from the dining hall, say: "Spiral downward to the ground,
every ounce and every pound."

Nazhena's second in command, Radosek, has interests in Jairess, in the Aerie. Rumor is he made a key that will take you from the mirrored hall to his chamber, a black feather in a fist size crystal, like the snowflake.

no flavor penalty, but you're staggered from the frost fall effect, so you can just manage to get up, you can save the shot for round 2 if you like?

ok, no baxies after this fight though

the doll's grotesque vissage doesn't change, its impossible to read eyes, one silver, one sad little girl's eye don't move. but you could almost swear you saw an image of the blonde girl in curls rip itself away enough for her head and shoulders to emerge from the doll, before being torn back into it. "help me!"

"help me!"

what i imagine it looks like at this encounter.

Giacomo watches the fight dispassionately, quietly laughing maniacally to himself

semi -closed recruitment. just listing for my players to chime in and confirm enrollment.

You step up to the ledge and brandish the lantern. Nothing happens

ahh yes, i see that initally he stepped over the dagger, then he stepped back instead to reach and pick up the dagger. his action would have happened after the shadow's attack not before, so : the shadow attacks ( without having to move over the dagger to reach him ), vanovar steps back to where he's not in reach, and picks up the dagger, not provoking an aoo, and not taking 2 str damage.

he does take 1d6 ⇒ 2 fire damage from the hot dagger . so 2 fire damage instead of 2 str damage. =)

I'm proud to announce the first native 5 Star GM in the Netherlands:

VC of the Netherlands, Auke Teeninga!

he flooded the archives for his 150th table of credit

[wribbit] :: i hear the osprey is always watching::
a mysterious frog says offscreen.

for those that need a recap:

After Varning and six of his men were killed on the shores of Lake Tarik, you've set up a camp outside of town. Some of you went in and stayed in the inn, making a copy of the dwarf's detailed map of the watchtower.

The letter was planted informing a captain that another captain was sleeping with his wife, and one of the guard captains killed the other in a duel. Now one is dead, and the other is in jail in the watchtower.

Ye Merry Men came to town, and performed in the tower on Starday evening. There was no point in attacking or trying something then, as you decided to wait for Moonday before starting actions in the watchtower, beginning with poisoning the stew.

On Moonday, Mamma Giuseppe was kidnapped by Victor, Temperance, and Ash. They impersonated a Dwarven worshiper of something evil, and taunted her and tortured her. They infiltrated the watchtower and poisoned the stew ( apparently successfully ). Ash and Leo didn't return immediately, but lack of action came in handy, as they were just waiting for the secret entrance to be accessible again.

Now you're off to sneak back into the tower, and take out the messenger ravens. you've all snuck in through the tunnel, and are ascending the tower in soldiers disguises. One guard was killed in the Flag room, while two more guards were found at the top of the tower, and are being fought now. One lies in a burnt crisp, the other isn't going down fast enough, and is shouting an alarm while trying to kill intruders.

we were, at least i was =P . its cool. k skelly is in the closet. got it.

they don't "absolutely" need a high con to survive.
it helps that they have hp, but a regular barb can wear light and medium armor and shields, same as a bloodrager. I've seen a Barbarian with stalwart/improved stalwart get phenomenal DR, at which point his Con doesn't matter at all.

Emphasizing Con as a casting stat leaves a bad taste in my mouth, even for a bloodrager. The source of their bloodrage is their bloodline/magic, which roots in the Sorcerer's Charisma.

having lots of hit points help, and yes raging vitality is *required* for barbarians above a certain character level ( but that's a paizo design flaw, requiring a Con 15 as prerequisite for a feat that keeps your barbarian alive while unconscious ).

if the *arcane* version of the raging class could do something differently, one thing is to turn the bonus hp gained during rage into Temp Hp a'la False Life. then you have an instant spell effect attached to your bloodrage: +2 temp hp/ bloodrager level. ( if they were feeling even more generous, if they base the Rage on 4 + 2 rounds/level + Cha rounds/day and its only providing a stat enhancement of +4 str, and +2 temp hp/level as a false life spell effect, there mightn't be as much reason to make it a blind rage: drop the -2 to AC. They're using magic not madness to fuel their rage, and that magic can be more easily controlled.

there's lots of paladin builds that work well with high str/cha, and decent dex/con, that don't fall apart the moment they take a little damage.

if they had temp hp which can't be healed, as temp hp are wont to do, but refresh each rage, taking the fatigue during combat and cycling rage in an encounter becomes more "interesting".

I'd actually love to the bloodrage work off of charisma instead of con

maybe i'm remembering this JJ post

Individual performance types are separate class features, but Bardic Performance is also a class feature.

You can have an archetype swap out specific performances, or you can have one swap out the entire thing. Depends on the archetype.

And yes, if you have two archetypes that modify different performances but don't overlap, you can indeed take both archetypes, provided that the two archetypes aren't oppositional in some flavor way that makes the GM unhappy to see them mixed.

Whatever the GM tells you that happens is what happens. This discussion shouldn't even be happening...

For what it's worth, I would make the spell end if you tried doing anything to disrupt the surface area that the pit was created on.

why should this discussion never even happen?

oh god no, i'm not looking to FAQ this or anything. I'm just opening the topic on the rules forum to see what kind of consensus can be had on what people think would happen.

you're trying to bring physics into an RPG?
well by the rules of magic*, as soon as you fold the paper, you end the spell, so you've got the contents of the pit dumping out and falling all over you, doing 10d6 falling damage and you die.

*sarcasm.

"good" priest: hold on! i can't save the world from the demon horde, first i must help yonder old hag cross the street so that I can again be blessed by my god and cast spells! Now come on ya old bag, you're crossing the street.

old woman: but i don't want to

"good" priest: you're going, no backtalk!

Neutral Druid: sorry, I can't stop him, that'd be a good act, I don't want to lose my powers.

I've loved raw magic wielders for a while since shandril shessare or whatever her name was, when she could leach power from permanent magic items, and protect herself or strike out with some pretty potent raw magic throw downs, and even consume spells thrown against her , a much better readied dispel that would add to her magic reservoir. It's nice to see a version that can cast spells. But maybe be the first class to decide : let the player choose cha or int from the outset, or launch it with a archetype to just switch it; Cha focus to roleplay it as more of a force of personality willing the magic appart, or int based, unravelling the cosmos around them.

didnt' see one. but the major is at the briefing to give his instructions in person. the lady gloriana isn't, so i can see taldans being given the handout , but if it happened in text, it wasn't bolded or i missed it.

great investigative and roleplaying mod. but if the pc's miss the rolls to uncover clues, they're kind of S.O.L. at finding things.

for high level characters, i feel sorry if they're itching for a fight, but avoid them all, or only get to fight a few dogs or wolves.

i'm often left with guidelines in my head for how things work, that were imprinted by 3.0 and 3.5.

i knocked a lot of them out reading the "what changed in pathfinder from 3.5 thread" which is full of hidden goodies.

i was dead set that comprehend languages required you to touch the person or object in order to read or understand it, only to discover that Pathfinder changed it when I got into an argument with a player on how it works, and he pulled out the PF rulebook and showed me the spell. I'd never had occasion to look up that particular spell change. So now I double check spells before casting as a player, and as a GM when I can.

but there's a lot to draw from in guidelines.
the whole Reach being square from 3.5 still follows a lot of GMs, even though paizo has tried to make Reach round.

certain paragraphs and words get dropped, even though the rest is directly copy/pasted from 3.5, so in a lot of cases, some clarification or additional points get lost.

complete arcane made it perfectly clear (well, a lot clearer ) what a weapon-like-spell is, and that you could take weapon focus (touch attack) / weapon focused (ranged touch), while pathfinder singled out Rays as weapon like, and allowed weapon focus (rays), while leaving ranged touch attacks standing out in the cold.

there's a lot of RAI support.
even some of the FAQs seem to re-clarify things that were clarified in 3.5 ( like temporary hit points from different sources stacking ).

The viking is intended to get only the base rage ability, not greater rage, tireless rage, or mighty rage, which are separate barbarian class abilities. A viking is a fighter who can rage; it is not a fighter who picks up the full progression of another class's primary feature. And as others have said, rage provides more than just a +2 to hit and damage.

giving up all of weapon training, to gain one (incomplete) class feature of another class, is a lot to trade away. and then the character must continue to choose to trade away fighter bonus feats, in order to take rage powers.

if you only ever want a couple of rounds of rage per combat, and you're not looking for higher level rage powers, you can already do that by multiclassing, then you get to combine weapon training, rage, and having loads of feats.

"You" is the caster of the spell.

PRD wrote:

Spell Storing: A spell storing weapon allows a spellcaster to store a single targeted spell of up to 3rd level in the weapon. (The spell must have a casting time of 1 standard action.) Anytime the weapon strikes a creature and the creature takes damage from it, the weapon can immediately cast the spell on that creature as a free action if the wielder desires. (This special ability is an exception to the general rule that casting a spell from an item takes at least as long as casting that spell normally.) Once the spell has been cast from the weapon, a spellcaster can cast any other targeted spell of up to 3rd level into it. The weapon magically imparts to the wielder the name of the spell currently stored within it. A randomly rolled spell storing weapon has a 50% chance to have a spell stored in it already.

Guess who's favorite sword just cast that spell? This has an unexpected benefit (in lower level games at least) of using the caster level of the weapon, which happens to be 12th. In higher level games thats a nerf, but from 6th (when you could possibly first get one) to 12th, its a boon.

At least you sword gets a few hit points, incase of sunders.

you don't gain the CL of the sword. the effect's caster level is still based on the berk who put the spell in the sword for you. the sword's CL is just for dispelling purposes, or any other spell/spell-like abilities the weapon possesses.

personally i've been baffled how a 5lb. sharp metal stick dangling from your wrist *doesn't* get in the way. it'd be like fighting while carrying a bag of groceries to me.

you can add Impervious to any ranged weapon, so for +3000gp flat price ( +4000 maybe, its nice to add Adaptive as well, so you can get a bull str or something and have an impact eventually ).

so a +1 impervious composite longbow :
can't be targetted by warp wood
has a hardness of 9 instead of 7 for a normal +1 projectile weapon
has 25 hp, insead of 15 for a normal +1 projectile weapon.

a +2 impervious composite longbow :
has a hardness of 13 instead of 9 for a normal +2 projectile weapon
has 45 hp, instead of 25 for a normal +2 projectile weapon.

a +4 impervious composite longbow :
hardness of 21 ( even adamantine weapons don't get a free pass to sunder your bow)
has 85 hp ( so good luck, they'll be hacking for a while )

if you're a Magus with a +1 impervious projectile weapon, you're set as you advance.
impervious will make your weapon un-sunderable by 9th level, leaving you free to make it a +1 holy bow, and just protect it from sunder with your arcane bond.

as a ranger... eh, you're going to want to beef up your bow for damage and accuracy anyway =)
in pfs, you're not going to need to worry about damage to your bow too much. as a gm, i've only sundered someone's weapon in a module, once. and never in a scenario.

Sorry. My version of a tantrum. It's out of my system.

continuing a discussion brought up in the Old Gods thread

I understand the need for a defined set of what's legal for Divine classes to worship, as presented in the PFS Guide. It provides choices to players about how they can build their characters that still fit within the scope of pathfinder society. My Cleric can't worship Lissala, and I can't be a devotee of the Old Gods and draw on divine power in Pathfinder Society play.

That said, for character classes that don't have a divine spark, the fighter, the rogue, the monk. Who or What a player places his faith in shouldn't be restricted, as the current wording on faiths is limited in the Guidebook.

Its currently feeling a bit "worship only these, or worship nothing." as your only choices.
What about playing a non-atheist character that still carries a momento of his parents, a holy symbol of Aroden or something.

I'd like a little more freedom of religion for my characters. A freedom to choose what to worship, when it has no ties to game mechanics. Is that too much to ask?

I personally think a non-deity you show devotion to is just a false idol and isn't precluded by the wording in the PFS Guide. just like you can have devotion to a particular Ruler in Golarion, roleplay it, and still be a Pathfinder. Worshipping an idol like Lissala right now would be more about , "what if they're a double agent working against us?" and i could see, in game, characters that do worship her, not being admitted into society, or being actively expelled.
Some have suggested though that worshipping a non-standard deity like Aroden would get you called out by some GMs. What the effect of this would be , or the repercussions, boggle my mind. Because I can't imagine a GM saying "choose your god! now! or you're not playing!"

the PFS FAQ leads to this as the updated list of what are the allowed deities in pathfinder society.

I don't even see an entry for the Green Faith. So as a Druid or Ranger, if you want to worship any deity, are you required to choose from the listed deities, not allowed to worship the Green Faith, as presented in the Inner Sea World Guide?

its not so much an aoo.

its some spell in spell storing armor.
so he would have to hit you already to trigger it.
so i think the attack would still happen, and then he'd be stunned/dazed/staggered after that.

its not an AoO. where the action happens technincally before the trigger.
the spell is discharged as a consequence of being hit. so you've already been hit, and taken damage, and then the armor would discharge its spell. i think ( i haven't actually looked it up, this just sounds like the logical flow of events ).

so if he's moved up to you, he's staggered, and that's his action for the turn, and doesn't get to attack you.

if he 5' stepped, he's still able to attack.
i think.

yeah, same damage, 1d6 for medium. same crit.
don't have a range increment for a thrown light mace,
and its light, aka a light weapon vs. a club's one handed weapon.

an immovable rod can support 8,000lbs of pressure, but doesn't say whether it can act as a club or mace.

it just says in the general rod physical description section:

(Many, as noted in their descriptions, can function as light maces or clubs due to their hardy construction.) These sturdy items have AC 9, 10 hit points, hardness 10, and a break DC of 27.

it'd make it a lot easier to metamagic a spell if you're spellstriking through the rod itself =P lol

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

They work similarly. HS trumps the need for cover/concealment, but you have a penalty on the check. HIPS trumps the need for cover/concealment, but it requires a nearby shadow, and has no penalty.

I take two things from that comparison statement. Firstly, Shadowdancer HiPS trumps the need for cover/concealment. Secondly, if it looks like HiPS, smells like HiPS, and acts like HiPS (or perhaps if it's actually called HiPS) it is likely intended to allow you to trump the need for cover/concealment and hide in plain sight.

link

yes he's discussing shadowdancer HiPS vs. hellcat stealth
but "Secondly, if it looks like HiPS, smells like HiPS, and acts like HiPS (or perhaps if its actually called HiPS) it is likely intended to allow you to trump the need for cover/concealment and hide in plain sight." is a pretty clear opinion on the rules.

ifs SKR's quote doesn't persuade you that maybe devs lean towards all HiPS abilities trumping the need for cover/concealment, I don't know how we can help clarify our opinion on it.

maybe if we start from the beginning with how you think it work.

masterwork transformation will transform a table leg into a masterwork club?? thats new to me.

I see the greatest disparity among rulings regarding wild shape.
so i'm wondering how these overlap. I haven't had a case of this, but I've thought about the build a little, and i'm just wondering how these points overlap/interact.
If you have a monk 4/druid 4 in bear shape ( or any wild shape),
and you've got +1 shadow leather armor on:

• do you count as "wearing armor" as a monk, and lose your speed and monk AC bonuses
  
• do all static properties of your armor keep functioning? ( you specifically lose the armor bonus, but does the +5 to stealth from shadow keep working? )
  
• do you take an armor check penalty while in wild shape?

and then it begs the question. if it were wild armor

• I can see it as being a definite yes to wearing armor, but is it worn or are you just gaining the armor bonus and no penalties to movement?
  
• but do you take the armor check penalty in this case? it only calls out gaining the armor benefit of the armor you're wearing.
  
• does the armor worn impact your speed in wild shape?

and i've seen a lot that if you wear Bracers of Armor, they cease to function in wild shape, unless you can put them on after you wild shape. I've always run them as an armor bonus, but not actual Armor, so as a static magic item, they continue to provide an Armor bonus, similar to someone casting Mage Armor on the druid after they wild shape. But I've heard variance on the boards for that as well.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fn#v5748eaic9qox

is the rules team overreaching? silencing a supernatural ability? what makes this supernatural ability sonic dependent? can't it be equally plausible that the witch cackles in a void, but her patron still knows she's cackling, and extends the duration of her hexes ( which her patron is already powering ), within 30 ft. of the witch.

if the powers all originate from the witch herself, whats the point of dark covenants?

yeah i second the notion that paizo needs a better thesaurus than microsoft word.

their precedent with Meteor Hammer though was , print after print, to update / replace the old stats with the new stats. so it goes both ways.

i still contend any druid should be able to wild shape into sizes as limited by beast shape, not limited by the bestiary entries.

paizo cuts down on what's needed for bestiary by providing templates like young and giant.
so when they need to use a Huge Dire Wolf in an adventure: they grab dire wolf, and apply the giant template. thus they're never going to print a huge dire wolf, or a huge dire tiger, or a large Roc. they have the tools they need to represent those creatures in the game already.

and so do druids. if a young roc or a giant dire wolf can exist in the game and he can fight it, and summon it, he should be able to transform into it.

giant and young templates should be open for wild shape, and an FAQ or errata should put them in as an exception for the rules on polymorphing into templated creatures. They already have feats that specifically break the template rule:

You can infuse your wild shape with planar strength.

Prerequisites: Wild shape class feature, Knowledge (planes) 5 ranks.
Benefit: When you use wild shape to take the form of an animal, you can expend an additional daily use of your wild shape class feature to add the celestial template or fiendish template to your animal form. (Good druids must use the celestial template, while evil druids must use the fiendish template.) If your form has the celestial template and you score a critical threat against an evil creature while using your form's natural weapons, you gain a +2 bonus on the attack roll to confirm the critical hit. The same bonus applies if your form has the fiendish template and you score a critical threat against a good creature.

rather than require an additional feat to transform into a Young Roc or a Giant Dire Tiger, it should be something all druids can do. this would fix the text removed from shamans, as well as clarifying how existing creatures can be re-sized for use with beast shape spells and wild shape.

link

i hate light. my next game is going to be Chronicles of Riddick and everything is going to be pitch black. all the time.

yeah, it all goes back to that FAQ which ... nerfed slings... because... slings needed nerfing...

when i look at all the weapons in the game. that's the one i want to go after for being overpowered. yup.

for that though, i point to the name of the ability and why it works with invisibility purge: "natural invisibility". vs. "shadow blend".

one is an EX ability, another is an SU ability.
will-o-the wisps have a glow, that takes some effort to douse. aside from that, their natural state is invisible. the only thing that gives normal people a clue to where they are is their glow.
invisibility purge works on them because it reveals this natural invisibility. while invisible stalkers have a special caveat that their natural invisibility isn't broken by invisibility purge.
See Invisibility however does spot both Will-o-wisps and Invisible stalkers, as their condition is "invisible", not blended or hidden.

"shadow blend", like a shadowdancer's HIPS, is a supernatural ability that depends on the ambient light condition, not on the perception of the viewer. ( it doesn't matter to either, if they're hiding from a dwarf w/ darkvision or a human with normal vision, as long as the area the shadow demon is in is "shadowy" or darker.

several creatures share this shadow blend type of ability, fetchlings, shadow mastiffs being among them.

Shadow Blend (Su) In any condition of illumination other than full daylight, a shadow mastiff disappears into the shadows, giving it concealment (50% miss chance). Artificial illumination, even a light or continual flame spell, does not negate this ability; a daylight spell, however, does. A shadow mastiff can suspend or resume this ability as a free action.

Shadow Blending (Su): Attacks against a fetchling in dim light have a 50% miss chance instead of the normal 20% miss chance. This ability does not grant total concealment; it just increases the miss chance.

when compared with the wording on the shadow demon's Shadow Blending ability, all su abilities, we see a trend: they're "effectively" invisible because all three of these creatures have a degree of 50% concealment in shadowy areas. making it hard to target them, take attacks of opportunity on them, etc. (except the fetchling) these are all benefits of the Invisibility condition, so writers seem to have progressed to calling it "effectively invisible" as a simpler way of stating it for the rules.

your best bet is to find a way to get more light ( daylight with the sunrod equipment trick, heightened continual flame , etc ). to wipe out shadowy areas for them to blend with. I'd love to see less reliance on this tactic in games, for parties that don't come with several daylights prepared or face off against a creature with deeper darkness at will, it can just become a grind and be annoying.