Srial's page

With Great Power Comes....oh you know

or

Using your cool toys indescriminantly leads to colateral damage

In a campaign I ran way back the party, about level 12 and 13, were long frustrated because they knew they didn't have a chance against the local evil king and his minions (yet anyway). The party wizard decided to make a 'statement' with some of his cool powers.

Their plan was during the next major military parade the king led (and he led a lot of them to keep his populace in fear) he would dump several bags of holding worth of fruit while flying and invisible from a few thousand feet up on the King's head, then teleport out. All the while protecting himself to the hilt from scrying and detection. They figured they'd embarass the King and win a moral victory. Perhaps they'd even show the people of the city how to stand up to the king.

Fine, I said nothing against their plan. They went around to all the merchants, I described them all and made them them rp every purchase as they cleared out four or five shops. I described the little old men and women, how much joy they were bringing to these people's lives buying all their wares. One old woman gave the wizard a hand knitted scarf as a thank you. One merchant insisted on bringing his pregnant wife from downstairs and they said they'd consider naming their newborn after the party's bard, etc.

The plan went off without a hitch. I didn't even force them to make a hit roll. Sure the King had several layers of protections including protection from misslies but his guards, entourage, advisors and most of the supporters were covered in tomatos, summer squash and apple juice. They even killed one of the king's favorite mayors.

The party cheered their victory and went to the inn to celebrate. The next day the party got the news. Every merchant they had bought from had been 'brought in for questioning' and then 'killed while trying to escape'. The merchants, their families, and people who just happened to be near the stores...all gone. Their bodies were impaled in front of the King's keep as reminders to the others.

The players realized their mistake almost at once. Sure they were protected from scyring and such. But all a single level 1 guard had to do was walk around to all the local shopkeepers and see who's stalls were completely and unexplainably empty and return that list to the King to bring untold damage to innocent people for their 'statement'.

Let them play with their high level toys, but remind them the dangers using them without thought may have if they endanger others.

Oh, and as an added bonus I'm pretty sure the party wizard had a moment of silence every time he saw 'knitted scarf' on his character sheet's inventory every time he looked at it...but he never erased it.

Totally random. Randomness can produce results that I personally would never have thought of trying in decades of playing. I have a decent imagnation, but totally random results can produce fun foundations that you can build on.

Our games usually end up like:

4d6, drop lowest take in order. See what class that looks like it might fit, see if I can come up with a good concept.

Sometimes I flip a coin and let it determine my character's sex.

Sometines I roll a d20 for alignment (1-2 = LG, 3-4 NG, 5-6 CG, 7-8 LN, 9-10 N, 11-12 CN, 13 LE, 14 NE, 15 CE reroll 16+).

By then I usually have enough of an idea that I just start imagining what kind of person who fit this concept, and I pick a race that jives with it (But honestly I play a lot of humans.)

Now, if the party is established and has a specific need. I will usually rearrange my stats to fit a class or archtype they need, but I try to do that as little as possible.

After having the stats and a concept, then I start to try to min/max options for it as much as the concept allows.

I think it's half the folklore, and half for game mechanics reasons. The game designers don't want every pc running out and tyring to get infected for an easy power boost with little downside. Making them almost all evil and taking away control from the PC when they change was their way of reinforcing this is a 'curse'.

I really don't think it hurts the game to have some therianthropes be of non-traditional alignments though. Lots of great stories can come from tweaking or outright breaking the mold.

I think you were right to roll saves for each hit, as the wight's ability has a dc attached to it. Automatic here to me means 'not a separate action' it does not to me mean 'no saves'.

Actually the energy drain entry says that DC attached to the ability is for the fort save 24 hours later. I read that section to say 'no save per hit'.

I went through almost this exact treatise with my group a year ago when I realized PF totally changed the old 'rewrite your charatacter sheet every time you get energy drained' mechanic. I ended up doing the same you suggest where I ignore the core book's suggestion about rolling a save every 24 hours. I go with the bestiary and restoration entries.

In my reading you get 1 save per negative level 24 hours later unless removed before hand. Fail and it's "permanent" which only seems to mean 'Needs a higher level spell to remove'.

The net effect seems to be that in the short term level drainers are much more dangerous (and at level 3 they're probably stupidly dangeorus), but in the long term they're barely an annoyance for any mid level group.

In your interpretation, what is the difference between the skippable prerequisite of Bull's Strength for a Belt of Giant Strength and the unskippable prerequisite of Bull's Strength for a Potion of Bull's Strength? Do you believe that cooperative crafting is impossible for potions, spell-trigger, and spell-completion items?

In my interpretation, neither are skippable. It's simply for the potion the caster must personally be able to cast/invoke/use the spell under their own power. For the belt, they can cast it themselves, or they can use a scroll, or a wand, or get their cousin Joe to cast it for them. If they don't personally cast the spell for the belt, it takes a +5 DC to make it.

I can only guess why they made it this way. My guess is the flavor of an alchemist toiling away making a potion. It makes no sense for the alchemist to make a potion and them someone puts the spell into it. It's an alchemical reaction, not a spell item, per se. It's like someone scribing a scroll and allowing someone else to cast the spell that turns into the writing. It makes no sense. That's purely a guess on my part, I can't tell you what they were thinking when they wrote that.

I went and found one instance of the Devs stating it is intended to be easy:

Sean K Reynolds responding that it is intentional that players are crafting very easily

Heres the specific quote. Emphasis mine.

That is intentional--as long as they're picking items for which they meet all the prereqs, they should have no chance of failure.

He doesn't say it should be easy to make magic items and ignore the prereqs.

By the way, I agree with everyone else. It's totally possible I'm wrong and there's some smoking gun hidden rule out there that says you really can ignore all the prereqs with a simple +5 dc check. Even so the cost of making these items makes this a silly argument anyway. I'm just trying to give you a rules based justification for saying it's silly.

I may be in the minority of this interpretation, but this isn't really a problem if you apply the rule as written strictly. Emphasis mine.

Note that all items have prerequisites in their descriptions. These prerequisites must be met for the item to be created. Most of the time, they take the form of spells that must be known by the item's creator (although access through another magic item or spellcaster is allowed). The DC to create a magic item increases by +5 for each prerequisite the caster does not meet.

"The prerequisites MUST be met for the item to be created." Period. That's not even a debatable sentence. No one can argue that sentence is unclear.

The next sentence says that most of the time the spells come from the caster, but access through other magic items or spellcasters is allowed.

The +5 DC rule says then says. The dC to create increases by +5 for each prereq the CASTER does not meet. It doesn't say that prereq doesn't need to be met in exchange for +5 dc.

I think it's totally in order to say that in order to make a luckblade with one wish, you need a wish spell. You can either cast it yourself, and take no DC penalty, or you can get it from a magic item or friendly spellcaster in which case you can still make the item, but at a +5 DC pentalty.

So sure, a 7th level crafter can make a luckblade with 1 wish as long as he expends a wish from a magic item (in which case...why bother?), or from a friendly source probably costing 25k as usual or some other trick through some monster's SLA probably.

But...people will say...there's a FAQ on this.:

Crafting and Bypassing Requirements: What crafting requirements can you bypass by adding +5 to the DC of your Spellcraft check?

As presented on page 549 of the Core Rulebook, there are no limitations other than (1) you have to have the item creation feat, and (2) you cannot create potions, spell-trigger, or spell-completion magic items without meeting their spell prerequisites. So racial requirements, specific spell requirements, math requirements (such as "caster level must be at least three times the enhancement bonus"), and so on, are all subject to the +5 DC rule.

Note, no where in there does it say you can create a magic item without meeting the prerequesities. Just that if you don't, it's still "subject to the +5 dc rule". If you read the "+5 dc rule" to mean that you still require either to cast the spell, or get it from another source with a +5 dc penalty then this is consistant. This FAQ doesn't say you don't still need the wish spell to make the luck blade.

I really hope the spell casting mechanic stays the same, just replacing the feats and blood magic.

I thought the fringe abilities were very meh, but the ability to have a spellbook, prepared spells and sorcerer like casting was HUGE for me.

I've always wanted to do a Monk/Ninja gestalt. Take all the dimensional feats that let you be your own flanker when using your dimension door ability. Watch the sneak attacks roll in without needing anyone else or any elaborate setup.

I've never played Patherfinder Society, so I can't comment on that. I have two thoughts on this as a great whole.

1) Optimization isn't new. It's just more common and talked about. I had a 1st edition game way back where I played a plain old sword and board fighter and was having a ball with my RP and doing my 1d8+2 damage a round and then some guy showed up with some tricked out build using the Complete Fighters Handbook getting 4 attacks a round, dual wielding and killing anything before I could ever get a swing in half the time. It ruined that campaign for me because I liked the rp, but constantly useless was no fun to me.

Nowadays optimization is just assumed to be the norm, but it's always been around as soon as the first player's options book showed up.

2) Optimization is like role-playing. Some groups are super serious about role-playing and throw a fit if you go OOC for a second during a discussion. Some groups barely know how to spell RP.

Some groups throw a fit if you've misspent a single skill point. Some groups don't care so much.

The trick is find a group that thinks like you. You'll never be happy with a group that you can't come to an agreement on about rp or optimizing. You never want to be the one guy or gal not on the same page as everyone else.