That Crazy Alchemist's page

Not a rules answer, but that's already been covered as best as it can I think. So I'll interject with a homebrew solution.

I'm playing a hologram right now, and the GM and I worked out a solution to this where Holograms gain the ability to spend 10 minutes "Digitizing" an item to add it to its holographic data. A digitized item is destroyed with no way to bring it back, but the item is made part of the Hologram and appears and disappears along with the Hardlight Body. Weight, handedness, as well as draw and stow actions are still tracked as normal despite digitized items being just data. Works really well so far!

I'm shocked no one's mentioned Brilliant Planner. One of my favorite feats.

It's so much fun being able to just say "yeah i kinda figured someone was going to steal all our food and camping supplies tonight, so back when we were in town I paid a guy to go buy some supplies and deliver them to us in a wagon at, coincidentally, this exact spot. He should be arriving in about 10 minutes or so."

It's a feat that gets more powerful and useful the more creative you get.

Why not just set it to whatever DC you'd like it to be? You are already making a custom creature here, and even considering a custom formula for its DC. So why bother trying to stick to a formula and just make it what you want it to be?

When I'm GMing and making custom content, I don't really get too bogged down by all the Advancement rules and such. I consider those guidelines at best. What is the most important factor to me is the party. What are their capabilities? Say you wanted them to have about a 40% chance of seeing it, then set its DC to 40% of 10 + the highest perception score in the party or something along those lines. Don't worry so much about what it's "supposed" to be.

CR is also completely meaningless in this game beyond determining XP. It isn't actually a measurement of how difficult a creature will be for the party, because every party is different. One party might stomp a creature 7 CR above their level but then almpst wipe on one 2 CR under their level. Its a meaningless metric. So just set your new custom creatures CR to whatever the amount of XP you want to give them would be.
The only real factor that matters is your parties capabilities. Figure out what they can do and make encounters, custom creatures, skill check DC's, etc, accordingly.

If they are high level, most of the 500-5000gp range stuff is likely to be fairly pointless to them and are likely to just get sold.

I'd make some custom "carnival-y" items for the carnival prizes prizes instead. Stuff they can only get there. And they should be consumable to make them even more exclusive and special feeling. Things like:

- Luck Tokens. Consumable item, allows you to roll twice and take the better result on any d20 roll. Must be used before the rolls are made.

- Power Plushies. Consummable. Summons a monster the plushy depicts that is under your control as if cast by a Summon Monster spell.

- Belch Beer. Consumable. Drinking this causes you to unleash a hurricane force wind from your mouth per the Control Winds spell (directional) for 1 round. Creatures caught in the area of the winds are sickened for 1d4 rounds.

Etc.

It's really hard to make being wheel-chair bound into a disability without completely borking your characters ability to function in the game.

Anytime the party needs to swim, climb, jump a gap, or move over difficult terrain you are going to pretty much be incapable of doing it.

Now, as others have suggested, you could make it a flying wheelchair. But at that point is it really a disability now?

The Sacrament Alchemist is an alchemist archetype and has an ability that is a bit unclear to me.

(Su)

At 3rd level, a sacrament alchemist’s faith inspires him with ideas for novel alchemical achievements, although the mental strain means that he can’t reliably repeat them. Once per day while preparing extracts, for a period of 24 hours, a sacrament alchemist can gain an alchemist discovery for which he qualifies. He treats his alchemist level as 2 lower for the purpose of this discovery.

This ability replaces swift alchemy.

I bolded the part I'm a bit confused by. What exactly is affected by the 2 levels lower thing?

- Qualification for the discovery in question?
- DCs and level-based effects of only effects granted by the discovery?
- DCs and level based effects of ALL effects of an ability that is modified by the discovery, even if the discovery does not affect that part of an ability? (ie choose Smoke Bomb as discovery, does this lower the bomb damage too? Or how about caster level for extracts used with the Infusion discovery?)

This could be pretty interesting if you have a burrow speed and can make your way underneath your opponent.

The new, and much more literal, Geysermancer!

Dazing spell has always been problematic. I have always ruled that "a successful save negates the daze effect" means that the entire Dazing Spell daze effect for that creature is negated. Basically means that any creature taking damage from a Dazing Spell only ever has to make a single successful saving throw per casting of a Dazing Spell.

Typically when you defeat an encounter there is an expectation that there is loot. Not every battle necessarily has to have a dragon's hoard of treasure but if the enemies in question are intelligent enough to see value in objects, or tend to kill and eat other creatures who see value in objects, then most likely they have said objects somewhere, either on their person or hidden nearby.

I know nothing about Rappan Athuk but if it's a complete module or adventure path and you are fighting many encounters that logically would have loot, but have no loot listed, then I'm guessing it's intended to be randomly rolled.
There's a great random treasure generator on Archives of Nethys that I use all the time. It's pretty balanced and you can customize the rolls pretty well to account for lowering or raising the WBL as needed.

What I've found is that BBEG encounters are as difficult as the situation they are in rather than the BBEG themselves. The moment combat begins, the party is going to unload everything they have at him. An entire round of casters unleashing their best spells and martials focus firing has a way of reducing BBEG's many levels above the party to low health more often than not. A BBEG has to use the ability to prepare to his advantage.
Be up high so the fighters have trouble reaching him, have protection spells precast, have tons of minions or a few large bruiser minions in there too so that the party needs to split their focus, add lava pits or traps throughout. It's an undead, use that to your advantage, and fill the room with poison gas.
The trick is to put them on their toes rather than overpowering them, because any well put together party will plow through any encounter that simply tries to overpower them. Parties are extremely single-minded and will try to end encounters fast. Set them on their toes right from the get go and don't let them dig in, and you'll have a good battle.

Adding additional game-halting complexity to a game whose combats are already very long and complicated isn't really a good thing in my eyes.
If your players enjoy then that's all that matters, happy for you guys. But It's going to be a hard pass from me.

I call myself out as a GM all the time. When I make a mistake, be it a math error, incorrect rules interpretation, or even a story element incorrectly told, I tend to let my players know about it. They seem to appreciate the transparency and helps prevent fostering a GM-vs-players mentality that a lot of tables develop.
However, when I do call myself out, I try to be as undisruptive as possible, but sometimes you just gotta pause for a moment and go back. But I always make sure that the "flashbacks" are in the players favor, never against them.
"Oops, sorry guys, your Archer actually DID hit that guy last turn, I forgot about the entangle effect on him. Roll for damage."
Or
"Crap, forgot to mention that the huntsman at the tavern also told you that there are tons of undead in these woods, if you guys want we can say you stopped to purchase some holy water back when you were in town"

Since it favors them, and adds transparency to the game, I find my players don't have a problem with me going back and tweaking things as long as it's not too disruptive.

I think the biggest retcon I ever did was this one time where they were fighting a custom Shadow demon that cast Deeper Darkness as a free action every round and they had no light spells to stop the darkness (which I didn't realize when I made the encounter). So I retconned that they had found some "light grenades" that cast Daylight when thrown (their inclusion actually fit the story) while they were exploring the dungeon earlier. Their addition actually added a cool dynamic to the battle because they only had a limited number of grenades, so they had to ration them out and use them strategically.

Retcons can be good, but you gotta make sure it benefits the players and without damaging their sense of autonomy

You really need to have the rules explain what is "fire"?

Actually, yes. This is a permissive rules set. You can only do what the rules say you can. Anything else requires GM adjudication. The weapon is "sheathed in fire" but since being "sheathed in fire" is an undefined concept within the rules, it is up to the item to define it. Which it does. And since producing light isn't mentioned in that definition, then by RAW the item does not produce light.

I had a chef-based character once who wielded a frying pan as his primary weapon using the trait Rough and Ready:

Benefit: When you use a tool of your trade (requiring at least 1 rank in the appropriate Craft or Profession skill) as a weapon, you do not take the improvised weapon penalty and instead receive a +1 trait bonus on your attack. This trait is commonly used with shovels, picks, blacksmith hammers, and other sturdy tools — lutes and brooms make terribly fragile weapons.

It was also a paladin and was able to enchant it with his divine bond ability, it was great.

Summoner kinda missed the point...they should be summoning more not relying on just one big bad.

That's not a failure in the class, it's a failure in the players using the Summoner like just another Animal Companion class, and forgetting their Summon Monster SLA abilities exist. I've seen far too many Summoners lose their Eidolon in battle and basically give up because they feel like their entire character died.

"Power creep" is a very serious problem for tabletop developers. Its what wrecked 3.5 for most people. The developers constantly trying to add "whiz bang" into every book, and resulted in every publication containing more powerful stuff than the previous books. Anyone who's played 3.5 in its end years will remember how EVERYTHING was ridiculously overpowered, there was almost no point in playing anymore.

Paizo tries very hard not to do this, offering new options but not necessarily "better" options. While there are many examples where they tripped up on this goal they still do a very good job with it considering.

I do what Ravingdork said. Best thing to do to get players out of their shells is by being the first one to make a complete fool out of himself. Do accents for your NPCs, act out everything, get them to laugh if you can. Get them to look at you and your antics and think, "Man what hes doing looks like fun I want to join him!"
No one wants to be the first one to start roleplaying because it's embarressing to do so, so BE the first one to do it.
Remember that the GM does more roleplaying than anyone else at the table, show em how it's done!

ALso, never never never force people to roleplay! It is awkward for everyone and will just annoy those who have difficulty with it. You have to let them come out of their shells on their own. I've always hated the "Describe how you killed him" thing a lot of GM's do as a means of encouraging roleplay. This is stupid and just sounds forced and awkward no matter how good you are at improv, and is honestly just a lazy GM tactic to for those GM's that don't want to do the describing themselves. Don't be that GM!

GM'ing is 90% acting, show them how to roleplay and they will follow your lead.

So, in my PFS groups I've gotten a reputation for coming up with off the wall builds that few sane men would create just for the lols.
This time I wanted to create a 100% PFS legal way of having an animal companion do all the talking. So I came up with this:

-Be Human, select Eye for Talent racial alternative (+2 Int).
-Be Sacred Huntmaster Inquisitor, get a Velociraptor companion. Name him Sir Raptor.
-Put a rank in Sir Raptors Linguistics skill to be able to understand Common.
-Get Extra Magic Item Slot feat for Raptor. Buy him a Headband of Intellect ASAP (one with ranks in Diplomacy for the lols)
-At level 4 give Sir Raptor a +1 Int for a total so far of 7. We now have a companion with a player level intelligence.
-At level 4 Inquisitors gain access to the Tongues spell as a 2nd level spell (earliest in the game). Have the Inquisitor cast this on Sir Raptor when needed.

Ok, nothing unusual here, we've all seen this stuff before. Heres where things get really silly:

-Be sure the Inquisitors Int is 9.
-Purchase a spell of Bestow Curse to cast upon the Inquisitor to take a permanent -6 penalty to intelligence. In PFS, harmful effects don't go away at the end of the session and bestow curse is permanent. So it will carry over indefinitely until dispelled (don't dispel it)
-Sir Raptor with an Int of 7 and charisma of 14 now has a human inquisitor companion with an intelligence of 3, who regularly casts the Tongues spell on Sir Raptor enabling him to speak, among other buff spells.
-With Sir Raptors Tongues spell, 14 Cha, and ranks in Diplomacy thanks to his Headband we now have a 100% PFS rules savvy animal companion party face by level 4. :)

Gravy:
-Give Sir Raptor the feat Extra Traits. Pick stuff like "Extremely Fashionable" and other High Class traits.
-Purchase Top Hat and monocle. Or another Extra Item Slot Feat and buy a Hat of Disguises or Sleeves of Many Garments. Sir Raptor is now the best dressed member of the party.
-Have the Inquisitor Companion take Magical Lineage (Tongues) and get Extend spell to increase duration of Tongues, we want that spell on Sir Raptor for as long as possible.

Any suggestions to help this silly build along, furthering the illusion that I am actually playing the raptor and the inquisitor is merely his "animal companion"?
100% PFS legal suggestions please. :)

Nothing concrete by RAW. Just make sure it's nothing outrageous and it'll be fine, no need to micromanage something like that.

A spectral hand isn't even supposed to have a piece on the board anymore than your own arm would. There is no movement involved, it's just a really long ghostly hand extending out of yourself that reaches out and touches someone and then comes back...just like a normal arm does. The only reason it has AC and HP is for those that wish to either attack it while it is hovering inactive next to you, or ready an action to attack it as it comes near them.
Additionally it does not have a full statblock and is therefore not a creature, and therefore is not subject to attacks of opportunity anymore than a vase would for falling off a shelf.

I'm sorry to hear about this. But he's up there rolling dice with the likes of Gary Gygax and other legends at the big roleplaying table in the sky. He's finished his campaign here on Earth, it was time for him to level up and start a brand new campaign. May his Dorito bag be full and his Mountain Dew never be flat.

Easiest thing to do is treat creatures with magic immunity as having Spell Resistance: Infinity. Any time a spell resistance check would be rolled the creature automatically succeeds. Simple as that.

I used this very tactic in PFS recently. It is quite effective and completely legal.

Also. EPIC 4 YEAR THREAD NECRO!!!!!

I understand that applying real world rules to this game is a dark road but OP imagine a swarm of rats was coming your way. What things do you imagine would be effective against that swarm. A Sword? Hardly. A flaming sword? Maybe it might keep them at bay for a bit but you aren't going to kill any more of them than you would with the sword. A Molotov Cocktail? Getting there. A Flame Thrower? Now we're talking!

1) It appears to have no duration, and is therefore permanent. More specifically it is actually "instantaneous" and would not be dispellable or be removed in an antimagic field.

2) Depends, someone fearful of death by old age might gladly take this "curse". It is worded more like an attack though and is likely meant to be one rather than a gift or boon except for the particularly desperate.

3) That all sounds correct, this is likely designed this way on purpose, the wording is too specific to be a mistake.

Heighten: "The heightened spell is as difficult to prepare and cast as a spell of its effective level."

Magical Lineage: "Pick one spell when you choose this trait. When you apply metamagic feats to this spell that add at least 1 level to the spell, treat its actual level as 1 lower for determining the spell's final adjusted level."

So, I want to Heighten Magic Missile to a 3rd level spell. I have Magical Lineage. I applied a metamagic feat, so Magical Lineage treats Magic Missile as a 0th level spell for determining the spell's final adjusted level. So, I look at Heighten, and Magic Missile becomes "as difficult to prepare and cast as a spell of its effective level," and the effective level is 3, so, it becomes a 3rd level spell.

As opposed to say, Toppling metamagic (which is a lousy idea--don't take it). Magical Lineage makes Magic Missile a 0th level spell and then Toppling adds one to the level, making it a 1st level spell again.

You are applying the effects in the wrong order. Magical Lineage only works on a spell that has alreafy been effected by a Metamagic feat, so the feat must be applied first and then Magical lineage is applied second.

It is interesting how many people are using statements like 'believe' when this is the rules forum.

RAW: As shown in this post Eschew Materials does not cover Foci.

House Rule: Eschew Materials does cover Foci.

This is the rules forum, if you are going to go against RAW when RAW is this clear at least please state that you are doing so as a house rule when you state your opinion.

RAW and RAI are two types of rules paradaigms. RAW is easy to identify, if we were all here on the Rules Forum answering only RAW questions there would be very few threads and fewer comments.

RAW has already been answered, only thing left is to debate RAI. If someone doesn't wish to debate the RAI with us they are under no obligation to do so.

Ascalaphas, the problem isn't that I have players who try to purposefully power their way through to the end as quickly as possible. Those are easy to deal with. The problem is that, the way this particular scenario is designed, the players can very easily do that without intending to, ending the game almost instantly while TRYING to simply explore. And it isn't through some obscure hard to find path that only clever or lucky players can find, its simply a matter of accidently going through the wrong/right one of three doors, 1/3 chance of instantly ending the scenario and with no way to go back (since the win condition in this one elimates all the rest of the encounters). Ultimately its just a very poorly designed scenario. Dropping a "GM Hint" should do the trick though.

No, HP damage is just the normal means by which an item gains the broken condition but the two are not synonymous nor is one required for the other to occur.

Because adding to attack damage is on par with adding to Initiative, AC, actually useful Skills and Reflex Saves?

Also, do you think you should be able to get Strength to hit with ranged weaponry? Let's say, crossbows.

Weapon Finesse is a feat tax, clear and simple, and a very much unnecessary one. Dex fighters are already significantly weaker than Str fighters, why tax them for it? Weapon Finesse should just be a combat option that everyone gets for free if they wish, would help level the field for Str fighters and Dex fighters...not to mention the poor rogues what are feat starved as it is.

No I don't feel that ranged weapons should add strength bonus to hit, why should they?

Only the Hat of Disguise gives you a bonus to disguise checks. The Cloak of Human Guise simply turns you human looking, there are no rolls involved.
So you could use the Cloak to turn into a human and then use the Hat to alter the human disguise to your specification with a total of +10 bonus to disguise. The result of this would basically just be to eliminate the -2 Disguise penalty for disguising as a member of a different race. Probably not worth it to stack them, just get one or the other.

Yeah this is a tough one that's come up before. Scatterguns are weird. Has the same problem with Swarms.
This could seriously go either way, I personally would give preference to the scattergun, mainly because non-casters need nice things too and scatterguns themselves need some love. So yeah, I'd say a scattergun is instant anti-mirror image.

The 500gp gem is "destroyed" in the sense that it is no longer a 500gp gem, it is now a memory receptacle.

Time for a reality check. Everyone take some ipecac, have an observer make through notes on exactly what kinds of actions your are able to perform, and then post here. For science!

Way ahead of you, actions include:

Walking, Running, Falling, Crawling, Vomiting, Coughing, Hugging the Toilet, Vomiting, Futilely Trying to Clean it up, Vomiting, Crying, Vomiting, and Bargaining With God.

So that's it folks, that's all the actions you can perform with the nauseated condition. Well I'm off to begin my experimentation on the Dying Condition now!

That Crazy Alchemist wrote:

Good lord this is still going huh?

Look, no one is going to win here. "Attack" is ill-defined enough to where it will require a GM to determine what constitutes an attack or not. Most reasonable people here probably agree that an attack requires an attack roll, though many munchkins trying to get sneak attack on a fireball without actually having the Arcane Trickster capstone would disagree.
The RAW cannot be argued in this case because it is too badly written, it's in the hands of the GM to define it.

The RAW is very very clear.

Quote:

All spells that opponents resist with saving throws, that deal damage, or that otherwise harm or hamper subjects are attacks.

Makes it perfectly clear that fireballs are attacks.

You're not a munchkin if you follow the rules of the game, just because many people dislike it and houserule it.

Did you even read the crap-ton of other examples listed above, many of which are instances where attack is defined differently that what you just said? "Attack" is very poorly defined, and is not clear on the RAW level.

And yes, "Following the Rules" as an excuse for performing wildly unbalancing and clearly untended acts is the very definition of munchkining. Munchkins don't cheat, they "follow the rules" to the precise letter and interpret them in whatever way most benefits them....and then get on forums to argue their point relentlessly even though they know full well, while not wrong, that are not right either.

you can full attack while mounted too…since you aren't the one moving.

No. Need the feat Mounted Skirmisher for that.

Oh, good. By Rikkan's logic, a rogue/druid can apply sneak attack to entangle. : /

Edit: And hey, now that we're doing damage, how about that dazing entangle?

We don't bring up Dazing Spell in civilized conversation...

My group just did this same thing, only they used repair magics to restore the constructs body once it was defeated.

as the body is now an object, it falls under spells such as Mend/reprair/make whole.
and they are asking for full market value of the body from the GM.

with the new PFS scenarios and the Iron God AP, this opens up a crazy amount of resell value for the PCs that I don't think was thought about from game designers.

constructed bodies start from 500gp upwards to 20,000gp.

how does one manage that influx of gold?

PFS doesn't work that way. Any gold you make during the adventure is reset to whatever the Chronicle sheet says at the end of the scenario.

However,the PCs never gain additional Prestige Points, experience, or gold beyond the limitations of the scenario’s Chronicle sheet or the basic Pathfinder Society Organized Play rules.

Arise, thread! Thread, arise!

This is some unusal Necro'ing too. It took over two years for OP to receive his first comment on this thread and then OP responded to that comment a year and a half later to simply say "Nope". That was the longest 3 conversational exchanges in history. You could have communicated faster by walking to each others houses from halfway around the world...

That Crazy Alchemist wrote:

I don't recommend treating Daze as a lesser form of stun. It's true that nothing in the game is immune to it directly but many many things are immune to it indirectly.

I'm not aware of any form of applying daze that does not either: 1) Require a Fort save or 2) be a mind affecting effect. So all undead, plants, and constructs are immune to all forms of daze. And vermin, and oozes are immune to MOST forms of Daze. That means that roughly half the printed creatures are immune to it already which is roughly the same amount as are immune to stun. But making un-stunnable creatures immune to it too you've pretty much just nerfed the effect into oblivion with only a handful of creatures ever being able to be hit by it.
So no, it's already balanced, no need to re(un)balance it.

Dazing fireball. Is not mindaffecting and on a reflex save.

True, forgot about that. I'd recommend nerfing THAT then rather than Daze as a whole if you have to nerf one of them. Perhaps making it a Fort save regardless of the spell it's riding on? Would make more sense then the way it's written anyway. Dazing Spell has always been kind of a cheesy abomination.

Beast Shape into a bear for Furry Flurry!!!

Imagine hitting someone over the head with a flatscreen TV...yeah just like that.

"I cast quickened Fireball as part of my AoO with my dagger. Sure I'm probably going to miss with my dagger but now it opens up the ability to use a swift action."
Crap like that will spring up everywhere with a blanket ruling like that one Rufus. These things need to be taken on a case by case basis.

Free actions, I'll give you, not a whole lot of harm there. But a swift action on an AoO is dangerous.

Never ever ever never ever never NEVER NEVER force a player to track his cost-less components! You are a very very bad GM if you do this and the player does not agree to it.
Because then what you have done is purposefully break the games rules for the sole purpose of making your players unhappy. This goes against everything I stand for in this game and I will personally fisticuffs anyone who does this to their players.

That said if your players are ok with it then go for it.

This among other reasons why I've never tried to tackle playing an Arcanist...too bloody confusing. I'll happily stick with my Alchemist's, we're the best class in the game anyway.

Throw Anything let's me throw a great sword like a ranged weapon, doesn't mean I can enchant it like one. Its still a melee weapon and a rock is still an unenchantable improvised weapon.

Perform (Mimicry)?

My next bard is so doing this! Anytime he does a bardic performance he just sits there mimicking random animals.

First: Your GM is right about the adopted trait only giving you the option to take another races trait. Granted this is an often highly debatable topic and there are people on both sides of it, but your GM is right this time (refer to #3 as to why)

Second: Your GM is right again. Race Trait and Racial Trait are two VERY different things with similar wording. One refers to the traits you automatically receive for selecting your race, such as the bonus feat from human, the other refers to traits only selectable by a certain race, such as the Helpful trait for halflings.

Third: Your GM is right again...not for any particular reason this time but it's just a generally good thing to keep in mind. The GM is always right! End of story! If you don't like how he GM's then offer to GM in his place and if the group won't let you, go start your own.

Fourth: Do not use the Rules Forums as a means of teaming up on your GM, this stinks of foul sportsmanship and whininess and I can safely say I am very glad to not be in your group, because the kind of crap you are pulling here would have made me quit your group long ago.

Fifth: Hats off to your GM for making the correct rational decisions in the face of a whiny, backstabbing, rules-ignorant, munchkin. Please thank him for me, the next time you see him.

faq about this

Good to see them answer this at least. Adding that they intend to Errata it was a nice touch.