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Imagine you are a wizard toiling away in your laboratory while your apprentice is practicing spells, mixing chemicals, or doing other equally dangerous things. What's the worst possible phrase you dread hearing from him/her? "I shouldn't have touched that."
There are hundreds of monsters in the pathfinder universe. Which ones do you think are unfair for their CR and why? Here's two that come up very often. 1) Wisp Immune to most spells, high AC, invisibility, situational fast healing, and a touch attack that's a guaranteed hit on any level 6 character. Even though they aren't nearly as deadly as other powerful creatures they can be incredibly annoying to fight, especially if they have friends who can dish out fear effects. 2) Shadow Demon Depending on the environment you battle it in shadow demons can easily kill or incapacitate a party unprepared to fight it. Having low hit dice means nothing if you boast abilities that synergize so well that it defeats the purpose of hit points. Incorporeal + DR 10 + demon immunities/resists. At will deeper darkness combined with invisibility in low-light conditions. Attacks that target touch combined with pounce. Magic jar once per day that doesn't require a focus. Summoning another of its kind with a 50% chance of success. For any party less than 6th level the fight will more than likely end in a TPK. Even at 10th level and beyond they can be a pain in the rear to fight against.
Anyone ever have a character whose motivation for PC/NPC interaction was living hell for everyone in the party? This can be from any PC or NPC from games you've played. I'll list a few personal motivations that come up often to start with. 1. The Assassin for Hire, or the "Murder hobo" Seems to come up in every game now and again, you'll run across some hired gun sent to kill you at someone's expense or have a member of your party that does the same. It gets very upsetting when characters will be quick to kill any sort of roleplaying NPC with diamond jewelry, a +1 sword, and some fancy magic items equipped without talking to them first simply because they'll get more gold for their cause out of it. 2. The Troll, or "THAT DAMNED BARD/ILLUSIONIST" Their motivation: To waste everyone's time whether it be bluffing out of convictions, creating duplicates of yourself, or stun/fascinate as many people as possible and just sit there while telling jokes or poking fun. Anyone whose ever played Part One of Rivers Run Red knows the feeling. It's frustrating to play against and its frustrating to DM. 3. The Instigator, or "Its never fun until someone gets hurt" The character whose sole purpose in life it to create conflict in the most spectacular way possible. For instance, one character put all of their hard work into writing a book on poetry that took an entire year to perfect and shares it with everyone. Instigator reads it, says he's not impressed, burns it behind their backs, and makes it look like someone else did it. All adds up to a boring afternoon of complaints and fistfights.
I've seen this so many times so I have to ask: Why do serpentfolk have disguise self as an at-will spell-like ability if they are monstrous humanoids? The description of the spell states this: You make yourself - including clothing, armor, weapons, and equipment - look different. You can seem 1 foot shorter or taller, thin, fat, or in between. You cannot change your creature type (although you can appear as another subtype). Otherwise, the extent of the apparent change is up to you. You could add or obscure a minor feature or look like an entirely different person or gender. The problem I am having is that in the tactics for serpentfolk it describes them infiltrating by taking on humanoid disguises even though they are monstrous humanoids which, by the spell's description, doesn't do jack of anything since they are monstrous humanoids and not merely a humanoid subtype. They can't even use mundane disguises to look like humans since, once again, they don't share the same creature type. I've come up with various ways to fix this problem. One of them was to exchange disguise self with alter self so they can appear as humanoids. Another was to give them a (Su) ability that allowed them to pass for humanoids using their disguise self ability or a disguise check. You could houserule that serpentfolk can use this ability to appear as a humanoid but by RAW it doesn't work. Can anyone confirm this? |
