Velocinox's page

So I thought it would be a good idea to register our adventuring company with the pathfinder society and perhaps even join and begin working our way up the ladder.

Then, I read the joining requirements. Well, sorry Pathfinder Society, I'll not be derailing our entire campaign to trudge off to Absalom and endure months or years of downtime (or worse in-game months or years of shoehorning our entire gaming group into a 'go to college' campaign setting) just to satisfy your sense of 'quality' members.

Wouldn't a society of fiercely independent adventurers be better served by a meritocrious society that lets anyone join AND THEN weeds out the pretenders and slackers? Don't keep out the ones that would rather spend time unearthing the world's secrets than engaging in a glorified spring break trip to Absalom?

Seriously though, why isn't joining the Pathfinder Society just as easy in-game as it is for real? Go to the local lodge, sign a document, pledge your service, abide by shared goals, report outcomes. Simple.

Think about it in-game... think about all the adventurers that are discovering things in their normal adventures that never come to light in the society because they don't want to participate in some stupid lengthy social ritual first?

Who in-character is a Pathfinder member that didn't just hand-wave it during creation, or be presented with it honorarily Ex post facto? Your entire beginning campaign would have to be completely dedicated to just that.

Sorry, but I think the entire beginning section of Seeker of Secrets was poorly planned and written. Please update this to make sense, and allow the average campaign player a chance to join without making everyone else at the table bend to their will.

(Yes, I know this can be house-ruled, but most GMs that play Golarion just go with canon if they haven't come across a problem.)

P.S. Just for clarity, this has nothing to do with the real world official-play Pathfinder Society. I have nothing against them and I enjoy participating. This is entirely about the in-game canon about a society that is all about gaining as much knowledge as possible preventing those very same people they want from joining because those people are too busy off doing what the society would have them doing anyway...)

Velocinox wrote:

How is the Synthesist healing his Eidolon/Temp HP? I thought only the Eidolon specific heals worked on them. Did something change in the rules?

He has one of his 1st level spells specified. He could easily have Rejuvenate Eidolon (Lesser) on his list. Or a Wand of it.

Sure, but he specifically says he heals up after the fight with LOH and wands (wands he has specifically named as cure wounds wands)

How is the Synthesist healing his Eidolon/Temp HP? I thought only the Eidolon specific heals worked on them. Did something change in the rules?

I would probably treat him as being mounted on the roc. He is effectively trying to do the same thing that being mounted on it would do. You can't wait until your mount moves you and then make a full attack.

If he insists on using the rules for grapple instead, then the roc can only move at half speed while grappling him. Also if the roc ascends at a 45 degree angle it moves at half speed. So if the roc flies up while grappling him it would move at quarter speed.

The enlarged roc probably would have no trouble lifting him as it likely had a strength over 30 and its carrying capacity is multiplied X 4 for size.

Would the Roc having flyby make a difference? Otherwise I like your interpretation.

Isn't a dire tiger much larger than a normal tiger? So wikipedia couldn't help much, go with the bestiary stats.

Well the bestiary lists the dire tiger as a Smilodon, so that is what I looked up on wikipedia. Also, at 6000 pounds that equal to four of the heaviest heavy warhorses at 1,500 pounds each, and they are large also. I am wondering about how common that 6k value would be among Smilodons, and is it an extreme case (would that even be a huge Smilodon?).

So had an 8th level druid try something new...

He wild shaped into a Dire Tiger (Smilodon), had his ant hauled/Animal enlarged Roc pick him up and fly to the enemy. It flew down to 10 feet and released the druid. He then wanted to pounce charge the enemy.

...and play stopped.

We eventually decided he needed to make an acrobatics roll to avoid damage and going prone, but couldn't find anything else wrong with it. So I let him do it on the caveat that I would try to get a better idea of the entire process and if we missed anything it may be different/disallowed in the future.

So what did I miss? I did notice the ecology section of the dire tiger lists it as up to 6000 lbs... which might be an issue, but that is up to and leaves some wiggle room especially as my second source (wikipedia) lists them under 1000 lbs at their heaviest.

Need help with a tiger bomb, please.

So linear is busted,
bell curve is where it's at...

Got it.

Out with the d20, in with the 1d10 + 2d6 - 2

:D

Yea, never been a fan of the 5% chance to fail no matter how good you are, and the 5% chance for an extraordinary success. Which is no better or worse statistically than rolling a 10.

Look at it this way, you're a professional, you work weekdays and you are extremely good at your job. If you use the D20 system to determine your monthly work results, then EVERY MONTH you will have a dramatic and terrible result to the work you do in the job you are an expert at.

Now, I don't know about you but If I seriously and dramatically fouled up my job every month I wouldn't have that job for very long, and I would start thinking about a career I was better at. All the while understanding that I am talking about an expert in the field, a world leader in that expertise, but once a month he botches the whole thing up. Right...

Bell curve is where it's at. The vast majority of the time you turn in average work consistent with your skill, once in a very long time do you have an epiphany or completely botch your attempt.

Summon monster seems to only be intended for combat. If the PC wants something more, like tapping into a creature's healing abilities, then they must use a Planar Binding or Planar Ally spell which is more open-ended.

Sorry, but I got enough of this wargaming, anti-roleplay sentiment when I was playing 4E. I'm playing a Summoner and roleplaying him as having just learned his abilities, and one of the things I intend, is to summon a happy dog that likes being around people as my first summons and have the townsfolk's kids play with him for a minute or two.

No combat, no purpose, just fun and roleplay... in a roleplaying game... go figure.

I cannot find one reference stating it only changes appearance when the Summoner levels. Its evolutions stay the same, but the book says its appearance is up to the summoner.

So you have a quadruped eidolon and lets say its evolution points are spent on improved armor, improved damage and scent...you could summon it as a unicorn looking creature, then next time summon a medium sized badger...the aspect of the creature is the same a quadruped, bu its appearance changes based on your desire. That is why the line about "cannot look like a specific creature" is so important.

now assuming you had a biped...

You cant summon your Eidolon to look like the mayor and give your friend a pardon...but you could make it look human enough to go bail out your rouge friend who got arrested without landing yourself in hot water. Though it would still look fantastical, like an angel or according to Ultimate Magic a bodyguard.

I'm not sure they can hear you way back in 2011... What with them getting ready for New Year's and all.

Claw/claw/bite is a bad idea. Why? becouse for a bite attack you need a head, witch alone cost 2 evolution point. So a ttal of 3 evolution point for an extra attack. Get more damage for the claw instead.

All base form are assumed to come with a head. I know it isn't stated, but the wording of the head evolution in UM is, "An eidolon grows an additional head."

How about another angle?

If I do allow a choice of Racial Favored Class Bonus no matter which Favored Class they level in, can anyone see a combination of Racial Favored Class Bonuses that might prove to be disruptive or unbalancing?

If nobody else sees a problem with that, and can't find where it is expressly forbidden, then I am going to lean in favor of the player this time despite my initial hesitation.

Can a Half-Elf with Multitalented choose the Racial Favored Class bonus from either of his Favored Classes when he goes up a level in a Favored Class?

My first reaction is, 'No, You can choose the default or Racial Favored Class bonus for that Class only.'

However, as I read the (many) sections of rules covering this, I find no wording that expressly prohibits this. Not only that, but due to the Core Book origins of Favored Class and Multitalented the wording is quite the opposite, in that Favored Class Bonuses are a pool of options and are always available when you level in a Favored Class.

Even in APG, it furthers this tone, with the concept of the Racial Favored Class Bonus being just another option in the pool of choices and no different from the default choices and is always available as a choice when you level in a Favored Class.

Am I being too conservative, and can a Multitalented 10 Fighter/10 Rogue Half-Elf take +1 CMD for all 20 levels because it is indeed a Racial Favored Class Bonus choice and he is indeed going up a level in a Favored Class, and it's just an intended bonus to the Half-Elf's Jack-of-all-Trades design concept?

Or am I right, and the RAW just hasn't been tweaked to address the new dynamic available to post-APG Half-Elves?

I would say yes, sense the PC is inside the t-rex so he is in the same square and lighting bolt hits all people in the same square.

I see what you did there...

Well, that's sort of the point, you want to reserve something like that for the ideologically charged classes. It represents their training in defending and fighting those with opposed ideologies. You could lower the power to say 2/4/6/8/10 DR instead of multiples of 5, but I would change it to a floating system. Where you have ranks of DR but they float 1 to 5 each for how righteous your GM thinks you have been behaving.

It would extend to monster/NPCs as well, the Devil with a rank 3 DR/evil is only rated at 6 total DR (a GM value of 2 per rank) because he is having a 'Darth Vader' period in his life and is regretting his life of evil after seeing how good his mortal son turned out to be. Or, he might hate his son for turning out good and be the current focus for the Devil's rage and when he finally gets his chance to kill him his DR flares up to 5 per rank because this is the moment his hatred has been waiting for...

Mechanically it could all default to 2 or 3 per rank for those GMs that don't want to invest the role-play time, but for those that do you have a power balanced system that better reflects the goal of DR applied to alignment.

Meh, 2¢... what are you going to do with them in this economy but throw them out there and see if anyone likes them. XD

Ahh, ok. Just making sure before continuing...

"The idea was for it to represent Good & Evil destroying each other."
While that's a nice peek into metaphysical philosophy, in gaming it just means it's useless beyond cheese.

Not to mention it could just as easily be re-written to represent the strength of one's faith. (DR/good being taken by a good person) meaning only those in a position to judge my works (my peers and mentors) can pierce my strength of will. Or in the case of evil, a weakness my masters can exploit when I get out of line.

I mean that's just as metaphysical and mystical as your interpretation and doesn't lead people to playing a warrior of good and getting DR/Law just so the mechanics work sometimes.

The idea was for it to represent Good & Evil destroying each other.

And it means a Paladin would have to wield an Unholy Weapon to easily By-Pass the Devils DR before getting that +5 Weapon.

I am assuming your second sentence was meant to say wouldN'T not would, and you are supporting the design, not sarcastically agreeing with me?

All this discussion on how DR is poorly designed without bringing up DR/Alignment? That's the most useless of them all. The alignment has to be opposite the user? So It's useless against my enemies but if I ever fight my friends I'm a monster! Bleh, poorly designed I say. It leads to dumb min/max stuff like the Chaos/Law juggle. (It doesn't make sense for my character to be Chaotic, but I'm picking it so poorly designed DR/Alignment actually works some of the time.)

It needs to be rewritten so that it's actually useful against your enemies, not your allies. If it's too powerful for that use, then change the power level or increase when you get it, don't just write bad rules rendering it useless to all but the cheesiest players.

Well my interpretation of the wording is that spirits are moving things about making them hard to find, like my wife with her purse. When things get unmanageable in there she'll take minutes to find what she is looking for and maybe even dump it out if she's at home.

The idea for the curse (imo) is that when you can't see what you are looking for and it is mixed in with a lot of other items then it takes you a while to find that specific thing.

If the player only had four coils of 50' rope in his pack the curse wouldn't apply because no matter what he grabs in his backpack it's going to be a 50' coil of rope. What are the spirits going to do hide the rope behind the other rope?

While on the other hand if the player is rummaging around a newly found chest for what is there, and it is mixed with 200 gold, 4 gems, a magic dagger, and a scroll and he's trying to see what's all in there, he's not going to get the complete list because the spirits keep moving the scroll and dagger around hiding them under the gold. Is this included in the RAW curse? Nope. Does it fit the wording of the curse? Yep.

So a quiver full of somethings all the same the spirits basically have nothing to work with, whatever you grab it's going to be what you wanted.

Well that's my take on it anyway, fwiw. I hope this is close to the intended design. It's more fun reading it as a roleplay concept than just reading it as a blind punishment rule.

Version 3 is actually how all this came up. the player was under the impression racial abilities were supposed to be positive only, but sociable is more like drow-blooded, with equal parts good and bad.

Thanks guys,

So by extension, it is also possible to lower their attitude towards you by two ranks using this racial ability by failing by 5 or more twice, which wouldn't be possible without it?

According to the PRD, Sociable is defined as;

Sociable: Half-elves are skilled at charming others and recovering from faux pas. If half-elves with this racial trait attempt to change a creature's attitude with a Diplomacy check and fail by 5 or more, they can try to influence the creature a second time even if 24 hours have not passed. This racial trait replaces the adaptability racial trait.

And the key parts of the Diplomacy skill for my question are;

A) If you fail the check by 4 or less, the character’s attitude toward you is unchanged. If you fail by 5 or more, the character’s attitude toward you is decreased by one step.

B) Try Again: You cannot use Diplomacy to influence a given creature’s attitude more than once in a 24-hour period. If a request is refused, the result does not change with additional checks, although other requests might be made. You can retry Diplomacy checks made to gather information.

So my interpretation of the Sociable Alternate Racial Ability is;

If you fail to improve someone's attitude towards you, then that's just how it goes, but if you fail to improve someone's attitude towards you, fail, and actually degrade their attitude towards you, you can try again (Breaking part B, above) and attempt to improve their attitude towards you using their now lowered (because of your previous failure) attitude DC?

Is this interpretation correct? Am I missing something not included that would affect this interpretation?

How in the world do you guys get your pie to stay up in the sky like that?

Did you know a katana can cut a tank in half in one clean cut?

...apparently butterfly swords can cut katanas in half.

Thanks for the speedy reply!

With Favored Son: Ameiko You gain an additional 10% over the amount of gp you normally would get from selling off treasure.

With the new Merchant Family You can resell items at an additional 10% over the amount of gp you normally would get from selling off treasure.

So if you have both does that mean you get a 20% increase in gold when you sell your treasure?