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I'm actually the DM in this case, but I was hoping to find some kind of consensus on whether/why a Synthesist/Summoner's eidolon can't do what Succubi and other outsiders have been doing forever. I didn't say it was standard, just that alter self interacts with outsiders the same way as it does with humanoids. The real issue is whether alter self or spells like it would simultaneously affect both parts of the synthesist/eidolon, in the same way that all other spells affect both of them as though they were one creature(until the eidolon is dismissed, anyway). If alter self can make either look like a humanoid independently as written, it stands to reason both would be simultaneously affected by a casting of the spell, but what would happen is really unclear, since the way the two are merged is visually one way and mechanically another(not unlike what happens when alter self is cast, making you look like a particular kind of humanoid, but not shifting around the stats all that much). I appreciate the help, everyone. If anyone finds a FAQ or a rule-based argument for or against, please let me know. It looks like I might have to house rule this until there's something more solid than "Synthesists are even wackier than normal Summoners."
I'm actually the DM in this case, but I was hoping to find some kind of consensus on whether/why a Synthesist/Summoner's eidolon can't do what Succubi and other outsiders have been doing forever. If it's meant to be a class limitation, it's kind of a strange one. Other classes are sort of marked by their gear anyhow, but not in such a way that a hat of disguise would be useless to conceal their martial nature. Like I said, it's a weird corner case if eidolons, fused or otherwise, can't be disguised or concealed while summoned(until someone casts detect magic, at least).
I've tried to find an answer for this in the forums and FAQ, but it seems to be much more of a corner case than most: would a fused eidolon be effectively hidden by disguise spells like Alter Self and Disguise Self? Could a character use these spells or ANY spells to remain fused(as in, fully armored with his eidolon suit on) but appear as defenseless as a demon pretending to be a small child? I only ask because Summoners in particular seem to have that weird glyph that can't ever be hidden(or so some threads say).
In a campaign I'm running now, I'm trying to populate a dungeon with some nasty critters that were bred/engineered to be perfect killing machines. Initially, I used Unfettered Eidolons rebranded as aberrations, but now I'm having second thoughts. I don't have a lot of skill crafting eidolons, and while it was an effective challenge the first time, I'm worried if may get a little dull for the party to keep running up against the same one that's listed in the Bestiary. Anyone who's familiar with Book of Vile Darkness or can get their hands on a copy, there was a truly nasty aberration in there called a Kython, with multiple challenge ratings and variable abilities. I'm curious how the two stack up next to one another in terms of lethality and variability as foes. Anyone have any opinions or advice on which to use?
An opportunity for shameless self-promotion. Excellent. I was going to post one of these threads myself if I couldn't find one. It's been a long time since I was active on the boards, but hopefully one or two of you remember me. I just published my first sci-fi novel as an ebook on Amazon:
The website has some art and background for the book, and I hope to update it regularly with new material. My first posted review should be up some time today(four out of five stars, woo-hoo!).
Nicely done! I normally don't read FanFics, but this one I really liked. Is there something more for the rest of the series?There's more...? OMG - I gotta find it. If I do - I'll post! I haven't written much in the setting in a long while, mostly due to player attrition in the third chapter of the campaign. Broke my heart after all the work the group put into their kingdom, but nobody could make time for the sessions any more.
Now, bear with me here... could a paladin enter the Gray Gardener prestige class? Assuming, of course, that they never knowing executed an innocent(and probably came from somewhere other than Galt)? The prestige class doesn't have any alignment restrictions or requirements, and Pathfinder allows for combinations like rogue/paladin now that the multi classing restriction has been lifted from paladins... is there a consensus?
I've been running a group through Carrion Hill, and they're digging the setting, even bringing some fun backstory to the game that I'm trying my best to integrate. Originally, I was going to adapt Carrion Crown to higher levels, but now I have a more challenging idea. I'd like to adapt Red Hand of Doom to Ustalav and use it as a bridge to get them to Wake of the Watcher and beyond. Some of them have already played through parts of Carrion Crown, most have only ever heard of Red Hand. Since the Whispering Tyrant has history with using orcs from the Hold of Belkzen, I was thinking of replacing hobgoblins with orcs, making the force empowering the Horde's charismatic orc leader into something more squicky and Lovecraftian. I'm using an agent of the Whispering Way as a long term antagonist. He encouraged the events of Carrion Hill and is seeking power for what's to come in Gallowspire. In the Horde, he's seeking to distract or outright conquer the population(either helps the Whispering Way achieve their goals). Any thoughts or suggestions on merging these two stories?
I may be mistaken on this, but is there some rule that a PC who gets his brain sucked out and drops to 2 INT loses all of his class levels? There are many creative ways a GM can justify class levels on a creature(though with this particularly creature, I'd have gone with barbarian levels). If the creature was trained, however that was accomplished, the benefits of the levels would stay. Most combat feats are fair game to animals anyway. Its all just a convenient way of achieving a game effect, like the character who plays a knight but has levels in fighter, or the PC who explains his sorcerer powers as the effect of demonic possession in his backstory. As Alexander said, mileage may vary. DMing is an art, not a science.
I'm sure it's going to be years before such a set exists, but I'd love to see the major NPCs and villains of the Kingmaker AP. In the first book alone, there are six or so memorable bandits that would look great as minis. In general, the timing on set releases will probably never line up well with the APs, though the Rise of the Runelords set might coincide nicely with the Hardcover offering(and feature a number of NPC miniatures that will get some use in Jade Regent, fingers crossed).
"Paladins are the rarest class in all of Golarion, even beyond the Inner Sea." I thought it odd, but maybe all those demons pouring out of the Worldwound keep their numbers low.
Magic is not commonplace. It exists. There's a subtle difference there. I think the general point being made is that anyone walking into Falcon's Hollow with a freakish many-armed creature is going to incite terror in the locals. The alternative is that people with freakish pets are commonplace enough that no one would bat an eye at an eidolon. Since this is a setting that describes paladins as pretty rare, we shouldn't make blanket assumptions about the newest classes being common enough not to cause a stir. There's a reason summoners can dismiss and summon their creatures.
I ran the first three chapters of Kingmaker and had a blast, with characters like Kressle and the Stag Lord growing into allies of the PCs through much role-play and diplomacy. Now I find myself running it again with a mostly different group of players, and I've decided to shake things up and make some changes. Spoiler: This time around, Oleg and Svetlana will not be the decent, hardworking couple they appear to be. More like the scheming Thenardiers from Les Miserables, only they like to rob and murder guests in their sleep when they can get away with it. The gullible PCs are the perfect defense from anyone who's on to their schemes.
Among the guests when the PCs arrive will be a tall hunter in a cowl and his elderly father. They'll stay out of the way, keep to themselves, and pitch in when the PCs inevitably discover Oleg and Svetlana's treachery, maybe even supplying necessary information about the Bandits of Thorn River. Happs and his boys will show up on schedule, but unbeknownst to the PCs, Happs is seeking revenge for the death of a brother who mysteriously vanished on his way to the Trading Post. Far from bandits, they're just locals. The Thorn River bandits and the Stag Lord's bandits are in direct competition with each other. While the man who had been Stag Lord has not commanded his own men in some time, his position at Oleg's Trading Post and his renewed relationship with his father has helped him overcome his alcoholism. Now he wants back everything that was taken from him--the mantle of Stag Lord, secretly stolen by Akiros Ismort when the Stag Lord was too drunk to even stand, the Thorn River territory, now controlled by Kressle, who became a free agent when a sentimental Akiros forced her out to start a new life for herself--and he's willing to let the PCs do all the work for him.
I've played the class you're talking about. It's pretty broken. The gadgets that combine spells are beyond ridiculous.
I usually buy the dirt cheap PDF that gets corrected automatically on future downloads. Wave of the future. ;)
I had a notion to slip an Elder Thing and a Flumph into the tower as researchers trying to find the source of the planar intrusion that plays such a significant role later. The tower, with its unearthly aura would seem a likely source for a breach between worlds, and having two friendly monsters wouldn't prevent security beasts like Shoggoths from tangling with a curious party...
This is one of those discussions that comes up so often and proves so divisive that I they not to sucked in, but I liked the OP's thesis so much I wanted to chime in anyway. Alignment is tricky specifically because it has a role in character development AND the mechanics of the game. I'm sure I'm not the only DM who sometimes changes NPC alignment on the fly to something that better matches expectations, especially with Evil-by-Statblock creatures like Kobolds, who are evil mechanically but behave much as Lizardfolk(for whom eating sentient races is not evil if they have a pretext). The way I reconcile the mechanics of alignment with character development is to consider alignment an average of one's actions over time, with certain acts overwhelmingly evil and others altruistic and good. Honorable and whimsical acts, I tend to slip I to Law/Chaos, but those are more deeply ingrained. Someone living by a certain code sometimes abandons it, but not usually. In this way, I still allow for acts of compassion when an evil character is borderline, and not every good PC who decides to be vindictive and merciless starts edging toward evil. Others may be more strict, but I'm a big believer in letting the characters define themselves, rather than their alignments. My personal take on Dexter Morgan: Lawful Neutral. Mileage may vary, and at times he almost seems Neutral Good to me, by his behavior.
In case it matters, I'd also like to see an ignore feature, though I'm sure its been addressed by admin in the 300+ posts why that would or wouldn't work for the board. I expect the negative side of an ignore button would be that posts that annoy to the point of madness are often situational, but there is at least one longtime poster who never fails to drive me to burbling rage with every arrogant, condescending post, regardless of the topic. I'm sure everyone has at least one person like that on this board or some other. One point in favor of an ignore feature is that it's more democratic than flagging and censoring posts, though thats only a minor point in the case of these boards, where no one plays whack-a-mole with the auto-ban hammer and the majority are very friendly to one another.
You're not alone. I like Invisible being used as the condition. The wording for Invisibility isn't terribly complex. Being hidden is just another way to be invisible, but thats just how it read to me.
I just got that reading the last few posts. The assumption is based on succeeding on the check with a -20 for sniping, or does that not apply here?
I may be mistaken, but the invisibility is automatically ended if you do anything. This seems to settle once and for all the question of sneak attack on multiple attacks from Stealth. Sniping has always been -20, so that part of Stealth isn't new. I don't see how someone could stay permanently invisible this unless they remain completely still and make their stealth check every round to do so.
Just for sake of curiosity, it's just my impression or the monsters/enemies set in this AP (random encounters at low levels excluded) are, for the major part, barely more that a nuisance for experienced players (and/or optimised parties)? I'm going to go ahead and say its better to increase the CR and pull a few punches than play it as is. A party of 3 or 4 skilled players with a 20-pt buy wouldn't find too many close calls in the first few books, but they would be challenged. 5 players lets them gang up on single combatants. Grouped encounters should be used wherever possible, so the big bad gets a few rounds of pain in before everyone turns their attention to him/her/it. I'm not sure, but I think the APs are written with a 15-pt buy in mind.
The push ability is not in the elemental entry even though it is in the spell. It seems you have round a typo. I would hit the FAQ button so that it can get errata'd in the next book that comes out. Nice catch. Odd, this is at least the third time people have looked for an answer on this. Must have slipped through the cracks because it's so situational.
I want to thank you and the others for the help. For now I think I'll try a mix of the two, doing my best to create 3-D structures that make an impression and use print-outs of the more intricate, irregular maps. If I had the time, the patience, and a robo-cutter, I'd probably try the Terrainlinx card stock models WWG does, but for now I'll have to be content with simpler 3-D structures and flat maps.
Thank you. I appreciate the clarification.
One of the things I love most about Paizo Adventure Paths are the maps. They're always interesting and atmospheric... which is why I don't want to just draw a sloppy approximation of them with dry-erase markets. For my upcoming Kingmaker game, I want to do something really special. Assuming they look decent when blown up to the proper grid size, I was going to either have color copies made of the major maps, fiddling with them in GIMP so each part is an individual file that prints at the correct size to link together, or I was going to try building 3-dimensional versions out of Terra-Clips(World Works Games). The main problem with the Terra-Clips maps is that I'll lose the exact shape of the maps. Just looking at the Stag Lord's Fort map, I can already see it's impossible to do with the pieces WWG currently sells in their sets. Likewise, blowing up the map images will likely distort the fine detail. So here's my question to the Paizo community: which would you do, assuming the issue is quality of gaming and not price(I think offhand that Terra-Clips will be cheaper in the long run, since they can be reused)?
I'm putting together a small group for a Sunday game in New Port Richey, FL with a carpool traveling from Brandon, FL along I-75. It's a solid group with strong roleplayers dedicated as much to character as to crunch. Anyone carpooling can expect to split the cost of gas three ways. I allow a pretty exotic mix of character concepts as long as they play well with others.
I would talk to the player about using a different die that you can read from across the table. There's a guy I used to play with who likewise had uncanny luck. Rolled more 20's than should have been possible. The part that's amazing is I know he's not cheating, unless there's a way you can roll a die that makes it land on 20 more often than normal. Any die, mind you. Not always his own. There are such players and they make fearsome DMs.
One more thing: I hate wotc. I cant help but feel if they had kept MOST of it to themselves, you might feel differently. I don't know if Paizo would be successful today if they'd had to build a system from scratch along with the monsters to go with it. Pathfinder owes a lot to 3rd edition being mostly open content, rather than the reverse. As for me, I don't hate anyone, but I've never forgiven WotC for ending third edition and both Dungeon and Dragon magazines within a year of me buying all the books and learning the game. Good on them for 3rd edition in the first place, but the Savage Tide AP was what got me invested in DnD. My first love will always be Paizo. :)
Question about the Bioconstruct modification on p. 116:
All bioconstruct upgrades have the same weakness—they are susceptible to critical hits. An attacker that confirms a critical hit against a golem with a bioconstruct upgrade deals damage to the construct and also destroys one upgrade. The damaged upgrade ceases to function and the construct loses abilities associated with the upgrade. If a construct has more than one bioconstruct upgrade, only one is damaged. The GM randomly determines the damaged organ. It may just be the wording, but this makes it seem like constructs aren't normally susceptible to critical hits. Is it saying that this modification makes them especially susceptible and to remove any critical hit immunities that specific constructs may have? Or was there a ruling that sneak attack and/or critical hits don't work on constructs anymore?
I'm trying to put together a small group of dedicated role-players for my favorite campaign of all time. I tried running it online but suffered some player atrophy and burned out on the massive amount of prep work required to do Kingmaker justice over a virtual tabletop. Now I'm trying again, but I'm a tabletop DM at heart. I loved running the first half of Kingmaker online, and I can only imagine it's going to be even better around a table. I'm looking for potential players around the Tampa area who can make the trip to Oldsmar, FL for a weekly or biweekly game. It's even conceivable that the game will run only once a month if all we can manage are all-day sessions. If you're interested, post here or email me at charlatans dot web at gmail dot com.
There's more...? OMG - I gotta find it. If I do - I'll post! I feel slightly humbled that people still wanted to read these. I'll post the consolidated copy that includes Kressle, the Fort, and the Stag Lord's encounter with a certain vengeful river Wraith. It was a submission to a Pathfinder fiction contest with segments to bridge the different vignettes. I was pretty bummed it came in like 90th after all the honorable mentions, but I love the characters and if it helps others running the Kingmaker AP, I'm pleased to repost it. EDIT: You can find it here: "What You Hold"
I've been to two Gencon events as a Tier-1 judge and have the dubious distinction of no characters ever dying at my table. On the one hand, I don't try to kill players(I've been on the receiving end and haven't enjoyed it), but on the other it always made me feel sort of inadequate. There were other DMs, people I knew, who had ridiculously high casualty rates and it did seem a point of pride for some. There were even some players that looked for such games and considered it a challenge to overcome. I'm coming in at the end of a very long thread, but I wanted to chime in because I both understand the frustration of the OP and have seen players disappointed when they weren't challenged enough. There's a very hard line to walk, especially in con games.
Are there any gamers up for a monthly or weekly game in the Tampa/Lakeland area?Hey, that would be great. I just emailed our regional coordinator to find out if there were any openings where he goes regularly. Depending on the day of the week I'm up for monthly or weekly. All I need now is another player or two. The plan for now is most likely running Carrion Crown, though I am open to other APs. I can be reached at charlatans dot web at gmail dot com to work out specifics. I'm encouraged that someone answered in only a day.
This is actually my favorite AP, although I love Kingmaker to death. Runelords wasn't a big hit with the players in my area, but part of that had to do with the feeling that each chapter wasn't part of an overarching story(an old complaint that dates all the way back to Dungeon). I think the flaw of Crimson Throne is that it spends so much time away from the city in the latter parts of the AP. I also think it makes a huge difference whether a Gm has read the Guide to Kovosa or not. Things like the villains of Old Korvosa feel a lot more significant when time is taken to build on the details given in the guide. Its always been one of my greatest regrets that I barely started chapter 2 when my group took a long hiatus. I've wanted desperately to finish this campaign for a long time.
Alas, your fears were totally unfounded. That'll teach me to reuse material. If I wasn't such a lazy hack, I would have written something new and original.
In the actual Bestiary or in one of the support books? The SRD doesn't have a reference for cairn wight, which sounds like what you're talking about and might be the wight I keep seeing in stat blocks. Is there a specific reason it would not allow multiple energy drains with a high enough BAB, or is it sort of an unspoken designer rule to keep the power curve normal?
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