Waxen Pith's page

Greetings,

I ordered the HUMBLE RPG BOOK BUNDLE: PATHFINDER SECOND EDITION BY PAIZO INC, including the tier which provided the physical copy of the 2nd edition core rule book (as show in my redemption history at https://paizo.com/paizo/account/redemptions).

When I was trying to complete the redemption, I was unable to correctly enter in my address. Specifically the site was not letting me enter in my apartment number. I emailed customer service on July 15th, however I never heard back.

Checking today, I am now able to enter in my address correctly. I was wanting to finish redeeming the offer for my copy of the physical 2nd edition book, and additionally I would like to purchase the 2nd advanced player's guide (and hopefully save a bit on shipping).

However now I find myself unable to redeem my copy of the 2nd edition core book.

What steps do I need to take in order to finalize my redemption of the 2nd edition core book and purchase the 2nd edition advanced player's guide so that they ship together.

Thank you in advance.

I've tried to read through all the forum posts on the Beast Bonded Witch Archetype but I haven't been able find a PFS ruling concerning what constitutes as "Suitable Vessel." Archetype Feature quoted below

Twin Soul (Su): At 10th-level, if the witch or her familiar is gravely injured or about to die, the soul of the dying one immediately transfers to the other’s body. The two souls share the surviving body peaceably, can communicate freely, and both retain their ability to think and reason. The host may allow the guest soul to take over the body temporarily or reclaim it as a move action. They can persist in this state indefinitely, or the guest can return to its own body (if available) by touch, transfer into a suitable vessel (such as a clone), or take over another body as if using magic jar (with no receptacle). This replaces the witch’s major hex at 10th-level.

Assuming I'm level 10 and playing in a PFS scenario -

Situation #1: Let's say my Witch dies and my soul goes to my familiar. What do I have to do to get my body back in shape in order to return to it? Would it just be as simple as taking out a wand of Cure Something Wounds and return it back to a positive life total? Or is it technically an object now and I need a Wand of Make Whole? If I wanted to heal it up to "Full" would it still use my class level life total?

Situation #2: After the first fight of the scenario, would it be possible to fix up the body of a fallen adversary, have my witch jump into that, and then carry the witch's original body in a Bag of Holding? At the end of the scenario I would return to the original body, I'm not interested in trying to ride a corpse across scenarios, nor am I interested in trying to psuedo-magic jar into a living opponent.

Situation #3: At the start of the scenario, my Witch tries to make/procure a suitable vessel. As I understand you aren't allowed to hire a spell caster for higher than a 7th level spell and Clone is an 8th level spell. So what if anything would constitute a suitable vessel in this case?

As a side topic, if my improved familiar dies and inhabits my body, what abilities does it retain? Does the familiar have to be in charge (switching via move action) to use those abilities? Can I still prepare spells if my familiar's soul is in me?

Lastly, can my Witch cast while in its Raven Familiar or while in the form of a Raven? (a la Familiar Form) Edit: Nevermind, reread the polymorph rules

I apologize in advance if this has been answered in a prior post of if I'm overlooking some basic rules questions. I'm not as familiar with PFS rulings as I am with kitchen table GM guidelines.

Ah, because you are not riding it you can't roll Ride, so effectively, etc. etc.

Thank you honestly.

It is a shame, though. Cavalier is such a fun class, but being restricted to such a small pool of suitable mounts is a bit stifling for society play :(

And for giggles, here are some other, perhaps more dubious ways of getting the STR score higher:

Masterwork backpack: No, it's not a giant backpack capable of holding a human, it's an... air saddle! Treats STR as +1 higher for carrying capacity, and honestly the, ahem, air saddle makes more sense.Technically, you'd have to use Flying Straps (though Exotic Saddle would work also and would never break since you never need to make the Fly check since it doesn't mention that under saddle but, anyway).

Anyway, I'd rule it that you'd have to use Flying straps, but that the player could be in a giant back pack. You'd have to find that chart on armor price size conversion to figure out the cost though. But the problem is, if we let you do that then you could technically use a

Bag of holding: Even the lowest bag of holding could carry a person, especially if that person were hanging out of it halfway so they could lance charge. You're inviting the GM to shoot the bag and cut off half your character or worse, but if I had to rule it I would say: half the weight of the character + items carried + weight of bag = approx 150 lbs and work from there. That said, I'm not going this route because if I had to GM that, every archer would shoot at the bag. Let's not get into the "armor plate the bag" rabbit hole :)

Hunter 1st level spell: Enlarge person - As far as I am aware, if you take your first level in Cavalier and then your second level in Hunter, you get a mount that is combat trained but doesn't have share spells, and then it stacks with the Hunter levels and gains share spells. I'm rather sure that this is accepted at this point, so yeah, enlarge person for big(ger) bird.

The wording on the boon overrides the normal requirements for a mount (it doesn't need to be larger, have a horizontal surface, need to be on the list, etc)

However there is one big thing that the boon doesn't override, mainly carrying capacity. If your horse takes STR damage it may not be able to carry you despite being a horse, and that should carry over to the Bird mount.

On a more minor note, even I don't believe that you could ride on the back of a small bird and have it fly, but the bird has two claws so it could carry you with them (assuming the STR requirement is there).

So what STR would a Bird need to carry a armored human?

Assume human weighs 175 lb.
Steel Lamellar (35 lb) + Lance (10 lb) + Handy haversack (5 lbs) = 50 lbs
Total = 225 lbs
Required STR score for light load: 26
Required STR score for Med load: 21
* taking into account small adjust of 3/4

Bird STR is listed as 10 so we have a ways to go.

Human Alt. Racial: Eye for Talent - +2 STR
1 level dip in hunter for animal focus: +2 STR
Animal Companion feat: hefty Brute (treated as Medium to eliminate the small penalty)
Hunter 1st level spell, Ant Haul: triples carrying capacity

So in two levels we have a bird with 14 STR, treated as medium instead of small for carrying capacity and with triple carrying capacity. The bird can comfortably carry me at second level as a medium load.

Would anyone have any strong objections to this, players or GM's?

I want to play this build but I don't want to suck the fun out of the table.

And can we please avoid the realism arguments? I concede that the bird has to carry me and will lose those natural attacks. This is a fantasy world, a knight carried by a small bird is not the most outlandish thing I've ever seen in a module :)

Not to keep posting to my own thread but the reason I ask is that I've been wanting to play a cavalier in PFS for a while, but I am sure many of us are aware of the problems with getting a horse through a dungeon.

From the research I have done I've found this old post ( LINK ) where the issue is addressed by John Compton.

This has been brought to my attention, and I'm revising the text of future versions of the boon that go to conventions. I'll post here again once that text is finalized, and those with the original version of the boon can use the revised text or the boon's text as they see fit (I believe the revised text is more beneficial, but I'll leave it out there as an option).

The intention is not to add mounts only (a relic of borrowing some of the language from the Mounted Tradition boon from last year). Rather the aim was to open up additional options for characters with any animal companion class feature (nature bond, hunter's bond, mount, divine bond, etc.) and strengthen an otherwise undervalued option for those that already have access to that creature.

Since that post was made in 2014 and I only received the boon a few days ago, I can assume that the boon was corrected in some way (I don't have the original text so I can't be sure).

But even if it wasn't changed the fact that it was reprinted means someone officially gave it the stamp of approval. In short, I'd like to use this to have a bird mount in PFS and I think I can present a good case to the table if I were questioned on it, but I don't want to get into an argument every time I play.

I'm going to roll out what I think would be a fair interpretation and then ask for feedback. And so we begin.

While at GenCon this year I received the Convention Boon #4, Ancestral Ally. Quoting:

"If you have the divine bond or mount class feature, instead of choosing an animal companion from the list provided in the class description, you may instead call a mount from the list below so long as you are a member of the corresponding race. If the animal companion statistics for your race's mount are found in a source beyond the Core Assumption, the source is listed below."

Seems simple enough, however under Elf and Human they have Bird listed and no other source, so I assumed it was in the Core "Assumption" (i.e. Core Rulebook)

And when I check the animal companion list under Bird, it turns out birds are small and mounts need to be at least one size larger than your size class.

While I assume it is not the intention to have a human riding a small bird, am I missing something?

Archives of Nethys Link: https://aonprd.com/DruidCompanions.aspx?ItemName=Bird%20(Eagle/Hawk/Owl)

*Sorry couldn't get the embed link to work for some reason