Zsar's page

Concise: One of my players wants to acquire a Ring of Forcefangs (8000 gp) which casts Empowered Maximised Magic Missiles with individual missile damage of constant 7.
I am alright with this - but how do I calculate a price for this thing?

Looking at the base item, it is already obvious that I cannot use Table: Estimating Magic Item Gold Piece Values to reproduce its whole price - because the ability to absorb force damage for charges is neither a spell (as far as I know) nor a non-spell ability listed in that table.
However, just as obviously, the cost for the spell part of the item has to be less than the total.

Spell level 1 times caster level 9 times command word activation 1800 makes 16200 - more than twice the full price.
Assuming charges were non-replaceable, multiply with 0,09 to arrive at 1458, which is ~18% of the full price.
Assuming Multiple different abilities, multiply with 1,5 to arrive at 2187 or ~27% of the full price.

Does that appear reasonable? If so, the modified item would have a price of:

- 5813 * 1,5 = 8719,5 gp price of absorptive ability
- (1 + 3 + 2) spell level * 11 caster level (assuming Wizard) * 1800 (command word) * 0,09 = 10692 gp price of magic missile
In total 19411,5 gp.

I am not sure whether this is still reasonable. It might be. Or mayhap not. Input appreciated.

I am also not sure how to use the table properly, assume e.g. an item with 6 charges per day - it is more expensive than one usable at will!? Yet nothing about that in the FAQ and nothing in the errata.
- This is relevant insofar, as that I tried to apply any seemingly cost-reducing effect to the magic missile, including this one (as rechargable charges - even though present in EVERY SINGLE staff - are unmentioned for reasons unknown) - but with 9 charges, the price would RISE: dividing by 5/9 is equal to multiplying with 9/5, which is larger than 1.
Again, input much appreciated.

Found Blacklight in the PF Chronicles Campaign Setting.
Looks acceptable. Consider issue solved.

Restated, are you asking, does the words of power system have a way to replicate Deeper Darkness?

I ask whether there is any way to replicate Deeper Darkness.

There does not seem to be a more powerful version either.

Are you refering to the magical darkness, that negates darkvision?

I specifically refer to the Cleric-only spell Deeper Darkness.

If that's so, I believe there are some spells, like blacklight, that can do it. Blacklight itself is arcane, so there you have a wizard that can do that.

There does not seem to be a "Blacklight" or "Black Light" in the PRD.

--

Goal is to procure a means to produce magical darkness in such a way that it may be employed in a fight.
Deeper Darkness approximates this goal closely enough, as normal light is two levels above darkness and can therefore be reduced.
Only in broad daylight will Deeper Darkness fail to behave adequately.

Light sources, which would provide bright light indoors, would be repressed as per the spell description, as long as they are non-magical or of lesser CL than the spell itself.

If a solution exists for non-magical darkness (not blocking Darkvision, that is), that would be interesting as well.

It would seem to me that the effect of Deeper Darkness cannot be replicated by anyone including Word Caster Clerics.

The Gloom word has no Boost and the number of light levels reduced is not a variable. Even if it were, Empowering the spell would yield a reduction by 1.5 light levels - so effectively still 1.

Is this the case or did I miss something?
Are there other means (not limited to wordspells) to provide light level darkness - without obscuring sight in other ways such as by fog - in a reliable (ideally non-consumable) way?

... I am not quite sure what I just read. It seems to be... disconnected? ... from the stated issue. Language barrier (german here)?

I demonstrated that I can give the Minotaur weaker Attribute score than Human (0 vs. +2) and still reach the score showcased in the Bestiary.

I had already linked to the level-offset rule and abandoned it in favour of the APL-offset rule introduced by Race Builder.

Balance between players cannot be a goal. Balance a Kobold and a Hobgoblin, when both are Barbarians.
And why should it be a goal? The guy who cannot wield a stick is not exactly a match to the berserker of death... in a fight. Luckily, this is not a game about fights but about adventure; the non-stick guy will have other strengths.
Surely it would only be fair to notify players beforehand if a campaign focuses on fights to the marginalisation of all else.

Adding class levels to something already beyond level 0 is akin to multiclassing, is it not? The rules presented in the Beastiary for Monster PCs are pretty similar to AD&D multiclassing progression.
Of course there will be issues when one character has implicit levels vs. another. First order of the day must thence be to strip away the HD and assorted boni to normalise the stats!

... Why the need to match PC and NPC?
Because they are supposed to be the same species. There should not be inherently better or worse races to the same species; unless constructed, of course. If I want inferior Minitaurs aside my proper Minotaurs, then I will create inferior Minitaurs! They should not implicitely exist. PCs should not implicitely belong to a superior or inferior "caste", such things shall be part of the setting and part of the story and thence explicitely described or not existent in the first place.

There are furthermore well-defined interfaces to regulate PC vs. NPC power level. Fantasy setting and Class, most notably.

Of course, some guesswork and by-ear-playing will have its entrance, as soon as the campaign starts. If the players optimise their roles, all the CRs need to go up, if they did especially bad, some may have to go down; if something does not play out as planned, encounters may have to be improvised or removed on the fly.
- But this here is not in a campaign, it is beforehand. To provide a solid fundament, the same rules must apply to all and these rules shall be consistent.

--

Anyway, I appreciate the thoughts on that spell immunity.
Considering the Duergar and Elven Immunities, I think I will bundle +4 Survival and Maze immunity together for 3 RP. Survival is one of the more universally useful skills, but not quite Perception and not quite Stealth.

This leaves me with a functional Minotaur for 26 RP. I still think that is a bit high, but then I managed to build a godlike Kobold Fighter-Rogue-Ranger, so mayhap it will end up being warranted.

I am a bit disappointed that no one seems to care about the RP costs I challenged (Large, Xenophobic) and that the distinction between flat-footed and flanked similarly has not attracted interest; but as I am apparently barely capable to bring my point across, I probably ought to blame myself for that.

The Bestiary Minotaur, having 6 HD, is obviously nothing a PC would have on level 1.
However, I would like to set it up in such a way that one possible build of a Minotaur PC would on level 6 have equal stats (minus class abilities) to the Bestiary Minotaur.
A Minotaur Sorcerer would probably not be that build.

For consistency. There is no point in rules without that.

The example Ogre seems to share its issues with my Minotaur draft:

Its Attribute Score can be bought from point-buy 14 10 13 8 10 9 (with +1 STR from HD) for a cost of 5, while either 3 (basic NPC) or 15 (heroic NPC) would be appropriate. This indicates that a PC Ogre would be "naturally" superior in terms of ability score.

At the same time, the example Ogre lacks three points of natural armour which cannot be accounted for by feat, as the Bestiary Ogre's feat slots for 4 HD are already full.

This is, thence, an inconsistency, adding to my feeling that the Race Builder may be broken.
On the other hand, that Ogre is obviously of poor make, as the attribute boni can be dropped for -8 RP, bringing point-buy cost of the Beastiary score to 11 (via 14 10 15 8 12 9; +1 STR from HD), still four points short the heroic NPC / Standard Fantasy mark.
Then three RP could be spent to adjust the natural armour to proper +5 and the creature would still be Advanced, not Monstrous.
- Mayhap one should better ignore this example.

Note that, given the wording of the rulebook, I might as well demand even harder constraints regarding the Ability Scores:

"Basic NPCs: The ability scores for a basic NPC are: 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, and 8.

Heroic NPCs: The ability scores for a heroic NPC are: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8."

As all the Beastiary entries are without a doubt NPCs, I could demand that their ability scores be reachable with exactly these values used in point-buy. Of course, even the most cursory glance shows that this would be doomed to fail; so I merely demand matching totals: 3 or 15.
Furthermore, I do not care about the optimal point-buy setup. But there should be one that reaches the given Ability Scores and matches one of these totals. Need to draw the line somewhere!

Mayhap it is all poor semantics? The race builder - is not meant to build? Is meant to benchmark pre-built, without Race Builder created Species? Then obviously I use it wrongly, trying to build with a "builder".

--

To clearly state my goal in the whole ordeal, I wish to enable the following process:

• Pick any entry from the Bestiaries.
  
• Determine how powerful the assorted creature would be at 0 HD.
  
• Create a character of such species and play that.

Unlike the troublesome Monsters as PCs rules, the Race Builder promises a simple model to account for imbalances which may occur. It would also (if only it worked) be much more convenient to use than my previous approach "design matching prestige class alongside 0HD-normed creature version and offer #HD levels in that".
On the other hand, I cannot see it working for a Sphinx, period.
(But I yet have to do the math on that.)

On the plus side, the Minotaur draft would not reach 30 RP in the worst case and averaging with core races would almost certainly pull below 20 with two more party members. The points spent are thence still ballpark enough to be used, but still:

• Is the cost for Large Size warranted?
  
• How many RP are +4 Survival worth?
  Static Bonus Feat does not cut it, obviously.
  
• How many RP is immunity to the Maze spell worth?

There is a very extensive article about the power level of designed spells in the Ultimate Magic book, but here such considerations are completely absent. Surely the spell level at least should be an indicator for the RP needed for immunity, yet Elven Immunities costs only 2 RP and grants immunity to, say, Mythic Sleep or Symbol of Sleep and assorted Coup de Grace possibilities.

Two more thoughts on the matter:

In order to easily provide a medium sized variant, I wondered whether I should build the Minotaur with the Giant Creature template per default... then I noticed that this does not just increase size but also grants +2 STR +4 CON!
This cannot be right!?
(assuming that size changes affect STR and DEX by 2 per step)

I cross-referenced that with Drow vs. Drow Noble scores, and sure enough the noble gets a total +6 ability score as well, plus other quite substancial goodies, so mayhap this is still ballpark.
- Mayhap the large Minotaur could be monstrous while the medium one were still Advanced?
But the large one already gets away with a negative RP cost for attributes, without template! Where will this go, if I apply six bonus points stacked in such a way as to reduce point-buy cost immensely on top of that!?

This in part also belongs into the Rules Questions subforum, but I did not want to split the issue into parts (before acquiring some third-party thoughts on the whole thing), so please bear with me.

Sort of a follow-up on this old thread; did not earn much participation, but since then the tools have been upgraded and here I am again.

Race Building a Minotaur and failing abysmally.

After much tinkering with the Ability Scores I eventually faltered and decided to keep those for last.

Now, I have the following setup:

• 7 RP Large Size: +2 STR -2 DEX -1 AC -1 AB +1 CMB -4 Stealth
  
• 3 RP Monstrous Humanoid: Darkvision 12 sq.
  
• 4 RP All-Around Vision: +4 Perception, immune to flanking
  
• 0 RP Xenophobic: Language Giant
  
• 2 RP Natural Armor: +1 (natural) AC
  
• 3 RP Improved Natural Armor: +3 (natural, stacking) AC
  
• 1 RP Natural Attack: Gore (Horns) 1d6
  
• 1 RP Reach 10 sq.
  
• 2 RP Powerful Charge: Horns 2d6+1.5xSTR-Mod

for a total of 23 Race Points.

Still missing:

• Immunity to being flat-footed
  
• +4 Survival
  
• Immunity vs. Maze spell

For the attributes, I still need

• +7 STR
  
• +2 DEX
  
• +5 CON

and have at my disposal

• -3 INT
  
• -2 CHA
  
• +1 Attribute Point from Hit Dice

to reach the Bestiary stats of 19 STR, 10 DEX, 15 CON, 7 INT, 10 WIS, 8 CHA.
I can use Ability Score Modifier Qualities as listed and NPC Ability Scores.
... Originally I did not want to use the latter, but I need them for the points to add up.

I have drafted two methods to reproduce the Ability Scores from the Beastiary:

• +2 RP Flexible Racial Ability Mods +2 STR +2 CON
  +1 CON for 4 HD beyond the first
  15 10 12 7 10 8 point buy for Minotaur NPC
  
• -1 RP Weakness Racial Ability Mods +2 DEX +2 WIS -4 CHA
  +1 CHA for 4 HD beyond the first
  17 10 15 7 8 11 point buy for heroic Minotaur NPC

Skill points and number of feats seem to add up trivially at least.

--

Now, I have a few problems with the results of this approach, which I am not too sure how to tackle:

• This is "just" a minotaur, yet with >20 points to be treated like an elder dragon (or god).
  
• There are no racial traits to close the gap between Beastiary Minotaur and this one (see "Still missing" above).

I wonder whether the immunity to being flat-footed (vs. weaker immunity against being flanked) is a mistake in the Beastiary.
... Granted, usually effects state explicitely that DEX-Bonus is lost, without mentioning being flat-footed, so the actual outcome may be more similar than is obvious ().

Why is the worse choice (Xenophobic vs. Standard; both 0 RP) not cheaper!? For PCs loss of Common language is a real downgrade.

Why is there no +Survival trait and neither a +<any skill> trait?

As Large Size does only what I listed up there, and all usual benefits (reach, physical attributes) have to be added separately, what makes it so expensive!? It adds downsides such as increased chance of Obstacles and Squeezing (added Difficult Terrain; -4 AC, possible loss of DEX bonus) or more expensive items; and all benefits (but added height, and thence "reach" upwards; but then height is not actually mentioned, so this could be considered house rule already) cost extra!?

The Minotaur (the Beastiary entry would correspond to a lvl 6 PC) does not seem strong enough to warrant this cost... I had hoped to stay Advanced with one point to spare for custom Weapon Familiarity (Fluff, all the fluff!), but it looks as if it would have to go a lot past Monstrous - and mainly due to its size: Dropping only that and Reach I gain !!8 points!! and therefore could boost the attributes beyond the Beastiary entry without becoming monstrous.
- No surprise then, that searching the internet has unearthed a plethora of medium sized custom Minotaur builds but not a single appropriately large sized one.

I guess at whole, I am not convinced that this Race Builder thingy is actually a functional tool. See:
"This is the race's creature type. A race's creature type is similar to the corresponding creature type, with a few important differences. The first difference is that each race type assumes members of the race are roughly humanoid in shape and have two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head. This is important so that a race can take advantage of all the various magic item slots available to characters and can utilize the standard weapon and armor options."
So, quite obviously I should not even try to build a Sphinx, huh?
Because it has no arms and this should somehow correspond with reduced RP value (so that can be spent to somehow reach the godlike abiliy scores).

Any input is appreciated (well, apart from "you cannot do that", I guess; had that the last time and unsurprisingly it did not help).

Now looks less userfriendly on Laptop (1366x768): Too much space between lines in sidebar, too large font, none of the directories fits on screen at 100% anymore.

Obviously optimised for higher-than-wide screen aka mobile phone.
Great for desktop users (Raise the sarcasm sign!).

Detail:

Core Rulebook dictionary fits screen at 70% scale. Font of the main screen is too small to read comfortably then.

Bestiary directory fits screen at 75% scale. Dito about main screen font.

New ability to expand several headers is nice but cannot be used effectively due to lack of screen size.

In general, for one additional entry (Technology Guide, thanks for adding) the sidebar grew by more than 50% in height.

Measures to resolve:

Fit entry height more tightly to text height. At 100% can gain 2 mm between every pair of entries.

Reduce sidebar font size to two or three points smaller than main frame font: No continous texts there, recognition can work based on silhouette, reading is not actually necessary beyond first few usages, so ease of reading can be neglected in favour of ease of use.

He's no longer human [...]

But he is, is he not?

"Vampire" is an acquired template, not a race. Any race can be a vampire. If racial traits would be lost, surely the text would state so, as it does in this case:

Armor Class: Natural armor improves by +6.

Hit Dice: Change all racial Hit Dice to d8s. [...]

So, if existing stats are explicitly raised or replaced, surely they would be explicitly removed as well?

... Losing the racial trait would be justified, if Resurrection would bring a killed Human Vampire back as Human Vampire... if the result is a Human without vampirism, apparently he has never stopped being human.
Unfortunately, the spell description is not quite clear on that part either.

So, a Svirfneblin's small size is different from that of a Pixie for no discernable reason?
... Well, this is how it is, obviously. Question: What to do about it?

• The "race" size modifier list must be completed.
  
• A well-defined way to assign creatures to either the monster or the race list must be described.

And I look for an elegant solution that either solves both points or renders one irrelevant.

Example with "Large":

Table:Size in Beastiary\Monster Creation lists base attribute values as
18 8 14
for a size modifier of +8 -2 +4.

Size Quality in Advanced Race Guide\Core Races lists the size modifiers as
+2 -2 0

Example with "Small":

6 12 8 -> -4 +2 -2
vs.
0 0 0

Now, if they would at least have the same sum, but there they differ too with +10 vs. 0 / -4 vs. 0.

I had planned to use the Race Builder as a means to transform a static monster into a leveled race (ex.: "Sphinx" monster -> "Sphinx" race + 12 levels of "Sphinx" class now calculable as difference), but if the not-race modifiers are context sensitive...

Furthermore, if this context sensitivity is accepted, how would one find out the proper modifiers for the other size categories? "Tiny" is listed as well, with -8 +4 -2 vs. -2 +2 0, but that was it.
So, from smallest to largest:
-09 +8 -02 vs. ST DE CO
-09 +6 -02 vs. ST DE CO
-08 +4 -02 vs. -2 +2 00
-04 +2 -02 vs. 00 00 00
<< Medium >>
+08 -2 +04 vs. +2 -2 00
+16 -4 +08 vs. ST DE CO
+24 -4 +12 vs. ST DE CO
+32 -4 +16 vs. ST DE CO

I see no simple solution.
Though I would very much prefer size modifiers to be simply context independent.

... Before the Advances Race Guide came up, I had not been aware of this schism, as all races were either "Medium" - modifier free; or "Small" and there they have
-2 0 +2
and
-2 +2 0
so I simply assumed the racial attribute modifiers would be
+2 0 +4
and
+2 +2 +2
for a total of +8 (with the regular +2 CH) versus the +2 of the other choices.
Mayhap I should just stay with this assumption?