baconwing's page

to stand on a mount, using only your balance, no knees, nothing to hang onto. sure might be DC 15, but in combat? if I was GM id say that anytime you get hit, I'd make you do a DC 20 + the damage or get knocked off. maybe 15 + 2X the damage? you'd be at a serious disadvantage to attack to. anyone fighting with a weapon needs to move their feet around. and the double damage from a lance on a charge would be lost due to you not being in the standard seated braced position normal lance fighting has.

but thats just me.

you could make an arguement with a GM that its purely for fluff and as long as you gained no advantage from it, he might let you not have any disadvantage from it either.

baconwing wrote:

I think a big part of peoples problem with charm person is that some people treat it like an I-win button, when in actually its an I have a great opportunity to slightly shift the balance of power in my game-button.

I'm actually kind of surprised charm person still has its own rules. Jump gives you a bonus on your jump check. Disguise self gives you a bonus on a Disguise check and lets you do it faster.

Charm person could be rewritten to be a special Diplomacy check.

yes I agree, if you couldnt get someone to do what your asking using diplomacy, then you cant get them to do it with charm person. with charm person, you might be able to push it A LITTLE BIT, but not much more than a diplomacy check against someone who is at max friendliness to you

awesome paladin thread

check out this thread on paladins, after you read this guys speech about paladins falling, you'll want to play a paladin.

charm person would be usefull in a situation where you stealthed into BBEG's castle, managed to get a one on one with the captain of his mercenary guard company and got a charm person off on him. then you could offer him a stupid amount of money to switch sides, which mercenary companies often do, and use your CHA check to convince him that you'll "definately pay him later when this is all done." hell even convince him he's been paid with fools gold, or illusions of gold that arent actually real, really sell him on turning against his former master. but no, you could not really convince a good man to kill his family. you could convince an assassin to kill someone though.

I think a big part of peoples problem with charm person is that some people treat it like an I-win button, when in actually its an I have a great opportunity to slightly shift the balance of power in my game-button.

its a lot of fun to play around with the spell, and a great opportunity for roleplaying. as a GM though, you have to make sure its not the players I-win button.

as a GM, if you roleplayed the s#%$ out of it, came up with all sorts of convincing arguements, and really came up with a compelling story why they would kill someone, then I'd consider it. but if you just said "I cast charm person, then I make a charisma check to get him to kill his cousin the evil duke." then no, its a level one spell, and should not be a save or suck to turn someone into your own personal assassin.

I'm a huge proponent for charm person working in fun and interesting ways, and all spells/skills for that matter. but it is a level 1 spell.

Dominate person is the spell your looking for. that will get what you need done every time, so long as they fail their will save twice.

You're already seeing the reasons for the hate here, and even in your original post you step out of line:

baconwing wrote:

Like infiltrating a cult of demon worshipers using disguise skill and looted cultist outfits along with a charm person at the first introduction to the cultists.

Charm Person is a single target, and has verbal and somatic components. Even if you succeed against ONE cult member, the others are going to scream, "Hey, he just Charmed Charlie! Kill him!"

I actually did cover this somewhat by talking about using using another player using his bluff skill, or maybe perform, to draw attention away.

having said that, to give you more back ground on the scenario i was working with was that the cult where holed up in a safe house, and there was a password to get in. which means one of those great little slidy windows in the door, as every movie tells us accompanies buildings with passwords. which would mean that I would not be visible to anyone else in the room, while having eye contact with the person answering the door, but not being the center of his focus while someone gives him the password.

anyways, I really appreciate everyones feedback!

anyone else got any good stories about fun uses with charm person?

holy hell was that last bit intense. love it!

big summoned enemy, just try and boost the poor guys AC as much as possible. wizard could drop an expedious retreat on him and he could just get the f!@* out of there as fast as possible once the badguy shows his hand.

a specially designed stage that can spring up on all four sides of the archbishop to provide full cover at the moments notice of an attack, with a secret trap door leading below the stage where one of you is waiting to get him to safety. have your wizard memorize the shield spell so he can provide the bishop with an AC bonus if needed. if your bishop has any money himself, glamoured set of armor to boost his AC if needed.

Detect alignment/evil on anyone trying to get near him. Paladin should be a food taster to prevent the bishop from being poisoned, as paladin should have stupid levels of fort saves. If he has less than +8 at level 5, he's doign it wrong. or a dwarf with a high fort save, if any of your monks are dwarfs.

your whole group needs to be on full doppelganger alert. I repeat, full doppelganger alert. have a code word set up that only the actual characters would know, then if anyone is seperated and the GM is instructing them to act the doppelganger, the player will have to say his character doesnt know. you would not believe how much fun it is to play a doppelganger/shapeshifter, especially if your GM has promised you big rewards for RPing it well :) so be wary, none of your friends/players are to be trusted.

as far as the imposter NPC's possibly using conceal alignment, zone of truth from your paladin will solve that.

your wizard using Major image to produce multiple copies of the bishop while doing the speech is an excellent idea, if you trust your GM not to just wave the magic GM hand and bypass that. I'd prefer to use Illusion magic to make it look like he's actually on a platform 4 feet higher than he actually is, so that any attacks on him will sail harmlessly over his head. if your wizard has anticipate peril, use that on whoever has your highest initiative score to be prepared to get the bishop out of there asap.

aid another action to bump bishop AC is good if you dont know where the attack will come from. try and boost his AC incase your GM is faking you guys out and its just going to be an arrow shot from the crowd.

I'll try and think of some more if I can

I've just did a search of the forums for examples of fun uses of charm person, and all I can find are stories of people either wanting to know why their GM wont treat this spell as basically dominate person, or GMs complaining about players trying to basically make this spell dominate person.

I have a bard, and I want to try and use this spell in interesting ways, even bordering on some interesting ways to start combat to our groups advantage. like infiltrating a cult of demon worshipers using disguise skill and looted cultist outfits along with a charm person at the first introduction to the cultists. In conjunction with a silent image to make one of the cultists look like they had a holy symbol of iomedae hidden up their sleeve. followed by an opposed charisma check to make charmed person openly accuse their fellow cultist of heresy. who knows if this would actually cause the other cultists to kill one of these two, either the accuser or the accused. using another player to make bluff checks to distract the other cultists so they dont see my bard casting, or my own bluff check to hide behind another player to mask my casting.

In my opinion, as a player if I go through that much trouble to set up what I consider to be a good strategy, I dont see anything wrong with this resulting in the death of a cultist, and even my group getting a surprise round out of the deal after they've dealt with their own. but some people seem to think that stuff like this is abusing first level spells.

whats with all the charm person hate, this seems like a way more fun way to start combat than "we draw our weapons and attack, everyone roll initiative."

I dont know that there is one, but enlarge person will enlarge your items for you, and you dont have to take the -2 penalty on attack for using improperly sized weapons.

If you really want to see this spell, you can always homebrew one up with your DM.

a Dirge bard, ultimate magic I think, can cast his mind effecting spells on undead at second level. they are really amazing for carrion crown. this really offers a great amount of versatility to overcome encounters that are not previously considered by most parties.

the same can be said for undead bloodline sorcerors. both are amazing in carrion crown.

thanks, these are some great ideas!

check out classic monsters revisited for a more thorough description of just how disgusting ogres are. they are the giant version of every horror movie based southern redneck territory, from texas chainsaw massacre, to the hills have eyes. thats the kind of s$+! ogres are into, but with more rape.

I'm trying to portrait a monk's monestary that is shifting from the lawful neutral Irori style of monk to the lawful evil asmodeus style of monk. corruption from within the ranks, even the monestaries ancient master gets poisoned by one of his own. but all this happens behind the scene and I was hoping for some advice on how to portrait subtle hints in this alignment change before revealing any big changes?

thanks in advance for any advice offered.

all any evil isolated society needs to be self sufficient is other people to abuse/take advantage of. so in your case, you could have a two tiered system. a family/clan/rival tier of society that are constantly fueding/warring/trading with each other. and then the slave class. the rise and fall of the various houses in a power struggle, based off the back of the slave class is enough to sustain a civilizations economy.

I have been just watching the video's by noah antwiler, aka spoony, and I am most impressed by how entertaining he is to watch. I dont know any other people who make videos like that and I was hoping that I could get some suggestions on where to find them. I have watched some of the dawnforged stuff and he is very informative, but he doesnt have the same presence as spoony.

here is who I am talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LusZp160bnA

So obviously the first thing to do with any problem between GM's and players is to talk about it in the group and fix it as a group.

That said not every behavior is easily recognizable. So I would suggest that we start categorizing the various types of bad GMs and how to recognize them, as well as suggestions on how to help the GM move off the behavior that is causing the problems.

1) The Counter GM
You get to the game things are going alright and suddenly your major thing no longer works. If you are a fire mage all the enemies are fire-proof, if you are a paladin all the enemies are neutral. If you are ranged there is always fog, wind walls, deeper darkness or some other means that prevents you from attacking at range. Regardless of what you want to do it no longer works. High attack bonus? Everything's AC jumps, high AC? Everything's attack bonus jumps, lots of damage? More HP, SoS/SoD? Nothing fails its saves. So you develop new tactics just to have them closed down too, eventually nothing works because everything is immune to everything.

What to do: Talk to your GM about the problem. It could be he has a weird idea of just how effective things are or he doesn't realize much he's overcompensating for your abilities. Assure your GM you aren't looking to have an easy time, but you would like to be able to do the things you are good at sometimes.

2) The Director
Hey everybody get on the train! You have a part to play and by the gods you are going to play it. This play has a plot and if you side track it everything is going to blow up or just plain not work.

What to do: Talk to the GM about the problem. It could be he's uncomfortable with the system and doesn't understand how to work around various abilities. Maybe he's really only worried about a specific power and he's overcompensating in order to prevent that one type of power from entering the game. Perhaps too much time on the forums has him intimidated about "players taking over...

I really like how all the problems you list are solved by talking to the GM. this really needs to be restated again. If you have a problem with how things are being run, talk to your GM.

it would be worth taking a dip into sorc for the infernal blood line to get the +2 DC to charm/dominate person if you were going to be using those spells at all. things like heroism, haste and good word are great spells to have but you might get a little tired of buffing after a few sessions spent standing in the back twiddling your thumbs. I'm not sure if there is an arcana where you can increase the DC of illusion spells but if your going to be doing illusion/enchantments at all then its worth looking into.

plus with the one level dip into sorcerer you can have a lot of fun by getting 4-5 extra charm persons per day. it really does make the out of combat stuff a lot of fun.

disclaimer, I dont know anything about iron gods or pathfinder technology books. you might need to take some sort of archtype like the technology version of the dirge bard to make mind effecting spells work on robots, I'm not sure.0

for the record, heroism is a second level bard spell, which is what im playing that is planning to pick up mythic heroism.

its gonna be great, combine with inspire courage and inspired defense mythic power it will be +8 attack, +8 damage, and +8 saves. :D

work out some sort of variation of the spell arcane lock with your DM. and make sure you have access to the use of detect object, which is only a second level arcane spell.

generally though, people aren't worried about this unless you think the DM is planning on stealing it. so talk to your DM and find out what his thoughts on the matter are and gauge his response.

bard would make a great addition considering how melee heavy you are. inspire courage, heroism/hastes work wonders for buffs. and dont forget that only about 40% of enemies in CC will be undead, there are a tonne of aberations and humanoids as well. so bards illusion/enchantment spells will be more effective than I think most people give them credit for.

*EDIT*

a dirge bard archtype can effect undead creatures with their enchantment spells, and gains +4 to save vs energy drain effects which is kind of a staple of the undead campaigns.

set them up with encounters they can't win just by charging in with a full frontal assault. make them work for their victories. if they have to stealth into an encampment taking out sentries, using charm person/dominate person or alter self and their disguise skill in fun and interesting ways then they deserve to think of themselves as awesome. If they are just min/maxed character sheets who want to hack and slash through stuff then teach them the finer nuances of role playing.

if they need ideas on this kind of thing then have then search youtube for "bardic knock spell" by spoony.

if you want them to FEAR you as a gm, then just kill one of them. but if you want them to take your encounters a little more seriously and not just steam roll through stuff, make encounters that are about more than just how hard you hit and how high your AC is.

I will say this. The most fun I've had as a GM was playing the role of lunderbud in rise of the runelords. He's an advanced hill giant with literally no part in the story, but he was big and dumb so I played him up like an enraged 4 year old throwing a tantrum as soon as one of the players mis-pronounced his name as "lunderbutt". and hilarity ensued.

Insane characters are a blast to portray, and I would never allow my players to take that fun away from me.

I would tell your players you have made up your mind on whether or not this will cure him, but you will not tell them. then make the reincarnation experience very traumatic for the NPC and give him MORE INSANITIES! and turn him into a recuring insane villain that blames them for all of his mental distress, not just the new ones from having his soul shoe-horned into another body to make things more convenient for the players.

if he doesnt sleep at all, i believe he's fatigued no matter what he's wearing

so regular heroism says +2 to attack rolls, saving throws and skill checks. but mythic heroism takes that to +4 and adds damage to the list of things it buffs. is one entry a typo? is mythic heroism not supposed to have damage or is regular heroism supposed to add damage?

you could go aasimar bard and take the favored class bonus that allows you to get inspire courage +4 at lvl 12 and then take 8 levels of DD. arcane duelist archtype for the extra feats, and focus on melee bard with high str and buff spells like haste and heroism. your party will love you for inspire courage +4 at lvl 12. maybe even take a one level dip into barbarian for the rage and you'll jack your strength up hugely from DD and barbarian.

if you wanted a full caster thats nuking people this isnt really for you, but then again thats not really what the flavor of the dragon disciple seems to be with the extra strength and natural armor in there. but thats just my two cents

bard is a good choice for any group. if your group ever goes mythic in this campaign, mythic arcane strike allows you to just add a bane weapon quality of your choice to your weapon.

awesome blow is the way to go.

another way to spice up giants is to give some of them the feat from 3.5 thats allows them to add their strength modifier to thrown weapons. basically make a few of them boulder throwing specialists.

can a barbarian with heavy armor proficiency still get his extra speed bonus in mithril full plate? if this question has been answered, you would probably find that the answer is the same to your question

Well, I got the crunch, and thanks to an earlier post, I got a nice backstory, but now I'm having a hard time figuring out how to roleplay my latest character.

He's a duergar untouchable and primalist bloodrager, arcane bloodline. He's lawful evil, and his mental stats are 7int, 15wis, 3(!!!)cha.

First off, the duergar are a puzzle to me. They're a LE society that serve a NE god who makes his home in the CE abyss. That alone is just weird. They barely have any flavor text, also, so there's not a lot to work with there.

Next, I have a hard time figuring out how to represent the mental stats. Very below average intellect and absolutely abhorrent charisma, but surprisingly wise...what is that? The best media representation I could think of for low int high wis was Forest Gump, but he's absolutely dripping with Charisma, so that's not exactly a perfect representation (plus, he's pretty clearly lawful good). I can think of a few dumb villains, but most of them were not wise as well, so I'm having an extremely hard time painting a mental picture of this guy and his personality.

I had a session with this character, and I played him gruff and quiet, with enough sense to realize he wasn't bright and therefore deferential to other's opinions. But, really, it was a combat heavy session, so I didn't have much chance to develop him as a character, and I'd like to know what direction to take this kind of guy in the future.

Low intellect high wisdom characters can be described as your stereo typical dumb construction worker, who still knows how to build a hell of a good house. He might not be book smart, but he's got common sense coming out the wazzoo.

the mythic book says you should be roughly 1 tier for every 2 levels. any big changes in that standard? like waiting 4 or 5 levels to gain a single mythic tier?

have your GM home brew star knifes into kukri's. coolness of starknifes, but 18-20 crit range. problem solved

I just started playing a character in wrath of the righteous and I wanted to know if we will get to mythic tier 10 so I can plan my character out accordingly. if we dont get to tier 10, what tier should I plan for and at what level?

Hi, after enjoying playing the new D&D edition for about 6 months, my group have expressed dissatisfaction with the way WotC will be developing the game going forward. While we are happy with the rules, it seems like D&D will mostly be represented by minis, boardgames and the MMO rather than the tabletop game. So we are looking for an alternative. Most of us have played 3.5, didn’t like 4E, and some of us have played Pathfinder about 3 years ago with various degrees of success. The one thing PF clearly has going for it is support from Paizo and plenty of monthly material. However, some of the players have reservations, so as GM I am coming here to voice a few concerns, tap into the experience of PFs many players and see if the game would be right for us, as opposed to 13th Age or something.

I’m not really looking to get into ‘edition wars’ or anything – just trying to get a handle on the state of play of PF three years after I last played it, and see it’s a fit for what we are looking for.

There seem to be two main sticking points, as we are all happy with the quality of production, art, supplements, etc. PF looks very healthy and well-supported, which is ideal. I played 3rd edition for years so I’m familiar with the pros and cons of d20 in general.

The problems are these: wealth-by-level, and the adventure paths. I’ll try and cover them separately as they really are two different things.

Here, I want to ask about the ‘Christmas Tree Syndrome’. One of the things that turned many of us off 3rd edition was the laundry-lists of magic items, because they had the combat bonuses required to function at given levels. This felt like everyone just ended up with the same items with little variation, and nobody went for something cool and offbeat because it was essential to get the ‘Big Six’. Also, players disliked having to trade in their items every few levels, which seemed like a videogame rather than the kind of stories found in books or films, where you just don’t see that happening. Also,...

its a lot of fun.

if you play it and dont like it, nothing we say can change that.

play what you like. if pathfinder and 5th edition dont do it for ya, find another game to play and let us know it goes.

ghost sound + silent image

a falchion wielding barbarian that takes imp critical, or uses a keen falchion. the crits done with a weapon on a roll of 15-20 only do double damage unless your playing mythic, but it sounds like you might want to play mythic if your going for that big, overstated, anime style cutting houses in half with a sword. mythic barb crits 15-20 and does triple damage with his crits if you spec him out right.

even none mythic, the falchion barbarian is crazy amounts of damage output.

the problem with giving advice on things like this crazy two headed cleric is that everyone has played with that wierd player who is just trying to stick it to the other PCs in either passive aggresive ways, or out and out just trying to f%$% with people. most people will be hung up because they are painting you with that brush.

now if your doing this in a group of players that you are geniune friends with, even away from the table, and your just looking for a way to have some really fun role playing experiences then I say go for it man! have fun and do whatever your GM will allow you too. especially if its a home brew setting.

Hope you have lots of fun with your crazy medium sized ettin cleric!

you people are all insane lol

Flame Blade lets you attack touch AC. So assuming you can find a way to apply your sneak, it should be easy to hit and get sneak damage.

Nature Fang druid lets you cast Flame Blade, gives you some sneak damage, and gives you an animal companion to act as dedicated flank buddy.

So, after Nature Fang 4, what is the best course for this character? Ninja X? Are there any feats or items that could make this more viable?

you could try a UMD rogue and just pick up a wand of flameblade, going full rogue. or a slayer/ninja doing teh same thing, but less skill points to toss around.

You can't go wrong with a bard or two. Inspire Courage really adds up when it's. +1 bonus to hit and damage for seveteen characters.

If you want some reall "sharpshooters", then Human(for Point Blank and Precise Shot at level one) Barbarians with the Urdban Archetpye can rage for a +4 Dexterity.

for the record, there is no range listed for inspire courage, its just "to be affected, an ally must be able to see or hear the bard" so a bard, with perform: percussion, working a serious pair of war drums could easily inspire everyone withing a hundred feet I'd think, farther if there wasnt a huge battle going on around them lol

Also, make sure you give him some low CR henchmen and not just pit a CR4 solo against a bunch of level 1 or 2 guys.

if you really need him to be solo, give him max HP so they don't one shot him.

just make up a character with those levels, but using NPC wealth by level guide lines found in chapter 14 of the CRB for his gear. then add the half fiend template to him and your set.

most NPCs use the 15 point buy system

dwarf barbarians kill giants like noone's business.

Arcane duelist is a bad ass. if you ever play a mythic campaign and gain access to mythic arcane strike, its basically like your weapon has a bane enchant against anything you want it too.

The way to break the game is not with your carrying capacity, instead use a critter.

In the game i am running my PCs have fast dire croc zombie with mule back cords and an ant haul belt. They use it to carry and or tow their ship.

At one point I built a juju zombie half dragon dino that could fly with load of 34 million pounds our nearly 17000 tons.

You would need 7 of them to carry a modern aircraft carrier. I need to try and make that one.

are you making the S.H.I.E.L.D aircraft carrier from avengers? old timey Avengers assemble?!!?!

I play in a group where half the people playing have jobs that are basically on call and their hours change every single week. we never play on the same day twice it seems. the biggest factor for us is that we are all friends and/or family that we see outside of pathfinders anyways. when you play with friends, you will make time to get together. when you play with strangers, it will always inevitably fall apart on some level because RPGs arent really enough to keep people together if you don't like these people.

table top RPGS dont attract the same kind of people that a beer league softball game attracts, or a pick up soccer game attracts. you will need to put in some serious effort socially with some of these people. Iomedae bless their hearts, but its true.

Maybe all you need to keep these people coming back is to make friends with the ones you want to spend time with and that can be your gaming group? I honestly have never played this game with a bunch of strangers, and have never played PFS. I love the game, but I just dont think its enough to hold my attention without the social aspect of it.

This game provides so much more than an opportunity to kill orcs, it provides you the opportunity to kill orcs with your buds!

just my two cents

If there is a druid or ranger in your party I would turn this into a whole quest for them to gain a special feat that allows them to tame dragons as animal companions. this would require MASSIVE amounts of house rules and very careful consideration by the DM to make sure this doesnt become a problem down the road, but it could be A LOT of fun for the whole group.

remember, your the DM, you can do anything.

in my campaigns I always have the local churchs offer bounties on evil artifacts so that they dont fall into the wrong hands again. Allows good players to profit from finding treasure without selling it back to someone who would turn its uses for evil down the road thus costing the paladin his class abilities by knowingly aiding future evil acts.

if your players are heros, then they should either destroy it, or try and collect a similar bounty like I put forward.

If they are murder hobos, they should hatch it and train it to burn things!