denigreur's page

Hi,

Quick question.
Rules are indicating that you can make a 5 foot step diagonally. Not when there is a corner, but yes if there an opponent :

You can’t move diagonally past a corner (even by taking a 5-foot step). You can move diagonally past a creature, even an opponent.

What if there is 2 opponent and you want to slide in ? As two ennemies in East position and South position are considered adjacent for purposes of cleave and other stuff, i was ruling in that case than you couldn't slip in between them to make a 5 foot step.
But now, one of my player is trying to challenge me on this. I have a quick answer for him on that. But I was wondering if I messed up my initial ruling on the inability to go through that diagonal between two enemies was the right one, or you should be able, I couldn't find anything related to that in the core.

I had a situation yesterday in my game as a GM.
My group were fighting a bunch of boggards in tunnels and caverns. The melee characters were holding a choke point in a corridor and boggards were piling into them to attack. The boggard's shaman was hanging back his followers and was slinging spells.

But our ranger, with Improved Precise Shot, was mainly ignoring all the soft cover provided by creatures and striking the priest hard and fast and he force him to retreat.

I'm looking back at the situation and i'm wondering if in that case, i should have ruled that the mass of creatures both allied and enemies would constitute as total cover at this point. My players are arguing that RAW, it shouldn't be anything but still be soft cover.

I haven't seen something in the rules stating anything about mass of enemies providing more cover. Have I missed something or there is nothing in rules changing that 1 creatures or 20 creatures gives the same cover.

I've finished the third book and my players, are cleaning up hexes in the East at the moment. But I'm kind of conflicted by the next step.

Tatlzford and Varnhold are already annexed. Civil war is brewing up north. They've met Irovetti and Mivon, among others, at the Outlaw Council months prior. I've turned Mivon as antagonist as I didn't want Pitax to be an obvious opponent and I'm running Irovetti as a despote who's afraid that the PC are the Nymph's puppets who wants to do her bidding, instead of being the puppet himself.

So far, so good. I've hinted at Nyrissa multiple times (more clues than the AP, plus Oracle of Time in my group wakes up near the House at the end of Time near her. They're super paranoid about her, they think Vordakai was a puppet and they don't know everything about the eyes and they think it's linked to Nyrissa.

But that also means that they're preparing for trouble. They have fortifications in all their cities, they have standing armies in all of them (protect the capital, protect from Mivon at the East and prepare for trouble up north in case of Civil War.) (Large human armies x 3)

Running the module as it is, would means that the attack on Tatlzford would fail miserably (which I can live with easily), but any hints pointing towards Pitax, I fear that it would means armies movement to take back Drelev right off the bat and forcing ahead towards Pitax for a confrontation, which would jeopardized a lot on how Chapter 4 and 5 play. Right now, i'm thinking a lot about a war of deception, having no mention of Pitax as they make Mivon as the sponsor behind the attack on Drelev and leave my PC grasping at straw while Mivon refute any involvement. I'd probably throw the tournament at the same time to confuse the PC even more with that invitation from Irovetti, after all they met him at the Outlaw Council and they know that diplomatic links exists. But since, those have major effects on the whole module, i'm a bit conflicted about all this.

I've read a bit on the boards, but I'd like feedback from the community, see how you ran it, and how your groups have reacted ? Any one had their group reacts with their armies at their back while dealing with Drelev ?

I'm running a Strange Aeons campaign and one of my players brought me a Hex he wants to use.

The Hex in question is Swine :

Benefit(s): The witch can partially transform an enemy into a pig. The effects of the transformation are mostly cosmetic and do not change the creature’s size category or overall shape, but the affected creature takes a –2 penalty on Will saving throws for a number of rounds equal to the witch’s Intelligence modifier (Will negates). At 8th level, the affected creature’s hands (or paws) turn into hooves, preventing it from using claw attacks or taking any action that would require the creature to use its fingers.

My understanding is that it's like the others minor hexes, 30 feet. Where i'm not entirely sure, is that past level 8 (my players are 10th level), the line blurs on what exactly the Hex is doing.

Does it entirely remove attacks or simply give hoof attacks ?
Also, it should bother the target to use weapons, items handling and also use spells with somatic.

Am I reading it correctly ? I'm bringing it forward to see others opinion, couldn't find anything on the board.

I love the research part. But I'm stuck in a loop with my players.
They researched the journals, they know Lowls tracks lead there and I've more than hinted that.

But now, they're stuck into a thinking process that brought them to :
- Dreamland - Scary
- Ritual - Scary
- Boat - scary

So basically, i'm stuck with a group that doesn't want to go to the caravanserai unless they buff to every possibility (I have a silvered throne shaman with a 2 month plan of crafting), including items to buff his knowledge to complete the ritual (and funny thing they're not even priority items in the list).

Since that's a major blocker for the rest of the adventure, you see where i'm stuck.

Add to that that the players are scared to do the ritual on the boat.

And they want to research the books to milk everything they can on the dreamlands and caravansera. I tried to have them think back by asking, okay but what are you looking for. And they're arguing they should have information from reading them. I kind of gave them a chance and a bonus for thinking about the Shadow's Ship book when they spotted the Bloodwind near Illmarsh and they milk it and were surprise to find that the ritual can bring them to it and understand that the visit to the caravanserai will bring them to locations they need to visit.

But they're still stuck in the mindset of waiting for the 2 months of crafting and wait and see. I took the time to expose the whole thing to them, but they still won't budge.

Anyone else had that issue ? I'm curious to hear how you dealt with it.