draxynnic's page

Yeah, that was my read on the situation as well - you get the gold and magic for an encounter you bypass, negotiate through, or otherwise don't get to looting the bodies for, but don't necessarily get the plot rewards. (My party had a similar issue in Part 3 - we skipped the encounter with the ice witch in the engine room by teleporting directly to "Adril's" ship in pursuit.)

Anyway, I've passed on the "Respect of Mona" to them. :D

Greetings, all,

I recently ran the above module for a group, and have come across an ambiguity in the interaction between the module itself and the Pathfinder Society guidelines.

Basically, the situation is this: While the Red Raven escaped (just), the party contacted the Red Raven by using a message spell through scrying (using the dagger that the Raven used to kill Adril) and thus received the password in order to see his evidence implicating Adril. This meant Geppa was present for the encounter in the caves and, thus, they both had the password and someone to recognise the password when they reached that encounter, and thus bypassed the combat entirely.

This meant that they never had the opportunity to pick up the ring that controls the phoenix (or even know about it), and thus get the campaign point for that encounter.

The ambiguity is that the section on "Creative Solutions" in the Guide says that players who find a creative means of avoiding a combat encounter (and this counts) should get the rewards. However, the section in question talks about rewards in money and access, and talks about rewards for a combat encounter - freeing the phoenix is effectively a roleplaying encounter that follows the combat encounter.

For the record, if this was a home campaign I would have no objection to giving them a point on the basis that they also managed to rescue the naga (a personal agent of one of the Ten) from Condria's control - something that isn't listed as being worth a campaign point, but which possibly should be. Given that this is organised play, however, I'd like a precise ruling before I award (or otherwise) the point.

The general process of 'can be used for a certain period of time per day, but doesn't need to be consecutive' effects is that they're free to maintain (apart from the time ticking down, of course) but take a standard action to initiate, regardless of whether they've been used earlier in the day. Similar to my question, though, I don't think this is actually stated somewhere - instead, this works using the precedent of effects like bardsong.

As for the important question - put your sheep inside a resilient sphere and I guarantee it won't be getting itself into trees. How to allow it to graze while also keeping it out of trees is left as an exercise for the reader. Marks will be awarded according to the creativity and nonlethality of the solution.

@Ssalarn: That sounds hopeful but, unfortunately, not definitive - I can see multiple counters being raised by some of the local players (geyser is available on at least one list, that's one example but it doesn't necessarily set the pattern for similar situations elsewhere).

It does seem to be indicating that the intent is for it to be available as a lower-level spell - none of the spells that I've looked at that may be getting a discount here are spells that I would say are among the more desirable spells in their 'natural' levels. Problem is that since this is for PFS and not a home campaign, I can't simply make an agreement with a single GM that it will work one way or another - unless I have something convincing I can show to any random GM, I'll either have to assume the least favourable scenario or accept that there will be table variation in rulings.

You are mis-interpreting things.

Winter Patron wrote:

Winter: 2nd—unshakable chill, 4th—resist energy (cold only), 6th—ice storm, 8th—wall of ice, 10th—cone of cold, 12th—freezing sphere 14th—control weather, 16th—polar ray, 18th—polar midnight.

When you reach second level as a witch with this patron, you get unshakeable chill as a 1st level spell. You get resist energy (cold only) as a 2nd level spell, and so on. What level the spell is is based on the base witch class, and what level you get it at, not your archetype.

This is actually exactly what I'm looking for a citation on. The winter witch archetype does nothing to slow down spell progression compared to a normal witch (the prestige class does, but doesn't result in receiving bonus spells known that you don't have slots to cast).

However, unshakable chill is listed as a 2nd-level spell on every list it appears on (druid, sorc/wiz, witch). From all I've been able to find, according to the rules as written, this means that your familiar can learn the spell, but you can't actually use it until you get to level 3 and have 2nd-level slots to put it in. Which seems weird that you'd get something at level 2 that you can't use until level 3, especially when there are plenty of level 1 cold-related spells that they could have granted, but unless there's something I and my local group have missed (and I'm posting to see if I can establish exactly that) those are the rules as written.

What I'm looking for is something that definitively establishes that, as you said and to continue using unshakable chill as an example, a second level witch with the Winter patron gets unshakable chill as a first-level spell.

I'm currently building a winter witch, and as a result have a preference for taking the winter patron (as it fits the theme). However, I've noticed something that could lead to some rules "discussions" in a PFS environment - a number of the spells on the patron list are granted at levels where you don't have the slots to actually cast them (unshakable chill at witch level 2 when it's a second-level spell, ice storm at 6, cone of cold at 10 (a 6th-level spell on the witch list).

I've done a search through the boards, and seen a few responses to the effect that if you get a bonus spell known you can't normally cast at your level, you get it at the highest level you do have a slot for (so, in this case, a winter archetype witch would get unshakable chill as a 1st-level spell, ice storm as a 3rd-level spell, and so on) - here and here, for instance. However, none of those responses appear to be from Paizo representatives or citing official rules backing up this interpretation. Can anyone provide an official ruling or citation on this matter?