dunklezhan's page

I'm clearly missing something - I don't know if i'm just not cunning enough with illusion magic, or if I've just overlooked something in the text but anyway...

Yogoltha the aboleth can be encountered around the city as a random encounter. He's even cited as a possible 'retaliation', stealing away/dominating an NPC.

My question is: how?

A projected image has only 100ft +10-ft per level range so it's not like it can do that from it's nice safe pool, veiled or not. I can't imagine the Aboleth is going to want to go near the froghemoth or mokele-mbembe so the large lakes are probably out. It's currently in a pool/slow lake which joins up with a river tributary who's source is only a thousand feet upriver meaning the tributary can't possibly be deep or wide enough yet to have a 6500lb, 25ft long aboleth swim down it in order to get to the network of canals or what have you (that the map doesn't show as being particularly extensive anyway) and I can't see it dragging itself across land, certainly not through Saventh-Yhi where it would be vulnerable.

Aboleths can have class levels. But this one - despite being 'advanced' and 4 CR levels higher than a normal Aboleth - does not. There's really very little to show for those 4CR levels except some higher DC/stats.

This particular Aboleth is stated as having only the 2 gibbering mouthers and the boggard oracle as minions. Neither of these are anywhere near combat range of the aboleth if the players happen to discover it's hidden pool and there is practically nothing that the Aboleth, from stats, can do without leaving the pool and travelling deep into the city, rendering it highly vulnerable. There's a good chance that the players will encounter and kill the mouthers and Oracle before they encounter the aboleth anyway and it only has 3/day dominates so its not like it can create an army of slaves quickly.

If someone can give me a clue as to how to actually play Yog'oltha that would be really helpful! How did you use it in your campaign, how do you normally play aboleths?

Second: how do Aboleths fight if it comes to a direct confrontation? The illusions they can cast do not include any shadow illusions so they can't actually do any damage with their spell like abilities, nor will any illusionary minions fool anyone when it comes to actual combat. They only get 3 dominates a day. Sure the DC23 is high enough but the instant a player is given any kind of useful instruction they get a second save, so with players at L7-10 it's certainly not a guarantee that this will work.

In short, I think need a crash course in:

'how to use combined illusions to combat advantage' with the illusions in question coming only from the Aboleth SLA list.

Using veil to make himself look like something else then projected image to be able to go out to fight is all very well, but it can't actually *do* anything when it does that - sure you can cast spells via a projected image. But it doesn't have any! It has some illusion SLAs (all non-shadow so cannot cause damage) and a limited number of dominates that it might or might be able to land, and anything useful it could do with them will grant a second save anyhow.

I appreciate Aboleths aren't supposed to be direct confrontation monsters especially, but I'm having real difficulty seeing how this particular one (which named but with no class levels, particularly not wizard: it had to use a dominated wizard in order to get access to the Fly spell and get to Saventh Yhi in the first place) can be used in the way the adventure pack says it can be used?

Forgive me, I've done a bit of searching but I just cannot find a specific answer to this.

So, I realise that magic weapons of sufficient power can be used to bypass material and alignment restrictions:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/special-abilities#TOC-Damage-Reductio n

What I can't find out is how this applies to things like DR slashing/blunt/piercing etc. It isn't mentioned on the table at all in fact, but I don't like to just assume that means that DR based on these kinds of DR types cannot ever be overcome any other means, given that something as potent as, say DR/admantine can be overcome with a simple +3 sword.

Hi,

Several rules refer to things the character is 'familiar' with. The example that comes to mind is wildshape (any [size category] that the druid is familiar with) but there are a few others, usually in relation to spell descriptions.

How do you determine whether the character is familiar with whatever it is?

My druid's been asking, and we've jury rigged some stuff about requiring slightly more exposure than having seen one. Fighting one in broad daylight, fair enough, you've seen it move, heard the noises it makes etc. Fighting one in darkness or heavy cover? Probably not enough. Sitting and observing a pair of otters for a morning would count, catching a glimpse of them in the river as you walk past, probably not.

Does that sound about the right balance?

EDIT: I'm sorry if this has been asked before. The use of this word in addition to it's "official" designation for wizards kind of throws off any search results you might get!