dwayne germaine's page

Thew redesign of the website looks good... unfortunately it's way more difficult to navigate. Overall I'm not a fan of this change

Is your Soceress evil? Why is she torturing a teenager? Especially one who is awkward in social situations and is probably genuinely trying to impress her.

Certainly looks like it to me

She frequently uses her appearance in tandem with her enchantment spells to lure victims and manipulate them to do her bidding.

...The GM let me loot a longspear from a dead soldier, so I could contribute in some way.
...I used 15 charges off a wand of true strike.

Did you play a caster in 9-00? What happened?

We got a lot of mileage out of that wand! I don't think I've ever come close to using so many charges off of a non-healing wand in a single scenario. My magus was out of spells pretty quickly too.

A couple of my favorite ones for new players are Silent Tide, and the Frostfur Captives

dotting for future interest

My first Alchemist was for PFS and was mostly a melee focused build, and was super fun to play. I dipped one level in Barbarian and spent a feat on extra rage, and that was enough that I rarely needed any more rounds of rage in a scenario. The single level dip in Barbarian also gives medium armor proficency, proficiency with martial weapons and the option of starting with power attack if you take it at first level (or rebuild your first level into it when you hit 2nd level)

Stacking a strength mutagen and rage is often not needed, but it sure is fun when you get to go all out. I would usually hold off on my mutagen till later in scenarios, using a couple rounds of rage most fights to bump up my damage output and accuracy.

I am a big fan of the beastmorph archtype for any alchemist, but especially for a melee focused one. Obviously Feral mutagen is one of the first discoveries that you will want to take. If you do go beastmorph then you won't really need the wings discovery, but it does fit the heavily mutated theme you are wanting for the character. Vestigial arm can be handy for holding onto various things like wands while you make full attack actions with your claws and bite, but you may not really need it (again it fits well with the heavily mutated idea).Of course the tumor familiar and tentacle are both great options for extra mutations on your character as well.

I would also not completely disregard bombs. Frost bomb has a great debuff ability added to it's damage plus it gives you another energy damage type. Even if you aren't going to do much else with bombs, when you get the chance, fast bombs is probably still going to be worth it for the number of times you run into huge things in high level scenarios and want to soften them up before rushing in. This doesn't require much investment in DEX since you are hitting against touch AC for bombs.

The fact that Blood Deflection clearly states that it can be used in such a way and Windy Escape does not could just as easily be used as evidence that Windy Escape cannot be used after the attack roll is made and hit/miss determined and must instead be used when the attack is declared.

I'm not convinced that there is a clear answer to this question.

Well said dragonhunterq.

I'm a big fan of PFS, and at the same time I am fully aware of the fact that it's pretty far from what "Pathfinder SHOULD be"
It's a great tool for meeting other players, seeing other GMs techniques, and getting more invested in the campaign world of Golarion. At the same time it's a far cry from what I would call an "ideal" game experience

I feel a little sad for anyone who thinks that PFS is what Pathfinder should be... there is just so much more that they are missing out on

I agree with supervillan about the Beastmorph alchemist. Poison is not generally very effective to use as a PC, so trading out it's use is no biggie. The loss of bonuses to save vs. poison and eventual immunity are a bit more of downside, but compared to the benefits you gain while in your mutagenic form, I find it to be a good trade off.

For a heavily bomb focused alchemist I wouldn't bother with it, but for most switch hitters and melee alchemists I think Beastmorph is an upgrade.

In addition to the suggestions above, Barkskin, Heroism and Alchemical Allocation are good infusions to hand out.

Mmm, gotta love that potion that's been in everyones mouth a dozen times

I would like to see Carrion Crown as the next hardcover release.

That is one valid reading of the rules.

Some people will interpret

Combat Reflexes and Additional Attacks of Opportunity: If you have the Combat Reflexes feat, you can add your Dexterity bonus to the number of attacks of opportunity you can make in a round. This feat does not let you make more than one attack for a given opportunity

as meaning that this situation is only a single opportunity.

Either way to your second question, I believe you are correct that you are not being attacked, and the combo would not kick in for any attacks of opportunity.

edit for clarity on the second point

The only game I've ever played in that went to 20th level or beyond was back when I was in grade 8 or 9 playing the BECMI system. (getting close to 30 years ago)

It was a lot easier to do when we played every day after school

Were there to be a special equipment boon introduced into the GM rewards rotation, it would likely need to be offered as an alternative to—not a replacement of—the race boon on offer.

Fingers crossed that this becomes a thing. I know I'm in the minority but I have almost no use for race boons. Mine are waiting for me to use them with a Xenophobia or Xenophile boon (if I ever get one) or something along those lines. I enjoy GMing the specials, but would be much happier if there was a non-race boon that I could get out of it

No, the free touch attack granted by casting the spell cannot be held for a later round. It is granted as part of casting the spell and if not used that round then it cannot be taken advantage of later.

I'm seconding the suggestion that they each play 2 characters. I have GMed and currently play in a group of three and it works marvelously for us. Two characters is not too much to handle unless the players are new to the game.

And taken with the comment about "a couple levels with a fill-in character..." suggests the GM has an agenda or is trying to orchestrate a particular outcome. He has some story idea he thinks would be cool. Not the best of GM behaviors, though if we're honest all of us have probably done it to some degree at one time or another.

Oh, and no judgement was implied in the multiple pc per player observation - if it works for your group and everyone is having fun, etc., all good. The play style could be part of the trouble though - the GM may feel more free to target specific pc's if a player controls multiple pc's than they would if the player controlled only one. It's one thing to tell a player one of his pc's will be unavailable for a while, it's another to tell the player his only pc will be gone.

I really think you may be on to something there. What the other player told me about the conversation he had with the GM it sounds like this is a very real possibility.

Out of curiosity, is your GM using the advancement track or going by actual monster/story xp earned? Barring other information, by my estimate your group should be character level 8 by now.

Tactics-wise, does at least one party spellcaster have access to Fireball? Ogres aren't exactly known for their fabulous Reflex saves. Then Jakardos can mop up those who survived.

We use XP, but haven't recieved an XP increase since finishing the Graul homestead.

The Wizard does have Fireball, as does the cleric from his fire domain. Both have used the spell to good effect.

Our GM has not in the past ever had us take over running NPCs like Jakardros, so we will see what happens when I ask about running him.

I'm glad your long time group is continuing. Best of luck. :)

Thanks, we've had a pretty good run of things. Good luck with your campaign. I know we had a blast with the final book of Kingmaker when I adapted it for the campaign I was running. If the rest of the AP is as good then it deserves every bit of praise it gets

Yeah, human male. 180ish pounds without gear before the GM alteration, plus nearly 100 pounds gear. Him and his gear (plus my gear) was just within my characters maximum heavy encumberance without the extra 40 pounds, it was after we checked and I said I could carry him that the GM insisted that he increase the character weight

From talking to the other player it sounds like the GM might have something up his sleeve with that characters body since he was told he may have to play a couple levels with a fill in character before we can get him back.

And you are correct, we each play 2 characters in this campaign (just the way our group runs it with only 3 people involved) and have done so for over a decade.

Thanks for he advice so far. The other player and I have been discussing the situation and it looks like we are going to push on for now and see how it goes.

To answer some of the questions asked,

Our party has 4 characters. 7th level generalist wizard, 7th level cleric of Asmodeus, 7th (possibly just hit 8th) fighter, and a 5th fighter/ 2nd trapper ranger.

The GM has been running the Black Arrows rangers. We don't have any idea what their abilities are like, but they have been horribly ineffective from my observation so far.

The dead fighter originally weighed somewhere in the 180s range of weight. When my fighter was able to carry him the GM insisted that the other player increase his weight by about 40 pounds, that put him over my maximum carry weight.

It's been swingy with encounters. We've trounced a few, and barely scraped by some (xanesha almost TPKed us). I was really content with giving our GM the benefit of the doubt on that sort of thing until this point, even after our disastrous first entry into Rannick. With our second attempt and our inability to get any enemies to go in investigate things so we might recover the body of our main front line fighter I'm having trouble maintaining faith that it's just inexperienced GMing and overcompensating.

I should note that we had Vale, Jakardros and Shalelu with us on our first venture into the fort, but Vale also died in that fight and the two archers did almost nothing in that fight so I have low expectations on what they can do for us now.

Our (dead) fighter and fighter/ranger are built a bit around teamwork with paired opportunists too so our ability to function has been curtailed with the loss of one of them. Not that I expect the GM to go totally soft on us, but making it impossible for us to recover the dead ally so we can raise him is pretty frustrating.

So this is mostly a bit of venting and/or ranting, but some insight from GMs who have run this AP is always appreciated.

So our expedition into Fort Rannick has gone horribly wrong. It may be for the best, as the other player and I are both in agreement that we aren’t happy with the way our GM runs things and a TPK might be the best way to end this campaign anyway since the GM is a friend that we have gamed with (he’s usually a player) for decades so we don’t want to upset him too much by just quitting his game.

Originally we were planning on getting in through the tunnels, but the night before we were going in Kaven disappeared and we found tracks going to the fort. We had been a bit suspicious of him and his sihedron tattoo, but his story about just getting it to gamble on Lucrecia’s boat seemed believable enough (we’ve got 2 PCs with high sense motive). With it obvious that he went and betrayed us we radically changed our plans, thinking that they would be ready and waiting for our basement assault. Instead we used invisibility and fly (burning a lot of our spellcasting for the day) to enter the fort from up top. We quickly dispatched the sentries in the tower, but one of them fell to the rampart below when he died (GM fiat) alerting the Ogres down there. We hurried downstairs and jumped another pair of ogres before the group from outside came running in. This is where things got out of hand. Suddenly our 7th level party was in a fight with a few regular ogres, 3 named fighter ogres, the ogre wizard(or sorcerer), and Mammy Graul, who had fled to Fort Rannick when we burned the farm. It seemed out of character to me that the ogres that were guarding the spellcasters would fight defensively too. We were overwhelmed before Lucretia also showed up, and then we lost one of our fighters before we could get out. Our GM then forced the characters player to increase his characters weight (he claimed it was unbelievably low) to the point that our other fighter could not carry him in his armor when we fled, so we had to leave him behind.

Our flight was still up, so we retreated to the giant eagle aerie to get away. There, with nearly zero resources left for the day, we had to fight a trio of Annis hags. We managed to just barely scrape by that fight with a random 5th level fighter joining in (replacement character for the guy who lost the fighter)

We rested up, and with wands were able to heal up enough to try for a body recovery the next day. We did some recon and found a lot of ogres on the second floor where we had fought the day before, but couldn’t get through such a big group of them to find the body of our comrade, so we tried to create a diversion, with an attack outside while our invisible ranger/fighter waited for a chance to reclaim the body and then flee. Instead of ogres rushing to fight us again this time though all we ended up accomplishing was getting even more ogres congregating where we suspected our companions body to be. At least we were able to slaughter several ogres on the ground floor.

We had done pretty well on the bottom floor though and wanted to push for our friends body, so we assaulted the group upstairs again. Almost immediately we had Mammy Graul dimension dooring out behind our group with a heavy hitting ogre and another ogre attacking us from the hall while Lucrecia hurled spells at us.

We managed to kill most of the ogres, but Mammy, Lucretia, and an unknown number of ogres remain. Our Cleric is down, the replacement fighter is 2HP from bleeding out. Mammy just dragged the unconscious cleric inside for who knows what purpose. Shalelu and Jakardros just showed up to help us out, but I don’t think anyone can take a full round against Lucretia (she’s getting high 30s-low 40s on all hit rolls so far) so I doubt that she will miss with any iterative attack. We have hurt her a bit (probably 40ish damage) but she doesn’t seem badly hurt. We were basicly deciding on fleeing now, or trying to take out Lucretia before we escape when we called the session last night, or just going death or glory (I am kinda hoping for death already as I mentioned above at this point, but I might be a bit too hot about this right now to make a good decision)

I guess I’m looking for perspective on this. Does this all seem in line with how Fort Rannick is supposed to work? Is our GM being unreasonable on how he’s running things? Are we just playing terribly that we can’t get through this? Am I just being an unreasonable player thinking that there should be some chance of success? Should we just tell our GM that we are done with this BS campaign, or go for the kill and/or our deaths?

The Sanguine Angel Prestige class actually makes me want to play in an Evil themed campaign. I like the flavor of it and I think the mechanics are very good as well.

Master Chymist is loads of fun for a melee or switch hitter alchemist. I took this with my -1 character in PFS and was pretty pleased with how it worked out.

AD&D did get some... goofy interpretations of alignments. I primarily blame the influence of Dragonlance, but that's a whole other discussion. I always saw that "switching sides" bit as more of a large scale (like cosmic, or international) phenomenon. The idea that a TN character should be expected to swap sides in a combat seems laughable. I suppose that some people might read it that way, but it would inform me if how much weight to give any other rules interpretation that person gave me.

TN used to state that you would turn against your own party if your party outnumbered the enemies.

You are going to need to provide some reference for this statement. I've played D&D and it's descendants for 34 years and I've never heard of this before. You sure you are remembering this right?

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again

Cayden Cailean... Because BEER!

I'm also quite fond of Desna, Asmodeus, Shelyn, and Calistria.

Plus who could dislike the services provided by the good folks at AbadarCorp

I am speaking solely in regards to diseases, not other game rules.

Really, because from this

I don't see why this wouldn't extend to other conditions as well. You still have the condition, you are just wholly unaffected by it (which would make the distinction moot in the vast majority of cases).

It sure sounds like you are using it as a precedent for other conditions

dwayne germaine wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Characters and creatures that are immune to disease can still act as carriers of the disease and can still spread the disease to others.

Are you sure? I think it makes sense in some cases, but not others. is there a specific rule for this somewhere?

There's the Antipaladin's Plaguebringer ability, but the ability to act as a carrier is specifically called out (and possibly unique) in that ability.

Yeah, I get that with a specific ability that allows it that it would fall into a specific trumps general situation, but it sounds like RD was saying that this is part of immunity to disease in general

Characters and creatures that are immune to disease can still act as carriers of the disease and can still spread the disease to others.

Are you sure? I think it makes sense in some cases, but not others. is there a specific rule for this somewhere?

@ graystone: Oh for sure you can CHOOSE to interperet it that way. I don't even think it will hurt the game. I think this is way less of a potential problem than the original Potion Glutton text was.

I just think that if you choose to look at the rules without the context of how they have ruled on similar questions in the past then you are essentially burrying your head in the sand and justifying an interpretation that you might want. On the other hand, if you want to make an informed decision about how they might rule on this IF they ever FAQ or eratta it, then you have to look at similar past decisions that the developers made and use that as a benchmark. If you do that then in this case I think you have to predict that the intent is that it doesn't work for extracts.

I HOPE that they allow Alchemists to use this for extracts, but I sure wouldn't bet on it, advise anyone that that is how it works until they change it, or fault any GM who does take the eventual ruleings on similar questions as an indication of how this actually works.

Edited for clarity on who I was responding to.

Sorry, people are using the change to potion glutton as evidence that it should work with this. I see it as the opposite. First Accelerated Drinker, and then Potion Glutton... In every instance where an ability has allowed use of potions with improved action economy they have come out with a ruleing that it does not work with extracts. I see no reason to think that this reinforces "they need to rule out extracts specifically for each". Instead it sets a precedent that extracts do not follow the rules of potions, and despite how counter intuitive it might be, any rule for potions does not include extracts unless it says it includes extracts.

People keep saying that this works with extracts because they specifically changed Potion Glutton to make it not work. I'm more inclined to see that as setting a precedent for the opposit interpretation. It's become obvious that the developers don't want extracts to be used interchangeably with potions, and that things that work with potions don't work with extracts unless they are specifically called out in the rules.

That said, I don't think it would cause that much of an issue to allow alchemists to do this. It certainly won't break the game if 14th level alchemists who worship Cayden Cailean can essentially use an extract as a swift while fighting with a rapier.

As far as the issue with drawing potions or extracts goes while using this fighting style, I'm pretty confident that the intent of the advanced style is that drawing the potion is part of the action. The fighting style is useless if while two weapon fighting, you have to drop or sheath your sword so that you can pull out the potion.

Thanks. That's how I thought it would work, but wanted to check just in case.

You might be able to do the 6 quests in 4 hours if you are running them for players who already know the system, my experience with running the Phantom Phenomenon at a local comic con was that with players who are new to newish to Pathfinder it will take closer to an hour per quest.

Good luck with the demo! I had a blast when I did it and everyone seemed to have a good time.

apologies if this question has been asked before... I'm not having some search difficulty.

Do the chronicles assigned to a GM credit blob have to be assigned in the order that they were GMed in? For example, I have a character number that has never been played, and that I have assigned several chronicles to. If I then GM "The Confirmation" am I able to assign that at the beginning of the characters chronicles, as if it had been GMed at an earlier date than the later chronicles, or am I going to have to assign it to a new PC number instead?

There is also Vicious Stomp, (though it has Improved Unarmed Strike as a Pre-req) that can help in getting reliable AoO off before you get greater trip, especially if you have an animal companion like a wolf with the trip ability.

In a campaign I am playing in we have two fighters, one trips things, the other has vicious stomp. They both have paired opportunist and combat reflexes to get extra attacks of opportunity off.

They started doing this around 3rd level, but we realized later that we could have made it work right from level 1. The builds really started to come together once that they were 6th level with the trip fighter taking greater trip. The other fighter is planning on getting greater bullrush soon to really get lots of attacks of Opportunity, and eventually there is talk about getting Broken Wing Gambit on both of them

dwayne germaine wrote:

_Ozy_ wrote:

if the Fighter is jealous of the supposed extra loot the Wizard is getting, he can take a crafting feat of his own to cash in on the lucrative business. Nobody is stopping him.

No no, He just goes off adventuring with the other non-crafters while the crafters work on their stuff. It's the only solution he has to the question of what to do to try to keep up in wealth with the crafter.

So those who don't craft spend their time playing while the crafter tries to get richer than the other people in the party by making money off of them.

Of course this just makes everyone not want to take crafting feats because it interferes with playing.

Nope. At that point everyone gets leadership so they get their own loyal wizard crafter. Then everyone goes off and plays while all of their followers stay home and craft.

win - win - win for everyone*!

*GMs not included

That's a totally acceptable solution to me

if the Fighter is jealous of the supposed extra loot the Wizard is getting, he can take a crafting feat of his own to cash in on the lucrative business. Nobody is stopping him.

No no, He just goes off adventuring with the other non-crafters while the crafters work on their stuff. It's the only solution he has to the question of what to do to try to keep up in wealth with the crafter.

So those who don't craft spend their time playing while the crafter tries to get richer than the other people in the party by making money off of them.

Of course this just makes everyone not want to take crafting feats because it interferes with playing.

This has happened every time I've done group loot, though this one was the worst of the lot. And it doesn't help when the people deciding this were grognards who'd been playing since I was born, and 'knew better' than my somewhat more hesitant younger self. It sucked, and I finally got out of those situations, and have gotten the confidence to actually argue back. But only when I can get in a word edgewise.

I'm glad that you've moved on to playing with better people. If you weren't getting input on loot distribution then it wasn't a fair way of doing equipment.

Our group requires consensus before we split things up. That doesn't mean that everything is always equal, and sometimes I know I'm going to be behind a little on wealth. As long as everyone aims for what's best for the party instead of what's best for their own character, then everyone wins.

Some players may not be mature enough to handle a scheme like this, and some may not be willing to give up a little bit of freedom in exchange for a better party dynamic and increased security. The group I play with wasn't always this good, and it didn't happen overnight, but it has become the best way of doing things for us.

And 'party loot', as in all of it belongs to the group? I will leave the gaming group over it. Because people screw me over every single time I've experienced it. When one PC has 8,000 gp worth of gear and I have 500, I get pretty irritable.

So don't agree to a split that is so lopsided.

It sounds like your problem is the people you play with.

Discussions like this make me very glad that my current group uses a "all treasure is party treasure" philosophy. Gear gets distributed to whoever we feel needs it most. Decisions about what to sell and what to keep, and what will the crafters work on, are made by the group. Since all treasure is party treasure, who pays for crafting always has the same answer... The group

I realise that as the number of players increases the viability of this scheme decreases (probably exponentially) but it really keeps everyone pretty happy in our smaller group.

Is there limit to how much prestige I can spend at a time? Can I burn 10 PP to buy five 750 gp wands all at once?

I believe that the text allows for prestige to be used to purchase an item once per session, so no to purchasing multiple wands at once.

Assuming a dip to pick up shield proficiency, Is there anything that would prevent a magus from doing spell combat while wielding a shield in one hand, keeping the other hand free for spell casting.

Arcane spell failure chance is going to be an issue, but a mithral shield can pretty much negate that. I just wanna make sure I am not missing some rule that will prevent my plan from working.

This character will be for PFS, so all of it's restrictions apply, also that makes the Skirnir archtype come into it's own too late in the game for me to want to go that route.

I'm confident that part of the reason that they leave free limits vague is because different types of free actions need to be considered differently. some you may be able to do several times in a round, others it may be more reasonable to limit to 3 times in a round. Some, like the throwing shield if you take the RAW as giving a free attack, should likely be limited to once in a round.

If they gave a hard limit, then you either get a problem where the limit doesn't even stop the types of excesses that you want it to (like throwing multiple throwing shields in a round) or it becomes a burden to the system where if you want to drop a weapon, quickdraw another, yell a warning to someone, and then drop prone... well all of a sudden you can't do all those things in the same round because they set the limit at 3 (I'm not advocating for a 3 free action limit)

It's better for them to leave it in the hands of the GM to determine what combinations of free actions can all be done in the same round, and take it on a case by case basis

The GM is expected to make calls on how many times you can use free actions in a round. I probably wouldn't have a problem with letting someone get a free toss of a throwing shield, but for that specific free action, I would rule it to only be once per round.

The FAQ on number of free actions per turn is pretty clear that limiting a free action like this is one of the decisions that the GM is responsible for.

Talk to the GM. Explain how you built your character with certain assumptions and how the choices you made at character creation seem to be invalidated by the way they play. Ask to restat your character, because it's not working the way you planned.

You probably won't be able to fundamentally change how a long-standing group plays, so adapt to the style, you may even find that in the end you enjoy the way they do things. Dump your charisma and reallocate the skill points if those skills are not relevant (with the GMs permission) so that you can fit in with their style of playing.

He basically wants to have his cake and eat it too.

To be fair, she is the evil queen of dragons. It should come as no surprise that an evil goddess wants that.

There is a small issue I noticed with your attack routine.

If you get multiple attacks because your base attack bonus is high enough, you must make the attacks in order from highest bonus to lowest. If you are using two weapons, you can strike with either weapon first. If you are using a double weapon, you can strike with either part of the weapon first.

I don't think that means that you do all attacks with one weapon from highest attack bonus to lowest, you would be doing your main hand shot #1 and then off hand shot #1, then going on to the next iterative shots.

So you would have to be drawing and holstering each gun a lot more than the way that you describe. If your GM allows that then it should work, if not then you might have to look into other ways of getting that many attacks.