fjeastman's page

Ah ha!

I had completely overlooked the targeting requirements and that robots are creatures not objects. Took me a while to grok they had Hardness and not DR and then I went too far in the other direction.

A lot of it is I haven't had anybody play a druid in years and never in higher-level play. The player joined just after they met Mad Paetyr in Valley of the Brain Collectors and the group decided to get his madness cured and add him as a PC.

So he's forever hauling out some druid-only spell or another I've never even looked at before.

Thanks everybody!

So here's one I'm not sure how to adjudicate.

Transmute Metal to Wood cast on a robot.

Logically, that'd pretty much wreck any sort of complex moving components and structural integrity of a giant robot that depends on super-science skymetal.

No save, SR only for magical objects, instant duration.

The literal lawyer I play with is pretty sure he's found the "I Win" button for every robot encounter. The RAW only seems to assume that people have medieval arms and armor so it talks about what happens to wooden weapons and armor.

The robot GOLEM has a special rule for what happens when it gets hit with Transmute Metal to Wood in the "golems do weird things with the few spells that work" mien.

Any ideas?

I can just say: "Oh, its AC drops slightly and its bullets do -2 damage." but it feels like one of those things where the spell as designed they tried to take some sort of "logical" consequence of turning metal swords and breastplates into wooden swords and breastplates and completely understandably did not game it out to make rules for what happens to complex machinery and whatnot in the same situation.

So this probably is an obvious question since I'm having trouble finding an answer to it online:

Does the Divinity Drive Dimensional Lock type power prevent the following?

Teleporting from place to place IN the divinity (Dimension Door, for instance.)

Summoning creatures with the Summon Monster spell?

Dimensional Lock suggests that summoned creatures are not prevented from disappearing at the end of the spell, but doesn't specifically say they are allowed to appear inside the zone.

My party is about to enter the Divinity for the first time. They discovered they couldn't get in via transdimensional means but given that two characters' main builds center on summoning and the sorc just took dimension door I want to make sure I'm correct in how I handle it going in. (As there will be a mighty gnashing of teeth.)

--fje

So my party seems hell bent on becoming robot overlords.

One character is a technologist Sorcerer with the Impossible bloodline.

On the whole it was pretty thematic, but it gives him the power to treat Constructs as if they were living creatures for spell targeting AND lets him target them with Compulsion spells.

Not a huge deal, though they did just waltz into the dominion hive two levels underleveled by Suggesting to the Annihilator that they belonged there and it should let them be. (Bad save roll)

They're planning on eventually Suggesting Binox to repair him or, eventually, hitting him with a Geas to repair and reprogram the Annihilator.

Should I fiat that a "repaired" Binox once again seeks to follow Unity?

It's still early, they haven't even found Cassandalee yet, but I have a feeling they'll be trying to get her past her fear of robots and get her installed in an Annihilator eventually.

I suppose it's the same sort of problem faced by any sort of magical compulsion and an NPC, but it seems like a lot of the balance depends on the PCs not really gaining unlimited access to Binox's abilities.

--fje

I essentially let Glaucite be "adamantine lite" in my campaign. Specifically because the gunslinger and sword/board fighter were really sucking it up against robots and were pretty much: "Well, time to buy adamantine everything."

Seemed a little too binary. I figure Glaucite's adamantine content makes it hard to work, but with the right tools possible.

The end result being they could craft, but not conveniently buy, glaucite weapons that would bypass Hardness less than 15 (I.E. 1-14). That's enough to take the place of adamantine weapons for robot killing.

With the hardness working against elemental damage it pretty much made robots immune to ranged attacks, even from elemental technological weapons.

Now the gunslinger has to decide whether to get the penetration of the physical firearms or the range from the elemental ones.

For my part it was more to do with player frustration of finding out there was one thing that could hurt robots. Even with the electricity vulnerability, the constant resist 10 means something like the Warden with good saves can shrug off multiple lightningbolts but get tore up by a rogue with an adamantine dagger.

This way they still have some issues against things with DR/Adamantine or hardness greater than 14, but it doesn't come down to one guy in the whole party can actually do regular damage to a large percentage of the enemies unless they all go out and buy one kind of weapon.

So I have an interesting situation.

The party gets to the Choking Tower. They decide to go in through Furkas' bedroom window. Essentially, they can get one guy up to the window with the Laser Torch and the plan is he cuts through the steel slats, slides in, and throws ropes down to the rest.

Of course, Furkas can sense somebody rolling up in his bedroom.

The one to break in happens to be a LE cleric of Abadar.

I figure, as a wizard, Furkas isn't going to unleash his full compliment of spells on one guy. One, it'd just be a little un-fun for the player to pop in and get nuked by the wizarding ghost. Two, it'd mean while that guy gets hosed then Furkas isn't much of an encounter until the next day.

BUT, the LE Cleric of Abadar is all about making deals. And he's got the scroll of resurrection from Torch hanging out in his backpack.

So here's my question:

Furkas SORT of got what he wanted, but he's sort of cursed to never complete any of his work. Would he be interested in being resurrected to continue his research?

And at this point, Cassandalee's body is pretty much useless to him. The whole adventure ends with: "But The Princess ('s Brain) Is In Another Castle". She can't really be brought back or otherwise interrogated outside of what Xoud already has. Would he be willing to trade, essentially, the knowledge about where to go next for getting returned to life? He can't use the knowledge as he is now. But he is a little batty.

He's already willing to capture the PCs, as evidenced by having the apprentobots take people downstairs, but he can't make use of a clerical scroll on his own. So he would sort of NEED the cleric, with the scroll, down in the room with his body to get poofed back. (There's enough of him to resurrect.)

It sort of short-circuits the dungeon crawl, but I try to not penalize the players for creative thinking and not approaching every problem with an axe.