helleb's page

Battle forms give you an Athletics modifier do they not? Why wouldn't you be able to use maneuvers?

helleb wrote:

But do you adjust the statistics if you deal extra damage? RAW I don't think so, since you don't change the to hit or damage bonuses. With e.g. rage or sneak attack you just also deal some extra damage, but don't change the damage bonus as such. RAI I have no idea and it would be great to get feedback from Paizo. Similarly it would be great to get confirmation if polymorphed characters can use trip, grapple, and other such manoeuvers.

Interesting stance. I certainly hope it's true.

If it is though that line in the sand just got a whole lot fuzzier.

Basically what Abyssalwyrm just said. The polyform actions say "One or more unarmed melee attacks specific to the battle form you choose, which are the only attacks you can use." and unfortunately trip etc. are attacks... We've been playing them so that it's still possible to use those manoeuvres though, since it makes no sense a bear or snake couldn't grapple. But yeah, the whole polymorph rules are weird and pretty unclear at least for me.

edit: flurry of blows is not an attack, so I'm pretty sure you can use that RAW. Some others not unfortunately. However if someone's spending all the feats for those I don't think it'll cause any issues and it's more fun to allow than disallow them.

EDIT: I was mistaken. Due to the wording of polymorph, it excludes non-bonus effects as well. ...the special statistics can be adjusted only by circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties.

I stand by my prior assertion that in other cases, many statistical changes or increases are not bonuses, and should not be treated as though they were.

But do you adjust the statistics if you deal extra damage? RAW I don't think so, since you don't change the to hit or damage bonuses. With e.g. rage or sneak attack you just also deal some extra damage, but don't change the damage bonus as such. RAI I have no idea and it would be great to get feedback from Paizo. Similarly it would be great to get confirmation if polymorphed characters can use trip, grapple, and other such manoeuvers.

Temperans wrote:

ikarinokami wrote:

Samurai wrote:

KrispyXIV wrote:

Samurai wrote:

It's more of a "you roll your dice and take your chances" kind of play, and that attitude can hurt players in a game where you are expected to know (and the GM is expected to tell you) all kinds of out-of-character game information in order to logically make your character's in-game choices.

Its only really "out of character" though if you dont accept that your character is more at home in his home setting than the player is - Player Characters are in general far more competent than the Player or any real person.

Giving the player information like enemy level is making up for the Players handicap in not being native to the world the character lives in - its giving the Player information the character should already have.

How would your character learn such information in-game? Like I said, some things are observable, but many other things are not, no matter how long your character has lived in the world. Do characters in your game see floating level numbers above the head of

everyone they meet?

now you are applying logic in our world vs Golarion. our world doesn't have levels. In a world with levels I would say with 100% certainty that every creature would have a means to know if another creature was higher or lower level that itself, creatures that couldn't do that would go extinct. Much in the same way predators have an innate sense of the relative health of their prey. From an evolutionary perspective that you could be a successful specis in a world with levels and not have the ability to make intuitions about whether or not another creature is higher or lower level than itself is highly unlikely.

Having some sense of whether a creature is a threat is indeed important for survival.

However, it is not so simple as just knowing about level. Its also a matter of how injured a creature looks/feels. How many characters are on each side. Does the

...

If level was an important thing in Golarion, wouldn't some NPC's / lore include discussions and information about it? At least I haven't seen that happen so far. Also, how do you know evolution even works in Golarion? There's a lot of powerful beings able to mess up natural selection and evolutionary paths by using magic to introduce new creatures and phenomena in the world in way faster pace than biological evolution can react.

Though imo that's besides the point anyway. I don't know how you imagine your game worlds and characters, but I just want to be able to immerse in my powerful wizard or fighter and focus on the adventure and heroic things the party does. Having to think about level numbers or other things like that doesn't add anything to the story to me and breaks immersion. We don't generally communicate numbers like HP left either. I understand that a lot of people like playing D&D/PF like a strategy game and I too can enjoy that. That's not how we usually play though and I'm surprised if everyone else playing PF wants that. If enjoying casters requires that type of play I'm quite disappointed and I'm probably not alone.