johstas's page

I don't know how our Dm missed that. Thx a lot for pointing it out Knick.

Greetings everyone,
As our party just concluded the adventure path, we are considering our options regarding the fate of Crown of Fangs. One of the PCs (who is a half-fiend) suggested that we let him take the crown to hell and promises he will never return to Prime Material Plane and not ever give away the item, both to the best of his ability. The rest of the party plans to try and find a "holy sword forged by a once mortal God" and then summon the half-devil to destroy the artifact.
Is there a way we can make sure he will keep his promise? We were thinking of an infernal contract but is it even possible for a devil to sign an infernal contract like that? And can we write the contract rather than the devil (I mean the wording and everything)? And what if he breaks the contract? What are the consequences?

Thanks for any assistance

Short description of the conflict background:

We are playing Curse of the Crimson Throne. My character started at Lvl 1 as battle oracle, LN very loyal bodyguard - guardian was the story concept. She was the bodyguard of another PC, a Lvl 1 paladin with very clear to the public's eye, good moral principles. They bonded very well during the first 3 adventures of the adventure path. During the 3rd book, we were feeling my character had gotten as loyal to the moral code of the paladin, as she was to the paladin himself, so we decided to turn my character's AL to LG. The two characters consequently started developing a master to student relationship as my character wanted to understand the code of conduct more thoroughly. During book 4, my character also took two lvls in the paladin class.
Just before we were to begin playing book 5, the player playing the paladin told us he could not participate in our gaming sessions for a couple of months due to work problems. He came up with the aid of the DM with a hook that would take his character out of our story (the hook was based on his background). When the paladin confronted my character saying he is leaving, me character said she was going with him (her loyalty was still more to her master than her principles). The paladin then told her that she should not follow him anymore, but follow the code (thus following paladinhood). So, my character started following the code more than her master. We finished book 5 and my character got Serithtial.
Just before we were to begin book 6, the player with the paladin returned to our gaming sessions. He had a missed 1 adventure and a couple of levels and he came up with the following idea (with the DM's approval and collaboration) to catch up: his character had been corrupted during the last few months (we were not told how but it does not really matter), the paladin was now an anti-paladin with the half-fiend template. It was a true shock for my character and we had some great on the role playing level few gaming session. The original problem was that my character had to work with a devil in book 6. The rest of the party had no real problem (they were all CN with tight background bonds with city Korvosa but no real tendency towards moral principles - thus they all said "if the paladin is ok with it, i 'm ok with it too"). My character was feeling guilty for not going with the turned paladin to help him avoid corruption - hence feeling to some degree responsible for his master's fall. She was also hoping that she will somehow find a way to turn her back into the paladin she used to be. So, she accepted the devil as long as 1) he didnot go against the party's wishes, 2) didnot hurt anyone from city Korvosa 3) didnot take action to corrupt anyone
The devil agreed and we went through book 6, having several small conflicts throughout the adventure, but nevertheless finishing it.
After the final battle with Ileosa, my character got Crown of Fangs. We soon found out that even though it was broken into pieces, to ensure its destruction, it had to be hit by a holy sword forged by a once mortal God. We thought it was rather unaccepted to come up with such a sword and started considering where we should hide it. Meanwhile, my character discussed with the party wizard and some other NPCs about the possibility that her former master could be restored and realized it was not possible.
After a dead end situation (as we did not want to give Crown of Fangs to anyone - it might corrupt him, we did not want to give to some powerful organization to guard it as we have no such ties but also did not want to leave it somewhere unattended as someone might find it), the devil made a suggestion: he would take the artifact with him in Hell, he would always keep it on him and he would never return to Prime Material Plane unless he was summoned. My character at first said he would never give up a major evil artifact to a devil. Then, the other party members said that if we could somehow ensure his promises were real, we might be better off.
To sum up, my questions are the following:
1) In your eyes, does our story have a natural flow up until the adventure path finale or maybe we were not objective and we only got here because we wanted to play our characters (thus making the conflict theoretical as a paladin might have never agreed to work with a devil in the first place)?
2) Would a paladin ever even consider giving up such an artifact to a devil (under some dramatic circumstances of course that lie on the small evil to prevent a greater evil concept)?
3) If she did it, would she risk losing paladinhood?
4) Is there a way make sure a devil will keep his promises? What about infernal contracts? They are supposed to trick humans but can they also be used to bind a devil? And how could that happen? Would he sign a contract with another devil? And if so, can a devil break a contract and what happens if he does not deliver his part of the contract?

The following came up in one of our sessions:

The attacker was invisible through Greater Invisibility but was not using stealth. The party was aware of his presence via Detect Magic

The ftr of the party was hasted and was using combat expertise, thus getting a +4 dodge bonus to AC. When the attacker attacks according to RAW:

"Invisible creatures are visually undetectable. An invisible creature gains a +2 bonus on attack rolls against sighted opponents, and ignores its opponents' Dexterity bonuses to AC (if any). See the invisibility special ability."

The question is the following. Is ignoring an opponent bonus the same as the opponent being denied the bonus according to RAW? Dodge bonuses are lost only when the defender is denied his dexterity bonus. Could one argue that when the defender is attacked by an invisible but not stealthy attacker, he does not get his dex bonus to ac but still gets his dodge bonuses?

but u guys gave me the feeling that the template makes it -partially- custom and since the dm did not have much choice (cause this was an existing character), i ll suggest that i turn him into a human for game mechanics and keep the race for RP purposes only. It might flatten things a little bit

Part of the Grapple Rules:

Humanoid creatures without two free hands attempting to grapple a foe take a –4 penalty on the combat maneuver roll.

1: Deformed Hand: One hand can't wield weapons; –2 penalty on attack rolls with two-handed weapons.

While technically you do have 2 hands free...you probably should be taking either a -2 or the -4 penalty to the grapple checks as you can't be effectively grabbing an opponent. I would probably have given you the -2 penalty as you are fighting with the equivalent of a two-handed weapon while grappling.

this would be a houserule, since by the letter of the rule one would only get the -2 bonus with 2-handed weapons, but it is not a bad idea

i ll mention it in our next session

Why is the GM frustrated if he can challenge you? Is it because nobody else gets hurt so he feels like the party as a whole is not being challenged?

i think because whereas other characters fail to deal dam with 20-30% at best (in some occasions it is worse than 50-50), the ogrekin only fails with a natural 1

The point is johstas, you are bringing in third party material and then claiming something is broken. The part that is broken is the third party material not the grapple. If you want to stop giving your GM headaches, commit (character) suicide die and get reincarnated as something 'normal'.

- Gauss

it is not 3rd party my friend

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/ogrekin-cr-1

of course, like many other things, it is up to the dm to allow templates but in this case he did. probably it was a mistake and that s why i m discussing it

but there would not be much difference with a human anyway (str would go down to 26, but there would not be a +1 level adjustment so he would have BAB +10 instead of +9, plus he would get weapon focus as bonus fighter feat at level 10 to get to the same CMB, plus he would get an extra feat as a human to get greater weapon focus for a higher CMB by +1). the only difference is the racial +4 bonus to grapple checks (which makes the difference to +3 for the ogrekin -i dont think it s that big a deal)

If a GM is going to allow player things such as more powerful races then he has to be willing to bring the pain or just deal with the consequences. I don't know what your AC is like, but either you or the healer should be getting a lot of the attacks. It is not so much that the character can't be challenged. The GM would just have to be brutally efficient. If your group handles character death well all he should have to do is concentrate fire. Well it is not exactly that simple, but this is not something that can't be dealt with.

i agree. depending on the intelligence of the opponents that is what he does. in most battles the ogrekin gets out very near to 0 hit points

in fact in 3rd edition he was also Large size with 10 ft reach but we decided to rule this out since it would make it even more powerful

truthfully i don't see why he would have let you play an ogrekin in the first place. That contributes a lot in the +6 str and vestigial limb (+4 to grapple) to making this character overpowered. Did he let you pick the vestigial limb?

in addition to larger creature that Wraithstrike mentioned put a fighter or rouge backup with the caster. You are grappled also since you didn't give up the +20 to grapple. That lets someone wail away on you while you are grappling your target.

the character was originally a half-ogre in 3rd edition d&d.

the unarmed fighter archetype lets u keep all ur dex bonus and other penalties for grappling in place of the normal fighter ability at 7th level so it s exactly as if u r fighting melee combat (so the rogue can't sneak att), plus the party also has another 3 characters to back up the grappler up (ie healing)

Once you get to about 10th level which is where you are now monsters are normally large size and bigger, and grappling them is not so easily CMD does not scale well with CR.

Bebelith CR 10 CMB +23; CMD 34 (46 vs. trip)

As you can see you are still ahead, but remember you main thing is grappling, and he still has a chance to escape.

Barbarians, Rangers, paladins, and inquisitors can do more damage.
The inquisitor has to build up to it, but it can be done. The summon's eidolon can also compete.

You can only grapple one thing at a time so I would just use multiple monsters. Having some that can fly is also an option. Difficult terrain to slow your movement also helps.

The Elder Earth Elemental which is a CR 11-->CMB +30; CMD 39

The Elder Air Elemental which is a CR 11-->CMB +27; CMD 49, and it can just fly around and stay out of your reach.

indeed these monsters would be very challenging but they r specific monsters. in general most of the times u r way ahead

in fact we did have an encounter vs flying opponents with reach weapons
it was tough to grap them and took a while but once he did it was game over (at least for the one that was grabbed). the truth is in that encounter the archer of the party had made a lot more dam

I don't think you can combine Power Attack with grapple checks to deal damage.

yes we thought the same thing at first

i do see that many other builds can get as high or maybe higher dam
but the main difference-advantage is with the grappler the opponent can not flee

of course the disadvantages r -as mentioned- not being able to fight many monsters simultaneously or fighting in specific circumstances (ie difficult terrain) but on the other hand the latter also applies for most melee dam dealers

that is a good idea (tie up)
i ll probably use it when monster HP increase significantly
but currently there is no need to tie them up
everyone goes down at 3rd rd max

u think it is worthless?
it s good to hear there is another view
but where do u base this?
u have a build that does sth better than 135 dam / round at level 10 failing only with a natural 1 against all non-caster opponents?
or do u mean that in several other occasions (such as fighting against 10 opponents) u r slower (1st rd no dam) and less effective (u threaten only 1 opponent)?

I have an ogrekin fighter (grappler) 9th level (essentially 10th given the +1 level adjustment for the race) with the following stats & feats:

18 str (originally) + 6 (ogrekin) + 2 (4th & 8th level) + 4 (belt of giant str) = 30 str

BAB = + 9

He has the following feats:

Improved Grapple (+2 to grapple checks)
Greater Grapple (+2 to grapple checks)

he has also the unarmed fighter archetype so he gets his weapon training bonus in unarmed strikes and grapple only (+2)

he has an amulet of mighty fists (+2 magic enhancement to unarmed attacks)
plus the racial bonus for the ogrekin (vestigial limb) that gives a +4

that makes a CMB of +31
most of these apply to CMD too which gets as high as 38.

with these CMB/CMD, it s very easy to grapple anyone and once he grapples an opponent it s almost impossible for him to escape without a teleport (best rogues have an Escape Artist of +20 at 10th level).

and then comes round 2: the grapple has a +5 since the defender did not escape (total +36). he uses the following 3 feats
Power Attack (-3 to att rolls +6 to dam)
Rapid Grapple (when he maintains the grapple he gets another check as a swift action)
Pinning Knockout (when opponent is pinned double your dam)

so in rd 2 he makes his first grapple check (as a move action with the Greater Grapple feat) to pin his opp (success with 2 or higher on the dice). then he gets another 2 grapple check as a swift action and a standard action for damage (+10 str + 2 magic + 6 power att + 2 weapon training + 1d3)x2 = 2d3 +40 for each grapple check
that s 90 points of dam in rd 2 (practically without a roll since he fails only with a natural 1)

and in rd 3 he gets 3 of these checks since he already has his opponent pinned (total dam 135)

my dm seems a little frustrated since he -most of the times- can not avoid this.

is there sth i miss with the rules that i should not apply?
if not, do u think it is overpowered or any damage dealer that focuses heavily in dealing more damage can have similar results at level 10?