knightstar4's page

I knew there was something missing from the arcanist when I read consume spells.
The idea is an arcanist exploit that would function similarly to the magus spell recall ability to atleast recall a spell slot. I wasn't sure if that's all it would do though. What do you think?

I was thinking of a house rule for my game. Paragon surge could be used by any race, with the alteration that the stat bonus would be up to a plus 4 total based on racial or half racial bonuses. Humans being an exception with plus 2 to attribute of choice only and half orcs getting plus 4 str.

What do you think?

Have the body disappear at night and have the character stumble into camp the next day resurrected. Make this mystery resurrection part of an ongoing storyline.

knightstar4 wrote:

Disease, War, Famine, Pestilence... Sound familiar?

In a game I ran a few years back, the dwarves fought a war that eventually ended in them enslaving all humans, interbreeding them with dwarves and sterilizing all the pure bred humans. So, a huge continent, with no humans.
Personally, I'd like a scenario where there was major war that weakened the "good" society and then the "evil" races wipe out what's left. Hobgoblins are the new dominant race of the region.

What were your part-dwarf part humans like? Dark sun muls or something else?

I drew inspiration from the Dark Sun Muls. They could lift alot more than humans and had dwarven stat bonuses. They tended to be hardier and stronger than humans, with low light instead of dark vision. It was a fun campaign with alot of development that I won't get into here.

Disease, War, Famine, Pestilence... Sound familiar?
In a game I ran a few years back, the dwarves fought a war that eventually ended in them enslaving all humans, interbreeding them with dwarves and sterilizing all the pure bred humans. So, a huge continent, with no humans.
Personally, I'd like a scenario where there was major war that weakened the "good" society and then the "evil" races wipe out what's left. Hobgoblins are the new dominant race of the region.

Funny how two people can use the same sentence as reasoning for two opposite conclusions. How much you want to bet we will never see this particular item explained by any game designer or posted in a faq? All we need is for some writer to slip up and include one item or another on an NPC arcanist in some pathfinder adventure and the precedent will be set.

So euh, which item does the Arcanist use to replenish his spellslots, Pearls of Power or Runestones of Power?

Pearls of power should be able to be used by Arcanists. They should replenish the spell slot. Here is my reasoning.

First forget prepared or spontaneous. Arcanists are a mix of the two.
Arcanists prepare their spells. When casting their spells, they expend a spell slot of that level.
The pearl, once per day, enables the possessor to recall any spell that was prepared and cast that day. That spell is then prepared again, **just as if it had not been cast**.
The spell has been prepared so the pearl can have an effect. The effect of the spell not having been cast is that the spell slot would still be available. So, the spell slot would still be available upon use of the pearl of power.

That is rules as written. I do believe the rules as intended would imply this as well.

Runestone of Power

I believe this would have no benefit to an arcanist.

Even if you believe arcanists cast spontaneously, you must admit that they can only cast certain spells spontaneously on each individual day. It is specifically stated that they are not potent aids to spellcasters that have the option to spontaneously cast certain spells. That implies that the arcanist does not get aid from this item.

Exploring further into the description of this magic item says that a spontaneous spell caster, using this item, does not expend the spell slot. That description could be interpreted as possibly stating that the arcanist would benefit from this effect. However, given the previous paragraph, this seems not to be the case and instead suggests that the arcanist could not be classified as a spontaneous spell caster in general, even if it could be said to be a spontaneous spell caster in some specific instances.

There are alot of questions. I'll comment just on one I've been considering before reading this post.

Pearls of power should be able to be used by Arcanists. They should replenish the spell slot. Here is my reasoning.

First forget prepared or spontaneous. Arcanists are a mix of the two.
Arcanists prepare their spells. When casting their spells, they expend a spell slot of that level.
The pearl, once per day, enables the possessor to recall any spell that was prepared and cast that day. That spell is then prepared again, **just as if it had not been cast**.
The spell has been prepared so the pearl can have an effect. The effect of the spell not having been cast is that the spell slot would still be available. So, the spell slot would still be available upon use of the pearl of power.

That is rules as written. I do believe the rules as intended would imply this as well.

You'll need to provide more specific information about the capabilities of your party for advice. At this point, the only thing I can advise is that you lob fire bombs off the will until they're dead, or they kill you. Also, you said the goblins are being resurrected by necromancers. Did you mean animated by necromancers?

On a separate note, I get the sense that your GM has some specific way in mind for you to overcome this, and any other way will end in failure. Has he subtly suggested anything?

There's a sorcerer, a paladin, a rogue, and a monk. Yes, I meant raised, not resurrected. It takes a long time to produce even one fire bomb for a mundane alchemist like the monk.

I'd like some advice for defending against a siege.
In the game I'm in, the town we live in (population a few thousand) has been surrounded by a goblin army led by necromancers. They have atleast one giant and a black dragon tucked away. Several of the goblins have been trained for a few levels of wizard and there is handful of human necromancers (cleric and wizard mix) amongst them. If a goblin falls, they tend to get resurrected.
Our group is has small mix 4th level, no 3rd level spells. My character is a monk who is good at making alchemical items. There are a few stone walls, but the other walls are mostly wooden palisades. It's about a week into the siege and the outside world has been cut off. Before the goblins really dug in, we succeeded in a small raid to destroy what we think is all of their catapults. Sometimes are standing guard on the wall and occasionally a fireball will hit the wall.
There might be large group of knights coming to break the siege but it's unknown how long it will be till they get to the town. What suggestions do you have for the defenders? Anything that an alchemist might be able to cook up that would be helpful?

Thanks in advance.

I'm creating a 4th level monk that's dex based. While the 1st level feat is taken up by weapon finesse and weapon focus and specialization will be taken care of by the weapon adept archetype, I'm not sure whether to go for beiler's bite or Pirahna strike as the 3rd level feat. I might not be getting the other till mid levels if ever depending on how things go in the game.
In general, which of those two feats would be better to take at 3rd level? I can't decide.

Thanks in advance.

So he can't be wounded, but he can be killed. Have it look like instant regeneration. Add up the points till it would go past negative con, allowing for any healing due to magic or time. At some point he just falls apart, all the 'wounds' now visible.

When a player says in response "I know what I'm doing", you say "So what are you doing?" When I've run games and a player presents a potentially disruptive character and I know the player well enough to know what they might be up to I say yes or no based off that. If I'm not sure, I'll ask for details.

Due to roleplaying reasons, my 9th level two weapon fighter is looking to change career paths into something more religious, probably paladin. It seems like both class's abilities will be watered down for a bit. Any build suggestions to make the two classes work well together?

Ptolmaeus Arvenus wrote:

In many cultures, consumption of a corpse is a perfectly acceptable method of disposing it.

Okay, I'll bite. Which cultures are those? Name some.

Probably greek, Roman through renaissance europe, chinese, arabic.

Note that these uses, excepting for times of starvation, were all medicinal. Look up mellified man and uses for mummies.

Does wearing multiple rings of ki mastery stack? ie. If you wore two such items, and have them charged up, is all ki use reduced by 2?

Our group has gotten a surprise... We're going to be involved in some underwater combat, possibly prolonged to some extent. Our group has a fighter, fight/rogue, magus, ranger, cleric, and a paladin. All are 12th level except the paladin, who is level 10. We just received a payday of about 11k gold. We have access to the katapesh market, so can buy the vast majority of items out there.

So, what suggestions do you all have for us preparing for this adventure, magic items spells, etc.? We're looking at a few days preparation time at most and we don't have anything useful for under water except for some swimming skill ranks.

I've played 3 monks in pathfinder.
One was an elf who was always running into danger, wanting to test himself. He didn't think things through very often.

Another (well, a pair, but they were twins that kept finishing each other's sentences, so I'm counting them as one) was a pair of zen archers who came from a pirate tradition. They had a strict code of conduct, even if that code was very short. Really, they were pirates.

Last one was a half dwarf / human (mul) that didn't wear robes or much besides pants. He was a very gruff character who philosophically should have been a paladin. As the game drug on, he became a grappling master. He would have used the martial artist archetype if it was available when I made him.

First off, I don't know how the d20pfsrd website is connected with paizo or not. But, I do use that site as a quick reference.

Today when I was trying to look at some charts on there, I came up to the message that I had "insufficient priveleges to access this item" and came up with a google log on. I logged in and it came up with the same.

Does anyone know what's going on with this? Seemed to be working fine yesterday.

There's going to be a half dragon monk flying and running around in our game... We've dealt with most of the details, but fast movement for them seems a bit off with flight involved.

What's the best way to handle monk fast movement for a creature flying with wings?

The necklace doesn't affect scent (tracking the PC or using it to track with) nor would it affect your descent through water. The description is confusing in that "shell of air" bit though, I could see why a DM might consider ruling that it affects scent. The descent speed through water shouldn't be affected either.

As for the swimming via wings, I would have to assume that that is a no-go. The rules don't allow for that to work that way and stepping back and looking at it from a realistic standpoint, wings are not suited for aiding in the water.

The question of flying underwater came up because the wings, like the rest of the body, would be inside that shell of air.

In the game I'm playing in currently, I'm playing one of the characters with wings and we're in the middle of the shackles.

Well, I was looking over the necklace of adaptation and needed to get a handle of how it would work with this character.

First off, how do you deal with the scent ability an the necklace? Never mind if the wearer is the one with the scent ability.

If you're wearing the necklace and jump off a ship, do you fall at a rate as normal for someone sinking through water, or do you reach terminal velocity?

Would a flyer with wings be able to fly underwater with the necklace?

I was looking over the movement rules again and it seems that there would still be a limit on how long one could run... But one could Jog forever, literally, if they didn't have to worry about the food & water I guess.

When a Martial artist gains immunity to fatigue, that brings up some interesting possibilities.

If you stayed up for several days, since you never get fatigued from it, do you ever progress to exhausted?

If you are force marching or running continually, do you ever become exhausted? While I realize with this you're still probably taking that temporary damage and need to rest/heal it somehow later.

How would abundant ammunition effect an arrow with a packet of holy water or liquid ice?

The archer I'm running in our current pathfinder game is finally going to go to a big city and has plenty of coin to spend. He has some alchemical expertise and bow and arrow manufacturing skill, so he wants to come up with just the right kind of variety of arrows to carry around.

So, what are the suggestions for arrow design and mixing those up for different scenarios?

Character is a Lore Warden with a minor in rogue.

Well, everything came together last session. It wasn't a complete railroad, but our characters put themselves back on the tracks of their own volition.

The drow city was attacked by another city and they released all the gladiators, exploded the collars. Of course that knocked out the characters and we were making our way through the city in the aftermath.

We had 4 or 5 medium to major encounters/combats, grabbing weapons off the defeated. It was a mixture of an invading drow/servant army and rebelling slaves and Militia. We used up all our healing resources and while we had acquired some new items, we had to rest and heal. But, we didn't feel like we had 8 hours to lay around anywhere.

We kept moving till we got ambushed by a pair of dryders who became visible and fried everyone in the alleyway we were in with lightning bolts. My character flew up and fired his bow while the minotaur charged forward and scored really well with a huge greataxe we had acquired and along with the help of the magus from behind, dropped one. The gargoyle of the party came up and down and injured the other. Then she surrendered....

We spoke with her about being a mercenary hired by the other drow city, what their plans were, a few secret passageways out of the vault. Unfortunately all those were guarded heavily and we were contemplating waiting and leaving, but that was very risky in some ways. So, the party settled on going back to noble area of the city and trying to hook up with the slavemaster's house and hopefully working as guards of something more promising than what we were in.

Around that time, the slave master, as well as a few of her upper level servants came into view. She explained she had arranged for her apparent death and wanted to take us up to the surface to get away from here and continue her pursuit to acquire lore and knowledge. We'd just have to serve her as endentured servants for one year. We all accepted and up to the lush jungle and sun overhead.

So we're on Raktor Island... Haven't been able to find anything about that place in the material yet, but I'll keep looking. With the roll i got for knowledge:Geography, my character should know the basics of the place.

I'm unsure about how to get around a scenario my current games holds. All the players are gladiators in a drow gladiator pit. We've done a few bouts and did pretty good overall. We have a human fighter who's really good at performing for the crowd, a halfling magus, a half drow cleric, a barbarian minotaur (though might be losing him soon due to player leaving for 4 to 5 months), a gargoyle ranger, and a serpentfolk loremaster/rogue.

We keeping on coming to dead ends for how to get out and it's starting to get frustrating. Sure, we might survive long enough to win our freedom, but the chances are not good for that. We all have collars that are triggered by distance from a place, such as leaving the premises, or triggered in general by the slave master that simply put the character unconscious. Trying to disarm it, remove it, has seemed all but impossible.

The guards are all minotaurs who are veterans of the arena.

The slave master seems to have some special plans for the characters, whatever that might be.

We've had prostitutes come in and gotten absolutely no where with them information wise about the city, the house, the collars, or what the slave master might be wanting.

Even the arena is protected by a magical forcefield for the fans.

Right now my character, the serpentfolk, has asked for a favor and been awarded a chance to go on a tour of the city. He hopes for the master to come along and try to get information or make an ally of them. If that doesn't happen, then we're at another dead end.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

A few topics for discussion...
Haggling, how do you handle it mechanically in your game? So far we've been using opposed diplomacy checks with modifiers being the guideline to modify the base price.

But, how would you handle things as far as pricing for goods in a way that wasn't simply selling at half? Seems awfully odd.

I'll be playing a Minotaur character in an upcoming game. The group will start out as gladiators. But, I happened to roll for max intelligence for the character and with the skill points I have now, the sky has opened up for party role.

Before I rolled up the stats, I was thinking after the racial hit dice he would go onto fighter. But why not be a ranger? Rogue seems a bit too far fetched for something that big. Maybe a barbarian?

So what's the best way, archetype wise or other, to make a Ranger that doesn't focus so much on particular terrains or enemies? Gotta be honest, I don't like the lack of flexibility with those.

Or a barbarian that isn't a raging brute? Never got much into the rage thing.

I think for murder we will go for confiscation of all assets to be applied towards resurrection and lost income. Any left over goes to the state (to prevent pinning murders on rich folks to get all their stuff). The murderer is put to death. If there are not enough funds to perform a resurrection, including that of the deceased and or their survivors, then none is performed.

Thus leading to life insurance with resurrection clauses, but then I already have that in a neighboring empire.

Note of course that many people might not want to come back, and are happy where ever they ended up. One of the reasons why many of the families of victims would not wish a resurrection to be performed.

In the process of creating a new nation in the game world I'm running, I've had to put some thoughts to the laws and punishments of the land. For murder, all possessions acquired, distributed to next of kin of victim/s and death by crucifixion.
But wait, a player character was murdered. They caught the murderer and instead of killing them, they gave the murderers to the authorities and had their companion raised.
Well, he was killed, so that goes under that law, but he was raised, so that makes a little quirk for the law doesn't it?
So how do you think the ability to resurrect someone would effect the laws of the land in general, let alone other magic abilities that would change normal circumstances for consequences of actions and punishments for them?

In the process of creating a new nation in the game world I'm running, I've had to put some thoughts to the laws and punishments of the land. For murder, all possessions acquired, distributed to next of kin of victim/s and death by crucifixion.
But wait, a player character was murdered. They caught the murderer and instead of killing them, they gave the murderers to the authorities and had their companion raised.
Well, he was killed, so that goes under that law, but he was raised, so that makes a little quirk for the law doesn't it?
So how do you think the ability to resurrect someone would effect the laws of the land in general, let alone other magic abilities that would change normal circumstances for consequences of actions and punishments for them?

We had a discussion in our group awhile back that was pretty deep and really ended with the conclusion that all of us had a good idea of what alignments were what. Just a mechanic to represent an aspect of a character that wouldn't be around except for some parts of magic depend on it.
After that discussion, I've changed several character's alignments. The big one was the orc barbarian going from chaotic neutral to neutral good. No one argued it. And, based on actions... There was a cohort that was in the party whom was badly hurt and a holy smite in the middle of the party would be perfect to take out some devils they were fighting. They realized they really didn't know if she was neutral or good and placed the smite in another area that wouldn't possibly wipe out the cohort.
That said, I don't know what this guy is like that you're dealing with. If he's just a jerk in general, you need to figure out if this is fun to continue or not. I was running a scion game before that broke up because it was no longer fun for me to run while having to put up with one of the 3 players that was in the group.

The sorcerous pretender worked great. The party was halfway to the blighted area on a 10x10 carpet with the archer, the gnome bard and the dwarven fighter. The bard realized that something was wrong with the monk and used bluff and sense motive and roleplayed a way to figure out something was very wrong with the monk. Thinking he's under the influence of a charm spell, he secretly looked at the monk with true sight and saw it was a tiefling halfling polymorphed.

The gnome was able to get all the inuendo and clear message to the dwarf, in song, that this wasn't the monk they knew without the archer or the monk realizing it. The dwarf smelled and realized there was a smell of make up coming from the monk and grappled him. The sorcerer used his anklets of translocation to teleport behind the carpet and used the dragon breath spell to hurt everyone on the carpet... Que semi epic battle with large summoned demons and a confused archer and lots of holy water.

It went over rather well, with the party going back to the city and interrogating the sorcerer, investigating the city, leading a mob (the whole party are heros of the community), finding the murderous assistants, getting the monk raised. In the end, the monk gets to tell the party of the heavenly temple he went to and the god who told him it was okay to leave and that the god would be coming down to earth in the city. Now the monk leave's the party to try to replicate that temple.

I think I'll go with the doppleganger idea. Hook it into a larger plot and use it as a way to introduce further adventure. We'd just see how long it takes the party to figure it out.
What I didn't mention in my post is that there's a definite sense of haste about the mission needing to be completed. We're talking end of the world type haste.
I'll just use the "doppleganger" as one of the race of half-devil hobbits that are trying to get blighted area going. If they don't figure it out in time, their first encounter in that area might involve a fireball in the back.
After the mission, the group would probably pursue finding him and possibly routing out any of the other devilish types in the town they thought was free of them.
That way I can bring in the new gmpc right away as an assistant or expert for this situation.

Incidentally, I was thinking about the archer because that's a huge party weakness and while people tend to be specialized, the monk had started to be a better melee fighter than the fighter or barbarian, which is where they should really be the best.

I've come to a cross roads with the GM character I've been running. Basically the heavy strength based monk started outshining the other melee based player characters around level 8 to 9 and at the top of level 10, I need to get rid of him. I never meant for the GM character to be anything more than a support character and a tool to help move plots along.

Well, I'm going to get rid of him and replace him with an archer. That will fill a ranged combat role that is somewhat missing in the party. The problem is, getting him to go away in a plausible manner.

He's lawful good, might as well be a paladin in attitude. He's an oread. He's had doubts recently as he's catching himself edging towards neutrality. The party has recently, after many months of travel, come to a new city where many of them plan on staying. They've been asked to go investigate an unholy area that seems to have devils of different sorts moving around in it. They were told they could use some lent flying carpets to get there in minimal time, (around 24 hours continual flight).

Character's mother is the big priestess who asked the group to do this. Character has a huge martial arts tome that he planned on using to start up a monk temple in this newly declared capitol.

So, what would be a good in character reason or way to remove said monk from the group?

Ended up going with a half fiend mountain dragon. Was rather effective... Until I didn't look up the counterspell rules I haven't used in pathfinder before. So some of those nifty spells, like a perfectly positioned blasphemy that would have effected everyone got countered when it shouldn't have.

Then the monk, who has a belt that can cast enlarge person on him for 10 rounds a day was able to grapple it enough to keep it from flying off and held it in place for a round or two. Unfortunately that perfectly positioned blasphemy now perfectly positioned him to get ganged up on and the rest was history.

So now they're going to investigate an area made unholy by the dragon and maybe go to a supposed dragon's graveyard. The place where dragons from near and far go to die of old age.

Definite stuff to mine from that.

I was looking for some inspiration. My muse doesn't seem to be singing in my ear this week as I play for the weekend's session. My problem is the group of characters (equivalent level 11, pretty well covers areas except for ranged being their weakness) is moving through the tibetan highlands (geographical setting) away from civilization as they know it. They're going to be traveling for around 2 months.

So, what's happening along the way? Winter's coming early.

I could use some ideas, as they do have quite some time to cover in game.

Reminds me of a player who wanted to start making adamantine weapons. Realizing that he'd go through lots of anvils and hammers, he decided to ask about an adamantine anvil. That of course could be cost prohibitive. So, an adamantine anvil with an iron core.

But shortly after that, I had to switch to a cost per pound system as a few players started buying the special materials in bars for later use.

Yar.

Link to the rules for Avalanches

Avalanches are a CR 7 event. They travel as far as you/the GM deems necessary. Everything else (width, PC location relative to it's size, damage, getting buried, etc) is covered by that entry.

Hypothermia is lightly touched upon in the Cold Dangers entry, found here:

LINKY

~P

Thanks. No idea why the search on prd & pfsrd didn't bring it up at first.

How would you handle an avalanche?
Have a party heading through the mountains and want a combat to trigger one. Just not sure how to handle the damage from slabs of ice or possible suffocation or hypothermia or getting trapped or not or digging yourself out or others out.

The idea is that the group is going to meet a very high level female wizard that is seeking her long (a few hundred years) dead lover. The lover was a Lich (very evil) who's philactery was destroyed. But, when they were younger, the soul had a spell of reincarnation bound to it. So when the soul was freed from the phylactery, instead of simply being gone, the soul was reincarnated. She's travelling to the land that the characters are originally from and in the process of moving away from.

The hook is that the lover's name is the exact same name of a hero that's an oracle that is also very high level and is said to have been found, in his early adventuring days, as an adult (of a different race than said wizard or lover) with no memory of his childhood.

I'm working off of the idea that the soul was not tainted from it's earlier good version and acts due to the binding of the reincarnation spell before. What came after that literally isn't a part of the character any longer.

What I'm really hooking this onto is that said high level oracle is basically the founding father of a new nation and the group is already suspecting there's an evil group working within the new political groups to try and take power from the foundation.

I wanted to have a plot hook in my game with a wizard that reincarnated, but with total amnesia. Is there any way to do this with the rules as written?

So one of the characters in my game wants to get a phylactory of change ala arms & equipment guide 3.5, or "Mask of many shapes" as it would be called. The listed market price is 11200. For those not familiar, basically gives polymorph self indefinitely, can change form once per day, and go back to normal form when you take it off.

Does the price seem a bit low to you? I'm not quite sure, mostly for the utilitarian aspect of it, but I was thinking of raising the price to 15000. What do you think?

How do you handle languages in your campaign?

So far I've had common be a small uncomplicated trade language that changes slightly as you span over geographical areas. I still have race languages, including Human. But given a drastic enough area change, even racial languages will be different to some extent. And of course, if one race completely dominates an area, their language pretty much is "common".

What do you think?

On a related note with some thread necromancy. There is this as well.

In case your players want to pick up large object Hulk style to throw at the bad guys.

Throw Anything Damage.

Just occurred to me, the party has access to the enlarge person spell. But then, I can't find any rules as far as being bigger increasing jump distance, thought it seems like it should.

How would you rule that?

I was looking at interesting ways to challenge the gaming group and ran across the 'evil eye' beholder wannabe. I realized that the creature could stay moving around and stay 40 to 50 feet above the party and the group would have a horrible time of it.

The group 9th level and has a barbarian two handed weapon fighter, a two weapon melee fighter, a bard, an oracle healer, a pretty generic rogue with a hand crossbow, a grapple monk. Well, none of them are great with ranged and couple with low savings throws on some characters, we're looking at some very bad off characters pretty quickly.

So how would you suggest the group deals with the threat? I've checked the first thought that the monk can only get to about 29 feet with max rolls and anklets of translocation. So how would you roll for something like the big strong barbarian giving a hand support and helping toss up the monk when he jumped?

Or just the let the encounter be rather long and nasty?

Don't forget to have your favorite bow enchanted with permanent gravity bow spell.