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So a sorcerer wants to polymorph and then use subtle spell to cast while polymorphed. The argument is that with polymorph, the lack of ability to use hands or voice is nullified by subtle spells not requiring verbal or somatic components.

Here is the appropriate section of polymorph spell:

"The creature is limited in the actions it can perform by the nature of its new form, and it can't speak, cast spells, or take any other action that requires hands or speech."

Here is subtle spell:

"When you cast a spell, you can spend 1 sorcery point to cast it without any somatic or verbal components."

I guess it comes down to this:

Is casting spells something different from other action that require hands or speech? Or is casting spells included in the text as an example of something you can not do? The word "or" is the sticky widget here. If the reason that casting spells is forbidden in polymorph is solely because of the need for hands and voice, then subtle spell would seem to negate that.

Remember also, that subtle spell requires a sorcery point, so its not an unlimited trick.

I know ultimately the DM gets to decide this and its up to them, but what do you guys think?

So I get it, you can't cleave and vital strike in the same round. My question then is why did Paizo use the term "attack action" in the Vital Strike description instead of the term "Standard Action". Seems like that would have avoided confusion.

I know that there are other things you can do as a Standard Action besides attack. But the description of cleave uses the phrase "As a standard action", not "As an attack action" like in Vital Strike.

Can an attack action be something other than a standard action?

Hey guys, just a few quick observations to make sure I understand it right. Animals are actually nerfed when they become companions, they lose their racial feats, and they seem to suffer a constitution hit (which they get back later through the companion leveling track).

Example: Pony pg 177 Bestiary.

The pony in the bestiary has a 14 Con, and two racial feats, Run and Endurance. However when it becomes an animal companion, as per pg 54 CRB, it's con is now a 12, and it loses Run and Endurance.

I've noticed the seems to be the case with every companion I looked at it, it loses its feats and seem to suffer an ability hit.

Is that right? The pony that is a companion starts off weaker than a regular pony (It gets much MUCH better as it levels up with its master, I get that)and is featless?

Seems a bit harsh if so.

Thanks.

Hi,

I have a general question and a specific example to illustrate the question. When adding a template to a creature that changes it's HD, do you adjust the CR and then change it's HD, or do you change the HD and then adjust the CR based on the new HD? CR is dependent on HD in this case.

In particular I am trying to make a gnome warrior skelton champion (yarrg). Part of the reason I am confused is because I don't like to just trust hero lab blindly. Its a great program but fairly buggy about things like this and it disagrees with the Bestiary. My terrible DM math disgrees with both! So I am turning to you dear readers to help guide my thinking on this!

Ok so, base creature is a gnome warrior CR 1/3. I will be refering to pages 250 and 252 of the Bestiary. It says that a skeletal champion has a CR of +1 higher than a normal skeleton with the same HD. It also says to change all the creatures racial HD to D8s, then add 2 racial HD to this total. HD from class levels are unchanged.

Option A) Here is how the Bestiary seems to have done the math. Base creature 1 HD from class level, no racial HD to take away, so add 2, for a total of 3 HD. On the chart on page 250 a regular skeleton with 3 HD has a CR of 1, add 1 to that for a total of CR 2.

Option B) This seems to be how Hero Lab figured it. Base creature is 1 HD A regular skeleton with 1 HD is a CR 1/3. Since a skeletal champion has CR of 1 higher than a normal skeleton with the same HD, we go up one higher on the chart on page 250, and treat the new creature as if it has 2 HD, which gives a grand total of CR 1. Then continue to change the bae creature by adding the addition HD.

Both ways seem to have thier logic. After all the CR adjustment is listed first on page 252 (first as in before the HD adjustment). I hope I have made the issue clear. It is kind of an order of operations issue, and I can find no evidence in the book as to which way is right (except of course that the example creature came out to CR2 and started the EXACT same CR as my base creature, a human warrior and a gnome warrior have the same HD and CR).

Is Hero Lab wrong?
Did the Bestiary mess up it's own math?

.......Help...

Thanks ;-P

So, I'd like to run a undead uprising / zombie apocalypse one-shot for my group. But my concern is how do I keep wave after wave of zombie encounters from dragging or being boring. Same enemies over and over ect... Any ideas? Thanks!

Casting summon monster as a sorcerer or wizard or cleric or even summon creature as a druid has always been a full-round action. One of my players surprised me by casting it as a standard action as a wordcaster (words of power sorcerer). Does this seem like an exploit to anyone besides me. As far as I can tell he is right, words of power are all standard actions. Just seems strange to me....

My GM leveled us from 10 to 20 last week, I can tell he is getting tired of running. I saw him drooling over the Tarrasque entry in the Bestiary, and no I didn't look at his notes or anything, he was very vocal about it.

I am playing a sorcerer, and heres my plan. Attempt to plane shift the beast. If i cannot get past his spell resist, maybe use a wish to negate it, then try again. Direct damage seems to be a hopless cause. Any thoughts or suggestions?

There are a ton of excellent guides out there for low to medium level sorcerer builds, and they served me well but I'm outleveling them.

My DM either in a moment of madness or just plain weirdness suddenly leveled us from 11 to 20!!!! Midget gaming anyone? lol.

Anyway, I am playing a drow sorcerer with the draconic bloodline, and again the spell selection guides have helped me up to this point, but I can seem to find any halfway decent guides on spells after 5th level.

Im looking for just general good solid sorcerer spell selections, any advice or help is appreciated.

Hi,

Ok i know this get's intense to put it mildly, but I just need to know how close I am to understanding this ability set that has vexed me since DnD 3.0.

Situation: PC falls into a underground lake wherein he is attacked by an anaconda (or a constrictor as per the Bestiary). The snake wishes to kill and eat the poor guy. It has grab and constrict. Assuming the dice go perfectly for the snake (and therefore badly for the poor PC), and the snake wants to do nothing but damage the PC as much as possible, no moving or pinning or anything, here is how the combat would go acording to my reading of the rules...

Round 1
Snake bites, gets to start a grapple as a free action (+4 bonus due to GRAB), no AoO, the Pc takes Bite damage, and constrict damage (he does NOT take the free damage from grab, nor can the snake choose the "damage" grapple action). Assume PC fails his escape attempt this round.

Round 2
Snake succesfully maintains the grapple as a STANDARD action, not free anymore (he gets a +9 on the roll to do this btw +5 from page 200 crb, and an additional +4 from GRAB ability bestiary 1 301). Therefore the PC takes: 1. Damage as a grapple action (bite natural attack, page 200 CRB), 2. Bite damage again (not from the bite per se, but from the Grab EX ability, page 301, Best 1), and 3. Constrict damage again since the snake made a successful grapple check (Best 1, 301). as a MOVE action the snake takes the PC under water and so the PC is subject to drowning rules (which I will not go into here).

Round 3
Same as round 2, this poor PC is screwed!

The rules on 300 say that you may choose to deal damage equal to a natural attack (a summary), so that would be the snakes bite attack in this case, as part of the standard action of maintaining the grapple.

The rules for grab and constrict say that the damage from these abilities is applied whenever a successful grapple is maintained (constrict adds the language of INITIATING a grapple, that's why it applies to round 1).

There is nothing that says these abilities are separate or that you have to choose one or the other. So to me it seems that in subsequent rounds, as a standard action you can apply bite damage (200 crb) apply grab damage (same as a bite)(best 1, 301), AND constrict damage (best 1, 301).

----------------------or----------------------

Does the word HOLD mean something different than maintain a grapple?

On 301 of the bestiary 1, it speaks of conducting the grapple normally or using the part of the body that intiated the grapple to HOLD the target. If you do this you get a -20 on the check to start and maintain the grapple.

If you succeed the target is held apparently. A held target is not subject to grab damage on the initial round but can still be constricted, on subsequent rounds the HELD target gets the grab damage AND constrict damage, but NOT the grapple action damage as per pg. 200 cause it is held, and not grappled.

Also if being held is NOT the same as being grappled, then my above reading is wrong, and a grappled target does not take the grab damage, because being grappled isn't the same as being held. So therefore a grappled target would take bite damage, and constrict damage on round 1, and on round two, it would take grapple action damage, and constrict damage, but NOT grab damage.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The sticky widget here is the 301 bestiary 1 entry about GRAB. About halfway down it says...

"The creature has the option to conduct the grapple normally, or simply (ha thats a laugh) use the part of its body it used in the grab to hold the opponent."

Does everything after this sentence in this paragraph apply ONLY to the special situation where the monster is HOLDING a target in one hand (or tentacle, claw, mouth ect.), or does the sentece after the next one pick up talking about regular grappled creatures AND "held" creatures again...?

"A successful hold does not deal any extra damage..."(ect ect until the end of the paragraph)

---------------------------------------------------------------

TL:DR

Is Hold the same as grapple?

If yes...
Round 1. Snake bites and intiates grapple, does bite and constrict damage.
Round 2. Snake mantains grapple as standard action, does grapple action, grab, and constrict damage.

If no...
Round 1. Snake bites and intiates grapple, does bite and constrict damage.
Round 2. Snake maintains grapple as standard action, does grapple action and constrict damage only.

(BTW if no, then what possible reason is there to choose to grab instead of grapple? Either way you are spending a standard action to maintain, so you couldn't make other attacks, so why would you give yourself the -20? What am i missing here?)

Thanks a LOT for any help.

I am usually to wordy, so I'll get to the point.

We were fighting through a mage tower and we got hit with a Prismatic Ray. We all got the indigo "insanity" ray (Dm realized later that this isn't really how it works, he should have rolled randomly on the chart for each PC, not once for all of us). So we are all under the effect of an insanity spell.

The insanity spell reads that the targets are under a CONSTANT confusion effect. Does this mean that there is no save other than the initial save to avoid the ray, and no duration? So we are all just confused forever or until some random NPC figures it out and helps us by one of the methods listed in the spell? Since the whole party is insane we effectively cannot help each other and are just stuck forever right? Does that seem a little OP? Am I missing something?

By the way heres what happened. After we were all confused, the spellcaster just sat back and watched us kill each other. Eventually I was able to cast dispel magic to help the party out (Which begs the question, will dispel magic remove the effect? The spell says only Greater restore, heal, limit wish or wish. Is removing a status CAUSED by a spell, a seprate category from removing the Spell itself? Even though the end result is the same?). But by that time all of my party was dead (one guy died just after I dispelled him). So I was alone. clear headed, and Greaterly Invisible. So being desperate and wanting to go out in a blaze of glory, I appeared in front of the guy and broke my staff over my knee!

Turns out Pathfinder staffs dont cause the devastation that I remember D&D staffs did when they broke (except the Staff of the Magi, an artifact). But my DM liked the idea so much that he allowed it any way. So I rolled my D%, and wound up on a different plane instead of dead, and the bad guy, his whole tower and most of the town was completely obliterated. Awesomeness.

Of course I lived, which i didn't expect, so now I have a few people who arent to happy with me. Should be interesting.

So yeah I should know this. If I am a sorcerer whom can cast level 3 spells on my own, and I get my hands on a staff that has say, a 5th level spell on it, can I cast that spell even though I cannot through my class.

While we are at it, some question involving wands.

I should know this, and i feel stupid.

Thanks.

Hello everyone. I am (again) working on further detailing a campaign setting that I've toyed with for the last 8-9 years or so. I probbably should have abandoned it years ago but I am stubborn I suppose lol. Oh and also it's not like I've worked dilligently on it for the last decade, just an off and on project that is on again. With that in mind I need some advice on my pantheon. First I will explain in very brief terms, the way my pantheon works so far. Then I will describe the two options to fill it in that I am considering. Thank you ahead of time for reading the whole thing (oh and yes, this is influenced heavily by J.R.R. Tolkien's book the Simillarion, which I may like better than even LOTR.

The alpha diety is called Irmendoll. From him were spawned 4 Avatars. These each recieved a part of Iremendoll's vision for creation of the world. They are:

Elonna- Holy, Avatar of light, gave gift of goodness and divine magic.

Winnarow- Nature Avatar, formed the physical world, created divine (druid) magic. Made animals plants and sentient races. All about balance.

Vinar- This one is kinda tough to explain. She is the Avatar of souls. She is the Charon of my world, except that she is also the Hades, but not evil. She created the seas and waters of the world. She also gave souls to the sentient. A portion of the flavor text for her reads, "all souls must in the end travel the seas of death to await the pronouncement of her doom in her ancient halls" (Think Mandos from the Simillarion, for those who've read it). Again though, not evil.

Majel- She is chaotic! When the other Avatars poured their blessings into creation she (the most powerful avatar) created a counter blessing to each of the other avatars blessing, sort of a pervsion of their work. She tainted Ellona's blessing to create evil and tyranny, evil divine magic, and arcane magic (power without needing loyalty to anything). Winnarows she tainted to create Abberations, Unnatural creatures, drought famine ect. Vinar- tainted to create immortality and undead creatures, liches ect. She is not really evil but more of a chaotic spoiler to the others.

Option A: Assign domains from the CRB to these Avatars and leave it be. My concern with this option is that there is not REALLY an evil diety for those campaigns, oh evil exsists to be sure, and Majel and even Winnarow to a point could be worshipped by evil characters. But they are not truly evil dieties. There is conflict still between Avatars, especially Majel and there is no reason two clerics of Ellona for example couldn't diasagree to the point of battle.

Option B: Create another layer of sub-dieties. I will call them paragons, and they will be the courtesans of the avatars if you will. I will make 10 or 12 of them of various alignments, each will have an associated avatar, and I will assign domains as seems appropriate. This will create a lot more options for players, and perhaps add some more options for conflict. I like the idea of no directly evil dieties though; its something different and I think will allow for interesting RP opportunities.

Either way, there will still be evil clerics, and the lovely evil monsters of the Bestiarys will still exsist. I would like to keep the Pantheon relatively simple, as in my world the Avatar chooses you, not the other way around. You are literally called to service in the clergy by one of the Avatars (if the player rolls a cleric). Adding a lot of extra paragons will water down the "power" of this event if you will. But if my idea is totally horrible and un-playable than I will change it and add the paragons.

There is a lot more I could share with you about my pantheon, and this is a very rough sketch. I appreciate your time though, and don't want to take advantage. If you read all this then thanks a lot!

I am trying to understand the ins and outs of high fantasy, as opposed to normal games. I know that the players get more points for the point buy system, and they get more treasure, and the NPC characters get a little more loot. Is there something I'm missing? It would have been nice if all this was put in one place instead of spread all over the book. Assuming my list is comprehensive, I have a few issues...

All the changes seem to benefit the PCs, but I see nothing in the "Designing Encounters" section that tells me to adjust the difficulty of the monster fights. So is high fantasy just a way to make the game easier for the players? They get all this extra gold and higher abilities, but fight the same old goblins that "regular" 15 point buy characters get? That doesn't sound right.

Now, I know that NPCs get double the gear value on 14-9, which makes them tougher. Fine, fair enough if you are making your own NPC's, but what if you are using a monster out of the Bestiary(s)? They are designed for standard fantasy right? How do you adjust them? I appreciate your "here's how I do it" advice I REALLY do, but I'm looking for a rule or something in the published materials. Thanks a lot guys.