moon glum's page

Yes. A swashbuckler can use opportune parry on their turn. They can make an opportune parry whenever an opponent makes a melee attack against them (provided they have the panache, and an attack of opportunity to spend).

Yes. A swashbuckler can riposte on their turn, since an immediate action can be taken at any time (not just on a creature's turn). It costs 1 more point of panache and their swift action. (When you take an immediate action on your turn, it counts as your swift action for that turn).

Note that means that you can then take another immediate action after the end of your turn (though that counts as your swift action for the next turn).

I would suggest ghouls. They are pale, they at most have a bone club, and they look like they could crawl on ceilings.

Implanted biotech dragon breath weapon glans! Cool.

I am curious about how spaceships are going to work in organized play. I totally grok how they will function for home games, but how will a spaceship's continuity be maintained in SFS? Will every character who had access to a the cutter 'Messy Scramble' in session N-3, where that ship gained a +2 targeting system for its pulse cannon, have the option of using that augmented ship in their next session, be that N-4, or P-17? Or will one particular character have to claim the ship, so that only they can access it in subsequent SFS games?

Technically, you can't use permanency to make mind blank permanent on creature. My 18th level wizard would totally do that though, if it were possible.

@McBugman:

For novels that are technically space opera (intersteller travel, advanced technology and aliens are commonplace) but have the serious literary tone of "hard" SF you should check out Iain M Banks "Culture" novels. "Excession" is a first contact story in a space opera setting.

Back on strange things to include, why "I am Legend" on the list? A story that boils down to "in a world of vampires the vampire hunter is the monster" seems as relevant to Starfinder as War and Peace.

I love the Culture novels, they are especially good for inspiration for starship names, for which Banks is legendary, e.g. 'Gunboat Diplomat', 'Undesirable Alien', 'Never Talk to Strangers', 'Funny, It Worked Last Time', 'Resistance is Character Forming', 'No More Mr. Nice Guy', ...

Starfinder is, IMNSHO, outre science fantasy space opera. As such, I would recommend:

Graphic Novels and Comics:

Saga, Image Comics. Television headed robot princes, sexy spider assassins, Wings vs. Horns. A ghost nanny. Civil war, sorcery, parenting, sex, drugs, romance writers.

ODY-C, Image Comics. Fight your way home across psychedelic, heroic light years.

The Kree-Skrull War, Marvel Comics. Deep sleeper 5th columnists who have been hypnotized into polymorphing themselves into cows. Earth is a little tactically beneficial island in the long game.

Literary Fiction:

Nine Fox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee. The calendrical system that a faction adopts determines the cosmological rules in which various super science technologies may operate.
Also, Conservation of Shadows, Yoon Ha Lee. Weird supernatural psychic metaphore intersects superscience space opera.

Cordwainer Smith: The Instrumentality of Mankind. Especially the stories 'A Game of Cat and Dragon', and 'The Ballad of Lost C'mell.

Rodger Zelazney, 'Lord of Light, Shadow Jack.

Movies (asides for the obvious Star Wars, Guardians):

5th Element

Jupiter Ascending

Chronicles of Riddick

All of the movies above are visually influenced by European fantasy art, e.g. Moebius, so I should add such works as Incal, Heavy Metal Magazine, Metal Hurlant, etc..

TV: Lex, Farscape, Firefly

Aaaaaaaaaaaah!

The more of the following that the lich does, the tougher the encounter will be...

Permenancies: See Invisibility, Arcane Sight
Permanent Illusion fo howling spirits of evil flitting around the encounter area and making a lot of noise to cover the sound of the invisible spell caster.

Having the players confront a simulacrum or two, or the liches projected image is also good.

Long duration spells that should be pre-cast:

Wizard:
Mage Armor
False Life/Greater False Life
Non detection
Resist Energy (fire, acid, sonic, in that order of importance)
Stone Skin
Echolocation (good for hiding within cloudkill/stinking cloud spells, to which the lich is immune, alternately, she could hide out in a cloudkill spell while wearing the magic item fog cutting lenses).

Cleric:
Spell Immunity (choose spells that the PCs have cast before and that the lich is not otherwise immune to).
Desecrate (in encounter area with alter, she is a mystic theurge, after all)
Freedom of Movement
Tongues

Min/level spells that should be pre-cast while the characters are dealing with the many magic mouths, glyphs of warding, created undead, and symbols just outside the encounter area:

Wizard:
Shield
Invisibility

Cleric:
Shield of Faith
Cat's Grace (assume she has a headband +4 Int/Wis)
Magic Circle vs. Good (stops good summoned monsters)
True Seeing

Spells cast while still invisible:
(perhaps with a silent metamagic rod, since they are relatively inexpensive):

Summon Monster's (silent meta magic rod if < SM VII). Instead of picking the toughest monsters (T-rex, tiger, etc.) its cooler to pick well themed monsters based on the lich priestess's religion and alignment.
Repulsion
Cloudkill/Stinking Cloud
Wall of Blindness/Deafness

Offensive Spells to Cast (cast quickened spells in combination with the most powerful spells)
Suffocate (vs. wizards and rogues)
Waves of Exhaustion
Harm
Mass Suggestion (leave your most treasured magic item here as an offering and leave this sacred place-- be grateful, for with your sacrifice comes mercy).
Blasphemy
Cold Ice Strike

Quickened Spells (a lesser rod of quicken will make a great reward for the players who defeat her):
Mirror Image
Scorching Ray
Cause Light/Moderate Wounds
Vanish
Magic Missile (good old standby, let the player with shield up gloat)

oh yeah, Star Trek is science fiction the same way that an Aircraft Carrier is a space ship. Its just... not. It superficially maybe sort of looks like it is but its really, really not.

"And i said, bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish, That's the way we do things here, make s**t up as we wish, the Klingons and the Romulons pose no threat to us cause if we find we're in a bind, totally screwed up but never mind, we just pull something out of our behinds, we just make some s**t up!"

The Vandermeres used an interesting defintion of science fiction for the anthology 'The Big Book of Science Fiction' (great anthology BTW): science fiction is fiction about the future. By that definition, star trek is science fiction.

I used to have my own definition of science fiction: Its fantasy fiction where the imagined world is presented to the reader through a scientific paradigm (as opposed to a magical one). By that definition, star trek is also science fiction.

If you were to allow only known, or even just believable science in your science fiction, then great science fiction classics like Dune, More Than Human, or A Fire Upon The Deep would not be SF. Nor would the *awesome* novel Nine Fox Gambit (a Nebula nominee this year).

I actually love science fiction that is more realistic and based in actual science. I love space opera with STL relativistic drives, for example, and for that reason think 'A Deepness in the Sky' is better than 'A Fire Upon the Deep'. But realistic (i.e. 'hard') SF doesn't define the genre, its just an approach to it.

The bramblewood lies just to the southwest of the village. The rose river runs through it. The bramblewood is wild and dense, having never been logged. This is not just due to the thick layer of skin ripping bramble thorns that covers the forest floor, but also because of family of were boars that dwells in its interior, and the redcap that haunts the banks of the rose river, who is known to the villagers as Mr. Redpunch.

A secretive group of villagers in Home carry on a dark tradition of giving Mr. Redpunch those elderly villagers that seem unable to care for themselves. These evil villagers delight in watching Mr. Redpunch brutally beat and stomp these elders to death.

I don't think there is a rule anywhere for this. Can you glob multiple charges of cylex together to create a massive bomb?

I have been waffling between not allowing it, maxing the damage out at 24d6 fire + 24d6 bludgeoning (with 4 charges), or increasing the damage by +2d6 fire + 2d6 bludgeoning, the save DC by +1, and the radius by +5 feet per additional charge (10 charges would be DC 26, 85 foot radius, 24d6 fire + 24d6 bludgeoning at a cost of 36,000 gp retail).

What do you all think?

If the PCs destroy both power conduits in area C19, "all monorail stations ... on the deck ... deactivate." When they defeat Bastion, "the security sector shuts down as if both power conduits in area C19 were deactivated."

Without the monorails, how are the PCs supposed to leave the security sector and go to area D or return to Starfall? Am I missing something?

It seems as though characters could fly down the monorail tubes and up the lifts. They may encounter obsticals, e.g. stuck trams, plasma oozes, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. It does defeat the point of having the characters try to re-start the graviton generator to power up secondary engineering though, so I was just about to ask your question...

If a creature has reach and they cast a spell with, say, an area of effect that is a line or a cone, can the point of origin of the spell be any square within the creature's reach, or must it originate from a space that they occupy? For example, if an ogre mage with a 10' reach uses a cone of cold, can they choose as a point of origin for the cone of cold any point within 10' of the 10'x10' square that they occupy?

Similarly, can monsters with reach choose as a point of origin any point within the reach of the appropriate member? For example, can a dragon whose bite has a 15' reach choose as a point of origin for their breath weapon any point within the reach of their bite?

In a science fantasy universe without clerics per se, gods could be different from the D&D gods we are used to, because you don't have classes that basically need to have a god to worship. Given that, there might be different categories of gods.

* Old Gods: gods from Golarion's past, e.g. Desna, et al. Sone of these may be losing their power as the memory of them fades, as per 'Who Morns of Adonnis', Star Trek Original Series.

* Iron Gods: Casandralee, Helion, Divinity, et al.

* TNG style Q-beings.

* Elder Gods: Hastar, Asathoth, Yog Sogoth, et al. This category includes include other sorts of ultra powerful, ancient alien beings.

* False Gods: beings that have duped tribes, nations, planets, star sectors into worshiping them. Such belief may or may nor confer magical, divine power, but it certainly confers wealth and worldly power.

* Alien Gods: gods created and worshiped on alien worlds. These would be an alien world's equivalent of an Old God, Elder God, Iron God or False god. Some of these would be unknown until their respective alien worlds were discovered.

Note that these categories overlap, because any being of sufficient power, and knowledge, is indistinguishable from a god to relatively who are relatively impotent and ignorant.

1st level sorcerer/wizard spells that have proven useful as scrolls:
Unseen Servant
Floating Disk
Protection from Evil/Good/Law/Chaos (good counter against mind control)
Comprehend Languages
Detect Secret Doors
Shield
Mage Armor
Air Bubble
Mount
Obscuring Mist
Touch of the Sea or Monkey Fish
Disguise Self
Ant Haul
Magic Weapon

Alternatively you could go for the Hail Mary and use Persistent Ghoul Touch - beating SR is a cinch with just Spell Penetration / being an elf and a Dweomer Essence, passing on a 5 or better - and if you pass the enemy is -paralyzed- in "Please Coup De Grace Me" position for 1d6+1 rounds.

Inevitables are all immune to paralysis, because of their constructed quality. They are tough, but I think the Zelekhut is only CR 9 tough.

Glitterdust blinds him if he fails a will save, but he has +10 to his will save, so the chances of him failing are going to be below 50% for an 8th level caster.

That's true but there is only one inevitable and 5 PCs, so if did fail that save even once, it would take a serious beating.

Other CR 9 monsters are just as tough. Look out for the Leukodaemon, especially if you are not ready to counteract disease. Just a few weeks ago I almost TPK'ed a party of five 14th level PCs with a small group of those things.

The constant true seeing is powerful against PCs, because it negates many defenses that the PCs might have, such as blur, displacement, mirror image, illusory wall, and improved invisibility, but I don't think the monster is overpowered. Heck, glitterdust could mess with it, and many PCs will have at least one dose of oil of align weapon. What you may be experiencing is that your particular group has not yet developed the techniques to effectively fight that particular monster. Players often need to learn to counter things like SR, flight, various form of DR, poison, and certain spells, that doesn't happen until they fight a monster that threatens them with those abilities.

There are certainly monsters that are too tough for their CR though. A death squad of four CR 7 sceaduinars (A 9th level encounter) would be much more dangerous, what with their anti-life shells protecting them while they blast the players with enervation before casting deeper darkness, and then using their life sense to attack players blinded in the midst of the deeper darkness with their harm and slay living spells.

There are already many pathfinder monsters that work in a high tech star-faring setting-- especially the Lovecraftian monsters, oozes and plants.

Monsters that can fight starships would be cool.

From classic trek, I'd like to see the extra-dimensional alien sorcerer space chickens from 'Cat's Paw'.

Inspired by Cordwainer Smith: wormhole dwelling phase dragons, and genetically modified human/animal creatures.

I expect that the krytons and the various creatures from the dominion of the black will be present.

Organic spaceships that have gone rogue, super sentient fungi that take over asteroids mining colonies and end up creating mossy mimicries of the humans and structures in the colony, undead planets, nebula oozes.

I have woken screaming from dreams wherein there is no adventure path after Strange Aeons, because the return of the Great Old Ones brings about the end of the multiverse. After Strange Aeons, there are only board games and one off modules set in pocket dimensions that have yet to devolve into madness-- pocket dimensions whose reality is only evanescent, and whose doom haunts their inhabitants' nightmares.

Snowlilly wrote:

_Ozy_ wrote:

Yup, as I said. Debatable.

With a sufficiently pedantic reading, anything can be debated.

Using common English interpretation of the provided rules, not so much.

You've got to be kidding me. Since See Invisibility is not a detect spell, nor one of the listed examples, there is NOTHING that demands Nondetection protects against it, nor anything that demands Nondetection doesn't protect against it.

In fact, looking at the spells that are listed, Nondetection seems to protect specifically against spells that target specific objects, areas, or creatures, along with detect spells. See Invisibility is a perception enhancement, so does not seem to belong in that list.

There is no 'common English interpretation' that either specifically includes or excludes See Invisibility, so I reject your comment 100%.

The spell is not ambiguous. It says:

"If a divination is attempted against the warded creature or item, the caster of the divination must succeed on a caster level check (1d20 + caster level) against a DC of 11 + the caster level of the spellcaster who cast nondetection. If you cast nondetection on yourself or on an item currently in your possession, the DC is 15 + your caster level."

Is see invisibility a divination spell? Yes it is. So, a the caster must make a caster level check.

As a DM, if you do not like sneaky PCs with invisibility, have companion creature with blind sight/sense, or a spell caster with a non-divination invisibility spoiling spell such as echolocation, or use the old chalk-like substance (the powdered bones of previous would be thieves, for example) on the floor.

I would say that if a supernatural ability would be treated as a spell for the purposes of disrupting concentration.

"Spell: If you are affected by a spell while attempting to cast a spell of your own, you must make a concentration check or lose the spell you are casting. If the spell affecting you deals damage, the DC is 10 + the damage taken + the level of the spell you're casting.

If the spell interferes with you or distracts you in some other way, the DC is the spell's saving throw DC + the level of the spell you're casting. For a spell with no saving throw, it's the DC that the spell's saving throw would have if a save were allowed (10 + spell level + caster's ability score)."

So, for something like, say, a witch's agony hex, the DC would be the DC of the hex + spell level.

I would not say something like Evil Eye, Misfortune, or the like would interfere with concentration, but, say, a void dragon's alien presence aura would.

Here is the spell book that I used for Marrow:

1st: technomancy, cause fear, shield, charm person, magic missile, ray of enfeeblement, detect undead, detect metal, decompose corpse, restore corpse, sculpt corpse

2nd: blindness/deafness, command undead, scorching ray, daze monster, ghoul touch, shatter

3rd: ray of exhaustion, lightning bolt, hold person, vampiric touch, call the void, preserve corpse

4th: bone shatter, enervation, animate dead

Note that when I ran this part, I made Marrow 7th level. Just remove the 4th level spells for a 6th level Marrow.

Yes, there are some deadly encounters.

While faerie fire certainly does only affect the actual creatures and objects in its 5 foot radius burst, any visible effect that the caster of the mirror image is subject to is seemingly duplicated by the images. Otherwise, just making the caster of a mirror image spell bleed would negate the spell. So, glitterdust does not negate mirror image, nor does burning the caster of mirror image with a fireball, or hitting them with tanglefoot bag, or turning their nose blue with prestidigitation.

I think that if there is a weird rule quick here, its not that faerie fire does not negate mirror image, but that the rules make it sound like faerie fire creates more light when there are more objects in its area of effect, and I doubt that faerie fire is meant to produce more light the more objects there are in its area of effect. I believe that the intent of the wording is to mean that there a flickering candle strength glow coming from the 10 foot diameter circle that the faerie fire spell affect, and any number of faerie fire affected objects in a 5' area only generate 1 candles worth of light. Otherwise, you could put, say, 100,000 copper pieces in the spell's area of affect, and get 100,000 candle power worth of light. That would be weird.

Oh why, oh why must my beautiful box the glistening delightful minis be surrounded by diminutive, statically charged, demons of agonizing torment! Why do condemn your customers to the carpet soiling, choking doom of Styrofoam peanuts!?!?!?! Like vampiric albino leeches they cling to my flesh, and drain my life energy!

What exactly do you mean by 'fox form', do you mean fox-like humanoid, or the tiny animal fox?

In the former case, that creature speaks all of its languages (common and sylvan at the least), so there should be no communication problem.

In the latter case, while a tiny fox (an animal) can't speak without some kind of magic (unless the DM allows foxes to speak), it retains its intellect and personality and so can understand all of its languages (common and sylvan). I would think it could use the bluff skill to convey messages (perhaps requiring a sense motive skill check to be understood). It could also scratch written messages in the dirt.

I don't understand why it would be good for a swashbuckler to remain a fox all of the time. How would they use a sword?

While this monster was not my favorite, I think that personal tastes aside it may be the best monster of the bunch. Its story matter is excellent in that I could use it to create a whole 1 session adventure based on the monster, and it is poetic, sorrowful, and horrific. I immediately reminded me of the Harlan Ellison short story, 'The Whimper of Whipped Dogs'.

Then the mechanics present unique abilities that could well lead to some memorable and terrible battles.

With regards to Alanya's comment above, I think that people can see them, but they will have 20% concealment and you will be flat footed without true seeing. That's the way I read the naturally ignored power.

I also read the isolate power as allowing someone to attack a tatterghoul that is fighting an ally, but the they can't target the isolated ally with anything helpful (e.g. mass cure wounds, bardic performance, haste, aid another action), though the power is unclear on this issue.

Since one of my games is a piratey type campaign, I am always interested in monstrous shell fish, and as soon as I read the description of a giant oyster that wields a scimitar with its tongue, it got my vote.

However, scimitars are difficult to wield underwater. If I get the chance to use a scrapshell oyster might give it an ability that lets them use any one handed melee weapon underwater without penalty.

Also, it would be more fun if they were clannish, rather than solitary, and had a sort of undersea feudal culture with oyster knights, and squires and warlords. Then players could fight large numbers of them at once, which makes for a better battle.

I like this monster, and not just because I am a sucker for a weird sisters Shakespeare reference. I see it as similar to Brown Jenkin from H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Dreams in the Witch House', but with furry cat-like features (rather than the rat like features of Brown Jenkin), hands like a human, and a wicked, bearded human face.

As a cat person myself, I find it especially frightful that a Malkin might replace a family pet.

I believe that there is room in the monster collection for weird, evil fey, and perhaps because many people love cats, there really are not enough evil creatures with ties to the domestic house cat.

This kitten has got my vote!

This was one of my top 4. I don't believe I have ever before seen an undead creature that summons a guillotine to chop of someone's head. Also, it has a Disney's Haunted Mansion vibe, which is a great thing. I would like a miniature of this thing with the accompanying translucent guillotine.

My underleveled group took on Binox tonight. They entered the battle injured and with resources missing (spells in particular). They are a party of four level 8 characters vs a CR 12 Binox. I was thinking he was going to chew them up. First round the sorceress pulls out Xoud's spellbook and casts rebuke technology. Binox fails the save which means he is essentially paralysed for 8 rounds (though he gets a save every round). They managed to chew through him in one round.

Players continue to surprise me. My favourite adventure so far.

My players also destroyed Binox fairly quickly.

Poor Binox. Its hard out there for a megalomaniacal A.I.

My players just finished the choking tower. Last game they traveled overland to the Scar of the Spider. During their journey, they fended off mutant two headed trolls (one with five arms), and a small flock of rift drakes.

Next week they enter the valley of the brain collectors. I am really looking forward to running this leg of the adventure path. It looks awesome.

How about an android investigator (empiricist) / swashbuckler (inspired blade). His name might be El. A level of inspired blade will give you a boost to melee combat with finesse, weapon focus, and inspiration. You will also have the prerequisites to take fencing grace. Empiricist fits well with a unemotional being like an android.

The new unchained rogue is both an excellent skill monkey, and a dangerous and effective combatant. You could take firearm proficiency as a rogue talent, if you want to use technological fire arms. The numerian archeologist trait would work well with such a character. You will want to also take a trait like mathematical aptitude (its called something like that), so that you can have knowledge engineering as a class skill-- it is the skill that is used to identify the many technological items you will find.

Thank you all for your comments!

Cool. I am going totally going to use these.

I agree with commenters that were troubled by the gaze attack. A quick fix for that would be to have it do wisdom damage:

Gaze (Su): 1d6 Wisdom damage, 30 feet, Will DC 19 negates. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Thanks for all of the comments!

This is a monster got out of control, in that it got way over word count and I had to edit it down.
As such, a lot of the eye possessed mechanics had to be trimmed, and the background had to be cut.

The original way over word count write up did allow the Occularictus to exercise some influence over eye possessed victims, and had notes about telepathy being limited to the same plane, and what sorts of healing is needed to remove the occularictus's eyes and return an eye possessed's sight.

The original background was approximately as follows:

Some occularicti are birthed from lakes of radiation steeped protoplasm that bubble in the deep realms of Sekamina. The protoplasm sprouts eyes that slowly crawl forth as grub like proto-occularicti that congregate in squirming mounds near their brithplace. Eventually their nervous systems develop to the point where they form a hive mind and can levitate, thus becoming an adult occularictus. Seeking new sights, they migrate upwards into the realms of Nar-Voth, where they hunt and reproduce, and where they can create eye possessed that allow them to vicariously explore the worlds beneath the sunlit sky.

Occularicti hunger for the blood and flesh of sighted creatures and are also driven by the desire to reproduce, which they accomplish by taking a creatures eyes without replacing them, and then injecting those eyes with an ichor that transforms them into occularictus eyes. When enough of these eyes have been created, a new occularictus is formed.
But beyond even their hunger and their drive to propagate their kind, occularicti are motivated by their desire to see all things, particularly that which is denied them. Occularicti are especially jealous of the sights that the surface world has to offer, and many dwell near the openings to Nar-Voth, where they can venture forth at night to transform surface dwellers into eye possessed. Some occularicti develop networks of spies and hoard knowledge that they use to dominate those societies of humanoids that they manage to infiltrate, and some of these sell their services to powerful rulers in return for victims that they use both as eye possessed servants, and as fodder to help increase the size of their brood.

Note that casting legend lore will normally take 1d10 days, or 1d4x10 minutes if the subject is at hand. This item lets you cast it as a standard action. That can be very useful. That's why I limited it to once per week.

I made the mockery power kind of simple. In retrospect, if I were to re-write this item, I might have done a mockery power like this:

Mockery: Once per day, as a standard action, the wielder can cause the jester head to take on the likeness of an individual creature within 60 feet and then harangue that creature with magically honed mockery. All allies of the target within 60' are affected as per the spell hideous laughter (DC 18). For 1d6 rounds the target of the mockery is compelled to attack the nearest laughing creature. If there are no nearby laughing creatures that the target can perceive, they instead are dazed. The target may attempt a DC 18 Will save to negate this effect, and may re-attempt the saving throw at the end of each of their turns. This is a mind affecting enchantment (compulsion) effect.

Thanks for the comments and critiques, positive and negative! It is exciting to have made it into the top 32. Project runway is actually a favorite show of mine, so I feel like I should talk back to Nina Garcia, or something...

I love fools, partly because I am something of a Shakespeare fan and there are great fool characters in those plays, and partly because I remember some very fun role playing moments involving player character fools.

It has seemed odd to me that there are few magical fool's accoutrements-- no marottes, motley coats, or jester caps bedecked with cocks combs or donkey ears-- especially because these are so recognizable as interesting objects from a medieval/renaissance setting.

So, I had wanted to submit a marotte for a couple of years, but figured it was definitely more a rod than a wondrous item. Then the changed the first round up so that people could submit rods. Yea!

I have to say that I agree with some of the critisms, particularly regarding the wording of the item (I should have read it to my wife before submitting), the descriptors for the mockery power, and the spell requirements.

I went back and forth regarding the 2nd power being a mind affecting fear effect, being language dependent, etc.. Language dependent would have required that the marotte speak languages. If I had more words I might have made it language dependent and given the marotte a tongues power. But I didn't, so I figured that mockery was a fear effect because mocking people humiliates them, and that is sort of like fear, and mockery does make the target shaken. With regards to its being a compulsion effect, its true that hideous laughter is compulsion, but that actually makes you do something, and being dazed doesn't really do that. It should definitely be an emotion effect though. I had forgotten that that descriptor had been added.

I had some other powers in mind for it-- pratfall, fool's license, an area of effect hideous laughter. If I was to give the item out in one of my games, I would probably add a couple of those powers in, particularly fools license, which was kind of like a sanctuary that let you mock people. I also might change mockery so that you could do it more often, but its effects were not so devastating.

I have also finished my map! That was fun. I will sleep on it and see if I have any elder god inspired dreams that reveal dark and forgotten truths about this image before I send it in.

Sceaduinar from bestiary 2.

The only thing CR7 about these bad puppy cats is their AC.

They have life sense. They cast deeper darkness and silence, hide within an anti-life shell, throw enervation spells and dispel magics at the party, and then, finally, move up in the silent darkness to cast harm and slay living on some party member. Their normal attacks life drain and do +1d6 negative energy damage. You attack them with a 5' reach melee attack, and you take 1d6 negative energy.

Aboleths also seem tough for CR 7 because of their DC 22 dominate monster 3/day. Most DMs just have this used to have dominated minions, but they can easily dominate most of an adventuring party before the party has managed to see through the illusions that hide the aboleth.

Both of these monsters are way cool, but when DMing you need to be careful what you do with them in an encounter, because they can easily TPK a 7th level party of adventurers.

You can't take 20 on knowledge checks, because there is no retry. See the CRB, skills, knowledge.

You can take technically take 10, but if you don't have an idea of the DC of the check, that might not be a good idea.

I'm hoping to maximize my PC's use of Linguistics, as he is a Human Investigator with both the Orator and Esoteric Linguistics feats (and thus already has Skill Focus: Linguistics).

Trait-wise, I'm already using Unintentional Linguist. If there are other means, beyond feats and traits, to also improve Linguistics, please let me know.

What other feats exist to improve one's Linguistics score?

I don't think there are other feats. A cracked Gold Nodule ioun stone grants a general +1 competence bonus on linguistics checks, and costs a cheap 150gp.

The social trait 'unintentional linguist' from ultimate campaign grants you a +1 trait bonus and an extra language. You would have to take the 'extra traits' feat to get it. There are several other traits that also grant that trait bonus.

If your investigator can use 2nd level extracts, or if you can afford a wand, you could use the spell investigative mind to roll twice and take the best result. That equates to about a +5 to the roll.

I just ran into an item that was basically a magical drone. Relative to its neighbor, I liked it.

What are the approximate numbers for each of the gangs? I gotta assume there are more Smilers and/or Steel Hawks than the ones explicitly placed in encounters. And then how many individuals are there in Scrap Wall that aren't part of any gang.

The module never says, but it does say that there are 'hundreds' of ratfolk and orcs in the lords of rust (add in some androids, humans, chokers, darkslayers, the odd ogre, maybe a wayward halfling).

When I ran the smiler's part of the module, I assumed that there were about 100 individuals affiliated with the smilers, with about a 3 dozen extra smiley smilers (who had modified their faces with soothe) ready for random encounters. I wrote up a couple of extra smiler leaders (a gunslinger, and a smiler orc barbarian with a bite attack) but never got a chance to use them. The one smiler random encounter I did was with a wanna be up and coming orc gang called the red hands. After Marrow had been killed, a few smilers tried to join this orc gang, and the gang leader decided to initiate them. The red hands surrounded the PCs, told them they were in red hand territory, and asked them to pick the weakest of them to fight the initiates. They picked Yule, the android gunslinger, who promptly shot all the initiates dead.

Neongelion wrote:

leo1925 wrote:

Neongelion wrote:

so I'd imagine that the arachnid robot wouldn't be able to house even a fraction of his consciousness either.

Where do you get that?

If the computing systems of a colossal, industrial-grade vehicle could not house a self-aware AI, I doubt the much smaller frame of an arachnid robot could do so. Unless the robot was specially made to house an entire consciousness or something.

They both can. and the arachnid is specially designed to house him.

Once the excavator is completely restored and powered up, it must be able to house Hellion (that is part of Hellion's plan, after all) but it seems that currently the central processor room (S3) can not house him. So, if he needs to escape, he has to use the arachnid robot chassis. Hellion is still within the excavator during the action of the module, but he can't fully upload himself to it. I think of the excavator as a snazzy peripheral.

The arachnid robot can definitely hold Hellion's consciousness. It was built to do that. Its computational infrastructure was designed by a super genius semi-divine AI, and is no doubt a lot more sophisticated than the hobbled, damaged computational infrastructure of a piece of construction equipment.

Had a TPK tonight. I was running the adventure through the last few sections of the lords of rust compound. Hellion unleashed all of its AOE attacks as they advanced through the compound. Kulgara gave the party a bit of trouble and one member had already died so after defeating her they decided to go back and rest and recoup their supplies. This also meant Hellion got all of it's spells back and was at full power when the players came back.

They cleared out Zagmander and the remaining dark stalkers/ettin and started heading towards Hellion. I had the observer robots waiting for them by the entrance, and after they took some damage they started retreating farther down the path towards where Hellion was waiting. The glyph traps popped doing some damage, but what really put them in was Hellion entering and managing to hit 3 of the 5 party members with confusion. Only one of them rolled to act normally in the five rounds that they continued to live. The remaining two had difficulty getting past his hardness. With Hellion's dual initiative he just chipped away at the confused party members and watched them slice into each other or themselves.

Note that if you attack a confused creature, it will automatically attack you every turn (no roll required). So, once Hellion attacked one of the confused party members, that party member would attack Hellion, at least until some other confused party member in turn attacked them.

Thanks so much! In Austin, TX rain is sporadic and sometimes hard to predict, which is probably why this problem occurred. It has not happened with any of my previous orders.

One thing that you all might consider is to package items in some water resistant bag, at least during the winter months.

Thanks again!