pipakin's page

Can you send me the files? This looks like great work!

philip at thekinfamily dot com

What I did was create a new combat maneuver, similar to a grapple, called Cinematic Hostage Taking:

** spoiler omitted **

It worked well that night, and we've since used it several times. As a "cinematic rule", it isn't something players can initiate on their own. I treat hostage...

My version, for two reasons:

1. I need PCs to have the same repertoire of powers as the enemies
2. I like playing with houserule ideas

Take Hostage: As a full round action you may attempt to take a hostage with HD less than or equal to your HD minus 2. Roll a combat maneuver check at a -10 penalty. If you succeed, you begin a grapple with the hostage and the hostage gains the pinned condition. While the hostage remains pinned, you may perform a coup de grace as a free action that provokes an attack of opportunity. If attempting this maneuver unarmed, you must have the improved unarmed strike feat and you take an additional -5 penalty on the check. You must decide if it is an unarmed attempt before initiating the maneuver.

The -10 penalty is to make this difficult (even a squirming level 1 peasant should be somewhat difficult to take hostage), and the -5 while unarmed is to make this less viable for a monk, since you couldn't disarm them to prevent the cdg. the HD restriction is to take it off the table for attacking BBEGs and make only really epic BBEGs be able to do it to the PCs.

can anyone think of a situation under which this is crazy broken?

So I was thinking of this thread at the gym (what else are ya gonna do on a treadmill, when the dude next to you has the TV set to 'Deadliest Catch?').

Heh, I like Deadliest Catch. I also love this trap. and I have the perfect place for it, assuming the PCs want to take the risk at that point. They can always come back later I suppose. :)

Holy crap I log on to a treasure trove of ideas. I love you guys! (My players may not though)

I think the plan is to go with a lot of MCC and Set's ideas. Yeah, I was going for a temple that was once a holy site (albeit for a darker sort of deity) and hasn't had anyone in it for some time. It was used 50 years ago during a war to store a dangerous magical artifact, but only parts of it were used (the parts the PCs have already explored). The rest of the temple, which houses even older things, is old and dilapidated with a lot of already sprung traps.

There's a goblin tribe that has moved into part of the temple, with their leader proclaiming himself king of the goblins. he's been trying in vain to get past the magical seals that the PCs have already bypassed, and wants the artifact they collected. He plans to seal the main entrance (via collapsing a section of wall) and forcing the PCs to leave through the oldest and most unstable area of the temple. The PCs (up to this point) are completely unaware of his tribe's existence (they have failed more Perception checks then is good for them).

Along the way they'll have to deal with "traps" inspired by posts here, and goblins (once the goblins figure out the hazards of the temple aren't enough to stop the PCs).

Note that while goblins won't be much of a challenge normally, they are practically out of healing magic and offensive spells (from dealing with the magical defenses in the inner chambers), so I need to give them a feeling of danger without overwhelming them. I'll let you guys know how it goes :)

A glowing mayan skull that saps 1 str if a will save (starting at DC 10) isn't met (that goes up by +1 DC each round) as the miasma thickens in a sealed room. Oh, did I mention crazy miasma is flowing off of it when they enter the room? I should mention that, it's pretty important. Meanwhile, the skull also generates 1 new bloody skeleton each round until a puzzle from a puzzle book is solved (something that can be worked through solving pieces, likea zelda puzzle). Bwahahaha... they'll love you of hate you, depending on the puzzle book puzzle... 3:)

I should mention that they are only level 3. lol.

How... ruined... are the ruins? If they're really crumbling, consider "non-trap traps". What I mean is this: premeditated traps set by an intelligent being are going to be inttentionally deadly. But trap-like situations created by the decay of the structure -- crubling wooden floors, unstable rubble piles, etc. can be adjusted in terms of how dangerous they are by the DM to fit the party.

Mostly intact, though that's a good idea. It would be likely that parts of the structure are unstable.

I've got a few players currently rummaging around the ruins of an ancient temple (think Mayan theme), and I need some nasty surprises for them. I'm usually fairly crafty with traps, but they don't have a rogue and I don't want to over-punish them, so I want nasty sneaky traps that won't kill them outright but will make them think.

I have reached down into my DM brain and....drawn a blank. Any ideas? Here's your opportunity to terrorize my players :)

We ended last night's session on a very interesting note. An enemy assassin left a sword in the shoulder of a party member so he could go after someone else. The groups fighter sundered said weapon instead pulling it out. The blade was left in the pc's shoulder.

The next round another assassin decided to hammer down on the blade on each side (the blade was sticking out the front and back of his shoulder). I decided to make the attack do 1/2 weapon damage, and gave it a con bleed since the blade nearly severed the pc's arm).

The group, even the player on the receiving end of the attack, loved the use of the blade and the attack (even the way damage was handled). My question is, did I handle it appropriately? The players may have loved it, but I'm wondering if ianyone else here had any other ideas on how I could have handled it.

I like it, in general ability damage is REALLY powerful though.

The hail of arrows is 8th level....

SO the cover fire should be of lower level, so taking three or four feats to get there seems a little steep to me.

On the other hand it maybe balanced. The next feat in this new feat tree sounds like it should be hail of arrows.

Rapid shot, many shot, supressing fire & greater, then hail of arrows...

actually hail of arrows is 15th level minimum. (1 caster level +0 bab, 6 full bab levels, 8 levels of AA)

That being said, I like the idea of Hail of Arrows being a feat. Then you just give it to Arcane Archer as a free bonus feat at level 8. This would end up needing a slight change (the number of attacks couldn't be based off of AA levels).

Soooo, here's my full feat tree. Which I think I'll use in my game:

Suppressing Fire

Requires: Rapid Shot, Many Shot

As a full round action, you may lay down suppressing fire in a 30ft cone. Any creature caught in this area must seek cover (at least 20%) or make a reflex save (DC 10 + 1/2 character level) or take damage equal to weapon damage. Simply moving out of the area (and not directly to cover) does not prevent the damage. If no cover is available within 1 round of movement, dropping prone also avoids the damage

Using suppressing fire uses 8 units of ammunition.

Suppressing Fire, Greater

Requires: Suppressing Fire

Whenever you make a suppressing fire attack, all enemies within the radius must make a will save (DC 10 + 1/2 character level) or attempt to seek cover and become shaken.

Hail of Arrows

Requires: Suppressing Fire, Greater and Character Level 15

In lieu of your regular attacks, once per day an you can fire at each and every target within range, to a maximum of one target per 2 character levels. Each attack uses your primary attack bonus, and each enemy may only be targeted by a single attack.

Excellent refinement. The aracher is a longbow user as well so I think this not only give him an extra trick to his arsenal, but also bring him a bit closer to the enemy and let him change up his standard "stay back and shoot that one till it stops moving" tactic he's been getting a bit bored with.

I like to see players rewarded for trying to impliment actual tactics in a typically head down bull rushing environment and I think this will do the trick.

So quick rewrite (changes in italic). I added the drop prone rule because this could become quite powerful in an environment without cover but with a lot of enemies bunched up.

Suppressing Fire

Requires: Rapid Shot, Many Shot

As a full round action, you may lay down suppressing fire in a 30ft cone. Any creature caught in this area must seek cover (at least 20%) or make a reflex save (DC 10 + 1/2 character level) or take damage equal to weapon damage. Simply moving out of the area (and not directly to cover) does not prevent the damage. If no cover is available within 1 round of movement, dropping prone also avoids the damage

Using suppressing fire uses 8 units of ammunition.

Suppressing Fire, Greater

Requires: Suppressing Fire

Whenever you make a suppressing fire attack, all enemies within the radius must make a will save (DC 10 + 1/2 character level) or attempt to seek cover and become shaken.

reminds me of the arcane archers
hail of arrows. that is at eighth level.

I think you could look at it.

Also if you have an accane archer how do those feats fit into that?

Good point, though the Hail of Arrows ability is more about hitting multiple targets than forcing them to run for cover.

This is a decent idea for suppressing fire. Although you might want to change it to a 30ft cone instead of a 20 foot burst.

Good point. I had envisioned it as a longbowman at range, but yeah, a cone makes way more sense in practical pathfinder combats.

The archer in my group just asked me about trying to lay down enough fire to keep an enemy pinned behind cover (not phyically pinning down but keeping them behind the cover so they don't get hit).

This interested me since it is sound tactic. I was thinking of making the ability into a feat, maybe requiring rapid shot and manyshot. It would have to be a full round action and would force a target to make a will save. If the save is failed, the target must spend its next round to move to cover or, if it is already in cover, staying in cover. If it's already in cover it take it's round normally though it cannot leave cover unless it makes the will save. If the archer doesn't continue to fire at the target it's keeping in cover the target no longer needs to make a will savebto move out of it.

My off the hip and completely unsolicited feat:

Suppressing Fire

Requires: Rapid Shot, Many Shot

As a full round action, you may lay down suppressing fire over a 20 foot area centered around any point within one range increment. Any creature caught in this area must seek cover (at least 20%) or make a reflex save (DC 10 + 1/2 character level) or take damage equal to weapon damage. Simply moving out of the area (and not directly to cover) does not prevent the damage.

Suppressing Fire, Greater

Requires: Suppressing Fire

Whenever you make a suppressing fire attack, all enemies within the radius must make a will save (DC 10 + 1/2 character level) or attempt to seek cover and become shaken.

Why make it 2 feats to force the will save, you ask? Controlling opponent's actions on the battlefield is REALLY powerful. And if I had an ability which forced you to stay behind cover you better believe every NPC archer would be doing it to the PCs everytime they could. Combine that with aoe spells like cloudkill and you can force the PCs to stay in a save or die/suck area for multiple turns.

Is an Alchemist's bomb considered a special ability to qualify for Ability Focus on page 314 of the Bestiary? I wouldn't think so but i'd like some input.

I'm generally of the opinion that it shouldn't qualify, but it's up to you as DM. As Char said, the standard rule is players don't get bestiary feats.

For a summoner's pet, how many primary attacks does it get? I'm being told that if an eidalon gets a claw/claw/bite that they can all be primary unless the attack it gets is labeled as a secondary. That seems just a bit op seeing as the eidalon can get three attacks per round by level 4.

Echoing the "use the right version" statement, as the original summoner was very potent and the newer one seems more balanced. But yeah, they do end up with quite a few attacks early on.

Thanks for the info so far. Another thing I've had come up is the group's archer wanting to try and disarm someone from range. I don't think it's impossible... but I don't know how it would work with the way disarming is done in PF.

There was a feat somewhere in a splat book for this in 3.5, but out of the box it can't be done AFAIK.

If you were wanting to homebrew something, a feat would probably be a decent tradeoff, maybe require some of the other ranged feats as a prereq (example: Point Blank Shot -> Precise Shot -> Ranged Disarm). I'd also put a hefty range penalty on it (maybe -2 for every half range increment or something) otherwise you'll have longbowmen disarming from like 600 ft away

1: How long does it take a character, mount, etc to become fatigued when going full out movement during travel?

From the srd:

A character can't run for an extended period of time. Attempts to run and rest in cycles effectively work out to a hustle.

A character can hustle for 1 hour without a problem. Hustling for a second hour in between sleep cycles deals 1 point of nonlethal damage, and each additional hour deals twice the damage taken during the previous hour of hustling. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from hustling becomes fatigued.

2: Sundering a weapon of armor piece is something I can understand. However, when character want to target a specific body part, knees, hands, left shoulder, etc what would the increase in difficulty become to hit the specific point?

There aren't any rules for called shots. Mostly because if players had the option they would always aim for the head.

3. Massive damage rules. In 3.5 you had to make a fort save if you took 50% or more of your health in one attack to stay alive. Where is this rule in Pathfinder?

It's an optional rule in the core rulebook. (Note that the massive damage only triggers on 1/2 your HP OR 50 HP, whichever is larger)

4. I had a player with a Darkmantle attached to him from head to torso. His arms were pinned to his side and the fighter comes up to wail on the Darkmantle. With each attack the Darkmantle took, I had the fighter roll a lower dice to injure the player. While the players argued that this wasn't how attacks into a grapple worked, I argued that this wasn't two humanoids wrestling with eachother. Anywhere the fighter hit the Darkmantle, the other player was only a thin leathery membrane underneath and didn't recieve damage immunity because of the Darkmantle. He was being hit as well as the creature. How would you have handled this?

Your players were right. While some creatures get special rules to share damage with players they are grappling with, the darkmantle doesn't. Doing so makes it more dangerous, which should probably come with a CR increase (and subsequent XP increase).