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In a setting where plate armor and rapiers are common firearms should not feel out of place.

powerfamiliar wrote:

I'm curious as to how this encounter should be played:

1. There's an crossbowman behind a secret door who is aware of the PCs on the other side of the door. He is ready to shoot the first person to come into the room.

As soon as a person about to enter the room could possibly detect the crossbowman, they are entitled to a Perception check. If they pass, roll initiative as normal. If they fail, the crossbowman get's a surprise round, then the victim gets to roll initiative.

powerfamiliar wrote:

2. Let's say 6-12 seconds pass and the PCs become aware of the door and using skills or magic become aware of the crossbowman waiting for them.

And? If there is nothing they could do to the crossbowman, they are not yet combatants. When the door is finally opened, roll initiative as normal, as both sides are aware of the other. It doesn't matter that the crossbowman doesn't know the characters are aware.

powerfamiliar wrote:

3. The PCs open the door are rush the crossbowman.

If the crossbowman is unaware, the PCs get a surprise round. If not, roll initiative as normal. Sure, he was "ready" to shoot, but his reflexes just weren't fast enough.

powerfamiliar wrote:

I think personally I declare "combat" starts as soon as crossbowman becomes aware of the PCs and grant him a surprise round. He uses his action to ready and continues to ready from that point on. As soon as the PCs become aware I ask for an initiative roll, but as soon as someone steps through the door the crossbowman gets his readied action.

Divination wizards and players with similar abilities should get some sort of warning. Spider senses tingling?

That seems needlessly complicated. Why not just drop into rounds as soon as one side could affect the other. The Diviner walks into the room and suddenly casts shield, just as a bolt flies out from the darkness. That sounds much better than, The Diviner gets a wiggy feeling while he waits 1d4 rounds for the rogue to pick the lock....

The rules as written just really break my suspension of disbelief. It just seems like preparing yourself for a situation doesn't help you much when the situation comes up.

This situation that makes me uncomfortable. There's a criminal with a gun inside a room guarding the door, there's 10 cops outside. All aware of each other. We roll initiative. How I want the rules to work is that the cops should definitely win, but if they just rush the room the criminal has a good chance (say at least 50/50) to get at least one shot off before he is taken down. With the rules as is if the first cop to have a chance to act just rushes the room he has an incredibly high probability of not only acting before the criminal, but catching him flat footed. He has I think about a 6-7% chance to get a shot off if everyone has the same initiative mod.

powerfamiliar wrote:

I'm curious as to how this encounter should be played:

1. There's an crossbowman behind a secret door who is aware of the PCs on the other side of the door. He is ready to shoot the first person to come into the room.

2. Let's say 6-12 seconds pass and the PCs become aware of the door and using skills or magic become aware of the crossbowman waiting for them.

3. The PCs open the door are rush the crossbowman.

I think personally I declare "combat" starts as soon as crossbowman becomes aware of the PCs and grant him a surprise round. He uses his action to ready and continues to ready from that point on. As soon as the PCs become aware I ask for an initiative roll, but as soon as someone steps through the door the crossbowman gets hit readied action.

Divination wizards and players with similar abilities should get some sort of warning. Spider senses tingling?

Diviners get a bonus to their Initiative (and some always get the chance to act in surprise rounds).

As the PC's open the door the combat begins - there is no surprise round as each 'party' is aware of each other. The crossbowman may be laying in wait - but how quick he can fire depends on his place in the order. Maybe his muscles have seized from holding the position, maybe he sneezes at the wrong moement...

My problem with this is the likelihood that a guard guarding a door will let someone past is way too high, and breaks my verisimilitude.

Running the math quickly using the level 1 PCs from the NPC codex against a guard from the NPC Codex.
PC initiatives:
Rogue: +7
Fighter: +2
Cleric: +1
Sorcerer: +2 (NPC codex wizard has Improved Init so I used sorc instead)
vs
Recruit: +0 (Wanted to use guard, but NPC codex guard has -1 init)

The guard beats the rogue initiative about 20% of the time, the fighter's about 40, the cleric's 44, a the sorcerer's about 40. So against this party the guard guarding the door will let at least one person thru the door before reacting about 98-99 % of the time. (The guard has .2 x .4 x .4 x .44 chance of beating all four party members initiative).

Even if you give all four party members and initiative of +0 the guard guarding the door will let someone walk up to him and stab him before reacting about 94% of the time!

Even if you give the guard improved initiative and reduce all the party members initiative to +0 the guard will let someone thru the door before reacting about 75% of the time.

Edit: Just realized that my math assumes the guard rolls off against each party member, but really he only rolls once and then compares against all the PCs. Going to try and rerun the math in that scenario.

Second edit: Math changes are: He will let someone through about 93% of the time in the first scenario, 82% in the second, and 53% in the last scenario. I still feel those numbers are way too high.

I'm curious as to how this encounter should be played:

1. There's an crossbowman behind a secret door who is aware of the PCs on the other side of the door. He is ready to shoot the first person to come into the room.

2. Let's say 6-12 seconds pass and the PCs become aware of the door and using skills or magic become aware of the crossbowman waiting for them.

3. The PCs open the door are rush the crossbowman.

I think personally I declare "combat" starts as soon as crossbowman becomes aware of the PCs and grant him a surprise round. He uses his action to ready and continues to ready from that point on. As soon as the PCs become aware I ask for an initiative roll, but as soon as someone steps through the door the crossbowman gets hit readied action.

Divination wizards and players with similar abilities should get some sort of warning. Spider senses tingling?

I'd say a PC can declare themselves helpless at anytime. I don't see why you couldn't, but I also don't see how you can make yourself any easier to hit than if you were under Hold Person or tied and bound.

On a DEX 10 PC this would mean an attacker would get +9 to hit if using a standard action or an attack action. And Would hit automatically if using a full round action (coup de grace).

I'm looking for comments on house rules for an upcoming E6 campaign set in Eberron.

You can see them in this Google Docs Document.

It's mostly tweaks and houserules stolen all across the net. I'm mostly worried about my weapons tweaks. I'm not a big fan of massive criticals so I changed it so crits instead do max damage instead of double or triple. I also reworked two handed weapons to do higher dice damage and removed the 1.5 STR bonus, they just get 1 STR. I didn't change Power Attack, so all in all is a minor change

Please cancel my Adventure Path subscription. I'm grown backlogged.
Thanks!

powerfamiliar wrote:

Here's Samuel.

Yeah, I don't know that I could take him. I gave up a lot for my +12 Will save. Hopefully you run up against a wizard before I run into you.

You got your wish! :P

Here's Samuel.

Thanks TOZ!, I tried copy pasting the link google docs gave me, guess I did it wrong. Yeah I had a space before a character that should not have been there.

Was going to post the whole thing here, but the tables got a bit messy. Here is the link

Mostly changes to equipment with some class changes.

Undead dragon? Even the purest of guardian could succumb to the evil arts to preserve his life.

Option A sounds very cool if you're ok handing your group lots of loot.

My party has not used the NPCs at all. There was one death and a player is currently using an NPC replacement, but that is it. they are currently jsut entering the last parth of module 1.

The fight in the cannibal camp was long and bloody, but they did fine. I even threw in some extra cannibals to make up for having 5 party members.

One party member died on the way to the mother so they took her on with only 4 party members. That did not go so well. I think my ruling on darkness was wrong as I ruled that it lowererd ilumination 1 step, but I counted the torch as the source. Mother only enojyed 20% miss chance through the fight. The party ended up fleeing, and coming back full strenght. That went much better, mother died to sneak attacks.

My party has had no problem with the traps, the DC is not all that high to find them, the party has found most of them. Dieseses almost took the elven wizard to 0 con (he needed the remove disease potion), but the chance of getting diseased is pretty low (5%) and if any other party member gets infected they have a good chance of making their save.

It's been challenging so far, but tons of fun.

Coriat wrote:

cranewings wrote:

You can't expect everything in a 600 page fantasy world simulation to make sense. When you find it, like people shooting arrows from 200' with their eyes closed at wizards running around on a battlefield, expecting to get a better penalty out of it - you just have to take a step back, close the rule book, and make a ruling.

Perhaps I disagree with you then. Green Arrow could probably pull this off. I bet Robin Hood would have stood a chance at it too. Legolas, that snob, probably would have done it while surfing on a shield too. I wouldn't be inclined to make it impossible, or to throw up arbitrarily steeper barriers than the rules already impose. Which he's already facing distance penalties and a 50% miss chance; that's severe enough in my opinion.

Well, those characters would all just fire and hit with a dozen arrows in one round and eliminate all of the images. Why not? That's fair. The wizard spent one action protecting himself. The fighter spends one round removing it. People should be ganging up on the wizard anyway, and if they aren't, they are probably already losing.

If you want to put blind sight on someone and make them like Green Arrow or Legolas, be my guest. I just don't think people should be firing arrows at moving targets 200' away with their eyes closed and hitting half the time.

They're not really hitting half the time though. Just half as often as they would with their eyes open.

If the game trully started at 10 (or 11 I guess) Gunslinger damage would be ok. The problem is the whole first half of the game where the gunslinger does not have signature deed lightning reload.

I assume the Deadly Aim and DR on touch attack issues will be fixed in the next iteration of the playtest, but reload times will stil kill gunslinger dpr before they get signature deed.

Umbral Reaver wrote:

This is daft. Firearms should be as realistic as bows!

That is, not in the slightest. It's all for playability and balance.

+1

Pathfinder has us shooting a bow 5 times in 6 seconds without haste, this is simply not physically possible. I have done a lot of archery and known a lot of skilled archers, I can shoot about 6 arrows in 30 seconds, the best archer I ever knew could shoot 12 arrows in 30 seconds and put them all in about a 4 inch grouping at 30 yards. That's 1 arrow every 2.5 seconds or about 5 every two rounds which means Pathfinder is twice as fast as real life, if we can suspend disbelief to allow those kind of heroics with a bow, why not a gun?

Do you see your players using guns as their primary style of combat under those rules?

I echo the "make them as realistic as bows" arguments. What's the point of going through th trouble of adding guns to your game if they're not going to be a viable option. Even as a range backup for melee characters they do poorly because of their very short range. A fighter is likely better off with a chackram.

I never said my cleric was going to invest feats into grit or class.

I never said i was going to take the exotic weapon Prof (fireamrs).

((precise shot i will take for bows, rays, and other weapon))=So when possible ya, will have gotten that feat if possible based on build.

I just said, my cleric was just going to be packing now.

Take the -4 penalty for not being proficient. And at 10-20 feet from target everyone open fire on that Touch 5 AC +penalty = AC 9. The fighter drop there gun, quick pull there sword and attack. The caster stay 10-20 feet away, and keep firing into melee AC 13 now.

...................

True, 1st level would be dead right off the bat from breath weapon. But 1st level player can now reasonable hit a Ancient Red Dragon AC.

Was mainly showing how high CR creatures, with +15 or better natural armor, are not vulnerable to guns attacks.

................

Anyway, as a Player i do not mind, as a DM it does have me worried.

Isn't throwing acid vials at the red dragon about as effective damagewise, and much better cost/feat wise?

If it was the only way to gain grit I would have a problem, but as it is I think it's fine, similar to one of the ways to gain Hero points. I don't think it was intended to be the primary way for gunslingers to acquire grit.

powerfamiliar wrote:

Quick question. I probably just missed it, but how do the player's get to v19? I can't seem to find the link from the canibal camp to the caves.

I forget the number, but there is a trap door at the base of the lighthouse. This leads down to V19.

Thank you both. I can't believe I didn't see it.

Quick question. I probably just missed it, but how do the player's get to v19? I can't seem to find the link from the canibal camp to the caves.

molten_dragon wrote:

It just bugs me that you guys charge money for little things that really should be included with the books for free.

"really should"? Define should. A more accurate statement for you might be to replace "really should" with "I really want to".

Considering how many posts suggested you pay for these "little things", perhaps you should reconsider your sense of "should".

In the case of Kingmaker the full map of the region is very important for the adventure, but at no point do they offer a complete map. If you have the PDFs and an image extractor (or older Adobe) making a composite is trivial, but it really should have been included at some point.

Really like your version of spell combat. The magus really needs an x+int ability. Your change to Magus Arcana seems rather good too.

I made a green hex outline for explored tiles, and a red one for claimed tiles. i then put together the diferent maps into one big map, and have been placing this tiles down wheneever my players explore or claim a hex. I also added a few markers for farms and roads. sadly I can't post the imgae since it uses the maps from the PDFs.

To me this is the biggest problem right now with the magus. It feels more like a prestige class or and archetype than a full class in how restrictive it is in play style. No other base class seems this restrictive.

My players spent too much money on Festivals and Promotions early on while focusing on economic buildings. This didn't quite work out and they ran out of BPs really fast. They now cut down on festivals/promotions, but because they focused on mostly economic buildings they are failing their stability check very often.

They do seem to be doing better now, being net positive on most turns.

Majuba wrote:

xJoe3x wrote:

Well I gotta say that sucks, a class for monsters in the apg. I am sorry that is just stupid. These classes should be applicable to players. I can't believe the people at pazio would intentionally screw up a specialization that bad. I am forced to think this is an oversight.

Actually, though I'm not using the APG at the moment, this style was one of the key nice new things for me, as a player. It's the Advanced Player's Guide after all, and one thing players tend to move on to is playing non-standard races.

I played a Lizardfolk some time back (starting with three racial levels), and a natural weapon style would have been wonderful for her. Wyvern is a more DM/extreme-PC style, but there are plenty of playable races with natural weapons.

I disagree, I really don't think a class should be build around having some non-standard race or being a monster. If this is how it is intended it is extremely poor design.

It would be poor design for the feat not to be an option. If you don't benefit from it you don't have to take it, but if you could benefit from it not having that feat as part of this variant would feel odd.

Warforged I'd love to take a look at those macros. Email: powerfamiliar at gmail.

As for the soothscales, I'm kind of curious too. One of my players is a draconic bloodline sorcerer aiming towards Dragon Disciple and he's very interested in allying with the tribe.

I ordered a copy of the bestiary and the core rules from amazon on the 8th, and by the 10th my order had already been delivered (free shipping too!). Looking at their site right now, it appears to be in stock. You should probably contact amazon if they ordered a few weeks ago, which would be before I did, and still have not received their items.

Voted for Jim Groves - Doom of the Dream thieves.

As a DM I kinda like the removal of the Turn Undead effect. I hate dealing with the "runaway" part of fear and similar effects. It's just a pain, particularly with battlemaps.

I've recently started using Heroes of Horror's fear rules to limit the running away.

I am hoping there is a PFS scenario that has heavy use of middle level undead that cause several TPKs because no Cleric bothers to take the Turn Undead feat, since it is felt that damaging undead is far better.

I doubt that will happen. If the fight is to hard for a party with a cleric and the new channel energy, it would probably be impossible for a party without a cleric.

Exotic weapons would have to be my one clear complaint. They are just not worth a feat. 4e did a decent, but mostly boring, job with exotic weapons. Exotics weapons seemed like a relatively easy fix from 3.5 to Pathfinder.

Hmmm though I liked alomost all of the previews I am not sure of this one.

The metamagic mastery seems kinda weak, but well thought of.

And my major beef is that combat casting and defensive combat training will be no brainers for wizards. And for the most part no brainer feats shouldn't exist.

Combat Casting seems like a huge no brainier, not sure on defensive combat training, guess it depends on how often the DM uses CMB.

Loved the change to metamagic mastery. Powerful but prevent going to far like DMM and metamagic reducing feat/class features.

Quick youtube search for doing acrobatics in armor:

Getting back up after falling of a horse. A roll. Cartwheel.

Okay, maybe I'm just negative, but I think the monk is kind of rediculous. I'm sorry, yes it's a huge improvement over 3.5, I'm not gonna argue that at all, all solid improvements.

But I'm sorry, it just seems silly to me to say, "the monk can't have a full BAB" and then for every important class feature of the monk say, for this feature he's treated as having a full BAB. I'm sorry to not be happy that the monk is much improved. but this is just a bad way to do it to me. Needlessly complicated.

Full BAB would've been much simpler. I really like the pathfinder monk and it will be one of the first classes I'll try, but I didn't really see the problem in giving the monk full BAB and d10 HD and make the class much simpler.

Yeah I'm a bit confused with the puzzle too. It seems that even if the party does figure out the sequence they'll end up taking damage as they reach dead ends. I really don;t see my party figuring out the teleportation bit. I'll probably just change numbers above each door so if the do figure the sequence out they will be able to continue unharmed.

Wildshape is probably the one ability from the pathfinder classes that I will not be using in my games. Shapeshift from PHB2 just seems so much simpler and fun. You get it from lvl 1, it's at will and a swift action, it's not broken like wildshape and natural spell doesn't work in it. The thing I didn't like with it was missing the animal companion. I think I'll end up allowing shapeshift druid a ranger quality companion.

This was a great help, particularly the chapel one. It really helped my players visualize what was going on in that encounter.