remorselesslysulkiest's page

Have you considered using a different setting than Golarion in your games?

Not sure what the best RPG settings for Not-Spain and Not-New World cultures would be.

The easiest way is to simply set the game in historical Spain or historical new world societies but some people in this thread don't seem to be happy with the idea of settings that feature historically accurate colonialism and violence. I personally prefer grittier and more realistic settings so I don't understand this but it's not my game so...

Now. A bigger problem might be that some classes, rules and monsters are biased more towards traditional Tolkien fantasy than fit for your setting. I think the biggest problem is with monsters and new world character classes. Even if you were to use a more universal system like GURPS a lot of homebrew might be necessary.

What are your favourite kind of dirty tricks?

Fighting-Man tricks are worth more points than froo-froo Magic-User tricks.

I'll start:

- Alchemical items such as smokesticks are good
- Pocket sand/pepper is always a favourite
- It's not RAW but realistically you should be able to throw an item such as holy water farther with a sling than with your hand.
- Pulling out ceiling supports and collapsing the entrance to the cave of doom behind you is useful.
- Chop down green wood and light a smoky and black fire at the entrance of a cave to smoke kobolds out.
- Pollute the kobold water supply with poison, rotting meat, feces, etc...
- Smear the blade of your sword in poison, rotting meat, feces, etc...
- Use flour to locate invisible enemies.

I started working on a Mystic Theurge - he's geared a bit towards optimization (but only because building an effective Mystic Theurge requires you to invest some love.)

But he's a bit... different, deliberately playing against type. Middle-age with prematurely grey hair, wide-brimmed hat, duster, smokes cigars, typical wandering loner type.

1st level is the Spellslinger Wizard archetype to help complete the cowboy look. I recommend barring Abjuration, Divination, Enchantment, and Transmutation as the majority of your gun-compatible spells are Conjuration, Evocation, Illusion, and Necromancy (and because those schools are well-covered by cleric.)

2nd is the first level of separatist cleric of Black Butterfly, taking the Void and Honor domains, and continuing the whole loner build by following Desna's shadow, goddess of solitude. You'll also have the Magical Knack trait choosing cleric to keep your cleric caster level up. Important to note is that the Spellslinger features don't specify arcane spells, so feel free to use your cleric spells through your gun, too!

3rd level is another level of Spellslinger before continuing to advance cleric at levels 4 and 5.

During the first 5 levels, he picks up Eclectic Training (if using the Spellcasting Guild rules from Inner Sea Magic, consider taking a trait that grants extra starting gold to start with a masterwork gun and to begin play with admission fees paid and money left over to pay for tuition. Personally, I'd ask to make it a feat, because getting such a powerful ability for something as common as gold still strikes me as unbalanced - but man do you need it as a MT.)

Choosing Wizard for Eclectic Training increases your effective casting ability for wizard by one (yes, including spells known and spells per day), allowing you to qualify for your first level of Mystic Theurge at level 6.

By level 7...

I did not know about Inner Sea Magic's Esoteric Training. I bet they'll nerf that eventually though. Before that I think the only way of getting a better Mystic Theurge is to abuse the mistakenly written text of the Scaled Disciple feat.

Scaled Disciple (Kobold)

Your draconic heritage manifests as divine power.

Prerequisite(s): Ability to spontaneously cast divine spells, kobold.

Benefit(s): You gain a +1 bonus to your caster level when casting spells included in the dragon domain* or subdomains. Your spontaneous divine spellcasting qualifies in place of arcane casting for the dragon disciple prestige class, and you may increase spellcasting in your spontaneous divine class as you progress in dragon disciple levels. Add the bonus spells gained from the blood of dragons ability to those you can cast as divine spells.

and you may increase spellcasting in your spontaneous divine class as you progress in dragon disciple levels.

It doesn't say that you can't increase arcane spellcasting levels as well as divine casting levels. That still only gets you up to 8th level/8th level casting or 7th level/9th level casting though. Also these are both only spontaneous casting classes (possibly Arcanist may work but personally I don't think so.)

How does Esoteric Training work? Is it possible to stack these?

I would say the player was actually correct here (with the caveat that GM always gets final say) as far as the rules go. It does seem like that particular trick is only needed if he's actually trying to make the mount attack an unnatural creature.

DM fiat doesn't exist. A DM can't force a player to play a game he doesn't want to and a player can't force a DM to play a game he doesn't want to.

If a DM really has an unsolvable problem with a mount he should simply say something along the lines of "you shooting really powerfully from far away on a horse is a bit overpowered and I want to nerf that combination a bit so that the game doesn't become too easy for the party."

Possibly some sort of divination magic such as Find the Path would work for repeatedly using Greater Teleport. I am unsure of exactly which divination magic would work for this though.

Also, one would want to use Shadow Walk, Haste and Quicken metamagic if possible for more speed. I am not sure if there is any way to speed up repeatedly teleporting.

Milo v3, yes you can definitely make up a custom magical item or spell to travel fast for your setting but I was having fun coming up with ideas for how to do it within the bounds of the existing rules.

What is left ambiguous is how long the Shadow Walk spell takes and not Teleportation.

So, repeated Greater Teleportion of 1000 miles at a time is very fast (7 days to traverse one Astronomical Unit.) I have no idea how fast repeatedly teleporting while using Shadow Walk would be though. I think it's supposed to be ambiguous so that it can be hand-waved by the DM though.

I think according to the magic item guidelines (at here ) a spaceship would cost 520,000 gp.

Greater Teleport = 7 x 13 x 2000 gp = 182,000 gp
Shadow Walk = 6 x 11 x 2000 gp = 132,000 gp
Fly = 3 x 5 x 2000 gp = 24,000 gp
Mass, Planetary Adaptation = 7 x 13 x 2000 gp = 182,000 gp
Total = 520,000 gp

Maybe the cost could be a bit smaller because some of the abilities are similar though.

In short; you need a special focus for the spell to arive on a different planet, otherwise planeshift takes you to the planet you're 'most familiar with'.

That's pretty reasonable and sensible. Does that mean that there might be strange or non-standard forked rods that would let one plane-shift to secret and hidden regions in the the planes? For example, special rods to plane-shift to border regions between planes.

Page 3 of that same (and amazingly awesome) book also explains that simply plane shifting twice isn't a viable method for interplanetary travel.

Can you go into more detail about this?

justaworm, Djinni are actually 7HD.

Janni, Mercane and Nightmares are all 6HD and can Plane Shift though.

Mercane seem especially useful because as part of their fluff they really like to trade for magical items.

quibblemuch If you have someone on the other side who can cast Resurrection you're golden.

Avoron you are mistaken: See here "moving normally on the borders of the Plane of Shadow but much more rapidly relative to the Material Plane." Shadow Walk does NOT make you go about four times faster. The time it takes is not defined.

You are right about casting Plane Shift twice though.

Knight Magenta, you're right. See http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/teleport.html . A 7th level scroll of Greater Teleport for 2,275 gp is also much more reasonable.

GM Rednal that relies upon being able to find a high-level caster. "Interplanetary Teleport" is only 1,530 gp to have casted but as a 9th level spell isn't guaranteed to be available. See http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/equipment.html#spellcasting-and-services . Also, "Interplanetary Teleport" brings the caster with you so that would require additional negotiation.

I am just doing this as a thought exercise but would be much more likely to do this as a player than as a GM.

Now that I think about it, buying scrolls might be the easiest way. A scroll of "Interplanetary Teleport" is only 3,825 gp and fits well underneath the base value for magic items in a metropolis (16,000 gp.) See http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/coreRulebook/magic.html . Buying 9th level scrolls seems sketchy to me though.

"Interplanetary Teleport" (a level 9 spell) is the obvious choice but won't be reachable in most campaigns.

It might be possible to travel at a lower level using the Shadow plane or the Ethereal plane. "Shadow Walk" (a level 5 to 6 spell) is the obvious choice for going to another place but it should also be possible to "Plane Shift" (a level 5 to 7 spell) to the Ethereal plane or Shadow plane for faster travel (although one might still need flight in the plane of Shadow.) However, for proper navigation one might need suitable Knowledge (Planes) and Knowledge (Geography) checks or the use of "Find the Path" (a level 6 spell.)

"Planetary Adaptation" (a level 4 to 5 spell, People of the Stars pg. 29 (Amazon), Distant Worlds pg. 55 (Amazon)) is the obvious choice for letting one survive the conditions on Aucturn but there may be lower level ways. "Air Bubble" (a level 1 spell) could let one breathe in outer space but there is also the matter of explosive decompression, radiation and a host of other issues. Those issues could be completely avoided if one was Undead or a Construct such as Wyrwoods though.

Presumably, once the base spells are figured out a suitable custom magic ship could be bought from a magic item market within wealth by level guidelines by even lower level characters. Magic item pricing is a black-art though.

I think the lowest level way to reach Aucturn from Golarion would to be a Wyrwood and simply "Fly" (a level 3 spell) to Aucturn from Golarion. There are no rules that state one can't simply keep on flying past the atmosphere into space when using the Fly spell. This might be a bit slow though.

Some have noted how mushrooms have no carbs to make alcohol out of. This is true. It is also true that surface dwarfs are an aberration and deep dwelling duegar are in fact their natural state. The difference being? Surface dwarfs have access to alcohol and duegar do not. In other words, duegar are, horror of horrors, sober dwarfs.

How about life that feeds off of natural nuclear fission reactors underground?

One thing that happens in fantasy is that the heroes are often more or just as intelligent (or at least cunning) than the villains even if they are warriors.

What are some techniques a smart warrior could use?

Perhaps, one extraordinary technique a super smart warrior (like the Midnighter in that one comic) could do is to simulate a combat situation ahead a few rounds.

So,

Impressive Foresight (Ex):

This character uses his immense tactical genius to predict the future flow of battle. This ability can be used once a day as a swift action. Simulate combat as normal from this point on but rounds later equal to the character's intelligence modifier (or at the character's choice any point earlier) combat is reset back to the point when the character's swift action has finished.

Tactical Genius (Ex):

Once a day the character can declare an ally hidden and removed from play for 24 hours. This character is completely hidden and undetectable. As an immediate action when the character is threatening someone the character can introduce the removed ally back into play at any place that would also threaten the threatened character.

This one needs some more work.

Stink of Magic (Ex)

As a swift action, a character can roll a perception check to notice tell tale signs of what kind of spells a prepared magic user has prepared for the day or a spontaneous caster knows. This check can only be made once per day for any one character. This check also notices prepared magical extractions a person has on their person (even if the person has not prepared them themselves.)

The character notices an amount of spells equal to how much they exceed a DC 10 magic check, starting first from Extracts, Arcane Magic and then Divine and from highest level spells to lowest.

Some more ideas on how to defeat casters.

Have a flying mount.

Wear a full suit of lead plated armour to foil scrying attempts. Not sure how that works with spells such as Contact Other Plane though. Most deities can probably get through lead plated armour so I guess it depends on who exactly you contact. This nullifies a lot of the BATMAN WITH PREP TIME LOLSTOMPS arguments.

Use alchemical remedies such as antiplague and antitoxin.

Always have one polymorph spell on you at a time so that you can simply no-sell offensive polymorph spells

Edit: Actually lead only nullifies scrying spells and most of those are the weaker divination spells anyway so never mind.

The fact that the party is inevitably going to split loot roughly evenly and this powers up God even more.

I should note that Wizards need to buy most of their spells. Maybe, every arcane magic spell known in his spell book should count against his wealth by level?

A Pathfinder Society FAQ notes that:

In the rare instance of a wizard charging a fee for the privilege of copying spells from their spellbooks, this fee is equal to half the cost to write the spell into a spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook). Rare and unique spells do not change the fee in PFS.

It could be argued that technically your player character's spell book full of magic spells is not the same value as an empty spell book and should be valued at at least the sum of this price for all the spells in the book and the value of the book itself.

I don't know if any GMs look over the spells known by their players and factor them into their wealth by level and determining the loot their players should have (obviously at initial start hen playing at high levels they do but I mean when checking up later on to make sure the party hasn't unexpectedly gained too much wealth for their level.)

Fullplate metal armor should provide immunity or damage reduction to electricity damage because it would act as a Faraday cage.

A fire proximity suit (such as one made from abestos) should provide damage reduction (or immunity) to fire damage.

Gold does not chemically react with most acids. As such, a full suit of gold plated armour should provide damage reduction (or immunity) to acid damage.

Cold damage can be prevented simply via lots and lots of insulation.

I am not sure how to protect against sonic energy. Also, these methods do not protect against magic that miraculously appears inside the armour instead of being blocked by it.

These are all fairly low tech ways of evening the odds against magic. Unfortunately, there are still a wealth of techniques that magic users can use.

Also, fighters should set off firecrackers to disrupt the concentration of magic users and deafen them.

Also, they should make thick smoke to make targeting harder and to make speaking difficult.

Still not optimized enough. Go Magus (Soul Forger) 7 / 5 Cleric (Forgemaster, Torag) / Evangelist (Torag) 1.

What are your favourite areas where the rules are unphysical?

I'll start:

Because the armour would act like a Faraday cage a full suit of metal armour should provide full immunity (or at least damage reduction) to electricity attacks.