shaft9000's page

thanks for the replies, guys.
sorry for the tone of a few posts; i was getting a little discouraged by the first few replies. i also should have opened with my proposed houserule instead of a semi-rant!

DM Blake wrote: ----Once you have the confused condition, you are no longer allowed to act "normally" (e.g. do what you want when you want).----

thank you. this puts it pretty succinctly, with little room for misinterpretation.

I do still like the earlier versions of the spell/effect better.
While I understand the desire to define Confusion as a condition, I don't get the changes as being any improvement, other than to keep GMs from keeping track of so many wandering confused monsters. And it only needs a d4, really.
It just struck me as bizarre how Confusion was changed from what was mostly the same for 30+ years.
so...I'm using this table instead, if anyone's curious:
roll d4
- 1 wander 10' in a direction determined by d8 (and in precisely the opposite direction if movement is inhibited by anything more than a standard Difficult Terrain)
- 2 Babble incoherently in place/stare off into space
- 3 Attack nearest ally/friend/familiar.
- 4 Attack nearest opponent/enemy/stranger. (Any allies that have attacked you during the spell's/condition's duration are now considered enemies)

cheers, guys

No, it is not my issue.
The syntax it is clearly contradictory, don't you see?
At the last session we stopped everything for ten minutes to discuss this, and no satisfactory fix was made. Hence the reason for this post. It's a waste of time if it doesn't get fixed, see?

Why would Paizo write the first sentence of the description at all, then?

Also, result of 51-75 says "Deal d8+STR damage to yourself with item in hand".
This also has real inconsistencies.
1st where do they get d8 from? What about tiny or Huge creatures?
2nd, what moron is ever going to attack themselves?? Perhaps a suicidal, desperately moronic PC, but NOT one that is merely confused.

If you like to use/pay for badly written fluff text then fine, have fun with that.
Judging by the replys here, I guess this is not the game for me RAW, and that's too bad. Bummer.

This has been nagging me for a while, and I can't believe that such an obvious contradiction made it as far as the 5th printing of the Core Rules without a correction/clarification.

under the description for Confused condition on pg 566 it states:

"A confused creature is mentally befuddled and cannot act normally. A confused creature cannot tell the difference between..."

So it says specifically, and the first thing to boot : CANNOT ACT NORMALLY

...and then the first entry in the Behavior table states that on a roll of 01-25 result is:

(drum roll, please)...... "Act Normally"!

*Smacks forehead*

It really makes me wonder just wtf they do at Paizo all day in regards to solid game rule content. Pretty pictures and better fonts are fine fluff and sells to the noob, but what we really need is a better system that works, period.

Anyway, (no thanks to the rules book I bought that was supposed to fix 3e issues and not create more of them) my houserule fix is thus:
a roll of 01-25 results in the character wandering 10' in a random direction, the direction being determined by a d8 roll.

yeah, Core rules say precision damage specifically does not multiply (pg184). Vital Strike description specifically states that bonuses for VS do not multiply, but are added (pg136)in the same fashion as Sneak Attack.

I agree it is a GM adjudication and not a hard&fast 'rule' to be enforced. But the designers act as though it doesn't exist as anything other than a special buff to tack on.

Morale is far more important than that - They could at least address it - this is a ROLE playing game, no? GM has to play the role of monster/NPC, too.
It's not even a suggestion in the so-called Game "Mastery" Guide. Yet there's page after page of fluff and extra rules that i'd never want to even try to use.

Priorities, priorities(and unfortunate oversights) *sigh*

I too miss morale in the game.

Certain monsters -particularly humanoid - depend on leadership and discipline in numbers more than others. Kill the chief and the tribe of kobolds, orcs or beast of similar ilk is much more likely to scatter and flee than fight on.

now consider the tables turned, where the PCs rush into a battle they're outmatched in: THE PARTY CERTAINLY WOULD FLEE TOO, AS SOON AS THEY RECOGNIZE THAT THEY ARE OUTMATCHED

so why wouldn't the NPC's as well?

This gets into the Tyranny of Fun debate of old, and I won't bring it there, but this IS one of 3.x+ oversights; bordering on plain dumb. RAW, they expect you to want to kill everything. The only thing that is accomplished is that it somewhat simplifies solving XP problems.
Anything deviating from this tendency must now be identified then implemented by the GM entirely. It's rather disappointing. I've probably, stupidly wasted more time (attempting to) look it up than it would have taken a design team to adequately address the matter.