that's what the army is there for as well. They can be all murder hobo they want, murdering kobolds and goblins, try taking on a platoon of well-armed soldiers with magical army backup, champions, long-established pacts with outsiders, etc...If their alignment won't hold them in check, overwhelming power will.
make them untouchable; a lawful evil duke/duchess/queen who rides that fine line of villainy, whispering in the good but old king's ear, bending the kingdom to their will while hiding behind the rule of law and an army, have them claim rewards from the group as taxes, right of land and lordship, have them execute a beloved NPC for poaching, tax evasion, or some other charge they are guilty of, but a kinder ruler would choose mercy, etc... Make them insulting and snoobish who treats all of their lessers like pawns (and everyone is their lesser). Give them innocent, lovely children, those who would weep and be devastated at the loss of their parent and are their only weakness, but dare they use a child to strike at the villain? PC get too upset with a villain and they'll just gank them and having a teleport scroll up their keister gets boring after the first couple of times, someone they cannot just straight out murder while maintaining some semblance of heroism really twists that knife.
the animate dead (mythic to boot!) was during the climatic battle at the end of the campaign, so it wasn't all that bad. The GM even let them play the mythic skeleton champion version of their characters against the rest of us, so they didn't even have to sit on their thumbs! @VM, Mother Night was a gestalted 16th level Witch (Gravewalker)/Dirge Bard, mythic tier 9 (in the world, there were no 10's for in-game reasons) and used Trailblazer rules, giving her 2228 hps (which only lasted her about 3 rounds after the beat-sticks got on her). She came with 4 mythic skeleton champion Grey Renders (which I said were previous bodies of Grendels summoned, since they kind of look the same) that gave her a bit of a meat wall to hide and cast behind. Her big thing in the scenario was using mythic Modify Memory to erase all history of the Cult's presence from nearly every plane of existence, leading us on a pretty epic multi-dimensional quest to find out what exactly she was planing and how to stop it.
for the last Pathfinder game we played, I made most of the NPCs for the GM, who is a big ole softy and we'd steamroll almost every encounter, just so I'd have some fun in the combats. I would make whole groups around a theme and just hand them over and let the GM figure out how to use them. For the last, we were pushing 17th and mythic so I came up with the Cult of Grendel, who I remade and was led by a mythic Night Hag named Mother Night, who would use the Nether Cauldron to sacrifice whole towns to summon Grendel for a giant orgy of killing and destruction. She rolled with an army of mounted Goblins, Orc beserkers and Ogre rangers and sorcerers and a few lesser hags and four or so named lieutenants and made for a rather epic number of encounters. All the "minions" were built around Innocent Blood and instilling fear on the soon-to-be-slaughtered and to eek out every last drop of effectiveness to allow the spells to land from the casters. Looking at that file, I made 14 pretty ridiculously overpowered custom NPCs or types for that group. Fortunately? Mother Night never got to summon Grendel as we stopped her before she could complete the ritual, but she killed all but two of the party in doing so, raising most of them as undead during the fight to prevent resurrections and other shenanigans.
not mine but one from several members of our group; They were playing The Morrow Project, a game based around a group of cryogenically frozen scientists and soldiers who are thawed out after the apocalypse and try to restore humanity. So you start off really well equipped in the game, they had a couple of humvee like vehicles with mounted HMGs, battle rifles, explosives, the whole shebangabang. During one night they are assaulted by a horde of savage cannibals who come running out of the tree line with spears and clubs. The player playing the leader tells the rest to mount up on the 50s and lay down dispersing fire on the horde. This cripples/kills/runs off the vast majority of them, easily ending the fight. Another player decides that he can't settle for anything less than total annihilation of the enemy and decides to chuck a white phosphorous grenade at the remaining, fleeing savages. Crit fails the throw, random scatter puts it directly on the hood of their vehicle. The Willy P goes off, disintegrates the Col, melts the arms and legs off of the character in the driver's seat, cooks the gunner to the body of the vehicle, eats a hole through the jackhole who threw it and melts through the engine block of the car, thus snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
in our last game, I played a prodigiously strong character and this came up quite a lot, so I figured out a fairly simple formula for tossing heavy weights, which can be adjusted easily depending on the "tone" of the game (we were playing mythic, so distances were mythically ridiculous) throwing a weight under a character's light load Str check x 5 feet
The rogue absolutely hated this after he found a ring of feather falling and we had a new scouting method...
Hedge Witch? Their flavor text seems strongly in favor of what you're looking for and their patron can easily be some higher power in the traditional sense.
I'd allow flaming to stack with brilliant energy. I mean it does damage even if the rest of the weapon does not (for DR as an example); the blade passes clean through the object, the fire however, does not. I'd probably allow Disruptive too because it's such a trash special ability, the DC is so low that by the time you can add this to a brilliant energy weapon, what are you actually ever going to disrupt?
commercial travel would probably be via teleportation circles, not some TSA Teleport Mage casting for small groups of people. Then you'd have instantaneous, foolproof travels from one set local to another. The initial cost would be more, but it's probably far less than the cost of a jet liner + fuel + maintenance + crew.
remembering back, it was the massive damage save that kept killing him. Towards the end of the campaign he was pushing high 30's in his Fortitude save but kept dying to natural 1's on the save, cause at that level, nearly every attack caused at least 50 damage. In game, we determined he had a heart condition that every time he raised his arms too quickly (like in a defensive manner when surprised by say a lightning bolt trap) his heart would stop and keel-over he would and then somebody would have to raise dead the cleric...again. There are some checks, that while sometimes necessary, probably shouldn't ever be failed by specialized characters. Like I don't mind a high level Fighter or even Bard or Monk chucking that 1 on a stealth roll and being spotted by the city guard, but your Batman rogue? Nah, that ain't cool that they are seen 5% of the time
I've used -10/+10 for nat 1s and nat 20s since 3rd edition came out. It was in response to a player with a ridiculous fortitude save failing something like 7 fort saves that they could only miss on a nat 1 in a couple of game sessions, 5 of which resulted in them insta-dying (or wishing it was something as "simple" as death). That seemed to have been an easy fix for such situations as it really only matters in those niche cases where some extraordinarily powerful being would otherwise have a 5% chance of looking stupid or being hit by people who have no business doing so.
L2 - Stone Call fits your theme, adds some control and a little bit of damage, or Frigid Touch. Do not overlook anything that lowers the number of actions an opponent can take. Frigid Touch's auto stagger is great on its own, but if you have anyone that can trip, grapple or otherwise make an opponent have to use their only action to get back to you, it's a great combo spell.
See, here's the thing ... in a grapple you are allowed to use one handed/light weapons -- like natural attacks. If I get grappled, that is one dead giant. As far as CMD questions ... remember, since I am not wearing armor, my AC is basically my CMD which will be higher than a full-plate wearing tank. And since I am finessing things, I use my Dex instead of my STR for CMB (as explained in earlier posts) so this reduction has no impact on my CMB. except when grappled you'll take a double hit, the -4 to Dex and then the -2 to attack
you should still be taking the -3 penalty from your 5 strength, bringing it to 27. Earliest giant one runs into, save troll, is probably the Hill, giant (CR 7) and they still nab you on a 12, Frost Giants are well within your CR (@11) and they are +20. You present as a nice target being rail thin and shuddering under the mountainous weight of *checks notes* your clothes, making you a tempting target. Should you prove burdensome to hold, well, you're much lighter than a rock which they can throw a 1/4 mile... really your CMD isn't bad, it's about average, meaning anything meant to perform a combat maneuver is going to succeed, but you present too nice a target (you're small and weak, you're a force multiplier with your group with heals and debuffs and are a moderate threat in melee). I mean something could simply trip you and then free action drop a shield or great axe on you and you'd be effectively pinned ;P (as I GM, I'd hit you with tanglefoot bags until the weight of goo was more than you could bear) at the end of the day, it's not the mechanics you can squeeze out though, compensating however you want, it's that you are barely stronger than an ordinary house cat. Min/maxing aside, that's ridiculous and should be a glaring hole to be exploited at all encounters much to the detriment of yourself and your group.
I can't imagine any Paladin worth the name, or many non-serial killers, who would be okay with somebody wearing a mask made of sentient persons skin, bonuses or no. As for legal authorities, they'd (assuming a non-evil society) probably arrest on sight anyone wearing a people skin mask. I mean, just imagine Leatherface showing up at the tavern or the Duke's Ball or strolling down the street, even without chainsaw running, he's attracting attention and screams of panic. Things don't have to be intrinsically evil for them to be wrong.
I'd bet more for expediency of programming than rules lawyering. It probably has the same programming as Hold Person, allowing FoM to ignore it, instead of its own unique ruleset. As for the OP question, I'd rule that it doesn't negate the imprisonment, but does the entangling effect like many others here, and two, this is why I hate many spells that have automatic functions like this. I generally detest a singular ability that negates an entire subset of hazards or even entire schools of magic (I'm looking at you True Sight!)
I always imagined counterspelling to be two spell colliding midair and canceling each other out. So the fireball is intercepted by another fireball and there is a dramatic flash of fire and light, but no actual damage.
I think I'm pretty fortunate, my group is fairly responsible all things considered, so when I have gave access to Wish or similar abilities, they keep it narratively reasonable, which is all I really want, something I can work with in, that continues the story...or ends it dramatically
Oh cool, I'll just ban wish from my games then. if you aren't okay with seeing where it takes you, that's probably a good idea. Just seems kind of wrong to dangle something like a wish spell out there for use and then lose your cool when they use it. Its the same as the old grogards who would complain about their campaign being wrecked after the players got a Deck of Many Things, like you gave it to them, you can't cry about it now.
part of me feels like if you're giving out wishes, because let's remember, the players aren't getting something you aren't explicitly giving them, you are asking for whatever comes and you might as well roll with it at that point.
also there is the psychological impact. Throwing a fireball at a bunch of PCs will get them to ready pencils to mark off some damage, but you instead counterspell their wizards big save-the-day spell and suddenly you'll see them perk up in fright! Long ago, I had an encounter with a previously described Red half-dragon troll that went after the party. Also with him was a group of triplet wizards. One was specialized in offense, one in defense, and the last in counterspelling. While they had their problems with the masochistic troll and the other two brothers, it's the counterspeller they still talk about with venomous hatred to this day. Counterspelling a True Resurrection will do that to a group though I guess.
prizes? If your carnival's ring toss game isn't making the barbarian lose thousands of gold for the stuffed basalt dragon figurine of wondrous power, what are you even doing?
a clone of a young child of course
the Iron Spike is awesome, I've had it since the beginning of the game and use it constantly. It was pretty funny in the beginning as my character comes from a wintery mountainous region and in the first round of the first combat of the first game I was hit with blindness/deafness, which we were too low level to cure for 5 game sessions. Unfortunately the rest of the game didn't take place in snowy mountainous regions so I would put up my snow covered hills in swamps, deserts, temperate forests...so that was fun.
currently my traveling war priest has made great use out of the Iron Spike, multi-tool, sapling rod and drinking horn of endless valor (this is a must have for Drunken Brutes with Drink Is Life). I let the rest of the group have the combat stuff, I take all the QoL improvement items and things that any traveler would love to have camping.
I think the UnRogue is fine as is, increasing HD and BAB I think would overshadow the Ranger and Fighter pretty badly. If anything, I'd give them a X/day ability to treat any opponent as flat-footed and call it a day. except those with uncanny dodge, it's improved version, see invisibility, other extra-sensory powers, etc... I'm fine with UnRogue as is, I've seen them in action in numerous games and they do just fine. That said, if there was any weakness in the class its the inability with a pretty decent amount of foes to not be able to use their main class feature for combat. So a x/day ability to sneak attack anything would help there, kind of like the Surprise Strike mythic ability. Maybe the same per day usage as a Paladin's Smite Evil, cause as you've pointed out, there are a lot of ways to get it, but for those corner cases (or just another Rogue)
It's more the locating hidden enemies/ enemies behind walls at will that concerns me, especially in prewritten content. get thicker walls? This shouldn't be a problem in most dungeons, castles and/or caves I'd think with stone walls (natural or brick), but I can see how that might be a problem in say a tavern or other non-fortified structure.
As much as I don't think it's a wonderful idea, I can't imagine it being more than just tedious. It's probably a good idea to prune friendships that would be ended by stealing in a game. a lot of this. Some of you must play with some real "gems". I only play with my friends, whom I trust, as they are my friends.
this takes a bit of setup, but in my experience its surefire success; so make it loudly and annoyingly known how much you love animals and abhor those who mistreat them. Then start small; in a superhero game, give your super a favorite pet, be sure to mention that you lovingly take care of them, but never involve them in heroing. Then ramp up, get a horse in the next fantasy game, name them, take care of them, take special attention on how you make sure they have the best stable and feed, etc. Throw in some conversations about games (Fallout is nice for this) on how you love Dogmeat for instance, but can't take him out of the house as the sound of him whimpering when hurt breaks your heart. Now, you GM should be primed, take that familiar, dote on them, love them and use them to the fullest extent, getting teary-eyed anytime anyone or thing threatens them. Visibly fume if something dares declares it as a target of anything other than pets or treatos. Abuse their game safe in the knowledge that they'd rather your familiar successfully scout everything than deal with your complete break from sanity should something happen to your beloved imaginary petfriend.
Strongly disagree, a well built rogue with sneak attack can outpace a fighter for damage at mid-high level. Even at low level it will be on par. UnRogue fixed that pretty handily with Debilitating Strike, besides the bonus of flanking or attacking a flat-footed opponent, another -4 to -6 to the opponent's AC virtually guarantees a hit. Then with multiple attacks, they make sure to nuke their attack penalty, making up for whatever armor might be lacking between them and a fighter. It's certainly not as easy a build as a point-and-click fighter, but it's crazy dangerous Our current game is a high-powered gestalt mythic campaign, my mythic vital striking martial artist barbarian hits for 280ish a pop, I pale in comparison to the two-weapon wielding knifemaster. As to being bad in solo play, I think there is nothing further from the truth. Rogues are Batman, they work best alone where they get to control the pace of combat, instead of rushing in with the rest of the group, they can take their time and own most encounters. Again going back to our current game, the rogue got separated in a dungeon and found a ghost beholder. It never hit him; couldn't see him, even with sniping minuses and he just picked it apart, using stealth and guile. Later on, after the ghost beholder had reformed, we all fought it, it killed two of us and took the rest of the seven person party into the double digits of health before we finally finished it off.
why don't demons/devils abuse it? Because forbiddance is a thing that exists. Only 6th level and not only does it block it, it can harm them as well. Sure if they have SR it might bounce it, or they take a fireball to the face for the attempt. Couple that with the people high enough to cast it and you'll check any teleporting willy nillyness in the bud right quick
two positive experiences where a Tengue swordmaster with a addiction to string, I would steal and hoard any and all string, twine or scarves I found even going so far as to threaten other characters if they had such a thing. To balance things out, I completely ignored other treasure, giving them all the coins, gems, weapons, armor, etc. I found. That seemed to work out well for the group. The last time, we played an Oops! All-Rogues! game and we had a running training scenario/contest to constantly "out-Rogue" each other. Of particular interest for some reason where the same 10 gold coins and small bottle of liquor that constantly kept getting nabbed, hidden, found and renabbed. That was a group decision and it never bled into actual treasure or useful items, so it worked out as well...after a bit of a learning curve;
now I kind of want to make a retired minotaur who has retired to a sunny vineyard to follow his passion of wine-making...
on a semi-related story, our most recent game had us encounter a Lich Nightmare Lord in his nightmarescape, which included a unhallow with a deeper darkness attached. When the lights went out, the panic on the other players was priceless. My fellow players are pretty bad, in the same boat as silver diamond's it would seem. These are 15th level, gestalt, mythic tier 7 heroes and they were nearly defeated by a 3rd level spell.
the heat needed to create a river of gold creates a permanent wind gust effect over the bridge, making anything short of siege weaponry ineffective. Fighting against this powerful updraft can also make crossing the bridge dangerous for smaller (read; non juggernaut) sized creatures. otherwise
keep in mind that even a tough love TPK doesn't have to mean the end of the game; you've already had a couple so far, and apparently one done by a demi-god. That sets up a scenario quite nicely for a nemesis of the godling to maybe swoop in and snatch the group up and rez them for their own diabolical porpoises...yes, I'm talking half-fiend dolphins steal-rezzing your champions! but seriously, there are all sorts of ways you can spin a TPK to continue the story. A couple of hard twists of their own fault that they have to solve to get our from under the thumb of, makes for a great chronicle
pretty much full agreement with VM, I'll keep the training wheels on for the first few levels, but by 10th level I expect people to be with it, especially with spellcasters who can ruin whole scenarios with a single well-chosen spell, so there is little to no mercy at a certain point. Adapt or die.
Arsenal of the Pike Monk
I think I got something wrong...
I wouldn't charge anything extra, since again, they are subtle weapons to begin with. If the player wants to get really fancy though, allow a masterwork disguised version of them that adds 2 to the DC and cost 50gp
search time isn't an issue as he mentioned they have Trap Spotter which lets them make a check automatically if within 10ft. Mark, you could always pre-roll Perception checks and Disable Device checks (which since they are both supposed to be secret rolls, stays within RAW) and then apply them to the traps ahead of time, allowing you to pre-plan encounters, thus saving time, or knowing which ones to "spice up" as needed. So if you know that the hall they are going down has 3 traps, before the game have a list of results for the two skills and apply them to those 3 traps. When the Rogue goes off to do roguey things, you already know if they are a success or failure and the consequences or rewards thereof. That doesn't make them any less of a speed bump, but greatly speeds up their play time, turning the successfully found and disarmed traps into simple narration and allowing you to focus the action on those that are missed/sprung and whatever may show up afterwards.
so your players want to find the traps for the advantage it gives them, but then turn around and complain about finding and disarming the traps...they sound terrible Dead serious, I'd take a break GMing and tell one of them to run.
in the second word of their description, they are described as subtle. I'd make them at least as hard to identify as a weapon as a cane sword. They'd be easy to spot, but most would think them just gaudy adornment and I think zza ni's suggestion of a knowledge check would be appropriate followed by the other skills as needed.
are they boring to you as the GM or boring to the group? Can you explain how they are boring? I happen to like traps, but I don't see much of a point of a lone trap that is just a check away from disarming all by its lonesome. There should be more going on if it's a trap that only requires a disable device check, like mass combat, a flooding room, necessity to find a bathroom, etc... otherwise, if its a lone trap, I much prefer a skill challenge trap, where several checks are needed to overcome, and not all or even the majority of them being disable device. Think of like Goonies traps, especially the bone organ one; perform, profession (musician) or linguistics, athletics, acrobatics, reflex saves, grapple hook checks, etc... just a dart trap in a corridor is a little lame and is essentially nothing but a speed bump. But I wouldn't axe them altogether, the character has spent resources on being good at finding traps, so let them have their moments to shine. Finally, again there are modifiers to Perception checks that you could use to add to the difficulty by RAW. If in combat, the distracted modifier is +5, mix up some favorable and unfavorable conditions for a -2/+2 to the DC, and so on.
where is the chart that lists what kind of damage natural attacks are? I can't seem to find it in Masterwork Tools.It's under Universal Monster Rules - Natural Attacks. The chart is named "Natural Attacks by Size". ah, thank you! I was looking under monster creation and advancement, didn't think they'd hide the chart in there.
its the "for a bit" that is subjective. Someone coming over for dinner, watch a movie, yeah maybe, depending on their issues with animals, but a 6+ hour gaming session? Nope, not sequestering my animals away from their home for that long, but also realize that I'd be the ass for setting up that situation in the first place, just play at the friends who doesn't have animals if they have a problem.
yeah no, it's their space, especially for pets, that is the only world they get to know. If someone else is uncomfortable around them, they have the option of not coming to the house. You can then personally weigh whether or not having that person is worth shifting locations or making other arrangements.
once, in a pretty high level 3rd edition module, one player was having monumental bad luck; a plethora of natural 1s, got his magic sword melted by a remorraz, failed saves left and right, it was so bad that the rest of the characters had to have an in-game discussion on whether it was responsible or not for us to take what was an "obvious" rookie into such dangerous battles with us. Then the GMs new kitten, hopped up on the table and whizzed on his character sheet. He just shook his head and said; "yeah, that feels about right"
we used to game at my house for a bit and at the time I had five dogs; a beagle, a golden retriever, a pit, a large street rat and destruction incarnate in a small 5lb dog form. I don't know what I would have done to one of my friends if they had suggested that I put one of the dogs up...but it would not have been pleasant, but I'd definitely be feeding my dogs their snacks.
I've done so in the past with an NPC that had a better-than-expected showing during an encounter or was memorable to the players, should that NPC have happened to survive or there is a neatly plausible way for them to come back. overdone it becomes tedious and leads to "mutilate the bodies!" as a survival mechanism and I think that detracts from most games (grimdark world is ok however) I had a Night Hag in a 3rd edition game that the players just hated with a fiery passion of a thousand fiery suns of fire. In their last battle she managed to survive though was thoroughly defeated. About 10 levels later she showed up again, though this time looking for help from the heroes, as something worse than her was about and she was pulling a Darla (though this game proceeded that arc by about 4 years, so suck it Whedon!). Anyways, players really enjoyed seeing her show up again, though totally not in a way they expected.
Your players must really trust you... I would've stopped caring about the GMs stories after the second campaign appeared to have been abandoned and I would've offered to run something for the group instead of being being a player in another campaign that I didn't think would reach a conclusion. if there isn't this level of trust in your group, you should probably find a new group...or question why you have such terrible trust issues.
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