Some rules questions

[Loughmoe Sentinel]

I have a couple of rules questions that have not got an answer in the game so I'd like the wise advice of those on these boards

First, does a creature who is the subject of a dominate spell remember what they did while under the spells effect or would it just be completely blank as if they were doing one thing one moment right before they were controlled by the spell and the next thing they know is what they are doing when the spell wears off?

Second if you have an object that only partially fits into a bag of holding or a portable hole or you deliberately keep a part of the object/creature/etc out of the bag does the weight of the portion in the bag not count against as would normally be the case with something in a bag of holding?

Oh and as a side note I'm really liking the Alpha releases of Pathfinder. Keep up the good work

[Legendarius]

To answer your two questions, here are my opinions.

1) I'd say yes, they'd remember all of the horrible things they were forced to do while dominated - makes it much nastier and more fun for the DM when that paladin was forced to do the unspeakable.

2) In my opinion, with the bag of holding, if you can't get the entire object inside the bag so that you can close it, then the magic of the bag does not kick in and it's no different than a regular bag for that object.

Agree on the Pathfinder comment. The variant rules seem interesting. There are certainly a few I'm considering incorporating in my games already.

L

[Rezdave]

Loughmoe Sentinel wrote:

does a creature who is the subject of a dominate spell remember what they did while under the spells effect or would it just be completely blank

This is pretty much a DM judgement call, IMHO. Of course, there is a middle-ground in which the subject recalls their actions but isn't aware of the fact that they were dominated and thus is at a loss to explain why they performed those actions. I think of a little kid who has done something wrong, and when asked why they acted badly (perhaps even doing something they had just been immediately told not to do) honestly answers, "I don't know." They don't deny performing the acts in question, but simply cannot explain their motivation.

Loughmoe Sentinel wrote:

if you have an object that only partially fits into a bag of holding ... does the weight of the portion in the bag not count against as would normally be the case with something in a bag of holding?

I would say yes ... the portion contained within the bag is subject to the effects of the bag, including weight mitigation, while the portion outside of the bag is not affected and so affects weight and encumbrance normally.

This does raise an interesting scenario in which a character is unable to remove a single, heavy object from the bag because the further they remove it the heavier it becomes, until such time as they are unable to lift it further to completely extract it.

HTH,

Rez

[Loughmoe Sentinel]

There are a couple others that have occurred to me

First is there any limit on the number of homonculi that a single construct builder can own or control at a time?

Second, with familiars some of the creatures available as familiars can live for a number of years but eventually they will grow old and die. When a creature becomes a familiar, does it retain the basic creatures lifespan? This would be quite annoying for an elf arcanist because of their VERY long lives, so I was thinking of a variant rule: Any creature you take as a familiar (or animal companion for that matter) now ages at the same rate you do and has the same lifespan as you, rather than the normal aging rate and lifespan of its kind. Does this rule seem reasonable?

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Loughmoe Sentinel wrote:

I have a couple of rules questions that have not got an answer in the game so I'd like the wise advice of those on these boards

First, does a creature who is the subject of a dominate spell remember what they did while under the spells effect or would it just be completely blank as if they were doing one thing one moment right before they were controlled by the spell and the next thing they know is what they are doing when the spell wears off?

The spell says nothing about lost memories hence the subject presumably retains its memories.

Loughmoe Sentinel wrote:

Second if you have an object that only partially fits into a bag of holding or a portable hole or you deliberately keep a part of the object/creature/etc out of the bag does the weight of the portion in the bag not count against as would normally be the case with something in a bag of holding?

This would not normally come up. This is because "If the bag is overloaded...the bag ruptures and is ruined." Hence you simply can't put part of an object that is to large for the bag into the bag without destroying it. The only way you can get to a point where one would be calculating the weight of an object partially outside of a Bag of Holding is in a case where the object would normally fit into the bag but one chooses not to put all of the object in the bag for whatever reason. I suppose in this case the part of the object protruding from the bag weighs whatever it normally would.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Loughmoe Sentinel wrote:

There are a couple others that have occurred to me

First is there any limit on the number of homonculi that a single construct builder can own or control at a time?

Nothing in the description seems to limit the number that can be made or controlled. Hence it would seem that their is no upper limit.

Loughmoe Sentinel wrote:

Second, with familiars some of the creatures available as familiars can live for a number of years but eventually they will grow old and die. When a creature becomes a familiar, does it retain the basic creatures lifespan? This would be quite annoying for an elf arcanist because of their VERY long lives, so I was thinking of a variant rule: Any creature you take as a familiar (or animal companion for that matter) now ages at the same rate you do and has the same lifespan as you, rather than the normal aging rate and lifespan of its kind. Does this rule seem reasonable?

Your not going to break anything should you house rule that familiars age at different rates then they normally would. However nothing in making a creature a familiar implies that its rate of ageing has changed. Hence I would think that by RAW familiars grow old and die at the same speed their more mundane kin.