Have the Iconics for the Ap after shatterd star been decided on?
We can be pretty sure that Harsk and Amiri are two of them.
Creative Director
|
Why would that even matter?Should clarify if that means "female Hellknights" or something else.
3. What are their views on sex?
I believe the intent here is that the question "What are their view on sex" could be interpreted in one of two ways:
1) Do Hellknights accept both males and females to their ranks?
2) Are Hellknights allowed to have sexual intercourse?In which case, to the best of my knowledge, the answears are:
1) yes
2) varies from order to order
Ah. Then I would expand that answer to say that those two answers (yes and it varies) doesn't change whether or not there's only male or female Hellknights. AKA: There are gay and lesbian and bisexual Hellknights as well.
|
Creative Director
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Grapple question. If I am reading it right when multiple creatures grapple a single target only one creature makes a check with a +2 per creature aiding it. So far so good. The section says once you are grappling a foe a successful check maintains the grapple and one of the options is that you can automatically damage the grappled target. Does this mean only the grappler making the check can damage the target, or can all of the creatures aiding also do automatic damage.
Only the grappler can deal the damage. It's best to have the person with the best grapple score make that role and to have it be aided.
|
Creative Director
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What is the most recent awesome moment from one of your games? It can be yours or another player's.
At Paizocon, I had an effective TPK at the end of my Call of Cthulhu game, including events like a ghost jumping from investigator to investigator to possess them and forcing the other PCs to kill the possessed investigators in order to try to stop the ghost... and then Greg Vaughan's character got pinched in half by the Mortician God. That was not bad.
|
Have the Iconics for the Ap after shatterd star been decided on?We can be pretty sure that Harsk and Amiri are two of them.
Uh I said the one after shatterd star (The winter themed one)
|
Creative Director
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A party in an old castle is fighting an invisible stalker in the main room. Since it's invisibility is natural, it doesn't show up under Detect Magic and See Invisibility isn't available for whatever reason, thus the entire party is forced to deal with the 50% miss chance every attack. Also, for the sake of argument, the stalkers intentionally stay near the party to discourage the use of area of effect spells.
With Rules-As-Written (and again without), what would be the result of the two members of the party successfully pulling a LARGE tapestry down from wall on top of the invisible stalker as well as 10' in all directions? Or a resourceful member used Create Water over the invisible stalker as other used Prestidigitation to soil the water?
(In short, what purely mundane methods are there to negate miss chance?)
That would resolve as a net attack, I would say. If neither PC has the net proficiency, they'd have a –4 penalty on their attack roll. If the stalker gets entangled, then the PCs can pinpoint its location but it would STILL likely have a little concealment (since it's under the tapestry) which means a 20% miss chance. Or not. Depending on how the GM feels.
Create water would still suffer a miss chance, and the caster would still have to guess squares, and if it still manages to hit, the stalker would at best be revealed in what square it was in but would still enjoy its 50% miss chance. There's already a few spells that do this effect—faerie fire and glitterdust both come to mind, with faerie fire being the weaker version but STILL being 1st level. Letting create water, a 0 level spell, do the same thing as a 1st level spell is not good.
In the case of an invisible stalker, there pretty much isn't a mundane way to negate the miss chance, but LOTS of ways to negate the fact that you have to guess the square of the creature. Dusting it with flour or mud would let you keep track of its square. Actually... I suppose if you completely drenched the stalker in something like paint or tar or something opaque and sticky, THAT would negate its invisibility entirely.
|
Creative Director
|
Would a game like calcio fiorentino* (Source) be played in Cheliax?
*Thanks Cracked.
Perhaps.
Uh I said the one after shatterd star (The winter themed one)Have the Iconics for the Ap after shatterd star been decided on?We can be pretty sure that Harsk and Amiri are two of them.
D'oh! Well, that certainly makes more sense.
|
Creative Director
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hello James,
So, ranged sneak attacks. Let's say that you are stealthed against your opponent, and you make a full round ranged attack. Does just your first attack gain sneak attack, or does every iterative attack that round gain sneak attack? And, at the end of the round, you are no longer stealthed?
One of my players is building a ninja who throws many many shuriken, and I want to make sure that I am understanding it right.
Thanks!
Only your first attack gains sneak attack damage, since the second attack happens after the target knows you're there. It's VERY VERY VERY difficult to pull off a sniper-type character who makes sneak attacks at range in the game. That's more or less by design, since the ability to do a large amount of damage at range while no one can see you more or less makes it VER VERY VERY difficult for the person begin damaged to fight back.
When you're making ranged attacks to sneak attack, you really do only get the 1 shot before you have to move and re-hide.
IF, on the other hand, you have concealment the whole time (such as if you have greater invisibility, or the target is blind, etc.), then yes, all your sneak attacks go through.
|
Creative Director
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Greetings. I have a question about Detect Evil spell(or any other alignment spell) I've searched forum topics and everyone speaks different about the thing. CRB states that evil creatures(not clerics, anti-paladins, undeads, outsiders etc.) with 4 HD or less have no aura at all. However, Detect Evil spell description says caster can detect "presence or absence of evil" in the first round. Also paladin's detect evil spell-like ability says, "A paladin can, as a move action, concentrate on a single item or individual within 60 feet and 'determine if it is evil', learning the strength of its aura as if having studied it for 3 rounds."
Let's say we have a level 1 CE Fighter.
1-) A cleric casts Detect Evil and look at the direction where the Fighter stands. Does the Cleric see the Fighter as evil or not?
2-) Paladin casts Detect Evil and concentrates on the Fighter. Does the Paladin see the Fighter as evil or not?
Thanks!
1) Nope, the cleric does not see the fighter as evil because he's under 4 HD and isn't a cleric or demon or ghoul or whatever.
2) Nope, the paladin does not see the fighter as evil because he's under 4 HD and isn't a cleric or demon or ghoul or whatever.
|
Creative Director
|
Have the Iconics for the Ap after shatterd star been decided on?
Yup. We make that decision when the Adventure Path is outlined. Reign of Winter got its outline finalized a month or more ago, so we do indeed know who the iconics are. And no, now's not the time to reveal that. Be excited about Shattered Star for now! :-)
A party in an old castle is fighting an invisible stalker in the main room. Since it's invisibility is natural, it doesn't show up under Detect Magic and See Invisibility isn't available for whatever reason, thus the entire party is forced to deal with the 50% miss chance every attack. Also, for the sake of argument, the stalkers intentionally stay near the party to discourage the use of area of effect spells.
With Rules-As-Written (and again without), what would be the result of the two members of the party successfully pulling a LARGE tapestry down from wall on top of the invisible stalker as well as 10' in all directions? Or a resourceful member used Create Water over the invisible stalker as other used Prestidigitation to soil the water?
(In short, what purely mundane methods are there to negate miss chance?)
That would resolve as a net attack, I would say. If neither PC has the net proficiency, they'd have a –4 penalty on their attack roll. If the stalker gets entangled, then the PCs can pinpoint its location but it would STILL likely have a little concealment (since it's under the tapestry) which means a 20% miss chance. Or not. Depending on how the GM feels.
Create water would still suffer a miss chance, and the caster would still have to guess squares, and if it still manages to hit, the stalker would at best be revealed in what square it was in but would still enjoy its 50% miss chance. There's already a few spells that do this effect—faerie fire and glitterdust both come to mind, with faerie fire being the weaker version but STILL being 1st level. Letting create water, a 0 level spell, do the same thing as a 1st level spell is not good.
In the case of an invisible stalker, there pretty much isn't a mundane way to negate the miss chance, but LOTS of ways to negate the fact that you have to guess the square of the creature. Dusting it with flour or mud would let you keep track of its square. Actually... I suppose if you completely drenched the stalker in...
So, just to be clear, a couple of 7th fighters, with no spellcasters to assist, facing a invisible stalker would face 50% miss chance per attack. But, if they use a tapestry as a net (which would probably be an improvised weapon, being a -4 to the attack), would that have the 50% miss chance, since the tapestry is larger that the 5' x 5' square? (If I was unclear before, I'm sorry, the tapestry in question was 20' wide by 25' long)
Which also brings up the question... which mundane attacks, if any, do not need to target a specific square, let along a creature within a square? I know some firearms are short-range cones, but are there others?
What's the one Pathfinder product that most deserved to sell much better than it did?
Of the Good-aligned outerplanes, which do Angels come from? Can it be whichever matches their Lawful vs. Chaotic alignment, or do they all come from one plane and then migrate to whichever matches their alignment?
|
Creative Director
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So, just to be clear, a couple of 7th fighters, with no spellcasters to assist, facing a invisible stalker would face 50% miss chance per attack. But, if they use a tapestry as a net (which would probably be an improvised weapon, being a -4 to the attack), would that have the 50% miss chance, since the tapestry is larger that the 5' x 5' square? (If I was unclear before, I'm sorry, the tapestry in question was 20' wide by 25' long)
Which also brings up the question... which mundane attacks, if any, do not need to target a specific square, let along a creature within a square? I know some firearms are short-range cones, but are there others?
Yup. Again... different GMs would handle that in different ways. The fact that a GM is there to adjudicate strange situations like this is a strength of the game, since it allows the game to be as dynamic as it is. The other option would be to treat it as a computer game, in which case the tapestry on the wall is not something you could interact with at all. Which is lame.
Splash weapons come to mind as mundane attacks that don't target specific creatures.
|
Creative Director
|
Of the Good-aligned outerplanes, which do Angels come from? Can it be whichever matches their Lawful vs. Chaotic alignment, or do they all come from one plane and then migrate to whichever matches their alignment?
They come from all three of those outer planes, depending on their alignment. Most are neutral good and thus come from Nirvana.
James, question about the core rulebook in the skills section. Quite a number of skills say that the rolls should be done in secret. I understand why you would do this, but how do you handle this?
Also, another issue I would like your advice on. Melee characters over level 10 really benefit from a full round attack sequence. However this works weirdly, at least to me. Say you have a melee character at level 10 with three attacks facing two blue dragons with many multiple attacks. If the dragons win initative they close (move action) and get a single attack. The melee character then gets to go to town with a full attack sequence. So in many ways it pays to stand back and wait for someone to come to you.
How do you play your monsters with this issue?
So, just to be clear, a couple of 7th fighters, with no spellcasters to assist, facing a invisible stalker would face 50% miss chance per attack. But, if they use a tapestry as a net (which would probably be an improvised weapon, being a -4 to the attack), would that have the 50% miss chance, since the tapestry is larger that the 5' x 5' square? (If I was unclear before, I'm sorry, the tapestry in question was 20' wide by 25' long)
Which also brings up the question... which mundane attacks, if any, do not need to target a specific square, let along a creature within a square? I know some firearms are short-range cones, but are there others?
Yup. Again... different GMs would handle that in different ways. The fact that a GM is there to adjudicate strange situations like this is a strength of the game, since it allows the game to be as dynamic as it is. The other option would be to treat it as a computer game, in which case the tapestry on the wall is not something you could interact with at all. Which is lame.
Splash weapons come to mind as mundane attacks that don't target specific creatures.
Thanks much... particularly for that last sentence... flasks of paint here I go...
|
Creative Director
|
James, question about the core rulebook in the skills section. Quite a number of skills say that the rolls should be done in secret. I understand why you would do this, but how do you handle this?
In fact, I disagree with that rule. I think that the PCs should almost ALWAYS be allowed to roll their dice. They might not always know the DC they're trying to hit, but I think having the ability to know you rolled high versus rolling low is important—it helps keep a bit of player guesswork in the game.
AKA: If you roll a perception check to look for traps, you don't know what the roll to spot any particular trap is. But if you roll a 1 or a 2, you'll know that the result of that check isn't nearly the best you can do and that can convince you to try again. Conversely, rolling a 19 or a 20 might tell you that even if you don't see the trap, you can be pretty convinced there's no trap there anyway, since you've been spotting traps earlier with lower roles.
In any event... sometimes I do make rolls for the PCs in secret. When I do, I roll the d20 behind a screen (I normally do NOT game with a GM's screen, so I'll just hide the roll behind a cupped hand or something) and then grab that player's character sheet and figure out the result that way.
|
Creative Director
|
Also, another issue I would like your advice on. Melee characters over level 10 really benefit from a full round attack sequence. However this works weirdly, at least to me. Say you have a melee character at level 10 with three attacks facing two blue dragons with many multiple attacks. If the dragons win initative they close (move action) and get a single attack. The melee character then gets to go to town with a full attack sequence. So in many ways it pays to stand back and wait for someone to come to you.
How do you play your monsters with this issue?
Melee characters over level 10 can also take the Vital Strike chain of feats to give them an option for making a single attack with the potential to do a single harder hit.
How you stage your moves and attacks when you have multiple attacks is part of the game's tactics, though. In some cases, being the first to move up into melee to attack is NOT the best option—it's sometimes a better idea to delay and let the monster come to you so you can get your full attack sequence. Taking this initial round to drink a buffing potion or otherwise bolster yourself is a good idea.
Another option is to have ranged attacks handy. With a bow, you can take your full number of attacks while you're waiting for the foe to get to you. With Quick Draw and, say, a stack of daggers, you can do the same.
Really... it's only rogues who you really want to get into melee as soon as possible to make an initial strong hit. Even if you have multiple attacks, if you run in and strike the first blow, you'll get your sneak attack damage, which for most rogues will be far more damage than what you'd get to do on a normal full attack.
But frankly, one other thing to keep in mind if you're playing a fighter type... you're not really just there to dish out damage. Your'e there to TAKE damage. You have more hit points, and with your armor you often have a better AC against foes. If you distract a monster by getting up in its face and then it makes its full attack on you, that gives the rogue or the wizard or whoever a chance to get in behind it and do THEIR thing. In video games, this is often referred to as tanking, and it's something that's pretty valuable but not something that, I think, a lot of gamers are keen on doing because often the idea is that if you're doing the most damage, you're somehow the "star" of the show or the main character.
If you moving up to melee the monster and absorb its attacks helps the other players in the group get in to safely wallop it with damage, then you're doing your job as surely as if you did that damage yourself.
|
Creative Director
|
PF removed the creator names from spells because they aren't OGL: Have there simply yet to be any spells with a (Paizo created/owned) creator in their name, or is there a conscious style choice to not include such a thing in spell names?
Our hardcover rulebook line does not assume any particular world—they're world-neutral, and as such, we don't attach creator names to those spells or things on purpose. We don't have that restriction in all our other book lines, so now and then you WILL see spells with creator names attached to them—there are several examples in Inner Sea Magic, for example. Since the vast majority of our new spells are presented in the rulebook lines, though, we don't do this very often.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
Fleshwarren questions:
1) Was it created via arcane, divine, or natural means?
2) Is it actually a body? Or just in appearance? Do players walk around inside the veins, bones, etc?
3) Was anything product ever planned to be set in the Fleshwarren? Or story?
4) Which person/organization on Golarion would know the most about it?
What have the ropers spelled out?
Did anyone ever actually fire a weapon (hand or long gun) before writing up the Gunslinger ?
The noise and smoke from a muzzle loading weapon is pretty substantial, fire one of these in close combat 5 or 10 feet from behind an ally without modern hearing protection and see what happens. Tinnitus anyone ?
The fouling factor alone will render any weapon useless after so many shots without cleaning depending on powder quality.
I cannot disagree with this more. I shoot muzzleloaders. Ive attended muzzleloading competitions (although I do not shoot in competition). Almost nobody wears 'modern hearing protection'. What they DO wear is ear plugs. The kind of plugs that anyone can make in just about any era. Stick a bit of cotton in your ears and your hearing is protected.
Now, I would not recommend that with modern firearms, but muzzleloaders are not modern firearms.
As for Gunslingers etc. I absolutely agree that they are pure fiction. Nobody can do what they do with a muzzleloader. (Rate of Fire, fouling, etc.) But then again, this is a game that is also fiction.
- Gauss
|
Hello James,
So, ranged sneak attacks. Let's say that you are stealthed against your opponent, and you make a full round ranged attack. Does just your first attack gain sneak attack, or does every iterative attack that round gain sneak attack? And, at the end of the round, you are no longer stealthed?
One of my players is building a ninja who throws many many shuriken, and I want to make sure that I am understanding it right.
Thanks!
Only your first attack gains sneak attack damage, since the second attack happens after the target knows you're there. It's VERY VERY VERY difficult to pull off a sniper-type character who makes sneak attacks at range in the game. That's more or less by design, since the ability to do a large amount of damage at range while no one can see you more or less makes it VER VERY VERY difficult for the person begin damaged to fight back.
When you're making ranged attacks to sneak attack, you really do only get the 1 shot before you have to move and re-hide.
IF, on the other hand, you have concealment the whole time (such as if you have greater invisibility, or the target is blind, etc.), then yes, all your sneak attacks go through.
And that why goggles of the snipe don't exist in my game world.
I know it is a bit weak as a question, but how do you feel about them?
To me they seem way too unbalancing, more in the hands of the GM than the players, but still unbalancing.
In the hands of a player they have the added defect that when using them in the right situation the character with the goggles would be the unquestionable star of the encounter with all the other PC reduced to a support role.
|
Creative Director
|
Fleshwarren questions:
1) Was it created via arcane, divine, or natural means?
2) Is it actually a body? Or just in appearance? Do players walk around inside the veins, bones, etc?
3) Was anything product ever planned to be set in the Fleshwarren? Or story?
4) Which person/organization on Golarion would know the most about it?
1) Unrevealed.
2) Unrevealed.
3) Not yet.
4) Unrevealed.
|
Creative Director
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And that why goggles of the snipe don't exist in my game world.
I know it is a bit weak as a question, but how do you feel about them?
To me they seem way too unbalancing, more in the hands of the GM than the players, but still unbalancing.
In the hands of a player they have the added defect that when using them in the right situation the character with the goggles would be the unquestionable star of the encounter with all the other PC reduced to a support role.
I assume first that you forgot the "R" on "snipe" and meant to say goggles of the sniper.
I assume second that "goggles of the sniper" are things we published in one of our hardcover rulebooks, because I don't recognize the item.
A search of our PRD reveals an item called "sniper goggles." Is that what you mean?
I don't think they're overpowered at all. They're pretty expensive, first of all. Second of all... anything that helps a ranged sneak attack character work better is a good thing, since that's a character concept that really doesn't work well in Pathfinder OR in D&D, despite the fact that in the real world, snipers are pretty bad-ass.
|
|
What have the ropers spelled out?You mean Jack, Janet, and Chrissie's landlords?
I see what you did there!
James, on a bit of a skill question roll :-) I have a player who has dumped charisma to 8 who has then taken ranks in Diplomacy netting a total +5. He claims that this makes the character personable and effectively has removed the poor charisma from his characters personality. I don't agree, on the basis that if you have a 8 strength and a +5 climb you can climb OK but you are still weak on other strength related tasks. I think the character is generally not so personable, but has a way of speaking that allows him to be persuasive. I am inclined to play NPCs as not really gravitating to the character, but if the character can get a NPC engaged they can go to work with the diplomacy skill. Is this the intention of charisma and diplomacy in the game? Would you play the NPCs in a similar way?
Hello James,
I have quite a bunch of -not very related- questions:
1) About every good / evil outsider that comes with DR is weak vs. evil / good. However, the other axis of alignments seems to be relevant only if the outsider is neutral on the good/evil axis (e.g. both devils (LE) and demons (CE) are vulnerable to good; but a devil's DR completely ignores any chaos-aligned attacks. Same goes, respectively, for demons, or azata, or archons...)
Is this intentional, to indicate a greater importance of Good vs Evil, as opposed to Order vs Chaos? Or is this just the result of the system having evolved this way?
2) The Demoniac PrC has an alignment requirement of CE (i.e. matching your demon patron). On the other hand, the Diabolist PrC only requires the practitioner to be one step within LE. Why the difference?
3) When Aolar met her end... how powerful was she? Something akin to the current Demon Lords, or even higher up (like what is rumored about Nocticula, for example)
4) All seven of King Xins governors descended into evil and megalomania. Since it it not probable that Xin deliberately chose persons with less-than-adequate personalities, odds are that this descent was instigated, or at least assisted, by an external force. Am I on a wild goose chase there, or has there been someone... or something that caused the runelords to fall from what they should have been?
|
|
And that why goggles of the snipe don't exist in my game world.
I know it is a bit weak as a question, but how do you feel about them?
To me they seem way too unbalancing, more in the hands of the GM than the players, but still unbalancing.
In the hands of a player they have the added defect that when using them in the right situation the character with the goggles would be the unquestionable star of the encounter with all the other PC reduced to a support role.I assume first that you forgot the "R" on "snipe" and meant to say goggles of the sniper.
I assume second that "goggles of the sniper" are things we published in one of our hardcover rulebooks, because I don't recognize the item.
A search of our PRD reveals an item called "sniper goggles." Is that what you mean?
I don't think they're overpowered at all. They're pretty expensive, first of all. Second of all... anything that helps a ranged sneak attack character work better is a good thing, since that's a character concept that really doesn't work well in Pathfinder OR in D&D, despite the fact that in the real world, snipers are pretty bad-ass.
Your assumptions are right.
My problem is that a character with them can set up a ambush from 300' with a ravine or a river between his targets and him and be immune from most retaliation with the exclusion of area effect spells.
The +29 to hiding from the range would allow him to snipe forever while dealing sneak attack damage and any carrier effect like Bleeding Attack.
A 9th level rogue bandit lord with those will be a terrific adversary for a 7th level party.
Fly and invisibility would ameliorate the situation, but they last a brief time, shot from ambush and move away and he will be almost impossible to catch while dealing substantial damage.
In the hand of a PC it mean that he can shut down most dumb NPC monsters. 1 Bleeding Attack and then you can let it die from the bleeding.
Sure, sniper in reality are bad ass and they work badly in a world with hit points, but the goggles allow the sniper to repeat its attack every round with a bow, something that is very hard to do in RL.
Even in RL you can dodge an arrow shot from a long distance as they are relatively slow, bullet instead are fast.
A item allowing you to deal sneak attack at any range against a flat footed adversary? It seem reasonably. It work in the surprise round, and, if you win initiative, in the following round.
But if it allow you to do that against any target whose dexterity has been negated it become too powerful for my taste.
P.s.: sorry, I know I have a tendency to ramble when given the occasion and this is the "Ask James Jacobs all your questions tread", not the "ramble about his reply" thread, but I wanted to explain my point of view. I haven't tested this item in game, so if there is a error in my line of thought please point it to me.
End of the derail and thanks for your patience.
James, any plans to have some art of the iconics wearing something different? Say, Valeros in a tux, Kyra in a dress, or Seoni in something more gypsy-like? Seems odd they only have one change of clothes, considering they have to walk around town at times without armour and stuff. Not to mention the picture of Alahazra swabbing the decks in her oracle gown!
I was kind of hoping Skull & Shackles might have, say, pirate versions of the well-known characters...
Reign of Winter got its outline finalized a month or more ago, so we do indeed know who the iconics are. And no, now's not the time to reveal that. Be excited about Shattered Star for now! :-)
So, it we're to get excited about it... can you tell us who the AP cover stars are going to be, apart from the lovely Shiela H?
Sure, sniper in reality are bad ass and they work badly in a world with hit points, but the goggles allow the sniper to repeat its attack every round with a bow, something that is very hard to do in RL.
Even in RL you can dodge an arrow shot from a long distance as they are relatively slow, bullet instead are fast.
Well, consider this: the ability to dodge the arrows is already factored into the archery equation. A longbow has a range of 100 ft; any target 101 ft or more away has a cumulative penalty on the attack roll for every 100 ft (-2 at 101-200, -4 at 201-300, -6 at 301-400 etc).
A third level Warrior, for instance, would have a minimum of +3 to an attack with a longbow on a target within 100 ft. At 101 ft, he has a +1 to attack, at 201 ft, he has -1 to his attack.
Remember, when comparing things from D&D/Pathfinder, you must also keep in mind that people in real life are probably 3rd level at best. The link is a bit of a long read, but it's a very interesting breakdown of a comparison of D&D mechanics to real life expectations.
James,
Would you please give the following thread a quick read and provide some feedback?
Thanks.
http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz67s2?Is-masterwork-sufficient-to-add-magical#1
|
Creative Director
|
James, on a bit of a skill question roll :-) I have a player who has dumped charisma to 8 who has then taken ranks in Diplomacy netting a total +5. He claims that this makes the character personable and effectively has removed the poor charisma from his characters personality. I don't agree, on the basis that if you have a 8 strength and a +5 climb you can climb OK but you are still weak on other strength related tasks. I think the character is generally not so personable, but has a way of speaking that allows him to be persuasive. I am inclined to play NPCs as not really gravitating to the character, but if the character can get a NPC engaged they can go to work with the diplomacy skill. Is this the intention of charisma and diplomacy in the game? Would you play the NPCs in a similar way?
This character may be a good diplomat, but he's still got a low Charisma and that means he's a terrible liar, not very intimidating, and relatively unartistic, for starters. To me, this character sounds like a great way to interpret a "soulless executive" who's really good at board meetings and keeping the shareholders happy... as long as he doesn't have to lie about his company's success!
|
Creative Director
|
Hello James,
Ninja is an alternate class for rogue. Can a human ninja select the alternate favored class bonus, and gain 1/6th of a ninja trick every level? If not, can they get 1/6th of a rogue trick every level?
Thanks!
Nope. That only grants rogue tricks, not ninja tricks.
Your GM may be more lenient though. I would be in games I run. Good luck!
One more question regarding Shamira, if I may...
If I understood correctly, each of the Midnight Isles is ruled by a unique succubus or incubus... of course, all of them under Nocticula; with the exception of her personal residence island, Alinythia.
Now, under 'Shamira', you state 'Realm: Alinythia'.
Which would imply that Shamira, despite being the most powerful unique succubus serving Nocticula, has no island to claim as her own.
DId I go wrong somewhere?
|
Creative Director
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
1) About every good / evil outsider that comes with DR is weak vs. evil / good. However, the other axis of alignments seems to be relevant only if the outsider is neutral on the good/evil axis (e.g. both devils (LE) and demons (CE) are vulnerable to good; but a devil's DR completely ignores any chaos-aligned attacks. Same goes, respectively, for demons, or azata, or archons...)
Is this intentional, to indicate a greater importance of Good vs Evil, as opposed to Order vs Chaos? Or is this just the result of the system having evolved this way?2) The Demoniac PrC has an alignment requirement of CE (i.e. matching your demon patron). On the other hand, the Diabolist PrC only requires the practitioner to be one step within LE. Why the difference?
3) When Aolar met her end... how powerful was she? Something akin to the current Demon Lords, or even higher up (like what is rumored about Nocticula, for example)
4) All seven of King Xins governors descended into evil and megalomania. Since it it not probable that Xin deliberately chose persons with less-than-adequate personalities, odds are that this descent was instigated, or at least assisted, by an external force. Am I on a wild goose chase there, or has there been someone... or something that caused the runelords to fall from what they should have been?
1) Qlippoth are chaotic evil outsiders who are weak against lawful weapons. There are other examples out there as well. For the most part, though, it is as it is due to simple design evolution.
2) Because they're not supposed to be mirrors of each other. And because of the themes that devils want to corrupt your mind and thus letting the devil-associated prestige class lure in lawful neutral or neutral evil ones, the forces of Hell can do just that. Demons are more interested in ruining you physically than mentally, and so that's not a factor. And again... because they're not supposed to be opposites.
3) Aolar was a demon lord. She wasn't as powerful as Nocticula, but she was more powerful than Treerazer. If Nocticula, being the most powerful demon lord behind Lamashtu (who's the only one who's a full on god—the rest of the demon lords being mere demigods), were a CR 35 creature, Aolar was probably something like CR 30 or thereabouts. Maybe. Those numbers are QUITE subject to change.
4) Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Had Xin not been killed, he likely would have turned evil in time as well. The runelords were not "made evil" by an external force. They didn't fall from anything. They rose to their heights as evil wizards by choice and free will.
|
Creative Director
|
So how does Control Water work in your games?
1. Can a caster (temporarily) flood a room with a cup of water?
2. Can a caster (temporarily) lower a sealed container of water?-OR-
3. Is Control Water only useful on bodies of water that could otherwise raise or lower their levels naturally (lakes, streams, oceans, etc)?
Up to the GM. I prefer option 2.5—the water can be raised or lowered well beyond what levels an existing body of water could normally achieve...but it has to be cast on a "body of water," not a mere cup of water. (That's the baseline assumption I make when designing and developing adventures.)
|
Creative Director
|
P.s.: sorry, I know I have a tendency to ramble when given the occasion and this is the "Ask James Jacobs all your questions tread", not the "ramble about his reply" thread, but I wanted to explain my point of view. I haven't tested this item in game, so if there is a error in my line of thought please point it to me.
No worries. My advice is to turn some of that tactical examination of what someone can do with those goggles around to building tactics to fight AGAINST them with your PCs. Obscuring mist, for example, can be a great equalizer...
Or keep in mind that whatever the PCs can do, the GM can do too.