I've always hated the idea that positive energy (aka healing) is good and negative energy is bad. Sure, one is good and one is bad from a Pavlovian "this one hurts me and this one makes me feel good" sense, but a morally evil person can use positive energy to heal himself and a righteous person can use negative energy to smite her foes. There's a reason that healing spells don't have the good descriptor and inflict spells don't have the evil descriptor.
On that note, I've always hated the idea of conjuring energy from the positive / negative plane to begin with. I personally liked how 2nd Edition did it; where healing magic was part of the necromancy school. I feel like it was only changed because people associate the word "necro" with "evil" instead of its true Latin roots, where "necro" simply means "life." I blame close-minded thinking like that as the reason we can't have white wizards and white necromancers in the modern-day era. On that note, this is one of the big reasons I like the witch; parts of her spell list seem almost like a modern-day shout out to what necromancy should be.
It's worth noting that in Pathfinder, positive energy is NOT "good" and negative energy is NOT "evil" in and of itself. In fact, I don't believe the energies were associated with good or evil in D&D either.
As for the question...
I prefer necromancy for healing magic, but that's not a change I felt comfortable trying to push through when Pathfinder was being made.
I don't think Positive or Negative energy has ever been given an alignment descriptor in D&D's history either. I meant that a lot of players personally view positive energy as "good" because it heals them. Probably stems back to many Japanese RPGs (aka Final Fantasy) giving a lot of the healing magic to the "holy" characters and keeping it away from the "evil" characters. For example, the white mage / black mage phenomena.
I figured that if anyone at champion preferred necromancy for healing, that would be the reason why it didn't change. As minor as it is, changing an entire subschool of spells around probably didn't seem like a good decision when you weren't sure how popular Pathfinder was going to end up being.
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Hmm something I've been wondering, who came up with the final design for the Sihedron and how (or did it come down to "here's a 7-sided star, now make it fancy!") ?
The reason I ask Is because I'm drawing the DCE Rise of the Runelords Sihedron tome for an art project and trying to get the proprtians right is a pain in the A#%!
Hey James, I got a quick question for ya: I was wondering if you could help me understand how a 'spell storing' weapon actually works. My group and I have been in debate about it, and here is how we break it down...
Say for example you want to use vampiric touch in your spell storing weapon- you make your attack roll and hit, and then decide to cast the stored vampiric touch spell.
Now, here is the issue: some of my friends believe that you must now make another attack roll for the 'vampiric touch' spell to actually hit, while others contest that the spell 'automatically hits' due to the previous successful attack roll. Which is it? Thanks again for the help.
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Aye. There's some in Katapesh that have "runes for the use of benevolent magic" written on them. These are the only ones I can currently find, but I know I've seen others.There's a number of references in places in the Inner Sea Region about large protrusions from the ground covered in varied runes that seem to do nothing but sit there and absorb lightning. Each time they are mentioned as having an "unknown purpose" and as far as I can tell, none of the APs have dealt with this. I know that you can't tell me what their purpose is, but...are these magical lightning rods related in some way? Feels kind of conspiracy-theory-ish to me.Can you cite a specific example?
Ah. Now I recall them. They haven't been dealt with in an Adventure Path because they're localized; they're actually NOT all over the place. Just in that one spot. What they're up to is left for now to the GM.
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Dear James Jacobs
I was looking at the rules for diseases and I was just wondering why the DCs for them are so low? I have never seen a single PC fail a fortitude save against them by level four. As such, I don't see any reason why a GM include them since by that level, the player characters have a pretty high fortitude. Just wondering if it is possible to have extra virulent strains show up or if, like poisons, the DC goes up based on the concentration of it. Like if adventurers walked through a filthy sewer versus being bit by a rat on the surface.
How do I discourage my players from minmaxing? Unless it is a class stat, I always see a charisma of 7 on them or sometimes 5 based on race. They just tend to get someone to be a face man for the group so they can all minmax the heck out of their characters on creation. Not to get nostalgic but I remember in AD&D 2nd when you could have close to average stats and still have a great character. Now people need to get at least one stat over 20 by level 4 or they feel weak.
Partially because they were inherited DCs from 3rd edition, and in that game, once you got to be able to cast remove disease, diseases really started to no longer be a major threat to a PC because they took so long to start hurting it was never really a big deal to just prepare a remove disease spell to fix things. And so they were designed with the thought in mind, I suspect, that they were low-level dangers and then there just wasn't a lot of support for them at higher level.
You can absolutely have extra virulent strains show up. And the game already supports that with the various spells and monsters that can cause diseases.
Discouraging min-maxing and making the players respect Charisma are two separate questions.
Discouraging min-maxing is kinda tough. One way you can discourage it is to simply set limits. Tell the players that they can only have one stat above 15 when they build their characters, for example. Another option is to just give each player 6 scores: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 (or some similar array) and say "here are your scores; arrange them how you like." If you're feeling REALLY adventurous, you can require them to roll their ability scores using dice. But don't forget that simply talking to your players is important too; let them know that their min-maxing is making the game less fun for you, and be prepared for the reply "Well, if we don't min-max, your adventures will kill us!" So, also don't forget to look at the adventures you run—if every single encounter is a close call or if your'e always trying to push the PCs to their limits, you're giving them the number 1 reason to min-max.
Encouraging PCs to not auto-dump Charisma is a different story. You could do something like say Charisma is a measure of a character's luck, and periodically have them make Charisma checks to determine how lucky they are. Or you could tackle it from an adventure design angle—this is my preference. Make sure that there's a lot of encounters where charisma-based skills have a chance to shine. This could mean more social encounters—have the PCs make Bluff or Diplomacy or Intimidate checks in order to resolve situations. This could mean more strange magical stuff; Use Magic Device might become a well-used skill in triggering and using strange magical stuff. Maybe there's a lot of infiltration type stuff that requires a fair amount of Disguise checks. If you take this route, the trick is to TELL the players when the game's over that they're earning equal or sometimes greater amounts of XP for these Charisma-based encounters than they do for the fighting encounters.
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And since Rob developed both Jade Regent and Reign of Winter... I wouldn't put it past him setting up that as foreshadowing. He's a smart guy!He may be a schmot guy, but more important, does he have a Nice Hat?
Yes. He has several nice hats. Including a pith helmet.
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Would you allow a CN Possessed Oracle PC who worships Lamashtu(albeit badly) into a Rise of the Runelords Campaign you were running?
No, because that would cause too much party strife and torment, and because there's too many elements in the adventure where a worshiper of Lamashtu would either be compromised or where others (PCs and NPCs alike) would assume the PC is a bad guy.
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This may have been answered, but this thread is 559 pages long, so I'm not going to search through it to find out xD
What advice would you give to a new GM? What AP would you recommend as a first game to GM? I'm going to be running a game for some friends who are new to TTGs soon, so I want to make sure i don't overwhelm myself :P
I would recommend that the new GM should focus on telling a fun story and entertaining the players; don't shut the game down because you're looking up a rule. Be comfortable from the start making ad-hoc rules decisions, and if there's a player or two in the group who knows the rules better than you, don't be afraid to lean on them for help.
I would also suggest starting out by running some of the Beginner Box adventures.
But if you're eager to launch into an actual Adventure Path... I'd suggest Shattered Star or Rise of the Runelords. They're both relatively simple adventures to GM—there's lots of dungeons (which are the easiest adventures to run, generally) and not a lot of complicated sandbox elements or new rules to figure out like kingdom building or ship combat.
But if you're all new... I really do suggest starting out with the Beginner Box.
Or perhaps split the difference and run Crypt of the Everflame. That adventure's for 1st level players and it was built as an introduction to the Pathfinder rules... so it's got a lot of extra advice stuff in it.
How do I discourage my players from minmaxing? Unless it is a class stat, I always see a charisma of 7 on them or sometimes 5 based on race. They just tend to get someone to be a face man for the group so they can all minmax the heck out of their characters on creation. Not to get nostalgic but I remember in AD&D 2nd when you could have close to average stats and still have a great character. Now people need to get at least one stat over 20 by level 4 or they feel weak.Discouraging min-maxing and making the players respect Charisma are two separate questions.
Discouraging min-maxing is kinda tough. One way you can discourage it is to simply set limits. Tell the players that they can only have one stat above 15 when they build their characters, for example. Another option is to just give...
I find it really simple, and perhaps something PF should consider- there should be no point buy advantages for buying a stat below 10. if someone really wants a 8 for RPing reason, fine, but there’s no ‘cash back’ so to speak.
How about a feat for any class (perhaps where CHA is not a Prime requisite), where a CHA of 14 gets you a re-roll once a day or a +1 to any save?
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Hmm something I've been wondering, who came up with the final design for the Sihedron and how (or did it come down to "here's a 7-sided star, now make it fancy!") ?
The reason I ask Is because I'm drawing the DCE Rise of the Runelords Sihedron tome for an art project and trying to get the proprtians right is a pain in the A#%!
The Sihedron itself is a mutation of a complex rune/artifact from my homebrew setting (there, it was known as the Sidol-Dihedron; I shortened the name for Pathfinder to make it less awkward sounding). Its incarnation as a seven pointed star was something I came up with, and something Wes helped me refine, and then we worked with the art department to come up with the actual look of the rune. The Thassilonian runes themselves were designed by Jeff Carlisle, but I can't remember now off the top of my head if it was him or Wayne Reynolds who first came up with the design for the Sihedron. I wanna say it was Wayne designing it as part of his original illustration of Karzoug. In fact, I'm 99% sure that's the first time we illustrated it.
You could do something like say Charisma is a measure of a character's luck, and periodically have them make Charisma checks to determine how lucky they are.
[Edited/simplified]: Just curious, do you worry that making Charisma more useful can indirectly make classes which are already Charisma based too powerful?
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Hey James, I got a quick question for ya: I was wondering if you could help me understand how a 'spell storing' weapon actually works. My group and I have been in debate about it, and here is how we break it down...
Say for example you want to use vampiric touch in your spell storing weapon- you make your attack roll and hit, and then decide to cast the stored vampiric touch spell.
Now, here is the issue: some of my friends believe that you must now make another attack roll for the 'vampiric touch' spell to actually hit, while others contest that the spell 'automatically hits' due to the previous successful attack roll. Which is it? Thanks again for the help.
The spell storing weapon "casts" the spell when you hit.
For vampiric touch, that means you hit the target, do weapon damage, the spell goes off, then IT does the damage as well. No additional attack roll is needed. The advantage there is that it removes an attack roll from combat, which makes the combat go that much faster and more smoothly.
The analogue would be that rather than delivering vampiric touch as a touch attack, you're delivering it as a regular attack, and as such you are now rolling against the full AC, not the touch AC. The benefit being you get extra weapon damage on a hit.
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You could do something like say Charisma is a measure of a character's luck, and periodically have them make Charisma checks to determine how lucky they are.[Edited/simplified]: Just curious, do you worry that making Charisma more useful can indirectly make classes which are already Charisma based too powerful?
Perhaps, yes.
In fact, there SHOULD be "dump stats" for all classes. If the problem is "my players always play characters who don't need Charisma," that's not really Charisma's fault. There's actually a lot of classes in Pathifnder that use Charisma, so making Charisma too potent is kinda bad.
Especially if you link Charisma to saving throws, since Paladins already get that.
Is there a NPC/villain from any of the existing AP's that you wouldn't mind seeing appear in a novel or future adventure as a significant character/threat?
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The Sihedron itself is a mutation of a complex rune/artifact from my homebrew setting (there, it was known as the Sidol-Dihedron; I shortened the name for Pathfinder to make it less awkward sounding). Its incarnation as a seven pointed star was something I came up with, and something Wes helped me refine, and then we worked with the art department to come up with the actual look of the rune. The Thassilonian runes themselves were designed by Jeff Carlisle, but I can't remember now off the top of my head if it was him or Wayne Reynolds who first came up with the design for the Sihedron. I wanna say it was Wayne designing it as part of his original illustration of Karzoug. In fact, I'm 99% sure that's the first time we illustrated it.Hmm something I've been wondering, who came up with the final design for the Sihedron and how (or did it come down to "here's a 7-sided star, now make it fancy!") ?
The reason I ask Is because I'm drawing the DCE Rise of the Runelords Sihedron tome for an art project and trying to get the proprtians right is a pain in the A#%!
Karzoug, always the trendsetter.
Hmm Sihedron tattoo. Good idea or bad idea?
"[Sorshen] was, at times, essentially a rapist. Hard to come up with redeeming traits for someone like that."
Yeah, you'd need orange-and-blue morality for that. I can help! There's chaos verses law, smart vs stupid, stylish vs scummy, equal opportunity vs bigoted, and earned power vs unwarranted pride. There should be ample opportunities for this since Sorshen lives in Korvosa.
1. Do you have any tools or templates to speed up the process of monster creation? You said you have an Excel file you use?
2. I'm guessing that Xin's mental ability scores in life were Int 39, Wis 23, Cha 32. Were these before or after augmentation through various means (wishes, ioun stones, etc.)?
3. Will Ultimate Campaign cover doing the kinds of fun things that only NPCs ever seem to get to do, such as in-game rules for creating monsters or artifacts?
4. Suppose I wanted a Kingmaker-ish game where I play as Sorshen. What how-to suggestions do you have for that?
5. Will there be any books giving advice for solo play? (Not just for hikis and weirdos like me, some people live in small towns.)
6. What are the alignments of Belimarius, Krune, and Zutha?
7. Will the other six runelords each get their own APs or will they be glommed into one?
8. What sort of clockwork technology did Thassilon use? Not just fightable monsters but other things.
9. Any plans for the Cantorian Spring? It was in Gods and Magic (p.62-63) but not Artifacts & Legends (save a brief mention on p.2).
10. Are you familiar with the Touhou Project? I find myself wondering if Elysium is anything like Gensokyo.
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Creative Director
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The Sihedron itself is a mutation of a complex rune/artifact from my homebrew setting (there, it was known as the Sidol-Dihedron; I shortened the name for Pathfinder to make it less awkward sounding). Its incarnation as a seven pointed star was something I came up with, and something Wes helped me refine, and then we worked with the art department to come up with the actual look of the rune. The Thassilonian runes themselves were designed by Jeff Carlisle, but I can't remember now off the top of my head if it was him or Wayne Reynolds who first came up with the design for the Sihedron. I wanna say it was Wayne designing it as part of his original illustration of Karzoug. In fact, I'm 99% sure that's the first time we illustrated it.Hmm something I've been wondering, who came up with the final design for the Sihedron and how (or did it come down to "here's a 7-sided star, now make it fancy!") ?
The reason I ask Is because I'm drawing the DCE Rise of the Runelords Sihedron tome for an art project and trying to get the proprtians right is a pain in the A#%!
Karzoug, always the trendsetter.
Hmm Sihedron tattoo. Good idea or bad idea?
Good idea! Unless Karzoug's waking up, in which case a chunk of your soul will get siphoned off to his runewell when you die... so keep that in mind.
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Creative Director
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1. Do you have any tools or templates to speed up the process of monster creation? You said you have an Excel file you use?
2. I'm guessing that Xin's mental ability scores in life were Int 39, Wis 23, Cha 32. Were these before or after augmentation through various means (wishes, ioun stones, etc.)?
3. Will Ultimate Campaign cover doing the kinds of fun things that only NPCs ever seem to get to do, such as in-game rules for creating monsters or artifacts?
4. Suppose I wanted a Kingmaker-ish game where I play as Sorshen. What how-to suggestions do you have for that?
5. Will there be any books giving advice for solo play? (Not just for hikis and weirdos like me, some people live in small towns.)
6. What are the alignments of Belimarius, Krune, and Zutha?
7. Will the other six runelords each get their own APs or will they be glommed into one?
8. What sort of clockwork technology did Thassilon use? Not just fightable monsters but other things.
9. Any plans for the Cantorian Spring? It was in Gods and Magic (p.62-63) but not Artifacts & Legends (save a brief mention on p.2).
10. Are you familiar with the Touhou Project? I find myself wondering if Elysium is anything like Gensokyo.
1) We use an enormous Excel file for creating stat blocks and new monsters, and make pretty aggressive use of styles in Microsoft Word to format the words for translation into layout.
2) After. Plus, there may have been some augmentation (in either direction) after he died.
3) No rules for creating monsters or artifacts in Ultimate Campaign.
4) Wait for Ultimate Campaign to come out since it's got expanded and revised Kingmaker kingdom rules, then get permission from your GM to play a super-powerful PC.
5) We don't have any plans at this point to do much more solo play stuff. Mythic Adventures will, in theory, talk about one-on-one games with a single GM and a single player, I think.
6) Probably neutral evil, lawful evil, chaotic evil.
7) I'm not ready to reveal that yet.
8) The bulk of the clockwork stuff in Thassilon was stuff that Xin used, as detailed in Pathfinder #66—they used clockworks almost entirely to create constructs, although not all of those constructs were used for battle. Clockworks were likely used for actual clocks, and perhaps a few machines here and there, but they were not omnipresent in Thassilonian cities or society. They were still pretty exotic. Not as exotic as they are today, but not commonplace.
9) Not at this time.
10) Never heard of it.
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Good idea! Unless Karzoug's waking up, in which case a chunk of your soul will get siphoned off to his runewell when you die... so keep that in mind.Karzoug, always the trendsetter.
Hmm Sihedron tattoo. Good idea or bad idea?
Well until Paizo publishes a cheaper alternative to physically enter Golarion ill just have to make due with a part of my soulstuff being used to revive an evil mastermind badass... I thinking I'm getting the better deal.
Step 1. Die.
Step 2. Get sucked into soulwell in golarion.
Step 3. Wait for murder hobos erm, adventures to slay Karzoug.
Step 4. Get reincarnated into a Gnoll.
Step 5. Who cares! I'm a Gnoll!!!!
Is the rough time frame of when the Silver Mountain fell known?
How do aboleths feel about such technology? Do they see it as lesser achievements than their own magics? Do they approve of how it's like life separated from divine magic (what with giving life to things generally a divine ability)?
Is there a chance that the crashing of the silver mount was intentional? This includes whether it was the intention of the pilots or some other being.
How deep down did the ship crash? Did it pierce the darklands?
Okay, one at a time then.
Does Freedom of movement cause your character to drop like a rock to the bottom of any body of water he/she is in?
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Is the rough time frame of when the Silver Mountain fell known?
How do aboleths feel about such technology? Do they see it as lesser achievements than their own magics? Do they approve of how it's like life separated from divine magic (what with giving life to things generally a divine ability)?
Is there a chance that the crashing of the silver mount was intentional? This includes whether it was the intention of the pilots or some other being.
How deep down did the ship crash? Did it pierce the darklands?
At this point, I'm keeping a lot (nearly all, in fact) of the information about the Silver Mount secret. For nefarious future plans, you understand.
The aboleths don't really have much contact with this technology, and don't really have an opinion about it yet as a result.
Beyond that... patience is the key.
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4) Will there ever be a adventure path centered around the Sun Orcid Elixir auction? Or perhaps a high level module?4) It's a great topic for both. Maybe some day.
I think this would be a great idea for a sequal to Price of Immortality. Is there any chance this might happen?
Is the rough time frame of when the Silver Mountain fell known?
How do aboleths feel about such technology? Do they see it as lesser achievements than their own magics? Do they approve of how it's like life separated from divine magic (what with giving life to things generally a divine ability)?
Is there a chance that the crashing of the silver mount was intentional? This includes whether it was the intention of the pilots or some other being.
How deep down did the ship crash? Did it pierce the darklands?
At this point, I'm keeping a lot (nearly all, in fact) of the information about the Silver Mount secret. For nefarious future plans, you understand.
The aboleths don't really have much contact with this technology, and don't really have an opinion about it yet as a result.
Beyond that... patience is the key.
Totally understandable.
Do in-house staff get first pick on new books that are being assigned out?
Does Freedom of movement cause your character to drop like a rock to the bottom of any body of water he/she is in?No.
Cool, that's what I thought.
Does Freedom of movement remove the effects of Feather Fall?
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I don't think Positive or Negative energy has ever been given an alignment descriptor in D&D's history either. I meant that a lot of players personally view positive energy as "good" because it heals them. Probably stems back to many Japanese RPGs (aka Final Fantasy) giving a lot of the healing magic to the "holy" characters and keeping it away from the "evil" characters. For example, the white mage / black mage phenomena.
You never had a character die for excess positive energy on the positive material plane, I assume?
Granted, they where NPC, but I have seen that happen 2 times. Give a new meaning to "bursting with health".
It has never happened in your games, James?
Hey James
I have a few doubts about two different witch archetypes.
If you don't mind, could you give me your thoughts about them?.
1) One of my favorite characters from Greyhawk is Iggwilv, so when I saw the dimensional occultist archetype I was thrilled.
A summoning witch? yes please!
But then I realised that the witch doesn't have access to any of the magic circle spells, witch are really important if you want to have a chance of succeeding in binding outsiders. The dimensional patron does not grant those spells either... Was that an oversight? If yes, would you consider ok to replace the blink spell granted by the dimensional patron by a magic circle against evil/law/chaos/good spell?
The patron provides the following bonus spells: 2nd—hold portal, 4th—rope trick, 6th—blink, 8th—dimensional anchor, 10th—lesser planar binding, 12th—planar binding, 14th—banishment, 16th— greater planar binding, 18th—gate.
2) The beast-bonded archetype (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/witch/archetypes/paizo---witc h-archetypes/beast-bonded) grants you the class feature twin soul, wich is incredibly flavorful and awesome, but its a little unclear rules-wise.
Consider this: A witch that was about to die transfers her soul to her familiar and they both escape. Her original body is lost (perhaps destroyed). If she then tries to use the magic jar-like option of the power to take the body of the mayor of the village...
what happens to the mayor? Does he die, because there is no receptacle for his soul to occupy? Does his soul share his body with the witch's soul? Something else entirely?
Thanks in advance.
PS.: I apologise if my english is somewhat broken...my native language is portuguese.
I don't think Positive or Negative energy has ever been given an alignment descriptor in D&D's history either. I meant that a lot of players personally view positive energy as "good" because it heals them. Probably stems back to many Japanese RPGs (aka Final Fantasy) giving a lot of the healing magic to the "holy" characters and keeping it away from the "evil" characters. For example, the white mage / black mage phenomena.You never had a character die for excess positive energy on the positive material plane, I assume?
Granted, they where NPC, but I have seen that happen 2 times. Give a new meaning to "bursting with health".
Bastion of Broken Souls!
Hey there James, got a question for you. Do you happen to know why a scythe has a x4 critical multiplier? What makes having a farm tool hit a vital area more deadly than say the 4 foot hunk of steel that is the greatsword?
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Hey there James, got a question for you. Do you happen to know why a scythe has a x4 critical multiplier? What makes having a farm tool hit a vital area more deadly than say the 4 foot hunk of steel that is the greatsword?
Because it severs your soul from your body. That's why it's Death's prefered weapon.
Hey there James, got a question for you. Do you happen to know why a scythe has a x4 critical multiplier? What makes having a farm tool hit a vital area more deadly than say the 4 foot hunk of steel that is the greatsword?
Here is my thoughts:
As you said a scythe is a tool. A scythes odd shape is designed for very efferent leverage. Meaning if you got hit just right with a scythe it would do a lot of damage. An average of 20 weapon damage on a crit. Compared with a Greatsword: an average of 14 damage on a crit, but with a slightly larger crit range.
But not every attack is a crit and the Greatsword will simply do more damage in the long run no matter how you look at it.
But that's all fluff. the real reason is to try to give each weapon a unique feel.
I don't think Positive or Negative energy has ever been given an alignment descriptor in D&D's history either. I meant that a lot of players personally view positive energy as "good" because it heals them. Probably stems back to many Japanese RPGs (aka Final Fantasy) giving a lot of the healing magic to the "holy" characters and keeping it away from the "evil" characters. For example, the white mage / black mage phenomena.It's worth noting that in Pathfinder, positive energy is NOT "good" and negative energy is NOT "evil" in and of itself. In fact, I don't believe the energies were associated with good or evil in D&D either.
In fairness, while it's not officially discriptored or restricted, it's a bit slanted, since good clerics, clerics of good gods, and good oracles get cure spells for free/channel positive, while evil ones get inflict spells for free/channel negative. Evil clerics/oracles can get the cure spells, but good ones can't not (though I guess they can not use them). Evil can't get positive energy channeling, though I guess there are elemental and alignment channels...
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In fairness, while it's not officially discriptored or restricted, it's a bit slanted, since good clerics, clerics of good gods, and good oracles get cure spells for free/channel positive, while evil ones get inflict spells for free/channel negative. Evil clerics/oracles can get the cure spells, but good ones can't not (though I guess they can not use them). Evil can't get positive energy channeling, though I guess there are elemental and alignment channels...I don't think Positive or Negative energy has ever been given an alignment descriptor in D&D's history either. I meant that a lot of players personally view positive energy as "good" because it heals them. Probably stems back to many Japanese RPGs (aka Final Fantasy) giving a lot of the healing magic to the "holy" characters and keeping it away from the "evil" characters. For example, the white mage / black mage phenomena.It's worth noting that in Pathfinder, positive energy is NOT "good" and negative energy is NOT "evil" in and of itself. In fact, I don't believe the energies were associated with good or evil in D&D either.
Uh... Actually Good clerics can pray for inflict spells. They aren't penalized for it at all and vice versa for evil clerics. A good cleric can even memorize a bunch of inflict spells and spontaneously convert them to cure spells if they want and, once again, vice versa for evil clerics. Infact you could play a good aligned Bones mystery oracle who receives all of the inflict spells for free... no guarantee you'll be useful to your party if go this route... for more humor be a Oracle of Life that gets all of the inflict spells... that's mind blowing right there...
[EDIT]Forgot a piece of information: An Oracle's alignment doesn't determine whether they get Cure spells... the choice is made by the player at 1st level and not predetermined otherwise.... most do go the obvious route and this is because thematically it is more appropriate for good aligned characters to cure the ailing rather then causing harm but there's nothing stopping an good-aligned Oracle of Battle from taking Inflict spells.
Generally speaking, how much are the various Chelaxian noble houses plotting to replace the Thrunes?
Are there any who, if they actually succeeded, could do so without the country descending into a War of the Roses/Time of Troubles (Russian Edition)/A Song of Ice and Fire type mess?
Hey James. Thanks again for helping me with the spell storing question, but I got another question for you...
Does the 'courageous' property increase the morale bonus gained from a barbarian's rage? For example, if you have a +2 Courageous/Furious amulet of mighty fists, would you then gain an additional +2 morale bonus to your Strength and Constitution while raging? thanks again for the help.
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Bastion of Broken Souls!I don't think Positive or Negative energy has ever been given an alignment descriptor in D&D's history either. I meant that a lot of players personally view positive energy as "good" because it heals them. Probably stems back to many Japanese RPGs (aka Final Fantasy) giving a lot of the healing magic to the "holy" characters and keeping it away from the "evil" characters. For example, the white mage / black mage phenomena.You never had a character die for excess positive energy on the positive material plane, I assume?
Granted, they where NPC, but I have seen that happen 2 times. Give a new meaning to "bursting with health".
Exactly, those were the 2 NPC death, before that my player characters had a few close call in hunting for ioun stones at the border between the earth plane and the positive plane (2nd edition, the idea of that area as the source of the ioun stones was from a a old number of Dragon, and the idea from that article was from a hold short story from Vance).
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Underwater combat rules:
Ranged Attacks Underwater: Thrown weapons are ineffective underwater, even when launched from land. Attacks with other ranged weapons take a –2 penalty on attack rolls for every 5 feet of water they pass through, in addition to the normal penalties for range.
Underwater Crossbow:
Merfolk Equipment
Merfolk have access to the following equipment.
Underwater Crossbow: An underwater crossbow functions like its normal counterpart above water, and can be used underwater. When fired underwater, the crossbow has a range increment of 20 feet. Anyone proficient with a normal crossbow can use an underwater crossbow.
As written the merfolk crossbow is an inferior weapon as its range is shortened and its quarrels still suffer from the "–2 penalty on attack rolls for every 5 feet of water they pass through".
Probably the RAI is that the other missile weapon have shortened range increments of 5' when used underwater, but the RAW don't say that.
The questions from that are:
- missile weapons used underwater are meant to have a 5' range increment instead of their normal range increment?
- there is a more extensive explanation of underwater combat in some supplement, like the shackles pirate AP?
(There is a thread about this in the Rule section, but I don't think anyone will use your reply as ammunitions, as the main argument is about confirming a critical with a second natural 20.)
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Total defense and quickened spells.
A strange thing that has come up in a magus discussion:
- when using total defense you can't make attacks of opportunity and use up a standard action;
- you can cast a quickened spell as a swift action;
- so it is possible to cast a quickened shocking grasp and use spellstrike to attack with your weapon.
What are the attacks modifiers in that situation?
Casting any quickened spell with an attack roll it is possible to get an attack while using total defense for any spellcasting class, so I think it is fairly important question for plenty of characters.
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Creative Director
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I think this would be a great idea for a sequal to Price of Immortality. Is there any chance this might happen?4) Will there ever be a adventure path centered around the Sun Orcid Elixir auction? Or perhaps a high level module?4) It's a great topic for both. Maybe some day.
No... I'd rather not tie the sun orchid elixir into that storyline.
The Sun Orchid Elixir deserves its own story arc.
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Creative Director
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Totally understandable.
Do in-house staff get first pick on new books that are being assigned out?
Not always.
I actually have pretty strong say in who gets to write what. As does Erik and Wes.
If an in-house employee wants to write a book, though, they all know all they have to do is pitch the idea to one of us and if it's good, we'll greenlight it and publish it once they're done writing it. We generally don't put such projects on the schedule until the writer's done writing it, though.
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Creative Director
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I don't think Positive or Negative energy has ever been given an alignment descriptor in D&D's history either. I meant that a lot of players personally view positive energy as "good" because it heals them. Probably stems back to many Japanese RPGs (aka Final Fantasy) giving a lot of the healing magic to the "holy" characters and keeping it away from the "evil" characters. For example, the white mage / black mage phenomena.You never had a character die for excess positive energy on the positive material plane, I assume?
Granted, they where NPC, but I have seen that happen 2 times. Give a new meaning to "bursting with health".
It has never happened in your games, James?
No. My games rarely, if ever, go to the positive or negative planes. Mostly because I kinda think they're kinda boring places to visit.