Beon se healm cræftig?
Creative Director
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Not sure I follow the rationale on #2. The spell doesn't say it continues to copy image. It specifically says movement, sounds, actions. That's it. While I understand that not continuing to copy image makes the spell less useful, it certainly doesn't make the spell useless.
Oh, and thank you for the response.
The rationale is that if the wizard does something like drop a weapon or get hurt and start bleeding or changes shape or otherwise has any physical effect mark his real body that if the mirror images DIDN'T automatically and constantly update to match the wizard's current appearance (be it freshly bloodied or recently disarmed or shapechanged or, as in your example, suddenly naked), then the spell would be useless.
Since the spell is intended to continue to be as effective for the length of its duration (be that until the spell's duration runs out naturally or the images themselves are destroyed/dispelled), then it HAS to be able to update constantly to continue its effects.
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Creative Director
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Going with the mode of making sure spells are not completely useless...
In pertinent part, Shield Companion states:
If you and the subject of the spell move out of range of each other, the spell ends.
It would seem the use of "and" instead "or" suggest that as along as the six second cycle ends with both creatures within the spell's range of each other, the spell continues to function.
Since the nature of the game prevents two people from moving together, this interpretation would allow the spell to work in the context of the artificial one at time movement that PF imposes. In other words, a druid and her companion who intend to move across the battle field would not lose the spell simply because one is forced to move one at a time.
Yes? No?
If at any point you or the subject are further than the spell's range, it ends. That means that when you have this spell going, you have to take care not to move too far away from each other, which means that you might not be able to move your full movement without prematurely ending the spell.
Beon se healm cræftig?You forgot to include anything other than a question mark in your query that I can comprehend, and therefore it is rendered null and void.
What? That was reasonably correct English. Can't you comprehend English?
:P
Is there any possibility of hex based maps of various locations of Golarion being created/sold?
First off, thanks again for responding....
The rationale is that if the wizard does something like drop a weapon or get hurt and start bleeding or changes shape or otherwise has any physical effect mark his real body that if the mirror images DIDN'T automatically and constantly update to match the wizard's current appearance (be it freshly bloodied or recently disarmed or shapechanged or, as in your example, suddenly naked), then the spell would be useless.No, the spell isn't "useless." I'm not sure why you keep saying that? It would mean that if you want the spell to continue to be effective, then you're actions may be limited. You can't change clothes, you can't take damage, etc.
Until those things happened, the spell would be very effective against any physical attacks. Again, not sure why the "useless" label.
The reason why the spell would be useless is that the actual caster would be appear different than the images.
For example, the Wizard (for whatever reason) pulls off his cloak and his images don't update. The images are all now wearing a cloak, and the Wizard himself isn't. So you can now easily tell the Wizard apart from the images, and the spell becomes useless.
In order for the spell to work, it must self-update otherwise any change in the caster at all reveals his presence amongst his images.
Do you remember what question I was going to ask? It was a really good one...
Can you apply the skeletal template to things with exoskeletons? Like insects, crustaceans, arachnids, etc...Nope. At least, not without cheating or being ignorant of what the word "skeleton" means. :-P
Doesn't mean there can't be an "animated exoskeleton" template that works very similarly.
Fair enough. I'm GMing and looking to have the players come up to an island ruled by insects, with a canyon that's full of staggering undead insects. I was thinking zombie template on bugs would be cool, but I did like the idea of a living exoskeleton.
How would you do an animated exoskeleton? More natural armor? faster? DR/slashing?
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Creative Director
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First off, thanks again for responding....
The rationale is that if the wizard does something like drop a weapon or get hurt and start bleeding or changes shape or otherwise has any physical effect mark his real body that if the mirror images DIDN'T automatically and constantly update to match the wizard's current appearance (be it freshly bloodied or recently disarmed or shapechanged or, as in your example, suddenly naked), then the spell would be useless.No, the spell isn't "useless." I'm not sure why you keep saying that? It would mean that if you want the spell to continue to be effective, then you're actions may be limited. You can't change clothes, you can't take damage, etc.
Until those things happened, the spell would be very effective against any physical attacks. Again, not sure why the "useless" label.
Since the spell is intended to continue to be as effective for the length of its duration (be that until the spell's duration runs out naturally or the images themselves are destroyed/dispelled), then it HAS to be able to update constantly to continue its effects.So making sure the spell is useful for its duration is important? If I read this response correctly, we should try and interpret a spell in the way that makes it useful? The spell doesn't say it continues to update its image, but we need to tack that on.
I can accept an RAI approach to this spell considering that it may not have been re-worded well.
This is the first time I've heard the complaint that mirror image is poorly worded, and the first time I've heard anyone interpret it in this way. Not saying you're wrong... but since it's the first time I've heard this complaint in many years, I'm not convinced the spell is poorly worded.
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Creative Director
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The reason why the spell would be useless is that the actual caster would be appear different than the images.No. Only if something happened to you. As along as you continue to look like your summoned images, you are benefiting.
For example, the Wizard (for whatever reason) pulls off his cloak and his images don't update. The images are all now wearing a cloak, and the Wizard himself isn't. So you can now easily tell the Wizard apart from the images, and the spell becomes useless.So what you're saying is that when you use a spell it's unfair for it to subsequently limit your activities. Kind of like Shield Other forcing you to limp along at 25' per round?
In order for the spell to work, it must self-update otherwise any change in the caster at all reveals his presence amongst his images.Incorrect. The spell works without that. It's just less effective. Or rather, it is more likely to be rendered ineffective. If no one can do AoO damage or mark the caster in some way, then the spell continues to do exactly what one expects.
I should point out that the 3.5 version specifically stated the images were updated. The PF version has intentionally left out that verbiage.
If we are going to interpret spells so that that they are more effective, then let's be consistent with that approach, yes?
Let's also take the discussion to its own thread and keep this one for questions to me, please.
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Creative Director
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Can you apply the skeletal template to things with exoskeletons? Like insects, crustaceans, arachnids, etc...Nope. At least, not without cheating or being ignorant of what the word "skeleton" means. :-P
Doesn't mean there can't be an "animated exoskeleton" template that works very similarly.
Fair enough. I'm GMing and looking to have the players come up to an island ruled by insects, with a canyon that's full of staggering undead insects. I was thinking zombie template on bugs would be cool, but I did like the idea of a living exoskeleton.
How would you do an animated exoskeleton? More natural armor? faster? DR/slashing?
Easiest way is to just use the skeleton template with no change, I guess. The players won't know the difference.
Easiest way is to just use the skeleton template with no change, I guess. The players won't know the difference.Can you apply the skeletal template to things with exoskeletons? Like insects, crustaceans, arachnids, etc...Nope. At least, not without cheating or being ignorant of what the word "skeleton" means. :-P
Doesn't mean there can't be an "animated exoskeleton" template that works very similarly.
Fair enough. I'm GMing and looking to have the players come up to an island ruled by insects, with a canyon that's full of staggering undead insects. I was thinking zombie template on bugs would be cool, but I did like the idea of a living exoskeleton.
How would you do an animated exoskeleton? More natural armor? faster? DR/slashing?
Fair enough, thanks. This will be a very fun take on rising undead, I feel :)
Is the security on Paizo's warehouse raptors better than the security at Jurassic Park?
Beon se healm cræftig?You forgot to include anything other than a question mark in your query that I can comprehend, and therefore it is rendered null and void.What? That was reasonably correct English. Can't you comprehend English?
:P
It is English in the sense of it was spoken in England, but I believe many scholars call it Anglo-Saxon now.
Hi James,
Long time lurker here but I'm only about 30k posts into this.
I'm running a solo campaign in Alushinyrra and am curious if you have names in your head for certain things, like does the moon have a name?
What would residents call a 'day' cycle?
And along those thoughts would there be names for the 8 hour blocks with the moon and without the moon?
Thank you and you're doing a great job with all of this!
Are Outsiders (who do not need to sleep, but can sleep) affected by sleep effects, like the sleep spell, deep slumber, or the slumber hex?
Thanks!
-Ben.
Do you remember what question I was going to ask? It was a really good one...I do. The answer was even better.
That is typically how it goes!
My Runelords group just finished the Shadow Clock and was invited to the Banquet by the Lord-Mayor Grobaras. It is somewhat of a small note, but they are out buying new clothes and everything and relatively excited. I got the Magnimar book to add some notable NPCs, but now I kind of want to explore some of the plothooks.
My question is, how do I gauge the pacing of the AP for my players? My thought now is to kinda throw out threads and see if they want to jump at any, but I fear they may get a bit too much XP and not find any challenges in the AP combat encounters.
What would be your best advice to a new GM? To an experienced GM?
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Do you agree with this list: top 10 Godzilla movies?Wow. Ten minutes long? No time to watch it. Instead, here's my list of top 10 Godzilla movies, from best at #1 to tenth best at #10.
1: Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
2: Godzilla (1954)
3: Godzilla vs. Destroyer
4: Godzilla Final Wars
5: Destroy All Monsters
6: Godzilla vs. Gigan
7: Godzilla vs. Biollante
8: Godzilla: Tokyo SOS
9: Godzilla vs. Hedorah
10: Son of GodzillaThe top 5 are solid. Slots 6-10 are not, they might shift depending on my mood.
For shame on Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (70s) and Godzilla 1984 not making the list vs your number 9 & 10!
Also, if you had a time bubble that allowed you enough time to write an entire AP without impacting anything else in your ridiculously busy schedule, where would the Valashmai Jungle rank in your list of preferred settings for said AP?
Hey James, hope you're well! Questions:
1) Are you still on your diet? Is it something you have to stay on forever?
2) What was your first GM (or I guess DM) experience like? Were you nervous? Do you remember the content?
3) On average, how long did it take you to stat up all the recent high CR monsters?
4) Were any of them particularly easy? Were any particularly hard?
5) What was the hardest stat block you've ever written? Or at least one that comes to mind fairly quickly as very difficult?
Thanks for all the time you dedicate to this thread! :)
In any event, there is no real Greek-inspired area in the Inner Sea region—that's over in Casmaron
Wasn't the Dragon leading Conqueror in Brevoy come from Casmaron/Iblydos? Did he bring along Greek style influence that can be shown in Brevoy?
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Creative Director
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Dervish dance [the feat] adds dex. rather than str. to weapon damage, as does the Aldori swordlord PrC. Do these count as precision damage, such that concealment, for instance, would prevent someone with the feat or prestige class from getting the extra damage?
A further sadly niggling rules question, would shadow blending abilities on a monster provide concealment vs. a character with darkvision?
Nope; they're the same type of damage you get when you add your Strength bonus. They're just damage bonuses. Nothing more. (They would have mentioned being precision damage if they weren't.)
Yes. The magical manipulation of shadows to blur and confuse is not defeated by darkvision.
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Creative Director
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Another quick question about Planar Binding. The spell description says that "If you assign some open-ended task that the creature cannot complete through its own actions, the spell remains in effect for a maximum of 1 day per caster level." I've got a guy saying that an instruction like 'obey me until my 70th birthday (40 years from now)' would get around this, because that's not open ended (fixed time) and the creature can complete it through its actions (assuming it's an immortal outsider). This strikes me as logically plausible but effectively nonsense, as it would allow you to use this spell to keep outsiders hanging around for arbitrarily long lengths of time.
I always thought that, no matter what you do, the called outsiders poof away either when their task is done or /at most/ when days/level have passed. If you want to keep them around longer, that's what Binding is for.
What's the correct interpretation?
thanks in advance,
Doug M.
Logically plausible but effectively nonsense is indeed the correct interpretation. The spell your guy wants is in fact just binding, which is the spell that's intended to do the type of thing he's looking for.
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Creative Director
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Hi James,
Long time lurker here but I'm only about 30k posts into this.
I'm running a solo campaign in Alushinyrra and am curious if you have names in your head for certain things, like does the moon have a name?
What would residents call a 'day' cycle?
And along those thoughts would there be names for the 8 hour blocks with the moon and without the moon?
Thank you and you're doing a great job with all of this!
The moon has a name, but it's currently unrevealed and is unlikely to be revealed anytime soon. Feel free to just call it the moon, or make a name up.
The residents would call a "day" cycle a night.
Full moon and empty moon.
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Creative Director
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Are Outsiders (who do not need to sleep, but can sleep) affected by sleep effects, like the sleep spell, deep slumber, or the slumber hex?
Thanks!
-Ben.
Unless a monster's stats specifically state immunity to sleep, it can be affected by sleep effects.
Not needing to sleep does not provide immunity to sleep.
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Creative Director
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Do you remember what question I was going to ask? It was a really good one...I do. The answer was even better.That is typically how it goes!
My Runelords group just finished the Shadow Clock and was invited to the Banquet by the Lord-Mayor Grobaras. It is somewhat of a small note, but they are out buying new clothes and everything and relatively excited. I got the Magnimar book to add some notable NPCs, but now I kind of want to explore some of the plothooks.
My question is, how do I gauge the pacing of the AP for my players? My thought now is to kinda throw out threads and see if they want to jump at any, but I fear they may get a bit too much XP and not find any challenges in the AP combat encounters.
You have to play some games with your players before you can gage the pacing, frankly. Every group goes through encounters at different speeds, and until you play a bit with your group and learn their ability to focus on the game, how fast they make decisions, how much time they prefer spending with roleplaying, what their allowance for getting distracted is, how often the table gets mired in side conversations, and so on... no one can say what the pacing of any AP will be.
My only advice is to NOT have in your head any predetermined "schedule" of how far you want/expect the group to get in any one session. Let them proceed at their own pace, and try not to worry about how long it's going to take to finish the AP. That, of course, assumes you don't have real-world time constraints. In a situation where you know you're moving out of the country at the end of the year and only have 26 game sessions until that happens... at that point, you'll either want to be at peace with the fact that your campaign is going to end in the middle, or you'll want to adjust how often you game or how much gaming you do per session or how much content you keep or cut.
If you're worried that they're getting too much XP because they're going off the proverbial rails, then the best bet is to adjust encounters and throw in plot hooks and other elements into what they ARE doing to get them back on the rails, then have them rejoin the AP's expected plot line where their XP would want them to go. That means they'll miss out on some of the AP's content, but that's what they get if they aren't interested in exploring the AP's content.
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Creative Director
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What would be your best advice to a new GM? To an experienced GM?
To a new GM: Don't be intimidated by the rules; feel free to make up rulings on the fly but remain open to changing those rulings. That, or trust more experienced players to help you with rulings.
To an experienced GM: You don't know it all. The moment you decide that other GMs or published books have nothing new to teach you, your skills as a GM decline.
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Creative Director
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For shame on Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (70s) and Godzilla 1984 not making the list vs your number 9 & 10!Do you agree with this list: top 10 Godzilla movies?Wow. Ten minutes long? No time to watch it. Instead, here's my list of top 10 Godzilla movies, from best at #1 to tenth best at #10.
1: Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
2: Godzilla (1954)
3: Godzilla vs. Destroyer
4: Godzilla Final Wars
5: Destroy All Monsters
6: Godzilla vs. Gigan
7: Godzilla vs. Biollante
8: Godzilla: Tokyo SOS
9: Godzilla vs. Hedorah
10: Son of GodzillaThe top 5 are solid. Slots 6-10 are not, they might shift depending on my mood.
I'd probably put Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla on the list, frankly, in place of one of the lower ranking ones if I were to rewatch them all today. Like I said... slots 6-10 might shift, depending on my mood.
And Godzilla 1984 is fine... but it's not as good as the 10 I list, nor do I have as fond memories of that movie as I do of the 10 I list.
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Creative Director
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** spoiler omitted **
Also, if you had a time bubble that allowed you enough time to write an entire AP without impacting anything else in your ridiculously busy schedule, where would the Valashmai Jungle rank in your list of preferred settings for said AP?
Valashmai Jungle would probably rank in at somewhere in the 10th to 13th place, mostly because I've already really scratched my jungle AP itch with Serpent's Skull and Savage Tide.
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Creative Director
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In any event, there is no real Greek-inspired area in the Inner Sea region—that's over in CasmaronWasn't the Dragon leading Conqueror in Brevoy come from Casmaron/Iblydos? Did he bring along Greek style influence that can be shown in Brevoy?
That's something we talk about in the last Kingmaker, in the continuing the campaign section, and I can't remember if that was the case or not off the top of my head.
But Brevoy, in any event, is not inspired by Greece. It's actually inspired by George Martin's Song of Fire and Ice stories set in Westeros.
Unless a monster's stats specifically state immunity to sleep, it can be affected by sleep effects.Not needing to sleep does not provide immunity to sleep.
Thank you!
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Creative Director
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Hey James, hope you're well! Questions:
1) Are you still on your diet? Is it something you have to stay on forever?
2) What was your first GM (or I guess DM) experience like? Were you nervous? Do you remember the content?
3) On average, how long did it take you to stat up all the recent high CR monsters?
4) Were any of them particularly easy? Were any particularly hard?
5) What was the hardest stat block you've ever written? Or at least one that comes to mind fairly quickly as very difficult?
Thanks for all the time you dedicate to this thread! :)
1) Yes, I'm still on the diet. I'm not staying on it forever, since it's a weight loss program, and if I were to stay on it forever, I would eventually die. Once I hit my target weight, I go off the diet and switch over to a lifestyle of eating normal food but eating it sensibly, rather than gluttonously, and I add in regular exercise and the like, and if I get too heavy again, I go back on the diet for a short time to adjust weight back down. I'm actually almost there, now... I'm hoping to be off the diet by the end of March (and thus back to normal food in time for the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon).
2) My first GM experience was for my mom, dad, sisters, and best friend. I ran Keep on the Borderlands, and they fought kobolds, and my best friend kissed one of the kobolds to throw it off balance (and me as well) so that the rest of the group could have an advantage in combat. I wasn't nervous; I was excited and had a great time!
3) A high CR monster takes me about 10 to 20 minutes or so to stat up.
4) None were particularly easy, but a few were pretty tough, especially ones like Areelu or new monsters like Deskari, since a significant amount of that stat work is actually designing new abilities.
5) It wasn't the hardest, but I remember about a week into working at Paizo, Erik Mona came to me and said something to the effect of "We're statting up Rary in Dungeon. His stats aren't done yet. You get to stat him up; he's a 23rd level wizard who happens to be one of the ones that the game has spells named after, so don't mess it up!" I like to think I did well at it, since I'm still working here.