Hoping to catch the eye of one of the developers with this one, i have looked everywhere and haven't found a clear answer. If a ghost(or other creature with a possession-like ability) inhabits another creature, what does that do to the CR of that ghost? say for instance: a Human Ghost, Fighter 8(CR 10) manages to grab hold of a Halfling Rogue 10. would that be a CR 20? looking at it you gain the HP, physical stats, and You can’t choose to activate the body’s extraordinary or supernatural abilities. The creature’s spells and spell-like abilities do not stay with the body.
while you keep your mental stats, base saves, level, ext.as with magic jar. any help would be greatly appreciated.
Two creatures of the same CR is CR +2, so it would be CR12 ish.
I doubt you will get a developer resposce since the CR system is not a hard and fast system, but rather a set of loose guidlines for making encounters.
Two creatures of the same CR is CR +2, so it would be CR12 ish.
What if, for instance then, if one was a cr 9, and the other a cr 10?
Creative Director
|
If you build an encounter where a ghost possesses a creature, and the encounter involves a fight against that possessed creature and then against the ghost... that's two encounters that resolve more or less back-to-back, and as such you should generally try to make the ghost and the thing it's possessing relatively similar in CR scores if you can. It does nothing at all to the ghost's CR, though.
If one was a CR 9 and the other was a CR 10 monster, I'd probably quantify that as two encounters, not one encounter. In any event, you should award the PCs XP for a CR 9 and a CR 10 monster at the end of the encounter, assuming they killed/defeated the possessed creature to cause the ghost to come out and then defeated the ghost as well.
In any case... an encounter's CR is really only something you use to summarize the complexity of the encounter in Pathfinder—it has no real impact at all on things like XP awards or the like. It's just a numerical score you can assign to an encounter to give yourself a quick reminder of how tough that fight is probably going to be.
If you build an encounter where a ghost possesses a creature, and the encounter involves a fight against that possessed creature and then against the ghost... that's two encounters that resolve more or less back-to-back, and as such you should generally try to make the ghost and the thing it's possessing relatively similar in CR scores if you can. It does nothing at all to the ghost's CR, though.
If one was a CR 9 and the other was a CR 10 monster, I'd probably quantify that as two encounters, not one encounter. In any event, you should award the PCs XP for a CR 9 and a CR 10 monster at the end of the encounter, assuming they killed/defeated the possessed creature to cause the ghost to come out and then defeated the ghost as well.
In any case... an encounter's CR is really only something you use to summarize the complexity of the encounter in Pathfinder—it has no real impact at all on things like XP awards or the like. It's just a numerical score you can assign to an encounter to give yourself a quick reminder of how tough that fight is probably going to be.
thanks for the response James. The main reason I am looking for this information is not for an encounter against pcs, i am currently running a monster-based anti-hero game. where the pcs play as monsters and go up against those goody two-shoes adventurers. One asked me to play a ghost, weighing the pros and cons i decided to allow the incorporeal monstrosity. possessing a town guardsman or a member of the thieves guild is his goal at the moment, and wanted to know how that would equate to his CR for the purposes of leveling are concerned.
|
Creative Director
|
woah...
This takes the question into completely different territory.
Ghosts have MANY abilities that make them poor choices for PCs, but I'd say the malevolence ability is perhaps the best example of these abilities, since this would, in theory, let your 1st level character possess something with a poor will save like, say, a hill giant, and then POW your game's all messed up, power-wise.
In other words... you're kind of on your own here. ;-)
ouch....lol
well, the best i could come up with, was to take the XP allotment section under the game mastering section of the core rulebook. for example, if they were to be CR 10, they would have an alloted 9,600 xp to work with, regardless of their level. so if he was a 5th level character with ghost, making him a CR 7 and worth 3,200xp himself. leaving a remainder of 6,400xp left to play with. meaning if he wanted to stay in a host body indefinably, he could in theory possess something that is a CR 9, worth exactly 6,400. Does this sound like a bad theory james?
|
Creative Director
|
ouch....lol
well, the best i could come up with, was to take the XP allotment section under the game mastering section of the core rulebook. for example, if they were to be CR 10, they would have an alloted 9,600 xp to work with, regardless of their level. so if he was a 5th level character with ghost, making him a CR 7 and worth 3,200xp himself. leaving a remainder of 6,400xp left to play with. meaning if he wanted to stay in a host body indefinably, he could in theory possess something that is a CR 9, worth exactly 6,400. Does this sound like a bad theory james?
If your players are having fun and don't feel that the ghost PC is overpowering and taking all the fun out of the game for them... then you're doing it right. There's really no other way to judge things like that in my experience.