When RAW make no sense


Advice

Liberty's Edge

"Early Firearms: When firing an early firearm, the attack resolves against the target's touch AC when the target is within the first range increment of the weapon, but this type of attack is not considered a touch attack for the purposes of feats and abilities such as Deadly Aim."

Let's face it, sometimes the guys that wrote the SRD were just plain silly. Starting a low-level campaign recently, I came across this sentence. If I read it correctly, it seems to imply that one can have deadly aim with a longbow but not a firearm. That seems frankly absurd, and even more ridiculous is the idea that a low-level Monk would have the reflexes needed to grab a bullet with "Snatch Arrows". Seems pretty stacked against Early Firearms. Gotta say I'm disappointed in the SRD on this one.

Is it a real balance issue to just ignore the SRD on Firearms when it pertains to feats like this?


on the contrary, normally you CANNOT use Deadly Aim with touch attacks; with firearms, you can.

Yes, snatching bullets out of the air is ridiculous. Even a relatively low speed pistol round like a modern .45 ACP averages 745 ft/second, let alone a somewhat high speed pistol round like a 9mm. (around 1200-1500 ft/second, depending on load out.)

I'm not even going to go into rifle rounds.

No bow every crafted by the hands of man ever came close to speeds like that. (admittedly, i don't know nearly as much about early firearms such as muskets, but I can't imagine the end result being radically different.)

Liberty's Edge

Uhm, it is written that way to explicitly allow firearms to be able to use deadly aim, which excludes ranged touch attacks (rays, acid arrow, etc)

Edit: damn ninja cat =p


As for arrow catching, it's already outside of reality to begin with. Arrows move at about 200 ft/second, which means even deflecting them (much less grabbing them!) would require super-human speed. A musket shot travels at about 400 ft/second and is much smaller. From a pure realism perspective, catching arrows shouldn't work, but always remember that this is fantasy and not all (ex) abilities need to conform to the laws of physics. That same logic should be extended to catching bullets. With that said, catching a bullet is an order of magnitude more difficult than catching an arrow, so I could definitely see a GM ruling that it requires an additional feat to pull off.


Dasrak wrote:
As for arrow catching, it's already outside of reality to begin with. Arrows move at about 200 ft/second, which means even deflecting them (much less grabbing them!) would require super-human speed.

No, it's totally humanly possible. It's just ridiculously hard and people who can catch arrows only get one in a few dozen. If you look up catching arrows on youtube, you'll get thousands of hits, and hundreds of those are not fake.

Characters in Pathfinder are super awesome heroes, though, so if real humans can do something at all, Pathfinder humans can do it reliably.


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Lets face it, unless we're dealing with a DM who goes out of his way to balance things such that players are at most badass normals, players in D&D and by extension Pathfinder are like the super heroes of the setting. They have physical or magical strength that would on a bad day would still literally blow the minds of your standard townie NPC, whose death has yet to come at the hands of a house cat.

Essentially, you 'are' the avengers or some other group of extraordinary individuals who surpass normal conditions for human(or otherwise) capabilities.


ConnorElzaim wrote:

Lets face it, unless we're dealing with a DM who goes out of his way to balance things such that players are at most badass normals, players in D&D and by extension Pathfinder are like the super heroes of the setting. They have physical or magical strength that would on a bad day would still literally blow the minds of your standard townie NPC, whose death has yet to come at the hands of a house cat.

Essentially, you 'are' the avengers or some other group of extraordinary individuals who surpass normal conditions for human(or otherwise) capabilities.

Pretty much this. My druid can wipe out entire villages with 2 spells, a fighter and gunslinger have to compete with that.

Silver Crusade

@johnlock90 what two spells?


chaiboy wrote:
@johnlock90 what two spells?

?

Unless you start assuming a very low level caster the possibilities are numerous against a village full of "townies". The higher the level the caster the more non-casters are trying to keep up with the mass killing power of casters ... sort of. High level fighter or gunslinger's greatest issue isn't wiping a village it is likely going to be keeping them from running screaming in a bazillion different directions and slowing the slaughter down.


chaiboy wrote:
@johnlock90 what two spells?

As a baseline? Entangle and call lightning while wildshaped/flying allows for controlling the battlefield (no one goes anywhere with simple npc classes/stats) and picking off high priority targets with repeated fire (10 bolts every level, 50 3d6 attacks at 5th for one casting). It only gets worse at higher levels. Then add in the companion for helping with 'hard' targets.


chaiboy wrote:
@johnlock90 what two spells?

Control weather + Control Wind will summon a 520 foot radius tornado. It will destroy every building in the village and every villager in radius will be dead in 3 rounds.


Contagion and in case that doesn't work, another contagion.


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A town cannot reasonably be expected to have spellcasting services available unless it's at least a small town (not a thorpe, hamlet, or village) and even then it's only 1st level spells. A single animate dead spell can turn a pile of chickens into undead bloody burning chickens. Each of these chickens exudes a 5 ft. radius of fire that deals 1d6 damage (effectively like being caught on fire with alchemist fire) and if you destroy them they explode dealing fire damage and then reform 1 hour later. If you really wanted to ruin a town, you could just do it with animate dead.

A caster level 5 cleric can animate 20 HD worth of undead. Get a half dozen of these exploding, burning, regenerating chicken skeletons and order them to run through a town setting as much stuff on fire as possible. They're tiny with a high dexterity for armor class, merely being within 5 ft. of something is enough to kill it / set it on fire, and whacking them can result in them exploding. Honestly, a half-dozen of these could burn a town down in a single night.


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ashiel is my hero. seriously, how do you thinkof this stuff?!


st00ji wrote:
ashiel is my hero. seriously, how do you thinkof this stuff?!

Truthfully, when I read about stuff I tend to think of how it could be used or would be used in the world. From there it's just a simple progression. For example, I read "burning skeletons" and how they functioned. I began to think of how you'd use them. What would the dungeons with them be like? Probably no flammable stuff in them if possible. Could you use them for purposes other than combat? This sort of thinking led to many different types of things. I realized humanoid flaming skeletons could be used to work in steel mills (they are unharmed by heat of any sort), and small burning skeletons trapped in metal ovens could heat houses without fire wood (stuff a burning chicken inside and warm a house forever). How dangerous they could be when mishandled also came up in my mind (hence setting houses on fire). If used as a weapon, sending burning skeletons to raze a town would be highly effective.

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