Ravingdork - I think the rules on Monster Advancement have some good advice which might be relevant to this situation. Here are a few quotes:
"In some cases, a complete rebuild does unusual things to a creature. For example, the advanced creature template gives and animal too much Intelligence, and a young incorporeal creature is tougher than a normal one." - This seems like a pretty clear warning that the DM should consider how the template changes the monster.
"Finally, compare the new monster's statistics to those presented on Table: Monster Statistics by CR for a creature of its adjusted CR. Note that if the original creature deviated from these values, the new one should do so in a similar fashion. For example, if the original creature had higher than normal hit points but a lower than normal CR, the creature should maintain that balance at a higher CR (even though its hit points and AC both increased)." - There's a table available to sanity check the CR of customized monsters. Why not use it?
I've sometimes applied the giant template to a creature more than once to get something of the desired size. I needed a Huge yellow musk creeper for a low level adventure, and a giant giant yellow musk creeper has about the right stats for a CR4 creature per the table. A few things are a little low and others a little high, but it is all reasonably close. The young young young young pit fiend skeletal champion in the thread which was linked earlier is way off the chart for a CR5 though. Hit points alone suggest moving him up into the mid teens, and his primary save DC is good enough for a CR20 creature. Then again, the OP on that thread seemed to indicate that the creature was just an amusing mental excercise, not something for use in real games to "crap on the players".
Fake Healer - After recent experiences I'd think that you'd know discussing the difficulty of the game with the GM can be difficult. I think we'll make it through the AP. I'm just not sure how.
If I wanted a dire dire dire dire marmot, by gosh I'd make it! :)
Maybe because you absolutely need size large Platypuses?
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Umm...if you can't stack templates, how could you possibly build Clifford the Big Red Dog? Depending on the story, that dog can grow to Colossal size.
Some might ask why it would be necessary to build Clifford the Big Red Dog for Pathfinder? I presume that's not actually a serious question, though.
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Notice how some work out but most don't? I think what's happened here is someone came across a template that just happen to provide benefits by stacking itself. I think this was actually just a fluke discovery. It seems logical that the intent was never for templates to be stackable, if they were then they would all be made that way.
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Which craft skill would you use pray tell?The biggest problem with a nuclear bomb comes not from the design/assembly of it, but the design and implementation of getting pure enough fissile material, namely plutonium and uranium.
Fabricate: getting bars of uranium, radium and other materials from pitchblende
Then separating the u-235 and u-238 without the need to bother with centrifuges.It is a good idea to develop a "protection from radiation" spell before doing this.
Even without building a nuclear bomb you can easily build a dirty bomb e depopulate a city. for more "fun" you can contaminate the water source of a region with radium.
Which craft skill would you use pray tell?I'd suggest "Craft (Atomic Weapons)," with a DC of approximately 10^1000 and a circumstance penalty of approximately 10^-1000 representing the circumstance that no one around has Knowledge (Nuclear Physics) at a suitably high level.
The Curies discovered radium with a small laboratory. Fabricate can separate it from the mineral easily. And they hadn't intelligence 36.
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No one has yet to answer the initial question. Why is it that people seem to be under the impression that stacking identical templates is both RAW and RAI?
If nothing else, surely it would break the "no stacking from the same source" general rule. What's more, with all the abuses and imbalances it opens up, it should be obvious that it isn't RAI.
I think you have found the RAW of why it can be done.
Wasn't there an old rule in 3.5 that said you could have only 1 of each type of template? One inherited (like Half-Dragon), one acquired (like vampire) and there was another I can't remember the name of. Of course this is 3.5 and not PF, but the template "types" remain.
I think you have found the RAW of why it can be done.No one has yet to answer the initial question. Why is it that people seem to be under the impression that stacking identical templates is both RAW and RAI?
If nothing else, surely it would break the "no stacking from the same source" general rule. What's more, with all the abuses and imbalances it opens up, it should be obvious that it isn't RAI.
Only problem with this is that it's not actually RAW.
The only two places where stacking limitations are discussed are Common Terms and Magic:
Stacking: Stacking refers to the act of adding together bonuses or penalties that apply to one particular check or statistic. Generally speaking, most bonuses of the same type do not stack. Instead, only the highest bonus applies. Most penalties do stack, meaning that their values are added together. Penalties and bonuses generally stack with one another, meaning that the penalties might negate or exceed part or all of the bonuses, and vice versa.
Stacking Effects: Spells that provide bonuses or penalties on attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and other attributes usually do not stack with themselves. More generally, two bonuses of the same type don't stack even if they come from different spells (or from effects other than spells; see Bonus Types, above).
(Note: I've not included the additional sub-headings from the Magic section because none of them actually apply to this discussion.)
The general case is clearly that two bonuses of the same type don't stack, that penalties stack, and that bonuses and penalties stack. Looking at the "young" template (rebuild rules only, since they're the most robust), the only bonus given a type is the Dex modifier, which therefore would not stack for multiple applications of the template. Other templates follow a similar pattern, whereby penalties are untyped (and stacked) and bonuses are typed if size, but untyped otherwise.
It would seem to me (admittedly without crunching all the numbers) that multiple applications of the same template will screw the numbers quite a bit if there are no size bonuses granted by the template.
Anyone got the time to look at the skeletal champion young young etc Balor taking that into account?
The thing is that although it has been said that modifiers from the same source don't stack (I know that James Jacobs has explicitly stated it), the RAW do not support this.
No one has yet to answer the initial question. Why is it that people seem to be under the impression that stacking identical templates is both RAW and RAI?
If nothing else, surely it would break the "no stacking from the same source" general rule. What's more, with all the abuses and imbalances it opens up, it should be obvious that it isn't RAI.
Templates are used by the GM not players. If GM wants to stack templates they are free to do so. After all a template is just a quick modification to a creature to increase or lower the CR in some instances. As well it can be used to change a creature. Stacking some templates makes no sense, you be better off modifiying via advancement rules. But you can add the Giant template a couple time to take small create to large size. Nothing wrong with that and you just increase the CR by 2 for two templates and then use your judgement as GM to see if they CR is correct. You might need to increase a bit or lower it by one depending on the creature the template was applied to.
You can also just design your own monster based off another from scratch using the advancement rules. I just stacking two templates is much easier.
@voska66: There are some problems that can arise with this, however. As an example given earlier in the thread, someone built a very nasty, low CR variation of a pit fiend by stacking the 'Young' template on it multiple times. The problem is that the template does not subtract abilities or hit points, so you wind up with a CR 5 creature with the hit points and abilities of something that started out as a much higher CR - and that should actually be higher still because as you're stacking the bonus DEX from the young template, you're making it insanely hard to hit.
I think Devilkiller points out the best evidence that the designers were aware of these possible issues - and that they also intended for people using templates to compare the final creature against the basic CR table based on stats, and then adjust if these didn't meet up.
I think Devilkiller points out the best evidence that the designers were aware of these possible issues - and that they also intended for people using templates to compare the final creature against the basic CR table based on stats, and then adjust if these didn't meet up.
But I also think that this same evidence suggests that they didn't intent to outlaw stacking templates, because if they wanted people NOT TO STACK TEMPLATES UNDER PAIN OF PAIN [TM] they could and would have written it that way.
As has been pointed out several times, the GM can put any monster she likes on the table, which whatever stats she likes. I don't think the game designers had any intention of limiting this freedom when they created templates. I don't think the game designers would particularly approve of a GM who deliberately put stupid/broken/badly designed monsters on the table, but I don't think they would care more about dire dire young young dire young elephants than they would care about uranium golems, sodium elementals, or two-headed oozes.
Oh, I agree. I don't believe they say anywhere, "Thou shalt not stack templates." My point was that they recognized that doing so could potentially cause issues, and so they warned people to compare the final product against the monster stats by CR chart to ensure that the creature wasn't 'broken'.
Time to take a look in-depth at our Skeletal Champion Pit Fiend.
Hit points: 275 = CR 17
AC: 34 = CR 19
Attack bonuses: +23 or +18 = CR 14 or 15
Average damage: 28.5 plus poison plus disease = CR 6 to 9 or higher.
Primary ability DC: 20 = CR 11
Secondary ability DC: 27 (meteor swarm, not calculated on the stat block) = off the chart.
Good save: +25 = off the chart
Poor save: +7 = CR 8
This creature is all over the shop. I'd peg it around CR 18, and adjust most of the numbers to fit that range.
Thank you for the breakdown, Chemlak!
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Which craft skill would you use pray tell?The biggest problem with a nuclear bomb comes not from the design/assembly of it, but the design and implementation of getting pure enough fissile material, namely plutonium and uranium.Fabricate: getting bars of uranium, radium and other materials from pitchblende
Then separating the u-235 and u-238 without the need to bother with centrifuges.It is a good idea to develop a "protection from radiation" spell before doing this.
Even without building a nuclear bomb you can easily build a dirty bomb e depopulate a city. for more "fun" you can contaminate the water source of a region with radium.
Which craft skill would you use pray tell?I'd suggest "Craft (Atomic Weapons)," with a DC of approximately 10^1000 and a circumstance penalty of approximately 10^-1000 representing the circumstance that no one around has Knowledge (Nuclear Physics) at a suitably high level.The Curies discovered radium with a small laboratory. Fabricate can separate it from the mineral easily. And they hadn't intelligence 36.
How would he even know about the materials outside of meta gaming?
How would he even know about the materials outside of meta gaming?
Oh, you can learn all sorts of stuff with a Commune spell.
I really hope you are being facetious...
Well, as serious as can be when one is discussing the idea of creating nuclear weapons in a high-fantasy setting.
I see no reason that Hephaestus or Wayland Smith wouldn't be interested and knowledgeable about awesomely powerful weapons. In a Golarion setting, Rovagug, the God of Destruction, would be very interested in figuring out how to kill lots of people and destroy lots of stuff at once. (I admit that I'd not be inclined to ask Gozreh about this.) Certainly, the idea that I want to blow stuff up on a massive scale isn't that unreasonable a question -- especially in a world that knows about gunpowder.
So if someone's really serious about it:
How do I make an explosion big enough to destroy a city?
The rest is a "simple" matter of connecting the dots.
Going even further, I find it hard to believe anything but Evilly aligned Clerics would even conceive of something like a Nuclear Bomb with no scientific basis. Good and Neutral clerics should be asking "why would we do this?"
Goodness, you do know that Einstein is often credited with inventing the atomic bomb, don't you? It's generally considered acceptable for the Good Guys to kill the Bad Guys, and if the Bad Guys are sufficiently bad and sufficiently overwhelming, the good guys are generally encouraged to get creative.
Second, even if some hundreds of divine casters started doing this, why would deities know these answers?
Because they're deities, and they're supposed to be extremely knowledgeable within their bailiwick. While they're not omniscient, I'd still expect the Oh-God of Wine and Hangovers to know pretty much everything about oenology. And while I'd not ask him for tips about architecture, I'd certainly expect him to know quite a bit about fermentation techniques...
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How would he even know about the materials outside of meta gaming?Which craft skill would you use pray tell?The biggest problem with a nuclear bomb comes not from the design/assembly of it, but the design and implementation of getting pure enough fissile material, namely plutonium and uranium.Fabricate: getting bars of uranium, radium and other materials from pitchblende
Then separating the u-235 and u-238 without the need to bother with centrifuges.It is a good idea to develop a "protection from radiation" spell before doing this.
Even without building a nuclear bomb you can easily build a dirty bomb e depopulate a city. for more "fun" you can contaminate the water source of a region with radium.
Which craft skill would you use pray tell?I'd suggest "Craft (Atomic Weapons)," with a DC of approximately 10^1000 and a circumstance penalty of approximately 10^-1000 representing the circumstance that no one around has Knowledge (Nuclear Physics) at a suitably high level.The Curies discovered radium with a small laboratory. Fabricate can separate it from the mineral easily. And they hadn't intelligence 36.
How the Curie did know about them? They didn't, they discovered them with trial and error. And a bit of horror, as "Because of their levels of radioactivity, her [Marie Curie] papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle.[59] Even her cookbook is highly radioactive.[59] Her papers are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing."
Why they searched for radium and polonium? Pitchblende rich in radioactive minerals is slightly luminous and warmer than non radioactive material. Get a lich or immortal wizard with a lot of time and he could reasonably deduct that there is something different in some of the minerals. then he could extract it with a reverse process: extract everything you already know exists and see what is left.
A human wizard probably will be appalled by the radioactive burns and search for clerical healing, but will probably be very interested on what is happening. A lich probably will not suffer effects from the radiations, but will test his new substance on animals or persons.
Probably they will not develop a atomic bomb, but a dirty bomb? Very easily.
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I'm regularly shocked by the general disdain posters show towards scientific knowledge...
Your phrase is fun as it sound like you are speaking of religion.
The development of scientific knowledge is 0.1% intuition getting the idea that something can exist or that it follow a specific rule and 99.9% hard work proving or disproving your intuition.
The biggest difference between modern and ancient methods of research is that in the late centuries the discoveries and methods have been shared, while in older times most of the knowledge was hoarded and shared only with your disciples, so some procedure has been discovered and rediscovered a lot of times while today we can generally check what other people has done and avoid duplicating their work.
Ancient people weren't stupid at all, they were capable to do wonderful things with very little equipment.
The development of scientific knowledge is 0.1% intuition getting the idea that something can exist or that it follow a specific rule and 99.9% hard work proving or disproving your intuition.
I'd put it at 0.1% intuition, 9.9% hard lab work, and 90% reading other scientists' papers.
The Curies are actually a good example; discovering radium was not, in context, all that earth-shattering a discovery. The idea that radiation existed at all was probably the most atonishing thing, but that was Roentgen (for which he won the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physics). Becquerel found that uranium salts, in particular, were radioactive.
What the Curies did was simply do the math and note that there was more radiation emitted from pitchblende than could be accounted for by the amount of uranium in it. Once you know that, the question "what else in pitchblende is radioactive" is a fairly straightforward one (although admittedly a very important one). But there's a reason that Becquerel shared the prize with the Curies. The Curie's investigation only makes sense against the background of what Roentgen and Becquerel had already found.
I'd say the sphere of annihilation is Pathfinder's version of a nuclear bomb.
Just a thought...there ARE scientists on Golarion...and it appears that physics operates very differently.
The synthesis of magic and technology, and the study of how they interact, would probably be a Sisyphean effort for some poor Golarion university.
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Just a thought...there ARE scientists on Golarion...and it appears that physics operates very differently.The synthesis of magic and technology, and the study of how they interact, would probably be a Sisyphean effort for some poor Golarion university.
...especially with the true masters of the art...er...elsewhere and presumed dead.
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Just a thought...there ARE scientists on Golarion...and it appears that physics operates very differently.is there a treatise on physics in Golarion? Or are you inferring this from how RAW models physics?
Just looking at the obvious. Science has created enormous bipedal robots, but still hasn't made things we're accustomed to as a normal part of life. So many things that happen in Golarion simply break physics as we know it.
Simple enough.