GM Sunder Hate?

[FLite]

GM was (if I understood correctly) new to pathfinder and to gaming (6th month total experience.) I was new once, so I'm pretty tolerant, and I try to help GM's who are trying to learn, but yes, I will take an experienced GM over and inexperienced GM.

[David Bowles]

I put the caveat in my post for new GMs. But if a 4 or 5 star or a VO tried to do that, I'd be really, really irritated.

[Benrislove]

why not just say what the spells do?

I really don't understand the rage about GMs doing things wrong, are people really so afraid of confrontation that they won't say "Color spray is a 15ft cone" or "Acid splash is a ranged touch attack, you have to hit, also only range 30"

Help the feller out, say "if you want to color spray these people, move up here and get em" I do that AS a gm to help new players, and I'll do it as a player to help new GMs :)

[David Bowles]

I don't have a problem doing that, but I've played with some GMs who don't like to be corrected because "it slows the game down". It's not so much about GMs doing things wrong, it's refusal to take input.

For me, at least, it swings both ways. I've helped new GMs understand character builds at the table they didn't understand, and even stumbled across a couple illegal PC builds.

[FLite]

benrislove, thats what I did. (the mage moving up wasn't really an option, for various reasons. Actually, she probably should have just delayed or readied till we got closer and there were more of us she could hit.) but since I'm a pretty new player, I had to go look up each of those things before I could say it. So the sequence went sort of like this:

GM: She color sprays you.
Me: Okay I roll my save, I get a X, did I make it
GM: Um, I'm not sure.
Me:(remembers that colorspray is cone)
GM: flips through book looking up saves.
Me: I flip through book, see cone range
Me: Hey wait, that can't be right. Color Spray is a 15 foot cone, not a ray. It's only 15 feat.
GM: Oh, thats right, hold on (GM flips back through character sheet, looking for something she can use on my.)
GM: Oh, Okay, you take 1d4+X acid damage as she use acid ray on you.
Me: Okay, I'll roll my save.
GM: oh, there's no save, you just take damage.
Me and everyone else at the table who has played more than a year: That *can't* be right.
GM: It doesn't say anything about a save.
Me: Then there is probably a to hit roll, there is always a save or to hit roll:
*massive flipping through books occurs, much of it wasted as it takes us a moment to realize that acid ray is a SLA that does not have a Spell equivelent, so we have to track down the bloodline it came from.*
Other guy: There it is, it's a ranged touch attack, that mean you have to roll to hit touch AC.

etc.

This is why I want a quick lookup table. That one interaction killed what momentum the fight had left in it. To the GM's credit, he took being corrected well, but each correction took time.

[David Bowles]

I'd rather burn some time than deal with a hard-headed GM. I'll take your situation over several I have been in. For a newer GM, especially one who doesn't play caster PCs, the spell casters can be tricky. Fortunately for myself, I played a wizard and cleric quite high in 3.5. A few things have changed, but not an incredible amount. Plus, I'm clear on rays, bursts, spreads and cones. I use stupid little tricks like how a diagonal 15' cone looks like a B2 bomber. It often amuses the players to hear my little tricks :)

[FLite]

David Bowles wrote:

I use stupid little tricks like how a diagonal 15' cone looks like a B2 bomber. It often amuses the players to hear my little tricks :)

I like that one.

and yeah inexperience is better than incompetence is better than malice.

I just want to be able to look at that sort of GM in future and say "here, all the information you need in the palm of your hand, now lets make combat really move."

[Themes86]

FLite wrote:

just looked, apparently it is not the modules fault, it is the creature description.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/caryatid-colum n

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2k94s?PFS-35-Voice-in-the-Void#8

Check out this post from Joshua Frost. If you want to look it up, you can find it in the GM Discussion Forum about the module.

[Diego Rossi]

Themes86 wrote:

FLite wrote:

just looked, apparently it is not the modules fault, it is the creature description.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/caryatid-colum n

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2k94s?PFS-35-Voice-in-the-Void#8

Check out this post from Joshua Frost. If you want to look it up, you can find it in the GM Discussion Forum about the module.

Check out the description in the Bestiary 3:

PRD wrote:

Shatter Weapons (Ex) Whenever a character strikes a caryatid column with a weapon (magical or nonmagical), the weapon takes 3d6 points of damage. Apply the weapon's hardness normally. Weapons that take any amount of damage in excess of their hardness gain the broken quality.

It was printed well after the CRB and still inflict the broken condition if the weapon take even a single point of damage.

It is a special ability of the CC, they always ad it, even in the first edition of the game.

[Victor Zajic]

The last time someone quoted the SRD in a post on mine on the rules forum, what the book said, and what the SRD said were two completely different things. It's really not a good rules site, even just for reference.

Archives of nethis is another 3rd party site, has all the soft cover book stuff in it, and isn't selling anything, so it can use the proper names for everything. If you really don't want to use the PRD, I would advise using archives of nethys instead.

Although, prepping to GM for PFS, I've never run across a NPC spellcaster that had a spell that wasn't listed on the PRD site from a hard cover book.

[FLite]

Victor, I think upthread I mentioned I'm throwing a spider across to Nethys.

But just to take an example (which I also posted upthread), prd does not have Blood Money, nethys has blood money, but it's wrong (because they have the 3.5 version, which costs 1 XP per X gp of component. Which would beautifully tank the WBL formula, heck, I'd take it just to let my character play at 11th level forever) d20pfsrd has blood money correct.

If people point me to specific inaccuracies in the pfsrd, I can use that to make my data agragate more accurate. Given that the book is inaccurate (doesn't have the errata or forum faq), the prd is inaccurate *and* incomplete (doesn't have the forum faq or the soft cover), d20pfsrd is incomplete and (I am told) inaccurate (I haven't found an inaccuracy there yet, but I have found missing data), and nethys is incomplete and inaccurate (no errata, no forum faq, but does have the PFS legal stamp, which none of the others have.) I am basically left with 3 choices.

1. Just don't bother, try to remember everything, and make calls as I see them.
2. Slow down game by looking stuff up in the book and then try to find if there is an errata or faq.
3. Build an aggregator that pulls all the data from prd, d20pfsrd, and nethys. Have it highlight data that is the same across all three and flag discrepancies so I can look stuff up quickly and easily.

(Note, I haven't even included herolab in that mix. It's too expensive, and there have been way too many threads on here that illustrate errors in herolab.)

Note that one of the things my aggregator will give me *that none of the other sources have* is a table of "Spellname, Range, Components, saves, Quick Description" that I can feed a list of the character's spells, so that when I get silenced, or held, or whatever, I can quickly look and see what the character can still cast that has a prayer of reaching the target.

So far, by the way, I have pulled the complete spell list from prd/nethys/d20pfsrd and run the first pass parser. I haven't crunched all the data, but so far the only spell name changes are things like using digits in place of roman numerals, or putting greater or lesser at the end or beginning of the name, or whether "communal" spells get their own page, or just get a sub page under the main spell.

[FLite]

Themes86 wrote:

FLite wrote:

just looked, apparently it is not the modules fault, it is the creature description.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/caryatid-colum n

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2k94s?PFS-35-Voice-in-the-Void#8

Check out this post from Joshua Frost. If you want to look it up, you can find it in the GM Discussion Forum about the module.

From that discussion, the poor barbarian in our party got raked by the GM. (He had the antler rage power and wound up beating the CC's to rubble with his antlers, taking 3d6 damage with each hit, and the party healers spent their turns healing him between hits.

[Victor Zajic]

I just look up what the specific spells that the NPC have, when prepping a mod, on the PRD, and make a cheat sheet ahead of time for that particular mod.

I don't think PFS NPCs ever have spells from the soft cover books. The scenarios are supposed to be designed so that with access to the PRD, you have all the rules you need to run scenario. As far as I know, no PFS NPC should be using blood money.

With PFS specific rulings and errata that is not on the PRD, you gotta do your best to be current, and make judgement calls at the table when you don't know or can't remember.

So if you just use the PRD spells for your program, you shouldn't run into problems. If you find specific PFS rulings or errata, I think your best bet would just be to manually add them as notes to your data tables.

[FLite]

Sorry, I don't do manual. That is what Perl is for.

More seriously, what you are talking about is what I'm doing, I'm just doing it electronically. Culling d20pfsrd is one of the ways I check to find inforum rulings I might have missed otherwise.

Also, remember one of my stated goals is to have quick access to the spells players bring to the table without having to stop game to flip through their books every time I have a question.

We had one game (not at Nefreet's table :) ) where the PC was a dual class caster with two completely seperate spell lists. Watching him flip back and forth through his lists of prepped spells looking for something he could cast was painfully slow. I can pretty much guarentee (from what I have seen of that player) that a lot of his spells were not from hardcovers, and probably 10% were not pfs legal. (again, why I am including nethys in this.)

[Victor Zajic]

You as the GM should not have to provide rules sources for the player's spells from any book, let alone softcover ones. The reason for that rule is pretty much to avoid the exact problems you are encountering. If you cover for players by providing rule sources, they are going to expect the same treatment from the next GM they encounter. If they don't know what their spells do, then they shouldn't be using them.

I deal with the kind of problem you mentioned by asking players to figure out what they are going to do on their turn ahead of time, and if they are still taking too long, giving them a 10-15 second time limit before I put them on delay while they figure out what they want to do.

I still vote for going with Archives of Nethys instead of the SRD. Your problem example, blood money, on Archives of Nethys is listed as 3.5, and not listed as PFS legal. Perhaps a reprint is missing, but it's not present the incorrect information as pathfinder society legal.

My example of the SRD being incorrect is not having to do with a spell, but with the Diablolist prestige classes, the entry under Share Spells for the Imp companion is not what is written in the actual book, and there isn't any errata for the book that has changed it. the SRD makes and printes a very large assumption about the Imp's type that isn't actually spelled out, rules as written, in the printed material, and people are qouting as gospel truth on the rules forum. I just plan don't trust the SRD anymore.

[FLite]

First of all, thank you for giving me specific examples so I can look at the sort of thing I should be looking for.

Re: players:
I'm still going to make them have the source, if only because then I can use the source to factcheck the data I get from Nethys/d20pfsrd. But this way I only need to see that they have the source at the start of game, and don't need to flip through it during game.

I *do* do what you suggest for my own turns (if I can't figure out what I'm going to do by the time my turn comes I delay till I can or go total defense.) That said, even as a GM, I am very slow to do that to a player unless they are experienced and should know better.

Based on the feedback here, I will probably rank data:

prd
d20pfsrd faq links (which are usually sourced directly to the forum post or faq page.
nethys
d20pfsrd

data that is the same between two sources will be elevated 1-2 steps up the ladder. (Obviously data that is the same between all three sources need not be ranked.)

[FLite]

d20pfsrd:
Share Spells

The diabolist may cast a spell with a target of “You” on her imp (as a touch spell) instead of on herself. A diabolist may cast spells on her imp even if the spells do not normally affect creatures of the imp's type (outsider).

Nethys:
Share Spells: This works like the wizard’s familiar ability rather than the druid animal companion ability.
(Wizard, from nethys.)
Share Spells: The wizard may cast a spell with a target of “You” on his familiar (as a touch spell) instead of on himself. A wizard may cast spells on his familiar even if the spells do not normally affect creatures of the familiar's type (magical beast).

I don't have access to the text, but assuming nethys is acurate, then the only difference between the two is that d20pfsrd says the imp is an outsider, and nethys doesn't say whether it is or is not an outsider.

Am I missing something?

[Mike Franke]

Did this thread get derailed somewhere?

As to sunder and PFS I think the issue is Character wealth. In a home game if a giant or sunder npc breaks a characters favorite magic sword that he spent 5 levels saving all of his money to have enchanted or represents 50% of his character wealth, a good GM will likely make up for it in the future.

In PFS if the same situation occures the character and player are simply out of luck. The destruction of items represents an elimination of character wealth that can not be made up. You suddenly have am 8th level character with the resources of a 3rd level character and you will always be 5 levels behind.

[FLite]

About 3 pages ago, yes. Thats okay I'm cool with it wandering as long as it doesn't spend to much time in certain areas.

Actually, that would make a lot of sense for why players hate it when the GM sunders (which doesn't stop paizo from putting weapon / armor destroyer monsters in game) But the phenomonenon I am experiencing is the one in where the PCs sunder NPC gear, which has 0 effect on PC wealth.

Also, Paizo put in a lot of ways to make getting your sword fixed easily.

[Diego Rossi]

@ Mike Franke

Definitive answer

Diego Rossi wrote:

Michael Brock wrote:

Scott Young wrote:

handwaving who actually did it. Not a PC, since there is no crafting, so it doesn't really matter who does it.

This.

Belafon wrote:

The first question is: Did you do enough damage to destroy it (more than total hp) or just to give it the broken condition (between 1/2 and 1 hp left)? Remember that the +1 enhancement bonus gives +2 hardness and +10 HP. The item has a CL of the highest enchantment on it (in this case 12),

PRD wrote:

Caster Level for Weapons: The caster level of a weapon with a special ability is given in the item description. For an item with only an enhancement bonus and no other abilities, the caster level is three times the enhancement bonus. If an item has both an enhancement bonus and a special ability, the higher of the two caster level requirements must be met.

so that leaves us with:

If it's broken, he needs a whole bunch of CL12 mending spells cost. 60 gp each and they restore 1d4 HP each.

If it's destroyed, he first needs a make whole at CL24. I've never seen a definitive answer on whether or not you can even get such a CL in PFS. It's a big debate precisely because of how devastating sunder can be. Assuming it's allowed, you need one casting of make whole for 480 gp, this will give it 1D4 HP and restore the magic properties, then follow up with mending until full. You can't have a craftsman repair it, they can't restore magic properties to destroyed items, that requires make whole.

And this

I am missing what is the ruling, can you elaborate your reply?

The biggest problems, from what I get is:
1) it is possible to repair an item with make whole if that require a caster above level 20?
2) We can hand wave who did the work, but we can find someone capable to do that "on the field" in the first hamlet we find or we should do that between missions?

Michael Brock wrote:

1) Yes

2) No, it should be done between missions.

[Victor Zajic]

Nethys is correct, the book doesn't mention anything about the creature type of imp companion, which actually determines a lot of abilities that it gets.

FLite wrote:

d20pfsrd:

Share Spells

The diabolist may cast a spell with a target of “You” on her imp (as a touch spell) instead of on herself. A diabolist may cast spells on her imp even if the spells do not normally affect creatures of the imp's type (outsider).

Nethys:
Share Spells: This works like the wizard’s familiar ability rather than the druid animal companion ability.
(Wizard, from nethys.)
Share Spells: The wizard may cast a spell with a target of “You” on his familiar (as a touch spell) instead of on himself. A wizard may cast spells on his familiar even if the spells do not normally affect creatures of the familiar's type (magical beast).

I don't have access to the text, but assuming nethys is acurate, then the only difference between the two is that d20pfsrd says the imp is an outsider, and nethys doesn't say whether it is or is not an outsider.

Am I missing something?

[FLite]

but in the absence of any rule that says the imp
s type is changed from it's default, it would stay an outsider, wouldn't it? There is a rule that an animal the becomes a familiar becomes a magical animal, and there is a rule that an outsider that becomes an improved familiar stays an outsider, and a rule that says an animal that becomes an animal companion stays an animal. There is no rule that says an outsider that becomes an animal companion becomes an animal.

So the only thing that changes it's type is an animal that becomes a familiar.

[Cao Phen]

I have the book and it has the base statistics of the imp a couple of pages after the prestiege class. It does gain spell-like abilities at its base and 4th-level advancement. Moreover, it has the ability to gain spell-like abilities, alternate forms, or telepathy in replace of tricks, since it is quite smart (Base 13 INT)

[FLite]

Cao, I think the problem is that the book doesn't list the imp's type, Victor, I think (correct me if I'm wrong) believes that since it uses the druid rules, it's type is animal. d20psfrd says it's type is outsider. And all of this makes a difference because that would also mean it gets devil (which has a whole bunch of imunities and energy resists,) evil, lawful (which both let it bypass certain DRs but also make it vulnerable to certain attacks,) Extraplaner (which lets it be banished.) etc.

[Karui Kage]

For what it's worth, I'd assume the imp's type is Outsider. It has d10 hit dice, good Reflex/Will, lots of class skills: all outsider traits. The fact that it has d10 hd instead of d8 alone makes it different from practically all other animals.

Plus, it just makes logical sense. Yes, it uses animal companion-like rules, but so does an Eidolon.

[Karui Kage]

FLite wrote:

But just to take an example (which I also posted upthread), prd does not have Blood Money, nethys has blood money, but it's wrong (because they have the 3.5 version, which costs 1 XP per X gp of component. Which would beautifully tank the WBL formula, heck, I'd take it just to let my character play at 11th level forever) d20pfsrd has blood money correct.

The lack of a Blood Money update is due to me not having the RotRL Anniversary Edition up yet. I've been crunching through the back log as quick as one man can, and thankfully am coming close to being done. I have less than half of the NPC Codex remaining, the NPCs from the GMG, and the RotRL Anniversary Edition. Once those three are done, I'll be caught up completely (as far as I know) with the various lines that my site covers. :)

[FLite]

I rather assumed that was the case. I wasn't criticizing you, for the record, I'm just explaining why I want multiple sources :)

[Karui Kage]

No worries, totally understood what you meant. :) I try to keep on top of when the site get discussed on Paizo's messageboards so I can address any confusion/questions like these as they arise.

[FLite]

If I find errors (or perceived errors), would you like me to drop you an email (haven't found any yet, as the RotRL stuff isn't an error but a data gap, though I have found lots in PRD and d20pfs)

[Karui Kage]

Definitely :) I encourage anyone to shoot me a mail if they see errors on the Archives to: asknethys at karuikage dot net

[My PFS Lavode De'Morcaine]

FLite wrote:

It came up recently in a side discussion I was having with someone that some of the local GMs have an hate of sunder, to the point of threatening to let NPCs start sundering PC gear if PCs start sundering NPC gear.

I don't understand how sundering is worse for the game than (for example) Grappler builds (which have the same problem of being able to shut down an opponent's ability to use their nifty awesome gear.)

Also, if their is a social contract that you can't break stuff PC's have bought why are there rust monsters in game?

What I was told by one of the long term players at our local is that it used to be a common issue. Back when people first realized that sundering did not affect what rewards you have available, there were suddenly sunder builds just all over the place. he said almost every table you would have at least 1 sometimes several sunder builds.

They got disgusted with it back then and haven't gotten over it to cooperate with the few you see now.

Don't know how true that is, I wasn't playing PFS back then. But that is what I was told.

[FLite]

That would make a lot of sense

[Victor Zajic]

FLite wrote:

Cao, I think the problem is that the book doesn't list the imp's type, Victor, I think (correct me if I'm wrong) believes that since it uses the druid rules, it's type is animal. d20psfrd says it's type is outsider. And all of this makes a difference because that would also mean it gets devil (which has a whole bunch of imunities and energy resists,) evil, lawful (which both let it bypass certain DRs but also make it vulnerable to certain attacks,) Extraplaner (which lets it be banished.) etc.

The problem is that animal companions are completely different from the beastiary entries with the same name. They only get what the animal companion rules say they get.

Imp companion rules don't say what the creature type is, and the part of animal companion rules it says to use don't include anything about creature type (so it doesn't default to animal). If it counts as an Outsider[Lawful, Evil, Devil] then it gets a host of powerful default abilities that are not listed in the rules for the Imp companion. And for PFS, strict rules as written matter.

[FLite]

But as you say, if there is no rule that changes it's type, then it's type would be outsider. And yes, that means it gets those extra abilities except where it says otherwise. (I think there is a FAQ that says it doesn't get telepathy because the descriptions says it needs a feat for that.)