Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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The druid in the first act is controlling (depending on level) a Dire Rat Animal Companion, up to 3 Dire Rats, and a rat swarm. He has no animal handling. How is he directing them? Furthermore, his first act is to kick open the rat swarm right next to him. Wouldn't it just immediately jump onto him??? I suppose for the animals, he could have used animal empathy to change their attitudes to helpful, but short of being a blight druid, he can't do anything about the rat swarm.
Further they are missing his AC stat block for the top tier, which means it is left up to the GM how it goes from a level 1 AC to a level 4?
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Look at his gear section, and stats, and extrapilate from that for the AC.
You can give some direction to the fact that the rats are animals, that are friendly to him, so they'll attack other things like rabid animals, but without direction, despite their willingness to not attack the druid specifically.
Swarm could be similar, his holy symbol is a dead rat IIRC, so some amount of deified protection can be assumed, or he could just be wearing vermin repellent :D
It's not perfect, but hey it's season 1.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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You can handle (DC 10, to do a trick) or push (DC 25 to do a non trick) domestic animals and animal companions. Dire Rats and Rat Swarms are definitely not domestic.
His charisma mod is +1, so he can't even make the DC 25.
I suppose with a lot of equipment bonuses, and take 20s, he could shift the rats attitude from unfriendly to friendly, (DC 22 for the Dire rats, DC 21 for the rat swarm.) But I thought Dire animals and swarms default to hostile? (Maybe I'm misremembering that?) Still can't get it to helpful.
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I think I'm going to give him...
I see comments like this all the time in scenario threads especially with regards to season zero/one scenarios. Why do we have to "do" anything? Just run the creatures/NPCs as described. Why does there have to be a rules-compliant reason why he can do the things he does? It works that way because the author/developer/GM says so. Enough said. The players have no way of determining what minor customizations an enemy might have. If you absolutely have to have a reason that you can give, just call him a variant, a specific exception to the standard rules for this one occurrence and call it done.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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because, as a *player* I hate it when I see an NPC do something cool, and I go to try to figure out how I can do something similar, and I can't.
And because as a GM, I notice that the authors in Pathfinder make these "minor customizations", often adding whole suites of extra abilities to the NPCs without ever bothering to up the encounter DC. (heavy armor on priests with no extra feat, an undead barbarian whose rage adds to charisma, since undead have no con, thus boosting all his power saves, etc.) and it annoys the hell out of me. Figuring out how to reconcile them helps me keep the game balanced.
And because the players *will* ask "hey, how did he make all those creatuers attack" and it breaks imersion if I just shrug, and say "because thats the way he's written."
And because it dictiates the creatures tactics. A rat swarm driven mad with hunger and a party that is the only thing in the room that doesn't taste of rat repelent will act differently than a rat swarm that has been trained to follow directions or has been trained to protect the cultist.
And because "why does there have to be a rules-compliant reason why he can do the things he does" is a question that creates very dangerous precedents. I mean, why does there have to be a rules compliant reason why the bad guy gets away? The GM says so, isn't that enough? For that matter, why does there need to be a rules compliant reason why your skill doesn't work?
Knowledge Arcana, Knowledge Nature, Knowledge Religeon, Detect Magic, Spellcraft, Craft Alchemy, Survival all exist to tell the players what minor customizations the enemy might have.
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I disagree. If immersion is the goal, then the characters, not the players would be the ones trying to figure out how said NPC did what they did. In most cases, there is nothing they can do to discover that. From a player's perspective, perhaps there is "I wanna do that," but occasionally, an NPC/creature is just different than the norm and can do something because of some off-camera experience they went through to develop it. Or maybe they were just born with it. In a world of flying dragons, fireballing wizards, and undead, anything is possible and doesn't have to be explainable. There is no reason why "variant" is not a perfectly legitimate reason for something in the game. If you want the players to be able to knowledge it, let them. Just tell them, this NPC/creature seems to display an unusually strong connection to rats even giving him the ability to control mindless swarms.
There is an old adage in the game I believe coined by Gygax himself that went something like, "don't let the dice or the rules interfere with the story." One of the inherent problems with RPG's as they have evolved is the game becomes more about the rules than the experience. What can I do, what can't I do. Its sad really. [/rant]
All that being said, we are not talking about a variation creature able to do something not normally allowed in this case. We are talking about early season encounters where minor development issues were missed or intentionally left in place to make it more interesting. Let's face it, if the swarm immediately attacked the BBEG, it wouldn't be cool. In fact, most would call that just stupid. Does it follow precisely to the general rules? No, but who cares? It doesn't take away from the game unless the PLAYER, not the character, meta-games "the rules don't work that way."
More importantly, we as GMs are not empowered to make changes to the scenarios in PFS. As Mike Brock has said numerous times, when a error like this occurs, we are to run it as it is written. By adding things like swarm repellent, you are changing what is written. Sorry, but that is not permitted.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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How did he do that? I want to disrupt it.
Does he have a spell that let him control them? (knowledge Arcana)
countermeasure: dispel magic
Are they trained? (handle animal)
countermeasure: opposed skill check
is he using vermin repellent? (Knowledge Arcana)
countermeasure: conjure water. Or maybe we should get some ourselves
Is he a person with a rare talent (Knowledge Local. Pretty high DCs, but I have players who consistently hit 30s.)
countermeasure: depends on the mechanic of his talent. Does it stop working when he goes unconsious.
The player have lots of ways to find out what is going on, and they have a legitimate reason to want to know what is going on so they can counter it. I also need to know what is going on so I know how to rule if they try something.
Are the animals controled magically? If so the druid in the party won't be able to handle animal to turn them back on the cultists. (I happen to know there is a strong chance there will be a blight druid in the party.)
Are they just friendly to the druid? If so they will do what *they* think is the most effective (int 3) not what *he* thinks will be most effective.
Does it just work because thats the way it's written? Okay, then it can't be run. There is no tactic block for the rats. So run as written they sit there and do nothing.
Actually, thats incorrect. There is no tactic block for the rats or the swarm. So run as written the swarm defaults back to swarm rules. Swarm rules and wild animal rules say "attack nearest creature that is not of their type."
So run as written, the cultist kicks open the cage and the rat swarm immediately engulfs him.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I will point out that your sugguestiong: "give the cultist the ability to control rats" explicitly violates the same rule as you are objecting to me violating, as nothing in the encounter as written gives him that power.
And "just run it and have the rats attack the PC" violates the instructions in the GtoP:
This does not mean you can contradict rules or restrictions outlined in this document, a published Pathfinder Roleplaying Game source, errata document, or official FAQ on paizo.com.
As that would violate the swarm rules. (published in the bestiary)
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As a druid, the NPC has wild empathy. Wild empathy allows diplomacy with animals, so I'd assume any animals found with the NPC has been made friendly or helpful via such an ability. True he only has a +2 in the lower tier, but that can be buffed by snacks/bribes and the like over time.
Who knows where he might keep his rat snacks in the room? Maybe it was just by the door the PC's just happened to barge in? As rats find other food closer (PC's) they decide to snack on the way to the snack bag?
There's generally a number of ways to hedge it in, by the rules, if you really want to.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Hmmm... At the first two tiers, he could use masterwork tools, and aid another checks from other druids, he would need to create a permanent attitude shift and move one step at a time.
Probably that's the best solution. Under my understanding of the rules, he would have to go all the way to helpful, or he would have to be making a DC 17-18 check to get the rats to help in combat.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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It occurs to me that if I were writing the scenario, and I had written it this way (and I have written similar scenes*) then the *intent* would be that the rats turn on everyone in the room, eat their handler, and the PC's now have to stop them from eating the helpless tied up juicy people, who are far more interesting than the tough, dangerous PCs.
Which, by the rules as written is an entirely legitimate way to run the scene. (As a reminder, there is *nothing* in the scene that says the rats attack the PCs. I just assume that is the intent because this is pathfinder, and that's what I expect.)
*I wonder how many of my PCs remember "The Poor Little Rat Girl" story line. The lesson of which is that unleashing a plague of rat spirits into a declining neighborhood to collapse property values into a slum so you can buy the land cheap from the greedy landlords so you can gentrify it, so that everybody winds up better off in the end only works if you have some way to *control* the rat spirits.