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Honestly, the rules are overly intrusive as it is.
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Honestly, I'm much more concerned about my last game of Calvinball when it comes to issues like this. We still argue over who flipped the It-rod over forth base last.
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Galorian dietary guidelines. So many adventures just drink beer and eat whatever meat grills at the tavern.
Time to come up with some food born illnesses poisons, heart conditions diseases and an obese template.
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How does a telekineticist (with appropriate wild talents, like TK haul) open a stuck door that would otherwise require a strength check to open, without blasting it off its hinges with their kinetic blast?
I mean, we just ruled "there's nothing better for opening stuck doors than telekinesis, it just works" since we had no idea what to roll.
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Knowledge checks to tell how something other than a monster works.
Knowledge local only tells you the race and general weaknesses.
If you face an enemy party of Dwarf Fighter, Elf Wizard, Human Cleric and Halfling Rogue the only thing the knowledge check can really tell you is their races which is not the most useful or relevant. In 40 years I don't think this game and D&d have addressed this.
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How being silent doesn't technically improve your Stealth chance.
If you are Invisible and you cast Silence on yourself, it currently does nothing to help.
It's a bit roundabout, but you can go off Deafened for this.
A deafened character cannot hear. He takes a –4 penalty on initiative checks, automatically fails Perception checks based on sound, takes a –4 penalty on opposed Perception checks, and has a 20% chance of spell failure when casting spells with verbal components. Characters who remain deafened for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them.
How does a telekineticist (with appropriate wild talents, like TK haul) open a stuck door that would otherwise require a strength check to open, without blasting it off its hinges with their kinetic blast?
I mean, we just ruled "there's nothing better for opening stuck doors than telekinesis, it just works" since we had no idea what to roll.
It's a little complicated, but I like to figure out the strength score that has a max load that matches your telekinetic max load and then use that strength for a strength check to open the door.
Flying rules and facing.
If you don't keep track of facing from one turn to the next, you might as well throw out all notion of "maneuverability class".
In general, both flying and mounted movement/combat need a serious overhaul. Too much is ambiguous and inadequately treated.
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Love?
Charm person.
Or a diplomacy check with DC equal to their charisma score.
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Many universal wild talents for the kineticists need to be expanded on. For example, a chaokineticist can take spark of life, but what do they summon with it?
Murder elementals?
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Mounted combat - there are rules - they leave big gaps in how to handle things.
Aerial combat - there are rules but play at higher levels and you have to come up with some goofy stuff to make it work without giving yourself a headache.
Underwater combat - seriously if you have tried it - it's a PITA, could be overhauled.
Overland travel - a good simple system to track overland travel and exploration - I use third party for this but the rules don't have a good 'here is how to handle this', including average distance, food considerations, survival DC's, considering that the third party book I use covers all of this in a couple of pages - it would make a good addition to the rules to help GM's out.
I look at it from a new group type of thing - once you play for a few years you can cover much of these things with your own 'how I run it' - but someone trying to learn how to GM comes up blank when using official sources trying to handle the above.
What's the big deal about flying? Pathfinder greatly simplified how it works over past editions. What are you fellas having trouble understanding, exactly? Insofar as I can tell, nothing is missing there.
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Unified stealth/invisibility/flatfootedness rules.
The morass of rules around:
- invisibility and "noticing" vs "pinpointing" DCs
- re-stealthing in combat and "being observed"
- blindness and invisibility deny dex to AC, stealth doesn't
- invisibility not accounting for sound based perception
- existing rules are strewn all over the place.
Mounted combat rules. The existing rules are the barest outline of mechanical limitations.
Combat initiation rules. Its left up to the DM right now, and that can lend itself to weird situations. For example, The party hears a non-offensive spell cast that alerts them to the presence of enemies and is likely to interact with them the following round. The party starts to prepare and asks to enter combat rounds to keep track of the rounds/level potion they want to drink. If they are then ambushed by a 2nd enemy group they didn't notice, is there a new surprise round? Is the party flatfooted? It seems like it should be, but the current simple ruleset would suggest that they aren't because they already noticed one set of enemies. (I think this may have been partially addressed in Ultimate Intrigue)
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What's the big deal about flying? Pathfinder greatly simplified how it works over past editions. What are you fellas having trouble understanding, exactly? Insofar as I can tell, nothing is missing there.
[list]
etc.
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1st rule of "wielding a 2-hander in one hand" is "don't talk about wielding a 2-hander in one hand"
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There are more rules than can humanly be kept up with. That said, there is always something that pops up in a session that doesn't have a rock hard rule defining it. That's where the GM steps in to rule on it.
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How being silent doesn't technically improve your Stealth chance.
If you are Invisible and you cast Silence on yourself, it currently does nothing to help.
The rules on stealth, invisibility and perception are quite contradictory (a hold over from there being 2 separate skills). In some places, being silent helps stealth. In others, it doesn't.
Talk with your GM or expect table variation (PFS)
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How being silent doesn't technically improve your Stealth chance.
If you are Invisible and you cast Silence on yourself, it currently does nothing to help.
The rules on stealth, invisibility and perception are quite contradictory (a hold over from there being 2 separate skills). In some places, being silent helps stealth. In others, it doesn't.
Talk with your GM or expect table variation (PFS)
Viola, like magic
Carrying items. Currently, this is by weight. The arrangement of how belt pouches, spell component pouches, backpacks, tied bedrolls, and weapon sheathes hang off the character's body is handwaved away as trivial. And usually it does not matter.
But when the fighter has six different weapons to quick draw off his belt and wants a seventh; when the ranger has a handy haversack, tied up longbow and quarterstaff, and two quivers in easy reach on his back; when the 2nd-level wizard asks why he cannot draw a wand while moving after he put it in a dagger sheath; and when the alchemist has a full bomb-making kit right at his fingertips, then I would like some sensible limits.
Also, do polearms get sheathed in Pathfinder? In real life, halberds don't have sheathes. Should I penalize PCs who walk for hours with their weapons in hand rather than sheathed?
What's the big deal about flying? Pathfinder greatly simplified how it works over past editions. What are you fellas having trouble understanding, exactly? Insofar as I can tell, nothing is missing there.
The problems with flying...
The biggest problem, IMHO, is the lack of facing from one turn to the next. If a critter is flying at top speed in a given direction in one round, it oughtn't be able to take off at top speed in the opposite direction on the next round, without doing some extreme maneuver.
I also think that the meaneuverability classes should impose some minimum turning radius. DD3.5 tried to do this, but it was too cumbersome.
The lack of facing is also an issue with charging mounts. I understand that it *simplifies* things, not having to deal with facing issues, but IMHO it is still immersion breaking. Anyway, that's the sort of thing the thread title was asking for: things that don't have rules but should.
There are more rules than can humanly be kept up with. That said, there is always something that pops up in a session that doesn't have a rock hard rule defining it. That's where the GM steps in to rule on it.And this thread is about such rules.
There are three ways the "we don't know what rule to use here" can go:
1) There's no rule so you can't do it.2) We'll just make something up that makes sense.
3) We have no idea whatsoever how this would work.
1 is bad, 2 is ideal, and 3 tends to grind games to a halt until the table can agree on going with either 1 or 2. Ideally, the first one is prevented through the culture of the game, and the last one is prevented by the rules being stated clearly enough to give people a picture of how things ought to work, so that's what we're really after here.
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What rules do you think PF is missing that would make the game overall better?
Or, what actions or situations lack rules, but tend to come up in games often enough to need rules (at least in your experience)?
1: Rules for throwing an object (or creature) for distance, but not using them as an improvised weapon.
2: Rules for climbing exceptionally large creatures.
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I think maybe some of you guys are overthinking things a bit.
A Stone giant (stands 10 feet tall) has a reach of 10 feet. A Huge air elemental (monster summoning VI) has a reach of 15 feet. Why can the air elemental sit 15 feet in the air and hit the giant while he can't hit back.
Because the giant's arms aren't attached to the top of his head. They are much lower on the body.
What is the rule for how many squares above ground something takes and does reach count beyond that?
I'm not aware of any hard rule, but I find it is generally safe to assume that their "central mass" can be targeted in a cube as high as their space is wide. A bit overly simplified sure, but it makes about as much sense as not being able to attack a giant squid's tentacles without proper feats.
what is the rule for how far down something can reach using 'reach'?
See above. If a Medium creature is 20-feet in the air (measuring the base of its "cube"), and has 10-foot reach, it cannot reach other medium creatures on the ground.
How far down does a character fall in a single round? Freefall and feather fall
Without feather fall, 500 feet. With it, 60 feet.
if two characters are at different heights do we count the height into the distance for spells and effects - do we need to use geometric math to determine distance?
Yes.
What is the typical line of sight from the air and what are the DC's to notice things on the ground?
You use the normal rules for line of sight. You use the normal DCs for Perception checks.
What are the typical perception penalties for weather and related effects while in the air
If you're in the thick of it (as opposed to being above a storm cloud), the penalties would be the same as they would be on the ground.
any rules for how to force something from the sky onto the ground using just arrows?
There are numerous feats, spells, and special abilities for this kind of thing. I don't know of any generic universal abilities though.
I guess that's what GMs are for. I once lassoed a peryton's antler and pulled it out of the air.
What's the big deal about flying? Pathfinder greatly simplified how it works over past editions. What are you fellas having trouble understanding, exactly? Insofar as I can tell, nothing is missing there.The problems with flying...
The biggest problem, IMHO, is the lack of facing from one turn to the next. If a critter is flying at top speed in a given direction in one round, it oughtn't be able to take off at top speed in the opposite direction on the next round, without doing some extreme maneuver.
I also think that the meaneuverability classes should impose some minimum turning radius. DD3.5 tried to do this, but it was too cumbersome.
The lack of facing is also an issue with charging mounts. I understand that it *simplifies* things, not having to deal with facing issues, but IMHO it is still immersion breaking. Anyway, that's the sort of thing the thread title was asking for: things that don't have rules but should.
I fail to see how facing will accomplish anything other than making flying more confusing/difficult for people.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Unless I've missed something, I don't think there are rules for going without sleep. For example, staying up all night on watch. Is there a chance of drifting off? What if enemies are harassing them by attacking every 32 minutes? Most GMs would probably rule the character is at least fatigued but I really don't think there's anything official.
Camping in general, for something that characters do all the time, is very abstract.
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1) what kind of action to sit in a chair? What kind of action to stand up from sitting in a chair? does either provoke AoO? what about sitting on the ground as opposed to lying prone?
2) some way for adjacent allies to change places without using readied actions
3) I think most of the skills work exceptionally well during battle (round by round), but the rules get in the way too much out-of-battle e.g. stealth checks outside of battle should be one/minute, not one/round; same with climbing
4) related to this: it just shouldn't be so difficult, outside of battle, for stealthy characters to sneak past a large group
5) STRONG SECOND on rules for going without sleep; also reintroduce old listen check at -10 rule from 3.0 when asleep
6) I'd like to kill off using minute by minute buffs in multiple encounters by introducing some sort of fatigue rules i.e. checks necessary for nonstop battling after certain # of minutes or something
7) reintroduce 3.0 rules for spot checks to become aware of wilderness encounters (i.e. flat DC16, modified by size and party #, not modified by distance)
8) redo animal companions so my head doesn't hurt so bad trying to make one
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There's a rule hidden somewhere that says if you don't sleep enough in a night you wake fatigued.
So Paladin's with fatigue mercy never need sleep!
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Many universal wild talents for the kineticists need to be expanded on. For example, a chaokineticist can take spark of life, but what do they summon with it?
Murder elementals?
We call those "Adventurers".
Unless I've missed something, I don't think there are rules for going without sleep. For example, staying up all night on watch. Is there a chance of drifting off? What if enemies are harassing them by attacking every 32 minutes? Most GMs would probably rule the character is at least fatigued but I really don't think there's anything official.
Camping in general, for something that characters do all the time, is very abstract.
There's a fort save vs fatigue if you don't sleep, but I can't remember the DC.
I think.
A Stone giant (stands 10 feet tall) has a reach of 10 feet. A Huge air elemental (monster summoning VI) has a reach of 15 feet. Why can the air elemental sit 15 feet in the air and hit the giant while he can't hit back.Because the giant's arms aren't attached to the top of his head. They are much lower on the body.
What is the rule for how many squares above ground something takes and does reach count beyond that?I'm not aware of any hard rule, but I find it is generally safe to assume that their "central mass" can be targeted in a cube as high as their space is wide. A bit overly simplified sure, but it makes about as much sense as not being able to attack a giant squid's tentacles without proper feats.
what is the rule for how far down something can reach using 'reach'?See above. If a Medium creature is 20-feet in the air (measuring the base of its "cube"), and has 10-foot reach, it cannot reach other medium creatures on the ground.
That isn't in the rules. The rules say you have a 10 foot reach but leave where that starts on the Z axis to whatever you can come up with on the fly when the situation occurs. You could say 10 feet from the ends of the monster space - but what about monsters that are super long but have no height? What about monsters that are 50 feet tall but only take up a 10 foot square?
Text and page space dedicated to how to handle this type of situation and movement would be helpful if nothing else to keep a new GM from having a moment of crisis and to reduce table variation on how it's handled (to some degree).
I'd take a big writeup on this type of rule help over another 100 feats no one needs any day of the week.
Ckorik wrote:
if two characters are at different heights do we count the height into the distance for spells and effects - do we need to use geometric math to determine distance?
Yes.
As that's on a diagonal plane does it use the 5/10 foot square rules? Do the rules about threatened areas apply to the diagonal plane above and below you? Does your reach form a sphere around you (as it would in real life) or is it a box due to the 5 foot square grid?
Again I'm not saying these things are difficult to rule on for an experienced GM - I'm saying that things like this hurt new GMs that are trying to learn how to use the game and never think about this kind of thing until it happens at the table.
As to facing - well they could always come up with a set of optional rules - it's not like they have been afraid to toss optional systems out in the wild and see what people like - and some of them have been really good addition to the game (stamina).
Quite right, sorry.
If the air elemental has three empty squares between itself and the giant, and also has a reach of three squares, it cannot attack the giant (as the giant is too far away). If they are closer, or if the air elemental has longer reach, then it can attack the giant.
Where's the confusion again? *scratches head*
Quite right, sorry.
If the air elemental has three empty squares between itself and the giant, and also has a reach of three squares, it cannot attack the giant (as the giant is too far away). If they are closer, or if the air elemental has longer reach, then it can attack the giant.
Where's the confusion again? *scratches head*
The rules say a giant has a 10 foot reach but doesn't give the giant a Z axis for that reach. As it stands currently the rules assume everyone is on the same Z access. Can the Giant attack things 10 feet in the air? 15 feet or 20 feet?
Backup your answer with a rule - otherwise this could use a rule space with notes about monsters that are taller than they have reach or shorter than reach respectively. Trick question - if you give the giant a Z axis and the rule for mounted combat shows you can attack from any square you occupy can the giant attack an adjacent square from his higher Z axis square and thus gain the 'higher ground' advantage?
Ckorik, a mounted character would most likely use their mount's space (as a cube), and the attacker's reach.
Unless I've missed something, I don't think there are rules for going without sleep.There's a fort save vs fatigue if you don't sleep, but I can't remember the DC.
To my knowledge, the only official thing is an explicitly optional rule from AP44 (Carrion Crown 2):
James Jacobs once wrote , which is one of the cheapest cop-outs I've ever seen - I'm sorry Mr James Jacobs, but in my home town, there are no elves, so sadly I don't have any f&#*ing idea how much sleep elves need.
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All creatures take up their entire cube.
So a large creature takes up a 10x10x10 cube, and can reach out 10ft or 5ft from that cube he fills.
Yes, your 6'8" half-orc only fits in and takes up an entire 5x5x5 cube.
All creatures take up their entire cube.
So a large creature takes up a 10x10x10 cube, and can reach out 10ft or 5ft from that cube he fills.Yes, your 6'8" half-orc only fits in and takes up an entire 5x5x5 cube.
As far as combat is concerned, yes. It makes sense within the context of the game too, since there are no called shots (traditionally) and the game generally assumes you're aiming for center mass.
Once you start getting to the really big monsters, particularly the purple worms, giant spiders and treants trying to realistically represent them on a 5fx5f grid becomes impractical. Heck even trying to put a Trex on the map (Gargantuan) is difficult.
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1st rule of "wielding a 2-hander in one hand" is "don't talk about wielding a 2-hander in one hand"
Yeah, when it comes to Pathfinder just don't do anything involving hands. Ever. Especially if metaphorical hands come up.
Knowledge checks to tell how something other than a monster works.
Knowledge local only tells you the race and general weaknesses.
If you face an enemy party of Dwarf Fighter, Elf Wizard, Human Cleric and Halfling Rogue the only thing the knowledge check can really tell you is their races which is not the most useful or relevant. In 40 years I don't think this game and D&d have addressed this.
Spellcraft. If they cast a spell or if you have some arcane sight or something and they have spells up. or if they have visible spells up.
If any of those foes are known at all then Ks Local: "legends, personalities, inhabitants"
"Hey, thats Bob the Black, Noted Dwarf fighter, he is known to be almost as dangerous as Crazy Eddy, your Barbarian."
and just why wouldnt "bob the Black" be a "Legends, personalities, inhabitants"?
There are currently no rules that allow monks to fire ki blasts, I guess.
Qinging monk has several spell like anilities that are good ki blasts, as well as dragon style roar.
I would like rules for what happens when mixing together different magical effects. For example back in Ye olde days of D&D mixing potions was dangerous, if you drank a potion of invisibility while a potion of fire resistance was still in effect you rolled on a random table to see what the outcome was.
The biggest problem, IMHO, is the lack of facing from one turn to the next. If a critter is flying at top speed in a given direction in one round, it oughtn't be able to take off at top speed in the opposite direction on the next round, without doing some extreme maneuver.
This has nothing to do with facing, rather, it is a direction of travel issue. There is a rule for this, too, and no, you can't just take off at full speed in the opposite direction. 180 degree turn costs 10' of movement and requires a DC 20 fly check. A first time flier may have a problem with this check.
Edit:oops, I missed your one round to the next part. Indeed, it specifically says you can do exactly this.