First of all, comic for reference. My contention is that more players than not have seen a PC (either their own or a fellow player's) shot from a catapult or other siege engine in the course of their adventuring career.
If I'm right, my GM owes me an ale.
Only if you count Toon, which I don't.
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Not my table, but I remember being told by a friend that in a 3.5 play the party threw the Frenzied Berserker over the castle walls with a catapult.
Turns out he even slaughtered the npc they were about to rescue.
Talk about plot twist.
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Now I want to play a frenzied berserker... Is there anything similar for Pathfinder?One of the Vigilante archetypes.
That's more of an attempt at the Hulk/Mr. Hyde, Barbarians actually have the Wild Rager archetype, which is probably as close as you'll get in Pathfinder.
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Wild Rager doesn't have the affect that the player loses some control of the PC, resulting in the PC attacking people the player may not want, unless brought below 0 hitpoints.
David's post was in response to a story where the Frenzied Barbarian ended up attacking and killing the NPC they were supposed to rescue.
Edit: The Wild Rager's "Uncontrolled Rage" is something that will almost never actually happen unless the character has Diehard. And, it's unlikely to happen very much even then.
Honestly, that wouldn't be the only story that would inspire me to play such a character. I remember a player who told me he dumped his wisdom on his Frenzied Berserker because the Half-Elf Bard with racial substitution levels could use Soothing Voice and calm the Frenzied Berserker down.
I suppose you could dump wisdom to fail the Uncontrolled Rage check.
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That's more of an attempt at the Hulk/Mr. Hyde, Barbarians actually have the Wild Rager archetype, which is probably as close as you'll get in Pathfinder.Now I want to play a frenzied berserker... Is there anything similar for Pathfinder?One of the Vigilante archetypes.Wild Rager doesn't have the affect that the player loses some control of the PC, resulting in the PC attacking people the player may not want, unless brought below 0 hitpoints.
David's post was in response to a story where the Frenzied Barbarian ended up attacking and killing the NPC they were supposed to rescue.
Edit: The Wild Rager's "Uncontrolled Rage" is something that will almost never actually happen unless the character has Diehard. And, it's unlikely to happen very much even then.
Uncontrolled Rage happens every time you drop an enemy, not when you drop to 0 or below. It’s going to happen a lot.
No. Probably because I'm not allowed to play with siege engines. *Sniff*
Why on earth not? Siege-weapons suck in Pathfindder -- firing the barbarian out of a catapult is about the way I can imagine them being useful.
(To the OP: Alas, no.)
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I've not seen a PC shot from a catapult, but I have seen PCs ride a Chez Lounge fired by a magical ballista across planar boundaries.
We crashed that vampire party good.
I'm counting it!
I was GMing for a group that managed to miss every clue as to what was going on, until they arrived back at town to find it under siege. Since they'd finally found out that there was an assassin in town who was going to assassinate the captain of the guard in the middle of the battle, they hijacked a catapult and launched the barbarian over the walls while wearing a ring of feather falling. I reasoned that it should start working once he was on the downward arc.
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Once.
Worst. LARP. Ever.
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My PCs did it while storming a castle. They had cast fly on themselves, and I let them start making fly checks at the top of their arc to take control of their flight pattern.
Of course, and perhaps related, that encounter lead to the one permanent death they suffered in that campaign arc.
I've allowed it as a boarding action. The halfling monk got in the catapult. The wizard cast true strike and shot the halfling at the sails of the pirate ship. The monk dealt with the fall handily, and, I forget, maybe took some damage.
Same halfling monk also threw himself off a cliff to attack manticore.
Soft LARP or Hard LARP?Once.
Worst. LARP. Ever.
Fictional.
Closest my character came was jumping 80+ feet between ships. [Ninja with high acrobat skill! Bumping against movement cap on jumping.]
I do recall reading a module (2nd ed) Huzzah's Goblin-o-War (Dungeon #63) that fired goblins from their ship onto yours. Hill giant captain and gargoyle air support.
I also once was in waist deep water with a monster I wanted to get around and flank. Had to jump up onto the water, walk on water (ninja, great!), and acrobat past into flanking. Ended my movement on top of the water, so fell back in. Much easier than trying to move through difficult terrain with no doubt stiff penalties on making the acrobatic check to avoid the AoO.
/cevah
In Giantslayer, a catapult is attacking Trunau. The PCs are expected to deal with it. There are instructions in the module that the crew of the catapult will attempt to grapple, pin, and load PCs into the catapult. Yes, one of ours did indeed go for an involuntary trip.
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Reminds me of a session journal I read once. Paraphrasing:
The party is in a fort fighting off a sieging army. There's still easily over a thousand troops left and supplies and spells are running low. The druid loads himself into the catapult and tells them to "aim deep". One short trip and a lot of falling damage later the GM looks to the druid's player. "You're on single digit hit points, completely surrounded, and you've got one action. Any last words?" The player's response? "Wild shape: fire elemental".
Apparently the loot from the adventure so far included several necklaces of fireballs, a helm of brilliance, and a wilding clasp. The druid basically became a magical nuke smack dab in the center of enemy territory.
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Yep, My character did that once.
We had to navigate our ship through a Dark Elven blockade. We decided to skirt the lead ship. My character, a halfling fighter, eagerly let himself get loaded into a catapult (He was the sort to go with what was cool instead of what was practical. Or sane.) and shot at their flagship. It turned out to be deadly accurate, and I smashed into the captain's quarters/meeting room, crushing the table they were making plans with. I took a few swings, then fought my way out, smashing their mast with my adamantium maul (3.5 version of the Earth Breaker) before leaping back onto my ship when it skirted past.
One of the crazier things he's done in his adventuring career.
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Alas, I have not.
I have seen a pair of dwarves push a topaz dragon off a landing on the Infinite Staircase (3.5 Planescape game), a barbarian launch himself through the air via Leap Attack while raging, frenzied (Frenzied berserker) and polymorphed into a war troll and create a crater on impact (same campaign, actually).
No catapult shenanigans, though. Not yet . . .
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RESULTS
YES
* Gallant Armor
* Dave Justus
* William Werminster
* blood_kite
* The Dandy Lion
* Benjamin Medrano
* Unicore
* roguerouge
* SlimGauge
* Matt2VK
* Trigger Loaded
N
* Saldiven
* William Werminster
* the david
* Lucy_Valentine
* Mystic_Snowfang
* Cevah
* Moonclanger
* Stockvillain
That's my best estimate based upon pseudo-anecdotal responses and similar. Looks like a winner is me!
Do you like movies about gladiators?
On the actual topic: Not an actual catapult, though I've certainly been thrown around the battlefield a lot. Occasionally into monster gullets so I can shoot my way out.
I'll add another "yes."
We were playing a Spelljammerish campaign (our ship eventually upgraded to planar travel as well).
Anyways, the ship's half-elf mad inventor and the derro barbarian (yes, derro) collaborated on a berserker delivery system, that IIRC wound up being a giant steel ball with handles on it for the barbarian to hold onto.
I think we only used it once, though mainly for lack of opportunity - we didn't fight ship-to-ship that often.
First of all, comic for reference. My contention is that more players than not have seen a PC (either their own or a fellow player's) shot from a catapult or other siege engine in the course of their adventuring career.
If I'm right, my GM owes me an ale.
I've never seen it happen at a table where I was a player. However, as a DM I was running a one shot where a clearly insane npc suggested that using a catapult would be the fastest way to travel from the town to the nearby forest.
The characters were "supposed" to say no, instead, not only did some of the characters agree to be shot via catapult but they actually convinced the rest of the party to join them.
One of the characters nearly died from the damage whereas the character that convinced the others to join him, just cast featherfall on himself.....
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I had a character (barbarian at the time) who was a bit more reckless in his early adventuring days and frequently tried to convince the rest of the party that launching him from a catapult was the best course of action. It only happened once to get him closer to the opposing army's leadership, but the plan worked out well enough in the end.
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First of all, comic for reference. My contention is that more players than not have seen a PC (either their own or a fellow player's) shot from a catapult or other siege engine in the course of their adventuring career.
If I'm right, my GM owes me an ale.
I've never seen it happen at a table where I was a player. However, as a DM I was running a one shot where a clearly insane npc suggested that using a catapult would be the fastest way to travel from the town to the nearby forest.
The characters were "supposed" to say no, instead, not only did some of the characters agree to be shot via catapult but they actually convinced the rest of the party to join them.
One of the characters nearly died from the damage whereas the character that convinced the others to join him, just cast featherfall on himself.....
Point of order: Since feather fall only slows downward movement, wouldn't that cause you to (a) miss the target and (b) skid violently against the ground upon landing?
Point of order: Since feather fall only slows downward movement, wouldn't that cause you to (a) miss the target and (b) skid violently against the ground upon landing?First of all, comic for reference. My contention is that more players than not have seen a PC (either their own or a fellow player's) shot from a catapult or other siege engine in the course of their adventuring career.
If I'm right, my GM owes me an ale.
I've never seen it happen at a table where I was a player. However, as a DM I was running a one shot where a clearly insane npc suggested that using a catapult would be the fastest way to travel from the town to the nearby forest.
The characters were "supposed" to say no, instead, not only did some of the characters agree to be shot via catapult but they actually convinced the rest of the party to join them.
One of the characters nearly died from the damage whereas the character that convinced the others to join him, just cast featherfall on himself.....
If this were real world physics, you would be right. But we're talking magic here....
/cevah
Point of order: Since feather fall only slows downward movement, wouldn't that cause you to (a) miss the target and (b) skid violently against the ground upon landing?First of all, comic for reference. My contention is that more players than not have seen a PC (either their own or a fellow player's) shot from a catapult or other siege engine in the course of their adventuring career.
If I'm right, my GM owes me an ale.
I've never seen it happen at a table where I was a player. However, as a DM I was running a one shot where a clearly insane npc suggested that using a catapult would be the fastest way to travel from the town to the nearby forest.
The characters were "supposed" to say no, instead, not only did some of the characters agree to be shot via catapult but they actually convinced the rest of the party to join them.
One of the characters nearly died from the damage whereas the character that convinced the others to join him, just cast featherfall on himself.....
If this were real world physics, you would be right. But we're talking magic here....
/cevah
heh, yeah and featherfall says that a character takes no damage when they land. Honestly, I didn't even think about the damage the characters should of taken outside of the falling damage. I was too stunned they were doing it in the first place.
Heck, the guards standing next to said catapult were equally shocked about what was going on and not only didn't stop them but were coerced into operating it once everyone was in.
As it is, the catapult didn't actually have enough range and ended up just dropping the characters halfway to the treeline, after which they continued walking/limping the rest of the way.