Yeah, for the sake of realism, I'd only allow the passing around an object once per round per object if that object is consequently being involved in actions other than passing it around, with an obvious limit on how much it can get passed around period. It allows teamwork without the concept of apparent munchkin-ism, which is really the big problem behind it.
I can get on board with that.
I mean, a round is 6 seconds, right? And if you have four players and are allow to pass a weapon around using an action, that means that each player is actually going in sequence within that 6 seconds, instead of the idea that all characters are actually going at the same time with initiative determining who was slightly faster.
So if we can pass it around to everyone, then PC 1 has his 1.5 seconds to make his two attacks and pass the weapons to PC 2. PC 2 has his 1.5 seconds to make two attacks and pass it to PC 3. PC 3 takes 0.5 seconds to move 30 feet (can you move that fast?), 0.5 seconds to attack, and 0.5 seconds to pass it on to PC 4.
Oh, and those times actually decrease for each enemy and each additional PC.
Cause that's the only way it makes sense of you can pass the weapon to each other after your attacks. It has to be sequential.
So limiting it to one trade per round makes a certain amount of sense.
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Put me in the camp of this being completely fine. And for the love of god don't implement some sort of rule to preserve "realism" in this instance. Instead think about the example from Captain America given above and houserule your grim, serious tone.
Next you'll say my awakened octopus only has two meta-physical hands that he can...
Oh.
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No, its not. The round has set time limit. Your actions must take place in that time limit. Someone may go first, bu you are still all acting in the same amount of time.
Disagree. While the round may have a defined time limit to it, the amount of time a character's actions require to be executed is defined by them being an action (of which you get three per round). If standing up is an action, it's in the rules that doing so fits within your round. If the rules say you can pass a dagger around and re-use it, the rules document that doing so fits within the round.
This is non-sense theory crafting
No, this is an evolving, pre-beta rule-set that has an observed consequence that is nonsensical. It's not the reader that is causing the silliness, it's the writer.
This should - in my opinion - be fixed (and may actually BE fixed in the written rules we don't have yet) by adding a single sentence in the "passing an item" action documentation that says "a single item can only be passed once per round". Maybe same for "picking up an item".
Rules in this game should be accurate, sensible, and clear. "The GM says 'no'" should absolutely be a case of last possible resort.
I don't play theater-of-the-mind games for a reason. I'm not here to play mother-may-I with a DM, where the rules are made up on the fly. Is the ogre 30 feet away and I can use my ability on them or is the ogre 35 feet away from me and I can't? Depends on what the DM feels like. No thank you. This game has a history of a documented rule-set with a per-page loophole count that is very, very low for exploitable nonsense. PF2 should have a similar goal.
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The other way around this, for an intelligent enemy, is to move as your last action. The circle-traders are going to lose all but one action (at best, depending on their Speed and the enemy's) if they also have to move.
The other way around this, for an intelligent enemy, is to move as your last action. The circle-traders are going to lose all but one action (at best, depending on their Speed and the enemy's) if they also have to move.
Conga Lines: The Return!
(This does also fix the problem)
Dudmeister: It use to only really be effective at lower levels and would go away from BAB 6+ onwards. Also if your GM didn't allow items being used around except as a standard then you had to drop and pickup which provoked an AOO. Do monsters still get Aoo? If so have it provoke one when you "give" the item to someone else.
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Better then handing the dagger to the barbarian and the rest of the party leaves/standing around trying to imagine how much fun it would be to actually be able to help.
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Already allowed in 1e or did a bunch of people miss the bit where Jason said the same thing happened every time he's run "Crypt of the Everflame."
Lol, happens every time there is a shadow in a level 1 module...
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Crypt of the Everflame was the first adventure published for PfRPG rules. Paizo published several adventures before that in the 3.5 system.In that podcast adventure, "Crypt of the Everflame" there is a lv1 fight with a SHADOW! And depending on how you explore dungeon, you might not have a magic weapon by that time. Cleric and Wizard are only ones that can hurt them.
At least that is how it was in the 3.5 edition of this adventure, Paizo's first!
They also published quite a few in Dungeon before Pathfinder was even a glint in their eyes.
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The peasant rail gun has worked since 3.0 and people all of a sudden believe the sky is falling when a new edition rolls around.
The railgun doesn't actually work. The last peasant in the line makes an improvised weapon attack with a BAB of 0 and -1 strength. There's no impulse or momentum in D&D or PF1. And prolly not in PF2.
I can't speak for everybody here, but I just think it's silly cheese, which isn't much more than a minor immersion break and fixable with a simple rule. It's not a "sky is falling" situation...specially since there's a cost associated with it and NPC counters to it.
Director of Game Design
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Hey there folks,
So yeah, this was an awkward situation that I'm not sure we had covered in the rules, so I made a call and moved on. The characters could just drop it for free and someone else could pick it up, so I figured one action was just about right.
And yeah, I knew that fight was going to be tough. Despite the new rules, some things have most certainly stayed the same.
I would implement a rule that a character can only spend a limited amount of actions using an item in around if it has been carried or used by another character. If a character spends any actions while holding the item and then drops it or hands it off to another character, the next character who receives picks up the item can only spend as many actions using it as the first hasn't spent with it.
So for example if character A makes an attack with the magic dagger and then drops it. character B can only spend 2 actions with the magic dagger. In that case B picks it up with one action and makes an attack with another. B can not use its third action using the dagger.
Basically this ties the item into the 3 action system and makes sure it doesn't travel back in time every time its passed on, since all characters are supposed to be acting at the same time within the game world.
It needs some cleaning up and perhaps a way to adress for haste, or any effect that might give a character additional actions, but that's about how i'd handle it.
The other way around this, for an intelligent enemy, is to move as your last action. The circle-traders are going to lose all but one action (at best, depending on their Speed and the enemy's) if they also have to move.
Yeah, like I said AFAIK the PCs in playtest WERE using actions to move up, they weren't all getting 2 attacks in. I think with that in mind, this just isn't a big problem if final rules allow this (as they allow similar in P1E yet I haven't seen many threads complaining about it). I think it's worth re-iterating that "6 second round" is itself abstraction that isn't worth messing everything else up to defend it's purity. If it doesn't work for a scenario, well I guess that round was longer than 6 seconds if somebody needs to get all simulationist.
It does seem like Init is working basically the same, or am I missing something?
BTW on a tangent, I liked the part where Shadow needed extra action to do STR drain, rather than free add-on to each attack. That type of thing seems to keep it under control more. Although I suppose high CR versions would probably get it for free per attack to maintain threat value. (also wasn't clear if they do get 2 attacks, the STR drain action would do more drain, or if they could 1xATTACK, 2xDRAIN if they have available actions)
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Hey there folks,
So yeah, this was an awkward situation that I'm not sure we had covered in the rules, so I made a call and moved on. The characters could just drop it for free and someone else could pick it up, so I figured one action was just about right.
And yeah, I knew that fight was going to be tough. Despite the new rules, some things have most certainly stayed the same.
ORDINARILY I would have said you made the right decision. The only reason I'm objecting is because you had a beautiful opportunity to kill Troy's character.
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I honestly don't see the issue here. It's a ridiculous, but also creative, strategy that's at worst going to be used in borderline cases.
If the players end up using this tactic to deal with an encounter then a) they outmaneuvered you as a GM, reward them, and/or b) the encounter was flawed to begin with.
Adding a truly arbitrary rule to mitigate this seems wholly unnecessary, and could lead to other issues. Say the "only pass an item once" thing is adopted. Imagine the following scenario:
Party is stuck in a room with a lowering ceiling, in one round they'll all be dead (having spent too long trying to get out). One character spots two mechanisms that when broken will stop the ceiling. Party has one crowbar, and the character who has it is too far away. He moves up as far as he can, and another character takes the crowbar and uses it on the first mechanism and breaks it. But now he's too far away from the other mechanism. So a third character moves up to him and takes the crowbar... except he can't, for some reason, since it was already passed once.
It's a ridiculous scenario, sure, but disallowing people from passing items along each other beyond a certain point is just as ridiculous as the pass the dagger strategy. What if the party becomes involved in quelling a house fire? "Pass the bucket!" "Ok! Wait, I can't, I took it from you!"
My ridiculous crowbar example can be solved by designing around it, and so can the pass the dagger strategy.
As I recall, it was established early on in this fight that the Shadow had no reactions it could take. Have we established that taking a weapon from a willing ally does or does not provoke reactions? I suspect that dangerous monsters with no reaction abilities are very rare or at least should be very rare.
Is there any reasonable formulation of a rule in the vein of "the same object may only be interacted with (e.g., picked up, attacked with) for a total of 3 actions in each round" that isn't open to unintended abuse (e.g., "I attacked with my sword three times so the enemy can't disarm me because that would be the fourth action that interacts with it.")
I like the rule as you told, but I think this could be 6 actions "per the same groups of allies", to prevent the "disarm abuse".
I guess this could work in any house rule, however, I think Jason did well not uttering this in the Rulebook (RB for short?).
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Insisting on inviolability of holy 6 second round will lead to many more ludicrous situations than allowing a certain sequence of legal actions here. If you need to imagine a 10 second round for this given round of combat to make sense of sequence of turns, so be it.
If they're spending an extra action each, that's already major debuff to their actions, even if with subpar (but viable) weapon, most will use that for extra attack (or other beneficial action) rather than play hot potato. Besides, this is a game where people complain about setting up Flank, this depends on N people all being adjacent to each other around all 360* of opponent, which inherently limits it' scale and applicability.
There really is many more such type of "crazy" examples and short circuiting core game mechanics to cover them all will not end well. Give up the fantasy of simulationism and enjoy the ride, I say.
Although to be honest, different approaches to Init, like all characters' 1st action is resolved before 2nd actions etc, do go some way to impeding situations like this. Because an infinite chain of people can't all wait until guy next to them has sword, they all have to spend their 1st action before anybody's 2nd action occurs. Even with ZERO cost to 'draw/pick up sword from adjacent ally' there is serious limit on the # of additional attacks enabled, and trying to maximize # of people attacking mean the 1st guy will need to not make full allowance of attacks.
This also has effect of more "interruptability" for longer spells somewhat like pre-3.x although without fiddly bits of 2ndEd weapon/spell speed. It does mean combat will require going around the table in circle to poll all players more per fight, although since the action you can take is simpler (and may be completion of previous action, e.g. extending attack into full attack, or completing spell - if player already declared that intent, the GM can just resolve the result or ask for roll etc) the deliberation should not scale directly. In many cases players resolve their turns like that already, e.g. in playtest seeing if they tumble past, seeing what they can see/do from new position, deciding final action from there. If anything, P2E' move to more flexible 3 action system will AMPLIFY that dynamic to intra-turn decision making since you are much more free without constraints of Standard/Move/etc, so moving to 1st-2nd-3rd-action sub-round resolution will be less of a change for P2E than for P1E/3.x IMHO. (still pretty significant over-all, I'm speaking here specifically re: time spent polling players for actions) Personally, that feels like it matches new system better, particularly when I recall how Summons are now 3-action spells whose result acts immediately (i.e. akin to Full-Round action, but not 1-Round spell whose result only acts next turn). That change seemed dubious to me, but if other (single or double, not triple) actions are happening/resolving in the meantime I would feel perfectly content with it.
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"The coroner's report is in Chief. All the wounds are from the same dagger."
"My god. That's the third one this week. How could someone stab someone for 16 consecutive rounds without someone seeing it happen?"
"What if it was 8 guys with one dagger?"
"Why don't you let me do thinking, huh, genius?"
This is where the GM steps in and says "You don't have time to do that," end of issue."This is where the GM..." aka it's a design flaw
Is it the same if your character is trying to dig a trench around a village to protect against a flash flood? If you don't have time to do it, whether or not you can physically accomplish the task, then you don't have time. That doesn't mean it's a design flaw.
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Beware the Ides of March
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This is coming from someone who both loves paizo products and is excited about 2nd edition. But that was just bad encounter design. I've been a player in that situation, and it's not fun, not being able to realistically contribute to a combat.even with the 2 dedicated casters, that left 3 players without anything to do to help with out ridiculously passing around the dagger.
This is coming from someone who both loves paizo products and is excited about 2nd edition. But that was just bad encounter design. I've been a player in that situation, and it's not fun, not being able to realistically contribute to a combat.even with the 2 dedicated casters, that left 3 players without anything to do to help with out ridiculously passing around the dagger.
There's always aid another. And flanking. Neither of those require actually hitting.
I do agree that the encounter is pritty awful, especially since there isn't a puzzly-solution to it.
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So everybody okay with passing the dagger around would be okay with a party passing around the same bow? And perhaps doing it habitually?
You'd be okay if a village had one shovel, but rather than one guy shoveling three times per round, everybody gets to shovel each round? Heck, children could help pass the shovel so adults could shovel more.
This argumentum ad ridiculum (argument to absurdity) shows (I would hope) that there has to be a line drawn somewhere. We're just all choosing different lines. I'm not sure it'd even be safe for Paizo to draw a rigorous line because there are bound to be counter cases.
That's why we have GMs.
I also know that if a GM pulled this trick on me, I'd be pissed!
And to those of you using Bucky & Cap as an example, I would not hesitate to let two high level PCs who leveled up together from childhood pull off such a trick, especially since these guys probably share teamwork feats. I just rewatched that fight, and it remains awesome. I'd even be okay with new mid-level allies doing it.
But random people pulled out of the DMV line? And in quantity? Kinda ruins the dynamism of it.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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This is one of those things that's cool once, (see Captain America and Bucky example), but rapidly loses it's cool factor if it becomes the go-to tactic. It's kind of a creative way of dealing with a shadow at level 1, but it's going too far if your party decides to only ever buy one great weapon and have every character use it as the normal fight tactic.
At least that's where I stand. As a one-off thing it's fine. As a normal approach to battle, argh please no.
This is one of those things that's cool once, (see Captain America and Bucky example), but rapidly loses it's cool factor if it becomes the go-to tactic. It's kind of a creative way of dealing with a shadow at level 1, but it's going too far if your party decides to only ever buy one great weapon and have every character use it as the normal fight tactic.
At least that's where I stand. As a one-off thing it's fine. As a normal approach to battle, argh please no.
Something like this might be better as a specific magical property instead of a base mechanic.
Speaking from PF1e experience... there have been times when you needed to be able to pass off a weapon because it was the only thing that had any real effect. Came up twice in my group's Crimson Throne game at that. Once when fighting a group of Wererats and my Rogue's silver rapier was the only silver anyone had, let's just say that rapier got around... and again at the final boss, who could only be harmed by a single magic sword... though in that case it was more of "The Magus (who has the sword) can't make a Will Save to save her life, the Barbarian's already passed, give the Barbarian the sword and let her go to town."
Another thing to consider with this ruling is that the bad guys, if they're smart enough, might also use this tactic. Imagine being at a safe distance one second, and then the next, you get stabbed 5 times while also being mostly surrounded.
In my opinion, if PCs are going to use a tactic, you can bet smart enemies will take measures to counter it, and other enemies may mimic that same tactic to use against them. What's good for the goose, and all that.
So if they do allow it, it may very well just boil down to a game of who can pull the most weapon-tossing shenanigans, a game that I'm fairly certain Paizo doesn't want to create for PF2.
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There's a difference between borrowing a weapon and tossing it back and forth in between attacks like a hot potato.
Hey, it worked for these guys.
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Put me in the "this is a non-issue" camp, or at the very least this isn't an issue with PF2e but in turn based combat in the first place, and we shouldn't think too hard about it.
Crypt of the Everflame was the first adventure published for PfRPG rules. Paizo published several adventures before that in the 3.5 system.In that podcast adventure, "Crypt of the Everflame" there is a lv1 fight with a SHADOW! And depending on how you explore dungeon, you might not have a magic weapon by that time. Cleric and Wizard are only ones that can hurt them.
At least that is how it was in the 3.5 edition of this adventure, Paizo's first!
Really? and I ran this last year wut. I mostly remember the pregens being so pathetically bad because they weren't quite "Pathfinder" yet. They hadn't really figured out the iconics.
My bad!
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First of all I would have not had the PC's fight such an enemy.
Anyways, I dislike this as it seems ridiculous. That being said if it was PC death I would have allowed it but let the pc's know that this is a more or less one time thing.
Or I would have hinted at an escape route to run run run away. Or some other way for them not to die. ;)
Also, I use hero points so I might have allowed them to burn hero points to do such a thing.
Again I don't really have a problem with it being one pass per round or every other round. Or the pc's making a slight of hand check or a dex check with an increasing dc per pass per round.
Captain America and Bucky can do it effortlessly because Captain America is what a 20th level Shield Champion Brawler with a lot of teamwork feats. Bucky isn't exactly a slouch either. And that was only between two characters. So those two could make many dex checks per round easily.
I mean Cap did jump out an airplane without a parachute. ;)
I don't think movies are a good benchmark for in game rulings. :)
Any solution would have to be part of the action itself. I already mentioned having the act of taking an item from another creature provoke reactions. Maybe we could also have the act of taking an already wielded weapon use up one of your attacks (so your first attack with it would already be at -5). A workaround for that would be for the wielder to explicitly pass the weapon on after attacking, but I would probably allow it as good strategic thinking.
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Hey, it worked for these guys.
Man, those guys were really abusing the rules. They pool their money, buy one adamantine shield between them, and use it for everything; parrying, bashing, knocking locked doors down, ranged attacks...
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So I was going back and forth between this thread and the myriad of resonance/wand threads when it occurred to me: what about passing the magic wand around the circle? Wands supposedly don't have charges anymore, and instead are limited by resonance, so having everyone share a wand is already ideal in terms of cost-value. Having them all share it on the same turn looks... very problematic.
For the sake of argument, let's presume a charisma-happy party with a Sorcerer, Bard, Paladin, and Oracle (let's presume PF has been around for a year at this point) and everyone invests in UMD. If they're 3rd level, we're looking at somewhere between 6-8 points of resonance per player, more than enough for a full-party wand nuke five times per day with points left over for other things. This looks pretty dangerous even with a level-appropriate wand, but what if the party pools their resources to buy a single uber-wand?
I'm sure Wands still have charges like normal. They'd otherwise be no different than typical at-will wondrous items or even staves if that was the case, in which case you can just ban everything and just turn this game into Wandfinder, which is both silly and clearly not the point of the game.
I'm sure Wands still have charges like normal.
My understanding of the resonance system is that one of its selling points is that there would on longer be a need to track charges on individual items. The subtext is that charges are a thing of the past.
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How else are you supposed to get around Caesar's DR 10/magic and piercing before he summons the Praetorian Guard?
This is something that is already possible is PF1, and I've definitely seen it happen before in games I've played it. This module even gives you this weapon specifically for the purpose of fighting the shadow with it, so... yeah, this is a non-issue that more just related to how Incorporeal monsters take damage.
If that +1 dagger is literally the only thing capable of really hurting that shadow, what would you prefer the rest of the party to do with their turns while only one person uses it? Pass? This way, they work together as a team to fight a dangerous foe that has the potential to turn the situation even worse if it manages even one PC kill.
I'm sure Wands still have charges like normal.My understanding of the resonance system is that one of its selling points is that there would on longer be a need to track charges on individual items. The subtext is that charges are a thing of the past.
I read it the same.
How else are you supposed to get around Caesar's DR 10/magic and piercing before he summons the Praetorian Guard?
It's a starting point but I don't think falling damage can be resisted.
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How else are you supposed to get around Caesar's DR 10/magic and piercing before he summons the Praetorian Guard?
I had something like this happen in game. It was my fault, I just pulled a monster out of the 3.0 MM and didn't check the update. So the werewolf had DR/10. The party won, because they grappled the werewolf and choked him out, it was one of the most epic thing I had saw in game.
Ya seem to be forgetting the purpose of the game. It's not to as accurately as possible simulate the real world in all matters. We don't get up from the table, pat each other on the back and say, "Man, we sure captured realism for a good four hours there."
The game's about creating exciting, awesome, and memorable moments. The dagger circle in the Glass Cannon Podcast was exactly that. It was funny, exciting, and most importantly, memorable. Yes, it's a bit cheesy, but it's great, and the game's better for the inclusion of oddities like this that allow players to come up with creative solutions to an impossible encounter.