Q1: Crew X means that a siege engine can be crewed by exactly X creatures "at a time." What does "at a time" mean here? When is this determined/set in stone? For example, if I crew a Crew 1 siege engine (not an action), load it (1 action), and aim it (1 action), but then spend my third action to walk away (or even do nothing), am I no longer crewing it? Can someone else just step in and take over to fire the siege engine since it's already been loaded and aimed?
My intuition says "No," because then there's no reason for Crew X-Y to exist (the format that tells you the minimum and maximum crew size.) However, I wasn't able to find a solid answer as to when "the act of crewing" otherwise ends.
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Q2: What is the handedness of crewing/various crew actions for Siege Engines? I was trying to figure it out, but wasn't able to find anything even suggesting an answer, let alone anything definitive. It seems absurd to me that someone could crew a siege engine with their hands full, but there's still no guidance as to whether or not it's 1-handed or 2-handed. The closest I could find is that some siege engines label their Aim/Load/Fire actions with the Manipulate tag, but Manipulate doesn't strictly state how many hands it takes, either - just that a creature needs a suitable appendage and that the handedness can vary.
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Q3: Would a Vanara's tail qualify as a suitable appendage? I would definitively say no to the "load" action, since that specifically requires you to handle ammunition, and the Vanara tail says it can't be used to hold items, but I'm uncertain about aiming and firing.
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Q4: According to the construct companion rules, "Construct companions can't use abilities that require greater Intelligence, such as Coerce or Decipher Writing, even if trained in the appropriate skill, unless they have an ability that allows it." Is crewing a siege engine sufficiently complex that it couldn't do so?
I must assume since your question is appearing now that you read about siege weapons in Battlecry! If, as with Howl of the Wild, they were not reprinted in that book and you were simply directed to Guns & Gears for the full rules (and you do not own that book despite appearing to be asking from the perspective of an inventor player), you can read the full rules for siege weapons HERE
My answers
A1: the current number of crew is the number of persons adjacent to the siege weapon when a siege weapon action is taken
Quote: All siege weapons need more than one person to operate them, working together as a crew. These crew members all need to be adjacent to the siege weapon for it to operate. A siege weapon's stat block lists the minimum number needed and the maximum crew size. Adding additional crew beyond the minimum is useful for ensuring a quick and successful Load in uncertain conditions and allowing for enough time to Aim the siege weapon when firing at a moving target. Mounted Siege Weapons wrote: Properly using a mounted siege weapon involves three activities: Loading, Aiming, and Launching the payload. Generally, none of these activities can be taken unless the weapon has enough crew, but the GM might allow a smaller crew or even an individual to perform simpler parts of the process, like Launching—especially at a dramatic moment! Portable Siege Weapons wrote: Portable siege weapons require moving in concert and making a single attack supported by the full crew. Because of that sentence in the first quote about adding additional crew I would say yes, if you're crewing a siege weapon with a minimum crew of 1, and you complete the Aim and Load actions, another person could crew it (whether you walk away or not) and operate it to attack. Some GMs might take a crew entry of simply "1" to mean only one person may operate it per round. I would not be that fiddly about it unless something about that specific siege weapon said so but check with your GM. If you are asking specifically about the Light Mortar Innovation, one thing all innovations have in common is that nobody but their Inventor may operate them proficiently. Even if that is not stated in that innovation's entry I would still rule that to be the case here unless it was specifically overruled. Anyone else that tries to attack with it would do so as if untrained
A2: in the Usage entry of the siege weapon's stat block, "The number of hands required for a held siege weapon reflects how many the entire crew needs to use to operate the weapon"
I only see hands entries on portable siege weapons in the list on AoN HERE
Some more reality simulation minded GMs might require that you have your hands free to operate a mounted siege weapon but I personally would not
A3: Vanara Prehensile Tail wrote: You can use your long, flexible tail to perform Interact actions requiring a free hand, even if both hands are otherwise occupied. Your tail can't perform actions that require fingers or significant manual dexterity, including any action that would require a check to accomplish, and you can't use it to hold items. So first, your tail can be used "to perform Interact actions", not just any actions that require hands. The Load activity has the manipulate trait, but it is not an "Interact action." Attacking with a siege weapon requires a check, so that's out. And you can't hold items, so crewing a portable siege weapon with your tail as one of the "hands" is also out. So in conclusion I would say no, you cannot not use your vanara tail to operate a siege weapon
If you are asking specifically because of the Light Mortar Innovation, I would say you can deploy it with your tail but not anything else
Light Mortar Innovation wrote: Your light mortar requires an Interact action to deploy it before you can Aim, Load, or Launch it, and it includes its own wheeled platform that it is mounted on as part of the deployment. It can be packed back up for easy transport as a 2-action activity with the manipulate trait and either worn as a backpack or carried in one hand while packed. Because of the light mortar's smaller size, the Move Siege Engine activity takes only 1 action when it is deployed. A4:>person
Unless your construct companion has an ability that allows them to crew a siege weapon, I would say they cannot
Thanks, Baarogue!
I did read the Archives of Nethys page regarding Siege Engines, and since most of my questions weren't answered there, I was hoping to ask to see if they were answered elsewhere that I might have missed. I'm a little sad to see that the answer to that is, "Not really."
But your assumption isn't far off! I was looking at building a Munitions Master inventor while trying to address the problem of it being a "solved" class. Right now, you just spend 3 actions a turn loading, aiming, and firing every single turn to just do a 10ft burst of 2d6 bludgeoning damage. That's boring, and is theoretically solved by the action compression you get as you level up, but all that does is give you extra actions to stand around tapping your foot because you're 100ft+ away from the battle.
You can fire a ranged weapon, but you're either taking the -5 MAP on the reflex save of the mortar or on that ranged weapon. You can't Demoralize because you're probably a fair distance away. You can't battle medic effectively, because it means abandoning your mortar to run after someone to heal them. You can't use the Explode action unless enemies are rushing up to you. You can't fire the siege weapon twice under the rules that explicitly say you can't fire your siege engine twice in a round. Even if you can leave a companion to manage the mortar, then the reflex DC sits at its static 15 instead of being your class DC.
Right now, it looks like the best "third action" is to just command a prototype companion gained from the feat line to go up into the fray while you sit back and fire, but that feels a little unsatisfying to me, especially since the companion upgrade feats conflict with the archetype feats. It's pretty clear that anything I want to do here would require accepting siege engine babysitting duty without GM fiat, but I'd like to minimize the amount of fiat I'm asking for to make things easy on the GM.
Just to bring this back to a rules-centric discussion:
Baarogue said wrote: A1: the current number of crew is the number of persons adjacent to the siege weapon when a siege weapon action is taken By this reading, would nobody else be allowed to be adjacent to it? (Assuming the Crew 1 limitation.)
Baarogue said wrote: Because of that sentence in the first quote about adding additional crew I would say yes, if you're crewing a siege weapon with a minimum crew of 1, and you complete the Aim and Load actions, another person could crew it (whether you walk away or not) and operate it to attack. The problem is that "Crew 1" is not a minimum crew of 1, but a maximum as well. This is because there is another format if additional crew are allowed: "Crew X-Y" (e.g., Crew 4-8, Crew 2-3.) If "Crew 1" means just a minimum of 1 crew member, then there's no reason for "Crew 1-N" to exist at all.
Otherwise, this feels like a "too good to be true" ruling, where you entirely ignore the limitations of Crew by arbitrarily stating that you're not crewing the siege engine anymore, and that's my primary concern.
Baarogue said wrote: If you are asking specifically about the Light Mortar Innovation, one thing all innovations have in common is that nobody but their Inventor may operate them proficiently. Even if that is not stated in that innovation's entry I would still rule that to be the case here unless it was specifically overruled. Anyone else that tries to attack with it would do so as if untrained Actually, the companion innovation doesn't have that wording. Just the armor and weapon innovation do. The way the Light Mortar works still incentivizes only you to use it. The Reflex Save of the blast is default DC 15, and only turns to your class DC when you are the one to take the Launch action.
Baarogue said wrote: A2: in the Usage entry of the siege weapon's stat block, "The number of hands required for a held siege weapon reflects how many the entire crew needs to use to operate the weapon"
I only see hands entries on portable siege weapons in the list on AoN
Yeah, that was my concern. As RAW stands, crewing a mounted Siege Engine is just you hanging out near it and smiling as it magically loads, aims, and fires itself, directed only by your brain.
Baarogue said wrote: A3: So first, your tail can be used "to perform Interact actions", not just any actions that require hands. The Load activity has the manipulate trait, but it is not an "Interact action." Thank you! I always get wires crossed and mix up "manipulate" and "interact," and this is exactly the kind of "am I missing anything" proofreading I was looking for.
Baarogue said wrote: A4:Unless your construct companion has an ability that allows them to crew a siege weapon, I would say they cannot I was hoping otherwise, but I can see the rationale. Thanks again!
Sure thing. Maybe some others will pitch in with their reading on the crew: 1 thing. If you want to enforce a maximum, I would do so by going with what I mentioned about only allowing one person to operate it per round instead of something like nobody is allowed to be adjacent to it
>Actually, the companion innovation doesn't have that wording. Just the armor and weapon innovation do. The way the Light Mortar works still incentivizes only you to use it. The Reflex Save of the blast is default DC 15, and only turns to your class DC when you are the one to take the Launch action.
Companions don't have the "untrained usage" wording because nobody BUT you can command your companion, so it would confuse the issue. But I agree that the mortar's entry having a default DC while you get to use your class DC looks like what they settled on instead, and I like that solution
Actually, upon looking closer, it appears anyone with martial proficiency can use their class DC, so this was not the "untrained with innovation" solution I thought it to be
Launching, G&G p.73 wrote: If you're trained in any weapons of the category listed in the siege weapon's proficiency entry, you can use your class DC instead of the weapon's default save DC. I believe this was an oversight after all. But by RAW, as you say, there is no restriction on someone else using it as if proficient
Answer 1: Anyone adjacent to a Siege Engine is crewing it, per the rules. When a single number is listed it is both Minimum and Maximum crew, per this line in Guns and Gears (page 74, in the example siege weapon statblock):
Crew The number of creatures needed to operate the siege weapon is listed here. If additional creatures can assist, there's a second number to indicate the maximum number that's practical. For instance, “4 to 8” indicates the weapon can't be operated by fewer than four creatures, and that no more than eight creatures total can crew the weapon at a time
Meaning, if your siege weapon lists only one number, that's all the people that can crew it, no more, no less.
To me the simplest solution to this is that nobody can take any Siege Weapons actions (Aim, Load, Launch) if the crew requirement is not properly met. If there's more than the number of people needed, then people need to spend actions moving away from the Siege weapon before those actions can be taken.
Answer 2: No mention of hands required anywhere except for portable weapons, but this is clearly an oversight. You can't reload a cannon if all your hands are occupied! So while I get the RAW doesn't say anything, I'd require at least one free hand for all the actions and maybe even two depending on the weapon.
Answer 3: As Baarogue said, tails (including the Vanara one) are limited to Interact actions, which none of the Siege actions are, so they wouldn't really work.
Answer 4: Nothing in the Siege Engine rules prohibits minions from crewing a siege weapon. The descriptive text mentions "person" but that's just descriptive. It would be dumb for a necromancer to be unable to use skeletons or zombies to crew his evil cannon; or for wizards to not be able to use their big strong golems to load that bombard.
So, I would allow a Companion as long as it can meet the other requirements, meaning at least a free hand, and being able to roll the appropiate checks. For Construct Companion that means having the Manual Dexterity modification, as well as Miracle Gears if they want to do any non- Athletics check (like Arcana/Nature for the Mudmaker, or Arcana/Engineering Lore for the Burning Glass).
TheFinish wrote: Answer 4: Nothing in the Siege Engine rules prohibits minions from crewing a siege weapon. The descriptive text mentions "person" but that's just descriptive. It would be dumb for a necromancer to be unable to use skeletons or zombies to crew his evil cannon; or for wizards to not be able to use their big strong golems to load that bombard.
So, I would allow a Companion as long as it can meet the other requirements, meaning at least a free hand, and being able to roll the appropiate checks. For Construct Companion that means having the Manual Dexterity modification, as well as Miracle Gears if they want to do any non- Athletics check (like Arcana/Nature for the Mudmaker, or Arcana/Engineering Lore for the Burning Glass).
Well, even if you do allow a construct companion to crew a siege weapon, they don't ever get any weapon proficiencies. So they'll be stuck at the default DC
Baarogue wrote: TheFinish wrote: Answer 4: Nothing in the Siege Engine rules prohibits minions from crewing a siege weapon. The descriptive text mentions "person" but that's just descriptive. It would be dumb for a necromancer to be unable to use skeletons or zombies to crew his evil cannon; or for wizards to not be able to use their big strong golems to load that bombard.
So, I would allow a Companion as long as it can meet the other requirements, meaning at least a free hand, and being able to roll the appropiate checks. For Construct Companion that means having the Manual Dexterity modification, as well as Miracle Gears if they want to do any non- Athletics check (like Arcana/Nature for the Mudmaker, or Arcana/Engineering Lore for the Burning Glass).
Well, even if you do allow a construct companion to crew a siege weapon, they don't ever get any weapon proficiencies. So they'll be stuck at the default DC Yeah but that's inconsequential. The DC only matters when you Launch, Launch is always a single action regardless of Siege Weapon, and you can only ever Launch once per Round, so you'd never have the Construct Companion Launch.
In the context of Siege Weaponry you'd use them to Aim or Load, since that's where the 2-for-1 or 3-for-2 exchange benefits you the most. Then you just have anyone else launch. It only really works on weapons with Crew higher than 1, but it can be very good for quite a few of those to have your Minion take the place of an otherwise fully functioning crewman who can then use their own actions for something else.
This is great stuff. I hope I'm not sounding like a broken record, but thanks again!
TheFinish said wrote: Actually, upon looking closer, it appears anyone with martial proficiency can use their class DC, so this was not the "untrained with innovation" solution I thought it to be That's... very interesting, and I hadn't noticed that before. It still doesn't necessarily solve "the DC problem" when the engine is crewed by a companion, given that they have neither weapon proficiencies nor class DCs, but does open some fun options for allies to help.
TheFinish said wrote: To me the simplest solution to this is that nobody can take any Siege Weapons actions (Aim, Load, Launch) if the crew requirement is not properly met. If there's more than the number of people needed, then people need to spend actions moving away from the Siege weapon before those actions can be taken. That's... a very elegant solution, and basically makes it take a move action to "uncrew" or "recrew." It even fits the flavor of an enemy coming in close and interfering, making it impossible to crew the engine (since the enemy is now "crewing" it, and it's above its maximum.)
It does have a weird hanger-on effect of meaning that a "Crew X-Y" engine that isn't at Y people yet can't be interrupted in the same way, though. But we're already treading in weird waters with these questions.
TheFinish said wrote: Answer 2: No mention of hands required anywhere except for portable weapons, but this is clearly an oversight. You can't reload a cannon if all your hands are occupied! So while I get the RAW doesn't say anything, I'd require at least one free hand for all the actions and maybe even two depending on the weapon. Agreed. It seems obvious to me that it's necessary for at least the load action, since you're literally handling an object (the ammunition, which in the case of the light mortar, is a light-bulk cannonball.)
TheFinish said wrote: So, I would allow a Companion as long as it can meet the other requirements, meaning at least a free hand, and being able to roll the appropiate checks. For Construct Companion that means having the Manual Dexterity modification, as well as Miracle Gears if they want to do any non- Athletics check (like Arcana/Nature for the Mudmaker, or Arcana/Engineering Lore for the Burning Glass). Thankfully, the skill checks are not an issue since the light mortar requires none! However, in addition to what Baarogue said here...
Baarogue said wrote: Well, even if you do allow a construct companion to crew a siege weapon, they don't ever get any weapon proficiencies. So they'll be stuck at the default DC ...since the mortar is my innovation, I can only take the prototype companion through the feats, and the feat companion doesn't get any innovation modifications like manual dexterity since it's not, y'know, my innovation.
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While looking over my options, I noticed one more weird thing that I had a question about, specifically in regards to the munitions master and I'd love to pick your brains if I can.
Q5: The Focused Fire action from munitions master lets you target a single square for +1 die of damage, rather than the normal 10ft burst. However, this action makes you launch the attack, which means you've already aimed under the assumption that you are targeting a grid intersection for a 10ft burst. What decides which singular square Focused Fire hits?
Obviously, the answer here is, again, "Paizo didn't define it," but I think it could go one of 3 ways:
- 1) You immediately aim to any 5ft square in range.
- 2) You pick a 5ft square within the initial 10ft burst you aimed for.
- 3) You pick one of the 4 squares adjacent to the grid intersection at the center of the initial 10ft burst.
And is there a reasonable way to flag these down as a potential FAQ/errata pass? I'm pretty new to the forums.
You attributed my quote to TheFinish but I'm glad you find it interesting. My point though is that I don't believe others should be able to use your innovation as if trained, since that breaks the pattern set by the armor and weapon innovations
A5:
Focused Fire wrote: You limit the blast of your shot for accuracy. You Launch your light mortar, targeting a single square. The blast is limited to the targeted square but deals one additional die of damage. Since the exact phrase they use is "limit the blast" I would have you choose a square within the existing blast area
Baarogue said wrote: You attributed my quote to TheFinish but I'm glad you find it interesting. Woops! Sorry! I'm used to talking on forums that handle a lot of the formatting for me, and I kind of jump all over the place when I'm writing a post.
Baarogue said wrote: Since the exact phrase they use is "limit the blast" I would have you choose a square within the existing blast area While that makes sense, that same phrasing could just be talking about how the size has gone from a 10ft burst to a 5ft square.
Ajaxius wrote: Baarogue said wrote: Focused Fire wrote: You limit the blast of your shot for accuracy. You Launch your light mortar, targeting a single square. The blast is limited to the targeted square but deals one additional die of damage. Since the exact phrase they use is "limit the blast" I would have you choose a square within the existing blast area
While that makes sense, that same phrasing could just be talking about how the size has gone from a 10ft burst to a 5ft square.
I'm unsure what you're arguing. That is what they're saying. But they follow that descriptive text with mechanics. "You Launch your light mortar, targeting a single square." They don't say that you need to Aim beforehand, and there's no indication that you remain targeted at that single square afterwards, so your Aim remains unchanged and ready to fire normally next turn if you choose to. I choose to interpret "the blast" to mean "the existing blast" because it would be odd for them to allow you to just target anywhere when they put such emphasis on the need to Aim in siege weapon mechanics. But if you want to argue that you can target any square you like, technically Focused Fire doesn't say there's any limit. Or if you want to restrict it more by requiring prior Aim, or that the targeted square be one of the four on the blast intersection you're Aimed at, be my guest ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh and no, there's not really any way to flag something as errata-bait. It's safe to assume that all of these threads ARE read by someone there and being discussed. Once every other blue moon someone official will confirm that something is being errata'd but that's not a quick process so I don't recommend holding your breath over it
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