Pathfinder

Oh, hey, thought I'd get some guidance from folks on a ruling I need to make in the near future.

In my parents' game, the guy playing the halfling paladin has a build idea he wants to try, and he's running it by me now to give me time to mull it over. So first things first, this is something that will potentially come up when his character hits level 6, and the party just earned level 4, so I have time to think this one through.

At level 6, the paladin is thinking of taking a level dip into oracle, specifically to take the Nature mystery and the Nature's Whispers revelation, which allows a character to add their charisma bonus instead of their dexterity bonus to their AC and their CMD. The question the player has is, is the bonus from Nature's Whispers limited by the max dexterity bonus for the heaviest armors?

Going strict RAW, it appears no - particularly as there is a different revelation (the Sidestep Secret in the Lore revelation) that mostly gives the same benefits (charisma to armor class and reflex saving throws, rather than AC and CMD) but explicitly does say that the max dexterity bonus for armor limits its effectiveness. That said, RAI may want to limit that (since it's extremely similar to Sidestep Secret), and I've seen that there's some argument even in terms of Pathfinder Society.

Going over this, I'm kind of torn. For one, this is going to get truly epic in terms of AC down the line with Smite active. By the time +5 armor and +5 heavy shields come into play, we're probably looking at a character pushing past an innate 20 charisma, so we'd have a paladin rushing around with a Smite AC north of 40 before accounting for stuff like magical charisma buffs, acquiring natural armor bonuses, and things like that. With the self-healing available due to lay on hands, we're talking a pretty tanky build.

On the other, I've already seen how rough this adventure path gets on players, and maybe giving access to truly ridiculous levels of AC is going to give players the advantage that they need. Not only that, but between spells and touch attacks (which already did a number on this paladin), it's not like this pally is untouchable.

Slightly related, but even further down the line, is that we also briefly discussed what would happen if said paladin did do the level dip into oracle, then used a feat down the line on Extra Revelation to snag Bonded Mount - does that stack with a paladin's Divine Bond if said bond is also chosen as a mount? Granted, this just would mean that the paladin's mount would keep pace with the paladin's level, instead of being at the paladin's level-1, so I don't think it'd be a big deal. That said, neither the Divine Bond nor the Bonded Mount abilities state that they stack with other sources of a companion.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

My opinion: Paladin is not an overpowered class, so I would accept empowering comboes as long as they're not immersion-shattering or potentially harmful for "spotlight balance" in the party.

For the first one, if one of his powers is to deflect attacks with sheer force of will it doesn't make much sense In-Universe to limit that because his armor is heavy. Since being a tank is the Paladin's job, this lets him do his job better without stepping on other jobs' toes. I see no real reason to forbid this, especially since (as you noted) it gets easier and easier for enemies to bypass AC as levels go on.

More or less same reasoning for the mount thing: it's quite unlikely that the mount's strength will ever be a deciding factor in a fight. By allowing that combo the player will feel good and the balance won't suffer. It's also a potential interesting roleplay concept if he wants to take it that way, showing how he's even more bonded with his mount than normal paladins thanks to his connection to nature.

Agreed, there are ways around high AC if needed, while giving the party a great tank for minor fights, while the major ones can be constructed to make sure to still be challenging, and yeah let them have the second.

Next up... why... why did I do this? I'm a masochist. So Ponyfinder group is approaching the major, final battle for the campaign. The Big Bad that has been behind everything has been freed from his interdeminensinal prison and him and an army of gnolls and demons are advancing on the city to start his conquest. So, need to make this epic, huge, just the advanced force trying to hit the city before the main one and stop them from getting defenses in place is attacking... and had the party split up into four separate groups, each facing massive numbers of foes.....

I found out, digging through errata, that there is an official wording on animal companions from different sources when multiclassed. Turns out that it's technically a player's option, although it's pretty obvious which option will generally get picked (especially in this case).

The options are pretty simple. You can either stack all appropriate levels into one animal companion, or you can have two animal companions that are limited by the levels of the respective classes. In this case, it would either be a mount at the character level; or two mounts, one at the paladin level and one at the oracle level.

Understandably, most people pick the "stack" option for a single decent mount. It apparently can really benefit some classes, as only some give an improved intelligence score to the companion (as both paladin and oracle give that, though, it's moot in this case).

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

On the Cha bonus to armor class thing, I suspect that RAI are that it be capped the same way as Dex, since

makes me think that it's supposed to have the same limits as the standard bonus.

After going over things, found/came to my answers, plus discovered some errata that does affect one of my players.

First, as mentioned before, I did rule that all sources of animal companion can stack (but don't have to), so the paladin can take Extra Revelation and get her mount equal to her character level if she takes a level dip into oracle. That one was pretty easy.

As for Nature's Whispers, I'm going to go with RAW and say that maximum armor dex bonus is not a limiting factor. This is because it's kind of neat thematically, and because the players do need all the help they can get in this adventure path. Also, the only thing it affects besides AC is CMD - generally, paladins aren't the best target for combat maneuvers anyhow. Also, finally, partly because the paladin probably needs it - due to a hilarious combination of dice rolls, the paladin at level 4 has less max HP than the elven mage (by one, sure, but still).

Finally, with the monk's player in the game, had to parse the feat that every monk (and brawler, really) loves, Pummeling Style. The player forgot to take a feat at 3rd level (heh), so he wanted to know if it was legal. First, after parsing the wacky punctuation, so far as I can tell, the feat's prerequisites are "can hit at least twice with a full attack and has Improved Unarmed Attack," so I figured the feat was fine.

But I noticed that said feat had been hit with errata, and I was a bit surprised by it. Two parts. The first, which I wasn't surprised at, specified that only unarmed strikes could be used with the feat. Not terribly surprised; people trying to use swords and the like with the feat seemed to be missing the point.

The part that did surprise me is that they removed the note about how criticals work with Pummeling Strike. For those unfamiliar, it used to be that if any single hit was a critical, you only had to confirm once (at your best BAB, even if that blow missed!), and a confirmation would case all of the hits counted as a critical. It made people actually consider taking the feat Improved Critical for unarmed strikes. Now, though, the individual hits critical as normal, and you only total everything up at the end to make it so that DR only accounts once.

It's kind of a moot point in my game (the main reason my monk's player wants it is to take Pummeling Charge - aka pounce - later on, so it doesn't affect his feat choices at this point). But still... while I agree that the old rule on critical hits could get ridiculous (I think, depending on circumstances, a 14th+ level monk/brawler had north of a 70% chance to critical with Pummeling Charge), it hardest hits a class that was in need of buffs, not nerfs.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

The crit thing was basically the best part of pummeling style. Why would they remove it? D=

Like sure melding everything into a single blow to overcome DR is nice enough, but Monks/Brawlers already get an innate ability to ignore a decent chunk of D Rs as they level up.

Admittedly, pummeling charge is still useful.

Click Click Boom Boom

I prefer Outslug Style from Weapon Master's Handbook; VERY mobile. Not quite charging, but 10-foot steps and no lunge penalty, coupled with some nice bonuses make for a more close-range mobile style.

Me and my friend's collaborative webcomic: Forged Men

So I could use some input from some more experienced players. Some of my friends and I are looking to perhaps run a game with Erum-Hel, the Lord of the Mohrgs as the Big Bad. As far as undead antagonists in the setting go, he's on the unique side (being neither vampire nor lich but clocking in at CR 23), and I was thinking that the ranks of his henchmen should include similar creatures—ie, powerful undead who are slightly different from the norm.

I've got a few ideas, but I was wondering if anybody else had some clues. We'd be taking the players from level 1 to strong enough to take out Erum-Hel, so just about any power range would have a place in the game.

I'm working on an encounter for my next session (second session as a GM) and I was wondering how I could make it an interesting fight.

The basic premise is: the P Cs are fresh off the boat in a new city and attending an event called the Festival of Illumination. One of the players is a Magus looking to go into the Bladebound archetype, so this encounter will tie into his obtaining a Black Blade (if you're not familiar with them, they're basically sentient swords that work as partners with their Magus - think a more cooperative Nightblood from Warbreaker) eventually.

The Grand Magus of some of the only remaining Bladebound magi in the known world, the Steelsong Magi, will approach our Magus to tell him that there's a dangerous fugitive loose at the festival - a Magus from their order who turned bad, corrupted by the whispers of one of the abandoned and vengeful Black Blades they keep locked away, killing some members of the order and seriously wounding the Grand Magus.

Now this rogue Magus, Fulmir, is on a mission under the command of his Blade, and there's no telling what could happen if he assassinates someone important who's attending the festival.

The Magus and the rest of the party are tasked with killing Fulmir and taking back his blade. If they find him with a suitable Perception check before he takes action, he'll run for his hideout and the P Cs will have to pursue him. If they don't locate him in the crowd, he'll kill an important member of the nobility and go to ground, again running for his hideout in an abandoned building.

How should I make this an interesting chase and subsequent fight? The general plan is for the players to chase him down a twisting maze of alleyways until he reaches his hideout, at which point he'll stalk them with Invisibility until he's ready to strike.

The only problem I can see is that Magi have some serious burst damage and he'd probably one-shot the players with level-5 Shocking Grasp. Colour Spray has a similar problem - if they fail the save, they'll just be unconscious and unable to act while he cuts them down, which is no fun for anyone. I'm thinking of giving him Obscuring Mist to confuse and disorient the P Cs and Mirror Image once he jumps into the fight, and he'll just use his Arcane Pool to give his blade the shocking burst enhancement.

edited 7th Feb '16 6:05:35 AM by JimmyTMalice

"Steel wins battles. Gold wins wars."

@1732 Well, I'd argue that the best part of Pummeling Style was qualifying for Pummeling Charge, but yeah, the crit thing was really good too.

As for why they changed it... well, for one, I think the math really swung the way criticals worked. Particularly as each hit counted as a critical. I think that breaks down when you throw in elemental burst powers on. Even for the dual-kukri crit build, you're only getting a crit about 30% of the time, and each crit does its effect once. With the original Pummeling Strike crit build, you have nearly the same chance of doing a crit as of when you get 3 attacks in (level 6 for brawlers, monks, and fighters with TWF and Improved Unarmed Attack), and all of the hits get the benefit.

Let's make an example to wrap our heads around things. We'll take two characters. One is a TWF kukri crit machine with three attacks and two keen corrosive burst +1 kukris. The other is a pummeling style brawler who does 1d6 unarmed and gets three shots with brawler's flurry with an amulet of mighty fists that grants the same setup (minus the keen part - we'll say that they have Improved Critical (unarmed strikes)). Let's say that both builds score all three hits on the same target in the same round, with attack rolls of 16, 12, and 19 (this one at the lowest BAB).

Kukri Crit Machine has to roll twice to confirm, and only gets corrosive burst to trigger twice if both confirmation rolls come in. Plus, the second confirmation roll is at the lowest BAB. Pummeling Style brawler only rolls once, gets to use their highest BAB despite critting on the lowest roll, and gets to apply corrosive burst three times despite only critting once. Kukri Crit machine did 5d4+5+1d6+2d10+5 x strength bonus damage, while Pummeling Style brawler did 6d6+6+3d10+6 x strength bonus damage.

And that's at low levels. At higher levels, the brawler doesn't need to take anything else to keep pace - no further feats are needed to keep getting additional attacks, their weapons continue to grow in damage without any tweaks (while the kukris are stuck at 1d4 unless you get that enchantment that increases their effective size; I forget what it's called), and the disparity grows further in terms of how often they get crits and the stacking effect of powers that activate with crits.

In short, in a vacuum, I could see the basic effects of crits working just fine under Pummeling Strike (i.e. only strength and weapon damage gets doubled). However, when you start adding in elemental burst effects, various critical feats (imagine triggering Bleeding Critical when you have six hits - "And they take an additional 12d6 bleed damage, each round")... Pummeling Strike had to be errata'd. I would have hoped that they had toned down the stacking critical effect (to make it that you could only apply abilities and feats to the collective critical once), but I can't blame them for making the feat basically just overcome DR. It's not a bad feat; it just keeps certain builds from breaking the game.

Also, to be fair, there are still uses for Pummeling Strike for monks and brawlers even at higher levels - the two never get the ability to ignore DR outright; they just get to overcome the DR of pretty much everything that has conditional DR. Which is admittedly most things, but sooner or later, a GM will get annoyed at your DR-ignoring ways and sent an Invulnerable Rager barbarian at you, at which point you'll be glad to stack all of your hits for purposes of DR, even at level 20.

@1733 I don't think that has quite the sheer power of what Pummeling Style offers, but that does look like it has fun versatility. Also, it synergizes with trip builds, so I like the idea of popping all over the field, tripping foes at range and getting AC bonuses while doing it. I could see even a vanilla fighter with a spiked gauntlet having fun with it. That said, the list of weapons it works with is exceedingly small.

@1734 Well, it might help if you give a list of the undead that you think are too common. I imagine skeletons, zombies, and ghouls are on the list, but I'm not sure what else you want to avoid. Also, are you looking for just mook undead, or are you also asking for suggestions for more distinct undead as lieutenants?

@1735 Well, it would help to know the level of both the PCs and the boss fight you have in mind. Particularly at low levels, you can mitigate the effect of some of the burst damage by just having your bad guy deal with another encounter prior to dealing with the PCs. If this noble had a bodyguard (and that's certainly a reasonable thing for them to have), they may have already blown through some of their spells and arcane pool before the players find them. This also means the fight will be harder if they find him before the attempted assassination, but there should also be greater rewards (perhaps some healing potions, maybe a few scrolls that he would have used in preparation for the assassination, maybe an item that gets disarmed during the assassination if it happens).

Another possible choice is to have the maguses who are enlisting the players' help give them some assistance - if the guy is known to employ shocking grasp a bunch (and he used to belong to this group; they should have info on his preferred methods), they can let the players know so that they can properly prepare. They may even have some items to contribute - potions or scrolls to offer energy resistance, maybe a scroll of gust of wind to deal with obscuring mist, and a strong hint that faerie fire or glitterdust might help a ton with his habit of using invisibility''.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

I'm happy with suggestions for both mooks and unique lieutenant style villains. This campaign is still in its most nascent stages, so any suggestions are good suggestions.

As far as things that are too common go, in addition to the ones you've listed, both liches and vampires are incredibly overdone (one reason I like Erum-Hel as much as I do is because he's a CR 23 undead monster with a god complex who isn't a lich). That said, if you've got an interesting spin on any of the overused ones I'm still happy to listen (horde of zombies, overdone. Zombie Lord with enough class levels to be lieutenant to the big bad? Potentially interesting).

Well, I asked in no small part because I wasn't sure how much you thought certain other undead from the basic bestiary were too common and/or overdone.

Since you didn't list it, shadows are pretty nasty. That strength damage (no save!) racks up quick, so they're definitely something to hold back until they get some levels, but they're rather capable of ruining a player's day. If you want to turn one into a really nasty lieutenant, imagine if you gave rogue levels to a greater shadow. Guaranteed f-bombs if you spring it on players, but if they know about it and have time to prepare, an incredible encounter.

Modifications to wights make for interesting foes - in particular, from the first Bestiary, I like frost wights (CR 4), which are very thematic in several situations.

For early encounters, crawling hands are good low level mooks at CR 1/2. You can then bring them back as a giant crawling hand at CR 5.

Starting at CR 5, crypt things are good for guardians of places of particular import. I'd consider slapping some spellcasting levels on one (with ability score adjustments) as an interesting lieutenant.

If you want to go old-school British Isles, you can pull in the banshee or the dullahan, both of which could be given class levels to really up the challenge.

Finally, probably for a lower-level lieutenant, a totenmaske is pretty horrifying, and certainly not one many people immediately think of.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

So anyway, I was amused when I realized that Pathfinder added ranged attack to 3.5 Tarrasque

Huh... so they did. Because, you know, the tarrasque wasn't already obscenely strong with exceedingly long reach in the first place (oh, side note - that was increased too, from 20 feet to 30 feet in PF). There's a few other buffs that it got too.

Plus, hilariously, it now has a language in Pathfinder - Aklo, though it can't speak it. So, if you ever wanted it to listen to you, now you know how to make it happen.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Putting classic uber monsters aside, I have to give Paizo credit for how they tactically wrote their villains.

In the "Giantslayer" adventure path, the players made my life easy by choosing to execute the BBEG of part 1, so the path is completely back on track. This means BBEG's girlfriend is out for their blood, but my players were a bit more ready for her than she was anticipating (though the module is written such that they are prepared for the party to find her early), and they ambushed her when they were prepared rather than her ambushing them when they were a bit spent. Not only that, but she was screwed when she was built to be an archery-focused ranger... and the monk made sure to take Deflect Arrows. He took point and got her in a pretty bad situation.

This is where I have to give Paizo full credit - when she's down and nearly done, what she first does is disengage, then pulls out a couple tricks based on the fact that she's also a first-level sorcerer. She pulls out a wand of invisibility, then uses ghost sound to make it sound like she's making a break for it. It's working great so far - one player wasted a tanglefoot bag trying to "catch" her where she was "making a break for it", and they're all convinced that she's left the room. There's one catch for her - they're searching the room she's staying in to find if she left anything behind, and the druid set his wolf to guard the one exit out of the area the room is connected to. Session ended just before she's about to use ghost sound again to try and convince them that she's left - I think a big part of it will be just how well the druid and the wolf can communicate just what's happened (the druid did buff the wolf's intelligence to 3 when he could, so the wolf can understand common; the question is whether the druid will read the wolf's body language well or not).

If nothing else, I predict that the druid is going to start preparing faerie fire and speak with animals more often after this session.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

On unusual undead: in the last first level campaign I ran, I threw a zombie horse at the party as a kind of first boss. It was unusually effective. There were other zombies in the encounter, but everyone remembers the horse.

In my Serpent's Skull campaign, there was one skeleton who just randomly kept getting nat 20s while attempts at hitting it all failed miserably. The other 6 skeletons were all destroyed, but it took nearly 4 full rounds for them to take him out all himself. I eventually as GM declared that he was better armed than the others and carrying a shield as it was becoming the only way to explain his ludicrous luck. I swear I'm going to resurrect him and throw him at them again just for the sake of annoyance.

Regarding unique undead, I'm definitely taking a page from Mummy's Mask and throwing some sort of undead dinosaur at them.

So far in my campaign, goblins roll nat 20 all the time

My players also had a near total party kill courtesy of a fiendish purple fungus. Everyone was down to their last hitpoint when they offed the damn thing, and it only took one round of combat to boot. The result of a combination of lucky rolls on its part and their paladin's use of Smite Evil giving the plant a great big target for its Smite Good ability.

Touching base to get thoughts from folks.

I have a friend who hasn't run before, but she wants to give it a try by running a one-shot/short run session with my help. Thing is, for some reason, she's enamored with doing both Pathfinder and something with a Sanity Meter. Not how I'd start my GM career, but eh, whatever.

Thing is, of course, is that Paizo hasn't released their official optional rules for a sanity meter yet - Horror Adventures isn't due out until July. Should I recommend that she hold off until then to get the playtested rules, or should I attempt to work with her to jury rig something to let her get started sooner?

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Is there 3.5 stuff with a sanity meter you could use as a starting point?

Nothing I'm familiar with, though if anyone knows of such material, I'll review it.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

I ask because it's one thing to adapt existing 3.5 stuff to Pathfinder (which is where a lot of Pathfinder stuff comes from, I understand), but it's quite another to make rules from scratch.

Check out the Ravenloft campaign setting, it might have such a mechanic.

I'm only really familiar with Ravenloft from AD&D 2nd; it didn't have such a mechanic then. It had what was essentially a corruption mechanic (to see if you were at risk at falling under the sway of the Dark Powers and potentially becoming a Darklord yourself), but that's only very vaguely similar to what my friend is looking for.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.