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If a GM will let you serve no god, I can't imagine he'd be opposed to letting you serve two gods and picking one domain from each.
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Jul 4, 2012 00:52
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Inverse Icarus posted:How do you figure, with the whole "alignment has to be within one step of her deity's" line? That's only if you've got a deity. Maybe read the entire class description before calling me out?
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Jul 4, 2012 00:55
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I don't think its a stretch to read 'no particular deity' as allowing polytheism as well. If you worship several deities, you don't worship any one in particular. I'm pretty sure that I've read something to the effect that most characters, including clerics, acknowledge the existence of whole pantheons, and pay them all due respect, but typically clerics are those who have strong fervor for one in particular and that is why they get magical powers from them. That is, you can worship several deities, but unless you place your faith in one above all others, they've got little reason to give you spells for it. At the same time, though, the universe itself will grant you spells if you believe hard enough in certain aspects of existence (domains), so its moot, unless the setting says otherwise. A cleric of Abadar still respects Gozreh, especially when he's in his element, he just loves Abadar the most because he's in line with the personal beliefs of that cleric and thus he's devoted himself to pursuing Abadar's ends. In exchange, Abadar gave him magical powers. But yeah, there's no reason you can't or shouldn't be polytheistic if that's what you want to do.
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Jul 4, 2012 01:39
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Inverse Icarus posted:That is helpful, but yeah I think ships in the traditional "D&D era" would be slower than that. Pathfinder has robot spiders and motorcycles, though, so who knows. What book is that in? I need a motorcycle!
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Jul 4, 2012 01:47
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If you choose to mechanically not worship any god but call it worshipping a pantheon your DM is being a dick if he doesn't let you play it that way.
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Jul 4, 2012 02:17
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You can also convert the Sovereign Speaker(Faiths of Eberron, I think, from 3.5). Its pretty much for that. You grab a domain from each god in your pantheon.
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Jul 4, 2012 07:03
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Danhenge posted:A Hill Giant is the sort of thing you let come to you while your casters drop will save stuff. It may get the first attack on you, but then you can five foot step up and unleash your (hopefully hasted) owns set of full attacks. Will save stuff? Like what? Also my group blows just fyi Meepo posted:Slumbering Tsar starts that high? I was under the impression it was a full 1-20 adventure path. Yeah, starts at 7
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Jul 4, 2012 07:03
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Nigulus Rex posted:Will save stuff? Like what? Also my group blows just fyi Normally(assuming you have a good AC) you WANT the giant to throw rocks because the attack bonus is so horrible it'd bounce off, forcing the giant to engage in melee. Clerics would be firing their Terrible Remorse(if they have it prepared that is), Spear of Purity(usually a good bet to have around) or even Command(Giant Will saves being lousy enough that even a 1st level spell would probably work). Wizards would have a wider range of options, with the Pit spells(some giants still can fit in, and they haven't a hope of making the save), Charm Monster, Deep Slumber(if the HD is within limits that is), the Image spells(just waste the giant's time fighting a nonexistent illusion, they aren't going to make the save), Suggestion, Hideous Laughter, or even Glitterdust. Its more surprising that the party arcanist doesn't have at least one of these ready.
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Jul 4, 2012 07:23
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veekie posted:Normally(assuming you have a good AC) you WANT the giant to throw rocks because the attack bonus is so horrible it'd bounce off, forcing the giant to engage in melee. Our party moron is our sorc, and he has literally none of those spells that you just listed  our cleric has also shown no incentive to prepare any of those, but I'll talk to him
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Jul 4, 2012 07:25
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In the case of general loadout, the cleric might want to prepare the lower leveled spells(Command and Spear of Purity are generally useful due to their nature, most enemies are vulnerable). Terrible Remorse is pretty specific, as a bane of low will save, high str enemies, so its not a good pick until you got more spells.
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Jul 4, 2012 07:49
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I took an elective on Caribbean Piracy in college, and I have an entire test's worth of notes on types of vessels, roles for sailors, and a few other things which might be useful for anyone who's dealing with high-seas adventures. What's a good, kosher place to upload it to? It's just a relatively short (10 pages, 2k words) text document.
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Jul 4, 2012 07:58
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veekie posted:Normally(assuming you have a good AC) you WANT the giant to throw rocks because the attack bonus is so horrible it'd bounce off, forcing the giant to engage in melee. The big problem is that it could still eat up your low-armor casters in a couple rounds.
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Jul 4, 2012 16:43
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I am having a lot of fun going through Stormwrack and trying to come up with open-ocean encounters for the party and their small, gunless caravel. What's everybody's favorite water-based enemy? It's completely unrelated to the module, but I'd like to give the party 2-3 "at-sea" encounters, complete with wind/waves and balance checks on the boat. They're coming in as 4 5th level characters. I'm thinking a couple of Sea Hags CR 4) would be neat, and I really liked the one Scrag I've fought as a player (CR 5). I'm definitely going to make use of Lacedons (aquatic ghouls, CR 1) during the scene where the party "lands" on the beach. I've got this idea to tie in a character's backstory with a bunch of undead in the first part of the island. What else do you guys have?
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Jul 4, 2012 22:17
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DO NOT make them fight a water elemental IN the water
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Jul 4, 2012 22:20
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Danhenge posted:DO NOT make them fight a water elemental IN the water Why's that? Because they couldn't tell where it is, since it is water? Or is there something else I'm missing? (There usually is) I don't plan on dragging them off of the boat, especially the Paladin and Cleric in their terrible AC Penalty armor, but the Wizard can cast fly now so there's tons of options for the party that don't involve swimming. Plus with humanoid monsters I could always have them climb into their ship. I could also have an encounter with pirates or something but they fought enough "normal" humans in the last module.
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Jul 4, 2012 22:36
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The Paizo blog Water Elementals look so cool, too!
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Jul 4, 2012 22:37
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Hey, pirate game buddy. I'm about to run Skull and Shackles so I've been looking at this sort of stuff for a long while. I know there's one monster in Stormwrack that's basically like a sea cat, only a wolf instead of cat parts, and it can shift into a human. Make two or three of these guys part of the crew, and have them volunteer for the night watch. When the group's asleep, they start killing the crew and having some of their buddies crawl on board to take the ship! Vampires can't cross open water. But they can seriously gently caress up a boat if their coffin is stored on board. Players never trust super hot women at sea. It's pretty much well set in mythology that they're all evil. So have them encounter a super hot woman and an old man, and let the old man say he's been ensorcelled by her. Turns out, the old man is actually the bad guy. Any number of race/class combinations work here. Baby dragon turtles at 5th level are just about as terrifying as adults would be at 10th level. And with a small boat, they might still have a chance to capsize it, or at least knock it around a little.
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Jul 5, 2012 01:12
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I'm trying to think of a few ways to make combat interesting for the two-person party of Martial characters that are running through one of the Adventure Paths. There were only the two of them to start, so I let them make Gestalts. As a result, their AC and Saves are almost through the roof, and just about the only thing that gets past them are Touch Attacks and, Combat Manoeuvres. I'm certainly Ok with powerful PCs, but I can't quite figure out ways to challenge them in combat without resorting to giving every NPC a Wand of Scorching Ray or other equivalent. So far I've narrowed down a few things that might help challenge them. First would be a fight with a large number of minions using Aid Another to give their leader a better shot at hitting them, the next would be challenging them to a fight around dangerous terrain and hazards, and the third would be them fighting to protect someone. The last one is particularly interesting, since they've recently hired a Bard Cohort to pump their God-awful Attack bonuses and shore up their total inability to deal with traps (their faces have been their trapfinding rolls). Anyone have any other suggestions?
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Jul 5, 2012 01:26
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Archers with Pinpoint Targeting would effectively be making touch attacks against them without the whole "ray attack" feel, and you could use a lot of the "special" arrows to make things interesting. Even beyond magical arrows, there are Tanglefoot arrows, bleeding arrows, slowburn arrows, etc. Negative Energy Channeling is Will for half damage, but the dice can get pretty high. Plus, you can probably find/fudge some effects that modify the DCs if you want to hit them more often.
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Jul 5, 2012 02:39
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Cephas posted:I took an elective on Caribbean Piracy in college, and I have an entire test's worth of notes on types of vessels, roles for sailors, and a few other things which might be useful for anyone who's dealing with high-seas adventures. What's a good, kosher place to upload it to? It's just a relatively short (10 pages, 2k words) text document. If it's literally just a text file, Pastebin should be fine for that.
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Jul 5, 2012 02:45
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Magic Rabbit Hat posted:Anyone have any other suggestions? There's always the "I'm lazy and not sure what else to do" option of giving enemies an additional +2 or +4 or whatever else might be appropriate to most of their numbers (mainly attack bonus, saves, and AC). I'm not sure if there's paizo rules about it, but if you're GM and it's in the name of giving the players a more reasonable challenge then you might as well go for it.
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Jul 5, 2012 04:01
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Inverse Icarus posted:What's everybody's favorite water-based enemy?fun going through Stormwrack and trying to come up with open Kua Toa for the win pr Sahuagin. Fish men are just so creepy and you can start the encounter with strange noises and shadows chasing the boat in the depths.
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Jul 5, 2012 04:08
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Theres always that special something with giant octopus grapplers who'd yoink PCs into its preferred terrain.Magic Rabbit Hat posted:So far I've narrowed down a few things that might help challenge them. First would be a fight with a large number of minions using Aid Another to give their leader a better shot at hitting them, the next would be challenging them to a fight around dangerous terrain and hazards, and the third would be them fighting to protect someone. Hostile environments seem to be the natural fit here. Hallucinatory mists, sticky terrain, semi-aquatic terrain, etc would provide added challenges that they can't just remove. Basically, just put in spell effects as terrain.
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Jul 5, 2012 05:32
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Inverse Icarus posted:Why's that? Because they couldn't tell where it is, since it is water? No, they just have a lot of power over PCs in the water, and PCs get hosed up by water. Without the right spell preparation they could probably whirlwind+drag PCs down without real hope of getting loose before they drown. Check out the underwater combat rules man, they're harsh!
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Jul 5, 2012 07:30
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Danhenge posted:No, they just have a lot of power over PCs in the water, and PCs get hosed up by water. Without the right spell preparation they could probably whirlwind+drag PCs down without real hope of getting loose before they drown. Check out the underwater combat rules man, they're harsh! Not so bad as advertised I think, Elementals are pretty much just meatwalls, its fairly simple to just beat the thing to death by force if the party tank or casters are able to attack.
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Jul 5, 2012 12:13
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veekie posted:Not so bad as advertised I think, Elementals are pretty much just meatwalls, its fairly simple to just beat the thing to death by force if the party tank or casters are able to attack. Hmm, I guess at their level, it's not so bad. Back when I was playing Living Greyhawk an 11th level party once took on a couple of Greater Water Elementals in a group that was not well prepared for fighting in the water. Only through a lot of hasted swift flys and burning up a bunch of Dimension Doors was my sorcerer able to get everyone out of there because we weren't about to do 400 points of damage to creatures with DR 10/- before the whirlwind and slams ate us up. I still think a fight against a 68 HP elemental could be a pain in the butt for a party without the right spell prep, though. No fire or electricity damage spells along with some water breathing.
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Jul 5, 2012 18:04
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Yeah I don't really want to throw a Large elemental at them, but I do like the art and flavor of water elementals. Maybe I'll do like a Sea Hag with 2-3 small/medium water elementals. I really want to do a Scrag though, a Giant humanoid monster weighing a thousand pounds could certainly create some fun times on a 100' boat, and then jump back into the water every few rounds to try to regenerate. I could probably turn that in to a really interesting encounter. That Paladin "Anti-Viking" I've mentioned before has Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Harpoon. I'm not kidding. I really hopes he harpoons the Skrag and gets dragged into the open waters.
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Jul 5, 2012 22:39
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That would only be awesome if he comes back from open water riding it.
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Jul 5, 2012 22:53
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Tactical Bonnet posted:That would only be awesome if he comes back from open water riding it. He just hit 5th level and could choose a bonded orca mount! He's going to go with the weapon, I'm pretty sure.
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Jul 5, 2012 23:05
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A lot of the NPCs in Kaer Maga looked very oddly at the Paladin carrying a Trident and Harpoon. Now he's returning to his element. He hit an undead vargouille with his harpoon and grappled it, that was pretty baller.
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Jul 5, 2012 23:09
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So metamagic rods ans Wizards. Do they have to slot them "enhanced" or can they hold the rod in their hands while casting and take a full-round action?
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Jul 8, 2012 02:25
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You only need one hand open to cast somatic components right?
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Jul 8, 2012 04:46
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Correct, otherwise the Magus spell combat wouldn't be possible.
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Jul 8, 2012 04:47
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In fact, while it says that a Sorcerer must still use a full-round action to cast a spell with a Metamagic Rod, it says nothing about Wizards, and the lack of any such notice implies that prepared casters use Metamagic Rod Spells the same way they use prepared Metamagic Spells, with no increased casting time.
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Jul 8, 2012 05:53
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Inverse Icarus posted:So metamagic rods ans Wizards. Do they have to slot them "enhanced" or can they hold the rod in their hands while casting and take a full-round action? "PFSRD posted:Metamagic rods hold the essence of a metamagic feat, allowing the user to apply metamagic effects to spells as they are cast. This does not change the spell slot of the altered spell. All the rods described here are use-activated (but casting spells in a threatened area still draws an attack of opportunity). Emphasis mine. You employ the rod by casting the spell through it at the time of casting. Prepared casters need neither choose in advance nor take additional time. Interesting note: the metamagic rod rules only mention sorcerers needing a full-round action, so by a strict reading other spontaneous casters seem to be able to evade the action tax by using rods.
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Jul 8, 2012 07:44
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So if the 5th level wizard in my game begs for some extra money and blows 9,000gp on a Rod of Lesser Empowerment, he can just hold on to that rod and then decide when he casts Fireball that it's empowered, all with a standard action and a normal slotted Fireball?
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Jul 8, 2012 09:52
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Yes. Though again, its really most valuable to a spontaneous caster.
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Jul 8, 2012 10:22
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Just so, although I would say Empowered Fireball is an awful waste* when you could have something like Persistent Stinking Cloud instead. *In the sense of not being as effective at winning encounters. The Fireball option is much better if you're trying not to show up martial types.
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Jul 8, 2012 10:43
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The group I'm playing with has one veteran and three brand new players. Basically their first characters. They are far from optimized and I'm not really guiding them to the "optimized path", I'm letting them design their characters however they want and just rolling with it. Like I said before, we have a Paladin with Exotic Weapon Prof (Harpoon) investing in Profession (Sailor) and a Wizard who just wants to blast people and chose Transmutation as a prohibited school. They're always healing in combat (which is a mortal sin to some), but they've managed to survive so far. The Evocation-specialist Wizard just wants to make his numbers bigger and is looking at that rod. It's all his gold, and then some, so I doubt he'll get one, but he's certain;y giving it thought.
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Jul 8, 2012 21:07
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But Transmutation is the coolest school! For shame. (Also best for Monty Python newt jokes.) I guess I read a bit too much into your previous post - you sounded vaguely appalled at the possibility. Blasting with big numbers can be a lot of fun and is probably the most balanced way to play a wizard. Disintegrate is one of my favorite spells (despite not being especially powerful) simply because it lets me throw all the d6s (also rays are cool).
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Jul 8, 2012 22:14
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