Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
JUST MAKING CHILI
Feb 14, 2008
I think size is the only thing that changes natural armor in a specific way. Every other application seems like it was randomly tacked onto monster stat blocks.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

gradenko_2000 posted:

EDIT: Unrelated question: is there a standing rule for how much Natural Armor a monster gains? Is that in any way tied to its hit dice?
As far as I know, it's only tied to size unless otherwise noted. You'd think it would be tied to HD or CR, aka "the things that are ostensibly what gauges difficulty relative to the players" but you'd be laughably wrong.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


3.5's convoluted attempt at simulationism (as always favoring casters) leads monsters to become harder to hit with standard attacks as they get bigger, but much easier to hit with touch attacks, because they lose Dex and size bonus to AC.

My hot take is that straight 3.5 would suddenly become a much better game if you did any of the following:

1. Enforced any kind of thematic approach to picking spells, so you are actually asked to make an intelligible character and not steered toward "make a guy with a save-or-die with a 95% chance of success in every slot." So, that is to say, acid wizards, light wizards, demon summoners, and so on.

2. Added in a Perils of the Warp-style system to casting spells, so that there is some kind of risk factor/fly-in-the-ointment scenario you can apply. Additionally/alternatively, in-game story stuff that makes casters more interesting/adds a political element to the game.

You know, anything but straight Vancian at this point.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!
I like the idea of something between sorcerer spells known and dread necromancer fixed list type thing. Like, casters specialize in a given school of magic and pick X spells known every level, but at least half of your spells known per spell level have to be of that school. Maybe do something like 3.0 school specialization, where you get a handful of banned schools based on the school you specialized in. And then give some manner of flavorful class abilities a la DN/warmage so there's a reason to do something other than wiz 3-5/PrC 10.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

JUST MAKING CHILI posted:

I think size is the only thing that changes natural armor in a specific way. Every other application seems like it was randomly tacked onto monster stat blocks.

Yawgmoth posted:

As far as I know, it's only tied to size unless otherwise noted. You'd think it would be tied to HD or CR, aka "the things that are ostensibly what gauges difficulty relative to the players" but you'd be laughably wrong.

Thanks. It's just that there's a really predictable pattern of how high AC should go based on player level as far as:

[Armor bonus + Armor enhancement bonus + Ring of Protection Deflection bonus + Amulet of Natural Armor natural armor bonus (+ shield bonus + shield enhancement bonus)]

And I figured that maybe a monster's natural armor bonus would "naturally" scale with hit dice (as a stand-in for player level) in a similar manner, but I guess it really does just come down to "oh it's a dragon? write down '+20 natural AC' at the end to justify everything"

dont even fink about it posted:

You know, anything but straight Vancian at this point.

If I were to run 3e again I'd almost certainly impose an old-school style "you never learn spells automatically, you have learn them from scroll loot or quest rewards" with maybe some exceptions if the character imposes a theme on themselves like "I am a fire mage"

The only reason I didn't for the game I actually did run was because (thankfully) no one chose to play a Wizard.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Yawgmoth posted:

I like the idea of something between sorcerer spells known and dread necromancer fixed list type thing. Like, casters specialize in a given school of magic and pick X spells known every level, but at least half of your spells known per spell level have to be of that school. Maybe do something like 3.0 school specialization, where you get a handful of banned schools based on the school you specialized in. And then give some manner of flavorful class abilities a la DN/warmage so there's a reason to do something other than wiz 3-5/PrC 10.

My instinct is to take a light touch with it and ask players to come up with concepts themselves, without trying to get into the weeds on mechanics. For example, if you want to make a wizard whose magical tradition is "ways to bend light and manipulate darkness," then that player can be trusted to be smart enough to take things in the general vicinity and get creative.

Another idea is to sharply limit the ability of players to cast spells of over 3rd level, keeping the "5-8 sweet spot" of the system for a longer time. Do things like only allow metamagic slots at 4 and above, or make it somehow dangerous to do over 4 at any given time.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

dont even fink about it posted:

Another idea is to sharply limit the ability of players to cast spells of over 3rd level, keeping the "5-8 sweet spot" of the system for a longer time. Do things like only allow metamagic slots at 4 and above, or make it somehow dangerous to do over 4 at any given time.
As far as this goes, I kind of hate the idea of E6/E8 and other rules that effectively say "okay you can have magic in this incredibly magic-centric game but actually not", especially because the vast majority of actually interesting spells are in the 4-6 range. I much prefer to just excise the really problem spells/mechanics, e.g. no save-or-die spells, shivering touch is not a thing, etc. and of course the obvious standby no one remembers, talking to a player who has an accidentally broken spell and asking them to swap it out for something else.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
I think there's also something to be said about how a limited selection of spells/abilities, whether due to thematic restrictions or random acquisition, can drive creativity and ""roleplaying"".

That is, the age-old story of the Magic-User using a carefully timed dismissal of Tenser's Floating Disc to drop a bunch of rocks on some orcs arguably only happened because that was the only spell available to them at the time.

If the M-U was free to cast Sleep, or Magic Missile, they'd be more direct about their problem-solving.

Similarly, if the Wizard has free and clear access to their do-anything, kill-anyone combos, then they're going to keep using those all the time anyway.

There's also an idea I've read where you give the player a completely out-of-depth/level ability, but it's all that they can do. Give someone access to, say, Iron Body or Sympathy or Matter Manipulation at something like level 3, but only that spell in conjunction with their normal ones, or even just that spell period. It'll challenge what they can do with it.

Paramemetic
Sep 29, 2003

Area 51. You heard of it, right?





Fallen Rib
There's a lot to be said for asking the players to just play something fun and not necessarily something mega-powerful, but it needs the right group (wants to have fun, not trying to min/max) and the right DM (makes a nice balance of straight dungeon blasting and other problems to solve or solutions to have so that flavor style spells aren't a straight waste of time).

When I rolled casters I always eschewed for example MM in favor of things like Charm Person because they are more fun for me, but of course that doesn't work in a situation where the only possible answer is more damage. If the only thing you present players with is combat encounters, you end up with players making their characters to survive and win combat encounters. People assume the reason they are playing is to win, the expectation is they need to win, so it's hard out there for an Illusionist or anything other than a straight Evocationist if you're running combat heavy sessions.

I'm playing in a campaign right now with a relatively new DM and one of the concerns is cutting down on meta-gaming - we have a lot of players who are PC RPG players rather than tabletop gamers so their mindset is min/maxy. Meanwhile I'm running a kobold wild-mage sorcerer who is afraid of magic because I find nerfed characters with gimmicks more fun to play, even if they don't blow up everything instantly. We're in a very loose 5e with a lot of 3.5 influence (because I'm helping the DM and only know 3.5 well) but the same situation applies.

On the other hand the problem in 3.5 has always been that casters don't only excel at non-combat but also excel at combat, while the non-casters only do okay at combat and usually are just kind of tagging along for everything else.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!
I have kind of an issue with the whole "min/maxing is bad" mentality that I see scattered all over the place. Min/maxing is what people do. If you're naturally big & strong and like football, you're probably not going to college for astrophysics; you're more likely going so you can get drafted by the NFL. If you memorized the periodic table at 6 are tone deaf, and really like blowing poo poo up, you're not going to try to start a band, you're probably going to do what it takes to be an organic chemist. So I don't know why it would be (a) bad form OOC or (b) unlikely IC for a character who has Murky-Eyed and Shaky flaws to only use melee weapons and/or spells that don't involve attack rolls.

Everyone, regardless of their level of realness, wants to play to their strengths. That's not a bad thing and it shouldn't be discouraged. Being "too powerful" is the root of the issue and that's more easily solved by just being explicit with intent and desire than anything else; I think being plain and open about these things alongside expectations of game tone are much more important in that search for a good game/group than blanket statements like "don't be too powerful". It's also the reason I hate the handful of "tier lists" out there, because it doesn't really say much about the intent of the game; I can make a monk that does 800 damage per hit, does it still qualify as tier 5 or 6 or whatever? If my wizard picks his spells via dart board, is he still tier 1?

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


Yawgmoth posted:

If my wizard picks his spells via dart board, is he still tier 1?

yes. it's incredibly unlikely that you could make a non-functioning caster in 3.X; I would say it's more of a challenge to make one that doesn't work than to make one that's even slightly optimized. I guess you could say "oh well my wizard has 8 INT :getin:" but if you made an otherwise normal wizard using a normal stat distribution, and only picked the spells by way of an RNG, you'd still have a tier 1 character.


I think 3.X really solidified the min/max thing (although certainly years of video games will push you in the same direction). in earlier additions the expectation was that you rolled all 6 attributes as 3d6 in sequential order and boom that was your hero like it or not. it was an "alternate method" to even allow players to roll 6x 3d6 and let them choose which attributes get which roll. racial abilities also counted for less in terms of overall character optimization, where stuff like a dwarf being able to tell the originator of any stonework or elves finding magic doors was considered to be pro-tier stuff.

3.X really codified that every aspect of your character can be assigned some arbitrary numerical value (abilities, level adjustments, racial levels, etc.) and also allowed stat buy to become a more commonly accepted method of character generation. once you can turn your hero into a pile of numbers, it becomes trivially easy to find things that make those numbers bigger and then exclusively pursue those things.

Paramemetic
Sep 29, 2003

Area 51. You heard of it, right?





Fallen Rib
I don't find min/maxing itself to be a problem, I mean that's how people play games and if you give people stat based games to play they are going to min/max. Unless you do it old school D&D "roll a level 1 character and that's your dude bite me" style, people are going to want to min/max. And people are not going to have as much fun when they accidentally roll badly and have a character that is profoundly enfeebled, and they won't have fun when they have to retire their all 18s juggernaut.

And if people want to play the game with min/maxing, then they should! As long as people are having fun, that's the focus of my tables and the focus of groups I like to play with. I run a MM PC rules kobold a bunch in 3.5 and it's great fun even though I'm not min/maxin' a kobold with a bunch of RotD stuff. But that said, that's what I like to do, and other people don't like running suicide sled characters that can't just blaster through stuff, and if you're running a sorcerer -4 STR isn't a big deal anyhow.

I think in my little rant above the thing I find distracting is obvious meta-gaming with the min/maxing. Fighters min/maxing makes _sense_ because that's what they do, they focus on killin' dudes and if they can kill dudes reliably there's some verisimilitude there. But clerics, rangers, druids, wizards, etc. all min/maxing for murder is fine if the campaign is set up entirely around combat encounters, but it kind of railroads the story.

So it comes down to what you want to play, if you're doing a combat heavy dungeon blaster campaign (and I suspect that is what most campaigns are) then that's fine. If you're trying to do something less blastery that's a different story but then there's a whole family of other issues that you run into.

So yeah, I guess I should not have been knocking "min/maxing" as such, that's just a thing players do, but in my experience if you're trying to balance between combat, social interaction, puzzle solving, and so on, then it's better not to make your combat encounters so difficult they can only be defeated by min/maxed dudes, which I think was the point I was trying to make before.

sugar free jazz
Mar 5, 2008

Just like everything else in a tabletop RPG, as far as I can tell, if it's good or bad depends entirely on the people you're playing with and is a player problem more than anything. If everyone is on board with min/maxing, including the GM, then it can be totally fine and fun. If there's one player min/maxing, but they choose to give other players the space to shine and have fun, then it's not a problem. If there is only one person at the table min/maxing, and they've taken over the entire game in a way that makes things boring and less fun for everyone else, it's bad.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Freaking Crumbum posted:

yes. it's incredibly unlikely that you could make a non-functioning caster in 3.X; I would say it's more of a challenge to make one that doesn't work than to make one that's even slightly optimized. I guess you could say "oh well my wizard has 8 INT :getin:" but if you made an otherwise normal wizard using a normal stat distribution, and only picked the spells by way of an RNG, you'd still have a tier 1 character.
No, you wouldn't. "tier 1" is roughly defined as "breaks every encounter with the barest of thought/effort." The reason wizards/druids/clerics are tier 1 is because if you pick the right spells to prepare (or the right domains/shift into the right forms in the divine caster cases) you can destroy an encounter before your enemy even knows that initiative has been rolled. If you pick your spells randomly, or pick them to a certain theme (and said theme isn't "break everyone's desire to play") you won't be tier 1; this is pretty plainly obvious given that the warmage is typically middle of the pack at best.

quote:

I think 3.X really solidified the min/max thing (although certainly years of video games will push you in the same direction). in earlier additions the expectation was that you rolled all 6 attributes as 3d6 in sequential order and boom that was your hero like it or not. it was an "alternate method" to even allow players to roll 6x 3d6 and let them choose which attributes get which roll. racial abilities also counted for less in terms of overall character optimization, where stuff like a dwarf being able to tell the originator of any stonework or elves finding magic doors was considered to be pro-tier stuff.

3.X really codified that every aspect of your character can be assigned some arbitrary numerical value (abilities, level adjustments, racial levels, etc.) and also allowed stat buy to become a more commonly accepted method of character generation. once you can turn your hero into a pile of numbers, it becomes trivially easy to find things that make those numbers bigger and then exclusively pursue those things.
This is some really 17-years-ago vintage grog, complete with rose-tinted glasses.

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


Yawgmoth posted:

No, you wouldn't. "tier 1" is roughly defined as "breaks every encounter with the barest of thought/effort." The reason wizards/druids/clerics are tier 1 is because if you pick the right spells to prepare (or the right domains/shift into the right forms in the divine caster cases) you can destroy an encounter before your enemy even knows that initiative has been rolled. If you pick your spells randomly, or pick them to a certain theme (and said theme isn't "break everyone's desire to play") you won't be tier 1; this is pretty plainly obvious given that the warmage is typically middle of the pack at best.

i was going to say "well are we talking about just the PHB spell list or inclusive of all splats, and is it possible that the RNG can still choose useful spells or are we presuming that the RNG will only pick the worst possible choice in any situation" but then i realized you probably aren't going to agree with me no matter what, so :shrug:


Yawgmoth posted:

This is some really 17-years-ago vintage grog, complete with rose-tinted glasses.

probably 20+ years for me but you were pretty close to the mark. i'll admit it's likely a factor of age; when i was a kid playing older versions of D&D nobody in our group had the system familiarity to really min/max anything other than the most obvious stuff, and the internet didn't yet exist. by the time 3.X had come around everybody was late teens / early adult years and the internet was definitely a thing, so it was a hell of a lot easier to min/max stuff with comparatively less effort, and likewise we had years of familiarity with D&D by that point, so it was easier for someone to notice how combining two or three or ten things could make the system fall apart.

edit: i remember being a kid and someone in our group determining his AD&D wizard could make a lightsaber just by casting light on an ordinary staff. that's all, it didn't do any more damage or have any special features, it was just a regular staff that had a color light enchantment :downs:. i always have remembered that as an example of "system hacks" that kids with no internet and only a vague understanding of the rules came up with.

Freaking Crumbum fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jan 7, 2017

Madmarker
Jan 7, 2007

Hey.....so I am looking to build a critfishing two-weapon warblade. Challenge level-no 3.0 material, no setting specific material, good alligned.

I know lightning maces is a must. Kukri's are a must. Getting Keen on them or improved crit is also a must. I assume blood in the water stance. Other than that, I don't really no what to do...any advice?

Madmarker fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jan 24, 2017

Eikre
May 2, 2009
One of the nice things about Lightning Mace is that it occurs on a threat, not a critical hit. Thus, it's still applicable against enemies which are not otherwise subject to critical hits. Still, you may consider a contingency plan for fortified opponents. There are plenty of ways to bypass Undead critical immunity and a handful to do the same for Constructs and Plants.

The direction most people take Lightning Maces is into a cascading full-attack. You take one or seven levels of Barbarian to get the Lion Totem and Streetfighter substitutions (CC and CS web enhancement, respectively) so that you can do a full attack at the end of a charge and add 1 to your threat range. You're a supercharger, like everyone else.

Don't rely on single-attack Warblade strikes too much; damage dice aren't multiplied by critical strikes. Flat damage is good, though.

You could also tack into the Blood in the Water school of thought by emphasize knock-on effects that are a result of the crit. If you choose to be a Necropolitan (which is the product of an evil ritual but not evil per se) then you can take the Eviscerator feat chain from Libris Mortis and impose the Shaken condition on anyone within 30 feet every time you make a crit. No save.

Eikre
May 2, 2009
Also, after reviewing stuff for critfishing, I think I've determined that there's a semantically defensible reading of Telling Blow from PHBII which lets you get around the 30ft limit on sneak attacks and skirmishing.

Basically, the Rogue class entry refers to "sneak attacks" as a particular class of attack which cannot be made outside of 30ft. Telling Blow doesn't characterize itself as a sneak attack, nor expand the circumstances under which you can perform a sneak attack, it just slaps the damage dice ordinarily attributed to your sneak attacks on any attack that scores a crit.

Somewhat more convincingly, the Scout class entry says that you apply your extra damage "while skirmishing," skirmishing being a temporary status that you trigger by moving 10 feet in a round. Telling Blow doesn't give you an avenue to be skirmishing, which is particularly clear due to the fact that it doesn't confer the skirmish AC bonus. Again, it just applies damage under its own, separate criteria.

I can see some reactionary pushback on this interpretation, but the model of a sniper as a guy who focuses obsessively on critical hits is pretty much a flavor slam-dunk, and the idea of doing x1 sneak attack per turn from just very far away is so obviously within the limits of reason that anybody who wants to argue can, frankly, eat my butthole.

Rorac
Aug 19, 2011

So I got a question about a prestige class, and I'm asking because I'm pretty sure I've read literally everything and can't come up with a way to make this happen.


Contemplative: requires the ability to cast 1st level divine spells to enter (among other things, but that's not important for this question.)


Also has this interesting bit of text.

quote:

If the contemplative did not previously belong to a divine spellcasting class, she gains the ability to cast divine spells exactly as a cleric of her patron deity. Her spell progression is the same as that of a cleric.

I would like to know how the gently caress that is to be achieved. I'm led to believe that some combination of feats and such allow casting arcane spells as divine, but is there another way to qualify without taking any caster levels?

Roadie
Jun 30, 2013
Having SLAs of divine spells might count. I can't remember.

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc
Yeah you can get into it with SLA. However it's most likely there because that's how it was in 3.0 and in the 3.0 version you didn't actually have to be able to cast spells to take the PRC

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
Is there a feat I could take that would let me cast some low-level psionic powers?

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc
Nope, unless you're already a psionic race

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

gradenko_2000 posted:

Is there a feat I could take that would let me cast some low-level psionic powers?
Hidden Talent gives you a single 1st level psionic power and (I think) 1pp to manifest it.

Nihilarian
Oct 2, 2013


Yawgmoth posted:

Hidden Talent gives you a single 1st level psionic power and (I think) 1pp to manifest it.
2 pp, it's explicitly a variant of Wild Talent for use in High Psionic campaigns

Rorac
Aug 19, 2011

Piell posted:

Yeah you can get into it with SLA. However it's most likely there because that's how it was in 3.0 and in the 3.0 version you didn't actually have to be able to cast spells to take the PRC

That is... extremely convenient, since we're using affiliation and the character is one point away from getting endure elements as a spell like ability (and being granted from church affiliation, it's pretty blatantly divine). Thank you!

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.
Do spell-like abilities actually count as divine or arcane? What of spells that are both on the list of a divine class or an arcane class?

Paladins, for one, start the game with detect evil as a spell-like ability, and since the spell only exists on the Cleric list (going simply by the core) it's clearly a divine spell. But if, for the sake of argument, you somehow had cure light wounds as a spell-like ability, would it count as arcane or divine or both, since it exists on both a divine list and an arcane list (Bards, to be precise).

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc
After checking it out (Complete Arcana page 72) it turns out I remembered it incorrectly. If a PrC requires "caster level X" or "can cast X spell" you can get into it with SLA's, but if requires "able to cast Xth level spells" you can't, so contemplative wouldn't work.

Rorac
Aug 19, 2011

Piell posted:

After checking it out (Complete Arcana page 72) it turns out I remembered it incorrectly. If a PrC requires "caster level X" or "can cast X spell" you can get into it with SLA's, but if requires "able to cast Xth level spells" you can't, so contemplative wouldn't work.



Hmmm. :crossarms:


At the risk of sounding incredibly munchkin-y, I could make a case for divine and arcane spells to be sufficiently different due to the nature of how they're cast; divine spells are fundamentally easier to learn and cast(namely, any 1st level cleric knows all 1st level cleric spells, yes?) due to a big part of them involving the caster asking for divine intercession with the catch being that if you piss off said deity, they can just as easily say "no".

That book seems very specific on the use of the word arcane in there even though it would've been trivially easy to just say 'spells'

Rorac fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Feb 10, 2017

JUST MAKING CHILI
Feb 14, 2008
One of my groups is talking about running an evil campaign after we're done with our current one, and I'm thinking about a building a naughty psion/thrallherd. We'll probably start in the 4-6th level range and go about ten levels. Any tips on fun with believers that won't leave if you slaughter them and powers like metaconcert?

Bouquet
Jul 14, 2001

It's pretty hard to mess up a Telepath/Thrallherd. Get the highest Int you can, don't pick powers that look bad because they are probably bad.
Thrallherd guide
General Psion guide

Metaconcert is primarily useful for the versatility of getting access to more powers and the DC bump. The biggest limitation is going to be on how many followers you can fit into the 20' radius. If you can get Tiny-sized psionic followers it's going to be pretty easy to get the DC for Psionic Dominate to the point where the target only saves on a 20. Once you're dominating 95% of the creatures you encounter for days/level there's not a ton of challenge left in the game.

Book of Vile Darkness has rules for sacrificing people that can get you nice bonuses if you have a high Knowledge (Religion), especially if you are a magic item crafter. But you probably don't need to bother unless it's a super high power game since your base abilities are already enough to break the game in half.

The biggest drawback for this build is the amount of bookkeeping required.

sugar free jazz
Mar 5, 2008

Do Soulmelds go away if you're in a dying state? I'm playing a Totemist and my GM is letting me use Craft: MacGuyverying to shove a flaming sword down my pants to give me constant fast healing 1 with Phoenix Belt, but I'm not sure if this will like instantly kill me when I'm dying or if it'll just pop me back up.


edit we're using these rules for death and dying so I wont instantly die from 6 damage but it'd be bad to be on fire in a dying state

sugar free jazz fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Feb 16, 2017

Madmarker
Jan 7, 2007

If an Egoist Psion becomes a Thrallherd, can they manifest the Psionic Charm/Dominate granted them by the Thrallherd class features?

I ask this because on page 20 of the Expanded Psionic Handbook it says, "Choosing a discipline means that the psion cannot learn powers that are restricted to other disciplines. He can't even use such powers by employing psionic items."



Madmarker fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Feb 27, 2017

Eikre
May 2, 2009
Yes, he can.

A psychic can learn a power or manifest it from a Power Stone or Dorje if it is on their class power list. The reason an Egoist can't learn a Telepath power is not because they have assumed a particular limitation in the way that a specialist wizard would, but because the list of Telepath-only powers is completely auxiliary to the main Psion list. It's an opt-in kind of an affair.

If you end up learning a power or get them added to your list through some other means (Expanded Knowledge, a Prestige Class feature, or, as it comes to items, multiclassing) then you are of course entitled to use them.

JUST MAKING CHILI
Feb 14, 2008
From the Powers Known section of the SRD: "(Exception: The feats Expanded Knowledge and Epic Expanded Knowledge do allow a psion to learn powers from the lists of other disciplines or even other classes.)"

JUST MAKING CHILI fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Feb 27, 2017

Rorac
Aug 19, 2011

sugar free jazz posted:

Do Soulmelds go away if you're in a dying state? I'm playing a Totemist and my GM is letting me use Craft: MacGuyverying to shove a flaming sword down my pants to give me constant fast healing 1 with Phoenix Belt, but I'm not sure if this will like instantly kill me when I'm dying or if it'll just pop me back up.


edit we're using these rules for death and dying so I wont instantly die from 6 damage but it'd be bad to be on fire in a dying state


As far as I understand, your soulmelds are a part of you and active until you're actually totally dead, regardless of the ruleset.

JUST MAKING CHILI
Feb 14, 2008
Is a ring of spell storing usable in a grapple?

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

JUST MAKING CHILI posted:

Is a ring of spell storing usable in a grapple?
Seems like you should, it says "the wearer need not gesture."

My question: is there a good way to give class-based NPCs better AC, saves, etc. without just giving them a Plot Armor template or the like? Monsters are simple, just give them 20HD and 30ish con and we're good, but humanoids whose main source of stats are their classes, I don't really have that option and I don't want t be throwing lv20 casters at my 10th lv party but I'm also less a fan of just tossing arbitrary bonuses to the baddies just to keep them alive an extra round.

Nihilarian
Oct 2, 2013


Be arbitrary. Decide how much HP they have, and they just have that much HP. Decide how much AC they have and they just have that much HP. Repeat as necessary until you have a finished NPC.

Don't spend hours drawing up character sheets for NPCs who are just going to get killed off 5 minutes after they're introduced.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!
The last NPC I statted out proper got 3 solid combats and a few social encounters out of. :v: Was just wondering if anyone had any ideas beyond "gently caress it, do whatever" since I generally try to go by the rules if I can. Maybe I'll just start hunting for weird defensive templates.

  • Locked thread