Forum: Public Forum

And Adam is showing his age: Jim Steinman 1977!

I had forgotten to post an event for next week.
So register away!

Laurent,

Adam, I think the pun tastic bit about the Druid would have read better if instead of saying:
I think he'll flee into the dawn and leave the rest of us in the lurch
it was:
I think he'll flee into the dawn and leave the rest of us in the larch

On the topic of what charicter I'll be playing. I have a couple of ideas at the moment... and no this time no mage-apedia. I am thinking maybe an Arcane Archer, a(nother) Eldrich Knight [who might like shrubberies), or maybe a Dragon Disiple.

It's nice being a bat, I generally get left alone. Apart from that high-fiving giant incident, which left me feeling like a Meat-Loaf (chortle).

Slowly getting to grips with the character. I'm not really built to be an offensive creature, but think I might give it a go at some point, I've done stupider things in the past.

Right my character has now been built.
He's a Human Sorcerer (Dragon bloodline)
And yes when I rolled the stats at Vague Connections on Saturday, Giga got kinda jealous!

Nick,

Yep, so have I heard tonight when I dropped by the shop. I take it you have not entered a Prestige Class yet then.

I am thinking of adding a veil of complement to 20 for the underground level, basically a PC with a stat of 18 will see that stat lowered to 20-18=2! That would be fun!

Laurent,

No prestige class as yet. Although I *might* take levels in Dragon Disciple in the future.
Although the 6d6 role still keeps it No 18 stat record.

Currently thinking Bras Dragon lineage... but for some reason White Dragon kind of appeals too.

I will point out my "duff" stat is 8 and I've done nothing to modify it. (Although I still have 10k gp to spend)

Dear players,

Game session.

Again it is great to have character sheets to play a game and your humble GM should indeed keep that in mind. The reason they were not in my bag was that I had taken the time to file them properly to liberate some card holder sheets for Nick. The binder ended up on the other side of the table and forgot to grab it when packing my gear. Lucky me I live nearby.

The first encounter with the Trolls was a game of two halves, jumpers for goalposts, Ron Manager in Saturday afternoon is football, etc. Needless to say that the Trolls dominated the first half hands down, lovely ranseurs!

That damn bat got a brilliant idea with that nasty wall of fire though, so despite the pummelling that Thorak went through at first, he did a lot for the party. Taking the excuse of getting a bus before half past ten was no excuse to score a critical hit on my poor Runeslave Giant and finish him off. This was not Cricket! (Adam, this is an idiomatic expression, no need to point out "Of course it was not Cricket, we were playing D&D").
Just you wait when I bring in the Scanderig and start stripping suits of armour away!

Adventure background.

We are potentially two sessions away from the end of this adventure, I have enjoyed running this one nearly as much as the others, but I still have the feeling that something is missing. It may also seem like a collection of monsters to the players, especially in Jorgenfist. The attack on Sandpoint was themed, i.e. Stone Giants with help from an evil Dragon, a believable mix assuming an intelligent Big Bad Evil Guy running the show.

The library level, where you are operating at the moment, is themed as "ancient relic of Thassilon", so those who have been in the gaming group for a while should expect all sorts of strange templated monsters and high magic. This is the type of adventure where everything makes sense to the GM, thanks to the background, but may not make much sense in turn to the players who genuinely have reasons to ask themselves "Why is there a Kobold here, why some Trolls, what about the Lamias?" They all have a reason to be there, so "Fortress of the Stone Giants" is not really a WotC adventure where "There is a Troll here because there is a Troll and err... well...". I can tell you off-character, and usually I try to give the info away, but again I cannot really find a way of doing so in-game. There is only so much Knowledge (whatever) checks can give. Diplomacy and talking to monsters before ripping open their chests and gobbling down their warm beating hearts, is not really an option either; again unless you have means of making you appear to be Giants of some sort. So this adventure does suffer from difficulties in plot exposition.

Bester's fist.

I knew I remembered reading something somewhere about Bester's fist being clenched all the time.

From the wikipedia page:
Bester's left fist is always clenched, a predicament that is never explained or even discussed. Only with the appearance of the second novel in the Bester trilogy (which was published in 1999, when the series had already ended), do we get the explanation.

This shall translate to a 90% arcane spell failure chance for spells with somatic components or the renaming of the PC to "Bob the would-be Dragon Disciple"

Game page updated and event posted for next week, as usual, please register.

Laurent,

As all good fans of B5 know... Bester never needed to use Somatic components. The power was all in his mind!

He was just making you *think* he had his left fist clenched!

Too bad there are no Psionics (yet?) in the official Pathfinder RPG. Some third party publishers have done Psionics for Pathfinder RPG.

Taking the excuse of getting a bus before half past ten was no excuse to score a critical hit on my poor Runeslave Giant and finish him off. This was not Cricket! (Adam, this is an idiomatic expression, no need to point out "Of course it was not Cricket, we were playing D&D").

That's a bit unfair. I love my puns and wordplay, but pedantry isn't really my MO. If it was, I'd point out that we weren't playing-

So this adventure does suffer from difficulties in plot exposition.

I just assumed that a wizard did it.....

Adam,

Session timing.

I forgot to ask about your bus, when Nick and I saw you last you were still waiting, so I assume you missed the twenty past ten or something. Sorry, the delay of the session was my fault, and I should not have tried to fit the last fight in extra time. Right now, I bet on two standard fights per session, or a big one.

Books.

I have received at last my Bestiary II yesterday, as well as all the Paizo stuff for December, I had requested Paizo not to send anything during the Christmas break as the reliability of Royal Mail takes a serious dive at that time of the year. Oh and I have MORE minis to get painted. I have yet to receive my Kobold Quarterly issue.

See most of you for Kingmaker tonight or The Witchwar Legacy tomorrow.

Laurent,

There's a few buses up to about 10:25, but after that there's quite a long wait for the next one. Most of the time I've made the 10:25 or an earlier one, but when we've run late/been talking afterwards it usually means a longer wait then a longer walk from the bus stop to home - which can make quite a difference. If I can get out of the door by 10:15-10:20 that should be fine. I think it's only when we finish a bit late and hang around talking for a bit that I start missing buses....

This matters less on Fridays, and probably most weeks - this week I've been burning the proverbial candle at both ends. And yes, the fact that I've described roleplaying past 10pm on a school night as part of "burning the candle at both ends" should give you an idea of the kind of rock and roll lifestyle I'm leading...

Adam,

The life of a super-hero is indeed daunting, working during the day, getting into those yellow or green spandex late in the evening and a whole night of patrolling the roofs and skies of Nottingham (or the actual Gotham, which is not very far from here) can be a tiring exercise.

Then again, crime is down 50% in Nottingham (according to the clever data time-scaling of the local police force) so your efforts are appreciated.

Laurent,

I have one of those dreaded "quick" 4.00 p.m. meeting today.
"Quick" for Mechanical Engineers does not have the same meaning as for the common man.

I may be late, expect me closer to 7.00 p.m.

Laurent,

Bat Vision - (when reading imagine a nice tone of voice)

Just being looking through the beastiary and realised that although I've been using the correct modify statistics for being diminutive/tiny, I had perhaps being using the wrong bestiary reference for the bat. As the bat is diminutive, it is the same as a bat familiar. The bat familiar has low-light vision, so I would guess that having low-light vision would also mean that they have normal vision. (Real life bats can see, just not very well). However I would argue that even dire bats would have normal vision as there is no note saying that they only use blindsense.

Blindsense, as was pointed out is fairly weak. It gives a small advantage in certain instances, i.e. where I can't use sight I can use echolocation (30m) to get a rough estimate of where people/things/monsters are. This still gives the concealment bonus to that player, but would stop people sneaking up on the bat (doesn't happen very often) ie I know they're in that 5m square but not quite sure where if it's my turn I can try get away and/or risk an attack missing. In specific cases I would not be able to use blindsense if there are instances where special sound affects are in use.

As a general point, my AC is still fairly low 21 even with the size bonuses it only rises to 25, so I'm easy to hit when targeted. The other advantage is as long as I act like a bat, I'm not suspicious looking as soon as I'm un-bat like, attacks on me could soon take me out. However, in the session, we were made aware that someone/thing was viewing the proceedings, they would be weary of suspicious bats having seen one recently attemp to kill a number of his monsters, loosing me that initial advantage. This suspision would probably pass onto all animal forms, as they'd be aware there is a druid in town.

So to conclude, I believe a druid in the form of a bat can see in normal conditions, blindsense isn't great, and if targeted I'll get my bat ass handed to me on a plate.

Dear players,

David and his bat.

Alright, let's pass a GM judgement on what you can do and cannot do.
Unless specifically written in the statblock, or due to the creature type, a creature always has access to normal vision. An ooze for instance is blind due to its creature type.

Just being looking through the beastiary and realised that although I've been using the correct modify statistics for being diminutive/tiny, I had perhaps being using the wrong bestiary reference for the bat.

Indeed you were wrong.
The familiar entry clearly states indeed that the statistic can be used for standard animals, so you should not have used the Dire Bat as a base animal for your Wild Shape.

So in turn you are right to say:
As the bat is diminutive, it is the same as a bat familiar. The bat familiar has low-light vision, so I would guess that having low-light vision would also mean that they have normal vision.

Low-light vision supersedes normal vision, so no problem here, so yes you may have low-light vision. Last night, there was a Darkness spell in the way, so you would not have used normal or low-light vision in any case.

Note that if you are even in need to climb or swim in bat form, you would use your DEX bonus to do so.

However I would argue that even dire bats would have normal vision as there is no note saying that they only use blindsense.

Yes, see the opening statement.
The entry for Dire Bat says that it has Blindsense 40 ft., and I shall add, normal vision all the way the human eye can see. You would get only 30 ft of it as per Beast Shape III though.

An now for the Blindsense issues:

Blindsight and Blindsense as per the glossary entry:

Some creatures possess blindsight, the extraordinary ability to use a nonvisual sense (or a combination senses) to operate effectively without vision. Such senses may include sensitivity to vibrations, acute scent, keen hearing, or echolocation. This makes invisibility and concealment (even magical darkness) irrelevant to the creature (though it still can't see ethereal creatures). This ability operates out to a range specified in the creature description.

* Blindsight never allows a creature to distinguish color or visual contrast. A creature cannot read with blindsight.
* Blindsight does not subject a creature to gaze attacks (even though darkvision does).
* Blinding attacks do not penalize creatures that use blindsight.
* Deafening attacks thwart blindsight if it relies on hearing.
* Blindsight works underwater but not in a vacuum.
* Blindsight negates displacement and blur effects.

Blindsense: Other creatures have blindsense, a lesser ability that lets the creature notice things it cannot see, but without the precision of blindsight. The creature with blindsense usually does not need to make Perception checks to notice and locate creatures within range of its blindsense ability, provided that it has line of effect to that creature. Any opponent that cannot be seen has total concealment (50% miss chance) against a creature with blindsense, and the blindsensing creature still has the normal miss chance when attacking foes that have concealment. Visibility still affects the movement of a creature with blindsense. A creature with blindsense is still denied its Dexterity bonus to Armor Class against attacks from creatures it cannot see.

The underline is mine.
This part is not very clear, but referring to Blinsense (Ex) entries, such as that from a summoner's eidolon, clears up the controversy "can target or not target?"

Blindsense (Ex): An eidolon's senses become incredibly acute, giving it blindsense out to a range of 30 feet. This ability allows the eidolon to pinpoint the location of creatures that it cannot see without having to make a Perception check, but such creatures still have total concealment from the eidolon. Visibility still affects the eidolon's movement and it is still denied its Dexterity bonus to Armor Class against attacks from creatures it cannot see. The summoner must be at least 9th level before selecting this evolution.

The underline is again mine.
So, yep, I believe my call was the right one about the ability to pinpoint but not "see". Remember, there was a Darkness spell in the way.

The key here is that Blindsight lets one see invisible (magical) or invisible (hiding) creatures. Blindsense does not, but that was not the problem yesterday. Therefore, within the Blindsense range, this is important, see below, when you are turned into a bat, you are immune to gaze attacks, immune to blinding (unless by sound effects), and see underwater. Concealment and concealment effects such as Blur still apply to Blindsense, thus 50% miss chance for attacks and cannot target an invisible/100% concealed creature. In order to benefit from the immunities to gaze attacks, you would need to switch off your normal sight (puny little eyes) and function on blindsense only.

Beast Shape III is the highest Beast Shape number that a Druid can get with Wild Shape.
Note that it says Blindsense 30 feet, but as a bat you get less.

So let's look at one of the most pedantic and rule-heavy paragraphs of the PRD

Namely the transmutation polymorph entry in the Magic section.

Transmutation spells change the properties of some creature, thing, or condition.

Polymorph: A polymorph spell transforms your physical body to take on the shape of another creature. While these spells make you appear to be the creature, granting you a +20 bonus on Disguise skill checks, they do not grant you all of the abilities and powers of the creature. Each polymorph spell allows you to assume the form of a creature of a specific type, granting you a number of bonuses to your ability scores and a bonus to your natural armor. In addition, each polymorph spell can grant you a number of other benefits, including movement types, resistances, and senses. If the form you choose grants these benefits, or a greater ability of the same type, you gain the listed benefit. If the form grants a lesser ability of the same type, you gain the lesser ability instead. Your base speed changes to match that of the form you assume. If the form grants a swim or burrow speed, you maintain the ability to breathe if you are swimming or burrowing. The DC for any of these abilities equals your DC for the polymorph spell used to change you into that form.

The bat form clearly grants a lesser benefit, Blindsense 20 ft., so you get only that and not the 30 ft. given by the spell.

Later it says:
While under the effects of a polymorph spell, you lose all extraordinary and supernatural abilities that depend on your original form (such as keen senses, scent, and darkvision), as well as any natural attacks and movement types possessed by your original form. You also lose any class features that depend upon form, but those that allow you to add features (such as sorcerers that can grow claws) still function. While most of these should be obvious, the GM is the final arbiter of what abilities depend on form and are lost when a new form is assumed. Your new form might restore a number of these abilities if they are possessed by the new form.

So you lose your Dwarven Darkvision. In other words, a bat sees only up to 20 ft in areas affected by Darkness or naturally dark areas. This makes it VERY limiting for you to cast area of effect spells in bat form in the dark (magical or otherwise); because I assume that the whole idea of being a bat is to fly in dark caverns/rooms.
Ironically the tougher Dire Bat get screwed because they lose low-light vision, thus rely only on normal vision and ''Blindsense 40 ft." (30 ft. for a wildshaped Druid).

Note that I have no problem with you wildshaping into a bat, but for the past couple of sessions, I have always thought it was a bit too good to be true. I have found a way of stopping the Paladin: Monsters with high AC! .
I still have to work out an aura of spring-attack negation.

Session.

The Stone Golems ended up being more interesting than the Scanderig.
The Headless Lord's tactics were good, it is just that Telas hit too many times and too hard compared to what was expected of him. Had the plan unfolded properly, the Headless Lord would have been helped by one or two Hill Giant Zombies every turn and separated half of the party with line-of-sight problems.
What is left in this room is just a group of severely burnt Hill Giant Zombies. They might have a couple of blows to deliver before crumbling though.

Game page updated and event set-up for next week.

Laurent,

Thanks Laurent. That has helped clear it up for me.

So, yep, I believe my call was the right one about the ability to pinpoint but not "see". Remember, there was a Darkness spell in the way.
I agree, I think there may have been confusion about what I was asking in the session, I was checking that when I first entered the room before any spells had been cast if I had noticed if they were wearing/using any metal armour/weopons. I was considering casting chill metal.

So you lose your Dwarven Darkvision.
I completely forgot about darkvision in my natural form, how foolish.

A couple of super bonus questions, more out of interest than anything I currently plan to do.

1. Can I only wild shape into something as it's standard size? Without using a secondary shrink/enlarge creature spell. For example, I couldn't wild shape into a tiny ogre (although why you would want to is a different question altogether)?

2. If I was in dwarf form, when I had the shrink (is it diminish?) effect cast on me and then wildshaped, would I wildshape into the standard size animal, and only be shrunk when in dwarf form or would the diminish effect carry through all my wildshapes?

Thanks again, I'm still learning bit by bit and I want to try avoiding accidently cheating.

David,

Thanks Laurent. That has helped clear it up for me.
I try to run a game as close to the rules as possible and still maintain an appropriate game flow - and enjoyment I hope. As you know, I also make mistakes that need to be retconned at times.

I agree, I think there may have been confusion about what I was asking in the session, I was checking that when I first entered the room before any spells had been cast if I had noticed if they were wearing/using any metal armour/weopons. I was considering casting chill metal.

Decent idea, but usually high level undeads tend to have cold immunities. I could check the monsters I used last night. I may have mentioned that the room was pretty cold, not cold enough to call for environmental cold related fortitude saves, but cold nonetheless.
The reverse, Heat metal, would definitely have worked of course!

If I had to run the encounter again, I would not tell you the suits were animating, because they should not have animated themselves as they had failed their perception checks on your first foray.

So you lose your Dwarven Darkvision.
I completely forgot about darkvision in my natural form, how foolish.

Yep, you could have seen through the Darkness spell effect once you had reverted to your Dwarven form.

A couple of super bonus questions, more out of interest than anything I currently plan to do.

1. Can I only wild shape into something as it's standard size? Without using a secondary shrink/enlarge creature spell. For example, I couldn't wild shape into a tiny ogre (although why you would want to is a different question altogether)?

You have to wildshape to the standard animal/dragon/elemental/plant/vermin (depending on your Druid level) of its kind, thus the listed default size.
A Halfling (small size) Druid polymorphs into a wolf (medium size) the same way a Human (medium size) Druid polymorphs into the same wolf (medium size). Your size modifiers change of course (the Halfling Druid loses his +1 to hit and +1 to AC for being small).

When reduced (under a spell effect), you count as a Dwarf of small size, but would still polymorph into a standard-size bat (diminutive, not fine).

A Tiny Ogre is not legally possible according to the core rules (this could still happen for specific spell effect designed for a specific adventure for instance), at best you can get a Medium Ogre (after using Reduce Person, because Ogres are large humanoid (giant).
A normal (standard monster) Ogre can become a "medium Ogre", but a Druid or Wizard/Sorcerer polymorphed into an Ogre cannor become a "medium Ogre", because you have to remember the following:
You can only be affected by one polymorph spell at a time. If a new polymorph spell is cast on you (or you activate a polymorph effect, such as wild shape), you can decide whether or not to allow it to affect you, taking the place of the old spell. In addition, other spells that change your size have no effect on you while you are under the effects of a polymorph spell. as the Transmutation Polymorph entry states.
So if you are a reduced Dwarf, the Reduced person effect will be cancelled prior to your wildshape becoming effective (by default you will choose the wildshape effect since you are the one deciding upon it by activating it).

As usual, if a very specific spell-effect, magic item, trap or otherwise, in an adventure breaks this rule this would be an exception of course.

This means that there is a way out for you to dispell the Reduce person effect of the trapped room: Do a wildshape to shake it off, then change back to being a Dwarf.

2. If I was in dwarf form, when I had the shrink (is it diminish?) effect cast on me and then wildshaped, would I wildshape into the standard size animal, and only be shrunk when in dwarf form or would the diminish effect carry through all my wildshapes?

See above, wildshaping cancels the effect. I have just realised that too!
Once wildshaped you cannot use Reduce animal on yourself to become a smaller bat.

About the reduce spells, note that they are very limited in scope: Only Reduce Animal, Reduce Person and Reduce Person, Mass exist, thus can only be applied to Humanoid and Animal types. Shrink Item (there is no Shrink spell per se) only applies to objects.

Some monsters (even non-Humanoid and non-Animal) may have spell-like abilities based on the reduce spell category, but these would not be accessible by spells of the transmutation [polymorph] sub-school anyway; check the Beast Shape ***, Elemental Body *** etc spell descriptions and you will notice that the lists of gained abilities are relatively restrictive.

Thanks again, I'm still learning bit by bit and I want to try avoiding accidently cheating.
Our gaming group is pretty good at playing in a civilised and enjoyable way, and unless you are all experts at it in such a way I cannot see it, I would not accuse anyone of cheating. At times we have indeed rule interpretation issues, but so far you have all accepted that the GM is always right... at least until I check a few things and use retro-active continuity to smooth over prior errors of rule interpretations!

Laurent,

Dear players,

An innocuous piece of news, nothing beyond the usual The-Daily-Telegraph-defends-the-countryside story. Or is it?

Foxglove cottage they say?
The owner being unknown and unreachable?
And this citation* : "It was disturbing people, particularly at night when it is very quiet around here."

Well, personally, I would not go to Hagworthingham, Lincolnshire, without my longsword +1 and a Cleric of good alignment.

The two old geezers (Michael Curtis and Edmund Done) who cut that alarm wire surely had some balls. What with a failed lich in the basement and all these hauntings... and the well!

Michael Curtis: "Ed, come and help me will you? Bring the light over here so that I can cut the wire."
Edmund Done: "Eh Mike, looking at that well over there. Back in a sec."
MC: "Damn you Ed, I do not like it around here.
ED, flashing the torch-light down the well: "Cool! Look how deep this is!"

MC, managing to cut the alarm wire by the light of a gibbous moon (thanks to a long forgotten Elven heritage giving him low-light vision): "Well, it is done. Ed! What is going on? Ed?"
ED, running away from the well, pursued by a lumbering dark mass: "Mike! Mike! Run away, there was a bloody big critter down there!"

(*) Yes, I know, this is taken out of context.

Laurent,