General Discussion

jkason · Jan 4, 2012

Satin Knights said:
A low level caster only gets to throw a few spells a day. He is going to reserve those for Grease, Color Spray and Mage Armor. So, this is more of a utility spell once you get over fifth level. And by that time, it is ineffective in combat.

Wish I'd known that before I added it to Nathan's spell list for his 3rd level. :blush:

Mostly, I did a quick "tiny animal" search, saw there was some stuff with poison, and thought it might be worth some decent debuffs: throw two or three poisoning things out there, maybe reduce some folks' con. Seemed a decent way to get multiple hits at a lowish level.

Then I actually looked at the SM1 list before my first post on this, and saw the overlap.

*sigh.* Guess I know what I'm swapping out at 6th level.

Satin Knights · Jan 4, 2012

You better not swap it out, that is when it gets good.
A) Fighting an invisible foe, summon foxes with scent. Where ever they surround, you hit with other spells.
B) Chased a guy into a maze, summon foxes, Handle Animal Seek, and they have move 40' base to chase up to three different paths.
C) Need a distraction to get past the door into a fancy party, summon monkeys at 25+' range inside the party to cause a commotion.
D) Facing a cavalier on horseback with a lance, toss down three foxes, Handle Animal Defend, and block the charge lanes.
E) Need to retrieve something from the bottom of a well, blue ringed octopus.
F) Being followed by someone's owl familiar, send three ravens after it.
G) If you have scouted ahead of time to know exact positioning, summon an octopus in the outhouse to cause a distraction.

It is a very versatile utility spell. Combined with a wand of Speak with Animals, it can be useful in many odd situations.

jkason · Jan 5, 2012

Is it okay that I keep spamming this thread with my rules questions, or should I maybe start a new thread explicitly for such? I figured, I'm not really proposing anything, though, where we need judge votes, but I'm pretty explicitly interested in the rules interpretation of LPF, not necessarily Pathfinder players as a whole, so this was my best bet.

Anyway: soft cover.

Since I've started trying to play an archer character, I've been looking at the rules on this. From what I can tell, Precise shot lets Eanos avoid a penalty for shooting into melee, but it looks like, if his allies are tactically placed between Eanos and his target, his targets still get a +4 soft cover bonus to AC.

Expanded, this is my understanding, with bad map examples. Below, O is an ally, X is an enemy, and A is an Archer:

Code:

[b]A        XO[/b]

Here, and for arrangements up to about 90 degrees up or down, archers without Precise Shot take a -4 penalty for firing into melee. With Precise shot, their attacks are in the clear.

Code:

[b]A     OX[/b]

Here, and for arrangements up to about 90 degrees up or down, archers without Precise Shot take a -4 penalty for firing into melee. Even with Precise Shot, however, the enemy receives a +4 to AC for soft cover unless the Archer also has Improved Precise Shot. Only an archer with the feat chain topped by Improved Precise Shot can make ranged attacks in this scenario as if making an unimpeded ranged attack.

Do I have that right? My poor inquisitor is probably going to be far less effective if I do (since he doesn't meet prereqs for IPS until 15th level

Guess that 8th level Dimension Hop will be extra handy), but I should probably figure it out sooner than later.

Satin Knights · Jan 5, 2012

Yes, simple one shot questions are fine in this thread. I think that is better than a lot of three posts threads.

Yes, you have the soft cover scenario right. I didn't think it was as drastic as needing 90 degrees off axis, but double checking the rules, it is.

At GM discretion, partial cover can come into play to reduce the +4 to +2. This requires the archer to see more than half of the opponent. Therefore, being 45 degrees off axis would reduce bonus the opponent gets under most circumstances.

jkason · Jan 5, 2012

Satin Knights said:
Yes, simple one shot questions are fine in this thread. I think that is better than a lot of three posts threads.

Oh, I didn't intend to create a thread for each specific question, but wondered if folks thought a general "rules questions" thread might be useful. I'm fine keeping it all contained in general.

At GM discretion, partial cover can come into play to reduce the +4 to +2. This requires the archer to see more than half of the opponent. Therefore, being 45 degrees off axis would reduce bonus the opponent gets under most circumstances.

Ooh. Excellent. It did seem kind of severe to me to go from +4 to +0 with a simple 5 foot step, so I'll likely go with this in my own games. And if partial cover applies, Eanos' Bane ability can help offset better once he's got access to that -- which is much sooner than when he can take the IPS feat.

GlassEye · Jan 8, 2012

Can polearms benefit from Darkwood? My inclination is to say that they can't but my inclinations have been wrong (many times) before.

Satin Knights · Jan 8, 2012

My inclination would be yes, but not completely. You have six to eight feet of wood shaft that would benefit, but then the head of the weapon as pictured in the APG is quite a bit of metal. The medieval versions of the weapon are simpler.

So, I would put the weight reduction at 25% for a darkwood bill instead of 50%.

perrinmiller · Jan 8, 2012

I would agree with SK on this. Yeah, that's what I said.

However, are we going to go there? There are other weapons that are made from both wood and metal. Are we just going to make it easy and go 50-50 on them for either metal or wood?

Sounds like a quick proposal. I vote YEA.