Viktyr Gehrig
First Post
Hello and welcome to the very first installment of Finding the Path, E.N. World's new monthly Pathfinder advice column. My name is Viktyr L. Korimir and every month I'll be choosing a handful of your questions about the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and answering them to the best of my ability-- what the rules say, what the rules mean, and how to get the most out of them-- plus a heaping spoonful of my own half-baked ideas, unfounded opinions, and baroque house rules. I've been playing tabletop roleplaying games for over twenty years now, and I've been active on E.N. World for nearly ten; in that time I have read and re-read, analyzed, dissected, rearranged and put back together every rules system I have come into contact with. If you like what you read here, you should check out my House Rules Lab page on d20PFSRD.
Since we're just getting started and we haven't had time to receive a lot of questions, today I'll just be answering a few recent questions from the Pathfinder Discussion subforum here on E.N. World.
In this installment: The limits of readied actions; psionics; challenging a stealthy party; comprehend languages and tongues; mixed heritage Sorcerers; and the Magus class.
#1: In a pbp game I am DMing a player readied an action with his bow using the following condition: ''He pauses, waiting to see if the halfling will try to cast a spell so he can disrupt it, otherwise he will just shoot him if makes a move to do something else."
The halfling had drawn a potion the previous round and drank it during the round he was targeted by the player's readied action. When I posted an update on the combat I said that the character watches for the halfling to cast but he didn't cast a spell so the character loses his readied action.
So, the above is just a little background for my actual question: Is a general ready action such as the above (i.e. I'll attack if he takes any sort of Move or Standard action) a valid condition for the Ready an Action action or is a more specific condition required?
So you've got a PC saying that if the halfling casts a spell, he's going to disrupt the spell by shooting him, and if the halfling does anything else, he's going to shoot him anyway. Sounds like what he's really trying to say is that he's going to shoot the halfling no matter what, but he wants to wait until he can catch the halfling doing something.
This is what the SRD has to say:
The Rules-as-Written don't really give us any specific guidelines as to what those triggering conditions can be; they can be as general or as specific as the player wants them to be. Your archer can say that he's going to ready an attack against the halfling if the halfling takes any kind of action, and if the halfling takes any kind of action-- standard, move, or swift-- the archer's going to shoot him.
And really, doesn't that make sense? “If you make one false move, I'll X” isn't just a cliché, it's the basis of the whole readied action concept.
It's easier to justify readying an action for a very general condition, since it involves less thinking on the part of the ready character; if the conditions he specifies are too general, all he's really doing is delaying his action. Unlike delaying, it allows him to take his action before the triggering event, but at the expense of having to specify that action in advance.
The only limitation here is that the character can only ready one action. He can't say “if the halfling does this, I'm going to do X, but if the halfling does that I'm going to do Y.”
Going the other direction, though, the player can make the trigger condition as intricate as he wants. That's where we run into problems. Your archer can specify he's going to attack if the halfling casts a spell, or a specific spell, or a spell from the schools of Evocation, Conjuration, or Necromancy; per Rules-as-Written, there's no limit to this, except for an unwritten common sense rule that a character can only respond to triggers he's aware of. Per Rules-as-Written, you can even specify the condition “something happens that I don't like”, and while this probably isn't Rules as Intended... it actually makes a lot of sense.
My advice? Ignore “triggering conditions” altogether. A character can specify a single action-- attack, move, cast a specific spell, whatever-- and then take that action at any point between readying it and the end of the round. Thus a character could ready an action like “shoot the halfling” and then take that action any time he feels like it, interrupting other actions at will.
#2: I'm not the most rules-savy DM. Frankly I find it unbearable to sit down and read paragraphs of rules. Usually this works for me but in my current game I'm starting to feel like I need to bone up. I just started PF and don't own the core book, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, etc.
My Pathfinder game is comprised of level 5 PCs. Most have a low comprehension of the nuances of the rules which is just fantastic - ideal gamers honestly. The psion, however, owns every player supplement and easily knows more rules than the rest of us combined. Still some of these behaviors are starting to feel fishy.
One of the best things about Pathfinder is that you don't need to own the books to learn the rules. d20pfsrd.com contains all of the rules from Pathfinder-compatible Paizo products and a steadily growing selection of rules from third-party publishers. All of your psionics rules are also available from that website, here.
Your first problem is that you are letting your players dictate the rules of your game, and allowing them to use supplemental materials that you don't understand. I sympathize with the fact that not everyone wants to pore over obscure tomes of eldritch lore like I do-- that's why I'm here-- but if you don't understand the rules your players are using, you can't adjudicate them fairly. You don't have to be a rules lawyer to run a good Pathfinder game. All you have to remember is that you're not a lawyer-- you're the judge, and it's the rules lawyer's job to convince you that the rules work the way he wants them to. There's nothing wrong with telling players they can't use rules that you don't own and haven't read, or even rules that you have read but don't like.
Your second problem is that your problem player either also does not understand those rules, or he's taking advantage of you. There's absolutely no way that a 5th level Psion is capable of doing the things you describe.
There are three basic rules that solve most balance problems with the psionics rules:
The psion can teleport in and out of rules, away from monsters, and to higher ground at will. In one instance I gave him bonus damage from jumping and attacking from higher ground. Now he insists on teleporting above monsters and dropping down on them to do extra damage.
If your Psion is a Nomad-- a psychoportation specialist-- he's got an ability called Nomad's Step that allows him to do exactly what you're describing:
At 5th level, your Psion can teleport up to 30 feet away in any direction. This is a Supernatural ability, so it does not provoke attacks of opportunity. However, it's also a standard action, meaning that your Psion cannot use this ability and attack in the same round, unless he has the Fast Step feat from Psionics Expanded.
If he's falling 30 feet with every attack in order to deal additional damage, he should also be taking falling damage. If he's using catfall or another similar power to reduce his falling damage, he isn't falling at full speed and he doesn't inflict the extra damage. A 5th level Psion can't afford to take 3d6 damage every round.
The psion claims he can open planar portals (or something) to the astral plane. I said this would ruin the upcoming planescape campaign...
That sounds like the astral caravan power, which a 5th level Nomad Psion could theoretically learn, but which requires a Knowledge (the planes) check, some prior knowledge of the destination, and a minimum of six days' travel time. This shouldn't pose any problem whatsoever for your Planescape game.
His psion can lift with telekinesis 250 pounds per level and "juggle three NPCs". I happened to catch a glimpse of the 2E Psionics book and saw there that the psionicist could lift 3 pounds per point and got like 8 telekinesis points at level 5. I also couldn't find anything like that in the 3.5 SRD. Does 250 pounds per level seem just insane? I mean 1,250 pounds is like 30 strength. Is anything like that in the Psionics Unleashed supplement?
That sounds like telekinetic force. At 5th level, for 5 power points, he can move an object (or objects) weighing up to 250 pounds total slowly, or he can hurl up to five creatures or objects at a target for up to 1d6 damage per 25 pounds of weight. When he's higher than 5th level-- remember the three rules of psionics balance-- he can spend additional power points to increase his weight limit by 25 pounds per power point.
#3: How do you deal with players who are simply TOO good at being stealthy? Our party handled our 1st level dungeon with incredible ease, barely taking any hits the whole time, and we've gone up a member since then. To be honest I'm glad I'm playing in this group and not running it, because I'm not really sure I'd know how to challenge them. But of course since it's good to learn, I'd like to pick up some tricks, for (as a GM) dealing with my own current party's style of play, in case I ever have to challenge it myself.
This question may be outside the purview of a strictly rules-based column, but as a self-styled advice columnist-- your Dear Abby of killing orc babies-- I like to address questions like this to help DMs and players get the most out of the rules. Plus, it gives me an opportunity to show off my expertise.
Your first and most obvious counter for Stealth is blindsense or blindsight. Blindsense allows the creature to negate concealment within the range of the ability, preventing your tricksy hobbitses from using Stealth in the first place. What has blindsense? Almost all of your Oozes, bat-like or insectoid monsters, and quite a few Aberrations. (As an added bonus, these creatures are also mostly immune or highly-resistant to your Enchantment and Illusion tactics.) A quick perusal of the Bestiary DB at d20PFSRD gives us:
In a mixed rules environment-- a game using both Pathfinder and D&D 3.5 rules-- you have the Mindsight feat from Lords of Madness, which gives any creature with the Telepathy special ability a blindsense-like ability out to their telepathic range. Creatures with mindsight simply know the location, creature type, and Intelligence score of any non-mindless creature within range, and not even the Darkstalker feat (also from Lords of Madness) can defeat it.
For variety's sake, and to make sure the players don't feel like you're deliberately negating their abilities, you might also want to include challenges that simply can't be bypassed by stealth. Throw in some roleplaying encounters, in which the characters need to persuade, interrogate, terrorize or otherwise simply interact with NPCs to get what they want so they can't just sneak past or gank all of your encounters.
And if all else fails and you just can't force the PCs to make noise, make noise for them. Stout oak doors with rusty hinges that squeal when you open them. Shriekers. Knee-high pools of stagnant water. Trip lines and pressure plates that activate traps that injure the party in amusingly horrible ways while setting off alarms. Surround big scary monsters with little pathetic monsters that scream bloody murder and flee, screaming even more bloody murder all the way, the second combat starts.
#4: If you cast the spell Tongues can you also understand written languages, similar to Comprehend Languages?
Comprehend languages specifies that you understand spoken words and read “otherwise incomprehensible” languages. Tongues says that you speak and understand the language of any intelligent creature, but explicitly states that you cannot communicate with creatures that don't speak.
So comprehend languages allows you to understand languages, regardless of whether they are spoken or written, but not speak or write. Tongues allows you to speak and understand spoken languages, but does not allow you to read or write. A character can, however, cast both spells with permanency to gain the ability to understand, read, and speak any language, but not write.
Also, depending on how you interpret the word “speak”, it's quite possible that neither spell works for sign languages like Drow Sign Language or the basic sign languages used by military units. I don't hold this interpretation personally, but that's a linguistic debate beyond the scope of this humble column.
#5: So the sorcerer bloodlines. It always struck me as funny how you could only have 1. How a powerful wizard in your background (one who may have dealt with fey, elementals, demons, devils celestials frequently) could crowd out all these other sources of power.
Well, that was kinda answered with the crossblooded and eldritch heritage feat chain.
Now I am wondering, could I as a copper dragon bloodline sorcerer take eldritch heritage for blue dragon bloodline.
For reference, the Crossblooded Sorcerer archetype allows you to select bloodline abilities from two Sorcerer bloodlines at 1st level, at the expense of 1 spell known per spell level and a -2 penalty on Will saves. The Eldritch Heritage feat tree allows you to gain some of the bloodline abilities of a Sorcerer bloodline.
By the Rules-as-Written, the Draconic and Elemental bloodlines are a single bloodline each and the Wildblooded bloodline variants count as the original bloodline that they are mutated from. The Crossblooded archetype specifies that the character must select “two different bloodlines”, and the presence of the word “different” means that by Rules-as-Written, the Crossblooded Sorcerer cannot select two varieties of Dragon or Elemental.
Likewise, the Eldritch Heritage feat specifically says that you cannot gain the bloodline abilities from a bloodline you already possess. This is explicitly prohibited by Rules-as-Written.
On the other hand, if you really wanted to do this, would it be reasonable? I can't think of a reason why not. Picking two Draconic or Elemental bloodlines as a Crossblooded Sorcerer means giving up just as much versatility as a standard Crossblooded Sorcerer in exchange for less benefit. Likewise, taking Eldritch Heritage as a Crossblooded Sorcerer to learn the bloodline abilities you passed up actually makes more sense to me than being able to learn bloodline abilities from a bloodline you have no connection to. I'd absolutely allow it in a game I was running.
#6: I'm currently running a pathfinder game for five friends, one of my friends is power gamer and he is playing a 6th lvl Magus and i find myself becoming so angry with him because how powerful he is. let me explain. He is using spell combat with spellstrike and casting shocking grasp, in addition to giving his weapon the frost and flaming quality with arcane pool. So he makes a melee attack and does 5D6(shocking grasp)+ 1d8+2(+1 elven thin Blade+str bonus)+2d6(flaming+frost), then gets to make his normal Melee attack 1D8+2 +2d6(flaming+frost), for a grand total of 9d6+2d8+4! which i find to be a lot of Damage, and he can do this round after round.
I read the rules for magus and at first i thought he could not make the second attack and we got into a huge fight over it and frankly I blew my top and he left. Then after reading the rules several more time i realized he could!!. on top of all that his AC after casting shield on himself is 25 which is five points higher then anyone else. Here's the problem no one else in the group is near this powerful, its difficult for me to build encounters to challenge him with out slaughtering everyone else.
Yeah. He can do that. He can do all that and he can do it what, eight or ten times per day? Ouch. But here's the thing: he can't do it all day unless you let him. You don't want to throw more powerful monsters at him to hurt him and possibly kill the rest of the party, you just want to slow him down so he has to spend more of his juice; you don't need tougher encounters, you just need more hit points.
Take monsters a couple CR lower than the party and then pile them on. CR 4 monsters aren't going to be able to hit your Magus very often, and they're not likely to wipe out the rest of your party. The Magus can only kill one or two per round and his weapon enchantments only last for 10 rounds per point of Arcane Pool. If you want to be nasty about it, put in a couple of CR 6 monsters-- a tough encounter for a 6th level party-- and a bunch of CR 3 minions. Have the minions rush the Magus while the tough monsters tear into the rest of the party; that way, the Magus has to burn resources to get through the minions quickly so he can help the others with the tough monsters.
Your Magus is also counting on a lot of elemental damage-- 5d6 electrical, 1d6 fire and 1d6 cold-- for his massive damage output. Creatures with energy resistance are going to slow him down considerably.
Here's a partial list of CR-appropriate creatures that his trick just flat doesn't work on:
Well, folks, that's it for this month. See you next month with another fresh batch of PC problems and DM dilemmas, vivisected for your entertainment. If you have any comments or questions you'd like to ask, you can send an email directly to me at viktyr.korimir@gmail.com with [Finding the Path] in the subject line and make sure to include whether or not your message is okay to publish.
Your friendly neighborhood rules lawyer,
VLK
Since we're just getting started and we haven't had time to receive a lot of questions, today I'll just be answering a few recent questions from the Pathfinder Discussion subforum here on E.N. World.
In this installment: The limits of readied actions; psionics; challenging a stealthy party; comprehend languages and tongues; mixed heritage Sorcerers; and the Magus class.
#1: In a pbp game I am DMing a player readied an action with his bow using the following condition: ''He pauses, waiting to see if the halfling will try to cast a spell so he can disrupt it, otherwise he will just shoot him if makes a move to do something else."
The halfling had drawn a potion the previous round and drank it during the round he was targeted by the player's readied action. When I posted an update on the combat I said that the character watches for the halfling to cast but he didn't cast a spell so the character loses his readied action.
So, the above is just a little background for my actual question: Is a general ready action such as the above (i.e. I'll attack if he takes any sort of Move or Standard action) a valid condition for the Ready an Action action or is a more specific condition required?
So you've got a PC saying that if the halfling casts a spell, he's going to disrupt the spell by shooting him, and if the halfling does anything else, he's going to shoot him anyway. Sounds like what he's really trying to say is that he's going to shoot the halfling no matter what, but he wants to wait until he can catch the halfling doing something.
This is what the SRD has to say:
d20PFSRD said:You can ready astandard action, a
The Rules-as-Written don't really give us any specific guidelines as to what those triggering conditions can be; they can be as general or as specific as the player wants them to be. Your archer can say that he's going to ready an attack against the halfling if the halfling takes any kind of action, and if the halfling takes any kind of action-- standard, move, or swift-- the archer's going to shoot him.
And really, doesn't that make sense? “If you make one false move, I'll X” isn't just a cliché, it's the basis of the whole readied action concept.
It's easier to justify readying an action for a very general condition, since it involves less thinking on the part of the ready character; if the conditions he specifies are too general, all he's really doing is delaying his action. Unlike delaying, it allows him to take his action before the triggering event, but at the expense of having to specify that action in advance.
The only limitation here is that the character can only ready one action. He can't say “if the halfling does this, I'm going to do X, but if the halfling does that I'm going to do Y.”
Going the other direction, though, the player can make the trigger condition as intricate as he wants. That's where we run into problems. Your archer can specify he's going to attack if the halfling casts a spell, or a specific spell, or a spell from the schools of Evocation, Conjuration, or Necromancy; per Rules-as-Written, there's no limit to this, except for an unwritten common sense rule that a character can only respond to triggers he's aware of. Per Rules-as-Written, you can even specify the condition “something happens that I don't like”, and while this probably isn't Rules as Intended... it actually makes a lot of sense.
My advice? Ignore “triggering conditions” altogether. A character can specify a single action-- attack, move, cast a specific spell, whatever-- and then take that action at any point between readying it and the end of the round. Thus a character could ready an action like “shoot the halfling” and then take that action any time he feels like it, interrupting other actions at will.
#2: I'm not the most rules-savy DM. Frankly I find it unbearable to sit down and read paragraphs of rules. Usually this works for me but in my current game I'm starting to feel like I need to bone up. I just started PF and don't own the core book, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, etc.
My Pathfinder game is comprised of level 5 PCs. Most have a low comprehension of the nuances of the rules which is just fantastic - ideal gamers honestly. The psion, however, owns every player supplement and easily knows more rules than the rest of us combined. Still some of these behaviors are starting to feel fishy.
One of the best things about Pathfinder is that you don't need to own the books to learn the rules. d20pfsrd.com contains all of the rules from Pathfinder-compatible Paizo products and a steadily growing selection of rules from third-party publishers. All of your psionics rules are also available from that website, here.
Your first problem is that you are letting your players dictate the rules of your game, and allowing them to use supplemental materials that you don't understand. I sympathize with the fact that not everyone wants to pore over obscure tomes of eldritch lore like I do-- that's why I'm here-- but if you don't understand the rules your players are using, you can't adjudicate them fairly. You don't have to be a rules lawyer to run a good Pathfinder game. All you have to remember is that you're not a lawyer-- you're the judge, and it's the rules lawyer's job to convince you that the rules work the way he wants them to. There's nothing wrong with telling players they can't use rules that you don't own and haven't read, or even rules that you have read but don't like.
Your second problem is that your problem player either also does not understand those rules, or he's taking advantage of you. There's absolutely no way that a 5th level Psion is capable of doing the things you describe.
There are three basic rules that solve most balance problems with the psionics rules:
- Psionic characters may not spend more power points on a power than their manifester level.
- Psionic characters may not spend more power points on a power than their manifester level.
- Psionic characters may not spend more power points on a power than their manifester level.
The psion can teleport in and out of rules, away from monsters, and to higher ground at will. In one instance I gave him bonus damage from jumping and attacking from higher ground. Now he insists on teleporting above monsters and dropping down on them to do extra damage.
If your Psion is a Nomad-- a psychoportation specialist-- he's got an ability called Nomad's Step that allows him to do exactly what you're describing:
d20PFSRD said:
At 5th level, your Psion can teleport up to 30 feet away in any direction. This is a Supernatural ability, so it does not provoke attacks of opportunity. However, it's also a standard action, meaning that your Psion cannot use this ability and attack in the same round, unless he has the Fast Step feat from Psionics Expanded.
If he's falling 30 feet with every attack in order to deal additional damage, he should also be taking falling damage. If he's using catfall or another similar power to reduce his falling damage, he isn't falling at full speed and he doesn't inflict the extra damage. A 5th level Psion can't afford to take 3d6 damage every round.
The psion claims he can open planar portals (or something) to the astral plane. I said this would ruin the upcoming planescape campaign...
That sounds like the astral caravan power, which a 5th level Nomad Psion could theoretically learn, but which requires a Knowledge (the planes) check, some prior knowledge of the destination, and a minimum of six days' travel time. This shouldn't pose any problem whatsoever for your Planescape game.
His psion can lift with telekinesis 250 pounds per level and "juggle three NPCs". I happened to catch a glimpse of the 2E Psionics book and saw there that the psionicist could lift 3 pounds per point and got like 8 telekinesis points at level 5. I also couldn't find anything like that in the 3.5 SRD. Does 250 pounds per level seem just insane? I mean 1,250 pounds is like 30 strength. Is anything like that in the Psionics Unleashed supplement?
That sounds like telekinetic force. At 5th level, for 5 power points, he can move an object (or objects) weighing up to 250 pounds total slowly, or he can hurl up to five creatures or objects at a target for up to 1d6 damage per 25 pounds of weight. When he's higher than 5th level-- remember the three rules of psionics balance-- he can spend additional power points to increase his weight limit by 25 pounds per power point.
#3: How do you deal with players who are simply TOO good at being stealthy? Our party handled our 1st level dungeon with incredible ease, barely taking any hits the whole time, and we've gone up a member since then. To be honest I'm glad I'm playing in this group and not running it, because I'm not really sure I'd know how to challenge them. But of course since it's good to learn, I'd like to pick up some tricks, for (as a GM) dealing with my own current party's style of play, in case I ever have to challenge it myself.
This question may be outside the purview of a strictly rules-based column, but as a self-styled advice columnist-- your Dear Abby of killing orc babies-- I like to address questions like this to help DMs and players get the most out of the rules. Plus, it gives me an opportunity to show off my expertise.
Your first and most obvious counter for Stealth is blindsense or blindsight. Blindsense allows the creature to negate concealment within the range of the ability, preventing your tricksy hobbitses from using Stealth in the first place. What has blindsense? Almost all of your Oozes, bat-like or insectoid monsters, and quite a few Aberrations. (As an added bonus, these creatures are also mostly immune or highly-resistant to your Enchantment and Illusion tactics.) A quick perusal of the Bestiary DB at d20PFSRD gives us:
- The Mobat is a bat-like magical beast that clocks in at an easy CR 3.
- Tentamort, CR 4, a nasty little tentacle monster.
- Carrion Golem, another lovely CR 4.
- Yithian, CR 9, an aberration's aberration with all sorts of fun telepathic screwery.
In a mixed rules environment-- a game using both Pathfinder and D&D 3.5 rules-- you have the Mindsight feat from Lords of Madness, which gives any creature with the Telepathy special ability a blindsense-like ability out to their telepathic range. Creatures with mindsight simply know the location, creature type, and Intelligence score of any non-mindless creature within range, and not even the Darkstalker feat (also from Lords of Madness) can defeat it.
For variety's sake, and to make sure the players don't feel like you're deliberately negating their abilities, you might also want to include challenges that simply can't be bypassed by stealth. Throw in some roleplaying encounters, in which the characters need to persuade, interrogate, terrorize or otherwise simply interact with NPCs to get what they want so they can't just sneak past or gank all of your encounters.
And if all else fails and you just can't force the PCs to make noise, make noise for them. Stout oak doors with rusty hinges that squeal when you open them. Shriekers. Knee-high pools of stagnant water. Trip lines and pressure plates that activate traps that injure the party in amusingly horrible ways while setting off alarms. Surround big scary monsters with little pathetic monsters that scream bloody murder and flee, screaming even more bloody murder all the way, the second combat starts.
#4: If you cast the spell Tongues can you also understand written languages, similar to Comprehend Languages?
Comprehend Languages said:
Tongues said:This spell grants the creature touched the ability to speak and understand the language of any intelligent creature, whether it is a racial tongue or a regional dialect. The subject can speak only one language at a time, although it may be able to understand several languages.
Comprehend languages specifies that you understand spoken words and read “otherwise incomprehensible” languages. Tongues says that you speak and understand the language of any intelligent creature, but explicitly states that you cannot communicate with creatures that don't speak.
So comprehend languages allows you to understand languages, regardless of whether they are spoken or written, but not speak or write. Tongues allows you to speak and understand spoken languages, but does not allow you to read or write. A character can, however, cast both spells with permanency to gain the ability to understand, read, and speak any language, but not write.
Also, depending on how you interpret the word “speak”, it's quite possible that neither spell works for sign languages like Drow Sign Language or the basic sign languages used by military units. I don't hold this interpretation personally, but that's a linguistic debate beyond the scope of this humble column.
#5: So the sorcerer bloodlines. It always struck me as funny how you could only have 1. How a powerful wizard in your background (one who may have dealt with fey, elementals, demons, devils celestials frequently) could crowd out all these other sources of power.
Well, that was kinda answered with the crossblooded and eldritch heritage feat chain.
Now I am wondering, could I as a copper dragon bloodline sorcerer take eldritch heritage for blue dragon bloodline.
For reference, the Crossblooded Sorcerer archetype allows you to select bloodline abilities from two Sorcerer bloodlines at 1st level, at the expense of 1 spell known per spell level and a -2 penalty on Will saves. The Eldritch Heritage feat tree allows you to gain some of the bloodline abilities of a Sorcerer bloodline.
By the Rules-as-Written, the Draconic and Elemental bloodlines are a single bloodline each and the Wildblooded bloodline variants count as the original bloodline that they are mutated from. The Crossblooded archetype specifies that the character must select “two different bloodlines”, and the presence of the word “different” means that by Rules-as-Written, the Crossblooded Sorcerer cannot select two varieties of Dragon or Elemental.
Likewise, the Eldritch Heritage feat specifically says that you cannot gain the bloodline abilities from a bloodline you already possess. This is explicitly prohibited by Rules-as-Written.
On the other hand, if you really wanted to do this, would it be reasonable? I can't think of a reason why not. Picking two Draconic or Elemental bloodlines as a Crossblooded Sorcerer means giving up just as much versatility as a standard Crossblooded Sorcerer in exchange for less benefit. Likewise, taking Eldritch Heritage as a Crossblooded Sorcerer to learn the bloodline abilities you passed up actually makes more sense to me than being able to learn bloodline abilities from a bloodline you have no connection to. I'd absolutely allow it in a game I was running.
#6: I'm currently running a pathfinder game for five friends, one of my friends is power gamer and he is playing a 6th lvl Magus and i find myself becoming so angry with him because how powerful he is. let me explain. He is using spell combat with spellstrike and casting shocking grasp, in addition to giving his weapon the frost and flaming quality with arcane pool. So he makes a melee attack and does 5D6(shocking grasp)+ 1d8+2(+1 elven thin Blade+str bonus)+2d6(flaming+frost), then gets to make his normal Melee attack 1D8+2 +2d6(flaming+frost), for a grand total of 9d6+2d8+4! which i find to be a lot of Damage, and he can do this round after round.
I read the rules for magus and at first i thought he could not make the second attack and we got into a huge fight over it and frankly I blew my top and he left. Then after reading the rules several more time i realized he could!!. on top of all that his AC after casting shield on himself is 25 which is five points higher then anyone else. Here's the problem no one else in the group is near this powerful, its difficult for me to build encounters to challenge him with out slaughtering everyone else.
Yeah. He can do that. He can do all that and he can do it what, eight or ten times per day? Ouch. But here's the thing: he can't do it all day unless you let him. You don't want to throw more powerful monsters at him to hurt him and possibly kill the rest of the party, you just want to slow him down so he has to spend more of his juice; you don't need tougher encounters, you just need more hit points.
Take monsters a couple CR lower than the party and then pile them on. CR 4 monsters aren't going to be able to hit your Magus very often, and they're not likely to wipe out the rest of your party. The Magus can only kill one or two per round and his weapon enchantments only last for 10 rounds per point of Arcane Pool. If you want to be nasty about it, put in a couple of CR 6 monsters-- a tough encounter for a 6th level party-- and a bunch of CR 3 minions. Have the minions rush the Magus while the tough monsters tear into the rest of the party; that way, the Magus has to burn resources to get through the minions quickly so he can help the others with the tough monsters.
Your Magus is also counting on a lot of elemental damage-- 5d6 electrical, 1d6 fire and 1d6 cold-- for his massive damage output. Creatures with energy resistance are going to slow him down considerably.
Here's a partial list of CR-appropriate creatures that his trick just flat doesn't work on:
- Vampires have cold and electricity resistance 10.
- Anything with the Daemon subtype has cold, electricity, and fire resistance 10.
- Your classic Shambling mound is not only immune to electricity, but gains a temporary Constitution bonus from electrical attacks. As a Plant, Shambling Mounds are identified by Knowledge (nature), which most Magi don't put ranks in.
- The Behir, at CR 8, is immune to electricity and has its own electrical breath weapon.
Well, folks, that's it for this month. See you next month with another fresh batch of PC problems and DM dilemmas, vivisected for your entertainment. If you have any comments or questions you'd like to ask, you can send an email directly to me at viktyr.korimir@gmail.com with [Finding the Path] in the subject line and make sure to include whether or not your message is okay to publish.
Your friendly neighborhood rules lawyer,
VLK
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