Pathfinder 1E Dealing with Grease

[Quixoticelixir]

Hey!

I'm starting a Kingmaker game and one of my players has chosen to play a summoner.

Of course, he has chosen "Grease" as one of his first level spells, which has me kinda worried.

I haven't played with the spell before, but I fear that he'll make short work of any non-caster by making the spell target their weapons, causing them to drop said weapons unless they make a DC16 reflex save.

How can I prevent the spell from ruining the encounters? Or am I just being paranoid?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Grease is one of those rare spells that have gotten less balanced in Pathfinder. IME, it's used mainly to trip people. Unfortunately, it uses an Acrobatics DC, only 10, but the Acrobatics skill does not autoscale. You can sometimes trip a large number of high-level enemies with a 1st-level spell because of that. Similar issues come up with the various Pit spells, only the starting DCs are very high.

Worse, players will always insist Grease is flammable, and given how many edition changes d20 Grease has gone through, it's unacceptable that this question has not been answered within the rules. I wouldn't make it flammable, but if you do so, I'd suggest making it burn up completely within a round, so you don't have characters trapped in a slippery flaming pool.

I don't know if you can Grease someone's spell component pouch.

How is the DC so high? It never fails to amaze me how high mental stats are in Pathfinder compared to 3.x. For that reason I would never use a high point buy in a Pathfinder game. (Or die-rolled stats. Someone is going to roll an 18.) Frankly a summoner has fewer reasons to crank their high stat (to 20?) than a regular caster.

If they're a summoner and not a conjurer it will only get worse.

 

[concerro]

The DC will be comparatively lower as the PC level up, and once it fails more he will move on to better options. One weakness of kingmaker that is more annoying than grease is that sometimes there is only one fight a day so unless you alter the combats they might not be all that challenging.

Back to grease-->Use multiple enemies. He can only grease one weapon at time, and trying to grease everyone's weapon will burn a lot of spell slots.

 

[Micar Sin]

well, if that does get to be an issue, there are locked gauntlets that helps keep you from dropping your weapons. Once the character gets a reputation for using that trick, it gets much less effective...

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/armor/gauntlet-locked

 

[WayneLigon]

I can't imagine what the problem is. Round one, guy's weapon is greased. IF he fails the save, he drops the weapon. He pulls out his secondary next round and goes on. Summoner-guy can do that one thing, what, one or two times a day? Who cares? Unless you're letting them bully you into the 'fifteen minute adventuring day', you're going to have several more encounters before he gets any chance to restore spells. And how many of those are going to be with just one opponent with one weapon? Not many. He might as well have his time in the sun while he can.

 

[Quixoticelixir]

How is the DC so high? It never fails to amaze me how high mental stats are in Pathfinder compared to 3.x. For that reason I would never use a high point buy in a Pathfinder game. (Or die-rolled stats. Someone is going to roll an 18.) Frankly a summoner has fewer reasons to crank their high stat (to 20?) than a regular caster.

If they're a summoner and not a conjurer it will only get worse.

He's got +4 from his charisma modifier, +1 from spell focus (conjuration), and +1 from the spell's level.

I think the spell's powerful enough without making the grease flammable. : P

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

That's still pretty high. 3.0 was written assuming a 25 point buy (15 in Pathfinder terms) and with a high stat of 15. There were no races with mental stat boosts then either.

In later 3.0, we had star elves, who got +2 Charisma and Spellcasting Prodigy (+1 DC), Greater Spell Focus (+2 DC) and *sigh*

The last time I played Pathfinder, it was Kingmaker. The DM gave us very high point buy. We had an elf conjurer, although he took the teleportation subschool and so couldn't acid dart a lot. He had Int 20 (elves get +2 Int in Pathfinder), high Dex and Con and was far more powerful than the expected 1st-level wizard. All his 1st-level spells had a save DC of 16. Grease, Color Spray...

High save DCs that the game didn't expect are a pet peeve of mine.

 

[billd91]

[geezer-mode]How did people ever survive 1e/2e (where the saves vs spells started pretty high compared to low level spells in PF)? Kids today...[/geezer-mode]

I'm having a hard time seeing the fuss too. If he greases a weapon, pull out a secondary weapon - a dagger if you've got nothing else. You can pretty much assume everybody's got one (even if it's not in their stat block, it's easy to assume their presence given the ubiquity of having some kind of knife on hand). The caster basically burns a standard action to potentially force the target to burn a move action drawing a different weapon. I'm not seeing the problem.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

In the last 2 campaigns I’ve DM’d Grease has been one of the most effective spells the players have used, especially when combined with the Sculpt spell (which changes the area of the spell to 4 x 10ft cubes). Combined with Glitterdust, I’d say they were close to the 2 most effective Arcane spells in both campaigns, even when the PC’s were in the mid-teens level-wise.

Several combats were turned into cakewalks due to the enemy being greased and blinded. If he fails his save he’s on the ground, reducing his melee AC by 4 and his attack bonus by 4. So he’s easier to hit and it’s harder for him to attack back. If he passes his save, then chances he doesn’t have 5 ranks in Balance and can be sneak attacked. Add to this Glitterdust, that blinds on a failed save. That drops his AC by at least 2 (more if he has a Dex bonus to AC) and gives everyone a 50% miss chance (assuming they can figure out what square the attack came from).

So you can see how the combo is horribly effective. Yes, they are low-level spells, so the saving throws are lower. However, if they PC has an INT of 20+ (fairly likely by the mid-teen levels) and taken a feat to increase the DC for spells from those schools, the saving throws are likely to be in the high teens, which is not that easy.

Of course, much of the problem is caused by the fact that as a DM, I seem to roll poorly for saves for the bad guys! I don’t know what it is, but it seems that when it comes to saving throws, the dice suddenly hate me.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Just dab it up with a paper towel.