Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[rasmuswagner]

What happens if you cast Chill Touch, then grapple an enemy?

[Grek]

Your GM becomes confused, looks at the spell, then looks at the touch attack rules, then looks at the grapple rules, then swears, then makes one of the following rulings:

A] Fuck you, you can't grapple with spells.
B] You get to add your Chill Touch to the grapple damage if you succeed on grappling the enemy.
C] You get to apply your Chill Touch twice, once for a successful touch attack and once for a successful unarmed attack.
D] You get to apply you Chill Touch effect up to Caster Level times, applying it once for every time you succeed a melee touch attack or do your unarmed grappling damage.

D is probably the most accurate ruling, but also the one your GM is least likely to pick.

[Prak]

There's also E) you get to apply Chill Touch each round you're grappled with the opponent.

Conceivably they might say "you can discharge for the initial touch attack to start the grapple, again for the grapple check, and then once each round and each time you make an attack, until your spell is used up."

[Adam Reith]

Ah, right. I forgot because that makes NO DAMNED SENSE.
So the class was even more shittily designed.

Yeah, the designer thought that mage armor was an abjuration; but instead of changing the wording to reflect this, WotC issued an erratum that runs the complete opposite direction:

Under the abjurant armor ability, remove mention of "mage armor" at the end of the paragraph. The abjurant armor ability does not affect mage armor, but the spell is still useful to an abjurant champion.

Apparently they proactively felt bad about the upcoming nerf, because according to the designer they tacked a bunch of other abilities onto the PrC that he hadn't written (or so I seem to recall, but I can't seem to put my finger on the reference).

Design by committee at its worst, where the committee members don't even bother talking to each other.

[Prak]

No, fuck that. Mage Armour protects you with magical force armour. It's abjuration. If you really want it to be conjuration because it creates that magical force armour, then it can be Abjuration/Conjuration.

Fuck WotC.

[ishy]

Mage armour should be evocation too:

Evocation spells manipulate energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end. In effect, they create something out of nothing.

And if it is a black shield it should be necromancy (because black).

If we add some fluff about it not actually being a shield but you can predict blows better, we can also put it in divination.

Or since the material component is a piece of leather, we could say it is from the transmutation school.

[...You Lost Me]

Well if you make it every specialty school, then any kind of wizard can use it, so you can also make it universal.

[Prak]

What if we say that the armour bonus actually represents a generalized low grade compulsion on enemies to not hit you? Then it's enchantment too.

[TiaC]

Since it can be visible or invisible, it should go in Illusion.

[tussock]

Classically Armour was Conjuration (because it was physical leather armour and lasted until it got beaten up) and Shield was Evocation (because it was magic that touched things).

Abjuration was for warding off outsiders, the elements, curses, and mind reading/control. Plus any glyphs were part-abjuration. 3e's Armour and Shield should both be Evocation, as they're nothing at all to do with magic circles and protection spells.

But 3e and 3.5 did away with all the themes, and just tried to put equal numbers of spells in each group. So now Cure foo is Conjuration because ... Clerics needed more Conjuration. Classically it was Necromantic like all the raises and heal and other life/not spells. Back when almost everything was Alteration magic, and the other schools were just handy keywords.

[hyzmarca]

In Shadowrun is there a functional difference between a cyborg who replaced his limbs with cyberware vs being a quadriplegic rigger who happens to be inside of the humanoid drone he pilots?

Yes. There's a huge difference mechanically. What exactly that difference is depends on the edition you're playing, but generally cyberlimbs will cost a lot more essence and the rigger will use the vehicle piloting rules.

Would the limbless rigger in the human-shaped-vehicle be able to do everything a street samurai does, or better than them?

No. The limbless rigger isn't paying essence, but in return he's using the piloting rules. Which means that he's better at some times, worse at others, and can use ramming rules to determine collision damage.

But the body, for example, wouldn't necessarily be able to swim, while a cyber-limb samurai would.

[Emerald]

But 3e and 3.5 did away with all the themes, and just tried to put equal numbers of spells in each group. So now Cure foo is Conjuration because ... Clerics needed more Conjuration. Classically it was Necromantic like all the raises and heal and other life/not spells.

More likely, it's now Conjuration because Necromancy is icky and evil but healing is pure and good so cure X wounds obviously doesn't belong in the same school as inflict X wounds.

If the designers cared more about putting equal numbers of spells in each school than the schools' themes, I doubt 3e would have 400-some Conjurations and 800-some Transmutations with tons of different effects because so many spells can be flavored as "moving stuff" or "transforming stuff" while Divination and Enchantment have around 200 variations on the same handful of spells.

[Grek]

Tome Samurai questions:

Does your Ancestral Weapon need to be a melee weapon?
Does Kiai! work with things that aren't your Ancestral Weapon?

[Prak]

While I thought the ancestral weapon had to be melee, apparently it just needs to not be a thrown weapon (though conceivably a samurai who could afford a returning thrown weapon could have one as their ancestral)

Kiai! (Ex): At 3rd level, a Samurai may convert a successful strike into a confirmed critical hit. He may use this ability a number of times per day equal to his half his Samurai level +2. This ability is a free action that is declared after the strike is rolled and confirmed as a hit, but before damage is rolled. This ability cannot be used on Attacks of Opportunity.

No mention of Ancestral Weapon only.

[fectin]

Ok. So.

You are trapped in a building, half sunk in a lake. The water is just below the second floor. There are four rooms on the second floor, with two sets of stairs to the roof, but no doors to the outside. One room has one entrance, and holes to the outside in the floor and roof, but also has solid doors that close it off from the rest of the floor.

There are several unpleasant things around: a half-dragon meleeing lizard thing with a fast swim speed, an invisible beguiler on the roof, and a black dragon ridden by a bow ranger flying about. It is currently very early afternoon.

What items would you most want to find in the room you have not yet searched to enable an 8th level party of four to survive (barbarian, druid, duskblade, rogue)?

[Prak]

scroll of teleport, dust of dryness, lantern of revealing, shield of arrow deflection/deflection, armour of acid resistance

[Koumei]

Candle of Invocation :3c

[fectin]

Candle of Invocation :3c

Actually, not as helpful as it might seem. You have to survive until evening for that.

[Prak]

Yeah, scroll of teleport is a way more useful DM-Troll. You can say "Fuck this, we're going back to town" any time you want.

[DSMatticus]

Hey, I know that encounter.

Their party brings a lot of firepower to melee, and should have no problem making the half-dragon lizard thing explode.

The invisible beguiler is invisible, and if you don't want that to turn into a clusterfuck they need a way to make him less invisible. The druid could use a scroll of faerie fire. If the rogue has UMD, then they can cast anything you give them a scroll of, like see invisibility or glitterdust.

Unfortunately, their party very clearly does not have mobility or ranged firepower on the dragon archer. You could let them stumble across the armory, with a convenient supply of bullshit ranged weapons, ammunition, and healing potions. Then the two sides shoot projectiles back and forth at eachother for awhile until the dragon archer gets bored and leaves. Potions of fly aren't that great, dragon flight speed being what it is. If they don't have a way of running the dragon archer off, well... they can hunker down inside and try to wait him out. This is bad news, because the ranger can track them and then pester them all the way home. But if the dragon archer already has the plot relevant loot, and the ruins are very obviously taken by the PC's, there isn't much reason for him to stick around.

[Prak]

Is a cowering opponent helpless?

The character is frozen in fear and can take no actions.

A helpless character is paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent’s mercy.

The different effects to AC imply they are wholly separate, but the description implies that you should at least be able to Coup De Gras a cowering opponent.

[fectin]

No. Think of "helpless" as a keyword. Any time you are helpless, it's explicit (with very few exceptions). "Take no actions" just means you can't do stuff.

[Prak]

gotcha, thanks.

[fectin]

In case anyone was curious, the correct answer was "we already searched this entire area, even if you say we didn't, and refuse to make search checks. Also, we reject your explicit descriptions of things we haven't searched."

Le sigh.

[Prak]

Assume magic that allows you to free reload crossbows.

How the hell does TWF with a light crossbow work out penalty wise? Is a light crossbow a light weapon? One handed? An obtuse two hander? A weapon that doesn't fit into that stuff and just applies its own -2 for shooting one handed on top of normal TWF penalties?

Just saw the part I was missing. Disregard this, I suck cocks.