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2017-02-21, 09:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Going off of memory I'd say that the majority of golems have Cl requirements = to their item CL.
Clockwork constructs seem to all be CL 7 or CL 12 and have matching CL requirements, too.
Robots have CR-based Craft(Mechanical) DCs, so that's an entirely separate paradigm.
I want to say that the rough majority of miscellaneous constructs with printed requirements and item CLs have CL requirement set equal to their item CL, too, but it's much more variable there than it is for the constructs that belong to a family of constructs.
I haven't gone through and tallied out how many of each type fall into which camp, though, I've been busy adding in the constructs from the Archive of Nethys that I discovered thanks to looking some up there as a result of the PFSRD's site migration issues to my master list focusing on gp/HD ratios that gave rise to this whole shebang.
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2017-02-21, 09:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Does Pseudonatural have an official conversion?
Also, of course, as long as you keep an Int score, you can apply Trope L'oeil to a Pseudonatural creature and get very close to the same result.
Well... the game wasn't called Accountants & Attorneys before the Pathfinder conversion. The rules are kinda intended to make it make sense (ish) for people to go smashing in doors and killing monsters to get stuff done.Last edited by Jack_Simth; 2017-02-21 at 09:59 PM.
Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.
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2017-02-21, 10:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
No clue. There's something vaguely appropriate it not being so, if not.
Certainly. The end result would be the same. The story just would be different.
Oh, I know. Fabricate is quite functional, and I'll probably make ample use of it when it comes online for me.
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2017-02-22, 12:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
I find myself uncertain about how attack codes are written in PF. I come to this via examination of the benefits of hydrae as waxwork creatures. In 3.5, a hydra makes a pretty impressive zombie, because its "attack" line is an attack with all of its heads. This means it doesn't need a full attack to get all of its attacks. But in examining the hydra in PF, I realized that there are no "full attack" lines and that the hydra now has the Pounce special quality (which a waxwork version would lose).
What are the base rules for how many attacks monsters can use in a standard action? Are hydrae good waxwork creatures?
I think the loss of fast healing doesn't hurt much when they have the waxwork regeneration to compensate. Their "hydra heads" special quality remains, since adding 2 new heads when one is lost is a definite improvement to their melee attacks. "Hydra traits" is questionable, because while it does contain the rules that make heads individually targetable for removal, that by itself isn't an improvement to the melee attacks until linked to "hydra heads." I'd probably house-rule it in place just because it's otherwise a lot harder to beat down a waxwork hydra, but...not sure if it's RAW that you could cut off a waxwork hydra's heads.
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2017-02-22, 12:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Yeah, figuring out what does and what doesnt constitute a special quality in PF has proven an excercise in futility.
They moved special abilities around the statblock "intuitively" completely dumping the idea of codified special abilities as 3.x had them.
Spoiler: Me ranting. I feel better now.Which for running a game is fine. Some things are easier to find. Great. Good for them.
Right up until templates need applied and you find that they copy pasted 3.x special ability inheritance but didnt bother defining which special abilities were which.
They leave that task to the individual GM to sort out which is, IMHO, kind of a **** move as the GM already has enough on their plate.
I have a short list of what special abilities are called out as special qualities and a poorly sourced answer from the RAW Q&A thread which advises me to start a new thread about the issue.
Am on the fence about doing so because the general tone has been that to criticize PF devs is tatamount to sacrilege and how dare I and why don't I just go play 3.x if I like it so much.
My apologies for the rant. Just frustrated. I LIKE PF, and even fir its glaring flaws I feel like it HAS been an improvement over 3.x in a lot if ways.
There are just some spots where PF RAW needed some more of the precision that 3.x RAW already had. Seems nonsensical and arbitrary to me that MY favorite bits of the game got under-copy-pasted.
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2017-02-22, 02:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
I definitely sympathize with your rant.
I'm posting here again because all of a sudden it seems like the animated object rules on the SRD no longer have the HD+CP calculation, and are only running on the CR. Did they remove the alternate rules? Or am I just failing miserably at searching?
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2017-02-22, 03:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
On mobile, but they seem to lack the haunting of harrowstone alternate price tag, aye.
As for waxwork hydras, I'd say heads can be severed, but can be reattached by holding them to the stump.
Decapitation shouldn't really kill them, tho, but being disarmed like that certainly helps.
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2017-02-22, 03:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Weird. Maybe it didn't survive the transition from the old host site.
Well, given that "hydra heads" definitely improves their melee attacks, the waxwork unquestionably retains it, so holding the head on the stump may be foolish; you want to just wait 1d4 rounds and grow a new pair of heads.
Decapitation kills neither constructs nor hydras, so yeah, cutting off the heads won't kill them.
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2017-02-22, 03:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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2017-02-22, 03:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Hah! I hadn't thought of that!
Though waxen regeneration kind-of does that already, since you could just scrape wax off and let it regen. Though if you're relying on RAW, you may die by the RAW in this case, too: no telling how much wax you get per "shaving."
Edit: Actually, since regeneration specifies that it regrows lost limbs, you could cut off a waxwork human's arms and legs and wait for those to regrow, just thanks to waxen regeneration. Even without having a waxwork hydra, any waxwork creature can give you infinite wax, assuming the lopped off waxen limbs don't melt/evaporate away.Last edited by Segev; 2017-02-22 at 07:04 PM.
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2017-02-22, 07:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
So, two more silly thoughts. The thread on water element creatures in cages made me realize you can make waxwork air elementals. I figure they look like the minis for the things.
You can also make trompe l'oeils of inherently invisible things, like Unseen Stalkers. That's a very expensive still life painted around a figure that's simply not there!
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2017-02-22, 07:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2006
Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Per the Universal Monster Rules: Regeneration: "Severed parts that are not reattached wither and die normally."
"normally" for a chunk of wax... isn't much decay. So... theoretically.Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.
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2017-02-22, 07:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
There's also the Alchemically Invisible template too.
I had an idea about Clockwork versions of oozes. Wireframe gears and ricepaper gear molds filled with alchemical gelatin.
Conical gears and such other whatnot means just about any shape is possible.
I imagine other amorphous Constructs as permutations on this design now by default.
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2017-02-22, 08:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Other than aesthetics, what advantages do clockwork constructs offer over their regular counterparts? I didn't see anything stand-out in the template.
Had quite another thought on a use for a Trompe L'oeil. Take your spellbook. Enchant it as an intelligent item (making it an animated object is optional). It is now a creature with an intelligence score. Make a Trompe L'oeil of your (intelligent construct) spellbook. Now, even if your spellbook is destroyed, you have a backup copy, and it will reform in the painting you keep in a safe location. You'll still have to keep the darned thing updated, of course.
It makes it easier to store them, though. The ability to enter image means that all you need is the crudest of inexpensive paint-works on a surface to make it into "a painting" that the spellbook can enter. Buy some tarot cards for it to lurk in. Do the same with all your spellbooks, if you like. Store whole libraries this way. Heck, your Trompe L'oeil canvass for them might be a large mural of bookshelves. You could even fake up a tablet reader by having a bunch of Trompe L'oeil books enter a single reasonably-sized painting and bring forth only the one you want to read, having it turn its pages for you within the painting itself.
Additionally, you can use the enter image property to slip these constructs under a door. If you want to strain the rules, nothing says the paintings they enter must be sufficiently large for them to fit through, so again, playing cards can store a Trompe L'oeil of any size and be slid under doors or through cracks. Creative use of mirage arcana might place murals wrapping around walls in useful ways for the Trompe L'oeils to slide anywhere they need to in the images.
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2017-02-22, 09:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Clockworks are crap. They even have a *1.5 price multiplier, for seemingly no reason.
I wish it wasnt so. Cuz I LIKE them. (Except the Mage wtf is up with it being unintelligent?!)
And don't Trompe L'oeil explicitly require a painting of their own dimensions?
Its dimensions must be at least as tall and wide as the trompe l’oeil itself.
This reminds me, the Tattoo Guardian has no limits on how many one can wear nor on how big a creature can be worn. There is the danger of having multiple Tattoo Guardians die if you take too much damage though. As written, they'll all take half the damage you do.
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2017-02-22, 10:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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2017-02-22, 10:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
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2017-02-22, 10:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Yeah... it's something of a problem with Shield Other - multiple castings don't reduce the target's damage any further, just gets the 'donors' more hurt. It's CR 3 and caster level 9. At 9th, it's essentially 14.5 k market / 7.5 k crafting for what amounts to 42 temp HP and two extra (weak) attacks. Has some use, as long as you don't let it get completely destroyed and get it fixed up with (Greater) Make Whole after battle. Hopefully you don't regularly take 80+ damage in a fight.
Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.
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2017-02-22, 10:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Oh, I guess you can easily keep clockwork constructs healed up with a clockwork servant.
that's kind of a feature.
Robutts are nice. Pity they're so expensive in price and basically impossible to actually make.
Unless maybe a Reclamation Robutt can make another Robutt without a lab, letting a non-Robutt version make Robots?
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2017-02-22, 10:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
On the one hand, I agree; it would make sense to limit Enter Image to paintings no smaller than the canvass from which they're spawned. On the other, there's something nifty about carrying a tarot deck with a Trompe L'oeil minion on each card.
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2017-02-22, 11:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
It is supposed to be yeah, but for that price hike the darned things just aren't worth it. For comparison, Robots have the same price hike built into their subtype too, they get sentience, skills, and feats. And they require an artifact to build.
That they can potentially benefit from minor healing AND require constant maintenance/winding is not worth paying for them by CR, let alone with the additional cost.
The Reclamation Robot could potentially recondition broken or timeworn robots one imagines. We ruled that at our table the Reclamation 'bot by itself can only rebuild the body, not reactivate the bot proper. For that it'd still need the Robotics Technological Laboratory.
Remember too that that tech artifact requirement can totally be hacked via making a Simulacrum of an Animated Object of said tech lab.
It's just dangerous because there are other, much less innocuous, tech artifacts that one could access in this fashion.
I say go with Rule-of-Cool. ThatTarotHarrow card idea is pure gold. Just be sure to double check with your GM first so it all pans out okay.
It will require a convo about what, exactly, qualifies as a painting.
Does paint spilled under a door then dried count? What about several layers or lines of paint? What about Shrink Item on an actual painting for 'cloth form' then sliding that under the door? What about Shrink Item on a Harrow deck's worth of paintings then gluing them to the cards?
Edit: Which is precisely why I prefer to combine it with higher HD creatures via the Amalgam template and the Price by CR rules. Is loads of fun AND lets you wear magical tattoos of your favorite monsters.Last edited by unseenmage; 2017-02-22 at 11:20 PM.
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2017-02-23, 08:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
You really like your optimization.
Oh, hey: A Trompe L'oeil qualifies for Construct Modifications. Construct Armor on something high-charisma makes for a suitable bonus HP pool (and it refills itself on destruction, with a delay). Crafter's Eyes is great on one intended as a spy. Rune-carved for anything you plan to send into battle, and the basic modifications (armor, ability scores, hit dice) are good for anything. Huh.Last edited by Jack_Simth; 2017-02-23 at 08:35 AM.
Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.
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2017-02-23, 08:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
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2017-02-23, 10:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
And yet, it's still more expensive on Animated Objects than just upping the size category, at least for improving Strength. (Admittedly, that comes at a Dex cost.) But it is solid evidence that one absolutely should not use +1 CR = +2 CP to add templates to them. A Simple Advanced Animated Object would add 2000 gp to its construction cost for +4 to all stats. Which, strangely, would give it 5s even in Wis and Cha. When normally adding +2 to a stat is 2000 gp...
Edit: Oh, hey, "weapon modification" only costs the price of the weapon to be added, and automatically makes the construct proficient with it. So any Animated Object weapons are automatically proficient with themselves! That is, in addition to their Slam attacks.
So animate, say, a heavy crossbow, and it can fire bolts with proficiency. Without having to pay for a "ranged attack" with CP.Last edited by Segev; 2017-02-23 at 10:49 AM.
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2017-02-23, 11:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
We banned the Advanced Template at our table. It's just too potent. Especially combined with Young.
We also play a lot of monster characters so the Ability Score Construct Mod and Advanced Template became wholly inappropriate unless repriced appropriately using Race Points and stat books respectively.
Wouldn't adding a weapon to an Animated Object that the object then wields require an appropriately sized weapon?
An Animated Object longsword works out to what; a tiny to small size creature? Adding a weapon to it means it would be wielding a fine to diminutive weapon?
Even if the weapon gets to 'wield itself' you're still paying for it twice. Once as per the cost of making an animated object and again as per the cost of making a weapon modification.Last edited by unseenmage; 2017-02-23 at 11:23 AM.
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2017-02-23, 11:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
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2017-02-23, 11:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Note however that Amalgam is third-party.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2017-02-23, 11:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Took us a while to realize that even if the Construct is mindless and the other creature isn't the template has an allowance that optionally lets the resultant Construct be mindless.
Which we took to mean the creator could easily control the Amalgam even in cases where one of the original creatures was deviously evilly genius.
Strip that genius away and viola, easily controlled mindless minion.
For retaining control of a, by default, evil genius mind things were potentially harder. We wound up deciding that so long as the commandable Construct half had more hit die the resultant Construct could be controlled.Last edited by unseenmage; 2017-02-23 at 11:34 AM.
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2017-02-23, 12:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?
Yeah, I don't think the Advanced template is meant for anything other than quick-and-dirty GM upgrades to monsters.
Interesting question. I think, at least, we have examples where that isn't the case. There is a sample animated object scythe that clearly is doing scythe damage but is priced as a construct of its size. Admittedly, we don't get construction costs, but it doesn't seem to have a size of a much larger creature than the scythe itself would be.
Technically, as it's the same weapon, you have it covered in the "original body" portion of the costs.
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2017-02-23, 02:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Craft Construct requires CL 5 - is it useful at that level?