We Are Stupid - Episode 123
Some people know all of the rules to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, but many, many more do not. Here’s a list of the things we screwed up in our never-ending search for Pathfinder perfection…
17 Episodes. 17 Episodes since we last made a mistake. Or was it 17 episodes since I last admitted we made a mistake? That’s sounds more accurate. 17 combat filled episodes, where mistakes abound, but We Are Stupid...strangely quiet. I’ve got no excuse. Time to get back on the wagon and analyze those mistakes that not only may have changed the very fabric of our characters’ reality, but should also be lessons for all those new GMs out there that seek Pathfinder perfection as we do.
Episode 123 is a long one and with that much recorded time, there’s plenty of mistakes to talk about. I’ll start with that dashing magical wolf: Lexington.Â
When I mentioned that his bite attack also as a “trip” ability, we seemed to conclude that I could decide to make a trip attempt instead of biting for damage. Here’s what the state looks like on my character sheet:
Melee  Bite +9 (1d6+3, plus trip)
Can I get a helping of stupid with a side of wrongsauce, please? That’s totally incorrect and drastically under-powers the ability. It says right in the ability that it’s plus trip, not or trip. C’mon, O’Brien. Not to mention that when Troy’s monsters have attacked us with a claw attack that reads “1d8+11, plus grab” you can be damn sure Troy’s rolling that damage and then rolling the grapple check. Not choosing one or the other. So, for future reference, here’s how it really works with our magical wolf: Lexington attempts to bite an opponent; make an attack roll. If the attack hits, I can roll a free combat maneuver roll at that moment to see if I happen to trip the creature. Aside from the fact that, as Matthew so kindly pointed out, an ooze is mechanically impossible to “trip”, I would be the one rolling the check and it would fail anyway, so why am I even talking about this? Because when we are stupid, we must be reminded.Â
There’s been a lot of attention thrown on Barron’s new teamwork feat Target of Opportunity, which gives him a free ranged attack as an immediate action when one of his allies hits an opponent within 30 feet. So does the ally need to be within 30 feet of Barron? Or does the opponent need to be within 30 feet of Barron? Or does the ally need to be 30 feet from the opponent? Or does does the opponent need to be within 30 feet of a Dairy Queen. We could ask these questions all day, but there’s only one correct answer as it turns out, and it’s the opposite of the one that Grant says. The correct answer is that Barron needs to be within 30 feet of the opponent that was hit by his ally. So, Nestor could be 150 feet away and with a successful attack on a creature that’s within 30 feet of Barron, Barron can get a shot off as an immediate action. If however, Nestor and Barron are 150 feet away from the target and Nestor hits, Barron might as well sharpen his gun, because he can’t do S**T. In Episode 123, Barron was about 40 feet away from an opponent that Nestor hit and Grant took the shot because he was within 30 feet of Nestor, but Grant is stupid. Don’t be like Grant.
When Sir Will and Lexington got themselves engulfed within the worm ooze of awfulness, Barron took a desperate conical shot with his dragon pistol to kill the creature and prevent it from suffocating the pair. A bold gesture, but we glossed over some mechanics here that are actually pretty cool.Â
A dragon pistol, if I’m understanding this correctly, has the Scatter weapon property which means it may fire in a cone if the wielder so chooses and if said wielder also loads the weapon with the proper scatter-shot ammunition. The dragon pistol can be used to shoot a single bullet at a single target (albeit at a shorter range of only 10 feet). When using the scatter property, however, Barron would need to make separate attack rolls for each target within the cone, all at a -2. So, attack roll on the ooze, then a roll on Sir Will, then a roll for Lex...and so on. You take the good with the bad though. We rolled over Grant’s hit onto Lexington’s flat-footed AC, which seems unfair, but Grant also could have CRIT and permakilled Lexington if he landed a “Nestor” roll, as I like to call it. A “Nestor” roll is when you roll a critical hit against your ally’s f***ing animal companion. Lesson learned here and we’ll try to remember that the next time Grant pulls out his dragon pistol 60 episodes from now.
Though there are more mistakes in this episode, I’m only going to mention one more because I’m running out of time: critical hits and constructs. When the oozes we fought in 123 were in clay form, we considered them constructs and though Skid rolled multiple natural 20s during the combat (some of which were against the clay form) we declared emphatically and with complete and utter confidence in our knowledge as actual play podcasters that “constructs are immune to critical hits and precision damage”. Uuuuh, yes, can I please have the chef’s salad topped with wrongnuts please? Idiots. The episode was 2 hours long because We Are Stupid. If we’d simply let Skid have his triple damage fan criticals, we would have been out of there in a cool hour and ten minutes! While oozes are immune to critical hits, constructs are not. This was news to me. Apparently, we made a common mistake and carried over an understood rule from D&D 3.5 that constructs are immune to critical hits. In fact, Pathfinder changed that rule and since we play Pathfinder, we should probably play by those rules. The Pathfinder ones. So, bring it, Lavallee! The next construct we see is getting crit to death immediately! Keen everything! Let’s do this!
This article would not have been possible without hard work and contributions of Pathfinder rule expert David Stronczek. Thanks, David.
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