Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S3|21: Math!.
This week is going to be a bit of a departure from the usual linear write-up. I found that this week, I was going digging in the rulebook a lot more than usual, so this week’s Sideshow will be more of a recap of some of those rules things.
Do I dare call it a “Rulebook Roundup”? Oh, I dare… I DARE. YEEEEE… HAWWWW, PARDNERS! (You can feel free to imagine me shooting finger guns if you like.)
The first thing that piqued my curiosity was the differences between stone and clay golems. I found myself fuzzy on what the significance of the distinction was (I don’t know if we just didn’t fight many golems in 1E, or if I just don’t remember those fights), or whether there was even a distinction worth mentioning.
Well, it turns out that they’re substantially similar in terms of base stats, except for a one-level difference in CR for the base models – clays start at CR10, stones at CR11. They have the same core golem antimagics (damage from cold and water, healed by acid, slowed by earth), though they do have different signature spell vulnerabilities: stone golems are affected by stone to flesh; clay golems are affected by disintegrate.
The real difference comes in their combat abilities. At the risk of oversimplifying, the stone golem is the debuffer, and the clay golem is more of a pure damage dealer. Stone golems inflict paralysis, have that charge that works like a bull rush, and can do an AoE slow. Clay golems can quicken themselves, rage, and their attacks do damage that can’t be healed by non-magical means. They both hit hard, certainly, but the stone golem feels like it has more nuance to it.
Speaking of abilities, I also wanted to clarify how the xulgath stoneliege ability worked, and that gets into our first real exposure to the petrified status. I had occasion to look this up recently – shopping for magic items in our Edgewatch game – so I actually knew the basics, but I wanted to hone in on the finer points. When you’re petrified, you literally become a statue. You become an object with a bulk and a hardness. You don’t age, and perhaps most importantly for strategic combat, your MIND stops as well, including perception of the battlefield around you. With the paralyzed status, you’re frozen, but you can still perceive and use mental checks like recalling knowledge. With petrified, you don’t even know what’s going on around you.
So here’s either a minor quibble or a cautionary tale about using keywords to arbitrate EVERYTHING. On one hand, if you read the petrified status as written, the xulgath would not have had the awareness to pop in and out of stone form like Steve was using it since they wouldn’t be able to discern the passing of time. On the other hand, if you take that sort of absolutist position it becomes absolutely as a self-activated power. Yes, I really want the power to turn myself into a statue in a way that robs me of the ability to deactivate it. So I think you have to handwave it a little and assume it’s LIKE the petrified status, but with some level of control over it since it’s a self-cast. So we also come to this: while keywords are certainly illuminating and can suggest the author’s intent, you can’t take keywords as 100% gospel because there will always be situations that don’t quite fit. Like this one.
Also worth mentioning: the text in the creature’s stat block specifically calls out grabbing a creature and then turning to stone, causing the grabbed creature to be immobilized. So there’s a tactical insight for playing one of these as a GM: have the stoneliege grab someone and have its buddies put a beating on it while the enemy is grabbed.
The other bit of rulebook fun this week involved gravity-related shenanigans: both Hap repeatedly falling out of the sky at the end of her round, as well as Alhara’s wall jump ability.
I guess the Hap one wasn’t really a rulebook controversy: that’s how cat fall works. Though the imagery of Hap bouncing up and down each round like a tennis ball is kind of amusing. The real mind-blower is the revelation that if/when you reach Legendary in Acrobatics, you can fall ANY distance and land on your feet without taking damage. Which, let’s be honest, seems a little silly for a non-magical Acrobatics feat. Get sucked out of an Airbus at cruising altitude? Just make sure to roll when you hit the ground or something.
Speaking of which… this isn’t a rulebook thing, but I found myself wondering what fall speed looks like represented as a Pathfinder movement speed. (I like converting units sometimes. Confession time: at one point in my past life, I tried to calculate what gold-pressed latinum from Star Trek would be worth in real life). Now, fall speed has multiple moving parts (acceleration, mass, wind resistance, height), but really quick back-of-the-envelope math using 120 mph as terminal velocity gave me something like 350 feet per 2-second action. If you were wondering. And just to bring it all full circle, someone who’s legendary in athletics just straightens their tie at the business end of that. What a strange game this is sometimes.
I also have to confess I also ran into a rulebook problem that turned out to not be one. When I was first listening to Alhara’s trick with the wall jump, I got the map a little turned around in my brain and thought she was actually jumping 100 feet total, which would break all sorts of jump rules. But I managed to get myself untangled and figured out she was jumping a normal horizontal distance and that the 100 feet was the distance to the ground if she’d failed her checks. So hey… a bit of a blind alley, but I learned a lot more about jumping rules, for the next time it comes up.
So in the midst of all that Rulebook Fu, our characters manage to clear out the xulgaths and the golem, leaving them with a hopefully clear path to cleaning up the second aeon tower. Is the small hut where the solution is to be found? Is there more unexplored area to come? Heck, are there any more fights to be had? I guess we’ll get into all of that next week. In the meantime, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.