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Alchemist's Bomb

Discussion in 'Pathfinder' started by Daeruin, Jul 9, 2011.

  1. Daeruin

    Daeruin New Member

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    One of my players is running an Alchemist, currently level 3. His bomb ability requires a Throw Splash Weapon attack, for which he has a +1 from the Throw Anything feat. Its damage right now is 2d6+4 at the epicenter plus the creature catches fire, taking 1d6 points of fire damage every round until the fire is put out. The bomb also does 6 hits of splash damage in a 10-foot radius, with a Reflex save reducing it to half damage. He can do 9 bombs per day. How would you set this up?

    Right how I have entered in a Thrown attack with a +1 to hit that does 0 damage. Then I have two abilities: one for the epicenter and one for the splash, since they do different amounts of damage. It seems like there must be a better way to do it. I thought of putting the epicenter damage on the Thrown attack, but that doesn't apply the fire damage over time. The splash damage has to be a separate ability, because it requires a template and a Reflex save. Any suggestions?
     
    #1 Daeruin, Jul 9, 2011
  2. edwardcd

    edwardcd Administrator
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    Currently, that is the best way to handle the situation in my view if you want "the computer" to handle it all. Alternatively, there's always the "make the players remember all that stuff" way too.. aka, each round the player says "ongoing damage (roll dice) 3!" and if they forget, less damage for the enemies.

    So yeah, right now the way you described is how I would go about it. Perhaps in a future (winter?) update on d20Pro that some of these effects can be easier to implement since that would free up a lot of the GM's time by not having to create two or more separate abilities to take into account something like Level dependent duration, damage, effect, and etc.; or, is failed a save (this happens), if passed the save (this different thing happens).
     
    #2 edwardcd, Jul 10, 2011
  3. Daeruin

    Daeruin New Member

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    Actually in our game last night I realized the "epicenter" ability, as I've been calling it, won't work either. There's no way to set up an effect that does an initial amount of damage, and then a different amount of damage over time . . . at least, not that I could tell.

    I've begun to get quite frustrated with the spell system and really the entire effects system in d20pro. Any time savings I might have gotten out of d20pro is cancelled by the work that has to go into keeping track of spells, creating effects, and all that business. I've decided to give up on all that and just do it manually, as you suggested. Players will have to write down their daily spells somewhere and keep track of their slots on their own. We'll just roll saves and damage manually.
     
    #3 Daeruin, Jul 10, 2011
  4. maxwell

    maxwell New Member

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    For keeping track of resources (like potions, scrolls etc) and spells, my group uses a google doc that we can all see. Everyone has their spells per day and consumable items listed. It seems easier than using D20pro right now.
     
    #4 maxwell, Jul 10, 2011
  5. neofax

    neofax New Member

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    Unless you have a cray supercomputer sitting in your house or a crap ton of linux systems wired up to run as one, there is no way a computer will ever work as good as the human mind. Going down the road of making the software handle every possible outcome is not efficient. At some point the code will become so cumbersome that the return on investment actually costs more than what it would make. I suggest just having your players remember what their character's follow on damage does.
     
    #5 neofax, Jul 10, 2011
  6. phloog

    phloog Member

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    True that a computer might never handle ALL things well, but it does seem like when these sorts of fairly straightforward procedures come up, a decent program should handle them...there's quite a bit of room between being able to do ANYTHING and what is being asked here, which is really just "allow me to put an effect in place that does X on round 1, and Y on subsequent rounds until ended" -- I'm no programmer, but it would take me about forty minutes to create a macro in Excel that does this.

    And of course it would be different if this weren't something that is absolutely now standard in the PF rules.
     
    #6 phloog, Jul 10, 2011
  7. ogexam

    ogexam Member

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    The ability to have an effect first to X then Y in the following rounds is on our list to add. So hang in there.

    What you could do in the mean time is create an ability that has an effect that does ongoign damage 6.
    Have an attack that is your initial attack.

    Have the player do their initial attack and and the ability on the adjacent creatures. That way you get the ongoing damage on for the next rounds while you get your initial damage from the attack.

    We are looking into being able to directly link attacks to abilities and effects which will give you the Do X damage on initial attack then Y damage there after.
     
    #7 ogexam, Jul 11, 2011
  8. Daeruin

    Daeruin New Member

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    I'm glad it's on the list. Thanks for letting me know. I hope the ability for players to edit their own characters will be included in the next update as well. This is probably the one issue that is making me consider giving up on d20pro. It's a huge time suck for me as the GM.

    Your suggestion would actually work pretty well. If I shift the initial damage to the attack itself, then I can still have two abilities—one for the damage over time, and one for the splash damage. Still a bit clunky, but it could work.
     
    #8 Daeruin, Jul 11, 2011
  9. kelendros

    kelendros New Member

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    The way I understand it...and its quite possible that I am wrong, Is that they are working on Spell effects and event's such as this. I am interested to see what happens when the changes roll out.

    and for the sake of argument, computers are already more powerful than the human mind they just don't know it yet ;)
     
    #9 kelendros, Aug 28, 2011
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