Admiral Jose Monkamuck's page

I’m currently running a Pathfinder game on Saturdays and I have said I would allow some material from 3.x to be updated to Pathfinder, subject to approval of course. One player already took advantage of that by bringing in a Dragonfire Adept from the Dragon Magic book. This isn’t about that conversion, although anyone who wants to see the changes I made I’ll happily post or email it.

This thread is about another player. One of the players (who is currently playing a monk) asked if there were any good ninja classes. Now you can play a really good ninja by just re-skinning the rogue. If you really want to take 1 level of fighter so you are visibly competent using any martial weapon and all armors, plus 1 or 2 levels of monk so you can beat people with your unarmed attacks. Still people want an actual ninja class, and I answered his question honestly. To me in all the 3.0 and 3.5 books I’ve looked in, including OGL books, I’ve only seen 2 ninja-esque classes that were remotely good. In the Rokugan book there is a core ninja class with some very interesting abilities (int bonus to initiative, 5 x con mod to base speed and a dodge pool that can be divided among multiple opponents are the only ones I can remember.) The other is a 3.0 class called the Ninja of the Crescent Moon. It has some of the coolest abilities over, but is BROKEN. Fighter’s BAB, all saves good saves, 1d6 sneak attack at every odd level, monk AC bonus, minimum of two special abilities per level. You can see the problem. Still it is one I used to love some of the concepts from (especially always sneaky).

He liked the sound of it too and wanted to try to get that updated. I told him there were only 1 or 2 people in the world who could teach him. Thanks to a deck of wonderous things managed to find and convince one of those people. So I wanted opinions on my update of the class:

Requirements:
BAB: +6
Feats: Improved Unarmed Attack, Deflect Arrows, Quickdraw
Stealth: 10 ranks
Other: Evasion class feature, must have a teacher

Stats:
HD d8
BAB: rogue’s
Fort: bad
Ref: good
Will: bad

1st: 1d6 Sneak attack, Monk AC, poison use
2nd: Improved Evasion
3rd: 1d6 sneak attack
4th: fast climb
5th: 1d6 sneak attack
6th: Silencing Attack
7th: 1d6 sneak attack
8th: fast sneak
9th: 1d6 sneak attack
10th:Always Sneaky, Blindsense 10ft radius

Sneak attack: As per rogue

Monk AC: AC bonus as a monk of his level or stacks with existing monk levels.

Poison Use: as per assassin

Improved Evasion: as per rogue

Fast Climb: the character is an expert at climbing quickly and carefully. He can climb at one-half normal speed without taking a -5 penalty and may always take 10 on climb checks. He may choose to take a -10 penalty to climb at his normal movement speed. Further he does not lose his dexterity bonus to AC while climbing.

Silencing Attack: When making a sneak attack the rogue may attempt to silence his target. The target is allowed a fort save DC 10 + class level + int. The effect lasts for 1 round.

Fast Sneak: You can move at your full move while using stealth without taking a penalty, and you are not penalized for hiding quickly when observers are distracted. You may take a -20 penalty to run while sneaking.

Blindsense: You are attuned to your surroundings and able to detect the slightest changes in them. This provides you Blindsense in a 10ft radius.

Always Sneaky: You are considered to be taking 10 on sneak at all times unless you specifically state otherwise. If an opponent is distracted or unable to see you at any time they must roll again to locate you. You can hide even if you have no cover or concealment of any kind, but this is at a -20 penalty. The penalty for taking a sniping shot is reduced to -10.

I took away most of the weird stuff (like being able to hypnotize people with complicated hand gestures or being able to ethereal jaunt).
Let me know what you all think. Is it too powerful? Not powerful enough? Any abilities it seems like they should have?

Oh, and all abilities are extrodinary abilities.

As has been mentioned in a few other threads in addition to the Pathfinder game I run on Saturdays, I am also currently running a game using the Anima system on Tuesdays. That will soon be coming to an end. Not that I will cease running on Tuesdays, but I've done as much with the Anima game as I feel I want to.

So this thread will be dedicated to the new campaign I am working on for Tuesdays. I will be using the GURPS system, current looking at 200 point characters, 50 points of disadvantages and 5 poins of quirks. Each character must be human and must be from Earth. They can be from past, present or future. It can be an earth with magic or an earth with psychics.

The characters will all wake up togather with only the cloths on their backs and no idea how they got there. "There" will prove to be a landscape completely barren of life with a modern day town in the distance. From there survival will be up to their skills and luck.

The inspiration for this game will be taken from many places, virtually all of which fall into the horror or post-apocalyptic categories. Some of the main inspirations are 28 Day Later, Zombieland, Resident Evil, Biomeet-Necter (manga) and the horror manga of Junji Ito. It's going to be gruesome.

Currently there are 12 players expected to be in the game. It was 11 but Tanis expressed an interest in joining, and is one of the only players I would allow to do so. I am encouraging the players to post journals using this thread. Audience participation would be most welcome. If you have suggestions for horrible things for them to come across in their journey through a destroyed world please feel free, just put in a spoiler tag. Any of my players who read spoiler tags will be docked exp. Also if you have any suggestions for the players go ahead and make them. They will need the help.

I expect a character death or two in the first session. While I’ll do my best to not try and trick the characters into getting killed, it will still be a dangerous world. One wrong move could kill you and anyone nearby.

**Before reading or posting on this thread please understand that it is NOT a place to complain about the GM killing your favorite character or being unfair in the game.**

Something that has been bothering me for a while now as I have run into it several times is an occational lack of basic courtesy by GMs. Mainly I'm refering to GMs who can't make a session for whatever reason but don't bother to tell the players ahead of time, or explain/appologize for what happened afterwards.

The players are planning their time around the game and all their plans are screwed up when the GM doesn't show. I personally feel I have a commitment to my players to at an absolute minimum let them know as soon as humanly possible when a game has to be canceled. Unless you are in the hospital or prison it's simply a matter of picking up your cell phone and calling someone in the group to say "no game today".

The worst example of GM and frankly player discourtesy I've ever seen involved a fairly large gaming group. A very limited number of the players got togather (including the current GM) to decide on a new game and to only invite their very favorite players. the majority of the group was not invited to this meet, the details of what happened where kept secret so that no one would actually have to tell anyone to thier face that there was a complaint. Further those not invited to the new game were never told when the current game would end, and in fact were were rediculed and insulted when they asked about what was going on.

I myself am not and have not been a perfect player or GM. I will admit that when I was younger I was not as mature or entertaining as a player as I am now. I also understand that thing happen in RL that over rule running a game. Still a simple call saying it is canceled or an appology and brief explanation afterwards doesn't seem to much to ask.

What is the basic level of courtesy you expect from the other people you play with? For the players out there what sort of courtesy to you expect from your GM? For the GM's what sort of courtesy do you feel you owe the players, and for that matter what courtesies do you feel they owe you in return?

Well Lads and Lasses, it has been an impressive victory for the Admiral and his loyal captains. Yes, I am now the admiral of my very own seven-ship fleet. This wussy little “Crimson Fleet” has been captured and Far Shore is safe.

We spent the last few months building up the village to prepare for this attack. Some of our more last minute changes were the addition of some nets to block the harbor mouth. Plus two stone huts at the outcroppings to raise a lower the net, as well as keep watch. Somewhere along the way blabbermouth managed to find herself a griffin named buttercup, which she wanted to ride into battle.

As we were putting up these little changes Da Fighter mentioned an idea he had heard somewhere, probably a bar. He suggested that one of us take the cloak of the manta and go under the ships and use Lady Tightbutt’s admantine sword to cut the keels out from under them.

After listening to Lady Tightbutt whine for a while about the fact that she didn’t want someone to accidentally lose the sword that she never uses and that she is too fragile to do it herself, the Journalist and I remembered our fun little water breathing spells. Since one casting would keep the whole lot of us from drowning for 3 hours each, we decided to just go after the keels together. We made sure that we stayed in the watch towers at the entrance to the cove once we thought the attack was close. To back us up we made sure that each tower had at least two villagers on watch at all times, plus the fastest runners were stationed there to take word to the village of the attack. Once the pirates showed up we would take out several ships from underwater, then take over the flagship.

Unfortunately the Crimson Fleet decided not to play along with this plan. We saw the huge fog bank roll up in the middle of the night, so the I assumed it was them using magic to cover their arrival. We immediately got ready and set out while making sure to send the runner to the village. As we climbed down the rocks we noticed something we hadn’t thought of, although we should have. The sorry b*stards were sending out launches instead of bringing the ships in. Plus I and some others spotted several figures standing on the flagship that were definitely not usual crew.

This called for an immediate change of plans. Instead of sinking ships that only had skeleton crews on them, I decided we would head directly to the flagship and take out their heavy hitters before they could get deployed. It was the classic tactic of cutting off the head. I took the time to call on a few blessings of Kord on the way there. Sir Ineptus was the first to get to the ship, by a slim margin. He crawled partway onto the ship, hoping to hide. I got there next and was far less subtle. I jumped onto deck and shouted “jump overboard, there’s only sharks there”.

On the deck was Vanthas, looking much uglier than I had heard about before, some sailors and four archers. They were joined rather quickly by three demons and eventually some sort of spell caster. The Journalist took to the air, and Vanthas quickly followed her, thinking her an easy target. Da Fighter, Sir Ineptus and me dispatched two of the three demons in short order and with little injury besides some sort damn vines. You try so hard to keep yourself clean and then stuff sprouts anyway.

Up in the air, Vanthas managed to seriously put the hurt on the Journalist, including using poison to take out almost all her spell casting. Unfortunately for him Buttercup flew down and ripped off the tips of his fingers on his better hand. This sent him fleeing back to the ship.

By the time Vanthas got to the ship, some Spellcaster had stepped out on deck. This promptly got him charged by Sir Hexen who ripped him a new one, of course his return attack did the same to Sir Inpetus. When the archers finally got in their attacks on Sir Ineptus almost putting him under. Lady Tightbutt was replying to the arrow volleys with fireballs, but hadn’t managed to take any of them out yet. I threw a dispel magic over my shoulder at the mage as I turned to deal with the last demon. That plus Da Fighter’s javelin finished off the spell caster before he could do much besides smack Sit Ineptus around.

The Journalist rallied enough to swing down and heal Sir Ineptus with her remaining powers before grabbing some trinket and disappearing. Sir Ineptus took cover from the archers in the cabin. Da Fighter was working on finishing off the annoying buggers as I took care of the last demon, when Vanthas finally returned to the ship.

He pulled out some huge pearl looking thing just before Sir Ineptus emerged from the cabin and chopped him in half. The pearl dropped and started spewing out some sort of acid stuff. Da Fighter recognized it from some cove they went to before I joined the group. He had Torsin slap him with a fly spell, grabbed the damn thing and head out to sea at speed. In the meantime I hopped on Buttercup and me and Blabbermouth head back to town to help against the longboats. Sir Ineptus and Lady Tightbutt stayed on the ships to put out the flames and take over the remaining ones from the skeleton crews they had aboard.

It’s a good thing that Da Fighter flew off with that pearl, it drove everyone on the longboats nuts so they killed each other. It’s only his quick thinking that saved the town from the same fate. The only thing that actually reached the town were four flesh golems, which emerged from the water only to get dowsed with about 20 gallons of alchemist fire each.
In the end not a single one of us even went unconscious. No Farshore inhabitant was even scratched. Not a single pirate managed to escape alive. We have 5 more ships, for a total of seven in our fleet. I am now the admiral of the Farshore Navy. Each of our little crew has their own ship and crew. I of course kept the sea wyvern. I call that a total and overwhelming victory.