All DMs are evil's page

Gaining extra experience points after 3rd level than the rest of the group is kind of a big advantage.

It does mean at some points the favoured characters will be a level ahead of the others.

The 10% bonus is almost exactly what you are penalised for being a level higher than your companions, so they never get to catch you back up.

I like the hitpoint idea, or maybe a plus one bonus to all your class skills.

I have used the MAx hit points at first level and the fixed hit points from then onward for some years now.

It works for me, but I do use heavily modified death and dying rules, which effectively give the characters an extra 10 Hit points before risk of death. I will post them on here under a different thread as a rule option for people to look at.

So if you are going to use the standard -1 and dying rules, then you may want to have the characters have a few more hit points to start.

Depends on if they don't revise Wish to simply cost you years of age again. ;)

breaks down when you get to Elves, what is a year or so going to matter to them.

The universal any one spell as James suggested seems a better idea.

What does QFT mean?

You can class me as a "fan boy", I was dismayed when my dungeon magazine got turned electronic, mainly for the reason that I do most of my reading in the office (substitute the word Lavatory for office and you get my gist).

So when the pathfinder campaign was released I was very impressed, I play pen and paper roll playing and what I heard of 4th edition has left me feeling it is aimed at a different generation from us +30 year old and above players. I might be wrong and i will certainly keep an open mind, but i am very reluctant to change versions again and my group of 7 players have said the same.

Refining the current rules is a good idea and what I have seen so far in the Alpha release is great, now i wonder if i can get some of my house rules in there?

I am absolutely over the moon with the direction you have chosen to head in.

I can now safely know that the Path-finder campaign world and adventure paths will keep me and my fellow players amused for years to come.

I'll be asking them all to download and read the Alpha release as soon as possible.

Good work in giving us players who don't want to convert to 4.0 an avenue to continue our adventures.

*must resist urge to do a silly happy dance*

1) Has anyone thought of technological advancements from a religious point of view?

In the real world, at certain times scientists have been persecuted by the religious establishments because their theories go against what they teach their followers. Darwin springs to mind, but I am sure you can all find many more examples.

Now transport that to a fantasy world, here peoples beliefs are not based on faith alone, here the fundamental principles of the real earth bound religions do not apply. So you don't have to have faith that you go to hell if you sin or are rewarded with eternal bliss if you are good. In fact religions in any fantasy game with priests are based on proof, those priests are living proof that God exists. So if the church tells you that their god created man and Darwin comes along and says "well actually we came from apes", who is going to be believed? I would go so far as to say Darwin would be stoned as a sinner.

So in my humble opinion a lot of the basics of science get limited by religion, not magic.

2) Now where do guns and gunpowder come into this equation? The church is probably not going to out law gun makers as sinners, after all they are not contradicting any of the churches fundamental beliefs. This is where the mages guilds come into play, can you see the mages guilds of any fantasy world allowing people to get hold of gun powder (or similar advancements)?
Gun powder can be used by any idiot with very little training, casting a spell as destructive as that is the realm of wizards, wizards who get a high proportion of their income from casting spells for people. They are not going to let any one undermine their trade.

3) My final point is simple, being an inventor usually implies a creative, inquisitive mind with a pretty high degree of intelligence. Wouldn't most of the inventors automatically become wizards by default because of their thirst for knowledge and high intelligence? In that case you take a huge chunk of the inventors out of the equation immediately. This would slow the advance of science to a crawl on its own.
Edit, point 3 was covered by "Cheddar Bearer" above.

The key to the map is indead wrong, but no fear the answer exists on this forum.

Do a search for this thread "http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pathfinder/runelords/archives/magnima rMapsScaleWrongupjd"

It should bring up a discussion on this matter and a link to a map with the correct key on it. The map is a blog entry if I recall correctly and has extra details.

In case you can't find the link, here is the correct key as posted by Paizo:

1: The Alabaster District
2: The Marble District
3: Naos
4: The Irespan
5: Bridgeward
6: The Capital District
7: Grand Arch
8: Vista
9: The Bazaar of Sails
10: Dockway
11: Lowcleft
12: The Arvensoar
13: Keystone
14: Beacon's Point
15: Rag's End
16: The Marches
17: Silver Shore
18: Kyver's Islet
19: Ordellia
20: Underbridge

Thanks Mary,

I had been thinking of maybe using the carpenter, but I like the children idea.

Testing.

As Mary has pointed out that she can not post to this, i thought i would have a go.

I am running with 7 PC's as well, they were only built on 25 points and we are only using the stock 3.5 books, with anything tied to this campaign added. This has limited their power to a certain extent.

At a basic level, if the encounter is 4 goblins, make it 6 or 7. This should allow you to leave the main singular villains as written, the party should expend the same sort of resources as a standard group.

Large encounters, such as the 10 goblins in briar tunnels, are best left as they are, or they become unmanageable.

You do need to add a bit extra treasure into the game, I am finding that adding one more magic item to each main villain and multiplying the treasure values by 1.5 is working well. Don't forget that if they find one silver weapon, you may want to make it two silver weapons.

Use story rewards, if you do not use them, the party will always be a level behind, this can cause some problems as has been mentioned above.

You may seriously need to consider adding 5' to each rooms length and depth, otherwise the combats become very congested.

Also please keep in mind that there are only haunts for 6 characters in the skinsaw mansion. I still have not worked out how to combat that, simplest solution is to have some haunts effect a two characters. The party reached that part on Thursday, so i need to make my mind up by then. I did consider adding the carpenters haunts in, but i can't work out some unique haunts for him.

20th level option. How about run the path exactly as it is, but when they get to the end villain, add a big off plane adventure in there, in stead of the end encounter. That gives you the ability to level him up and use a lot of the high powered monsters (or written adventures). That would allow you to not have to alter the AP, that is time you could spend on other things.

Hope that helps, let me know how it is working for you and i'll try and point out any pitfalls i come across.

I have not read the section on this yet, so I can only make some guesses and assumptions.

1) Imps
a) Don't breed, so there is a finite number of them.
b) People dislike them, after all they are evil and most people are not.

2) Psuedo-dragons
a) Do breed, so they have a big advantage in numbers.
b) Are probably pretty loved by the populace, a kin to the way people love dolphins and hate sharks.

3) As the rules stand, this means that the imps are always going to be able to kill the psuedo-dragons at will.

Last year while in the foot hills of Wales, I watched a flock of Starlings take on and drive off a Buzzard. This was done by repeated use of their faster movement, agility and numbers. The poor buzzard, just gave up and went home in the end. This would be my take on it, the imps are controlled by where they can go and what they can do, if they trespass on the psuedo-dragons territory, they get mobbed in large numbers. they are most likely invisible, so if they retaliate they become visible and that attracts the attention of the humans, who can hurt them and probably consider them a nasty infestation, where as the psuedo-dragons are probably seen as lovably characters. Again I am assuming that the humans have grown up in a symbiotic relationship with the dragons, who probably do a mighty fine job of keeping vermin under control.

A second take on it would be to consider how honey bees deal with wasps. The wasps can literally, sting the bees to death and bite them in twain. The bees can't hurt the wasps, their sting can't penetrate their armour and their bites are too weak. The bees know this and swarm the wasps, in real life they actually cook the wasps in side an oven of bees. In this analogy I would suggest that the psuedo-dragons could grapple flying imps and cause the writhing mass to fall to the ground. Does Damage reduction negate falling damage? The fall will kill psuedo-dragons, but I assume if the imps are killing them, the sacrifice of enough of them to kill one imp is probably a sacrifice they will probably make. If the fall is low enough to allow the imps and dragons to survive, the imp is on the ground in a mass of writhing grappling, pinning psuedo-dragons. Humans can then join in.

First off, if you are a player who has not yet played the second adventure path module, get the hell out of here.

Now down to business, I am running a party of 7 characters in the rise of the rune lords AP. This has all the usual problems associated with it, under powered encounters, less exp, not enough magic items, ect. I am dealing with those issues no problem (in my opinion).

What I am struggling with, is adding a new category of haunts to the list, I am drawing a literal blank on it, not like me, I hope my creative juices have not dried up.

Have any of you wonderful people got ideas for at least two new haunts so I can ensure all my characters get 2 each (+ the universal ones). If you can think of a class for them, that would also work.

Feel free to tie them to a room number if you want.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

All DMs are evil wrote:

You should type up and post that list, a few of us might want to steal it.

Can do. It's a little long, so I'll put it behind a cut.

** spoiler omitted **

Consider that "yoinked" and accept my gratitude.

EDIT, sorry Robin, didn't see you had mentioned doors as well. Great minds and all that.

Yeth hounds don't have opposable digits do they? If not, then they only have to run as far as a door.

Also, if Orik is befriended, have him know more about the hounds instead, especially that they can't be hurt with normal weapons. In my campaign, the hounds were the children of Nualia, so it had really grossed him out.

i am sure there is at least one silver dagger in the adventure as well, I might be wrong about that as i don't have it with me, if not, it is easy to add one.

Greetings All,

My party just wrapped up a session last Friday, and we left off with them accepting Aldern's offer to go on a boar hunt. One of the PCs is none too trustworthy of the noble set, and wants to do some investigating on him before they leave. I think he actually suspects Aldern of having a hand in the goblin raid, which will be great fun to play around with. >)

One of the other party members grew up in the Sandpoint area and spent a few years recently in Magnimar. Having the advantage of being able to access the background information on the Foxgloves in The Skinsaw Murders, how much of that information would be accessible to a Gather Information check?

Going by the wording in the text, certain things would be either common knowledge or a low DC to get (Foxglove Manor being called 'The Misgivings', Aldern's whirlwind marriage to Iesha, the general bad luck that the family seems to have had over the years). Would this be a reasonable assumption, or am I missing something?

I would love for Mr. Pett and Mr. Jacobs (...that sounds so MIB) to weigh in on this one, but (as always) all thoughts are welcome. Thanks in advance!

Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"

Remember that the gather information check in the AP2 on page 23 are a bit biased towards the events in that adventure, but do contain information available at any point of time. the DC's for the information you asked about are all going to be around the DC15 to 20 level (based on the existing DC's).

How about taking some of the other information available in that module and using that.

I'll hide the rest below a spoiler for to protect the innocent:

I was planning on digging up the dragon ante and using that for character creation when we get to Crimson Throne, as that is many months away, i hope this is fleshed out and finalised by then.

So far it looks really good. My poor players only get to play with 25 points these days, muhahahahahaha.

Thanks for the answers, so I think based on what you have said, I will make characters choose what sort of damage they inflict before they draw. Otherwise Sythes become pretty awesome.

I also like the triple confirmation for none major villains, in my game, if a bad guy has a name listed, then he is classed as a major bad guy. It is a great way of scaring my party.

We use a metal A4 sized plate, we blue-tack a piece of paper with a grid numbered -10 to 30 on it for initiative. Each square is big enough to take a lower case letter from fridge magnets.

Each character has his own letter, bad guys also get a letter if they have a name, otherwise they get a round "Nobo bored" magnet. Works pretty well, I am sure their is a market for it somewhere, as it is quicker than the commercial ones available.

With these cards, when a letter appears, they are going to be even more jumpy.

I just got my deck in the post, going to introduce them tomorrow when my group meets.

Very impressed with them so far.

Quick question for any one already using these:

With a weapon that deals two types of damage, for example the dagger can deal piercing or slashing, are you letting the characters choose which type of critical they inflict after the card is drawn?

It doesn't affect many weapons, but the weapons it does effect tend to be ones not heavily used in my campaign, so that is how I am planning on running those weapons.

I've been trying to keep at least the broad strokes of the various NPCs in my mind, and I made particular note of which characters were sought out by the PCs most often. I noticed, for example, that they seemed to be interacting with "generic watchman" a lot, so I named all twelve along with a brief phrase of characterization for each. Then I drew up the watch schedule, so at leat I know who's on duty when.

I think that it's all about the NPCs. You're on the right track, and now it's just a matter of internalizing what all those people are like.

You should type up and post that list, a few of us might want to steal it.

I used a few of the colourful characters as reoccurring encounters, the half-orc dung collector (who's name escapes me at the moment) tried to start a fight on the pretty boy sorcerer in the hagfish, got charmed and has now become his best buddy in the world. His cries of "mate" make that character want to dive for cover.

I love the idea of introducing the boat, the Paradise, to the party before hand.

I had kind of assumed it was a static barge in my mind. But I see no reason for it to be a magic powered river tramp boat, the only boat heading in that direction.

We are several weeks away from this but i am going to start fleshing this part out.

Has any one run this variation with the PC's being the ones who cause the boats destruction?

Also has any one got a decent tramp steamer map?

All DMs are evil wrote:

*schtuff*

That's actually a fairly good suggestion, as long as he doesn't mind the book-keeping... Kudos to you.

Glad to help, i appreciate it when characters think out of the box, I wish a few more of my party did the same. My ranger hasn't even considered his companion yet and he is now 3rd.

Still sad about the true masters passing.

Amen to that, I was trying to explain to my group what he meant to the game and us long term gamers, a few of them have only been around since the the creation of 3.0. Best way i could sum it up was that none of us would be here in this room if it were not for his creativity. Two of my mates who are best buddies, would never of met and i would of lost contact with 3 of them from high school.

I wonder which outer plane he has chosen?

I would love to see your cliff hanger pass the chapter, I am a great admirer of both your works.

My wife is going to go bonkers when she realises I have added another subscription :-)

maybe I should start putting these through as business expenses?

Looking forward to the first one, August is sooo long away.

a) You could just not let him start with one, but with the promise that one would become available latter on.

b) The other solution I would offer him, is to give him a very young (teenager) Gecko, so it is about the same strength as hunting dog (possibly guard dog) to start with. So reduce its size to small, HD, str ect, in line with the guides for reducing/increasing size in the monster manual. I would charge him the same cost as a hunting dog if he had brought it.

The advantage of this, is that Geckos are fairly quick growing creatures, so this will allow you to age him (advance his HD) as the adventure progresses. You could also break the animal companion rules and allow this particular one to grow to Large size, so he can serve as a mount.

By 12th level, the Gecko would have 6HD more than the standard creature as an animal companion of a ranger, but their would be better options available to him. This is why I would start the Gecko as a base 8HD large sized creature as per the creature advancement rules, then regress it to 1HD as a teenager for him to start. Compare its progression against the rangers animal companion advancement to see how it works out in comparison. I am at work so I can't do the math at the moment, but it would be a nice way of giving him what he wants early, but not allowing it to over power the group. It also keeps it useful through out the adventure.

In meta gaming terms, Geckos are cold blooded, this means they need heat to function. Could be a problem latter on in adventures. But a ring of warmth could solve that problem.

Hope this is less confusing than it sounds.

Classic, I can't wait for my group to get to this point. We are only 3-4 sessions away by my calculations.

Let us know if they take the easy road and lie or come clean.

Wouldn't Horran make a fantastic replacement PC if one of the characters die?

(edit, nice Avatar by the way).

My party of 7 second level characters, ran away from her and bricked up the entrance tunnel at both ends and asked the town guard to routinely patrol it, they have vowed to never return again.

No one thought outside the box, so they paid the cost of getting there butts kicked by several inches of bad assness (made up word).

Well done to you and your fellow players.

There are loads of entertaining fights ahead of you in this s AP.

Try and avoid the spoilers.

I love Rise of the Runelords.

I'm having so much fun!

That is all.

I agree, add my vote to the having a great time running this AP.

My 7 players are enjoying them selves as well, so all is good in my little corner of the fantasy world.

As I think we've mentioned before, Pathfinder is not the proving ground for wild new ideas or relatively unpopular topics. You are far more likely to see an epic or psionic one-shot module than an entire PF adventure path dedicated to such a topic.

Hurrah :-)

Mosaic wrote:

But if it's set in stone, so be it. I'll adapt.

Well it is...

because it's underground.

HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Groan........ (OK I'll admit that it made me chuckle, what does that say about me?)

By the way, I am warming to the Darklands, kind of reminds me of Night Below boxed set adventure in some way.

I can't get my head around how people love high level play and Epic blows my mind? I suppose it would be boring if we were all the same.

I find adventures above 15th level very difficult to run and getting the balance correct between killing a big part of the group and them walking over your encounters is a nightmare. All the players I know love the feel of 4th to 12th level, after that it gets a bit less fun. It is not just my DMing either, as I have played in several groups and we all feel the same way.

I vote for more adventure paths wrapping up at 15th level. I am also not a huge fan of Psionics, but I have no problem with them being exclusive to my bad guys. I actually like it when the villains can do things that the players could never do. Makes them more unique.

My ideal world would be sightly less powerful than typical, with the main movers and shakers of the world being 12th level. this means that once the PC's reach 15th level, they are real powers. I disliked the forgotten realms, high/epic level NPC round every corner feel. I get the impression from the APs that Golarion (sp?) is very much in the same sort of mould as my likes.

All DMs are evil wrote:

Reminds me of the microprose game Darklands from 1992.

Go to Darklands

Fantastic old game, shame it doesn't run on my PC any more.

get yourself dosbox.

I can get it working, but it crashes, even with the latest patches. No idea why. But thanks for the suggestion.

I love those old games.

Any chance on it being more "hollow earth" than "underdarky?" (not referring to the old Hollow World setting, just hoping for dinos and stone age civilizations versus drow/illithid confict.)

No danger of any mind flayers, they are "intellectual" property of the enemy, I mean Wizards of the Coast. Which is good, as I don't actually like mind flayers that much.

That journel is bloody brilliant, I really hope you plan on doing more of the hand outs.

I wish I had access to it when I ran that part as it will add loads to any groups enjoyment.

I still maintain that a section for player aids on this official site would be brilliant, especially if we could rate them.

I must give credit to the guys who wrote and edited the first path finder "rise of the rune lords".

we just finished one of the funniest encounters we have had in a while. Although it is probably one of those, had to be there to find it funny moments and loses a lot in translation.

Players who have not played this adventure path to the end should not click the spoiler button.

Anyone else had any funny moments?

The cramped quarters have been noticed by me, but ironically not by the group.

I am running with 7 PCs (yes I need my head looking at). We went stock rules only (with the addition of any official Pathfinder and Gamesmaster additions) and were built on 25 points. The party is pretty heavy combat based (1 Human Sorcerer, 1 Halfling thief, 1 Elven Cleric, 1 Human Druid + Dog, I human Barbarian, 1 human fighter and 1 Dwarven Ranger).

So far I am having to throw a few extra monsters into each combat as well, so I tend to add an extra 5' width and depth to each room to make the combats a bit more spaced.

As we are pretty abstract with maps, this part has not noticed yet.

But we do have interesting situations where combat can break out, but the person at the back of the group can't actually see what is going on because he is round a corner.

The buffalo mount happened in my campaign.

He was called Lub and he was a highland cow.

We loved Lub, right up to the point he became lunch for a Wyvern :-(

I agree that the problem with mounts is that this is typically Dungeons and Dragons, with the emphasis on Dungeons. Mounts have limited use in the standard dungeon. Druids and Rangers usually have companions that can travel anywhere. But horses have a limited use.

A male gorilla (Silver Back) would be an interesting choice, certainly big enough to be ridden, has a climb speed, good set of attacks. Just need to limit its ability to use weapons as it gets more intelligent :-)

I would impose some sort of limit on its advancement similar to a druid has if they go for a more powerful mount. Something like Paladins level -2.

Reminds me of the microprose game Darklands from 1992.

Go to [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darklands_(computer_game)[/url]

Fantastic old game, shame it doesn't run on my PC any more.

I see they have changed the way it records posts to stop the "strange" way Eberron and UA were gaining votes in the previous round.

Voted, just need to get my players to vote as well.

How about have the goblins be prejudiced against by the whole town, but then have them do something later on to redeem them selves in the towns eyes?

There will be some minor spoilers in Curse of the Crimson Throne about Rise of the Runelords (particularly for ** spoiler omitted **

Now and then there WILL be minor easter eggs for those who have completed the previous adventures, but these'll be uncommon. You can certainly play the Adventure Paths in any order you want... but now and then spoilers WILL leak in. I'll do my best to keep them out... but I won't be able to stop them all. Especially in cases, now and then, where we'll use monsters or other rules elements introduced in earlier Pathfinders in later ones. And the runelords WILL play a small role in the background and "dressing" of Curse of the Crimson Throne, if only because the Adventure Path DOES take place in Varisia. That'd be like having an adventure set in Egypt that doesn't talk...

I actually am hoping for the opposite, I would like lots of easter eggs and nods back to the last adventure path.

It gives the world a bit more history, colour and believability.

I don't know what percentage of groups rotate DMs and are planning on doing this for each adventure path, but if this is common, then maybe you could put all the spoilers (or links back to a previous adventure paths) in side bars, boxed off and colour coded to warn the DM who is playing in the previous adventure path not to read them until the adventure path is finished?

I would certainly welcome more nods and links to the previous AP, while keeping the balance that it is playable as a stand alone adventure path. I remember that towards the end of the Dungeons magazine run, Several adventures gave nods to previous adventures in the DM write up. In particular one adventure had a list of previous adventures that were events foretold to lead up to an important moment (I forget the details), but I liked it a lot.

I hope all you DM's are getting your role-playing groups to vote as well?

We are only 2 votes behind second place now.

Superb map, please accept my thanks and consider the map stolen and used :-)

We could really use an area of this site set aside for user content.

How ironic, that one of my PC's decided that burning it to the ground would be a good idea as well.

I said, sure its made of wood, keep in mind that it is wet wood, but get a big enough fire going and it would probably burn, also remember it is misty every morning and it is late autumn when the adventure starts, so it has been raining on and off for a few weeks. He even suggested getting some flasks of oil to help start the blaze.

Throwing oil at the building from a distance and lighting it is not going to work, at the most it would damage and area of the building before the goblins crazily beat the flames out.

Starting a controlled fire is a different matter, But that is more difficult to do that in a stand up, drag out fight with the goblins.

I was hoping to use her later (perhaps as a bad guy), but I'll wait a while and see if she appears iun a future AP.

That is just wrong, bad guys (girls) should never have pig tails :-)

I'll be playing 3.5 for the foreseeable future.

I represent one of those classic roll playing demographics, been playing D&D since I was 11, I'm 37 now. 8 of us meet once a week and for most of us it is a welcome diversion to our every day lives, but not a huge investment in time or money. One of the players has never played a spell caster because he never got round to reading the spells in the PHB, and another was sharing a PHB until last week when he brought one on e-bay.

With 19 years of history invested into one home grown campaign world, I shocked the group when I announced that we were starting the next campaign on a whole new world. That is how impressed I was with the content of the Pathfinder AP, I had been looking forward to playing those Goblins for months.

I will continue to subscribe to the Pathfinder AP's until I can't use them any more, if they stay as 3.5, or even a hybrid 3.75, I will follow you until the group stops playing.

Piazo have my respect, where as I am not keen on the direction that 4th Edition seems to be heading.

With reference to Oversized or Undersized magic items, I have a house rule where a permanent magic item can be consumed as part of the creation XP cost of making a similar magic item.

I let half the XP of the origional item go towards the XP cost of the new item. If the materials used in construction of the origional item can be re-used, I allow them to count towards the cost of the item as well.

This gives the NPC item creators a logical reason to buy magic items from players at half their normal cost, yes it costs them a bit more to make, but they don't lose as much XP in creating the item.

It also allows any PC with an item creation feat to use the items as part of his process to create usable items for the group or him self.

Think of it as re-forging a Large sized magic metal weapon into a medium sized long sword. Or prizing the gems out of a huge sized helmet to put into a medium sized Amulet.