Belfur's page

*spoilers ahead*
I am sorry to voice hard words, but just finished the module, and it probably killed my Rise of the Runelords Campaign. I am burnt out and my players got frustrated hacking through tons of always the same ogres, not seeing the point of it in relation to the Campaign. Linking of the episodes were rather illogic and without some tweeking, the glitches in the timelime would have set-up my players completely. In the end they laughed at the ridiculously overused gore and grime theme and the Blackarrows, who just seemed to have survived, because they were just not challenged before and fell to the first real threat, because of sending away half the fort on patrol regularly.
I laughed about rooms not even 30 by 30 ft which are stuffed with three large monsters, protected by a punny (for 9th lvl characters) wight, which are supposed to cast force-cage on the PCs filing in by a 5ft wide tunnel and try to escape by the very same way. And I cried about the wasted real role-playing episode (e.g. Paradise, Whitewillow and the witches) degrading the associated NPCs to yet another monster with a short speech to be slain. They seem to have been cut in order to tell unnecessary stories about the motivation and history of unimportant cannon fodder monsters (Ettin, ogre cook).
I tried my best to modify the adventure, get rid of the glitches and involve my players by interweaving their character backgrounds. As it stands I didn't succeed much. Moreover I buy adventures because I am low on time to come up with them myself. Enjoying part 1 and 2 I know that there are much better adventures in the Pathfinder AP series.
Hopefully after a break, we can give Part 4 a try or start CotCT.

Thanks for your answer, cosmo.

This has probably been asked before, but maybe you can confirm it (if it is true).
I would like to buy the Shackled City Hardcover. As I live in Germany, the shipping costs for this is quite high (even with the discount paizo gives, adding another 50% of the whole book price).
Now my question: is it possible to hold the hardcover until my Pathfinder #19 and the companion ship and add them to the hardcover parcel. So that I will still pay the shipping for the hardcover, but save the shipping for the pathfinder books?

I also wanted to expand on this scenario. I will draw the three witches into this, as it is a pity to just make them yet another canon fodder in the Kreeg lair. They of course will taunt and torture the nymphs ghost, but they should also interact with the PCs...I think they will take the forms of nymphs themselves, seducing the male players to follow into death traps in order to "save their sister" I just still need the "tests" the PCs have to "pass". Maybe one will also shortly reveal her face to the only female player, to sow dissent among the party.
Ok there you could come with pixies, sewn to a necklace which is given to the Pcs by the "nymphs" as flowers, and they do not recognize it or similar stuff, but this adventure has too much of gory stuff and my players only laugh about the overuse of gore. In the end the PCs should start to hate the witches and be really happy to finally get them.
I always have Macbeth in mind when I think about the cenario.

Hi there,
What is this "Paradise" thing? Is there some neat stuff that I've missed?
GRU

I'm not sure. After Xanesha, my players were paranoid about hot women sporting 10,000 year old bling.

To the OP, I also had the Paradise around, and had my players kicked off when their sniffing around for clues became too obvious. Well, the cheating at cards didn't help either.

Well, they've read spoilers then. There's nothing that suggests an inherent connection between the rune and Lamia. It's not obvious, like seeing a stone giant on the cover or a ghoul on the cover.

I just started Hook Mountain Massacre and made some small changes, weaving in some character background, reviving the Paradise etc (to get some more RP enoc#~*ers, before the big slaughtering begins), but after last game night the I finally realized with 100% certainty, that nothing can really surprise my players any more (this is not a critique about the AP per sei, mind me). Every twist and turn in the adventure is anticipated one of the players or another and if only in a joke he makes. Without encountering Lucretia, just from seeing that she is somehow involved with the Sihedron, made them suspect, that she is a Lamia, and there are many things which they are not surprised about.
Do you have similar problems? Is every twist and turn in a story anticipated by the PCs or are our stories just too much cliche? How do you counter it?
Not that we did not have any fun, but sometimes this frustrates me a little bit.

Yes, with Adobe Acrobat 8 I got the black background, although I am lucky to own Photoshop where I could use the magic wand to select all black and fill it with white. But funnily lately I have a different problem: I could only select pieces of the picture, so that I would have to select them seperately and put them together like a puzzle, I even have this with pictures I already selected and copied as a complete picture before.

The quicksilver hourglass from Dungeon (can't remember the issue) from the module with the same name. Unfortunately that's not open content...

In the Akropolis of the Thrallkeeper there are some points:
- in the description of the Havero tentacles it says: "Although the havero itself is fantastically intelligent,..." In the monster section (p.86) however it is listed as fantatically stupid: INT 5 that is (or was it meant fantastically wise?)
- if the PCs are attacked by the tentacles, it is quite likely that the noise points will rise to 40 or 50 and there it states "..as long as the noise point total remains at 50 or higher". Combat necessarily increases the noise point tally, is it the intention that the PCs have to retreat, once the Havero is roused?
- Area A1: it states, that Sial and Krojuns band return to area A1 under certain (rather likely) circumstances to wait for the storm to end...it is however not mentioned how they react to each other. It is hard to imagine that they are on good terms.

My group, who now tackle the Thistletop Goblins:
Loretta female human Varisian Ranger
Asrun male human Varisian Sorceror
Kad'Rak male human Shoanti Barbarian
Scato male human Rogue

Retired: Luran male Shoanti human Druid (followed Shalelu into the wild after her visit to Sandpoint, but his name was honored by Kad'Rak who named his horse Luran).

Just saw and first to post :-D
drivethrurpg.com sells the 4th edition core books as pdfs and at least at the moment they are 30% off print edition cover price.

Ack!

Player's Handbook wrote:

Harm charges a subject with negative energy that deals 10 points of damage per caster level... If the creature successfully saves, harm deals half this amount, but it cannot reduce the target's hit points to less than 1.

I always read the bit about not reducing to less than 1 HP as part of the "if you save" sentence. Thus, if you make the save you take half damage, with a maximum of your current HP-1. If you fail the save, though, all bets are off and you take level*10 HP damage. Is there an errata or something somewhere? I would love to know so I can save the PCs the cost of the Raise Dead.

O

PS Woo hoo! Post #200!

Harm damages a subject with negative energy that causes the loss of all but 1d4 hit points.
If used on an undead creature (requires a successful touch attack), harm acts like heal.

That is really outragous. Sometimes my packages were caught by german customs (usually some D&D books I bought via Amazon Marketplace) when they were not properly labeled. And then the taxes were too low to be even collected (less than 5 Eu), the only annoying thing was to go an pick them up at the custom's office.
As proposed, you should buy your pathfinders at european retailers (amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, amazon.fr), although you might have to wait longer than with the subscription. If you want the pdf and can expect that every package is taxed, than you could easily buy the pdf directly at Paizo in addition to the print version (14$ in comparison to 32$) and would still be better of.
Another thing which might make you happy, but you would have to inquire on it: the limit for pakcages from outside the EU taxed will be raised from now 22Eu to 120Eu (not entirely sure about the numbers) within this year, accounting for the increased international trade, especially with electronics. Normally this should be a EU wide thing, as otherwise it would not make sense (importing things to the eg. Germany for free and then to Denmark for free instead of directly to Denmark for a hefty fee).
I hope you can manage to continue your Pathfinder, and will be glad to assist you with a Curse spell onto some of those greedy mail agency manangers ;-)

Mistake or house rule? (and maybe would not have changed much anyway) Harm reduces you only to 1hp no matter how many hp you had before or how big the damage was.

Of course the briars do not dampen the sound, but what I forgot was the waves crashing onto the cliffs below, which would dampen the sounds...and sure I should have left the dogs, where they were, I think that was the biggest mistake (although firepelt cougars are really nasty: bite claw claw pounce). Anyways, my players agreed to the Druids offer, I will rearrange some of the goblin guards and play on as is, alhtough I have another nasty plan: as Erylium escaped, I will change her alter self to cat and she will hide in a food barrel: "poor little kitty, should be food for nasty goblins, we take you along". Either she enters the fray on Nualyas side, if necessary, or she will take revenge on the Druid, making for a fun monster-monster fight later on, with the PCs not knowing whom to kill first...

I really don't know, but it is quite certain, that he is not buried, where he should be. Queen Ileosa poisoned the king, so he is probably burnt, in order to destroy evidence and then his ash is probably hidden away somewhere so that no one can resurrect the king or question him by speak with dead.
But still an interesting question...

I was just reading KQ and although it is a good magazine, there is nothing like having a full colour magazine delivered each month and to read through it...pity I could only enjoy Dragon for three years.
Soon it will be the first year without, any memorial festivities planned?

Would it be possible to introduce set pieces, which are more the RP type, with Rise of the Runelord being rather combat and dungeon crawling heavy (this is less for CotCT) this would be very welcome. I would like to see something like the ball in Prince of Redhand more often (eg. I would have loved to see the casino boat in Hookmountain Massacre fleshed out). This would give the opportunity to present RP heavy settings as optional parts of the adventure so people who do not like such things can leave them out.

Sounds ok, although of course it is not at all flashy and will only attract hard-core gamers.
You might want to add the download-link, or at least mention that the pdf is free for download.

I would like to do (although I won't have the time): Minion Monsters (lots of weak enemies, which you can hack through, but which still make a difference and you cannot ignore), the way remove affliction works (removing curses is just too easy in 3.5, so they are not really frightening), healing surges.

Thanks for the info Molech! I am a little bit more in favor of WoTC, I also liked Lost Empires of Faerun, Heroes of Darkness, and others and WotC was really excellent in putting out high optical quality for nearly all their products (just forget about things like sword and fist, et al).

Maybe its already old for you, but I saw that WotC announces an Adventure Path for levels 1 through 30 in Dungeon (with 18 adventures). At least they are starting to do something right, from a business point of view (as early adventures will still be free, but later ones not any more), if they now started to do good adventures...
Although they should put a "To the Honor of Paizo Publishing" in the front of each module, as the AP, in the end, is an invention by them ;-)

The game expects the PCs to be 3rd level by the time they start in on Thistletop, and it also expects 4 PCs, so a lower level & lower number of PCs can certainly end in a grisly TPK here, alas.

That said... even if the goblin druid "wins" the battle... you have a pretty cool option...

** spoiler omitted **

Stabilization makes sense. Nualia has to sacrifice living creatures to Lamashtu every time she does a religious service, and when she doesn't have prisoners she uses goblins. I'm sure that the refugees in particular (who are her first choice for sacrifices) would be eager for any alternate offerings.

Ouch, that sucks :(
In my games, the characters are always all there, even if a given player is absent (in which case, either another player or the DM plays him as an NPC). I can't really understand how to run it otherwise, neither from a role-playing point of view nor from an encounter balance point of view. Don't you run into that kind of problems all the time when one or more players are missing?

Hi there,
I need some advice, please. Up to here we had really a lot of fun with Burnt Offerings, but this session ended quite sadly. My PCs went to Thistletop, entered and fought the 10 Goblin Refugees, which alerted the Druid. I thought, the Druid would surely command the Goblindogs to attack the PCs. Together with the cougar, this was nearly a TPK, meaning, the sorceror just got away as he was entangled out of sight (besides 40ft radius, that is nearly the whole complex, entangling everyone for a duration of 4 minutes!!). The enemies would have been bad enough, but what really makes this complex a deathtrap, especially for low level chars, is the small tunnels: -4 to AC and Attack leaves the PCs with no real offensive or defensive power.
Is it meant like this or is just the entrance too small?
Unfortunately one player was missing today so I had only 3 PCs and two were still Level 2 (Rogue and Sorceror) and one was Level 3 (Barbarian). Maybe it was my fault, but this is of course very unsatisfying as the PCs feel a little bit cheated by the harsh conditions. I now ruled that the Goblin Druid might have stabilised the two PCs for torturing and they could be saved later on (if the players like to after trying some new PCs). I think it was unfairly hard on them.
Comments, suggestions?
Sorry for the whining, but after some really fun and exciting sessions this one was a real let-down.

First, your two players are ....ah...no good gamers, put it like that. Either, stop inviting them. Or, if you want an ingame solution, give them what they want, send in a group of competitor heroes (maybe guys originally from Sandpoint) who save the day, who are always there saving the day and then mock the PCs for being late weak and ineffective, if your PCs attack them, they just teleport away and laugh. At least this gives you a revenge.
I quite often hear my players ask, why it is always them doing the hard work and the NPCs always stay back: I just tell them: you could share your XP and treasure and fame with these NPCs ...or you could start to act like the heroes you want to be (my players are normally very colaborative) and this normally sets them straight (esp. the XP part ;-)).
Hope you find a game you like at some point (don't forget to slaughter your players' characters before you dump them :-D)

This was my first order from Paizo (Chaos Crucible, Downer, Combat Pad) apart from subscriptions. It arrived promptly and had a small goody inside, a booster of item cards. A nice treat, thank you!

I stopped buying WoTC Novels after Year of the Rogue Dragon, I really loved The spiderqueen series (/apart from some minor details) but in TYotRD series you could just hear the dice rolling and book flipping for spells too much! And the author used too often the same phrases to describe combat and spell casting (maybe there was just too much fighting and too little story?). The Orc War Drizzt do Urden story was fine, but also this all seems to be made up too quickly and too forced out of the authors...

Linux acrobat displays the pathfinder pdfs (at least up to #6) correctly. kpdf however someties has problems with the layers of the pictures (e.g the sihedron rune was displayed on top of character pictures without being transparent). Which versions are you using?

Congratulations for this courageous move and all the best wishes. I am staying with you as long as possible.

In original edition and AD&D class was all about role in combat. Role playing was an afterthought and yet it happened anyway. You can role play with any set of rules.

ArchLich wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, Belfur was not taking about specifically 4E. I think he was saying that it is the DM/GM job to provide meaningful gameplay even if the characters are currently low(er) on combat power.

Hmmmm. Not sure I agree with this. The adventure is what the adventure is - if the clock is ticking and the party used too many spells before they could rescue the captive/close the portal to the abyss/whatever then is it up to the DM to change the game so that they can get through to the end of the mod?

If I'm not mistaken, Belfur was not taking about specifically 4E. I think he was saying that it is the DM/GM job to provide meaningful gameplay even if the characters are currently low(er) on combat power.

I don't see how role playing is missing from 4E. It will still have interparty interaction, you can still talk to NPCs, there is always room for puzzels, and you can play the whole day without resting just like 3.5. The fact that you can use a 5 minute rest, or a 6 hour rest is actually more flexible than the overnight or 24 hour rest time in 3.5.

Is there something that you are seeing that i am not?

15 minutes day, 1 hour day...they should put back the role in the role playing game. I guess every, or at least 90% of all systems will boil down to this, if everything you do is fighting. Have interparty interaction, NPCs you can talk to, puzzles you could solve with your brains and you have a game where you can play a whole day and more (in-game time) with out resting. If you just want to do hack'n slash all the time, give your group a recovery stone with X charges, which refreshes all their HP, Spell, Mana or whatever, or just fast forward over the rest every time they need it, problem solved. Just my opinion, but if I read, 4ed is more about role playing again, because it feels different if I play an eladrin fighter or an elven fightet, because the elf can whatever and the eladrin fighter can teleport I get sick (and not because of the super-duper-teleport-power).

Buy the pdfs and print them/have them printed and bound together. Voila your compilation. If you want it cheap, print b&w and use a folder. I will probably do this to keep my books nice and pristine during play (so that I can also take notes during play).

Some months ago at WoTC
Gamedesigner (GD): ..and then in April or May, we put up a demo adventure to show everyone how cool the new edition is.
Manager (M): Put up, are you sure we could get up the "pay per page" system we planed for DI till then?
GD: No, players get this for free.
M *turns white and makes a strangling noise*: For Free??!!!
GD: Yes, players will be very hot on knowing what the system is about.
M *gets back compusure and sets on grandfatherly smile*: That's why I make business and you make....whatever you do here. They are hot, that means you can charge them anything and they would pay, that's good news, make one of your booklets and we sell it like the lead ups, we published in winter this classes and monsters things and make it nearly as expensive as the new PHB.
GD: But players will be very angry if they have to pay that much for a 32 page adventure.
M: Again you are not seeing the big picture, my son. We put the rest up on the DI and charge a second time. Its a demo anyway, people will accept to play for an hour and then: please register, its like World of Warcraft (oh, gods, why did I reject the job at Blizzards five years ago, now I am here and have to live with this low-profit-margin-business). We had lots of costs, all the drops in sales with the old edition, all this free Dungeon and Dragon and all this free previews...gamers should be happy to help us refill my...oh, our pockets so that we can go on making more money...I mean games...I think I had a very good idea with that preview adventure, if you did not have me...

I nearly bought H1, than I saw that it is only 64 pages (at least on the WoTC homepage) and it was clear that they intended to milk gamers again, the additional material on the DI makes it just worse (just say "nominal fee"). So I will wait for the PHB, maybe.

Yes, a succubus is level 12 (with 6HD), not 7 or 8. She will be very frail, thus useless in combat at Party Lvl 14, but her abilities could prove invaluable. What makes her very unpredictable is her ability to summon a Balor with a 10% chance. You could, if you have access to it, take a Lvl 8 Succubus with less HD and abilities. The other advantage is, that the succubus is most probably chaotic and might leave if she is bored (e.g. a pain in the foot for the game/DM) ;-)

Liking the french language I might even buy it myself....on the other hand most German translations sound really incredibly stupid...like the D&D core books.
Brandopfer? (is ambiguous)...sorry, no thread jacking, great news. Merci beaucoup!

Unfortunately, it is not only providing stat blocks for both systems. If what Wizards tells is true, the whole philosophy of building encounters is changed and this probably to a degree which makes a 3.5-4.0 conversion very difficult, meaning that it is necessary to design a completely new encounter. Whatever Paizo does, I hope they take the right decission (from a comercial pov, that is).

Some very great ideas...keep them coming ;-)

I just read the Skinsaw Murders and am a little bit grieved by the waste of nice story..admitted, I also see that there is only so much space in a pathfinder.
**Spoiler**
Ironbriar is a justice of Magnimar, a socially powerful villain...but who cares? Not the PCs. They will just hack him to pieces, shrug and continue.
Did anyone expand on Ironbriar, make some run-ins with him before the PCs go to the sawmill?

I downloaded some fan-made introductions from the internet...unfortunately I cannot remember where I got them from, but there should be something out there for your players to read. Also make good use of Diamond Lake for roleplaying purpose. In later adventures there will not be much space to roleplay, rather consider inserting some sidetreks (if you have the time) and cutting some later adventures (at least remove some unnecessary parts).

PIT FIEND
...creatures in a close burst 2. The exploding devil is destroyed....

How is Aurics band doing, did the PCs kill them or even leave them in friendly terms, When the PCs think they get mangled between Kyuss and his minions (let them sweat, in the end they took the risk to go directly to the center of it), one of the minions gets skewered by a sword and the widely smiling face of Auric appears, the Elf rogue (forgot her name) stepping from the shadows and a cantancerous wizard blasting undead to pieces. And Auric says something like: Hey guys, are we late for the party, I heard you guys have an appointment to kick some god's ass. Don't worry, we will take care of the other guests. Sure if Auric is dead, you could still have Celeste and some celestials appear and free the PCs backs.
They could even bring some equipment or you could decide, or roll, which tasks in Alhaster they could perform before.

As there are a fair number of Germans post on these boards I dare to look for new players here.

Hi there, I will move to Berlin at the end of the month and want to establish a new group for playing RotR, but I can also step into the player's role if needed.
I want to play rather story and role-playing heavy, but still enjoy the possiblity for optimizing characters, as long as the group is homogenous in this regards.
I plan to play once a week on week-day evenings.
If you feel that this is something for you, post your interest here. Looking forward to some new D&D.
Johannes

Some good ideas, thanks, I think the helping hand could be the harbinger, giving them an artifact, which weakens Kyuss, when he emerges, maybe making him a standard Worm that Walks, but then will still have to give the PCs something...and Dragotha could be something, when there is still time.

Hi Paizo community, I need your collected creative pool. I will move at the end of the month and am looking for a possibility to end my campaign with a big bang. I tried to speed it up (as discussed in another thread), but holidays, a business trip and other things messed up the schedule. I have about two to three sessions left (maybe I could squeeze in a long session somewhere. The PCs are in the Spires of Long Shadows, I made all monsters on the entrance level frozen in time and the harbinger teasing the PCs as his "guests", while they had the visions. They now entered the lower level and the harbinger told them, that the monsters in the lower level will be alive and await the PCs.
That's where I am now, I could call it a day and just have the PCs level to 19 or 21 and fight against Dragotha or Kyuss himself, but would be much happier, if this would end now in a more organic way. I am thinking hard, but have no idea how to stop the AoW at this time in a decent way and hope that anyone has a good idea.