Cole Cummings's page

I've been using Elder Things and other Cthulhu mythos things from the start of Starfinder as kind of a "price for coming out here" kind of background threat.

In my take on the Mythos the Elder Gods were the first sentient things to exist after the Elemental Gods shattered the elemental chaos to create the ordered universe. It was the Elder Gods that first pooled wriggling proteins together to create biological life. And with no template of form just let that life evolve into all manner of aberrant shapes.

Finally Trillions of Eons later the Elemental Gods realized their place for Order was teeming with horrors, and they created the Dragons to destroy them. (that's why dragons are so powerful and they also have an elemental theme to them) And they started to take a more active role in the direction of the universe.

We're running into some fun cultural quirks with Sheerin characters that I thought might be fun to talk about here. The Sheerin are extremely communal. So communal that they have a racial trait for it. How do you all think this plays out in game?

I play a Sheerin Mystic and in the Starfinder scenario we were in there was a Sheerin in a bar with two mean looking Vesk guards. I saw what the author was trying to do but didn't think they thought it through. Since My Sheerin and the NPC Sheerin were the only two Sheerin in the place it just seemed completely natural for my character to simply walk over and be NEAR the other Sheerin. No words needed to be said. I played it off as simply a natural inclination of the species.
Also, when drinks were ordered my Sheerin ordered a Bowl of what I ad-libbed as "Zil" (a drink Sheerin like) with five straws, one for each person at the table and 1 extra in case someone wanted to join. I saw this as mimicking the act of sharing resources in a matter of fact way.

How would you interpret Sheerin culture? Ideas? I'd love to hear them.

I hate the spontaneous cast of "Summon Nature's Alley". It's just morally wrong to force animals that having nothing to do with you and your situation to fight and potentially die for you. Sure it works mechanically, but if a nature focused druid ever used this spell in my campaign without really good reason, I would slam her like a paladin that throws children at an charging dragon.

My question is:
Should I replace "Summon Nature's Alley" with another spontaneous cast spell?
Or just make "Wild Shape" available at lower level (6th lvl is way too long to wait in my opinion for such a core class ability)

I've been looking into this myself. The rules are obviously written with things like Doors in mind.

I am Society for Creative Anachronism heavy fighter who fights in steel (Pathfinder) "Half-Plate". I can tell you, my plate armor is not even a 1/4" thick (If it was, I wouldn't be able to move!)

Typically steel body armor is made from 20gauge steel 3/80" (.0375) thickness. But since it's heroic fantasy and we're dealing with medieval steel we'll jack the thickness up to 16gauge 1/16" (.0625) thickness.
(1/4" would be 3gauge (.25))

Armor hit points is: 5xAC bonus for each INCH of thickness

This would mean that 16gauge Full Plate Armor would be 5x9x.0625"=3HP rounded up.
1/4" Full Plate (which btw is heavy enough to stop a .45caliber bullet at 20', we tested it :D ) would have a whopping 11hp but only a Dwarf could fight in it.

Plate Armor is very complicated. It's put together with rivets, leather straps, precisely articulated joints and sliding services and is designed to distribute weight across the body so it doesn't unduly hamper movement, or pull swings with momentum. (mine still does, its a huge disadvantage in speed to fight in steel vs. lighter materials)

So Heavy Full Plate Armor, the kind a Jousting Knight would wear, which weighs around 90lbs (from Claude Blair's European Armour Circa 1066-Circa 1700.) but since we've added thickness we'll just say 100lbs. Would be rocking 3HP and a Hardness of 10.

This is more accurate. It reflects the historical movement in tactics, once heavy plate armor was introduced, of attacking a knight's Armor instead of trying to kill the knight himself. Footmen employed Heavy Maces, Picks and Bec de Corbin type weapons specially designed to break the armor of these battlefield juggernauts. Once you get past the Hardness of the armor and damage it the Knight would have to retire from the field to repair his armor.
Keep in mind that a Heavy Mace does 1d8dmg, a Heavy Pick does 1d6dmg and even the highly specialized 2-handed Bec de Corbin does 1d10. That means only an attacker's STR modifier would have a chance of dealing damage to Full Plate, and only if Max Dmg was rolled on the die.

Just wanted to say I'm taking Brock's advice and bowing out of PFS Gming. I've shut down the event I run at my house (2 Tables weekly) and have let all my players know.
I'm also shutting down the event I was planning on running at SpoCon 2013.

Instead I'll be running Legacy of Fire adventure path.

Funny...my players don't seem to mind that much. They said PFS was kinda flat.

Now they are trying to convince me to let them run evil characters through the adventure path. Not sure how that would work, but anything is possible with imagination :) Cheerio!

Sorry, that part of the Faction Guide is not available for PFS play.

Additional Resources wrote:

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Faction Guide

Feat: Fast Crawl; Spells: hibernate, tripvine; Traits: Beast of the Society, Berserker of the Society, Blade of the Society, Defender of the Society, Exalted of the Society, Greater Adept of the Society, Havoc of the Society, Honored Fist of the Society, Maestro of the Society, Stalwart of the Society, Tracker of the Society

You have to use the PFS Field Guide which is required reading for PFS players.

To be invited into the ranks of the Eagle Knights (with the rank of Lance Corporal) you need 20 Fame and it costs 1 Prestige Point. So you can't just be an Eagle Knight. The minimum rank for PCs is Lance Corporal.

You know, there comes a point when the rules become so much of a hassle that the game isn't fun anymore. I am not going to buy Another Book. I have the Faction Guide. We shouldn't make products obsolete as long as they are still in print. That is very annoying.

gnomewizard wrote:

So my friend and I are both into gaming he is a worship pastor at the church that my wife is a youth pastor at. We have some kids in the youth group who need another connection to keep coming back to church so PFS for youth groupers(5th-12thgr) is born. Yes, of course Jesus saves and takes half damage, amen. My question is I need to run the scenarios that are Pg or at most Pg-13, and pretty definitely 3hrs in length. I don't want them to be lame, so yeah any Suggestions?

For your plan to succeed the scenarios you run do not need to be official. Eliminate the faction missions, or just get rid of the objectional ones. Have everyone play Andoran. Heck, make up your own "Christian" faction (from Mendev) and write faction missions that reinforce Christian values. Since you will not be running official PFS scenarios, you can tone down the violence to an acceptable level with some editing. There's usually an optional combat that you can drop in the Season One scenarios so you can shorten their length.

I love this idea of a Christian faction with faction missions that teach Christian values. Even though I am not a Christian I can appreciate this excellent use of the PFRPG to teach good values to kids. Thanks for the idea.

Is there anything like a guide to how to make character names that sound Talden, Andoran, or Cheliaxian etc. Osirian and Qadiran are self explainitory, but the others are questionable.

I find this book very useful.

"The Everyone Everywhere List"
From Erik James Olsrud

The Everyone Everywhere List gives you percentile lists of male, female, and surnames from every major European, Middle Eastern, and Oriental culture in the world.

After that you just have to figure out which real world culture each Golarion culture is patterned after.

For instance:
Andoran = United States
Absolom = Jerusalem
Varisia = Slavic
Land of the Linnorm Kings = Scandinavia
Osirion = Egypt
Taldor = Mesopotamia (not completely sure about this one. I still need that book)
Qadira = Persia

and so on...