Lurker in Light

DM_Ego's page

964 posts. Alias of Egoish.




Be it so known that the bearer of this charter has been charged
by the Swordlords of Restov, acting upon the greater good and
authority vested within them by the office of the Regent of the
Dragonscale Throne, has granted the right of exploration and travel
within the wilderness region known as the Greenbelt. Exploration
should be limited to an area no further than thirty-six miles east and
west and sixty miles south of Oleg’s Trading Post. The carrier of
this charter should also strive against banditry and other unlawful
behavior to be encountered. The punishment for unrepentant banditry
remains, as always, execution by sword or rope. So witnessed on this
24th day of Calistril, under watchful eye of the Lordship of Restov
and authority granted by Lord Noleski Surtova, current Regent of
the Dragonscale Throne.

With these words on a thick piece of parchment the adventurers set off to the south, heading for the little known trading post "Oleg's" to start their explorations and find their fortunes. Walking or riding down the South Restov Road at the end of winter is a taxing journey for the fittest of hero's, made even worse by the advent of a late winter snow storm. The hero's slowly trudge towards the distant shape of a road side inn for their first night out of Restov, hopeful that they can complete the two day journey in three days through the half foot of fresh snow that now coats the countryside.

No one needs to make saves for avoiding the elements at this stage as it is warm enough when fully clothed and cloaked that there is no danger, the Dog and Goat Inn in the distance is a small affair but is rumoured to serve the best hare stew in Restov. If anyone wants to make knowledge local/history/geography checks for any info about the area i will let you, you will also get a +2 circumstance bonus for any research you may have done before setting off.


Welcome to you all, i just want to get everyone to post in here before we start on the gameplay thread so i can confirm everyone made it in.

Congratulates on being accepted and a heartfelt apology to all those who didn't make it through.


Hello pbpers,

I have been putting some thought into a pbp and have finally decided to try my hand at it after having a great experience playing in one of Lucendars games.

Rules, we play as closely to raw as possible, core/apg/um/uc are allowed as are anything from the campaign setting books as long as its on the pfsrd.

15 point buy
max starting cash
1 campaign trait
1 other trait
max hp for level 1

I will be recruiting 5, maybe 6, players and tweaking the AP as such. I would like to warn you that the first book and into the second book until your kingdom gets rolling can be a little treasure light, i will be slotting some more stuff in.

I'd like a little bit of fluff on your background and the reason you wanted to head to the stolen land, a simple paragraph will do. Recruitment closes at 7pm gmt on Saturday 12th of May, if its a slow response i might extend it. I would like people to commit to 10 posts a week, weekends are understandably quiet but if we are mid combat posting your action to keep the game moving would be appreciated.

Also one last bit of fair warning, if you want to play a summoner your math better be prefect because i hate checking sheets for errors and this class drives me crazy, its not an auto no but if there are mistakes in your first draft it will be a no.


SO i've been writing a kingdom event for an APL 4 party, i found a creature thats ideal, gave it some support so its not a walk over and created a CR 7 encounter, i'm not sure if this beastie should actually be the CR it is though and i just wanted a little advice. My players look away now...

CR7?:
Monsters(cr7), smoke has been spotted on the horizon billowing from the lands of Holder Luminita, she has several families on her lands spread over a number of small farms. Upon investigation the party will encounter people fleeing the area back towards the Capital who will tell them that the Holder was killed some days ago and then creatures of flame started rampaging through the area burning farms to the ground, the largest farm in the area (the one belonging to Luminita) is still burning fiercely.

The party will have an encounter with 4 small fire elementals (Bestiary 1) on their way to the main blaze to give them a clue as to the nature of the event.

Approaching the farm you can see an outline of the half brick farm house still glowing with residual heat from the fire which must have recently died down, the building itself is mostly burnt out but some smaller fires still remain and illuminate the area around the destroyed building.
Inside the building or within 10 feet of its walls each creature takes 1d6 fire damage per minute and must make a fortitude save DC 15 (+1 per previous check) every 5 minutes or take 1d4 non lethal damage from the oppressive heat.
Approaching within 30 feet of the farm will cause the Lurker to spot the party and raise the alarm to her fire elemental minions who will move out of line of sight behind the stone walls and wait for party to enter the building, a DC 10 Perception check reveals the presence of the two medium fire elementals and a check result of DC 20 reveals that there seems to be another presence in the building from the strange movements of the wispy smoke still around. A DC 49 perception check reveals the Lurker's square until she moves.

2 Medium Fire Elementals, Bestiary 1 (cr3)

Lurker in Light, Bestiary 2 (cr5)
Init +8 Senses low light vision, perception +16
Ac 20, touch 17, flat-footed 16 (+4 dex, +3 natural, +1 size, +2 bracer’s)
HP 50 (8d6+16)
Fort +4 Ref +10 Will +9
Defensive abilities blend with light (greater invisibility in better than dim light), immune blindness, DR 5/cold iron
Speed 30ft, fly 30 ft(average)
Melee 2 claws +9 (1d3+1) or MW dagger +10 (1d3+1/19-20 plus poison fort DC 17; 1/rnd for 6 rnds; 1 str/1d3 str damage; cure 1 save) add +2 to hit for invisibility
Special abilities sneak attack +3d6
SLA (CL 8th; concentration +11)
at will – dancing lights, flare (DC13) ghost south (DC14) light, mage hand
3/day – daylight, blindness/deafness (DC16)
Str 13 Dex 18 Con 15 Int 14 Wis 16 Cha 17
Base atk +4; CMB +4: CMD 18
Feats alertness, flyby attack, improved initiative, weapon finesse
Skills acrobatics +15, escape artist +15, fly +17, knowledge arcana +10, knowledge planes +10, perception +16, stealth +19, survival +11
Languages ignan, common, sylvan
SQ daylight door(d.door 1/day from and too areas of bright light), poison use, ritual gate
Treasure/equipment bracer’s of armour +2, MW small dagger, lesser ring of fire resistance, MW lute, healers kit, courtiers outfit (female), silver bracelets shaped like doves in flight (200gp), pair of sapphire earrings (120gp), sapphire ring (60gp), silver broach with herald design (40gp)

The Lurker is wearing the items which she has taken from the Holder who used to own this building, the creatures she has killed have been used to summon the flaming allies she now has roaming the area around her conquest. She will wait while the PC's defeat the fire elementals and observe the fight, after 3 rounds or when the last fire elemental dies she will open with deafness on any casters she spots and will use blindness if there seems to be a capable melee threat, she will then use fly by attack and her invisibile in light ability to make repeated sneak attacks on the party, first targetting anyone who seems to be able to detect her or casts any spells which could negate her invisibility advantage. If the party attempt to snuff out the fires to cut down the light the Lurker will use its daylight ability and will use daylight door if reduced to lower than 10hp.

So what does everyone think? is it going to be too hard for a apl 4 party or is it a fair CR?


So tonight in the end of series finale our level 7 party fought an advanced 15HD shadow demon. We were having some trouble with it being incorporeal and having sick damage reduction.

Thinking back to a forum post i read a while ago i decided to arcane bond bestow curse from my spellbook and curse the demon with a physical form, we rolled combat casting and spell resistance and a will save. It worked and the demon lost the rule, we hammered it for a round and it pulled off a last minute escape via greater teleport at 7 hp.

All in all a great fight but i was wondering if anyone else had any unique curses they have used. The guide lines for curse craft are pretty open and i think its hard to judge whats allowable as comparable to the effects available.

A few others i thought of using are curse of severing to remove access to a class feature such as channel energy, or distraction for a DC 10+curse caster level concentration check to cast spells. Anyone done some curse crafting of their own?


So my current party have recently discovered that because we don't hang out in Hooters (thats what we call the temple/tavern of Cayden in Absalom) that our party is getting a reputation, now its not all bad but there are some rumours flying around that we need to fix (some of them are far to accurate).

We currently have done a lot of work for good causes (some of it even pro bono) that seems to have been twisted by the rumour mill to make us sound evil (some of us are), and our aquisition of property (villa in absalom, pirate ship, letter of marque from chileaxian merchant) has been frowned upon by some of the more goody goody adventurers (bloody caydenites) and i'm worried it may start to effect business.

So with that in mind how do i go about boosting my adventuring company "Hired Goons" back up to a stirling reputation?


If i'm rocking around on a phantom steed and i want to move 240 and cast a speel or even do something as simple as move and cast a spell as a full round action i need to make a concentration check.

Now up to level 12 i normally only use my phantom steed outside combat but at 11 i'm planning on taking mounted combat so i can use it all the time, is there a way i can avoid the concentration check by level 13?


In the past i experimented with a bane weapon focused against spellcasters, i'm aware one was published in a 3.5 splat book after my failed experiment, but i found it extremely powerful due to the huge number of creatures it targetted. A large portion of creatures above cr 8 and above seem to have some spellcasting ability. Having scrapped that plan i had a new idea...

Spellbane; gives +2 enhancement and an additional +2d6 damage against creatures who cast spells of a particular school, creatures who have in memory (prepared casters), are able to cast (spontaneous casters) or have on their sla list any spell of the specific school activate the enchantment as per the bane quality.
Req; feat, dispel magic Price; +1 bonus

Basicly i have a paladin who is using the undead scourge archtype who does not need an undead bane weapon as more damage is pointless, what he would like is a better way to fight the necromancer who made them, so a spellbane(necromancy) longsword seems like a useful addition to his armoury without being hugely overpowering. It could also be handy for pc's combating planar incursions with a conjuration focus, i also had a sneaky idea for an elite guard unit equipped with evocation bane subdual weapons to combat blast happy wizards in cities.

My worry is that i'm wrong and the monsters that got minced by my original foray into this kind of weapon will still be getting minced, i was thinking of adding in that the sword will only work in such a way on a target who has cast a spell of the school in the last 24hrs but it seems clunky already and the secondary method will be harder to track.

What do people think?


Well my group of four have just defeated the stag lord and after an epic fight and about 12 sessions are nearing the end of book one so i thought i'd share some bits of the experience. There are to many bits to spoiler tag so if your playing book one i would stop reading now.

The groups made up of Monty a life oracle with a wasting disease curse, Liza a greatsword barbarian who kills most things with minimum damade, Eric a druid with a tiger pet who replaced his cousin Bill an alchemist who passed away fighting the "not a kobold" tartuk and Nefty an evil eye and cackle witch who replaced Monty's bodyguard a cavalier named Tilian who also passed away in what my players affectionatly call the effing illusion encounter.

I've run most of the set peice encounters out of the book other than swaping a few feats or spells or increasing the odd hp total here and there to make the fights a little more epic, we've had a few deaths saved by hero points. Kressle was responsible for one at the thorn river camp, Happs also caused another at the thorn river camp after they showed mercy and let him go from Olegs trading post (on a side note Happs escaped again at the thorn river to haunt the party later).

They enjoyed the two session encounter with the faeries and spent litterally hundreds of gold on bribes while wandering around the northern reaches of the forest, this all paid off as the faeries saved them from encounters with an owlbear at level one, a will-o-wisp at level two and some trolls at level two. They cleared the temple of the elk with no issues at level two but lost most of their horses (and gear) to a shambling mound on the way back to Olegs, quick thinking by the Tilian saved Monty the would be king from a mossy death, then suffered a days camp in a blizzard (random weather generator). After escorting Jhod to the temple they hit the hot springs, Tilian was 1 round away from drowning when Bill finally killed the last frog and pulled him out, this encounter was all the funnier as if they had fallen for it more completely insted of being paranoid about it they would have had much better time swimming without their armour on.

Random encounters ended up being more challanging than some of the set pieces and i have now rolled trolls three times but every time i just use them as a threat to highlight the danger, tracks or in the distance or fae warnings.

The mite lair proved to be entertaining after they realised the mites were basicly no threat, they rescued mikmek whom they had already met and bartered with at the raddish patch (who is also fast becoming a friend of the pc's and may one day be a pc in his own right). After the first two rooms they came to the chasm, Tilian was straight onto the handholds and straight down the the bottom with the giant centipede, after 6 rounds of fighting Bill put it down with alchemists fire however not before Lisa was poisoned to 5 dexterity, that one fight sucked up all the party resources other than a few potions and a couple of channels. Amazingly and bravely they decided on "one more room" and climbed out of the chasm rounded a corner walking straight into the chiefs war room. I made a few changes to the chief giving him a fighter level and the mounted combat archtype so he could make ride checks for his mount, this resulted in the party on the verge of dispair with Lisa and Tillian down, Monty out of spells and Bill heavily wounded until they were reminded that those hero points they had been hoarding could be used to recall channelling uses per day, add to hit, add to saves etc. Armed with this knowledge they defeated the mite chief and his pet in a flurry of hero points then retreated safely to the kobold caverns.

Upon reaching the silver mine they headed straight for chief sootscale and handed him the statue, securing his alliance and fealty if they would remove Tartuk the usurper shaman, sadly for them the shaman was a wily one and had some aoe effects to mingle with his illusions including color spray which i swapped into his spell list and a five charge wand of fireball in place of his magic missile wand. After driving the party crazy with invisibility, silent image and colour spray he spent 3 rounds umding his wand until it went off, for nearly max damage, and dropped the party before they had a chance to hit him.

I blame this near tpk on the precious session when they burned all their hero points to stay alive in the mite warren but thinking outside the box Tartuk did a runner with his loot and left them to bleed to death.

As everyone stabilised before minus con it took them three days of natural healing to awaken, during which time Tilian had become extremely ill from infected tick bites. Unable to clear the disease with his heal skill and fearing Tilian may pass away (on a side note it would appear that a disease which drains str cannot actually kill you, just force you into a coma until you waste away. I house ruled this to if your disease causes double your str score in damage you shuffle from the mortal coil) the party entered a break neck race across the stolen land to Jhod at the temple for healing, fighting througrandom encounters and pushing their horses to the brink of death they made it with scant hours to spare (Tilian was at the point a failed save and a high roll would spell the end). Thankfully Jhod is a highly skilled cleric and easily stabalised Tilians health and nurse him back from the brink.

Arriving back at the Sootscales they set up an alliance with the chief and spent a couple of days writing up a treaty, after that freshly reloaded after their heroic actions saving Tilian and brokering peace with the kobolds they set off tracking Tartuk and his sack of loot (svetlana's wedding ring). A heroic fight insued with the sneaky "not a kobold" illusionist killing both Tillian and Bill before Tillians horse kicked him to death.

Now two months into their adventures in tbe stolen land and reaching level three with just a few hexes left on the edge of the south westerns swamps to explore the Blighted as the band of hero's have come to be known receive a new charter from Restov to finish the bandits once and for all, not a moment too soon as Monty is currently having a recuring nightmare about his home being burnt down with him in it then falling too his death in icy waters as a stag helmed figure cuts the floor out from underneath him which is preventing him from resting and regaining spells. Spending a hero point to pass (just) he regains his spells and they set off with their wagon loaded in loot and booze to the stag lords fort.

Time for a lunch break and this is a little long so i'll post the fort encounter in a while.