DM Jeff's page

Wrath of Khan
and then...
The Undiscovered Country

Hmm, and Voyage Home has to be in there somewhere.

2, 4 and 6, yeah, 2, 4, and 6.

-DM Jeff

Simple question. Is idea of backwards compatability holding Pathfinder back from its potential.

In my opinion, not at all! They are sticking with their promise, which means a lot.

-DM Jeff

So say we all.

-DM Jeff

Er, ah, Shelyn is my new favorite goddess.

-DM Jeff

There's the ones Nic Logue invented for ch 1 who all get involved, and then there are the dozens my PCs wanted as contacts from the Guide to Korvosa, then...

There's the outside module I'm running tandem with the first three... :-)

-DM Jeff

*raises morning coffee mug to the fine folks at Paizo for keeping our game going with gusto and style*

Can 'Thank You' be said too much?

For the mass annoyance and grumbling that went through my games from GenCon '07 until the Pathfinder announcement...

It can't be said too much!

-DM Jeff

We're in the same boat. My wife finally made an excel sheet to share with the group to keep them all in mind!

-DM Jeff

Many thanks, and of course, I finally found it!

IIRC Orcus shouldn't actually be in here, but whatever.

Beholder

Cambion

Displacer Beast

Dracolich

Dragonspawn

Drider

Drow

Flameskull

Githyanki

Githzerai

Hook Horror

Kruthik

Kuo-Toa

Mind Flayer

Orcus

Otyugh

Owlbear

Sahuagin

Shadar-Kai

Shifter

Slaad

Tarrasque

Umber Hulk

Warforged

Yuan-Ti

-DM Jeff

*sigh* Been round and round "teh google" today and cannot find any list of the monsters WotC did not allow in the last updated SRD. I used to have it back when I was writing, but seem to have misplaced it.

If anyone has a link or a list I'd really appreciate it, thanks!

-DM Jeff

Raneiro, a human male Warlock.
Vianti, a human female cleric of Iomedae.
Johan, a human male monk.
Wyatt, a human female noble/rogue.

-DM Jeff

Yep, career DM here. But I'm like a specialist wizard. I get some kind of bonus when running D&D/Pathfinder 3.5 d20 and Star Wars Saga Edition.

I get a penalty running anything else!

-DM Jeff

I understand, and tried to explain. Where they are coming from is spreading them around. When they get the 'big kicker' under 3.5 they are more comfortable putting ranks into character building skills like local knowledge, crafts, professions, and that kind of stuff. Here, they opted not too for few points.

Honestly, I like the Pathfinder way, I was just reporting the player's observations!

-DM Jeff

OK, just played our THIRD session last night. The story is flawless, it's going great and the players are having a good time.

* We're very glad the final book is going to have an index, because a book this size without one is....difficult!

* The skills are a little bum-clutch. We apparently really got used to the ones we had over the past 8 years or so and the differences are somewhat odd. My wife's PC went to tie a prisoner up last night and much mirth ensued (not to my amusement). As mentioned earlier, the players are giving me the impression they liked the old system better. Time will tell. I've posted the sidebar of skill changes inside my DM screen, but it's going to take a while to adjust.

And personally I'm tired of the jokes of "I acrobat out of the way", "I acrobat over the fence", "I stealth up to the guards".

-DM Jeff

A friend got this for me, when I said I needed a new DM screen. This sucker is like cement. You hold it above the table and drop it and it sounds like a book hitting. You can kill a rabbit with it, or give a munchkin a concussion. It's heavy, strong, and has the dwarven Stability racial trait.

As for what's on it, the art facing the players is great. The charts I wouldn't know about. I taped them over with my patented Pathfinder/3.5 charts so fast I never even saw what was on them.

There's eratta for it on the WotC site I hear, but I don't know what for. As for construction, I give it an A+.

-DM Jeff

I'm sure that's a typo, meant like "read but not actually used at table".

And yeah, some books can be to heavy (or too lite, beleive it or not) to ship Media Mail.

-DM Jeff

This module (to me, anyway) reeked of a good over the top 80's fantasy movie. All the sets, bizarre themes and epic storyline. I played Barrow as a playtest and we all loved it. One day I'll get around to runnign these three in order.

-DM Jeff

Super new suggestions, thanks again!

-DM Jeff

There we go, yes: The Risen Martyr from Exalted Deeds, AND the Blood Magus both have that as qualifications.

I too searched through the spelltouched feats in UA but none have raise dead or something similar as requisites.

Prestige Classes down, feats search continues.

Thank you for the help!

-DM Jeff

So far my group and I have found the ratio of dark-to-normal adventure themes to be perfect. In fact, I'm afraid I'm guilty of turning the dark volume up to 11 or 12 even when Paizo sets it at 10.

In other words, when it's a normal adventure I leave well enough alone, and when it's dark I make sure it's really dark. That fits my DMing style.

-DM Jeff

EDIT: I find it easy enough to do heroic happy, my dark themes need some assistance I'm all too glad to get!

I hope I'm not making this up, but were there not a small set of feats or a prestige class you qualified for only if you had been raised from the dead in 3.5? It was a WotC book, of this I'm certain.

Any help would be appreciated!

-DM Jeff

Basically, the monster book will contain a nice, solid mix of open creatures from the Monster Manual and Tome of Horrors to create a new core creature list. This will look a lot like the current "core" but with a few of the third edition newbies swapped out for monsters with a nicer first edition vintage.

Well. I'm dancing in my office, if that helps. Great idea.

...at this rate I can see us doing at least one monster book a year.

Good, this means we can enjoy a solid, useful monster book to start with, and then a chance to help influence the decisions of later ones as well. Sign me up.

The Tome of Horrors has a HUGE amount of classic monsters that NEED to be in the core book.

This is just so damn sweet to read!

-DM Jeff

How did the Warlock do?

Worked very well. Savess were already PF correct, hit dice went up to a d8. Otherwise he worked perfectly fine. Took a feat from Tyrants of the 9 Hells to do an extra 2d6 to his eldritch blast against "mortals" three times a day. And he has an invocation allowing him to utter a word and do shatter on other's weapons and objects. It's making for a very good game (and operates seamlessly with PF Beta so far).

-DM Jeff

Sunday I ran my first full Beta game for Curse of the Crimson Throne.

Cleric, Warlock, Monk, Noble.

Warlock from WotC, Noble from Black Company campaign setting. Both ported really easy to PF's skills and HP system, no trouble at all. This was important to us and showed PF did it's job so far with backwards compatability in mind. Eventually the Noble will multiclass into Rogue. So far everyone else intends to go career in their classes, this is partially from PF's upping the core classes with interesting features.

Cleric. First, to truly test the way we intend to game, I opened up the ol' WotC and Paizo 3.5 library for PC creation (with my approval). This caused no problems of compatability whatsoever and created a lot of smiles around the table. Her positive energy blasts were just what the group needed. Last campaign I gave everyone a "Second Wind" quick partial heal ala Star Wars sage edition for heroics. This took the place of that.

Monk. No trouble. Took the old Vow of Poverty from Book of Exalted Deeds (this is a player I can easily trust with this) and he's quite happy with his effectiveness so far.

To be perfectly honest, there really wasn't too much difference in play at all. The PF rules were basically invisible for the most part except when we used skills (Perception vs. Stealth is smoother and requires less thought) and CMB was a big hit.

CMB helped us through two grapple atttempts, a bull rush and a sunder, and they all went smooth as pie. The players all thought the DC's were fair.

As for me as DM, easy stuff. I already take the stats from my PF PDF's and print them out to mark up during play. I just ran through and updated the Grapple's to PF's CMB, and combined listen, spot, search and move silent and hide into Stealth and Perception. I did no other conversion and just winged the rest. Easy.

Two things. Two of the players were not overly fond of the new skill point allotment at 1st level. They both were dissapointed they got so few points at first level, points under then old system they'd put into a rolepalying skill like craft, profession or knowledge. I relented by allowing everyone to have one "roleplaying skill point" to put into one of those skills, and all were happy.

Second, we didn't use ANY of the optional "extra hit points" rules presented, because our whole group is old school, and we enjoy starting off as normal berks and working up to heroism. That worked fine too.

Overall, you don't get a lot from just one game, but so far the group is very positive about it and look forward to trying out more as we go.
Thanks for listening!

-DM Jeff

Everyone's seeming to love humans. I didn't think it was the Pathfinder rules before (really not much changed, EVERYONE got the extra +2) but now I'm wondering.

As my wife pointed out last night, it's because Paizo crafted their human cultures to be so darn cool, specific and unique, they're now as fun or even more fun to fit into the role of Chelaxian, Varisian, Shoanti, as it is dwarf, elf, etc.!

-DM Jeff

Way to go Marnak!

My group starts tomorrow with CotCT as a Beta playtest and I can't wait to dive in! Glad your first session went well, that shows promise.

I have 4 players for this game.

* Human Cleric of Iomedae.
* Human Warlock (father had a devilish contract)
* Human Monk
* Human Noble (from Black Company Campaign setting) /Rogue

We've played out the beginning meet outside the little home and will all meet for finner tomorrow at a local resturant to finish out the first meeting, then back to the game room for play!

-DM Jeff

OK, the fast playing bit: I play with d20 veterans who really know their stuff. We play very close to Rules As Written and combats fly fast and furious. They also trust my quick judgements.

Then I bet I didn't count the close to 60 total hours spent doing stuff in email. I bet we all spent about 2 hours a week doing otherwise boring reminders or stat stuff (or dividing treasure) during the week over email (that can eat up a lot of time at the table) so that helped too.

Also, treasure tracking. Everyone had a couple trading card sleeves and we used Paizo's treasure cards to track the entire inventory. It was funny when they turned them in at the last game and I was looking at nearly 60 cards! Christmas Tree indeed!

PDF's: I clip out the stat blocks and print them onto my own page. The format stays, but then I take a few minutes each week to jot down page numbers (specifically of spells or rarely-used feats) right next to the items in question to speed play. It also made capturing NPC profile heads, handouts, and maps a godsend. I can also copy floorplans in the PDFs without having to cut out the text and numbers to enlarge for miniatures.

Overall the quality of the adventures, the PDF, and the general way Paizo writes the way we like to play all helped.

To all those about to start: you should love it. This was the campaign that finally got my one player to admit was more fun than Shackled City (but only just!).

-DM Jeff

Whn you put the time played like that, wow indeed! I also can't tout enough what an amazing help the designers and fellow posters on these board have been to help tweak and work out some sections for my particular group. That, and having the PDF's as well? Priceless.

-DM Jeff

Wow. That good, heh? That's one of the only FR books I do not have. What in particular made it so appealing to your imagination? Can you give some specifics, with spoiler tags if need be? Thanks!

In particular, their discussion on the plots and ways the yaun-ti infiltrate different societies, what they hope to gain, and specific missions had me scribbling adventure ideas on napkins to use later. The inhuman breeding experiments different castes used, and how they trained their agents to work among humans was just, well, darn good reading.

One part set up and gave particulars on where yaun-ti spies might be operating and what they were involved in around the Realms. Also, the geography sections were easy to read and seemed complete and ready to run. There are also chapters on how to develop and play an entire party of yaun-ti PC agents.

There's also intensive work exploring the nagas of the Realms and their plots and schemes. Some of the stat blocks were a bit "epic", but many others were just good ways of giving your players a swift kick in the unexpected. The monster section was large enough and had creatures of all levels.

And (this is always important to me) it wasn't dry, dull reading, it kept me engaged nearly throughout.

Hope that helps!

-DM Jeff

How did you use Hollow's Last Hope after Skinsaw? You must have pumped up the monsters quite a bit to be any kind of threat to a group of adventurers that are 6th level or higher.

I did indeed! I was so enamored by the locations and the basic idea that I expanded the whole poisoning thing to be a Sczarni plot backfiring, and ramped up the various creatures to match them with stock stats from other books!

-DM Jeff

All the locations are modular, so if you were looking to "fill in" undeveloped parts of whatever city you are running, this could help stock it up pretty easily, yeah.

-DM Jeff

I have to say this is no doubt one of the better FR sourcebooks. Despite having a plethora of cool stats for making your own adventures, the fluff and adventure ideas in here really got my imagination going. I created dozens of threads in my FR games, wherever they were set, after reading the ideas in this book.

Just my 2 pinch.

-DM Jeff

With Adding in the extra Adventures you guys finished at 15th level? Really

Very much so. They missed some stuff along the way and that was actually my reasoning for adding the extra advetures to keep them up to date.

Also, I admit to scrapping a few rooms myself. My party and I are not fond of "you enter the 5th room, this one ALSO has 8-10 whatevers, and they come to attack you". Repeat rooms are ususlly scrapped or rewritten. Through sheer dumb luck they missed most of Foxglove Manor except for the end sequence they needed.

-DM Jeff

Best of luck to you Nic, and best of all thanks for sticking around to write for the game when you can!

Enjoy your new job to the fullest!

-DM Jeff

I just subscribed, and this was my first issue. It arrived last Friday and I spent long times on the hammock this weekend with this REAL magazine and it was wondrous to have another generic monthly dedicated to my version of the World's Most Popular yada yada.

REALLY impressed here. I know exactly why I didn't subscribe earlier, I figured nothing could hold a candle to my beloved print copies of Dragon. I'm happy to report I was wrong, and if this is ANY indication of where the Kobolds are going (and they stick with 3.5) I am along for the ride no questions asked.

GREAT JOB Mr. BAUR & FRIENDS!

-DM Jeff

Anyone use this one? Age of exploration stuff seems tempting for my islands campaign.

Early in the d20 thang (circa 2002) I borrowed a lot from this book, and their other supplements for my own Maritime part-time game. I found the material to be highly imaginative and quite good.

EDIT: Their Broadsides! book has bee exceptional in this regard, and i suggest checking it out.

Their ritual magic system waa a bit of a spike in power but with just a little work made for some good story elements.

-DM Jeff

Some Spoilers, please bevare!

Well, my group finished Rise of the Runelords! We began January 7th of this year and played 32 6-hour sessions. The campaign consisted of (in order):

PF1 Burnt Offerings
Homemade Boggart Side Trek
PF2 Skinsaw Murders
D0 Hollow’s Last Hope
E1 Carnival of Tears
PF3 Hook Mountain
U1 Gallery of Evil
PF4 Fortress of the Stone Giants
PF5 Sins of the Saviors
PF6 Spires of Xin-Shalast

The players had a complete blast. Golarion has totally hooked them, and most of them now have Companion subscriptions as well as scooping up the Guide to Korvosa, Campaign Setting and Gazetteer.

They ended at 15th level Sunday Night while fighting (and defeating) Karzoug in his lair. Misha the Ranger/Scout Pathfinder, Aidan the farmer hero and Paladin of Erastil, Leland the Binder/Sorcerer and Kitara the Shoanti Spirit Shaman have saved the day!

These are all old-time hacks who immediately felt my enthusiasm for the setting and adored feeling like they were playing anew again with the fresh takes on Goblins, Ogres, Ghouls, Stone Giants, and the new monsters that returned wonder to their game.

Leland the Binder successfully co-produced a play at the Sandpoint Theatre with the book of Ancient songs he recovered from the ship in the swamps near Turtleback Ferry. Misha married Belvin the Shipyard guy and got some journals posted in the Pathfinder Chronicles. Titus Scarnetti is going through massive legal wrangling in Sandpoint. Aidan helped open a new shrine in Magnimar. Kitara was a very antisocial Shoanti who nonetheless won over the hearts of many of Sandpoint during their adventures. I should also mention how Leland, while bound with a particularly horny vestage, wound up sleeping with Justice Ironbriar’s wife disguised as the old elf himself.

Did they have a favorite adventure? It’s pretty much Hook Mountain and the adventures surrounding it. Fort Rannick, in particular, was a real highpoint for the group (and Shalelu stayed behind with her adoptive father figure to restart the Black Arrows).

Now, they have crafted PFRPG characters to tackle Curse of the Crimson Throne, our next game beginning in 6 days using the new rules set as our playtest game. Good times indeed. Thanks Paizo!

-DM Jeff

For 28 years I've pronounced them to rhyme with "throw".

When I start Second Darkness I'm going to pronounce them the PF way, to rhyme with "now"...just to make them feel different, throw my players off, and remind them we're on Golarion now!

-DM Jeff

My group just created our PF characters to begin Crimson Throne, and yes, some of them did notice this (and I saw it) as well.

-DM Jeff

Parts of it had me grinning, and others had me wincing a tad. Spaeking from someone who owns all Buffy, Angel, and Firefly DVD's, I truly feared that shark over there...and the stance Whedon had as if he was going to try to jump it.

-DM Jeff

Sadly, for the first time in a long time, my wife and I decided to bow out this year thinking (incorrectly) that WotC would be piling 4e all over everything and everyone and so we decided to get windows installed instead.

Then the Paizo announcement came, and we shed a tear. ONE. Before making plans to be there for 2009 and the rollout of the PFRPG!

GenCon is great. And last year for the first time we also bought our two daughters (10 and 14) and they had a blast and there was plenty to keep them busy and happy.

Seeing old friends and meeting new ones you only know by a messageboard alias is also super.

-DM Jeff

And there it is pending! I love these guys!

-DM Jeff

In my group, more options = more fun, yes. We allow any WotC splat book with DM approval, and since that's me, and my players are not seeking out loopholes and trying to be obnoxious, it always seems to work out A-OK.

-DM Jeff

Huh. I actually haven't been to WotC's boards since the announcement of the Pathfinder RPG. If you go back, don't tell them I said hi!

-DM Jeff

Never forget Paizo's own Gamemastery Map Pack: Caravans.

http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/p/paizoPublishingLLC/gameMastery/maps/camp aignMapPacks/v5748btpy80i2&source=search

-DM Jeff

Lots of new races is unlikely...

FYI this sits well with many of my players and friends.

-DM Jeff

And reason an order for this disc alone is still pending 5 days later? Perhaps a sudden shortage? Order placed Tuesday still pending.

-DM Jeff

Welcome to the jungle!

We have fun...and games!

-DM Jeff

There's nothing like Dungeon and there will probably never be anything like it.

This is true. Happily, Kobold Quarterly is a magazine that's quickly gaining a very loyal following.

http://www.koboldquarterly.com/

-DM Jeff

Since I haven't seen any other aesthetic comments, here's my basic first impression.

The BOOK itself is a real beauty. Look at the quality put into just the BETA, for crying out loud.

A strong, sturdy, superb binding.

Full color with some of the best pieces of fantasy art around.

It smells good.

You can open it just a few pages in, and it stays open.

The stupid ink doesn't smudge off with the slightest of finger touches.

The borders are clear, the font easy to read and the page layout friendly to navigate.

THIS, friends, is a darn fine BOOK.

-DM Jeff

And I hope my group will eventually accept 'pathfinder' as d&d material.. as of now, they think of it as a whole new game.. bummer.

Once you start playing they will see it's more true to D&D than D&D has become!

-DM Jeff