Dan E's page

Just realised Kirilarien's detect evil ability is constant, but i'm not comfortable retconning the narrative at this point. I'll remember it in future. Also partly as a realisation and partly as compensation...

** spoiler omitted **

OK maybe her concentration was overt or maybe he's just really suspicious.

Sorry for my absence guys I'm back on board now.

Sorry for my absence guys. Some work and personal issues after I finished holidays. Trying to work back into things now.

I'm happy with the four although OK if you want to add another.

Well if we consider ourselves in danger mode I propose we're sleeping inside an extended rope trick from Marcus. Happy to be at the end of any watch as Okoya suggests.

Guys I'm off on holidays today for a week to the Maldives. Get the impression net access is spotty if at all so please bot me in the interval.

OK done already :)

You could just give it a dog stats or have a bear companion.

Better yet make the druid part of a cabal of all female fire users that have bears. In a few levels they can go with fireball and flameshield. Hilarity ensues.

For what its worth you may wish to lose the forest references. Katapesh the city is in a fertile valley but think Afghanistan for everything north, aside from stretches of savannah. Sandy deserts in the west and south.

More (possibly) helpful geography facts on pathfinderwiki if your not fortunate enough to have Dark Markets.

I get the distinct impression that if we use detect evil a lot here... we are going to find a lot of evil here. ;)

This is why Alex warned that playing a paladin would be difficult in this campaign. We are going to have to let a lot of evil slide... and just concentrate on the Evil. :)

To be honest my post was intended more as "So exactly what are we doing?".

4d6 ⇒ (5, 4, 6, 5) = 20 16
4d6 ⇒ (5, 2, 1, 5) = 13 12
4d6 ⇒ (3, 5, 5, 5) = 18 15
4d6 ⇒ (1, 6, 3, 5) = 15 14
4d6 ⇒ (6, 6, 6, 2) = 20 18
4d6 ⇒ (5, 6, 4, 4) = 19 15
4d6 ⇒ (4, 5, 6, 4) = 19 15

Dotted for thinking about. Edit: and wow.

If Marcus sounds a bit neutral its because I'm not really sure what the night plan is apart from walking around scanning for evil. Are we setting up at the Pounders camp and patrolling every few hours?

Fine by me like the same approach.

(Xantrius hasn't been skipped... I haven't started round 3 yet. Give us a chance :-) You can keep that post though... :-)

OK was just confused as you have him higher on initative order than the sailors.

Checked and I'm fine looking through the brower at home only a problem at work. So don't worry about it.

I am sorry... I can't help myself... link :)

Well I'd glady take Hannibal. You are clearly BA. Vincent can be Face (with optional references to him being a lord). The others can duke it out for Murdoch.

Something with an acid attack presumably. I had vaguely hoped we could take Gurg alive but even without his club he was doing too much damage for that.

As for treasure, were presumably going to end up spending hundreds of thousands of gp worth of loot to acquire items to acquire more loot in order to complete our quest and then incidentally get money sometime around what? Level 20 :) Hopefully Vincent is Ok with this.

Scratch the last sorry was looking in the wrong place.

"Nobleman's discount"?

Oh dear.

Smite evil!

Knowledge nobility is about Marcus's one weakpoint. So I suppose we know theres some shameful event but not what it is? I am thinking that Marcus will be a bit questioning of Vincent's reasons and they are quite different in alignment. Maybe thats come out in the past and they've covered over it. Just wanted to cover OOC before it comes up IC.

Aron are the rest of our characters aware of Vincent's motives? Just tryting to get a handle for interactions with him.

It isn't a matter of trust. It was/is never a matter of trust. Of course we trust Alex, or we wouldn't be playing in his games! :)

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment though, I do have an explanation as to why keeping the mechanics out in the open isn't a bad thing.

Us as players seeing the rolls and modifiers can be seen as the equivalent to the training and abilities of the characters at sizing up their opponent. Whether it be a save roll or and attack roll, the characters would have some indication as to the likelihood of success or failure apart from the binary result of fail/pass or hit/miss. How badly did I miss? How fast and agile does the creature creature seem? How durable? etc etc.

As a player, seeing a high reflex modifier is similar to the character seeing how fast and agile the creature is. The character should also be able to roughly gauge the likelihood of success or failure of a tactic or strategy.

I am not suggesting that a creature's stat block be viewable from the moment it is encountered, although there is an in game mechanic for that already as well via knowledge checks. If a caster is looking to cast a spell, and makes a knowledge check, it should be possible for him to know what kinds of magic the creature is likely to resist and those that it might be weaker against.

And even if the caster fails, and takes a chance on a spell that say targets a Will save, it is not entirely unreasonable to say that the caster learns of the targets strength or weakness of said will when the save is rolled. The in game explanation for knowing that creature X had a high modifier to its will save is that the caster felt the strong resistance when he tried to control its mind. He would then be able to decide as to whether he thought another chance may prove fruitful or perhaps he should change tactics.

The same case can be made for most of the rolls regarding combat.

Of course, the DM can verbally describe things in detail, but that entails a lot of work, that perhaps he doesn't...

About this and DM's reply below I'm pretty easy. Some parts of system knowledge are basically impossible to switch off (ie we run into a giant and I'm more inclined to target its reflex rather than fort save). But that ends up mostly being OK I tend to think. A wizard should generally know what his spells are good against.

Where it gets sticky of course is where everything is not what it seems. Maybe its just an illusionary giant or a giant with a bucket load of rogue levels. I tend to roll things in the open unless theres a point to hiding it (which is mostly skills) but then again your giving the fact away that you do need to hide it. So thats certainly not always perfect.

But ultimately players with time on their hands are going to desconstruct things. Particularly when lives are on the line :) Might as well fight the tide as that.

Overall, generally happy to just leave the resolution to DM's discretion particularly with him dropping (as he is wont to do) nuggets of info in descriptions.

Nah.

Note think we have an xp counter and mapper (Durin) and lorekeeper (me). Any volunteers for lootkeeper now we have some?

Prayer is a luck bonus so it all stacks deliciously.

At least it will need a 20... OK I'll stop that.

Our tengu gets two full attack sneak attacks on it. Hopefully that will be enough.

Thats not so bad Aron. Some time I'll tell you about how my elven fighter got killed by a cockatrice in a solid cage.

Yeah bladethirst not really the selling point of the arcane duelist for me unless you want something really specific like ghost touch or DR piercing. + 1/+1 to the bard or +2/+2 to everyone. Hm let me guess...

Looked at this is in detail at one point during my game. Bit of work to find it but believe Sean clarifies they are all primary here. Its only when you combine with a weapon they go secondary and get the -5.

LINK.

I can lore keep.

My bad but init should be +10 with ioun stone (which I swapped in when persistent rod went out). Equally though I probably wasn't wandering into town with the strange rock circling my head so good for combat.

Familiar perception should be + 13: base is +9, + 4 for my extra ranks). (sorry didn't carry from skills up to top of stat block).

I am really enthused about this game.

OK so given we are old school its got to be the tavern. If it really is run by a vampire that we have to convience Talomyr not to smite I'm going to be so pleased.

Got it. Going to try and work it in to the IC chat when we start rather than just deem to info dump prior.

Thats OK, we will all help you out...

"Remember that time Zanzu drank all that mead right before the battle with the orcs.... good times...."

So reprints good then? Its a great spell. Sorry. Trying to be helpful rather than annoying.

No problem.

Dan E wrote:

But hey its not that expensive so give it a go if you feel like it.

8600 gp (or over 1/3 of his starting wealth) isn't expensive? :)

Well in the grand scheme of things... hey i was being encouraging.

You havent looked at my equipment then I started with a lesser rod. I can hardly complain i ban it myself but thought you were ok with it. Assuming its out ill need to rethink things.

Might try my luck with a ring of the ram ... seems an interesting little item. Any comments welcome.

Its an interesting one and provides some flexibility. I should be providing pits and tentacles and things for you to knock someone into. On the downside it doesn't scale and targets cmd which on monsters at least scales up severely after CR 8 or so. Thus its best on humanoid enemies without good bab and will eventually be not useful. But hey its not that expensive so give it a go if you feel like it.

Second offensive defence if you feel you can squeeze it in. Its just so good and a +4 dodge bonus to boot.

I'm liking the final group a lot. 4 characters at 18+ strength says badass soldiers to me :)

From my side I'm really struggling with my last feat, the bonus 5th level one (thus crafting, metamagic or discoveries only). I would have taken craft woundrous item or wand but crafting is out and most of the metamagics I'd rather have a rod for (Im going to end up buying a lot of rods). I went Dazing Spell but dazing fireball is a 6th level slot and that will be a very long time away. Vaguely thinking about taking the trait magic lineage acid arrow and using dazing with that for a 4th level slot. Any other suggestions?

Yep for me clearly but can we hear from Aron, Deevor and Max on that? The former two look neutral and may not be so good for them.

Ah Ok I see now you said archetypes and feats not necessarily spells. Less of a headache really and I was staying away from the new gimicky ones anyway. Think that just drops 1 or 2 low level spells from my book.

... Although it kills the dream of dwarf punting....

I suppose I can just beat your initiative and buff although flys an unlikely first round spell and after that your raged. I really badly wanted to work telekinetic charge into a 4th level slot but couldn't decide if it was good or just silly. But the urge to fling party members (particularly demi-humans) at the BBEG remains.

Looks nice Aron. I'm going to greatly enjoy inspire courage and possibly good hope on augmented summons.

OK good to know. It seems a fairly sad world given the ratio of evil vs good gods.

Talomyr if your still deciding on the anti-undead thing you might like to look at the oath against undead archtype vs undead slayer. Some nice stuff without having to make the full commitment for your smite (although you lose a mercy and get detect undead vs evil). My familiar can pick up the last though.

I think I'm going to end up casting fly on you a lot given the angry dwarven barbarian resists friendly magic.

From a look at a view forums last night yeah there doesn't seem like there is a world setting to draw from. Which is fine. Carte blanche to make stuff up!

One thing I guess is that the church of Muir is probably not on its last legs as per the Golarian port. So presumably we have allies and support in the background at least as soon as we can teleport.

Keen to get started. Any more ideas for the group genesis?

Managed to find a bit of info via google.

There is this on Bards Gate LINK

A map! LINK

Brief history of Orcus LINK. All we knew in the old days was that he had a wand we wanted.

Property prices! LINK

Wealth calculations! LINK

Some more gods stuff although looks like its the same as what you posted. LINK

Okey dokey just looking to flesh out the background but I'll leave it generic.

OK heres the bulk of my crunch. Name to follow although it will probably be something in memory of Marcus.

Struggling a bit getting a versatile enough spell book and haven't got the cash to fit wands in as yet. Will probably tweak the spell list after seeing what Aron and Max end up with. Assuming in particular that Aron's bard will grab haste although I'll pick it up shortly.

Had a look at the deity list. Is there a wiki somewhere I could get a basic idea of the setting from?

Nearly swapped the whole thing into a white necromancer but not sure how much undead in the game and then thinking maybe a cleric better for that. Maybe that idea can be the backup.

Oh and I'm just trying to be the best giant shark I can be (even though presumably we'll be out of the water at least 50% of the time).

Sorry guys very limited time to post. Will finish my update when I can.

Beyond high ranks in Knowledge (Religion) you won't need to worry about the Prq much.

Looks about right Okoya. Remember you might still want to discuss past exploits, party nature (are you mercenaries for hire, strongly affiliated with the church, part of a decent sized adventuring company...) etc.

Bit slow with my crunch sorry really busy til at least the weekend.

I am going a specialist conjurer, teleportation sub-school. For background I am thinking an Andoran battlemage and crusader. While still committed to the struggle I have him as having slowly come to the realisation that the worldwound is a lost cause unless the forces of light can find a way to stem the demonic influence on the material plane as opposed to merely killing demons. In that context I see him as having close links with the church of Thyr (and quite possibly Tal's characters and Okoya's if he's maintaining a religious link) and a natural desire to investigate Orcus' lost stronghold.

In terms of the group background one approach would be to tie everyone in to the crusaders/church of Myr maybe as a professional para-military group. We could even be the equivalent of the churches special forces or troubleshooters, perhaps theyre only real remaining one if the church is that much in decline. That would presumably have us all knowing each other and I kind of like the idea of us being able to say "Hey remember the time that..." and mutually develop backstory in IC chat.

Alternatively if that doesn't work for some due to differing background or alignments (I'm thinking the existing crusaders/church group is going to be fairly strongly good aligned), we could have an existing core (perhaps again me, Okoya and Tal's character) simply recruit the others. That maybe gives some nice new vs old tension to work with.

Just some possibilities.

For the DM can I use the dimensional agility feat with the shift school power? Text says it functions like dimension door but RAI not clear to me.

OK looking at improved familiars assuming I will be good and best options seem to be:

Lyrakien

Harbinger

Liking the first one in particular with its constant detect evil, detect magic, spell-likes and fatigue/exhaustion remover (see thinking about the barb).

As I read the rules my familiar gets my skills ranks if they are higher adding its own ability score.

So even though my charisma can (and probably will) be mediocre my lyrakien can say diplome at a + 15 which is going to be as good as any PC. Use magic device seems another possibility with the familiar flying around say with a CLW wand stablising people at the least.

Now I like to get value out of a feat as much as the next person and all seems perfectly RAW (and if you stick to the bad improved familiars then the feat basically becomes worse than useless given you lose the usual familiar ability) and maybe response is that if I start using my familar like a PC then its as likely to get whomped on as a PC.

Just seems like a possible headache for the DM (and possibly other players) so I thought I'd raise. I started off wanting something I wouldn't just leave in my backpack and forget about but possibilities have come to mind.

I'm coming across wrong so sorry about that.

He seems like a perfectly well optimised murder machine to me. And as far as I'm concerned those who post their characters later can conform to those who do so earlier rather than the other way around.

I meant only that (i) my inclination to pick something other than the stonelord seemed justified (don't need two characters with versatility in sundering) (ii) as a wizard if something did manage to get through his busty will save I'd pretty much start running immediately.

In terms of suggestions as I said mechanically he looks pretty funky to me. The barb in my LOF game gets a huge amount out of reckless abandon so maybe have a look at that. Steel soul is another +2 to saves on top of hardy if you want to really get those saves into orbit.

Edit: Oh the other thing that occured to me was "Mental note, take the make whole spell."