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I confess to not having appropriately acquainted myself with the APG's contents yet. I'd missed this neat trick as well. Kydeem, was that armor in a Dragon article? I remember a Dragon article full of nifty armor options including one that I think is the one you are referencing. I remember it because I decided it was ideal for an arcane caster - wear armor normally, "blink" it off to cast, "blink" it back on when not casting. Very much an adventuring mage's solution to needing more armor while avoiding the pesky ASF!
I think Slenderman is going to be a long-running bit of weirdness in my campaign - something the PCs NEVER solve or even understand. Heck, I doubt they'll ever actually face off against him directly. (wait, there's a pun there...ugh!) Slenderman will be a sidenote they encounter on other adventures, from time to time a red herring and occasionally an involved - but only in a sideways kinda/sorta way - actor in their dramas. And I know for FACT if you create benders, I'll have a whole new campaign fire up! (aigh - another pun!) In fact, that one there might get a couple of non-gamers I know (ok, one is a computer/console gamer) to give Pathfinder a go. Very cool!
Why did we cast Animate Dead on this one Because Mogart was providing us with closure. DM caught the player in question admitting he was cheezing the game and toasted him for it. Bravo! Mogart, good job! I only just found this thread and read it thru in one sitting. Oh, and my players will soon loathe animated bear traps - perhaps almost as much as they loathe kobolds with phalanx fighting and tower shields...
I got partway into your post and had to bring it to the attention of one of my players. Here's his response: Hey, this one of Doc's players.
I think your low Constitution score plays into this concept nicely. A frail character is more likely to want to avoid combat, and to remain at longer range when combat starts. Your Hit Point total is pretty good for your level and hit-die type, so I wouldn't worry too much about being too easy to kill. I feel that the Dodge feat is a good choice, because that +1 has saved my bacon surprisingly often. Taking this over Precise Shot is not a “bad choice.” To me, it speaks of a character who has not trained in shooting around her allies, or who *has* and is simply afraid that she will hit her allies anyway, thus losing the benefit of her training in actual combat. That's just me role-playing the lack of a feat, giving an in-character reason for mechanical choices. In reviewing your skill selection, I noticed that you have *no* ranks in Sense Motive *at all,* which means that the only bonus to Sense Motive checks the character has is the +1 from her Wisdom modifier. The +3 class skill bonus is, after all, only gained if you have at least one rank in that skill. A talker should have ranks in Sense Motive, and it should be maxed out if your primary role is the Face of the Party. Also, if an opponent gets within melee attack range and tries to use a feint against you, having Sense Motive maxed out makes it much harder for the feint to succeed — and take away a good portion of your AC. In your case, the DC would become twenty instead of fifteen.
Final note: I like the concept, I like how it has been built, and I want to know how it works out at the table.
Wow. Just...
This will no doubt get worked into my upcoming Modern Path campaign. Very creepy indeed. Slenderman takes a round of buckshot to the face and collapses behind some piece of furniture... ...only to NOT be there when the PCs maneuver to check the expected corpse. In confusion, they look around and see Slendy passing a window, carrying the child they are supposed to be protecting. Sweet!! Also, a very well-written and presented product! I agree, this felt like a product I should have paid for. I saw only a very few misspellings and punctuation errors - in fact, I have found far more errors in products I *did* pay for! You've done a great job on this - kudos to you!
While I was looking at some other SGG products, one of my players happened to see Dream Magic on the screen. "Now *that* would be cool!" says he. Weeeeeell, now! In case you've missed it, I'm setting up a modern-day campaign a la the tv show "Supernatural" and a dream-world adventure might be just the thing... Actual unique Dreamscape monsters would have been appreciated as well, rather than two templates to make dreamscape creatures. (Though the templates are easy to use and a nifty start.) I was looking at eidolons over the weekend and I think you could design some pretty freaky/scary Dreamscape monsters using eidolons and their evolutions as a guide. Hm. The Genius Guide to Denizens of the Dreamscape. Hmmmmmmm...
It will start there, but I don't know that it will *stay* there. It may well turn into the PCs' "home base," depending on how well they do - I can see the Good Professor's daughter (to be remade as a Witch, I think) acting as an anchor-point/librarian/lodgekeeper for the PCs should all go well. One of the next adventures will be a modernized "Haunting of Soldragon Academy." Harrowstone will grow in age, likely being placed in western Pennsylvania some 20 miles off the beaten path. The facilities will have originally been a prison during the War Between the States, later converted into an asylum and then into a prison, falling prey to the backstory events some time in the very early 1900's. The events of "seventeen days ago" that kick off the module occur as detailed. That's the current plan, anyway...
And so it starts... This is the blog I'm starting up for the campaign - there will be spoilers, so if you are going to be a player in an adventure listed in any entry's title, don't read it. Otherwise, I'd love folks to read and offer comments. That way, I can keep otherwise scattered, disparate threads herded into a manageable entity. The first entry is a GM's overview of setting up the new campaign - what I plan to accomplish, what gaming resources are approved or pending, etc. A second entry will be happening very soon, dealing specifically with questions and thoughts on how to modernize Harrowstone.
Brandon - THANK YOU for your commentary on this thread as well as sending me here from my own questioning thread. VERY helpful as I gear up to run haunts! These things look like a lot of fun... (says he who ran an underground adventure using only a lit candelabra sitting on the battle-map, blowing out candles as magical light-sources faded... just as the vargouilles attacked...) (yes, I think Harrowstone and haunts might just scar- erm, be remembered by my players for years to come!) Aux - I'm very interested in your ideas, as I was wondering about doing something like that myself.
If I get too tech with it, at least one of the players will start singing "Ghostbusters" and ruin the mood!! :D Brandon, thanks for that link - I'm going to reread it in depth tomorrow and mine it for all I can. With my players wanting a "Supernatural" meets "Charmed" campaign, having a lot of sample haunts is a huge benefit. I'm thinking at least one player is going to run a Witch from APG, so there'll be some healing magic both for the PCs and for dealing with haunts. (short of actually destroying them, that is)
Does holy water count as positive energy for purposes of damaging a haunt? I was about to send a group of Modern Path heroes into a modern form of Harrowstone, only to discover ... you can only damage haunts with positive energy. I'm considering adding a physical damage weakness to all the haunts, just so they can affect them without having access to much in the way of magic as they start out. Hm, in fact, I may make it a campaign-wide fixture...
I live in Louisiana - I've seen mosquitoes the size of jet fighters... :D I've been thinking, if there is magick in the world (hidden or not) and monsters in the dark corners, why can't stirges have been mosquitoes that was exposed to those dark energies? I'll just describe them as being to mosquitoes what the Hulk is to a normal human. Heck, they may even have screaming human visages, since this is a haunted area - just to keep it creepy. As for the magic items, yes - modern medicines. Or, at least, they LOOK like modern medicines... ;-) I've already done the stun batons (see Avalon Games' Infinite Horizons #2). As for making the cure wands something like a spray-can, I can see that for modern stuff. What about for stuff that was made around 1900, though? Any thoughts there?
Yeah, I'd wanted to use real critters rather than the fantasy ones we are used to. I'm making the campaign world something along the lines of the tv shows "Supernatural" and "Charmed" - there will be magic for the PCs eventually, so I have to figure out how to handle the magic stuff - scrolls, potions, wands, etc - in the adventure, as well as working out what critters to replace. There'll be monsters, but rarely - or that's the plan...
With guns, there is a very wide range in similar sized weapons. If I understand you here, I disagree. With a typical fantasy melee weapon, you get a LOT of damage area impacting the target. With firearms, you get a smallish chunk of lead. Piercing melee weapons have higher crit multipliers, so a bullet should, too. Since bullets do most of their damage inside, after they hit, the likelihood of a bullet damaging a vitals area increases - the bigger the bullet, the bigger the wound-track that threatens a crit. Therefore, it makes sense to me that firearms damage dice don't vary all that much - and stacking multiple dice into a gun's damage column just because it is a gun and therefore automagically more lethal than a sword is imo a baseless position. The biggest area for variation between guns seems - again, imo - to be properly in how likely a given round is to hit something vital (crit-range) and how much damage it does at that point (crit multiplier).
I'm working my way through this adventure to bring it into the modern world. One of my main hang-ups I've run into - replacing the stirges. They are fairly important thematically, so I need to nail this one. Any suggestions? I'm sure I'll have more questions come up and I'll post them here as they arise.
Welcome aboard, Meredith! I'm sure you'll find a group more than willing to take on a brand-new player. Mine would, but we're a bit far away for that. and regale someone new with tales of our favourite characters and gaming anecdotes (at which point it’s perfectly acceptable to just smile and nod and think about something else). As long as you aren't cross-stitching (where we can see)! Kinda funny - I have a good friend I chat with online pretty regularly. She's not a gamer per se, but she knows stuff like WoW because her son plays them. She's not a writer, but her mom has published several librarian-oriented non-fiction books. So she gets to "listen to" me prattle on, *trying* to not overwhelm her with gamer/writer jargon. She smiles, nods, and cross-stitches - just happy that I'm happy. :D Oh, and that cat? Scared stiff. Petrified with fear. (Wading thru water? Off-the-cuff, I'd treat it like a blizzard for movement. If it became a regular occurrence, I'd start assessing loss of movement options based on depth - ankle-deep, no runx4; shin-deep, no runx3; waist-deep, no double move; chest-deep, 5-foot step only. But wait, what about currents...)
O.o You so rock. I just printed out the parts of "Haunting of Harrowstone" I need to start my preps. That means I'm makng a list of OTHER stuff I need to get ahold of ... and here you go and add another title to that list... I mean, "that accursed book/chest/knife/oven/whatever" is such a staple. ...crud. You just gave me an idea. How do you steal a haunted house? (When a friend gets back from Iraq this fall, we're going to get together for a large one-off gaming-session. The planned GM for the session is envisioning a cross between "The Italian Job" and "Oceans Eleven," with us on a time limit and having to steal something that is difficult to steal. Why not a haunted location? Interesting...)
Tempest. Teapot. Good product, good folks on both sides. I bought it because SGG put it out, making it more likely to be a quality product, and it happened to coincide with a local project. While I haven't read thru the product in detail as yet, what I *have* read of it reinforces my opinion of SGG. What I've seen here reinforces my opinions of SGG and Paizo. Granted, for most of you, that doesn't really count for anything at all. But hey - it's pushing 12:30 in the morning, so I'm compelled to throw my opinion into the tempest. It's like a requirement for internet access or something - the later it is, the higher the DC for the Will save to avoid posting your opinions...
My gaming group has fallen in love with the tv show "Supernatural" (and "Charmed," but there's no accounting for taste) and are interested in a modern campaign in that style. So I've been looking into converting The Haunting Of Harrowstone into a modern-day setting to run with GRC's Modern Path expansion. But what if my players don't want a one-off? I'm gonna need more fodder for their adventures. Based on the reviews and discussions, RiP's #30 Haunts books are must-haves. I want to take a moment and express my appreciation to reviewers like Megan, End, and D_M who take the time and energy to really dig into a product. The information they provide allows me to make a better-informed decision on my purchases and makes our game-times more enjoyable.
The world is a much larger place than just what the PCs can see... so's life. I look at it like this - at least he didn't leave Paizo due to being killed in a head-on collision by a drunk driver (as happened in one of my other hobbies this month) and will be continuing to put out Pathfinder material! Cause for celebration, that is.
I'm working on a modern-day map of a generic motel and, per the thread title, need some help with measurements. Can someone give me the rough dimensions of: - a typical motel room (bonus consideration given to answers which start, "the room I am staying in measures...")
All assistance appreciated! This is a very interesting project - I'm designing a motel for use as a "keep" in a "post-disaster" game (and my mapping skills are atrocious). So, I'm designing a motel that was closed down, sold, and turned into a keep by a small community that was later assaulted and abandoned, and has now been somewhat repaired for use by a gang of bandits. I'm rewriting "Crucible of Freya" (Necromancer Games) to fit a more "Mad Max" type setting - which is interesting all in itself. Especially since two of the four players were in on the original Fairhill campaign!
Tangentially, anybody know if Infinite Futures is any good? Does it cover Mecha? Modern Day? In reverse order: No, no modern-day coverage. Yes, Infinite Mecha was released in May, iirc. IF as a whole suffers from having been rushed into print. It could be VERY good, but it needs some work at the editorial level. Hopefully, that will be addressed in the near future. I know *I* am compiling a huge list of fan-caught errata to send them.
Don't wait. If you wait, then once you *do* start, you'll realize how much fun you could have been having and how many awesome pieces you could have already turned out in the time you waited. The learning curve really is small, I promise. The molds also work with resin, if you like that instead of the various plasters. I'd like to point out that the Hirst Arts' Egyptian line can make some great Mos Eisley-style architecture if you are a SW gamer, too. And some of the stuff works well with action figure displays.
And, as a bonus, there is also the Awaken Arcane Bond feat, so you can make your arcane bond object an intelligent magic item! :) I was going thru an older notebook either today or yesterday and found an entry where I wanted to set up a campaign world where EVERY magic item was intelligent. It was tucked into some notes on slavery and such with a side-note suggesting a faction that considered magic item creation to be slavery and another note wondering how prevalent magic items would be in such a world. Plus, bonded items - while intelligent - would actually be shards of the caster's own soul/intellect/id/whatever and thus slightly different from the standard "trapped spirit" items. Very interesting ideas, I think... (and totally OFF what the OP was after - sorry!)
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