Dryder's page

Its happening now - what will it be? Not sure...

I quote something from SteelWind (of Chronicles fame) he posted on the O66 boards. Not sure if he posted this on enworld (where he does review work as well). I like his writing a lot and thought this was relevant to post here given that WOTC are doing playtesting now...

Here is the link for the rest of the article below... well worth the read.

The Five Year Trend

2013 also fits within WotC’s emerging “five year” horizon for their editions of D&D. After 3.0, WotC went towards an emerging trend of “five years” in terms of their “Revise. Reset. Resell” marketing strategy for the game. I find that marketing strategy to be exceptionally odious and the main reason why 4E was a failure in comparison to 3E. Never mind what it was or what it wasn’t in terms of its underlying design – it’s main failing was that it was released too soon.

As Monte noted on the podcast earlier this year, there was a tremendous interest in 3E because 2E was D-E-A-D at the time of 3E’s release. When 4E was released, 3E was still very much alive in the market place in terms of its value in use. Late era 3.5 sales edged down for WotC because the market they wanted to exploit (rule books) had only so much capacity before it was overwhelmed. And there is no question at all that WotC overwhelmed gamers with 3.5 rules – so many of them and released so often that WotC pretty much ran out of ideas and topics to write books about – and enough customers interested in those ideas – to make it sensible to make more of them. I’m not suggesting somebody could have come up with better ideas, btw. There’s only so many rules you can release in such a short period of time. (I’ve got at least twenty 3.5 books from that era on my shelf I’ve barely cracked – and never read.)

What WotC needed to do was come up with a different product line instead of selling rules. WotC needed a new product line that had more capacity for absorption in the marketplace. WotC did exactly that with D&D Miniatures and for a time, it worked. But WotC overestimated the capacity of the market to absorb the product in as short a time span as the product was being released. They ended up flooding the market with too much inventory in 2006/2007 and that inventory glut harmed that market in the short to medium term for the next few years, too.

So WotC ran out of topics to write books on and they ran out of customers who wanted to buy miniatures by the case. They couldn’t find a way to make adventures profitable enough for them to justify the development expense and sustain the product line over a longer life-cycle. It was time to release 4E.

As a consequence, 4E was not “too soon” for WotC, but it was much “too soon” for most of their customers. That’s a real problem for WotC’s business model and it is one that they still have not addressed.

Moreover, 4E’s break from compatibility with 3E was a disastrous design decision from a marketing perspective, because when the OGL was factored into the picture, it opened the market to actual competition against D&D’s brand. Taker a release of an Edition of the game which was put out too soon, add to it the OGL, and what you got was Pathfinder RPG. Pathfinder aimed directly at lifestyle gamers who weren’t done with 3.xx yet. As a consequence, in my estimation, Paizo has now pried at least half of those “lifestyle gamers” away from WotC and they have built their following for Pathfinder from that secure, (if demanding), customer base ever since.

Losing half or more of your lifestyle gamers hurt WotC’s success in the “long tail” of its product line in the later stages of 4E. Its expansion rule books did not sell nearly so well because half the people (or more) who would have bought them didn’t. They were off buying Pathfinder. Still, that’s not the real problem when it comes to marketing 4E. The expansion books sustain the brand and make a bit of money, but the real cash is in the temporary gamers. And THAT has been the problem we’ve seen in the past two years for WotC. The emergence of Paizo as a real competitor of an ongoing brand has siphoned off not just half of their “lifestyle gamers”. If that is all it was, it wouldn’t be so bad. But Pathfinder has become so successful that it has siphoned off a BIG ASS CHUNK of new gamers churning IN to the market for their temporary 1 to 3 year stint in the hobby. Those are the customers who bulk up the number of core rulebooks sold and can make the game significantly profitable.

I don’t know how many of the new gamers have “churned in” to Pathfinder RPG instead of “churning in” to 4E, but it’s a HELLUVA LOT. That’s why we have seen the sales numbers of Pathfinder’s Core Rulebook INCREASE in 2010 and 2011. There is no other explanation for that sales trend that fits the facts. Those are customers who aren’t WotC customers and never will be. That’s a big loss to WotC in terms of their sales levels. Not good. WotC’s Essentials line was aimed at those new customers, and the market performance of the Essentials lines indicates that it didn’t work. At the same time, there weren’t enough of those new customers coming in to make the D&D minis line profitable, and WotC has killed that collectible product line off, too.

So now we’re getting 5E.

5E will Probably be Awesome

So, what will 5E be like? I haven’t a clue. Given that it’s Monte Cook, and further given that WotC lost a lot of customers to Pathfinder RPG that they would very much like to have back (and FAR worse, has since lost a LOT of short-term customers who have become Paizo’s temporary customers instead of WotC’s), I think it’s fair to say that the future of D&D will look more like its past and less a significant break from the traditions of D&D that 4E was. I think 5E will not be taking not so much a step forward so much as it will really be one step back and two steps sideways.

While there will remain some aspects of 4E that WotC will continue with along into 5E, I think 5E will look a lot more like a fusion of Star Wars: Saga Edition & d20 Modern re-infused with Arcana Evolved/Iron Heros touch of 3.xx.. The game will look a lot less like 4E and a lot more like 3.5. It truly will be more of a ver 3.90. That’s my feeling. I may well be wrong.

But really, that’s not what’s important. I know it SEEMS that it’s important, but it isn’t. I’m fairly certain in fact that I will like 5E as a system. In fact, I am fully prepared to like it a lot. But there are three factors involved in 5E – all of which are beyond the capabilities of Monte Cook to redeem or remediate – which will cause me to not adopt it as my go to RPG.

I want to be clear that I really don’t think there will be “problems” with Fifth Edition, as such. I think Monte will do a pretty damn good job, overall. From my perspective, the “problems” with Fifth Edition stem from the corporate objectives and business model of Wizards of the Coast, not from the design talents of Monte Cook. As such, those problems are beyond the capability of any one designer to ameliorate == and any one edition of the game to fix.

The Problems with Wizards of the Coast Approach to the Hobby:

1. They want the fast buck, not the long dollar: If you have ever read articles by Ryan Dancey on the sales figures for the core books of 3.0, Ryan gives you a sense of just how many copies of the core rules that WotC sold a little more than a decade ago. It was a breathtakingly large number of core rulebooks. They sold hundreds of thousands of copies a month when it was released. The later iterations of 3.xx – even the core rulebooks for 3.5, never sold nearly so well. Hell, I’m not sure that (excepting the three core rulebooks for 3.5), that if you took the REST of the entire 3.5 product line, combined? My bet is that you wouldn’t match the number of core rulebooks that WotC sold for 3.0. They sold millions of those things -- just a stupid number of them.

When your sales figures get that large, your cost of production drops to extremely low levels. You can print those books for a couple of bucks each on that scale. Your profit per book still goes sky high. At that point, you realise that what your business is really all about is selling core rulebooks. The rest of your game is just window dressing and marketing spin so you can sell more core rulebooks to new gamers.

And that’s why WotC does what it does. They aim to sell core rulebooks to as many players of the game as they possibly can, in as short a timespan as they possibly can. They don’t care if those players churn in and churn out of the hobby in less than three years. A sale is a sale, in their view. If those customers stick around as “lifestyle gamers” – so much the better. But WotC is a division of Hasbro, and Hasbro wants the fast buck. That’s why the Revise. Reset Resell strategy will continue in another five years after 5E is released, even if Monte Cook gives us a Fifth Edition that he received from God on the slopes of Mount Sinai engraved upon Stone Tablets.

So when is 6E coming? It says right here in 2018.

My timeline for an RPG system isn’t five years - it’s much closer to ten. I think ALL lifestyle gamers are customers who dig MUCH deeper and care MUCH more about the game than the 80% of WotC customers who are temporary gamers of convenience (game for three years or less). Lifestyle gamers are closer to a ten year product cycle than a five year cycle in terms of our edition horizon. So WotC and I don’t see eye-to-eye on this and that’s not EVER going to change with 5E, 6E, or 7E. Monte Cook sure as hell isn’t going to change WotC’s marketing strategy on that issue, either.

Paizo knows this and has been quite clear that their horizon for the Pathfinder RPG product line is aimed at a deeper and longer run than five years. They haven’t yet said how long they will aim for, but the intent is to longer than five and get closer to ten. Their business model and product release schedule on the Rules side is aimed at this longer span, too. (I do fear that Paizo’s release schedule on the Golarion side / Player companion aspect of the game is too ambitious. We’ll see.)

So that’s Knock #1 on 5E. In fact, I am so dead certain about that aspect of WotC’s business model that I know it will be a problem with a game that does not yet exist and that I haven’t even seen yet.

You know the line from Jerry Maguire, “You had me at hello”? Well, in this case, “You lost me at five years”.

Worth reading the rest of the article posted over on O66... I edited this to take out the saltier language but I think that SteelWind nails it.

I've been putting together a few mapping tips and tricks and posting them on G+ and facebook at lunchtime 2-3 times a week. If you're interested, you can find them here:
• tips on facebook
• tips on Google+
• collated tips on the blog (every Saturday more or less)

I hope the tips come in handy to people, and let me know if there's something you'd like to see covered.

Tips so far (from the last 3 weeks):
• Drawing top down hills
• City design - start with the roads
• Dungeon design and adventure flow
• Simple hatched city district styles
• Using the Shape Tool to create quick simple icons in Photoshop
• Hand drawn mountains
• Turning a map into an aged paper handout
• A classic gatehouse design for guarding your front door
• Creating isometric dungeon maps
• Quick and Easy Dungeons using Grids
• Using layer styles for attractive dungeons.
• Using paths to create pretty dungeon maps
• Old School Mapping in Photoshop and Maptool

To the OP: as the developer of the Pathfinder Modules line, I wanted to address your concerns personally. Since you clearly took a lot of time to compose your thoughts and post them here, that seemed the least I could do.

I mean this as an honest criticism, so please forgive me if this sounds harsh (it is certainly not meant as a personal criticism of anyone) but the Modules line, as it stands today, seems like little more than a proving ground of sorts for adventure authors that Paizo is vetting or possibly grooming for bigger things.

That role is covered more these days by the Pathfinder Society Scenarios line, which, as a PDF-only product line involves less production cost for the risk, and the difficult nature of designing a tiered adventure for organized play allows us to really test people in a crucible of design difficulty.

Let me explain. First, it is a well known fact that the opportunity to write a module in the PF Modules line is the grand prize, if you will, of the RPG Superstar contest. So, one out of six of the adventures that we'll see in a year of the PF Modules line is written by a newcomer to the industry, and that's a good thing. Cultivating fresh talent is critical to the future health of the gaming industry that we all (presumably) love. However, it also means that Paizo is accepting a certain level of risk. This is, after all, the professional maiden voyage of someone who won a contest, which leads me to my second point.

That's true; it is a risk for us. That's why we only offer it to the winner. But that's a risk we're willing to take to give people the incentive to participate. You'll note that the runners-up were offered Pathfinder Society Scenarios, which have smaller word-counts (and thus less pay) and are less prominent as they're never printed and sold in stores. But one module a year by an untested author is an ok risk, as far as I'm concerned, in order to promote RPG Superstar and to truly reward the person who lasts to the end and comes out on top.

The Pathfinder Modules line is bi-monthly. I believe that a two month gap in the line is intentional because many of the developers in this line are not full time employees of Paizo and thus there is the risk that the initial drafts, reworks, etc might not arrive on time or at a level of quality that Paizo is comfortable with. I'm guessing that the two month gap between adventures is a safety net to allow Paizo time to recover from an adventure author who drops the ball for whatever reason.

I am the primary developer on the Pathfinder Modules line, and I am a full-time employee at Paizo, so that isn't the reason for the bi-monthly production schedule—not directly at least. While I work on this bi-monthly line and handle all the outlining, assigning, art ordering, revisions, and general freelancer back-and-forth as the adventures are written, I'm also doing the same same thing with the Pathfinder Society Scenarios line, which involves two scenarios a month. Thus, in a two month period, I'm personally overseeing, from start to finish, five adventures. To add another 32-page module on top of that would simply be more than I (or anyone, for that matter) could have time for and maintain both the high quality we strive for at Paizo and a semblance of sanity (not to mention a marriage and social life). Paizo is growing, and it may be that we take on more developers as time goes on who can help with some of the workload and enable this line to go monthly, but that's not something we have specific plans for at the moment.

Third, the PF modules line has been, at least up to now, a 32 page softcover. I believe that this, again, is by Paizo design as an intentional risk management firewall against a new or inexperienced adventure author getting in over their head with a project too large for them to handle. And, of course, poor sales on a 32 page adventure is a more easily absorbed loss than a 96 page super adventure that sells poorly.

This comes back to the same issue as above. Development of the adventures in our Pathfinder Adventure Path line (which usually come in around 55 pages, on average) are a full-time job for my fellow Developer, Rob McCreary. Doubling the size of the Pathfinder Modules line would necessitate the hiring of an additional person to take on development of it, as that amount of work is enough to occupy someone's plate all the time. As Vic pointed out above, it's also not something we can vary from month to month, and even changing the product length (and thus price) on people who have been subscribing for going on 5 years no would likely result in more cancelled subscriptions than it would net. That is the real risk with making changes to the format of the adventures, not a fear of a freelancer dropping the ball. We trust all of our freelancers to be professional and turn in the absolute best material in the industry, and we wouldn't assign someone to a project if we didn't think they could do it.

Or, to put it another way, I understand that there is great reluctance (justifiably so btw) in making any significant changes to the very successful Pathfinder AP formula (6 adventures, monthly, starts 1st level, finishes at 13th-17th level), but why can't the PF Modules line be more dynamic in its content, format and even release schedule?

As I said above, our subscription model means we can't be dynamic with the format of books that belong to subscription-based lines. You'll notice, for example, that our forthcoming Rise of the Runelords hardcover is not part of a line, as it wouldn't fit within what our subscribers tend to expect from month to month. That said, I feel the content of recent modules has been very dynamic. Adventures such as The Harrowing and The Ruby Phoenix Tournament are stories and types of adventures that we haven't done anywhere else, and that, at least internally, really excite us in terms of non-standard adventures we'd like to run or play. Coming up, we have The Moonscar, in which high-level PCs travel to the moon to face demons in an outer space jungle. That's pretty non-standard if you ask me, and not something we could do with any of our other product lines. The Modules line, as a relatively low word count line of one-off adventures is actually the perfect place for us to do weird or experimental adventures that might not be everyone's cup of tea. After all, if something doesn't interest you, you aren't committed to running five other adventures around it, and can simply not use that single adventure.

Hollow's Last Hope, Crown of the Kobold King, Revenge of the Kobold King, Hungry are the Dead, Tower of the Last Baron and Treasure of Chimera Cove were loosely connected, but that trend seems to have stopped in the modules line for the past year.

With only six adventures a year, one of which we're committed to having as the annual RPG Superstar module, that leaves only five to work with for linked adventures. And if the level range or concept of even a two-part arc isn't to people's liking, that's a third of our annual production run that we risk having lower sales on, as opposed to the normal sixth that we risk with any product. At the moment, there are no plans for other linked modules, but I wouldn't rule it out as something we'll never do again.

What we have done this year, however, is link a module (this month's The Ruby Phoenix Tournament) to the metaplot of our Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign for the season, thus synergizing the two product lines and adding an additional level of continuity to the world as a whole. If folks like this, we may do other crossover modules down the line.

The most obvious, to me, is the mega dungeon crawl. Most of the ones that I've seen done well (ToEE, Ruins of Castle Greyhawk, Undermountain) are not going to fit into a 32 page module, but nor are they likely going to be your entire campaign. Rappan Athuk Reloaded and Slumbering Tsar from Frog God Games are two exceptions of mega dungeons that are, IMO, full campaigns but they include more than just dungeon delves in a specific site. The dungeons listed in the book 'Dungeons of Golarion' would make good candidates here.

I agree. These would make awesome adventures, and we've said for a long time that we'd love to do a megadungeon book. But as stated above, it can't be part of this line, as people didn't sign on to the subscription with that as a contingent. If we were to do one down the line, it would likely be handled like the Rise of the Runelords compilation coming out this summer. But until we have such an adventure that we're ready to publicly announce, we could always handle it differently.

'Sandbox with walls' areas, as I call them, are also good candidates. This is a valley, or a kingdom, or a forest, or some other geographic area that will have numerous encounters and sites for adventure in it, but it is designed specifically for a limited range of levels. 'The Valley of So-and-So' details 50 different encounters, for levels 7-9. It won't fit into a (single) 32 page module but it also isn't something that merges nicely into a themed Adventure Path. Nor is it necessarily an area large enough for an entire campaign. Falcon's Hollow is a good example; not coincidentally, the area around FH made for my favorite series of adventures in the Modules line to date.

That's actually an interesting idea. I think we might be able to do a series of adventures in the same region to do this sort of thing, similar to how the early adventures in the line were often set in Absalom or Falcon's Hollow, to provide a number of unlinked adventures for GMs to pick apart and use as they needed in a sandbox-style campaign in the same region. It's not really something that we've discussed since I took over the line, so the suggestion is certainly one I'll bring up in our next long-term Pathfinder Modules planning meeting.

Also, there is the 'event' type of adventure. Something significant is going to happen, or should happen, and the PCs either have to make sure that it doesn't or that it does. The event, whatever it is, is big enough that 32 pages isn't going to allow for enough detailed coverage of it, but an entire AP centered around the idea is going to end up stretching the PCs' patience (I felt like this by the end of the Age of Worms AP....cripes show up already, will you, Kyuss?).

Event-based adventures are really hard to pull off, even by experienced authors, and that's one reason we haven't done a ton of them. This month's The Ruby Phoenix Tournament is sort of an event-based adventure, but perhaps it's time to do another one in the future. It has been some time since we did one.

Maybe this is an area that Paizo has consciously decided to leave to third party companies. Certainly Frog God Games has scratched this itch for me up to now. But, when Paizo has enough confidence to branch out into online games and comic books, I have to believe that it can take a calculated risk on the Pathfinder Modules line in order to get it to that next level.

I'll note that both our online and comics products (as well as our various minis lines) are licensed to other companies, meaning they take far less resources than something produced internally. I too want to see the Pathfinder Modules line rise up your excitement ranking and this sort of feedback is exactly what we need to do that. Thanks for taking the time to post such extensive commentary.

First let me say that Paizo has put together a truly beautiful product, even by their own high standards. I can't wait to sit down and read it cover to cover. In the meantime, though ...

You know it had to happen. Let the cataloging begin. I summon Charles Evans!

p. 35
The year 2498 is listed before 2497 in the Timeline. The dates correspond to the correct facts, they're just listed in opposite order.

Amentum (Ultimate Combat gladiator weapon)

Arc Slinger (Ultimate Combat feat)

Atlatl (Ultimate Combat primitive weapon)

Hawkeye (Archer archetype class feature)

Longshot (Ultimate Combat spell)

Steady Aim (Musket Master archetype deed)

Some mistake I've found in this thread:

1. There is no such thing as an outsider-bane weapon. You must choose a subtype, such as outsider (evil), outsider (earth), etc.

2. Bane weapons work regardless of what plane they are on.

3. Outsiders on their home plane are NOT native outsiders, nor do they become native outsiders. They ARE native to their plane, but that is different from being a native outsider (which is a specific subtype that means they have an unusually close connection to the material plane).

4. Creatures (of any kind) only gain the extraplanar subtype when away from their home plane. While adventuring on the evil outsider's plane, your entire party is considered extraplanar, and may therefor be banished.

IIRC, historically, crossbows were originally banned because a peasant shouldn't be able to kill a knight.

As it has been pointed out, crossbows were simple weapons, anyone can use them, but i am fine with them as they are now, just imagine if crossbows were realistic in their damage and to-hit, an entire party could be taken out within a surprise round. Armor piercing? that sounds like a touch attack, we'll be fair (sort), make it within 30ft it's a touch, just enough for sneak attacks anyway, the damage that should do? well just remember that crossbows were if not killing outright, defiantly taking knights down to below 0 (even without sneak). So at the very least, a knight would be warrior 1, 14 con right? yeah that doesn't sound to bad, so that's 12 hp at first level, so a crossbow should be able to do at least 13 damage on average, and hey give it high threat maybe 18-20 because it would regularly kill people (crit). and this is probably a freaking light crossbow.

hell just using some of the stats Atarlost posted:

the problem would seem to be that only relatively primitive medieval crossbows are represented in the rules. Crossbows are a weapon that benefit a great deal from superior engineering, design, and craftsmanship, and a simple +1 to hit from being masterwork doesn't reflect this.

It's worth noting that actually, composite bows were not a medieval european weapon either, in fact, europeans never developed composite bows, although the Chinese and mongols were using them possibly as early as -300 BCE. By this time they were also making composite crossbows which were a pretty advanced design and gained many of the same advantages from being made of a laminate of wood, horn, and sinew. So it seems like the problem is that the game designers have represented a society that can make pretty advanced bows but not applied the same logic to crossbows.

The obvious solution to me would be to create composite crossbows which would be much more expensive and also more effective than a regular crossbow. A common criticism of pathfinder these days is that it allows firearms which represent a relatively high level of technology. In such a society it would be pretty reasonable to assume they could make crossbows that are more advanced as well.

here's the house ruls i'm running in my current game

Hand Crossbows now do a base 1d4(small) or 1d6 (medium) points of damage

Light Crossbows do a base 1d10 points (small) or 1d12 (medium)

Heavy Crossbows now do a base 2d6 points of damage (small) or 2d8 (medium)

The Double crossbow no longer causes a penalty to hit with it if you are proficient, its base damage is as a light crossbow of it size.

The Rapid Reload feat now allows you to load a new case of bolts into a repeating crossbow as a move action.

The Crossbow Mastery feat now allows you to load a new case of bolts into a repeating crossbow as a free action. If you have multiple attacks, this means you may make your full number of attacks with a full attack when using this weapon.

Double repeating crossbow: This crossbow is a marvel of engineering and is masterwork by default, no lesser design could possibly fire properly. Two arms of precision forged steel cross each other on it's fore section while the back incorporates two clips of bolts and two triggers, the whole of which is encased in a heavy plate of steel guarding the hands and often bearing stylized artwork or heraldry as best suits the individual wielder. Each double repeater is custom made to fit a specific wielder and other creatures take a -2 penalty to hit with one that is not fitted to them (stacking with the nonproficiency penalty). A skilled crafter might be able to resize a double repeater for a new wielder (DM's discretion)

Cost: 1000gp

Base damage: 2d4 (small) or 2d6 (medium)

Benefit:You may make one attack roll as a standard action. If the attack hits, the target takes damage from both bolts. Critical hits, sneak attack damage, and other precision-based damage only apply to the first bolt. Alternatively, you may fire both arms independently as a full round action and make multiple attacks if you normally could. You may choose which case to fire each bolt from as part of a full attack, for example in case you have loaded the bolt cases with different types of ammunition. You can't make full attacks with this weapon that deal damage for 2 bolts as part of a full attack unless you have the manyshot feat, and in that case you can still only fire a single extra bolt as part of a full attack.

Drawback: Due to its size and weight, you take a –8 on attack rolls if you’re not proficient with it.

Load: Each case of bolts holds 10 bolts. Loading one case of bolts is a full round action that provokes attacks of opportunity; the Rapid Reload feat allows you to reload both cases of bolts as a move action. Crossbow Mastery allows you to reload both cases of bolts as a free action.

it's not RAW and possibly the loading isn't realistic but it seems to be fun so far so, hey, who cares what the game designers intended?

Crossbows need a buff of some sort. It's a pure low level weapon right now, and usually gets discarded after a few levels.

The simplest buff is that crossbows gets +DEX to damage right off the bat. It's useful later on, viable as a build for fighting classes, and dangerous enough for average low level NPCs.

It's always about the static bonuses, more dice doesn't help unless it's 3 or 4 times more.

Paizo will not buff it though.

Lots of those who do tend to crossbows - Inquisitors, Wizards to be particular don't tend to have high dex. Its not a bad idea though - aiming ability and all that.

Make it a static bonus.

The rules just do not do the actual weapon justice. Quit screwing one of histories greatest weapons!!!

I beg your forgiveness in advance. I am compelled by forces beyond my control...

That's it. I'm sick of all this "Crossbow" b!+*~#*# that's going on in the d20 system right now. Crossbows deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that.

I should know what I'm talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine crossbow in Japan for 2,400,000 Yen (that's about $20,000) and have been practicing with it for almost 2 years now. I can even shoot through slabs of solid steel with my crossbow.

Japanese smiths spend years working on a single crossbow and cock it up to a million times to produce the finest instruments known to mankind.

Crossbows are thrice as powerful as European bows and thrice as large for that matter too. Anything a bow can shoot through, a crossbow can shoot through better. I'm pretty sure a crossbow bolt could easily pass right through a knight wearing full plate with a simple trigger pull.

Ever wonder why medieval Europe never bothered conquering Japan? That's right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined Samurai and their crossbows of destruction. Even in World War II, American soldiers targeted the men with the crossbows first because their killing power was feared and respected.

So what am I saying? Crossbows are simply the best ranged instrument that the world has ever seen, and thus, require better stats in the d20 system. Here is the stat block I propose for Crossbows:

(One-Handed Exotic Weapon)
1d12 Damage (P)
19-20 x4 Crit
240 ft.
+2 to hit and damage
Counts as Masterwork

(Two-Handed Exotic Weapon)
2d10 Damage (P,S)
17-20 x4 Crit
480 ft.
+5 to hit and damage
Counts as Masterwork

Now that seems a lot more representative of the shooting power of Crossbows in real life, don't you think?

tl;dr = Crossbows need to do more damage in d20, see my new stat block.

If you look at it another way, if you NEVER want to invest a feat in a bow and want something relatively cheap then the Crossbow is right for you. D8 or D10 damage and 19-20 crit range.

It sort of works - sure the Longbow is better and does the same damage as a light crossbow but it costs double the price.

My house rule adds +2 to dmg at short and point blank ranges (ie the ranges of most encounters).

Now if you don't want to spend 300 for a composite longbow, the light crossbow is a better than decent choice and a heavy crossbow at D10+2 is something worth shooting for the serious enthusiast who doesn't want to pump feats into it.

Mind you after about level 4 even with these changes both longbow and crossbow fall flat unless enhanced by feats.

I used black window marker to black-out the entire map, then a damp cloth to reveal the rooms as they were explored. It worked remarkably well...

The final encounter was pretty neat as the party's light source didn't reach into all the corners of the large room.

Use larger sheets of post-its. The gum/glue will keep them in place and the larger ones can be cut to fit the layout. I found the easiest way, particulary in such a linear map is to imagine walking through the map to determine what will be seen at each point and making the reveals match. The more complex the map, the more difficult it becomes. Players are known to do the unexpected (or the idiotic) and you can't always plan from what direction the PC's are coming.

Its the fountain. The water loses its potency shortly after being removed, unless consumed.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

So I am running MOTLG as a part of the path to immortality series and it's gone seriously wrong.

This campaign was going so well until now......

Hi,

as my group will very soon be starting part 3, I´m currently making some maps to show/play with. I´m using Maptools to make the maps.

To get ideas for the maps I´m using Google to find some ruin pictures. I hope its not an legal problem posting them here. If it is, please contact me and I´ll remove them. The monster pics are also from google.

If someone has a good picture for one of the locations, I´d be happy to see them and maybe make a map.

I will be updating them as I make them.

So lets start, maybe someone can use them for their own campaign:

E1 Crocodile Island
Map
E2 Lair of the Ape-Eaters
Map
E3 Chimera Lair
Map
Monster: Chimera pic from AP

E5 Isle of Shadows
I ignored the discription here. In my version its an old tower which is completely flooded. It was once a kind of bank. On the inside are still some vaults, which are closed behind a giant sealed door and multiple forbiddance effects.
Map

F1 Shattered Bridges
Map F1a bridges
Map F1b bridges
Map F1b nord
Map F1b east
Monster = degenerated serpentfolk pic from AP

F2 Promanda of Law
(Ugimmo is currently in his lair, an old building, half sunken in the water)
Map
Monster: Ugimmo pic from AP

F4 Flooded Amphitheather
The thing to the right is a portal. This portals are all over the city and connect some buildings via dimension doors. Some of them are still working.
Map

F5 Den of the Rakshasa
Changed Crocodile to normal tiger because of the pic ;)
Map

Funny thing about the tarrasque...

I've been trying to fit the tarrasque into an AP since Age of Worms. Sometimes, he sticks in there until nearly the end (he almost saw an appearance in Savage Tide, and then again in Runelords, and then again in Legacy of Fire, and then again in Kingmaker), but it usually ends up being, "The tarrasque is too spicy. The AP needs to be ABOUT the tarrasque if he's gonna show up. We'll do the tarrasque AP next time." And then next time rolls around and we get distracted by pirates or ninjas or drow or whatever.

What NPCs from the future books could also be brought to the funeral as friends of the professor? I like the idea of having this influx of strangers all come into town for the funeral, and then all vanish just as quickly.

I'm thinking:

• Acting Seargeant Dun - The son of a mere basketweaver whose husband had died many years earlier, Dun didn't have very many prospects in life. However his departed father, Edward, was a good friend of the Professors. He died at the hands of some restless natives during an expedition led by the professor into some ruins in the Mwangi Expanse.

  Professor Lorrimor returned to Lepidstadt and gave Edward's share of the bounty to his widow. When the time came for Edward's son to gain a job, Professor Lorrimor wrote a letter of recommendation which got Dun a job as a courthouse guard.
  

• Zvraskav Hora - He had sold many goods to the good Professor over the years, and also kept an ear out for news that might interest the professor. He comes to pay his respects of not only a good customer, but someone who had grown into something of a friend.
  
• Duristan Silbio Ariesir - An aristocrat inspired by the professor's many tales and dealings with creatures of the night. He has come to the funeral and has vowed to continue on in the good professor's step. His first goal is to go into the Shudderwood which the viscious creature s of the night call home.
  
• Kvalca Sain - Professor Lorrimor first met Kvalca when the professor was studying various diseases that could be spread throughout the lycanthropic community in order to destroy this plague on humanity once and for all. Kvalca proved an invaluable aid for his understanding and knowledge of lycanthropes.

  They became good friends, which was Kvalca's goal. Kvalca revealed himself to be a natural werewolf and sympathised with Professor Lorrimor's fears of the average lycanthrope. Kvalca pointed to werebears as a benevolent example of his race, and told the professor of his ultimate goal to one day unite the werewolf tribes.

  Through these discussions Kvalca managed to convince the professor to cease his studies for now and to continue it one day in the far future if Kvalca failed in his goals.
  

• Horace Croon - An eccentric inventor that the professor met and even acted as patron for some of his designs. He comes with an overly complicated invention that takes a rather simple affair (setting fire to some kindling) and turns it into a great ordeal. He has a gigantic barrel with pumps to pump out oil and then knobs and wheels to have this oil catch alight as it sprays into the fireplace. Horace calls this a "lighter" but still has a few kinks to work out (he explains as he quickly stamps out a rug that also happened to catch fire).
  
• Abraun Chalest - Professor Lorrimor certainly had his fair share of expeditions into the lost tombs of Ancient Orision. Always keen to aid in identifying and interpreting these ancient relics was Abraun Chalest. The PCs have an opportunity to befriend Abraun with a diplomacy DC 17. If they succeed he offers to show them a good time in Caliphas should they ever be out that way.
  

I want to thank Spacelard and F. Wesley Schneider for their inspiration. I'm even more excited about this AP now and I'm finding a much better way to link the different APs together with this bit of foreshadowing.

So... I just did the preliminary stats for the revised Xanesha for the Rise of the Runelords hardcover, updating this much-beloved NPC to the Pathfinder rules while toning her down quite a bit from her over-the-top incarnation in the original adventure. So I thought as a quick preview for folks... I'd throw her stats up on these boards!

Enjoy! Hope she's still mean, but not as mean as she used to be! (I'm thinking she MIGHT still be too powerful... but that there might be some new ways you can do things before in the adventure to prep yourself against her...)

I just picked up the module and I am considering inserting it as well.

(Carrion Crown spoilers ahead)

I have a couple other ideas I am bouncing around, but that is the most feasible.

You will need to spend some time describing Westcrown, the pc's will be there for quite a while. There's a lot of ways to do this, but a few key ideas you need to hit.

1) shadows attack at night
2) city is old
3) aristocracy is corrupt, people oppressed

I might head from the Baron's to Westcrown, and have the PC's invited to the Mayor's home in a few days. Run the feast from book two, and instead of a celebration, it's a reminder of the power of the aristocracy and how the PCs are on a short leash (assuming the players sided with Andoran in the previous mod).

Then, before the players get to attend, have the Children of Westcrown contact them, and explain that they need something from within the mansion. Doesn't really matter what, though the keys to Delvehaven would work.

I'd follow with a chase scene, using the new chase deck, or the rules from the GMG. Hellknights and hellhounds arrive to beat on players, children of westcrown run. If the NPC's run, the players are more likely to follow.

The feast introduces a lot of important NPCs. If there are other people you want to have in your campaign, put them there as well. You can fill in any backstory you like easily:

"oh, did you hear, there's a new gang in the Dospera, tieflings if you can believe it. Murdered some commoner, don't know the name" etc.

As someone who has been DM'ing on and off for awhile I have thrown countless MM, bestiary, and custom monsters at my players, but actually ended up backtracking on one of my big-bads after creation. She was a Nymph Vampire with the advanced template and 4 levels of Oracle (Time). Ended up looking at the things saves and AC + the saves my party would need to beat the thing and basically made it screw with the party but the encounter ended up being a romp in her flesh golem pit with her AP spawn lieutenant. I am sure others have had the same problem with their big-bads, and would be interested to hear what creations other DMs had to sideline.