Fitzwalrus's page

Finally they have talked about posting snipers in the crows nest, either with bows and crossbows, or with rifles if you're using advanced firearms.

This was a standard tactic throughout the historic Age of Sail, and probably back into the Middle Ages and Ancient periods as well. If your players aren't doing this they're not thinking offensively, and you certainly should be doing it to them.

(Insert Evil GM Laugh here...... ;D )

Co-player (to me): "I tickle you." *rolls natural 20* "HA! I crit!"

Me: "Would you call that a... crit-tickle?"

Oh Gawds, that's horrid.

Well done!! ;D

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The Gatorbird is particularly well done. That one has all kinds of possibilities....... heh, heh, heh......

That's pretty much what I figured. Otherwise you could "loop" upwards of 50d6 damage onto one target, which would be pretty d*mn effective for a 5th Level spell! ;D

Thanks.

Using the "chain of adjacent squares" effect it is possible to have a Fire Snake spell loop back on itself so that it crosses a given target square more than once. If this happens, does a creature in the "looped" target square take only the Xd6 damage for the overall spell or does he take Xd6 for each of the squares that have been "looped" onto his position?

(I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this ("NO!"), but having a bit of knowledgeable confirmation before the situation comes up would be nice. Thanks.)

One of the things we did that worked out well was that every character got 1 additional skill point per level that had to be spent on Swimming, Profession: Sailor or Craft: Shipbuilding.

Another good idea. I did something similar with Traits: my players started with threeTraits rather than the usual two, but one of the three had to be chosen from the Campaign Traits in the S&S Players' Guide.

I may "borrow" your extra Skill Point idea as well.... ;D

145. You own cats you've named after characters from a fantasy novel.

D*mn. Got me there.

304. You've owned generations of cats named after characters from fantasy novels......

... you can simply cast enlarge person while you are holding the bow and then cast gravity bow right afterwards. They will stack because the are not stacking size effects. Gravity bow is not a size effect.

This is how In would assume you do it. My Wizard in Serpent's Skull uses Gravity Bow on a regular basis, and the effect increases damage to the next size level. When using the spell my Medium crossbow does damage as if it were Large, so if Enlarge Person makes a character and his gear Large then Gravity Bow on his bow should do damage as the next size up from Large. (Huge?)

LATE EDIT: Or maybe not. If an Enlarged medium-to-large arrow returns to medium once fired, the Gravity Bow would just bump it back to Large again, not Huge. Ooops.

(Note to self: read the entire thread before posting! ;D )

Beautiful sculpts - the Champion is particularly nice.
I love the little sea critters on the Matron's staff... it's little details like that that really make a figure.

I've never purchased a case of pre-painted figures before (or even that many singles) but I am going to have to scrape up the coin for this set. Keep up the good work!

The beginning really depends on the GM. It's a pretty fine line between making the PCs hate their oppressors and making them hate the game.

I think the book actually makes a mistake in how it assumes to lead PCs to hate their overlords. Punishing the PCs too much annoys the players and when you aren't succeeding at level 1, it can be very frustrating. Instead, punish NPCs the players care about. In fact, it makes more sense that Scourge and Plugg would take note of the PCs allies and punish them for aligning with the 'wrong crew.'

Sandra befriends the PCs right away and sneaks them some of their items? Well, guess who should get a lashing that night for doing so.

This is good advice. The first two parts of The Wormwood Mutiny are pretty much a straightforward railroad and can be frustrating and even boring for the PCs, particularly if your players' playstyle leans more towards action than intensive roleplay. The key here is to be aware of your group's strong and weak points (both as characters and players) and adjust accordingly. Hillary's idea of influencing the PCs by punishing their friends among the crew is excellent, but even so 21 days of beatings before the real action gets underway can strain the interest of anyone who's not a diehard roleplayer. Many GMs (myself included) have telescoped the initial actions on the Wormwood by eliminating some or all of the "off" days in between incidents, and this can help move things along if your PCs' interest is fading.

Could be an intriguing adaptation of the Dracula story.If they can keep it away from the hack writers and maintain an interesting storyline it has potential, but if not it'll crater pretty quickly.

I do not see the point of these recent strips and that makes me really worried, because Rich does everything for a purpose.

.... and that's why the eventual reveal of just what's really been going on is always so much fun.....

Just how big is a Paizo small base? A lot of previous swarm minis have been flat 1" by 1" squares so figures can stand on/in them, but if these new swarms are small enough that they can share a space with another figure I don't see a real problem. I like the sculpt of the rat pile (as that's what rats do in confined areas) and I'm curious to see what else Paizo has up their sleeves for other "area" critters. Flying swarms are always a pain in the rear to represent on the table, so I'm definitely ready for some new ideas there.

(Absolutely love the Fishguts mini, BTW. Ambrose is my favorite NPC in the AP so far, and I converted a Megaminis "Butcher" figure to represent him in my game, chicken and all.)

I recently got one of our group GMs to read the first module, and he's now pretty set on running the AP. (Heh, heh, hee....)

I'm thinking a Dhampir Kinslayer Inquisitor (Pharasma, possibly?) would be a great fit for the campaign, but my potential GM is against Dhampirs because of the probable negative reaction from the locals in the first book when gaining Respect from the townsfolk is so important in the first part of the AP. Is this a valid concern, or is this something that can be worked around as the campaign progresses? I can see his point to a certain extent, but is it possible the Dhampir PC could take a less public role in the first module to avoid problems? I would really like to run the character concept if it's not going to be a game breaker.

(I've read some online CC campaign accounts up through the initial exploration of the prison, so I'm familiar with the first module up to that point. No detailed spoilers past that, please. ;D )

I have to admit I'm not really familiar with the Distant Worlds setting, but with all the discussion here about how to get your players into space it does sound a bit like re-inventing the wheel. At least as far as the technical aspects of the "ship" goes I think SpellJammer would fit the bill, and for adaptation to PF I know there was a preliminary "upgrade" of basic SJ to the 3.0/3.5 system in one of the later issues of Dragon magazine. If you can find a copy of that conversion to PF should be fairly simple.

Once upon a time there was a game called "Spelljammer"........ ;D

Personally I haven't a clue as to exactly what's going on, unless the "illusion" they're experiencing is generated by the "runed" corridor as some sort of mind-scan test by the pyramid's defensive magics to weed out anyone who shouldn't be allowed access to the gate.

I would view the "10 minimum" needed to sail the ship as being the total number of souls onboard, primarily because operating the ship with that few crew is a desperation measure with everyone lending a hand. With that few crew the ship sails with considerable restrictions on various Skill checks, and would probably be lost if it faced a major storm or other hazardous situation. This is why you need to "crew" up at Rickety's first chance you get, and be careful to recruit more crew from later captures in order to replace combat losses. (From reading other campaign accounts, once the players have cleared Rickety's with a full crew it appears a lot of GMs are just assuming recruits balance losses and don't worry about tracking exact numbers unless something major comes up.)

If your players' crew falls below a total of 10 people then they have a problem. At that point they're more or less immobilized until they can come up with a clever plan to acquire more crew.... which you as GM may have to help out with a bit. (Shipwrecked castaways, etc. etc.) ;D

....murderous little grinning muppets who may or may not be easily swayed by pie and/or a good diplomacy roll.

That may just be the best description of Goblins that I've ever seen.... ;D

Isn't a Buccanneer a Bard archetype?

Fitzwalrus, I realize that RAW, you can have a gunslinger with early weapons but I rarely read any that don't have modern weapons. Sorry, I just have a problem with my players running around with 1873 Colt Single Actions on a pirate ship. Just doesn't fit for me.

There's a "Buccaneer" archetype for both Bard and Gunslinger, apparently. I was referring to the GS one, which according to the SRD is in the Advanced Race Guide. (Don't have that particular book myself, so i have to rely on the online information.)

I completely agree that (if allowed at all) guns should be limited to Early Firearms in S&S, if not in Golarion as a whole. I would only allow "modern" weapons as one-off treasure items, and d*mn tough ones to acquire at that. Where are you reading these accounts of games with modern weapons? Genuinely curious, as I read a lot of online campaign threads here on Paizo (S&S in particular) and I can't recall ever seeing anyone using advanced cartridge firearms.

I don't doubt that Hollywood has given us an exaggerated view of the age of piracy, but there are sufficient surviving period accounts to balance things out. Perhaps pistols may not have been quite as common as Pirates of the Caribbean would have us believe, but cannon were the standard ship-to-ship weapon of the day and pistols were common enough that a number of the surviving instances of "Pirates' Codes" include mention of them (usually in reference to below-decks safety or requiring their owners to keep them in good repair.)

We are talking about a fantasy roleplaying game here, so if we can handle flying sailing ships and awakened talking animals I think we can deal with a little bit of poetic license when it comes to "real" piracy. ;D

I keep reading all these groups with gunslingers in an AP the only person with firearms is the Pirate King. Well to each his own, but this is the wrong AP for that IMHO. Now Razor Coast is going to be a better one for firearms but still no gunslingers. I swear we have a whole group of new players who think it is 1885 and they are Billy the Kid. Wrong genre!

Firearms are a standard feature of traditional pirate tales, and every module in the AP has a sidebar on how to introduce gunpowder into the campaign if the players and GM wish to do so. That hardly qualifies Skull & Shackles as the "wrong AP" for using firearms. Gunslingers (and particularly the Buccaneer archetype) fit the spirit of the campaign very well, and there's no reason you can't have them in play but still limit the overall access to weapons to the public at large (which is how I'm doing it in my game.)

As you say, "to each his own", and if you or your group choose to run the AP strictly as written then more power to you. However, of all the Pathfinder APs I've played in, run or read through I think this is the one most appropriate for firearms... and Gunslingers to use them.
Obviously, YMMV.

I suggest the book Damnation Alley By Roger Zelanzy.

+1 to this... it's been years since I read the book, but as I recall it was quite good.

Avoid the ghastly movie version at all costs, however.

Stephen King's The Stand (in both its book and miniseries versions) is probably my favorite post-apocalypse story. Some bits of it might be a bit adult for the classroom though, particularly in the expanded edition of the book.

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Laithoron wrote:

In case anyone else needs a map of Windward Isle, feel free to make use of the one I came up with.

Windward Isle: Gridded | Non-Gridded

Note: Be sure to click on the map until only the map is displayed in your browser, otherwise you'll just be downloading a low-res copy. Full size is 3,840 × 2,160 (i.e. HDTV×2).

Awesome work...Thankyou very much.

What SC said! Beautiful map, and very useful. Thanks for sharing.

I picked up the Fire As She Bears PDF today, and although I've only gotten through the first three chapters (has anyone else had a problem with the pages taking a long time to scroll?) it looks very useful.

The only major disconnect I've seen so far is in the ship construction system. The ship construction "spaces" FASB uses are 20' wide whereas most PF/S&S sailing ships (like the Wormwood and Man's Promise) are 30' wide, but that's a handwave as is the difference between the 20' FASB tactical movement square and the PF/S&S 30' one.
The real difference is in the cost of building a sailing ship in FASB as opposed to the "standard" PF/S&S prices. The equivalent ship in FASB is way, waaaay more expensive to build than in PF/S&S, and that's going to take some serious retrofitting one way or the other.
If you're not using gunpowder if your campaign you may also need to do some number crunching to see if the standard PF damage for shipboard ballistas and catapults will work out OK against FASB hulls. (I think it will, but haven't had time to check yet. Cannons in FASB do quite a bit of damage.)

Other than that it looks like a solid product. It appears the authors have done a good job of balancing real-world sailing mechanics with simplified RPG gameplay while still maintaining a good nautical "feel" to the game. The various rules for more fully integrating all the PCs into the operation of the ship are great, and there are some fun spells and magic items lurking towards the back of the book. (Immediate Anchor and Krakenshot Cannonball are just plain mean! ;D )

This will definitely be finding its way into my campaign.

I'll probably just go with the current captain is unfair to the crew.

I think you can safely proceed on that assumption....... ;D

I've been running Skull and Shackles from the getgo with 6 PCs and haven't had any major difficulties.

Your idea of making more of the crew initially Unfriendly or Hostile is not bad, particularly if your party is heavy on Diplomacy types. (If not, you probably needn't bother.) Adding more crew is another possibility, but as you say will add more NPCs for you to track. I haven't found that to be necessary in my game.

As you get farther into the AP past the first module you may have to increase some encounters, but by that time you should have a good idea of your group's capabilities and have a better feel as to what kind of adjustments may be necessary. Read ahead, and plan as you go.

Have fun! ;D

Officers are not counted (at least as far as I know), the 20 are sailors. In order to fire any siege engines you need sailors above the base 20.

That has been my assumption as to how crewing a vessel works. In a life or death situation the officers would undoubtedly lend a hand in sailing the ship, but under normal circumstances I don't believe they are considered in the crew strength total.

King_Of_The_Crossroads wrote:

Life can be pretty dull on board a pirate ship.

man have you even seen a captain morgan commercial

ROFLMAO!

Laugh of the Day, Lamontius...... :D

Dotted. Fun stuff.

Please consider the "comfy pillow" idea...... borrowed. ;D

The big Asian junk ship is kind of Asian flavored but I figured pirates are world spanning travelers and more likely than most to have assorted ships from any part of the world.

Now that I think about it, (mild Spoiler here) the ship of one of the pirate antagonists in the AP is a Junk, so that could fit in for at least part of the campaign.

Beautiful miniatures!

I also like using 3D terrain, buildings, boats and vehicles whenever possible in my games, and I am in the process of painting and fitting out a 21" long pirate ship for my players to use in Skull and Shackles.

As to this specific kickstarter, there are some Asian-themed areas in The Shackles, but as written the AP has more of a Medieval/Pirates of the Caribbean feel to it. The Fishing Village part of the kickstarter could be used without any major problems, but the rest of the buildings are a bit out of character. You certainly could make changes in the overall theme of the AP or redirect some of the action to the "Asian" parts of the Shackles to allow use of these buildings and boats in your campaign, however.

Looking at the other buildings the company offers I'd say their Medieval Village set is probably closer to the "default" S&S setting, so you might have better luck with those (no ships there, however. Alas. :( )

Jason Nelson wrote:

If you're already starting book 6 it may be a bit late to be offering extras, but if you're interested in seeing the original manuscript, email me at

Email sent, thank you!

As have I. Thank you, Jason.

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Mikaze wrote:

No scary pictures in this one.[/url]

Check your pants. I think they're on fire.

I'm not sure I WANT to see what Mikaze considers a "scary picture" to be, then...... :(

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Look here. This whole SCP thing is getting out of hand. I may never sleep again. I'm also becoming leery of being awake.

:)

It's spreading faster and farther than you think.

Since first being exposed to SCP yesterday I've already told two of my friends about it, and plan to tell more.

If I can't sleep, why should they? ;D

IMO, JJ Abrams did'nt Kahn anyone.

Ohhh, that's horrid.

Well done! ;D

Nevermind the parrot-sub-woofer

Great..... now I have the mental image of Pluck the parrot flying around the rigging going WUBWUBWUBWUBWUB...... ;D

Well, there are several factors that could be at play here. The first is simply that the economics of the black market does not follow normal rules; the players could easily be paying 200gp for the squibbing and 1800gp for the "no questions asked" part of the deal. If the PCs were able simply to sail into Bloodport and ask openly to have the ship altered, it might be substantially cheaper.

The second is that there's a tendency to regard crafting in Pathfinder as a single unitary task, when in the real world it's often possible to divide a complex task up into several independent simpler tasks to make the overall work faster. With the Pathfinder crafting rules, this makes thing even more effective. While Rickety and his crew are changing the fore and stern castles (a major job, DC 20), Huey and his crew are re-rigging the ship (only DC 15), Dewey and his crew are installing a new figurehead (DC 15), and Louie and his crew is simply applying a new coat of paint (DC 10). It can take a lot less time for four ten man crews to do four 500gp jobs than it does for one forty-man crew to do a single 2000gp job.

And of course, there are also issues of having stuff ready to go, issues that would not be a factor in building from scratch. That figurehead Dewey is installing? There are four of them, ready carved, in the shed over there. As soon as you leave, Dewey and his crew will carve another one, but that can happen off-camera.

The most important thing, of course, is that events in any RPG happen at the speed of plot. Who wants to hang around all month literally watching the paint dry? If you want more enforced downtime, you can make the operation take as long or as short as you want, but the adventure as written is supposed to be Skull and Shackles, not Adzes and Awls.

+1. Great post, and good breakdown on how Rickety might handle his business.

No, it may not match real-world experience (sorry, Vikingson ;D ) but it's fun and sounds more or less believable to all us landlubbers, so I guess this is where "willing suspension of disbelief" comes in.

SAMAS wrote:

But that's the point. Move it far ahead to allow a new setting in the same world, but let any players who want to go back to (or keep) the classic Medieval European/African/Asian Fantasy to do so in the "Classic" era.

And which of these eras is going to be supported in the playe companion, pathfinder setting, pathfinder modules, and pathfinder adventure path product lines? some people would not be interested in this new, 19th centurty feel you suggest, and Paizo might lose some customers.

This. When WotC revised 3.0 into 3.5 they no longer produced support materials for the earlier version but concentrated on the newer and shinier rules for all their subsequent releases. Granted those two versions could be "retrofitted" into one another with a certain degree of work on the part of DMs, but that was far easier to do (since they both were set in the same time-universe) that it would be to match up a "medieval" PF1 and a "steampunk" PF2. If Paizo were to do as you suggest they would either have to abandon the PF1 timeline (which I very seriously doubt they would even consider) or split their publication capacity to support two rule sets and two timelines. (I rather doubt they'd do this either, as it would cut in half the material usable to all players and would probably tick off a great many of their existing customers to boot.)

As was said above, "if it ain't broke don't fix it". There's nothing wrong with PF that a tweak here or there can't deal with, and it certainly doesn't need a complete "PF Version 2" rewrite to accomplish.

If you want to play PF in a Steampunk setting that's a whole different matter, and could be a lot of fun to do. The way to do that, however, is to campaign Paizo (or a 3PP) for an alternate setting using the current rules, not rewrite PF to introduce the new setting.

Fitzwalrus wrote:

Great stuff, as always. ;D

Question: what happens if the number on the "free move" Wyvern die is greater than the number of players? (EG: 5 players, die comes up 6+) Ignore for that turn? Reroll?

Either ignoring for that turn or rerolling would be valid options. I lean toward reroll because a result of "no change" is always the least interesting result of a die roll.

I'd go with "reroll' also..... somebody should get the bonus. :D

I think I'll introduce this game the next time my crew does Pirate Entertainments of an evening.... maybe Conchobar has a traveling set in his gear.

Great stuff, as always. ;D

Question: what happens if the number on the "free move" Wyvern die is greater than the number of players? (EG: 5 players, die comes up 6+) Ignore for that turn? Reroll?

Chumley. Hate that fat bastard. Might just eat his face after I eat Plugg's. Definitely making a drinking goblet out of his empty skull.

Outside of Plugg and scourge, Chumlett is probably the NPC my players dislike the most, although it takes the form of ridicule more than anything else.

Except that losing arms is not part of Pathfinder. Nor would I want to spend a large % of my WBL to “fix’ something that shouldn’t have been there anyway.

Depends on what you're playing. The Skull and Shackles Player's Guide has a "Massive Damage" option that can result in the loss of various body bits up to and including the loss of a limb, and S&S is certainly Pathfinder.

That's a kind of spell that would likely be invented as part of a big "Mythos on Golarion" type book we may someday do...

Tease. ;D

I consider rolling for stats better. Not everyone is dealt a good hand in life. Plus as long as you follow the rule that the combined modifiers of all the stats must be higher than a +3, you're fine.

First time I've seen the "+3 or better" rule, but I like it.

I've been playing this silly game for a good many years, but with the exception of two games run by the same DM (neither of which lasted very long) I have never used point buys. I'm not knocking the idea - I can see where it would be a good "averaging" mechanic in group play like RPGA or PFS - but rolling for stats has just always been the norm at tables where I've run or played the game.

Our current group uses a modified 4d6 system - roll 4d6 (rerolling any "1"s once) and drop the lowest die. Do this six times, then arrange results as Abilities as desired. We usually allow a complete redo if two or more stats are below 10 ("Yeoman Smith decides he's not really cut out for the adventuring life and goes back to his plow" ;D ), which probably gives the same general result as Hama's +3 rule.

This can result in some rather strong characters (particularly once racial modifiers are figured in) but our DMs are not shy about throwing some pretty tough encounters at us from Level 1 on so it seems to work out.

That's a great wikilink, TS - thanks! Fun read.

I think a polydactile black cat may have to saunter out of the hold of the Man's Promise to keep our catfolk company..... ;D

FilmGuy wrote:

I think if the page six table gave just a little more plot info, I wouldn't miss the summary at all.

My opinion as well.

Mine too. The ToC is nice, but limited. The Summary gives a much better overview of the adventure. If the linear progression of the plot that is explained in the Summary could be abbreviated into the ToC, then go for it. Otherwise the Summary should stay, as it is a handy overview showing the GM "what comes next" without having to plow through the entire module to pick out plot points.

Regardless, my point remains, even if it's only a little harder, why add the complication?
Especially in a system, like 3.x, where there are even more bonuses and penalties in play? Why make it any harder than it has to be? For no benefit?

This. Particularly the "no benefit" part.

WoTC had to have done extensive pre-publication playtesting of the 3.0/3.5 rule system, including the changes to THACO and the rest of the combat system. If the playtesters had arisen en masse crying "This sucks! Give us back our Thac0!!" the change to the simpler, easier system never would have happened. Obviously, the playtesters did no such thing.

If some folks personally prefer THACO to the current rule there is nothing stopping them from retrofitting everything Paizo writes back to the earlier system. It's your game, so knock yourself out. However, insulting the math abilities of those who prefer a simpler way of doing things (and who appear to be in the majority) adds nothing to the discussion.

Berk the Black wrote:

Paper instead of plastic? Shame on you guys. I think you want the blog down the hall.

Trust me, if you saw my collection of plastic, you'd agree I'm a true believer. But not everyone can afford my obsessions, and for them, paper can be a viable alternative. And some stuff, alas, simply isn't available any other way. Especially if you want non-martial NPC's, which simply haven't been done much in pre-painted plastic, but which are available in abundance as free paper minis (witness Dryw the Harper's Imperfect People.)

Same here. I'm building my own collection of painted minis to run Skull & Shackles and have access to lots of others, but there still are certain individual critters that simply don't exist outside of paper - as yet - which is why I'm looking forward to the release of these plastics so much.

In the meantime the papers are available as fill-ins (where else are you going to find a Grindlylow?) and my players don't seem to mind.

I think the question was re different diseases and I see no reason why a character cannot contract different diseases at the same time for a cumulative affect. I had some characters in RA that contracted up to 3-4 diseases at the same time. They were crawling back to town to find a cleric!

Shaun's question was about contracting the same disease (Ghoul Fever) from two different sources. I completely agree that some poor sod can contract multiple different diseases at the same time.

Official or not, Riggler's post makes perfect sense and is probably the most logical way to handle the situation, unless there is Word From On High saying otherwise. ;D

I thought this rule would add some verisimilitude by making armor and shields not be indestructible, but all it did was ruin the AC of the non-mages and require lots of return trips to town or Mend spells or extra gear to be carried - extra bookkeeping to aggravate the players for no real benefit.

This. I once played with a DM who used a similar system, and "player aggravation" was the primary result. Like requiring magic users to locate, store and track every single bit of their spell components, a system like this can be fun if everyone is OK with it and with the additional time it's going to take away from game play to do the necessary record keeping, but if not it's just a pain in the rear. (We finally had a player revolt in our game, and the system was dropped.)

PF abstracts things like this for a reason. Of course Valeros spends time repairing his armor and polishing the nicks out of his sword edge in between battles, but the rules handwave that as "off-camera" action so as to not slow down the game.