I want to give a thanks and shout out to Jon. I just ran this at Tower and had a great time spicing it up based on Jon's suggestions.
I had the players write down a bunch of advance d20 rolls, and asked for their perception modifiers and their will saves. Then whenever they did something significant, like enter a room, or search something, or react to the creepiness of the situation, I would make the person with the lowest Will Save result see, or hear, or imagine something unsettling, or if multiple characters rolled low, give them conflicting effects.
Spoiler:
I had the alien voices start immediately once the characters got to the basement. Often only one or two characters would hear them, and the voices would react in pitch and volume to changes in the lighting level as the characters carrying light sources moved about.
Interspersed with this I would have one of the characters occasionally understand the whispers, which would either be something about the immensity of the "dark tapestry" or would be a voice stating some minor point of the backstory the characters wouldn't otherwise be able to know or some oblique foreshadowing of a future room. My players were very good about selectively sharing the whispers they heard, based on how much a character would really feel comfortable sharing that particular thing said.
I also gave the characters whispers or visions that were an "in-character" comment from one of the monsters. For instance, the brown mold whispers that it loves the fire, the shrieker whispers that it hates the fire, and the innocuous mold whispers that it has found a new home. When the owlbear possessed by Kuburrum knocked a character unconscious, he had a dream symbolic of being trapped as a brain in a jar. When another character read Imrizade's notes, she got a vision of being a helpless being hanging by an umbilical chord. Hodd gives an obviously metaphorical vision of being chomped in half by a beast to symbolize the decay of his lower half.
I was playing with a tier 1-2 tier table, meaning some of the cooler exotic monsters in the higher tiers were missing. So instead I would give the characters visions of some of the unworldly monsters they would have faced in a room as they were entering it, or pondering which route to take. It kept them guessing even if they could positively id the actual monster there.
I also gave characters visions of some of the other statues in the cayatid column room to throw them off: before entering, a character gets a vision of a little girl holding a man's hand and turning him to stone, then when they enter, there is a statue of the same little girl. I had descriptions prepped for every statue in the room, including a few that had been warped by the gate but not come to life. And of course there was a weeping angel just to spook them.
Anyway, it was great fun adding flavor to this scenario (often from the material that normally only the GM sees) and I wouldn't have thought to do it if I hadn't been inspired by this thread.
The Tengu Swordmaster Rogue Archetype, from Advanced Race Guide p. 164, grants the ability to enter a Trance (Ex) that can mimic a Style Feat from Ultimate Combat. For instance, the Swordmaster may enter a Crane Trance and gain the benefits of the Crane Style Feat.
Is it possible to use this ability to take additional feats in the Crane Style Progression? That is, once the Swordmaster's BAB was high enough, would it satisfy the prerequisite feats for Crane Wing while in the trance?
Consulting your spellbook and swapping spells takes a minimum of ten minutes and provokes an attack of opportunity.
You could make the time to swap vary with its chance of success. For instance:
To perform the swap the caster has to use a full-round action to make a Spellcraft Check with DC 25 + spell level x2, with a +1 for each additional round spent concentrating, and a +5 bonus if the spell slot being swapped was originally empty. If the caster fails the Spellcraft check, he loses the old spell, or empty spell slot, without gaining the new one. If the caster's bonus exceeds the Spellcraft DC, he can cast the spell as part of the swap action. The caster can't take 20 in combat (as always), and if the circumstances demand, the caster must make Concentration checks (with DC determined by the level of the new spell) or lose the additional time spent concentrating.
Sanity check: how do those numbers work out? Assuming a base stat of 20, and maxed out ranks in Spellcraft, a caster who left the slot blank and spent two rounds unmolested on the swap could successfully access her highest level spell 50% of the time. Spells five levels below the max level cast-able could be accessed without risk. And a twentieth-level caster should be able to cast 1st-level spells at will.
If that seems too powerful, you can make the DC 25 + spell level x3. If the casters are preparing still too many spells for your tastes, you can up both the check DC and the empty slot bonus.
I have been trying to do a bit of the same thing myself, but for flavor purposes, becauseI often find that the stock list of Vancian spells contrains the flavor of the world. Every spellcasting character feels a bit too much the same, a bit too combat-oriented, and a bit too mathematically quantifiable.
One concept I have been toying with is "Reserve Feats" from 3.5. The actual published reserve feats were disappointing, but the concept was promising. In exchange for a feat slot, you would gain the ability to cast a 1st-level effect so long as you had an appropriate higher level spell (usually 3rd level) prepared, but not expended.
Thematically, you could explain this as a wizard being able to channel only so much energy at once before shooting his wad (the prepared higher level spell) but until doing so, the wizard could draw on that energy to produce lesser aspects or incarnations of the same type (the lesser effect).
The published ones were mostly combat oriented, but they could be modified, I think, to solve the old dilemma of the wizard who can cast a massive fireball, but then has to use a match to light his cigar, or stand next to the fire to stay warm, or pester the Party cleric to cast light.
I think to make this mechanic really sing, you'd need to have a bit more of a feat path than just the basic reserve feats, and you might want to structure things so that the caster gets fewer high-level slots, but more quickly. You might also want to craft higher level spells that don't do much on their own, but have a lot of useful aspects to draw upon for the reserve effect.
I have never been changed for the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Scenario #1–04: Cries From the Drift PDF that is still pending on my subscription page, but, I got changed for 1-05.
I would like to know if the gears (except the weapon, the armor or a healing potion) have a utility in a scenario of the Pathfinder Society. I would be interested to know if there are a utility to these gear.
Thanks a lots for the answer, it will help my perspective of the choice of gear.
I want to know where and how you take the inspiration for naming the characters, the place, a historical event in a adventure.
How do you create without using a name that is the property of an author or a corporation?
I would know the adventures that come out for a party of first level and what is your own opinion of the module about the kind of play.
I.e. "Name of the adventure": more roleplay, "Name of the adventure #2": more combat, "Name of the adventure #3": more balanced.
Please! No Spoiler! No bashing at an adventure!
I will begin with a list of adventures for a party of first level:
Lands of Darkness #1: The Barrow Grounds by Expeditious Retreat Press
In Search of Adventure by Goodman Games
Dungeon Crawl Classics #53: Sellswords of Punjar by Goodman Games
Dungeon Crawl Classics #54: Forges of the Mountain King by Goodman Games
Dungeon Crawl Classics #55: Isle of the Sea Drake by Goodman Games
Dungeon Crawl Classics #59 by Goodman Games
Master Dungeons M1: Dragora's Dungeon by Goodman Games
I want to know if I should preorder the three core rulebooks or I should wait to have seen the rules of this new edition of D&D (website or in a store).
For those who will advise me a site, I won't buy from the USA because the shipping price, the customs, the exchange rate are compicated to have a Canadian price of the product. Also, I won't buy with a credit card.
