Kalridian's page

Hey everyone

Last session, my players surprisingly decided to skip a part of the adventure that would have lastet for about 3 Sessions and save it for later (something they could do, but which I totally didn't expect)
Now I face the problem that I prepped this 3 session chunk in advance, because I knew I don't have much time for prepwork later.

What I am faced with now is a combination of very little time to prep and only a vague Idea of what's going to happen next session.

The short version:

The players, who are in pursuit of another group, arrive in a lawful evil hobgoblin city where their "prey" is still restocking their resources and since the group is not very sublte, their "prey" will probably become aware of their presence.

Under the laws of the city they are not allowed to harm one another without engaging in a formal duel, which the "bad guys" will not agree to.

What I need now are ways in which the "bad guys" can trap the party in legal proceedings or otherwise make their life a nightmare, so they can gain a headstart when they leave the city again.

What I have so far are the options to somehow get stolen goods into their posession and then have them accused of thievery or to spread the rumor that they are spies/assassins.

I would really appreaciate any input on what else they could do and which "tools" I could put in place for the players to overcome this.

tl,dr: I need ways for a LE villain to pester and delay TN to CG PCs in a LE city.

I don't have many Ideas at the moment, this is more of a shameless attempt to get you guys to give me yours.

1. Encountering/having to deal with a tribe of Morlocks or other denizens of the deep, who regularly sacrifice slaves/prisoners to their Lake-God that is actually a Living Lake

2. A cave that contains the old but deadly Remorhaz plus Brown Mold - combination

3. Encounter a group of Darkfolk slavers with a broken wagon/in front of a cave in/some other form of travel impedement and be forced to decide wether to ignore them, try to free the slaves or help them for a reward (preferably information or something else that can't be taken of their dead bodies if the players decide to attack)

Hello everyone

I need some input on possible ways to continue my campaign.
Since I am rather stressed out with non-roleplay-related stuff at the moment, I haven't found time to do much prepwork lately, which means, my players have more or less caught up to the status quo of my notes last session. We will be playing again on Friday and I have a vague Idea on what I want to accomplish in the following sessions, but I can't come up with a way to do it and I fear, I am kind of blocking myself by worrying about it.

I would greatly appreciate your input for the sake of my players' fun and my sanity.

Now for the situation I need advice on:
My players (A level 7 TN Shaper-Psion (essentially a caster focused on summoning constructs and creating all kinds of stuff from ectoplasm) and a level 7 CG Synthesist (combat focused, demon-like eidolon), together with 4 level 5 and 6 Monk NSCs (controlled by the players in battle, by me outside of it) will be entering the darklands next session. They will do so through the entrance in Highhelm in the Five Kings Mountains. In my Golarion, the dwarves (being LN) allow trade with the darklands through the outer city (at a price), as long as isn't slave trade (mainly due to not wanting to anger their good neighbouring countries). Foreigners aren't allowed inside the inner city without a good reasen.

The journey is suppposed to take up about 2-3 Sessions, before they arrive in a cavern in Sekamina below Lastwall.
I know what awaits them there, but I don't want the trip to be to easy, since the characters have (rightfully) been making a big deal out of entering the darklands and are preparing for all kinds of dangers.

They have a magical device that points them into the direction of their target, but otherwise have no knowledge about the nature of the path there.

What I need now, are some interesting encounters and problems for the way. Some of them can simply be "random" encounters, but I don't want to sit there and just throw monsters at my players until the journey has been "hard" enough.

What I'm looking for are challenges that have to be solved by creative use of skills and Magic or by roleplaying.

They will most probably hire some kind of guide, so getting lost is not really an option, also I find that rather boring.

Additionally, the Synthesist is, unbeknownst to the others, trying to find an evil Artifact of Zon-Kothun that has been stolen from a Shellyn-monastery where it had been kept safe.
The only things he knows about the artifact are, that it looks like a rusty knife and it grants the the bearer enormous power, but quickly kills him. He has been told to "follow the trail of corpses".
(It can't be put down once it has been touched and the bearer needs to make a dc 20 fort save every day or gain a permanent negative level.) The bad guy who stole it is using a horde of weak minions/slaves to transport it, who, due to their low HD and saves, die about every other day. One of them will have died in Highhelm.

Now I need a situation in which the player can a) find the corpse or information about it and b)somehow be able to follow the group of bad guys based on it. (their route more or less concides with the direction the party is travelling in)
I had thought about there being some kind of dwarven police force who, upon finding the (supernaturally aged and warped) corpse, used speak with dead to find out more about it and from whom he can obtain the information (he is very charming and knows the value of a good bribe), but I am open to better suggestions.

Thanks to everyone who managed to read through my wall of text and tnanks in advance for all input.

As far as I know, it doesn't, because it doesn't say so anywhere in the creatures profile, but in the text for durable arrows, we find the following:

Durable arrows can be broken in other ways (such as deliberate snapping, hitting a fire elemental, and so on).

Of course, if you hit a fire elemental with any normal arrow, it breaks, because that's, what ammunition does, when it hits.

Is this a holdover from some older edition or something?

Since my party lacked a proper Tank, I gave them an NPC construct with the lifespark subtype (he and his awakening are tied into the story of the campaign) and it worked quite well, they started teaching him about the world, about his newly found emotions and the magus started giving him melee training which resulted in the construct gaining levels of fighter. This started at level 4, now they have reached level 8 and have grown very attached to their metal friend. The problem is, without a CON score, his HP are advancing very slowly, a problem I hadn't considered in the beginning. Even with generously rounded 6 hp for each fighter level, the PCs are overtaking him one by one and there have been some very tight situations for him on the frontlines.
Now my players are searching for ways to buff him, so he survives, but since the normal +CON items don't work, I'm rather short on ideas.

They are willing to spend a considerable amount of money on their friend, so I would like to give them the option of actually succeeding.

How could this be done RAW and if there's no way, which houserules would you propose?

tl;dr: Need a way to raise the HP of a lifespark construct with fighter levels.

I have a gunslinger player in my game who also invested heavily in craft(alchemy), so he could "invent" the grenades that can be found in the alchemical weapon section of ultimate equipment.
I had him invent them, because guns are so rare that it is nigh impossible to buy one outside of Alkenstar and most people haven't ever heard of black powder as a whole.

Recently, he has made the necessary rolls and built some greades, tested them in combat and of course, the one and only thing happened, that ALLWAYS happens, when you give a P&P player explosives.

He wants to build bigger ones that do more damage.

Since that is technically possible and he invented the standard ones, I don't want to outright forbid this, but I also don't want to make it to easy or to game breaking.

So now my question:

What would be the market prices, craft DCs and stats for better/different grenades that you would allow?

I have a player wo is going to be playing a holy gun paladin of Cayden Caylean with a musket. Since firearms are going to be EXTREMELY rare in the world, he bought the glamered enchantment for it, so he doesn't raise too many questions when he carries it around.
Now the big question is: What should it be disguised as? We need an item that the character can carry on his back and preferably bring into places, where weapons would not be allowed (he's playing the chaotic paladin archetype, so no lawfulness-problems here).
On top of that, the item should look cool in context with his overall leather-duster-and-hat-style.

So far we've come up with a rolled up blanket or a huge mead horn, but we're not really satisfied with either.

Any ideas?

I'm sure everybody on these boards has noticed the issue that there is often one special combination of weapons and feats that is just the best (or close to it) for a certain class. (Good example is the dervish dancing scimitar wielding dex-magus).
Now, being a little bit of a powergamer myself, I can totally understand it, when a player wants to take the most mechanically optimal route for his character.
Sadly this can come into conflict with the desired fluff/flavour of the character and I often see people on these boards say things like "No, I want to stick with weapon XY for my build, even 'though something else would be better" or "I would like to have weapon XY, but it's just so suboptimal, so I can't use it."

For example, one of my players wanted to play a sword-and-board fighter, a big, slightly dumb brute without a lot of finesse. According to a guide he read, the scimitar is the optimal weapon for that build, since he wanted to go a high crit- sword and shield TWF-Route. (I don't want to discuss wether or not that is the best decision or anything, just an example). Now the problem was: A scimitar is way to slim and elegant for the picture he had in mind. Under normal circumstances he would have been forced to choose between the optimal numbers and the fluff he had in mind.
My solution for that problem was simply this: If he uses all the stats of the scimitar, the price, the damage and damage type, etc and it counts as a scimitar for all mechanical purposes, so the balancing isn't upset in any way, what is the damage if he just describes it as a big, ugly meatcleaver ingame?

Of course there are limits to this, since it's difficult to refluff a weapon as one with a different damage type for example, or a one handed weapon as two handed or stuff like that, but aside from that, why limit the players?

After I have started to use this "rule" in my games, it encouraged the players to come up with way more interesting and creative character concepts. The player will have a hard time deciding to play that cool pharasmian temple fighter with the gravedigger vibe who uses a spade in combat, if you force him to use the crappy stats for an improvised weapon. If you allow him to describe it as reinforced and sharpened and just use the stats for the greataxe on the other hand, the probability of seing that awesome concept at your table increase drastically.

In my opinion this is a "rule" from which the whole table only benefits and I have yet to encounter any difficulties with it.

Since I'm neither as experienced as many and wouldn't consider myself to be more intelligent, my question is, why do so few other people, if any, seem to do this? Are there any problems with this approach that I have overlooked?

Title says it. I want to confront my players with a greater duststorm in the middle of the desert and I want to know how many rounds they have to stay on their feet and not choke to death on the sand to have their tents up and be safe in them.

Up until recently I was always sure on how to play this, but last session one of my players made me uncertain. If a creatures SLA-entry looks, for example like this:

At will: greater teleport (self plus 50 lbs. of objects only), light, major image (DC 20)

3/day: greater dispel magic, mirage arcana (DC 20), rainbow pattern (DC 22), spell turning, sunbeam, wall of force

1/day: scintillating pattern (DC 25), screen (DC 25), symbol of insanity (DC 25)

How many castings of any spell does it get?
One each of the 1/day spells or only one casting of ONE of them per day?
Same for the 3/day entry.

Edit: spelling.

Alter winds says, it only affects natural winds, but control winds has no such limitation. So if a 10th level druid were to cast alter winds, to increase a strong wind (which shouldn't be too uncommon) to severe wind, could he then use this severe wind as a basis to reach a tornado force wind under his control via control winds? If yes, this seems a pretty powerful combination.

I searched for a while, but I couldn't find anything. Is there a spell in PF that increases the weight of an Item? It's not uncommon in all kinds of storys and it would be cool to have as a flavourful debuff. Something that you could maybe use on a weapon to give it penalties to hit and on an armor to possibly make it heavy enough to get the wearer encumbered. The only spells I could find that change weight were the various enlarge and shrink spells, but I don't want the size change part, only the weight.

If something like this exists, would somebody please kindly point me to it?

And if it doesn't, how would you go about building it? I have an npc sorcerer whom I would love to have something like this, but I want a properly balanced Spell in case my players want to research it too.

I Intend to have my players discover the completely devastated site of an old mages tower, blown up by a magic accident. As a result of the accident, the veil to the Astral plane is especially thin in that place and arcane magic is strengthened extremely.
The details of the story don't really matter though, what this is about, are the mechanical effects.
I plan on giving all arcane and SLA casters the option of "tapping into the energy" of that place, thereby doubling their effective caster level, in exchange for haviing to make a pretty difficult caster level check to keep the magic under control. (if they don't make it, out comes the random table) I don't plan on having my PCs fight in the ruins, it's just supposed to be curiosity for the braniac Wizard and a possible trading good for negotiations with another wizard that will turn up later in the story line. Now I want to make sure my players don't surprise me with an unexpected exploit of this. They are level 9 right now, but quickly rising, so feel free to warn me about higher level spells too.

What I want to know from you is: What would you do with double caster level? What ways come to your mind to exploit this in non-combat situations? I want to be prepared for what my players might throw at me.

Are there any ways to temporarily give a property like flaming or ghost touch to a weapon, that do not relie on a class feature like the paladins bonded weapon?
My players are going to have to deal with some ghosts soon and since one of them actually tends to do some pre-adventure research, they'll want to have ghost touch weapons, preferrably without having invest a ton of money to buy fully enchanted ones.

Is this possible via magic weapon or greater magic weapon? The spell description only talks about the enhancement bonus, not about properties.

Does the Shadow Dancers hide in plain sight ability work against enemys with darksight/blindsight? RAW seems to imply it, but to me it feels as if it shouldn't work, since the enemy can see through the darkness of the shadow.

I need a CR 9 paladin to throw at my players. My groups wizard has recently gone from CN to NE, being further on the move towards CE due to some actions that the rest of the group mostly doesn't know about
(main thing being a pact with a powerful demon, who left some kind of "mark" on him that allows him to see through the characters eyes)
I want to have a paladin confront him out in the middle of the street and accuse him of his evil ways (since a pally should definately be able to sense the demonic bond with detect evil, not to mention his new unholy scyte)
The Pally is supposed to be strong enough to REALLY endanger the wizard, if the rest of the group holds back. Since they have been friends for quite some time, they will probably rush to his aid, after which I intend to confront them with the repercussions for killing a church official in the middle of the street, since they have become a little to "meh, just kill it and think later" lately. (partially due to my fault, since I have given them a bit to many monsters and to little hostile NPCs)

They are currently Level 9 but I usually count them as 2 levels higher due to non-core races and 25 point buy, so a CR9 should be pretty challenging for one of them alone, right?

The thing I am asking for is a melee Paladin, CR 9, not optimized for anti-wizard-combat, since i want to give him a fair chance and don't want to come of as directly countering his character.
The problem is, I have never played or built a paladin before, so I don't know to much about the mechanics of that class. I would therefore ask for a rather straightforward build, since I don't want to get chindeep into the fine options of paladin-hood only to have them kill the guy in one encounter.

Anybody willing to donate their char to the cause?

(On a sidenotice, what would you guys think about making a thread to share NPCs and PCs in, formattet in Adventurepath-stlye, so other GMs can use them in their games? Kind of like an extension to the NPCs in the GM guide. I have been sitting around and preparing NPCs more than once, thinking "damn, I bet 20 people on the forums have already built a guy like that")

edit: fixed some typos, you can keep the rest

It does not stack with Normal armor of course, but I just realised, it doesn't stack with bracers of armor either, because they are essentially the same spell.
I am not mistaken on either, am i?
My sorcerer will hate this...

One of my players bought boots of levitation recently and a question has come up.

Do they simply move you up and down or do they negate gravity with a range of personal?

I know nothing in the spell says anything about negating weight/gravity, but the part about you becoming unbalanced when trying to wield a weapon seems to imply it.

This is important to discern what can be used to move a levitating character from A to B. If he simply is moved up into the air and nothing else, he/she needs to grab onto some handholds to move.

If the character becomes essentially weightless, a simple gust of wind or unseen servant would be enough.

You could even use mage hand by poking the character with an unattended object, which the becomes attended by touching him (at least thats how I understand the RAW), falls down, becomes unattended, repeat for profit.

Or if the character is weightless, you could tie twine to an arrow, shoot it to the other side of the chasm and clamber along it.

I just want to know what to allow once my players start pondering the full potential of their new toy, which they are sooner or later bound to do.

I made up a cantrip for one of my games in which no one wanted to play a char with healing magic on their spell list but one had a Wizard with tons of skillpoints.

At first it used to look like this:

Magic Bandage School: Healing; Level: Clr 0; Drd 0; Witch 0; Wiz/Sorc 0;
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 Minute
Range: Touch
Target: Living creature.
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless); Spell Resistance: Yes
This spell allows the caster to make a Heal check (as per the skill) with all penalties and boni. For every point in excess of DC 15, the target of the spell is healed for one HP. A creature can only be targeted by this spell once per hour. The use of the heal skill depletes one use of a healers kit as normal.

Sadly it turned out to be to weak and nobody bothered using it.

To fix this, I changed it to:

Magic Bandage School: Healing; Level: Clr 0; Drd 0; Witch 0; Wiz/Sorc 0;
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 Minute
Range: Touch
Target: Living creature.
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless); Spell Resistance: Yes
This spell allows the caster to make a Heal check (as per the skill) with all penalties and boni. For every point in excess of DC 15, the target of the spell is healed for one HP per Chasterlevel. A creature can only be targeted by this spell once per hour. The use of the heal skill depletes one use of a healers kit as normal.

While this worked quite well in my game, in this thread I got shoved face first into the vast possibilities of abuse that this spell offers to a char optimized for it.

What would you do to make it alround-acceptable and more balanced?

I thought about putting in a maximum of 15 or 20 for HP healed with it.

Your thoughts?

What it says in the title.

One of my players approached me with this idea and I couldn't find anything in the RAW that contradicts it.

If a spellcaster casts a buff with Range personal into a spell storing weapon and then hits an ally with it, wouldn't he in this way be able to cast the self-buff on the ally?
(assuming it's a dagger, wielded by a Wizard with a -1 str mod, this would do 1d4+1 damage, so nothing anybody above level 3 really cares about)
The player and I am aware of the level 3 cap for spells in storing weapons, but there are quite some good ones below that.
(True strike, disguise self, alter self, arcane sight, beast shape 1, blink just to name a few.)

RAW for Spell Storing weapons:

Thanks in advance for your help.

Isn't the dragon in "Entombed with the Pharaos" way to strong for its CR? This occured to me when I ran it for my group and the fight against the Dragon in the basement of the pyramid would have ended up resulting in a completely ridicculous TPK, had I played the Dragon to full effect.
That thing is supposed to be CR 9, has 97HP, DR 5/-, immunity to electricity, can fly, has a 8d8 breath weapon an AC of 28 (which in my oppinion is insane against the 6th to 7th level chars who are supposed to face him) and deals an average of 96 Points of damage on a full attack, possible critical hits ignored. The 96 damage assume that all his attacks hit, which is not very unlikely, since they all have at least +16 to hit.
The full stats for the dragon can be found here link removed on pages 17 + 18.
For reference, the 4 chars that are supplied with the adventure (in my eyes meaning that you should be able to run it with them) have

Fighter
Hp: 43
AC: 20
highest attack: +11

Sorceress
HP: 22
AC: 15
highest attack is irrelevant

Cleric
HP: 42
AC: 20
highest attack: +7

Rogue
HP: 29
AC: 20
highest attack: +10

If you put that together with the stats of the dragon, an average full attack kills any character and even the fighter has to roll a 17 to hit that thing. It has saves of ref+9, fort+9 and will+11 on top of it all, which makes magic suck too.

How is that monster an appropriate DC 9?

Compared for example to the tyrannosaurus, who is also DC 9 and does a comparatively ridicculous 34 average damage (while having +2/4 to hit compared to the dragon, okay.) he has, on top of that, about 50% more HP, bit at a 7 points lower AC, those don't count as much.

What the title said. Many spells state that a creature gets a bonus on the saving throw or some other boon if they are about to be forced to do something that would harm them.
What if a wizard hands an NPC under the influence of charm or suggestion a book with exploding runes on it and says "here buddy, read that for me, while you step onto that floor tile over there (which is a concealed trap)".
It would obviously be harmful for the NPC, but until he's read it/triggered the trap, he doesn't know that...