Moriartty's page

Player, or DM if neccesary, looking to start a Pathfinder group in the Chicago northwest suburbs.

I am interested in a game that meets once a week or once every two weeks on the weekends. Weeknights are possible but game could not start before 7pm.

Drop a note if interested or know a group.

Okay, this is in no way a rip the module thread. I am just going to throw out my idea for making this Adventure Path better. Anyone is free to comment or add their own ideas.

As a side note I am a player in a campaign that I think is about 3/4 of way through the second module. So please limit the spoilers.

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My idea is simple. As far as I understand the AP it is supposed to take a party of 4 from 1st to about 16th level. During the AP the party is to be heroic defenders/saviors of the city.

Now here is the problem I have. The first module starts out too fast. The King dies, the Queen takes over, Blackjack saves the poor painter, and then the second module starts with the plague.

There needs to be more than this. In my opinion 1st through 4th level should happen in the city but without major changes in the city. The King should live this entire time. He players should work for the Guard, maybe the Sable Company, but there should be a good 4 or 5 sessions worth of stuff where the party does stuff and has stuff doen for them by the city. If done well by 4th or 5th level then the players really will be attached to Korvosa and the people in the city.

Then at this point start the actual AP, kill the King and start everything rolling. If the prelude is done well enough the players wont have to "roleplay" their characters loving and wanting to save the city, they themselves will have become attached to a degree and want to do it.

Do this well and even the railroading will not seem so bad because you will have gotten your players emotionally invested in the town, in Kroft, in the Kings death, etc etc.

Right now as written things go to hell way too fast and there is no time to become comfortable with Korvosa and thus be upset when she starts to fall apart.

Opinions?

Okay, in a group that is on the second COTCT module. Plague is hitting the city hot and heavy and citizens are dying left and right.

I have no idea how far into the module we are but we just captured a goth-elf who was playing with dead nobles.

This is what is bothering me. This whole campaign to date has been the biggest railroad since the Dragonlance module series, minus the epic feel that DL had.

One example, since the very beginning of the module my character, a former sailer, has wanted to explore the ship sunk by the town guard. The DM has basically refused to allow this by making it impossible to find the actual location of the ship.

Why?

This makes no sense till the session before last. In that session a were-rat came along, asked us to kill her murderous brethren and as a reward will tell us where the ship sunk since she happened to know where it went down. So basically we couldnt explore the ship until the module storyline told us we could. Yawn to say the least, though I admit this is not really the DM's fault if that is how the module is written.

No this is the annoying part. On the ship we find important evidence. We find the death boxes, we find the body of a cleric of the god of disease and undeath, and we find a receipt showing that the "doctor" who the Queen hired to save the city actually owns this ship of plague.

All of this would be very useful information we could have had 5 sessions earlier and used.

I do not feel so much that I am playing a RPG as much as living someone's conversion of a Raymond Feist novel or a chose your own adventure book we all loved when we were nine years old.

Please tell me this adventure path gets better and the players start to get to make real decisions. I want to know that if need be my character could leave town for a day trip without waiting for it to come up in module number four, page 22, paragraph 6, line 2, when the module "tells" me I decide to leave town.

Question

In "Pathfinder Chronicles: Campaign Setting" there is a feat named Hamatulatsu (page 83) it is a local affinity feat for the region of Isger.

At the bottom of the feat under "Special" it says the feat can be taken as a 2nd level monk bonus feat even if prerequisites are not met.

Here is the problem.

My DM has ruled that this does not apply to the local affinity requirement of the feat. That you must have Isger local affinity to take this feat. My feeling is that the feat specifically says without qualification that a monk can take this at 2nd level as a bonus feat even if prerequisites are not met.

Who do you think is right?

BTW. I am not looking for a bunch of wannabe DM hacks to tell me that the DM is the final arbitrator and whatever he says goes. That does not mean squat to me. This is a question purely based on how you think the rules should be interpreted. I have already told the DM in question that his ruling is fine even if I think it is a grey area. I am just curious what other people think. Monks are certainly not engies of combat domination that anyone has to fear their game becoming unbalanced by a monk having this feat. I am mostly annoyed that the DM has basically ruled that this feat will never be allowed in my character since we are running the Crimson Throne Adventure path and thus unlikely that my character would ever have a year to spend in the region to gain affinity.

Opinions?