|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I just noticed some mail and lo and behold Paizo has sent me a Christmas Card. I think I might have got a little teary-eyed. That is, until I noticed the ten percent off month of January, and my natural dwarf-like lust reigned supreme. Well done, folks, and I offer a Yuletide toast to thee as well.
I am looking for some inspiration for a clockwork tower I am developing, and was hoping to steal some ideas from published adventures if anyone can name a few for me. The main thing I am looking for is ambience, room descriptions and decor, cruelly ingenious traps and puzzles, NOT so much monsters which the monster books I have are full of. The two modules I am currently lifting ideas from are Wicked Fantasy's Against the Iron Giant, and DCC Vault of the Overlord (both awesome in their own right.) I really want to give the whole thing a steam-punk, grinding gears sort of barton fink feel. And a cool trap or two would be nice. Thanks in advance, and in full disclosure I have to add I originally posted this question over at the RPGnet forums, but got dismal results.
OK, I am having some serious trouble wrapping my head around energy drain, particularly the saves. Perhaps I have been doing it wrong all these years, but I always thought when struck (with a successful touch attack) the character got 2 fortitude saves, the first being at the time of attack to avoid the drain altogether, and the second being 24 hrs later to see if it ‘sticks’ but I have gone through every book I have (3.0 AND 3.5 PH, DMG, MM) and have found absolutely zero references to the first save to avoid the level loss. Am I crazy? As an aside, I read in a book about alternate energy drain affects, such as simplified level loss rules, but cannot find them either, I thought it was Libris Mortis, but apparently Im wrong about that too, so bonus points if you can point me to the rules variants for energy drain. Thanx
Hi my name is JD Barnes and that is what the Welcome says at the top of the paizo page but the message board has my main listed as Otto Ringus which was a PC I made. How do I get my main message board name (not aliases, which I understand) but my MAIN one to be JD Barnes. I cant see a place to edit the profile name. I know there must be a way because before I made otto ringus I was JD Barnes on the forums.
I ordered nine of the Clearanced d20 3.0 Character record folios.(GRR1008) Five of them arrived today. Ok, so it is pretty clear to me what happened. Five folios and the order info sheet were in an unmarked shipping envelope inside the box. I am guessing that there is a SECOND unmarked envelope floating around the warehouse with my other four folios inside it. Well, my campaign starts up tomorrow night after an extended holiday, and now I do not have the required number of folios to bestow upon my players as gifts. Or maybe I should just give it to the five best players? Any way you look at it the plans that I had in mind for tomorrow are dashed. Either I give no gifts, or only give out the five I have, but either way it is a less than momentous occasion, instead one of half-arsed lameness. I sincerely hope that you will make good and find the other four folios and ship them to me. I have no doubt of it, and thank you in advance. (Not to mention the fact you should be loving to get rid of these things! Who plays 3.0 nowadays?? Besides us i mean...) Sheesh! Incidentally this seems like a good time to bring up another of my gripes, especially since this seems to be a shipping error. What is with the stacking shipping fees? I ordered $9 in stuff and the total was $18. That is outrageous and seems to be a simplified way of calculating shipping on a per-item basis instead of a fairer system. Well, I do not think your shipping department has proven itself to be worth its inflated coasts, at least with this order. Ticked in Kansas City
Hi, so I am introducing drow into my campaign as one of the main forces of evil threatening the world - ya I know, totally lame and cliche. Well when you are DMing a group where 75% are new or novice players, what's old becomes new again! However, there is that 25% of old school grognards who knows whats up with drow, and it is to those, and other factors, that make me want to take the spider out of the drow. I am thinking of replacing it with snakes. I foresee the yuan-ti as being their "above ground" masters or lords, or whatever, and the yuan-ti worship Demogorgon (who in my campaign is a shiny-black skinned humanoid with a draconic head) So I want to combine these two elements: yuan ti overlords, Demogorgon worship into a new Drow look. The problem is that the spider influence goes pretty deep with the drow and I don't want to break anything. I believe the drow's innate powers and stat blocks shouldnt need to change, it is mostly the flair and fluff but I was curious if anyone else ever gave the drow a facelift and how it went...* *I have the utmost respect for Gygax and his drow vision, and think they are a fine species as is, but only want to change things up for variety, not for some fault that isnt there.
Ok, I am trying to understand this sentence, but could someone please break this down for me? Maybe I am dense, dunno...
Thanks! J~
Hiyas, so, I am one of those lazy DMS who HATES doing all the work to making monsters with levels, NPCs etc, but I know some of you out there actually LIKES doing that sort of thing (cant imagine why lol) anyhow… I was hoping some one with that kind of interest and some time on their hands might help whip me up an NPC. Here is what I am thinking: 3rd level Sorcerer Were-rat. Name Lucerne. Alignment NE. The stat block is my problem. I am creating an evil party for my characters. (My party has 7 members and can really tear through the baddies...) These villains should have a CR of 5-6 I guess. There will be 4 members, a Yuan-ti wizard, a drow fighter and a drow priestess. The plan is for my party to face them now at 3rd level and be defeated and finally to slay them at around 5th level. If some one wanted to stat the other 3 as well, I can only bow down in eternal gratitude. Here's what I have, which isn’t that good honestly. These are NPCs I’ve taken from other sources and just changed some names, skills around. Some might even be recognizeable, but I am not satisfied with them… Lucerne - 3rd level Were Rat Rogue 2/Bard 1
Abilities Str 13, Dex 22, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 11, Cha 8
PUNKETAH - 3rd level Yuan-Ti Wizard Hit Dice 3d4+3 (12 hit points)
‘FOUL’ FRITHOFF, 3rd level Drow fighter Hit Dice 3d10+3 (22 hit points)
Hit Dice 4d4+4 (15 hit points)
Hmm. Anyway, it was a crazy night tonight. The characters had just made second level and were in-between adventures, so I mixed things up with a random encounter. But it what started as a simple dilemma turned into true insanity! Ok, so basically the characters, who were stopping over at a small wild-elf enclave, more homestead really. Well, instead of pushing them onto the next leg of the journey, I had them get caught in the middle of a battle between 30 skeletons and an evolved wight riding upon a nightmare vs. an injured juvenile black dragon. The Elves looked after Thrandour the king of eagles (great eagle) and the PCs had just turned in quest reward. The eagle spoke to them of a black drag9on, and at the end of the session, I had the entire homestead enveloped in darkness. Originally I was going to have an attack by a drow raiding party, but I decided to use the black dragon. In my world Demogorgon rules the underworld and Orcus rules the undead ad they are waging a war for control of a region known as Shalizar. Anyhow, I had to use the darkness, so at the last minute I decided to use an element of behind the scenes, that of the undead masters capturing and killing dragons to become undead minions, and had a hunt take place right on top of them! The scene opened with the darkness (they had all week to wonder...) and then as the opening rolls they hear a huge crash and make reflex saves to avoid the massive redwood splintered above them in the darkness. The dragon lands at the base of the hill (elven sentinels call out signals of what happens) but Thrandour atacks! His wing is boiled off in an acid blast! Then the characters go mad! Instead of planning a defense, they rush out of the encampment and the cleric miraculouosly turns 13 of the remaining 25 skellies! Now everyon gets in on it. The undead concentrate on killing the dragon, but the evolved whight also carries a staff of lightning bolt (4d6) The dragon dies. The cleric heals the dragon (!) and together they defeat all the undead! Then get this: The dragon (who has 1 hp) says "Your reward is to live another day" takes off. They get an Attack of opportunity! Rolls a 23, AC is 22 hits! KILLS THE MO-FO'ing dragon!!!!!! Award 21,000 experience points! (Plus all the undead) I rule them immediatley advance one morre level to 1 xp above 3rd and call it a night. Man, it was crazy.... but hilariously fun.
Random idea for a game. (Totally inspired by Kruelaid's Z-war.) I have read some awesome Zombie survival games and really want to run one myself. As a huge zombie fan, and a D&D player, it is something I think would be really fun. It would be a traditional modern zombie survival-horror p-b-p where the characters either hook up or dont, try to survive, and hopefully carve out a viable survival solution for themselves, with the campaign ending with either human survival or undead victory. There is a modern D20 zombie game going on that I am really impressed with. My problem is due to laziness I do not want to learn a new rules system, in fact I want it to be rules-lite to the point where few rolls are even needed. It will be all about interaction and problem solving. I wonder how much interest there would be in a game like that? Alternatively, I thought about a game using standard 3.5 rules, maybe with no classes, or even wierder, with classes, but their abilities must be translated into modern terms. For example, the spell magic missile might be a tazer, or the cleric spell cure light wounds could be a stim drug or pain reliever, mebbe. I don't know, does anyone have any suggestions or ideas that might work? This idea is new to me, and I am not sure if it will work out, but I just want to find the easiest way to go about it if I was to do it. I can't be buying a bunch of new rulebooks, and honestly don't have the time or brain-space to learn a new rules sytem. I am thinking the classless system would prolly work best but I feel there should be advancement and awards that come with levelling. Maybe just use HP and ability scores and each level you can add 1 point to 1 ability score. I don't know, thats why Im asking for help. I post this here rather than the Connection board cuz I want to see if I can come up with a workable solution before I see if there is even any interest in the game. OK, thinking about it, here is an idea, classless, all characters start with 10's in all abilities and 4 hit points, but they get 4 points to spend where they want, on hp or abilities. A melee strike does 1 hp damage, a bullet does 4. I just want to keep it simple since it is about roleplaying and problem solving, burt there does have to be the element of chance, so some system needs to be in place. Cant wait for suggestions, please respond if you have any ideas! Thanx, J~
The Skeleton’s Key – A tabletop Campaign Journal I want to keep a record of the campaign I recently started running at home, and if no one minds, this seems the perfect place to do it. I have no hope that this will be read and/or enjoyed by anyone else, so I will most likely be speaking to an audience of one (myself) but if I happen to attract any outside attention, I (who am an attention hound by nature) would love any questions or commentary. Let me start this thread off with a little background, first about myself, then the players, and finally the campaign world. Myself – 30 something, started with 1st Edition in sixth grade, somehow skipped the entirety of 2nd edition (was adventuring in real life at the time) and got back into it around the time of 3rd edition. It was a series of events: the 3rd edition core rules release, Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and my first Play-by-post game (roleplayinggames.net) that got me back into the game. Oh and the D&D movie came out about the same time. I have always been DM except for a few short interludes in high school when I shared duties with Roger (now lost to mists of time, I think he is a preacher somewhere.) The highest level I ever advanced anyone was 8th level and it ended in party-wipe (those were the days) after 18 months of world-saving. I plan on the current campaign going from level 1 – 20 at a relatively brisk pace, maybe 1 lvl per month average. (We’ll see how things hold together at the upper end of levels) The Players – All players are in their 30s, there are currently 6 players, 3 women, 3 men, of which 1 is my wife, 2 are workmates, 1 is best friend. All have some experience with D&D, the girls less than the guys, but all are enthusiastic, witty, and we all have wanted to do something social for a long time. This seems to be a perfect outlet. There are 3-5 other people who are interested in the game and if I let it, the table could easily expand to 9 players. I haven’t let that happen yet, but I am tempted! We have an alt, my 11 yr old son, who I allow to play the characters of anyone not able to make it to game nights, (Fridays 7-10pm) The threat of an 11 yr old with little knowledge of the rules playing their character seems to keep most people coming week after week! (He is learning quick and is a gifted boy, he will do fine and one day will be a full player I’m sure, if the interest keeps up.) Location - We play in my living room, Friday nights, I have to 48” sq card tables side by side. We use miniatures (I did a quick and dirty $100 purchase of D&D mini singles from a web-site. This got me all the base monsters needed, and a handful of player character minis for those who needed them. Turns out 3-4 of the other players also have minis so it was not an issue, but I like to be prepared. We use a battle mat, that I made by printing out a 1” grid on Architectural paper (24” x 36”) and then had my wife laminate it. I work in engineering, she works in the school system so it was a perfect storm – and it works great! I actually bought a flip mat and came very close to buying a Chessex mega-mat, but have no need to use either. The only down side is my solution is very flimsy, it wont last forever – but it was free and we can make new ones as needed!!! Gameplay – Strangely enough, this is a 3E game, not 3.5 or 4. The reason for this is that everyone had 3E books, so we decided to just roll with it. In cases where the rule is obviously broken I will bow to 3.5 solutions, but most cases we get by pretty easy. I will make a call on the spot when there is a question, and no one minds. Hopefully they see me as being as reasonable and just as I see myself, lol. Basically we play rules-lite, i.e. no double rolling on crits, it just crits! No time wasting changing items from equipped to un-equipped, free use of ‘instant-action’ try to reign in the attacks of opportunity, etc. I am thinking of coming up with a critical hit/penalty roll table, or I might buy that deck of cards I see advertised here. (I wish there was a deck of monster cards –Paizo, order up!) I have a large amount of source material to draw on, including all the core books (3.5 included) and many campaing, 3rd party resources. I also have a fondness for Dungeon Crawl Classics and Necromancer Games. Next post I will describe the campaign world and the introduction, then what follows should be a fairly basic week-by-week bloggie-style description.
LOL, this thread is really only for anyone who might be interested in the following intellectual idea. The idea is to mash together the old school module U1 – The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, with DCC1 Idylls of the Rat King, but to take out all goblins and replace them with Orcs. Lots of Orcs. How best to achieve this, and what trwists and plot hooks can I add to make it a really good adventure? What I want out of it is a good but short haunted-house style adventure (Saltmarsh) followed by another short-ish dungeon crawl type adventure, ending with a main battle with the Were-Rat from Idylls along with an Evil Cleric (perhaps a Yuan-ti) and I love the illusionist Sanbalet, so I will make it a party vs- party final battle with the above 3 vs the party. Campaign-wise, the factors leading up to this adventure are thusly: Lucerne (the were-rat) has stolen a magical item that helps keep the land safe from undead. He is the last ancestor of a mining family. Saltmarsh mansion is nestled in hills, not near the coast, and it is Lucerne’s ancestral home, now abandoned for many years, along with his family’s silver mine. He has returned after many years in a nearby city, to re-establish his family fortune. The cellars of the mansion will actually connect to the mines, rather than the sea (as in the original.) I was thinking at first some huge railed vehicle to replace the ship, the vehicle could take people from the mansion thru an underground corridor miles long to the silver mine and vice versa, but that might be too hokey. And secondly, I want to have a big orc presence, so I am thinking of replacing all goblins in Idylls with orcs, but that would be a lot of work! Especially with the half-goblin were-rats in the deeper levels. Oh, and I am also thinking of trimming the dungeon in Idylls down to 1, maybe 2 at most levels, if possible. I have too much stuff for the players to do, big dungeons will level them up too quickly lol. Any thoughts are welcome, if interested in helping me out.
OK, so I can find bucket-loads of adventures featuring kobolds and goblins, but I was really hoping to find a few good adventures featuring Orcs: Pathfinder, Necromancer, DCC, whatever, I just want some good Orc Inspiration. I would love to get a few modules that feature orc encampments, raiding parties, whatever, I need to populate a section of my campaign with orc hordes and need help filling out the areas. Every time I try to sit down, there is a goblin in my way but I cant seem to find A SINGLE ADVENTURE FEATURING ORCS AS THE MAIN NEMESIS(!) (Ok I lied, the main thing I want are class monster stats, like orc clerics, shamans, warlocks, etc. so I dont have to do all the boring stat-block work myself!)
I ordered a flip mat last week (the plain one square/hex) and I THOUGHT it said ship 6-9 days when I place dthe order. Well I just checked up to see if it shipped yet, and now it is listed as back-ordered. I am wondering, sinc ethey are all the same pricE, if I could substitute a patterned flip mat, so long as at least one side is plain squares. I would accept any you have in stock, and would appreciate the change as I am in dire need of game mapping at the table. Tavern would be ok, city market, cathedral, etc. I REALLY appreciate it! Thanx
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Posts