Themes86's page

I would have said a Meenlock, but they aren't in the SRD.

My next guess would be troll, but I didn't think they needed that freaky jaw to make them more terrifying looking.

Looking through the monsters of the SRD, perhaps it the pathfinder take on ettercaps. While the ettercap always had an association with spiders from its 1st edition origins, I never really liked its evolution into the more spider-like creature it has been protrayed as in 3rd edition. If this is indeed the pathfinder ettercap, I definately like it. The jaw hints at the spidery connection, but its firmer humanoid nature seems more true to the original concept.

If that isn't it, I am at a loss.

Edit: Rats. I wasn't even close. I guess the link to the product through the blog didn't show all of the threat. I should have realized something was up when the last post was listed as 2 August. Something like this would have certainly producted more chatter than that.

Sinspawn, eh? Does that mean it is an outsider?

Last weekend I watched a series of giant crodile B movies on the SiFi Channel because they were introducing there latest entry that night at 9PM, Supercroc.

Anyway, in the first one, one of the teenage kids being chased by the gaint croc spends the whole movie spraying himself with bug repelent, which doesn't seem to keep the mosquitos away because he still swats them in between spitzes of bug repelent. At the end of the movie, the croc swallows him whole, but a minute later, the croc starts gagging and coughs him up. Later the teen implies his spray keeps away bugs and crocs.

So, is you want a monster that swallows other creatures whole to cough up their prey because they can't stomach it, how about an alchemical that can be rubbed on the body (skin, armor, clothes, etc.) that forces the swallowing creature to make a fortitude saving through verse some DC 1 to 4 rounds after swallowing. Failure means they are sickened until they cough up their meal.

It would need more fleshing out, by someone with more a better grasp of the alchemy rules should be able to balance it out.

A quick question: does anyone know of a decent way to handle the Swallow Whole ability?

Today, my 6th level part came across a T-Rex. In the 1st rd, it grabbed Ruphus, doing 3d6+13 pts of damage, then swallowed him in the 2nd rd doing 2d8+8 bludgeoning +8 pts of acid, resulting in a stunning 3d6+2d8+29 pts in 2 rds! I didn't want Ruphus (my favorite NPC) to die, so I had the beastie swallow the party tank next and help cut his way out (not a strict rules interpretation, but hey, I'm the DM).

So, has anybody come up with some sort of substance that forces critters to puke swallowed adventurers? Obviously, it shouldn't be something that works automatically, which would obviate the terror of being swallowed, but... well, you see what I mean.

Thanks,
Olodrin

Mine arrived last Friday. But I didn't open it until Sunday. After which, I wondered, what did I miss in 148 about Shami-Amourae? A cursory look around the house would seem to indicate I misplaced it. Then on Monday, what do I find in my mail box when I get home ... 148. Certainly a case of the Post Office loosing track of things. LOL

Thanks for the response, Vic! Keep up the great work!

You can't... yet. But we plan to make that option available before the first Pathfinder ships.

When do we get to combine it with a Pathfinder subscription? If now, how?

Everything Ben said is correct.

Retailers get upset when publishers discount their own products. We can get away with discounting Pathfinder because we've positioned it as a replacement for Dragon and Dungeon, but we can't do that for everything. So, the big subscriber perk you get is the free PDF, and the ability to combine it with a Pathfinder subscription to save on shipping.

Call me when you get colorful, I'll buy.

I can certainly understand, variety is the spice of life, but for me all I buy is black T-shirts because of bowling. They put so much oil on the lanes these days that any color shirt worn other than black gets a stain that doesn't come out. With a black shirt, they oil is still there, but you never see it. I might have to pick up a few of these. My local Arena Football team has been rather stingy with the black T-shirts the past couple years and I need something new other than WWE shirts. LOL

I like the format.

I do have a question ... For NPC classes, isn't CR = Level - 1.

Shade & Box. I just finished reading the article and want to congradulate you. I really enjoyed it. Keep up the great work. With any luck, you'll be invited to stat up and flesh out Gruaghlothor in the future by ... somebody. Probably to late for inclusion in Dragon so I suppose it will have to be WotC.

hmm; everyone I know says IMHO is In My Humble Opinion, but there you go; confusion in acronyms. We have like a bazillion of them at work; sometimes sentences are nothing but a bunch of acronyms with a few conjunctions and articles; we actually have a book that you get when you start here with most of the common acronyms; it is all SNAFU, but then you guys are JAFO anyhow :) so there you go from SPQ to you deep within SUMCO.

Some remembers their Blue Thunder. LOL

So WotC has put up a barrel, sack and crate contents generator on their website.

My impression/guess is that this is supposed to be demonstrative of how electronic materials can do things that a magazine can't. At the very least they seem to be trying to counter the popular attitude that they have a poor online content track record.

They do? I always liked their online content. Sure, it could be more, but hey, its free. You can't beat that.

I just hope it is still there once the transition over to their new 'thing' going on, because I don't plan to subscribe to that. And if not, oh well. They already lost me with cancelling Dragon and Dungeon magazine. LOL

Under World

Exactly. This leaves lots of room for myth and legend that confuse the underworld, the world under the earth, with the Underworld, the planar realms of the dead, devils, demons, etc. There might even be connections between the underworld and the Underworld.

Or not. Those can have their own names as well so there is no confusion. Just an idea.

Subscriptionability for Gamemaster modules would be nice as well as an option to have them sent concurent with Pathfinder to save on shipping costs. I can wait for one or the other arrive in house for the two to be sent together. Just adding my opinion to the support column.

WWE Backlash ... Bobby Lashly vs. Shane McMahon, Vincent McMannon, and Umaga in a handicap match for the ECW championship and ...

Ouch. There's a lot more to em than what you see in the blog my man, that's like a 5% tease of all the juicy koboldyness backing these guys up. I strove to make them as sinister as they are ridiculous ... you'll see what I mean in a few months when it comes out. That's just a very very quick treatment of these guys ... I promise, I won't let you down GGG, You'll like "Crown" in all its glory when you get to read the full experience of Jekkajak and Merlokrep. I hope you give it a chance. Greer will vouch, he's read the whole thing. And yes, the Truescales are the Truescales, with their own quirks, not "Kobolds" with a captial "K."

I am a little confused. Is Truescale a new breed of kobold, like poisondusk a new breed of Lizardfolk? Or are Truescale just their tribal name?

As part of our celebration of "Paizo 5," our fifth anniversary, we have promised a major announcement each and every month this year. So there are a LOT of secrets, Heath.

Enjoy.

--Erik

What were the major announcements for January, February, and March? :-) I probably heard them, but I am just not putting 2 and 2 together at the moment.

Correct again!

Sorry for the mistakes.

Not at all. I appreciate the time in helping me polish up my skills. I am sure editing for the gaming industry is challenging when your looking for grammer, spelling, ... and math mistakes. LOL

Ha! Yeah; that's good advice... If you notice what you think's an error and want to post about it, by all means do so! Just do so in a friendly manner, because you don't want to angry up the editors. :-)

Why of course. I want to use this as a learning experience. Can't do that if I come barreling through like a bull in a China Shop. Only thing you learn that way is ... how to break China. LOL

Anyway, I really enjoyed the adventure, The Distraction, by Tim Hitchcock, in Dungon 145. I plan to adapt to my own campaign, in the future.

In the meantime, my current campaign storyline involves gnolls, so when I come across the interesting gnoll ranger stat block on page 17, I of course added it to my collection of gnoll stat blocks for future use. From my experience of adopting stat blocks from WotC products recently, I have developed the habit of double checking AC, attack score, skill totals, etc. in my head. Usually, when they're right, I eventually dig up all the modifiers and they balance out. When they're wrong, I have to go with my gut and tweek them.

But, with the authors and Paizo Staff being so friendly and responsive to the consumer, I thought it worth a shot at double checking here.

I see three possible errors in the Gnoll Ranger:

Armor Class is listed as 17. I count 16. +1 for dexterity, +1 for natural armor, and +4 for mwk chain shirt. Am I missing a modifier?

Hit Points are listed at 37. If you use average hit points per hit die you have 4.5 (for d8 average) x 4 (since humanoid and ranger hit dice are both d8) + 4 (constitution bonus) x 4 equals 34. Of course if you don't use average hit points per hit die, this isn't necessarily an error. But if you do, I could be missing 3 hit points in my calculations.

Things look good for the ranger purchased skills. But, I think the wisdom modifier, which is higher for the gnoll ranger than for your typical gnoll, was forgotten when it comes to listen and spot. Just a bump up to listen +3 and spot +4. At least I think. I puzzled it out for a couple days before the armor check penalty finally made me realize that hide and survival fit flawlessly.

So, did I figure correctly or do I have something to learn. I am looking forward to the result, eitherway.

I am just wondering if it is okay to bring up if you think you found an error in a stat block in a Dungeon adventure? In the past, it seems the authors and Piazo Staff are really good about answering errata querries about their work, but I thought I would ask first. The reason I ask is two fold. One is, it would help point out the error so others will know about it and any possible corrections ahead of time. Two is, I'll really learn something about monster building if it turns out I am wrong. Thanks in advance.

Not to highjack the thread, though I loved the update of the World Serpent Inn, will the Ecologies Collection have material that was trimmed from the published articles or other extra material at all? While the ecology flavor is great, it would be more enticing for subscribers of Dragon magazine if the collection had more crunch to go with that mouth watering flavor. :-)~

Grimcleaver wrote:

I love the Ecology articles. If I could buy a fat hardbound book of just the ecology articles I would do so in a heartbeat. They are by far the best stuff coming out for D&D hands down.

Your wish is our command! Well, it isn't hardcover, but it will be a nice softcover on par with Red Hand of Doom in quality. Here is the link to the product:

Dragon: Monster Ecologies

It just went to the printer and should be out in late April.

-Lisa

My daughter, bless her heart found this. Thought it would fit here and I am sure you will all enjoy it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S9aApo92AU

Further, last weekend we went and saw the Blue Man Group : How to be a Megastar 2.0 tour. Anyone familiar with the blue men will know they have scrolling signs that you can read before the show. Well this time the signs were trying to get you to join the Modcast via text message on your cell phone. Costs $1.99 plus whatever you text message rate is for your provider and during the concert you get text messages on your phone. It was fun.

Anyway, one of the strings talks about how nerds put the Modcast together and how nerds were great at inventing things so you should really try the Modcast. They invented things like ... Dungeons & Dragons ... well ... maybe that isn't the best example ... but you know what we mean ... so join the Modcast.

So D & D in Pop culture is still around a year later. LOL Enjoy the video.

The Savage Tide Player's Guide will probably be available for preordering sometime today. In the meantime, here's a sneak peek at the cover.

Hummm. Haven't we seen that picture before?

I hope they put the pre-order notice in a store blog entry. Otherwise, I'll never find it. LOL

Any idea on what the TSR product was??

I13 Adventure Pack 1 Has an adventure in it called the Circus of Gandolfo. It was 1st edition.

So does that mean if you subscribed to both Dragon & Dungeon magazines, you can buy two?

Is Ral Partha still around? The reason I as is, I am thinking of getting back into miniature paint, with an eye toward the game mastery line, but when I used to paint regularly, I used Ral Partha paints. The paint has now hardened out after close to 15 years in the closet, but I have a few projects that I want to finish using hte same colors. So I figured the best way to match things up is to by the same brands of paints. Any idea where to find them?

First, I am looking forward to your synopsis of the rest of the adventure.

Second, because of the entertainment value, I hope your players will make up new characters and continue on this adventure. I don't know about others, but I would like to see this story continue.

Third, I haven't played D&D since 2nd edition. I keep up collecting 3.0 & 3.5 edition books as fuel for my own imagination. From that I have a working knowledge of the system, but the best I can offer is a numberical analysis.

From you initial synopsis, it certainly appears that your normally good players made some mistakes that have weakend their effectiveness in succeeding encounters.

Beyond that, I can't comment at the moment other than to ask, how many gnolls were in the ruined manor house and had any of the characters leveled up during the length of the adventure.

Greg

OK, let's talk about what went wrong.

First, setting up watches. The group has been playing together for years and worked out a routine - spell casters do not stand watch as they need 8 hours rest in order to relearn/pray/meditate for their spells. This leaves the fighter types to take watch.

This works if you have equal numbers of both or more fighter-types than spellcasters. This group didn't (2 fighters to 4 spellcasters), but they never stopped to think about that, they fell into their old habits.

So I threw the huge monstrous spider at them.

Now the spider was going to show up anyway, just later in the adventure. I just wanted to wake them up to their situation before things got too serious. Why the barbarian did not cry out for help immediately, I'll never know, but that's how it happened.

When they did the same thing the next night, I was rather surprised. I expected that they would let the barbarian and the samurai get enough sleep to start recovering from the venom, especially as the barabarian was down SIX points of strength. But no, business as usual - spellcasters sleep, fighters stand watch.

So I decided to mess around with them a little using the halfling's familiar. The raven came down to watch over his friend and, having darkvision, the dwarf noticed him. I pulled the dwarf player over to the side and worked the scene with him, piling up his paranoia, just to see what he'd do. For all he knew, the raven was a spy of some sort and could not be allowed to report back. So when the bird moved, he attacked it, critically hitting it for near max damage.

Now personally, if I'd been a player, I would have woken either the druid or the Wu Jin and asked them about the bird first. Either way, it was the halfling's fault for actively hiding the fact that he was a spellcaster and had a familiar. Did I have to set the scene up? Maybe not, but then again, this was a freshmen mistake on their part.

When it was finally brought to the group's attention that their main...

I do like the idea of a dragon online suppliment. I hope it is something they will consider.

But I have also thought that this is something we could do ourselves.

Recently at work, our research lab hosted a two day electronics seminar. To assist in sharing the knowledge of the various presenters, we collected all the presentations, converted them to pdf files, and burned them on to CDs.

This made me think that it would be neat to go to a gaming convention and the various vendors or presentors giving out free or cheap CDs full of pdf of the kind of gaming material similar to what you are all talking about. Not original material, but some vendors might put them in. Stat blocks for characters and advanced creatures. Simple mini encounters. Varient rules. Etc. At a convention, each vendor would have to produce a whole CD, but they could each offer something to the convention organizers that they could burn onto a CD to hand out at the door.

I am certainly digressing. From that idea, and what you have been talking about here. What prevents we on the boards creation what your talking about. If you like an article and it inspires you to create an NPC for your campaign or an encounter in your next dungeon, create the stat block, throw in a little flavor text, and post it on these boards. If enough are ideas on a particular dungeon magazine are offered, some enterprising person could collect them together, pop them into a pdf and share them with anyone that asks for a copy.

Example: Dragon 301 had the Ecology of the Troll. I thought this an excellent article. I particularly liked the troll variants and started work on a MSWord file of stating out all the varients there. I then moved on to filling in the holes of 1st & 2nd edition trolls (giant troll, giant two headed troll, spirit troll, etc.) using various templates from a variety of sources. (Fiend Folio, Savage Species, Manual of the Planes, etc.) That dragon magazine also first introduced the Draconic template so I slapped that on the troll and had to make his half black dragon/half troll father.

Anyway, you get the picture. Something for everyone to consider. Sure, it would be nice that Paizo could do that kind of stuff for us, but nothing prevents us from doing it ourselves. As long as we give credit were credit is do, don't actually copy the source material, it should work out.

i heard a rumor about orange (and yellow and purple) dragons appearing in some upcoming hardcover book or another... if only i could remember which book that was going to be. ;)

I would hazard that is the upcoming Dragon Compendium. A good selection for it, I must say. :)

The ruined mine office described in Dragon #333, while abandoned, does not stand empty. If the PCs want to use it as their base of operations, they’re going to have to win it from the creatures that have squatted there, including a small band of goblins led by their shaman, Ugloop. They have been wandering the countryside of the cairn hills for weeks, completely lost and cut-off from their tribe, trying to avoid the daily Garrison patrols. They have holed up there until their leader, Ugloop, can figure out what to do. In addition, there are a few infestations that must be dealt with to make the place safe.

This looks great. Well thought out. It could prove a handy side plot that can be woven in between the other adventures should a DM think the players need a little experience boosting between episodes.

I do have a question. Is the treasure level commensurate with the challenge of the encounters? It seems excessive to me. The Cairn doesn't seem to offer as much treasure and the challenges in there are harder. Just my gut first impression. Otherwise, as I said, it does look great.

>> "A Thousand Roads"

>> Short article discussing how the adventures in this issue could segue into (or out of) previous or future Dungeon adventures. Could also discuss how to use this (or previous) Dragon's material with the adventures.

Given the popularity of the adventure paths and campaign arcs, this seems like a good suggestion. A nice one page article showing how a couple adventures could be linked up. Over time it might even show you a complete campaign from 1st to 20th.

This is an original idea, directly related to DMing. And Eric already has a proposal outlining one of these. :)

I like this idea as well. Or an article on just using the settings in past Dungeon adventures in an ongoing campaign. Plenty of adventures detail a town or a village that would make a great base of operations with just a little more fleshing out. The maps are already there. Just need to flesh out a few more of the buildings already there. Some of these can be as simple as recommending Campaign Workbook articles that fit the right flavor.

Along those lines, beyond using the one page, for frequent adventure authors who have an interesting place/fixture in one of their adventures, to use it in succeeding adventurers they write. If possible.

I think at this point, all the articles would have been choosen since it is due out in October.

That being said, those are all good suggestions. I would like to see the numerous 1st edition PC and NPC character classes converted to 3.5 classes and prestige classes. The previously mentioned Witch (which was presented in several articles, not just #114), the Deathmaster, Bandit, and Bounty Hunter to mention a few.

In second edition, several new PC races were introduced. The Aspis is the first one that comes to mind, but there were several based on Star Frontier races made into usuable D&D races.

Ed Greenwood's Pages from the Mages and the Wizards three would be excellent articles to convert. Especially since the flavor text would remain the same, only the spells and magic items need to be converted.

Even some of the 3.0 edition articles would be nice to see reprinted with updated 3.5 statistics. The ecology of the Troll article comes to mind. I still can't get my mind on what would be the best damage reduction to give the suggested rock troll.

With a little research I am sure I could come up with more specific articles, I just can't remember their exact names.

I'd like to get some fan-based suggestions in.

1: The Nine Hells: Part 1 and 2, Ed Greenwood.
2: The Nine Hells: Revisited, Ed Greenwood.
3: The Making of a Milieu, Arthur Collins.
4: For King and Country.
5: Welcome to Malachi.
6: Baba Yaga's Hut (Issue 83).

That's the best of the best that comes right off the tip of my tongue. If I think of more later, I'll post more.

Sean K Reynolds did several template classes in a series of web articles on the WOTC web-site called Savage Progressions. I'll see if I can paste a link to the archieve: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/sp

Surprisingly, Half-Celestial wasn't done as a straight up progression. He did a Half-Fiend progression which should work as a base to develope a Half-Celestial progression. He also did several transitional progressions from one race to another, such as Half-Drow/Drow, Tiefling/Half-Fiend, Feytouched/Half-Fey, and ... Assimar/Half-Celestial.

Plenty of information there to help crafter a straight up Half-Celestial Savage Progression.

There's an article in Dragon 326 on adding a half-elemental template one level at a time.

Has there been a similar article already in Dragon (or in any other book) for half-celestials?

I've done some Google searches for it but I didn't find anything.

Dagobert