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Tamonash Byrraju Portrait: 15 Description: Tamonash is a proud, regal Vudrani. Born on Jalmeray, the superiority of Vudra over the barbarians of Avistan or Garund was instilled in him from an early age. He was admitted to the Monastery of Untwisting Iron where he showed great talent, but also great disregard for aesthetics from the Inner Sea. While sparring, Tamonash's use of taboo techniques resulted in his opponent's death. For this crime, he was caste out of the monastery and disowned by his family. Motivations/Goals: Tamonash hates the barbarians he's forced to reside amongst, and hates his own people for casting him out. He seeks power to return to Jalmeray as a conqueror. Schemes/Plots/Adventure Hooks: Tamonash scours the ruins of Katapesh, Osirion and Nex for items that give power over elemental creatures, knowing the power of the bound genies that defend his homeland. Specifically, he desires rings of elemental command. Newly unearthed sites or expeditions by other organizations (such as Pathfinders, the Aspis Consortium, or the PC's) attract his attention. He tries to insinuate himself into such groups with the intention of betraying them later. Alternatively, Tamonash may have a lead on one of his desired treasures, and recruits the PC's for an expedition, again with the intention of betrayel. Tamonash Byrraju CR 9
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===== Offense =====
===== Tactics =====
===== Statistics =====
In lieu of our regular game, this week we rolled up one of each of the new alternate classes to playtest them. I ran Carrion Hill, or as much as I could in about 4 hours time. 20 point buy for stat generation. We had a dwarf gunslinger (musket), gnome samurai (riding dog mount), and a human ninja. We only made it through three fights.
Spoiler:
Fight 1 was against 3 dark creepers. Monsters had time to hide in a darkened room, but lacked ranged weapons (other than throwing their daggers, which would have left them without melee weapons), so the surprise round was used just to engage the party in melee. The Ninja was the star of this fight. She made the perception check to spot the creepers when everyone else in the party failed, so she got to act on the surprise round. She then beat the creepers at initiative. Invisibility to position for a sneak attack attack-of-opportunity when one creeper moved one-hit killed a creeper, then moving to flank one-hit killed a second. The gunslinger scored a critical hit with his rifle against the third and dealt 77 points of damage against the last creeper. The samurai felt... unproductive. Second fight was against a ghoul rouge 6. Again, the monster heard the party coming and hid. This time, nobody made the perception check, so it got a surprise round to actually attack. It hit the gunslinger for a good chunk of damage, and the gunslinger failed the fortitude save and became paralysed. The ghoul won initiative, took a second bite out of the gunslinger (who then failed his save against ghoul fever) and dove into a nearby murky pool to hide. The gunslinger is below half hp at this point, paralysed for 4 rounds, and in (eventual) need of a remove disease. Loss of a good fort. was definitely felt. Samurai and ninja
The last fight we got to was against some asylum orderlies (4 human warrior 3's). This almost didn't count as a fight. R1-Gunslinger almost dropped one of the orderlies with one shot, samurai and dog combined dropped an orderly, ninja alone dropped an orderly. The orderlies attempted to trip the two melee party members, succesfully tripping the ninja but failing to trip the samurai.R2- Gunslinger reloads, samurai and pet kill their orderly, ninja attacks from prone and kills her orderly (the one the gunslinger had wounded on R1).
The gunslinger never used any grit (foolishly, but he's a new player). The ninja was never hit despite having the lowest AC (getting tripped doesn't count, she never took any actual HP damage). The samurai never used his challenge (only usable 2x per day meant he was always waiting for a tougher foe). The consensus seemed to be that the ninja by far was the most powerful of the three classes we played with. The gunslinger seemed "swingy," either ending encounters very quickly with a lucky crit or not meaningfully contributing at all (paralysed by ghoul, reloading every other round otherwise). The samurai played like the variant cavalier he is. The samurai player did lament being forced to select a mount. Melee classes tend to do better the bigger they are, and he felt compelled to play a small race so that he could take his mount into a dungeon. Otherwise he would have been "wasting a class feature." He would have preferred to play a medium race and have some other option he could have selected in place of the mount. So, perhaps not all samurai have to be mounted?
First World Druid (Druid)
Nature Bond (Ex): A first world druid may not select an animal companion or the Animal domain. Instead, she adds the Travel and Trickery domains to those usually available to druids. Beast Empathy (Ex): A first world druid can improve the atttude of magical beasts with an intelligence of 1 or 2 as a normal druid can with animals. She can also use this ability to influence animals, but she takes a –4 penalty on the check. This ability replaces Wild Empathy. Wild Shape (Su): A first world druid gains this ability at 6th level, except that her effective druid level for the ability is equal to her druid level -2. At 10th level she can assume the form of a Small or Medium magical beast, at 12th level a Tiny or Large magical beast. This effect functions as beast shape IV. Tane's Power (Su): When wildshaped into a Huge plant or Large magical beast, or shapechanged into a Huge plant, Large magical beast or Huge dragon, the first world druid gains an additional ability based on the creature type she assumed. Sard's Electrical Jolt: When in plant shape, every time a creature strikes her with a metal melee weapon, arcs of electricity deal 2d6 points of damage to the attacker. Thrasfyr's Entangling Chains: When in magical beast shape she grows six chains from her body. As a standard action, she can cause these chains to snake outward to a radius of 20 feet and thrash about violently. All creatures in this area take 10d6 points of slashing damage and become entangled - a Reflex save halves the damage and negates the entangled condition. An entangled creature can escape with a Reflex save or a DC 30 Escape Artist check made as a full-round action. The chains can also be sundered (hardness 10, hp 5, Break DC 26). The save DC is Dexterity-based. Jabberwock's Burble: When in dragon shape she can burble once every 1d4 rounds as a standard action. This blast of strange noises and shouted nonsense affects all creatures within a 30-foot-radius spread - these creatures must make a Will save or become confused for 1d4 rounds. This is a mind-affecting sonic effect. The save DC is Charisma-based. These are in addition to the normal benefits of the assumed forms. This ability replaces Timeless Body.
Candle of Viscous Ephemera
Working up a level 1 summoner for a playtest session tomorrow and I came up with two questions. 1.) What is the starting wealth for a summoner? This is particularly important since I need to buy weapons and armor for effectively two characters. 2.) Can eidolons speak? And if so, what languages? And can I put skill ranks into linguistics so the eidolon can speak additional languages?
We can't be the first group to get started! My group consists of... Halt: male dwarven cleric of Abadar working for his freedom Erzabet: female half-elf monk also working for her freedom Astra: female human rogue/fighter seeking her roots Kito: male human wizard/archivist looking for Haleen Jirani: male human fighter also looking for Haleen (they're brothers, and have a Raistlin/Caramon sort of thing going on)
and I have a new favorite Christmas song! The Killers- Don't Shoot Me Santa And I love the kinda creepy Quentin Tarantino vibe in the music video. That, and the Christmas Goat.
Swift Performance [General]
Special- You can select this feat more than once. Each time, it must apply to a different bardic performance you know.
Check this out! The Tiefling Gladiator here from the Against The Giants huge set due out in early July bears a very striking resemblance to the Iconic Tiefling Fighter from Paizo's dead tree edition days of Dungeon. I know WotC owns the rights to all of the art from that time, and has recycled it quite a bit already, but I think it's kinda cool that some bit of that era still gets to live on. Hopefully Tyralandi Scrimm is up next!
This weekend, one third of our group was out of town. The fairer third, actually. So while my wife and the wife of one of the other players were gone, we rolled up new characters and ran through The Demon Within by Stephen Greer. By Memorial Day, we finished the adventure successfully. We played through to the adventure's completion without stopping to rest, so there was no fifteen minute adventuring day here! On to our observations! The Paladin Spoiler:
actually didn't feel very paladiny. The player's comments after the game sessions were that he felt like he was playing a fighter who occasionally pulled off a spell or some other neat trick, and could have possibly played a fighter with gear from Magic Item Compendium to replicate just about everything he was doing. Nevertheless, his Channel Energy was helpful (though overshadowed by the cleric), his smite evils were all used up. Actually, I think he had one left. Also, his Divine Bond never got used. As a standard action, he'd rather just attack. This ability should be a move action to summon, I think. The Monk Spoiler:
performed surprisingly well considering all of the flack the class has been getting. I played this character myself, and created an elven monk with a high dexterity and weapon finesse. His attacks were at +17 (which was more than adequate in this adventure at least) normally, but combined with flanks, the cleric's luck domain power, the ranger's hunter's bond, and the paladin granting smites, I often had much higher attack rolls, so accuracy was not an issue at all. I used eight of my ki points and ten stunning fist attempts, which means I still had a few tricks left up my sleeve. Would I have liked more ki points? Sure. But I didn't need them to contribute. Oh, and jumping 50 feet to get past crowds of panicking peasants while my party is slogging through what they consider difficult terrain? Awesome. My damage output with this character was a bit low, averaging fifteen damage a swing, but Gorgon's Fist and Medusa's Wrath more than made up for it. Many times, Mordulin (who GM'ed this game) swore (as in used profanity) and muttered that Gorgon's Fist should allow a save. The Ranger Spoiler:
was a GMPC run by Mordulin. To encourage him to post a little more often, I'll let him share his own thoughts on the class. The Cleric Spoiler:
still had a lot of fun with the class. Accuracy was his biggest problem, but that's what you get when you play a character with a moderate base attack bonus and use Power Attack. Channel Energy and Turn Outsider saw frequent use, so much so that his Heal spells went to NPC's we came across that had been driven insane. Imagine that, a cleric who's resources were deep enough that he felt confident to use valuable high level healing slots on people who weren't party members! The mind boggles! Next week, back to Rise of the Runelords!
Since getting together a second time each week to run playtest characters wasn't really happening, and Alpha 2 had all of the classes currently used in our weekly Rise of the Runelords game, our group made the decision to just convert our RotRL characters over and make our weekly game a playtest. We're deep into Hook Mountain Massacre by this point, and after converting characters, managed to get through only Part 3: Down Comes the Rain. Specific player feedback: The druid Spoiler:
(a male gnome pyro named Fireblossom) was delighted with the fire domain. It fit his character very well, and let him sell the wand of produce flame that's been his signature ability for some time now. Shapechanging was more for movement and defenses, but he kept his wildshape usage to a minimum until he has the chance to pick a few favored forms and write down exactly what his stats are like while so transformed. The cleric Spoiler:
gets even better at these levels. The positive energy channeling finally heals a decent amount of HP per use, and she was able to use her own prepared spells as she prepared them, not dipping into them at all for spontaneous cures. She feels like she's a full-fledged caster, not a back-up caster holding onto spells she'd like to use in case someone needs the healing. The dwarf barbarian Spoiler:
burned through 39 of his 43 rage points during the adventure, so the formula for gaining rage points seems right on track to provide a degree of resource management without encouraging a 15 minute adventuring day. Power Attack plus Surprise Accuracy FTW! The wizard and rogue are still being tweaked, I'll have more firm observations later. GM observations: Still digging how easy XP is to award. Absolutely keep this system! Power Attack is a frequent combat option for the giants and ogres and trolls the party is facing right now, and I had to mentally calculate the Str bonus, atttack penalty, and damage bonus over and over again. Please include the power attack figures in the stat block, likely with the other combat options. It will make combats on my side of the screen much faster!
Maybe not that dramatic, but two of my group are unhappy with Overrun (and bull rush) sharing the CMB mechanic. This came up in playtest last night. We were playing Home Under the Range (Michael Kortes, Dungeon 134), and at one point, a giant scarab beetle got spooked during a fight and tried to bolt. The cleric (1/2 orc cleric of Gorum) tried to block the beetle, and we got to test out the overrun rules. The beetle overran (but didn't knock prone) the cleric. Fine and good, the rules seem to work O.K. But that player got to thinking, and talking, with the party fighter. And They decided that the DC is stacked too heavily against success for bull rush or overrun attempts. Their specific argument was that a lvl 1, str 16 human fighter (CMB +4) has to roll a 12 to overrun a housecat-sized imp (bab+3, -2 size, +0 str, CMB +1), and a 17 to knock said tiny outsider on his tuckus. And if it's that hard to overrun a tiny creature, how much harder will it be as levels go up? They want the movement-based combat actions (bull rush and overrun) to remove BAB from the equation. So it's just size and strength.
...when I switched my shipping option to hold products for one monthly shipment? Well after I made the switch, I got billed for J2 all by it's lonesome (order #854141), but I still haven't seen it. Okay, maybe your holding it for Pathfinder. That's cool. Odd that I'd receive seperate order numbers if their supposed to ship together, but hey, as long as their system works. But I haven't been charged for Pathfinder #5 yet, either. Is J2 coming separately (and just taking a long time) despite my preference to hold items for one shipment? Is it and Pathfinder 5 being held for another module expected before month's end? And if so, why have I been billed for J2 (and gotten acces to the pdf) and not Pathfinder 5?
I ran across This Article while perusing the web this morning. Dang. I thought I was a Star Wars nut. (Well, I was a Star Wars nut, then George made the prequels, but thats another topic.) O.K., time to go make a barrel of cash, then explain to my wife why a room modification is more important than paying off credit cards. It's the only way to quell the jealous spirit rising within me.
A little back-story: one of my players started out as a gunslinger type character using renaissance firearms in TINH named Syn, but literally kept getting knocked to the negatives; three times in one session, two of those in one fight! After the final knockdown (by the Ixit scouts), followed by nearly drowning, the player decided he wanted to play something else. Rather than introduce a new character, though, the Syn sold his soul while unconscious and re-trained as a warlock. Syn sadly died in Tamoachan, and that player is currently playing Syn's former mentor, a very skilled gunslinger trying to find out why his student turned his back on the way of the gun. What does Graz'zt have to do with all of this? Well, when the demon appeared to Syn, I described a black-skinned man with six fingers. I knew Demogorgon was the main baddy, and Orcus and Graz'zt are his biggest foes, and between those two Graz'zt seemed more likely to offer his patronage. Keep in mind I ran this as soon as I got the issue waaaay back when, before the details of Malcanthet's plotting were available. I was hoping I could tie Syn's fate in with the end of the campaign, perhaps a bittersweet reunion with old friends and former mentor, but in 149 we find out the Graz'zt has his hands full with Lolth and won't be involved. Any ideas on how I can at least sneak a dead gunfighter/warlock thrall of Graz'zt into the Savage Tide endgame?
My group is halfway through HTBM now, and in both HTBM and SWW Urol Forol came across to my group as both demanding and useless. His assurances in Tamoachan that he had plenty of stone salve followed by refusing to pass them out led to an hour long in-character argument. His demand that the pc's aid the young Longneck being chased by Terror Birds didn't go over too well, either. I'm worried that when he gets taken by the Bar-Lgura, the party will offer a hearty "Good Riddance!" |
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