Wolfsnap's page

In my campaign: there are the PCs, and their potential adversaries, and maybe a few NPC clerics and hedge wizards scattered about levels 1-3. That's about it.

Every fighter should always have at least one slashing, one bludgeoning, and one piercing weapon, as well as one light weapon, one reach weapon and one ranged weapon. Some of those can be combined for multiple effects in one weapon.

My current favorite combo is Longsword (slashing), Light Flail (bludgeon, disarm, trip), Guisarme (slashing, reach, trip), composite bow (piercing, ranged) and a dagger (light, piercing).

And really, everyone should have a dagger.

"Congratulations, there is now a level zero." :)

3d6 or 4d6 is fun if everyone is into it and you're open to a random gamble on who's playing what. Point-buy usually leads to a more functional party, though.

My house-rule is that players only accidentally shoot each other in the back when it would be funny.

Which is pretty much all the time. :)

Again, past a certain point the party will become too powerful to truly challenge with standard combats. Stuff starts to scale in weird ways past level 10 as your players find funky interactions and synergies in the ever-expanding pool of rules.

Don't worry about making ALL combats interesting or challenging: Sometimes it's okay to let the PCs steamroll an encounter and feel like big damn heroes. Just make sure to start throwing in "weird" battles or fights that happen under strange conditions:

- Aerial or underwater combat

- Combat in a structure which is collapsing/falling end-over-end down a mountain/falling out of the sky

- Illusions or mind control to set the party fighting each other (always a favorite)

- Weird gravity or topography (inside a spherical room, for instance, or among the gears of a giant clockwork.)

- Time dilation effects (time moving slower or faster in different parts of the battle-space)

- Lots of environmental hazards (lava, spikes, poison gas, fog, etc)

That kind of thing will challenge and engage the Players more than basic combat mechanics ever will.

Encounters on the road should reveal things about the wider campaign, hint at things to come, and even foreshadow threats and obstacles that the players are not even aware of.

Here's an example from one of my own campaigns:

The Party is entering relatively settled/civilized lands, but they are going overland, avoiding the main road. They encounter a farmstead and need a place to rest/recuperate.

Elves are rare in these lands, but the party contains two. The poor farmer and his family have only heard of one elf in the region: a local warlord with a reputation for violence. As such, they treat the PCs with extreme deference and are obviously terrified of the elves. This makes the PCs suspicious and sets off a series of social interactions/skill checks.

The PCs figure out that they've been mistaken for somebody else, and now have been set up to meet the warlord later on, who eventually became a recurring antagonist.

This is pretty much the gold standard of advice. Try talking, and then try walking.

If the players refuse to let him die, you can always have him attack them after they heal him up because he's pissed off at them.

Oooh! Or, after they save him, he can say something like: "You have denied me an honorable death in battle! Very well: I will accompany you on your quest. If death does not find me before the end, then I shall challenge you to honorable combat and we shall settle this blood debt then!"

Least annoying cursed Item I ever encountered in terms of rules was a "Ring of Flight" that only functioned when you were screaming at the top of your lungs.

Let me offer an alternative suggestion to everyone else:

Let it go.

Let's say you think he's cheating his rolls somehow. So what? I know it sounds like I'm not taking the game seriously, or that it maybe violates the purity of the game, but I do take my players' enjoyment quite seriously and I do care about the game. At it's heart, this is ultimately a game of make believe, and if someone at my table wants to pretend he's Poe Dameron rolling nothing but natural 20's, then where's the harm? I know this will rub a lot of people the wrong way, but in my experience there is a lot more to the game than rolling D20's and there's plenty of ways to spread the spotlight around and make sure that everybody gets to feel like a "big da#n hero."

Ultimately, if he's cheating, then he's only cheating himself out of a fun part of the game. If he just has great dice mojo, then that's just his thing and why bother trying to change it? Pathfinder is not an MMO, it's a group of friends having fun around a table. If he plays well with others, is considerate at the table, and contributes to the overall level of fun, then that's good enough for me.

Anything is possible with the right GM.

Why so obsessed with Ice magic, man? Let it go. :)

Guys, frenzied rages that force you to attack everything standing (even your allies) are not a drawback, they are a feature. :)

One of the most entertaining half-hours of roleplay I have ever heard in my life was a game of Rolemaster where the raging, hulk-style half-giant barbarian botched a series of rolls to calm down, but kept getting open-ended/exploding crit rolls(rolling multiple stacking crits) whenever he went to hit anything. He took down all of the bandits attacking the party, and then proceeded to take down all of his teammates one by one.

They survived (barely) by falling down and playing dead/unconscious when he hit them (some of them didn't have to pretend). One PC thought he was safe because he was flying, but then the barbarian critted a jump role to leap 40 feet in the air and knock the guy out of the sky. It was awesome.

Yes it was bad news for the party, but a very fun time for the players.

Wheldrake wrote:

Much of the treasure in chapter 3 is oversized ogre hooks, ogre armor and the like, stuff that not only the PC can't use, but that they are unlikely to even be able to sell. Who wants a +1 ogre hook? Unless you let it be re-hafted as a halberd or some such.

A shady, fool-hearty merchant who has no issues selling powerful magical weapons to giants. Where do you think ogres and cyclopses and hill giants get their magic items from?

Those +1 Ogre Hooks were originally +1 swords that were looted from foolish adventurers and then beaten into hook-shapes. :)

I have a solution for him:

In a campaign I played in a while back, my PC was part of a massive war effort against a huge army of goblinoids who were Evil with a capital-E. I was playing a pretty ruthless LN type who was concerned only with defeating the enemy, but we had a Paladin and some other Good-focused PCs in the party.

Early on I wanted to try to find ways to scare and demoralize the enemy, however I faced a conundrum: what counts as an atrocity to a bugbear? I originally thought of impaling enemy bodies on stakes a-la Vlad Tepes, and other such nastiness, but I realized that it wouldn't work. A bugbear who sees his buddies impaled by the road will just think "Ha! Look at the funny humans trying to be intimidating!"

But after a little thought I came up with something much more devious. We tried it on a captive and the GM was impressed, so it worked like a charm.

The captive was washed, anointed, and blessed while still alive, and informed that after his throat was slit, his body would be bound in an attitude of supplication, and placed on his tongue would be a small wooden holy symbol to the Paladin's deity, carved with an entreaty for forgiveness. In this way the Paladin's god might claim the captive's soul.

We started doing that with every goblinoid we could, and spread the practice throughout the army. THe GM congratulated us on figuring out how to properly scare a bugbear.

"You see those Elves from Golarion? They've got curved swords!

Curved. Swords."

I am all about the homebrew.

- A Paladin may not harm and innocent, nor through inaction allow an innocent to come to harm.

- A Paladin must pursue and destroy evil, except where such activity would violate the first law.

- A Paladin mus preserve his own life and the lives of his comrades in arms, except where such action would violate the first or second laws.

TO quote Martha Stewart: "It's a good thing."

I dunno, you could make it a story that Drow tell about humans.

Vigilantes work together all the time. Have you not seen "The Avengers"? :)

Maybe they need a "manager" or an agent of sorts. Somebody who helps them out with getting jobs and quests and figuring out where to go and who to hit. He can be slightly sleazy but with a heart of gold. And he works on 15% of the gross take (or otherwise is getting something out of them).

I'm liking the Cinderella tale.

Keep the stepmother/sisters. who murdered her real mother and keep her as a servant, but she gets help doing her duties from her "little animals" (all her mother's former slaves, still in the house and still loyal to her out of fear) The step-family is going to the gladiatorial ritual at the Great Fane in an attempt to curry favor with the High Priestess of Lolth. Drowella wants to go too, but they chain her up in the dungeon.

Drowella cuts off her own hand to get free, then breaks into the summoning chamber and calls up the unquiet spirit of her dead mother, who tells her the secret of a dread ritual of power as well as where all her cool old magic items are hidden. (Glass daggers?) Drowella then performs the ritual by sacrificing all her "little Animals" and summoning a servitor shadow demon. With the demon's help she goes to the Great Fane, takes over the ritual, kills her stepsisters on the alter of Lolth and drops her glass daggers on the way out.

The High Priestess goes sends a herald for her to see who this new power is, and Drowella proves herself by murdering him. The stepmother is tortured to death, and Drowella is placed on the High council of Lolth, whereupon she murders the High Priestess and usurps ultimate power.

Thought you might appreciate one possible fairytale. I hope it is to your liking.

That was brilliant! Thanks!

Yeah, I get where you're coming from Cuup, and intellectually I know it's a valid point, but it's not somewhere I want to go at my table. It's just going to make some of my players uncomfortable.

Um... no. Let's not advocate rape stories.

Wholeheartedly agreed.

However, for good Drow fairy tales, you could just do an internet search for dark or creepy fairy tales and then altering them to fit Drow. Many original fairy tales ended with many children dead or eaten, which would fit Drow.

I was thinking more in terms of subverting traditional tales. Like when Hansel and Gretl put the witch in the oven, in the Drow version they would then eat her, gain her power, and then return home to wreak vengeance on the parents that abandoned them, and that's the happy ending.

I kind of like the idea that instead of a "Big Bad Wolf" there's the "Big Bad Elf" :) Although that's probably giving the elves more credit than the Drow would.

My party is in the Under-murk and has managed to corral a Drow nobleman in to providing them safe passage across the Drow realms. Last session they got to visit a Drow town, which was a pretty weird and prickly experience for all involved. Long-story-short, one of them acquired some Drow books, including a book of Drow Fairy Tales. (I was working off the cuff, and he said he was looking for very basic stuff, like an Undercommon grammar primer, etc.)

So now I need to figure out what kind of fairy tales the Drow tell their children. The best we could come up with at the table was:

"J'ak and J'eihll went up the hill to fetch a pail of poison. J'ak ended up at the bottom of the well with a broken neck, and J'eihll's parents succumbed to the venom shortly after dinner, leaving her solely in charge of the family estates."

So, I'm sure everyone has seen threads like this a million times and are sick to death of them. but I'm hoping to open up some discussion here to better help my understanding.

I have participated in so many of these threads that I accrued enough material to write a book on the subject, which I encourage you to check out.

There are lots of ways to interpret the Paladin code, and obviously I think the one provided in the book above is best: The Paladin fights against Evil and for Good, and the "lawful" part of the code is generally imposed on the Paladin herself to ensure that she doesn't get too bloodthirsty or otherwise become the thing that she's fighting against.

My homebrew is the coolest campaign setting.

Obviously you try to make it fit seamlessly into the narrative if you can, but then there are just days when you have to throw up your hands because there is NO good way to introduce a PC that doesn't involve some kind of ridiculous hand-waving.

My most recent example: the party is stranded a thousand miles from civilization, in an arctic wasteland, populated solely by mutants and horrors. I have one player who's character has suffered a baleful polymorph and one who's current PC is just NOT working for him. Both want to bring in new PCs. (actually one would like to bring back a previous PC who has been dead for a while!)

I want my players to have fun. While I never shy away from throwing setbacks at them or putting the whole party in deadly danger, I'm not going to ask a player to use a PC that he or she is not enjoying. What's the point?

So one PC is summoned back from beyond the grave by an almost literal Deus Ex Machina, and the other ends up joining the party via random teleportation accident. It's kludgy, inelegant, and offensive to my sense of narrative, but now two of my players are happier and more involved in the story, and the other players just take it in stride.

Craftsmen count as Trained Hirelings, which cost 3sp/day. If they work 6 days in 7, that's 2gp/week per crafter. It doesn't specify type or level, though.

In my own campaign, I would say that these guys are level 1 experts, and if you want higher level crafters, you multiply the rate by the level of the crafter. I would also top out a dedicated crafter at level 4 or 5 maximum, but that's just the kind of campaign I run.

You do realize the OP hasn't posted on these boards since 2010, don't you?

Thread necromancy seems strangely appropriate given the subject matter.

Kill'em all, let Rovaugog sort 'em out!

3. In the morning, the entire area in a 1 mile radius from where you planted the bean is covered with a Fog Cloud.

The poop in the same place that the PCs poop?

Trying to find in-universe explanations for meta-game concerns is a non-starter. I have always thought that the idea of there being lots of high-level characters running around in the game world to be pretty untenable.

I have found that the games I run improve greatly with a few assumptions made:

1 - The PCs are the stars of the show, and it is their job to out-shine everyone else in the game world.

2 - 90% of NPCs have no class levels

3 - Of the 10% of NPCs who do have class levels, the vast majority are no higher than level 2.

4 - Rulers and kings and high-priests and other potentates average from level 5-7 unless they are explicitly going to be antagonists for the PCs.

5 - The only NPCs who scale in level with the PCs are their antagonists.

6 - Magic is rare, EXCEPT for the PCs. Their party is always the highest single concentration of magical power in the world, aside from their antagonists.

Not true. An Animal companion is much like a service animal and is more welcome even inside buildings. A halfling on a dog takes up roughly the same amount of space as a human just standing around. Its not like your trying to fit a Large warhorse into a house.

I'm not going to tell you you're doing it wrong, and certainly for PFS that approach is entirely appropriate to the milieu. Speaking as a GM, however: "core only, low-level campaign" often translates to "something with a greater sense of realism and reduced fantasy elements". In that kind of game, a halfling riding his mount into somebody's home, stronghold, or place of business might be seen as rude and weird, and hence immersion-breaking.

Or maybe not. That's why I recommend speaking to your GM about it.

Also, if you would prefer to play the big armored knight on a heavy warhorse, your GM might be able to offer a response like "Oh, that's great! There will be lots of wilderness and outdoor action where that character will shine!" or even "You'll be spending a lot of time in caves and dungeons, maybe your should use a small character on a medium mount."

I'm just trying to balance the innate prejudice this board seems to have where "Mounted PC" automatically implies "Small PC on a medium Mount."

Nobody expects the Spanish BerserkahhHHHHHHHHHHARGLEBARGLEBLOODSPURTHITCHCOCKMURDER!!

Hmm but i can se my gm making all the combats inside buildings so my elephant needs to stay out waiting for me... Still is a good idea

Make sure you talk to your GM about this and find out if the campaign will accommodate this kind of play. Even a Halfling would be unlikely to ride an animal into a building, or fight mounted while indoors.

That said, a fighter on a heavy warhorse could be pretty devastating in a core-only low level campaign.

There is a helpful guide to Paladin alignment and a workable Paladin code that's compatible with most gods available in this book which should provide a workable solution for Player and GM.

I need to thank this thread because it has helped me to solve an enormous problem with my campaign.

This creature is an entire campaign in and of itself. It's the Pathfinder Matrix!

I'm going to break tradition and talk about NON-magical loot which is cheap and interesting:

- Coins can be interesting if they are of unusual mint. Although they have been gone from the game for a while, I have re-introduced Electrum Pieces to my campaign as the coinage from a lost civilization, so when they show up the party knows that some cool ancient artifacts might also be in the area.

- Shiny Rocks: Low level monsters like Goblins and Kobolds in my campaign often have shiny rocks in their loot. These are usually just interesting polished stones of various kinds which can be sold or bartered away by the party later. They're basically copper/silver pieces but re-skinned to be slightly more interesting.

- Artwork: Not necessarily worth a lot, but whether it's painting, or sculpture or something else, it can depict people, places, or concepts which are important to the campaign.

- Trade goods: Raw iron or copper can be worth quite a lot, or salt, or grain. Minor alchemical items like a tin full of Tindertwigs can be invaluable to the party later on. Alcohol and tobacco as well make good treasure, depending on your party's vices.

- Drugs: Valuable, potentially dangerous, always interesting.

- Books: I often include books which, when studied for a week (maybe with a successful INT check), grant 1 free rank in a particular knowledge, craft, or profession skill. The whole party can take turns with the book and then sell it off afterwards.

- Small Animals: A caged lizard that secretes a valuable poison, a rare songbird or a talking parrot, or a trained mouse all have value and are fun for the party to play with.

- The Inexplicable: A gem that pulses with orange light in a random pattern. A small clockwork device who's purpose and function are unknown. A wooden puzzle box that no one can open. A scroll written in a cypher that can't be decrypted. A stone idol of a god no one can identify. Are these things valuable? Maybe. Useful? Who knows? You'll have fun listening to the party's many amusing theories about these small enigmas.

There are multiple guides and systems for making alignment a more entertaining part of the game available in this book.

David Letterman knows how to create a well balanced party.

Yeeesh. On the surface, this sounds like a power-tripping DM. Or at the very least, one who really wants to have the campaign tied down to the rails. I can sympathize with the guy - as a GM I have occasionally gotten too fond of my own creations. Honestly the best way to resolve this situation is to talk about it openly with him. Trying to beat him over the head with your rulebook is not going to solve this and just make everyone miserable.

I assume that all the other players are in agreement with you? If so, the best thing might be to ask your GM to take a break and be a player for a while, and hand off the GM-ing duties to someone else. Not in the same campaign - probably a published adventure path or something like that, but if someone else wants to run an idea of theirs it would be good. Changing up the group dynamic might help your GM get over his control issues.

There are various ways to play True Neutral. Here's the description from The Very Last Book About Alignment.

A true neutral character is likely to consider philosophical

notions of morality or justice to be naive or passé. She will
usually render aid to those that she feels deserve it, but
only if it does not overly inconvenience her. She may also
try turning such action to her advantage at the same time.
She tends not to go out of her way to make either friends
or enemies, but can usually be trusted and depended on
by her associates if they don't ask too much of her. She is
likely to prefer negotiation for solving problems, but only
from a strong bargaining position. She can be equally
comfortable working both inside and outside the law, so
long as her personal risk is low. Where authority is
oppressive or unjust, she may actively avoid it and
attempt to leave the area.

How many encounters are you planning? It's always best if you can layer several different types of encounter (combat, hazard, social, etc.) with multiple levels of difficulty into a particular session.

If you're designing a big set-piece battle (the focus for a particular session, for instance) then you should look at three elements:

1 - Story

Why is the fight happening? What are the victory conditions? What are the consequences of either victory or defeat? The players should be very aware of all these things.

2 - Environment

Where is the fight happening? Does the terrain/lighting/weather/presence of a rotating deathtrap help or hinder either side in the fight? Or both sides? If one side is at a disadvantage, why are they choosing to fight here? What are the escape routes? Some or this may come as a surprise to the players.

3 - Foes

CR and APL are a good place to start. Lots of low-level mooks to cut through will make the PCs feel like big damn heroes and help shield the boss. Environment and story considerations can make even a low-level foe more challenging, or a high level foe easier.

Maneuvermoose wrote:

Wolfsnap wrote:

Pathfinder is not an MMO.

Pathfinder is an MMO, and, more specifically, a MMORPG. The game rules are hosted online, and you can even play online. It is an RPG. It is multiplayer. There is no inherent limit on how many players can play at once, making it "massively" multiplayer. Pathfinder is literally a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.

PFS doubly so.

PFS even less. In any given PFS game, the game will only ever encompass six players plus a game master. (my home game has 8 players) Whatever happens at other tables at other times is largely irrelevant. The rules only ever have to work for the small group of individuals at a given table (even if it's a virtual table) and the GM. You don't have to balance the whole player-base against each other. You just have to make the game enjoyable for those people at the table, and ultimately that comes down to how the players and GM interact with each other and not so much the mechanics.

Don't get me wrong - it's fun to argue and debate mechanics on the internet, and Paizo will always need to publish new kinds of fun material in order to stay in business, which will provide new fodder for more debates. However we need to recognize that we have plenty of mechanics to achieve whatever we want at any given table, and that most of us will only ever use a small percentage of the published material.