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Maybe you guys can help me out with this, but what exactly are the advantages of using Astral Projection over and above Plane shift. This just never made sense to me.

Am I being dense or what?


Thanks guys, looks like I might have to subscribe to Dragon to go along with My Dungeon Subscription.

Some of those interest me more than others, just wanted to see what I had missed.


Hey, I just picked up the most recent Dragon and thought the Volo's Guide section was awesome. Can anyone list the subjects of the last couple? I think that the series started in January.

Thanks,


Hey, are the back issues that have the FR maps in them worth buying?

How much detail do they go into?


I understand the zeal of the 2e players to make their Strahd an epic character, and if I were running a Ravenloft campaign thats what I would do, but you guys should remember that the original Strahd was either a 10th or 11th level wizard in his first appearence I6 way back in 1982 I think.


Ok well, here is my two cents since I just figured out just about the only way to play it out.

I don't really like or find the reason's given for an incursion campaign to make much sense, from Dragon 309. But I really like the idea.

Now here is my backstory:

#1, the proto Gith peoples were Draconic Humans with some 1/2 Dragons in the mix, bred by the Ithilid's for their usefullness in war.

When Gith visited Tiatmat to ask for aid, Tiatmat gave Vlaakalith the scepter of Ephemelon for three reason's,

#1, the Gith under the leadership of Gith would destroy themselves against the Ithilid's.

#2 they would aid Red Dragons, and therefore the Dragon Queen.

#3 She would convert Gith and then send Gith back to take back control of the Githyanki when the time was right, and that time is now because the DragonFall war has begun in earnest and Tiatmat needs her army, i.e. the Gith people.

So I would actually have two invasions, the first Led by Gith, and her Duthkagith legions, to aid evil dragon kind, including smashing the cult of the dragon, and a second invasion by Vlaakith designed to destroy the renegade/false Gith.


Hey what sorts of reasons do you all normally use to get the Gith to invade Faerun?


Erm.... Alexander was 33 when he died, 22 when he took the Throne and was on campaign for 11 years.


Which day of the games is it? If the Plinth is full of gladiator's, i.e. it is early in the game's then its too risky for Bozal to go after the PCs himself. Plus if its early in the games, and there are many teams in the Plinth, it could be any one of them that tried to sneak into his lair.

If its later in the games, Bozal could very well figure out who it is and go after the PCs. I think the adventure should have had one more encounter where Rakininan tries to off them in the Plinth, although I would like to see it be a group of gladiators who befriend the PCs doing it and not pitchblade.


One more thing, Lots of the spells in BoED, and some of the other FR books were more usefull. Plus remember anything that forces a fortitude save is good against undead.


I agree, Turn undead isn't as usefull as I thought it would be, even maxxed out in the Spire, you have to #1, get a good turning roll, and at the same time roll good damage, this one was the killer, lots of times even maxxed out turning barely damaged the Undead, they are all turn resistant, and so have a turning check of around 16 at minimum!


I think you guys are missing the point! By the time they figure out what is really going on, and how dangerous Kyuss' return could be the PCs are already 16th level, Tenser is only 21st level, and so isn't that much stronger than the PCs, also after they complete Storm Island the PCs are almost as powerfull as Tenser, and things move very quickly from there, the pcs zip from 17th to 21st level and up in weeks of game time.

At lower level's the PCs are just one of the 30 adventuring groups that come to Tenser with a 'the world is going to be destroyed type of plot', most of which are stopped or false alarms. Why after say Gathering of Winds would Tenser immediately drop everything and focus on this one potential threat. Maybe there are multiple ways that the Kyuss prophecies can be fulfilled and he has to manage 5 groups of characters like the PCs not knowing which one is on the 'real' trail of Kyuss.

Although Knowing Tenser he is probably managing 30 groups like the PCs, and holding off Iuz at the same time.


My Pcs are just finishing red hand of doom and should be about the right level. One is an Air Genasai Wizardess worshipping Akadi, and one is a WindWalker, priest of Shaundakul, so they fit with the Air theme. I had originally planned on sending them into a Gathering of Winds at some point, hence my pushing the Air Theme, and then on into the rest of AoW, but I am going to run this first and have them actually take over and re-establish the Temple in the mountains near Elsir vale. Icosiel's tomb will be connected via portal to said temple. I.e. they seek to become modern day Wind Dukes!


Clean cool and refreshing, James I hope you didn't read that, just because you know personally I'm a miller man, :)


My 2 cents is:

Eye of Horus Re, or Morninglord of Lathander are good, i don't know the radiant servant but believe them to be very similar to the above anti-undead specialists. Also the Doomguide prc from faiths and pantheons.

I personally would swap out the rogue for a 2nd line fighter -ranger or paladin. With a feat like Able Learner or a PRC like Human Paragon, you can get a good search and disable device check with a little multiclassing and at the same time be much better in combat. These adventures have too many undead and other immune to sneak attack critters to make a straight up Rogue. Ranger or Bard-Rogue Multiclasses are better, specifically the Ranger with many points spent on Favored enemy (undead), and the BoED feat Nemesis (undead).

some of the PRC's from the BoED could be very usefull, Fist of Raziel is an obvious one.


I think that yes, with the body placement stacking limitations that putting it on the weapon would be more expensive. The rules on 'other' types of bonuses are designed to be prohibitively expensive so as to prevent munchkinism. :)

Now if you can convince your DM to give you a ring of true striking good luck!


Ok James it sounds to me like you all aren't going to fill up the adventures with Cardstock ads, which are really the only ones that anyone has a complaint about and realize that these are a major pain to the reader. I can live with one or two a year.


You could do what Gary Gygax did when his PCs got too cocky, i.e. just wear them down. WG-6 was designed to really push his pcs (well anyways, Gygax was a brutal brutal DM or so the lore goes). The way he did it was by attrition. I.e. they powered through the first encounter and the second and the third and the fourth, but by numbers 8 and 9 their resources were tapped, their power ups were expired, their scrolls were gone, their spells were cast. In the end they ran, I think they used plane shift to escape and did so with their lives, but they did end up leaving all of their gear. :)


Personally, I cheat, yes cheat, I comb their character sheets for weaknesses and use them, repeatedly until they fix them and then I find the next hole. Just make sure you are not being completely unfair. Hey, whats more fun for the players, crushing everything or having the smart NPCs all using the little old silence spell to make their sonic attacks useless. Or what about protection from energy-force. Just make sure you make whatever you come up with available to the players too.


James, can you ask these advertisers if its ok to perforate the ads, so #1 if you are going to use them its easy to do so, and at the same time the people who aren't going to use them aren't stuck with them in the center of an adventure they are going to try and someday use, I understand that on the part of an advertiser being in the middle of an adventure, and being unremovable might be an advantage! But hey we are paying en-masse for our subscriptions too.

My suggestion is that Paizo just make it an official policy that they will only accept certain types of ads for that position in the magazine. I.e. at least perforated and preferably half page.

I know that often these types of decisions might not be up to just you and Eric, If there is someone in sales we should send an e-signed protest to, let me know and I will collect it and send it along, maybe if we get a few hundred signees they will listen, after all it is us that their advertisers are trying to sell their product to, and we are a very good demographic, i.e. educated men between the ages of 20-35, well some of us at least used to be 35 not too long ago, :)


Also the article in question doesn't use the epic rules as eluded to, frankly I'm surprised that they included that example as the math is pretty clearly wrong, but I think they got into the is the 'ELH core or not question'. Sometimes the game authors in their desire to make things accesible, oversimplify things terribly, since they don't want to assume that people know even the most basic mathematics. To my mind it causes more confusion than it solves.


The pertinent point in the bracers of archery isn't in the weapon proficiency but in the fact that it provides an insight bonus to attack rolls with a bow. Basically true strike on a weapon does the exact same thing, an insight bonus only to attacking with that weapon.

If you look at the DMG and the costs to add spell like abilities they include the 1.5 multiplier, so do the costs to add skill bonuses to armor, they are the skill level times the skill level times 10, times 1.5. i.e. compare the cost of a cloak of elvenkind with minor shadow power to armor. Both add +5 to the skill, one costs 2500gp and the other costs 3,750!

Anyways, the only other officailly possible way to adjudicate the +20 insight bonus under the rules as written is to use the same cost as the attack bonus and multiply it first by 2 since it is an 'attack bonus other' and then multiply by 1.5. So that is basically 24 million.

I understand that many feel that their preconceived notions about the value of magic items should supersede the rules, but I personally don't, its a very common humand problem to skew logic to fit what/how they want things to be, but I don't see any reason why D+D shouldn't be more like real life, I.e. just wishing something were true doesn't make it so.


My question was about how you felt about it, not necessarily what you did about it, I was using the second part to illustrate a point and make the poll more interesting. Please vote on how you feel about it.

Anyways, keep them coming, it looks like these cardstock Ads hit a nerve with more than just myself. I hadn't thought of the Razorblade idea, I guess I got a bit of Krusk in me, grunt, rip.

I don't know if this poll is really for the over-the counter buyer so much, after all if your worried about the price within 5 dimes of the over the counter price and hemming and hawing about it you should probably get a paper -route or something. Boy that probably really dates me, do kids do paper-routes for pocket change anymore????


I thought the DMG said pretty clearly that bonuses to saves, ac and attacks fall into a different category and that you pay according to the attack bonus. The ELH lists a +20 weapon as costing 8 million gp (not sure if they nerfed this in the 3.5 DMG since I use the SRD), so that is the base cost. Then you factor in that this is a bonus like the insight bonus provided by bracers of archery which provide a +1 bonus and cost 5,000 gp. This means that instead of multiplying by 2000 you multiply by 5000, which gives a cost of 20 million gps. Plus you need to add onto this that this is an additional power on the item if its on a sword say that already has an enhancement bonus. That multiplier is 1.5 so the total should be like 30 million! I think this is different than my calculation on the other post but I hadn't thought of the bracers angle!

Is it even possible to make any item that stores a spell with a metamagic feat added to it. I can't think of any non-artifacts that do that. what is a specific example and where is it from?


Not sure about the Warlock.

But the DMG is pretty clear on the weapon of true striking, spells that create attack bonuses, saving throw bonuses, ac bonuses etc.. are in a special category where one pays by the added bonus to the item in question. Since the addition of true strike is a what an insight bonus and its +20 should be based on the value in the ELH which is 8 million gp. That should be doubled since it is like a luck bonus and stacks with the attack bonus, and then multiplied by 1.5 because it is an ability added to an already magically enchanted item, which makes it cost 24 million gps. If that doesn't make your players gulp in surprise then I don't know what will!

Now of course if they are 50th level, well why not. :)


E the first one is E, sry about the faulty exit polling.


Yeah the adverts on the regular pages are fine, its the cardstock one that bugged me. I guess so far we have three A's and one D.

Only four votes though, I suppose I should have labeled this as containing naked photos of Jessica Simpson. Then we'd get the attention of the people! :)


Here is a simple question with some multiple choice answers...

I found the full page ad in between the last two pages of the adventure 'Tensions Rising' in issue 136 to be:

a, A major irritant, I now have embedded sawtooth cardstock in the binding of issue 136.

b. A minor irritant, I left in in and flip over it.

c. Not an irritant at all, I am well trained at ignoring things that annoy me.

d. I used it to buy advertised product! Thanks!

e. Didn't even realize it was there, ad, what ad, huh. You crazy!

Anyways, let the Editors know what you think by posting an answer below and some comments if you want. Thanks!


Josh, frankly that doesn't help very much, what I am wondering is why Paizo didn't ask the advertiser if it was ok to perforate the ad, and then pay for the additional cost themselves by realizing that putting an ad in the middle of an adventure was just a really bad idea in the first place.

Anyways, I'll start a poll here to see just how many people felt put out by the ad placement! Maybe if the response is sufficient Paizo will consider changing their modus operandi on this issue.

The current title just isn't catchy enough to attract people's eye, :)


Oh yeah, in terms of monsters and therefore PC abilities Red Hand and Age of Worms certainly lead PCs in different directions.

In Red Hand, having a druid in the party is a great advantage, same thing with Rangers and Bards, having a party with some Stealthyness all around is really good here, and the Party must have Archers.

In AoW the most important thing the PCs need is a Cleric With good Turning abilities. Paladins are also great, and its nice to overlap two turning attempts at the same time and hope someone gets lucky.

The worry is that after setting their characters up to fight mainly Hobgoblins and Dragons with a smattering of undead and evil outsiders, that putting them up agains something like the spire of longshadows is a TPK waiting to happen.


Yeah its true, the new version of the game definitley caters to the preconceptions of your average 14 year old. I don' have anything against the kids but hey I walked in their moccasins, but they haven't walked in mine, :)

Look at the starting ages as well, they are way young. These might be more realistically medievel than modern. I remember being 14 and thinking not only that I knew everything, but that I could learn the really hard stuff in a short amount of time. It just aint true.

Anyways, I see the natural break points as the gaps between the TFoE, and the RtBK, RtBK and HoHR, and Champions and What is it called the one with the dragon and allustan. Hmm maybe I am too old!

If you put the evidence in there right you can have long gaps in between these adventures very easily.

If I were going to skip some of the AoW and replace it with Red Hand (I am running this now and its good, but the average battle is a good bit less challenging than HoHR for instance where if the PCs don't plan specifically to battle a mind flayer they are in big trouble), Anyways, I would use Red Hand in place of Blackwall, Harsh Reflections, and Champions Belt, then go right into The Gathering of Winds, You might be able to run Champions Belt with alot of modification after Red Hand, anyways, depending on the average character level.

Then I would probably have the PCs surprised that Rakinian is in league with the Cult they faced off against years earlier in TFoE.

anyways, thats my 2 cents.


Yeah I found it irksome enough, and couldn't remember if it was the exception and not the rule, and so went back through my back issues to see if I could find any, well I only checked a couple, :) and while I found some 3x5 ones, I didn't find any other big ones like that.


Which also makes sense since Dungeon/we the consumer are already paying extra to have the delivery encased in plastic, why not just put the advertisement in there as a loose sheet of paper, that one can use or toss at one's pleasure?


Eric- In the future, if you all are going to include full page ads can you all at least perforate them so they can be easily removed. My Dungeon 136 had a full page add for a book club imbedded in the spine, my major beef is that taking the thing out of there threatened to tear up the mag, and has left a jagged broken piece of paper imbedded in there.

Anyways, I would be willing to pay more per issue even than to be bombarded with Ads like this one, but at the very least they should be easy to remove regardless.

Thanks,


Two Groups:

Eye of Horus Re, which I am assuming is similar to the Radient Servant, this one has Greater Turning 3+cha times a day. Combine with empower turning, extra turning and quicken turning and lots of minions go by by, although it wasn't as effective as I thought because in the Spire most of the monsters have improved turn resistance.

Paladin-Human Paragon- WarMind, just a beast with the two handed Maul, liches watch out, those bones are brittle.

Psion-LoreMaster, with +1 arcane/divine spell casting converted to +1 manifester level. Use Magic Device and high spell craft make him just like a mage for detect psionics checks.

Rnager-Rogue- Stalker of Kharash, with favored enemy-evil and nemesis- evil, and improved favored enemy evil, does +4 +1d6 dmg to evil creatures, not including if it stacks with undead, where you only get the dmg modifies once, but the +1d6 from the nemesis feat stacks. Once he gets bane of enemies at 21st level the bad guys are in for it.

Second Group:

PsiWarrior/Ranger/Harper Paragon with Vow of Poverty (makes claws of the beast magic weapons) will also go nemesis-favored enemy evil -bane of enemies root. is an Aasimar with outsider wings feat from RoF.

Ranger-Paladin(Mystic Fire Knight)- Smite attackes disrupt spell casting (champions of Valor FOR), Ranged Smite, Extra Smite, and Divine Might. Uses Bow to pack a whollop. Human

Cleric-Wizard- Mystic Theurge, also of mystra, will take Dwemerkeeper at level 17 from faiths and pantheons.

Ftr-Sorc-EK_?Raumarthi Battle Mage? Spring attacking Arcane strike wielding bad ass, channeling spells through Sword to Crush enemits- Feytouched. Arcane Preparation Feat as well allows for Quickend casting.

Anyways, thats my two groups.


I would add that in 2nd ed, I guess it didn't sell very well but the Against the Giants silver anniversary bit, with the subtitle 'the liberation of Geoff' was pretty good. For some reason I really liked this one.

T1 is certainly a must have.

I know its not popular but the one (why am I zoning on the name), oh yeah Vecna Lives I like alot just because of the detail that it brings to Verbobonc, and the Kron hills. Same thing with Fate of Istus, as far as the adventure goes, its pretty weak, but it has maps of lots of cities that don't exist anywhere else, as well as some detail on what those cities are like.

5 shall be one, etc.. are just ok I would say, didn't really dig them that much because they used that to my mind weird 'renaissance vibe' that greyhawk was getting into to differentiate itself from the FR.


Uh hit wrong button, continuing post.

In 'Dawn of a new age' it lists the control DC for the sphere of annihalation as a DC-60 check, but in the SRD it says the control check is DC-30, So anyone know which is right?

Or is it that Kyuss' check is a 60 which must be beaten by the PCs.


I couldn't find it listed in the adventure how much Experience the PCs get regardless of the CR, did I miss it or is it not there?


I couldn't find the CR for Kyuss anywhere in the module, but how much experience should the party get for completeing things and elimating Kyuss?

Probably for everything, involving Kyuss including being smart and weakening him before the final conflict, the PCs should get expts for a level 30 encounter total at the end. Did I miss this on my first read through?


Plus doesn't it say in the text that Rakinian is unaware of the demise of Bozal and the Ultragarasta until the last day of the tournament? I.e. he doesn't check down there until the last day of the contest. If he finds that the Ultragarasta is freed, he runs and if its alive he frees it.

I can't imagine your players not wanting to finish up the games, there is gold and glory there.


Oh yeah, my players, i.e. not their characters are likely to drag me into the street, and tar and feather me if I use Mords Disjunction on them. We have a kind of a detente, Russia vs. USA kind of agreement on this, If I don't use it on them, they don't use it in every encounter from here until eternity.


I have a couple of comments:

I think rules wise using greater teleport is fine, they definitely meet the description for its use in the spell description and I don't think that they should be held back on this account.

I think one thing you forgot which is not a big deal is that originally Darl's party had an additional fighter in it, i.e. the Minotaur that gets killed by the titan, I'm probably going to add the minotaur from the other AP, don't remember his name, although it might just push the encounter over the top.

I have toyed with the idea of FRizing Darl since my campaign is set there. If you make him a priest of Cyric, he gets the spell Time Stop as his 9th level spell, and if you use some of the uber spells from MoF, there are a couple of great cleric ones, One is a 7th level spell that is a contingent Heal, Fate of something or other, and another provides spell resistange of 11+ caster level for sr-29 for a short (7 rounds each) duration to multiple creatures.

Also how did you guys deal with the Hand of Vecna, The Blasphemy power is cast at 20th level which should freeze the party with no save.


Ok my bet is Sphere meets Monolith, unstoppable force vs immovable object= Big Bang Bang.....


Oh yeah,

Kongen-Thulnir- Southern Giantspires.

Wormcrawl Fissure- Cloven Mountains

Tilagos Island- In the Center of Impresk lake.


I put my AoW campaign in the Lake of Steam area:

Diamond Lake - North of Ahnkapur along the Thornwash.

Free City: Ahnkapur.

Ahlaster- Caradoon on the shores of lake Impresk.

And I switched out Manzorian and used Cadderly and Soaring Spirit instead.


There is a pretty lengthy description of this process in the back of the FRCS.

Basically the dracoliches body starts to reform at the location of the Phylacery. I believe that if there is a suitable body available, i.e. the right age and dragon type, they come back to life pretty quickly, if there is another skeleton there like a Dire Crocodile, they can inhabit that, but if there is no body at all then it takes a very long time to reform.

This is why Dracoliches Phylacerties are stored in rooms with lots of Dragon bones and pieces around.


I agree that is a super clever idea. Probably not in public at the party unless attaced with a note that says, 'Show no surprise as you read this' or somesuch. Its pretty clear Zeech considers them to be Traitors and would hunt them down. The only thing is he is pretty deeply in Lashonna's pocket. If she finds out about it she is likely to convince Zeech it is a lie and stir more animosity towards the PCs.


At high levels Polar Ray combined with the Archmages ability to switch out the type of energy damage done on the fly is awesome. And the great thing about it is there is no save.

It makes sense that Dracoliches cannot crush, but I don't have the draconomicon, so I didn't know. I am just using converted PGtF web enhancement and the FRCS.

I didn't realize that AMF specifically caveats the size issue. He could still use it as a defense, but he would have to widen it. That puts it out of his reach to cast, and he doesn't have the feat. He could use a scroll though, with only a 5-10% chance of failure. I guess though if a trend starts of Dragons buffing from scrolls then all of the humans are in big big big trouble. :)


Ah yes, now its a Talisman of Reluctant Wishes.


Hey, I remember these from 1st ED, where are the 3.5 stats? I can't find them anywhere.

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