baldwin the merciful's page

I think this belongs on the Discussion board a bit more than the gameplay one.

Jobs on the Wormwood

Each day everyone will be assigned jobs depending on whether they are a cook's mate, a rigger or a swab. Each task represents a day's worth of hard work and there is a set DC to make to succeed at your job. Failing a task results in punishment that is doled out during the "Bloody Hour". Work takes place under the watchful eyes of Mr. Plugg and Master Scourge, and getting away from it is not easy.

In addition to your normal jobs, you can also use your time during the day (and night) to explore the ship, scrounge for gear, interact with your shipmates, or attempt to influence an NPC.

Each PC can normally take two ship actions every day, one during the day and one at night. You can also attempt to take up to two additional ship actions during the middle watch in the dead of night, but to do so you must succeed at a Constitution check (DC 10, +4 per extra ship action taken) or be fatigued for the next day.

These rules are in place so that it is possible to get through the voyage without spending several thousand posts on what everyone does at every single point and can let us focus on individual events and actions. Essentially, what you'll do is let me know what actions you're going to take and we'll go from there.

Here's a guide for anyone new to PBP games. Hope it helps.

Paizo haven't added "oh but what if the PC's are evil" advice in the other AP's so why should they do the opposite in what is obviously not really intended to be a Heroic campaign?

The AP's would end up twice the size.

stuart haffenden wrote:

Why should the developers solve your own created problem? Choose a different AP.

How about "It seems I am paying for stuff I don't need. Why should I continue to do so?"

Then don't.

Not every AP (or other book, for that matter) is for everyone. If you don't want to play pirates, don't buy this AP. Maybe the next one will be more to your taste.
Paizo is gambling that more people will be drawn in by the thought of Pirates!, than driven away.

Some people didn't want to play a sandboxy kingdom building adventure either. Or a Far Eastern one.
Should they stick to just traditional, vaguely European heroic adventures, to avoid the risk of losing customers?

Those are some pretty good ideas. Modifying the encounter always is an option, but I would have loved some alternate way to do things from the developers, like in Ashes at Dawn over in Carrion Crown.

It seems to me that taking Good aligned PC's into this campaign is kinda asking for trouble. There are sooo many campaigns where it's impractical to allow evil character why not just suggest to the players that this campaign is better suited to N or E alignments.

When I told my player's that the campaign I was going to run was "Piratey" none of them thought "Ooow, I'll play a Paladin then", they all went with N or E.

Why should the developers solve your own created problem? Choose a different AP.

About Lady Renarie Inarossa, her holdings and family

Lady Renarie is a widow. She is fifty-eight years old, and has five children. Her children are (from oldest to youngest), Catheretta (her husband is Martopos), Enggio (his wife is Penelope), Sarianne (female), Thelimaea (female), and Arumio (male).

She can be described as average in both height and weight (she is 4 foot nine inches tall and weighs one hundred sixty-five ponds). She has an attractive face and thick red hair that she wears long with two small braids at her temples that she pins up above each of her ears. She has brown eyes. In public she is reserved and soft spoken, but it is rumored that in private she is domineering and has a quick temper. Her husband, Georgianno, died from injuries he sustained in an accident while helping to clear a buildup of debris on the Greenbank river two years ago.

Her home, a large farm just to the west of Corner Mill, is a collection of many buildings (and is practically a small village unto itself) and there are four families of tenant farmers working directly for her. The Fleetfoot family lives in the main house (the “villa”) with the Inarossa family and the patriarch of the Fleetfoot family is the “Kassamo” or adopted brother of Renarie (se the note on the culture of Dwarven Families).

Renarie has the King’s authority over the towns of Corner Mill and Westfork. Her holdings are approximately 27 square miles in area.
Meets and Bounds: From the western shore of the Laslo peninsula northward along the Greenbank River to the top of Signalfire Hill, from Signalfire Hill east to Thickwater Springs, from Thickwater Springs north to the foot hills below the Jack Rock Mountains then east to the headwaters of the Rolling Valley River, south along the Rolling Valley River to the east fork of the Linore River, then south to the coast.

There are several fishing villages along the southern coast of the county as well as many villages along the banks of the Manero River. Corner Mill lies at the mouth of the Greenbank where it empties into Rocky Bay and Westfork lies inland where the west fork of the Manero River joins with Thickwater creek. North and east of Westfork is a high rugged mountain range with a few abandoned mines. To the west and south of Westfork are a lower elevation range of mountains and a few mines that are in operation.

Economically, Lady Renarie’s lands are doing better than her neighbors, and most of the people under her charge are well off. However, currently the raids and random attacks by undead creatures are occurring mostly within her lands to the west of Westbank.

to answer you question diego, I think you're overblowing the distraction clause. i think that's in there to mean where there is battle or some sort of interference, not the potential for interference because that can happen anywhere, even in a nice quiet lab someone can bust in and wreck up the place. not likely, but then we have to go with how likely something distracting is going to happen and how distracting it is.

i stay away from that, so thus a nicer interpretation of the ruling for distractions as interference

EDIT: or it could include something that would inhibit concentration

So your position is that in practice it will never happen.

Let's look the possible situations and them explain to me why you think they are no distracting but instead respect this requirement: "his work is generally done in a controlled environment, where distractions are at a minimum, such as a laboratory or shrine. Work that is performed in a distracting or dangerous environment nets only half the amount of progress (just as with the adventuring caster)".
As a start the only "portable laboratory" is the alchemist lab, good only to make potions.

Premise set 1:
- Low level party out in the field:
- sleep arrangement one or more tents
- you are exploring the wilderness in Kingmaker, so no real time pressure
- there are wandering mosnsters

You want to make a scroll.
- you need the appropriate implements: what they are ink, pens, paper and a level surface were you can write, like a table
- you are almost certainly missing the table, you are moving on foot or horseback so it is improbable you are binging with you a folding table. You can sit on a stone with a book or a board on your knees to use it as a writing surface. You can work but it is far from a optimal situation. Your inks instead of being on the same surface are on a nearby stone or on the ground
- it is a sunny day? the sun beats on your inks, drying them to fast
- it is raining, even a drizzle? you can't work
- fog? your paper start to get wet
- snow? you can work
- wind? you run the risk of the ink running around on the page so you have to take extra caution
- below freezing point? some of your inks will freeze They are medieval-renaissance stuff, no good for working at sub freeze temperatures
- "but I can work in the tent". Your group is bringing a pavilion tent with them? Normal tents are very cramped. If you have a pavilion tent it will keep out the rain, wind and sun but only some of the humidity and the temperature will not be much above the external temperature.
- you are in danger from wandering monster. Sure, there is a guy taking guard duty but hopefully your crafter isn't totally distracted by doing his work. If your crafter is so focused on his work that he will not keep an eye out for possible danger you can look how it ended fro Archimedes of Syracuse, "Do not disturb my circles" will not work better on a troll than on a Roman soldier. So he is working with weapons at hand and ready to react to strange sounds, decidedly distracting in my book
- all the above, to me, speak of a distracting and non controlled environment

Potion making?
- Requirements: "The creator of a potion needs a level working surface and at least a few containers in which to mix liquids, as well as a source of heat to boil the brew"
- I have studied chemistry for a few years and done my share of laboratory work. You can work with your stuff on he pavements, but it is hardly optimal.
- you need to have a fire running all the time, great trouble beacon
- as you have a fire running you can't work in a tent, so you either work outdoor or you bring along the equivalent of a yurt
- rain, now, dust, wind, sun. all can ruin your potion components
- what will do to your work the pollen from the nearby tree? the leaf that has fallen into your boiling water? No idea, better restart this part of the process
- you are still working fully armed and ready to react to signals of trouble

Armor and weapons?
- heat source and leather working, metalworking or wood working implements
- same problems than above with the fire, plus ever so often you will have to hammer the metal, heat it, boil wax to treat the leather, put a slate to the wood and so on. You can do pretty complex stuff on the field but it is very different from working at your workbench a home

Wondrous items?
- cloth is easy if embroidery suffice, knitting can cover some other item but all other items have the same problems depicted above

Rings?
- again, mostly metalworking with some gem cutting. Same problem depicted above

Staffs, wands?
- woodworking. Same problem depicted above

Rods?
- same problems as making weapons

Note that you will always have the problem of working in a unsafe environment where monsters can attack the next minute.
Rope trick can ameliorate some problem but it will worsen some other problem. I will not lit a fire in a enclosed space. The trick volume is very strange as "The space holds as many as eight creatures (of any size)." mean that is somewhat adapt to the creatures in it. My pinion is that it has berth space for exactly the number and shape of creatures in it plus a bit of extra space to move around but nothing more.

Premise set 2.
- mid level party
- all other premises same as set 1

Now our group can use Secure shelter. The risk is way lessened and the crafter can have a desk.

Scrolls
- yes, you can make them at full efficiency

Potions
- if you have a Secure shelter for you only yes, but that kind of work smell, is often toxic and don't work well with other people sleeping while you work, so a maybe

Other stuff
- you have the problem of running a sufficiently hot fire, occasional hammering and often make to do equipment (metalworking tools require an anvil).
As a general rule I would call it a distracting and suboptimal situation, barring very specific form of crafting.

The danger part 8barring some extreme situation9 s sufficiently mitigated to be a non factor.

Premise set 3
- high level party
- all other premises same as set 1

- Mage's Magnificent Mansion, enuff said.
They have the space, the privacy, the safety and the means to bring along all that is needed.
They can craft at their heart content.

If the group hasn't access to the listed spells or some equivalent item or spell (an Instant Fortress as an example) they work like a lower level party.

- * - * -

Side note. Cooperative Crafting is less good than how it will appear at a first glance:

Cooperative Crafting

Your assistance makes item crafting far more efficient.
Prerequisites: 1 rank in any Craft skill, any item creation feat.
Benefit: You can assist another character in crafting mundane and magical items. You must both possess the relevant Craft skill or item creation feat, but either one of you can fulfill any other prerequisites for crafting the item. You provide a +2 circumstance bonus on any Craft or Spellcraft checks related to making an item, and your assistance doubles the gp value of items that can be crafted each day.

The bolded statement mean that to help someone you either need the relevant crafting feat or at last 1 skill rank in the relevant craft (spellcraft don't suffice, it s not a craft).

So to help making weapons and armors you need ranks in:
- Craft (bows) (for magic bows and arrows)
- Craft (weapons) (for all other weapons)
- Craft (armor)

To make wondrous items you need the right craft for the items and s on.
you need to take only 1 rank, so nothing major, but they pile up for class with a low to middle number of skill ranks.

Thats a weird one, to be honest. Unlike the previous examples, the guy actually can go out and squeeze 5% from the "in game" vendors and such.

I still can't see him trying to charge the group though. Making the group more powerful in general should still be more important to the character than taking 5% more of their gold for himself.
As character IC Id still have a problem with a character profiting off using his abilities for the group.
...

The way I look at it in this scenario, is that the players are now stealing from the crafter. If the crafter could make more money off of the open market, but the players are demanding to pay less money than he could get elsewhere, then it's a reverse example of your extortion example.

Are not the other players profiting off of using the crafters ability? Is it wrong in a world that is capitalistic with markets that buy low and sell high such as the pathfinder world, for a wizard of abadar to ask for minor compensation for his efforts.

I think this is where we are seeing the hangup. I'm viewing the pathfinder universe through a capitalists eyes, while you are viewing it through a communists eyes. (no offense intended). It is perfectly reasonable considering the OP's God choice, to operate the way he does.

You yourself admitted that your groups WBL is already skewed because of how you play the game. Is it really that bad to charge considering the already skewed nature of your games?

Oh hey, here's a question -

When you have a Bard in your party, and the Bard does a performance in a tavern, and makes ten gold off the patrons of the tavern, do you descend on the Bard like vultures demanding your cut?

So.. sell me on this?

Fair enough.

I can't speak to 1001 (I'm not as familiar with it as I would like to be), but I will discuss it in context with APG/UM/UC. Short of the long: the best reason to pick this up is concentration on theme. While APG/UM/UC are great, they cover a bunch of different topics. These are specifically focused to a campaign on the high seas. These spells enhance playing like a pirate or privateer by bringing far more specific flavor through the spells. For example: aquatic appearance. This spell is similar to disguise self except it makes you look like ... water. So when you are in water, you get a bonus to Stealth checks. Herein we also have shadow sails, which increases a ship's speed while giving a ship ghostly-black sails (kind of a Black Pearl theme there).

Next is there are more spells in here than in APG/UM/UC combined that target vehicle or assume a ship as part of the spell. Kelp grapples is one such example. A successful CMB check means the enemy ship is pulled closer to your own. This way your crew can cross onto their ship and attack. A new 0-level spell, depth sounding, allows the caster to know the depth of water beneath a ship. The two highest level spells within are shipgate, which is dimension door for a ship and all its contents, and sodden ship, which allows a ship to travel underwater.

Inside are also spells that help the more martial classes. Floatsteel, for example, negates the armor check penalty of one piece of armor. Swashbuckler's charge is another good example. This spell allows its caster to charge despite the tight twist and turns of a ship.

Last but not least we have my personal favorite: sublime rope swing. Its my favorite for one simple reason: I can totally see Dashing Swordsman Elan using this spell!

That's my sail's pitch (sorry, bad pun).

Lemme start by saying I very much enjoy your products, so the following question comes form a place of real curiosity and affection.

Why do I want this? What makes these pirate spells good enough, in theme or mechanics, to make me buy it when I already have the APG, UM, and 1001 spells?

I want you to have an answer that convinces me, I really do. I'm just not sure what design philosophy you could have had for pirate spells specifically, that would create something with enough extra utility to be worth another reference. I am running a pirate game, I just don't know what kind of magic I need for that game that won't already be covered by the sources I have.

So.. sell me on this?

I have uploded my copy to Dropbox, HERE. I am about 90% sure that it is the pdf that DigMarx posted. As it is based on OGL rules, it should be ok for me to leave it there, unless DigMarx asks me to take it down.

-- david
Papa.DRB

hit them where it hurts the brain bucket design encounters to factor in positioning and elevation an d use hordes of creatures , be sure to use creatures that have a high cmb and use manuevers these penalties will begin to outweight their ac bonus,s.

Prone -4 ac, Flanking +2 attack, Charging +2 attack , elevation + 1 attack.
Dirty trick a less than well known combat manuever can inflict blinded, dazzled, deafened, entangled, shaken, or sickened.
Design a fight in a bar where a bunch of cads swarm them , jump on tables , trip them , spit potent alcohol in their eyes, grapple , flank ,urinate on them "thats where the sickened bit kicks in" and act like rabid monkeys.
Goblins desire to do these things as well.

Nets are a neat thing too ranged touch attack to inflict -4 dex -2 str and entangle them.
Would be funny to see those lil munchkins beaten bloody by the fishermen at the docks.

Also go back to old school gm'ing run traps that make them think outside the box the simpler the better the hardest traps are usually the simplest ones , make it so the party enters a room full of flour and they need to think outside the box to avoid a powder explosion, force them to trek through corridors narrow enough to only allow them to pass single file and trap the hell out of it.

Heres what you should do.

- Sailors
- tomb of horrors
- include more encounters with more creatures

one last thing there are plenty of spells that are touch attacks it may seem sub optimal but run some goblin shamans with corrosive touch / shocking grasp not only is it thematically cool 2-4d6 damage will be noticed over time and will tax party resources best spells for this are Magic missile, Shocking Grasp, Scorching ray.

You are the gm you build encounters differently than players build characters , a player will never use blasts due to the spell slot expenditure as a gm your spells per day is limited only by your discretion make it so they are attacked by a cult of cr 1 adepts , hell if they each only have 1-2 spell slots and dumpy stats you can get away with making them cr 1/2 , run 5 of them with 1 cr3 necromancer.
Magic Missiles from the cultists and scorching rays from the necromancer.
add 6 1/3 skeletons in there for good effect maybe a ghoul.

I would like to point out what I perceive to be errors in Shinzakei's review

First the CR of the monsters is wrong in many cases. For example a CR 5 Black Skeleton in the tome, has dr 10/ bludgeoning and good. What kind of CR 5 has a DR with AND that is too strong at a CR 5.

The kind that appears in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game

Such as the Werebear CR 4 and has DR 10/silver (from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 2),or the Gemstone Gargoyle CR 6 that has DR 10/adamantine (from the Pathfinder Chronicles: Classic Horror Revisited).

DR is for creatures that are Spoilers.

"A spoiler is a creature with specific defenses. Specific defenses help make one monster different from another. For example, a creature with spell resistance (SR) shifts power balance away from spellcasters, while damage reduction (DR) shifts power balance toward spellcasters. One often finds creatures with both DR and SR, such as outsiders; this combination blunts the effect either special ability would have on its own.

DR is a strange effect, because it can punish melee attackers in general but reward melee attackers who deal lots of damage. Displacement has a more pure effect, hurting attack rolls but leaving area-attacks and spells unaffected. "--Monster Niches by Jesse Decker and David Noonan

So while it might increase the CR of an encounter for the martial character it has zero impact on your spellcasters.

Also there are a ton of monsters over CR 20 and pathfinder doesn't have a epic level book at this time. (could be a few years yet) so all these monsters with very high CR (even one with a 39) you can't even use with your parties. Its neat that there are monsters out there that are that nasty but i can't use them for years if ever (paizo may not release a epic lvl book)

The Pathfinder Roleplaying game has published 20 monsters over CR 20. Tome of Horrors complete has 16, IMHO that does not constitute a ton since pathfinder has more. Also I am pretty sure this keeps it under 10% of the product.

There is a Pathfinder Compatible Product for epic levels, and ToHC is a 3PP product (I won't link to it here as I think its uncool to advertise someone else's product in the Frog God Games Thread) So if its OK to use this 3rd party content it should be OK to look at using other 3rd PP content.

Also not every encounter is meant to winable or even within a players CR there are monsters you run into that are there simply for the "There is always a bigger fish" effect. Insurmountable challenges are a part of life, and therefore for the stimulationist role-player rather than the gamist, they should be a part of the PFPRG.

Steve

Got back from the office today and there it was, the shipping box split open, bite marks all over it. Two dead neighbours (lucky thing I'm building a pool, so hiding the corpses will be easy). All. My. Cookies. Gone.

I followed the trail of destruction to my library, where I found the Tome of Horrors gnawing on my other monster books. PFRPG Bestiary 1 & 2 teamed up with Monster Manual I, II and III from 3.5 and managed to hide on top of the shelves, but Monster Manual IV had to fend alone and was half-eaten -no one likes that guy. The sturdy case of the Dragonlance Monster Compendium helped save all my AD&D 2e monster books, while the Annual Volumes were hiding somewhere out of sight. AD&D 1e's Monster Manual was being masticated when I got there, after the ToH ignored OD&D's one because it didn't know it was mixed along with the other two manuals.

Finally managed to control it by having my two dogs circled around it while I hurled low-rarity monster cards from MTG at it. Got it chained in the basement for now. Not sure how much longer I'll be able to keep it here without the authorities noticing, however. I think it goes beyond the limits of the Exotic Animal Ban law or something.

I think that if the various sub-systems were updated, mechanically fixed, expanded, and playtested, that they'd make a great start to a hardcover rule book. Then when they're fine tuned to work well, they could be much more easily used in future APs, without having to invent them in an already rushed development timeline.

• nondetection provides SR of sorts against it.
• they have be able to see the things that have magical auras
• mind blank provides total immunity to it
• mislead sets up some patsy's auras instead of the target's
• they only get presence, number and strengths - he can make the schools with Spellcraft checks
• magic item identification is not a free action with arcane sight

There are other means of thwarting this as well, the Master Spy prestige class is just one of them. As posted above, he can lose it with a dispel magic targeting that effect or that happens to pick it off for either being to weak to pop the stronger spells up and running with other methods of dispelling.

Every foe doesn't necessarily care - those that do will hopefully be exceedingly dangerous. ^_^