bearinjapan's page

Thanks guys. That's given me some promising ideas. I spent a long time organizing the latest scenario and used a lot of brainpower and time in doing so and my brain started hurting when I came to the assassin part, which is another layer on top of many others. This will enable me to write a more intriguing situation. Thanks!

Blymurkla wrote:

bearinjapan wrote:

Of course I don't want a PC to die, but I do want to terrify them.

I suspect what you want is for the PCs actions to have consequences. They pissed of the wrong guys and should, in some way, pay for that. That's fine. No, it's great. It's what RPGs are for, it's what they do best.

Of course it may be the players acting up/out rather than the PCs doing something.

If so, remember Rule -1: "Never try to fix a OOC issue IC."

Or you can just say: "Your actions have annoyed a very powerful group. Your characters wake up dead- or rather they dont wake up. Roll up new Pcs and this time dont be dicks. Or if you wanna be dicks, find a different DM."

The players haven't done anything wrong. The adventurers have annoyed a very powerful evil group, which is what adventurers are supposed to do. The assassin is part of the ongoing intrigue.

Some of the adventurers annoyed a very powerful group and this group has naturally hired a powerful assassin to kill them in revenge. The thing is, I think as GM I might feel guilty if the assassin just sneaks up and kills one of the PCs. I was thinking of making it so as the assassin just has one attack and then runs off. He would have to score a critical hit on his sneak attack to kill one of them (about a 4% chance, I reckon) OR use poison and do a coup d-etat if they failed an easy DC14 Fort save and went unconscious (although other adventurers would undoubtedly rush to the aid of their fallen comrade). Does this seem fair? Of course I don't want a PC to die, but I do want to terrify them.

hmm to find a familiar when you get a link on\off at exectly 1 mile...

id let them roll knowledge (geometry) ;)

(i know you said 'Triangulate' and im just exltaining it. but not many know that it's not something very dificult that only nerds can do)

mark the first exect point you get the link on sign, point A. go back out of signel and head in any diraction (lets say north) for 10 steps then try to get close untill you ping the signel again. mark that as point B. now you should be able to do the following.

1: draw a stright line betwin A and B.
2: from the signel off\on know which way the radius of the mile is going (say a and be are north and south and the signel is coming on whne you head east of the points)
3: go to the middle of AB turn 90° to the diraction the ping is from and head stright, in a (very) little less then 1 mile your be at the familiar location.

should look like this
and probebly work better from above or at a flat land with no obstractions

I think I will send my players on a geometry course! That's excellent and that diagram really does explain it

TrinitysEnd wrote:

bearinjapan wrote:

Thanks so much. Excellent responses, and the TRIANGULATION! Also now that we are here ... 1/ If the witch (level 4) is knocked unconscious I think the familiar would go to get help if it knew an ally was resting just a few minutes away, or ... would it stay with the witch? It has an INT of 7. 2/ Who should decide for the familiar? I told the witch that she must make decisions for the familiar, and not the GM.

Background info ... In my scenario the witch was unconscious (knocked down by wood golem; who returned to its nonanimated sentry roll after rendering unconscious all the 3 party members and did NOT spot the familiar) and I asked what the familiar was doing at this crucial time in a dangerous dungeon. The witch, instead of sending it to get help (a dwarf ally was just resting 3 rounds away), said the familiar would just wait. Then after am hour another foe turned up and captured the familiar and stripped the party members.

1 & 2: For the most part, I generally let my players control their own animals. I only step in to take control in the instance where one would need to push an animal or the likes. If the person was silly and didn't go get help, that's their choice.

Do you mind if I ask how the thief did not trigger the golem and also spotted the familiar?

SORRY, I meant they started robbing the party members and spotted the familiar. As they were robbing them the dwarf fighter ally eventually turned up and after a brief skirmish chased the thieves off (who had themselves been damaged by the wood golem)

bearinjapan wrote:

Thanks so much. Excellent responses, and the TRIANGULATION! Also now that we are here ... 1/ If the witch (level 4) is knocked unconscious I think the familiar would go to get help if it knew an ally was resting just a few minutes away, or ... would it stay with the witch? It has an INT of 7. 2/ Who should decide for the familiar? I told the witch that she must make decisions for the familiar, and not the GM.

Background info ... In my scenario the witch was unconscious (knocked down by wood golem; who returned to its nonanimated sentry roll after rendering unconscious all the 3 party members and did NOT spot the familiar) and I asked what the familiar was doing at this crucial time in a dangerous dungeon. The witch, instead of sending it to get help (a dwarf ally was just resting 3 rounds away), said the familiar would just wait. Then after am hour another foe turned up and captured the familiar and stripped the party members.

1 & 2: For the most part, I generally let my players control their own animals. I only step in to take control in the instance where one would need to push an animal or the likes. If the person was silly and didn't go get help, that's their choice.

Do you mind if I ask how the thief did not trigger the golem and also spotted the familiar?

Also a small rule that might have been missed but might be nice for your party later on. If you are Uncon but stable, you can, once an hour, roll a Constitution check (DC 10, but with a negative equal to negative HP) to regain consciousness. You act as though disabled, and too difficult of actions will put you back out. But it could at least get the party members up and out in a bad situation.

First, I ruled the thieves triggered and fought the golem and defeated it. Then they started robbing the familiar, who was hiding in the witch's backpack. A perception natural 20 from the one thief spotted the familiar. Then he grappled it with a CMB 19, and pinned and tied it up with a further natural 20. (I was rolling amazing!)

The video of the session is on our FB page Pathfinder RPG Tokyo

Thanks so much. Excellent responses, and the TRIANGULATION! Also now that we are here ... 1/ If the witch (level 4) is knocked unconscious I think the familiar would go to get help if it knew an ally was resting just a few minutes away, or ... would it stay with the witch? It has an INT of 7. 2/ Who should decide for the familiar? I told the witch that she must make decisions for the familiar, and not the GM.
Background info ... In my scenario the witch was unconscious (knocked down by wood golem; who returned to its nonanimated sentry roll after rendering unconscious all the 3 party members and did NOT spot the familiar) and I asked what the familiar was doing at this crucial time in a dangerous dungeon. The witch, instead of sending it to get help (a dwarf ally was just resting 3 rounds away), said the familiar would just wait. Then after am hour another foe turned up and captured the familiar and stripped the party members.

In my campaign an archenemy knocked the level 4 witch unconscious and kidnapped her compsognathus familiar. The thief fled to a small town (1,200 population) and was hiding with the familiar (sealed in a box) in a warehouse when the PCs arrived at the town in hot pursuit.
When the witch was a mile from the town I told her that she had regained the empathic link with the familiar and that it was in the town.
BUT would the witch be able to know exactly which building the familiar is being kept captive in by using empathic link? (remember the familiar has been locked in a box and has no idea where it is since being kidnapped)
I've been looking in the books and online but cannot find an answer.
(In the game I had to make an instant decision as GM, so I allowed the witch to home in on the precise warehouse, but I think I may have made a mistake. I need to know for future reference.)

There is no radius on the spell so it would not rain. It would more likely be a massive bucket of water falling down SMASH on someone's head in one square. The spell needs to be edited for the revised edition to make it clearer, as does the Stone Shape spell, another one I just had a problem with when a player tried to imprison a redcap within stone and I said no. The books are great but just a few things need tidying up and those 2 spells are examples.

Bad timing, I guess, for me. The new adventure path is set in Nirmathas, but as there was already a bunch of stuff set in the area for the last 18 months I have been running my own adventure path set in the nation, and it's about to end. I started with the adventurers at Level 1 and used the "Crypt of the Everflame" and "Masks of the Living God" scenarios, a bunch of my own little scenarios based on the adventure ideas suggested in "Fangwood Keep" (which fits perfectly). So the adventurers were on a twin path of defeating the cult of Razmir AND finding out what was causing the Darkblight (this helped me and I hope them not get bored) ... the blight was a plot hatched by Treerazer and spread by his followers, here a coven of hags (Green, Annis and Sea, aided by a swaither demon and some ogres). Sigurx the troll collected the "poisonous black tar" for the witches after milking it from the "portal" in the latter scenario. The hags then spread it in the Fangwood using a Forest Drake creature as a crop duster ... the drake a pet of the green hag and leader Hilda whose base was in the Dark Grove in the hollowed-out tree of the dryad queen Arlantia, who had been falsely accused of spreading the blight when she was in fact a captive being tortured by the hags ... Treerazer believed Fangwood an easier area to destroy over the elven Kyonin and was thinking of relocating there. Why am i saying this? I don't know. Just chatting. I guess I'm a little disappointed that the next adventure path is dealing with this kind of thing when I've already kind of done it myself. Never mind, I'm about to run Curse of the Crimson Throne, so I shouldn't grumble!

Yeah, I think the common sense approach (as usual) is the way to go! But I know the players might grill me on it. But this conversation gives me a better grounding (excuse the joke!) on the matter! Thanks guys.

Thanks for the link Ascalaphus. But if one was flying surely one could summon an air elemental in the air. Rules say "cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it."
So an air elemental cannot appear in air as air does not have a surface and it would be floating in open space?
And also the problem with earth elementals. Surely an earth elemental can be summoned in solid earth by a burrowing summoner as earth is effectively just an open loaction for earth elementals as it's kind of where they live.

In the rules all I can find is "Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them," which is under the summoning spell. Ascalaphus, please tell me where you got that quote from "It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it" but summoning something in air such as an air elemental ... well, how is there a surface in air? And that would mean you cannot summon an earth elemental within earth if you were burrowing as it is not an open space next to you?
Kileanna, what you say makes sense.

Or can an earth elemental be summoned in the air and then have levitate cast on it by the summoner so it could float up and down and hit people?
Also, could it be summoned on the branch of a tree 50' above the earth?
The same could go for can water elementals be summoned on land? And can air or fire elementals be summoned inside earth if the summoner has been burrowing?
I feel they can but cannot find any ruling and it's an issue in our game as one cleric wants t focus on summoning.
Advice appreciated. Thanks.

Sorry, just read this in the rules... "Instead, when your nonlethal damage equals your current hit points, you’re staggered, and when it exceeds your current hit points, you fall unconscious. It doesn’t matter whether the nonlethal damage equals or exceeds your current hit points because the nonlethal damage has gone up or because your current hit points have gone down." So I think if the opponent has very low hit points you can resort to nonlethal damage and use a -4 to hit. And also I would maintain my house rule of doing half damage and not applying the strength bonus. Not sure whether I would still allow a crit to be judged as an accidental real damage blow.

If through lethal damage you have reduced the opponent from 30 to 5 hit points and you want to knock the foe out, then it is absurd to then suddenly start doing nonlethal damage because you have to then do the same anmount of nonlethal damage as 30. Instead allow pulled blows of have lethal damage to nudge the foe into unconsciousness. Makes perfect sense. but an accidental crit may occur, so dont roll a 20. As a DM I run it like that (and see my post above)

If capturing rather than killing is required I allow the attacker to do half weapon damage without any STR or other damage bonus. Makes total sense.

Excellent. Thanks a lot. Totally understand now. I basically forgot that the new initiative remains for the rest of the combat.

If a wizard 1/rogue 2 multiclass character casts the Vanish spell in round 1 and then moves invisibly into position in round 1, can he then get a sneak attack in round 2 (due to invisibility)? Remember the spell lasts for just one round per level and he is level 1. Could he delay his initiative turn in Round 1 to cast it at the end of Round 1, and then revert to his regular initiative turn higher up the order at the start of round 2 to sneak attack before the spell ends at the end of round 2? If that makes sense ... it's doing my head in!

Thanks Dargonchess and Gorbacz. I was also attracted to Curse of the Crimson Throne, but hmmm, Hell's Rebels I could just do as I really fancy that one. Thanks. More food for thought

Thanks taks. I'm still mulling but that's very helpful.

This is what I told the players ... MSG 1 ... "Message for players in the campaign I run now and also in future: "INSULTING POWERFUL NPCs ... This is an interesting topic so I should talk about it to be fair to the players in the campaign I run ...
If you want to insult people then that's fine by me, but remember there may be consequences to pay so don't blame me if one of them shoots a lightning bolt at you, or strips you naked and throws all your belongings off a cliff. I just should warn that in the campaign the NPCs are played like they are real people, i.e. they could take offence at a sustained bout of verbal abuse and might get very angry to the point of murderous. These be dark ages full of murder and mayhem, not 2017 Tokyo!!!
Maybe I have mentioned it earlier, but I thought I should remind you after the centaur incident. That's the third insulting of people in powerful positions. In Kassen, the dwarf Voldreas Oakchest (played by my work colleague) insulted the captain of the guard (reasonable insult I guess but the guy was the captain of the guard), and in Tamran, Kulakh insulted Gavkirk the ruler of Nirmathas but it wasn't a massive insult but it has not won Kulakh a friend, and then the centaurs ... there were about 80 of them. Quite clearly they are dangerous creatures.
Just letting you know for future reference or I wouldn't be doing my job properly. But I am certainly not telling you how to behave! Just bear it in mind."
MESSAGE 2: INSULTING POWERFUL NPCs TOPIC ... I thought up a good analogy ... "In my neighborhood of Asakusa in East Tokyo there are a lot of yakuza. If you went into a bar with 3 friends and there was a yakuza boss in the corner surrounded by a dozen henchmen, would you even jokingly insult him? Of course, if you did, he might have a sense of humour and laugh it off, thinking `who is this little upstart?' and be rather amused, but 9 out of 10 times he or his henchmen would probably be angry and there would be a price to pay. He would probably just threaten or kick you out or administer a minor beating as this is Tokyo, 2017. But in a Dark Ages world where people wield swords, errr, the response might be a little more lethal ..." Even good aligned creatures could get angry, although I guess they might cast a curse rather than kill the offender. Or, of course, challenge the offender to a duel."
SO now the matter is effectively closed and the campaign continues!

I promised I would tell you what I did. Initially I planned on the centaurs trailing them out of the holy area and once outside a powerful centaur wizard turning the dwarf into a dodo. I thought it would be pretty funny if he had to waddle around as a dodo for a session and it probably would have been hilarious ... but ... the end of the session coincided with a three-week break from the game and then I thought that it would be best to simply warn them that NPCs will react appropriately. I thought if I turned him into a dodo perhaps he wouldn't learn anything from the experience apart from "they got the better of me this time, but ..."
So I told them they are free to insult an NPC, but they have to be aware there may sometimes be consequences ... so I let them off this time, but I was helped in being lenient because of their mitigation ... they had rescued the centaur chief's relative from being certainly eaten by the troll.
Since this incident then the dwarf in question seems to have cut back on insulting NPCs and concentrated more on other aspects of role-playing, so it seemed like my action has benefited the group as a whole.
Many of you gave me some excellent advice and I thank you for that.

I run a group of five 3rd/4th level adventurers and am thinking of running the first three segments of Giantslayer followed by the first three of Hell's Rebels (on surface they seem to fit into my campaign plan; north to Hold of Belkzen and then West to the ocean). I am happy to put the effort in to change the challenge ratings. What I am mainly looking for are good storylines. I would hope the party might rise to 8th level after playing all 6 of these (in my campaign, progression is slow-to-medium). Any advice before I purchase the books???

Kitty Catoblepas wrote:

You, as the GM, will have a lot more fun if you change the tone of the campaign slightly than you will if you're constantly butting heads with your players. Actually, if you're the only person not having fun, that's probably the easiest problem to solve.

I couldn't disagree more with that statement.

Of course everybody has to have fun, but when you start being so permissive with your players and letting them do anything they want without facing consequences you're entering a dangerous game. Coherence is lost, control is lost, and if you let them do anything that's exactly what they will
do. There will be the kind of players that will take advantage and the ones who'll feel frustrated because of the players taking advantage of GM's permisivity and of the story losing coherence.
I'm not talking about railroading players so they only do what you want of them. I hate that. I'm talking about increasing the realism of the game and the feeling of dealing with real people by the simple principle of action/reaction. Everything has consequences. You treat others nicely: you are treated nicely. You behave like an idiot: very few people are going to like you. If you are OK with that, it's OK to me. Some people might actually enjoy their characters to be punished for they acts, why not? My only issue is with players who love to play total idiots but don't want to deal with consequences.

Kilenna ... you hit the spot there. I agree totally, hence my post in the first place

Bill Dunn wrote:

Kitty Catoblepas wrote:

Rereading this thread, all input seems to be Destroy Character with Massive NPC!!! without asking the question, Who isn't having fun? (and trying to change things up a bit until the answer is No one). Honestly, I've never seen fun be the destination of a DM power trip.

Who's not having fun? Quite possibly the GM since fun for the GM isn't always the destination of a PC power trip...

You, as the GM, will have a lot more fun if you change the tone of the campaign slightly than you will if you're constantly butting heads with your players. Actually, if you're the only person not having fun, that's probably the easiest problem to solve.

To be honest we are having a lot of fun ... both me and the players in my campaign ... just wondering about the players' characters insulting NPCs and about when do you draw the line ... this is the interesting topic.

I would caution the OP, though, about punishing "players". That wording is a bit telling here.

I don't mean punishing the "player", I mean would the centaurs try and punish the player's character. I am referring to the character within the scenario and the NPCs within the scenario. Not the human being playing the dwarf. Would the centaurs, especially the hardcore centaurs (maybe not the leader) who got very angry while the insults were thrown, would they seek to take action later against the character. Basically follow the characters through the wilderness and do something. The issue is really about how" real" do you keep the game. Do you let players get away with insulting NPCs? Or do NPCs react? Or do you just think "it's just the player talking so forget it?"

I would like to thank you all for your comments and any future comments. I kind of new what I was probably going to do already, but this helps finely tune things and it's good to get your various opinions and good ideas. After the session I will post here letting you know what actually happened.
(I have to be careful what I say right now because it's not impossible that one of the players might be reading this). Right now, all they know is that the centaurs are very angry.
I also just wanted to know if you had similar situations of insulting NPCs. I think it's an interesting topic and there's not enough debate about it on the Net. Cheers again for taking part in this thread!

Should I punished the adventurers or always allow them to get away with abusing/insulting powerful NPCs? A dwarf adventurer (level 3) has just hurled some sustained abuse at a powerful NPC centaur leader in front of his tribe of 80 centaurs on their holy ground during one of their annual rituals. The dwarf was part of a group (average Level 2-3) that had rescued one of the centaurs (cousin of centaur leader) as he was about to be eaten by a troll. But upon rescuing and returning with the centaur to the tribe, the dwarf was unhappy that he was not given a lot of money (hence the insults). Already the scenario notes warn that the centaur leader, Neutral in alignment, is easily angered. Also the centaurs are not fond of outsiders. (This is one in a series of abuses at NPCS from the dwarves in the party who I think they believe are acting in character; I feel it is time to teach them a lesson).

I've done three ... 1. Masks of the Living God is excellent as it offers up something totally different and allows a lot of fun role-playing 9/10. 2. Fangwood Keep ... pretty interesting with a couple of different factions involved and not just a simple hack dungeon 8/10/ 3. Crypt of the Everflame ... nice premise of a bunch of novices rite of passage thing, but really it's just a dungeon and the characters cannot decide to do anything apart from go from A to B. But as hack and slash goes there are some fun things. 7/10.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry

Who cares if it's lethal or nonlethal? It only really becomes lethal if it kills him. Bang him down to next to no hit points and then do the nonlethal damage to knock him out. No way should a paladin fall for this.

I just started DMing a year back and I used this series of 4 adventures and it worked brilliantly and was easy to run (especially the 1st one) ...
1. Crypt of the Everflame (classic dungeon romp)
2. My own short wilderness adventure (to get them up to level 3) based on an island on the Gray Lake near the crypt.
3. Masks of the Living God (excellent infiltration adventure)
4. Fangwood Keep (where they will unravel the secrets of the Darkblight)
5. My own long wilderness/dungeon adventure in which the party discover the monsters spreading the Darkblight (I used the map of the Marideth River Valley in Fangwood Keep and fleshed out Deadeye's Haunt, Sigurx's cave, etc etc).
6. Carnival of Tears (horror module that I have slightly modfified to relate to the Darkblight)

The Darkblight is affecting the forest of Fangwood. I have it as it was started by Treerazer through a poisonous magical portal.

I opted not to run City of Golden Death as the follow up to Crypt/Masks because I wanted to finish this personalized adventure path off with the darkly hilarious Carnival of Tears.

It took the party from 1st level through to 5th.

Seems unnecessary if the game is DMed correctly. Appearance is really a non-issue and it should not affect the game in any way. Can you give any examples of how it has affected your game? Charisma is about personal magnetism and that's it. Very little to do with Appearance. Some of the most beautiful people in the world are so boring and nauseating that after an hour you'd rather be hanging out with the Elephant Man. Charm spells are magical, it makes Zero difference if you are good looking or not.

Evil people can have personalities. And they can be slightly evil rather than rampantly evil. I just ran a revenant, Wolfgang, in my campaign. He was an undead boatman cursed to transport people to a fog-shrouded lake for one gold piece per person. He was a gregarious fellow and in life had been a good-aligned cavalier. The evil had started tainting him as an undead, in that for example, he was desperate to kill the person who had wrongfully executed him for a crime he did not commit. I played his as this gregarious, chain-smoking figure who occasionally lasped into bouts of melancholia over his undead status. His being undead was driving him insane basically. Evil on the basis of insanity caused by being undead. But still capable of being good at times. He did help the party out in their escape from the island (but admittedly tricked them into breaking his curse so he could run off and kill his executioner).

I just looked this up because I have decided 3 hags in a coven worshipping Treerazer have jailed the dryad Arlantia in her huge old tree. One is a sea hag, the other a green hag and they are led by an Annis Hag. I decided it is permanent until you get a remove curse. The main worrying thing for me is if one of them gets killed by her evil eye.

If you are still reading this thread then ENLIGHTENED Paladin is the answer

The Teddy Bear gave me comfort during the game ... this is extremely philosophical and I just chatted to my mate in work and he said I was "mad" but later he started giving way. He then said a flower had no charisma. So I asked do "ants" have charisma. Who draws the line where ... flower is living ... dog?

Zero charisma is impossible some say here ... and I initially agreed ... but I have a teddy bear and when I was watching the football (soccer) the other night he was placed next to me, as my wife was in bed and it was 4 a.m. So I would say that Teddy Bear has charisma. If you look at the Websters dictionary under charisma 3 "it has a special allure or charm that inspires fascination or devotion." That could be an inanimate object.

If he's come to his senses after seeing true ultra-depravity that he doesn't like then he surely has wolen up to the reality of the error of his ways. If he has honesty changed alignment he should be allowed to follow the new alignment. And then he won't go to the Abyss or wherever he was destined to go. If he starts being nice and is no longer a bandit then he is forgiven. Surely.