hnlockwood's page

Top reason for humanoids not to have spiked gauntlets:

"Dear party cleric, will you please heal me? I had an itchy nose and went to scratch it, but forgot these damn gauntlets.

"What do you mean, no? Just because it's the third time today!"

An NPC death, but a good enough one for me to report it!

Name: Calseinica Nymmis
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Expert 2
Adventure: Sixfold Trial
Location: Aberian's Folly, guest room
Catalyst: A PC
The Gory Details: The party's rogue/conman/actor was cast as Larazod; unfortunately for Calseinica the ambitious wizard in the party also had a thing for our Larazod. An attempt to have Calseinica killed in the play itself didn't work - she was unconscious but stabilised, and then the cleric's Channel Energy helped her make it through - so the wizard waited until the dark of night, taking a brief detour during the exploration of the Manor after the Cornucopia.

A coup-de-grace later, plus Prestidigitation to clean up the blood, and Calseinica was an ex-actress.

As the thread says what do you think are the bad elements of Pathfinder. Please keep the topic civil.

Shipping costs! If you're outside the USA there seems to be no easy way to get your subscription delivered cheaply (which is understandable, and it's not like Paizo's chiselling me for cash), so most of the subscriber discount goes on shipping.

For me, it's the availability of PDFs. The majority of my gaming is play-by-post, so I'm on different computers at different times; sometimes the PDF is enough; I live in England so shipping times are lengthy on the hard copy. The fact of a free PDF with subscriptions is icing.

(Also, I like the campaign setting.)

My group finished City of Golden Death last night (we play by internet chat, so it's quite slow - especially as we can only manage a game once a week, with frequent gaps). The crowning moment, I think, was when the PCs were in the process of escaping from the Tabernacle, fighting the guardian there.

The naga, down to 6 HP, turned invisible and attempted to climb down from the ledge. She rolled a 1 on the climb check, fell, and took enough falling damage to kill herself off. Thus it ends - not with a bang, but a whimper.

Excellent module, though!

If your players are up for the sand box style Kingmaker would be perfect. You wouldn't really need to make the encounters tougher, there is plenty to keep them occupied besides combat.

This might be the inspiration I've been looking for! I can boost the big bads, and some of the other fights, but the exploration/wilderness/problem-solving bit could work very well indeed with just some speedbumpy combats.

I'll let you know what happens...

Go with Crypt of the Everflame, as it was designed to intro people into the new Pathfinder rules.

I just got back from my weekend's gaming. I took Crypt of the Everflame and its sequel, Masks of the Living God. Both were exceptionally well-received, and they were fun to DM as well. Top marks!

Go with Crypt of the Everflame, as it was designed to intro people into the new Pathfinder rules.

Many thanks for all the advice, folks, and I'll see what people think about playing Pathfinder rather than DnD. If I can get them to try it, I reckon they'll like it.

I'm just looking at Paizo products because I've come to trust the production values, rather than because I'm tied to Pathfinder for this occasion :-)

Are you starting @ level 1? Do you know how much the party is hack&slash vs roleplay?

Not fussy about level, but that's likely to be decided by committee. The Saturday game for our weekend is going to be L8 DnD (3.5), so I don't want to do the same thing too much.

As for the roll/role balance, it's mostly hack-and-slash with out-of-character banter. The fourth wall is gone, and we're working on breaking the fifth :)

Here's the situation. I have a group of gaming friends whom I only get to see once or twice a year, and we play a few short adventures. I am likely to run one, and I'm looking for something that will take 6-8 hours to run. I'd like it to be quite self-contained.

My big question is: should I go for a Module or a Scenario? I'm aware that Scenarios are part of the organised play system, but none of the others have played Pathfinder before and I'll be leaving Society out of it for this one.

Recommendations on people's favourite modules etc. are not essential, as I'm likely to browse a lot anyway, but feel free to chip in.

Many thanks!

Just wondering. Does anyone have one?

Not yet. One of my players, a rogue who's planning to go sorceror at level 2, decided that the best way to deal with the torbles in the sewer was to feed them. I winged it a bit and ended up with one of them following the group around; this was inspired a little by the player describing the picture of the thing as "cute".

Yep. I was having the same problems with Acrobat 7.1, but both Acrobat Reader 9.0 and Foxit 3.1 work fine.

My advice is to either let the players figure out a way that makes sense for their PCs to participate, or have Janiven thank them for their time, and ask the players to generate PCs that fit better for Janiven to recruit. Janiven wasn't looking to hire adventures or recruit people who were not already sympathetic to the cause.

The AP really isn't good for your typical merc who only does things for money/power. If they are looking to get paid for every act they perform on behalf of the Children of Westcrown, I think it will make for a less enjoyable AP.

Thanks for the advice! I decided to give it a little more time; play-by-post happens slowly. The other characters, including the half-orc monk whom I hadn't pegged as much of a talker, started offering arguments why they should do something. It only took Janiven a couple more arguments before at least half the group were on board, and then a group of Hellknights showed up. Whaddyaknow?

One of the players made an OOC remark: Horrible visions of Janiven locking the cellar door behind us are rolling through my head.

"The insurrectionists are firmly locked in the cellar officer. Here's the key."

I'm so tempted...

Well, I've started running CoT on a play-by-post site, and everyone seems to be having fun so far. I have two groups, each of 5 players, and both are sat areound a table talking with Janiven.

Group A is all being very well-behaved; one is saying "do you actually have a plan, or are you going with optimism and opportunism?". Most of the rest are saying "yes, let's do it!".

Group B is apparently full of cynics. The main grumbler is the rogue, who states that "freedom" will just lead to fewer opportunities to make money due to reprisals from the nobility whenever they are crossed. He's asking Janiven for payment up-front for his services, which she doesn't have.

I'm wary of just introducing the Hellknights to force the party together; they're bright enough to see that as railroading. On the other hand, I need to get the characters invested in the plot. So what do I do?

I love Pathfinder. I've only recently started playing it, but I love it to bits.

What would be really cool, in my opinion, would be a few excerpts/previews. Back in the old 3.5e days, Wizards used to publish an excerpt from impending sourcebooks (a feat or two, an item, and usually the entire table of contents). I haven't seen anything like that around here; am I simply looking in the wrong places? If it's not there, is there a reason you don't do it?

I ask because I don't have enough money to buy everything Paizo publish :( and because I'd like to get the most (subjective) bang for my buck.