Goblin Squad Member. Pathfinder Society Member. 1,519 posts (1,520 including aliases). 3 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 2 Pathfinder Society characters. 2 aliases.
The Simulacrum Lich is wonderful. It worked great for my players the first times I used it. Also it's very "lich-like", kind of contingency plan (pun intended). I vow I'd make a lich called "Victor von Doom" who will use thousands of simulacrums :P
Quicken Channel is a good Idea, really. That, Quicken Spell, and maybe a Conductive Mace, and he's good to go. Add a high level demon and his bodyguard Paladin, and that's an epic fight!
Putting in a demon because he fell out of favor with the devils? That'd really upset Asmodeus. Give the PCs even more reason to take him down too.
Love the idea of Victor von Doom. You should totally do that this time too. Maybe make a homebrew item to give them all mirror image as well.
After giving him max wealth, and using various tomes/manuals my Throne has AC 48. Should be quite the tough time for my PCs. By that point I'm thinking a couple of them will have touch abilities to get passed the high AC. At least I'm hoping. Otherwise I'll have to bring him down a bit.
Yeah, there's no archers in my party. They're all melee based. I've made sure they at least have bows on them, but no one ever uses them. Everyone's Dex sucks in my party, short of the gnome ninja.
For Thorn, I switched out on feat for Quicken Channel (uses two channels as a move action) so he can still do up his standard action to cast.
As for the shield, I gave him an animated one because I houseruled it back to the 3.5 version (the Pathfinder version I made into a +1 property). If you put the Advanced template on him that'd help out a bit as well.
I've only ever seen the simulacrum aspect of a wizard ever used in a game once so thankfully that won't be a cliche for my group.
Please tell me someone has some kind of link saying that the swift actions got changed to immediate. Otherwise this creature's abilities don't work so well.
And it'd be awesome if the link was "official". Apparently just because James Jacobs says it should be and confirms it, doesn't make it gospel anymore because he's said in the past to not use his quotes.
For Thorn, I've changed some of his wealth around, and given him a bunch more. Gave him a bunch of scrolls of Summon Monster XI, and will have him readied to do a Time Stop (that will be DM fiat maximized) where he'll just continually summon. That should take care of some of their resources. Also, I'm going to add in that Grigori made Thorn a simulacrum scroll a long time ago, and it's time to finally activate that. The PCs will think it's the real deal, and once they've taken out the weaker version, then the real fight will begin.
And don't forget that increasing the linnorm's stats will also increase the curse. That's the only reason I'm not increasing any of this stuff. I know full well my PCs would never be able to do anything about that save. Granted the obelisk will be cure that, but you'd need PCs will a really good knowledge check. Although, your PCs could probably pull it off.
Our recently updated campaign journal at http://711derby.weebly.com/call-forth-the-darkness.html
Last night's game had a special guest appearance from Something Positive's Redneck Tree. The DM (my wife) thought it would be fun way to give the Bard (whose player has an obsession with trying to get his bard to seduce everyone) a taste of medicine while adding a challenge and a laugh. It went down well and she highly recommends it as a monster if the party needs a challenge, extra XP, or just a really good laugh.
Well they're 5 HD each, and have either the Advanced Template (made it a +2 LA) or another template of equal value (ie lesser half-dragon or cunning creature, both of which are 3rd party). Reading up in the later books about how everyone could just be given the vampire template, but skip the basement scenario, I just gave them the above templates instead of the vampire one. They were quite content. Three of them are veterans, two are brand new to d20, and the last one is new to PF but has played eight months of 3.5 D&D. As for AP's, none of them have ever gone through that before. One's been in a group where they started the first book, but never completed the entire thing. My group's very new to this.
Part of me is glad that they're shaken up because when they first got the templates, they honestly thought they'd be invincible. They've since learned the hard way that this is most definitely not the case. Getting +4 to all of your stats does not save you from Smite Evil, swarms of birds, or AoE spells.
wasn't your party loaded with plenty templates and several gimmicks that made their characters above average? How can they fear those fights? They should be roflstomping those encounters.
They honestly thought I was advancing the game to compensate for their templates, but I haven't really done anything. Just max hp and added an npc level or given them 25 pt buy instead of 15. But yeah, they're like two "levels" above what they should be for this part of the fight, and they are cringing hard over what their gaming experience would be if they'd done it without anything advancing them.
It's probably the crazy lucky rolls I've been getting. I let my players see my rolls so they know I'm not cheating. That way when I roll a "1" we all get to have a good laugh at how bad the main guy failed.
Hey Kevin, I had a similar concern when I started my group on WotW... too sandboxy compared to what they were used to.
To help alleviate that, I bought a whiteboard that I place so all the players can see it.
At the top I list the mission given out by Thorn (ie do this, then this, and lastly this). It gives them a reference point to start at when they are trying to figure out what to do.
I also use the white board to remind them of things they discovered (ie the affair, (insert creature here) that Tacticus has, the Stew, etc). It helps keep them on track and everyone has the same info, rather than just the one guy who made really good notes.
So far it has worked really well for my group. Right now my group is on book 2 and the reminders of what kind of sacrifice they need when has kept them on track and noteful of who they need to get a hold of for the next portion of the ritual.
Another suggestion is using the Knowledge check for Ballentyne to see how well they figure the bugbear horde would do if they do nothing... and how angry Thorne will be at them... :)
Hope it helps.
I'll be giving a better summary of it later but we played last night, and the players were not happy when we started playing and they found out in game what they had to take down, including a Lantern Archon Gestalt and Havelyn. They were just going to wait for the bugbears because they honestly believed that they weren't supposed to take on such "epic fights" for their level. They are not looking forward to the next couple of sessions. Especially since they messed up on stealth checks last night, and now the entire garrison is up, and hunting for them.
Is there even any safe place for Mitra's followers after the campaign ends? I'm trying to think of what would be a good place for the PC's to start. It's not easy living in the midst of a totalitarian, diabolist regime.
Also, how many years would it take for the Asmodean government to become well-entrenched?
Well the entire 6th book is having them become entrenched so another additional year? Depends on how much of the sandbox quests they did before, and how many you'd have them do off-screen afterwards.
As for where they'd start, there's the mountains, the forests, sewers, caves, or maybe an NPC that's only pretending to on their side has an underground bunker for them to hide out in.
DM_Blake, As per CRB p550 the pricing for a slotted skill bonus is bonus squared*100. Thus, for +5 that is 5*5*100 = 2,500gp.
Kevin_Video, unless your player is really attached to the spell effect the item your player probably wants is the Goggles of Minute Seeing on CRB p515.
- Gauss
I'll bring it up. He just like the bonus for getting the wrong check.
So one of my player's would very much like to make a continuous magic item that will give him bonuses to his rogue's trapfinding. However, the spell in question is confusing for how you'd normally do it up via the rules.
CASTING
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, F (masterwork thieves’ tools worth 100 gp)
EFFECT
Range personal
Target you
Duration 1 minute/level (D)
DESCRIPTION
If you don’t have the trapfinding class ability, this spell grants you the trapfinding ability of a rogue of half your character level.
If you have the trapfinding ability granted by class levels, however, this spell grants you a +5 competence bonus on all Disable Device checks made to disarm mechanical (but not magical) traps. While under the effects of this spell, whenever you trigger a trap by rolling poorly on a Disable Device check, you may roll a second Disable Device check. This new roll uses the same modifiers as the first roll. If your second roll is high enough to avoid accidentally springing the trap, you avoid setting it off, but still fail to disarm it. Each time you take advantage of this feature, the remaining duration of the spell is reduced by 1 minute—if less than a minute’s worth of duration remains, the spell ends as soon as you reroll your Disable Device check.
The first part is easy. It's the second part, where it says "each time you take advantage of this feature, the remaining duration of the spell is reduced by 1 minute". How do you "reduce" a continuous spell? You can't.
I'm thinking a +40% increase just because you can't do such a thing.
That being said, is this one of those items that will just never be able to be continuous, but charges/day is more than doable?
Yes it should get Improved Natural Attack. My idea is that a torturer knows how to deal injury and pain. If it gains no benefit from the bonus feat then I would just have it add +2 to damage from the quick build rules. Your solution of Ability Focus (Chastise) is also cool.
As always GMs should do what they think is best for their game.
No, I like your idea about the +2 to damage. That makes a lot of sense to do that. While GMs should do what might be better for the game, it's always nice to hear from the people behind the initial creation and get their opinion first.
Got a question on the Torturer Creature template. Why give it the Improved Natural Weapon feat (which I'm assuming is really supposed to be Improved Natural Attack since the other feat doesn't exist)? What if it doesn't have natural attacks? Is there a substitute feat for it? Should they instead get Improved Unarmed Strike? Perhaps Ability Focus (Chastise)?
Hey Gary, how possible would it be to run a Good campaign set after Bellinda's defeat and the fall of Talingarde? The PCs would be resistance fighters, clerics of Mitra, paladins, et cetera.
The goal would be to survive in a Diabolist-ruled Talingarde and eventually fight back against the regime, sort of like a reverse-Way of The Wicked.
Even better, if you've already played through the campaign, you can set up the PCs as the kingdom's dreaded rulers. ;)
It'd be sort of like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_%28role-playing_game%29
I don't think it'd be hard at all. Especially considering the PCs are eventually supposed to take over the whole world. It doesn't even have to be on Talingarde.
That being said, after Throne of Night, Gary had mention contemplating doing a sequel to Way of the Wicked, which included expanding the tyranny beyond the island. It would be decades later, and you'd be playing offspring of the previous characters.
I know this might sound... extreme... but I'm going to say the Jabberwock. It's classified as a dragon but it's from the primal realm of the fey, and it lives in forests so it would be more than happy to claim a village and turn it into one.
Jabberwocks don't normally go in for subtle revenge tactics, but perhaps the fey of this forest have come to see the Jabberwock as a false prophet of sorts-- it doesn't much care about their plight but it allows them to worship it, and they are convinced it will smite their enemies and bring new life to their forest (it may do the former, but likely won't do the latter).
The Jabberwock does have the mental stats to lead a cult of personality if it wanted to (INT 12 WIS 29 CHA 26, speaks Common, Draconic, Gnome, Aklo, and Sylvan) and if the fey of the forest have been looking for a champion and a Jabberwock showed up, they might curry favor with it in the hopes of gaining it as their savior (or at least not being destroyed by it).
That's not bad at all, and it really does make perfect sense. Just too bad that it's a CR 23.
What about a covey of hags trying to protect their land?
Or an awakened animal found normally in the environment, like a tiger.
Or a unicorn. Surely the entire forest would rally behind a unicorn.
Funny enough, there's a sorcerer bloodline specifically for unicorns, and a race that has a horse head. I could change that to a unicorn. And, it'd give them the spells they need.
And don't say "A druid" because that's a class, and the druid is always seen the hippie that ties themselves to the trees in hopes that the loggers don't chop them up too.
Huh, I always saw them as earthquakes, firestorms and tidal waves smashing civilization to bits. A new Archdruid taking power to bring nature to the fight would be a cool main threat, powerful too.
Only if you're allowed to play them. Any group I've been in the GM's nerfed them so I've never been able to play one legit passed level 6 (E6 system). I honestly don't know much about their power.
It'll all depend on what they end up facing. Was thinking about level 5-6. However, for the curse to work, there'll need to be a few sorcerer or cleric levels involved as well, as well as a template for +1 CR (Green Guardian). So the level cap might be closer to 10. In the end, to break the curse, they'll need higher level spells too.
Whenever there's a campaign that has anything to do with the forest, it's always about how the fey will do everything to keep "the man" out. Well, I'm going to take that one step further. What if the forest was in jeopardy from man? I'm talking rain forest deforestation here. Think "Avatar" or "FernGully". Who would be leading the team against that? Who would be the head person who'd gather everyone and go "Take them out." Like Godfather mafia status. And don't say "A druid" because that's a class, and the druid is always seen the hippie that ties themselves to the trees in hopes that the loggers don't chop them up too.
I'm looking more for a race. Would it be a forest giant? A dryad (even though it can't move more than 900 feet from their tree)? Something else? If it's the dryad, they can't move very fair so they'd probably get some kind of boss man to do it.
I'm looking to do a one-shot for a convention, and the story is that the humans have little regard to the forest, or nature in general (oh the surprise there). As such, they are constantly getting larger families and need more timber to build their homes and make room for their expansion. Finally, someone has had enough.
When the adventures arrive at the city, looking for work, or maybe they've been sent there on a mission, it's vacant. Not a single person is in the village. However, a new forest seems to have grown within the city itself. These trees are the people themselves, cursed by the green guardians who've decided to make the humans pay for their crimes by making them rebuild the forest with their own bodies.
(PS, If you don't have the book, it looks like the kingdom building rules are, surprise surprise, drawn from the Kingmaker AP.)
Drawn from, but everyone keeps telling me that they've been improved upon. I have to take their word for it seeing as how I haven't read either Kingmaker or the new Ultimate Campaign book.
We got an update on what's going on. More delays as was suspected. Also, his silence was more or less just an error on his part in bad decision making. Silence is not always golden.
Put this on the FB page as well, but curious about what category Name Traits go under. There's of course the standard faith, magic, combat, racial, etc, but do name traits have their own category (ie. name)?
But seriously, I've never heard of what you're talking about. Jeremy would be the one to directly answer you but I confess to being intrigued. Where have you seen/heard of such a thing as plastic-coated-metal?
It was a proposed Kickstarter that unfortunately didn't get funded. Was just wondering if DS was doing up standard minis or if they were going to try and complete what the other Kickstarter wasn't able to.
It was essentially a plastic resin that would help protect the metal inside from getting chipped or scuffed.
Sorry, let me rephrase the question as it seems too many people were busy point out the metal vs. plain plastic as opposed to what I was actually looking for.
Are they going to be your standard metal like the old school ones, or the new metal with protective plastic coating style?
I think it's fine. It's probably Hero Lab that's giving you the CR 19. Remember, it's CR -1 for having NPC wealth and NPC stats. If you've got PC wealth and stats then it's -0 CR. Hero Lab probably didn't factor that part in if you've made the wealth and stat equivalent.
Just thought of another question that my player and I were very confused on, and enjoyed in 3.5. Why can't unicorns be summoned anymore? Before it was through the Summon Nature's Ally spells. Now you can't seem to get them at all. Why was that changed?
Just thought of another question that my player and I were very confused on, and enjoyed in 3.5. Why can't unicorns be summoned anymore? Before it was through the Summon Nature's Ally spells. Now you can't seem to get them at all. Why was that changed?
James, I'm hoping the answer is "yes", but in D2 Seven Swords of Sin, you guys introduced the blades that represented each of the individual deadly sins (lust, greed, gluttony, etc) but by the end only the Asheia the Sword of Lust was elaborated on. Was just wondering, did you guys ever expand on the other six swords on page 31 of the module besides them being a +1 weapon? If so, where can I find each of these weapons? If not, what would you make Garvok, Shin-tari, Tannaris, Chellan, Baraket, and Ungarato?
I would had let them use the farmer idea, just make the farm to be 1 day traveling instead of 1 week (honestly, 1 week traveling will put them almost out of the borderlands if they do just 20 miles per day). It was a decent enough plan to make it work.
When GMing a Sandbox, free-form play is important. Just because the storybook says Eddarly and Mott will challenge to a duel, it doesn't mean it should be that way.
The problem with me is I don't do well with free-form. If it's not in the book, I've got nothing.
Right now I'm looking for a guest GM to take over for a while because it's looking like I'm not cut out for running this kind of scenario.
Today we managed to set aside enough time for a quick game. One of my old players was able to come back this session, one player had to leave because he joined a band, and a new player joined us. We now have an elf torturer.
I'm having to railroad the players just to make them do something instead of nothing:
Unfortunately it was not a great session to introduce her as the party really didn't know what to do. The gnome no longer has any penances (he worked them all off thanks to the assistance of the group) so he's good to go and not looking to kill off his character any more. However, most of the night was making them roll Intelligence checks at DC 5 or 10 just to make them do something. They're so used to written campaigns that go "Turn off your brain and go fight these next 20 encounters" that they have no idea how to actually role play any more. And half of these guys have been playing for 8+ years. I can't help them, but I'm dropping HEAVY hints on them, and making them roll checks when they're thinking of doing something that will either derail things or will put them in jeopardy. It's almost like I'm playing the game for them. They're so stumped as to what they're supposed to do, right now they're contemplating just waiting for the whole two weeks, and just having a full out brawl. If they lose, they lose. If they win, all the better. It's not something I want to see happen, but they're so lost that that's all they've been able to come up with. If it wasn't for Timeon giving them the map at the beginning, they'd be even worse off. They're looking for red herrings that don't even exist. One player's not even doing anything at all. He's left the party and gone into the forest to hunt by poorly setting up snares because his Survival is practically 0. It's fine that he wants to role play, but he's on a mission. He's only doing it because he doesn't know what to do and told the party to come get him when they've got a plan.
They've got their own notes written down for who the captains are, who's away right now (Varning), that Mama comes once a week to make stew, etc, but they're not doing anything with it. And when I finally, very heavy handedly, got them to remember about the affair of Mott's wife and Eddarly, they were suddenly confused as to why that was a problem. It's adultery. But again, they still didn't know why that would mean anything. Finally I said that they should write a letter to Mott himself about the whole ordeal. The party decided against that, and wanted to use the information to blackmail Eddarly instead, and that it was a certain farmer far away (one week's ride away) that knew about it, and that they should meet private with no witnesses. Then one week later they'd send out another letter to Mott saying that they knew of who his wife was having an affair with and to ride out to the same location. They hoped that they'd settle things. Which I bluntly told them that things would get taken care of, but that was wasting too much time (they have 12 days left) and no witnesses meant if either died, no one would know about it. So, grudgingly, the players allowed me to once again put them on the path to give the letter to Mott and finally something happened. Mott attacked Eddarly openly, but Eddarly killed Mott. Then I had Mott's widow also get chained up because the male players decided that maybe they should keep the now obviously lonely widow company, and I didn't want things to go there.
We're playing again in three weeks, and still nothing has really happened. At least nothing that didn't have me telling them "go do this, go do that". It's almost getting to the point that I want them to fail just so I can quit this campaign. A campaign that I loved reading and supporting, but obviously my veteran players of 8-20 years can't handle it because they have to think outside the box and actually do stuff that's more than just fighting everything and spilling blood. I blame their previous GMs for this.
"Damage that is dealt based solely on your alignment, such as the damage dealt by a chaos hammer spell.
so the holy sword is going to still deal damage from it being a swrod, and from the characters strength and from its enhancment bonuses, but the +2d6 will not deal damage to you."
I thought he was referring to some of the Vale's "residents" teleporting out to ask for help, then teleporting back.
Yes, that was what I meant.
That's during the three months. You can make side adventures for the PCs to make sure that doesn't happen. Should someone manage to escape, then Richard and company are there in Book IV with the army and you see the PCs start losing lots of minions.
I'm confused on the write-up in Purity of Hellfire regarding alignment damage.
At 1st level a purifier gains resistance to fire, and alignment based damage equal to her inquisitor class level, at 10th level this becomes immunity to fire and alignment based damage.
What exactly does that mean? If you're LE you have DR 1 through 9 against lawful evil creatures, but after 10th level you're immune to all damage dealt to you by lawful evil creatures?
@SnowHeart -- So what ended up being the final outcome with Grumblejack?
Oh! I forgot that. ** spoiler omitted **
Yeah, I'll admit that I really wanted my guys to have him on their team so I might have given them a little too much insight with him. Now they love the big guy.
Its not about it being better.You can't have a small mount with a small character, your mount must be at least medium. Hence dogs at level 4,they can't be choosen as a mount before that.
That's fine, but unless you're planning on starting at 4th level, chances are you've got an actual bond with your wolf, and aren't going to just dismiss him for the dog for three levels, and then ask for him back at 7th.
My guess is that they aren't referring to the common dog, but the riding dog, which has significantly better stats than the former, and that has better base ability stats than a wolf (as well as having Acrobatics with a huge bonus to jumping).
Unfortunately, no, they are referring to the common dog.
This question is not mine, but one found unanswered on another forum. Was hoping James could answer it, but he said to instead put it here.
"A small Cavalier can take a wolf mount at level one. A wolf has 13 hp (2d8+4), AC 14, and a 1d6 bite attack.
If you're at 4th level, you can get a dog mount. A dog has 6 hp (1d8+2), AC 13, and a 1d4 bite attack.
....How does that make sense!? You get access to an (objectively) less powerful mount at a higher level?"
My guess? Is it because the dog starts out small sized, then is medium at 4th level? If so, you guys might want to spell this out to people a little better.
kevin_video
