If you did want to bring back Vanthus as an incorporeal undead, I might suggest a specter. Calling back to Gary Gygax's early conception of them as extremely evil people sent back as servants for fiends or dark gods. The Advanced Bestiary has a Dread Specter template and a normal Specter variant as well.
KainPen wrote:
The Red Mantis Assassin is actually a good example of something that should be a prestige class. It's a specialized set of training tied to a specific group in a specific campaign setting.
BigDTBone wrote:
So were the Taliban really good guys? Were we wrong about them giving shelter to Al-Qaeda? Am I missing something here? Why does the War in Afghanistan always get lumped in with the War in Iraq?
Liranys wrote: I, as a player, usually feel cheated when, due to bad luck or an encounter that's just too hard, the character I've put months of effort into, dies. That's when I as a player feel cheated. I have never felt cheated because the DM fudged a roll to let my PC live and continue playing the game. But I get attached to my PC's, maybe other people don't. I can't get attached to a PC that can't ever die. If my character was going to get to the same point no matter how the game went than what's the point of playing that all out? That's how I feel.
Liranys wrote: To each his own. I'd much rather have the Plot or story determine levels since we've been caught in two different situations due to the XP system. Either we've leveled too fast and are going through the encounters like a breeze, or we're almost dying because we didn't level fast enough. Going by "plot" or "story" can ensure that the PCs are the right level to make the play challenging but not too challenging. That's not true, in my games at least, because if you're playing in a player driven game, the PCs decide which challenges to undertake in the first place. If what they are facing is too hard or to easy for that matter it's their own fault. Unless they happen to encounter a monster that is an outlier for the area, but getting into whether the PCs should always face "appropriate" challenges is a whole other can of worms.
Werebat wrote:
I like that ratfolk aren't chaotic evil.
Issac Daneil wrote:
Well actually... plate armor probably should protect against firearms of the same time period. It wasn't until later that rifles made it obsolete. So full-plate arguably should have DR that applies against firearms. Or at least the ability to apply some of it's armor bonus against firearm attacks. Though perhaps the fact that firearms only penetrate within a certain range is already enough to account for this property of plate armor.
Playing odd races is as old as the game itself. In the original Blackmoor campaign player characters included a vampire and a balrog. In fact, the only reason the "classic" races made it into the game is that people wanted to play them. Gary Gygax originally see the point in including the "classic" Tolkien races in the published game.
Electric Wizard wrote:
And that was Electric Wizard's non-sequitur of the day folks! Tune in tomorrow for more adventures in complete nonsense!
Morain wrote:
Stuff like robots and the like have been in fantasy rpgs for about as long as they have existed. For instance, Gary Gygax's Greyhawk campaign had multiple characters obtaining blasters, and Dave Arneson ran Gary Gygax's Mordenkainen, and Rob Kuntz's Robilar through the "City of the Gods" a crashed alien spaceship. Androids, robots and cyborgs are mentioned in the first published version of D&D as potential monsters. This has basis in a lot of the fiction that Gygax and Arneson read, such as Conan having met an alien in "The Tower of the Elephant". Fantasy is a lot broader than Tolkien and his imitators, and I'm glad that Paizo has chosen to explore some of the possibilities of fantasy that many do not.
James Jacobs wrote:
Meh. Sorry, but the source material just does not support Cthulhu being that strong. Being able to terrorize a boatload of low-level NPC classed characters does not necessarily equate to being able to do the same to a party of near-demigods like a high level Pathfinder party.
Sissyl wrote: Make a monster matrix in generally nondescript rooms in a dungeon. Make the dungeon absolutely mindbogglingly oversized and also symmetrical more than one way. Avoid any sort of plotline like the plague. Get the PCs there by a reward of gold. Take every monster straight from the MM. Make sure that spells and magic items and monsters don't follow any particular theme or discernable pattern. Most of that's not objectively bad, that's just a difference in playstyle. The last couple of things and the part about symmetry I'd agree with. However, the megadungeon is a perfectly valid style of play, and can be made interesting even without a "plot". In fact, unless you're a skilled GM plot can easily lead to railroading, which is absolute anathema to me.
Well, I've been thinking of going back to college anyway. But seriously, you are a terrible, horrible person for suggesting that a person's worth is tied to their level of education. Furthermore you seem to be under the impression that there are a lot of engineering jobs available to anybody who wants them. That doesn't seem to be true, in fact in America we have a lot of people who have advanced degrees but no opportunity to make use of them, including some of my friends. So not only is you're suggestion born of arrogance and callousness it's also ignorant as well.
^ That was in response to this post, I think. YawarFiesta wrote:
Well this ties into something I posted earlier in another thread. The game wasn't originally about heroes. It was about adventurers out for fortune and glory. While the game had creatures from Lord of the Rings it more closely modeled Conan and other Sword and Sorcery stories. In the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns you weren't heroes trying to save the world, you were exploring the treasure-filled dungeons under an abandoned castle trying to win you're fortune, at least the early part, since after you won you're fortune the game would transition into a different phase, but that's a completely different can of worms. Of course as people started playing it they started to take it in different directions, where some campaigns were more inspired by Lord of the Rings, eventually leading to such developments as Dragonlance and Second Edition, where this was the default. Yet the roots of the game still stuck to a degree.
One of the things every megadungeon needs is a nearby town for the PCs to use as a base of operations. This should be big enough to provide the resources the adventurers need, such as a cleric that is high enough level to cast spells like restoration and raise dead. However, if you use a large enough settlement it can be difficult to fully detail it enough, which may or may not be a problem depending on how you treat the settlement. If all it is is a way to provide resources to the PCs it doesn't need to be fully detailed. Theoretically the town could be inside the dungeon it's self, or it could be less a town and more of a camp in remote areas far from civilization. A megadungeon is a "living" place, it will change over time due to the actions of it's inhabitants and in response to the PCs actions. A PC group will never clear out a megadungeon, not only because it's too large, but because as the PCs clear out certain sections of it these sections will be repopulated by other monsters. There is no "end" to a megadungeon, even if it is bounded geographically. Even then a DM can still add new areas, as the inhabitants mine them out, or otherwise create them. The megadungeon doesn't need one overarching theme, but it can be useful. However, this theme should not dominate the dungeon entirely. That can get pretty boring. Instead have levels that are different somehow, like a cave of troglodytes connected to a megadungeon inhabited by undead, or have the dungeons intersect with a different underground structure that existed before. A good dungeon, in my experience does not have every single room inhabited. Despite what the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide says, "empty" rooms are good. These can serve as a buffer between different monsters, addressing the complaint of "why haven't all these monsters killed each other already if they live in such close proximity?", can serve as channels for PC exploration, allowing them choices like "do we attack these orcs, or do we try to go around them and see what is there first?" or can serve as a refuge were the PCs can hole up and prepare to take on additional challenges. A classic megadungeon is not the "break down the door, kill the monsters, loot there stuff, rinse repeat" hack and slash dungeon that so many complain about. It's primarily about exploring this wondrous, exotic and dangerous location... and then looting it. Levels tend to have multiple interconnections, and internally to have lot of different paths, branches, side paths, etc. A classic megadungeon level isn't a linear path from the entrance to a "boss monster" whose guarding the only path to the next level. In addition there tend to be multiple entrances, often providing convenient access to the lower levels. Also, don't think you need to detail the whole thing at once. It's good to have an idea of how the whole thing fits together, but generally you should work on 2-3 levels at once. Also one dungeon level does not necessarily equate to one character level. It can, but even then it tends to have "extra xp", so that the characters don't need to clear out the whole level (which as I said before, is unlikely anyways) to go up a level. This is it for now, I might have more thoughts later.
I would say that the threat the Nomen poses to the PCs kingdom is perhaps overstated a bit by some posters. Certainly, a force of calvary archers, perhaps using guerrilla tactics is nothing to scoff at, so however much larger the PCs army is they certainly could be a threat of some sort. However, they will certainly be unable to take and hold territory, since that will open them up to retaliatory strikes that will certainly overwhelm them. So while the Nomen can certainly be a nuisance to the kingdom, they have no chance of conquering any of it.
I'm thinking of allowing "talking animals" as a possible racial option. However, the Race Builder does not allow for magical beast characters. So here's what I've come up with: Magical Beast (4 RP)
Special Subtype: Augmented Animal (2 RP)
I'm not sure how to handle the various disadvantages such a creature might have, such as lack of hands, lack of speech, etc.
I don't think that, even if deities cannot be killed, that they should automatically win any fight. If the players have a goal and a deity is opposing them directly, they should still have a chance. Furthermore, stats govern things outside of combat as well. If Gozreh tries to strike down the PCs with a manifestation of nature's wrath, do the PCs survive? If Shelyn tries to charm a PC does she succeed? What happens if the PCs tries to deceive Asmodeus or face Cayden Cailean in a drinking contest? Let's assume that "whatever the story says should happen" isn't a concern, mostly because not everybody plays that way.
Did I say, golems and clockwork? No, and that's not at all what I'm referring to. What I am referring to is the explicit mention to "Cyborgs, Robots and Androids" in Volume 3 The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures of the original D&D boxed set. Furthermore, robots appeared in the module DA3 City of the Gods, which is based on a dungeon appearing in the Blackmoor campaign run by Dave Arneson. Gary Gygax's own character, Mordenkainen explored this site alongside Rob Kuntz's Robilar. Speaking of Gary Gygax, he had characters from his D&D game visit the starship Warden from the game Metamorphosis Alpha. Metamorphosis Alpha later inspired the adventure S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, which featured part of a crashed alien space ship. I will also bring up Temple of the Frog, which while it has no robots, does include an alien who wields several technological items. This adventure first appeared in D&D Supplement II. While I could bring up more examples, these should be enough to prove my point. That being that the inclusion of Sci-fi elements in D&D has a long history. For that matter, this was also true in many of the Swords and Sorcery stories that D&D was based on! Fantasy is far larger than Tolkien, which arguably was only a superficial influence on D&D at first. Not saying you're wrong for not liking them, but they have been part of D&D for a while, and apparently part of D&D that the Paizo developers like. So I wouldn't expect them to go away anytime soon. Besides I thought we had already established that nay-saying others ideas for monsters was a no-no.
Starsunder wrote:
Not to mention inaccurate to many mythologies.
Farael the Fallen wrote:
You do realize that everything in the original Star Trek universe is still canon, right? It just takes place in a different universe.
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