L5R (and the new Legends of the Burning Sands, which I might like better)
7th Seas Specific Time period and setting, but so much fun it doesn't matter. This is one of my favorite games ever.
Fantasy Hero (Hero System) Perhaps too complicated.
Palladium Fantasy
Exalted
The new Fire and Ice looks interesting, but I haven't played it yet.
Mouse Guard! But mainly because who doesn't want to play bad ass mice?
Burning Wheel
Note: someone asked for a description of this system not too long ago, here's the quick sum up. Uses D6 dice pools where 1-3 is a failure and 4-6 is a success. Magic weapons and supernatural creatures might roll 1-2 Failure and 3-6 Success. Great (but complex) fighting rules and one of the greatest character creation systems out there. My complaints on the system is that it might be too complex for my group of players.
The PDQ system games like Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies. Simple but effective.
Talislanta is really neat.
Houses of the Blooded. It's really different and maybe too complex for some people's taste, but it's awesome. Lots of group storytelling where the players get involved with the running of the game. Combat is fairly deadly, and you should never get into a large battle, only one on one duels. But the game is one of a kind. The PDF was only $5 not too long ago, check it out. It's worth just reading even if you never play it.
My only complaint on Earthdawn is that I really like skills and rogues, but in this game everything comes down to magic. My thief doesn't move silently, he use magic to hover off the ground just enough to move silently. This really bothered me whenever we played it. I've been playing Exalted enough that it might not bother me now. I am interested in this 3rd Edition though. hmm.
Artesia is really interesting and balanced. The system is based on the Fusion system, so if you look at games like Sengoku (awesome Samurai game) or Cyberpunk you might find some interesting system information. The only major difference is in the damage and experience points. For the story world, just read the comic. It's really great.
Oh and by the way, Mouse Guard is published by the same comic company, but uses a very different system. It uses the Burning Wheel.
I think if more people had bought the book a few years ago, maybe more product support would have come out, they certainly wanted to make more books. But at this point I'd be shocked to see another Artesia book.
I don't have a major problem with Prestige Classes, but I find they work best when they show specialized knowledge but don't radically change the character.
For example my favorite Prestige Classes include just about every thing in Swashbuckling Adventures, Spycraft, and D20 Modern. The base classes are fine in these games, but they're designed to be very generic. The Prestige classes in these books are fairly easy to get, aren't that powerful, and give definition to the characters.
In swashbuckling adventures there are some prestige classes that are actually fighting styles. So instead of being a fighter, you're a fighter with 3 levels of Aldana fighting style.
And I agree that there are too many prestige classes out there, but so many of them are so specific that I'm not sure if it matters.
The only problem I had with Prestige classes were for Clerics and Wizards in 3 Ed. Mainly because those classes don't really change after level 1. Sure more spells and a bonus feat every so often, but deep down no change. So the only disadvantage of taking a Prestige Class was the loss of maybe one level of spells. And most of the time the classes were really random, Blood Mage I'm looking at you.
But Pathfinder, by working on the Base classes has I think fixed that. Now you have more reasons to stay with the Base Class and every time you take a level of a Prestige you have to weigh the pros and cons.
I just got this, and I haven't even printed anything out, but I can tell you what it comes with and maybe it'll be enough for you to make your decision.
Three forms of currency, Dwarven, Elven, Human
Dwarven: 1 CP, 1 SP, 1 GP, 1PP
Elven: Interesting coinage, one coin worth 8 SP and and one worth 8 GP that can be split into 8 pieces.
Human: 1CP, 2CP 3CP, 5CP, 1SP, 5SP, 1GP, 5GP, 1PP, 5PP, 10PP
And fake versions as well.
And a treasure chest to hold everything.
Each page has a different amount of coins on it, but the small amounts, such as copper have about 20 coins per sheet, some of the larger amounts such gold coins have about 8-10 per sheet.
So yeah to get say 10000 gold it would be a lot of printing, but I don't think anyone would ever want to do that. Having enough coinage to represent different cultures seems good enough to me. Personally I plan to make maybe thirty of each type, so one sheet of copper, and maybe three sheets of gold. And if I feel I need more, I'll print them out later.
I spent part of my day off working on these minis. So much fun. Between this and World works games, I'm getting pretty good at paper crafting, something I never thought I'd say.
Another success. Ghartok, The Carrion King looks freaking awesome.
You know I was thinking, an idea you could do if you had interest is making minis of the NPC's that are in the books but not part of the plot, such as Fayar on page 63 of House of the Beast. Or characters that show up in Dark Markets (like the awesome looking half orc on page 16) or the Guide to Korvosa.
That way players could use them for their characters and DM's would have more reason to bring these NPC's into the plots somehow.
At any rate, great job on this one. Hope PaizoCon was fun. Maybe I'll come next year when I'm less busy and more wealthy.
That is really great. I'm hoping to run this story sometime after summer, and I'll find a way to get these in there somewhere. You do the others and I'll try to use them as well.
Personally speaking I think the idea of paper minis for PC's is a good one, but ultimately you will never be able to create the exact look a PC will want. I do think doing a series based on the Pathfinder line would be really smart.
Pathfinder Adventure Paths are the obvious place to start and I know you've already thinking about that with Varisans, but creating a random set of generic heroes for Legacy of Fire would be really helpful, both for PC's and NPC's.
I think you could also take a look at what kind of characters might show up in Riddleport or Korvosa and create a set based on them.
Then you could look towards the Companion and Chronicle books, the Pathfinder Elves, Darkmoon Vale, Osirian, Katapesh, Cheliax (HellKnights!!) and so forth.
I only say this because you could have a class based set, but a fighter playing Rise of the Runelords would look very different than one playing Legacy of Fire.
Ultimately you have a lot of options to choose from, so have fun and keep us posted.
Also I'm sending you a friend request because I love facebook.
These products are the best. I check in every few days just to see if you've got any new ones. Simple to make, make as many as you want, and they look great. Much better than metal minis. Way to go.
Eh, I think the pricing is fine. It's really not that much and the added value of what these products could bring to a game is too much to pass up. Only problem I can see is my players wanting a paper mini of their specific character as well.
And look at it this way. Buy one mini in the store, that's going to cost around $7.00. And you still have to paint them. Here I can get my entire Gnoll needs in a fun and unique way with out having to track down a ton of Gnoll minis that would end up costing me way more than I ever wanted to pay.
Better than I was expecting. These are going to blow my players away. Between this and Worldworks games, it's a lot of printing, but man this is going to be worth it. Great job.
I've been silently watching this for some time now. Your work is really awesome.
This is just another reason why Paizo is by far my favorite company right now. Can you imagine a place like Wizards discovering a forum member and working on paper minis with them?
Way to go everyone involved. Just let us know when we can give you our money.
Well, there's about 20-30 page that detail the Noble Houses and Lands, with game effects. And certainly the concept is that everyone play a member of the noble house, to help tell the story.
There could be more details on exactly how you can center the plots of your adventures on a noble house. I'm thinking futer books might go into more details. This book focuses more on the system and how the rules work: combat, weapon damage, poison, warfare, social combat, ect. And for what it is, it's pretty darn good.
If you're really interested in your character playing nobles, you might want to check out Houses of the Blooded. I will admit that it's a strange game. Lots of dark fantasy. But there is a mechanic that handles land management and retainers that is really neat. It even takes into account other nobles turning your retainers into traitous spies.
I just got this book the other day. It's interesting. At first I was put off by the amount of pure crunch in the book. Most of the book is just the system, and I just felt at first that there was no personality to the book and game itself.
However, upon further reading I found that the system does a really good job of creating a situations that could and do appear in the books. Combat is highly dangerous, yet there are safety nets that allow you to avoid certain death. So one hit good hit could kill you. And you could also survive a drop from a very high building. I won't give away the mechanics, but I will say it's really clever. And the focus on creating and managing your Noble House is really neat and very much part of the book.
Thus far, I'm enjoying reading this. Now to see if I can get a chance to actually play the system.
Well I guess the most important thing would be to give them reasons to be at the Swallowtail Festival and then feel the need to stick around and protect the city.
I haven't put too much thought into it. Just think it might be a cool idea.
After reading the beginnings of Second Darkness, it made me wonder if there wasn't some way to bring the Character Traits idea into Runelords. Six or so traits that force players to get involved in the plot. Maybe one that has something to do with the Late Unpleasantness, another with the newly formed church.
My problem with always came down to I stab you, then punch you, then stab you. So now you have both lethal and non lethal damage. If you go into negatives, are you dead, or do you only get knocked out, do I have to additional damage equal to the non lethal damage to kill you? What happens? It's probably in a rule book somewhere, but I've never really took the time to look it up.
I liked a rule I read somewhere, maybe Spycraft 2, where non lethal damage caused a fort save and could knock you out, but never adjusted your hit points.
The problemis that the system is so connected to the game. Other magic systems, such as Rifts or Shadowrun, tend to have fewer spells and the major differences between two spell casters isn't the number of spells they cast, but what spells they can choose and the other abilities they have.
Changing the way the Vancian system works also changes the relationship between the Wizard and the Sorcerer, so any ideas we have have to address this as well. That is going to take space and details.
So if this could be something that got an entire page or two, it has merit. If not then it might be a waste of time.
One option that is still the Vancian system that might work is to change the rules as such: First the Spells per Day and Spells Known charts do not change. A Sorcerer cast exactly the same way as always. A Wizard can cast any spell he knows in his Spell book, just like a Sorcerer. So they can cast the exact same way, but the Wizard has fewer per day, but more choices. To balance things out, the wizard takes a Full Round Action to cast any spell, this is so he can flip though pages and find the right spell or some such. If this isn't enough of a drawback, it could always take longer, say two rounds to cast a spell. Maybe a Specialist casts his Schools spells faster, I don't know.
The advantage would be not having to memorize spells in the morning and could always pull out the right spell at the right time. However, the increase in options could slow down combat, as every round the wizard might have twenty spells to think about before casting a spell. That's another reason to make the wizard take 2 rounds to cast a spell, gives the player time to figure out what to do.
Now I'm going to say this as well, I actually never had a problem with the Vancian system, but I like trying to figure out alternate ideas.
I'm all for giving the Druid the option of a Healing Domain, but I'd make it part of the list and let the player choose. And personally, I'd keep the Druid's ability to cast summon spells. We have to remember, it's not that the Druid's job should be the healer of the party, his job is to be the Pets guy. Summons, Shape Change, Companions. We just want him to be more effective as a healer. That way you could have a Druid and a Cleric in the same party and not feel like you were stepping on each others toes.
My suggestion would be to create a new ability Called Nature's Touch or some such. A number of times per day equal to the Druid's Wis Mod he gains the ability to heal D6 points of healing to any creature he touches. This healing increases an additional D6 every 2 Druid levels he takes. So 2d6 at 3rd level, 3D6 at 5th, and so on.
This is the same mechanic as Channel Postive, but can only effect one target. This way it will mean he can free up some spell slots and still heal, but never as effectively as the Cleric.
Just a thought.
And for the record, I've never like Non-Lethal damage mechanic in this game, I find it mildly confusing and would suggest not increasing it's presense. Outside of that, it's not a bad idea and if others liked it, I'd not object.
Monte Cook did something in Arcana Evolved, which is one of my most favorite systems, but that's not the point. It was a Vancian system, sort of. First off he created a lesser powered and a higher powered version of each spell so that you could cast the 2nd level spell as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level of effect. To me it made all the spells seem a little more useful. But sadly that would require too much change. What wouldn't is that he also made a list of Spells Readied and Spells per day. In this he made all spell casters both Wizards, Sorcerers and Clerics in the way they worked.
You choose a list of spells that are your Spells Readied, much like the Spells Known list for a Bard or Sorcerer. However you can choose any spell available to you, like the Cleric. Once you have your Spell Ready List, you can cast them a number of times per day based on your level, just like a Sorcerer. However, the big difference is that as long as you have an hour of time and spell books on hand, you can always change your Spells Readied List, much like a Wizard.
I'm not sure how we could use this idea, or even if this is anywhere close to what other people are looking for, but the ability to change the wizards spells mid day is really nice.
Another option would be to take a look at Arc Magicus or Talislanta, both of which do not use a Vancian system at all, but could be replaced entirely with the current system without affecting the rest of gameplay that much. Such a radical change Could never be just a sidebar, it might require at least a chapter. Or maybe a book of magic or something.
I have to admit that I like the idea of not having to depend on the Cleric for healing, but I would like to focus only on the Druid. I like the Bard as is.
First thing I would do for the Druid is give him a choice of the nature based Domains, and include Healing. But I would allow him to also have his companion, since that's a part of being a Druid to me. Maybe take a look at the Arcane Evolved Greenbond, who could cast Cure Light Wounds a number of times equal to his WIS mod per day as a class ability. Less impressive than Channel Positive, but would help.
They all sound like good characters, ones that are based in the world and had some thought behind them, my concerns just from reading posts from a couple of DM's on this site is that Runelords has moments where the only real motivation is to stop evil and help the innocent.
Your paladin should eat this up, but the two neutral characters might have to be given something else to work with. I straight up told my players that only one of them could be Neutral, and that the game is designed for heroes, for the sake of having fun, make characters that are, or if push comes to shove, can become heroes. They had no problem with this.
The big problem moments that effected other games seem to be in the Skinsaw Murders (when the party leaves town) and the entire set up of Hook Mountain. There have been a number of thread that mention ways to deal with them, but mostly it comes down to what you think will motivate your players. Money? a friend in need? Revenge? Whatever.
The only other thing I can think of is to give them all good reasons for coming to Sandpoint to begin with. Maybe giving them a couple of ideas and asking them why they are showing up for the festival.
According to Pathfinder, Spell Like Abilities work just like normal spells except they have no Verbal, Somatic, Material, or Focus. So it's more like psionics.
I don't know if that's how it works in 3.5 or not, but that's the way my group always thought it was supposed to work.
Have fun playing and certainly tell us how it goes.
Sorry if I offended anyone. Jeez. I was trying to be helpful. I might regret sending this post, but oh well. I go back to work full time next week, so my ability to read and respond to these things is limited.
This long is a one, so I’m spoilering it for those who don’t care to read it. It’s mainly for the OP.
Spoiler:
As far as Splat books go, the complete books are fairly easy ones to come by at any gaming store. And Pathfinder seems to want us to use the other books, why give us more feats, if you don’t want us to use them? Also the whole point is to keep 3.5 around, not just use Pathfinder RPG. That’s their idea, not mine.
(This is for the guy who was against using Feats and only wanting to fix the Class abilities)
I don't see why you can't increase the effectiveness of a class by creating/using better feats for them? The Fighter is nothing but feats. True the Pathfinder version has more, but feats are feats are feats.
(Alright back to the OP)
For the record I was talking about the Paladin in general, not one character sheet, but if you want my opinion on what you should do with your character, here it is. I’m assuming your stats are in the order you showed them, with a Str score of 11.
You are not a front line combatant. Sorry. Get as much heavy armor as you can, maybe a tower shield (with a feat) and Aid Other as often as possible. Mix it up with Full Defense. From time to time attack, but with a +2 or +3 to hit, most likely you will miss. Go after the spellcaster and distract him. Use your character as a speaker for the group. His stats don’t support him being the fighter, not without a lot of magical aid. Hire a Warrior to protect/fight for him. Use Detect Evil and Sense Motive all the time, use Diplomacy and make monsters hate you less. Use the Heal Skill to treat deadly wounds and add your Wis score to the healing.
Sorry to say this, but if he feels like a sucky fighter, it's because you made him one. A Fighter with the same stats would work just as badly. Focus on where you made him effective.
As far as the first three levels being low powered, that's the case for most classes. But that doesn’t mean the Paladin is on par with the Warrior, nor does it mean that most of his abilities are useless. Let’s compare the Fighter and the Paladin. We could compare him to other classes, but if the problem is that he’s not a good enough fighter, this one seems the right class.
Hit Points the same, Skill Points the same, Saves the same, Weapons and Armor the same. So really the differences between the two classes are Class Skills and Class Abilities.
Skills: Paladins get social and healing based skills and Fighters get some more physical skills and intimidation skills. Outside of that they are fairly similar.
Class Abilities:
1st level: Smite Evil, Detect Evil versus one Bonus Feat. Smite Evil is more powerful than any Feat out there (at least those available at first level). Increase to both hit and damage, and it increases as you go up in level. At first level it could be as high as +5/+1 to an attack. I think it’s worthy of once per day status, but if you must simply increase the number of times per day to 3 (That’s the same as taking Extra Smiting, but at 1st level instead of 4th). With even a decent Strength score of say 14, Weapon Focus and a MW weapon, that’s a 50% chance of an AC of 19, pretty good for 1st level. And Detect Evil is the bane to many DM’s all over the world. Some say it’s broken and too powerful. Not combat effective, but not everything’s combat.
2nd level: Divine Grace and Lay on Hands versus a Bonus Feat and Bravery. Lay on Hands is more powerful than any feat you could get for what it does. Is it going to increase your damage and make you a better combatant, no; but there are no feats (that I know of, please correct me if I’m wrong) that allow you to heal others, multiple times a day at that. If that’s what you want to do, then it’s better than the Fighter. Divine Grace is simply better than Bravery (though Bravery is a great addition) Bravery effects fear only and maxes out at +5 at level 18, Divine Grace can start at +5 with the right stats. It’s one of the most powerful abilities in the game.
3rd level: Aura of Courage and Divine Health versus Armor Training. Both are defensive in nature and to me about the same. A +1 AC is great, no question and it gets more powerful latter, even better; but for now it’s just a +1. But immunity to both Fear and Disease is also awesome. And if you haven’t had a DM pull out the disease problems such as wererat bites or even simple Filth Fever, you’re lucky. At low levels disease sucks.
So in my mind the Paladin is on par with the Fighter, better in some ways. The only problem with the Paladin in 3.5 was the need to put high scores in Charisma, Wisdom, and Strength to be effective, and that after 8th level you felt like there was no reason to stick with the class. Pathfinder fixed those problems. Does every class need a complete over haul or some flashy new mechanic just to keep our interest?
At any rate, I felt the need to react to the negativity created by my last post. It’s out of my system now. Sorry. Hopefully this one won’t have the same effect, but I’m fairly certain it will.
A couple of things to think about. Most everything you guys are talking about has already been done in 3.5, and since Pathfinder is backwards compatible there is no reason to not use these fixes. They aren’t perfect, but they will help. Most of these come from Feats, and the increase in feats per character will make getting some of these more doable.
Increase Smite Damage: Use the feat from Complete Divine, Improved Smiting. It increases damage +1d6 and ignores DR. Not insanely powerful, but at 1st level it would bring a longsword (with let’s say Str 16, Charisma 14) up to +6 to hit and doing 1d8+4 +1d6 damage minimum 6 points and maximum 18 points. Much better than d8 +4
Add to that the old Smite Evil/Power Attack Combo. Negate the Power Attack by your Charisma bonus each time you use it. Sure you get no increase to hit, but the increase in damage should help.
By 4th level you could do the Smite Evil/Power Attack/Divine Might combo: Additional -1 to hit but a +d6+9 to damage. And that’s with a 14 Charisma and a one handed weapon.
Extra Smiting (Complete Warrior) increases the number of times per day you can Smite by 2. You can’t take this one until 4th level.
Increase Healing: Extra Lay on Hands brings up the number of times you can use the ability but there isn’t anything I know to increase the amount. However, even without any feats, you can use this a goodly number of times per day anyways. And yeah at 2nd level it sort of sucks, but you aren’t a Cleric. End of story. You can still heal people 6 hit points a day (Chr 14), better than any fighter.
Once you get up a few levels you radically change though. At 4th level you get Channel Positive Energy (at least 2 times a day) and 1 spell (Cure Light D8+4). You can take Extra Turning to increase the number of times to use this. Not as impressive as a Cleric, but again you’re not a Cleric. And by this point your Lay on Hands is healing 4 points each use.
Working with a Cleric/Bard you can use Sacred Boost to maximize any healing spells cast with in a round.
By 5th Level you can take Sacred Healing (Complete Divine) Fast Healing 3 for the party for rounds equal to Chr bonus.
General Feats to increase the Paladin (all from Complete Warrior) There are others, but these are my favorites.
Divine Might: Chr bonus to damage
Divine Shield: Chr bonus to AC
Divine Vigor: +2 temp hit points per level and +10’ to speed
Sacred Vengeance: +2d6 damage to all attacks in one round to against undead.
Try playing up the Stone Giants early on. Maybe Ironbriar knows more about the plot than the game makes out. Maybe he mentions his mistresses dark master, Mokmurian. Heck maybe he brings up that she has sisters plotting all over Varisa, and that soon cities like Turtleback Ferry and Sandpoint will be razed to the ground, blah, blah, blah..
They only have to think they know what's going on, hopefully you can get them to think that Mokmurian is the big boss, and then pull out the Runelord after they defeated him.
Well it's been mentioned in a few threads, some people moved Rannick closer to Sandpoint and loved it. I personally think that the travel is an interesting aspect to the story. A cool idea someone had was to use enchanted forests around turtleback to travel back to sandpoint area easily. If you did this you could alter the ending of Hook and have them rush to the aid of Sandpoint right at the end of the adventure.
First off, over the next little bit, use down time in the game to talk about the other areas in Varisa, make people think about life outside the town, it'll make people more willing to go if you already excited them about other places. Go ahead and mention the Ogres in Hook Mountain, it'll be many sessions before they ever have to go there.
What's the background of your players? Do you think you can come up with ideas on how to get them personally involved with any of the plots, such as family in Magnimar, or somesuch?
One of the things I want to do the next time I run Skinsaw is alter the events a little. Have less information for the party during the first murder, make it so they can't figure it out until a few murders in. Maybe a cool chase scene as they foul an attempted murder, something. It'll hopefully make tracking down the skinsaw man that much more important, and keeps you in Sandpoint a little longer. Also, I'm going to find a way to logically have the skinsaw man speak to the party while they're in the manor, some sort of disembodied voice where certain rooms get different personalities. It'll give you time to let slip any info about magnimar and makes the house more player involved, someone just wrote that they felt that it was just a bunch of traps and their players hated it.
I mentioned this to someone else who had troubles with this section, play up the connections between the murder victims, maybe the skinsaw man starts leaving a list of who he's killed behind or even tells you who his next victim is. The point is that Skinsaw is targeting people. And the players know this. But they don't know why he's going after these particular people. Then when they find the note (or alter it and leave a list of people to be killed off in the house) they will hopefully care that Skinsaw was sent by and working for someone else.
If this isn't enough to get them to go to Magnimar, don't force it. Let a few days go by and then send another killer out, this time just a skinsaw cultist. Or have someone come down and ask for help. The two cities are close enough that if they had similiar killings going on they might know about this. The Sheriff tells the party that this is just the tip of the iceburg as it were. If that's not enough, do a little side quest, something like Kobold King and jump to Hook Mountain.
You know your players better than anyone, what kind of stories do they like? If sending them to Tuttleback on official business isn't good enough, what about some NPC they like and trust asking them to help them make the trip to sell something or the like. You could use (female elven ranger, tired can't remember how to spell name) and play up her father, or cut that out entirely and just use a merchant. Or maybe if you have a ranger in the party, they once spent time with the Black Arrows, heck alter the story a bit and have one the PC's father stationed at Rannick. You've got the time to set that up.
If the players get into Skinsaw and you think you cna pull it off, how about trying to place evidence that the two Lamia Matriarchs are in communication somehow and the party finds out that the town is in danger. That way its a direct tie in and not two missions.
Once you've done that, the rest of the story goes pretty smoothly, except finding the runeforge, but that's a while down the line. I'm tired, can't think of anything else to say.
That's a really neat take on the Paladin. Good job.
I really like the Lay on Hands Points. I have no complaints with point based features.
My only thought was that with Smite taking the spells that the Paladin used to get, he loses out on the flexability of a large spell list. Maybe instead of gaining the ability to cast just Dispel Evil at a certain level, he can use Smite to cast any 4th spell in the paladin spell list.
Each one with a Bonus Fighter Upgrade, meaning if you used a Bonus Fighter Feat to gain the feat, it gets better after a certain level.
Each one with a Feat Boost ability. Fighters automatically get a certain number of Feat Boost Points (for lack of a better term) based on level, non-fighters can take a feat to get a boost point. Then you can use the Boost to gain a special ability from your feat. You can only do this on one particular feat once a day.
Double Feats: More impressive feats that require the fighter to use two feats at the same time to get (in BOXM every class gets a feat every level, so any level you get a Bonus Feat, you get two feats)
Uberfeats (silly name, maybe too powerful) High Level Feats that only the Fighter can get, requires you to lose a few older feats, but comes with lots of abilities and are really powerful.
Fighter Domains: I really loved the Domains in BOXM I, so it's not surprising I like these as well.
Fighters get a free domain at Level 1, and additional domains at higher levels. They represent your school of fighting, such as Agility, Dirty Fighting, Mounted Combat, Two Weapon Fighting, and Weapon and Shield.
Each one gives two abilities, one when you first get the Domain, and one after you've taken 8 feats that are related to the domain. So instead of nine specific abilities that the Arcane Schools give out, it's just a theme that your character has.
Then there is a list of anywhere from 14-20 feats for each Domain, one of which is considered the Key Feat. You don't have to take any of these feats if you don't want to and you don't gain any of them for free. However, in addition to gaining the second ability of the Domain for taking 8 of these feats, you can trade out any of them (except the Key feat, which often is a prerequisite for most of the feats anyways) you know for another feat in the Domain list. You must be able to meet all the requirements for the feat, and you must train for 1 full day to switch the feats. Once you've done this, you keep these feats until you decide to switch them again.
I will admit that some of the feats might be broken, but some of them are just plain awesome, such as feat that allows you to lower your AC to increase the AC of an ally next to you, or a feat that allows you to roll an attack to negate an incoming attack on you, or giving bonuses to allies based on level and Charisma as long they can hear/see you or following the predetermined plan you came up with earlier.
Fighting Styles Feat groups, allowing you to switch out any feat you know for another feat in that group that you could have.
40 pages of feats, most of them either Fighter only feats, or feats that increase in power after 9th level (or some other level) if and only if you got them as a Bonus Fighter Feat.
A few things for non-fighters, and a few things that will only work if your using BOXM I with them, such as the new hit point rules, or the increased Feats/level, but still I think this is going to be a really good read.
Like many of my posts, this is a long one. So long I felt the need to spoiler it into sections. But there is hopefully something in here that you will find useful.
First off, as far as Fighters having three good saves, hmm. I think it would make the Monk that much less appealing. What I would be interested in is a way to choose which Save is good and which two are bad. That way my dude with a sword is still Fort, while my archer is Reflexes. All the bonus feats make the fighter the most flexible of classes, except in Saves and Skills. And I totally agree with Fighters getting more Skill Ranks, however in the new system, I don’t really care if he gets any new class skills, a +3 is only a +3 after all.
And I like Psychic Robot’s +1/+2 idea for Weapon Training.
Fighter Only Feats:
Spoiler:
There are of course a number of feats with the Fighter in mind, these however are the only ones I’ve found that either you had to have a certain level in Fighter to get, or you needed a feat that only Fighters could get, such as Weapon Specialization. I put a brief description of the Player Handbook Two feats.
(PHB II did more for the fighter than just about any book, really improved the feat line up, and unlike Book of Nine Swords, it made Feats that a fighter could use, not new classes that were for fighter/mages.)
PHB II
Melee Weapon Mastery: BAB +8 Additional +2/+2 on all Slashing, Blunt, or Piercing weapons
Ranged Weapon Mastery: BAB +8 Additional +2/+2 on ranged slashing, blunt, or piercing attacks, and +20’ range.
Crushing Strike: BAB +14 Cumulative +1 to hit with each blunt weapon attack
Driving Attack: BAB +14 Special Bull Rush/Trip attack using piercing weapon
Slashing Fury: BAB +14 Two attacks as a Standard Action. Additional slashing weapon attack in a full attack, -5 on all attacks.
Weapon Supremacy: F18 +5 to any attack except the first, +1 AC, Take 10 on one attack per round. Plus additional benefits.
A PFRPG Fighter with Greater Weapon Specialization and Focus, Melee Mastery, Slashing Attack, and Weapon Supremacy (all Longsword), by 20th level, the base attack without strength or magic items would be:
+23/+23/+23/+13/+7 Where the third attack got the +5, and one of these would get to Take 10. Damage would be D8+6 per hit.
With a 20 Strength and a +5 weapon however:
+33/+33/+33/+23/+17 Damage D8+16.
And that’s only 7 feats.
There are so many feats that give new abilities for Fighters, some are amazing, some.. well not so much.
Book of Iron Might:
Spoiler:
And lastly, for those of you who haven’t checked out Book of Iron Might, from Malhavoc Press please do. I think that there are some great concepts that could be used to build off of. And frankly, it’s just a good book.
The Book of Iron Might details Maneuvers, which are combat options that anyone can attempt, such as Bull Rush, or Trip, except the maneuvers allow you to do area attacks, blind, daze, stun, reduce speed, and additional damage. The penalties involved with each one can get ridiculously high, so there are also a bunch of drawbacks, from Full Round Action, Provokes Attack of Opportunity, and even Provokes a free attack that automatically hits. You can create specific maneuvers in training, or make up maneuvers on the fly, up to you and the DM. The effect makes very unique combats, and lots of options.
The book also created Arcane Battle Feats, which combines the fighter and the mage, sort of like the BoNS, but does it through the use of Feats only, not a new class. Each feat gives you something much like a spell, most can only be used a number of times each day, and they range from energy attacks, animated weapons, and mild flight to name a few.
Fighting Style Feats are pretty good, there not super powerful, but they add a lot to your character. Pretty much you take a feat that is your style, such as Archer, Brawler, Fencer, or Tactical Genius. Each feat comes with a selection of five different abilities. When you gain the feat you get one ability, and you get one additional ability every time your BAB goes up +5. So if you took the Feat between levels 1-4, you’d have all five abilities by level 20.
My favorite thing about the book was it’s creation of Battlemind Feats. These are less magical, more mental/physical training feats that allow for some interesting strategy in fights, and have very neat training rules. You have to declare that you will take a feat two levels in advance. After one level, you start training in the skill, gaining a small benefit, and then you gain the Feat the next level. You keep both abilities.
Example-: Training period: with a full round action you study a single opponent, gaining +1 on attack rolls on him for the rest of the encounter. Feat: each round you may pick someone who has attacked you and gain a +1 to strike them. Each consecutive round they attack you; you get an additional +1 to a maximum of +5.
Many of these feats are based on fear effects, adding to surprise checks, initiative checks, and precision attacks.
You know what made the fighter really great in 2nd Ed. was Weapon Specialization. Back then at first level you got +1 to hit +2 to damage on one weapon. Weapon Mastery got you +3/+3 if I remeber correctly.
Keep in mind that you also had a limited weapon selection. You only knew how to fight with maybe ten weapons at level one. But the other classes didn't even have that. A rogue might have only known how to fight with a dagger and a shortsword at level one. Weapons would more like skills back then.
But what I really wanted to bring up was that what made the Fighter better than the Ranger or Paladin was that Weapon Specialization also increased the number of attacks per round you got.
If I was specialized in the longsword I'd get one attack this round and two attacks the next, and it would go back and forth 1/2/1/2.
One option you could do is to have weapon focus act as both the standand feat and weapon specialization for the fighter, but also increasing the number of attacks with that weapon by one (every other level is fine with me, but some people might not like that). You could limit the number of times you can take this version of weapon focus 1 per every 5 levels, or maybe even only once.
First off, thanks for the link to Upping Nualia, I hadn't read that one yet and it was really helpful. In regards to the skinsaw mask, hmm. I hadn't thought of that. They're priests of murder, and maybe the mask needs to be just for them. I do think it would be neat to tie them in together, maybe thur Tsuso as suggested, she did work with them for a while in Magnimar. And it would be neat to foreshadow them a bit before Skinsaw.
I like the graverobbing idea on some level, but not sure if I'd want to do it or not yet. Simply that the whole attack on the town in many ways was a smoke screen (pardon the pun) to stealing the body, so a graverobbing moment would require a mild rewrite. Mild because I don't think the party would ever know that.
One idea that did come to mind after reading the graverobbing comment was on Nualia's thugs. Using the Yeth hounds. Except they can't handle sunlight, so they would have to be used in the nighttime.
I both love and hate monsters like Yeth Hounds. I hardly see them used, and they have some neat things to them. All that I like. What I hate is that they have a DR 10/Silver and unlike the werewolf, very few people would know this. So that means a much harder fight, even if the party has silver weapons, and most likely an awkard moment of roll Knowledge: you just remembered their weak against silver.
I really liked the thugs from Skinsaw too. I had them show up in Burnt Offerings, they knew and were sort of rivals to the party Rogue. They didn't really like each other, but never got in a fight or anything. I wish I had used them more, but the story kind of left them behind.
I recently picked up Classic Monsters Revisited, and of course I’m really enjoying it; but after reading the bugbear section it made me wish I had done more with Bruthazmus. Which made me wish I had done more with all the villains in Burnt Offerings in general.
One of the problems with dnd adventures is that it is very difficult to present a villain at one point in the story and then later have the PC’s fight them. Generally speaking the first time you meet a villain is the last time you meet them as well. It really adds something to the game if the PC's have some personal experience with the bad guys before they attack them.
So I’ve been trying to think of ways that I could bring Bruthazmus, Nualia, Orik, and maybe Lyrie into the story earlier. The only place I can think is during the Festival. It would make sense to me that Nualia would risk going back to town to retrieve her father’s bones. She hated enough to kill him; I could see her hating him enough to dig him up personally. And she could wear a mask, maybe even a Skinsaw mask to continue the tie in with the next book?
At any rate, if I did this I’m trying to figure out what’s the best way to pull it off, with a few things in mind:
One: the PC’s have to feel like they accomplished something, not feel 100% defeated. Firstly, because it’s a bad way to start the campaign and also because I still want to run Part Two with them as town heroes.
Two: I want the PC’s to recognize the villains later, maybe even interact with at least one of them.
One of my ideas is to have one of the party members have a mentor, they are 1st level characters, so the idea is that they are just leaving their training and are now off on their own. One of the players, preferably someone of the fighter/ranger/barbarian type, would still have their teacher with them. The mentor could be the one who brings them into Sandpoint, maybe this person used to live there and was well liked by people like Belor, Ameiko, and Shalelu. During the initial attack by the goblins, the mentor splits up to cover more ground, instructing the player character to help as many of the townsfolk as he/she can.
Then during Die, Dog, Die, the players can see the north gate of the city, where the mentor is fighting Orik in melee combat. At first it’s just the two of them and the mentor is winning, so the PC’s don’t have to worry, it’s just letting them know what else is going on. Then they look back and the mentor is fighting Nualia and Bruthazmus at the same time, while an injured Orik is off to the side with a group of horses.
Now maybe Bruth attacks from behind, or Nualia does her Lamashtu’s Mark ability, but something distracts the mentor just as the PC is watching and then the Nualia kills the mentor in a way that not even raise dead can bring back, such as beheading.
If the party attempts to get closer Bruth stays behind with his bow and shoots at them as the others ride off. If they continue pursuit, then maybe I can have a cool scene in the woods with Bruth stalking them and playing with them, but never attacking, sort of how the Bugbears are described in CMR.
Another idea is to have the party face off against the villains directly during the festival, but frankly I’m not sure how to do that and not have 1) the party is defeated or killed, 2) the party accidentally kills Nualia or at least prevents escape, or 3) the party feels cheated, like there was no way for them to win. I don’t have a problem if the party is able to kill off any of the other characters (Orik, Lyrie). And I’d want to keep Tsuso out of this so that he’s not considered a villain when his sister sends him the note later on in the adventure.
If someone has an idea beyond any of these, or comments on how they’ve handled bringing a villain into the plot early, please do so. Or if you can think of any reasons not to do this as well.
I really liked Runelords. I will admit that yes by having multiple writers working on the adventures, some ideas got lost in the mix. But I think it’s worth the minor effort to work around those.
And even though I’m becoming a hardcore Golarion fan, I disagree entirely with the idea that Runelords was a mistake or a waste. (And at least in my gaming store, sales of the books disagree with that as well) It was the very nature of the trip around Varisa that appealed to me. I wanted to learn more about the locations. Heck, Rise of the Runelords is why I’m a hardcore Golarion fan.
And it wasn’t lost on me that Runelords also goes into the history of Varisa. There’s a good reason why this is the first Adventure Path. You can’t fully understand a location until you understand how it got there.
After this summer, I’m hoping to form a new group in my current place of living, and even though part of me really wants to move on to Crimson Throne (I’ve now read the second chapter). One: because it’s new and we all like new thinks. And Two: because I like urban adventures. But if I’m going to start up a new Varisa campaign, I’d rather start with Runelords and run it again. I never got a chance to finish it with my last group, but also it defines the world so well.
Now if I can just fit those Gamemastery modules in somewhere.
And I don’t want to harp on this, but I will point out that if I showed up to a game that you ran and gave you a character with STR 14, DEX 13, CON 13, INT 12, WIS 12, and CHR 12, no one would think me weak.
Yet no one would think me powerful.
As heroes go, that’s pretty average.
That’s 28 points.
At my game table, if there is less than a single 16, you get to reroll. One 16 and a bunch of 11 and 12's is a tough character to play with.
Is it realistic, sure. But that's not Hercules, Conan, Indiana Jones, or Luke Skywalker. Well maybe Star Wars Luke.
I feel that the Arcane Item Bond is so powerful that we might stop seeing familars in games. My plan is to allow both options and give anyone who really doesn't want a familiar a bonus feat instead.
I most likely will do the same for Nature and Divine Bond as well.
What about improving the Fighter only Feats? Something like what the Book of Iron Might did, but go further with it? Not to mention the Combat Maneuvers.
That way the class isn't radically changed but the options for fighters increases.
In that book they had (I don't have it in front of me, so I might get some of this wrong)
Arcane Battle Feats: sort of fighter/mage type actions.
BattleMind Feats: sort of warrior monk type actions
And Fighting Style Feats: Each feat created a bunch of different abilities that you could pick from every +5 base attack.
Frankly there are lot of fighter prestige classes with class abilities that could easily become Feats. Defesive Stance from the Dwarven Defender for example. It's fairly powerful, but it's so limited by the lack of movement.
Most fighter feats are the same basic thing over and over, it would nice to have more options with each feat. Like a feat that offers at least two combat options, or even some non-combat options.
Also, I'd like to cut the amount of semi useless feats that are needed to take other feats, such as Weapon Focus. With the new Weapon Training ability, it seems really pointless for a fighter. Don't get me wrong, I like a +1 as much as anyone, but aren't more interesting things that I could be doing?
And I don't really think that a Fighter should have all the options of say a wizard, because there is a feeling that comes from playing a Fighter. A fighter with boots of flying, swords of fireball shooting, and shields of stoneskin is a wizard. If I could swing my sword and hit 20 orcs I'd feel a little odd.
The book of nine swords has some interesting stuff in it, but I was hoping for more things for the fighter.
Options. Not new classes.
And yeah 4 skill points and Perception added. Maybe the ability to move with Acrobatics too.
As far as Divine Bond works, I got the feeling that the lack of stacking meant if you could increase your weapon +2, and you already have a +1 longsword, you could make it a +2 longsword or a +1 flaming, flaming burst longsword. You could just make it a +1 flaming longsword, but then you are wasting a +1 somewhere.
Non LG Paladins. To me a Paladin is defined by Goodness, while a Knight is defined by Lawfulness. So I have no problems with a NG, CG, or LG Paladin. It doesn't bother me. But I can understand why someone else would feel otherwise. In the end, I'm fine either way.
And one last thing. I was thinking about what Glan Var said about a point based system creating balance between the characters, which is true. However, I don't know if that is a fair system for dnd.
What I mean is that certain classes only need one ability score to be truly effective. Wizards need Intellgence, and it could be argued that Fighters only need Strenght. If some of there other scores are less than wonderful, they can still do everything they're supposed to do. Other classes need more than one ability score to be truly effective. Clerics need Wisdom, Charisma (for Turn Undead), and Strength. Monks need Strength, Wisdom, and Dexterity. And so forth. The more complicated the class the more ability scores you need to be effective.
So if the point based system allows only one ability to be high at the expensive of others being very low, it's creating classes who are going to feel far weaker than they should be. It's hard enough to play a Bard, but to say the only way to play a Bard with a high Charisma is to suffer in the other stats, making him that much less a combat class is really hard for me to get behind.
The only point based system I've used and been happy with is the one that Iron Heroes came up with. You could easily have a character with 16, 16, 14, 14, 12, 10. Or 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8. Or straight 14's. This breakdown made me feel really good about my characters, without seeming over powered. But maybe that's just me.
However, there is nothing stopping a Paladin from putting his highest ability score into Strength. As long as he has a fair, 12-14 Charisma, he isn't that different from a Fighter. But as long Str is high up on your list, a paladin can be really effective.
A PFRPG Fighter has 20 Feats, plus Weapon Training and Armor Training. I'm not going to say that isn't far better than the combat abilities of the Paladin; but the Paladin has 10 feats, Smite Evil, and Divine Bond, and Spells.
They have the same base attack, the same Hit Dice, and the same saves (except a Paladin has Divine Grace, so should have better saves), and if they've got a fair DM, the same amount of money to spend on equipment.
The Paladin can put his Feats into some great abilities that can be used over and over. And in many books you can find Feats designed with the Paladin in mind. Are all of them amazing, no; but some of them are.
The new Divine Bond gives you the ability to add up to +6 into an already magical weapon for minutes per level. So let's say you've got a +5 holy avenger by 20th level. Now you can bump it up to a Keen, flaming, flaming burst, disrupting holy avenger. 20 minutes of total nastiness.
I'll grant you that the 3.5 Paladin's lack of feats made him feel far less than the 3.5 Fighter. Increasing Feats for the Paladin changes all that.
Should Smite Evil be something he can use more often, perhaps. But not on the level that Rage can be used. Smite Evil is simply more powerful than Rage. It might not seem like it at first level, but when your adding +3 to hit and +10 to your damage at 10th level as a free action, and you can do so say 56 times a day, it'll be a tad bit more powerful than +2/+2.
Even with the Rage Powers, many of the truly powerful ones are 6 points, which means at best class level/day.
If we were to alter the number of time per day, no more than class level/day. But then, Extra Smite sort of already does that, so why would we need to change anything?
Not trying to be difficult, just pointing out that the class is pretty darn good.
I have to say, after looking over the Paladin, I don’t think the class as written is flawed. The Paladin has always needed fair ability scores, that’s true. But for good reason, he can do a lot more stuff than the Fighter or the Barbarian.
A Paladin is a combatant, so he should have fair Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. He’s a charismatic and clever individual, and as such he should have a fair Intelligence, Charisma, and Wisdom. That being said, he should have at least a 14 Wisdom, 14 Charisma (if not Higher), 14 Strength, and the rest can be lower if they must, but preferably no less than 12. But honestly, a paladin should have a few exceptional scores of 16-18 as well. If this can’t be done with 28 points, it’s because the 28 point buy is flawed in my opinion. It’s designed to create semi realistic characters, average folk, not heroes. A paladin will never be and should never be average. He’s a classic hero of legend and nothing less is acceptable. I honestly think he can only be made with a die roll and good rolls.
There has been a lot of talk about the Paladin not being able to hold his own against a Fighter in terms of combat. Yes. That might be true. And he shouldn’t be able to. That’s not the Paladin’s job.
Fighters train in combat and nothing else. They should be better with a sword and arrow. They should hit more often and do on average more damage.
Put a Fighter against a Fighter.
Put a Paladin against Spellcaster or arcane monster. With a high Charisma and Divine Grace, he’s got high saving throws, and spells like Resist Energy, Protection from Evil, and the truly awesome Holy Sword. Not enough, look at Complete Divine. Lots of good spells in there. And now he’s immune to Charm and Fear.
A paladin at low levels should be fighting evil spellcasters, demon cultists, and the like. And later on, demons and dragons. What good is the vast majority of his abilities against a Fighter?
Also, focus your paladin on the type of Bond you’re going to take. If you’re going to get a Mount, take the Mounted Feats. A paladin in open terrain rules the battlefield.
If you’re not going to go that route, look at the Divine Feats from Complete Warrior. Divine Might alone gives the paladin a lot of power. Oh and by 5th level, with a 14 Strength, a 16 Charisma, and taking Extra Smite, you can roll a +10 doing D8+7 4 times a day with a non magical weapon. Combined with Divine Might and it goes up to D8+10. Combined with Power Attack and a +1 weapon, maybe even Weapon Focus. You get the idea.
And when you run out of Smite Evils and Spells, try Laying on Hands. By 5th level, you’ve got hopefully 15 points to spread out to people. No it’s not much, but it’s more than the Fighter can do, and you can never roll a 1 on a cure light wounds.
Oh and let’s not forget the much improved Turn Undead, which you should hopefully have 6 times a day. With you around, the party has a much easier time getting though the day.
As far as Paladins of non LG alignment. I like this idea. (check out Book of Hallowed Might: Awesome) At first I thought it would take up too much space to show four of even nine different Paladins, but with the amount of pages dedicated to the Wizard and Sorcerer, maybe it's not a big deal. I'm just not sure if enough people want this to justify the space needed.
By that I'm also saying that a LG paladin should have different abilities than a CG Paladin. Not just a different alignment.
I really like what Monte Cook did to familiars in the Book of Experimental Might, and plan to use those rules for any familiar I run.
For those of you who don’t know the book, he turned it into an optional ability (sort of like a Feat) that had a starting level of power, and then other feats could be spent on it to increases it’s power.
The idea is that your familiar is a creation of your mind, just a helpful presence. And you can talk to it to gain mild help with knowledge rolls and the like. The familiar also has the ability to manifest itself into any Tiny animal form it wants, then it gives you Alertness and a bonus to caster level. But the familiar can’t move away from the 5’ space your in. Anyone else that touches the familiar makes it disappear for a minute or so and gives you a penalty to caster level.
With upgrades, familiars can move further away from you, they can manifest into more powerful creatures, including elementals types. At this point the familiar can fight and touch things, and if killed off, he disappears for a few weeks.
Monte explains that his complaint with familiars is that no one remembers to use them, and he figured if you give them more flavor abilities and made the player have to take the time to manifest or interact with them in order to use the benefits they give, more players would actually use their familiars. He also said he got a lot of ideas from Pullman’s His Dark Material’s deamon.
I think one of the problems is that you're looking for one really long adventure, such as maybe Temple of Elemental Evil, which is fine; but not really what Runelords is. I've only had the chance to read part one of Crimson Throne, so maybe it'll be more to your liking. Rise of the Runelords is a group of interconnected short stories, that all lead up to a big adventure.
And yes the first three stories are less connected than the final three. However, there are a lot of connections between the adventures, if they're run correctly.
The Sihedon Rune is the primary plot thread from one adventure to the next, but there is also the Lamia Matriarchs, both of which are somewhat masterminds of two of the first three adventures. These creatures are rare, and assuming your characters aren't on any side quests, they haven't seen anything like them before. Also, I don't want to give anything away, but in the first adventure there is a very clever reveal of the main villain. And his entrance into the game is very carefully laid out.
If you've finished the first three adventures, you should know that something weird is going on, that a certain symbol is showing up everywhere, and that people are being murdered and war is brewing. You should also know that there is a connection between all the murder victims, and that the symbol is connected to ancient Varisa and that many of the locations you're going to (Thistletop, Catacombs of Wrath, Magnimar, Skull's Crossing) are also connected to the old Empire.
You should notice that snake women (who should have told you at one point who they work for) and if you've completed Hook Mountain, you should also know that the final boss of that adventure also works for him as well.
As far as the travel goes, there is a really good reason for the party to want to go to Magnimar. In the Foxglove Manor, did you guys find the note written to the Skinsaw man explaining that he works for someone else who lives in Magnimar, and that she told him who to kill? If you ignore Magnimar, why can't she just send more killers to Sandpoint? So if you care about the city, why wouldn't you feel compelled to travel there? If you didn't find the note, wouldn't news of the exact same murders happening in a town not too far away make you wonder if there isn't a connection between the two?
And for the record, at no point does the adventure claim you should move to Magnimar, just complete you mission and return to Sandpoint. If you decide to stay, the game keeps going without effect, but you don't have to.
As far as Hook Mountain goes. The fact that the Lord Mayor of Magnimar askes them to go and see if something has happened to the rangers stationed there should tell them there is a chance that something really bad has happened, maybe a plaque, maybe something else, who knows. They haven't heard from the Black Arrows in a long time, which is odd. No one has heard from the city.
To me this should show the PC's that they are no longer just Sandpoint heroes, but heroes to the rest of the world as well. And then by having Shalelu come with them, with a personal reason for going herself (that being her step father) if the job isn't enough, maybe a request from a friendly NPC. She doesn't want to take the journey herself.
As far as feel like this is one big coinsidence, think of it more as the plot of the first game is so large that it's affecting the whole of Varisa, you aren't showing up at the exact same time as the villains, the villains are everywhere and you're just now beginning to see that.
Also, just wondering, what type of characters do you have?
Runelords (and from what I've seen Crimson Throne) need heroes. Characters that hear about people being murdered and think, "What can I do to help?" Or at least, how much money is there in it for me? At least then the DM can bribe you. But if that's not a good enough reason for you to do something, I'm not sure if any of these games will appeal to you and you should talk to your DM about how to alter the games so that you characters are more interested in the events.
Yeah, this is a tough one. It's just as hard for the DM as it is for the party. Unless you want a TPK. But here are a few ideas to keep in mind if you don't want one.
First off: Don't let them get to the Shadow Tower without fully resting. Be sneaky, if they are using the ravens to find the Shadow Tower, have them lose the first few, suggest it's too dark to see. During the daytime, they can follow the bird and reach the place.
If they are using information from the uncharmed Ironbriar, then not only do they know how tough she is, but also give them a few ideas of how to fight her. Work together, she's a powerful spellcaster and a tough fighter, and so forth.
How to hit her:
AC 26 +Mage Armor (AC29), + Shield (AC33) + Haste (AC34). To effectively hit her you'd need a +19 to hit.
The hope is that your PC's are 6th or maybe 7th level, so at best you could hope for a +7BAB +4STR +1WF +1 Weapon = +14. So even rolling a 19 is a miss.
Option One: Teamwork. Flanking bonus +2, Charging bonus +2, Aid Other bonus +2. Now one Fighter could have up to +20 to hit, meaning a roll of 14 or better hits. Not prefect, but can be done. To set this up, use this kind of teamwork on the PC's when they're fighting the Skinsaw Cultist and make certain they know where the bonuses are coming from. The two fights are really close together and it will make the cultist fight more fun anyways.
Option Two: Touch attacks. Even with her insane AC, she stills has only a Touch AC of 17. You could Trip her, a little odd considering her snake body, but still, she'd lose 4 points of AC. Or grapple. To set this up, use a few touch attacks on the party fighter or cleric. Goblins can make use of this in the Glassworks fight or in Thistletop.
Option Three: Buffs. Once you've figured out a way to get past the Silence spell, the cleric is going to want to put the bless on, aid, whatever. Again, use the Skinsaw cultist to show the PC how this is done.
Option Four: Dispel Magic. Once you've gotten past the Silence spell, dispell her Buffs. Sure she can recast them, but it'll take time to get them back up. And if she's flying at the time, she might fall to the ground as well.
Fighting the flying ability:
Flying isn't as bad as some people make out, her tactics suggest that she loves melee. She doesn't start flying around and casting until taken down a bit. By then hopefully the party is doing alright.
Fighting the silence:
Option One: leave the area. She can follow and now you've got more spells and abilities. But then she can cast Silence again.
Option Two: Have a Bard in the party. Countersong doesn't effect Silence in the rules, but the 1st level spell Joyful Noise from Complete Adventurer does. Suggest to your bard way back in Burnt Offerings to consider taking Joyful Noise, or at least give them the ability to buy a scroll of it well before this fight happens. If they forget to use it, oh well, but I love seeing the Bard look good.
If you don't have a Bard in the party, try a scroll of Joyful Noise in a shop and let the party Rogue see it. You can do this as far back as in Burnt Offerings, maybe it belongs to Ameiko. The point is to get it in their hands. A successful Use Magic Device roll can get it to work.
Joyful Noise lasts as long as the caster concentrates. Make certain the party wizard understands the beauty of Dispell Magic by this point. Give Justice Ironbriar two scrolls of Dispell magic and use one on the party. It'll make the Ironbriar fight a bit more difficult, but not super hard.
Option Three: throw out the timber. This doesn't seem a good option to me, since most likely your PC's will never know where the silence is coming from.
Option Four: spells without words. There aren't many spells without words in the player's, so ease the spells you think the party could use for this fight from other sources slowly as you go, drop a scroll of Ice Knife into the game somewhere.
Handling the Flesh to Stone: Remember that she goes for someone near the edge, not the best target. So don't use this spell the best way you could, don't go for the Rogue or Wizard. This is Fort save DC 15. If you use it on a fighter or cleric they have a fair chance of saving from this spell. If you can, always shoot for a Cleric. First off, at the begining of the combat, he can't cast spells, so if you take him out of the fight for 10 rounds, it isn't the end of the world. Just make sure to show how close he is to the edge so that the rest of the party can think about how best to protect their healer.
Handling Spell Resistance:
Spell Penetration: Even if you get past the silence spell, you have to beat that SR. With Spell Penetration, a 6th level caster has a 50% chance of pulling this off. Considering the amount of SR in the game and adventure, this is a really good feat to consider for any spell caster. Play up the Sinspawn's SR in the first adventure as much as you can, make your spell caster feel useless and frustrated in those fights, where the party has a good chance of winning anyways so that he might take the Feat and finally feel good about having it now.
No Resistance: Find spells that beat SR naturally like acid arrow and use them against the party in earlier fights. Anything to keep these spells in the party wizards head.
There are other ideas, and if I can think of them, I'll try to post them up.
The problem (at least in this thread) is about hardwired characters, specifically the Wizard and Specialization.
First off, I think it important to note that we are talking about the Wizard, which since 3E has been shown as the book learned magic user, as compared to the Sorcerer. Perhaps after looking at the Pathfinder Sorcerer, we’ll see that the design concept was in fact to create a more hardwired mage with the Wizard. They all went to school (or Mentored, or some such), and so all learned similar things.
I’m really looking forward to what Jason and Paizo are going to do with the Sorcerer. And maybe they will be more your cup of tea.
But personally, I really like the new Specializations and Domain rules. I like the fact that they both have common threads; it creates a unity to the classes. And I would point out that being able to use spells from the opposed school gives far more flexibility to the former version of the specialized Wizard, since they were even more limited by the spells they couldn’t ever use. It also Specialist Abilities, and wonderful 1st and 2nd level abilities, which vastly improve the Wizard in general, since running out of spells at low levels is a bad thing. Also with his new system, Jason has done some of the work for me. My Enchanter doesn’t have to use a spell slot on Charm Person, because he gets 1 per 2 caster levels. Awesome. I would have memorized that spell at least twice anyways.
And if you truly hate the way specialization works, there is an easy fix. You could always say any spell that can only be used 1/day can be replaced with any spell of the same school of magic.
And finally, I would also like to point out that in many ways all dnd spellcasters are hardwired. You have nine levels of spells (or less, depending on your class). Within those spell levels, there are, I don’t know, 20 spells each. And yes there are plenty of additional spells created in many books, but there is still a list that you must pick from. Add to that, you have to choose what spells you know each day and that’s it. Picked the wrong spells today and you’re out of luck.
Compare this to the freeform spell casting of Mage, or Ars Magica, or even Talislanta and you feel very controlled and hardwired. I’m not saying that dnd is better or worse, but when your playing dnd, you have certain expectations. The limitations of magic are one of them. (For the record, check out Ars Magica. That might be the game for you.)
I can’t fault someone for making a version of a 3E Specialist Wizard and giving me a specific spell to cast. It didn’t bother me when I played a Cleric and got one of two specific domain spells, it doesn’t bother me here.
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