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A cleric of Desna is able to summon a Lyrakien (Skinsaw Murders, p86) with Summon Monster II. For most clerics, at 3rd level, the summon would last 3 rounds.
Is there anything inherently wrong with a cleric who summons Lyrakien and then has them immediately use all 3 of their cure light wounds spells?
Instead of directly casting Cure Moderate Wounds (for 2d8+3), this is effectively 3d8+12 since the Lyrakien is CL 4th.
The Lyrakien is definitely more versatile, beyond just being used for the healing, it could make use of it's flight, Desna's Glare, Confusion or other abilities to help through a tactical challenge.
As a DM I like the RP value of a Desnan cleric beseeching Joidyrilli the lyrakien pixie for aid - it's more interesting than casting the 50th cure spell directly or from a wand.
Question is - is it balanced? It's a weaker heal in a single round, so it wont take the place of a Cure Moderate if your main line warrior needs to get back 2d8+3 in 6 seconds, but it does have the benefit of at least fire and forget for 3 rounds, creating a tiny flying medic for a fight, which is pretty cool.
Without thinking, I made a middle-aged cleric for a campaign. I didn't adjust the Str/Dex/Con or Int/Wis/Cha - I simply wanted to play someone "older" (makes me shudder to think 37 is old).
For the DMs out there - do you enforce that new PCs are in the acceptable starting age range? Do you let PCs be any age they want? Do you play with the modifiers to abilities if so?
If I threw 3 grizzly bears at the party that's supposed to be an EL 7. If you consider that the group of 6 4th level PCs is an APL 5, then this should be a "hard fight."
Your group will have an easy time if you pick monster choices that they operate best against that don't use tactics. If you are looking to “fix” the “broken” system, imagine you read this line “if your group contains a high number of melee combatants in heavy armor, consider generic melee monsters to be 1CR lower.”
Remember with 6 PCs, 2 clerics, 1 paladin, lots of armor, 20-point buy, and some "fudge" if they are veterans, you may even round the APL up to 6 for an "average fight". These average fights merely consume wand charges, spell slots, potions, and shouldn’t really risk death.
Let's look at some average fights:
A pair of harpies could provide a more interesting fight than a pair of bears. This CR4 creature can attack your party's will saves, use their ability to Fly, and go in for the folks who are not wearing full plate. This should force the group to spend some healing, cast some spells, and at least do something besides swing at a monster standing there. There should be no threat of death in this fight, but the wizard might feel a bit scared if half the group is fascinated and 2 harpies swoop in to flank him.
What next... say a mummy (CR5) with a couple skeletons (CR1). You have some crazy will saves maybe someone important takes ability score damage, hampering them later.
Toss a CR5 gibbering mouther at them. Maybe the mouther starts on a ledge, or around a portculis that needs to be opened. Its CR5 so its just an average fight (or even below average for this group), but there's some fun with its spit blinding people, its gibbering confusing people, and DR to overcome.
To really make things fun, then toss a Sorcerer with some fighter mooks their way. The fighters can be decked in full plate with shields and harry the melee PCs. The sorcerer can overhear the gibbering fight, casting Resist on both guards then fly on himself. When the party arrives, he can unload several fireballs into melee exercising your group's reflex saves, which by the sound of things are probably terrible. The sorcerer’s familiar could be hitting the “tanks” 60% of the time with ranged touch attacks.
It shouldn't be too hard to "eyeball" CR for things, discounting melee monsters by 1CR and even considering adding 1CR to things your group is unoptimized to handle. You'll find an encounter where the party has to leap bridges, or make Acrobatics check to move half speed across slippery terrain on a ledge are probably much more than a +1 CR change for your group.
A Goodman Games module "The Mysterious Tower." (It wasn't that good.) I used it for one trap and two combat encounters - both of which were trounced. After that I started creating my own encounters, which worked only somewhat better.
The Mysterious Tower spoilers:
There's 3 owlbear encounters in the adventure. The easiest one is the single sleeping owlbear, which lists as EL2 - a slam dunk for a 1st level party of 4 players.
There's 2 other owlbear encounters - a mated pair, and an owlbear with 2 young.
It also shows the Gelatinous Cube as a mere EL3, which is also a slam dunk for your group, even if they were 4 PCs of level 2.
The ooze should have had a pretty good chance to jump whoever first walked into Room 26, especially since the shriekers in the earlier room would have been making a ton of noise. It's basically a DC15 Perception check for whoever goes first into that room, or surprise, the character actually steps INTO the cube.
From this module, give the Djinni, or 4 animated coffins with 10 skeletons, or 2 earth elementals a try, as those are some of the more difficult encounters. If the party is having an easy time with a given room.
Even still, if you completely ignore its PF vs 3.X, you'd want to probably soup up those encounters since you have a party of 6 with better-than-usual statistics.
The earth elementals for example - Instead of 2, use 3. Instead of using the printed 30hp, give them their maximum of 44hp.
The encounters all in question that have been called "really easy" should be relatively easy, since they are warm up ones (the single owlbear, the gel cube). There's still several harder ones, before getting to the end encounters.
The printed module even tells you what to do if your party is strong, saying "Double the number of owlbears in areas 12, 13 and 14 and make them all awake".
Just be sure you warn your group before next session that they've been on easy encounters, below their challenge level, and you'll be running the harder stuff with the "stronger parties" recommendation - because with 6 people, using Pathfinder rules, and 20pt buy, they qualify for those recommendations!
From the sneak peek in the Paizo blog, I'm curious what the archetypes change for the class. Breaker, Brutal Pugilist, Drunken Brawler, Elemental Kin, Hurler, Savage Barbarian... so many tasty sounding variations.
I'm also interested in the Fighter archetypes, too. Haven't seen any teasers there, though.
"That's your grandpappy's meteor hammer? What a coincidence -- this is my grandpappy's launching crossbow!"
"Hey, you guys got a weapon from your grandpappy, too? That's where I got this falcata!"
"Yeah, and that's where I got my injection spear! There's a lot of history in this ol' injection spear..."
Yeah, within the past month this has happened now in *multiple games* for me... you have foretold the future. Now it's a bit trite, but the trait's just so good, players can't help themselves!
Nothing like a level 1 sorcerer running around with an Elven Curve Blade and having +5 to hit at 1st level. Or a 1st level Inquisitor using Mark of Justice to ramp up to +8 to hit with Granpappy's exotic weapon at 1st level to make the Fighter/Paladin/etc say "whaaa?"
Raw material cost: 2000gp
List price of goods created: 6000gp
This is a 60% margin on raw goods. Lots, and I mean lots of stuff in the world has a higher margin than this. DeBeer's margins are probably higher than this, by a lot.
However, Bob the Mage, if he truly wants to make this a business is going to have other costs besides the rubies. He's probably going to have some place he does this work, and stores his unfinished and finished inventory. He might have a shop somewhere. He might market his goods to the nobility in all the neighboring cities, hiring carts, renting stalls in markets and bazaars, etc. He might have to deal with petty theft from his employees. He'd probably spend 80% of his time on the road, going to parties of the rich and wealthy, trying to convince them that "Bob's Rubies" are the best in town. He might need to have sales, marking them down to 75% of price to beat out Joe's Rubies. He doesn't want to handle direct sales? Well all those jewelry stores in town aren't going to buy at-cost from their supplier. They are probably hoping for 25-30% margin themselves.
If you look at any jewelry business, they have pretty good margins on the raw materials, but a decent amount of costs otherwise. When it comes down to everything all-in, your wizard is probably as profitable as any other jeweler or gem merchant. Or maybe, maybe has 5-10% better margins, letting him live a life comparable to any other jeweler in the kingdom, maybe with an extra servant, or a slightly larger manor than his competitors.
What separates this character from another BBEG for the party to defeat?
Killing "other evil guys" doesn't make someone good. Evil guys kill each other all the time.
Would the party all cheer or feel relief if this character died?
If this character wasn't in the party, and they encountered him in a dark dungeon where he was manufacturing his trench coat from faces of other evil creatures, how would they deal with him?
Usually the question about "is this evil" comes up because someone wants to Smite something, or Detect Evil. If this was an NPC, it would be tough not to allow the smite, or not to register a faint aura here.
When I think of CN, I think of a Wemic or a Wild Elf. Sure they might make a necklace out of teeth as a primitive custom. They'd get a decent circumstance penalty in civilized areas if they wore their necklace.
There's an alignment system somewhere where you can be something akin to C3E10 which is 3 clicks Chaotic, and 10 clicks Evil. When determining alignment, I tend to look at a system similar to this. It only takes CnE1 to register as evil. Using a system like this, you can't be "truly neutral". You could be CxG1 or CxE1 where you are the slightest click to good or evil.
One of my gripes about 3.5 was the number of players who chose their god based on domains because there was such a huge difference in power between them. Seems like the tradition continues :(
+1 on this comment.
A completely separate discussion could be had here. Your standard Pathfinder NPC Cleric of Desna, or Cleric of Shelyn can outperform a Cleric of Gorum or a Cleric of Iomedae in a duel by taking advantage of the little perks their domains grant.
Oh, and WTB a board admin to correct the misspelling of "Opinion" in the thread's title!
At low levels it is a far better cleric; melée and especially melée clerics rule the world here.
Maybe it's the adventures I'm playing in (Paizo ones), but they're pretty well balanced for everyone to shine.
I've seen so many cases now the domain ability useful at level 1 & 2. Its the encounters we're seeing at the table where there's *always* a bad guy armored up to AC22+ at level 1. The super-optimized melee DPS runs in with a +6 hit (+4 Str/Dex, +1 Weap Focus, +1 BAB) and connects when they roll 16+. The holy warrior cleric (if he were there), I pray they stopped at a 16 Str, and is maybe hitting with rolls of 17+. If they're lucky a bard plays a tune or someone casts Bless. Now they're hitting 14-15+ but they are still missing 75% of swings.
Now the domain cleric stands and fires off 3 ranged touch attacks and does the bulk of the damage since they are typically only trying to hit AC12.
I've seen the domain cleric cast Enlarge Person in 2 encounters in a day, where the 2sq x 2sq "tank" (in one case the cleric themselves) completely changes the tactical lay of the encounter with reach.
I've seen the domain cleric of Erastil cast Entangle and dramatically change 2 fights in ways a holy warrior cleric with an extra BAB and a melee feat couldn't dream of.
Especially clerics who pick up Scribe Scroll at 1st, and have 2-3 copies of their domain spells purchased with 33g from their starting pool. The holy warrior cleric can pick up Scribe as well at 1st (plus something else if human), but they're left scribing Magic Weapon, Divine Favor or Bless as their signature abilities. Which when it comes down to it, really aren't going to change an encounter dramatically if they even went that route.
I haven't had a holy warrior cleric in a game I've run, and haven't sat behind playing one yet. I'm definitely curious, and I think only actual play will crystallize it's pros and cons - that's the main reason for my original post.
It would be interesting what comes out in Paizo's Advanced Player Guide for the core classes. Maybe if there was an alternate domain for Gorum, or a "Battle" domain, DMs would fear the domain more than the BAB? It does strike me as odd that Clerics of Desna, Shelyn, Besmara, etc all seem to do better in combat via domain abilities than Gorum. There seems to be a definite shortage of Gorum clerics among Pathfinder games...
I've only really seen comments so far "Having a full BAB is really powerful". I'd love some anecdotes to understand better what that means. Obviously, someone taking 3.5e (not Pathfinder) Fist of Raziel is going to be pretty elite, since that prestige class alone is very very powerful...
I'll ask two separate questions about the holy warrior variant:
(1) Is it "more powerful" than a regular cleric at levels 1-10?
(2) Is it "more powerful" than a regular cleric at levels 11+?
To me, the domain spell lists are one of the things that makes a cleric potentially interesting to play. Giving that up is giving up one of the classes best perks, moreso at mid-to-higher than lower levels.
I'd really consider giving them Heavy Armor proficiency as was already mentioned in errata to "buff them up". So the mentality of "wouldn't allow the variant" is shocking.
In our games, a cleric who wades into melee - that's usually trouble for the party if there's not someone else who can heal since the BBEGs tend to like hurt those holy types. I guess I'm just not used to seeing level 10+ encounters which would be tipped in party favor if the cleric had a 10% better chance to hit, but I am used to seeing them tip in the party favor when the Cleric of Sarenrae casts Fire Wall or Fire Shield.
I can imagine at my table, somewhere around 9th level, the Fighter player saying "hey Cleric, I saw that fight you hit one more time than usual and did 15 damage to that CR11 creature that had 150HP. Nice job."
It would have been far more epic for that same encounter for him to say "wow that Firewall dropped right on the whole line of CR11 creatures, that was insane, how did you do that, I didn't know a cleric could cast that" and be much more jealous.
We talk about flexibility being a huge advantage. To me the domains are more flexible than BAB. BAB can be augmented with spells. But extra spells can be used for so much more than BAB, whereas the holy warrior cleric can't ask for a refund for his extra BAB in encounters or puzzles where that extra BAB has zero value.
The big ??? for me is how you value those domain powers. I just don't have a great handle on those.
This totally depends on the domain.
At low levels, there's some tasty reasons to have a domain. The ranged touch attack of Water, Air, Fire, Storm domains has been meaningful in fights with opponents with a high AC. The 1st level holy warrior without domain access will be sad, even with the extra +1 BAB when he's missing the Hobgoblin Captain with a 23AC when instead he could've been hitting 13AC from afar.
The Travel domain and its extra 10 feet of movement is often viewed upon by all non-Barbarians with jealous eyes.
A lot of the power is in access to spells. A 1st level cleric who has access to Lesser Confusion, Enlarge Person, Entangle, True Strike, Burning Hands looks and feels "more powerful" to the group when the spells come out. By giving up the domains, you actually lose a lot of the interesting wizard/druid/bard spells you might get.
This gets especially true at higher levels, when a Cleric could have picked up Fire Shield, Chain Lightning, Cone of Cold, Power Word Kill, Wall of Fire, Disintegrate, Stoneskin, etc.
Like I posted earlier, in a player's shoes I'd be fairly torn as a Cleric of Sarenrae if I'd want the option. The Fire domain is very tasty, but I'd also be tempted by a slight boost to my scimitar wielding mojo. The good news is in allowing the variant, you enable multiple interpretations of a Cleric of Sarenrae.
A Cleric of Shelyn, I couldn't imagine picking up the variant. The Air and Luck domains are outstanding.
A Cleric of Abadar, same deal - Earth and Travel are hard choices given how great the domains are.
I was more struck by the martial gods where you most likely would consider the variant as thematically appropriate - Gorum, Iomedae, etc. Clerics of Gorum are kind of brutal, and clerics of Iomedae feel like a paladin. There's obviously clerics who worship both, and the feeling of the effective benefit of the War domain, for example, feels comparable. I'd almost wager to say Paizo printed the Pathfinder Setting variant specifically targeting gods with War, Strength, etc in their portfolio.
I personally wouldn't allow it, and I'm very lenient in what I allow in game.
Hmm, my first reply here had some sort of error, so here goes again.
This sentiment is actually surprising to me. I would actually think the cleric is maybe slightly gimping themselves by going the Holy Warrior route versus keeping their domain spells and slots. I'd ask a player "are you absolutely sure?" and remind them the flexibility they are losing.
I tend to look at classes at 1st-4th level and 5th-10th level since those are the 2 zones we play the most in, and I'd think most games are in these realms. To look at 20th level, its kind of a different universe.
At 1st level, say I wanted to roll up a cleric of Gorum (Strength, War domains). For "fluff" reasons I can see wanting to be a more physical interpretation of the deity, and consider the holy warrior variant. At 1st level specifically, I could actually pick up Weapon Focus when I normally could not since I'd have the +1 BAB to quality. This would take my odds from hitting a typical level 1 monster up about 6-8% depending on my stats. Being very generous, I now go from hitting say 5 out of 10 swings to 6 out of 10 swings. So for every 10 rounds of melee combat, I get an extra 2d6+6 damage in if I'm a crazy cleric wielding a Greatsword. Most clerics wouldn't see this much gain, they'd be in the 1d8+3 ballpark. I get 2 more HP to take a beating, too.
What did I give up at 1st? Well I gave up, forever, my access to Enlarge Person. I gave up the Strength Surge and Battle Rage abilities that were each usable probably 5-6 times a day.
I can totally see someone picking up the Holy Warrior variant, because as a player they enjoy the game more when they hit things versus cast a spell. Would I turn this player's choice down because he'd be too powerful? I really doubt it, he's no way as strong at combat as the pure Fighter or a Barbarian. His spells, he'd be likely to cast a Bless, which everyone would love, and maybe a Magic Weapon for himself, which you'd think the party might also be happy for. That's if he's not expending both of his meager 2 slots for CLW to keep the party moving.
Now I'll look at 8th, since that's where I tend to look for upper-mid level play.
The holy warrior has picked up +2 BAB over his regular counterpart and 9 HP.
His domain powers are actually pretty snazzy now. From War domain, his touch adds +4 damage and he can pick up any random combat feat from a book at will. From Strength, he can get a +4 on Strength checks, and give himself a +8 Strength for several rounds a day.
He's got access to Enlarge Person, is a level away from an extra Flame Strike or Righteous Might, and is a stone's throw away from Stoneskin.
Same deal, let's pick a foe that favors the melee type. Let's say he's squaring off with a CR10 fire giant with an AC23. We're talking a 52% versus 60% chance to connect for the 2 options (unbuffed). Either character can buff up to increase their chance to connect.
Beyond 8th, I'd think you'd totally beg your DM to drop the holy warrior variant, especially when a Cleric of Gorum realizes he could have had Stoneskin, Power Word Blind, Power Word Kill, Crushing Hand, Clenched Fist, etc.
In the DM seat I in no way see the +2 BAB and 9HP as "wow I better disallow that since it could unbalance my game".
Maybe that's because in general a "day of adventuring" in the games I'm used to, I see the spellcasting as the better boon than the extra ~4 connected hits a day for some amount of physical weapon damage. There's certainly games where if the average day is 250 rounds of combat versus 40-50 rounds, that you'd rather be a holy warrior. But in games like that, you'd probably want to be a straight rogue or fighter, and have a number of unhappy wizards, sorcerers, bards, and what-nots at your gaming table. You'd probably need a variant like this to even get a player to be willing to roll a cleric in a game like that (at low levels).
So I'm giving a shot at running a campaign in Oerth (Greyhawk) using the Pathfinder rules and looking to crowdsource you all for some clever ideas.
I've had a player come to me wanting to play a character who would be a Wolf Nomad of Wegwiur. Of course his focus is Barbarian as his main class.
Now outside of suggesting 4 levels of ranger or 1 level of druid to pick up an animal companion... What would be fair ways to allow him to meet the "fluff" requirements of said wolf companion?
I've given the option to simply take 25g of starting money to purchase a wolf cub, or possibly burn a starting trait - where the cub would essentially have the stats of 1 HD dog, and he'd be using Handle Animal for all interaction.
But say he wants more than this without the dip... I see a possibility being a variant like the PF Setting ranger variant where he maybe loses Trap Sense at 3rd to get a wolf companion with his druid level at 1/3rd his barbarian level?
Funny, I've been very strongly considering running Age of Worms as the feature adventure in a PbP I'm starting, assuming said PbP makes it beyond level 4.
I'm running levels 1-4 in the Free City using Pathfinder rules, so would completely replace the early Diamond Lake parts (as well as the repeat visit to the Wind Duke cairn at 11-12). I'm trying not to think too much about what I'll be doing in 2014, since by my guess it'd take 4+ years to run the full AP on a PbP.
My recruitment ad is still open, the game's being run over at MythWeavers.
I read some background info on Cheliax that Iomedae is fairly tolerated unlike a lot of the other good gods. I wanted to create an Iomedan who could walk the streets of Westcrown, and be both recognizable as in favor with the Asmodeans but also be known as a beacon of hope to any resistance. He's a pure cleric, and I'm likely to use the stat array of S14 D10 C12 I11 W16 Ch15 so he should be able to handle social situations with ease. Personality-wise, he's held his tongue in the Imperial Courts at quite a few horrid sights, so he's not by any stretch impetuous like many Iomedans seem to be.
History:
Red. It's the color that the diabolists and thaumaturgists of Asmodeus are most often seem wearing in the streets of Westcrown. That's not why Valeron chooses to wear red, he wears it because it's the color of valor and courage. And he wears it because it's the color his brother wore, and his father before him.
Valeron was seven years younger than his older brother, who practically raised him when their father was killed in the service of a noble of the Imperial Court based out of Rego Corna. You see, his father was a special breed of warrior that the Asmodeans used to hunt heretical worshippers of gods or demons of chaos. Valeron isn't sure how his father died, he knows the men who came home with his father's cloak said something about a rampaging vrock kept as a guardian by a merchant from Rego Pena. His brother wore the cloak next, sworn to follow in their father's footsteps. That was until he was murdered when the boys were on their way hom on Valeron's sixteenth birthday. This time he saw what happened - he saw the shadow beast rend his brother in two and carry his corpse into a dark alleyway - the tattered remains of their's fathers cloak adrift in the dank water of a backlogged stormdrain.
Valeron didn't intend to follow in their footsteps. It took over a year to recover from his second loss as he buried himself in his work as an apprentice to a Westcrown lawyer working for House Julistarc. He could only work in that profession so long before his family's blood began to surge in his veins, spurring him to action. Call it the Legis Curse, but Valeron has trained and studied the miracles of The Acts of Iomedae. The Wiscrani may look at him and see nothing but an obedient dog trained to hunt demons or heretics on command. Valeron prefers to think of it that it's not that Westcrown has plans for him, but rather it's he who has big plans for Westcrown.
Appearance:
The red fires of Valeron's passion are immediately recognized by anyone who takes a moment to look in his eyes. His dark, shiny hair sweeps down across his forehead, where his chiseled features have evoked Westcrown's women to claim he has the dashing looks of a cambion. To this, Valeron bites his lip, knowing he has no blood of wretched devils to "thank" for his good looks. He is merely his father's son and his brother's brother. His armor is simple and functional, his steel shield bears no specific markings, and his longsword can always been viewed at his hip. When armored, he is always seen wearing a particular red cape.
I always start with the backstory and appearance, then work up a sheet as a second step, so if I see I'm highly likely to get accepted, I'll invest the hour or so to full decorate a character sheet.
We started a few months ago, but have really only gotten 3-4 sessions in.
Here's our group:
Waukim, human bard. Character is loosely based on Aladdin (Disney's singing variety), although I'm thinking he's starting to channel Elan from OOTS :)
Rylene, human cleric of Sarenrae. Pretty good scimitar wielding butt kicker, the burning hands from a cleric has been fun to see. She's seeking out what happened to her mom.
Lao, human monk from Xian. Gnoll killer and source of abstract words of wisdom.
Ardeth, human fighter who works with a flail and trip attacks. Orphan-mate to Waukim and looking for Haleen.
Since my group returned to gaming about 5 years ago, we have gamed exclusively in Greyhawk, and probably seen almost every core WOTC class outside of the Incarnum classes and the Factotum class, and a couple of the Psionic classes. The most popular Psi classes in our group have been the Psion, the Ardent and the Pyschic Warrior.
Among the players, there is definitely skepticism at the Psionic classes, but I'd equate the same initial skepticism to the Book of 9 Swords and the Incarnum classes - where its the player (or players) who dig into the book cover-to-cover that establish the comfort level to play the class.
Pessimism grows if the player struggles to play the class (the random element of the Bo9S Crusader for example slowed down gameplay). Optimism grows if the player excels at playing the class (Psionics seem to be used in a round much faster than even wizard spells do, perhaps because a Psion is much more likely to spend power points on a power, knowing that if they had to, they could use that power again later without resting, versus a wizard who expends that 1 3rd level spell, knowing he'd need to rest to use it again).
I know our top psionic player really likes the psionics system, and is probably the LEAST rule versed player, so she likes it very much due to the power point system being much simpler to grok (like mana) than having to feel like she'd need to min/max a Wizard and deal with scribing scrolls or crafting wands to augment Wizard play "properly". So strangely enough as it exists printed by WOTC, it gets a thumbs up from the most junior player.
One of the favorite parts of Psionics is that as introduced, it has the same level of detail as Wizard Schools and Cleric Domains. In that you can pick a Psion and have ~8 flavors to look at (i.e. Psychokinesis, Psychometabolism, etc). Having the 'specializations' is a very exciting part of the system.
We use the rules that Psionics is just another form of magic, so things like SR apply, and you can use Detect Magic and Detect Psionics (for example) interchangeably. I think this is pretty important to make it easy to run, otherwise a DM might feel like there's too much effort to refit a printed adventure to allow psionics, so if I were to rewrite it, I'd tend to eliminate specific things like "Knowledge (psionics)" or "Psicraft" or "Autohypnosis" from the mechanics - and lets something like "Concentration" take the place of Autohypnosis.
I'd be all over buying a Paizo update - mostly because I think our gaming group needs to feel a similar breadth of options in the Pathfinder products to the 3.5 WOTC products. Our group loves the period when we do character creation, which is always spurred by the appearance of more core class options. Our group tends to be somewhat "purist" and will wait for a Paizo version of a class, and stick to the printed Pathfinder core classes until an update appears. Getting some updated core classes in time for Council of Thieves for example, is what acts as a genesis for "oh I want to make THAT" and creates demand for a new campaign for 1st level characters.
Stepping into Theldrick's temple. Bad crowd control by the party resulted in them facing all the cultists, the skeletons, the tieflings and the dire boar in a single pro-longed battle. As cultists ran low on HP, they ran off to get help and were successful in doing so. Our 4-man party was down to a single member squaring off against the last tiefling, narrowly avoiding a TPK.
The grimlock cavern with the cliff. Again, bad crowd control in the first grimlock room sent a grimlock running for help from the krenshar-master grimlock, and the party split into 2 pairs. One finishing off the grimlocks in the first room, and the other pair facing the krenshars and houndmaster. A failed save vs fear from the krenshar sent one of the party members climbing down the cliff to escape (since the grimlock was blocking the other exit), bringing the archers into the fray as well. Once again, near TPK.
The encounter with the invisible stalkers (we just finished that last weekend) was also a tough one, especially since they were down to 3 members actively trying to fight them off (with the 4th member being Ixiaxian speaking the password). They ended up fleeing the encounter completely, and avoided some deaths since the cleric took the spell 'Close Wounds' and used his immediate actions to stop a few killing blows. I had the stalkers not pursue them as they followed their instructions to the letter (versus if they pursued, it would have been a TPK for certain).
Everything else, WC and Blackwall were pretty easy going. Shukak was a good battle, but noone dropped in it.
Maybe after all Eric's hard work on Diamond Lake, WOTC finally realized the potential of other areas of the Cairn Hills region in 3.5e and we are finally after decades of pent up demand, going to see a highly detailed hardback on Innspa!
(mmmm, or not)
I'd rule out a faithful recreation of original TOEE... (a) it just seems too dungeon intensive for Eric, and a faithful recreation wouldn't really feature the Welcome Wench as much as the hint let's on and (b) if he was doing just Village of Hommlet, he also might find that a bit too mundane... I'd keep guessing.
I do hope if it's an adventure, we can see a little smack-down rivalry between JJ's Red Hand and whatever Eric is working on!
I thought someone leaked this somewhere on another message board. He's working on a new super mega module called "Return of the Flumph King"... it's supposed to come with an audio CD that includes sounds of mating Flumphs to help players get in the mood. I guess that's what JJ is calling "neat"?
Haha... I forgot to mention the scene of my players in the Egg room.
Once inside the players (not the characters) began to discuss the advantages of keeping a black dragon egg, perhaps remembering back to when they had the baby owlbear in their custody. I remember specifically answering if they could squeeze the egg into their Heward's Handy Haversack. I finally reminded them this was the egg of an EVIL dragon and they finally decided to destroy it since they didnt want to leave it behind. Of course when they finally destroyed it, only 2 PCs were left on that side of the water-filled tunnel.
When the rogue in the group picked up a hammer and finally cracked it open, the worms began to spill out. His immediate reaction? Flee the scene... yep, you heard it... they let the green worms infest every last egg. At this point I was thinking evil DM thoughts of how to potentially make them regret this tragic decision.
Amazingly, the PC wizard became heroic, using his Fly spell and 2 wands of Burning Hands to zoom around the egg chamber and utilize all of his charges to kill the spawnlings single-handedly, since I ruled they were too small to reach him and had the ceiling go about 20' up from the floor.
Same here. I had Hishka request the PCs remove both Shukak and Ilthane's kobolds. From Hishka's perspective wouldn't he/she (it? darn genderless lizard) assume that if Shukak was defeated that Ilthane would just groom another cohort to lead the tribe, and see that Ilthane was really the biggest threat to the tribe's existence? Hishka wouldn't want to kill Ilthane's minions directly - if the party is responsible then in the chance that Hishka crosses Ilthane's path, he can indicate the PCs were the cause of the destruction of Ilthane's plans, and act in the best interest of the Twisted Branch, even if that meant sending the black dragon hot after the party's trail (which is exactly what we want, right?)
When I provided my group with the campaign background information, I included the Red Death, and one of them (the wizard apprenticed to Allustan) came up with that both his parents died from the Red Death. He sort of built in a possible path to hate Incabulous, seeing him as the root cause of his less-than-ideal life.
This has yet to materialize fully, as I'm still debating whether or not having this related to Kyuss is just "too much" in terms of trying to tie sub-plots together, or if I want it to even be anything of consequence in the campaign.
Next session should finally see my group getting into the doppelganger lair. I went ahead and coerced a player into playing the part of the Ixiaxian, and he's done an awesome job being "creepier" the past sessions as the group pursued some player-initiated tangents in the Free City.
My general question is that I'm looking at Sodden Hold and trying to rationalize Ixiaxian waiting until the mirror room to reveal that he is in fact a doppelganger, obviously by dropping the bomb when the player announces he is attacking another player (or similar).
A few parts where I'm concerned:
- There's the part where the party will get into the hallway with all the rooms that have pairs of doppelgangers potentially inside. Would Ixiaxian actually fight these doppelgangers to the death just to turn on the part in the mirror room? Or perhaps he suggests non-lethal damage as an approach?
- Would he do anything special with regard to the invisible stalkers or the octopus?
Any insight as to what others have seen done here would be great...
Hoorah! Congrats to James! Definitely well deserved. And personally, I think you should go with zombie kenku and dinosaurs. Of course, that's just me.....
Yes, fiendish zombie kenku pirates and dinosaurs all around I think. Hmmm, "Dungeons & Dinosaurs?"
I'll add my agreement to reinforce demand for more adventures featuring kenku... what about pirate kenku battling against ninja aaracockra battling against samurai raptorans? Maybe something about a cult of Pazuzu too?
I think my group has spent about 4 sessions pretty much focused exclusively on Diamond Lake play having nothing to do with the AP adventures.
I ended up detailing the Spinning Giant considerably due to the players choosing close ties with the garrison. One of the players worked really hard to get a job as their cook, before he ended up having to quit after spending immediately needing too much time off...
Since the garrison came into play, the stats for the lieutenants, Tolliver, Velias, etc were all important. I've seen a lot of DMs make use of Melinde, must be something about female paladins.
Allustan's stat block was useful, as one player was his apprentice and wanted to learn spells from his master. Allustan has quite a few good ones too. His 1000gp mirror sounds like it may get some use at some point too.
Joten-Hunter - Experienced giant-hunters from the Yeomanry, Geoff, and Sterich have learned much about their prey, and put all of it into use.
Ooh this one would be helpful too see a Dragon treatment of. For a lot of these PrC's, they have many defined in Living Greyhawk materials, I wonder if that causes any complications in getting these published by Paizo?
We just did this last night as the group finally finished off Ilthane's kobolds.
Afterward, the group of 5 players I ran through was very interested - "was that part of the module?", "that was really cool", etc. The guy that played Santos did an amazing accent and kept telling Walton how smart he was. Folks were literally on the floor when they asked "Where is he from?" and "That accent sounds familiar". When the spawn got loose, and the players got a chance to interact with the worms, they all said it felt like they were in the movie Aliens. :)
Not sure if it was mentioned, but you can get some mileage out of some of the Star Cairns - Lyzandred - Doomgrinder series as well. These seem to be cheap on eBay (like 2 or 3 bucks each) - at least they were for me.
The maps inside are some of the best for the area around Greyhawk, and can help you liven up the area outside of Diamond Lake for the AOW AP.
It only seems right to me that folks in this area know about the Mistmarsh along with Felnarix, Greysmere, Ogremeet, Storm Keep, etc... of course most of the 3 modules above are sparse on those details, forcing you to grab a boxed set like FtA...
Mad God's Key is my favorite. Issue #114. The first installment of Age of Worms is good, too.
I second consideration for this adventure. One of the best 1st-level adventures written in a very long time, and requires no 1st/2nd-ed to 3.5e conversion. It includes several urban elements with a dungeon crawl, so you get a lot of mileage out of it.
Too bad the sequel is a Living Greyhawk adventure... I'd love to see it in Dungeon.
A 14th level thief or mage has all the ranks he needs to pick the really hard lock or cast the really powerful spell. The 7th level thief / 7th level mage cannot pick the lock or cast the spell.
I'd hope most campaigns would be able to allow a 7/7 rogue/wizard to be able to contribute to a 14th level adventure. There isn't anything inherently munchkin about multi-classing. It's the 2 rogue/2 monk/4 wizard/1 prestige A/6 prestige B that reeks of munchkin-dom. Then again, some folks can justify this with good solid RP... you can usually tell if a person is min/maxing and respond by making sure they regret their choice in some way :)
I know a friend of mine was trying to have a character very similar to Conan, and ended up with levels in rogue, barbarian and fighter. He was definately not munchkin, he was just trying to capture the flavor of what he wanted... the character seemed fairly comparable to another level 7 character despite the spread... which wasn't intended to max out a specifical skill or ascend a certain feat tree... just get the right mix of skills available to solve problems.
I'm wondering if it has something to do with a certain group of slavers from a certain peninsula.
I'm just giddy at the thought of an official 3.5e Stalman Kilm, Markessa, Edralve and Theg Narlot. Maybe DDM miniatures would be in the future for them too! *Dreams*
Seeing the new Marut in the Underdark DDM got me thinking about how it might be fun to run an Inevitable in a game at some point, hunting down someone avoiding death, breaking an oath or denying justice...
Does anyone out there know if any Dungeon adventure features an Inevitable they could direct me to for a little creative inspiration?
My group didn't jump in the first elevator and went ahead and turned it and ended up fighting the swarm and slasher (or rather upon seeing it, running for their lives).
Upon their return, since the hole was open (after the fought the slasher and beetles), they just dropped right down.
Our group finally got to the grick encounter last night, and I ran it as written... sounds of metal rubbing metal and it popping up next to one of the folks on the metal balls and surprising him. One of the group tosses the shortsword to him (having identified it the previous day), and he stabbed at the grick, actually rolled a 20, and almost killed it. The wizard used one of his magic missiles and the grick was toast. The fight didn't even make it to a second round!
Might have to do with your players. I was floored when one of my players (playing a wizard) picked up all the elemental languages - Auran, Terran, etc. He's been quite happy to tranlate the whispers.
I've actually been tempted to swap out Erythnul for Incabulous a few times. Quite a few of the players built up their backstory with some deaths due to the Red Death twenty years back. It just seems fitting that a priest of Incabulous was involved in some way... this'd probably require too much tweaking to 3FOE.
I'm wondering if the adventure path uses Incabulous at all with a tie-in here...?
I hate to sound harsh about Dragon's current state as I've been a subsciber off and on for half of my RPing career. Right now it doesn't appeal to me and in some sense, having Wormfood in it seems like a marketing ploy to get dupes like me to buy it. Dungeon on the other hand, is worth every penny I've paid for it in subscriptions since 1986.
Seems like smart cross pollination on Paizo's part. I've picked up a couple of Dragon issues due to having some information that could be helpful in running 'Worms. More than just Wormfood, there has now been a few ecology articles (Kyuss and Lizardfolk) that have some utility. I'd take a couple more with some leverage - I really wanted something about "mining towns" - i.e. whats the throughput of the smelting house, how much is raw iron worth, is coal mined and used, etc.
If I had to organize the party, I'd push that we use:
Drake, Tromble, Sprout, Zilas and Amur
If we used six, I'd add Mykul.
I'd make the cleric's affinity to his deity more obvious, or even offer the option of 2 clerics of fairly different gods, or a cleric or druid as options. If this was the case, the 6 person party could have included those two.
For a pre-set scenario, I'd take a sorcerer over a wizard, since I'm sure the sorcerer spells will be set to the ones that are needed. :) Plus they're just more fun if you know it's a one shot session and you're only 1st level when the two classes are fairly the same par. To create more interest here, maybe mention their favorite spells.
Sprout seems quite useful - the only rogue option, and deadly with a bow!
When did everyone start the adventure? Or was the day/year even relevant in your campaign?
I started mine (like I do almost every adventure) on the last day of Coldeven, with the next day being Growfeast. The party has spent the first 3 days of the festival poking around the cairn. I'm playing it like any other day in DL, most of the celebration was on the first day, and took place almost all in doors as I have the townsfolk naturally dividing themselves up among the hotspots. Day 4 is Cuthbert's Day which led to some interesting fun.
I have been elusive on the year with the group. I know the module publishes with a date ~CY595 and has set some material events such as Red Death in the 570's. I've been mulling with dropping this back 12-13 years to right after the Greyhawk Wars...
I ran into similar issues. One of the characters is an impoverished citizen of Diamond Lake. Fully aware of the rival adventurers, he has contemplated that instead of risking his life with the party, perhaps he can profit more from selling the information about the Whispering Cairn to Khellek's crew.
He bumped into Tirra and started off by suggesting he knew of another Cairn with treasure and what's that worth to the thief.
I had her fiddle around with 1gp and probe a bit, flirting along the way figuring she could get the information with a crooked smile. The player didn't talk, figuring 1gp wasn't worth it.
In my mind, the rival adventurers have probably had all kinds of folks try to sell stuff to them - "yeah I know of another Cairn with lots of loot, and maybe a dragon... I'll sell ya a map for a few gold" and are wary of any offers now. In fact, their first reaction is that any such information is 99% likely to be fake.
However, if the group starts showing up with magic items... that's another story (which has yet to occur)
I see no issue with PCs leaving the Cairn and going back to town - it often creates a nice mix between dungeon and urban setting, where the PCs get a chance to roleplay more in town.
The module is pretty tough and the players could use Allustan's knowledge checks (they have on their own taken to creating sketches of any symbols/glyphs). Most of the tough encounters (such as the swarm/slashers) have caused players to go negative HP.
When I look back at the history of all of our playing at 1st level, the group has loved the nature of going back and forth between town and the dungeon (i.e. Hommlet and the Moathouse). To them this is classic gaming. Keep the 'dungeon' changing - maybe the dead wolf corpses attract a new occupant? Maybe some bandits trail them to the caves? If the frequent resting starts to make things too easy, thats a very easy problem for DMs to solve. :)
No reason you couldn't have a few hundred goblins in the Lortmils - they are quite expansive. Expansive enough to hide some ancient cities and valleys.
You wouldn't probably find an organized goblin army, but then again would you find that anywhere?
Plenty of corpses from the Hateful Wars CY498-510 to make fodder for undead. You could have skeletal dwarves, orcs, all kinds of interesting undead.
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