GM Faelyn' Falcon's Hollow Series

Game Master Faelyn

Not a fan of PFS, personally. Good luck!

Thanks Zilka, but I'm stocked full of games, and PFS isn't one of my preferred types.

I will get a post up sometime tonight. Had a lot going on recently and wanted to give you guys sometime to respond to everything going on.

The discussion of "wolf sympathizers" reminds me of this.

that is hilarious, but seriously, isn't "wolf" one of the more common druid/ranger animal companions? I mean come on, you get trip, which is a serious game changer in Pathfinder

Which is why, pug or dachshund should be first choice, I'm pretty sure they have all the trip feats, like greater trip, trip on the fly, and every other kind of trip known

I want to take a moment here, and I apologize if this is long winded and moody, but I am feeling a bit off today and want to just get this off my chest

I do not want to have any arguments with any of the players about how I am playing my character or how anyone else should be playing their character, and I think we’ve manage to avoid that so far.

I don’t mind it if my character has little arguments with other characters as long as it does not distract from the game or give any player hard feelings.

When Caine, the character, mentions “evil” creatures I want to respond “in character” that Nathaniel doesn’t really know something is inherently evil or not, and chooses to believe that no creature is “inherently evil” as this is something he believes the Lady of Mittonwier taught, forgiveness and giving every living thing a chance to prove its intentions and only fighting to defend life, but I do not respond to these comments of Caine’s because I feel the distraction has gone on long enough

I know that as a Paladin the character can detect evil. I am trying to play Nathaniel as if he doesn’t really understand that he has this power, and I think that someday he must realize that there is inherent evil in the world, and I am looking for something “in game” to push him in that direction. Nathaniel simply hasn’t been attacked directly enough, or had to defend anyone else enough to understand how the world works (in game that is, where some creatures are “evil” by nature).

I have no problem with that, conceptually.

Here's some issues you are going to have to address though-

In Golarion (and most other D&D settings) there is no such thing as subjective morality. Good and Evil are real forces that have agendas and take direct action in the world, and the gods are the arbiters of behavior and thought. They are totally real, everyone knows it, and they have powerful churches full of people who can detect alignment, smite good or evil, and cast spells that can directly ask the gods is something is right or wrong.

Evil gods empower their followers, and when they die, those followers don't get punished. They get rewarded for their service. There are demons, and undead, and many other creatures who are evil just because of what they are. Dragons are even color-coded by their morality, and everyone knows it.

In Golarion, ethical philosophy isn't an abstract thing that people argue about. It is a tangible force, like gravity. It is a thing that happens to people. It is a thing that can be measured and observed. (The church of Abadar is all about measuring and observing things, and then creating laws and passing judgements based on those observations.)

For Boote not to know any of that means that he was sheltered in a way that no one else could even understand. It's the equivilant to growing up in a weird cult in a bunker that brainwashed you into believing that some fundamental things about reality are completely backwards.

This runs into a problem with Caine, who knows all this stuff very well and has some very strong feelings on the subject. (I studied philosophy in college, and Caine is a re-work of a character I've played before, so I've had years to think about his ethical framework.)

I have no problem with how you are portraying Boote, and I would love to have a really in-depth ethical discussion between the two of them.

Yes, well yes and no. I believe Boote has lived a sheltered life. I also choose to believe that not every single person in the campaign setting is as knowledgeable about the worlds subjective morality as you suggest. As even in the real world practically everyone has a different idea about how things like morality and ethics are supposed to work, and even in a fantasy world where clerics cast spells, and there are deities that take an active roll in the world, I feel it is a stretch to assume that everybody has the same, complete, and well thought out ideas about how "good" and "evil" are really supposed to work.

I feel that any campaign setting is going to be chock-a-box full of people like Boote, and Caine, and even stranger people with even stranger ideas about this world. I do not think Caine or Boote are abnormalities

You have it a little backwards.

Most people in the real world have subjective moralities. Most ethical philosophies in the real world are also subjective. All religions are. The only ethical philosophies that aren't subjective are Kantian Ethics and John Rawls' Theory of Justice. In all of human history, those are as close as we have ever come to Objective Morality.

That's really important because Subjective Moralities are all provably false. The don't work. Every one of them runs into problems of paradoxes or internal inconsistency. They all break under scrutiny.

The game world isn't like that. Morality in Golarion is absolutely Objective. Detect Evil and Smite Evil work no matter what god you follow, or even if you follow no god at all. The gods aren't the ones who decide what is right or wrong, they are the ones who enforce it. In Golarion, Morality is a cosmological force. There are never internal inconsistencies or paradoxes.

In Golarion, Morality can be measured scientifically, or just understood by asking the gods directly or reading their holy texts.

The gods might have differences of opinion about what to do about good and evil, but there aren't any differences of opinion on what good and evil are.

So for Boote to believe that nothing is inherently evil is kinda like Climate Denialism or the Anti-Vax movement. There are people who believe those things. There might even be a lot of them, but what they believe isn't based on reality. Proof exists.

At some point, Boote is going to come face to face with that proof. I think that will be a fun thing to see and explore in game.

Well, the followers of evil gods *think* they'll be rewarded. Whether they really are or not... well, it depends on whether you think your soul being tortured for centuries until all thought of rebellion or self-determination has been beaten out of you, then turned into a devil to serve the higher-level devils for eternity, for example, is a reward.

"There is a place prepared for you in Hell", promises the devil, offering you a pen to sign the infernal contract. When you die, turns out that 'place' is the seven hundred million, five hundred and sixteen thousand, eight hundred and ninth brick from the left in the wall of Dis.

Hey guys, I love what I'm reading here. The interactions between Boote and Caine have been thoroughly enjoyable for me! My thoughts on it... I agree with Caine to an extent that there is definitely a fantastic perspective on morality that is very different from our experiences. There are purely evil entities in the world that could potentially be "saved"; however, that is something that would require extensive work to accomplish.

That being said, I actually quite enjoy Boote's pragmatic, if quite naive, view. It's interesting to see his perspective that, perhaps, the others haven't seen what he's seen, or perhaps they've been too quick to accept those "absolute morality" explanations. Also, Terquem, don't worry you guys will definitely experience some wholly, nonredeemable evil soonish in this campaign.

Without giving away too much, the next adventure is mostly dungeon crawling and will span levels 2-5. My plan is to tweak the leveling rules a little bit to avoid the old "we rush in, kill, leave and rest, then rush back in, etc." The idea is that each time you all level, you'll automatically gain your abilities from leveling up and all resources will be refreshed. That way the continuity doesn't get broken by needing to rest to "refresh" and level up. Once we get into it, you'll understand more why I would like to try this method.

Lastly, sorry for my limited posting recently. Work has been very busy the last two days and one of our cars took a dump on Saturday, so yesterday my wife and I spent much of the day yesterday evening looking at cars and today we are going back to purchase one we found.

That's not quite accurate. What you describe is the kind of thing that happens to people who are duped into selling their soul for power, or who fail in their missions.

People who serve willingly and succeed in their tasks (like priests and Antipaladins) are greatly rewarded.

The afterlife of various religions has more to do with success or failure than right or wrong. A follower of Erastil who was successful and pious would go to an afterlife where they spent their eternity as a powerful hunter in an endless forest. Followers of Erastil who screwed up would become prey as a punishment.

To a follower of Cayden, Erastil's reward sounds like a punishment because that's not what Cayden says a reward should be. Erastil's faithful think it sounds amazing.

Those things aren't about ethics. They are ethically neutral things, which go into the realm of value judgement (which are absolutely subjective, and should be)

Mistaking value judgements for ethics is a common philosophical hiccup.

In game, a good way to think about it is that Morality is objective and absolute. Values are subjective and vary wildly from god to god or person to person.

I guess I just have a different idea of what it means to be, "first level"

First level doesn't mean ignorant. It just means low-power. None of the stuff we have been talking about is locked behind high knowledge check DCs. Anyone with a rank in Knowledge Religion or Knowledge Planes is expected to have a general understanding of this stuff.

Even people with no ranks in any knowledge, but with access to a library, can take 20 on a knowledge check. That's my benchmark for what is general knowledge. Above DC 20 takes levels, ranks or high attributes. Anything DC 20 and below can be learned by someone with no ranks or intelligence modifier who spends an hour in a library.

Not to drag this out, it is actually a very interesting conversation, but to be fair each of the characters have a very different background from one another.

Nathaniel is, as he noted, inexperienced in the ways of the world. While it wasn't a cult exactly, he comes from an excruciatingly entrenched home life where people often do what is expected of them and largely have for the last 1,000 years. Right now, he's a romantic who had just spent 4 years actively guarding a tomb, on a hill, in quiet little village in the middle of nowhere important. He's quite literally getting his first real taste of the world on a sabbatical that no one expected him to take. I would say that he is in fact ignorant of a great deal of normal experience.

Caine, on the other hand, is a little bit older, has lived in a fairly harsh part of the world. He served, as he noted, a powerful and well known church and fought for what they taught him. Then slowly he realized that everything he'd been fighting for wasn't just or right, at least to him. And the worst part was that it wasn't even a lie, it was law, just twisted and backwards. Caine is a realist bordering on to pessimist. He was a higher level character at some point in his past, until he lost his faith in both the world and in his religion. Where upon he retreated to the Vale to live out his days being a drunken bouncer at a brothel.

I was probably home schooled.

So Zirren's plan for dealing with the bat swarm involves color spray to knock them down and then using regular oil flasks to burn them. As written, you can either try to use them as alchemists fire, but it takes a full round to ready them to be used and then there's only a 50% chance of them working as they should, or you can splash a 5 ft. area with the oil which will then burn for 2 rounds dealing 1d3 points of fire damage as an area weapon.

He only has 5 flasks of oil, so he's banking on effectively 10-d3 damage to take it down. Thankfully the area damage does an extra 50% to swarms, so hopefully the dice roll doesn't just hate us.

That said, next level I'm just going to pick up burning hands.

That sounds like a good plan, Zirren! Here's how I'll rule the oil situation. Once you get the flames going, you'll only need to succeed at hitting any square adjacent to another square which currently is ignited with flames. This is will cause that square to catch fire as well. I say each ignited square that the swarm is occupying will each do their own individual damage to the swarm with appropriate damage.

So GM, I don't know if you have a surprise for this fight, but it seems to be over except for the damage Rolling. Can we just skip to that?

Yes, I was just thinking that as I was reading over the last post. I don't see any need to draw that out any longer than necessary. I will have a post up in about 45 minutes.

Mwahahahaha, my masterplan of letting someone ELSE come up with a plan, someone ELSE executing that plan and someone ELSE taking the credit for it is almost complete.

Now all you need to do is find a way to take credit for it and you're set!

Take credit for the fact that someone else is taking the credit?
That's brilliant!
I like the way you think!

Mwahahahaha, my masterplan of letting someone ELSE come up with a plan, someone ELSE executing that plan and someone ELSE taking the credit for it is almost complete.

No! You dastardly fiend!

You magnificent bastard!

Cue Zirren's theme music

Welcome to my secret lair in evil dwarf temple.
I hope that you've enjoyed your stay so far
I see you've met my assistant Atregal
His morality is quite obnoxious
But I assure you he's harmless enough
He's a sweetheart, calls me young master
And he has a way of finding awful things and being nice to them for me

Oh, and I'm so into you
But I'm way too smart for you
Even my party thinks I'm crazy
I'm not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You'd see the curse that controls me from inside my head
Says I shouldn't kill you yet

I made this half-pony, half-bat inferno to please you
But I get the feeling that you don't like it
What's with all the screaming?
You like bats and you like ponies
Maybe you don't like fire so much
Maybe I used too many oil flasks
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony burning some bats for you?

....

Hey folks, with the Strange Aeons AP coming out in August I definitely plan on picking up the entire AP and am curious if any of you would be interested in being a part of that group? I likely wouldn't kick it off until October so uncoils have plenty of time to read over the first book and prepare everything. If you are interested, please let me know!

That'd be cool, but if we play at this pace we'll never make it past book 1 =P

I'd like to put myself down for a tentative yes, if that's okay.

Most play-by-posts don't get too far into the AP, unfortunately, but there are some that beat the odds.

I'll consider it depending on how busy I am at the time, OK?

I am so very, very in.

I've been waiting for that one since it was announced.

What's it about? I know nothing

"That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die."

It's the Lovecraftian adventure path. It's why they published the Occult book and the Horror book last year.

Yep, I'm in. Much like Caine, this one has been wished for ever since I played in Jade Regent, and subsequently Carrion Crown- The wake of the Watcher, Carrion Hill, No Response from Deepmar, Doom Comes to Dustpawn, and currently Valley of the Brain Collectors. There's a few I want to check out, but this is definitely the one that's grabbed my attention the most.

Sounds good, everyone. I'm not necessarily expecting an answer right away. This was just a tentative seeking out players with whom I enjoy RPing. I have also been very excited for this AP ever since it was announced. So far I like the premise of how it starts off in the asylum. I definitely plan to relax my restrictions on character creation this time around. I know you guys are great players and with this being my very first time GMing I wanted to restrict things more to that which I was more familiar. I feel much more comfortable with GMing in general and with more in-depth characters.

So for those are you that are interested, feel free to start fleshing out the basics of your characters. I can tell you the basics that I plan on using.
- 20 point buy
- All Paizo published races will be available for play, though some of the crazier races may need to be reviewed (kasatha, strix, and the like)
- Three traits (One of the campaign traits and any other two Paizo traits)
- All Paizo published classes and archetypes are available (Unchained monks can utilize any archetypes and I would allow Bloodragers to use Unchained barbarian rage rules)

DH says Human Summoner.

I plan on playing a variation of this guy.

Lovecraftian? Hmmm I'm not sure what I'd play. Maybe something occulty
Is it still played out like most APs? Or is this more of a Call of Cthulhu kind of game? What I mean is: Are we capable of succeeding and being heroes, or is our goal to live as long as possible?

It's still a pathfinder game. The heroes are supposed to be able to fight back.

VMC options are available and we would be using Background skills like we do now. I'm even opening up all alignments, but the PCs must be non-disruptive. I would also allow one Drawback to open up a 4th trait, but know that any Drawbacks will come into play! Anything else you guys can think of? Ask any questions you may come up with.

Belladonna, it will be more Pathfinder and less "we are barely surviving each fight" CoC. Now I can amp things up a bit once we get into the game if you guys want that.

I'm generally a fan of amping some things up.

Also, not to push things too much here, but with the fact that level 1 characters generally don't have too much to do with their swift actions and the fact that the Wargs AC is higher than Nathaniel's roll even boosted with smite, maybe we can move on with the round?

Good call, Zirren. Looking at it, it wouldn't change anything.

Okay that makes sense. It sounds interesting, and I like our group a lot.

I'm just playing around with ideas at the moment. I'm currently interested in the spiritualist archetype, the fractured mind.

It took me a while to find a good opportunity to try out the Detect Evil thing, and now I need to figure out how to "learn" what Smiting Evil really is.

How deep/dark is the Darkmoon river? Could we cross it if we went straight to it to save time?

The River is approximately 100' wide in most areas with certain locations being narrower, but swifter. Average depth would probably be 20-30'. Closer to the lake its deeper, but wider and less swift. Closer to the mountains where you originally crossed its less deep and wide, but steeper banks and much swifter current.

You most certainly could save time by cutting straight south and crossing the river!

Yeah, I'm going to veto this plan right here. First off, even in relatively calm water the majority of this party are going to fail their swim checks and some of us may even start drowning. If we were leveling up and all had reasons to learn to swim, maybe I'd be down for this plan. But unless we decide to rest for a day we are not getting across that river.

If we do rest then I can conjure up Dolphins which will allow us to cross the river in short order. But otherwise not so much.

What are our resources? Zilka has used one of her two spells for the day, and has 5/7 luck points remaining.

It all depends on how long it takes us to reach the river, we know we'll have to stop and rest if we take the way we came.
Secondly, if someone could cross the river, we could send that person or person ahead, looking at the map it seems they'd not have to cross any large amount of dangerous ground.
We could also make a raft, but I can see how that might take too long to be worth it in the end.
I don't mind going back the way we came, just checking the options.

Whatever you guys want to do we will make it happen! Just let me know what you all decide to do.

I think we should use our healing resources and continue exploring this place. But we should rest Before we go back. If we run into a Wyvern again we're pretty much hosed.