Not a noobish question Nate; it certainly wouldn't hurt to make sure the party has at least one or two people that can dish out some pain and take a hit or two. But I didn't really read Tupp's post as saying that he's focusing solely on Aid Another; unless he's rebuilt since I last GMed for him he can hold his own in combat fairly well :)
Also, would people be okay with a tentative start date of somewhere around the 22nd of this month?
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Yeah, I just meant Aid Another for skills (Boo for only 2 ranks per level.) During combat, Tupp can be a real handful. I'm going to be taking advantage of some halfling only feats, racial traits and a katana for an eventual high critical threat with loads of bonuses to the confirmation roll of a two handed power attack. It's a shame risky striker only works with creatures two or more sizes larger because it would've been a slightly better fit than power attack, but I can't have everything. In short, he'll be able to hold his own, and that's before we even start to talk about smite evil. :)
Oh, shoot! I'll be away from my computer from the 22nd until the 28th. If we start then, I should be able to do some posts, but I couldn't promise the usual at least once a day. Sorry.
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Alrighty! I've got Ylva ready to go. A rowdy prizefighter and hater of all things Chelish, she's going to be a little lacking in damage output, but she should more than make up for it by being rather flexible and locking down characters. I plan on grabbing Improved Dirty Trick, Improved Trip, and Improved Reposition which should let her be pretty effective in controlling opponents.
I just wish Nate was playing Teldon. If he thought Jo was bad, Ylva's would make him go bananas.
Well...based on past experience I know we've already got quite a few 'characters' both on the player side and the PC side of things (lookin' at you, Tupp) so I think this is going to be tons of fun and hilarity for everyone :D
Also Tupp, if it'd be easier for you (and anyone else) we can wait and start right at the end of the month! Thoughts? Also, I'll PM Haladir to make sure he checks back in and can see the updates here.
Hey folks, I'll be heading out of town to DieCon 18 from today through Monday the 11th. While I'll have my phone and Kindle with me, I don't anticipate having much time to catch up on posts but I'll do my best to peek in as I'm able and answer questions and such :)
Hi, folks. I lost track of this thread for a week until Ladile kindly PMed me.
It looks like we have the bases covered... I think I'd like to bring in either a divine caster (cleric of Sarenrae) or a barbarian (Shoanti, going for Thunder and Fang).
Thoughts?
I have no problem waiting until the end of the month, and have a great time GM Ladile!
Okay, cleric it is!
I came up with the concept a few days ago while reading the War for the Crown Player's Guide...
A minor Taldan nobleman who is secretly a cleric of Sarenrae. He has the Hidden Priest archetype, and poses as a wizard.
I haven't yet built this character, and will do so and register it sometime in the next day or so.
How interesting! Will we be in on your little secret, or is that going to be part of the fun?!Okay, cleric it is!
I came up with the concept a few days ago while reading the War for the Crown Player's Guide...
A minor Taldan nobleman who is secretly a cleric of Sarenrae. He has the Hidden Priest archetype, and poses as a wizard.
I haven't yet built this character, and will do so and register it sometime in the next day or so.
I am planning on that being part of the fun... at least for a while!
Hahaha... I was thinking about maybe making a witch (at least partly because I love how hexes allow you to always have something useful to contribute, even at low levels when you have very few spells), and I was thinking if I do I may be masquerading as some kind of priest to hide it- the irony!
Part of me feels like it would be too ridiculous for both of us to be pretending to do each other’s jobs, but part of me thinks the reveal could be pretty fun.
One downside with this being a PFS game...
I've played a Hidden Priest character before in a home game (a Varisian cleric of Desna who posed as a bard in a campaign set in Cheliax.) During the course of play, we realized that the Hidden Priest archetype is grossly underpowered: You give up a major mechanical benefit (a domain) in exchange for a social benefit that requires frequent use of some fairly high-DC skill checks to pull off... some of which aren't even cleric class skills (i.e. Bluff and Perform).
We fixed that by adding the following line to the Hidden Priest archetype...
Skills: A Hidden Priest spends a lifetime perfecting their cover story, and can become very competent at deception and at the actual skills related to their public profession. A Hidden Priest gets a base of 4 skill ranks (+ Int modifier) per level. They gain Bluff as a class skill, and also may pick one additional skill as a class skill. This additional skill must be related to their chosen cover story. Once chosen, that class skill cannot be changed.
This modifies the Cleric's number of skill ranks and class skills.
That mostly seemed to balance losing a Domain.
If this were a home game, I'd lobby for that change.
Since this is a PFS game, we can't use home rules, so I'm going to see what I can do about picking traits and feats that will assist the character concept. This won't be a particularly well-optimized character for combat, as I'll need to pour a bunch of resources into making the social side of the character work.
I think you may be right. I'll see if I can build the concept without the archetype.
As much as I love the idea of the Hidden Priest archetype, it's not a terribly effective choice for an adventurer... unless you're playing in an intrigue-heavy game where being a preist of that faith is dangerous. (i.e. a Desnan in Cheliax; a politically-connected Sarenite in Taldor; a priest of Nyarlathotep)
Hidden Priest was among the first archetypes published for the game: Inner Sea Magic was published only a few months after the Advanced Players Guide (which introduced archetypes to the game), and it was one of the first archetypes for clerics ever published.
Many of those early archetypes are underpowered compared to ones that were published later, particularly those for clerics.
Sorry for being slow to post- I’m in the last week of a 5 week intensive course I’m doing for grad school. Should be posting more after Tuesday.
I haven’t had time to look through and make sure everything is PFS legal but I’m thinking I’m probably going to make a witch with the storms patron and the healing hex who’s pretending to be a priest of Gozreh.
If you have Hero Lab, you can check a box at character creation that restricts options to PFS-legal ones.
Also, If I recall correctly: If you're using any options from outside the PRD, you need to own a copy of the sourcebook (print or PDF).
Hal is correct about needing to own the source material, buuuuut...
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I second the archives of nethys tip! It's best to double check, but can be super helpful for a quick check of your options. As for your witch, Nate, I'm afraid that the storms patron is not legal. I had a quick look, and the closest legal patron I could find that would fit the theme of Gozreh is water.
Thanks, Tupp, for checking on that! I do use AoN a fair bit, although I haven't really gotten into the habit of checking for the glyph. And as for patron/god I'll look at that some more after I finish up my course.
Hey guys, just a quick check-in to say that DieCon was a blast and that normal operations should resume tomorrow afternoon/evening once I've gotten home and had a chance to get settled in :)
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Those make forums WAY harder to police!
Hiiiii, checking in to say that I hope everyone is doing well and that your characters are coming together without much issue :)
For anyone that's interested in reading about my convention experience:
So, DieCon 18 - my second DieCon to date - went great. My brother and I hit the road around 8:30 or so Thursday morning and, even with making a couple of stops to hit up a game shop, use the bathroom, and eat, we arrived in Collinsville, IL just after 4:00 pm. We met up with friends Chris (who lives a couple hours north) and Becca (who flew in from Las Vegas and was crashing at Chris' place), got checked in to the Super 8, and then loaded up and headed into downtown St. Louis, MO to have dinner at Blueberry Hill. While there we also met up with another guy that Becca & Chris know from their time in World of Warcraft. This was the second year I've met him and he's a rather odd duck, but nice enough. After dinner we went down the street to the Snow Factory for some Thai-style ice cream. While good and also a rather novel experience, I'm not sure it was worth $8. I'd have been just as happy to go across the street to Fitz's for shakes. After all this the hour was getting late so we headed back to the Super 8 to get some sleep.
Friday morning, we got up and headed to the nearby Denny's for breakfast before going over to the Gateway Convention Center to get ready to sign up for games! Normally registration and sign-ups open at noon but for some reason they started about a half-hour early. Since I'd already preregistered I was able to get my t-shirt and convention booklet and hop right into the registration line.
Event signups for DieCon are interesting in that, with the exception of Organized Play programs like PFS or DnD AL, you sign up in-person and the events tend to be something of a first-come, first-serve basis. You have a card and you write down three sessions that you really want to get in to (first choice) and then write down two alternates (second choice) and then go through the line. The people at the desk then look at your paper and go to see how many slots are still open for the events you want. They then give you stickers to place in your booklet for the events you're able to get into. One limitation they *do* impose for Saturday and Sunday events is that they only give out maybe half of the tickets for those on Friday and hold the rest in reserve for folks who can't get there to sign up until Saturday or Sunday. Luckily for me I was able to get into all of my first choices right away and for the PFS/SFS I'd signed up for, my tickets were held in reserve and waiting for me since I'd done my signing up via Warhorn.
After a quick walk over to the nearby Mexican place for a drink (no lunch since several of us had just eaten) we then filtered back over to the convention center for Session #1, which started at 2pm. My event for this was a board game called 'Mansions of Madness' - gameplay seemed somewhat similar to 'Betrayal at House on the Hill' except with a heckuva lot more Cthulhu creep factor. The rules were a little complex and took some getting used to but the game itself was quite enjoyable and it came right down to the wire on whether we, the players, would win or the GM! I enjoyed it enough that I would've shelled out money for my own copy but none of the vendors seemed to have one. Sadness :(
Each session has an hour-long break before the next session starts so those are good times to hit the restroom, grab a bite to eat, go smoke, wander around the convention hall, etc. I brought some of my own snacks and flavor packs for my bottled water (which I just kept refilling using the canteens placed around the hall) because the snack bar is crazy expensive.
Session #2 was my first foray into playing Savage Worlds. What I didn't know, because the blurb for it didn't mention this part, is that we were going to be using the 'Pirates of the Spanish Main' setting for the game. So when I sat down and ended up being the only one at the table who hadn't played before, the GM grinned at me and said, 'Okay then, you're the captain' and tossed said character sheet my direction. Pretty sure I had an 'Oh god' look on my face but hey, it's good to try new things right? And actually, it turned out pretty good! I mean yeah, we narrowly escaped being executed only to have a rival run off with our ship (after having 'repaid' me by helping to bust us free) and had no navigator and like 5 NPC crew and no money or supplies but we did manage to take a merchant ship (using our persuasive smooth-talk and the one sword we had between 6 characters) and made it to what amounted to Tortuga. The session ended right as we'd finished negotiating a deal for our cargo and making some preparations to buy supplies and start tracking down leads on where to find some cannons...but the rest will be detailed further down for I'd also signed up to play the second part of this little adventure during the middle Saturday session! I also received a copy of the Deluxe Explorer's Edition of Savage Worlds - hooray for free swag!
After a decent night's sleep, we all got up early Saturday morning and trooped back over to the convention center for moar gaming! Session #3 was a game of 'Call of Scooby Doo' using a game system called 'FAST' that was developed by brothers Larry and Woody Babb. Larry himself ran our game and the best way to describe the experience is like a standard Scooby Doo mystery (including special guest stars as playable characters) mixed with puzzle solving and some Cthulhu-style horror. I played this last year, where the scenario was called 'Wednesday Mourning' and featured Wednesday Addams as the special guest star. This year's scenario was called 'Cereal Killer' and featured Count Chocula (or his daughter, the Countess Chocula) as the special guest star. I played Velma, same as last year, while my brother and another con-friend reprised their usual roles as Scooby and Shaggy. The player of Shaggy even brings Scooby Snacks to the game each year! Much fun was had by all and we solved the mystery and defeated the crazed Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, who was the villain for this year's scenario.
Session #4 saw the continuation of Friday's Savage Worlds game and most of the same players returned, including myself. For those of us who played both sessions, we actually got to 'level up' our characters before getting started, which was nice. More pirate hijinks were had wherein our fence wound up murdered and our money stolen...along with someone's daughter? I suspect that said daughter was originally supposed to be my character's daughter but see, I hadn't paid close attention to my character sheet during the earlier session and had given my captain a female name and gender...which in the real world setting and time period the game was set in, would've been really unusual. Oops. But it did lead to some amusing comments from the rest of my crew. At any rate, we raced off to Haiti to try and rescue our money (and the girl, I guess) from the clutches of Baron Samedi and encountered storms, hostile locals, and a bloodthirsty shark along the way. Unfortunately we kinda ran out of time after the shark encounter and the GM had to narrate the rest of the adventure and conclusion but I had a surprisingly good time with the whole thing and would definitely play with this GM again at future DieCons.
Session #5 is where I finally sat down and played my first ever game of Starfinder! Starting with the very first published scenario, Claim to Salvation, which is run using 4th level pregen iconics. Most of the other players had about as much experience as I did, which was none, so it was nice to be more or less on a level playing field with everyone else. I also saw a familiar face at this table, a kid (probably 14-15ish) who was at all of my PFS tables at last year's DieCon. He seemed to have grown up a little in that this time he didn't try to go all murderhobo right off the bat and also didn't keep interrupting the GM as they were trying to talk. All of the other players, as well as the GM, were super friendly and helpful and we all had a great time playing through the scenario. While I think Pathfinder will remain my main squeeze, I definitely enjoyed Starfinder enough that I plan to make my own character for SFS play.
Sunday morning rolls around after another night of adequate sleep and this is the day where my brother and I are in all of the same events together. Session #6, our first of the day, was a PFS game playing the scenario 'Scourge of the Farheavens'. We only had four people for this and had a really weird level split with one 5th level character and everyone else being 1st level because most of said players either only had those characters to play (the 5th level shaman and the 1st level fighter) or just really wanted to play a particular character (my brother and his 1st level druid). I can't say a lot about the particulars of the scenario itself as I want to avoid spoilers but it was highly amusing and surprisingly challenging in certain parts. It was also pretty straightforward and we finished with an hour to spare so it'd probably be an easy one to run for anyone contemplating GMing PFS scenarios.
Since we got done with plenty of time to spare, my brother and I actually hit up the nearby steakhouse for lunch and had the first proper meal we'd had since Friday morning. Afterwards, we went to Session #7 which was a homebrew game of Deadlands titled 'Large Trouble, Small China' wherein we had to solve some issues with gang violence occurring in San Francisco's Chinatown. Oh, did I mention we had to fight an evil wizard and his nigh-invincible henchmen? That was a thing. I've played Deadlands before and would actually like to play it more in the future, if our home group can ever finish some of our Pathfinder campaigns.
Last but not least, our last game of the convention was Session #8, where we played another PFS scenario titled 'Beyond the Halflight Path'. This one is a 3-7 evergreen with multiple story arcs that can be played and it was my first time playing it. The beginning has plenty of social stuff happening and then the latter part was more dungeon-crawl than anything, but that's okay. Once again, we just had 4 PCs but at least this time there wasn't quite as much of a level gap. We won and survived, but man we had one or two tough fights! Our ectoplasmist spiritualist was the MVP of the scenario and I'm positive that without his assistance we would've wiped on at least one of the encounters. On the other hand...what's up with characters not having any ranks in any knowledge skills? Some classes that are skill-starved I can understand but otherwise, I mean...really? Especially when you're 5th or 6th level? I've seen this several times now with live play but I don't know that I've ever seen it in a PbP game. I try not to tell people how to play but sometimes some decisions leave me shaking my head a bit. Ah well.
Anyhoo, that's pretty much the tale of my experiences at DieCon 18! Had lots of fun, picked up a little swag, and managed to survive through all of my games. I'm totally looking forward to next year :)
Also, apologies to those of you who will see this posted across several games!
Yeah, I was thinking Confirmation for sure as long as the veteran players can stomach it :3
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I have exactly three PFS games under my belt...
The Night March of Kalkamedes
Scourge of the Farheavens
The Solstice Scar, Part C
...all played at PaizoCon 2018!
(All of the GMs were great, too!)
The nice thing about certain scenarios is that they're considered 'evergreens' and may be played multiple times under certain conditions. Rather than try to explain the ins and outs of it myself, I found a handy link that does a great job and appears to be up to date as of May 2018!
I’m still here. Sorry I haven’t posted anymore character details yet- I keep going back and forth between making a witch or an arcanist. I liked the idea of the sort of storm-mage type guy but I haven’t really found a way to pull that off that I’m satisfied with. I have a couple other vague ideas but nothing’s coalesced yet.
I’m still here. Sorry I haven’t posted anymore character details yet- I keep going back and forth between making a witch or an arcanist. I liked the idea of the sort of storm-mage type guy but I haven’t really found a way to pull that off that I’m satisfied with. I have a couple other vague ideas but nothing’s coalesced yet.
Some thoughts about a PFS-legal storm-based character...
Sorcerer (Stormborn Bloodline)
Unchained Summoner (Storm Caller)
Wizard (Conjurer), specializing in weather- or storm-related spells
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Arcanist has versatility. Witch has stamina (the good hexes don't have limits per day).
It depends on what kind if storm mage you want to be. I assume throwing lightning around.
The Storm Dreamer is a poor choice to make a storm mage (it is a 4 level caster, 6 if you are channeling Archmage, and you get very few--1 per spell level--arcane spells to make your lightning).
The Storm Caller summoner is good even though it's a 6 level caster. You've got decent lightning throwing abilities on top of your eidolon and spells.
Consider the Elemental Master arcanist (air) to gain lightning blasts (Advanced Class Guide).
Consider the Havoker witch to really have all-day lightning blasts (Magic Tactics Toolbox). However, it gives up all hexes.
In case anyone is interested...
I just posted a Recruitment thread for an experimental sandbox campaign, set in the city of Kaer Maga, using the Dungeon World game system.
[DUNGEON WORLD] City of Strangers - A Sandbox Campaign
Dot or post if you might be interested!