Masters of Golarion II

Game Master fnord72

Cosmic Dream Lord, how is your character coming?

Seemed like he was still deciding what he wanted as a concept. This was last week, I haven't heard from him again since.

Let's make sure we're posting in here twice a week, minimum. Even if it is to just say "still heer" or hi.

At this level I think a required posting rate of 2-3 times a week would make sense since we will be expecting a much higher level of detail and preparation in players posts.

If we think we are all good, and ready.

Then starting a recruitment thread is next.

I happen to own this copy of the board. Any suggestions on what you would like to see for a recruitment thread?

Round-robin GMing? Or volunteering? Does one of us have something ready to go?

In regards for me running anything, I have no experience with a game at a level such as this. I would be most unsuited for it however much I may want to.

Round robin could be interesting, but we'd need to come up with some significantly terrifying encounters. We definitely need a minimum post limit, though.

I personally feel that at this level the game needs to be more than just "I make an epic roll under know:local, now I know who,when,where."

Now I go and kill the BBG with my epic awesomeness.

Kinda boring if die rolls are allowed to rule the game. This is so far beyond the typical adventure path at 1st level that the players and GM need to understand that more thought is needed.

Players that make super-epic narrow-focused killing machines should go over to the other gameboard where it is just endless combat against a DM epic pet.

So how do you challenge epic characters? By having the information hard to find, spread out, and in little clues that have to be put together.

Any thoughts?

Makes sense to me. A bit of combat wouldn't be terrible, seeing as we get to see some of the capstones so rarely used in action. Maybe sheer numbers could increase the CR to make for interesting fights. But at the same time, there should be weight to what we're doing. Roleplay and consequences should be just as much of a detriment to failure as a dying. Probably more so.

Of course a crazy knowledge check shouldn't tell you of every secret out there. I'd have to think that things like Legend Lore and Discern Location should be used sparingly. At least by our side.

I'm thinking that at this level many of the bad guys minions have mindblank or nondetection on a regular basis.

The low level riff-raff can't afford it, but then, they don't know enough to need it.

What do you guys think of this for an advert?

*******

An epic level game has a few openings. This is not your standard game invitation. Please do NOT start posting character ideas or builds. Building an appropriate epic level character for this game is more than just building the most badass uber slayer possible.

We will expect that you have considered how and why your character managed to survive and become one of the most powerful heroes of Golarion. Your back story and inclusion into the backgrounds of the current players will carry more weight than how effectively you can optimize a 25th level character.

That's right, 25th level. I'm not getting into the rules for character generation yet. Like I said before, this game requires more than just making an awesome character. It also needs a player that understands cooperative play between players and the GM's. Yes, GM's. It takes a lot of work to make an epic character. It takes many times as much effort to make an encounter that can challenge epic level players.

Your eventual character will be good. That is not negotiable, don't ask.

Cont.

Please don't dot for interest. Feel free to take the time in framing your post for interest. Several of us that have been involved with this game through several iterations since August of 2012 will be reviewing your interest.

We will be looking at your posting history on this forum, including:
How many games you have posted in, the level of those games, the types of posts you have submitted for those games, and the tone of your conversations with other players and GMs in the game, discussion, and recruitment threads.

If you have never played a game higher than 15th level, this is probably not for you. If you have only ever played hack'n'slash, this is definitely not for you. If you haven't played play-by-post/email, this is not the type of game to learn it.

For your first post we would like to see your viewpoint on how a character would successfully exist in Golarion at 15th level. With this kind of power a character is probably one of less than half a dozen in an entire country. We are not looking for how the specific character you may eventually build would have lived, but how 'a' character would fit into the world.

We would also like your post to provide some of your history with RPGs in general. Which ones are your favorites? what is the longest table top you have played in? Your longest pbp/pbem? From the viewpoint of a townsfolk, describe one of your favorite characters.

******

What do you guys think?

Seems like a good advertisement.

I like it. When did you want to post the ad?

Sorry for the long radio silence. Busy week aside (many apologies for not getting back to you, ace), it was a major case of "too many good ideas, too many possibilities." I finally have something now. Given that the group does not have a dedicated full divine caster, I am going with Half-Elf Lunar Oracle Self-Proclaimed "Fey Queen" from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings.

My other main idea was a Blade Adept Arcanist who actually has enough levels to be viable on the frontlines, but we already have a wizard, a bloodrager, and a dragon, so that would have been highly redundant.

Edit: For some reason, this thread wasn't showing me updates! I would have replied sooner had I seen them.

I should have sent a PM. I have been overloaded with a mother-in-law in the hospital these last couple days or I might have thought of it. This is about the only posting I have been able to manage since it does not require much brain power at the moment.

I'm sorry to hear that. I know that pain, GMV.

Instead of purely straight Oracle, I'm actually thinking about a dabbling in Barbarian/Rage Prophet. I'll take the twenty-levels in Oracle to get that nice Final Revelation, but it's nice to have room to explore other options.

If you're looking for that idea, CDL, we should link up backstories.

Timing depends on whether we wait for CDL to finish his rebuild and back story. If we wait for him, I'd like to make sure his back ground and current whereabouts are firmly entrenched before we seek new blood.

If we want to go ahead and post for recruits before hand, I have no problem with that as well. He's guaranteed a spot as long as he wants it.

Since it seems that I will be continuing as the current GM, I have a few ideas to pass by y'all.

I plan on keeping the existing mysteries of the desert as a current unknown.

After searching the desert for several weeks, it was apparent that most signs of civilization (few existed as is) had disappeared into the sand. Maniket has effectively been buried under sand that is building a new coast from the ever-present wind. The party had to leave in the hopes that more information could be gleamed elsewhere.

I'll post something in the campaign page about the known area and effects.

I'd also like to have each player list some personal goals, areas of influence, personal projects.

I expect that there will be times when the game goes a bit more sandbox with players describing their own actions and influence on the world.

I linked GMV's google folder on the documents page. I also added a copy of Validk's character sheet to the file. (GMV, can you make the folder shareable to those with the link, keep editing rights to us? That or keep another copy of the folder in case it gets messed up.)

I also added these suggestions from GMV to the doc.

While reviewing the character creation guidelines, we had pummeling style marked as questionable.

I'd like to rule that as noted here: pummeling style. Unarmed attacks only, not weapons, not natural weapons.

These additional edits were suggested and I did not see any negative comments:

Players will be required to use a google document for their character. Their character sheet should make use of: hyperlinks to d20pfsrd, internal bookmarks, and detailed information on their character, background, followers, etc.

Companions, followers, and any other retainers use the basic NPC attributes as outlined in creating NPCs on d20pfsrd. Equipment owned by these is their personal equipment and requires typical negotiation and is subject to DM ruling on availability to the player. Players may provide, from their own funds, specific equipment they may call on. Generally this will be available, but is still subject to DM ruling. i.e. providing a temple with a few scrolls to be held for your character.

A cohort/mount gained through leadership uses the heroic attributes.
Cohort/mount gear is from the NPC heroic list. Additional items may be provided from player wealth. The cohort is not a mobile bag of holding/ buff bot for the player character. Specific equipment to be held by the cohort for the primary purpose of the player character comes from the player character's wealth. I.e. a fighter that carries a pearl of power for their master would be counted from the player character's wealth. A pearl of power carried by a fighter cohort to pay for a spell cast on the fighter may come from the fighter's wealth.

I'll work on setting up the basics of a google doc template (I'll just strip out a lot of the details from a copy of Validk's sheet.)

Please add into your background which reason your character had for traveling to Rahadoum. It may likely come up in the future. If you retired your character and rebuilt it, no need.

Rahadoum adventure seed

Since Wayland is new, I'll come up with a reason for his visit to Radahoum in his backstory. If me and CDL do happen to link up backstories, maybe a divine influence could be a good reason to lead them there.

On an unrelated note, I think it's a bit off that Pummeling Style doesn't work with close weapons. It seems like Pummeling Charge was meant explicitly for monks and brawlers to have an edge in mid-game, just seems not right to say "choose between this feat that gives pounce and the Close Weapon Mastery class ability". /rant

I have adjusted the Google Drive folder to allow anyone with the link to view any documents placed there. The three of you have editing permissions no matter what.

Cosmic Dream Lord, would you be so kind as to PM me your email you wish to use with Google Drive? Once I receive it I will add you to the list of those who can edit. I will send an email from Drive letting you know it is active.

As for myself, I will be adding the reason Katja chose to go to Manaket as soon as I get myself rested as I am working off little sleep. In the next day or so I should be close to where I need to be.

I'm not planing to continue the Rahadoum angle at present. Therefore it isn't critical for Wayland to have been there.

Sounds like a plan, then. I aught to finish up the fire giant scenario from the backstory. I don't think it should be too much, I took this character from an earlier campaign.

Any other comments before I post the recruitment thread?

I've got nothin'.

I'll PM you about it.

Ford, will we remain tier 1? Or did you plan on 2?

Blast wayfinder. It won't let me choose my primary alias to post from, just the character attached to the game.

-Posted with Wayfinder

I hadn't thought too much on the tiering. I was thinking that would be the primary reward system for completing events since experience is sooo very far away.

I had a couple of proposed rule suggestions a couple posts up. Any commentary?

Also, I have posted the recruiting thread.

There are a couple of other epic games in development so I expect some quick response to the posting.

I personally feel strongly about someone that posts "dot". To me it's pretty pointless.

If you would like any edits to the initial posting, please let me know!

I have also gone back and dragged out the original material that got this game started (The Custodians). I've made that group kinda defunct. It can be a future plot device.

That gives three strong areas for character development:

1) how and why their character is epic (and how that would fit into mainstream Golarion)
2) how and why they joined the Custodians, and what they did once cutoff.
3) Their recent ascension to mythic status and their future goals.

Excellent. I see the recruitment thread is up. I will have Katja updated this weekend (yay for weekends off!) and keep everyone posted.

-Posted with Wayfinder

There were some typos in that post. Also, we never discussed anything about that new lore. I really would have preferred that you posted it here first.

What typo's?

The new lore is actually very old lore.

I'm welcome to suggestions and changes.

Arrg, forgot I can't easily edit the postings... sigh. But I can unset the recruitment thread and redo it.

So PLEASE, get your suggestions in.

Just off the top of my head:

1) We've only been playing since August 2013. The recruitment post says August 2012.

2) Golarion is misspelled at least once.

3) "...before a Convocation of herald's. Dozen's of heralds..." should be "...before a Convocation of heralds. Dozens of heralds..."

I will admit that the bulk of the post is mechanically/grammatically correct, and what I pointed out is rather small in grand scheme of things. However, I feel that these typos highlight how we aren't all ready to go.

As for the Lore, the events are correct, but I do not recall anything about Custodians. Maybe I missed something from earlier?

A short summary of what we want* would have been to put at the top, and then we would dive into the lore.

* e.g. This is a game starring a cast of 25 level characters. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Just off the top of my head:

1) We've only been playing since August 2013. The recruitment post says August 2012.

2) Golarion is misspelled at least once.

3) "...before a Convocation of herald's. Dozen's of heralds..." should be "...before a Convocation of heralds. Dozens of heralds..."

I will admit that the bulk of the post is mechanically/grammatically correct, and what I pointed out is rather small in grand scheme of things. However, I feel that these typos highlight how we aren't exactly all ready to go.

As for the Lore, the events are correct, but I do not recall anything about Custodians. Maybe I missed something from earlier?

A short summary of what we want* would have been to put at the top, and then we would dive into the lore. I think it also could have been broken up into sections with bolded titles to differentiate them.

* e.g. This is a game starring a cast of 25 level characters. Etc. Etc. Etc.

May suggest using the campaign tab? It allows for indefinite editing in cases like these.

-Posted with Wayfinder

That is a great idea.

Any ideas about what we could do about the recruitment post? As I said, I don't think we're ready to go.

I'm not sure what else we need before we recruit people. Not sure where all of the story came from, but at least it's a way to make sense of more epic level characters in the world. That said, maybe a clearer set of rules for how characters will end up looking is in order. It'll explain what we will want from people better.

Ask, and ye shall receive...

I went back and reviewed where I was getting my history from. CDL is correct, the 2012 start was for a fizzle that GMV and I were involved in that included our current toons in a format pretty close to the one we have now.

I moved that chunk to a spoiler on the campaign page.

As requested, I added some bold section splits, with very basic stuff at the top.

Good idea aceDiamond. Can I get more on that? Like something that is post ready?

1) We need a concrete premise. The recruits need to know what they will be doing. One reason Version 1 ran out of steam was because there did not seem to be any major objective other than poking around in a desert.

For example, even though there was a lot going on plotwise in The Lord of the Rings, the ultimate objectives were to defeat Sauron and toss the One Ring into a volcano. Having something like that to focus on can go a long way.

2) We need a well-formatted initial recruitment post. What we have right now is an unpolished block of text. Truth be told, if I was not already part of the group, I would be hesitant to apply as is.

Most other DMs break theirs up into clearly defined sections. Premise, backstory, rules, character guidelines, and so on.

3) We need a good, lean background story. It might be the lack of distinction between sections, but the lore we have now is hard to digest. Could it not be condensed some?

At this point, I would ask a mod to delete the initial post so we can put in the more polished version later.

Happy to see you back CDL.

What do you suggest? Put some ideas out there of what you would like for that.

Keep in mind that I wasn't the original DM for this and just volunteered to pick a couple roads to drive down. It's a group consensus on where the car is going.

I'm going to be busy until Friday, so I probably won't be saying much until then.

As for the post, it looks much better with breaks to format it.

We have a couple of people in the recruitment thread that are looking to join the adventure. Please take a look and chime in.

A couple of things have popped up for consideration.

1) Do we stick with the expectation that cohorts can't take leadership? I'm personally inclined to keep this. Depending on the build and intentions, I'm willing to make an exception for a specific build.

2) Should we extend the leadership table? I'm thinking that if we do, we don't progress it the same, but introduce bigger steps.

Leadership score needs to increase by 5 for each step after 25.
The followers from the last line and the line 5 back are added together for the next line.

Score 30: cohort 18; followers would be: 1st (135+60) 195, 2nd (13+6) 19, etc.

Score 35: cohort 19; followers would be: 1st (195+75) 270, 2nd (19+7) 26, etc.

I also brought up the prior general goal of finding immortality. I believe this is still a valid goal to reach for, in line with CDL's suggestion.

I'm not sure about extending Leadership, really. Seems like it's a pretty hard cap.

Thoughts on firearms?

I'd like to leave them out of the game. I think there are too many issues with them, especially with whether or not you can free action reload.

Thoughts on firearms?

I'd like to leave them out of the game. I think there are too many issues with them, especially with whether or not you can free action reload.

I've not looked at firearms at 25th level so I couldn't say definitively on it. At first glance I am inclined to say no for the time being.

I'm not against them. At this level, firearms are utterly tame compared to some of the stuff our characters can do.

I'm up for firearms. If I'd known, I'd have been more tempted to make a Picaroon.

I've seen some nasty and disturbing builds down around the 13-16 range that do hundreds of damage bypassing DR and hundreds of feet to touch armor from concealment against invisible enemies with firearms.

I'm leery of builds that are so powerful they can just walk in and settle the argument in one round, without researching weaknesses, discovering lost clues, etc.

Nothing against any player, but I was expecting the battle against Storm to take a little longer than it did. The whole session ended up being about how to secure him after the extremely short battle.

Another seen and I was trying to provide clues to a mystery to be solved. The attempted solution was "kill it now, figure it out later."

If we allow firearms, at what level? And do we impose a limit on the number of "free" actions per turn?

I vote for no guns, or very rare guns, at the most emerging guns. I'd prefer to keep the flavor of sword and sorcery.

Having firearms will require greater review of the character as I have seen a lot of people selectively reading some of the rules to get damage caps way out of proportion.

While we are on the subject, I'm also inclined to not allow technological weapons at this time. I've barely touched any of the books that discuss them.

I think that's an over-exaggeration, if you ask me. At the time, it didn't seem like our GM knew of the caliber of 25th level characters and threw what seemed to be an equal CR event at us. Another GM would probably run that significantly differently, especially with how we got away with the demiplane prison.

It also seems like the players that even want guns aren't going to pick a base gunslinger, which significantly reduces how useful PF firearms are. I'd say emerging guns to rare would be reasonable, at least. With the level of power we're offering, an archer build could churn out just as a terrifying damage output, if not more so.

While the archer may be able to put out as much or more damage, it's not likely to be against ranged touch