Please not that I've put up a recruitment thread for Wrath of the Righteous.
Sorely tempting, DW. We'll see if I can come up with something I'd like to play. Tempted to try out an inquisitor but I'm having a hard time finding a concept that I like. Thematically it seems like a good class to be playing, but I just can't find a character I like.
Oooh, while I was writing this, I had a flash of inspiration! Thinking about how my concept plays out so I may well get a post up shortly. :)
I may submit a tank. Thankfully of a friendlier demeanor than Pavel, and without a speech impediment.
I was thinking about signing up. I'm going to be running this for my group. Given the pace of PbP I'll be ahead of where we're at in the game shortly after we start because we meet every week and I tend to move things along. I know CB wouldn't want a player who read and DMed all the modules in the game. I think I'm going to have to skip this one.
Rules question: does Lead Blades stack with Enlarge Person? I don't see anything under LB that says it wouldn't, but I'll bend to your opinions.
It seems like they do from my casual reading and a quick Google search of the Paizo rules forum. The decision is TCB's of course. :) Here are the links I was looking at:
Lead blades and the impact weapon property DON'T seem to stack.
Lead blades and enlarge person do seem to.
If they stack, my understanding is that a large, lead blade Katana rolls 3d6 following the same progression as a longsword.
Had some downtime while I was waiting for some tools to run at work and got to look at your campaigns, DW. I hadn't realized you were running a Kingmaker game with Set and Javell. I'm running the game for my local crew and they're just about to hit the end of the third book. Looking forward to that dungeon crawl. :D
Fair warning: I have labelled all the stuff my PCs have discovered thus far. This may spoil stuff so be careful.
The Kingdom of Ursonia as it stands some 4-5 years after the Torgonauts started the kingdom.
Okay, that map TOTALLY reminds me of the Civilization video game. Which is a totally fun game. Well, CIV 4 was my favorite. Unfortunately, it won't work for Windows 7. That is a pretty freaking cool map, dude. :)
Thanks! :) Pulled the maps from the Folio PDF with a pdf image extractor and then stuck them together using GIMP. Fun project for me. :) Have the PCs maintaining it now.
Sorry about the fly spell confusion Javell, I thought I mentioned it in-character but I may have forgotten. I'm excited to see how Theoden reacts to flying all over the place. You've got 4 minutes left on the spell (as I noted in my edit) so go nuts while it lasts. :)
I'm pretty positive it's something I missed. That happens a lot with me. Either that or I just plumb forgot. Which happens even more. :p
Kingmaker was the best AP I've ever run. It was a blast as a DM. I think module 5 was the most fun. I worked in a lot of drama and intrigue. I developed some NPCs not in the module to use for plot points. The final battle was epic. An all out power brawl as one monarch took his last stand against the other...winner take all.
After that I probably enjoyed either Carrion Crown or Rise of the Runelords.
I plan on turning Wrath of the Righteous into an epic adventure where the children of the Kingmaker characters battle against the demonic forces in that modules. The parents were the greatest heroes of a kingdom, the children will become myths and legends.
I'm guessing you're talking about at the table? If so, man you've ran through a ton of AP's.
I've only run through the three I mentioned. We started Second Darkness, but did not finish. I've done a bit of one module of Curse of the Crimson Throne. I really enjoy APs. Great addition to the game by Paizo.
AP's were a great idea for sure. The only one I've run in RL is Second Darkness. And we haven't finished it either. We got near the end of Book 5. That was a few years ago, unfortunately.
The good news is, the other players are family. Bad news is, tough to get us all together at one time anymore. We've talked about getting back to it, it's just hard to find the time.
I've actually read all of Rise of the Runelords. That is my favorite AP. That be fun to play through.
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Ah, APs.
I think we're halfway through Rise of the Runelords, in DM Wellard's game, although I really have no idea. (Cleric of Nethys) I also played the very first bit in tabletop, as a Cleric of Erastil.
Other than that, I've started two Second Darkness games (neither made it out of the first module), and played one standalone of the second adventure, I think. (Cleric of Urgathoa, Cleric of Calistria and the same Cleric of Urgathoa again!)
I think I've been in two startups of Legacy of Fire, but neither made it much past the thrice-damned pugwampis. :) (Druid and I don't remember...)
One Skulls & Shackles, which did not make it off the beach. (Druid with dinosaur companion!)
I've been in one Curse of the Crimson Throne, using some house rules (recharge magic, from Unearthed Arcana), which was underway when I joined, and I never really integrated into it. (I'm not great at jumping in as a replacement, especially playing a pre-existing character someone else made.) (Cleric of Abadar)
Two Council of Thieves, one of which died a couple encounters in, the other of which is in the second or third book, I think. (Barbarian and Wizard - Conjurer. OMG, no clerics!)
Two Kingmakers, one of which didn't make it out of the meeting with the dudes in Brevoy who where giving us the charter. (It looked to be a very political game, more Vampire the Masquerade than D&D, and I think it hugely turned off the other players.) (Summoner and Cleric of Abadar / Kalistocrat)
One Jade Regent, currently in a cold place and going strong, although I totally changed my character after the first few encounters. (Tried playing a druid, and nobody else played a healer. After many encounters with poison, and even one with a negative energy level, playing a class with delayed (or none at all!) access to the necessary cures was proving frustrating! Ex-Druid, now Cleric of Erastil.)
So, I've obviously got a thing for clerics...
I'd love to play a druid more regularly, but if no one else is playing a cleric, the druid ends up using all of their slots trying to be a third-rate healer (despite lacking such necessities as restoration), and never actually gets to be a *druid.* (Or, yanno, you can say to hell with it, prepare all fun druid spells and let everyone else die, but that never leads to a fun gaming experience...)
Same situation with an oracle. A divine caster who is almost guaranteed not to have the restoration or remove blindness or remove curse or liberating command or breath of life that you desperately need (and, in some cases, such as with liberating command or breath of life, can't count on being able to carry on a scroll), and, if he does, is stuck with them permanently? No thanks.
I can never get my head around playing a cleric well. Every time I try I end up disastisfied with how the build works out. Maybe I should challenge myself to make one next time I get to play a character. Thinking about it some more, I just don't get divine casters. Too many Mind-Effecting spells to do the debuff thing so it seems like you're left with summoning and being a band-aid.
As for APs. I guess I've had good luck because I've not had any of mine die out. I'm currently playing in a Kingmaker game with 13 (count them!) PCs. There's a political angle to the game that's been fun but it has been one of multiple things we're doing. Largely boils down to who gets to play leader for the group. It's been interesting playing with so many people and actually playing out the political machinations (which for my paladin are pretty limited...). We've been moving fast and are getting ready to go after the end boss for module 1.
I also just joined in on Curse of the Crimson Throne game that DW is playing in. Looking forward to messing around with my vivisectionist/Trapbreaker rogue replacement. The good doctor, Jozif, should be a fun one to play. I don't know much about the story, so I have no idea where we're going from here.
Otherwise I haven't really done much in the way of APs. My final PBP has been a fun one. We're a batch of Tiefling slaves who were wildly experimented on by the drow. My party were made as living weapons (which we've done admirably) and we've been running around causing havoc. I've been enjoying melting faces with an admixture evocationist. (I have a thing for wizards.)
Otherwise... I guess I'm GMing Kingmaker (ran that tonight) and that's about the extent of it. I AM hoping to get into DW's Wrath of the Righteous as it looks like it'll be a blast. I've had this lore warden concept kicking around for a while so I want to give it a go.
I like playing divine casters. The idea of your faith actually amounting to something is intriguing. It makes for interesting roleplaying, especially since the majority of gamers are often anti-religious and have so little desire to play a character who must have absolute faith to manifest his power. Not to mention divine oriented players have to follow the religious ideals of their deity, many gamers don't like to do that either, at least that is my experience.
But the biggest reason most avoid playing clerics: they don't like the healer role.
Another problem in PbP is the pace of leveling. A cleric doesn't hit the sweet spot until higher level. Much of his low level power is invested in keeping the party alive. Once the party reaches a level where they can take hits and dish enough damage to end battles quickly, the cleric can start using his resources on offense. They can unleash some pretty potent offense. They can melee better than the 9 level arcane casters due to their armor and weapon choices.
I love it when you finally get to lvl 9 or 10. You get enough spell slots to fill them with some offensive spells and the party is generally strong enough to allow you to do so.
I was trying to do my Holy Nuker option in a PbP. It requires the use of holy word. PbP levels so slow, it would take years to reach the levels to use holy word to destroy everything. I'm saving that concept for my tabletop game.
I've started a lot of APs, but never finished one either because I wiped out the party or we just got sick of them. We had a TPK in Rise of the Runelords at the end of the second adventure and got pretty far into Council of Thieves until the 3rd adventure when the party decided to attack the Mother of Flies and were all turned to stone for their impudence. Second Darkness just petered out in the third adventure as well- just lost steam. There's also just phases where I get sick of Pathfinder and all of its complexity and bolted on rule sets and splatbook options; but I guess that happens with every system. Running Skull and Shackles now and basically had to jettison the ship to ship combat rules just because it was bogging everything down. Even now just two adventures in, I'm ready for a break. Maybe we're just casual scum in my group, but spreadsheets of spells, crew members and other minutiae to track is a little too much for an art school graduate like myself.
Busy few days coming up. I'm not sure I'll be able to update maps and fight before Monday, but I'll try!
No problem; I need to update Pavel's sheet to have the sword, anyways and get my spells, effects and such organized.
Man, clerics is ALL I ever play at the table. Because no one else will or wants to. It's the one spellcaster I actually like playing. I'm not really into arcane.
I've always wanted to play a druid but I never have. I've always thought changing from one animal to the next is just cool.
Of course, you don't get Wild Shape until like 4th or 5th level. So until then, they're kind of boring. And just to be clear, I judge that based on the fact I played one only at 1st level so that's probably not a fair assessment. And plus it was back in the 3.x days. So I've never even attempted one in Pathfinder. One of these days though...
@Rikash: 13! Jeez, man! That's insane.
And Jozif? Okay that's pretty funny. I've got a cleric(funny enough) named Iozef. He's easily in the top 5 of the best characters I ever played on these boards. He was a lot of fun. And what's funnier is that I'm a power gamer at heart - although, over the past few years I've come to appreciate how just beating things to death doesn't make a game fun solely - and Iozef was completely on the opposite end of the spectrum. Good times. :)
I've been in one Curse of the Crimson Throne, using some house rules (recharge magic, from Unearthed Arcana), which was underway when I joined, and I never really integrated into it. (I'm not great at jumping in as a replacement, especially playing a pre-existing character someone else made.) (Cleric of Abadar)
:) If it weren't for me jumping in as a replacement, I'd be in like 2 games instead of 8. Or 7. Or whatever it is. :p
I will agree wholeheartedly that it's not easy. I've actually taken over 2 pre-existing pc's and both have been difficult to incorporate. One game died so I'm never gonna know if I could've pulled that one out. Another one is still going(it's been about a year I'd guess) and it's gotten better, but there are still times when I'm like, "Now what?" It is truly an undertaking.
Up to this point, Kriger has been the easiest; and that was from the get-go. But he is truly the exception.
It's actually a typo on my part, now that I look at it. This is in the character in question. Even more of a coincidence in this case. :P
Ha! Only one letter away. That is pretty funny. :)
This was the character I was speaking of:
He was a knowledge MACHINE! A cloistered cleric. I always wanted to play a character who knew practically EVERYTHING. And he pretty much did. It was greatness. Don't know how that helps in killing the nasty creatures but hey, it was fun! :)
His avatar is that of a vampire. I didn't realize that until I actually went back to look out of curiosity. I just thought it was the perfect pic of a bookworm who spends all his time inside reading.
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He was a knowledge MACHINE! A cloistered cleric. I always wanted to play a character who knew practically EVERYTHING.
I almost never fight as a cleric, so I loved the 3.5 cloistered cleric, and, later, the Archivist, from Heroes of Horror and / or the Knowledge Domain feat in Complete Divine.
Knowledge as power, a very cool concept.
@Maddigan: You got picked up in Lucendar's game. He's looking for you in the Discussion thread. Just fyi.
@Rikash: 13! Jeez, man! That's insane.
Crazy/Insane it definitely has been. I can't imagine trying to GM it by myself. It's not too bad at all when we split up into 3 parties, but when all 13 of us are together it's a bit nuts. The game is here if you're interested in perusing it. We've had a pretty decent turnover rate due to RL stuff (I think we're down to 8 of the original 13 with 5 replacements that joined recently). I guess that's not terribly surprising, all things considered. :) Fun game though with all the inter-party politics and jockeying for leadership. That and Kertuffle has been making some fun adjustments to keep it fresh for those of us who know the AP.
Knowledge as power, a very cool concept.
For sure. It's why I like wizards. :P
Time to hit the hay, but I'm curious if any of you have heard of the Iron Kingdoms setting? It's got some neat takes on the classical cleric roles (in addition to being a fun mash of the industrial revolution with fantasy). I'll have to elaborate on this a bit later but now I'm tempted to start GMing a game in that setting. There's one city in particular where I've always wanted to run a game. It's basically Mos Eisley (hive of villainy) with a bit more government and even more criminals. You can also toss in some horror/intrigue elements with cultists and multiple nations using it as a base for intrigue. Maybe I'll have to find a time to come up with a campaign for it... Adapting it to the Pathfinder setting could be a lot of fun.
I'm pretty sure I got mine. Round 1 I cast shield (not sure it'll help, but worth a shot). Round 2 I made tactical suggestions.
Thanks Javell.
Iozef was awesome indeed! Never eat cereals while reading his posts. It's just too dangerous for the computer; you will explode laughing out the your Chocolate Covered Sugar Bombs!
Lol! :)
Everyone posted their two rounds of action, right?
Yep. Well, basically I'm just gonna wait for round 2 to cast Magic Weapon. That's it for me.
Thanks Javell.
No prob!
It just occurred to me that Manu has improved evasion. That would mean he doesn't take any damage from the breath, right?
Moved this to the discussion thread to avoid cluttering the gameplay thread.
You actually got it all right, Theoden. I had forgotten part of the rules for Telekinetic Charge. Telekinetic charge lets you use an immediate action (using the swift action for your next turn) to make an attack at the end of the movement. If you take the extra attack, you can't smite (as you used your swift action). You should be fine with how things are now. :)
Quick recap of how this worked so it's clear in my head:
- I cast Telekinetic Charge on Theoden.
- Theoden gets moved by the spell anywhere within the 40 foot radius around me as long as he has a clear path. He could have potentially taken an/many attack(s) of opportunity for this.
- At the end, if Theoden wishes, he could have made an attack by spending an immediate action. In this case he chose not to so he could use Smite Evil on his next turn.
- Theoden's turn rolls around and he hovers in place. He probably needs a Fly roll for this with a +7 bonus from my fly spell but a -2 penalty from being large.
- Theoden uses a swift action to smite evil and then makes a full attack on the dragon.
Okay, I deleted my post because I should've put it in here.
Well that's cool then. As long as everything's cool, then I'm good. I rarely have run arcane so I know very little about the inner workings of spells.
Yea, had to a do a little digging to make sure I got everything. Thanks to Maddigan for pointing out the immediate action thing. I hadn't noticed that before.
@Javell: The only thing you may need to do is make a fly check. With your dex and ACP your total bonus seems like it should be a +5 targeting a DC 15.
You know, I've never been a part of a fly spell. Man I can't believe how freaking involved it is. It's almost more trouble than it's worth. You really need someone with ranks in the fly skill to partake of it.
Okay, now I'm even more confused. So, are my previous attack rolls null and void? Do I need to do everything over? Because if they're not, then there's no way I can do a move or standard. So I'm guessing they are?
Yea. Turning out to be less helpful then I had hoped. With a few ranks in fly it might be better. (also as I gain levels and there's a bigger bonus).
@Rikash: Where'd you find this: '+4 good maneuverability'
I know the Core has it in there somewhere, where it talks about poor, good, perfect, etc., I just can't find the dang thing.
I don't play the fly spell in that fashion. I always assumed hover applied to flying creatures, mostly creatures with wings. Creatures with supernatural or magical flight do not require the same type of air resistance on the wings to remain aloft. Thus they would not need forward movement to remain flying. I understand the principle of flight the were trying to simulate with the fly skill. It should only apply to winged creatures.
I use this sentence as my reason:
Using a fly spell requires only as much concentration as walking, so the subject can attack or cast spells normally.
I allow 5 foot steps and normal full attacking without hover checks with the fly spell.
Fly is a Dex-based skill. That means Théoden's armor penalty applies as well. Thus it is nearly useless for almost any class that uses medium or heavy armor with an average dex.
I think the Fly skill is a poorly designed, poorly explained skill that doesn't at all treat flying (specifically magical flight) in a sensible fashion.
@Rikash: Where'd you find this: '+4 good maneuverability'
I know the Core has it in there somewhere, where it talks about poor, good, perfect, etc., I just can't find the dang thing.
Maneuverability modifiers here.
Might be canceled out by your armor check penalty.
You make some good points Maddigan. I'm not sure how DW wants to treat it. It seems like it'll be quite a bit easier to deal with given your interpretation. I haven't had it come up yet in my Kingmaker game and most of the games I've GM'd haven't really lasted past 5-6th level.
I don't play the fly spell in that fashion. I always assumed hover applied to flying creatures, mostly creatures with wings. Creatures with supernatural or magical flight do not require the same type of air resistance on the wings to remain aloft. Thus they would not need forward movement to remain flying. I understand the principle of flight the were trying to simulate with the fly skill. It should only apply to winged creatures.
I use this sentence as my reason:
Using a fly spell requires only as much concentration as walking, so the subject can attack or cast spells normally.
I allow 5 foot steps and normal full attacking without hover checks with the fly spell.
Fly is a Dex-based skill. That means Théoden's armor penalty applies as well. Thus it is nearly useless for almost any class that uses medium or heavy armor with an average dex.
I think the Fly skill is a poorly designed, poorly explained skill that doesn't at all treat flying (specifically magical flight) in a sensible fashion.
As per my AC penalty: It's only a -1. So technically I would've only gotten a +4. And now that that's settled...
Man that was my thoughts exactly! I just can't put it as well as you. I'm sitting here thinking, "If I can fly, why do I need to roll to hover?"
Obviously my first thought when it comes to flying is Superman. The way he flies is kind of the way I always pictured magical flight in DnD.
Now, creatures with wings I can understand. Obviously birds are the perfect example. If they can hover at all, they have to continuously flutter their wings. Hummingbirds probably the best example I can think of. I'm not actually positive all birds can hover to be honest.
Anyway, I totally agree. The whole, "...as much concentration as walking" seems like it should be easier to do than this brutal learning experience. The way this is going, it's turning out to be, "...as much concentration as riding a unicycle." :P
I think it's a +5 even after the ACP. You've got a +3 from 1/2 my caster level, +4 from good maneuverability, + 1 DEX, -2 from large and - 1 ACP. Putting my engineering major to good use here. :P
Oh, and thanks for the link, Maddigan.
@Rikash: For a minute there, I was thinking it might be too. But that's because I nearly forgot that being enlarged is a -2 size penalty to Dex. So my Dex would actually be a modifier of +0.
Ah, fair point. Too many modifiers all around. :)
Yeah once you start throwing spells around, it seems if one point is affected, then this point and that point are also affected incidentally. It turns into a big ol' spider web of happenings. And trying to keep track of it all turns into a chore.
The spells and odd modifiers are why sometimes I just roll with it if it's close, especially for skills and such.
Hit rolls, saving throws, and damage I like to be very accurate.
Perception vs. Stealth I like to be accurate.
Acrobatics moving through enemy squares accurate.
Action use I like a good degree of accuracy.
Anything that will trivialize a challenge I try to keep as accurate as possible.
Most other things losing a bit of accuracy to keep the game moving is ok with me.