Gestalt Carrion Crown

Game Master bigrig107

Here's the discussion thread. Feel free to use this to discuss potential characters and how you all know each other.

I have recently started using discord (just text) to keep up with the campaigns I GM and it has helped a lot with accountability and availability, would that be an option people want to use for this?

Checking in. I’ll send the link to the other two right after I hit submit.

We haven’t had an in-depth conversation about it yet but I believe the idea is to all be part of a religious order together (I think our three characters are going to be a ranger/warpriest, a bard/paladin, and an inquisitor/gunslinger). We haven’t talked about a specific god at all yet, though.

Edit: I forgot to say, I joined discord for another game that I’m playing in and don’t mind using it for discussion and updates here too.

Sorry, I meant to delete my dot, but clearly I did not.

Also, I see that Joe dotted in too; the other player is Polyfrequencies (who I believe is in the WotR game as well) and I'm sure he'll check in soon.

I think probably everyone already knows most/all of this from PMs but just so we're all on the same page here's where we're at with character creation.

- 25 point buy
- 'normal' race options (including aasimar and tiefling)
- gestalt
- background skills
- elephant in the room feat tax rules are in effect

A couple of things I don't think we've addressed yet.

- HP? I just assumed max at 1st and 1/2 rounded up after that, but our GM might want to do something different?
- Starting wealth?
- Traits? I assumed 2 with one of them being a campaign trait, but (again) our GM might want to do something different?

And for our GM's benefit: I know the campaign traits all have different reasons for us to be at the Professor's funeral (which makes it seem like their assuming we'd be meeting each other there) but the idea I shared with the others was that we could all be part of an order/secret society/sect within the same faith/church that had us in Ustalav to help protect people from supernatural threats. We may have interacted with the professor together as a group, or individually before joining, but either way we could still all have different relationships with him and be invited for different reasons. We haven't settled on a deity yet (and are open to suggestions) but probably one that's LG or NG (has to be one of those or LN, to support a paladin) and has some connection to protecting people (or opposing supernatural dangers).

Right now (to the best of my knowledge) the tentative plan is for Joe to play a str-based (angelkin) aasimar paladin/bard, polyfrequencies to play a (plumekith) aasimar inquisitor/gunslinger, and I'm looking at a str-based, 2WF (hungerseed) tiefling warpriest/ranger (although, I won't actually 2WF until 2nd level).

Oh, Polyfrequencies. I know him! Excited to have him along.

Those rules sound good, yeah. I’m pretty much okay with a lot of races, just not any aliens or plant people or anything extraordinary. Dhampirs, aasimar/tiefling, elemental races, etc all are fine.
Two traits, one has to be campaign. Can take a drawback for a third, but I must approve the drawback. No easy ignorable drawbacks.
Wealth is average for your highest class. Hit points max at first, half every level after.

As far as deities go, there are a handful of good options. Abadar, for his civilization protection. Iomadae for general good-ness.
But I had a compromise: Pharasma. I wouldn’t mind waiving the LG adjacent deity Paladin rule for Pharasma specifically, or some other appropriate deity if you can convince me enough. I know Pharasma is pretty much perfect for this adventure path, and I don’t want her to be taken away as an option just because one of you wants to play a Paladin.

I’m not entirely sure on the balance with regards to this AP and gunslingers, though, especially when combined with Inquisitor gestalt, so I might have to take a look and see if it’s not super insane.

The player’s guide actually suggests Desna, Iomedae, and Pharasma as the three gods which will feel the most connected to the AP. We may hold off on picking one a little bit longer though, until you decide on whether or not the gunslinger will work, because if not there may be some shuffling around of classes/builds. I’m not sure if Poly has a back up plan at all, but I do know that he pointed out at one point that we didn’t have an Int character at all (and don’t really have options for a good divine one). Given that, if he has to switch he might want to switch to like a fighter/investigator or a slayer/magus or something? If that’s the case, we’d probably tweak the concept to be part of a secret society (or whatever) that isn’t directly tied to a church (and then both divine casters could worship different gods).

I just know that old adventures weren’t made with the gunslinger touch AC attacks in mind, and a lot of older stuff is made trivial by them.
I’m not banning it outright, I’ve just heard that it’s probably best not to play them in older content. If he wants to play it, I’ll make it work.

There might even be an appropriate society in game already, I just haven’t done enough research yet. I’ll look around when I get off work today and see what I can figure out.

Sorry I missed the thread until just now. It was a busy weekend. Hello all! I will get caught up.

So, this might require a little tweaking for our overall concept but I had an idea I haven't had a chance to play that you're welcome to try out if you want... Swashbuckler/Inquisitor [sworn of the Eldest].

You'd have to worship one of the Eldest (a fey god)--so either we'd all have to or we'd have to adjust our concept away from all being part of the same church--but the archetype makes inquisitor Cha based so it synergizes really well with swashbuckler (and there's a bunch of +dex/cha races).

If you're into magi, I think slayer [sniper]/magus [eldritch archer] is a super fun combo. Or, slayer [stygian slayer]/magus [blade bound, hexcrafter] is pretty cool and would bring a bit of a 'using the dark to fight the darkness' vibe that's pretty prevalent in a lot of supernatural-fighting stuff. I'd probably steer clear of magus/investigator though; it's kind of cool conceptually but I'm not sure the mechanics would come together that well (with the number of rounds it would take you to get all your buffs rolling you'd probably be better off just pairing one of those classes with something with a full BAB).

If you're really in to the investigator [antiquarian] (which I also think is a pretty cool archetype), inspired blade isn't a terrible pairing. Having a bad Fort save in a party with only 3 people isn't as bad as having a bad Will save, but it is less than ideal. I'm not sure what a better option would be though? Fighter [lore warden] would cover the Fort save and get you some extra mileage out of your Int, but wouldn't do quite as much damage (against things that precise strike works on), and you wouldn't have parry and riposte. Or, the 'child of Acavna and Amaznen' fighter archetype trades away most of their fighter goodies but gets Int based bloodrager casting... so less melee effective than a swashbuckler but you get to be some sort of mystic theurge gish, lol.

I had a little free time this morning so I was thinking a bit about potential gods, and I had 2 thoughts.

Magdh- one of the Eldest (so it would work if Poly wants to go with the swashbuckler/inquisitor I mentioned), she's LN so she would work for Joe's paladin too. She doesn't have a real strong connection to battling supernatural evils, but she's apparently believed to be "single-handedly protecting the First World from some calamity" so there is precedent for her followers protecting the world from calamities. She also has triplets as part of her portfolio, so I kind of like the idea of every cell of our order being assembled as a trio.

Tanagaar- an Empyreal Lord who's LG (so a perfect fit for a paladin). He's a patron of watchers and protectors, so pretty much a perfect fit for an order devoted to watching and protecting against supernatural menaces. His portfolio also includes night, so he could potential be a perfect fit for something like a stygian slayer/bladebound magus, if Poly decides to go that direction (and his favored weapon is kukri, which I was already leaning towards for my weapons).

Is there a particular reason you don't want to go Pharasma? It's the easiest tie-in for both you and me resource wise, and fits this AP quite perfectly.

I'm willing to let the paladin worship her (could even take the oath against undeath), but what's your issue with her? If you just don't like her that's fine, she just seems perfect for what you guys want.

I have no issues with Pharasma if your OK with the paladin build. I'll try to cover Knowledge skills if no one else can, but feel free to take that off my hands.

So, I could probably work with Pharasma if I have to. From just a fluff prospective, I've never been particularly attracted to her as a patron. And for this in particular, I obviously don't know as much about the AP as you do, but in my mind the order that we'd be a part of would be on the watch against all kinds of supernatural threats, not just undead, and while Pharasma makes sense in terms of fighting undead I don't see anything that would have her followers going out of their way to deal with other menaces. And then, from a mechanical standpoint, I'm not crazy about her domains to begin with and the warpriest blessings they grant are mostly garbage.

If everyone else wants to go that way I'll figure something out though. Probably take an archetype that trades away one of the blessings (or both). Definitely not my first choice.

It would also preclude the swashbuckler/inquisitor build (though, I don't know if Poly was even into that).

Edit: Actually, depending on what Poly does end up making, if people want to go with Pharasma I might just switch my concept to something less effected by our deity (like a slayer/magus if he doesn't use that, or maybe some kind of inquisitor), then it wouldn't really matter.

I do like the sworn of the eldest archetype, and previously built a gnome follower of Ng for a Reign of Winter campaign that never went anywhere. But I feel like the Eldest are more appropriate in campaigns that deal more specifically with Fey and/or the First World.

A Lore Warden/Investigator could be an interesting combination. In either case, I would plan to cover as many knowledges as possible. I think I'm leaning increasingly towards Investigator being one half of the build, and just need to find a good second pairing (of which there are plenty).

If you’re going to cover knowledges, that frees Joe up to focus more on social skills (and even trade away bardic knowledge if he wants). As far as pairings go, I do think lore warden or inspired blade are probably your two best options? My personal preference is lore warden for the extra skill points and greater flexibility (you’re less limited in your weapon choices, and less limited by needing things to be vulnerable to precision damage), although against things that take precision damage (and don’t have DR against piercing) the inspired blade would do more damage, I think.

As for me, I like the idea of having one of us focusing on each of the mental stats, so I’ll stick with something Wis based. Since everyone else is cool with Pharasma, I’ll look at some options for divine casters that aren’t quite as tied in to their god as a cleric or warpriest and see what I can come up with. Maybe some kind of inquisitor/monk if there’s a monk archetype that has anything to do with the dead/undead? Or, maybe I’ll look at pairing something with that Druid archetype for worshiping a god (nature priest, I think)?

So, are we all going to build characters separately and just post them when they're mostly done, or do we want to talk through any of the details?

I'm going to follow Poly's lead and post some ideas I've had and look for feedback from everyone. I do want to stick with something Wis based, and I have come around a bit on the Pharasma idea. So here are the rough concepts I'm trying to decide between.

The Zealot
A militant priest devoted to battling the undead and anyone else who disrupts the natural order of life and death, trained by a crusader from nearby Molthune. Ranger [divine tracker]/Warpriest [Molthuni arsenal chaplain]

The Ascetic
A friar who eschews weapons and armor in favor of faith and fists; as concerned with helping trapped souls to reach the Boneyard as with stamping out undead threats. uMonk [soul shepherd]/Inquisitor [expulsionist]

The Woodsman
An unusual priest, more comfortable in wilds than on busy city streets, who came to the Lady of Graves not through her church but by watching the cycle of life and death in nature and meditating on the stillness of placid pools; embraces the power of nature as a tool for fighting those who distort the natural cycle. Ranger [corpse hunter]/Druid [nature priest]

The Gentleman
A minor noble who studied at the University of Lepidstadt, where his family money bought him into an elite society of Pharasman occultists known as the Order of the Palatine Eye. Fighter [mutation warrior]/Bard [dwarven scholar, speaker of the Palatine Eye] (I know we already have a bard but with these two archetypes it'd be Wis based and use a different spell list, and give up inspire courage, so practically a different class)

I'd love to hear people's thought?

@Poly- if you're still looking for ideas for an investigator, I discovered today that there is a Lepidstadt Investigator archetype (for investigator) and also a Ustalavic Duelist fighter archetype (focused on fighting with a single light blade, and originating at the University also). I'm not sure how good either is but they may be worth looking at?

I will look at the Lepidstadt Investigator and Ustalavic Duelist!

I like your ideas. As I continue to develop my own, I will post them as well.

Any preference on which you like most (or least)?

@GM- anything you see there that you don’t like and would rather I steer clear of (or anything you find particularly interesting)?

I'm partial to the Zealot. I'm leaning toward a sacred shield paladin and a bard with no archetype.

I'm holding off on building too far until I know if I need to cover the Knowledges.

When I built a swashbuckler/investigator last weekend as a possibility, he had 12 skill ranks per level (6+Int(4)+background(2) and was covering arcana, engineering, local, and religion. I also grabbed skills in acrobatics, bluff, craft (alchemy), diplomacy, disable device, spellcraft, and stealth. Had an inspired panache pool of 5 and an inspiration pool of 4. I could easily switch back over some knowledge skills, but overall would have panache to acrobatics, bluff, climb, diplomacy, escape artist intimidate, ride, sense motive, and swim (between inspired blade and noble fencer), and free inspiration to all knowledge and spellcraft. The weak Fort save is less than ideal, and he would be hard-pressed to do much against anything immune to precision damage, but he would be one hell of a skill monkey.

Other possible pairings that look promising are Fighter (as GH mentioned), Brawler, Slayer, and (oddly enough) Cavalier. All would play very differently. (Ranger and Monk might also be possible, but would benefit more from wisdom than I had planned to put in.) I will do some theorycrafting this weekend and see if anything inspires me.

As for your builds, GH, I'm drawn to the Zealot as well. The Gentleman would likely have met my to-be-built character at the University, though, so that's also promising.

Another odd thing: the bard is one of the few classes (including sorcerer, alchemist, and vigilante, inquisitor) that has archetypes for all three mental stats. It would probably not be ideal, but you could presumably have a party of all three of one of those classes, with two people taking one of the alternate archetypes, and gestalting with something else (probably a full BAB class) for some other type of unity. Not to throw another wrench in here.

Lol- Why not go all the way and do an Int alchemist/sorcerer, a Wis alchemist/sorcerer, and a Cha alchemist/sorcerer? I’m joking but in all seriousness bard pairs well enough with almost any full BAB class that you could do three of them pretty effectively. I do think we’re better off diversifying more than that, but if we wanted to have a cover story of being a traveling band we could do it.

We are but poor, lost circus performers. Tell me, is there a village nearby?

I'm honestly fine with a whole lot of that, and I don't really have any preferences. I'm running this for you guys, with no recruitment, so I aim to only have minimal input on your characters.

If I had to pick a favorite, I would say I like the Woodsman the most, just for an interesting nature-focused viewpoint.

So... I've been working on crunch and fluff for the zealot and I've run into an issue. As a zealot, he's devoted to the pure faith, which in this case is purposefully removed from the concerns of morality (good/evil) and ethics (law/chaos). In his mind a paladin would be a clear heretic. He'd be willing to work with one for a cause like battling the undead, but it would be a source of regular tension. I know some inter-party tension can make for good RP but I deal with a lot of conflict management at work and, honestly, I really prefer to avoid it as much as possible in my gaming.

The zealot is probably the only one I'd have that problem with. The ascetic would likely recognize that the paladin was slightly heretical but his attitude would be more like 'if the Lady of Graves sees fit to grant him powers, who am I to judge'. The woodsman, having not received formal church training, probably wouldn't even think of him as a heretic. The gentleman, being well educated, would know that a paladin of Pharasma was a heretic, but be too 'enlightened' to be concerned about it.

I'm also thinking that with an investigator and a bard as teammates I should probably make sure to cover survival and some of the other outdoorsy stuff. The gentleman wouldn't really do that at all, so I'm mostly looking right now at the Ascetic or the Woodsman, and I'm leaning slightly towards the woodsman (mostly for practical reasons- 25 points is a nice buy but monk is already really MAD and that particular class/archetype combo needs at least a little bit of Cha too, which would leave him spread pretty thin).

Fun, fun. I dig it.

So most likely I am going to be building a Lore Warden Fighter/Empiricist Investigator. Having looked at the Lepidstadt/Ustalav-specific archetypes, they generally underwhelmed me, trading away a lot of abilities and not getting much back in return.

I want to avoid building another Sherlock Holmes or snobbish intellectual elite. Personality/motivation-wise, I envision someone with a deep curiosity towards the sorts of subjects that Professor Lorrimor researched who desires more field experience actually encountering the horrors of Ustalav. It might be fun if he is related to the Kindler family, and therefore deeply wanting to model himself after author-adventurer Ailson Kindler. He could even be making a living more as a coroner/medical examiner at the start of the adventure, though be generally dissatisfied with the work, and happily jump at the chance to go on an adventure.

Interestingly enough, in 2E Pharasma's followers can be NG, LN, or TN, and therefore she can absolutely have Redeemer Champions (but not paladins or liberators).

Poly- does that mean you don’t want to do the religious order and/or secret society thing any more? Or were you picturing that being more of a volunteer thing that required having a day job? In my mind, I was thinking that was going to be our full-time gigs.

I'm still good for religious order/secret society. I was trying to think of a university student's connection to Pharasma, how he could have come more personally to the faith.

On another note, since this is the first time I'm really looking to play a 1e fighter, what are our thoughts on combat stamina?

So, have we gotten into any more specifics quite yet? Lots of good ideas floating around, that's for sure.

I’ve had a busy week so I haven’t typed anything up yet but I’ve been thinking a bunch about the woodsman (and a little bit about the ascetic). I got off on bit of a rabbit trail and worked out a ranger/druid build that I really liked (with different archetypes than I was originally looking at), but then I realized I had really lost the connection to Pharasma completely so I had to scrap it. Now I’m mostly looking at druid (nature priest)/ranger (divine tracker) and just trying to figure out if I want to build an archer (since I don’t think anyone else was planning a ranged build) or a melee build.

edit: I guess it would really be more of a switch-hitter build I was looking at instead of pure ranged, because the druid archetype doesn’t trade away wild shape, so at 4th I’d have the option to turn into a lion or bear or something and claw/claw/bite away.

Alright, here's a rough draft of what I (giant halfling) have done so far. I welcome feedback.

All of the crunch (for the rough draft) is in Andrei's profile, along with bullet points for appearance and background. I didn't want to write those out until they're actually set.

For our order, do we want to have all come to it in different ways and from different places and then been assigned together, or should there be something more purposeful behind it (like we were all recruited by the same person, or all joined in the same city, or something)?

Yeah it's been a very busy week for me as well. I basically have my crunch ready to go, but I still need to work on he backstory and remaining alias.

I imagine that we could have come from different ways and different places. Do we want to say that we're part of the Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye, or is that too secret of an organization/has ties to the AP?

I don't know anything about whether that order is tied to the AP or to what extent, but in the fluff for the bard archetype I looked at it described them as being wealthy gentlemen who basically buy their way into different levels of membership. I'm not sure that would really work for my woodsman?

I'll look into it and see if the Palatine Eye works, or if it's too connected.

@BigRig- are you alright with occult classes? I had never really looked at them before but the spiritualist actually has two archetypes that are connected to Pharasma, plus others that could be a good fit even with a less direct tie-in (especially if we go the Order of the Palantine Eye route, with their esoteric interests).

Alright, so if we go with the OotPE I'd like to make (if allowable) a ranger [divine tracker]/spiritualist [phantom blade]. The phantom blade spiritualist is basically a Wis-based magus (but still with the spiritualist spell-list), who gives up the phantom (pet) for something like a blade bound magus' black blade. The idea for him would be that he's from an aristocratic family and grew up an avid hunter and fisherman. When he got a little older he joined the OotPE (or some similar organization) and studied the occult with/through them. I'm picturing his family as long time Pharasmins and his father a member of the OotPE, even if we were part of another order.

Honestly, I don't really care for pet classes usually, but with several archetypes that trade away the phantom I kind of like the idea of something in this vein even better than the woodsman (again, assuming BigRig is onboard with the class at all).

All Paizo classes are available, minus the gunslinger. None of the occult classes are particularly troublesome.

I wanted to follow up with the question on combat stamina. Is that something that we would be interested in implementing in the campaign? And if so, which of the four options (feat access, free for fighters, fighter bonus feats only, free for everyone) would we want to use to introduce it?

That's about the last thing I'm trying to account for in my crunch.

I was waiting for the GM to answer that.

Personally, I have no objection to including it? I believe I've only been in one game where we used them and (iirc) fighters got it for free and anyone else could get it with a feat? Whatever the GM wants to do is cool with me though.

Also, I cleared Andrei's profile and reworked him as a ranger/spiritualist who's from a minor noble family, grew up an avid outdoorsman, and studied at the University of Lepidstadt (where he got into more esoteric studies and joined the Order of the Palantine Eye, or whatever order we're all in). I did copy the old profile though and have it saved in case we end up going with an order where the more rustic ranger/druid makes more sense. But, aside from actually writing out the bullet-point appearance/background (assuming they're ok) I should be completely ready to go.

Free for fighters, and anyone else can get it with the feat.

@GM- any decision on the Order of the Palantine Eye? I’m (tentatively) planning on being a member. It’s not a huge deal if I have to change that, I’ll just switch to whatever order we are part of, but I took ancient Osirian because it’s apparently something they use and I’ll have to switch that to something else too if we’re part of a different order.

I didn’t see any connections in the first bit of the adventure. Seems fine to me!

Excellent! I'll finish creating my character asap then.

I'll be hammering things out tonight.
Pali/ Bard (arrowsong minstrel)

Alright, since nobody else has posted a finished character yet, I think I’m going to do one more overhaul… As I was working on finishing up Andrei I realized 3 things: 1) the fluff for this version is my favorite; 2) I liked the mechanics/style of combat from the zealot more; and, 3) there’s no reason I can’t combine those in one character.

So, I’m going to stick with the same general backstory but have his training with the Palantine Eye be slightly less esoteric. I need to look through the warpriest archetypes and see if I want to stick with the one I had before or switch to something stranger, but I think I should have everything finalized tomorrow.

I still have to write out the actual description and backstory (from the bullet points), but my final, official version of Andrei is all set. I look forward to seeing the other two when they’re ready.

I am likewise still working out the description and backstory, but here's Petyr, the human-appearing tiefling lore warden/empiricist from poly.

lol- I am also a tiefling with the pass for human trait! I think Joe is looking at an aasimar, so that'll be a nice counter-point.

I either read in the Player's Guide or something else on Ustalav the tendency towards high suspicion amongst residents, so I'm like "gotta be more normal".

I almost went with dhampir, but negative energy affinity is so much harder to account for before you can easily afford a wand.