GM Wolfe's Rise of the Runelords

Game Master Jude the Wolf

Please make use of this as much as needed. Great communication makes a campaign last.

Thanks for the invite. I want to make two changes to my build if you don't mind as I think it will make Cin more party friendly.

1st I want to sawp my dump from Wis to Cha. Same exact statline just swapping thise stats I made the character at work as I said and I am fairly certin I won't be taking any arcanist exploits that require Cha.

2nd I want to change my level 1 exploit to Quick study instead of dimensional slide. I will take the slide later but quick study will let me change my prepared spells in a pinch to get a different buff or utility.

I also am gonna spruce up the backstory. 100% the same just more detailed and readable.

That's fine with me. Thank the gods y'all have a Bard!

Thanks for the invite! Looking forward to spending some time with you all. I will have my stats sorted out sometime within the next 24 hours.

3 Barbarian types, me (Saurian Shaman Druid), Azi (Actual Barbarian) and Ingir (Skald).

Dwarf Ranger,

2 Half elves, Bard and Arcanist

GM Wolfe

After reviewing several Traits, I am requesting GM Approval on a Trait adjustment.

The Trait is Kin Guardian

The adjustment (calling it the Heroic Guardian Trait)

Thanks for the consideration.

So obviously our characters don't know each other yet but it would be good to get an idea of how we all work together. It looks like we will have a lot of melee. As I level and get more slots I will have room for more buffs but in the early levels I will likely be focused on myself but if it would be more advantages to one of the other melee Enlarge person is my bread and butter always prep'd spell.

Either way with the huge amount of melee we have we should probably pair up with flank buddies. Arkon has his AC, so that Leave Ingir, Azi and Gareth. Without any RP happening I can see myself connecting with Azi easier both us being half-breeds thus slight outcasts.

Anywho flanking good.

Thanks for the invite! Happy to be here. Yes, we are very melee heavy, especially since even my ranger is melee. Even the Arcanist is melee. We are pretty much "all in your face"! We even have the druid pet to crowd the frontline. This will be fun to watch - especially without anyone to channel, and the heals limited to the spells selection of the caster and wands. I guess we will figure it out.

@Mioki: what a chauvinist proposal! Even the name! Bigotry :P

So obviously our characters don't know each other yet but it would be good to get an idea of how we all work together. It looks like we will have a lot of melee. As I level and get more slots I will have room for more buffs but in the early levels I will likely be focused on myself but if it would be more advantages to one of the other melee Enlarge person is my bread and butter always prep'd spell.

Either way with the huge amount of melee we have we should probably pair up with flank buddies. Arkon has his AC, so that Leave Ingir, Azi and Gareth. Without any RP happening I can see myself connecting with Azi easier both us being half-breeds thus slight outcasts.

Anywho flanking good.

Cinthiel will have to explain flanking to Azi. He doesn't have too much of a concept of teamwork or field strategy, but he is quite trainable. Kind of like a puppy. A really large puppy. :)

Thanks for the invite! Happy to be here. Yes, we are very melee heavy, especially since even my ranger is melee. Even the Arcanist is melee. We are pretty much "all in your face"! We even have the druid pet to crowd the frontline. This will be fun to watch - especially without anyone to channel, and the heals limited to the spells selection of the caster and wands. I guess we will figure it out.

@Mioki: what a chauvinist proposal! Even the name! Bigotry :P

Yeah, I know. I even hesitated. That's why I hid it in a spoiler. Hopefully our gracious GM views it as innocent and does not throw me out of the game. (hint, hint) :)

Yah I just realized we don't have a real healer the druid and bard can do it but I don't think it is either of their focus. I can swap one of my learned spells for Fiendish healing but I don't know how that will go over RP wise with the demon blood component. Once we get some cash we are likely gonna have to buy out the towns stock of potions and scrolls of cure.

Also even though melee and transmutation is my specialty with my quick study ability and the fact that I can learn any spell with my spell book I can function as a universal Wizard type if needed.

@Mioki I read your backstory btw. While I normally hate when players try and use

@Mioki: to each one its fun, so my apologies if I sounded a little harsh. I was just hoping that since we're a short steps from 2020 we'd already be conscious about certain things (and I'm glad you hesitated! Just frustrated you didn't follow your hesitation). Regardless, I leave it for the GM.

@Cinthiel: I find that story element distasteful regardless, but again, I'm not the one to judge.

In terms of healing, my ranger will eventually be able to do it in emergencies as well. Far from an ideal place, but we have to make our lemonades with the lemons we're given!

To everybody: if you feel I'm crossing the line with my comments above, again my sincerest apologies. I can just step out of the game if it's the case as I'd rather not damage anyone's fun.

To everybody: if you feel I'm crossing the line with my comments above, again my sincerest apologies. I can just step out of the game if it's the case as I'd rather not damage anyone's fun.

Seemed like it was a joke to me I got no beef. Actually is there beef in trail rations? :)

Not offended.

Lack of healing can be concerning but I'm equally concerned with status removal when we are away from a town. With skald's vigor my skald will have fast healing 2 when raging but that doesn't help anyone else. I can also take some cure spells like the bard.

@GM Wolfie if it okay with you I will look at some other class options that can fit with the background I created with some minor tweaks.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Not offended.

Lack of healing can be concerning but I'm equally concerned with status removal when we are away from a town. With skald's vigor my skald will have fast healing 2 when raging but that doesn't help anyone else. I can also take some cure spells like the bard.

@GM Wolfie if it okay with you I will look at some other class options that can fit with the background I created with some minor tweaks.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

I say let the cards fall where they may. We will not know each other at the start of the adventure. Roleplaying party strengths (and weaknesses can be a lot of fun IMHO).

I personally like a challenge so don't mind the lack of traditional healers. If you really wanted to make something different and had GM approval and wanted to stick with the Shoanti origin a Shaman could work.

@GM Wolfie I spruced up my backstory if you wanted to give it another read :)

@Mioki: to each one its fun, so my apologies if I sounded a little harsh. I was just hoping that since we're a short steps from 2020 we'd already be conscious about certain things (and I'm glad you hesitated! Just frustrated you didn't follow your hesitation). Regardless, I leave it for the GM.

@Cinthiel: I find that story element distasteful regardless, but again, I'm not the one to judge.

In terms of healing, my ranger will eventually be able to do it in emergencies as well. Far from an ideal place, but we have to make our lemonades with the lemons we're given!

To everybody: if you feel I'm crossing the line with my comments above, again my sincerest apologies. I can just step out of the game if it's the case as I'd rather not damage anyone's fun.

I am hoping we did not get off on the wrong foot. I am quite the nice guy when you get to know me. Thanks for calling me out on my ignorance. I'll keep it in mind on future posts. I had no intention of offending.

GM Wolfe: if you are offended or even were offended I will take leave from your game with no hard feelings. My intentions were innocent, and I honestly support the roleplaying aspects of my request. That said, if I can stay in the game, I humbly withdraw my request so it does not haunt the future of this game.

Respectfully Yours.

Wow, I missed a lot at work!

@Mioki
If you want that change, go for it. There's plenty of strong female NPCs in this AP that will be happy to humiliate--er--help with character growth.

I don't mind the graphic backstory, but don't mistake that as my approval of using trauma to fuel development. If you feel such hesitations in the future, I'd go with them. We're not measured by our intentions, but by our impact.

I'm looking forward to seeing Azi's story unfold.

@Ingir
If you want to cook something else up that works with your story, have at it.

In general, you are free to make adjustments to your character as long as it fits your submitted backstory. We'll likely start playing on the 1st, so I expect all characters to be finalized by then.

I'm looking forward to playing with all of you, and I know that we're going to have a blast going through this classic AP.

@Cinthiel
Your revisions turned out nicely! Well done.

@Cinthiel

Your revisions turned out nicely! Well done.

Thanks. Can't wait to start. If there is anything I can do help you prep let me know as I am my f2f groups eternal GM and I am quite familiar with Golorian setting and lore. Besides the Wiki I can point you to some Paizo books that can be helpful with this ap and sites I like to use.

I won't be able to change shape til lvl 6.. so i'll be spell focused a bit, not to say he'll be useless in cmbat.

The AC is primarily going to be a flanker seeing as it has a 60ft movement.

@Gm Wolfe
So I just looked over the recruitment page and noticed something I missed as a sub system that I wasn't aware of. Background skills. So that means that I have 2 extra skill points for use in skills classified as Background? Or in m,y case 1 for background skills since I have one in Knowledge(History) Already and than get 1 adventuring skill point as a refund/trade for the adventuring one I spent on history?

@Nicolas Paradise
If you have some book recommendations, that would be helpful. I have a few books I'm using now, but some of their titles might spoil the adventure so I won't list them here. The wiki might as well be my homepage now. I've run this F2F twice before, but I am hoping to really get into some things that just get glossed over at the table.

I didn't notice that either! So You'd have 1 background skill point and one adventuring skill point, like you said. Thanks for bringing that to my attention so we could get it set right.

@GM Wolfe if you would prefer I not list books here in case of spoilers I can message you on discord or some other way but besides the ap itself both anniversary and ogl there are at least 4 splat books that have good info for this game that I can think of. One is specifically a player book so I will say it.

Varisia Birthplace of legends.

Edit: keep forgetting to post in alias. Must make sure I don't do that in the gameplay thread :X

Also you want these sites.

Golorian Calendar you can select the year and have all the in universe holidays with proper names of days of the week ect. RotR for instance should be set to start in Rova 4707 to match uts realworld release of September 2007 and the Swallowtail festival.

The same site also has this Golorian name generator that besides using sourcez from books uses real world names that seem to match so selecting Varisian gets names that are east european and Romani in origin or Cheliaxian gets Italian and some spanish(spain) sounding names.

@Cinthiel
If you could PM your recommendations to me, that would be great. Thank you for the calendar and name generator! Those will definitely come in handy.

@GM Wolfe
Done! :)

@Everyone

A little early forward thinking.

Do we want to create some kind of shared document for party loot? That way items that are either for party use or junk that will be sold when we get to town can be put in one place and we can also put any odd coinage that doesn't divide evenly in there to go toward group projects?

I am not big on book keeping as I do enough of it in the 2 games I GM f2f but if no one else wants to do it I will.

EDIT: Also I think my character is 100% done so anyone let me know of any suggestions or tweaks they think I could make CHARACTER SHEET HERE

@Cinthiel

Cinthiel looks like he will be very fun to play. I played a bookish sorcerer once and really enjoyed it. He could teach Azi how to read and flank ... especially flank.

I would be happy to help with the bookkeeping if the party agrees to a shared document. Since you do this in other games, do you have a template you use that can be duplicated and shared? Would rather not start from scratch, and, by reviewing your character sheet, I bet you have a very organized system.

@Cinthiel

Cinthiel looks like he will be very fun to play. I played a bookish sorcerer once and really enjoyed it. He could teach Azi how to read and flank ... especially flank.

I would be happy to help with the bookkeeping if the party agrees to a shared document. Since you do this in other games, do you have a template you use that can be duplicated and shared? Would rather not start from scratch, and, by reviewing your character sheet, I bet you have a very organized system.

My other games are face to face so I just use a standard loot sheet from Dyslexic character sheets.

A simple google doc or sheet would probably work fine but I can google around and see if there are any exiating templates around.

Azaersi - Azi wrote:

@Cinthiel

Cinthiel looks like he will be very fun to play. I played a bookish sorcerer once and really enjoyed it. He could teach Azi how to read and flank ... especially flank.

I would be happy to help with the bookkeeping if the party agrees to a shared document. Since you do this in other games, do you have a template you use that can be duplicated and shared? Would rather not start from scratch, and, by reviewing your character sheet, I bet you have a very organized system.

My other games are face to face so I just use a standard loot sheet from Dyslexic character sheets.

A simple google doc or sheet would probably work fine but I can google around and see if there are any exiating templates around.

No worries. I can easily whip up a Sheet. How do I share it with you Fine, Paizo folk? Do I use the Messaging Function? I could use a little help with that to get started.

I don't have a preference how or where you share it I am a fan of google drive but dropbox is also probably fine.

You can post links directly here with the [url=urlhere]texthere[/url ] tag.

I support your loot sheet ideas.

Google doc with everyone getting permission to access?

Loot Sheet

Ok, I think I did this right. If you need permission to access, do a request and it shall be granted.

I am open to any thoughts on format or I'll just start plugging away once our gracious GM starts spreading the loot. (hint, hint) :)

Not sure how to do this (maybe the GM can only do this), but I was recently in a game where there were links to important campaign related things above the Game Tabs. If possible, maybe we can get the Loot Sheet posted there for easy reference.

The GM would have to post it in the Game info tab. Given his posting schedule he seems to be check twice a day once in the morning and once in the evening so he should see this soon and be able to post it.

@Azi
I need permission to access the sheet. After I've got it, I'll put it in the Campaign Info tab. I appreciate you making this.

@Cin
It's her, not his, thanks.

Happy to see everyone working together already! My work schedule is changing slightly, so my posting schedule should be 10 AM and 10:30 PM EST. That's not what I originally had in mind, but that's life for ya.

@Cin
It's her, not his, thanks.

Apologies I knew that I red your about me post. Must be some Freudian slip as every GM I know is male.

EST = GMT -5 so you are 13 hours behind me... so 1 am til 12pm are your posting times that i'll see.

GM Wolfe going by your posting time and the request, you should have access now. Sleeping by this time of night, since I usually wake at 3 am for worky-work. Also on EST. Live in Pennsylvania about 50 miles north of Philly. (Go Eagles)

Plenty to read here! Haven't seen you posted.

I plan to become Bard/Cleric on level 2, so you'll get some healing

@Everyone I am also EST as well in South Jersey (Go Eagles[I don't actually care I don't follow sportsball])

@Vanea Oh cool. Are you going for an Evangelist build or something? Either way I am intrigued by that multi-class.

@Vanea that’s great as I was struggling to find something that grabbed me.

@everyone - I’m from Indiana (right outside Indianapolis) and on EST too.

I'm on PST at the moment, but relocating to EST mid January.

I assume I'm ready here too, unless the GM wants me to change anything!

On a side note: if the party prefers and the GM approves, I can create a completely different character (to be more on the ranged dps side instead). You let me know... I don't mind.

This Dwarf is build for melee, particularly around cleaving with the Dwarf-specific feats. While as a ranger I should be able to carry a bow and do something in ranged too, this wouldn't be my focus.

As for Vanea: great builds around Calistria, especially involving Wasp Familiar and some prestige class (the bard level suggests me you might be going for courtesan one, but who knows right?)

I'm on PST at the moment, but relocating to EST mid January.

I assume I'm ready here too, unless the GM wants me to change anything!

On a side note: if the party prefers and the GM approves, I can create a completely different character (to be more on the ranged dps side instead). You let me know... I don't mind.

This Dwarf is build for melee, particularly around cleaving with the Dwarf-specific feats. While as a ranger I should be able to carry a bow and do something in ranged too, this wouldn't be my focus.

As for Vanea: great builds around Calistria, especially involving Wasp Familiar and some prestige class (the bard level suggests me you might be going for courtesan one, but who knows right?)

Unless you want to I wouldn't change. Ranger is like the main class I play at any opportunity and even with a melee build Rangers do great ranged damage when needed. Although as a ranger I usually use my leveling feats for my main build and use my combat style feats for archery. However a good archer only needs 2-3 feats Deadly aim, precise shot and multishot anything else is butter. Knowing a bit about how Paizo makes AP's there maybe a few areas where we are crowded but we can make it work.

A CotCT game I play an Elf Ranger with a Curved Blade and the rest of the party is a Combat Maneuver fighter, a dual wielding rogue and a summon focused druid with an animal companion and we have tons of fun surrounding a target tripping them and than obliterating them with AoO's and My power attacks and the rogues sneaks while the druid peppers with arrows and the ac tiger mauls them. We beat a 5th level npc boss that was designed to be unbeatable because we caught him in his own trap and kept his reinforcements blocked to a one wide door so the got stopped or killed one by one as they tried to help their boss.

@GM Wolfe are crafting or leadership going to be allowed? Personally I only really want scribe scrolls(which it bothers me that arcanist doesn't get but skald does) but as the party Wizard it usually falls to them to do magic crafting. IF we are going to be allowed to and the party wants I can go for those feats because I realistically by my build only need like two feats since I compensate for not having all the fighter bab and combat feats by being buffed to high heaven and getting more stats from my buffs because of my archetype.

Leadership is usually a no no but sometimes is can be fun especially if it happens naturally.

Oh, not suggesting to change because I don't think rangers are good. Rangers are great - had been playing them for 30 years (not only Pathfinder, of course).

This build, however, feat starves so I doubt I'd be able to afford the bare minimum for ranged to be effective (Precise Shot is the bare minimum, which means 2 feats with PBS). Proper ranged builds would also bring deadly aim and multishot, like you mentioned, but also rapid shot, clustered shots, improved precise shot and point blank master (there are other interesting ones but I like to round on these).

I certainly believe Gareth is great as it is, I just don't believe the party is with our current composition, as much as we can "make it work". I had played enough to learn to dislike crowded melee parties.

If it became a real problem I could retrain into a blaster build however I think we should be fine there will just be a few encounters where crowding will force some characters who roll lower on init to play alternative to their main build like me becoming a party buffer as opposed to self(or shapeshifting into something small or tiny so space doesn't matter) and you pulling out your bow.

Btw, are you taking an AC at 4th?

I don't know yet if I'll use a Prestige class later. Being dual classed might be enough. Or maybe if I find something interesting RP wise

@Cin
It's water off a duck's back, my friend. Just settin' the record straight.

So many yankees! I was born in West Chester, but I'm happy to be mixing that Brotherly Love with Southern Hospitality here in the mountains.

Crafting is definitely a yes. There's plenty of downtime opportunities in this AP so crafting is very possible. I won't get into specifics but assume that you'll get at least one long stretch of downtime each book, or between books.

Leadership...well, it has a reputation, but honestly it's not any more game breaking than half the crap Paizo's put out at this point. I'll say that if you roleplay exceptionally, and help guide the story in the appropriate directions, I'd allow a PC to take Leadership. This is definitely an AP where it can make sense.

I don't think being melee heavy is a game-breaker, but as y'all probably know some AP encounters can be PC killers without a ranged specialist, especially in the first six or seven levels. Consider that, but if you are really digging your party composition as-is, don't change it.

And sorry about missing a post this morning. Y'all know how the holiday season is.