[Non-PFS] [3PP Class Only] Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands (Inactive)

Game Master djpika

PERFECT!

Ok, voting has concluded. Welcome to the game Storm Dragon.

We can clean up the aforementioned details in a bit.

@original members - if you guys can decide on returning to town or staying at the keep, I can start to work them in... the former being the easiest, I think.

I'm good with returning to town. I think we collected enough gold. or gold equivilient that Zupon can restore his re-fillable healing kit. and may see about buying extra.
He has his 1 refillable 10use one. and 2 more 10use ones that are not refillable.

Granted only 4 heals per person per day. but man those uses go fast.

Also for the moment, as we are healing tapped. Zupon made 2 healing elixirs and 1 bomb during the body clean up. Though ideally no ambushes on the way home!

Return to town. Lick our wounds. Gain new members. Start again the next day.

Ok, I'll let the group wrap up any additional preparations before going in the game thread. That should buy enough time for the new additions to clean up info.

Returning to town sounds good as well; Nathan's got both an in-game reason to be in Swallowfeld and to meet up with party via Reithic. For Randall, mebbe the recent orc/goblin activity would be part of the reason to go to Swallowfeld [if there aren't any other reasons or in-game connections to go there]?

Returning to town sounds good as well; Nathan's got both an in-game reason to be in Swallowfeld and to meet up with party via Reithic. For Randall, mebbe the recent orc/goblin activity would be part of the reason to go to Swallowfeld [if there aren't any other reasons or in-game connections to go there]?

or maybe, word of Aunt May's meatloaf has spread so far and so wide, that, being a hungry soldier, Randall is like, "damn I am hungry. I want that meatloaf I heard about." and then #BAM he's at the Inn all hungry and stuff

@Nathan - I was looking at your character sheet and I have the following questions:

(1) How did you acquire 4 feats?

Feats Access Psionic Talent, Extra Power Known, Persuasive, Psychic Sensitivity[OA]

There's 1 from level 1, 1 from the psion class itself, and then? I thought Persuasive here might be a trait but then you have 2 traits listed:

Traits natural flier, psychokinetic talent

(2) Where are you getting the alter self spell from?

. . 1/day—lter self alter self (specific human, drow, or elf form)

(3) Why do you have psicrystal abilities listed without a psicrystal and the Psicrystal Affinity feat?

(4) It looks like you cross pollinated Paizo's Occult rules with Dreamscarred's Psion to get Occult skill unlocks... which doesn't really fly since DSP's Psion was created pre-Occult and I don't believe the intent was to treat this as a precursor for the Occult Unlock abilities.

I think the main answers are HeroLab & Alternate Racial Traits.
If there was an unmentioned exclusion, I would be happy to abide by it.
But I just reviewed ... so I will need it pointed out for me.
The material is meant for flavor, it isn't mechanically meaningful, mostly, because I won't play to it. BUT. A great example of why I wanted this, is that Nate could pick up a psychic spell later on. If we want.
SCREENSHOT
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IINWJrcWXZ0MPsBPHtKP2q65vpQgioMk/view?usp= sharing

It is easier to see the sources in a full character sheet as well:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18xmay0GBIOXClc_VHMSjsy9NKVpBsrl_/view?usp= sharing

PLEASE let me know what needs to change

Not at all the character I wanted or wanted to play.
Please review again:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18xmay0GBIOXClc_VHMSjsy9NKVpBsrl_/view?usp= sharing

Note - I'm posting this as is since I had it started earlier during a break but didn't get a chance to complete the post.

This pertains to

SCREENSHOT

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IINWJrcWXZ0MPsBPHtKP2q65vpQgioMk/view?usp= sharing

It is easier to see the sources in a full character sheet as well:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18xmay0GBIOXClc_VHMSjsy9NKVpBsrl_/view?usp= sharing

PLEASE let me know what needs to change

-------------------------------------------------------------

@All - does anyone else want to take a stab at this? I'm looking at the hero lab character sheet and most of the questions still stand. I'm not sure why he's allowed 4 feats to start with. I also don't see an alt racial to allow for the alter self, which seems to be the logical change for it since it's not a part of the psion powers.

Some of the abilities listed appear to be an artifact of how Hero Lab processes certain things (Occult Skill Unlocks called out, Energy Type forced selection for spell).

Things like Powerful Presence appear to be bugged, since this is a racial trait that replaces the bonus feat trait of humans, which he doesn't get as a half-elf.

I found Flexible Half-Breed, which doesn't appear on 3pp, but that looks like it explains the alter self ok, which replaces the multitalented racial features.

I still don't see what's giving him the psicrystal since I believe that requires a feat to attain it.

I'll have to read through DSP stuff on d20. Whats on there anyway. Not all of its listed on that site as they hold true to retained rules for getting folks to buy it.

It probably won't be today or tomorrow. As I'm having contractors over building things.

but I do have question. I can only access the second link,m the first one is restricted.

What class from Dream Scarred Press is he playing? is it called "psion" ? or is it a different one?

===========

off hand I think some of the DSP classes do give free feats for "entry" to their schtict. but Herolab also may be confusing Half Elf and Human's free feat and skill focus situation.
if it is giving both humand and half elf it might be doing that. It occured to me because the sheet has odd race label "Humanoid (Elf, Human);" So i'm wondering if it seperates

=============

Most (all?) Psionics stuff should be on the SRD, at least through Ultimate Psionics. Every time I've cross-referenced the site with my own copy of Ultimate Psionics it's been accurate.

I might take a look-see at it later myself, if I have time.

Note - I'm posting this as is since I had it started earlier during a break but didn't get a chance to complete the post.

This pertains to

Nathan wrote:

SCREENSHOT

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IINWJrcWXZ0MPsBPHtKP2q65vpQgioMk/view?usp= sharing

It is easier to see the sources in a full character sheet as well:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18xmay0GBIOXClc_VHMSjsy9NKVpBsrl_/view?usp= sharing

PLEASE let me know what needs to change

-------------------------------------------------------------

@All - does anyone else want to take a stab at this? I'm looking at the hero lab character sheet and most of the questions still stand. I'm not sure why he's allowed 4 feats to start with. I also don't see an alt racial to allow for the alter self, which seems to be the logical change for it since it's not a part of the psion powers.

Some of the abilities listed appear to be an artifact of how Hero Lab processes certain things (Occult Skill Unlocks called out, Energy Type forced selection for spell).

Things like Powerful Presence appear to be bugged, since this is a racial trait that replaces the bonus feat trait of humans, which he doesn't get as a half-elf.

I found Flexible Half-Breed, which doesn't appear on 3pp, but that looks like it explains the alter self ok, which replaces the multitalented racial features.

I still don't see what's giving him the psicrystal since I believe that requires a feat to attain it.

Take another look now that it's revised?

All of that is gone ... given that it seemed to be the offending material. Yes, the Starchild background grants a Feat. Yes, F. Half-Breed grants the spell. It's all gone. Occult skills are NOT unlocked.

I really thought this was what we wanted ...

I'll have to read through DSP stuff on d20. Whats on there anyway. Not all of its listed on that site as they hold true to retained rules for getting folks to buy it.

It probably won't be today or tomorrow. As I'm having contractors over building things.

but I do have question. I can only access the second link,m the first one is restricted.

What class from Dream Scarred Press is he playing? is it called "psion" ? or is it a different one?

===========

off hand I think some of the DSP classes do give free feats for "entry" to their schtict. but Herolab also may be confusing Half Elf and Human's free feat and skill focus situation.
if it is giving both humand and half elf it might be doing that. It occured to me because the sheet has odd race label "Humanoid (Elf, Human);" So i'm wondering if it seperates

=============

I just changed those permissions, but as I said, all of that is gone.

Most (all?) Psionics stuff should be on the SRD, at least through Ultimate Psionics. Every time I've cross-referenced the site with my own copy of Ultimate Psionics it's been accurate.

I might take a look-see at it later myself, if I have time.

Cool I'll look up stuff when I can. Might gander through on lunch break if I get one (haven't lately)

Apologies for the late showing; had to do a bit of character sheet forensics for Nathan's PDF link [good to have some free Nate-Char-Sheet downloading stuff out there for PF1e. ;p] by checking in on an associates' Hero-Lab program... plus some judicious checking on AoN/D20Pfsrd... and a wee bit of source-book checking too. :)

Nathan, by any chance, are you re-using your Herolab character creation output? I've noticed that there were some extraneous leftover junk files left on your character sheet [especially that first iteration of Nathan's character pdf- that was a bit of a doozy to go thru]. One suggestion that I can offer, if that is the case, is to create a brand new character pdf output per each character only without reusing them from another character; I know it can be a hassle though with having to re-checkmark all of those relevant sources for each character sheet. :(

I think that Nate's initial Half-Elf racial trait substitutions were the following: Starchild, from Horror Adventures, which replaces adaptability and is the source of the Psychic Skill Unlock feat, plus Flexible Half-Breed, from Blood of Shadows, which replaces multitalented and is the source of the Alter Self spell-like ability, plus Perfect, from Horror Adventures, which replaces elven immunities; Perfect is meant to be an Elf only racial trait though under RAW but I can personally confirm that Hero-lab does allow for a Half-Elf to take this. My guess is that Hero-lab doesn't differentiate between Elf and Half Elf elven immunities racial traits.

What gets really weird when the Psychic Skill Unlock feat gets taken is that it adds in the Gatefinder skill stuff- which only should be activated when you take the Planar Sensitivity feat but Hero-lab automatically puts it in. Same with the Munavri only psychic skill unlocks for Modify Current, taken from Profession
[Sailor], and Read Tides, taken from Survival; a GM can, if they wish to, allow other races with the Psychic Skill Unlock to take these at their discretion. ;)

Apart from those, Nathan's newly chosen Access Psionic Talent Feat, Extra Power Known (Psion) Feat from the Psion Class, and Psicrystal Affinity feat [which gives the Alertness feat too] plus the Natural Flyer and Psychokinetic Traits checks out though.

Apologies for the late showing; had to do a bit of character sheet forensics for Nathan's PDF link [good to have some free Nate-Char-Sheet downloading stuff out there for PF1e. ;p] by checking in on an associates' Hero-Lab program... plus some judicious checking on AoN/D20Pfsrd... and a wee bit of source-book checking too. :)

Nathan, by any chance, are you re-using your Herolab character creation output? I've noticed that there were some extraneous leftover junk files left on your character sheet [especially that first iteration of Nathan's character pdf- that was a bit of a doozy to go thru].

I think that Nate's initial Half-Elf racial trait substitutions were the following: Starchild, from Horror Adventures, which replaces adaptability and is the source of the Psychic Skill Unlock feat, plus Flexible Half-Breed, from Blood of Shadows, which replaces multitalented and is the source of the Alter Self spell-like ability, plus Perfect, from Horror Adventures, which replaces elven immunities; it is meant to be an Elf only racial trait though under RAW but I can personally confirm that Hero-lab does allow for a Half-Elf to take this. My guess is that Hero-lab doesn't differentiate between Elf and Half Elf elven immunities racial traits.

What gets really weird when the Psychic Skill Unlock feat gets taken is that it adds in the Gatefinder skill stuff- which only should be activated when you take the Planar Sensitivity feat but Hero-lab automatically puts it in. Same with the Munavri only psychic skill unlocks for Modify Current, taken from Profession
[Sailor], and Read Tides, taken from Survival; a GM can, if they wish to, allow other races with the Psychic Skill Unlock to take these at their discretion. ;)

You mean like "dirty coding" - like the delete coding isn't clean so it leaves stubs in the character that are never cleaned out. That seems TOTALLY possible based on how hard I looked.

So then maybe I will do a ground up rebuild using the characteristics of the current build BUT prior to starting, I will change my defaults to deactivate anything Occult (or Planar even) from Paizo sources.

That's about as clean as it could get.

You mean like "dirty coding" - like the delete coding isn't clean so it leaves stubs in the...

That sounds about right, Nathan. :) [even learned about a new term, 'dirty coding', to boot ;)]

If you still want to have your character to get the alternate racial trait substitutions, you can always check the Half-Elf webpage from AoN; they got a handy-dandy substitution header for each of the alternate racial traits for added convenience [plus it's easy to cut and paste the text too]. ;)

Apart from those, all that is really needed for Nathan's character sheet to be nearly complete is to:

1. Figure out what Personality that you want your Psicrystal to have; that'll net you another skill bonus.

2. Pick your extra 5 Talents; note that you can choose any 0 level Psionic power from any psionic class. :)

3. Pick out what equipment that you want to have, apart from your free Artisan's clothing.

4. Put in those 8 question background stuff that you've already done for Nathan; you'll prolly hafta update things if you want to still include Reithic, your Sunday Inn performance, and Aunt Mayarwen's veggie meatloaf somewhere in there. ;p

So then maybe I will do a ground up rebuild using the characteristics of the current build BUT prior to starting, I will change my defaults to deactivate anything Occult (or Planar even) from Paizo sources.

The Gatefinder stuff is from one of the Hell's Vengeance [be Evil and Pro-Cheliax] Adventure Path and the Munavri Occult Skill stuff is from Heroes of the Darklands, if that'll help things along for ya. ;)

Nathan, by any chance, are you re-using your Herolab character creation output? I've noticed that there were some extraneous leftover junk files left on your character sheet [especially that first iteration of Nathan's character pdf- that was a bit of a doozy to go thru]. One suggestion that I can offer, if that is the case, is to create a brand new character pdf output per each character only without reusing them from another character; I know it can be a hassle though with having to re-checkmark all of those relevant sources for each character sheet. :(

I think that Nate's initial Half-Elf racial trait substitutions were the following: Starchild, from Horror Adventures, which replaces adaptability and is the source of the Psychic Skill Unlock feat, plus Flexible Half-Breed, from Blood of Shadows, which replaces multitalented and is the source of the Alter Self spell-like ability, plus Perfect, from Horror Adventures, which replaces elven immunities; Perfect is meant to be an Elf only racial trait though under RAW but I can personally confirm that Hero-lab does allow for a Half-Elf to take this. My guess is that Hero-lab doesn't differentiate between Elf and Half Elf elven immunities racial traits.

Starchild required some additional digging, as the higher hits were for the same name religion trait that grants automatically determining where true north is and a + 4 trait bonus on Survival checks to avoid becoming lost.

HeroLab/character accounting would be a bit cleaner if it specified these racial changes as racial as opposed to leaving them untyped.

The Perfect replacement issue is probably the same as Powerful Presence human trait issue.

The updated character sheet looks better and should be fine. With no Psychic Sensitivity, the additional powers like Gatefinder shouldn't be an issue - it's just additional noise on the sheet as an included source. Chigao is correct in that the 5 talents should be listed/selected for the Access Psionic Talent feat.

RE: dirty coding, that usually implies using a workaround to fix a symptom of the issue. In this case I suspect it's just a bug due to increased features being added that was never fixed, i.e., not differentiating a racial feature with the same name as having 2 possible scenarios. Thus, it exists purely as one state in the database that happens to match for both races.

Chigao Waiyo wrote:

Nathan, by any chance, are you re-using your Herolab character creation output? I've noticed that there were some extraneous leftover junk files left on your character sheet [especially that first iteration of Nathan's character pdf- that was a bit of a doozy to go thru]. One suggestion that I can offer, if that is the case, is to create a brand new character pdf output per each character only without reusing them from another character; I know it can be a hassle though with having to re-checkmark all of those relevant sources for each character sheet. :(

I think that Nate's initial Half-Elf racial trait substitutions were the following: Starchild, from Horror Adventures, which replaces adaptability and is the source of the Psychic Skill Unlock feat, plus Flexible Half-Breed, from Blood of Shadows, which replaces multitalented and is the source of the Alter Self spell-like ability, plus Perfect, from Horror Adventures, which replaces elven immunities; Perfect is meant to be an Elf only racial trait though under RAW but I can personally confirm that Hero-lab does allow for a Half-Elf to take this. My guess is that Hero-lab doesn't differentiate between Elf and Half Elf elven immunities racial traits.

Starchild required some additional digging, as the higher hits were for the same name religion trait that grants automatically determining where true north is and a + 4 trait bonus on Survival checks to avoid becoming lost.

HeroLab/character accounting would be a bit cleaner if it specified these racial changes as racial as opposed to leaving them untyped.

The Perfect replacement issue is probably the same as Powerful Presence human trait issue.

The updated character sheet looks better and should be fine. With no Psychic Sensitivity, the additional powers like Gatefinder shouldn't be an issue - it's just additional noise on the sheet as an included source. Chigao is correct in that the 5...

Yeah, the 5 additional Talents are totally missing.

WOW - this rebuild is so much cleaner.

Can someone please remind me where Shadowtown in located on Golorian?
I was going to NOT have him speak Taldane, but he's pretty smart so there are a lot of languages to pick.

How would you function in normal society not speaking Taldane?

How would you function in normal society not speaking Taldane?

Speaking racial languages ... well, and regional. Varisia has a lot of flavor like that. An elf speaking Elvish, Varisian, Shoanti, and a few racial languages isn't going to have issues speaking to people.

Storm Dragon wrote:

How would you function in normal society not speaking Taldane?

Speaking racial languages ... well, and regional. Varisia has a lot of flavor like that. An elf speaking Elvish, Varisian, Shoanti, and a few racial languages isn't going to have issues speaking to people.

Except in group settings, at stores or other public venues (remember, the average human, i.e. most of the population, only speaks Common/Taldane), or in general any other time you don't want to look like a weirdo for not understanding the language everyone else on the continent speaks.

Doesn't almost every standard PC race get common innately. For free.

They do, but sometimes you can trade it away.

Nathan "Cable" Grey wrote:

Storm Dragon wrote:

How would you function in normal society not speaking Taldane?

Speaking racial languages ... well, and regional. Varisia has a lot of flavor like that. An elf speaking Elvish, Varisian, Shoanti, and a few racial languages isn't going to have issues speaking to people.

Except in group settings, at stores or other public venues (remember, the average human, i.e. most of the population, only speaks Common/Taldane), or in general any other time you don't want to look like a weirdo for not understanding the languge everyone else on the continent speaks.

LOL, he said, to the guy who has been in Mexico for 14 months not speaking the language everyone else in the country speaks

...this is still open?

I've been sitting on The Priest, if it's a plausible option?

Storm Dragon wrote:

Nathan "Cable" Grey wrote:

Storm Dragon wrote:

How would you function in normal society not speaking Taldane?

Speaking racial languages ... well, and regional. Varisia has a lot of flavor like that. An elf speaking Elvish, Varisian, Shoanti, and a few racial languages isn't going to have issues speaking to people.

Except in group settings, at stores or other public venues (remember, the average human, i.e. most of the population, only speaks Common/Taldane), or in general any other time you don't want to look like a weirdo for not understanding the languge everyone else on the continent speaks.

LOL, he said, to the guy who has been in Mexico for 14 months not speaking the language everyone else in the country speaks

Now tell me if you'd come off very intelligent if you'd lived all your life in Mexico and never learned how to speak Spanish.

For that matter...why have you lived in Mexico for 14 months and not picked up the language? Spanish isn't that complicated, especially if you have the opportunity for immersion.

...this is still open?

I've been sitting on The Priest, if it's a plausible option?

Sorry, not at the moment. We're working in two replacement characters currently. If you would like, I can let you know if something does come up.

RE: dirty coding, that usually implies using a workaround to fix a symptom of the issue. In this case I suspect it's just a bug due to increased features being added that was never fixed, i.e., not differentiating a racial feature with the same name as having 2 possible scenarios. Thus, it exists purely as one state in the database that happens to match for both races.

Good to have those additional clarification for all the dirty coding stuff, DM rel20. :)

WOW - this rebuild is so much cleaner.

Can someone please remind me where Shadowtown in located on Golorian?

Good to hear about your rebuild being much more cleaner, Nate/Nathan. :)

Unfortunately, the name Shadowtown for Golarion isn't ringing any bells for me; could give us some more details about the town that you could recall? Depending on the locale, Mendev/the Darklands/Nidal/Absalom and Shadow Absalom/or Ustalav all seem like likely locales with a town of that name [mebbe even its' source of where ya got it/heard it from]. :(

I was going to NOT have him speak Taldane, but he's pretty smart so there are a lot of languages to pick.

Storm Dragon wrote:

How would you function in normal society not speaking Taldane?

Nathan "Cable" Grey wrote:

Speaking racial languages ... well, and regional. Varisia has a lot of flavor like that. An elf speaking Elvish, Varisian, Shoanti, and a few racial languages isn't going to have issues speaking to people.

Storm Dragon wrote:

Except in group settings, at stores or other public venues (remember, the average human, i.e. most of the population, only speaks Common/Taldane), or in general any other time you don't want to look like a weirdo for not understanding the language everyone else on the continent speaks.

Scholar Zupon wrote:

Doesn't almost every standard PC race get common innately. For free.

Storm Dragon wrote:

They do, but sometimes you can trade it away.

As a gentle reminder and fyi, DM rel20 did end up placing this campaign over in the Inner Sea nation of Andoran by way of the Darkmoon Vale area, more specifically ; unfortunately, it seems to be a primarily Common/Taldane speaking country only, heh. ;p

Admittedly, with Nathan's current language choices [Azlanti, Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Shory, Sylvan, Thassilonian], that will mean that for all intents and purposes, only Andru [via Dwarven and Gnome] and Xephkiel [via Sylvan] would be able to communicate clearly with Nathan. ;)

Another unintentional [possibly?] setup from not being able to speak Common/Taldane is that Nathan would be pretty estranged from his Uncle Ben's side of the family [mebbe not Uncle Ben himself due to his ability to woo the Elvish Aunt May!]; and that's not even getting to communicating with Innkeepers Maban and Bleja [presuming they don't speak any other languages besides common/taldane] for employment- though it might've been arranged by Aunt May?

One suggestion that I can give [presuming explicit buy-in from DM rel20 or possibly even the others!] is that while there's nothing preventing a character having some sort of accent from poor lingual understanding per say, with the options of Azlanti, being the root language for common/taldane, and Thassilonian, an off-shoot of Azlanti that's the root language for Varisian/Shoanti [Shory being an ancient, extinct Mwangi Expanse nation of flying cities], perhaps with a Linguistics/Diplomacy/or even both roll/s, you'd be able to get across your ideas to others in common; naturally, if you get a natural one to the roll/s, you end up reenacting that Monty Python skit about 'Hovercrafts Full of Eels'. So, whadaya'all think of that suggestion? ;)

PS. prolly could even have a words intended to speak spoiler/section and a what actually gets spoken [which will have to be made up- no profanity if it can be managed] spoiler/section. ;p

Was really more of a tune-up retcon question than anything, but that's an awesome amount of background, wow, thank you.

I really just could not remember the name of the town, sorry about that.