I just wanted to drop a line about a podcast project I'm involved with called Something... Something... Dragons.
This is an actual play podcast where we're going to be playing the Carrion Crown AP. Unlike most actual plays, all of our players are teenage girls.
We started off doing the "Phantom Phenomena" Quest series for Pathfinder Society, but I tweaked it so that they were working for Professor Lorrimor during the quests. We then did a one-year jump to the funeral, so when we get to the funeral, the girls were already invested in the Professor.
Our audio starts a little rough - we weren't planning to release the "quest" episodes, they were just recorded to get the girls used to recording, but at their behest, we made those the first six episodes. "Haunting of Harrowstone" picks up with Episode 7.
In any case, the first five episodes are available now on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and on most other podcasting platforms. So, if you'd like to check it out, that'd be great!
I've been writing these for my PC in a Serpent's Skull campaign, and thought I'd share them here (since I can't share them with the other PCs in the campaign just yet).
This has been written entirely in-character by my PC, Adria Trias, a Half-Elf fighter/magus who is the bastard daughter of a minor noble from Taldor. She has all kinds of family issues, as you'll probably note from her references to her sire who she wants to kill, and the constant note of disapproval she imagines from her father. This is her journal, but she writes it as if it was being read by her father. It's also worth pointing out that at the campaign start, Adria was a crew member of the Jenivere, and in hiding about her true name and gender.
Our PCs consist of Adria, Kita Maesae (Tien Half-Elf Gunslinger/Swashbuckler), Helana Striker (Aasmir Oracle/Paladin), Alaric (Human Investigator), and Drogar (Hobgoblin Ranger).
Sunday, 10 Erastus, 4710:
Father,
It pains me to have a day unchronicled within this journal, however with the events of the previous evening, it could hardly be helped.
Last night, Captain Kovacs ordered a feast to be held for all of the passengers on the ship as well as the crew. Despite my natural reluctance to socialize, I followed orders as you had instructed me to do and ate with the passengers. The meal was good – nothing to compare with the fare that would have been made back home, but certainly better than I had gotten used to on the ship. Following the meal, I went above deck to take the night’s watch. I watched as Drogar fell out of the crow’s nest – unconscious and I thought dead - when I found myself overtaken with the same unnatural sleep.
Waking up this morning, I found myself on a beach with several of the passengers from Jenivere, although I was the only member of the crew. We were set upon by a series of creatures that Helena later told me were called eurypterids. Four of us awakened and fought them off before myself or any of the other survivors were too severely injured.
It is, at this point, that I feel I must tell you of the passengers of the ship who I now find myself forced to regard as companions.
First, there is Aerys Mavato. Although this woman is a half-elf, she has shown no signs of the odious behavior common to elves. She is trim and athletic look, wears armor, and shows signs of being competent in a battle. Indeed, her first act upon boarding the Jenivere was to smash Dodrick Hart in his stupid face when the dolt had the nerve to suggest that she could bunk with him. I do not know if it would be wise to trust her with my true identity, but I feel that she and I would find we had much in common.
As you well know, I never took to the arts of courtly intrigue or romance, much to your chagrin. Alaric, on the other hand, seems born to them. I have already grown tired of his tales of his romantic conquests, and find the man to be tiresome. On the other hand, unlike some of the others on the island, he has shown a willingness to take risks and perform actions in service to the good of all, he is competent with a bow, and he does seem to have some useful knowledge.
The same cannot be said for Gelik Aberwhinge. This troublesome gnome fancies himself an entertainer (more on that later) but has shown a mean streak in his manner of speech. He has not proven himself to be particularly helpful in our present circumstances, and while duty demands that I protect him as I would any of the other castaways, I will confess that I would not shed tears over his demise.
I want to know more about the woman who identifies herself as Helena Striker. She is tall – close in stature to my own height, and of a not dissimilar build. However, she seems to regard herself as a holy woman, dedicated to the god Pharasma. I am not overly familiar with the religious practices of the Lady of Graves, having focused my religious instruction – such as it was – on the principles of Cayden. However, in addition to her skill as a warrior, she also seems to possess significant healing magics. That said, she does not perform the rites of the priesthood, leading me to believe that she must be one of those touched by the gods to be an oracle.
I have little opinion on the man named Ishirou. He seems unkempt and undisciplined, unhelpful to the survival of the group, and overall to be little more use than Gelik.
You would not approve of me consorting with criminals, but then you have approved of little that I have done over these past twenty-seven years. And so I feel no shame in my feelings towards Jask Derindi, a man who came aboard the Jenivere as a prisoner, bound for Sargava. This Garundi man has held himself with honor and composure, and I feel no guilt over the fact that we freed him and returned to him his possessions which were found on board the wreckage of the Jenivere. Helena mentioned that Jask is a priest in service to Nethys. Perhaps he would be able to help me continue to decipher the spellbook that you took off my Sire the night that he fled?
As long as we are on the uncomfortable subject of elves, we should discuss Maesae. Another woman of half-elven decent (strange that there should be three of them among the survivors), this short woman seems to have Tian ancestry. She wields both a katana and a “pistol.” Her skill with the katana is nothing to speak of, although I note that she wields it in a single hand. With my limited experience with that weapon, it is most often used in a two-handed fashion – and therefore incompatible with the graceful art of Rondelero. Perhaps she would be more effective if she would hold it that way? Of course, that would prevent her from using her “pistol.” The weapon seems effective enough, although it is unmistakably loud. She’s helpful and friendly, willing to put herself into danger, so much like Aerys, I will try not to hold her half-eleven status against her.
Finally, there is Sasha. This red-headed woman is impulsive and has somehow found herself to be missing a portion of one of her fingers. She also bears the mark of the Red Mantis between her shoulder-blades, a fact that was unknown to me while aboard the ship, but was revealed after we awoke on the shore. I do not know much about the order, but I know better than to speak to her about it. She bears cautious watching, but she would likely be of use in a battle.
It is worth noting that there was one additional passenger aboard the ship – a Varisian woman named Ieana. Rumor had it that she might be the true owner of the Jenivere, or perhaps was simply Captain Kovac’s secret lover. There were no signs of her, or any of her belongings, on the shore.
As previously mentioned, four of us (Alaric, Helena, Maesae and myself) awoke while we were being attacked by the eurypterids. The others did not awaken until after the battle. Upon comparing experiences, we discovered that we had all likely been drugged during the feast, yet we had each been ferried to the island by… someone? (Later evidence suggested it was Alton Devers, the mate aboard the Jenivere). Similarly, most of our personal possessions and some basic survival gear had been placed upon the beach. The supplies were most welcome, but we quickly realized that we needed more. We were able to see the wreckage of the Jenivere not far from the beach where we had landed, and so the four of us who had originally awoken made way to examine the wreck.
Aboard the wreckage of the Jenivere, we did in fact find a significant amount of additional supplies, although to my dismay I discovered that my personal belongings that were not already in my backpack were lost to the sea. This is not overly concerning in terms of our survival, but does leave me feeling adrift. I have kept a sturdy grip on your blade and buckler, but within the chest was the dress and jewelry you provided for my ill-fated wedding day. Yes, the wedding never occurred, and I fled, but I kept those reminders. They were gifts from you, after all. Yet now they, along with the book chronicling our family’s history, lie at the bottom of the inner sea.
However, this journal is no place for sentimentality, so allow me to continue. The other things that we discovered aboard the Jenivere are significantly more troubling, and need to be documented. First, there was the body of First Mate Alton Devers. He had fallen prey in part to the sting of another one of the eurypterids, but had also been stabbed several times by a rapier. We dispatched the creature that had killed the man – I always respected him as a ship’s officer, and it did me good to know that it was at end of my blade that the eurypterid fell, but we are still unsure about who stabbed Devers.
More troubling was the body of the cook. Not only was he dead, but he seemed to have been dead for several days. This, of course, is in defiance of the fact that the cook himself served us during our final meal on the ship. Even more curious, the cook seemed to have been killed by the venomous bite of a serpent – but a man-sized serpent. There are now some suspicions that among our number there is a viper – perhaps literally.
We returned with the supplies and set up a base camp. Upon examination of the maps and charts found in Captain Kovac’s wrecked cabin, we have determined that we are on an island known as Smuggler’s Shiv. This was further borne out by my examination of the Captain’s Log. Kovacs was a troubled man. His early entries in the log are mundane and simple recordings of the ship’s progress, but as time goes on, his recordings become less regular, and start focusing less on the duties of the ship’s captain, and instead are focused on the passengers. More precisely, they are focused on Ieana. The log details the Captain’s growing interest in her, including several love poems that I would be embarrassed to transcribe here. The entries continue to get more harried and irregular, and in them the Captain discusses mistrusting members of the crew, especially Devers, and their attempts to romantically entwine themselves with “his” Ieana. Just as disturbing, it seems that the Captain made the choice to head for Smuggler’s Shiv so he and Ieana could start a new life together. How this, the poisoning of the crew and passengers, our safe transport onto the shore, and what Devers’ role in all this exactly tie together is still to be determined, but we are beginning to get a picture of it all.
One last note before I turn my attention back to my Sire’s spellbook for the night. I feel that I have gotten close to being able to decipher its pages. The dabblings in magic I had undertaken back home may have finally paid off. Before we set up the watch for the night, we were found by one additional member of the crew. A hobgoblin known as Drogar, who I had thought to have perished from his fall out of the crow’s nest, seems to also have washed ashore, and the sounds of Maesae’s hand-cannon drew him to us. It is good that I am not the only one of the ship’s crew to survive (although we cannot discount the possibility that Ieana and Captain Kovacs are somewhere on the island). I am uncomfortable finding myself thrust into the position where I am largely leading the survivors as we attempt to survive. I would prefer to step aside and let others make the decisions, however until someone else steps up, I was taught to take decisive action when I saw what needed to be done. In the absence of someone else to give orders, what else is the daughter of Lord Petrianus Trias to do?
I'm about to start a new group through the Mummy's Mask AP, and they're working on building their characters.
I have three out of four players who have their character ideas pretty well flushed out:
1) An Aasimir Psychic who is a native of Wati.
2) A Gnome Rogue who has aspirations of moving into the Arcane Trickster prestige class.
3) A Half-Elf or Ifrit Hunter
And my fourth player currently has no firm ideas.
Any ideas of weaknesses that the team could use shoring up in for me to direct her? We've got a pretty decent broad-based of magic (at least if properly buttressed through scrolls and wands) between the Psychic, the Hunter (who can use a lot of the more common Divine magic through items) and once she starts getting there, the Arcane Trickster.
The main thing I can see as a weakness is a meat shield/fighter type.
Any advice from people who have gone through the AP?
A common trope in stories is dragons who shapeshift to appear human for large periods of time to disguise themselves and move among humans.
On on Earth do you manage this in Pathfinder? Unless I'm missing something, Dragons can polymorph self 3/day, and at a caster level of 16, that lets them do it for 16 minutes.
48 minutes is not long enough to pull off a long term deception.
This past weekend, my party was on session two of their exploration of the Misgivings. They decided to explore up before going down.
Spoiler:
They got face to face with Iesha, crying into her mirror, wherein the overzealous Magus decided she would immediately cast Disrupt Undead on the Revenant, breaking her from her self-revulsion.
This was followed up by two different party members trying to talk Iesha down, since by this point they were quite sympathetic to her from what they had seen in the haunts. A natural 2 and a natural 3 later, and Iesha was attacking the entire party. But she still wanted to get to Aldern more than to fight the adventurers, so she let out her baleful shriek to try to get them cowering so she could move past. More than half the party failed to save against fear, including all of those directly blocking her way, so she began to make her way down the stairs.
A chase ensued, during which they followed their target down from the attic, down the second floor, down the first floor, and into the basement (which they had not yet explored).
Between the different things delaying them, and the fact that one of those who had been delayed was the Halfling with a move of 20', I had four different combat maps spread across my dining room table during the session before they all caught up together in the basement.
Spoiler:
Sadly, two well-placed blows from an Undead Bane Great-Axe in the hands of the party Brawler, and then a natural 20 on the shot from the party Gunslinger meant that, even with Iesha's hefty amount of HP and damage reduction, she died the True Death only feet away from the catacombs where she could reunite with her murderous husband/
My daughter is looking at creating a back-up character for our RotR game, and somehow got into her head the idea that she wants to play a small-sized creature who rides a giant spider.
Preferably a hairy spider that she can boost the Charisma of and name Lucas.
Any suggestions for the best way for her to do this? As a back-up character, she'd be brought in at sixth level and start with suggested WBL in gear and gold.
I was vaguely considering a Goblin Cavalier, but I can't see a way to give her a Giant Spider as her mount.
A bad (racial) reputation is going to wear off eventually. After 1-2 levels on the local level you are no longer just "some goblin." You are now the goblin that saved the mayor’s daughter, and even though it scared it s+$!less to do so also brought back her pony. After 3-4 levels you are now on the regional level. The goblin that travelers say killed those Norborgor cultists that were attacking temples. After 5-6 levels you are just Timmik the Pathfinder. After 10 levels you are Timmik the Great.
Depends how localized the campaign is frankly. If you were rolling something like Hell's Rebels where you spend 95% of the game in one city, it'll probably pan out like that eventually. Things get more iffy on more globe-trotting campaigns unless news of your exploits spreads via Fantasy Facebook considering how most of these games are over and done in under a year in game.
Now, this particular conversation came from an “Are Goblin PC’s ever viable?” thread, but that’s not the part of it I want to talk about. I’m more thinking about
Quote:
via Fantasy Facebook
Isn’t that pretty much precisely what Bards are for? Not so much their role in an adventuring party as in history. Bards collected and spread tales and songs of great deeds. Am I the only GM who uses this function of Bards to spread the notoriety of my PCs?
Example: I’m running a game that started as a Homebrew campaign before moving on to complete the “Rise of the Runelords” Adventure Path. In the last adventure between moving from my homebrew setting into Sandpoint, we had a guest player come in for the session, playing the Iconic Bard Lem. The party was Level 4, so when they got into Sandpoint, I was going to want to send them directly to Thistletop. While they were talking to Lem, they shared the story of how they had escaped from the dungeon of Queen Mirabel and slew the dragon Blackfang (out of the Beginner’s Box adventure, which I tacked on to the second level of their dungeon. Incidentally, Blackfang isn’t dead, but Lem didn’t know that. He rolled abysmally on his Sense Motive check.)
Lem’s player left after that session, and we established that there were a few weeks between when he left and when they left the city they were in, meaning that there was time for Lem to stop in Sandpoint as he raced to catch up to his traveling companions. I decided that he arrived shortly after the Goblin Raid on the city, and while stopping at the Rusty Dragon, shared the song he had composed about the Slayers of Blackfang with Ameiko. This meant that when the party arrived in Sandpoint, several people recognized them from the song, and had reason to feel comfortable asking these brave warriors to stop the Goblins of Thistletop.
Surely I can’t be the only person who uses Bards this way, can I? It seems to me that players should find that the word of their exploits does spread beyond just their local area. Anywhere that the PC’s deeds are known, traveling Bards should have a chance to hear about those deeds, and then when that Bard moves on, the stories of the heroes should have a chance of being spread. (And hey, sometimes the stories of their embarrassments and accidents should spread too.)
How fast and how successfully their legend spreads is, of course, going to vary from GM to GM and campaign to campaign, and how much the GM wants their players to become known across the world, but it seems like Bards very much are the “Fantasy Facebook” that does virally spread the tales of great heroes.
My daughter is about to join in to my RotR campaign, and is willing to jump into the badly needed niche of an arcane caster.
She doesn't want anything too crazy complicated, but she very badly wants to be a spellcaster who can still contribute in a fight with a sword. But she doesn't love the idea of a Magus.
She would be coming in at 6th level, and I was thinking about suggesting to her a Swashbuckler 1/Wizard 5, and then switching over to an Eldritch Knight at 7th level.
The idea would be she'd come in with a +1 Agile Rapier, and a high Dex. She wouldn't be able to stand toe-to-toe with the party's fighters, but she'd have (assuming a Dex of 18) a +8 to hit (+4 Dex, +1 weapon, +2 Wizard BAB, +1 Swashbuckler BAB) and do 1d8+4 damage with her rapier and (wielding a mithral buckler) give her an AC of 17 (+4 Dex, +1 Buckler, +1 Ring of Protection, +1 Amulet of Natural of Armor).
She could scribe scrolls or pick up a wand of Mage Armor, giving her a pretty acceptable AC overall for 6th level.
And it would give us a 5th level caster with access to 3rd level arcane spells.
It's not quite as strong a Gish as a Magus, I know. But do you think it will be competent?
I've been gaming for 30+ years (starting with the red D&D boxed set), although I hadn't touched much d20-based or fantasy-oriented for a good twenty years of that.
This past June I dove into Pathfinder feet-first. I've been running a Rise of the Runelords game for some friends and my 10-year-old daughter. And I've been having enough fun that I kind of want to play.
We found that there's a PFS group that meets at one of our FLGS every other week, and have decided we'd try to get into it.
I have downloaded the Guide. I've looked at the additional resources. And my daughter and I have both built our characters (using only Core + APG).
We're looking at being a pair of half-siblings. Me, the older brother half-orc air elementalist wizard, her the half-elf archery-based Paladin of Erastil (mom had it rough.)
Our character sheets are ready, we have dice, and we'll be stopping to grab minis today (and hopefully we'll have time to paint them before Feb 4).
What am I missing? How much backstory of our relationship/parentage is needed/will be relevant in a PFS game?
I just recently took my PCs into Rise of the Runelords. They were an existing party at about 3rd level, so I'm bringing them right in to the village after the initial Goblin raid, and after having some time to make connections and ties to the city, are being told about Thistletop and planning their excursion/attack there.
Here's my issue. My party (larger than average) consisted of a Rogue, a Brawler, a Gunslinger, a Samurai, a Druid, and a Magus. (And I'm already prepared to scale up encounters to deal with a party of six instead of a party of four, so that's not where my issue is.)
My issue is that our Magus player is... unreliable. To the point I'm thinking of gently uninviting her from the table, or making it clear that she's welcome when she can make it (if I can find a way to reasonably get her back to the party), but that I'm going to keep major plot points from revolving around her.
That isn't what I'm worried about. What I'm worried about is whether a party can survive with three beatsticks, a rogue, and a druid.
The Samurai player has offered to change characters to an arcane caster of some sort, but I don't want to force her into that if she isn't 100% on board - unless the lack of an arcane caster is going to be crippling as we go through the AP.
I know they can probably make their way through Thistletop and dealing with Nualia without an arcane caster. I suspect they won't even have any significant problems through the Skinshaw Murders. But beyond that? How badly screwed are they if the Samurai doesn't switch out?
Hi everyone! I'm relatively new to the forum and Pathfinder, but not to RPGs or gaming.
A few months ago, I had an itch to do a dungeon crawl for my 40th birthday. So, I got a bunch of friends together, found a simple dungeon crawl online, had them roll up 1st level characters, and then had at.
It ended up reawakening my desire to do a good fantasy RPG, so we kept going. And I've run them through a few sessions, leveling them up to Level 4, in a town of my own creation that they are now ready to get far, far away from.
I've just started reading Rise of the Runelords, and I love it. I want to bring my PCs into it - but I don't know how best to do that.
My thoughts were that I could:
Option 1 - Let them deal with the first few scenarios more or less as-written, knowing that the encounters will be a cakewalk.
Option 2 - Scale up the encounters for each adventure, continuing to scale them up through the entire adventure path. More work for me (potentially a *lot* more, but doable.
Option 3 - Drop them into the adventure path at the Skinshaw Murders and do my best to impart any background information that they would have gotten in Burnt Offerings so that, as we go further, they have all the required information for the later scenarios.
-This one seems the hardest to do effectively in terms of making them care about Sandpoint, and having the relationship with Aldren.-
Option 4 - Like 3, but instead of me just trying to find new ways to impart the information from those earlier adventures they didn't play in, do a brief time-jump out-of-game, writing up the events that occurred since leaving the previous city, arriving at Sandpoint, and giving them a narrative recap of the events of Burn Offerings (so that it all actually occurred for their characters, and they have a reputation in the town, etc.)
Any thoughts on what I should do? I outlined the ideas to my PCs, and they all seem to be ok with any option other than 1 (because cakewalk adventures worth negligible XP are no fun for anyone).
