Abudufdef's page

I am not sure exactly how the Magic Warrior’s Aspect rule for this archetype is supposed to work. Since it isn't on the PRD yet, I hope it is ok if I post the rule in it's entirety.

First off, how often can you use this ability ? It lasts for minutes per level, but how many times can you activate it? No limit is specified. If it is indeed no limit...

The clear winner of beast shape abilities here is fly 30 feet (average maneuverability). Can a 3rd level magus really fly at will with this archetype? Even flying minutes per level is pretty good.

Secondly, can you gain natural attacks with this ability? It just says you gain the abilities from beast shape I. So strictly read as written I would say no, but even the artwork has the magus with a glowing claw hand.

Quick question.

I know the warpriest blessings from say, the Fire and Water Domain don't stack with their respective weapon enchantments, but can they stack together?

Can you use both on a single weapon at the same time ?

Hey all. I have concept in mind for a human Mutation Mind psychic with the Abomination discipline.

But beyond that I am struggling with a clear build. I figure if you are going Mutation Mind, you want to be in melee at least part time, but I am not sure if I should try to focus on natural attacks, maneuvers, applying touch spells etc.

So I'm hoping some of you pro optimizers have some ideas.

Players stay out !

The campaign as-written has some issues as a lot of people have noted but there is some really neat stuff in there at it's core. So I thought I'd share my experience and some things I've added/taken away. Some of it is particular to my party and their backstory/interactions with the various factions, but some other additions are more static and could be adapted to anyone's campaign.

A bit about our group; This is my first real Pathfinder campaign that I am GMing, but I've played 2nd and 3.0 and 3.5 in the past off and on. My lack of system mastery is pretty well offset by all the veteran players. We are all pretty busy so we only get to play about 1 session/month.

The party

• 2h Fighter-Veteran player; Character is a bit like Tommy Lee Jones' character in The Fugitive. Had the Get the Cargo Through campaign trait and Jask was the cargo.
  
• Ecclesithurge Cleric-Veteran Player; Priest of Pharasma, but loves gold. Received prophecy about deicide.
  
• Monkey Goblin Vermin Hunter-Veteran Player; Yeah I know, but it actually works. He wanted a goblin and I knew monkey goblins lived on Mediogalti so it was my idea. He managed to coexist with the locals/Red Mantis because of his mantis mount/pet. Works more like a Cavalier. Only good-aligned character in the party.
  
• Ninja-New Player; Really wanted to play an assassin. Boarded the ship with a contract to kill Sasha. Secretly hired by Chivane (of the Mantis Cult.)
  
• Swashbuckler-Veteran Player; Dandy pirate. Face of the party. Retired to "service industry" in Kalabuto.
  
• Pyrokineticist-Veteran Player; Played by former swashbuckler player. Background is a bit flimsy at the moment.
  

Souls for Smuggler's Shiv
This is a great little book. I didn't change much. Everyone liked it. No one died. Ninja hims and haws the whole time about killing Sasha. Group does all the boon quests from the NPC's. Jask and the Fighter develop a Stockholm-Syndromey bromance. Best fight was the Cannibal camp. Group manages to sneak in and murder the witch and drag her away. Group comes back and ends up fighting the entire camp in an epic battle that lasts the whole session.

Caves of the Mother was surprisingly a cake walk. Ghouls blew their Perception checks so they were basically fought one at a time. Mother got caught in a Light Prison and tore to pieces. Eventually, they find their way into the Azlanti Temple where they take out Yarzoth in short order. This was a bummer as I wanted her to escape and become a recurring villain. The PC's reveal some of what they discover to the NPC's.

Ninja gets the bat curse in the priest's chamber and with the light house repair underway he realizes he is running out of time to kill Sasha. I am worried this will derail the party. I thought maybe in the process of befriending her, he might learn her story and flip on the Mantis - but he doesn't. He kills Sasha in the night, and the other PC's track him back to his tent with great Survival rolls in the morning... great. Sasha was my favorite NPC too. In a burst of inspiration, he makes a Bluff check saying that he has no memory of the event and he is insane because of the bat curse. He succeeds, and instead of murdering him they put the manacles on him and take him to Eleder to have his curse removed. Time for book 2.

Racing to Ruin Pt. 1

This is the book where I start making some changes based on reading peoples' experiences. I know I want to add some more elements of player choice, more detail to the locales, and more pseudo-African flavor. The shrunken head and War Mask of Scare or whatever gives me the idea that I want my PC's to sort of be visually transformed by the journey through the M'Neri Plains and Screaming Jungle. Most importantly, I want to add more Serpentfolk to the campaign and give the impression that they are pulling the strings.

To me it makes sense that there is a small Ydersian cabal in Eleder. People know that Saventh-Yhi is supposedly somewhere in the Mwangi Expanse, so Sargava is a natural place for a serpentfolk sleeper cell, waiting for actionable hints as to the location of their lost god. I haven't stat-ed up all of them yet, but I have ideas for about 6 advanced serpentfolk led by a fanatical bone oracle.

So everyone gets into town, gets to take a breather and make purchases for the first time since the campaign starts. I play it as Gelik is the only one of the NPC's who is interested in running off to the Pathfinders. He is the only one of them that understands the significance of what they have found anyway. The party gets hired on by the Pathfinders and preparation begins.

I run it such that the PC's have to go get Nkechi before the Freeman Revolt. The PC's meet Nkechi, the Fighter almost dies to the Kelpie, but find a feather before the Stormbird comes back to the nest.

Here comes another big change I made. The PC's return to the city to find that the Pathfinder lodge in town has been attacked and copies of the information leading to Saventh-Yhi have been stolen. Guess whodunit? That's right, the serpentfolk. They subsequently sell copies of the information (while disguised) to everyone they can find. Their plan is to infiltrate all the factions, use them to find, secure and explore the city, and eventually play the factions against each other.

The Mantis separately approach the Ninja and give him payment for his assassination. He declines to bring their offer to the rest of the PC's. He doesn't want to push his Bluff check luck explaining why the Mantis contacted him. Chivane basically blackmails him to be his agent inside the other two factions; saying she'll tell the other PC's if he doesn't help her out. He basically says ok (not that he has much choice in the moment.)

Now that everyone is in the game, the PC's get counter offers from the other factions with the exception of the Mantis. A small bidding war ensues, but I don't let it escalate too much. Rolling some great Diplomacy, the PC's secure a two-way alliance with the Pathfinders and the Pirates.

The Freeman Revolt happens, they save the warehouse and Aerys from the rebels in a protracted combat. The PC's embark on their journey.

Racing to Ruin Pt. 2

I know I want some more encounters along the road and I want to play up the local flavor so I stat up a human cleric of Angazhan and use some stock slaver stats and have a couple encounters in the edge of the Bandu Hills against Bandu slave catchers. The cleric has a Slaver's Madu which is a cool, in-theme magic shield. The PC's dispatch these guys pretty easy.

I make it a real choice whether they go in the cave or not, but they choose to go in after narrowly avoiding a fight with Athyra. The Salt Mine and the Cock Fight are both pretty uneventful. The PC's declined cheating by casting spells on the birds.

When the PC's get to the Chemosit Village, they are immediately and hilariously paranoid about all the nice people and leave before meeting the shaman. I assume she uses her mojo to send the chemosits on them the next night where a brutal fight ensues. The Fighter dies and gets his head eaten off. The rest of the party barely gets them down after the Fighter dies. The cleric successfully raises the Fighter using the scroll from the island.

As written, at this point in the book there is a huge empty nothing as the PC's cross this stretch of plains. What a waste. So I was inspired by the film The Ghost and the Darkness. As the PC's are crossing the plains, I tell them that they hear lions across the Savannah at night and eventually their main expedition sends them a runner informing them that a pair of male lions has been attacking the caravan and killing porters. They don't don't eat people so much as kill them. They even drag wounded people off to lure others into a trap. This is a clue that these aren't normal lions. This keeps happening each night. The PC's can either risk losing too many porters or lose a day (or more) of travel heading back to the expedition and confronting the lions. My PC's head back to the expedition after the 3rd attack and manage to track them back to their bone-strewn den. "The Devil and His Shadow" in my campaign are actually a Lion Shaman (Druid) and his animal companion backed up by a small pack of female lions. Between tall grass, pounce, and a well-placed Shifting Sands, it was a tough and exciting fight, but there were no deaths. Exactly how I wanted it to go.

The party makes it to Kalabuto. One player is tired of his Swashbuckler, and basically swaps in the Kinetiscist. Fair enough I guess. Chivane secretly meets up with the Ninja and she lets him know that an ambush is coming and that under no circumstances can the Pirates learn about the mantis blade when everyone gets to Saventh Yhi, because Kassata has a blood feud with the Mantis. The party gets ambushed at Cheiton's house, there is some combat.

At this point I want to introduce the serpentfolk infiltrator to the PC expedition. It would be simple enough to say, GM fiat, and have a porter get replaced, but that is so boring and doesn't build enough narrative. Early on I thought about what positions in Eleder would let a serpentfolk collect information and have access to all rungs of society. The best I could come up with was the madame of a brothel. So this serpentfolk is in Kalabuto under the pretense of setting up a "franchise" location. That falls through (supposedly) and she approaches the PC's to have her and her small coterie follow the expedition, capitalizing on lots of newly rich people far from home and comfort. The PC's are of course skeptical, but the sorceress can Bluff like a boss and she offers them a cut of her funds to sweeten the deal. The PC's agree and the Pirates take no convincing. With a decent diplomacy roll, Amivor and the Pathfinders are also convinced. The snake is in the grass.

Racing to Ruin Pt. 3

This is where we have left off so far. Next session I'll have another Aspis-funded ambush when the PC's cross the River of Lost Tears at Kalabuto. After that I want to play up the idea that the PC's have crossed into an area that is not only beyond civilization, but also lost to time. I want to add a couple dinosaur encounters, as well as maybe a mob of Biloko's and an evil shrine. I am also going to have the PC's encounter the village that the necromancer is from otherwise that cool story about looting an old folk hero's tomb is really random and pointless.

At Tazion, I know I want the serpentfolk there to be part of part of the same cabal as the others (because why wouldn't he?) who managed to race ahead of the others with Overland Flight and Invisibility spells. To his surprise, he finds a willing army of Charau-ka provided by Ydersius.

Wow, this ended up being really long. I'll save my ideas and changes for parts City of Seven Spears and Vaults of Madness for a separate post which are even more extensive. Let me know what you think.

Suppose you have a Hybrid class, say the Hunter, who takes an archetype, say Verminous Hunter.

Among other things this swaps the Hunter's Wilderness Stride for Swarm Step which are abilities you get at level 5. Now suppose the Hunter dips 2 levels into Druid. Normally at level 2, a Druid picks up Wilderness Stride.

So what happens if you have a Hunter 2/Druid 2? My intuition says you don't get both.

Phrased more generally, if you have a hybrid class with an archetype that trades a class feature, and then multiclass into a class that gives you access to the feature you traded with your archetype, what happens?

Do you get both features?

If multiclassing into the base class gives you earlier access to the feature, do you get the alternate feature early?

Are you unable to multiclass in this way unless your two classes are 'compatible,' i.e. you find a Druid archetype that also has Swarm Step?

I was paging through the APG when I stumbled on the Cave Druid archetype and I immediately thought it just oozes (ha!) character and flavor. So many character concepts came to mind when I looked at it like an eccentric dwarf who tends to his submerged crystal garden and an exile drow who finds peace away from his mad people amongst tall fungal stalks and puffballs.

I do have some trouble with it mechanically though. Now let me preface this by saying I am no druid or system expert, so please tell me if I am completely off base here.

Let's take a look at the archetype:

Cavesense I feel is really solid, as is the addition of Darkness to your domain possibilities.

I don't think I have ever played a game where it was needed (or even possible) to go down a corridor that needed squeezing so that seems pretty circumstantial, but moving freely over rubble seems a decent enough trade for Woodland Stride assuming you are going to be inside most of the time.

I don't recall ever fighting anything with tremorsense (except maybe a thoqqua I think), but if you are going to be indoors, losing trackless step isn't a huge deal.

Now here comes the meat. We get Wildshape at level 6 and use druid level -2. Also you can't be plant. Ok, fair enough, because we have the option to turn into oozes at level 10. Awesome! Let's just check the wording on Beast Shape to see what we get with our cool oozey powers. Well first off we don't get a natural armor bonuses as it says in the APG when we are an ooze. Ok fair enough I guess, because I get to be an all-devouring blob.

At level 10 we can shift into a Medium ooze, looking around that leaves the good old grey ooze as the likely candidate. Cool. We get 1 slam attack with grab and constrict. Not bad. But we don't get the oozes acid attack or (weirdly I think) it's transparency ability. Ouch. The crystal ooze is another option that trades constrict for a paralytic poison and a swim speed. I think the crystal ooze may actually be the better option.

So to me it looks like we trade 2 wild shape levels for the ability to become sort of an interesting grappler that is light on the damage. Not quite as cool as I initially thought. It might be cool for sneaking up on lone targets and sentries, except you don't get the oozes stealth abilities. That might be easy to mitigate in other ways I suppose. I should say you also become immune to poison, sneak attacks, and crits while you are an ooze which is cool. I'm also not sure how all DM's would handle an ooze's oozey-ness, like being able to crawl into cracks and under doors.

Another thing I noticed while researching this concept is that vermin and animals are not the same for purposes of Beast Shape which means my Cave Druid can't turn into an awesome Albino Cave Solifugid or even a nightmare-inducing cave spider. I find this really odd because 1.)RAW you can actually turn into a Phase Spider with Wildshape because it is a magical beast and 2.) Beast Shape specifically mentions that you can gain the web special ability. I mean, what are you shaping into that shoots web that isn't a spider?

I really like the cave druid idea conceptually, but think it's just a little...off mechanically. When I think caves, I think bugs, bats, oozes and fungi. We don't get fungi or bugs, and oozes lose their signature acidic attack.

I guess my question is do you think this archetype is good as-is and if not how would you fix it in a balanced way? I am not a min-max kind of guy. One of the reasons I really like the Cave Druid is because it seems like such an awesome character to RP, but I feel like with a couple tweaks it could have all the flavor I feel like it should. For me this would almost be as simple as being able to Wildshape into oozes and vermin.

Thoughts?

I'm considering running this AP in a few months. Looking over the random encounters in these two books, I'm wondering how to frame them in a cool way and one that doesn't break verisimilitude.

What I don't want is "You see 2 wights in the middle of the street, roll for initiative," or "You see an elephant grazing on the plain, it turns and charges, roll for initiative." Why would there be wights in this place, or why is there a singular elephant (a herd animal) in the middle of nowhere? If the elephant isn't a combat encounter, how do you make it an engaging encounter?

How have you made your random encounters more interesting and more "believable".

I am thinking about starting Pathfinder, having played 3.5 back in the day. The majority of the PFRPG that gets played in my area is Society so if I decided to go ahead and start playing it would probably be with PFS.

My question is how would the Spell Dancer be for a first character? I like the whole magic swordsmen thing and that the spell dancer archetype is all about speed, avoiding attacks of opportunity, and dimension dooring around.

At the same time I don't want to burden the GM with a bunch of arcane (no pun intended) rules, or play something that is hard to...well, play.

Thoughts appreciated.