Aquateenflayer's page

Reading this thread makes me wonder how well reflavoring a monk's abilities would work as a shapeshifter. You could make it so the stances actually morph your body into what they are mimicking when you use them. And reflavor feats like crushing grab to lobster claw, dancing leaf to skin flaps, and wall run into spider legs.

I’ve been working on some homebrew for a mystic theurge style wizard. I was wondering if this seemed balanced to you guys.

Sublimation School
You have studied the magics outside of the scope of wizardry and have picked up skills and secrets to use them more effectively.

You learn the Arcane Sublimation School Spell
If you take the feat advanced School Spell you Gain Arcane Rearrangement

Arcane Sublimation Focus 1
Cast 1 action verbal
Duration until the end of your turn
You use your expertise at wizardy to aid in the effectiveness of casting a spell of another tradition.
The next time you would cast a spell you may substitute your Arcane spell DCs and Arcane Spell Attack for those the spell would otherwise use.

Arcane Rearrangement Focus 4
Cast as you are preparing your spells for the day
Duration until the next time you make your daily preparations
You may spend up to 3 focus points while casting this spell. For each focus point you spend, you may choose any spell that you know and prepare a single casting of it as if it was in your spellbook. The spell is treated as an arcane spell in every way, but you may not copy it into your wizards spellbook. Each spell prepared this way lowers your max focus pool by 1 until it is cast.
This does not increase the number of spells you may prepare in a day.

Broadened Magics Thesis
Choose a multiclass archetype that has a basic, expert, and master spellcasting feat. You gain that archetype's dedication feat as a bonus feat even though you don't meet its level prerequisite, though you must meet its other prerequisites.
You can choose the spellcasting ability score for the multiclass archetype you chose as your key ability score.

I see what you are saying, but the way it is now I feel like there’s usually a large disconnect between what the player wants to spend the gold on vs what the character would. I get why it happens. I usually fall into that mindset as a player. You don’t want to sacrifice the survivability of the party for RP.
It’s strange to me nearly every adventuring party, no matter how poor impulse control in other situations, will sit on wealth that rivals kings in an inn for weeks at a time while the wizard finishes crafting magic items.
Living expenses are a good tool for fast forwarding through some of the more mundane aspects of role playing staying in a town. What I’m trying to do with my system is to help players highlight some of what would otherwise be unexplored aspects of their character. It puts the onus on the player to chase after the Gm with their own plot hooks vs the Gm having to finagle it out of them.

"Oh, and I go drinking and partying until I meet your spending quota. That's...800 gp? Done."

Even a simple declaration like gives a starting point to guide a player deeper into his character and the world.

I find little opportunities to build on a character interaction like that really make the game come to life for me. It helps build a narrative web that you can call back on later in the story. I don’t think it’s appropriate for all kinds of campaigns. In a ticking clock scenario it would be really out of place.It would create the same sort of disconnect as commander shepard shopping for his aquarium or throwing a dance party instead of dealing with the reaper invasion.

I usually run more sandboxy campaigns or modify the ones I do to incorporate some sandbox elements. Having a world that reacts to the players actions opens up new ways to casually show how important the characters actions and effect on the world.

Character only spends his money on partying at high levels? Nobles and merchant lords come up to him on the street begging for invitations to his next rager. Vineyards and breweries are emptied in his wake. Extraplanar merchants set up caravans to bring in wine from the planes of heaven. An army of thirsty men and hangers on closely follow the movements of Golarions own version of The Great Gatsby.

Have someone donating all their gold to the temple at high levels? Have new cathedrals start popping up in small towns. Get invited to fundraising dinners. Hymns are written about their generosity. Priests of aligned Deities start asking for donations to their own churches. Become a major target of evil cults. An aspect of their deity periodically comes by and gives them a thumbs up.

If you are worried about not being able to spend all the gold, a reasonable cap could be established. Maybe once you hit level 10 the cost stops rising.
In my opinion there is always something to waste your money on. A base of operations, while sometimes useful, in most campaigns would qualify as a waste of money. They can get quite expensive. Magical mansions filled with servants ready to cater to your every whim. Arcane academies filled loaded with apprentices that worship the ground you walk on. Fighting pits stocked with the fiercest of creatures to show off your fighting prowess to an arena of screaming fans. Then once you start stocking your base with magic items it becomes a gold sink that can last until the end of the game. Everburning torches lighting every room. Permanent levitate spells in place of stairs. A courtyard filled with magic plants guarded by an adamantine wall. A personal art gallery filled with the most expensive paintings on the material plane along with archeological curios from predating the age of darkness. A library that spans as far as the eye can see and warded with every book preservation spell known to mortal men.

@Draco18s: Yep. That’s a very important aspect of implementing a system like this. Make it clear out of character that you are giving the players extra, not taxing what they would otherwise earn.

@ Zapp: I have considered using gold for xp. I think it would be good for a super wealth motivated party, but not what I’m going for this time around. It looks like it would create a high motivation to do anything to make money but take the wind out of the sails for other kinds of adventures. If I end up running a pirate themed game I’ll probably go with some form of gold to xp.

@Loreguard: That is a good point. In many campaigns it feels like having an ethical character is a major drain on the party coffers.
Bury your fallen companions without looting their corpse. Give that grieving widow her late husband's wedding ring instead of pawning it. Refuse the promised gold reward form the peasants that can barely feed themselves.

I'm in the process of planing for my next campaign and I've had this idea kicking around in my head for a while. It's a system that encourages PCs to split up and enjoy their status as wealthy heroes in their downtime.
I've noticed, at least in my group, that the players become a bit tight pursed during the course of the campaign. They end up trying not to interact with the world in ways that cost's them gold. Which I can understand. If you spend 50gp on fancy wine at the bar instead of picking up a couple of bottles of alchemists fire you might get some scowls from across the table when the party comes up against a swarm.

So here is my basic idea. First is to pick a percentage and add it to all the wealth the players get during a campaign. Then in order to level up the PC must squander that percentage of the WBL for his next lv before he can level up. So if the Gm picked 10%, to get to 2nd level, you'd have to blow 100gp. 3rd level 300, 4th level 600 ,ect..

Here's some examples of squandering money I had in mind.
Exotic Pets - pricey to buy and maintain. Plus you may need a pet sitter while on the road.
Charity - House and feed an ever increasing army of orphans. Maybe you are the one making them.
Fancy dinners and parties - Be the toast of the town then buy everyone another round.
Music and Art - Become a patron of the arts and leave a lasting cultural legacy.
Clothing - Dress as flashy as the random picture you found online to represent your character.

I feel like by not only encouraging but mandating that the PC spends some money on themselves it will help flesh out the character in interesting and unexpected ways.
The downside it does create a bit of extra paperwork. On the other hand I do story based leveling and this is more in the control of the players, so not too much record keeping going on.

Does anyone have any experience with a system similar to this, or any advice on how to run or expand on it? I'm still a few months out from my next campaign so I have plenty of time to fiddle around with this.

Please cancel my adventure card game class deck subscription.

Thanks for the feedback. It makes me a bit more confident in my efforts hearing of an example that can work. Wish I could see it in person but alas I reside in the pacific northwest.
Quick question, for your more complicated enemies like casters do you trust your players to make good tactical decisions for them or have a tactics list like the vanilla game?

I decided to start by converting the first adventure of the Rise of the Runelords. My efforts seem to ave shifted to making more of a board game than a system to aid in gming.
I'll start by explaining what I've done with the monsters. The first thing I did was to turn saves into a static defense so the person attacking/casting is always the person rolling. The rest of it is just kind of boiling creatures down to their basics. I'll post a few examples of what I've done so far.

I have the pathfinder card game (one of the reasons I'm converting rotrl) so I'm gonna use those cards to draw from for monsters and have matching stat blocks ready to hand out to players.

I want each battle to feel unique so I was thinking of having custom deck lists of monsters, encounters ect.. for every battle/dungeon. But I agree encounters seem to be the hardest part of the conversion process. since I'm throwing out the Xp mechanics of the board game I need to give a way to mitigate some of the more dangerous encounter cards.I have been toying with the idea of having skill checks on the bottom of all of the encounter cards and if you make your check you don't take the full effect. That raises the question of scaling. Should the damage/DC raise with the Pcs level or just create new encounter cards for higher levels.

That's where I'm at right now. I'll post a few more monster of my monster conversions once i get them typed up.

For my next pathfinder campaign I was thinking about taking some of the mechanics from the Castle Ravenloft board game and tweaking them so they work in within pathfinder.
The mechanic I'd be most excited to use is the monster cards/tactics. I gm a big group, usually 7+, so having the random encounters/henchmen basically run themselves would help me from getting burnt out gming long drawn out battles.
In the board game there's no gm so all of the monsters are player controlled. Each monster has a card that has all of it's statistics and a set of if then tactics and is given to a player to be used after the players hero turn. One of the bigger problems I can foresee with this is that movement in the board game is defined by tile or being adjacent to the hero. So with players being in control of monster movement that would raise some questions regarding attacks of opportunity.
There's also some other stuff I wouldn't mind being added like some of the random tile based exploration and encounter cards.
If anyone has done any work on this or has any ideas on this already I'd love to hear about it.

Can a beast bonded witch use the transfer feats ability with fighter bonus feats?

Rune of Razing lets you ignore hardness and dr for 5 rounds/day.

Link

The brotherhood of the seal prestige class has an ability that ignores 1 point/class level called water splitting stone.

Link

"Right, this here is a one on one match between your deamon and my Cotton. Winner takes half of the loser's money." Clay says taking off his hat and itching his head. "If that's all right with you I'll even let you take the first move kid. Because I'm just that nice of a guy." Clay puts his hat back on and gives the boy an icy stare. "That is unless you feel like backing down. I'll even give you a deal and you'll only have to forfeit 1/4th of you money."

Clay gives cold stare for a few tense seconds before cracking a smile. "Alright then." He says tipping his hat.
"Go get him cotton!" He shouts pointing at the jigglypuff.

Clay turns to face the bushes and pushes up the cowboy hat that was sitting low on his face. He gives a hard stare. His hand drifting to rest on an his belt of empty poke'balls.
Clay motions to Cotton his adorable mareep sidekick who comes springing down the road after his master. The bell tied around the pokemon's neck tinkling with every step. Clay gives his pet a gentle pat on the head without breaking eye contact with the bushes before picking up a small rock and hurling it into the brush.

I got a small critique.
The control Dc is defined clearly on the first page but is referenced to as command dc for the rest of the document. Didn't even notice it myself until one of my players asked me what the command dc is.

I've only read them so far, but I predict that at least one of my current players will step down his role on the high council to start his own mega-corp in the near future.
One thing that I'd add is making the Kingdom have more effect on the business. Such as, A high taxation edict cutting into profits, or good stability making caravans more successful.
I don't have the books with me right now, for the buildings did you just copy paste the kingdom stats or is there a some sort of formula in play here?
Have you given any thought to converting any of the Hex improvement stuff from the book of the river nations?
Love what you have so far can't wait to see what you do next.

My players are about to fight the Stag lord and finish the first adventure. Excited for RRR I have been looking around for interesting house rules and fluff I can add to the kingdom building aspects. After reading about the Outlaw Council in the book of the River Nations I'm hoping to find some rules on gaining/loosing rep with other nations. I've already started working on a 100 point system, (1=hate, 50=neutral, and 100=love) but if there is already something out there I'd love to see it as I'm not overly familiar with the pathfinder campaign setting.