Arachne's page

Hmm. Actually, thinking about it, I think the main thing I want from future companions is a return to the old format, or - even better - a merging of the old and new formats. Cause 2 pages per topic just really isn't enough.

Elves of Golarion redone with a Blood of Fiends-style overview of the different types of elves would be great! Mordant Spire elf, wild elf, desert elf, snowcaster elf, aquatic elf, Jinin elf, drow, forlorn...

People of the Lost Kingdoms. Lirgen, Yamasa, and Sarkoris. An elf, dwarf, or gnome who grew up in either of those could easily still be alive and adventuring, and anyone from those nations at all with the right spells or magic items (Sun Orchid Extract) could still be around, not to mention that there are gonna be plenty of descendants from those places with a recent link to their ancestral homes.

I'd like to see Drow of Golarion. After all, even if the drow themselves aren't considered playable in the setting, drow-blooded half-elves are.

Following that, Dwarves and Elves of Golarion 2 would be nice.

Angelkiller's Handbook, of course. Archaeologist's Handbook.

People of the Darklands, People of the Seas, People of the Distant Worlds, People of the Tempest (Sodden Lands, Mediogalti, the Shackles). People of Magic, too.

Blood of Genies.

Didn't see this thread, sorry. I'll post this again: I'd liek to see a Witch archetype that allows her to cast spontaneously.

My personal wish is for a Witch archetype that allows the class, as written today, to cast spontaneously.

Excited about this one :) . I'll definitely get it.

Hmm.

I'm really hoping to see the Ancient Osiriani gods given some details here, along with other dead gods - Aroden, the Thassilonian ones... but mainly the Osiriani ones. Actually, just cut out Erastil and give them his page count :p .

I'm also really hoping for a couple of completely new deities.

If this comes into print, I'll buy it immediately. (Hint, hint!)

@Arachne: I'd just ask your DM if you could consider the Allosaurus Large Sized for the purposes of Mounted Combat... At least until it actually DOES increase in size, where it gets the stat bonuses, size bonuses/penalties, etc. I don't think it'd be terribly broken (in fact, I don't think it'd be bad at all), and it'd be a mostly flavor thing anyways.

I already did :) .

My Tiefling Paladin of Shelyn is most happy with Sir Alistair, her allosaurus mount.

Arachne wrote:

I'm gonna throw this out here, then: What's SAD and MAD mean?

Single Attribute Dependant.

Multiple Attribute Dependant.

Assuming everyone wants a decent Con score how many other high attributes do you need to do awesome as that class. Fighters need one STR, Monk's need several str wis some dex.

Thanks :) .

I'm gonna throw this out here, then: What's SAD and MAD mean?

I'm curious about the pawns too. Anything is better than the tokens that WotC has decided to implement in their game. I hate being mr. skeptical negative pants, but I hope they don't "change" the classes (ala D&D Essentials.)

I hope they are each a new archetype.

Ooooh - nice :) ! I'm getting this one, and my little sis might also find one under the Christmas tree.

[Sings to herself while putting up a wreath] "It's beginning to look a lot like..."

-Lisa

I know that one!

"...a lot like fish men."

So, we'll get it "when the stars are right"? ;)

No antipaladin codes for Calistria and that other one? I can easily imagine an antipaladin of Calistria - almost Slaaneshi.

Still, this one is very much on my list of "Stuff To Get".

Yup! One half in each...

Oooh - now I get why they're called half orcs...

Sooo - half-orcs can be found both in the Lands of the Mammoth Lords and the Realm of the Mammoth Lords?

Dang it! I knew I was talking to myself! And there are a lot of voices in my head, each with their own opinions.

Can't I all just get along?

Are you mocking me, dear sir? I will have you know that the internet has a long and respectable tradition of non-existence!

Yep. So glad there were so many here willing to mansplain it for me.

Indeed. What would we ever do without strong, powerful men to mansplain all the things our weak, inferior woman-brains can't process? *swoons*

EDIT: Oh, yeah - KaeYoss? Gorbacz? You, and all the guys who are on your side in this, this isn't aimed at you.

It's settled, folks - "he" is gender-neutral because that's the way it's always been. As are "man", "male", "guy", "dude", and "definitely not a woman".

Also, the internet doesn't exist, so we aren't having this conversation.

As to the Objects, these are used to hone in on how your Motivation manifests. You might have the Despising Character Motivation but that doesn't necessarily mean you just Despise everyone and everything. You should pick one (or more than one, if it fits your character concept) Object which becomes the focus of that Motivation. The objects listed for each Motivation are simply the most likely Objects - players and GMs can certainly work together to come up with others if they like. The idea is that these optional rules give you the tools as well as the flexability to mold those rules to whatever works best in your game!

Right - but my point was that not all motivations seem to really gel with their objects, and it can be hard to see the connection. Not an insurmountable problem, really.

As for the other two points I made, you are quite right in that they're justified - but they're both mechanics that I can see as having undesirable consequences. Rules that influence personality - World of Darkness's Virtues, Vices, Morality etc., Legend of the Five Rings' Honor, and similar from other systems - have to be very carefully designed, and I'm not much of a fan of the "roll a check and if you fail you do [x]" implementation. I think incentives work better - but in Pathfinder, I can see how such a method would be hard to do.

Don't get me wrong - these aren't *major* issues. The product is, overall, quite strong. But they are issues still.

This looks like something right up my alley, but I'm a bit skeptic due to Fell Beasts and Tome of Secrets not exactly being up to what I expected of them.

I can't speak to Fell Beasts and Tome of Secrets, not owning them, but the main issues with this one are as follows:

- All motivations require an Object, and exactly what this "object" refers to is sometimes unclear ("Gives charity to all without prejudice - object: family, friends, lower social classes, race").
- There is a mechanic where characters can be forced to act out their motivation against the player's will. This can be fun if you're into that sort of thing, but I can also see it being terribly unfun in some situations.
- The benefits of certain motivations could encourage people to minmax their characters' personalities (like I said above - "Ooh, my rogue is chaste, 'cause then I get more skill points!").

Apart from these issues, though, I'd recommend it.

In playtest, the +3 skill points did not feel game breaking (plus, just think what the character has to give up in order to get all that additional free time to dedicate toward learning extra skills! ha ha:)

From experience, not much ;) .

In all seriousness, we found it's a great Motivation for a fighter to take for instance, since it makes up for the fighter's low skill points. Even if a class like a rogue or bard takes this Motivation, those 3 extra skill points are great, but they really don't unbalance anything.

If the +3 seems a bit too much for your liking though, I would think you could lower it to +2 skill points in your game without making the Motivation less attractive.

My greatest concern is how this intersects with the human Skilled bonus and rogues, who focus to a great extent on skills. I can easily foresee how this bonus could end up overshadowing both. Or, god help me, someone stacking all three, and then adding their favored class bonus! 13 + Int mod per level, anyone?

Still, I'd have to try it out in practice to say for certain. I'm certainly tempted to play the above combination (Chaste Human Rogue), myself.

Say you're a cleric dedicated to the concept of Law. You worship all the gods of Law equally, no matter their position on the good/evil axis, and do not consider one better than another.

Say you're a cleric who wants both the Light *and* Darkness domains - no deity is likely to have both, but a cleric can still have them as a worshipper of the cosmic balance of Light and Dark, or yin/yang, or whathaveyou.

As for how such a cleric gets spells, I imagine gods who sympathize with their ideal grant them, on the basis of "this advances my agenda". Not as many as they grant their own clerics, but when many chip in at once, well...

I've read, but not played it. All things considered, it looked nice, but I'd definitely only offer it as an *option*. Also, there's one that gives +3 skill points per level, which I'm somewhat hesitant to allow.

Rogue, monk, and alchemist wa for the top spot, though the rogue wins out.

Look at the bestiary 2. None of them are large by 5th level. Tons are large by 7th level. Allosaurus is probably the best. It has good str, decent con, 3 attacks, pounce and grab. It is not that different than the "big cat" animal companion - better ac, worse offensively.

You're right, that one looks quite competitive. Is there any way I could get it up to Large for riding purposes before level 7, though? Maybe by reducing some other stats?

If I remember correctly, if the creature is a quadraped, then it's one size category larger, if biped, then you need two categories larger...

Which means the critter needs to be huge. So just a huge sized megaraptor, or a large sized say... stegosaurus.

If that's too much trouble, why not just use rhino stats and flavor it like a triceraptops?

I once had a campaign where there were no horses at all, characters rode things like ostriches, but actually, there were a bit more lizard like and probably would have been more of an axe beak...

Biped would be best, but Huge? That might be too large :( .

A stegosaurus would be pretty cool, though :) .

I note that the regular horse is Large, and the pony Medium despite presumably being ridable by Medium creatures.

Hello,

I'd like to make a character on a dinosaur mount, in the vein of the Cold One Knights from Warhammer Fantasy (getting GM permission should be no problem - they tend to trust me not to break the game). That is a Paladin, in plate armor, with a lance, and all that.

Do any such mounts already exist? If yes, where can I find them? If no, are there any dinosaurs that could be modified into a mount easily? We're talking pretty much horse-sized, here, but if only smaller ones exist, a Halfling Paladin would work, too. And if no, does anyone have any good homebrew rules for riding dinosaurs, or at least guidelines for how I can make one?

In advance, thank you :) .

It's marked with an asterisk, which means it doesn't stack with other asterisk-marked discoveries. I'd take that to mean that you can *choose* to apply one asterisk-marked effect to your bombs, which would mean that he could easily throw a normal one. Even if it didn't, buy acid bomd or something and you can choose.

The exact text is "only on such discovery can be applied to an individual bomb", which makes it pretty clear that, if you have more than one, you get to choose. I'd definitely allow an alchemist to throw one without any asterisk powers attached, though.

Why couldn't she draw it from her right side? I don't know much about dueling, so I'm just guessing but wouldn't it expose you less? Drawing from your opposite hip feels like it's going to expose your sholder and back a lot, and you can't really parry with an off-hand weapon at the same time, which you should be able to do if drawing from your main-hand hip.

Because it's awkward and takes more time.

Although I like the new archetypes (I'm ambivalent on the feats and especially the chakras), I have to say, this product could have done with some editing. It's quite simply packed with spelling errors, sentences changing structure halfway through, etc. Most of these are mere annoyances, but there are some that make the rules unnecessarily hard to understand.

Editing errors on page 1:
- Extra space inserted between sentences in page opening quote. Double spacing is otherwise not used in this product.
- 2nd paragraph of the Contemplative Monk's flavor text not indented.
- 2nd paragraph of the Cast Sutra ability not indented.
- 1st paragraph of the Quickened Sutra ability not indented.
- Under the Powerful Sutra ability, the word "level" is misspelled "levl".
- In the 8th line of the same paragraph, there are 2 spaces between sentences.
- In the next paragraph, "descendants" is misspelled "descendents".

As noted, these are errors from page 1 *only*. The rest of the product is similarly peppered with them.

This upcoming update - does it include corrections to stuff like the above?

The corrected numbers are as follows:

13 cohorts, of every level from 7 to 19.

Followers by level:
1 - 379
2 - 34
3 - 16
4 - 9
5 - 5
6 - 2

Again, the followers don't worry me, but the fact that you can get a level 19, level 18, level 17, and level 16 character (possibly designed by you) to follow you around everywhere? Yeah... that is probably broken.

I did the math. Assuming that you are level 20, and that you and each cohort has a +2 modifier to their leadership score, you get a maximum of 7 cohorts (level 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8 and 6), and the following minions:

Level 1 - 213
Level 2 - 18
Level 3 - 9
Level 4 - 5
Level 5 - 3
Level 6 - 1

For a level 20 character, that's not that powerful. I might be worried about the level 18 cohort, but not the rest.

This is, of course, assuming that all your cohorts and metacohorts have had the time to level up.

EDIT: Upon rereading the text of the Leadership feat, it's clear I was wrong - for some reason, I thought no cohort could be higher than 2 levels below their leader. Posting corrected numbers below.

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/extras/collaborators/work-area/ 3rd-party-publishers/psionics-unleashed/psionics-unleashed/psionic-powers/p ower-details/Power-Resistance

I keep getting "Page not found". That's the URL I got when clicking a link to power resistance from the psionic bestiary main page. I tried finding a link on a different page, and got the same error. It looks like the power resistance page does not exist.

How about "Zealous"?

Nothing about bardic performance actually requires performance -- just a visual component or an audible one (sometimes both).

Simply put an, "Outward to Glory!" works, just as well as, "For FREEDOM!" or "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"

It's all good.

I always wanted to play a bard with Perform (painting) or Perform (piano), myself.

"Hey, everybody! Stop fighting for a sec, and look at what I drew!"

Bards are awesome. In my group, a party without a bard was extremely rare.

I'm currently anxiously awaiting this book in the mail, so I'll have to exercise due restraint so I don't end up reading everything on here first ;D .

Much appreciated, thanks!

And did you mean that you bought SGG's take on the apprentice-level PCs but liked TOP's better? That is high praise indeed (and nods with all due diligence to Marc Radle, the author of said product).

You're welcome :) .

And, yes, that is what I meant. No disrespect to Super Genius intended, but I much preferred your method of dividing up class abilities. I also bought your Achievement Feats pdf today, and had some issues with it, but I think I'm getting too off-topic and this isn't the thread for this.

Great to hear you are using Tricky Owlbear's "Learning Curve: Apprentice Level Characters!! I hear it' quite good ;)

I actually got both of them, but the Tricky Owlbear one is better, I think.

And we appreciate that!

Robert Thomson
4 Winds Fantasy Gaming

You're welcome :) . I've been acknowledged by someone who wrote something I game with - now I feel all important and stuff :D !

I would, in fact, consider the "Flaws" PDF to be absolutely essential - after buying it, I haven't made a single character that didn't use it.

Say, if I may ask a question - the Luven Lightfingers book; is that a book detailing a single store and its contents and owner, or is it primarily an expanded items list? And, if it's the latter, is it magic or mundane equipment, mainly? Inquiring minds want to know ;) !

Oh, yes, that's another thing I look for in 3PP: New and interesting non-magical gear.

As a player and a GM, the sort of 3rd party products I prefer are the ones that fill niches that the official rules do not.

In my games, I currently use the following two 3PP:

- Tricky Owlbear's "Learning Curve: Apprentice Level Characters"
- 4 Winds' "Flaws"

I've also got Dreamscarred Press' "Psionics Unleashed" on order, and I've looked into a couple other 3PPs that I've considered buying (4 Winds' "Luven Lightfinger's Gear and Treasure Shop", Skorched Urf's "Adventurer Essentials: The Common Tongue").

I very much like these sheets, but I'd like to pick some nits, if that's ok:

1) I understand why you can't make specific sheets for all the Prestige Classes, etc. However, I'd still like to see a generic one - one that gives you a counter for special class abilities like Stigmata, or Mutate, or Inspiring Command, a block for writing down special class choices such as Advanced Mutagens or Defensive Powers, and a generic caster section. Such a sheet could be used for Prestige Classes, 3rd party ones, alternate ones, etc.

2) I think having some place dedicated to Proficiencies would be a good idea. Armor and Shield Proficiencies could be done simply as checkboxes down the right-hand side of the Armor and Shield sections, with "Prof.:" at the top and the boxes labelled "L, M, H" and then "S" and "TS". Weapon Proficiencies could have the 5 lowermost lines of the Special Abilities section of the Character Info sheet dedicated to them, with one additional line saying "Weapon Proficiencies". This would be as simple as adding the heading.

3) I'd like to see a sheet for the Antipaladin. This would pretty much simply be changing the names of the abilities on the Paladin sheet.

4) I'd like some space for noting down spell-like abilities. It's quite possible to rack up quite a few of these during the game, and so a place to list them, including effective caster levels and uses/day. My suggestion would be either removing the 2 lowermost Effects fields on the Combat sheet and put in 4-5 of these instead, or removing the lowermost lines in the Skills field and replacing them with spell-like abilities.

These are all suggestions only - I very much like the sheets as they are right now, and have nothing more than such minor niggles to contribute. I'd fix them myself, but have little skill with computers.

There is one particular element of Serpent's Skull that might make it worth considering more strongly for your purposes, and that is that it comes with the extra NPC bodies you're looking for built-in. The first adventure, Souls for Smuggler's Shiv, strands the PCs on a tropical island with a group of PC-classed NPCs - a ranger, a fighter, a rogue, a cleric and a bard. It would be extremely easy to use those characters to "fill out" your sister's party as she adventures, and she could even rotate through them as she thinks one or another of the group might be most useful to her at a given point.

Having read the Player's Guide, I can see what you mean. However, the truth is that Serpent's Skull contains some themes I'm very hesitant to use (colonialism and "civilized" "European" nations vs. "primitive" "African" ones - that one never ends well), so I probably will shy away from it in favor of something less minefield-y.

Kingmaker is very very open to "go where you want within [set of instructions X]". I would not recommend it 'out of the gate' for newer players - the wandering monsters can be brutal. The playstyle you have indicated won't need more than those post-it notes to get Kingmaker to work with.

The disturbing nature of my avatar is precisely why I chose it. :)

I'll consider Kingmaker, then. I have to admit it looks a bit... bland? From where I'm sitting, which is kinda a put-off, but I'll give the Player's Guide a read-through.

Also, your avatar? Brrr...

Berwim-the-Vampire avatar

Just wanted to add something about d20pro. It's 30 bucks for the full program, a judges license (what you use as a GM) and two players licenses. Every player after that is 10 bucks. So for you, your sister, and your girlfriend, it'd be ten apiece. Didn't want to give you the impression it would be 30 for each player and the GM.

I'd actually kinda assumed that it was $30 for me and an *unlimited* number of players :/ .

Can I just throw a couple cents in for rptools.net Maptool? It sounds like it has similar functions to d20pro, and its free. I usualy use the basic map/unit/reveal, and not the higher end stuff like macros, but it works well for me, and is, as I said, without cost.

Gonna give that one a look - thank you :) .

I've started my sister on Crypt of the Everflame - she chose to play a Sorcerer, nicely rounding out the Fighter, Rogue and Cleric I'd pre-made. She's gotten past the Orcs, but still has somehow managed not to find the map in her backpack - she hasn't opened it yet, and has no idea what kind of stuff she's carrying. I'm not planning to penalize her for this, though. She seemed to enjoy it, even though she's still pretty shaky on the system and didn't really take much initiative (I think she was "testing out the waters"). It helps that she's a huge Order of the Stick fan, though, so she's familiar with a lot of the terminology involved.

Also, I've decided that Carrion Crown will be my chosen AP.

This means that this thread has essentially played out its purpose, so all that remains is for me to thank you for the very helpful and kind reception I've gotten here, even though I managed to clone my very first thread and then delete the wrong one. Thank you :) .

Wow, that's pretty far north. (At that point, I'm not sure which would be harder to reach, mainland locations like Nord Capp or an island such as Spitsbergen.) So kudos to you for getting a game together despite the geographical location!

Thank you :) . Yes, it is. But I'm not really planning to stay here for much more than another year or so.

Serpent's Skull is a good Pathfinder-rules- built choice for an AP to get some mileage out of. Kingmaker does not actually require that you build and run a kingdom. The rules are there so that you can. There are sidebars throughout that briefly discuss the general nature of things when the "kingdm in the background option" is in play. You should not need much more than a few post-it notes throughout the entirety of Kingmaker to set it up to your taste.

in short, Kingmaker without building/running the kingdom itself means that the characters are the "field agents" or solvers of problems by way of spell and steel on behalf of their liege lord/lady.

Carrion Crown once fully published is likely to be an excellent multiple-use AP as well.

Welcome to the boards!

Thank you :) .

Wouldn't Kingmaker without the kingdom part be a much less interesting path? I mean, it could certainly still be good, but wouldn't a path specifically designed for the playstyle I'm using be better?

By the way? Your avatr is highly disturbing.

If you go the route of Society modules, the Devil We Know series (four of them if I remember right) I can recommend, and there is one society module that takes place in Facoln's Hollow (same place Hollow's Last Hope takes place in).

I'll consider them, then :) . Thank you.

As for d20pro...click ** spoiler omitted **...

Hmmm... that sounds unnecessarily fiddly. I'll keep it in mind, but I'll first have to see if I'll ever actually need it before committing $30 to it.

Serpent's Skull is definitely a path with good replay value. On that note, Carrion Crown would likely go well with your play style. When I played Ravenloft (an older horror setting, in case you're not familiar) we rarely ever used a combat mat. Course, combat was kinda rare to begin with, at least in the traditional sense...

I know Ravenloft, yes :) . My problem with it was that it was too gimmicky. "This domain is ruled by a panther-man vampire! This one is ruled by a wererat bard!" As a coherent setting, it rapidly left behind "dark and gritty" and got into cheese-territory. Now, Planescape - that's a setting I can get behind :D !

Carrion Crown and Serpent's Skull both sound like something close to what I want. To be honest, I'll probably end up with Carrion Crown, since Serpent's Skull has some elements I'm not a fan of.

Welcome to the boards Arachne! Have some cookies. *offers fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies*

Oooh, cookies :D !

First hello and welcome to the boards.

Thank you :) .

Beyond what others have said, I agree starting with Crypt of the Everflame series and get both your feet wet with the game. You could also run some follow up Pathfinder Society adventures after that to keep things going. They are short and meant to be run in about 4 hours, plus they are cheap PDF's. I would look at running a AP once you get a more experience with running Pathfinder and hopefully can find a couple of more players.

I intend to run the entire 3-module series starting with Crypt of the Everflame twice (once for my girlfriend, as a sort of playtest, and then once for my sister), and then possibly consider an adventure path. I might throw in a Pathfinder Society module ever now and again, though :) .

As for the issue of one player, well when i was younger that was a problem for me as well. There was three of us. What we ended up doing is do troop style play. That's where each player makes and run's more than one PC. So I would just suggest letting your sister make two characters and then if you throw in two NPC's that will help her characters out it should be ok.

What I've done (I played a short session with my girlfriend today) was rolling up 3 NPCs - a cleric, an archer rogue, and a fighter tank - and give them personalities (wise but withdrawn cleric, sullen and quiet rogue, boisterous but rock stupid fighter). These are all 1 level below her PC, and will remain so indefinitely. She can choose to take as much control over them as she wants at any given moment, or let me run them, and if her PC goes down, she can still control them as much or little as she wants. This way, they shore up the most important support roles (healer, tank, lockpicker, and trap disabler), and can serve as friends for her character without overshadowing her within or out of combat. None of them have even a single rank in any social skills, and they got 5 less points to build stats than the PC. I'm thinking of adding more to this roster as time goes by, but only allow her to bring 3 at any given moment (a la Dragon Age).

Also I agree you might want to check into some of the online programs to get in games online. Possible you and your sister could join the same group then and play together.

I don't really want to play games with strangers.

If you're farther north than Narvik then you are really getting up there.

Indeed ;) .

Maybe I'm not understanding things...Carrion Crown has about four more months left, one adventure per month, first two are already out. If you mean how long it will take to play...well, then I fully understand. I'd like to say most APs take the same amount of time, but when we did RotRl the first book took four or five sessions (we play ALL day though, 8-12 hours), where the first book in CC could be done probably in one, maybe two of our sessions. As you said, you might play in them, so I won't give out any more spoilers than I already have, but I will say it's very easy to jump from the intro to the last dungeon in Haunting of Harrowstone.

OK - about 4 months left? Thank you - that's what I wanted to know.

As for running APs multiple times, I think it's a good idea. I convert everything, weather it needs updated or not...and a lot of the time when I'm redoing an NPC, I'll get two or three different ideas on how to make them. So, if I run the path different times I can use the different ideas.

I'll probably mostly stick with whatever stats are in the books, and instead fix some details (like changing the occasional magic item into something a player might need). I'll also probably try to recruit 4 players.

If Skype and playing online is even a tentative option, I would look into d20pro.com. It's a program that sets up what's called a virtual table top. So you load a map, plop down markers for the PCs/NPCs/monsters, and can start playing. It costs money (30 bucks US), and takes some getting used to, but once you get a handle on it I think it will be well worth it. Plus there's the whole part where you can play with friends who don't live near by. If your interested I can blather on a little more about it, haven't used it to game yet, but I've been monkeying around with it for about a month and learned some stuff.

While it's highly unlikely I'll end up using it (I run without a battle map or miniatures, usually), I wouldn't mind hearing more about it if you don't mind the typing.

I've considered the possibility of using a numbered grid - then you can say "Ok, the goblin moves from A4 to B6."

I'll second Hollow's Last Hope. Along with the rest of the Darkmoon Vale adventures. They have some edginess inherent in them, though it's easily watered down to taste.

Hmmm... I'll think about those, too. For the moment, I'm committed to Crypt++, but it might be worth considering for the future.

Greenwich Mean Time is (usually) eight hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time. The change over to or from summer time doesn't always happen at the same time though on the different sides of the Atlantic, so there may be a couple of weeks in the spring or autumn where the difference is an hour different from this.

04:00 GMT is 20:00 PST the previous day for most of the year.

Ok, so Wednesday, 20:00 PST, would be Thursday 06:00 in Norway. Middle of the night.

Hmm. On the Council of Thieves front, I've just recalled that it features The Six Trials of Larazod in part two, which I'm not sure would have its full impact with only one player. Basically, in order to infiltrate Chelish society, the PCs are called upon to take the role of actors in a play about a traditional Chelish folk-hero - and there's a full script (written by Nicholas Logue) provided for the PCs to follow...

Although the exact wording of the play script (which strays into adult territory in places) might be a good reason simply to skip the word-for-word performance and just describe the action.

Indeed? Well, that sounds interesting, but as you say, I should probably have a full group for that.

I *might* be able to get a second player, although it would be difficult to arrange - I could get my girlfriend to join via Skype.

Unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with CoT or all of it's bad press to give much advice. I'm hoping to get the rest of it over this year, though it's not terribly high on the list of priorities...

I can see why. I, personally, expect to buy 1 full adventure path and run it several times, but leave the others be in case I ever end up experiencing them from the players' side.

Carrion Crown will be six adventures, as are all of the APs...though it not being finished is something I can see being an issue. I wouldn't personally run an AP until it was done, I'd read through the whole thing at least twice, and made a number of notes...though I'm something of a perfectionist as well, just in different avenues.

Yes, I know - what I do *not* know is how long it'll be before it's finished. Honestly, it's 2nd on my list, after Serpent's Skull.

As for things being too "heavy", I can understand the reluctance. If I were DMing for my nephews (one's your sisters age, the other is a little younger), I would be pretty careful about what themes I used. Do remember though, that as GM, you are the filter she will see the world through. So no matter how graphic a given adventure might be, she only sees, hears, smells, experiences what you tell her she does. In my typical Age of Worms campaign the setting is as dark and horrible as I can make it, with everyone a drug addict, sexual deviant, or corrupt in some other way...but that's with a group of college kids as the players. If it were my nephews as the players, I would run the same campaign, same adventures, same NPCs, but with a much thicker filter.

My sister is quite mature for her age. Still, 13 is 13 - I can most certainly edit things for her but only if it still leaves the adventure path intact.

Definitely want a healer in there. I've heard archer paladins work out well. A druid can do alright too, as the druid themselves uses her spells to heal, while her companion can go on a rampage and act as front line fighter. If you have access to the Advanced Player's Guide the summoner class can do this as well, though it's a little tricky, but I think would be more effective after you got a handle on it.

I will have the Advanced Players' Guide by the time we beging - I'm expecting it in the mail on Monday or Tuesday.

I think, however, that I want to go for something I already know how to run for the NPCs - something relatively simple, so I don't need to spend much time making their moves in combat. Thus, a melee Paladin or archer Cleric sounds excellent.

Alternately, stock her up with potions.

I'd make sure to include a healer in there (Note: An archer Cleric is a very viable character). The game really assumes you'll have one and can become unpleasantly difficult if you do not. Especially with only three characters.

Thank you :) . I'll try to do that, then (making either an archer-Cleric or a Paladin out of one of her companions).

You might also want to suggest to your sister that her character be at least decent at social skills, and avoid making the NPCs very good at them, so that there's a solid reason she's the one doing the talking to NPCs for the most part. And likely the party leader.

I fully intend to do just that - no fun if the NPC has to do all the talking. I also intend to make her the party leader, although the NPCs will have personalities (think in the direction of Dragon Age 2 or the Mass Effect series for my intended approach).