Ausk Valrosh's page

I only have experience with low level campaigns. And while it kind of sucks not being able to throw these gargantuan beasts at them on the reg, the lower scale of power is awesome. I'm more of a fan of low magic stuff as is, but I really enjoy the difficulty of feeling like you have to pick your battles.

At top tier levels, an army is a second thought for the god wizard. At level one a group of guards poses a serious threat.

I really like NPC codex books like this. It cool to have professional grade ideas for inspiration

Dotting for future reference

Yeah I've been utilizing some of the information from kingmaker, as its the only real insight, that I know of, into Brevoy. Is there an entity in that ap that is similar to my request? I'll admit I haven't seen kingmaker in its entirety so I wouldn't know.

One last thought, while I know the animal companion might be more optimal, I like the domain choice for thematic reasons.

Also, coming up with a cool name would be nice too, all of the names I've come up with sound terribly generic.

So I'm running a homebrew campaign in Brevoy, and I plan on doing a lot with the Grozni woods. I created a group of people that are dedicated to protecting the interests of the woods, composed of treants, pixies, and centaurs.

They function to keep outsiders from doing too much harm to the forest, and insiders that have passed over from the first world from running rampant.

The leader of this group of nature wardens is a higher level (probably 15) centaur druid, and I'm just not sure how I want to build him.

So, paizo community, with your vast knowledge of optimization please help me make this leader not a pushover in the event that my pcs ever come to blows with this organization. I'd like to keep most of the features and feats to APG and Core, but if that's too constricting then I'll take anything.

Also just so I understand, whats his intended class? It could lead to other reasons.

I can't help on the elven nobility aspect, but maybe I could have a suggestion on the reason for joining the society.

This snobbish elf could perhaps see the society as an opportunity to reclaim lost elven artifacts or knowledge, and wants to make sure it gets back to kyonin where it belongs and not in some rich human's manor.

I see your point on the battle herald, but that makes him come off as a militaristic type of person. Unless I'm wrong on the flavor of the class.

Oh and delaying casting is no issue with me.

The idea, thematically, behind the character is that he started out telling these grand tales of heroes, and singing songs of their feats, and then decided he wanted to become the hero that he's always sang of. The bard level represents the obvious, and the fighter level is supposed to represent the time he spent training to prepare himself for his adventures. The concept is still pretty fresh and I haven't fleshed out any REAL backstory yet.
This character is supposed to be a little more on the flavor side of things and I know fighter and bard have little synergy. If fighter would hinder this concept then I'm open to other classes/archetypes. (The only restriction on the other classes is nothing from the ACG, they just rub me the wrong way).
Heck maybe even just straight bard might be better than splashing a martial class, I just want to stay true to his concept.

So I wanted to draft up a character. The concept is pretty much a gnome that wants a life worth writing a novel about. So he is all about experiencing life, and being generally adventurous (page taken from desnan faith).

As for the build, I'm not looking for purly optimised DPR, I'm just looking for a good build to keep this gnome viable.

As for restrictions, its just 20 point buy, and level five (any combination of fighter and bard, but must have both).

Thanks for the potential help.

567: Castles of ash:tells how Chorral claimed the people of issia and rostland, conquered them and unified them under his banner. A nation that used to be divided came together to form Brevoy. The book is Chocked full of philosophical debate of whether his murderous conquest was the best thing to ever befall brevoy.

I'm going into Environmental science so I feel a connection to Gozreh and I respect his faith, that in mind I also really like everything about Desna and her adventurous clergy. If I were a character I'd probably be a druid with a lifestyle influenced by the desnan faith. Which to me sounds like a fun character to roleplay

The group collectively got a small manor in the city as a part of their reward. Also we are playing a real low magic, low loot kind of campagin where gold has been pretty scarce so 1000 gold to them is the bees knee.

I'm asking this because we are playing a homebrew in Brevoy and my players just recently hit a milestone in the campaign and have gained some minor minor nobility and a small wealth of gold. My player is interested in buying some land outside of the capital of new stetven for his pc and said the cost for an acre of land in Michigan (where we live) is about $2100, so I figured gold is worth more than dollars so I said 500gp, but I feel as though even that number might be a little high.

Have you had any experiences with this/how much should I be charging? (He only has 1000 gold to work with)

Give them druid levels so they too can awaken an animal eventually, and then those animals can do the same and it will form a chain of awakened animal druids that will do your druidic bidding.

More flavor than build, but still ^

My favorite character concept is a dwarven ancestors Oracle. Get the ability to summon weapons, and roleplay it as the spirits of your ancestors possessing you to fight like they did in their prime.

Ex: "Brinoff the hammer, TO ME!" (A spectral warhammer forms in your palm, and your eyes shine with a pale light) "alright, let's show these maggots how a real dwarf fights!"

Try not to get too hung up on the details. Have a pool or names that are readily available and use them as the players encounter them. You don't need the city to be crazily speced out if you only plan on having 2-3 sessions in it. The only reason I suggest not fleshing it out to the max is because it would be a bummer if you burned yourself out on it.

How hard is he making combat? Can you get by by using "sub-par" weapons? If so the mutagen alchemist could be good, as well as other builds I'm sure

On the topic of rovagug being released, the deities would get involved again. As it was in the inner sea world guide, all the deities evil and good would align and reseal him/ find a way to end him (perhaps with the PCS help?)

Oh and mine is just because he was my first pathfinder character and my pic is because I really like wizards and Azaven is pretty wizardy

I'm just waiting for The Roc to show up.

What the actual hell... How does someone think that's okay?

Barathos wrote:

Chess Pwn wrote:

60% to 80% a combat

You poor sap. Get a GM that isn't running a hack'n'slash diablo-clone.

Uh, if you aren't at least 60% combat, why aren't you playing FATE instead? Seriously, if your game isn't mostly combat, you've chosen the wrong system to play.

Pathfinder can accommodate all sorts of campaigns. Combat driven ones are the easiest as every class has the ability to do it, and killing monsters often gives more exp than you would get from RP. Someone once provided the example that a solid RPG session is 33% combat, 33% RP, and 33% adventuring (making use of skill checks and the sort).

Other variants to those percentages are more appealing to certain groups of gamers. For example I just ran the first session of my new campaign and it was all mostly RP and adventuring with a combat at the end, and my players loved it because they enjoy their classes for their RP purposes. (I have a fighter and a rogue that more than contributed in that combat at the end)

TL;DR: pathfinder more than accommodates sessions of non combat related fun, lore oracle sounds like a blast to play.

An inquistor fits the bill perfectly.Bonuses to intimidate, martial prowess with some extra magical boosts. Can strike fear into its enemies, seems fun to RP

The crafty face rogue with ranks in appraise and the social skills would be good enough to represent the merchant side and a couple multi class levels into fighter would represent his knowledge of arms. Throw in worship to abadar for flavor and I think you have a fun character there.

Yeah I'm doing my own homebrew in Brevoy and a lot of your ideas are really spot on, best source of info/inspiration I've found on Brevoy.

So are we due for an update yet? The masses desire more Redcelt!

I would love more on Brevoy and its nobility.

So I was just wondering, if someone befriended a cloaker could they wear it like an armor, so that the cloaker and him shared damage and have the player not be considered grappled? Essentially a living cloak of half damage with a stinger tail. Is this feasable?

natural 20 have no weight on skills...its just a very high roll and doesn't do anything else for skills, just like rolling an 1 on a skill, doesn't do anything.

For Political intrigue, just take inspiration from the media (A song of Ice and Fire being the popular one at the moment, Ninja scroll is another more actions/adventure orientated). Intrigue is about more than just diplomacy, it's about forming alliance, backstabbing, betrayal. In a fantasy world, like Golarion, you can even shift the table on them. When magic gets involved, a dominated former ally, goes from friendly to being their enemy or maybe someone they knew is replaced by a doppelganger or a succubus etc...

Basically the first thing you need to establish, what is the primary conflict, why are they doing all this? In game of thrones for example, everybody is playing the game to get on the Iron Throne. Like, what is the clear goal here?

I've talked to one of my players about what kind of game they wanted play and he said (and I concur) that he wanted to play something that had a major goal but also had this separate quest line that has to be dealt with. He referenced skyrim when talking about this, because in that game there is the immediate problem of alduin and the return of the dragons, but there is also the Nord's fighting against the imperials for power.

Long story short I plan on doing something similar with solving the vanishing as the big end goal, while also dealing with the potential civil war that's been brewing.

So I've been planning this campaign set in Brevoy for my players and everyone seems interested. I've promised, political intrigue (something I've never dealt with) , dynamic player involvement in the plot (meaning I want it to be more sandboxy rather than a railroaded story (something we've never really done)), and a relatively low fantasy version of Brevoy (not that brevoy isn't already low fantasy esqe).

That being said, I would like some input on how to deal with the political stuff and how the players can get involved. I've stated the rule that only one player should be a noble from one the established houses of Brevoy, as to limit an inner party struggle a bit.

But the real issue lies in playing the political parts out. Should there be diplomacy checks? Should it rely purely on roleplaying skills? If I do have checks, how much weight does a natural 20 have? These are things that I believe are a little more complicated than simple dialouge, and diplomacy.

Do you guys think I am wrong? Would making it play out differently just bog the game down and make it less fun?

Any and all thoughts and questions are appreciated, thank you

This thread is a thing of pure beauty

78. Leadership feat

Those seem pretty useful :)
Allow me to narrow the search for info significantly. (For characters level 10-15) Help me build the dungeon of a bard lich who would rather humiliate his intruders rather than kill them outright... he can just kill them when they get to him ;)

I tend to have trouble thinking of ways to make dungeons challenging and enjoyable at the same time. I know puzzles are okay, monsters are a part of it, and traps are integral as well. However I find whenever I try to design a dungeon it becomes too linear, and ends up feeling relatively dull.

That being said I would like to see what you guys would recommend for making dungeons feel more exciting/interesting to explore.

First let me start off by saying I read your initial question but none of the responses so I'm sorry if this is redundant.

I am currently running RotR and my group just finished burnt offerings.

I had my group describe in detail why they came to Sandpoint on this particular day, and how they went about it. (Only had 3 players, two of which were in-game traveling brothers) and that alone added about 3 hours of game time before the festival even began. This helped the players get introduced to some of the NPCs, the layout of the town, and ultimately improved their connection to the town. Once the festival began the next day, I wrote out things to do at the festival (it gives a brief idea of what goes on) and wrote out speeches for when the notable NPCs took the stage. My players told me that it did in fact improve the quality of the assault, and made it more fun to play.

As for shops and stuff, I make them roleplay buying things and that also introduces them to the world and builds connections.

The players wanted to talk to the town sage for information on an unknown enemy. So they find this man named Eldar on the outskirts of town. Turns out this man was just a raving lunatic and his cat was actually the wise sage. A curious thing though, Edldar could still cast spells but when his spell book was examined they found nothing but pages covered with cat S***. A very interesting encounter to say the least.

Oh yeah forgot about the new classes. Swashbuckler ftw.

So like a rogue/duelist?

Allow me to introduce to you: Deden Elslayer. This guy's first character (brother to one of my best buds) I sat down and tried to make a backstory with this guy. I informed him that its good for the character to not just be a badass but have negative traits too, fears, insecurities etc.

So he's like "yeah alright, my level 4 ranger has a wolf companion and sort of understands animals better than humans (how trite lol but that's not what makes it bad) he has a crippling fear of whales and bees."

"Why?"

"Oh @#$% ummmmm... Because his whole family was on a boat and he watched a whale eat it. And he hunted some stuff for this dude and he payed him with a handyhaversack.... Full of BEES!"

Then he proceeded to be nothing but a hindrance to the group, refused to fight with the group because "I'm chaotic neutral and I think about myself and only myself". Very disruptive, and I won't be asking for him to return.

Is this for pfs or homebrew stuff?

He actually has all of those spells. He knows that control is strong yet he's still dissapointed that his occasional crossbow bolt doesn't hurt lol

I think he said he was going to utilize scrolls. I might plan some more bursty scrolls here and there so he can kind of get what he wants. But if he keeps complaining ill have to sit him down and have a serious talk with him lol.

He understands the power of the "control" mage. We had a great encounter using grease in our last campaign and he even has it as one of his spells because of it. His chosen school is illusion and two forbidden schools are abjuration and necromancy.

I know that he wants to deal damage (he was stoked to play his cheesy cavalier with a lance last campaign) but its just not going to happen, i m going to talk to him about changing his class to something more instantly gratifying. We do need an arcane caster in the group but I'd rather he have something that he won't moan about in game.

So my friends and I are starting up the rise of the runelords adventure path and I already see problems brewing. We all met up last night in order to flesh out everyone's back story and character sheets. After we got all of that settled we decided that it would be beneficial to run a little practice session with the team.

I used the little premade adventure that I got from the beginner box and we ran it, and it was fun. Problem: my friend is playing a wizard and he feels absolutely useless (and was very vocal about it) next to the two handed ranger. I told him that this was gonna happen for the first few levels that he will feel weak but eventually come into his character, which I thought he grasped the concept of because he played a sorc in my last campaign.

Is there any advice that I can get for this situation. I know that's just how the game works that martials overshadow casters for a good while, but I seriously don't want to listen to him whine for the next X sessions about how weak he is.

I understand if there's nothing really substantial that you guys could tell me but I'd appreciate any help in the matter. Thank you

Dot