Belgrim Blackstone's page

So this is mostly a bit of venting and/or ranting, but some insight from GMs who have run this AP is always appreciated.

So our expedition into Fort Rannick has gone horribly wrong. It may be for the best, as the other player and I are both in agreement that we aren’t happy with the way our GM runs things and a TPK might be the best way to end this campaign anyway since the GM is a friend that we have gamed with (he’s usually a player) for decades so we don’t want to upset him too much by just quitting his game.

Originally we were planning on getting in through the tunnels, but the night before we were going in Kaven disappeared and we found tracks going to the fort. We had been a bit suspicious of him and his sihedron tattoo, but his story about just getting it to gamble on Lucrecia’s boat seemed believable enough (we’ve got 2 PCs with high sense motive). With it obvious that he went and betrayed us we radically changed our plans, thinking that they would be ready and waiting for our basement assault. Instead we used invisibility and fly (burning a lot of our spellcasting for the day) to enter the fort from up top. We quickly dispatched the sentries in the tower, but one of them fell to the rampart below when he died (GM fiat) alerting the Ogres down there. We hurried downstairs and jumped another pair of ogres before the group from outside came running in. This is where things got out of hand. Suddenly our 7th level party was in a fight with a few regular ogres, 3 named fighter ogres, the ogre wizard(or sorcerer), and Mammy Graul, who had fled to Fort Rannick when we burned the farm. It seemed out of character to me that the ogres that were guarding the spellcasters would fight defensively too. We were overwhelmed before Lucretia also showed up, and then we lost one of our fighters before we could get out. Our GM then forced the characters player to increase his characters weight (he claimed it was unbelievably low) to the point that our other fighter could not carry him in his armor when we fled, so we had to leave him behind.

Our flight was still up, so we retreated to the giant eagle aerie to get away. There, with nearly zero resources left for the day, we had to fight a trio of Annis hags. We managed to just barely scrape by that fight with a random 5th level fighter joining in (replacement character for the guy who lost the fighter)

We rested up, and with wands were able to heal up enough to try for a body recovery the next day. We did some recon and found a lot of ogres on the second floor where we had fought the day before, but couldn’t get through such a big group of them to find the body of our comrade, so we tried to create a diversion, with an attack outside while our invisible ranger/fighter waited for a chance to reclaim the body and then flee. Instead of ogres rushing to fight us again this time though all we ended up accomplishing was getting even more ogres congregating where we suspected our companions body to be. At least we were able to slaughter several ogres on the ground floor.

We had done pretty well on the bottom floor though and wanted to push for our friends body, so we assaulted the group upstairs again. Almost immediately we had Mammy Graul dimension dooring out behind our group with a heavy hitting ogre and another ogre attacking us from the hall while Lucrecia hurled spells at us.

We managed to kill most of the ogres, but Mammy, Lucretia, and an unknown number of ogres remain. Our Cleric is down, the replacement fighter is 2HP from bleeding out. Mammy just dragged the unconscious cleric inside for who knows what purpose. Shalelu and Jakardros just showed up to help us out, but I don’t think anyone can take a full round against Lucretia (she’s getting high 30s-low 40s on all hit rolls so far) so I doubt that she will miss with any iterative attack. We have hurt her a bit (probably 40ish damage) but she doesn’t seem badly hurt. We were basicly deciding on fleeing now, or trying to take out Lucretia before we escape when we called the session last night, or just going death or glory (I am kinda hoping for death already as I mentioned above at this point, but I might be a bit too hot about this right now to make a good decision)

I guess I’m looking for perspective on this. Does this all seem in line with how Fort Rannick is supposed to work? Is our GM being unreasonable on how he’s running things? Are we just playing terribly that we can’t get through this? Am I just being an unreasonable player thinking that there should be some chance of success? Should we just tell our GM that we are done with this BS campaign, or go for the kill and/or our deaths?

apologies if this question has been asked before... I'm not having some search difficulty.

Do the chronicles assigned to a GM credit blob have to be assigned in the order that they were GMed in? For example, I have a character number that has never been played, and that I have assigned several chronicles to. If I then GM "The Confirmation" am I able to assign that at the beginning of the characters chronicles, as if it had been GMed at an earlier date than the later chronicles, or am I going to have to assign it to a new PC number instead?

Assuming a dip to pick up shield proficiency, Is there anything that would prevent a magus from doing spell combat while wielding a shield in one hand, keeping the other hand free for spell casting.

Arcane spell failure chance is going to be an issue, but a mithral shield can pretty much negate that. I just wanna make sure I am not missing some rule that will prevent my plan from working.

This character will be for PFS, so all of it's restrictions apply, also that makes the Skirnir archtype come into it's own too late in the game for me to want to go that route.

So I'm playing in a Rise of the Runelords campaign and I'm level 6. Fighter4/trapper Ranger2. We all have ridiculous stats due to the way we generated characters so my scores are Str19 Dex17 Con12 Int14 Wis15 Cha13. I'm sort of a trip build with Greater Trip, Combat Reflexes, Paired Opportunists, and Felling Smash (plus others but not as relevant) a couple other party members have paired opportunists and the other fighter has Vicious Stomp so we can capitalize on AoO madness.

I've recently started thinking we would be well off with more spell casting ability, No retraining allowed so I'm stuck with what I've done so far, and he's pretty fun as it is, but I can't help thinking that going Magus might be viable with him. True Strike for when we really need a trip to go off would be pretty nice, and with the magus arcana that uses your level for your CMB instead of your actual CMB would keep me working as normal once I can take it.

The question is if the spell casting is worth loosing out on weapon training and further armor training. Buying magic items hasn't been possible in this campaign so far and I expect that will not change, so we make due with what we find. I would have to give up on using a two handed reach weapon when I want to do spell combat, and give up my magic breastplate for now or deal with arcane spell failure chance. I still kind of think the spell casting might be worth it. We only use the Core rulebook, APG, Ultimate Combat and Ultimate Magic books, so all splat books material is out of consideration. Should I stick with the classes I have or start my magic training?

So I'm playing in an Adventure path with a fighter who has improved trip, and another player has a sword and board style fighter in the group. We are looking at working together to do some combos and I just wanted to check if this is going to come together the way I hope it will.

We both have combat reflexes, and will both be taking the greater versions of our combat maneuver at 6-7th level. At 8th we will take paired opportunists. The sword/board fighter might take vicious stomp right away (we are about to hit 4th)

If (once I have greater trip) I trip someone next to the sword/board fighter that will provoke attacks of opportunity from both of us (from greater trip) and will provoke a vicious stomp AoO from the sword/board fighter. With Paired opportunist, will our AoOs from greater trip give one another and additional AoO each? And further will his Vicious stomp allow me to take another AoO?

What happens when he starts to use Shield Slam and gets free bull rushes with every shield hit? If he has Greater Bull Rush and does a shield bash attack that free bull rush should provoke (and since it provokes from me should give him another AoO from Paired Opportunists). If I use my AoO to trip the foe, that is going to provoke attacks from my buddy, both regular and Vicious stomp, plus one from me... possibly another from each of us from paired opportunists... possibly another from me on his vicious stomp.

Is this all Legit? I think it is, but it sort of goes beyond what I've seen happen in any game so far. If so are there other ways to get more attacks of opportunity per round other than us just getting Dex belts because we are gong to run out of AoOs fast.

I'm just trying to get my head around what this will allow us to do and the best way to capitalize on it without investing too much on one trick.

Just curious about what advice people would offer for a my character I'm planning on for Rise of the Runelords. I'm not very experienced playing clerics, but think that this should work pretty well. We use rolled stats and everyone is starting off with pretty good numbers... way better than I would allow if I was GMing, but there is no flexibility other than where I put the racial bonus.

Str 16
Dex 10
COn 16
Int 10
Wis 16(+2racial)=18
Cha 15

Variant channel ability (rulership) for the daze effect on failed saves against my channel negative energy to harm living creatures.

Traits: Dangerously curious, Student of Faith(RotRL campaign trait +1DC for channel ability and +1 caster level for cure spells)
Feats: Selective Channeling, Command Undead

My plan is to take Sacred Summons at third level, and continue to take feats that improve my channel ability or improve my summoning ability all the way through. Not sure if I have the feats to spare though to do both effectively, and want to know if anyone sees glaring problems with this.

I'm curious about other peoples experience with how the Advanced Class Guide has changed your local scene for Pathfinder Society. Although I really like some of the new classes, I am starting to wonder if dropping so much new legal material on us all at once was a bad move.

It could be partly that the new school year started around the same time, but it's been way more difficult to get people to fill GM slots at the local venues here lately. Is this partly due to GMs not feeling comfortable running games with so many characters that have a ton of new rules associated with them, or is it just that everyone has more on their plate now?

If a wizard or sorcerer has multiple effects that increase the effective caster level of spells with certain descriptors, do these increases stack with one another.

For example, lets look at the spell Burst of Radiance. 2nd level evocation with the light and good descriptors. If this spell is cast by an elf with the alternate racial trait: lightbringer (treated as one level higher when determining the effects of any light-based spell or effect they cast) and the campaign trait: Force for Good (good-aligned spells are especially powerful, and they function at +1 caster level.)

Does this character cast the spell at caster level +2 or do the effects not stack?

Sorry if this has been adressed, I did a search but couldn't find a ruling on this.

I am curious if a character can retrain a feat that they got from one of their class levels to something else. For example, can an Alchemist retrain the Extra Bombs Feat thet they get (instead of Craft Potion for PFS) into some other feat using the re-training rules?

I am making a human inquisitor (conversion inquisition) of Asmodeus for PFS and I'm having a bit of a problem deciding if I should keep him straight up inquisitor or dip into fighter for first level.

I like the idea of a fighter level to start for heavy armor proficiency, martial weapon proficiency, defender of the society trait, and being able to start with the weapon focus and dazzling display feats right off the bat, but I usually stick to single class characters and have an aversion to cross classing. I also don't like the idea of having to wait until 5th level to use dazzling display, and then ninth to get cornugon smash.

Is a single level dip into fighter with an inquisitor going to pay off or will I regret it?