Bozworth.'s page

Why did my campaign end before I felt it was “finished?”

It seems to me that most (or nearly all) pathfinder/dnd campaigns fall apart before the story is finished. The question is why, and what can we do as players and GMs to set ourselves up for a successful campaign that leaves everyone satisfied. I’d like to focus on adventure paths specifically. I recognize in advance that a campaign does not have to end when the adventure path says it does, and that satisfying endings can occur at any point in the story depending on your perspective. Still, I think many players and GMs end their campaigns sooner than they would have liked, so I’d like to explore why.

I think self-written campaigns usually break down because of the herculean task of writing your own material. GMs, even committed ones, have lives and work and family. They also run into writer’s block or need extended hiatuses to develop new material. I think any extended hiatus can spell doom for the campaign. I could be wrong about that, but in my anecdotal experience GM delay leads to players moving on to other games and, from there, generally to campaign collapse.

To restrict the task to more manageable amounts of info, I’d like to survey you cannibalistic humanoid forum dwellers on your experiences with adventure paths specifically:
1. Of the campaigns you have begun, how many have you completed start to finish?
2. How many reached a satisfying ending for you story wise even if they didn’t reach the end of the printed material?
3. For the campaigns that collapsed, why do you think this occurred? Players not showing up? GM's lack of commitment? Scheduling difficulties?

I would love to put together an idea page for ways to avoid critical campaign collapse, which I think begins when more than three sessions are missed or canceled, or when more than three sessions occur with only two players showing up.

I’ll get around to extensively posting my own experiences if this takes off, but I’d love to hear what you all have to say on the matter. To start off, the only adventure path I have run to completion was Carrion Crown--on the second attempt. It took a couple of years to get all the way through. The successful run was generally a weekly game. I think doing it weekly really helped, though I know life gets in the way and it is rare to find a GM and 3 or 4 players to commit to weekly sessions. Still, even bi-weekly sessions seem to spell disaster unless the GM really rides herd on their players, reminding them of each session and trying to persuade them to show. The campaign in question also had a set of players that shifted over time--as one dropped out I had to go out and recruit another. I think only one of the players made it through from part 1 to part 6 without interruption, though a couple others were non-sequentially present for 3/4ths of it.

What do you guys think? Why do these campaigns break down? How many players do you need for a quorum? Are there strategies you guys have to avoid campaign collapse? Please assume that the written material is interesting and the games are fun, those are different issues.

My two cents as a druid 11, ranger 1, monk 1, played since level 1 in PFS:

You can do one level of ranger for shapeshifting hunter, but I'd suggest one level of master of many styles and go for dragon style, dragon ferocity, and feral combat feats if you can only pick one multiclass. This will increase your damage significantly, especially with any of the pouncing forms. I went master of many styles instead of unchained for the better saves and the free style feat, but it's your call.

If you are dedicated melee honestly you could just stop leveling druid at any point and pick up strait barbarian just to keep things simple--lesser fiend totem rage power gives you an extra gore attack--it might not be optimized, but it'd be extremely strong.

Level breaks for spells are strong jaw as a 4th level spell, wall of thorns as a 5th level (because it doesn't offer a save), and spellstaff, liveoak, greater dispel magic, and source severance as 6th level spells; as a melee druid those are my favorites. So pick an odd numbered level as you last druid level if you want access to the next tier of spells. If you do stick with octopus consider planar wildshape--the 1/day smite is disgusting with 9+ attacks.

Also I like to put a greater dispel into a ring of counterspells if you get to that point--you have a lot of buffs running and not a lot of spells per day, getting hit with a greater dispel can make you sad.

For level six has anybody mentioned source severance, liveoak, and spellstaff?

Other ways to boost AC: get an animal companion with bodyguard armor to stand next to you. That can be between 2 and 7 AC vs a few attacks per round.

Summon Spells are actually pretty bad, since they can't hit anything and have so low health they die much to fast. Pitting a Treant against a Level 20 demon is just useless. So i abandoned all the Summon Stuff.

Dex Bonus is at +1 of course, that is easy to reach, even while large...

rest i will have a look at and i too find the fog stuff ridiculous good, therefore i am asking if i am overlooking something. Don't want my GM to be so mad at me, that is no longer funny :)

Suit yourself. A cr20 Balor averages what, 80 damage on a full round attack? Treants have 114, but even if the Balor kills it in one round that's the same as you taking an extra turn. Sure, the treant only has a 10% chance of hitting said Balor, but it makes a decent ambush triggering device or flanking buddy. If the Balor dominates it you can release the spell and the rest of your party basically gets a free turn they would not otherwise have had while you and the demon burn standard actions. I guess the best argument in its favor is that it's free--only costs you a spell once every 11 days. I know it does take up map space, but you can leave it at the entrance to the narrow dungeon and the scream of it dying can be an alarm. But to each their own.

Dex bonuses are going to cap pretty quick with fullplate +5. Especially since the mithral/celetial route isn't allowed.

True true, I forgot he was actually wearing them. Though maybe he can use some extra dex. He did lose some becoming large size I am assuming.

My two or more cents: For saves, a cracked pale green prism gives you a +1 competence bonus for just 4000gp. After that you can try putting dex bonuses on your belt; or getting the 8000gp Ioun stone that does the same thing. Non ac based defenses: If you have an alchemist in the party you can ask them to keep an elixir of elemental protection up on you using alchemical allocation--only lasts an hour per casting but just might save your life. So might a dream journal of the pallid seer, and that lasts forever until used. Post jingasa nerf you can check out a buffering cap for crit mitigation. Also stoneskin which you can cast and haste which maybe your party can cast provide other defensive benefits. Last, I always try to carry a bead of newt prevention on me at later levels to break in case of baleful polymorph. Oh yeah, if you're grappleing things with arcane spells check out source severance--and at level 11 don't forget to use your spellstaff and live oak spells--they are good quality cheese.

Your GM probably has some leeway here. You could use the damage types listed for natural attacks--bees sting, sting attacks do piercing; rats bite, bite attacks are all three b/p/s. Or your GM could say that the dr applies because they are too small to plausibly crack bones.

So I know this is probably answered here somewhere but I am having trouble searching it out. I am playing a str monk/druid(saurian) druid build in a game and it is my first time playing a druid. I am trying to wrap my head around the damage dice used for my natural attacks. I am looking at wild shaping to the allosaurus which is huge and at base it's 1d8 damage dice but I am sitting at a monk 1/druid 6 with feral combat training and improved natural attack (claw) which according to one source should make it 2d6. When I look at the tables myself and apply the die step it looks like it should be 1d10 so I am just trying to understand the mingling of these feats for this build. Thanks any help or constructive criticism would be appreciated.

If additional clarification is needed: feral combat training won't change the damage your claws do. But it will let you use cool stuff like Dragon Style. Also, cast strong jaw so they'll be 4d6.

And I guess the actual question is, is it actually an error, or do the society people think you can take Natural Spell before you get wild shape.

And oops, this is my other avatar.

If it's PFS, isn't that PFS's fault, not Paizo's?

Regardless, you seem to have answered your own question: the player at the table can get it by retraining (if PFS allows that, but the normal game certainly does), so whether it was originally an error or not, it doesn't seem unfair NOW that you can actually match it if you want.

Core players can't use the retrain rules, and I'd never thought of PFS as that separate, but fair enough.

That's a good puzzle, the rules don't specify, but I assume hand signals or sounds are the way. I don't think RAW say that the animal being deaf or blind prevents you from using the handle animal skill, though if anybody else knows different I'll accept correction. If I were GMing that event and I had foresight, I would ask the Druid "How do you give commands to your animal companion?" before I threw the thunderstone. The druid can decide how he does it since he trained the thing, and if the animal needs spoken commands then deafening it suffices to stop it understanding those commands. That said, if this is one of those calls that results in character death and somebody is calling the venture captain over to adjudicate, be prepared to hear the argument that there's nothing the rules saying a blind and deaf tiger can't be handled to scent out Lem and drag him from the burning building.

It seems weird how the flanking trick is written, especially when it says that the animal now ALWAYS takes AoO's

Or just perhaps that given that the animal has limited AOOs and is threatening multiple people, that it will never decline to use an AOO on the target of the flank command. Seems an odd thing to put in though.

It seems weird how the flanking trick is written, especially when it says that the animal now ALWAYS takes AoO's

Good catch. I don't know the purpose of that sentence. I could speculate that maybe they meant to clarify that the flank trick does not allow the animal to avoid attacks of opportunity that it provokes by moving around to flank--but that would be speculation.

If the creature doesn't have the Flank trick, then can it gain the benefits of flank, or provide a flank? Can it take attacks of opportunity?

Yes and yes. Animals get attacks of opportunity; this is true for the Druid's animal companion as well as for the dire tigers about to attack the party. Same goes for flanking. The animal might not know that you want to flank with it without the trick, but if you are flanking you both get the bonus. This basically reflects the notion that a person who is threatened on both sides has to divide his attention to defend and thus finds it more difficult--that's true whether it's two people, two dogs, or a dog and a person.

Correction: the exact wording on free actions is that the GM can decide a "reasonable limit" rather than "fair number," I do want to be precise.

It's appreciated. I'm running pfs, and I'm trying to run the game as best I can and as accurate to the rules as possible. I'm going to require rolls for tricks, but I really need to understand the limitations on the free action. Should the roll be done in secret? You wouldn't know if the animal responded anyways until it's turn.

If I was a player who wanted to be a jerk about it, I would just tell the GM that "I instruct my animal companion to do such and such 10,000 consecutive times just to be safe, do the rolls in secret if you want, but one will probably make it." At which point the GM could point to the FAQ stating that he can limit my number of repeated free actions in a round to a "fair number."

<http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9qda>

What's a fair number? Twice? Ten times? I feel like you're going to get arguments at the table over that. Even dumping charisma at level 1 with one rank in handle animal, a druid still only fails on a 1, 2, or 3 so hopefully it doesn't come up too often. Most druids should be able to tap the check. This is just my opinion, but when I GM pfs tables, I don't require a check for an animal companion unless it would be a push rather than just a regular handle animal--I just don't want to spend time on it. It is your call though.

Oops, sorry, some of that was redundant to what Dafydd said, wrote a while ago but forgot to hit post so I didn't see the interim.

If you can command your master aka animal companion as a free action with handle animal, then what are the consequences of failure if you can just preform another free action?

In pfs especially, who controls the animal companion between the player and the gm?

If the pc who possess the animal companion goes unconscious, or dies, what happens to the animal companion?

With my limited knowledge of tricks, should an animal companion instructed to attack always charge, use all their attacks, and never 5ft step tactically for flanks or better positioning unless instructed otherwise by other tricks?

I'm sure I'll have other questions later.

I'm not sure if there are consequences for failure for the druid if you are only trying to handle your animal companion (and not push it)--I haven't seen any from what I've read so far, so it seems like a druid would get as many tries as they want, or to save time just be allowed to take 20. Hopefully that exact question won't come up since it's only a DC 10 to handle an animal, you already have a +4 with your companion, and anything you are telling it to do that doesn't require a push probably won't upset the game anyway.

If this helps, I've played a lot of PFS with animal companions and I have never had a GM who expressed a desire to control my animal companion or made me roll handle animal unless it was something that would require "pushing" the animal. Recall that a "push" is required to convince the animal to do something that it wouldn't do normally and isn't trained for, and that a druid still has to use a move action to push, so he can retry but it takes additional rounds.

As to behavior: just remember that your animal companion is a creature with an intelligence or 2 (or higher if you boost it) that wants to help you. If you go unconscious or die, it will probably continue with the last command you gave it, but it's not a robot. If you told your loyal dog to "stay" and then dropped dead from a heart attack, it might stay, it might start barking, or it might whine over you for a few moments and then go seek help. These are RP choices, and you should be allowed to make them, just as the GM should be able to say no if you come with anything unreasonable.

Should an animal always charge? I'd say that depends on how you trained it. There is no charge trick, so I'd assume that when you taught the animal to attack you either taught it to always charge or never charge--just as long as you are consistent. If you are in PFS it could be a trickier question, since they don't allow custom tricks, and you may get told that your animal will always charge if it has a charge lane, but I can't find a clear rule on it (so I'd say do it the way you want until a GM tells you no, then obey that GM without making a fuss). Also, by default the animal will probably use every attack available to it, and use its most damaging attack if it only has a standard action--these are standard animal tactics.

Flanking: There is a "flank" trick, so your animal companion would probably need that trick to be able to flank on command. For a home game maybe you can convince a GM that specific animals, like a wolf, will flank by instinct, but for PFS that probably wouldn't fly.

5-foot stepping: I don't think a 2 or 3 animal level intelligence gets you the ability to 5 foot step for tactical advantage generally, though there could be specific circumstances that would make sense. The easiest way around this though is to get your companion's intelligence up to 3, give it a rank in linguistics so it understands spoken language, and just tell it to "step 5 feet to the left". Hope this helps.

Had to chip in my two cents on the veiled illusionist question: my heavens oracle's favorite spells have been from her veiled illusionist levels, specifically shadow conjuration and shadow evocation. Few things are funnier than watching an enemy pound on his shadow evoked resilient sphere while the party arrows auto pass their will save and go right through--though it looks like you're not specializing in illusions so your save DCs would be pretty low.

Still, it might be worth it for greater invisibility alone, and it doesn't look like you lose much in the way of your mystery spells. Not sure how much diplomacy is in kingmaker, but if you like being a diplomancer, check out raiment of command (as well as the tap inner beauty and enhance diplomacy spells, and that wand of adoration you can UMD when you really need it as high as possible). Also, that rolling twice for SR ability that veiled illusionist gives at level 4 is actually pretty amazing, and the disguise trick has a lot of rp value.

Summary: veiled illusionist has a lot of flavor and certainly wouldn't be bad. I'll echo the opinion that bless is more useful than bane.