I am running a zombie outbreak in the Smokeside of Alkenstar, which is a district of the city in a permanently anti-magic region. I want to make sure I understand the limits of this zone:
*Do weapon/armor runes work?
*Do teleportation spells from outside the region (like from the other side of the city or from another plane) work?
*Divination is explicitly pointed out as not working here
*Do magical beasts or creatures given locomotion/sentience due to magic get destroyed or crippled?
*Does "Change Shape" polymorph abilities work here? Would a werewolf become a human if they enter?
*Do Artifacts, which typically are beyond magic, work here?
Currently in a debate with my friends about this topic due to a player wanting to play a barbarian character based on the Punisher. Here is where we are stumped:
Chaotic or Lawful? He disregards society's laws and in doing so causes chaos since his methods are usually extremely violent. But he also has a code, his own set of rules which he would die for, and a strong sense of honor.
Good or Evil? He protects the innocent and only goes after people who harm them, but then he truly takes pleasure in killing, and has executed many opponents he had already rendered helpless, and he has no qualms against torture.
In my game we have changed the way traps are handled in order to not make trapfinding and disabling primarily just the rogue's trick. It's been well received and has made the idea of trap encounters fun and something to look forward to for the party.
We removed Disable Device as a skill. On class skill lists that have Disable Device, Knowledge (Engineering) replaces that skill instead.
Perception remains the primary way to spot traps, or at least perceive if something is amiss. Traps now have a Solution DC that falls under Finesse, Force, and/or Logic. Some traps may have multiple Solutions to bypass.
For mechanical traps, Knowledge (Engineering), Craft (Trapmaking), or Profession (Trapsmith) can identify the mechanism of the trap and determine whether Finesse, Force, or Logic is needed to bypass it. For magical traps, depending on the esoteric focus of the trap, Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (Religion), or Knowledge (Planes) can determine the Solution possibilities to bypass or disable the trap. Magical effects on traps can always be dispelled or countered with the same spell or the spell 'Dispel Magic.'
Finesse will require, usually, Dexterity based skills like Acrobatics or Sleight of Hand, or even a well placed arrow or skipstone.
Force will mean some kind of martial action can essentially break the trap, whether it's destroying a component by dealing enough damage to it, jamming something into a vital mechanism, or some sort of Strength skill or check.
Logic will indicate that bypassing the mechanism can merely require the solving of a riddle, puzzle, or possibly the possession of some obscure knowledge. This will require a Wisdom or Intelligence based skill check to show your party's warrior that nerds are cool.
Lockpicking is now handled merely with Sleight of Hand, Craft (Locks), and Profession (Locksmith).
The advantage to this method has been that the party has been able to work together to deal with traps, make trap encounters more cinematic, and decrease the reliance on a rogue in a party that wants to delve into ancient crypts or raid bandit hideouts. Also, and most importantly, it's been a heck of a lot of fun to play! Now my group looks forward to using their class abilities to outsmart the trapmaker!
What are your thoughts or opinions? Could something like this be implemented to enhance Pathfinder 2E?
I am reading the timeline and tidbits in source books, and it seems like the dwarves were superior in every way to the orcs and goblins when they were all in the darklands. They had vastly superior weaponry, stonemasonry, and magic. When they finally reached the surface they built the massive Sky Citadels. Then shit hit the fan. Half of them got overran by the very creatures that used to flee from them, the other half barely hanging in there (with the exception of Highhelm and Kraggodan)
The only thing I'm missing is why their culture declined and their technology grew stagnant and forgotten after the quest for sky. Now if you want something awesome you have to go on a quest for some "forgotten dwarven artifact" or technique. What happened to these guys?!
At least with the elves the excuse of their cultural decline is that they chose to leave via the elf gates leaving only a fraction of their culture behind.
Because grappling was a very strong option in Pathfinder. I mean, if you had your Ubermage with stoneskin and shield and Mage armor up, any old character could still saunter up and completely shut them down with a grapple. And even super grapplers basically couldn’t beat giants and other super strong guys. It just makes it so that halfling technomancers stand half a chance of not being grabbed.
Since Starfinder did away with somantic components to spells, a grappled caster can still cast spells all day.
I have a player who is pissed because he made a melee grappling character with 18 STR, Combat Maneuver Focus (Grapple), and +1 BAB. He has a +9 to grapple opponents. With ncs having and average 22 combat maneuver defense, he has to roll a 14 or higher to grapple. Thats a 30% chance to succeed when he spent a feat to be the best at this. That's so silly. I was mad for him.
The CMD and CMB system in Pathfinder worked way better than this. What is the reasoning for such a ridiculous DC?
I suspect that after a pact world book, a veskarium book will follow in a year or two.
Agreed. Afterwards hopefully more info on the Azlanti Empire comes to light because, while hints have been made, almost nothing concrete enough to make a "canon" homebrew around exists.
I'm playing a blind dwarf Oracle who worships Yuelral, elven goddess of gems and crystals. His thing is he was raised thinking he was an elf and is very racist against dwarves.
The DM however is concerned that I wouldn't have any powers from the goddess because she wouldn't grant them to a non elf. Is this accurate?
The Players in my game will start the campaign by breaking out of a Razmiran prison where they were awaiting execution for various crimes and for not denouncing their respective religions and seeing Razmir as their God. The prison will be run by one of Razmir's wizard-priests who will act as the warden and the boss of the prison. Many peasants work at the prison as servants. If the PCS kill the warden and reveal him to be a wizard using magic items, how should the peasants react?
If they spread the story of fake priests how should the Church of Razmir react?
A player wants to play a Necromancer in my upcoming evil-themed campaign I am running, and he asked about some of the problems he would face in my game. I explained to him that the biggest issue will be walking around with a growing horde of undead trailing in his wake. He asked if there was a way to fix that and all I had for him was buy invisibility rings for his undead.
But it got me thinking, what clever ways could a Necromancer travel about and still keep his undead with him without arousing unwanted attention?
I was sitting here thinking...perhaps a charm could be made, like a charm of distraction, that can be placed on an individual and until it is removed forces a concentration check to cast.
So my entire 6 person group is fresh and new to Pathfinder...and d20 systems for that matter. So for the opening sequence of Giantslayer I decided to beef up the involvement of the Hopeknife Ceremony to get them all used to rolling d20s, hitting DCs, and applying modifiers.
This is how I did it.
The ceremony has the basic tug of war game which honestly I thought was rather lame. No one was rolling dice for it, no one felt involved. Afterwards though I announced that through the course of the celebrations there would be a raffle and in addition 4 other main events: Knife Throwing, Orc Trivia, Boulder Tossing, and a Drinking Contest.
Each of these allowed someone in the group to be excellent at.
The Raffle:
I kind of spoiled them with this, but I had potions of heal, enlarge person, giants strength, and invisibility, masterworked armors, and the grand prize being a war-trained heavy horse. The tickets were 30 gp each (I made the price relative to the leftover starting gold each player had) and assigned each person a number on the d20 die to represent their ticket. At the end of the day I rolled for prizes and everyone managed to get something cool, as did a few NPCs. This led to some roleplay later that involved swindling those NPCs out of their raffle prizes haha.
THe Main Events:
So with the four main events, I allowed each player to sign up for a minimum of two of them. In each one that a player wasn't signed up for, I let them play the role of an NPC. This gave everyone something to do at each stage of the ceremony. Each event had a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, with prize money of 100, 50, and 25 gp, respectively.
Knife Throwing:
This one favored Dex characters. The rules were simple; each person signed up and in each round through a special throwing hopeknife at an orc mannequin. The kill spots on the orc were colored accordingly: DC 10 hit the blue parts, not lethal; DC 15 hit the yellow, highly damaging but not lethal, and DC 20 hit the red parts, the face, heart, and groin, all lethal! I broke it down to one throw per round for 4 rounds. Hitting blue was 1 point, yellow 2 points, and red 4 points. Everyone had fun and hilariously the elven mage beat the paladin archer in this game, a fact she hasn't let him forget.
Boulder Tossing:
This one let players show off just how strong they are. I made sure everyone had a different colored die (and had some for the various NPCs) and we all rolled in a shallow cardboard box all at once, applied each participants strength modifier, and gave points accordingly. The highest result represented the farthest throw, and they received 5 points. After that the next lowest and so on received 4, 3, 2, and 1 points. Everyone else received 0. After 4 rounds the results were in, points added, and the rogue beat the fighter and barbarian.
Orc Trivia:
This one was for the smarty pants' in the group. The way I set it up was I asked 10 increasingly hard questions worth 1 point each, and then a final bonus question worth 4 points. The first question was a DC 10 Intelligence roll, and each following question increased the DC by 1, with the bonus question being a DC 20. THe wizard won this one, but surprisingly the Barbarian wasn't too far behind.
Drinking Contest:
This one involved fortitude rolls, and everyone was super excited to drink, even if it was in a roleplaying game. I invented a local specialty firewhiskey that was donated to the event that everyone was drinking. The way the contest worked was starting with a DC 5 fortitude roll, each player would knock back shot after shot, each consecutive shot increasing the DC of the save by 1. Whenever a player failed by 5 or more, they received an increasing -1 penalty on future saves. If they failed by 10 they passed out. The rogue was the first to go down, and the barbarian won only after raging halfway through the event to push his saves a little higher haha.
The unconscious players were revived by volunteers from the Sanctuary. Once everyone was semi-conscious, I did the raffle, rolling a d20 and calling out numbers.
After every thing was said and done, the whole group had a fun time with non-combat rolling and roleplay, got to interact with the important NPCs in more than just dialogue, and they even got really attached to Rodrick Grath, moreso than if he had just walked up and monologued to them and then left as the AP had written (Which was perfect for getting them involved in what happened the next morning) In addition they all had stories and swag to brag about, as well as extra spending money to go celebrate with the other adults at the afterparty at the Ramblehouse.
Name: Arynn Vrood
Race: Human
Class: Necromancer
Adventure: Broken Moon
Location: Feldgrau
Catalyst: Chain of Perdition
The Gory Details
Spoiler:
While flying and using Greater Invisibility, Vrood gave away his position to the flying party cleric with a failed ray, and got himself caught with a Chain of Perdition. He was then dragged down into the area of his CLoudkill spell that he opened combat with and was held there while he was blinded (negating his eyebite spell) and slowly failed Fort save after fort save and suffered a lethal amount of Constitution damage, ending his life. While this happened the party of heroes sat around and laughed at him even after his dying moments. The GM told us that this encounter was supposed to be much more scary and climatic in his head.
In a mummy's mask game I am starting later today I am playing a wizened yet vulgar wererat-kin wizard. I want to have him use profanities whenever he speaks, without actually dropping f-bombs and other common profanities in our world since I think that's be tasteless...instead I'd like to see if anyone can think of some great Golarion themed curses and profanities that a street rat would throw around much to the chagrin of the high born folk and to the amusement of everyone at the table.
Name: The Splatter Man
Race: Human Ghost
Classes/levels: Mid-level Wizard
Adventure: The Haunting of Harrowstone
Location: Basement Levels of the Prison
Catalyst: Two Exorcists from the Far Side of the World
The Gory Details:
The party has only two players, a Tengu Cleric of Shizuru and a Kitsune Synthesist Summoner. They were level 5 due to advancing the progression to balance it out with the two-man adventure.
Here's what happened:
Spoiler:
After easily dismissing the Letters Haunt, the Splatter Man decided to appear before the PCs in his full glory. The PCs laughed a little as they won initiative and the cleric cast his katana spiritual weapon to wail on the Splatter Man while the Summoner cast Shield on himself. The Ghost Wizard failed to identitfy the spell cast by the synthesist and tried to cast one of his magic missile at him, which failed. He then glided back and through a wall in an attempt to be clever. The cleric came up again, and he sent his spiritual katana to curve around the wall and attack the ghost some more while at the same time lazily casting Chain of Perdition and sent it to entangle the ghost in its links of force. The Kitsune cast shield on the Cleric next, and moved in to block the exit of the cell the ghost had retreated into. The Splatterman, now entangled in chains of force, was unable to glide through walls and attempted some kind of touch thing on the Kitsune. Either way, the following rounds involved the Splatterman being beat down by a spiritual weapon, channneled energy, and a flurry of magical attacks from the Kitsune, all while being dragged and pinned by the chain of perdition which had by this time anchored its hooks onto the bars of the cells.
It was probably the most anticlimatic boss fight in all my gaming history.
Tar-Baphon is just an insane nhilist (or used to be, the imprisonment on Gallowspire perhaps has changed his mind) which pretty much was a pawn of a bigger threat.
I have a vision of a party busting into gallowspire to find T-B surrounded by mounds of yarn. "Nah, done with the conquest thing. I've taken up knitting. Here, have a scarf! It matches your armor!"
I love reading about the ancient necromancer lords, and I am curious about what are the real differences, other than their names and location, between Geb and Tar-Baphon? It seems like the only one is that Geb was actually successful in making a functional undead nation whereas Tar-Baphon got his arse kicked and sealed away.
What in their philosophies and actions made it prudent for Aroden to fight Tar-Baphon and have a crusade led against his nation of undead and not such a massive undertaking been attempted against Geb? Did Geb not reanimate one of Aroden's heralds and use her as a mockery and a slap in the face against worshipper of Aroden and those of the holy knights who seek to vanquish the taint of undead on Golarion?
The most I have read about anything being done about Geb are agents of Ozem sneaking in and attempting to sabotage things, but no where have I seen any cohesive effort to take the nation down.
Anyone have any insight as to why the citizens of Golarion reacted to the rise of both of these necromancers in such vastly different ways, and why Geb is free to rule his own plot of land while Tar-Baphon was imprisoned within his.
When a player is dropping multiple high powered AoE energy attacks per round, should the DM rule that all the objects in the area are also affected? This includes worn equipment and items on the victims of the explosions.
I've recently been thinking about how awesome a pathfinder game set in ancient Rome could be, assuming magic exists, after reading Rasputin Must Die Anyone have some ideas on plots or even major events in history that would be fun to bring to the gaming table. I've knocked around the idea of Gladiatorial type scenarios but from past experiences those can be monotonous.
My problem is I can create the world but I am at a loss for what a compelling story could be.
I am playing a tengu cleric of Shizuru in a Carrion Crown game approaching level 5. I am wondering what some ideal metamagic feats would be for a cleric. Since they lack blasting spells in the lower spell levels a lot of the feats seem like they'd be useless with the exception of Persistent Spell. Any one have some insight into metamagic feat selection for a cleric?
One of the bestial features of the ragebred is two hoof natural attacks. Can these be gained with claws ( as per the lesser beast totem power) if one were to say the hooves are on the wereboar's feet, and in that sense would they also be able to wear horseshoe wondrous items?
The way I see it, Giants are massive. They are fast. They have long arms. While your halfling on a wolf is frolicking around, a pissed off group of giants can overrun the melee fighters and run down the halfling with a full run action, then when he tries to get away from them they get their attacks of opportunity, then if he does his double move away from the giants as a withdraw, the giants can then charge him down from that and beat his little ass into a pulp, or at least punt his wolf off a cliff. Sure it'll mean ignoring the other PCs and taking their licks from them, but combat 101 is to take out the biggest threat, and apparently this halfling is the biggest threat.
Oh I definitely agree - if you let the players just be chaotic stupid without any focus, things can get out of hand. Thats why I am really attracted to the idea of making them part of a werewolf pack, having that camaraderie already, and also giving them a specific set of objectives that will make them want to work together and even with others to accomplish a greater goal.
Lyee wrote:
I highly recommend reading Way of the Wicked book 1. It's a 3PP evil campaign I've been GMing and is very enjoyable.
In the first book, they have a few pages (3, I think) discussing the 'problems an evil campaign can run into' and it's worth the read. I would just paste that section here, but that's part of the content of the book so I probably shouldn't. It generally goes over problems like evil vs mindless violence and such. They articulate it better than I.
I have been bouncing around the idea of running an evil campaign in the Darkmoon Vale area where the PCs are part of a werewolf pack who will eventually carve out a werewolf nation in Andoran. I want it to be very similar to the Kingmaker campaign, where they will need to slowly drive out, dominate, or enslave settlers of the Vale and establish territory for the pack while at the same time spreading their curse to strengthen their ranks or to throw settlements into chaos before moving in.
Of course the nation of Andoran will not be happy about this and run a campaign to drive back the werewolves, protect the citizens, and take back their territory.
I plan on giving the PCs the opportunities to make alliances with evil fey, evil dwarves of the Five Kings mountains, and neighboring countries to support and strengthen their campaign to create an autonomous werewolf nation.
I want them to start off as natural werewolves because I don't want to deal with uncontrolled transofrmations where I have to NPC the player since that takes a lot of fun away from a game session. I am worried though on how to execute the main classes in conjunction with the werewolves, since it seems Lycanthropy pairs with the physical classes more than it would with the magical classes. As far as I know, when in animal form a player cannot cast, but could they cast in hybrid form? If so then there is no longer a problem.
Just reading this, however, does anyone have any insight on problems that could arise or have ideas to add to this campaign concept?
