Cap'n Coal's page

Sorry to be the 667th post on this thread, but does anyone have ideas for additional encounters in the Many-Steps Monastery?

I found this absolutely gorgeous map on reddit but it is several rooms larger than the monastery presented in the book. I was thinking of adding a memory devil to one room and maybe a few more redactors, but are there any other level-appropriate monsters that would make sense to appear in the monastery?

The players have been taking their sweet time getting to this mission, so it makes sense that the Church might have moved in a little bit in the three months since the Night of Ashes.

Canonically speaking, time on Earth and Golarian passes at the same rate. The Dancing Hut travels to its destination instantaneously, so there's no time lost travelling to Triaxus or Earth.

So it depends on how long it takes the party to clock the adventure and most importantly, how long you as the GM think is the most interesting length of time to pass.

Just keep in mind that the eternal winter that is gripping the world represents a global extinction event. Even a year would be enough to kill some species and induce famine in some parts of the world. There's also the matter of Baba Yaga's geas, which theoretically prevents the party from engaging in too much downtime activity.

Name: Inspector 74
Race: Triaxian(!)
Classes/levels: Investigator 7
Adventure: The Shackled Hut
Location: Logrivich's Tower
Catalyst: Full attack from an adult dragon
The Gory Details: Inspector 74 was the only party member capable of flight, so he took to the skies to face Logrivich using Monstrous Physique. Two full attacks (with a crit on bite) and a breath weapon later, the Inspector's headless corpse went splat on the streets of Whitethrone.

My party is still in Whitethrone. I will have them learn of a secret meeting between the witches and mysterious new allies and might throw in an encounter with dragonriders somewhere along the way.

This information is from the Irrisen Land of winter book. I will also be including information from Hagreach from the land of Linnorn Kings book as soon as it arrives. Does anyone know of additional information and ressources about this area, that connects to Baba Jaga?
ALso I m struggling to put a plot together where I can incorporate Kostchtchie, Jarl Ceszac, Ratibor and other warlords into a fine story. My problem is that so far all seem to be former allies of Baba Jaga. But I would like for one or two to be Ulfs. Would you spinn a story where Ratibor was a sucessfull or treacherous Ulf general?
The party never really wanted to help Baba Jaga with conviction, I had to convince them that Queen Elvanna is the worse of the two evils and only Baba Jaga can stop her.
If I lead the group on this longer path with all this sidequests. How can I reward them? I still want them to discover the Coven and dungeon from the book. They are already pretty powerfull and while I m looking forward to the challenge of designing my own plots, I want to avoid of having to upgrade every future encounter.

I can sympathize with your predicament and I really like your solution!

Have you checked out People of the North? Book 3 of Jade Regent takes place on the Crown of the World. The Witchwar Legacy also takes place in norther Irrisen.

You could have Ratibor plan to betray Baba Yaga， but then betray the conspiracy. This would explain his light punishment.

Name: Baphomet Half-Battle, Jr.
Race: Tiefling
Classes/Levels: Magus [Mindblade] 1
Adventure: The Snows of Summer
Location: The Border Wood
Catalyst: Atomie Ambush
The Gory Details: I set up the route to the High Sentinel Lodge as a single map in Roll20 and my players were incredibly wary of following the bandit tracks that I laid out on the map as well as other obvious spaces for encounters or traps. The players were doing their best to keep away from the clearing of deep snow where the arctic tatzlwyrm was lying in wait, but split up in the process.

Baphomet Half-Battle, Jr. was first to walk around the tatzlwyrm's lair and took interest in a large tree decorated with dead crows up on the path ahead. He was charmed by the dancing lights that bobbed around the tree, when one of them cast Color Spray on him. Vosi and Shor took turns stabbing the giant devil to death while Pym left to search for more victims.

The party's ratfolk witch had had some unlucky rolls and was nearly dead from frostbite, so he and his cat hid in the trees.

The swashbuckler was still trying to leap from tree to tree.

When Junior went below 0 HP, they decided "discretion is the better part of valor" and ran back to town.

See if your DM will let you take Ability Focus (HEX NAME HERE).

I think it depends mostly on your group. Are they willing to sit in front of a computer for 4-6 hours talking over video chat? For me it was boring and I backed out of the game after several sessions. I think it could be fun, but I think the GM would have to really engaging for me to play over videochat again.

I don't know how engaging I will be, but fortunately this campaign doesn't have too many sessions in it--in September I'll be moving out of the country. No one expects this to last more than four sessions.

Skype is great, but I've switched to using Google+ Hangouts. They work very well and there are some people developing an RP Tool specifically for Hangouts called TableForge which has some promise. Until then, I'm using MapTools.

In any case ... playing over video chat is great. I wouldn't suggest doing just audio ... I'd suggest everyone has a webcam (being able to see each other actually does make a difference ... you can read lots of non-verbal cues).

How many people do you have on video chat? There are five of us in all and I'm worried that five videos will slow down the connection to the point that communication will just break down. I've been out of the country for a little while so I'm not really on the up and up with Google +, but I think all the sites listed in this thread should be enough to get us going for now.

Thanks everyone!

I'm planning to run my first Pathfinder campaign this summer with my friends. Unfortunately, we don't even live in the same state, so we were thinking about playing over skype.

How is GMing online different from being in person? Are there any programs that are strong to use? I hear good things about http://rptools.net/. Any other advice?

I'd personally use a variation of Wild Shape where in addition to beast shape, elemental body, and plant shape, you also gain access to alter self, disguise self, polymorph, and shapechange (later on). Better to have an ability replicate already established spells if you can.

I'd probably give the class a whole redesign. I don't like the shift points and I'd probably scrap that and make it just a number of times per day equal to X + some stat. Maybe make it a 6-level caster with Medium BAB like the bard. I'd suggest looking at the Infiltrator and Shapeshifter archetypes for the Ranger for inspiration. The Infiltrator in particular seems to fit the bill with what the Shapeshifter 3.5 class wants to do.

Took your advice to heart. I know the Synthesist isn't terribly popular on this board, but I was thinking about giving the guy a small bonus based on his charisma to his eidolon pool per level and let him have a variety of weaker eidolons to summon/transform into. I'm not sure what the limit on summons/transformations per day would be.

I'd also give him the gradation of alter self/disguise self/polymorph etc. at the expense of the summon monster and spell casting class features.

The only part of the original Summoner class that remains is the Aspect feature, which is similar to the Infiltrator and the 3.5 Shapeshifter.

How does that sound?

I'm preparing to run a short campaign this summer and one of my friends wants to play a shapeshifter. Aside from adjusting the the BAB and the available forms, how would you make this class suitable for play?

Adding 2 fast healing every three levels seems horrifically broken. If I keep the class feature at all, I would slow it down to every four levels and only give him +1 fast healing.

Additionally, I think the form mutations need to be reworked. Since giants and elementals are no longer their own type, I would move those bonuses around and also add an ooze mutation that made the shapeshifter immune to piercing damage. I don't see this campaign going past level 10, so we won't run into the problem of a character who can turn into a dragon that is immune to critical hits, flanking, mind-altering effects and has a +2 to strength besides.

In the interest of discussion, do you think the form mutations are a balanced class feature? I was thinking about making the mutations weaker, more frequent, and apply only to the non-shifted shapeshifter. These mutations would be similar to some alchemist discoveries, like the option to grow wings or new appendages.

All that said, this is my first time as a GM so I don't have all the mechanics of the game down. Am I on the right track or is this class unsalvageable?

So I downloaded the ARG in January, but didn't have a chance to play with it until last night. One thing that tripped me up a little was the use of the term "monstrous" as a race type and also as a term for power levels. Maybe it was just because it was 3 AM, but it the simultaneous use of those terms made things a little confusing.

Are monstrous races naturally monstrous? Perhaps they could change the type to xenian (or maybe beast, to avoid similarity with outsider) or change the power level to epic or grotesque.