CaspianM's page

Do cannon golem's cannons attack touch AC in the first range band?

So I've finished the written part of the adventure and its a real relief I will tell you that. I need to read adventures in more detail next time to make sure everything makes sense.

So in a Narnia kind of thing the last couple of parts of the game will revolve around the PCs versus Chorral (who's in a Star Warsian twist is one of the PCs' father) I wish I could use the mass combat system but that subsystem turned out really badly.

So yeah, what would you do for a final showdown type event?

So, if I had a big bad monster that could cast shadow projection from the APG what happens?

It keeps its HD and what not, but is the incorporeal touch attack conducted at it's normal attack bonus with it's normal damage and STR damage, or is it at it's normal attack bonus but with only STR damage?

http://utrpg.memethief.com/Kingmaker

This is my game. My game has diverged pretty hard since book 2? As the blurb says, right now Armag has survived and has a gigantic horde. This is the start of our book 5.

I've been dealing with weapons for large sized creatures a lot lately and I can't find a definitive listing for damage progression for weapons that are large and greater.

Where would I go to find such a list? Should I still be using the old 3.5 chart?

What I've done is have one of my PCs, formerly a murderous cavalier, now a murderous Paladin as a secret bastard son, which was revealed later that he was the last Rogarvian standing and thusly theoretically in line for the throne of Brevoy (Also he brought back summer once). In this instance the Surtovans have been doing a good job of running Brevoy but for some reason (I'm thinking N) they are getting jealous and looking to move down to stomp on said PC.

Said PC has also been getting some manifestations of fire (small fire resist, flaming eyes when doing spells, giant flame eruptions when praying) which has been interesting. Can't judge reaction to that yet.

For the fighter archetype there is the 5th level power that allows them to disarm and do damage "without the usual strength modifier" Now this is supposed to suggest that the bonus damage done is just by adders and other riders but what about other stat modifiers (ie dex) to damage?

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter/archetypes/paizo---fig hter-archetypes/aldori-swordlord-brevoy

Thanks! Now I just have to put this advice together.

I'm running Kingmaker and am currently trying to build a human NPC designed (hopefully) for one on one combat with a PC. What suggestions would you make regarding classes/feats/etc?

Perhaps interestingly I don't see the Nyrissa plot in book 6 to be something I really want to happen, especially since my game is mostly focused on the kingdom. I'm mixing Nyrissa into a Stolen Lands/Brevoy war of succession with a hint of the Dragon Reborn from a famous fantasy series to hint at Chorral's return.

Sweet. For the record the combo of graveknight, barbarian and centaur is pretty much amazing.

So when statting monsters up, how do you deal with this particular confluence of huh regarding con increases during rage? Does it gain bonus charisma when raging instead or does that part of the power not count for anything? Should I just use charisma as the base for the rest of the other keyed stats like how hitpoints switch over?

Just a question. Spell combat seems to be focused on single attack touch attacks. How does it interact with multiple attack touch attacks like Chill Touch?

@CaspianM - From what I read, the Swordlords ruled Rostland as a separate kingdom from Issia. When Choral appeared, Issia (Surtova) bent the knee quickly and fairly bloodlessly. Being hothead fighters, the Swordlords resisted completely and had to be decimated by the battle at the Valley of Fire before surrendering. In my mind they went from being the old rulers of a land to being nothing, as Choral would have appointed his own loyal people or Rostland turncoats as rulers over his newly conquered kingdom. When I applied GoT thinking to this situation, it made sense that the Swordlords would band together secretly and build up their military and political might disguised as "private security" for each of their holdings. However when the time was right and these individual security forces were combined, they would = Swordlords' army.

About the hidden prince idea - My initial hesitation to do this was because of creative license. I didn't want to paint myself in a corner if I could think of a good reason the Rogarvian family disappeared that conflicted with having one heir free. My sencond thought was because I was afraid this would devolve from being a campaign about the Stolen Lands into a super heavy political "bug hunt" with the PCs on the run a lot and the entire campaign about Brevoy.

I wish I could say more about how I am handling this particular thread but I know my players peruse these boards. But basically you have to add in some other ideas modified from other series where a Dragon features heavily and that combined with the suggested story lines from the last book in the AP provide a rather weird and crazy sideplot that shouldn't detract too much while providing hilarious and terrifying omens.

One thing I never really understood with the Issia and Rosterland split was where did the Swordlords fit? From what I read that they are a part of Rosterlander culture, but are they separate from the Rosterlander families?

As an addon a good subplot would be the "hidden prince", where one of the PCs is secretly the last Rogarvian left, and some Surtovan nobles are running around in your country looking for him.

What are you building the Duelist to do?

I think something important that comes from how my group plays D&D is that any noble of any importance has to be classed and armed as a PC. One it adds treasure which some players like, two it makes it harder for people kill said people, though it also makes it more lucrative.

You've got a lot of good stuff running here. Will comment more once I digest it better.

Why not open up the archetype to all weapons? That way it can do polearms, piercing weapons and so forth.

So, one of my players brought to attention a rather odd situation. The wording for Axiomatic and Anarchic weapons does not suggest that it works on people/native dwellers of the main plane of Chaotic and Lawful alignments but only towards outsiders of said type. Is this the case?

Ok, I'm having a quandary here. I redesigned some monsters for my Kingmaker game to give actual challenges to my PCs. What I'm using is someone's fan-conversion of the Warlock because I really don't feel up to running a high level wizard as a main baddy yet.

( http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz5bg5?Master-Arminass-Revised-Warlock-for-the#1 btw)

The problem of stacking Character levels on a monster became kinda evident in what I did. The output CR 9 creature has 162 HP and a 150 range touch attack that does 5D8+6 fire damage and forces Will saves or become shaken (the party is pretty bad at will saves it seems)

The question is, how would you fine tune this so it doesn't just outright kill PCs? The thing that I don't get is that apparently that damage code seems actually about right, but I'm thinking the HP and the control rider on the damage might be the thing that takes the fight to crazytown.

That being said, one of the players is a Cavalier who's damage code is up to 2d12+34 to 42 on a charge and another is an alchemist barbarian who's running a claw/claw/bite/gore attack routine that does a lot of damage when he's full attacking.

I've been doing a lot of digging around with Cavaliers and I was wondering, what is the interaction with the crit multiplier with the multiplier from Spirited Charge? Is it not a crit multiplier so its a case of 3x damage x3 or does a crit only add another 2x damage in the way Pathfinder deals with crits?

1) Game expectation issue: if it is a surprise invasion you might upset the people who were expecting a nice quiet mining game (no idea how this could happen in Pathfinder but you never know) This of course is the question on when you're springing your event.

2) Scale: the "Can we kill it" question. That relies on the how long is this event going to last in your campaign. Conversely don't let the event just get crushed by some lucky boulder to the barbarian chieftain. That being said, if it looks unbeatable players can lose forwards momentum.

Thanks for putting this up. I disagree with changing the STR bonus type to Morale, though honestly it would keep the problem of Barbarian/Alchemists down.

I'm having problems understanding exactly how mounts work in the mass combat system as is.

So if I have a hill giant riding a mammoth (advanced elephant) 1 hill giant cavalryman is a CR 16 creature, or otherwise a CR 8 army. Is this right? How does this interact with the idea of the tribe of hill giants with mammoths that is present within War of the River Kings?

One thing I found with my last session is how should magic interact on one to one interactions between diplomats. Its a possibly very frustrating situation.

I'm building an Aldori Swordlord NPC. This is mostly a question of interest. If not it's no biggie.

Though that is a good side question then. What are the other good damage spells other than shocking grasp?

Is there a rules legal way to make the Black Blade the Magus gets an Agile weapon? Or is the character basically leveraging shocking grasp for the extra damage?

I'd also like to take a look at that. Also what is the naming convention for people in Brevoy? It sounds vaguely russian?

So interestingly my players are taking the narrative into their own hands and are interested in hosting a tournament in their lands as an attempt to show how awesome they are. I guess the idea is to introduce their kingdom to the rest of the River Kingdoms.

This is amusing mostly as this was the point where a Song of Ice and Fire game I was playing in previously fizzled out.

I've got some notes on how medieval tournaments go and I think running a ruleset so the joust resembles Full Metal Jousting's format. Also I think I'm going to take ideas from Green Ronin's Song of Ice and Fire RPG as it has some guidelines on that.

What else should I include?

So, there's the whole Aldori sword-fighting culture in Brevoy. Are there any canon details about them other than the origin story?

I've been revisiting these Aldori threads a lot for my Kingmaker game and have come up with a hilarious problem. What does a duel between two Aldori end up looking like? Cause with these stats it sounds like it could end up being really boring and long.

In RPG terms evil comes under the the definition of "guys who its ok to kill because they are not good"

Literally. You'll notice generally speaking there are few explorations of Orc culture, cause if you realized that that orc barbarian who is mapped on either a germanic raider or a viking raider is stealing food from a village for his starving kids (because his tribe has been ousted from the nice places to live by humans) it becomes a game that's vastly different from D&D.

The nature of the Surtova king and queen rely on the question of whether they had anything to do with the Rogarvians disappearing, as they stand to gain rulership of Brevoy.

So, either the red dragons that allied with the Rogarvians decided the Cinderella period of human leadership was over and took their gifts back, or somehow the Surtovas initiated some kind of massacre of an entire household and their substantial guard. This is also likely if really asshatty red dragons decided to get in on this regime change because its really funny, or the dragon equivalent of changing the channel on the Sopranos.

So if somehow the Surtovas were in on the Rogarvians disappearing, then you want the face of the Surtovas to be mildly competent but utterly unaware of evil back dealings since the first person a PC suspects is the evil king with the Snidely Whiplash mustache. He needs a minder with decent social skills who is onside for the bad stuff, but is also out of the loop as again, PCs. So if we go that route, its pretty simple to see the King as the guy who's come in after a strange event and is trying to hold everything together. His sister is a manipulative jerk, but seems to be otherwise helping out. All the while they act as an insulator between PCs and the guys who are really messing around with Brevoy.

Thank you for this conversion. I've only really ran the tomb encounter as is and it was pretty terrifying for the PCs to encounter an AC 29 creature and the attendant non-pushover skeletal warrior sidekicks.

The whole sibling love thread likely boils out of the Song of Ice and Fire influences on Brevoy.

CaspianM wrote:

I think the political thing could be mechanized somewhat which would (I hope) make it more accessible for everyone. I'll put up my notes on the mechanics when I get home. Perhaps that will be of interest to people.

Caspian that would be greatly appreciated!

Thnx in advance.

It's sort of up. I'm trying to figure out a way to mechanize my rules some more cause otherwise its a whole lot of prep and a lot of secondary sources to go through which is counter-productive for GMing.

Sorry, my internet at home has decided to go insane. I'll be posting what I have as I can. They're not really finished so comments would be appreciated to fine tune these rules. Also there are spoilers and what not so yeah.

The problem with running macro social encounters is that you kinda have to expand on the material given for the local kingdoms, which is kinda sketchy. The Guide to the River Kingdoms is a really cool book however and gives good pointers as to what the various kingdoms do.

First things first is to outline stats for the kingdoms. What I have as a guideline is:

Disposition: Does the country like the PC's country. Rate -10 to 10. Depending on your players you can keep this hidden and reveal it through narrative or show the number. The PCs can do some kind of interaction with the other kingdom to improve relations (ie quest or a diplomacy roll plus an expenditure of BP) Of course with Pitax their disposition should always be kinda neutral (barring crazy stuff the PCs do to them) until War of the River Kings.

Let's guestimate some possible interactions

Trade agreement: The PCs arrange some sort of trading setup that's beneficial to both sides. This acts like a revenue stream per month of the Power + Disposition of the other country. In addition the other country might have extra bonuses to this trade agreement in the form of more BP or some kind of other narrative discount.

It takes a minimum of two months of game time to setup which sees the councilor in charge of it, usually the Ambassador, not providing his bonuses to your country. Furthermore it requires an extended Diplomacy test pegged at lets say the character's diplomacy + 10 to 15 (depending on how difficult you want to make it), with each check taking up 1 month's time, minimum 2 successes, more for people who want to provide hassle to the PC's country, like say Pitax. Your PCs might also want to quest to finish this somehow. Easiest solution is a "remove bandits" quest with several high CR encounters.

War: This subsystem hasn't been explored well. That being said there should be ways for the PCs to engage in lower level skirmishes. If the PC's declare war on a country they suffer an unrest penalty of 3+disposition, minimum 1 unrest unless disposition is at -10.

Research: Man I wish there was a research option. Sadly I can't think of one other than somehow providing the PC's prerequisites for building armies.

Power: This is another soft rating. This is just to suggest the general level of NPC they'll be dealing with when they interact with the town. Peg the rating above the PC level to suggest they might want to hang back a bit from a place or lower if you want the PCs to try to invade/co-opt a place.

Make revealing information about the kingdoms cost BP and/or face time. My guess is travel to adjacent kingdoms is something along the lines of 2 months (assuming travel, staying and hassles) with the countries farther out taking 3-4 months?

Also with all of this don't forget Brevoy. It's likely they'll want some taxes and to check if there are any Rogarvian holdouts in your PC's country. For now we'll say the Greater Powers (Brevoy, Galt, Numeria, Kyonin, Razmiran) also fall within the purview of these rules, with greater bonuses and greater penalties and so forth.

As an additional question, were Warlocks broken in 3.5?

I figured you meant the spell, but that seemed really powerful as I was reading it. Fair enough.

Slowed isn't a Pathfinder condition. What do you mean by that?

Why annoy your GM at all?

The person casting plant growth does not have to cover the entire hex.

Space on the hex has to account for farmhouses, roads, rivers, trees, etc. Plots of land are likely more like 50% of a hex's area if that.

While not particularly low level I would like to note several interesting builds I am working on for my Kingmaker game.

Troll Titan Mauler 3 (CR 8). Has a huge greatsword which with rage has an attack line of +17/12 (4D6+13, 19-20/x2)

Advanced Troll Cleric X. Has enough stat boosts to make actual casting a thing.

I think the political thing could be mechanized somewhat which would (I hope) make it more accessible for everyone. I'll put up my notes on the mechanics when I get home. Perhaps that will be of interest to people.

I realize that Maxximilus fixed the wording on larger weapons, but while fixing it there was also another extra static bonus added to that, which scaled upwards with size. I was just wondering why that rider was there.

Edit, nevermind, I forgot to calculate how the penalty reduction progression worked.

I don't understand why you would give Titan Maulers even more damage when they can get larger weapon dice already?

After going through all the background material for Brevoy its pretty easy to draw a comparison with the state of Brevoy and the Song of Ice and Fire series. Has anyone diverted the course of the adventure path into something that has interactions with Brevoy and the whole Rogarvia/Surtova issue?

I'm amazed at the elegance of your solution. It also makes Rogues focus on Rogue-ish weapons too. All in all brilliant!

Wow, there is some really cool stuff in here.

karkon wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

CaspianM wrote:

If you had an optimal output for the problem it's best to let people know what it is or have some way they can make rolls to figure out stuff the players would not figure out under stress. You really shouldn't punish players for not mind-reading the scenario.

.....

You really spoon feed your players?
At that point you can roll the dice for them too. RD players think he is railroading them and you are suggesting him to feed them the "right" solution or the adventure?
[shake head in disbelief]

I made this point earlier in the thread. Players take their cue from the DM. If solutions other than combat are available you need to give them some indication or clue. Your descriptions are their window to the world so if you keep pulling the blinds over that window then they will go to the default mechanic. I start every game by reminding my players that combat is not the only or best solution to problems. I am rewarded with games that have a lot of role playing. Either way they are rewarded with XP and treasure.

I think you play a slightly different game than I, and Diego do (separately). If my Dm were to say what you do at the start of your games, I would think something like the following: I am not a child, nor have I been for a decent period of time, and don't need my dm to speak to me as if I was. I know I have any options available to me that I can possibly think of... that is pretty much the entire point of this game.

Edit: the point I am trying to convey, I suppose, is that I will get an idea of how to act in your world by interacting with the world, not through pre game declarations. You can say whatever you like before the game begins to set the world up, but it is how I interact with the various peoples within it that will determine if I think there are options available to me past hack-and-slash.

A solid description of surroundings is vital, yes, but I don't want my dm to follow it up with "and it...

Bro, you're putting up some rather leading text here.

When I say problem its specific narrative stuff I want to happen for my own amusement. So for when the kill happy PCs come through the adventure every once in a while I'll outright tag someone with a subtle "please don't kill, rape then eat" hint. Its not as if I'm suggesting railroading everything just that sometimes as a GM you want stuff to happen in your game. And as the arbiter of the world it'd be nice to see it happen every once in a while.