Cenorin's page

I anticipate my Kingmaker players using the spell divination quite a bit. Since the spell is supposed to provide "a useful piece of advice", possibly in "the form of a cryptic rhyme", I've written up several poetic answers that might be useful in most Kingmaker campaigns.

In the original version of Kingmaker, Vordakai is supposed to deal damage by channeling negative energy, which Necromancer Wizards can't actually do. Here's my attempt to rebuild him so that he can damage with channeling while keeping as much as possible the same.

I've made him a Hex Channeler Witch with the Death patron. This gives him a different spell list and fewer spell slots (since he's not a specialist wizard anymore). His new prepared spells are:
Witch Spells Prepared (CL 9th; concentration +14):
5th - Dominate Person, Waves of Fatigue
4th - Dimension Door (2), Phantasmal Killer
3rd - Dispel Magic, Fly, Suggestion, Tongues
2nd - Blindness/Deafness, Detect Thoughts (2), False Life, Ironskin
1st - Charm Person, Chill Touch, Comprehend Languages, Mage Armor, Ray of Enfeeblement (2)
0th - Arcane Mark, Detect Magic, Read Magic, Touch of Fatigue

Here's a summary of the changes:
* Quickened Shield (a 5th-level spell) becomes Ironskin (a 2nd-level spell). He can't Quicken it, but with his Perception bonus he'll probably know when the PCs are getting close.
* Grease (1st-level) becomes Ice Slick (2nd-level).
* Displacement (3rd-level) becomes Fly (3rd-level). Hardly equivalent, but it gives him a way to stay out of melee range.
* Drop one Detect Thoughts (2nd-level), Ghoul Touch (2nd-level), Vampiric Touch (3rd-level), and Bestow Curse (4th-level). His paralyzing touch is good enough without augmenting it with a spell.

I think this is pretty close to what the author intended when creating Vordakai. Personally, I'd this version is a bit less powerful, but not by a lot.

What do you guys think? How does this version compare to the original?

This is excellent material, Rhys! I decided to use a version of it in my own Kingmaker game, with a few changes:

* I added passages to emphasize the Black Sisters more, since they're a major part in the backstory of one of my PCs. I also created an unholy symbol for their sect by mixing Gorum's and Gyronna's symbols (i.e., a sword stuck in a bloodshot cat's eye rather than a mountain).
* I wanted Armag to sound a bit more like a pillaging barbarian than a conqueror.
* I removed the references to Gozreh, who isn't relevant to my campaign.

Here's the result:

My plan is to reveal the text piecemeal throughout the campaign. The PCs have found passage #10 already, inscribed on the walls of the Stag Lord's Fort from when it was a Gyronnan monastery. They'll find #7 and #9 when they defeat the Gyronnan cult from RRR, and #1 and #2 on the walls of the Candlemere Tower. The full prophecy will be revealed sometime in BfB (I haven't decided exactly when).

RRR mentions that "particularly adventurous PCs" might try to recruit unusual NPCs like Chief Sootscale and Melianse the nixie as leaders for their kingdom. My group is about to start RRR, and I suspect that this will come up - they're already talking about recruiting Perlivash and Tyg-Titter-Tut. The phrase "particularly adventurous" suggests that this should come with special risks, but it doesn't seem to give any guidance on what those risks might be, so I'm looking for suggestions and feedback. This is particularly important because they're also considering having an NPC Ruler.

I'd prefer to avoid just treating their ability scores as lower than they are, since that doesn't seem "particularly adventurous". I'm thinking that I'll customize whatever I do to sit the NPCs and the role, but some basic ideas are:

* Recruiting the NPCs in the first place may be difficult - treat their initial attitude as Unfriendly or Hostile for this purpose. Playful fey don't like the idea of paperwork.

* Small chance of generating Unrest each turn, as the humans are uncomfortable with their leaders.

* Some, like Perlivash and Tyg-Titter-Tut, may shirk their duties. Each turn they have, say, a 5-10% chance of leaving their office vacant.

* NPCs with dumped stats (not in their primary ability scores) may create problems. For instance, so far they have spared Auchs - if they give him a leadership role, they may find that he endangers the fragile peace they've established with the Sootscale Tribe.

Other thoughts or suggestions?

I've been trying to find more information about the prophecies of Aroden, but so far I've come up short. I know that prophecy has been unreliable on Golarion since he disappeared, but I'm wondering how detailed the prophecies were before then. For example, would someone familiar with his prophecies have known that Cheliax would split away from Taldor ahead of time, or would it have been fairly vague and the meaning would only have become clear in retrospect? Given that the Harbingers have apparently been trying to make various prophecies come true, it seems like his followers have a pretty clear idea of when certain things were supposed to happen.

I'm also curious exactly how the prophecies have failed since he died. For example, suppose that a prophecy indicates that a great darkness will fall across the land, bringing war and death in its wake, until a hero with a magic spear leads an army to victory against it. Would we expect nothing to happen, or would we expect something to happen but with an uncertain outcome? For example, would everyone be scared because some big darkness is supposedly coming and without Aroden there's no guarantee that the hero will emerge?

Other metamagic feats you might consider (depending on whether you expect to do more buffing or debuffing) are:

Bouncing Spell - The first target making the save redirects the spell to another target of your choice.
Persistent Spell - Force target to save twice.
Reach Spell - Many transmutation spells require touching, and it's not always easy or desirable to be that close.
Vast Spell - Don't you just hate it when you have to choose which targets to affect with Haste because some are more than 30 ft. apart? Well, what if I told you they could be 60 ft. apart for the low, low cost of one additional spell level?

I have yet to see another caster take Reach Spell, but it's been a godsend (Sarenrae, in this case) on my oracle. Usually, I use it to turn touch spells into short-range spells, either so I can save someone's life with a Heal or Breath of Life from across the room or so I can use a debuff like Bestow Curse without having to get into melee.

"Erinyes" is another interesting creature with a name that I find impossible to pronounce. Yes, it's from Greek myth, but since a lot of translations outside of D&D/Pathfinder call them "furies", they could have easily used that instead.

How about a Dual-Cursed Oracle with the Clouded Vision and Deaf curses?

I like devas, but it's terribly confusing having both "monadic devas" and "movanic devas".

You can argue that the various "specialized" Fighter archetypes like Two-Handed Fighter, Phalanx Soldier, and such do a better job of reflecting the character concepts that most people have when making Fighters - it's much more common for someone to be thinking "I want to be the ultimate greatsword user" or "I want to be the ultimate pikeman" than "I want to be really good at wielding a wide variety of weapons", in which case you don't need the Weapon Training in five different weapon groups offered by the base class.

58. While on the Astral Plane, have the silver cord that connects you to your body severed.

It might help to know a little more about the specific feeling that you're trying to create in your players. Are you hoping that the weird things will scare them ("I'm never heard of a monster like that before, what the hell is that thing?"), enthrall them ("whoa, that tree made of crystal you just described sounds awesome - I wish I could see it for real"), or something else?

Regarding the problem of player familiarity with monsters, I haven't had much occasion to try it myself, but I've heard from other GMs that they've had a lot of success re-skinning existing monsters. For example, one GM used the statistics for a gorgon, but presented it as a red-furred yeti thing.

In theory, removing the Azlanti general Krahnaliara Lac Suhn could prevent the fall of the serpentfolk empire based out of Sesseghishoss, at least until Earthfall happened centuries later. That could have all kinds of consequences, probably interfering with the rise of ancient Thassilon and several other nations.

There may be something more official somewhere, but here's an explanation on the Paizo blog about which combat maneuvers use weapons and which don't.

That's a very good source that I'll probably use going forward. That said, one problem I can see is that there are a few weapons with the "grapple" special quality like the garrote - while the text doesn't specifically say "you can use a grappling weapon to make grapple attempts" like it does for weapons with the "trip" special quality, it seems pretty clear to me that you are using the weapon in the grapple attempt, and I'd be hard-pressed to say that the weapon's enhancement bonus shouldn't apply in that case. But I also wouldn't complain if you decided to rule it differently in your game.

Korolan wrote:

Hey Chaine!

With evergreens, you can get credit each time you run the adventure. There are only two stipulations
1) You can apply it to a 1st level character, as long as they don't have credit for that adventure yet.
2) You can apply it to a 2nd level character, as long as they don't have credit for that adventure. You may only do this once.

Hopefully that helps!

Sweet! so basically, it's a GM exception that allows you to apply these Evergreen on 2nd level PCs as well? (in the case of Confirmation, if applied to a 2nd level PC, would the chronicle sheet grant the free Wayfinder as well?)

It's not strictly a GM thing - anyone can play an evergreen with a lvl 2 once, GM or not. If I follow, what's being said here is that it works the same way for GM credits - you can GM an evergreen as many times as you want, and one of those times you can apply the credit to a lvl 2 rather than a lvl 1.

As for The Confirmation, my reading of the chronicle sheet is that only your first PC to receive the chronicle gets a free wayfinder, whether that was for playing or GMing; you don't get a second free wayfinder the first time you GM it.

...you're playing the only non-pregen in a 7-11 scenario, and two of the players are new to PFS.

After reading this and many other posts I wonder if a GA Succubus might be essentially a "redemption temptress"

Essentially going around to evil or negative energy infused, (otherwise)chaste beings offering redemption, then when the offer is taken they have sex with the subject, absorbing it and it's evil essence into themselves, making them pregnant and dissolving the evil entity complexly(as energy drain).

Then within a week(keeping it within reason for gameplay, otherwise a few months) the celestial...

I had similar thoughts after reading this, though like others I think a good succubus would focus less on the sex aspect than a traditional succubus.

The way I see it, the broad concept of the D&D/Pathfinder succubus is a demoness who tempts people toward the dark side with the promise of sex. As such, they would target good people during moments of weakness and offer them a life of pleasure and wanton excess. We sometimes see them used as the consorts of evil people just to kind of illustrate how evil they are, but that never really made much sense to me - I always envisioned the succubus as abandoning her target once they had fallen to the dark side to find another to corrupt. It's like a drug - at first the high is intense and easy to get, but over time the pleasure fades and the costs become more extreme.

So to my mind, a "good succubus" would target tyrants or similar people and tempt them toward the light side. This probably wouldn't take the form of sex, at least not the way a succubus tempts someone, because a tyrant can coerce or threaten women into satisfying his lusts. The good succubus is like the Ghost of Christmas Past, offering the villain what his evil lifestyle can't provide - inner peace, no one trying to assassinate you, relationships based on trust rather than fear, or maybe a second chance with that one girl that he's never been to win over despite all his power. The good succubus tells the tyrant that if he lets go of whatever pain or need drives him to commit atrocities, he can have a simpler, more peaceful, more rewarding life. (I'm kind of envisioning something a bit like the "Lexmas" episode of Smallville - while I think the execution in that episode was stupid and went against the point they were trying to make, the concept of someone trying to convince the bad guy that maybe he's been pursuing happiness the wrong way is interesting.)

I also agree that for more general purposes, nymphs tend to fill this role pretty well.

I have a ranged-casting focused Flame oracle with the Haunted curse, and it's almost never been an issue. He's currently level 16 and I think I've only had to drop something once since about level 5, and even before then I don't think I encountered a situation where I needed to pick the thing I dropped up again in a hurry. The spells you get from it are also pretty nice. That said, it might be significantly worse if you expect to be in melee regularly.

If you aren't going to be the party face, the Wasting curse isn't too bad (you might check with your DM to see if he would house-rule that the penalty doesn't apply to UMD checks - that never made any sense to me).

I don't have any particular problems with the deities, but my initial thoughts are...

Given the story of Rovagug's conflict with the other gods, I think it would be interesting to either expand Gorum's portfolio to include more general destruction or elevate one of the lesser gods of destruction up to the main pantheon as a replacement for Rovagug. Basically, the idea is that since destruction is sometimes necessary, after the other gods sealed Rovagug away they would have found someone else to fill the role. Someone they could work with, destroying things on Golarion without necessarily destroying Golarion itself. Personally I'd prefer that this be one of the good or neutral gods of destruction because I think that's a more interesting concept, but it could work with an evil one.

At Aja's request, Aklitas reluctantly turns his gaze to the corpse from which he had been averting his eyes, but the sight turns out to be less disturbing than he had feared. He casts Detect Magic and gazes intently at the coin...

Spellcraft: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (20) + 8 = 28

Well that 20 was nicely timed.

RE: verisimilitude in our game sessions.

One of the objections I've heard DMs and players voice about this is that even if the DM describes something as "This is Shimmerfang, a long-lost blade forged 300 years ago in the Kingdom of Varsokor. Crafted from mithral with the pommel shaped into a decorative rose, it functions as a +1 Frost Longsword.", the players will just write down +1 Frost Mithral Longsword and forget the rest.

I've never tried my solution to this, but it seems to me that a good way around this would be to have more of the magic weapons function like the special weapons in the book. For example, you could add "Twice per day as a swift action, Shimmerfang's wielder can focus the energy of the blade for a short time, increasing the frost damage done on the next successful hit by an additional +1d6." to the weapon's description. The idea is that, if done right, this doesn't significantly change the power of the weapon, but it does make it feel more special and can't be as easily abbreviated as the first version.

You're on a Tier 5-9 diplomatic mission, and the question "who's the party face?" is met with blank stares.

SmiloDan wrote:

You're running a rebel insurgency campaign, and every player approaches you outside of the game and tells you they want to secretly play a double agent working for the big evil empire.

I'd love to watch this blow up in their faces as, since they do not know the others work for the same empire they do, they sabatoge all the plans to backstab and inadvertently win the war for the rebellion!

Actually, this could be really cool if the different PCs were working for different nobles and officials within the government, none of whom know what the others are planning, and the campaign suddenly becomes not about the now-comically-inept rebels who've failed to catch six different spies infiltrating their ranks, and about which of the various evil lords is going to be able to use the threat of rebellion to increase his standing or even take over the empire. Kind of shoots the GMs plans to hell, but if he or she is willing to roll with it...

Three separate players introduce themselves with some variation on "I'm here 'cuz I like killing stuff" and nothing else.

1. Why are you a Pathfinder?
My druidic powers came to me slowly, and I've never really understood them. Being a member of the Grand Lodge allows me to learn from other druids, experience more of the world, and put my talents to good use.

2. Do you have a name and surname that is not ripped straight out of existing Earth mythology or popular culture?
"Gonyar" is probably not a unique name, but as far as I know I didn't get it from anywhere specifically.

I'm from a tiny mining community, so we didn't have last names, but they wanted one when I signed on as a Pathfinder and after hearing my story someone suggested "Deepson".

3. Which nation did you grow up in? How did this nation influence you?
I'm from a small underground mining community in the Five Kings Mountains. I assumed I'd be a miner like everyone else until my connection with the earth became clear and I left to explore it more deeply.

4. What do you look like? What are your wearing? How does this vary when you’re stalking through forests, sewers, deserts or in glittering cities?
Being a Dwarven community, everyone just relied on their darkvision rather than bothering keeping torches lit, so for most of my life I saw everything in black and white. I was shocked and amazed to discover the rich variety of colors you have here on the surface. I don't know why people don't take more advantage of it.

Gonyar doesn't really get the concept of color coordination, so he's wearing hide armor painted green and gold, with red boots and a sky blue hat.

5. What do you love? (Treasure and experience doesn’t count)
Me? I, uh ... don't really ... have anyone that I, um ... excuse me for a moment.

Recites a prayer to Bolka, the Dwarven goddess of marriage.

6. What do you hate? (Unclear and irritating darkness level rules don’t count)
We didn't have to deal much with lawbreakers in our small community, so I find the level of crime here on the surface most disconcerting.

7. Which other Pathfinders (PCs) do you rely on for teamwork, survival and butt-kicking? Do you have a bro? a mentor? a father figure? maybe a rival?
I've enjoyed getting to know other druids through the Society, but there are none I'm particularly close to.

8. How does your race influence your views? Are you a stereotype of a certain race? How are you different from most humans/elves/gnomes/orcs/tengu?
I don't think I'm all that different from other dwarves.

9. What are you afraid of? Do you have any phobias or worries?
I'm uncomfortable with things I don't understand, especially given that I still have little experience with my druidic powers - I worry that someday that lack of experience might prove costly for my companions.

10. What is your most treasured possession?
I'm, uh, not sure.

His hand subconsciously drifts to the golden ring he wears on a chain around his neck, the holy symbol of Bolka.

I doubt if Monster-san has any more clue than anyone else of which door is the one they're looking for. How would he?

The fact that the MitD marked several doors seems to confirm this; if he knew which one was right, it would be safer to mark only that one door so the count is only off by one.

Makes me wonder if this is the first time the MitD has done this.

Almost certainly not.

Actually, based on the fact that the MitD asked for the paint here, I'm guessing this is the first time that he's been able to pull this particular trick. Of course, he may have been doing other things to slow them down, like holding back in combat (although he does seem to have trouble pulling his punches).

Well, the MitD doesn't seem to understand his own powers, so he could be doing something subconsciously, but I kind of doubt it. If nothing else, his inability to recognize the Gates for what they are probably throws a monkey wrench into that.