Seriously, have a talk with the player before the next session. Explain to him that if he wants to play this adventure, he needs to play along with the plot a bit more. His character is surrounded by far too many foes, and if the character continues to act like an idiot, he's going to get killed.
Adventure paths require a group that is interested in pursuing the story they lay out. There are plenty of decisions the player can make on how to approach things, but they can't outright refuse the main storyline without making things really annoying for everyone else (GM and other players). Ask him if he's acting this way because he misunderstood and thought from the adventure name that he was supposed to be able to mutiny right away, or if he really thinks that the fun thing to do here is to be so obnoxious that he makes it impossible for everyone else to play the game?
That's the plan. I'm hoping he'll get the idea from this, but to make sure I'm going to have a chat with him.
Keelhaul him. It was a traditional punishment for the time. Have it do 6d6 damage and have him roll a DC 18 Fortitude check to avoid infection.
The AP actually provides rules for keelhauling. It involves simultaneously taking damage per round (for between 6 and 12 rounds) and taking a test against drowning. Scary stuff for a lvl one character.
On a sidenote, one of the other PCs rolled a phenomenal bluff check and saved the character from losing the ear. He just got lashed into near fatal unconsciousness instead. Thanks for the help everyone, and I'll keep it in mind for future punishments.
But yes, maybe start with minor digits, fingers and the like.
The conversation went something, roughly, like this:
How it happened, this is not a joke or an exaggeration wrote:
Evil Master-At-Arms: Ok, you're on the deck of the ship, now listen to your captain.
Enslaved PC: I'm going to walk away and try and have a sneaky conversation WHILST the captain is talking DIRECTLY to me.
Evil Master-At-Arms: Hey! *gets a lacky to hit him for 2non-lethal damage to get his attention back on track* Now pay attention or I'll cut your ears off.
Enslaved PC: Cast doom to try and intimidate just the lackey who hit me, in front of a whole pirate crew, none-of-whom like me, right after being told I'll have my ears cut off.
I'm currently GM the very beginning of The Wormwood Mutiny, and I have a particular player who is insisting on trying to mutiny, to sway the crew through overt threats, to assault Scourge.... and Harrigan literally just finished his welcome speech.
Right before his last outburst, he was directly threatened with having his ears chopped off for not listening. I know this isn't a standard punishment in S&S, but the threat of whipping hadn't done much to dissuade him. I don't feel like keelhauling him this early in the game, so I plan to follow through with the threat of ear evisceration.
My question to you, forums, is as follows:
(1) What penalties should be applied to someone who has had their ears cut off? I'd go with full deafness (-4 init, can't do perception involving sound, -4 on opposed perception and 20% spell failure on verbal), but I'm not sure if that would be the effects of having your ears removed.
(2) What would be the heal requirements on that? I'm assuming cure light wounds wouldn't be quite enough to regrow ears? He's a level 1 cleric though, so I'm sure he'll try.
As was promised, I struggled a lot to put together a party: it's taken me 3 hours re-reading through Crunch And Fluff. Whilst two characters really stuck out to me, the next 12 favourite characters were all pretty much on an equal footing. In the end, I narrowed it down to a party of 5, as follows:
HOWEVER!!!!!
Given how many great characters there were, I'm going to offer a proposal. Once I'm settled into GMing, and if I feel that I have sufficient time available to me, I'm planning to run a second game of S+S. I have another party already written down and if/when I start it I'll contact the appropriate players.
Once again, thanks to everyone for applying, I had tonnes of fun reading through.
Just over 8 hours til submissions close, I'll try and have final decisions up sometime about an hour after that. At this point, I'm looking to take a group of 5.
If I struggle to narrow it down, I may do a trial RP of your characters reaching the Formidable Maid but I will try and avoid this as I'm quite keen to get the adventure started. And I honestly doubt that witnessing all your characters come to life will make my job any easier anyway.
Thanks so much to everyone that has shown interest though, I hope you all get the chance to use these characters in future, because they're pretty darn boss.
Just so you all know, you've now got less than 24 characters to make changes/sign up and such.
Then applications close and I go through the gruelling tasking of working out which pirates are ship-shape, and which are marooned in the pub to swill rum and accost wenches.
Hahaha, we might almost wind up with a party full of teiflings :|
Also, whilst I remember:
Applications will close 5pm April 12th, Australian Eastern Standard Time (GMT+11).
This means you all have tones of time to finish characters, so you have no excuse for lazy character fluff. It also means I have tonnes of time to finish my mid-session exams and assignments, and we can get started when I'm on midsemester break and can post stuff at 3:30am :P
Ok crunch for Beval cleric of Besmara is done. Will do background at a later time. Do you want us to write up equipment if so how much gold do we start with rolled, average, max?
Max Gold now, please do buy your gear, but I'd appreciate if everyone would indicate 2 small items separate from their maingear. These could be items of personal significance (i.e. holysymbol, wizardbook, love letters from a flame) or just too small to have taken off you (string, a vial of ink).
Hahah, I'm loving these single super dump stats. Could make for some very interesting pirates, with very obvious flaws :D
In regards to the <7 int, I heard a story once about a 4INT 18WIS half-Orc, who mostly said very very stupid things in stunted common... Until he came out with a perfectly organized battle plan involving pincer movements. All the fellow PCs did double takes.
Lexi: definitely play the five, we'll work out the role playing requirements depending on what ability score you stick it on. In regards to the gnomic tiefling, how would it differ from a regular tiefling apart from high?
Yorick: play the second set, that should be fine.
Shoelace: I don't think that second set is anything like a commoner :P EDIT: that barbarian actually sounds pretty cool.
It's worth mentioning as well that I'm a really big fan of uniquing and interesting Roleplaying first and foremost. I'll be looking to put together a party they is going to interact well together. Lexi can vouch for my weird character designs
Sorry about the delays, I've had both some real life stuff and timezones get in the way.
CHARACTER CREATION
Classes:
All Paizo Core + Base allowed except for Summoner
Races:
All core races.
Additionally, Tengu, Tiefling, Aasimar and Gillmen :P
Alignment:
Whilst I'm happy for any alignment to be played, we're talking about pirates here. This means a few alignments may need to be played very specifically to both fit the theme and ensure that we don't have player conflict.
Lawful: This should probably be 'Law of the Sea' lawful. You follow a pirates code, which I might just post up partway through the game.
Ability Scores:
Ability scores will be generated with dicerolling. You will roll 4d6 six times, discarding the lowest dice roll from each set. Assign ability scores as you see fit.
In the event that the dice gods spite you (we're talking an 8 point buy), you can go for full reroll.
Hitpoints:
Max at first, then half HD +1 each level after.
Traits:
Two traits, one must be from the Players guide. However, this can be waivered if you can suggest a solid enough reason for your character to have been in the Formidable Maid the night before.
Rafael The Silent wrote:
Also: This is my opinion Charles, but you should go with something you like as setting, preferably with characters you will like to play. Of course you cannnot have only heroic NPCS and bosses but even so keep what you like in mind. What makes you excited, in my experience, that is the more important thing, it is what will keep you working in things. The worst thing that can happen is you as a GM to lose interest.
Thanks for this advice. The three that I picked were all APs that I was equally interested in either playing or GMing. I'll be sad to not get to play as pirates without some massive internal spoilers, but it does mean it'll keep my attention :D
As for popular AP's, it seems Skull & Shackles gets the most interest lately, but a glance at the Recruitment board shows people want to play pretty much anything. :)
Well, Skulls+Shackles is probably my top preference anyway. I love me some Pirate action, and I have a few fun character concepts that I can port into the AP as NPCs. Assuming the next few posters aren't ardently against it, I might just make this a skulls and shackles game.
So, I've been playing Pathfinder for a few months now and have really loved the PbP method of playing online a lot. My local group doesn't have the chance to get together more than once every month (if we're lucky). Given that it'll be a long while before I can really hone my GM skills in real life, I want to have a go at running an Adventure Path here on the forums. Expressions of interest are appreciated, as is any advice in regards to GMing.
At present, I'm looking to run one of the following APs:
-Second Darkness
-Carrion Crown
-Skull & Shackles
I'll decided based on what seems popular, although I'm entirely open to changing to something different if there is demand for it.
Given my stats were so-so, this is an intentionally min-max'd character to emphasise his height and ugliness. I'm thinking of making him a professional garbage man. I'll try and have a full character up later.
I'm quite excited for this. One quick question though: how do you feel about some strong min-maxing for character sake. For example, 20 wisdom but 7 intelligence representing an incredibly devout and wise cleric who can't read, write or use correct grammar?
So, I haven't posted up the stats for my Dwarven Cleric yet, but I should have them up in 3-4 hours (been a busy few days of uni). I hope this won't be counted too harshly against me :P
Very funny idea. I believe your AC is one too high. About your multiclassing idea, the class that embodies "gaining divine powers through force of will" is the Adept, the NPC spellcasting class. I realize that this is not really..good. Other suggestions are going into Oracle (Being chosen for divine power by...someone) or, I suppose I might allow the cleric if you gave me a particularly good reason.
I'll have a look at those. I built up the character in Hero Lab, so the math should all be correct, but that doesn't mean I didn't copy it across wrong. On that note, the favoured enemy probably snuck in by me copy-pasting someone else's formating. I'll get rid of that now :D
Yeah, I'd be willing to play around with an oracle as well. I was pondering the concept of a LG divine entity just giving Nostrum powers because they're too embarassed to let him know that his religion is wack :P
I'm willing to leave that as something to work through as the story plays out though, and obviously work with you as we go.
I'd be keen to get all up in the 1920s. I have the rule book on my bookshelf: we endeavoured to get an IRL group together a year ago, but couldn't make our timetables work... I suspect cultists were involved.
Hahaha, yeah, that was the idea. I thought the idea of the strict/concerned elderly mother figure chasing after her kids would be quirky fun (and I didn't have any other ideas for this campaign yet).
Like I said though, I'm happy to go back to the drawing board if it's overkill.
So, I just spent ages working on a back story for a different application and I'm super burnt out at the moment, but all this talk ofinterwoven backgrounds gave me an idea.
Feel free to shoot this down and I'll start a new character, but:
Nursemaid Gylarra
Lvl 1 LG Dwarven Cleric (Torag)
Super Slimline Backstory Gylarra is an elderly dwarf of 212 years, who has spent most of her life in service to Torag in Almas. She is slow and methodical in her faith, working constantly to shape and forge those around her into stronger people. Some would call her old-fashioned, and there is no denying that she is a stickler for rules, but Gylarra is always welcome to take ideas onboard if they can bring about greater good.
As protective as her deity, when two orphaned ifriti were left on the doorstep of her temple Gylarra could not resist taking them into her care. Never having had children of her own Gylarra took them to be a divine blessing. Given how firey they were, some have suggested that the two would never have made it to adulthood if they didn't have a carer as patient as Gylarra. Indeed, they tested her patience to the limits frequently.
Still, mothers are mothers regardless of blood. And so, when the two twins finally set of to adventure the great world as pathfinders, Gylarra couldn't resist fretting. Eventually, the worry (and loneliness) got too much, and so Gylarra set off to Katapesh to make sure the people she cared about most came to no harm.
As I said, I'm happy to be shot down and come up with another character if need be. Thoughts?
As an aside: when you said "any non-chaotic evil", would that include a Lawful Evil inquisitor of Asmodeus, hellbent on getting people to sign suspicion contracts? Not planning to play this character mind you, I've just been pondering the concept lately of an 'evil cleric' who just doesn't get why everyone hates his God.
Spoiler:
(even more so if it was somehow a 'Lawful Good' follower of Rovagug who had been brought up in cult that said Rovagug just wants to hug everyone).
Well, I'll have a go at rolling up a character now Lexi and we'll see what happens. I'm happy to play just about anything, so I'll see what I can do :D
Raf - If I don't make it into Lexi's game I'd be more than happy to dive on the recruitment for LoF :D
Haha, in that case, I'll maybe have a crack at DM-ing sometime soon. I'm much the same though. I currently have a 12-child family that I want to RP every single member of: there aren't enough games in the world!
Seriously though, Lucelia's rolls came out as 13pt buy. I saw that person that got a 46 :|
