Christopher Carrig's page

Troubleshooter wrote:

So while they won't get as many feats with 1 CR of Monster as they would with 1 CR of Fighter, they probably get more hit points and possibly attack bonuses.

Exactly my point.

A creature with a 2 intelligence should not have the mental faculties to process the tactical usage of the quantity of feats a fighter recieves.

I may be mistaken on this, but is there some rule that a PC who gets his brain sucked out and drops to 2 INT loses all of his class levels? There are many creative ways a GM can justify class levels on a creature(though with this particularly creature, I'd have gone with barbarian levels). If the creature was trained, however that was accomplished, the benefits of the levels would stay. Most combat feats are fair game to animals anyway.

Its all just a convenient way of achieving a game effect, like the character who plays a knight but has levels in fighter, or the PC who explains his sorcerer powers as the effect of demonic possession in his backstory.

As Alexander said, mileage may vary. DMing is an art, not a science.

I'm sure it's going to be years before such a set exists, but I'd love to see the major NPCs and villains of the Kingmaker AP. In the first book alone, there are six or so memorable bandits that would look great as minis.

In general, the timing on set releases will probably never line up well with the APs, though the Rise of the Runelords set might coincide nicely with the Hardcover offering(and feature a number of NPC miniatures that will get some use in Jade Regent, fingers crossed).

There's more...? OMG - I gotta find it. If I do - I'll post!

I feel slightly humbled that people still wanted to read these. I'll post the consolidated copy that includes Kressle, the Fort, and the Stag Lord's encounter with a certain vengeful river Wraith. It was a submission to a Pathfinder fiction contest with segments to bridge the different vignettes. I was pretty bummed it came in like 90th after all the honorable mentions, but I love the characters and if it helps others running the Kingmaker AP, I'm pleased to repost it.

EDIT: You can find it here: "What You Hold"

Okay, my favorite moment in our Kingmaker campaign so far was when Topper Red(in our campaign, a woman who pretended to be a man and was eventually made Spymaster of the group's new kingdom) arrived in town to tell the group that there is a town to the north that seems to be run by Nugrah, the Stag Lord's father, a reincarnated goblin version of Dovan, a hated NPC, and a Will-o-the-Wisp that survived two combats with the group and has become a recurring villain. Serving them as they build their small but evil empire are the defeated but since-ignored Mites and a tribe of Kobolds that has resisted all efforts to assimilate and has a yellow-skinned leader who was raised from the dead after Tartuk slew his tribe.

The moment that made it awesomesauce for me as a DM? The player character who said, "A town full of villains? Are you effing kidding?"

The most fun part for me will be the later reveal that explains what force nudged the old druid into creating a mirror image of the community the PCs are building. Until then, I will have to be satisfied with knowing that they have a vile enemy to the northwest that financed its kingdom with the buried loot they never found because they were too honorable to raid a burial cairn(until later, when the exact same situation happened but involved a "treasure map," go figure. For those DMs of Kingmaker reading this, yes, I did add substantially more treasure to the Barbarian Cairn in Part 1 than it lists...it was necessary to find some explanation for why creating a kingdom is possible for anyone without a 50 BP head start when our group in particular came very near to collapse when they started building.

Anyway, I was just giddy after tonight's session and wanted to celebrate by sharing with all of you. Good night to all and Kingmaker continued to be the best AP I have ever run. May the Grim Harvestman overlook you all.

I think I hear someone talking about me. <g>

Using the backstory of the Stag Lord, filling in the gaps and making some logical leaps based on the very detailed job Tim Hitchcock did with the character(hands down, one of my favorite villains of any AP so far), I played the Stag Lord as more Lawful Evil than Chaotic Evil, trying to imagine what someone would be like if they were treated like an animal most of their childhood. He has no pity, mercy, or kindness in him, but he's not evil for the sake of being evil. I played him as the living embodiment of the River Freedoms, particularly the last, "You have what you hold." He takes because he can, and he kills when necessary but wouldn't bother if someone wasn't a threat(with the exception of those who disgust him, like Davik Nettles... whose history I expanded a bit so that he paid off several of the bandits to inflate his reputation and proved himself a coward and worse when the Stag Lord came to personally witness his strength and possibly reward him for it, as he rewarded Kressle for her show of strength).

When my players infiltrated his fort as Kressle's new recruits(they'd slowly managed to befriend her over several weeks and forced her into a serious conflict between her fervent belief in the Stag Lord and her belief in the PC's), it was Dovan who figured out that they weren't who they claimed to be and he "called jackal on them," which triggered a massive ambush combat that eventually awoke the Stag Lord. He refused to even entertain a truce without an even exchange of blood for blood...namely for one of the PC's to submit to being taken into the negatives just as Dovan was in the combat. The PC's chief negotiator is willing to risk being at the mercy of the Stag Lord in the name of a truce, but Akiros, who has seen the Stag Lord's greatness sink to the bottom of a bottle at Dovan's careful urging, refuses to let another drop of blood be spilled. His fight with the Stag Lord is joined by the PC's, and after a grueling battle, the Stag Lord prepares to die fighting, taking just a moment to express his pride that Akiros was the one to end him.

The party cleric, who has been dispensing mercy and trying to redeem as many lost souls as he finds in the Greenbelt, surprises everyone by refusing to let the Stag Lord die. He saves his life and shows him the second act of kindness he's experienced in his entire tortured life(the first, per the backstory, was his encounter with Nyrissa, which had a dramatic effect on his view of the world). A barbarian warrior might have scoffed at such mercy, a less scrupulous villain might have taken advantage of the act, but my take on the Stag Lord was not that he refuses to show mercy or kindness--he doesn't have a frame of reference. It's like describing colors to a blind man.

As someone whose fate was altered once before by an act of perceived kindness, he fights alongside the PCs when the escaped owlbear rages through the compound and afterward allows them to pursue their truce, all the while trying to understand his new place in the world and the reason for his continued existence. Is it Her? Having given up so long ago on the hope that his Dream would come back to him, having failed and self-sabotaged his grand plans to build an empire for her as a gift, is this strange confluence of events somehow Her way of leading him somewhere...perhaps back to Her?

There's a great deal more to it than I've said, but eventually the Stag Lord is rechristened Narlmarch and appointed Warden of the new community. I told my players that they should make no mistakes about what they can and can not accomplish with someone as deeply damaged as the Stag Lord. Years and years of abuse has cut most of the humanity out of him. He was a leader by default, given power and respect by those who met him, but he never sought power for himself(thus his failed ambitions, which never possessed enough passion to be more than daydreams). It's not a problem for him to serve someone he considers worthy, but the Stag Lord is not someone who can be redeemed so much as "reprogrammed," like a Terminator. His humanity is atrophied and may never heal enough to change his inability to care for others or himself, but he can be given a new purpose and will follow that purpose until death. The bargain struck, the thing offered to him that he would willingly trade fealty for? The PC's have promised to find this Dream woman and reunite him with her.

A side note on Davik Nettles: Davik and the Stag Lord are eternally linked. The Stag Lord's death sets the evil revenant to rest, but so long as the Stag Lord lives and is allied with the PCs, Davik's fury and hatred should grow until he becomes a very dangerous threat to the community that shelters and gives comfort to his murderer. In our campaign, Davik's effective immortality and gradual mastery of all rivers, rather than just the waters where he died, has made him a recurring villain.

I fully endorse any group that wants to go against the grain and is willing to work hard to redeem the bandits and particularly the Stag Lord, and they should receive the reward of a very powerful ally if they succeed through good roleplay or careful planning, but the more realistic the consequences, the more awesome the ultimate victory.

James Jacobs:

2) Would it be reasonable to have a 'no more than one of these per city district' rule for some features such as dumps to encourage diversity of buildings in districts?

I like your thinking. As it is, the gnome player who has been a very vocal proponent of adding nothing but dumps because they're cheap to build and fun for his sick, disgusting eidolon to play in has become a feature in Grigori the Critic's tirades about the rulers of the Kingdom. It's fairly easy to turn metagamed decisions about the PC's city into fodder for Grigori. I highly recommend everyone who's stumped for material for his tirades think back to every building their PCs chose and decide whether they were roleplaying or metagaming. It's very rare to have an avenue for criticizing players for placing game stats above story without coming off like a vengeful GM...let Grigori be your friend. :)

I smell the makings of a thread-derailing debate that boils down to personal preference and inevitably veers toward personal insults. I think we've all thrown in our two bits on this. Maybe it's best we return to our respective corners and let the topic drift back to The Stolen Land.

So, how about them random will-o-wisps? Anybody do something creative with those? Or integrate the new creatures from the Bestiary?

Since I can't get an answer on what might have happened to the Dwarves in the Golushkin mountains, one of my players is exploring the abandoned Dwarven hold and encounters some Thawn squatters(the stronghold itself resembles the Mary Celeste). Anybody else do something like that?

What do you mean "normal point buy"? It would be tough to gimp a player enough to make him unable to quality to cast 9th level spells...the requirement is a 10 + spell level in the applicable attribute.

And, no feats for the NPC class....

My thinking is that each little victory will be that much sweeter due to the increased challenge. Most PC's become really powerful around 6th level (as compared to the challenge) when using a 20 or 25 point buy in my opinion.

Normal Point Buy = 15 points.

At 10, you can't afford better than a 16 in a single stat, which would be pretty crippling. Such a player could, conceivably reach 19 if they spent all their points on Int and added all their extra ability points and racial bonuses there(assuming they have the option of choosing where to put them). If they took 7's in one or two stats, it would be very harsh, but they could have a reasonably balanced character. So yes, it would be touch to gimp a player enough to make it impossible, but they would be gimped enough that choosing to one day have 9th level spells might mean their will saves would be painfully low or they wouldn't be able to carry more than a spell book without falling over(I know the encumbrance rules, it was hyperbole).

I don't disagree with your thinking. The harder the challenge, the sweeter the victory. But there is a point where the increased challenge completely outclasses the challenger, and several encounters in the AP are dicey enough to qualify, IMO. By all means, don't use 20 or 25-point buys, as I recall reading that the power curve in every AP is designed for 15-point buy parties of 4-5 on the medium XP track. I don't know if I'd go lower than that, since the starting stats are something they have to live with for a very long time. Or die with after a very short time, depending on how well they do.

No feats at -1 level is good. Keeps everything balanced later so they scale like normal players with a little extra baggage. I'd go so far as to treat starting saves like prestige saves and only use +1 or +0. Rather than being a "bonus" level, it becomes a proving level. If they can survive as nobodies, they deserve to one day rule the land. Their 1000 XP that brings them up to class levels is the experience that trains them to be what whatever class they choose, whether awakening their divine connections or honing their fighting skills. It's something I might steal for a future game.

If there are any Maptool users running Kingmaker(and there would not be an issue posting them), I have been working on some macros to handle the phases of kingdom building. So far, I've automated consumption and the three kingdom checks, including generating/reducing BP and Unrest. If Paizo doesn't object to sharing macros that use their kingdom rules and there are Maptool users interested, I will post them in a separate thread.

One of the biggest hurdles to using the new rules in an online game is keeping track of all the numbers in a way that everyone can see without slowing the game to a crawl. Macros are a huge help with restoring real world speed to online kingdom building.

I recently ran a marathon all-day session in which the players got to know all the bandits of the fort, eventually culminating in a massive combat that ranged across the entire fort when Dovan quietly marked the group as "jackals" and four simultaneous combats sprang up. While there were some dramatic moments, the big surprise was how hard the cleric worked to reason with the Stag Lord, even going so far as to agree to the Stag Lord's cruel terms for a parlay: one of the party allowing themselves to be struck down and left bleeding like the Stag Lord's men so both sides were on "even" terms. As this was when Akiros stepped up, the group was spared the possible loss of its healer but ended up fighting to protect Akiros as Stag Lord and lieutenant began a titanic battle that ended with Akiros sustained only by his rage and the Stag Lord at death's door. The Stag Lord trying to go down fighting after pronouncing his pride in Akiros being the one to end him was more than our cleric could take and he risked life and limb to heal the Stag Lord...just in time for the raging owlbear to escape.

Through much RP, the group won the day and earned the right to speak with the Stag Lord as his equals and perhaps even his betters. He is not drawn to the path of redemption as Akiros is, but his life has been a series of cruelties endured and then inflicted and while death might have been his secret wish, he is genuinely curious about these strange interlopers who risked everything to show him mercy and propose using his power center as the foundation for a true kingdom.

I'll admit, I'm partial to the character because of the brilliantly detailed backstory and personality, so I was secretly hoping the group somehow managed to win the day without killing the somewhat nihilistic, tortured man at the heart of the Greenbelt...but I never really planned for the possibility. This leaves one incredibly big loose end and I'm hoping the question has entered the mind of the writer:

What exactly can be done about the vengeful spirit of Davik Nettles if the Stag Lord does not die?

He can haunt their dreams and will never stop rising from the water to demand the death of his murderer...which is very cool and creepy but probably wasn't intended to give the players night terrors for the rest of the campaign if they zig instead of zag. Is there anything that can be done to destroy the tortured soul for good? Some form of atonement, unlikely as it might be, for the Stag Lord to attempt? Can they at least stop the nightmares?

2) Convert the PCs into army units themselves; the rules for building armies allow this, but it's not recommended!

My suspicion is that the novelty of being a one-man army will wear thin when your carefully honed class abilities have to be filtered through the mass combat rules. Having a one-man army that consists of your hill giant friend or something seems more along the lines of running a single-creature army. The abstract nature of the combat rules work well for players who want to lead armies but not run six hour combats with thousands of d20 rolls, but players who want to mix it up would do better running surgical strikes, boss battles or even "cut scene" type of combats where they have to fight the horde but only get 1d6 rounds of actual combat before switching back to mass combat. They'll feel powerful cutting down a dozen guys singlehandedly but won't be doing it long enough to wonder why they needed an army if it's that easy.

I think Paizo would do a fabulous job if they reworked their early stuff to be Pathfinder-ready out of the box, but the truth is that nothing is ever going to be perfect for all players at all times.

Just before running Kingmaker for my current group, we did a converted version of Demon Within that was fun at first but rapidly proved that an all-demon module is either incredibly hard or incredibly easy depending on whether the players KNOW that it's an all-demon module. I did my best to update challenges for the group, but it was all for naught. My only casualties were a player who wasn't there to plan his own actions and a player who was accidentally fireballed by a member of her own party. The longest battle with the least certain conclusion was one in which I abandoned all attempts at balance and threw a slew of 3.5 Monster Manual IV and V demons at the group in an extended siege.

As they play Kingmaker, I updated most challenges to accommodate a larger-than-normal party of six and left them that way when the group shrank to four players. So far, no one has been particularly imperiled by the decision because these are 20-pt characters built by seasoned players.

Bottom line: even if Paizo did update their earlier adventures, it would be a poor substitute for any conversion a good GM could do. Turin the Mad and his version of Savage Tide are a prime example of how to run a campaign. If you're dealing with players who expect close calls and deadly foes, it's up to the GM to provide them, not Paizo. It's up to Paizo to deliver quality stories with some meaty stat blocks and they continue to do that in spades.

Hi all, my group has been playing through Kingmaker and I've been writing small interludes for the group to read, giving them insight into their prisoner, Kressle, and their adversary the Stag Lord. I thought I might share this entry and crosspost it in the Campaign Journal forum, although it is not strictly speaking a campaign journal. Full credit of course to the brilliant Tim Hitchcock for giving these characters so much depth and to Alexander Kilcoyne for his excellent additions to the Fort in a 6-player group.

Fair Warning: the journal contains some brief adult language, themes, and all that you might expect from a bandit fort. There are no real spoilers if players wish to read it.

Life at the Stag Lord's Fort

Level76mage wrote:

TPK.

I have a new obituary, my PCs created a Black Market on the first turn with all of their money, and on the second turn, it rolled up a "Mirror of Life Trapping" as their major item, when the PC's went on their usual raid of the store to take illegal items, the first PC looked in the mirror and was traped, the rest looked incredulously at the mirror that just ate the Party fighter and were all consumed by it, TPK.

Wouldn't they eventually pop out if others who also frequented the black market looked in the mirror and failed their save? Say a week or a month or worst case 500 years or more later?

Ooh, exciting new Kingmaker campaign. The group is liberated from the mirror and has to start over in a strangely familiar yet alien version of the Stolen Lands some centuries later. Maybe the bandits have been replaced by firearm-wielding militia and/or steampunk-style ReMade from the Dragon article on China Mieville's Bas-Lag setting. Steam-powered cyborg fugitives hiding in the woods and preying on travelers!

Awesome looking poster, much better than the one I ginned up.

Tiny error tho, "capture" is misspelled.

I don't know, seems like it could work if the entire poster had errors and slang. Old West style.

"Wanted ded or aliving, prefer DED"

I was very nearly on the 4e bandwagon because I've heard positive things... but not enough to commit. The veil of secrecy made it a little hard to get excited about it, but I liked the promise of a faster system with better abilities for the races, more daily powers for the classes, simplified combat... I just hadn't seen anything really substantive.

When I saw the discussions and the customer feedback urging Paizo to do their own thing and ignore 4e, I was horrified that Paizo might be swayed to actually abandon the WotC flagship and mire themselves in an outdated form of the game. I saw the announcement that Paizo was going to do just that and my heart sank. I love Paizo, and I didn't think it was a sound business move, even if it seemed like Wizards' secrecy was a ploy to squeeze Paizo out of the market or at a minimum, hamper them and be the big fish with all the material for a while.

Just yesterday, I had a discussion with a very conservative gamer friend who is virulently against 4e and thought the Pathfinder RPG announcement was a great move that would be assured success. I debated him and played the cautious, worried fan.

Today, I read the Alpha ruleset. I was wrong. I have never been so happy to be wrong. I actually called him minutes after I read the Pathfinder rules and told him we're converting this weekend. I understand why he was so optimistic about Paizo taking the middle ground now, even though I have no idea how he knew before ever looking at the rules that Paizo could overcome the cosmic pull of 4e with a revamp of 3.5.

Everything I heard about 4e and liked but didn't get to see for myself is here in some form. It's here and I can actually look at it, get excited about it, and start trying it out. Maybe some of it will need an overhaul yet, but you made all of us a part of that overhaul and you're actually showing us the rules instead of hiding them and saying that they're awesome. Dungeons and Dragons is just a game to Wizards of the Coast, like Magic, or Star Wars, or any of their other products. They're using sound business strategy to protect and market their product. I thought for sure that trying to beat them at business couldn't work.

If you keep improving these rules, fine tuning them so that they keep games fun and interesting, speed up the slow parts and keep all the old books within reach of easy conversion, you could make Pathfinder into what Dungeons and Dragons no longer is--more than a game. And THAT is a business venture that I see succeeding.

Maybe I'll play 4e when I want to play something quick and without much depth. It won't be in my heart like the game that came out of Dungeon and Dragon magazine and became my first homebrew setting. It won't be something I look forward to reading like the next GameMastery adventure or Pathfinder volume. I play and DM this game because it's a storytelling game. I am deeply moved that Paizo went against naysayers like me and delivered the toolbox that will let me do what I love with this game.

So, from this cautious naysayer, I'm going to my favorite gaming store tomorrow to preorder two copies of your rules. One for me, one to donate to the store so they can show off Pathfinder RPG at no extra cost to them. Wizards will seduce them with free stuff, so I will to, on your behalf.

Congratulations. Now when's the next alpha update? <g>