Christopher Dudley's page

Pathfinder took the top sales spot in the 2nd quarter of 2011 and held it until the third quarter of 2014

Didn't realize it was that early. I was pretty sure I recall the celebrating on the boards and it was around the time D&D Next was announced. I won't argue with your facts, though, doubtless well-sourced versus my memories of nearly 10 years ago.

I do recall their run of Essentials was over in 2010 and they didn't release any more major rules books. There were some adventures and some player options in 2011-12.

When D&D 5E came out in 2014, it was not an immediate smash. Pathfinder 1E was still quite dominant in the marketplace.

What happened?

As far as I recall, the only time Pathfinder was number 1 was the year 2013, and much of 2014, during which WotC didn't release a 4e D&D product at all, and focused their attention on successive iterations of the D&D Next public playtest.

D&D is the brand name for all RPGs. If you ask someone who's even heard of the hobby to name some tabletop RPGs, they'll name D&D and maybe something else. Paizo didn't do something wrong to drop to #2, they just got bumped down by the biggest name in the business returning to publishing again.

Considering power word spells have always been a "no save" thing since 3.5,

They've been no-save since 1st edition D&D. It was also an innate 1/day power of a Death Knight in 2nd Edition. I can't remember if the 1st edition Fiend Folio death knight had it, because I don't recall really noticing the Death Knight until Dragonlance.

There should be a spell called Heat Water To Just the Right Temperature For Tea, But Not Tea Right Now, But Tea So It Will Be Just the Right Temperature After a Few Minutes of Steeping.

This is great news for everyone running 8-year-old adventure paths the world over. Very timely, folks.

Unlessssss..... this is a hint to a hardcover version-updated megamodule release to kick off PF2.

Or.... maybe it's just to drum up more interest for the CRPG coming out.

Some of my players will update, and some won't. What can you do? It's a two-system party.

The Druid animal companion shark starts out small (and the dolphin medium), but that's the only small one I can find with a quick look.

You seem to have a lot of house rules that manipulate XP. There are other commodities in the game. Just sayin.

Tentacle beasts and what not are good and all, but the real horror comes from a changing reality that doesn't fit any rules that can be discerned.

Left is right, up is blue, down is the knowledge that your existence is meaningless.

Tell the sorcerer that one of his spell slots is permanently only usable to cast: Summon Gho-Dholtha

Give it stats as if it were a summoned monster of the appropriate level, have it take the shape of ordinary beasts, though something is always creepy (a bear with gug arms, strange crossbreeds, human faces, a tentacle attack that comes out of its mouth, etc). It always obeys orders, except on the last round of the spell, it always turns to the player and asks "Are you ready to return with me?" After a couple sessions, whether he casts the spell or not, inform him that now 2 slots are permanently taken up by the spell.

Once he casts the spell, he occasionally has a specific dream. He's on a rock, surrounded by empty space (like outer space, just stars in the distance). In front of him is an altar, which sits in front of a massive statue that looks like it was carved millennia ago, but has been eroded by time, it's shape now unidentifiable. In the dream, he takes out a giant red ruby from a pocket under his left arm, places it on the altar and smashes it. The ruby bursts and covers the altar in blood, and the massive statue starts to tremble. That is when he always wakes up.

If he ever dies, describe his chest as having a strange pulsing glow to it. If they open up his chest cavity, they find his heart has been replaced by a ruby. If a spellcaster studies the ruby (detect magic, identify, handling it for several minutes), they now go through everything he went through.

I probably won't reserve a spell slot like that but I might vary that idea to corrupt some spells he casts when I can find an appropriate time. Or she casts. Male player, female character. Pronoun trouble ensues. You've given me an idea. When (s)he charms a creature, I'll have it start speaking Aklo. I might even use the "Are you ready" idea there.

I also like the dream idea since dreams are playing a big part in this campaign. I won't take the idea verbatim, but there's definitely a good basis to play around with.

Break it. Did the lich come back? That wasn't it.

Perhaps a slightly tweaked [url=http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/corruption/aboleth-corruption/]Aboleth[/url corruption? It has a lot to do with strange things of the mind, and the aboleth-related aspects could be changed to more Cthulhuesque drawbacks without too much trouble.

I like a few of those, so I can use that as a starting point. Thanks for pointing that one out.

What kind of sorcerer is he? If the PC likes summoning things, I can see saying that all of his summons are like this, whether he wants it or not. But he shouldn't HAVE to summon these things to use all of his spells for the day.

I don't think he has any summons on his spells-known list. He's mostly control. Showstopper spells like Charm Monster. Battlefield shaping like Web. I don't know his other spells, actually, but that was the theme he was going with. He has a couple damage spells.

Sorry, this thread went dead for days so I stopped checking. Now I have to get caught up. I appreciate all who thought about it and offered suggestions, even if I don't agree with your conclusions.

I really enjoyed playing my last synthesist summoner, for mostly thematic reasons. In 10 levels, I don't think I ever got to really cut loose more than once or twice with all the mayhem a s/s can bring to bear, but it was fun. Sorry that campaign ended.

And I made my last druid a Saurial Shaman, which was great. His velociraptor companion Mok'Lor (that means "Clever Girl" in Polyglot) was killed in SS with a monkey-man's coup de grace, so he reincarnated her as a T-Rex. So much biting.

Both characters and classes I would love to go back to.

You're not wrong. Combat is the focus of most of the rules because that's the thing that needs the most rules. The skill system can serve to arbitrate non-combat encounters, but so can plain old-fashioned role-playing.

My group does a fair bit of combat but the majority of most sessions is character-driven interactions with NPCs and with each other. It could be that your GM is just not looking to provide any challenges that can't be solved with combat, or it could be that your group is so bloodthirsty that they turn everything into a combat, but there are many ways to approach many challenges.

If you play published adventures, especially from Paizo, you will consistently see challenges that are suited for characters of the levels listed on the cover of the module. That really is part of the structure of the game. Some companies publish modules that include the occasional encounters the party would be wise to avoid (Necromancer/Frog God Games, I'm looking at you). Which sounds like it makes sense, but it's a bad feeling when you accidentally run into one.

If you don't like the way your game is being run, offer to run it yourself and run the kind of game you'd like to play in.

Gothic compendium from Legendary Games.

I will check that out. Thanks!

I am utterly humiliated by the "then" in the title of this thread. Can I get an admin to fix that?

I'm running a game that sprung from Carrion Crown and just kept going. The party is 8th level now. In the course of the CC module, they took some books from the library of one of the cultists and the sorcerer has been reading it. I believe I called it "The Space Between the Stars" or some such. I don't recall if that was named in the module or not.

I want this to have an effect on the character, and I think the player is kind of nudging this way as well (if I'm reading the signs right). So I took a look at the corruption rules, and I like the idea of granting a little bit of power at a price. However, none of the corruption types given really sound like the kind of effects you might get from the creeping madness from reading up on the secret Elder Things from Beyond.

In addition to this, the sorcerer has the aberrant bloodline, and was the one PC affected by the

Obviously, based on this alone, Deep One sounds like the perfect corruption. But after taking a look at it, those are all about turning into a Deep One, which doesn't make a lot of sense for what's going on. Growing gills and craving the sea isn't the end result of reading about the secret ancient horrors of the void.

I took a cue based on a podcast interview with (I think) Jason Buhlman, and let the player cheat when he failed a Will save, saying that the knowledge gained from the book his character had been reading let her break the mind control. That was at the end of the last session. Now I want that to have a lasting effect and a taint of corruption, but none of the types I read really fit.

So I'm wondering if anyone has any house rules Corruptions, or has ideas, or knows of any 3PP products (that aren't on the d20PFSRD) for a more Lovecraftian corruption, like a sliding slope into madness.

You can tell that Galt never has any real influence on Golarion because they still measure movement in feet.

I wish most of the bard archetypes didn't take away bardic knowledge.

Reading this module now and these notes are very helpful. Thanks, Andrew. Just curious reading this: when you say the ranger quit the party and was replaced by an Oracle, does that mean you lost and replaced a player, or do you mean he just couldn't see the character staying with the group anymore and replaced his PC with a new one?

Christopher Dudley wrote:

Fireball has the fire descriptor even if you change it to a lightning ball. So the spell does normal damage. So Elemental Spell is useless for Draconic Sorcerers.

In which case, the feat is ONLY useful to target an elemental vulnerability of a monster, which might be useful once or twice in your adventuring career, unless you're in a campaign that specifically focuses on monsters with that vulnerability. This makes no sense.

I think exactly the opposite, for exactly the reason you state.

Changing the damage type but not the spell descriptor allows your draconic bloodline sorcerer to get around elemental resistance & immunities while still getting the bonus damage from their bloodline arcana.

So you're saying the blue dragon sorcerer should learn lightningbolt and elemental spell to make fire-damage lightning bolts and get +1 per damage die for it? Also interesting, and I see what you're saying, but again, I feel it's more limited in application than I feel a metamagic feat should be.

Edit: apologies for the threadjack.

No, which is the mistake I made earlier in this thread, too -- and then caught. And houseruling that Elemental Spell changes the descriptor as well as the damage opens up Rimed Elemental (cold) Fireballs, which would be terribly nasty. See my post here for quotes.

Interesting. I see the problem, but I don't really think it's a huge problem. You're talking about using a 5th level spell slot to entangle someone for 3 rounds. If you have a 5th level spell slot, you could do this effectively with a first level spell and save your 5th level slots for good 5th level cold spells.

That made me look for other cold spells. Here's another weird wrinkle with the elemental descriptor.

School evocation [cold]; Level bloodrager 4, druid 4, magus 4, shaman 4, sorcerer/wizard 4, witch 4; Domain water 5, weather 5; Elemental School water 4
CASTING

Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M/DF (dust and water)
EFFECT

Range long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area cylinder (20-ft. radius, 40 ft. high)
Duration 1 round/level (D)
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance yes
DESCRIPTION

Great magical hailstones pound down upon casting this spell, dealing 3d6 points of bludgeoning damage and 2d6 points of cold damage to every creature in the area. This damage only occurs once, when the spell is cast. For the remaining duration of the spell, heavy snow and sleet rains down in the area. Creatures inside this area take a -4 penalty on Perception skill checks and the entire area is treated as difficult terrain. At the end of the duration, the snow and hail disappear, leaving no after-effects (other than the damage dealt).

The spell has the cold descriptor and does a total of 5d6 damage per round. So by RAW, the bloodline gives you +5 damage on that roll. But only 2d6 is cold. So shouldn't it be +2 instead?

@Christopher Dudley

Nope. Just the damage type.

OK, in that case, that feat doesn't benefit the draconic bloodline for any spell, correct?

I would think that changing a fireball to a lightningball would give +1 damage per die to the blue-draconic sorcerer, but it doesn't, by this reading. Because:

Benefit: Choose one energy type: acid, cold, electricity, or fire. You may replace a spell’s normal damage with that energy type or split the spell’s damage, so that half is of that energy type and half is of its normal type.

Bloodline Arcana: Whenever you cast a spell with an energy descriptor that matches your draconic bloodline’s energy type, that spell deals +1 point of damage per die rolled.

Fireball has the fire descriptor even if you change it to a lightning ball. So the spell does normal damage. So Elemental Spell is useless for Draconic Sorcerers.

In which case, the feat is ONLY useful to target an elemental vulnerability of a monster, which might be useful once or twice in your adventuring career, unless you're in a campaign that specifically focuses on monsters with that vulnerability. This makes no sense.

Magic Missile doesn't have an electricity descriptor, it won't benefit from the bloodline.

But if you change it to electricity damage with the elemental spell feat, doesn't it gain the electricity descriptor?

... He needs the feat Elemental Spell (electricity) and a NON-electricity blasting spell per spell level -- especially Fireball. ... And then you get to rods for other metamagic feats like Maximize Spell to boost the damage.

No reason you can't use a rod even if you have the feat. It's nice to be able to use those 1st level spell slots for electric magic missiles (each doing 1d4+2). And a lesser elemental rod is only 3K. Pile it on.

I love how this section of the message boards highlights ambiguities that never occurred to me. I would always have interpreted that as applying to the power for the school you already selected, and will continue to apply that in my own home games, but the OP has shown me a different interpretation that is not explicitly wrong within the text given. It reminds me how clear I really have to be when writing my own game rules.

XanaverForgedawn: I'm fine with elven longswords.

Christopher Dudley: The group should be public. You can find it here. If anyone has trouble accessing it, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for linking. I can see the group, but can't read the posts.

Is the group public so that people can read earlier posts from the absent PCs?

By EU law, Cheese made in Stilton, Cambridgeshire, is not allowed to be called Stilton cheese.

The barbarian.

I think that the Elemental eidolon does actually breathe, eat and/or sleep.

** spoiler omitted **

But on the Unchained Eidolon entry they dont gain the Inmunity to bleed, poison and stun until level 12.

** spoiler omitted **

Sadly for my elemental eidolon...

The description of the eidolon explicitly says that it does not gain the abilities of its subtype.

The eidolon gains this as a subtype, but unless otherwise noted, it does not gain any of the features, abilities, or weaknesses of that subtype.

Christopher Dudley wrote:

Just at a first glance, his Deflection bonus from Smite Good doesn't stack with the +2 deflection he has normally. So good news: he caps out at 49.

Actually, he already took the non-stacking into account, hence why Smite Good only raises his AC by +5, when his Cha modifier is +7.

...*blink*...*blink*... Yes. Obviously.

I blame cutting down on my coffee.

Just at a first glance, his Deflection bonus from Smite Good doesn't stack with the +2 deflection he has normally. So good news: he caps out at 49.

Personally, I wouldn't even bother attacking his AC. He's got other weaknesses, and sure, even his saves are pretty high, but not auto-success high. And a 1 always fails, unless you've done away with that rule as well. But to avoid attacking his AC, look at spells and effects that target an area, obstacles that simply lock him in place, and other kinds of things. There might be some hazards that might pose a threat to him.

Of course, you could just let him stomp all over everything. That's fun, too, if that's the game he wants to play. It's not the GM's job to beat the party down, it's just your job to give them stuff to react to. They still have to complete the story, and if they're having fun steamrolling fights as they go from plot point to plot point, you're still running a good game.

Did the 3.5 warlock have pacts? I thought that came up in the 4th edition version. I think they're a fine addition, I just don't remember them being part of the class. I think it was part of the flavor text that the warlock's powers came from some pact, but there were no mechanics behind it. I could be wrong, since my book is not nearby for me to check.

I'd change "Feywild Pact" to "First World Pact" for PF. It's Golarion-specific in nature but general enough that I don't know if Paizo can say that's a term they own. And I wouldn't be surprised if WotC owns the word "Feywild" since they started using it in 4e.

The Bree Yark Tribe

Odraude wrote:

I don't really post as much these days. Forums just seem not so great anymore. So I just stick to Starfinder and maybe gamer life, as well as my google+ crowd.

I stopped posting a while back also...I was encountering harsher, ruder posts from people and it seemed like most threads lasted about 6-7 posts before someone was letting fly with some sort of viciousness.

Yeah that's why I stopped taking part regularly as well. Seems no matter what you say, someone is going to attack you for it. Civil disagreement is a last resort to some.

As an aside this is not an excuse for anything but I suffer from depression and used the boards as a way to escape for a time.

I'm glad you added this because I was going to point out that it sounded like a sign of depression to me. One I've experienced myself. There are a host of studies examining the link between online communities, social media, and depression. I think the best advice is to take breaks. Take care of yourself.

They're seventh level, and yes, tiny in a Medium castle. And they won't be doll versions of themselves, but I was hoping to enable them to keep their party roles in their doll forms in some way. @Fergie, you're right, I'll have to keep the martial doll able to hit things with a two-handed... something. Kitchen knife, maybe.

Awesome ideas, thanks!

That subject pretty much describes what I just did. I have some ideas for how they get out of it, but their souls have been placed in dolls. I was thinking of giving the stats for soulbound dolls, but with a few arcane spells for the sorcerer, a "mend" for the cleric, a few skill boosts for the investigator, and a STR bump for the martial.

I have a few things in mind, but to make sure I give them the most interesting game possible, I'd like some suggestions for ideas for what they can encounter in the castle on their quest to restore themselves to their bodies. They're each about a foot tall, and their magic will be limited. The castle is mostly clockwork stuff, but there could be some organic threats as well.

Thanks in advance!

Did they ever do anything with adapting the Incarnum book? Picking up D&D's forgotten bits and pieces and supporting them has seemed to work well for DsP so far.

Hi,

got 2 questions about the animal ally feat. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/animal-ally)

1: "must not have an animal companion or mount that advances as an animal companion."
Does that mean i cannot pick that feat if i start level 1 as a druid or knight or sth?

2: If i start my charakter with 5 levels of Fighter, i can pick nature soul level 1 and animal ally level 5. my effective druid level would be 2. (5-3)
Not i go into inquisitor - sacred huntsman (or any other class with full druid level) for the next 5 levels, would my effective druid level be 12?

calculation:
5 levels in INQ-SH would grant me 5 effective hunter levels (=druid levels)

animal ally grants effective druin level 7 (character level 10 - 3) and explicitly says that it stacks with other sources.

isnt it stupid that i must spent full 5 levels of none-animal-companion class? im thinking about fighter / sacred hunter but want my animal companion at full progression. i´d prefer going into the sacred hunter first and dip in the fighter later, but that seems not to work.

1. Yes. That's exactly what that means.

2. No, you do not add the 5 again; you've already added them. You add the effective druid level from your Sacred Huntsmaster class, which is 5, to the 2 you got from being a Fighter with Animal Ally, for a total of 7. If you gain more levels in any other class, you will continue to gain an effective druid level for your companion. But you will never have an effective druid level greater than your character level - 3.

(ETA: some clarification)

The Prophet archetype looks pretty cool. ;)

I had read a story in elementary school or middle school called "The Soul of Caliban," about a dog that was ugly and misshapen that everyone misjudged.

So back in '88 or so, I made up a character named Caliban, who was a fighter, but who behaved in every way like a paladin, because he really considered himself one, but his Charisma was under 10. Back in 1st ed, classes had ability score requirements, and to be a paladin, you had to have a Charisma of 17 or higher.

In the course of the game, he acquired a troupe of followers in his religion, and then in an act of divine intervention, his ability scores were rearranged and his high strength replaced his Charisma, and the DM replaced his fighter levels with paladin levels.

I played Caliban for a while longer, until I left that town. But I continued to name my PCs that in the future, in Baldur's Gate, and those sorts of games. My first WoW character was a paladin named Calliban (Caliban was taken). Some people still call me Calli.

If you go to Rahadoum, you will die.

Thing is, in a Tabletop Game pretty much everyone you meet is trying to use or kill you in some way, so being always suspicious is almost always right.

It's for this reason I've sworn off having a secretly-evil NPC ally or patron. We've seen it too many times.

One of our running gags is "I don't know much about magic." My wife's rogue kept saying it. It started out as an in-character way for her to remind herself not to metagame and offer solutions her character wouldn't really have any idea about. But then it took on a life of its own and became her catchphrase.

Some time later, she was alarmed to learn that it was underground slang for the street women playing their trade near the Arcane Collegium to solicit business, signifying they weren't there for the school.

A twofer!

Episode 16 - The Wizard of Oz

Episode 17 - Oz the Great and Powerful

Rysky wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

You forgot Robert April, voiced by James Doohan, NCC-1701's first captain, who preceded Pike, as shown in the TAS episode "The Counter-Clock Incident".

I thought about him, too. But I'm not sure ST:TAS is considered canon.

The only person who'd really disagree is safely dead.

?

The only person who ever said that TAS was not canon was Gene Roddenberry. But like many of his positions, he wasn't always consistent on it. Various authors have given homage to TAS. Robert April even appeared as a character in Star Trek: Into Darkness.

The T in James T. Kirk standing for Tiberius was from the animated series. As is a precursor to the holodeck, just called the Rec Room.

David M Mallon wrote:

On a 1999 episode of TV series 3rd Rock From The Sun entitled "Dick's Big Giant Headache, part 1," series protagonist Dick Solomon (John Lithgow) meets the character Big Giant Head (William Shatner) at the airport. During the scene, Big Giant Head mentions "seeing something on the wing of the plane," to which Dick replies, "the same thing happened to me!" This is a reference to the fact that both Shatner and Lithgow played variations on the same character in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet," and the "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet" segment of the 1983 film The Twilight Zone: The Movie, respectively.

Similar fanservice in-joke in the pilot eposide of the 1980s Buck Rogers TV show -- Gil Gerard, playing the main character who has been frozen for 500 years, meets an old-time pilot who makes some comment about comparative ages; they go back and forth a bit. The old-timer was played by Buster Crabbe, who portrayed Buck Rogers in the late '30s.

I didn't know that. I'll have to go back and watch BRit25C again. Buster Crabbe also played Flash Gordon, a character who primarily existed because Alex Raymond was such a fan of Buck Rogers.

Personally, I reversed that planar trait and decided that summons would be EASIER within Kakishon. One of my PCs was a conjuration wizard, and for many of the earlier levels he felt kind of ineffective. So the last thing I wanted to do was hamstring his character just when he was starting to be effective. So I gave him standard action summons in Kakishon. He had a blast.
"I think I'll need to use a wall spell here."
"OK, wall of what?"
"Wall of .... RHINOS!"

If you want to keep the summoning barrier there, maybe you can introduce a balancing mechanic where the eidolon can retreat to and travel inside an object carried by the PC instead of his home plane. A lamp, perhaps. They could find it in the first pavillion they encounter in Kakishon. This can be treated exactly as summoning and dismissing his eidolon, but instead of having to bend over backwards to explain why summoning works for the eidolon but not the spell, you've got a focus for why it's a special case. Also, keeping an eidolon in a lamp is very thematic for the AP.