I just finished running my work group through Vengeance at Sundered Crag and it was kind of messy. One PC died and they almost had a TPK. They don't have the most optimized PCs (a couple of them were new players before we started doing this) and I want to give them a break in the next game. The problem is that they are all level 7 except for one level 8 player so I have to do tier 7-11 games ... and those are hard for a non-optimized party. Can any of you recommend an easy Tier 7-11 game?
You can still remember the last time you had seen the book. He was sitting on a rock, looking at the dozen dead ghouls, and writing fastidious notes. Just when you had snuck to an angle where you could see what he was writing, he had slammed the book closed and looked unnervingly directly at you. “One day,” you said shaking your head. “One day you are going to have to show me what is in that book of yours.” He just smiled and said, “tell you what: I will leave it for you in my will.” At that moment you couldn’t wait for Professor Lorrimor to be dead, but now that you look down at your desk and his book, you would gladly burn it if it would bring him back.
The adventurers that brought you his book (and the other books) had told you of his death at the hands of the damnedable Whispering Way and you were sure you would find a way to make them pay for what they had done, but for now you were more interested in finally reading his book. You opened the cover and just as you got to the first page you were interrupted by the unusual sound of boots running to your office. An undergrad student, that you vaguely remember seeing before, sticks his head in and shouts, “They got ‘em! They got ‘em!” before running off in the opposite direction. Whatever he is running towards seems to be generating an ever louder racket.
So my current group has found the joys of creating intelligent undead, but a bit of an issue came up. They wanted to bring back an evil cleric as a skeletal champion (so it could cast spells to help them), but only thought of this idea after they had fed said cleric to their pet Otyughs. Since it was weeks ago that they fed the Otyughs the cleric, I said all they could find in the Otyughs poop was a single piece of one of the cleric's bones and that wasn't enough to bring him back as a skeletal champion with. One of the characters offered to use marvelous pigments to recreate the rest of the skeleton with (since marvelous pigments specifically says you can make bones). The question however is, would that actually work for making a skeletal champion? Usually when you make an intelligent undead that involves a template, you need the body of a specific creature, whose class abilities and/or racial hit die determine the power of the undead being created, but does this body mostly made from marvelous pigments could as a body for such purposes? Part of me wants to say no because the vast majority of the skeleton didn't belong to anyone and therefore couldn't inherit any class abilities from that person, but part of me wants to say yes because the spell would latch onto the small amount of an actual person that is in the body when the spell is cast and bring that person back in control of the undead. Not knowing the answer I decided to ask you guys what you thought?
One of my players has been running around for a while now getting blood samples (usually without their permission) from both PCs and notable NPCs (antagonists and allies). At first this was just so that he could give them negatives if he ever had to scry on them, but he has invested so much effort in this that he now wants to do more with it. I wont let him get Ganji Dolls (I don't like the idea of him being able to kill people half a city away), but I do want to give him something to do with the blood. So I created the following metamagic ... but I wanted to know what other people thought before I offered it to him as an option.
Bloody Spell (Metamagic)
You have learned how to use discarded parts of a target’s body to form a link between yourself and a target.
Benefit: When you cast a bloody spell you must have a small piece of the target’s body, either a hair, some skin, or some blood. A bloody spell cast in this way has a DC 2 higher than usual, gains a +5 bonus to spell penetration checks, and can be cast as a range of close, even if the spell is usually only deliverable at range touch. A bloody spell can only effect one creature, even if the spell would normally affect multiple creatures. If the target of a bloody spell manages to make the will save against it, any effect that they avoid by succeeding at the save (either the entire spell's effect or half the spells effect) is then reflected back at the original target (who can make any saves normally allowed by the spell to negate or reduce the effect).
Level Increase: +1 (a bloody spell uses up a spell slot one levels higher than the spell’s actual level.)
In a home game, I have a player who wants to use Shadow Projection (which essentially makes you into a version of the monster Shadow) to make himself harder to kill. The problem is that he is a buffing mystic theurge and I am not sure if he would do strength damage to the other players if he delivered a range touch spell on them. The Shadow's strength drain ability is marked as a Supernatural Ability. Can SU be turned off?
I just finished doing a PFS legal campaign to level 19 (I let them level to 20) and everyone thought it would be a good idea to end it by doing a homebrew version of the Starstone Cathedral. I wanted to have a lot of rooms that weren't just a monster and/or a trap, but instead presented the players with difficult tests with no single answer. How the players each answered the test would determine what domains that received when/if they became a god. The problem is that I am having trouble coming up with these tests. Below is one that I came up with.
The PCs enter a jungle environment and see a Rabbit eating, and with their crazy high perceptions will probably see the fox getting ready to pounce on it. The PCs each have a chance to act and their actions each resolve with a different rabbit and fox than the other PCs. Then their guide asks them why they did what they did. If the PC saved the animal because he doesn't like those who live by hurting others they are more likely to get the Good domain (and crap from the rest of the table if they are not a vegetarian). If they let the fox kill the rabbit because that how nature works, they are more likely to get the Nature domain. If they saved the rabbit because they like rabbits, I may make a custom Cute Animals domain. If they mind control both animals to obey them and serve (one PC probably will), I will probably give them the Tyranny domain and/or Magic domain.
Please share if you have any tests you think would be good too.
I just finished doing a PFS legal campaign to 19th level and everyone thought it would it be fun to end it by doing the test of the Starstone Cathedral (I let them level to 20). I am having a bit of trouble with the traps however. One of the players is a skill monkey Rogue and I want to put in a lot of traps for his sake, but I want them to be clever and/or interesting. Not just "save or take a bunch of damage". The problem is that any ideas I can come up with or find online don't work for super high level PCs. They can all fly and have necklaces of adaptation (or another similar item). Does anyone have an good ideas for high level traps? Stuff that would really challenge them and maybe even kill a PC (since at this level death is a minor inconvenience).
I GM a group of ungodly broken 18th level characters. My group is full of experienced players (many of them high star GMs and/or Venture lieutenants) who know every trick imaginable. I made peace with this a long time ago and don't try to give them challenging combat anymore, just challenging roleplay. That said, they are about to fight Karzoug and just for once I want to give them something challenging. I know there a million posts about the Karzoug fight, but none of them seem to deal with my unique challenge. How do you kill two gunslingers and a cleric who has already cast Source Severance? The gunslingers always win initiative (and I do mean always) and drop something like 300 damage each. They have items that allow them to not be affected by a number of things that normally stop gunslingers like fog, wind wall, incorporeal, miss chance, or invisibility. I don't know how he can stop them (or even slow them down) from killing him. Someone mentioned magic jar and possessing the giants, but as soon as he casts a spell they will know which giant he is in and destroy it and then he has to use a full round action to get in another giant (and all of the giants will likely be shot to death in the first two rounds). I could put a prismatic wall around them ... but then he would not have line of sight or line of effect on them to cast anymore spells. To make matters worse the cleric has cast Source Severance which is like anti-magic field, but only for arcane spells. If you guys have any clever ideas I would really appreciate it. I just don't want them to breeze through this final fight.
one of the boons for beating it allows players to make a sin mage in PFS. Does this mean I can make a sin mage in Core? I didn't think so, but we had a venture lieutenant at the table who said it did indeed mean that, and he usually isn't wrong about this kind of thing. I couldn't seem to find anybody talking about this anywhere on the boards. What are your guys' thoughts?
So I just ran The Waking Rune for a bunch of core players and something interesting happened, that I haven't ever heard of happening and it is making me think I might have done something wrong.
Spoiler:
They took Runelord Krune alive!
During the fight with the lash-mistress I played up the fact that Krune was waking up and had the coffin vibrate and make noise. One of the wizards, afraid that Krune was going to start conjuring monsters, spent seven rounds to cast a scroll of forbiddence (ignoring the ongoing fight). I thought this would trigger Krune's contingency dispel magic, but only rolled a 2 on the dispel check and failed to get rid of the forbiddence. When Krune woke up and realized he couldn't teleport out of the coffin, he was surprised and started to talk to the PCs. They talked for a while, but when it became evident that the PCs weren't there to bring him back to glory, he swore to kill them, and I called for initiative. The same wizard won initiative, cast Anti-Magic Field and jumped on his coffin. ... at this point I couldn't find anything that he could do and after a few minutes of me flipping through the scenario, he offered his surrender.
So my question to all of you brilliant and experienced players/GMs is what could Krune have done to still fight? There weren't any stats for PCs to open his coffin without destroying it so I assumed he couldn't do it either. Was that a good assumption? I also assumed his spear wouldn't work in the anti-magic field. Is that true for artifact level weapons though? What do you guys think?
I have a high level PFS character whose backstory is that he married a Medusa (it fits into a multi-part game he played). For flavor purposes I wanted to purchase an item or take a feat that makes him immune to her gaze. Either something that makes him immune to petrification or gaze attacks. I have found an item that gives him bonuses, but I want something that would give him immunity. Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I don't usually post here but I have a rules question that I can't seem to find the answer to anywhere else. If a barbarian uses knockback on a mounted target (or if someone uses bull rush in general) and succeeds, does that mean the target is knocked off their mount or is the mount moved back also?
Pathfinder Society GM. Starfinder Society GM. 59 posts. 13 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 22 Organized Play characters. 
