Craig1234's page

The county of Barstoi in Ustalav has illegalized magic of basically all kinds. They also suck ass over there.

Also, Rahadoum has had a lot more written about it since ISWG, in both Lost Omens World Guide and Lost Omens Legends, as well as various pieces of short fiction. (Druids are completely kosher since their magic doesn't come from divine entities at all, it's just arbitrarily divine because of legacy stuff in 1e). Did you know they invented vaccines?

I have in mind bits of story that would essentially become 3 or 4 modules in a related main quest line (kind of like an adventure path, but much less of a railroad approach). The second chapter would be in the lands where its illegal, so at creation time, they won't know its coming. There are paths where they can get it legalized (by essentially overthrowing the govt) or they can try to fly under the radar, however they prefer. As they complete the main objectives in the area, they move away, so they won't need to hide it permanently, just for a portion of the story. The reason I ask about where it could be like that is because, as a rule, magic is fine everywhere else.

That said, having just looked over these little tidbits, ideas are already morphing, so looks like inner sea guide, here I come.

As I'm approaching the end of a decade-long run of RotRL (it's been quite a haul), I've been thinking of developing my own adventures for my players next. I have plenty of ideas stored up that just need to be organized and developed, but I don't know where to put it. My mind went immediately to picking up a world guide and getting to know it as the setting, and then I could use that as the framework for my story (and probably use a bunch of other hooks to pull it all together).

Therefore, I did a quick search and found several, but realized that they seem to overlap one another (for instance, "Campaign Setting, The Inner Sea World Guide" and "Campaign Setting: Cheliax, The Infernal Empire" - even though Cheliax is part of the inner sea guide).

Having never seen any of these books before, I was left wondering what is the difference between a campaign setting and a world guide (if there is one), and how do they fit together - I wouldn't think twice about buying one, but I won't be buying several.

I'd appreciate any assistance you can provide clearing this up.

Also, any suggestions for where to set it would be good. A key part of the story requires a nation where magic is illegal (not absent, just illegal, requiring the players to be careful about where and when they pull out the magic stuff).

Thanks again

I'll be sure to try those things. I worry about taking out the weapon effects before the final battle as I know these guys are keen enough to simply wait until the next day before entering the portal, thereby recharging the effects.

think I found my own answer, but still feel free to present any other ideas.

My party had let Lucrecia escape and I think its only fair that she gets another turn at them, so I'm adding her (leveled up to a CR19 on her own) into the final battle, which will make the entire battle a CR 23.

I have been too lenient allowing my players to get their hands on magic items and ultra-high quality gear in this campaign (to be fair, it's my first campaign, so I didn't expect it to be a problem until recently) and the result is that they are almost untouchable. For example, this is a party of 3 level 16 characters who in our last session took on a CR20 fight and the PCs only got hit twice the entire battle, which was short because they never missed and did massive amounts damage every time with every hit.

They're just coming into Xin-Shalast now, so they just have to get through the city before the final battle, and I'm worried that the final battle will end up being anti-climatic, which would be a real shame. As such, I'm hoping to scale up the CR of the final battle (in the book its a CR22) so that it is very challenging but don't know how to do it. My guess is the final CR would need to be around 25-26, and I also don't want to add any other bad guys to the mix, so it would be a case of doing some leveling on the 5 monsters in the fight or adding defenses to the eye of avarice itself. Any suggestions for how to improve this situation?

Thanks

I have been too lenient allowing my players to get their hands on magic items and ultra-high quality gear in this campaign (to be fair, it's my first campaign, so I didn't expect it to be a problem until recently) and the result is that they are almost untouchable. For example, this is a party of 3 level 16 characters who in our last session took on a CR20 fight and the PCs only got hit twice the entire battle, which was short because they never missed and did massive amounts damage every time with every hit.

They're just coming into Xin-Shalast now, so they just have to get through the city before the final battle, and I'm worried that the final battle will end up being anti-climatic, which would be a real shame. As such, I'm hoping to scale up the CR of the final battle (in the book its a CR22) so that it is very challenging but don't know how to do it. My guess is the final CR would need to be around 25-26, and I also don't want to add any other bad guys to the mix, so it would be a case of doing some leveling on the 5 monsters in the fight or adding defenses to the eye of avarice itself. Any suggestions for how to improve this situation?

Thanks

fantastic thank you

My group is rapidly reaching the end of our RotRL campaign, and I've run an additional side story for each of the PCs. With the campaign coming to a close, it will soon be time for one of them to raise an army and reclaim his homeland (after fighting their armies of course). This is something he's looked forward to and I've encouraged. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the rules on how to do this (I know I saw them once). Can anyone direct me to where I can find out how he can build his army, and how I can build an army to counter it, and then actually do battle?

Appreciate it, thanks.

Well, he's a Dragon, and a Red one at that, so he's arrogant, hot-headed, and in this case, young. Could be reckless, especially since he's impatient and starts to head out early, if I recall correctly.

To really grasp his power, he can do flybys in the streets and burn citizens as they flee (might catch some giants). When he goes to land somewhere or take off to the air, he could grab a guard and chew through their armor, dropping the corpse a round later to fall at the party's feet.

I don't know your party, but my party uses rolled stats (standard 4d6, drop lowest) and had a Rogue/Fighter, Paladin, and Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple (and an asleep Witch). I upgrade Longtooth by a few age categories (I believe up to Adult) and it was a good challenge for them.

Thanks, I lost a player in my party, so to compensate for only 3 players, I've had them all running a level above plan (book says 11 for this battle, they will be 12, but only 3 players). They are all very experienced though, so they really know how to max out their combat, which is why the tear through most every fight with ease. I have thought of aging longtooth a bit, but didn't want to make him impossibly strong either. They'd easily dispatch of him on his own, but with 13 giants and 3 bears also in the mix, I presume they'll be running out of all their spells, heals, etc. before the end.

I have another question about this battle, and that is Longtooth. I've never played a dragon, nor even fought one as a player. Any tips on how best to scare the hell out of my players with him without accidentally causing the TPK or doing something stupid that lets them kill him in 2 rounds?

GustavoMalek created this one that I used https://m.imgur.com/a/Dg0rW

I still can't format a link properly here, but you should be able to cut n paste that.

Got it, thanks

I did exactly that. Required alot of zomming in and out, but worked. Somewhere (maybe the community created content thread?) I found a gridded map of Sandpoint.

Sweet, thanks for the info, I'll have to go searching for that map

Sorry, to jump on such an ancient thread, but I have this fight coming up in 3 weeks and am hoping that someone still looks at this :)

What I was wondering was if anyone has tried putting the map into something like Roll20, then just having everyone use that to track movement as if it was any other map? To me that seems easiest, but I don't know if I'm really being an idiot with it.

They are pretty well optimized. They have a shadow dancer who never seems to miss, a paladin, and a wiz. The person who left was, unfortunately, the healer. That said, they've handled most fights well and I've kind of fudged up the difficulty of a bunch of them. That said, 2 of the recent boss fights were very challenging - one of the PCs died in the first one (saved by hero points), and poor Shalelu died against the Kreeg Ogres (I gave them everyone to play for that fight, Shalelu, Jakardros, and even Kibb).

I think upping them a level is probably best, though I do like the stat boost option. The only thing I want to avoid is making some strange imbalance in the game that I'm not aware of. I may just be over thinking it, but I'm also by far the least experienced person involved, yet I'm the GM, lol.

One of our players had to drop out of the adventure path about 1/2 way through. I doubt I'll be able to find another player, which leaves me with 3 adventurers (all experienced players). The AP is clearly designed with 4 heroes (currently level 9 if it matters) in mind, and I'm not sure what the best way would be to continue with only the three. Should I just give them all an extra level? Add an NPC (they don't particularly like that idea)? Something else?

The one approach I definitely don't want to take (cause it would be too much work for me) is to rebuild the encounters.

Any help with working this out would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I had some bases 3D printed that include numbers on the base. Made white, red, and grey 1-10, so that's plenty of variety. There's a free design out there. Not hard to find.

Unfortunately, I don't know anyone with a 3D printer.

I just did a fight this weekend which required 13 of the same type of pawn. Management of that fight was a pain because I could never remember which was moster2 and which was monster11. My thought for solving that in the future is to buy one of the brighter colored bases (yellow or red) and use a sharpie to write a number on the bases, making them unique. My only question with that is will the sharpie stick to the base or just rub off?

thanks

@NoTongue
Just to be clear, I'm fairly novice at being a DM, however, my players are all very experienced and expert at taking advantage of my weaknesses as a DM. I don't blame them, the rule of the house is if you realize you did something stupid, you can't take it back, and it's only right that it applies to me too - it's how you learn. I am learning - rapidly - and am really just looking for a way to keep it interesting for them as I do.

As for an update, we got together and had a sessions, this one was the Ironbriar fight - and since they waited for the meeting, they ended up fighting all 13 cultists and Ironbriar in one massive fight. I applied what I learned from this thread and things went much better. The PCs were able to pretty much steamroll through the cultists, but the cultists made enough of a mess to turn the fight into a challenge, which logically it should have been - it was 14 to 3 after all. No one came near to death, but they all took some pretty big hits and when it was over they were both relieved and happy with how the fight went - a win in my book. thank you all for the help, and thank you Michael Tally for the Ironbriar rebuild, it gave me some tricks that really caught the PCs offguard.

Wow, so much help, and so many great ideas. First, let me say thanks.
Second, here's what I think I learned from all this:

1) The tactics I used for Foxglove were just plain wrong
2) It is appropriate for the "boss" to go after anyone and everyone, not just the "tank"
3) If I have only 1 NPC, I should consider adding a couple of small helpers (rats, goblins, etc) who can spread the party's attention a bit.
4) If the "boss" has the ability, I should go ahead and try to sunder back at the PCs
5) I should feel free to rebuild the "boss" characters to be a challenge to the party

I should say, because its been mentioned a couple times, my games are always a success because we all do have a great time. I just want to be sure they don't turn stale or too safe. I've actually only ever killed one PC, and it was ok because she hated her character - so I gave her the ability to create a new one.

will have to give this rebuild a try

Hmm.. one thing about 'tank' characters. They -should- be ignored. This isn't a computer game with silly aggro rules. If the NPC sees a highly armored person, the correct response, in most cases, IS to ignore them.

It's a flaw a lot of computer gamers have, thinking that 'tanking' as you see it in computer games, exists in RPGs. Most of the time, it doesn't. Unless the enemies are mindless, or have no acceptable way to get by the armored character... Ignore him. That's not bad role-play, or a bad GM. It's poor expectations on the PC's part. Intelligent NPCs (meaning have an int score, period, not meaning a high int score) are not computer programs. They aren't going to mindlessly attack someone they have a very low chance of hitting.

OK, I was in video games long before RPG, so I may be very off here. It's always seemed to me that you would logically go after the squishy one first, but it just seemed wrong somehow in actual practice.

You have to play to the strength of your villains.

Wish I had thought of that, it would have made things much more interesting.

Firstly, let's deal with the title. If you are trying to fight your players, you're doing it wrong.

Not really trying to fight them, just trying to make sure a challenging fight is actually challenging. I've got my role down pretty well, just having trouble with the tactics part.

For a bit of background, I'm a fairly new GM leading a game (ROTRL) with a party of 3 very very very experienced players. The problem is that one of the players I just can't hit or damage, so there's never really a challenge to any fight. Let me give a specific example.

We're fighting Aldern Foxglove (Skinsaw man), Level 7 CR8. The 3 party members are all level 6, giving an APL of 4.5. By the book this should have been a challenging, if not down right hard, fight. It turned out to be extremely easy and took only a couple rounds to wrap up.

Here's what happened:

Round 1:
-Foxglove attacks PC. His weapon is +12, but the PCs AC is 25, so Foxglove has only about a 30% chance of hitting, which he fails to do (Note, if he succeeded, he'd have done a max of 9 DMG to a PC with 53 HP).
-PC attempts sunder on Foxglove's weapon. PCs Greater Sunder is +13 against Foxgloves CMD of 27. Unfortunately, my players have a habit of rolling inexplicably well (without cheating) and the sunder is successful. As Foxglove has a light weapon, it is shattered and gone.
-Others add armor buff to the PC

Round 2+:
-Foxglove can now only use his melee attacks at +11, which gives him only about a 20% chance of hitting (because of the slightly reduced attack and increased armor). Meanwhile the party pretty much just quickly chops him up.

Now, I could have ignored that PC and gone after the others, since I could definitely tear them up, but it didn't seem right to me that Foxglove would ignore the big guy bashing him with a sword and go after the others - maybe I was wrong there.

In the end, I'm not trying to kill the party, but in epic fights that are supposed to be very challenging, I should be able to at least hit the PCs - and that doesn't seem to happen now.

How should I deal with this?
Thanks

I understand that, and will likely do so, but I've also been curious about the online use as well, which would require electronic rolls. Was wondering if they are fudgeable to the GM?

Been looking into roll 20 a bit, and it looks pretty good.

There is one thing I'm wondering about regarding rolling though. As GM, I've been known to, umm, shall we say, misread the results of some of my rolls. Is there a method within roll20, if using the computer rolling, to easily alter the roll result?

Thanks

I've been looking through these forums for a solution to my situation, but haven't found anything quite like where I'm at. My group and I meet in person to play over the kitchen table and decided (since we're all old) to make it a no-tech game. After about a year of play though, I was finding the GM paper keeping to be slowing things down too much, so I added a laptop with combat manager and pdfs just to keep from having to switch between any of 5 different books (and normally being in 2 or 3 at any given time). What I've started considering is allowing one additional tech bit in to make map life easier for everyone. That is, sitting a TV face up on the table and displaying the map on it (probably using maptools), then letting everyone else just move their tokens on top of the TV. Has anyone tried this? I'm wondering how well it works and if the TV gets really messed up in the process. I've also considered using something like 3D virtual tabletop and letting the players move their digital pawns around it, in which case I could just stand the TV normal as a reference. Ultimately, since we like the old school approach and actually sit together to play, I'm don't want to replace the dice or paper or communication or anything else, just trying to ease the map/fog part of the equation.

Anyone have thoughts suggestions about this?

Thanks

Does anyone know if this works on a mac air?

OK, so regarding the spellcasting AOO, you mean if the "casting time" is swift or immediate, then there is no AOO - and that includes spells which are normally longer but have been quickened to swift. Correct?

I just updated one of my players on the topic and he reminded me of one other question that came up last night. In general casting a spell causes an AOO; however, they were suggesting that spells with duration of "instantaneous" were so quick that they neither provoked an AOO nor could be interrupted, therefore did not need any concentration check. My thought was that the effect last for only an instant, but that the AOO and possibility of interruption came during the casting movements before the effect, and therefore did still provoke AOO and possible interruption. Everyone agreed that longer duration spells all triggered the AOO, and concentration checks if needed.

Which is correct?

thanks, that's kind of what I thought but wasn't sure enough to stand by it last night.

Forgot about the bow, but presuming its melee so I can clarify further, is there any hard end to the chain or does AOO just keep going until someone doesn't trigger it?

Couldn't remember if an AOO can or cannot provoke a subsequent AOO and couldn't find it in the rules.

Example: NPC moves out of a square threatened by PC provoking an AOO. PC then opts to shoot NPC with her shortbow from a distance of 5 feet (which as a normal attack would trigger an AOO from NPC). In that case, does NPC get the AOO against PC or is there no subsequent AOO triggers?

Thanks, just can't remember.

So last night my party decided to rest in the middle of a goblin den (they were aware of the risk and did it anyway). They made it 6 hours before the goblins attacked. Since they didn't get the required 8 hours, the casters didn't get their spells back, nor did anyone get any sleep healing. That was all fine.

Here's the problem, immediately after the attack, they decided they wanted to rest again since they still have no spells. Now I'm thinking they've been up for 15 mins of heavy combat after a 6 hour sleep, so they're probably not ready for sleep. I also don't really want them to since I know that they've no cleared up pretty much everything in the stronghold, and there's really only 1 fight left before it would make sense for them to hold up for the night.

Regardless of what waits ahead of them, I'm not really sure how to handle it if they want to just sit around all day and night before moving on.

Suggestions?

Thanks

perfect, thanks, now we can make decent general approximations.

My PCs are about to go through an area with tons (literally) of loot, far more than they or their pack horse could carry. We don't really do much with encumbrance except to say that the overall would be too much (keeping it simple), thing is, I have no idea how much a pack horse could carry, so it's hard to say that this stack of stuff would be too much. Please let me know what would be a reasonable max weight for normal loading, then my group and I can decide what's reasonable based on that.

Thanks

Thanks, I would've changed it but first wanted to see if I needed too. What makes this real fun is the two half elfs are both clothies, so this should be fun, lol.

Excellent, it would be boring if it didn't work on them. Now I can kill them good, mwahahahaha.

Thanks

My party is about to run into a NPC who has a few +1 Elf Bane Arrows. My party has no pure-blood elf characters, but does have 2 half-elf ones. do the arrows work the same on them?

excellent, thanks. That's what we thought, but I wanted to be sure.

Trying to help my sorcerer correct some mistakes in her character creation (she's now level 2) and as I'm looking at spells per day, I see no reference to a formula for 0 level spells. Does that mean she has unlimited casting of 0-levels?

Sry, I'm just used to refering to Intelligence and INT rather than specifying "bonus", so yes, his Intelligence is 9, which gives him an INT -1

Wow, you just made me look it up again, forgot that there was a choice on favored class. So then, lets say it went this way, would it still be correct?

Cleric 1: 1 skill point + FC Skill
Cleric 2: 1 skill point + FC HP
Bard 1: 5 skill points (nothing, not a favored class)
Cleric 3: 1 skill point + + FC HP

In this case, as a 4th level PC, he would have gained 2 bonus HP, plus a total of 9 skill ranks?

Oh, I think I understand now, so his favored class is cleric. Let's say at level 3 he decided to take a level of bard instead (making him Cleric 2/Bard 1). During that leveling he would get whatever the bard gets for skills, not what clerics do? And his following level, he goes to Cleric 3/Bard 1 - and now gets his 2 ranks for the next level of cleric again?

Is that correct?

excellebnt, thanks

so, he's a level 2 half-elf cleric with INT of -1. He has listed cleric as favored class (even though it is currently his only class). Does that mean:

Base + INT + FC = Total
2 + -1 + 1 = 2

Do I have the math correct there?

I have a player with -1 INT, his skills per level is 2 + INT. Does this mean he only gets 1 skill per level, or are negative values not applied to skills per level?

Thanks

awesome, thanks

Oh my god, these ideas are so much better than I even had thought off, this is going to be sooooo cool when set. Now I'm even thinking of making the whole area the giant "cube" thing, and then make the Escher vault one of those cubes - who knows when they'll find it.

Has anyone tried anything like this? And did it work at all?

So I have one of my PCs running a side quest to get the Super Sparkly Item of Awesome Goodness from a highly secured area. My plan is to have the party work their way through the usual barrage of guards and traps until they finally reach the vault containing it. Once they step in though, they can see the SSIiAG hovering in the center of a large cube (probably a few hundred feet in each direction), but through some magical spacial warping, they've entered a room that may as well have been designed by MC Escher, complete with stairways that you climb to reach lower levels, or side walls, etc. Of course, flying would be magically prohibited. I have some ideas on how to make it work logistically (though not entirely sure it would until I start figuring out the maps in ridiculously warped ways).

The big question is whether or not it would work or just be a really tedious pain in the neck that didn't really achieve any of its intended goals. Has anyone given anything like this a try before? How'd it go?