Cranefist's page

In my current game, the party traveled into the elemental plane of water through a portal from a dungeon that was rapidly filling with water.

From their, they have traveled into the Astral Realm, carried from the boarderlands on griffons.

Right now, they are walking a dragon road, following the direction of a layline walker, hoping to make it to the Outlands, then to Sigil, and from there back home.

For wizards using the Core rules, traveling between the planes seems to be pretty easy. Once you hit 9th level, you can basically come and go. That ease of access for traveling wizards seems like it will be the defining feature of this sort of game, and I'm not sure I'm happy with that fact, especially considering how easily they can take people with them.

How do you think I should handle planar travel in PF, while sticking as close to the rules as written? I'm technically running the Emerald Spire right now, but I'm breaking up the dungeon maps across the campaign with a little tweaking, rather than stacking them and running straight through.

I'm running an online game of Pathfinder using a combination of published adventures and home brew. It is likely that the cast of players is going to rotate, with up to 8 or 9 people playing, but likely only 4-6 showing up regularly, with 3-4 core players.

I need to be able to run the published adventures and if I end up with a lot of level spread in the party, it is going to make it more aggravating, given that I'm going to have to make some adaptations on the fly to keep it entertaining when I don't know how many people are coming. I plan on leveling up the party every 3-4 games or when they complete an adventure and I need them to level to start the next one.

On the other hand, I don't really like it when I show up every week and my character is only equal to someone that comes like once a month. I know it is about the journey and not the destination, but there is just something about the reward being sapped that sucks.

Wealth by level is pretty important. The difference between a broke character vs. one with level appropriate stuff is pretty large. Interestingly, there isn't much of a difference between a character with normal wealth and a character with double wealth. Doubling a 3rd level character's wealth, for example, still doesn't get him a +2 sword.

I think what I'm going to do is just litter the game with a lot of treasure - about double what I would drop to get X number of players to WBL over 3-4 games. That way, even if I start new characters at normal WBL, it seems like experienced and actually played characters have an edge.

I might also include land, wealth, titles and followers as common rewards that you can only get by playing.

What do you think?

The primary thing in adventure gaming that I've always thought was kind of stupid is when NPCs take fights they can't win, or stay in fights when that becomes clear.

Lets say you are 4 goblins and 4 guys armed to the teeth come walking through the woods. There isn't a deer in half a mile because of the noise of their walking in the woods. For some reason though, these goblins will take the fight.

Then you got the CR 5, INT 13, teleporting demon who will take on the paladin and wizard for no reason other than they are there.

How about the 10th level wizard who even fights a PC group instead of just vanishing through a portal - what's he thinking?

Modules and PFS is so funny because you always have this parade of suicidal NPCs that will happily rush into a losing battle and stay to the bitter end.

Your rogues and rangers constantly scouting ahead are way more important in a game where NPCs won't take fights unless they think they can win. If you give the vast majority of the villains in your world a healthy dose of self preservation, the party will only get an easy fight if they are somehow able to initiate it by surprise. In almost all other cases, NPCs flee unless they think they can win. Often they will flee fights they can win if they don't know who is attacking them and are caught by surprise.

I've found that with Pathfinder, I end up adjusting encounters a lot on the fly. When you are running for a well optimized party, sometimes modules, or even home brewed games, can end up feeling a little like a walk in the park.

Now, I'm with everyone else when it comes to saving a player's behind from some bad rolls. For example, say a rogue does his job and hunts for traps just ahead of the party, doubles up on failed rolls, and then suffers a critical hit from the monster in the next room that was waiting for him. WOOPS!

In that case, I'll do something sneaky like look at the players sheet like I want to see if he passed his saving throw for sure, but really be double checking his HP. Then I'll just award damage that is like 4-6 off from killing him, instead of causing his head to come clean off.

That's not really an issue most of the time though. Most of the time, I'm sitting there ADDING special powers to monsters, bumping up their hit points, or secretly giving them some DR or automatically letting them pass an opening saving throw or two. No one likes to win a fight just because the wizard color sprayed the BBEG or the fighter went first and critical hit its head off.

The important part is gauging when the players feel like they are having a challenge. Most of the time, it is only coming off as a challenge if the party blew through most of their spells and spread some damage around. Dropping a PC counts as well, as long as the monster gets off two good rounds of action.

The real difficult part is deciding just how much experience you want to award. If the party was against a CR 8 when they are APL 4 and they would have trashed it in the first round without spending much, you just got to bump that down to a CR 4, because that's what it is. On the other hand, if you drop an extra 60 HP or a couple hero points and free saves on the CR 8, is he a CR 10 or 12 now?

In my opinion, no. He's just a CR 8 because you made him feel like an 8, whatever you had to do to get it there.

So, I'm getting ready to run a big adventure that is suppose to go from levels 1-13 or so.

As a part of my game prep, I rolled up the magic items for sale in the town and surrounding area. Using the suggested spread for an area a size larger, there is a 75% chance any item of 4000gps or lower is available, plus 10 minor, 7 medium and 4 major magic items.

Without getting into the nitty-gritty, I rolled up a bunch of crap. Most of it was just potions and scrolls. The stuff that wasn't, half was still just crap no character in the group would want.

By the time they are 13th level, if they start packing close to 140,000gps a piece, they won't be worrying a whole lot about their 4000gp magic items.

Keeping up rolling randomly for treasure and the outrageous tedium of rolling up the items for sale if the party were to travel, I would spend hours making lists and it would still all be crap.

My point is, if you follow the suggestions in the book, the party would never have quality gear at higher level unless they make it themselves.

The only other option is for the GM to just use the hand of god to drop the party gear they want, or to constantly roll random gear for all the towns in the campaign until the party can find what they are looking for.

Complaining time - man, I hate character spell lists. I really do.

I'll sit there thinking about how I'm going to make this cool bard archer. When I finish up by writing down his spells, Gravity Bow isn't on the list.

Or when I go to make a Summoner and get level 2 spells. Well, I guess I can either take Haste or handicap myself, because I'm getting these spells later than a wizard but for some reason I have an odd ball 3rd level spell on it.

I wish that there were only 3 spell lists: Arcane, Divine and Nature, and everyone just pulled off of those.

If anything, Gravity Bow should be Arcane, because you are transmuting a random object, not Nature, because bows are used in the woods.

It would also be better if they didn't jack around with the level of spells between classes. You are basically picking spells for me when you do that.

How would you model it?

To me, it looked like an 18th level monk vs. 12th level fighter. The monk decided to forgo attacking for two rounds and gave up his AC modifier from Wisdom, and got clipped, after taking a bunch of hp damage grappling if losing HP can represent fatigue.

Silva was trying to use crane style.

What was coming if Weidman's 4th iterative attack missed?

Does the globe block the ray?

If the spell was making a heat ray, then the ray isn't magic. It is a real thing.

"EDIT: By the way, GM, I wasn't sure what to do as far as equipment. I went with masterwork weapons and a mithral breastplate--I'm pretty sure that falls within the WBL for 6th-level characters. If not, or if there's something special you want me to do, then let me know! This is Loup Blanc, by the way."

Equipment can be anything you want to purchase via wealth by level, provided it is listed in an official Paizo core rule book and fits within the tech level (no +2 shotguns).

It is the Day of Fire, the winter solstice as celebrated on the streets of Ashlam, on a frozen winter evening mid Kisilīmu. Here, under the great red arch that marks edge of the merchant district, a massive festival has sprung up. As every year from the dawn of history, the people have gathered along the Royal Road to celebrate the return of the sun and to encourage it to quickly bring back its warmth.

As the sun sets, a full bright moon lifts heavily from behind the palace, casting its shadow over the teeming streets.

The smell of confections, the beat of drums, the jingle of dancers and the lure of free and wild people carries on the cold and biting wind. As the cold night air sets in, the heat of the fires and the flow of liqueurs both climb beyond reason.

You find yourselves here, within the celebration. While you all came for your own reasons, you feel a pit in your guts that is keeping you from enjoying yourselves. Your sixth sense, honed by a life time of danger, magic and adventure is telling you to keep on your toes and to not let your guard down. As you look down the crowded streets, with people piling into the businesses and bars purchasing drinks and lavish gifts, you notice a number of them are closed. Five businesses in a row run by the hobbits are sitting empty, as well as a normally busy bar owned by humans on the north side.

Your gaze turns to the city streets again, and you realize that the streets themselves are clear of the lithe people. There are some 30,000 hobbits in this city of 1,000,000 but you notice that none of them are around.

Something seems... strange.

What are you doing?

Hello,

I'd like to find some people to play my first play by post game.

The game will be set in a fantasy world sort of like ancient Greece and Persia.

Characters start out at level 5 and must have a back story of at least a little depth. Characters do not level up and NPCs will not have more than 3 levels unless there is something special about them. Half gods and lesser gods are level 7. Powerful deities are around level 9.

Combat

Combat is handled like so:

Initiative is simultaneous. Everyone gets three actions and takes all three of their actions together in the same post, fully describing them and writing out their effects and rolls. Any characters that have a higher total initiative bonus than every NPC get to take four rounds worth of actions on their turn. If an NPC has the highest total bonus, he gets four actions.

After all actions are declared and described, the GM will make one post explaining how the battle actually transpired, and what treasure can be claimed.

Reply to This

I would love it if no one gave me their opinions on this, in this thread, unless their opinion is that they like it and want to play. If you have a problem with this, please send me a private message.

So, I started playing with a group that started me at level 11. I just hit level 12.

Incredibly, we just wacked a CR 16 or 17 vampire. Maybe higher. The DB had 9th level spells and 500+ HP. There were 6 of us banging on him. As a ranger I have an extra +4 and was buffed maybe 5 times before the fight, so I was hitting him on a 3. I hit for around 225 damage over two rounds.

That wasn't too surprising to me. When we decided to go after the guy, I was hitting rolls of 40+ on my tracking and perception rolls to hunt his minions down.

We are actually playing soft ball at this point. I'm pretty sure that the casters with all their speak with dead and find the path and shadow walk and divination and so on and on could have bypassed most of what I was doing, but they let Van Helsing do his thing for story sake. Nice of them.

I have no idea what the GM could have done differently. The vampire's layer was hidden with a dimensional gateway, with a passage so tight you had to have gaseous form or something to fit and a shadow doorway hidden in the pitch black of empty umbra. He had 9th level spell traps and god awful shadow minions, vampires, and other crazy s$&&.

It was borderline incoherent. I only could accept it thematically because of my familiarity with the game, but it didn't look much like any kind of traditional story.

And we are still leveling up. One of the wizards is about to hit 14th. His summoning of Devas and casting limited wishes is already crazy.

I'm running a game right not I'd like to keep leveling up. They will be fine soon but I could see this group going all the way up.

What do you do past a certain point? What can it even be about?

I usually think of the "Strength" attribute as being a combination of lifting ability and power. Characters with really high strength scores in Pathfinder are the kinds of super human freak power athletes than have both large muscle mass and lifting ability, but awesome jumping / throwing / track and field ability.

In real life, some people (all of these examples are of people with low body fat) can bench 400 pounds but can't sprint or do 25 pushups. Some guys can do 100 clapping pushups but are so small they can't lift 120 pounds over their heads. Some people, like Pathfinder fighters, have the gifts and training that let them do both.

But dang it, I get sick of EVERY MONSTER being the same way. Hill giant power athletes swinging super accurate clubs and jumping really high just suck man. You can't have a peasant scramble away from a slow giant in PF because he hits on a 1.

Power Attack gives a good approximation of someone winding up on an attack, and the wind up giving the target time to prepare - thus a penalty to hit and a bonus to damage.

Monster Trait - Massive

A massive monster gains a -1 to strike and a +2 to damage for every point of his strength modifier over +3.

The monster gains a -1 to strike and a +1 Natural AC and DR 1/- for every even hit die.

The monster strikes against touch AC when confronting enemies in non-magical armor (to represent the blunt force trauma of all that weight smashing down on you).

Monsters with this trait under CR 4 add +1 to their CR. Monsters CR 4+ reduce their CR by 1 or stay the same based on GM judgement.

There is a lot of emotional content when PCs feel like they have to run, especially from a fight they started.

Tonight, the party was trying to rescue a noble woman from the clutches of the vile orc chief. The party of 4 2nd level characters was planning on taking on a 5th level orc, 12 first level orcs, and a standard troll, plus a POSSIBLE wyvern rider who may or may not show up (didn't).

They have a good plan. I give orcs -2 strike during the day, so they come in the day, distract the troll with a summon monster, and set fire to the oil treated animal skin tents. They were hoping during the disarray they could bust in and grab the woman and flee.

Instead, first guy out Leeroy Jinkins style charges a random orc and they get embroiled in a combat that seems to get worse every round as more enemies get into the fray and they party doesn't have a spell caster to thin out the orcs.

They manage to cut the woman free who flees to the NPC archer and yet the player playing the cleric decides, screw it, and attacks another orc.

It was only after the paladin was out of healing and the cleric had been revived TWICE, after the fighter is reduced to 1 HP because I managed to roll 1s on a falcion, while the troll and most of the orcs are still up, that they decided to withdraw.

It occurred to me that emotionally, it was the spending of resources, of being out of spells and being below some imaginary HP threshold that let them make the decision they needed to run.

They should have run as soon as the woman was free. They should have known they couldn't win because they have fought orcs before, while level 2, and they are all old gamers. Gamers hate to run. The fighter should have realized he was near death at 6 HP vs. orcs with 2 handed weapons, but being reduced to 1 was all that made him scared. But if they were just suicidal, why run in the end at all?

Anyone else notice the resource thing is what gets PF players to run?

Does anyone think having hero points, and spending them, makes players more likely to run because their get out of jail free card is blown?

I just wrote up another 11th level character. I'm playing in a high level game today and this is my first session.

I wrote up an 11th level Ranger Skirmisher, two handed fighter, with a pole arm. I am locked into this decision now as the GM has purchased a miniature already.

Here is his frame:

STR 18
DEX 14
CON 14
INT 10
WIS 14
CHA 10

HP 92
AC

Base +11
Melee +15 / +10 / +5
Range +13 / +8 / +3

Fort +9
Ref +9
Will +5

Feats:
1 – Dodge
1 – Weapon Focus – Glaive
2 – Power Attack
3 – Combat Reflexes
5 – Mobility
6 – Great Cleave
7 – Combat Patrol
9 – Body Guard
10 – Dreadful Carnage
11 – In Harm’s Way

Skirmisher Tricks

Cat Fall 20’
Upending Strike
Vengeance Strike
Quick Climb

Right now, he looks like a bit of a wuss. I'm afraid he isn't going to hit enough and when he hits, he won't do enough damage. I understand he has advantages fighters don't, but I'm used to having weapon training, weapon spec, and so on and on.

Ohla,

I'm working on an 11th level Zen Archer monk who has a Dex of 7.

I can't take deadly aim, so I'm concerned about his damage.

Is there anyway I can make this work?

If I'm a human fighter for 6 levels and then a Duelist for 5 levels, how many levels of favored class do I have for extra skill points?

I'm working on some higher level characters for a 12th level game. I get an 11th level character.

I'm probably going to make a switch hitter and try to stuff several different abilities onto him.

Doing too many things at once does weaken a martial and I'm concerned I don't know how powerful he needs to be to be relevant.

How high does a skill like Perception or Stealth need to be?

How much DPR against a CR 12 does it need minimum if I want him to be able to stand on damage.

What are the minimum archery feats at that level? Arrows seem very feat intensive.

The second level Polearm Master's Ability:

At 2nd level, as an immediate action, a polearm master can shorten the grip on his spear or polearm with reach and use it against adjacent targets. This action results in a –4 penalty on attack rolls with that weapon until he spends another immediate action to return to the normal grip. The penalty is reduced by –1 for every four levels beyond 2nd.

This ability replaces Bravery.

Question: Can I take two levels of Fighter - Polearm Master, then switch to regular fighter? Is there any funky rules with the favored class bonus and does the ability above continue to improve despite no longer gaining levels in Polearm master?

I ran a large battle tonight. In a cave, 3 squares wide, 3 1st level pcs with a 3rd level fighter, 10 first level fighters, and a 1st level cleric went against about 25 crazed farmers and a ghast - with the ability to turn to his side a round later anyone he bites, instead of stench and disease.

During the battle, the third level fighter and a first level fighter were turned. The ghast made it up to the paladin and paralyzed him (for 3 rouns). Before the ghast struck the final blow, the legionnaire behind the paladin switched places with him and fought it off (was eventually turned) until the paladin was healed by the npc cleric and the paralysis wore off.

The party won, but it was dicey.

While I like maintaining the integrity of the sandbox I run and I don't fudge dice, I find having some npcs around really helps keep the party active in adventures and death free. Nothing like a good npc meat shield or multiclass healer / rogue to keep the party alive. They might redshirt, but at least the invested players stay alive.

I'm running for a decent party. For only having three people, fighter, paladin and cleric, they found ways to get tracking and trap finding and now that they are second level, two sources of healing, plus some ok damage.

I asked them today if they wanted a DMPC to round out the group and like any self respecting old schoolers, they declined. Still, I really do like having one around to play. At least I know they aren't afraid to badger npcs into helping them when they think they need it.

This is general discussion, so I'm just generally discussing.

How receptive are you to the GMPC if he is low powered and doesn't contribute to many ideas or directions - just role play and combat help (though he gets a share of the loot and xp).

An NPC is going to ask a riddle. I don't think my players can guess it. If you answer wrong, the golem TPKs the party (probably).

Instead of answering it out loud, I'm going to let them make a die roll if they think they have a better chance that way.

How should they make the check?

Because riddles can often be answered more than one way, I was thinking of Diplomacy + INT.

So I've got this dungeon that story wise - has been designed to generally keep 7th level characters out. The party is aware that the two 5th level NPCs that live in the town above - a cleric and a fighter, will not go into the tomb. The party was actually sent to the town by a 7th level caster and told to get something from it for him.

Now that they are there, the cleric told them that getting something from the tomb for the wizard is a bad idea, but instead, they would help against the wizard and the problems he caused in other ways.

The party, all 1st level, basically have the authority to order the two 5th level characters and a bunch of town guards around during this crisis (PC Paladin's have a lot of sway in this world and he nat 20ed the Diplomacy check to get their help).

I am almost certain the PC group is going to go into the dungeon.

It is a wizard dungeon, so I'm trying to make riddles and traps / ways of bypassing the monsters - but slipping up once in a place that can keep out a 7th level wizard is suicide for a 1st level party. On the other hand, getting 7th level treasure at first level is pretty sweet.

Any opinions on how I should handle this?

Side note: the 5th level NPC fighter is geared out for mounted combat and the 5th level cleric has like a 6 strength and doesn't wear armor. Neither have any magic items. It isn't like they would be big help in a dungeon and they have no intention of going in there themselves. Worse still, them dying would be really bad for the town.

My current campaign runs really close to a major sea. In the first game, and early encounter was with a pirate ship.

The only spell caster on either side was the PC cleric. Somehow he had animate rope memorized. I didn't question it at the time. I figure it is a domain spell. In any case, it was very handy during the battle.

Then, after, he spent his spells and healing skills to make sure no one on the ship died.

Got me thinking a little more about naval combat in Pathfinder. Given the expense of a ship and the vulnerability it has to magic, would any sort of normal naval warfare exist? Would they shoot arrows, grapple and board, or ram? Would they just read a pile of scrolls of fireball and dispel magic instead?

Would wizards be hired for premium to cast those spells and any ship with too few wizards would get demolished?

Anyway, food for thought.

I'm solving it in my current game by having like 8 wizards in the whole game world over level 1, so it won't happen.

1st level party, 3 decently optimized characters - archer, fighter, paladin, and one guy playing a cleric.

The cleric rolls stats and comes out ok. With race modifiers, he ends up with a 14 Int, 18 Wis, and 12 Con. Strength and dexterity are 10. Cha 7. He wants the high Int for RP. Buys light armor and no shield.

No strike bonus. AC 13.

So he gets hit constantly, never deals damage back, and watches as a CR 3 melee creature takes on him plus 2 of the warriors and beats the three of them senselessly. They barely got out. The cleric swings 4 time for a total of 3 damage.

He picked this, knowingly.

If a paladin has a katana, can he dishonor the sword and have it break by doing something that doesn't actually break his paladin code?

I'm writing up a Necromancer for my first level party to take on. I need him to be around 5th level to story wise, do what he is suppose to be doing. Unfortunately, a 5th level wizard is dangerous against a first level party without even a rogue or ranger to get the drop on him. He will certainly hear them coming and have time to prepare.

He will only have 20 HP, his third level spells will be "spent" making the area skeletons that the cleric should chew threw pretty easy. I can make sure he doesn't have any deadly area of effect spells like sleep. All of his feats will be story based - nothing to help in combat with PCs.

What is this guy's CR?

Side question = A skeleton is worth 135 XP. Are they still worth that if a cleric just rolls through and channel kills them all no problem?

Starting a new game next week for what is turning out to be a group of heroic sounding PCs.

This is set in the Points of Light campaign setting, the first one called, "Wild Land."

Scripture Pilgrims from Bright Empire

The Paladin's god, Delaquain - The Goddess of Honor and Justice, has a temple in the capitol city of Falacrine, where at least some of your characters should be from. Being the former center of the human world, characters from anywhere can end up in Falacrine.

A civil war between the followers of Delaquain and Sarrath - God of War and Order, weakened the empire and lead to the eventual destruction of the city of Falacrine by a barbarian horde. A large part of the population fled to the mountains and survived. They returned and have been rebuilding the city for the last 10 years.

During the rebuilding of the temple of Delaquain, a scroll was miraculously uncovered, intact. The scroll, which contains the complete teachings of the goddess in one epic poem, also possesses the power to cast the spell Miracle. The high priest, on his death bed from injuries sustained during the shattering of the empire, believes he was kept alive by the goddess to perform one last task: to make a copy of the scroll. Shortly after completing the scroll, the high priest died. One scroll is to be kept in Falacrine to be used by the next King's Priest to intercede on the cities' behalf either in the crowning of a new emperor and the avoidance of another civil war, or in the defense of the city should the horde return.

The second scroll is to be sent west, to the far reaches of the empire, to aid the people there and to reestablish the empire's reach should that be Delaquain's wish. The priests of Falacrine divined that one of the empires greatest heroes, Pilus Prior Mithika, is still alive and in the western reaches of the empire but are unable to divine his exact location.

Your party has been assembled by the preists of Delaquain to carry the scroll to the western reaches of the empire, into lands splintered by demi-human hordes, fleeing mercenaries, free towns and other strange people, to find Captain Mithika so that he can help to reunite the empire - or so the priests hope.

I was thinking of running a game like one of these old school wizard games I used to know.

The schtick is that everyone gets two characters - a full caster and a companion. The full caster: summoner, druid, mage, sorcerer, cleric, and so on only get experience at the end of an adventure if they spent the whole adventure working in their lab / church / grove. Other characters only get experience for adventuring.

So you can use your caster for an adventure if you want, but he won't get any experience. I want to force the players to use non-spell casters mostly, but let them have access when they think they need it. Further, it creates a reason why chantries and lodges for casters are so important.

I was thinking about getting this book but wanted to know in general what is in it.

Is it a 2e style book with like, Roman Equipment, Greek Equipment, Renaissance Equipment, etc... or is it just a book of magic items?

I was thinking of getting rid of saves and AC and replacing them with one number based on level + armor. Spells that allow a saving throw would be replaced with something equivalent to an attack roll, like stat + level. The rational is that magic affects the mind, and sense armor makes you feel safe, you are safe.

This would bleed off some of the spastic paper / scissor / rock in the game and make fights more level and fair.

I'm playing a ranger with a 14 strength and a 16 dexterity in a Pathfinder Society game in a little bit.

I gave him point blank shot and weapon focus longbow.

Think he can survive?

Hello,

I'm trying to write up a 5th level sorcerer for a 25 point buy game.

I'm making him a fay blooded sorcerer with a 20 Charisma. The main issue I'm having is I can't tell what an enemy has to do to detect that you are casting a spell.

Can I use Bluff to conceal that I'm casting a spell?

What about Slight of Hand?

What about either combined with Silent Spell or Still Spell?