Cranerat's page

I have some spots open in an ongoing campaign (35 years now) for players. I use Pathfinder core rules and 3.5 where Pathfinder doesn't cover (Above 20th lvl and I use Starjammer/Spelljammer rules for travel between worlds on the prime material plane).
Send me a PM if interested.

Current players have been playing for 5+ (one since 1979) years and starting level isn't an issue. I use the base books for starters and don't use 3rd party books. I find them unbalancing for normal gaming. All players are currently adults from 20-65. Nothing is impossible! :)

I've been running this campaign since 1978, started 2nd ed., and migrated through 3.0, 3.5 and now use Pathfinder rules as the main ruleset with the others to augment the game and allow players to pretty much do anything they want to with characters. Contact me if you are interested. Mature gamers only please, and need to keep the swearing to a minimum since I have family that can overhear.

Game is usually every Sunday from 11AM - 5PM Mountain time. Most of the time I get on between 9AM and 10:30. Many times the game runs till 6/7PM if everyone can stick around.

I use Pathfinder as the main rules with missing feats from 3.5 (all books) and use spells all the way back to 2nd ed. since some were dropped over the years (cacodemon, enchant an item, and the true "wish" spell).

Role playing is pretty much required as is creativity. I don't do very well in a straight hack-n-slash campaign since players must figure out puzzles, politics and power plays by major factions and NPC's. I do use the Epic rules from 3.5 since many of my players have been playing over 4 years straight (at least) and have broken lvl 20 (quite a few) with multiple characters. Some have been playing in this campaign setting for over 30 years.

The campaign setting is of my own creation based on a mixture of Greyhawk, Pathfinder, Spelljammer, Planescape, Eberron, Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, Gamma World and even some T20.

Contact me for details if interested.

Guys,

A bit of constructive criticism here. Whomever did your research on the New Zealand Maori weapon the “Taiaha” for the book “Ultimate Combat” must have not looked into this fantastic and intriguing weapon.

A Taiaha was/is a wooden weapon made of hardwood (usually ironwood) and was the main "Two-Handed" reach weapon of the Maori’s for both offense and defense. It is true it is a bludgeoning weapon, but it was never intended as a piercing weapon. The point on the handle side was actually a facial carving and the point was the tongue representation of the warriors ancestors who crafted it. This side (point) was never placed on the ground as it was a sign of deep disrespect to one’s ancestor(s). True, you could put a point on one, but that wasn't the original intent.

One of these wooden weapons would be passed from generation to generation and was believed to hold the ancestral spirits of the family’s warriors to aid them in battle. The taiaha was a very fast weapon and the bladed end could actually “cut” the opponent and since the Maori’s didn’t have access to iron or steel at this time, it was never thought of as a slashing weapon. The taiaha was more of a short staff than a club or spear. The sharp end was usually dressed with feathers, string and fur to the shoved into the face of one’s opponent to distract more than anything. The point is purely coincidental and claiming the taiaha is a double ended weapon with piercing qualities is a bit far from its actual use. Also, being light and hard (fast) is shouldn’t be gifted with a d10 damage for a medium sized weapon unless you redo the staff to also do a d10 damage. This makes the taiaha better than a mace for damage. A taiaha would have a hard time denting armor (could but wasn’t intended) and damaging the person encased in it as a mace could. What it should get though, is a bonus for disarms as (a whip or even other weapons) plus it is not a single handed weapon, it’s a two handed weapon.

Also, a taiaha doesn’t weigh 10 lbs. Your heavy mace weighs 8, the light weighs 4 and you’d be lucky to have a taiaha weigh 5-6 lbs. The ones I make are in the 2-4 lb range and are still a bit heavy and I’m using ash. The ironwood ones were smaller in diameter and the blade ends carved way down due to the wood quality and weight of the hardwoods available in New Zealand.

Again, a taiaha is a speed weapon for both offense and defense, not a club or quarterstaff weapon that relied on weight to do damage. Sorry, just had to submit this info since I have done quite a bit of research into these extremely unique weapons that were greatly feared by any who ever met the Maori’s on anything but good terms (including other Maori tribes).

Cheers! :)

In order to play in this campaign (It won't be on paper/posted, it is live on Sundays, 11AM-5PM Mountain) send me an invite request with a copy of your proposed character created at Lvl 15 using the Lvl 15 starting NPC wealth table 14-9 NPC GEAR on page 454, from Paizo's Pathfinder Roleplay Game "Core Rulebook".
My starting character generation for stats is as follows:
One auto 18, then roll five sets of numbers with three dice taking the highest two and adding six to generate (Hopefully) epic stats.
HP: First level is maxxed with HP/HD and Con. The rest of the 14 levels, roll 14 time re-rolling any 1's. If you re-roll a 1, you HAVE to accept it.
Send me a private message with the subject "Sunday LOA Submittal" for me to look over. If I accept, then you will be sent an e-mail with the connection information for D20 Pro and Skype.

I will close this campaign after I have accepted three players. If in the future I drop below 6 (again) regular players, I will reopen this campaign and again solicit for players.

Be aware that the current set of players are high level and have all been playing this campaign for years (one over 30) and know my style of DMing.

I will post my "House Rules" so potential players aren't blindsided when they start playing. You may not like my house rules, if that's the case, no time wasted on both our parts.

Play will start for any new recruits on 9/3/2012 with the other players whom you will meet on line.

Happy Trails!!

Looking for two to three people wanting to play a high level campaign that pretty much has been home grown since I started DMing. Power gamers need not bother applying. This is an actual role-playing campaign and there are times exp. doesn't get awarded in a session.
I currently have three players in the party (Sub Epic to epic Female Elf/Druid20, Dwarf/Fighter20 and Gnome/Heinz57(Lvls 21) in my own campaign world I created a while ago. I have been playing (DMing) this campaign since 1st ed. I have one player that started with me back in 1978 and everyone since then has played from 2nd ed. all the way to the current Pathfinder rules.

To play: Submit requests to me via personal message (not sure yet if this is possible on these boards) or here on the board in this section.
Required: Pathfinder Rules understanding and use. I will accept 3.5 when Pathfinder doesn't cover what one want's to play.
Rules: Pathfinder first and foremost, 3.5 where Pathfinder doesn't cover, Spelljammer, Eberron, Traveller T20, and a document I provide of “House Rules”.
When: Every Sunday (Most anyways unless something personal comes up with the family) from 11AM-5PM Mountain (US) time.
How: We use Skype and D20 Pro. I have a couple of extra licenses.
Limits: I can only handle a max of 6 people playing due to technology (Bandwidth for D20 and Skype) and I currently have three regulars with two others showing up rarely. So I am looking for 2-3 more players interested in a long term (Years) campaign.

Background: Currently the party was hired to deliver an Elvish Armada back to the elves in the Forgotten Realms sphere by a troll buccaneer that is creating his own secret harbor (base) in the Greyhawk sphere and currently has 6 spelljamming ships in his fleet. As an example the trolls basic stats are; Goondag “The Destroyer” Troll8/Barbarian14/Horizon Walker8 (Yes, this is an epic campaign after 34 years).
Goondag hired the party to deliver the Elvish Armada after he retrieved it from a port on the world of Greyhawk (Scuttleport, which was both a normal and spelljamming pirate port in my campaign) after the port was subject to a a pearl from the “Dungeon” series from “Savage Tide” that turned most everyone into “Savage” creatures.
The party was joined by an Grey Elf ambassador “Silias”, to take the Armada back to the elves sphere for 10K gp each. It was supposed to be an 85 day trip. 56 days into the trip they were sucked through a rift in the prime material, made when another captain attempted to destroy an attacking ship as a last ditch effort by putting a bag of holding into a portable hole, to another crystal sphere that encompassed an entire galaxy instead of just a system.
They are currently trying to find a way from their galaxy back to where they came from. There's a few things that prevent them from using normal gate or greater teleport spells at the moment. They are attempting to gather enough resources to repair the armada and continue their search for a way out of this universe (They have a few rumors and ideas learned from locals).

Guys,

I have a complaint about your adventure path series that I just noticed finally reading through the Skull & Shackles series, specifically the last installment; "From Hell's Heart".

First I want to praise you on the quality of the product up to this point. It's been great and a real help at times for me to grab a scenario to add-lib in my own campaign setting that has been running now since 1978. Where I used to have lots of time for prep and to create scenarios for the players (when I was single and no kids) I now have very little time and am surprised I can get in 5 hours a week of play for some old and new friends that still find my campaign setting amusing, challenging and still good enough to continue to develop characters for long term goals.

I am disappointed in the direction the Pathfinder Adventure Setting books seem to be going. What I mean is: In past volumes, the writers included all the pertinent data for encounters that a DM wold need to run the scenarios without needing extra books for reference to get the creature stats. This issue I am noticing that it wasn't included on both the iron golem and the canon golem. What gives?? I am used to not needing anything but the published book for the adventure unless a specific rules question came up that was outside the actual activities covered in the adventure. Not sure why these creature stats weren't included but if this is the direction the publishers are going to be continuing on, I will have to say that this will be an inconvenience and I will consider the adventures to be incomplete, and needing more than just the basic rules manual. This seems to be the ploy that WoTC used to get people to purchase additional publications and tends to get a bit pricey for just a few additional bits of information to complete a written adventure.
Please, if you are going to use specific creatures for encounters, include them in the adventure path so I don't have to purchase additional publications for the stats of those single creatures. It's not complete otherwise.

I have had a few of my long time friends from starting D&D (Yes, 1st edition) complain about the ease of characters being brought back to life. In the 1st/2nd editions we had Resurrection Survival based on the Con score. In today's AD&D/Pathfinder rules players tend to take ridiculous chances as they know they can usually be resurrected or brought back with no penalty for dying. Unfortunately I have to agree. There is no penalty for characters dying and getting brought back. Yes, the lower level "raise dead" does penalize. But when you are playing epic level characters (a couple of my players are playing characters they started back in 1978-1983 and converted from 2nd edition) with no real fear of death, encounters with what should be exciting, dangerous opponents don't get that "My character may die and not be able to be brought back" feeling.
And for those of you who know of the old "Arduin Grimore" critical hit tables you also know that even a 2nd lvl character had a chance of "one-shotting" a 20th lvl character, making for a truly "Epic and memorable battle if they happened to get a "Brain Pierced, Immediate death" result.
There are rules I have implemented for both dealing more damage in an encounter to speed up some fights, and for reintroducing truly "Critical" hits without having a set of extraneous tables that sometimes created more administrative recording than was worth. I am sharing these for those that may have the same wish of older players. SO far, they seem to be working very well, even with lower level parties.

These are included in the rules and description of my self created campaign world, as written in a document I provide all my players when they choose to play in my campaign world.

Character Death

When a character dies the following will happen:
The character's original Constitution (Con) will be forever recorded as the Base Con Score or Original Con Score. If you add CON points due to ability increases this will also add to the CON score. Wishes, books and any magical means short of Divine granting of a Con Point will not increase this base score, but can increase the Con (Game Con Score) past the original BASE score. This will be known as the "Game Con score" or the "Playing Con Score".

1. The player will loose a Con point, no save upon death. True Res and Wish will regain this Con point back for the "Game Con score", but not the "Original Con Score".
2. The player will make the equivalent of a “Resurrection Survival” roll (1st and 2nd ed. Had these based off constitution) to see if they want, or can come back to their corpse: The player may not make the decision outright. For all we know the player went crazy after death and LIKE being dead.

The Resurrection/Survival roll will be a percentage roll (or even a D20 roll, yes, action points can be used at this time also) equal to or less than 5% x the characters current CONSTITUTION attribute after they died. For example; If a character dies with a 19 Con, then after death they lose a Con point, making the Con now 18. 18 x 5% = 90% or 18 or less on a D20 roll. If the player rolls a 19 on a d20, or 91% or more on a D100 roll, then they are forever dead and cannot be brought back. Roll a new character!

*GRANDFATHER CLAUSE: Those characters that were started before this rule implementation will have a special advantage over all newer characters. I will allow you to compute your Original Con Score as follows:
Original base Roll for Con = 15. Then 1/4 of all attribute mods (whether you used them or not for Constitution modifiers) gained over ALL levels will be added to this Base score (assumed DR) for Constitution whether Con was added or not.
*Special Bonus for melee types. You will be able to add 1/2 of all attribute increases to the base of 15 for a higher starting "Original Con Score".

New Damage Rules

Since 2nd ed. Character progression has sped up considerably. It no longer takes years to reach 15th level. The new rules from 3.5 and Pathfinder have introduced the concept of creatures with hundreds, if not thousands of hit points and AC's that can reach further than even most epic level characters can hit without a natural 20 on a d20. Because of this, and the fact that I personally think a 15+ level character should be able to dispatch a lower level character with 30 or less HP (for a 5th lvl character with reasonable Con score, a fighter would have an average of 50HP at the least). Because there are no feats, or game mechanics to both speed up the combat, i.e. do more damage without unbalancing the game too much, I have decided to implement the following rules for damage dealing with both melee weapons, and spells without adding home-grown feats. This is also being implemented so that there is incentive to use strange and new weapons that are never used in the game due to their inadequate base damage. This will hopefully encourage the use of different weapons as a Signature Weapon for the characters.

Signature Weapons: A signature weapon can be any weapon the player chooses, and must be in possession for a week of game time or more. A Signature Weapon is a specific weapon type (long sword, ranseur, glaive, long bow), not a specific weapon (+2 Long sword, +3 Composite Long Bow, +5 dancing rapier of flaming burst). Any weapon of that type becomes the signature weapon and will deal the damage from the new damage rules being implemented below. If the signature weapon is lost, destroyed, or lent to another character, as long as the player picks up another weapon of that type (Almeda lends her +2 Sickle to Proddim for a fight and instead, wields her +1, flaming burst sickle) she will still benefit from the BAB damage bonus rules below. If a signature weapon is no longer desired of a specific type, another can be chosen and the wait will be a week before it is active once again. During this time the previous weapon chosen as a “Signature Weapon” will no longer benefit from the signature weapon bonus. This means a week without any signature weapon bonus damage.

Home Plane above ground: To gain the signature weapon BAB bonus damage in an encounter, a player must make a “Survival” skill check outdoors on the pane that the player is a native on equal to 10 + HD of the creature encountered. If this succeeds, then the player will gain a damage bonus to both melee attacks and spells against the creatures race for that encounter. Player should keep track of ALL the creatures encountered and on the specific planes or locations as they will gain a +1 bonus to survival skill check DC for every encounter.

Other Planes: Planes the character is not a native of, the DC increases to 18 +HD of the creature encountered. Knowledge Planes Ranks only will apply to this Survival DC check. Not the bonuses that a player receives for attributes or magical increases more than once on the base Survival check.

Underground: In this case, the Knowledge Dungeoneering ranks will be added to the die roll to achieve a DC of 10 + Lvl of creature on the native plane, and 20 + lvl of the creature on on native plane, underground. All ranks would stack in this case, the Survival with bonuses, the Knowledge Dungeoneering ranks and Knowledge Planar Ranks would all stack.

BAB Damage Bonus from Level of Character
1. The characters Base Attack Bonus (BAB) will be added as damage to any hit “Provided” that character can make a survival skill roll at the beginning of the combat equal to 10 + the creatures HD. The players are encouraged to keep a running list of creatures encountered as they will receive a +1 bonus every time thereafter if they encounter the same race of creature. The BAB damage bonus is to award those classes that use BAB as their main source of damage dealing, i.e. Melee classes (Fighter, Monk, Ranger, Paladin etc.), with added damage as they increase their BAB. BAB bonuses from the 3.5 Epic Levels will also be considered BAB damage bonuses for all classes if this rule set is used.
2. In underground encounters a “Knowledge Dungeoneering” DC skill roll will need to be made upon the above dependencies.
3. On other planes other than the players native plane, and “Knowledge Planar” DC will be needed based upon the above dependencies (10 + creatures HD) to benefit from the BAB bonus to damage.
4. This Damage can be applied to spells based on the casters total levels in casting classes of either Int, Cha or Wis casting.

Critical Damage Bonus (Melee/Natural Weapons)
1. Critical damage will now be the following for melee weapons and natural attacks (Yes, the critters get it too): The weapons base damage (long sword is 1d8 base damage + BAB modifier) x the characters level (all levels of all classes) x the weapon critical modifier. Using a long sword above, wielded by a 10th lvl character we get the following damage for a confirmed critical; 1d8 for weapon damage, x10 = 10d8 for critical done by 10th lvl character doubled since a long sword has a critical multiplier of x2 to make the damage a Base 20d8 damage for a confirmed crit. Str mods, feat mods, and magical bonuses get added on top of this AFTER the base crit damage is rolled for.

Magical Critical Damage: Is basically the same as above except, you use the spells BASE damage dice to figure the total critical damage.
1. Example: a scorching ray, cast by a 15th lvl character does 15d6+15 damage, BUT the base damage of the spell is 1d6 per level of the caster to a max of 15d6. The base damage of the spell is 1d6. A 15th lvl caster achieves a critical with a scorching ray they would get the following for a crit: base damage is 1d6 x lvl of the caster + Lvl Modifier for damage =15d6+15. This 15d6+15 is added to the original 15d6+15 of the base spell making it 30d6+30 (not 15d6 x15), this 30d6 has a x2 multiplier for a critical so final critical damage is 60d6+60. There, you now have something to fear from ALL criticals!!

May seem difficult but I understand what I wrote and may not have conveyed the ideas very well. I'm open to opinions and possible suggestions. Especially if you try them and find something broken in the rules that I haven't encountered with my gaming group.
Most of this is taken care of creating characters and running games with D20Pro (strike if not able to ID outside products) since my gaming group lives in different areas of the USA.

Thanks ahead of time for any input/decent criticism.