Has anyone tried using the plot cards as a reward?
I feel that I've heard of plot cards before but I can't quite remember what they are. Can you please enlighten me? It sounds interesting.
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That was awesome! Thanks for the link.
I am all for limiting fights to realism, as long as you do the same with wizards and everyone else.So, they can only pull rabbits out of their hats and stuff? Right on! No, but they can amaze you by showing you your card. :)
Suggest everyone gets 30 seconds to state their action. If there is a rules question they have that 30 seconds to read/quote the rule, if they can't, then the DM gets to make something up or cancel their action. If they want to be into the game (i.e. get a good return on investment for purchasing the books) they will do more than just stand and try to hit the enemy. They will try tactics, such as flanking, overrun, charging, grappling, etc. (Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to feats to do those things, the feats just make them easier or less risky) with 5 players and the GM running the monsters, each player should have 2 and half minutes to decide their action and have the rules reference ready so that they get to do what they want during their 30 seconds. They can then explain outside of their 30 seconds to other players, what they hope to accomplish and how the other players can help. Such as, I want to flank this guy and backstab him, can you move 2 spaces this way so that on my turn, I can do this... or, I'm going to cast color spray, but I go after you, can you try to push this goblin 1 space back so I can get him as well. (Now they have to look up the rules for pushing an opponent) As they do this more an more, things will move quicker. Oh, and grapple isn't just wrestling on the ground. A medium size character can attempt to pick that goblin up and chuck him over the ledge. The goblin can in turn attempt a second grapple to not be thrown, basically grabbing onto the monk's arm for dear life.
My first level group has 5 players in it, 4 have never played pathfinder before, 3 of them are 12 and under. Each round of combat can take about 3-5 minutes with rules look ups for spells and special actions. As far as hitting AC 16, My son plays a half-orc barbarian (20 pt buy) with 18 or 20 strength, and uses an earth breaker which I think is a 2d6 weapon. +4 or + 5 for strength, +1 for weapon focus, and +1 BAB gives him a +6 or +7 so he only needs to roll a 9 or a 10 to hit. When he rages he gets an additional +2 to attack and damage. My other son plays an elven rogue with 18 or 20 dex, can't remember, but with weapon finesse he gets a +4 or +5 to hit. Add in flanking for an additional +2 which he does a lot, and that helps the barbarian. Or he is using a short bow to great effect. We have a magus, cleric, and wizard for the other three characters. I don't remember their stats, but the cleric uses summon monster 1 to great effect (goblins hate dogs, so guess what he summons). The wizard is working on being a god-mage, so he doesn't do direct damage spells, instead he uses battlefield control type spells. I think he has had the greatest effect on combat so far. The magus player is new to role-playing, the cleric player hasn't played D&D since 2e. The wizard player (Magus' father) and I are the only ones with 3e experience (been playing since it came out back in 2000, plus we started back in the early 80's with basic, advanced, and 2e). This has helped and during off turns while I'm helping my sons with rules options or explaining things to them, the cleric's player is looking up spells and getting ready for his turn, the wizard player is helping his son with options and such. So this does speed up play quite a bit. I haven't had the players run up against goblin rogues yet, that would be killer, especially for first level. But they have battled classed goblins. If this is your first time playing pathfinder, I would have just stuck with the pre-gens until you guys were a bit more familiar with the rules. Monks are tough to get right due to MAD (Multiple Ability Dependency). With 5 new players I would have asked them to play fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard, and then have the 5th player play one of those classes or a barbarian, ranger, or bard. After a few sessions, once people are used to the rules and things go faster, throw away those characters and explore other race/class types. How many opponents are you facing at one time? I don't think I've thrown more than 8 at the party and the wizard cast obscuring mist blocking off 3 of them, making the combat a lot more manageable. Sorry this post has gotten long, I hope you found some of what I said helpful.
Good stuff You said what I wanted but was not able to.
Well the point is a 20th level caster walks into a village where an overwhelming majority of people of 1st level commoners and maybe... maybe the best person there is a 3rd to 5th level class fighter/aristocrat. There torch and pitchforks wouldn't stand up against a meteor strike and summon monster 9. You didn't... I read the peasant part and promptly ignored the rest. my bad. You are right, spellcasters on a power trip can and will be brought low eventually, but it will take a while and lots of resources. This hasn't stopped spellcasters from becoming evil, from trying to take over the world, or from being petty. A spellcaster could become evil but stay nicer than a balor so that resources are devoted to stopping the demon summoner and he will always be the "we'll get to him later, right now we have this" type of evildoer. He could make life miserable for lots of others without making himself too much of a target. The point is though, at that power level, there isn't too much that can stop him and of those things that can, it will take a while (maybe several years or decades). Plus it is most likely the mage has studied his opposition so that he is prepared, adding even more to his ego.
Well the point is a 20th level caster walks into a village where an overwhelming majority of people of 1st level commoners and maybe... maybe the best person there is a 3rd to 5th level class fighter/aristocrat. There torch and pitchforks wouldn't stand up against a meteor strike and summon monster 9. A very interesting question Ravingdork. IRL if I were the 20th level mage... what would I do? I'd hope that I'd be humble and meek. Knowing what people can be like, 1 exception will lead to another which will lead to another, the bar will become lower and lower until that 20th level mage is worse than the devil himself. In D&D there are so many DMs that say, "Are you sure you want to do that? That may cause an alignment shift." Which causes players to rethink their actions and do something else. I think it would be cool to let the player do their thing good or bad and the DM keep a tally. The alignment shift can be subtle and a secret from the player. It would be cool to see the players face when a detect alignment reveals that he/she is something other than what's on the character sheet. The reason being is that people lie to themselves about who they are or where they are headed. This could be the same thing. "My character sheet says NG however the actions seem more LE" This would be an example of a person lying to themselves, which I think would be an interesting thing to play out.
Well, from my perspective, that of a customer, player, and DM, Ryan is a Hero.. nay a Super Hero. The OGL was the best thing to come out of the 3e/3.5e era. I love that there are third party publisher and other sources that I can glean ideas from. It's also one of the reasons I am into Pathfinder and not anywhere else.
Though I am curious if a lot of groups don't finish APs; if a lot of people play up to the 12-13 level range then ignore the end of the story that would be a important indicator of something wrong. I don't see that around my area at all; we tend to play the entire thing. My group starts but does not finish. Its always due to the fact that life gets busy and we may go several weeks where we meet regularly, then we can't meet for a few months. By the time that few months have passed, we've forgotten what we were doing so we start something else. I think the farthest a campaign has gotten was Star Wars Saga 6 or 7th level. We started Rise of the Runelords and just about finished the glassworks. We've started doing one shots just because they can done in 2-3 sessions. And we are all over the map from 10th level to 25th level. So for my group, campaigns start at 1st level, one shots typically take place above 10th level.
If a defeated creature gives 600 xp, is that xp divided among the pcs or for each one? Thanks. Divided.
Yes. It's not compatible with Pathfinder though, not without a lot of work at least. D20 is still the center mechanic. Take the various talents and make them class features much like the rage powers of a barbarian. You have a bunch but only limited slots so every Jedi (force user) will be different. Force powers can still be encounter only powers much like in saga edition. Feats can have a force descriptor much like meta magic feats.
I liked the way Saga edition handled force powers. Have you checked that out?
The Daemons (Yugoloths) would of course help the PC's prevent this from happening. They have a vested interest in keeping the Blood War going. It is a great source of power and money for them.
Planescape w/ 1st and 3rd edition manual of the planes stuff. Love the great wheel and really enjoy Sigil. Picking one from this batch, "Planes of Law" boxed set. Loved the descriptions of Acheron and the Nine Hells. Second would be Spelljammer. If I had to pick one from this, it would be "Practical Planetology".
I want epic... but before that, I would love to see several modules that deal with different adventure types (along with designers side bars of course) that would go from level 10 to 20. This at least would help me so that I don't run level 11, 21, 31... etc like level 1 but with bigger numbers and more dice. But as a world designer... bring it on, I love stating that stuff out. In my world, I peg the dark eight around level 50-60. This gives the players a ton of wiggle room get up in the higher levels and explains why every 25th level party hasn't conquered hell or the abyss yet. I can see them doing the spelljammer thing first, then doing more to develop the outer planes before doing an epic/mythic book. I figure that Galorian tops out just over 20th level and therefore the multiverse will need to be expanded to give players and dms more places to go. Let's face it... give a world as vast as it may seem, there is only a finite number of sentient creatures, meaning that someone somewhere is going to be the highest level critter. By broadening the multiverse it allows for even higher level critters to exist. Wow, my 2 cents turned into 2 bucks.
I've got a question regarding how long it takes a group to finish an AP. I read someone played 4 hours a week and finished in a year. I've only read through Burnt Offerings and it seems that part 1, the start of the swallowtail festival and initial goblin raid can be done in less than an hour. It appears that part 2: Local Heroes, can be done in about 2 hours. Part 3: will take a little longer because it has more combat... Am I doing something wrong? Leaving stuff out? Should I read the other modules to see which NPCs I need to spend more time on and develop more? Thanks, Creeping Death
Having never seen Deliverance, I don't know the reference. We plan on playing about 4 hours a month, so I'll have plenty of time to edit things. Unfortunately I bought some of the modules in PDF format. However, I do have another group that I can get together with so not all is lost. I think I'll settle on 20 point buy and edit the modules. If it gets too hard or bad, I'll just stop with this group and do another adventure path. Thanks, Creeping Death
Hmm... It looks like I'm going to have to make some changes to get this to a PG rating, which I don't mind too much. Thanks for the advice, keep it coming. Sexual themes, I want to steer clear of... violent and grotesque themes I can downplay and rewrite. You don't have to go too far to get the point across to children that these people/monsters are really evil and need to be eradicated/brought to justice.
Hi all, I'm going to be running RotRL soon. I was looking over the character creation rules on the PRD and noticed that there are different levels of campaign types, low fantasy to epic fantasy. This will be the first time I've dm'ed in years (lots of years) and I'm playing with a few newbies and very inexperienced players. I want to avoid TPK's, been there done that, usually not a good thing. But I also don't want the PC's the bowl over any of the opposition and not be challenged at all. There will be 5 players and 1 DM. 3 of the players range in age from 8 to 12, the other two players are in their 30's. My 10 yr old is playing a a fighter type, not sure if that is a straight up fighter, a paladin, range, or whatever. My younger son wants to play an assassin, so that mean rogue. My friend is going to be cleric. I'm don't know what my other friend (the only other one besides me with a lot of experience in rpgs) and his son are going to be yet. We haven't gotten that far. In terms of prep, they all have the player's guide. I've read it, and I just downloaded the first adeventure. I'll be perusing this forum for ideas, hints and tricks. So, looking for any good advice on point buy and I guess anything else you guys can help me out with. Thanks, Creeping Death
Increase the critical range of the scythe to that of 18-20 x3. That should help a bit. As I recall, haven't played 40k in a real long time, these guys are supposed to be very deadly in 1 on 1 combat, so play test it against a single 10th level fighter. If this thing wins about 60%-70% of the time, I'd say it is about right. Damage should be +4 due to 19 strength.
I wasn't too keen on the handling of clerics either. I get into this argument all the time on Spelljammer conversion boards on Facebook & The Piazza. Too many old school gamers want to convert the setting, but want to keep ALL of the 2e rules that were superseded in 3e/PF. I think a more appropriate way to handle clerics, in a 3e/PF game, is to require a caster level check with a DC determined by how far out of step the cleric is to the local pantheon. I like the DC check for clerics to regain/use spells. Having it offset by how fancy/elaborate their personal worship area/shrine is on their ship. This would give a good reason for clerics to build on on their ship. I suppose in an area where the people tend to travel via spelljammer more often, the gods could be in more than one sphere or certain gods would have a "foreign exchange system"; The god of war for sphere x will help/grant spells for visiting clerics of the god of war from sphere y and such, thus reducing or eliminating the DC.
I love Spelljammer and have every TSR supplement. I actually like the idea of the crystal spheres and the phlogiston. Although, I wasn't too keen on clerics being cut off from their deities. I think we chucked that rule. Using up a caster's magic spells for the day was harsh, so to keep that character relevant, (I was usually the DM) I allowed them to acquire an artificer type helm early on. So I would like to see that go or be redone. I am looking forward to Distant Worlds.
I'd say about post 25 the thread is getting too long. IMHO.
oooh, just had a thought. No level caps but bonus caps? i.e. no one can have more than a +50 bonus to hit on their first hit +45 on the second (str, magic, feats, etc can raise it, but raw nakes bonus to hit based on class/level can not be more than 50) So a fighter maxes out at level 50, a mage maxes out at level 100 (4 attacks, just like the fighter). Put caps on the other things like saves, hitpoints etc. At some point mortals just reach their limit. They can continue to gain levels which allows them to gain more feats to do different things, multiclass to pick up new abilities and so forth but numbers stuff don't grow. At some point something become too big for a mortal, I don't care how many levels he has, to do anything to. I always chuckle at the epic level handbook's xixcal (The amazingly tall creature that has great wyrm white dragons perched on its shoulders). How can a 6 ft tall human damage that thing with a 3 foot long sword? This thing can rend for 4d8+48, it's bigger than some mountains and that is all it can do? Having rules to enter demigod status would be the only way to increase stats beyond mortal abilities. This would probably also require a different rules set, but once characters make it past some point in these higher levels, this becomes a new possibility.
I would love a 20+ rules set, as long as it is open and supported. Open so 3rd party publishers can add to it and make adventures for it. Take the PC's to a high enough level that they make the notice of the Dark Eight, a Demon prince or two, a Lord of the Nine, or even a god.
Well said!Ah, but this raises an interesting and relevant point. You don't need to justify the lack of epic-level creatures in positions of power. The non-epic rulers may be in place because the epic characters of the world have better things to do with their time than govern things. Seconded or thirded, oh whatever, this is a really good point!
I'm sure vader would have treated Tarkin more like he treated the officers in Empire Strikes Back.Not if Tarkin was appointed and favored by the Emperor, Vader wouldn't. In which case Tarkin is not in power because of his title, but because someone stronger than Vader wanted Tarkin in power. I'm sure if Tarkin had survived the destruction of the Death Star, Vader would have been able to kill him. This does translate to a church, because the god is stronger than the 25th level cleric and also grants him his powers. But make it a king instead. Can't really have all the DM's important PCs suddenly favored by the gods, then what would be the point of the PCs. On the epic topic: A few more things, I don't want level limits. I had fun statting the Dark Eight to around a CR 60-70 Range. Bel, He was around 80 or so, but that is because he is one of the Lords of the Nine. hmmm... I'm gonna have to do a one shot where the epic pc's take on one of the Dark Eight. So no level limits on the PCs. Gradual increase in power, either keep it the same as 1-20 or slow it down a little more (why not? there are no level caps). But as others have requested, That should be the small part of the book. The rest should deal with DM'ing tips and player tips. Maybe tie it into a system where you lead vast armies, run kingdoms, or found a planar spanning organization. There must be an adventure path or two or three or more that go into the epic levels. I think having an adventure path 2-3 modules that start in the low 20's and advance the character to somewhere in the 30's. I can see level's 1-20 where the PC's at level 20 finally bring down the main villian only to find out that he was just a pawn of Orcus and so really, they have been fighting Orcus the whole time. Maybe the villian didn't know he was being played by Orcus. Think "Batman Begins". For the first 10 levels the PCs are fighting against Falcony, only to find out that Scarecrow is the real villian. So they spend the next 10 or so levels going after him, only to find out that Ra's Al Ghul is the real power behind Scarecrow, and without Ra's Al Ghul Scarecrow isn't really that bad or powerful. So they then spend a few levels into epic (or more if you prefer) going after Ra's Al Ghul. I also think that NPC villians should advance in level as well. Take batman for example. When the PC's are first level Falcony is level 5. When they are 5th level, he is level 8. When they are 10th so is Falcony. At this time Scarecrow is 13th level. They meet up or are close in level by 20th. This would allow a villian to last longer and be different at every encounter instead of having a villian way off and the PCs sprint to get to his level then kill him.
I've always chalked that up to Lucas not really having the whole story fleshed out properly. If he had, I'm sure vader would have treated Tarkin more like he treated the officers in Empire Strikes Back.
I would like to see knowledge: psionics and spellcraft. Chuck psycraft or whatever it was they had. I've played all psionics since '83 or so, can't remember, I was like 10. I really liked the 3x versions. Although I think there could have been a better way to do some of the metamagic and item creation stuff. Right now as it stands, you can be a wizard that takes quicken spell, then multi into a cleric and use quicken spell. Can't do that with a psion, the mechanics are a little too different. (Although I did like the cerebramancer from dragon magazine that allowed you to use power points to fuel spells and such, that was cool.) The real test would be: Is an arcane enchanter overshadowed by a telepath or are they the same? Thrallherd was just plain awesome. I dominated just about anyone and anything. <dramatic re-enactment>
While it was a fun one shot adventure, I could see how easily it could be abused. I was trying to get into metacreativity so that I could create an astral construct or two, and have two thralls. On my initiative turn, I would have 4-5 characters to control. I only missed controling an ancient green dragon because I rolled a 1 on the dominate check or the dragon rolled a 20 on its save, can't remember, its been over a year since I've used psionics. balance, balance, balance.
I kind of liked them, but never got a chance to really use them outside of statting the Dark Eight. I'm sure I'm in the minority though.
I agree, the math was one of the problems. Some things did get over the top; balancing on a cloud.
How to deal with certain spells I'm looking at you divination. With plenty of examples. How do you design adventures that can only be solved with the use of those spells? How can some spells be foiled occasionaly without the player thinking he is always being nerfed? How do you make it interesting so that at level 21-23 you save the world and then from levels 23-26 you save it again, and then yet again from 26-30? Designing worlds that take epic creatures and characters into account. Can't really have an evil 3rd level cleric creating a band of undead to terrorize and conquer the world if a 23rd level cleric with positive energy aura happens to ride by. How do you have a church structure with the head of the church being 18th level and then you, a cleric, come back from a plane hopping adventure at level 25. Who is in charge of the church then? Maybe rules for running world/planar spanning organizations and empires. How does the economy work if you have enough gold to alter the gravity of your home planet? The king is a 10th level noble, his army is 1000 level 2 warriors, I'm a 10th level Legendary dreadnought that has a total DR of 12/-. Mathematically, his army can't stop me unless all 1000 actually rolled a critical hit and did max damage, otherwise I could walk in naked and they pretty much couldn't hurt me. It would also make for a boring adventure if every few days someone came running up the the epic PC's and said "evil epic guy is invading our country by himself again, help us."
I liked the epic spell system, sure it had some warts and other issues, but I think the idea was sound. Clean that up a bit. Some of the Epic prestige classes were cool. Options not bigger numbers. When you are epic and you bull rush you can now push 10', boring. When you are epic and you bull rush as part of your bull rush you can do one of these cool manuvers. If you do an epic book, don't for the love of all that's holy, create non-epic feats in a later suppliment that do what an epic feat can do. Level 20 fighter then multiclasses to wizard and follows that for 20 levels should be the same as a wizard 20 that multis into a fighter for the next 20 levels. I liked that wizards had to option to focus on epic spells, getting more spells per day, getting higher spell slots, or being able to cast many spells per round.
Deal breakers.... hmmm... Union. |