CzarGarrett's page

Here’s a question- do we know for absolutely sure, that Aroden is dead?

Why couldn’t he have just continued his lessening involvement and left reality? No phone to call, no forwarding address to send the mail. He’s just gone.

I would think that the result would be the same as dead - no spells, no connection to holy places, etc

And the other gods, Pharasma in particular, know he’s gone, but don’t want to let that knowledge out so if/when he comes back, things can go back to the way they were.

Essence of the Balor.

It could not fully be in the material plane, and therefore the demon aspect is much weaker. Then you might only have a CR5 vs CR7-8 (depending on how you make the lesser Balor version).

Maybe the Balor is using the child as an agent in the material plane to strengthen its true demonic form.

My first thought is environmental.

Who cares if the PCs can escape the tentacles when the whole area is filled with poison/fire/etc that the BBEG is immune to.

This is HIS playground. He makes the rules.

Most people probably know the general details of major events - Earthfall, Whispering Tyrant, etc.

The more regional the event, the less likely people from outside the region will know about it. Thallisson might be relevant to Varisia, but not all to important for the average person in Taldor to know much about.

Excellent. Thank you all. Definitely given me some strong foundations to work with.

I was thinking central Asian kind of themed, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

I was also planning on doing some stuff with Centaurs, given that they are mentioned with Iobaria, and with the plagues I’m guessing they might have moved eastward to avoid.

I like the idea of a large smattering of humanoid types.

So I realize a lot of Casmaron has not really been detailed, but that which has seems to be mostly to the south and east. I seem to have exhausted most of what I could find online in the Pathfinder Wikis and here on the forums.

I’m looking for any resources specific towards the area of Casmaron directly east of Iobaria, so the very northwest corner of Casmaron. These sources could be in-game or just general information about any “real life” analogs for cultures that might be appropriate for the region.

Thank you in advance.

I'd be tempted to use the environment.

Imagine a fight against a Fire Giant in an erupting volcano. Every round or two, the ambient temperature increases and therefore becomes more dangerous to the PCs and not an issue to the Fire Giant.

At first it might just be exhaustion, suffering penalties to hit and to saves. Then it starts to do a bit of damage, maybe 1 or 2 points per round.

After a couple of rounds, the PCs are suffering significant penalties to their attacks and defenses, and taking 10-15 points of damage per round, as well as dealing with the unbothered Fire Giant.

Or something to that effect.

The one time I was able to get a group far enough to found the kingdom, I told everyone that if they couldn't come up with a name as a collaboration in the period between sessions, that it would go to a lottery.

Each person would have 1 entry, written on a piece of paper, added to a pool with a small handful of names I would make up/steal from other sources, and then we'd draw out of a hat.

If I recall, they agreed upon something like Endurheim (which is a rough translation of not-stolen in Icelandic or Danish)

I've always thought of Paladins as being Lawful GOOD, with the emphasis on GOOD. When given the option of doing something Chaotic and Good or Lawful and Evil, they will always go with the "Good" option.

So I guess in the grand scheme of things, I pretty much agree with your stance.

Here's the scenario - in the earliest adventure, the group I am DMing for managed to Charm a random goblin sorcerer (rolled a 1 on the save) and got him to fight along side of them against some of the other goblins. Later on, he started to question why he was fighting the other goblins and the party tied him up while they continued. Nuk-nuk (the goblin sorcerer), then escaped and fled into the night.

I'm thinking of having him come back in some form. However, and I may be overthinking the situation, I have far too many options and rationales, so I need some suggestions to narrow my choices.

The following are the ideas I've come up with:

1. Nuk-nuk swears vengeance and
a) goes forward with sorcery as his means of vengeance
b) forswears magic (as it screwed with his mind) and plays to the strength of goblins, IE, rogue.
c) while surviving in the wild embraces the barbarity of nature and becomes a barbarian.

2. Nuk-nuk realizes that if he fought the PCs he would have died and now he wants to help them by (DMNPC)
a) finding religion and become a cleric
b) needs to use tracking skills to find them again and develops an affinity for the woods and becomes a ranger
c) spends so much time sneaking around that he becomes a full-fledged rogue

3. As #1 above, but Nuk-nuk dies in the process and comes back as some sort of undead.

Like I said, I may be overthinking things, but what would your choice of the options be? Or is there a better option that I'm not thinking of that anyone would care to suggest?

Coming from a background of science, I almost want to say that a neutral cleric of Urgathoa could easily be akin to someone who works at the CDC.

Those people don't spread disease, but they are fascinated by it. A neutral cleric could be someone who looks at and examines disease. Not to spread or combat it, just to understand it.

All I know is if you don't kill one of your players if they try to pick their nose with a lockpick, you're doing it wrong.

Also, I'd try to make some sort of transporter puzzle. They have to figure out the correct sequence of doors to go through, otherwise they'll be teleported back to a starting location.

I would think it would be various outsiders who directly served the deity, as well as any souls of mortals that earned the right to assist.

I doubt it would be lesser deities, unless it was some sort of pantheon structure, although I could see other deities visiting, ala European royalty in the Middle Ages.

Pataxmos invented a dratting nuke

I think that player basically just won D&D

In the Kingmaker AP (first part I believe)

You could look at that for some more specific details.

One tank of gas.

Cardinal Chunder wrote:

or you could assume that the PC has been practicing using the Common to Necril phrase book, available from all good Pathfinder stores, from a very young age.

Yeah, because Taldane->Russian phrase books are so common on Golarion. Or in Russia, for that matter.

The Hungarian one works well.

My hovercraft is full of eels.

I think you should summon a sperm whale and hope it contemplates it's existence while it falls.

The wonders of magic is that it can bend reality.

Since there's so much reality, there needs to be a lot of spells to deal with it.

If the party is good/neutral, I think you have to go Paladin in Ravenloft. It just fits too well IMO.

1) Give it a top hat and you got yourself an award winning NPC already.

3) Seriously, a top hat would make anyone love the bugger.

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Find allies.

Lots and lots of allies. Summoned, paid off, etc.

To help a bit on the DMing side of things, maybe make more of the treasure into consumable stuff.

Rather than a bag full of gems and gold, perhaps a potion of cure light wounds and a 1st level spell scroll.

It kind of gives them the way to keep going without stopping all the time.

I personally would love to see an Arcadian-based Kingmaker campaign.

So much open land to explore.

I wouldn't say it's weak for its CR, but I would say it's weak for what I imagine as an Iconic creature. I wish it had a sort of age category deal, like dragons.

Agreed.

But as mentioned before, the whole class level addition thing could work well.

One might even develop a ratio. 25 years = 1 level. So a 500 year old Aboleth might have 20 class levels. Definitely not a pushover then.

However you want; that's just flavor text.

Agreed.

Also, I feel that the actual actions could vary from culture to culture.

An Elven wizard would probably have a much more graceful set of movements than a Dwarven wizard.

A Iomedaen cleric from Cheliax would have a different style of spellcasting than one from Mendev.

It could be some fun and interesting roleplaying possibilities for characters to explore.

When DM-ing, if there's a rule in question, I usually just go with whatever seems like it will result in the most fun for the group and/or most appropriate for the story.

It's worked well for me thus far.

I would say yes.

As written in those quotes, Scavenger gives a racial bonus, Dump Salvager gives trait bonus.

Thus, two different sources for bonuses and stackable.

Without chiming in on specific builds, I fully support your use of Chains or any character from the Gentlemen Bastards as the basis for your character.

/thumbs up

Isn't there some sort of barbed vest thing in the Adventurer's Armory that does extra damage to a creature that swallows you?

That could help, if I'm not imagining it.

From what you described there, the lying part is the only thing I feel a Paladin won't be okay with doing, and even then, there's still a small chance the occasional lie to avoid bloodshed wouldn't be against a Paladin's personal code. At least IMO.

The whole protecting party members angle is ideal for a Paladin, so just stick with that line of reasoning.

Advanced and Fiendish templates (somewhere in the back of the Bestiary), and additional class levels all come to mind as ways to pump up CR

I think this scenario opens the door for a mini-adventure.

The Paladin now /could/ have the internal moral obligation to find and redeem this cult leader for his actions while charmed.

Or the Paladin finds out the cult leader was evil even before being charmed and thus must hunt them down and bring them to justice.

Regardless, the Paladin shouldn't be considered fallen for the lack of action given the information available at the time.

I took an idea from another RPG system (FATE) for stuff like this.

The concept is that during character creation, each character writes up a little backstory about what made them become an adventurer. Then, the stories are randomly passed out to the other members of the party, who add themselves into the story, in a minor capacity. Doing this twice for each story gives a bit of inter-connectivity and helps the players to build the groundwork for progressing relationships.

As for preferences, I think it's better if there's some rationale that they're all together. I mean, it just seems incredibly unlikely that a handful of people would be in the same time at the same place with concurrent goals.

I did run a game where various PCs kept doing weird things that would annoy other PCs and occasionally would degenerate into a duel (such as loot - if two people wanted the same thing, a roll off wasn't good enough, they had to literally fight over it). But it never got so bad as to reach the stabbing someone in their sleep point.

Maybe go with more of a title rather than name, and have the lich's true name be some sort of key to finding and destroying the phylactery.

The Istentelen (Unholy in Armenian). Real Name - Allistar Swordbane (or something) and have the phylactery hidden behind an engraving of a broken sword over a star.

IIRC, they should stack as they are different sources (racial and unnamed)

If there were multiples of the same source (sacred and sacred, feat and feat, racial and racial etc), they normally wouldn't.

Now that's an interesting way to think about Rovagug. However, I wonder if it would be too much to expect for a half-breed from Belkzen. The thing about Rovagug is that his cult, especially in Belkzen, is almost entirely focused on destruction, violence, savagery, etc that I wonder if it's even possible for a half-orc, educated by his peers, to even come to such a conclusion on his own.

There's "heretics" and fringe-thinkers in every religion.

While perhaps not likely to come to such conclusions, IMO, it's entirely possible.

I often have a side table with several folders to separate things.

NPCs will be in one folder.
Each city/village will be in another.
Campaign notes in a third.
Etc, etc.

That way when the party enters City X, I can grab that folder, while limiting the number of extra papers cluttering my workspace.

Given the association between Bards and art (singing, dancing, storytelling, etc), I'd say it's more innate then learned.

However, since a lot of techniques of art are learned, there is some aspect of magic for a bard being learned.

Personally, I'd give it a 60-40 split in favor of innate.

What type of evil? Or at least in general terms, where does he sit along the alignment axis? I kind of feel like a CE wizard would have a different spell set than LE.

School specialization? If he's a wizard, and you're building him as such, then knowing what school he's specialized in and which schools are opposition schools can help to develop a list.

I would figure a lich would have enough time/resources to develop spells and/or magical items to replicate the bulk of a vampire's abilities.

So while not a true Lichpire or Vampich, or whatever you might call it, you'd probably be able to have the best of both worlds.

I'll agree with Scavion. Low levels there isn't much.

Besides the aforementioned masterwork items, I'd look at low level consumable magic items. Scrolls with one 1st level spell. Some of the cheaper wondrous magic items (anchor feather token, etc). It might not be something they'd directly use, but it helps them build up some resources to sell or trade for the stuff they really want and it can cover the "Ooh, magic item" feel.

As as to there how- setting up little adventures with items in play can help. If the players see an enemy wizard with a wand throwing an interesting spell around, perhaps the party's sorcerer decides he wants it. Or the bandit leader who's armor seems impervious might inspire the party's fighter to get some diesel armor.

A towel.

Duh.