I'm just curious how other people design encounters. I'm running a long campaign (every week for over a year now) and my planning methods are rather scattered. Typically I think of something while I'm out on a walk, speak my idea into speech-to-text in my phone, and then take those notes once I'm back home and try to put them into bullet points.
The problem arises in that sometimes I keep my notes in text files, but sometimes I try to arrange them in a spreadsheet with appropriate columns, and sometimes I just drop the text files in a folder hierarchy on my laptop.
Do any of you have any sort of de-facto planning method for encounters? I'm thinking I want to lean more toward a spreadsheet with columns like "encounter type" (I.E. social/combat/skill), "location", "related plot points", "other notes", "NPCs involved"
A bit of background; I'm running a home game where the PCs came across a patrol of bad guys and last session ended with a few of the patrol members "getting away" in mountainous/foothill terrain. The PCs stated they're chasing the fleeing patrol because having them report back to their main army is really bad.
So I'd like to have an encounter that sets up a chase-like atmosphere without going through the rules for a chase; I want this to be longer than a quick dash through some obstacles, think something more along the lines of Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas following the Orcs to rescue Merry and Pippin.
I was pondering maybe do a skill challenge-esque type setup where they need to make 5 or 6 total successes before 3 failures and at least 2 or 3 of those successes need to be survival (tracking) checks.
I'm also pondering throwing a trap in there that the patrol pre-set in case they were followed that will do more to slow the PCs down than damage them.
Ok, I'm not wanting to convert Saga Edition to Starfinder ... at least not all of it. I like Saga Edition personal combat, I like the feats and the defense mechanics ...
What I do want to convert is the one part of Saga Edition that I think they really dropped the ball on; space combat.
The Saga Edition writers even want so far as to say space combat was meant to be a "highly cinematic approximation." That really should be translated as "a muddled, unexciting experience meant to handwave."
So I'm wondering if people out there have done any conversions of Starships and Skills from Saga Edition?
It doesn't seem like that daunting a task, so I'm more than happy to jump into it, I just hate reinventing the wheel.
What kinds of things would people find on a typical Fantasy RPG road? I'm looking for a random encounter table that doesn't necessarily have to be combat-oriented, but combat is fine.
So far I have the following:
Major trading caravan
Small trading caravan
Governmental caravan
Single merchant
Religious caravan
Entertainment Troupe
Refugee family
Party of adventurers
Band of soldiers
non-combat Military caravan
Any other ideas? My personal thought was when I get enough things on the list to make a few different 1-100 random encounter charts, like low/medium/high level each of "highly-travelled road", "lightly-travelled road", and "rarely-travelled road"
I'm going to be in a party of six playing Giantslayer, and 4 of the 6 players have already said what they want to play;
Aasimar Cleric of Iomedae
Hunter with big cat companion
Half-Orc Paladin of Shelyin
Kobold dex-based fighter
That leaves my fiance and I to choose how to fill out this group.
I've pondered playing an insane gnome gunslinger who uses a medium musket and thinks elaborate plans involving explosives are always the best option. My fiance was thinking something arcane, but is pretty open.
I'm not completely set on the gnome, but it seemed amusing to me.
Gaming coordinator here, don't let the con's odd website scare you off. Should be a lot of fun with Doom Comes to Dustpawn and True Dragons being offered
The home game that I'm running is winding up and it's gone well. The players are all happy and one of the players is so inspired that he's going to be running his own campaign after this. Being a bit indecisive and bad at missing obvious things, I'd like some advice on a character.
The characters are starting at level 3
Due to the nature of the world, any race is allowed
Divine magic from the gods is being blocked on this world
We've been told aberrations are going to be a major enemy and a lot may be taking place underground.
My initial thought was to play a Changeling unchained rogue and focus on claw attacks (until we get high enough for the character to get 3 attacks). After playing Neverwinter 2: Mask of the Betrayer and watching the musical Wicked I've been on a bit of a kick of hags and witches and dig the idea of being a spawn of one. I'm not sure what route I want to go with style and feats, though. I know my character is likely to hide the fact that she's a Changeling (disguise, maybe dark glasses or an eyepatch?) and perhaps even hide the fact that she's female (for story reasons). How would one hide the fact that they're using claws in combat?
As always, players in my Wednesday night home game DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!
If any of you are familiar with Faerun (and I’m sure a lot of you are), I’m talking about the City of Shade. A little background:
I’ve been running a home campaign for the bulk of the last 2 years that has the PCs chasing leads all over Faerun to find out the City of Shade has returned and is doing not good things. The characters are now level 12/mythic 4 and are faced with having just defeated a major lieutenant of the Prince of Shades and are standing before a portal to the City – wherever it may be. I’m figuring 5-6 sessions in the city itself, but I’m having a bit of trouble with populating said city. I’m guessing for the bulk of the inhabitants life is fairly “normal” living on the plane of shadow and they’re not really involved with the Prince of Shades plot to return and restore the “Evil” Netherese empire. Heck, I’m kind of counting on a lot of the city to be non-evil as it means the PCs will have moral choices in front of them in how to defeat the Prince.
Since the city is built on the flat side of a giant chopped-off mountain top, I’ve used Dalaran from WoW for some inspiration … So I’ve got a map of the city and I’ve prepared 3 major “levels.”
The Mezzanine – the flat part of the shorn-off mountain where most of the city is built, “street level” if you will. City Center I have the portal with a lot of city guards and the portal operators. I figure this will be a big, wild, messy encounter. Going out from city center I have roads leading to all the cardinal points, and two other “ring” roads – an inner loop and an outer loop. The city has high walls for population control on the inner loop and lots of residential areas on the outer loop. I’ve even put in some greenhouses to grow what the city can’t trade for in the outer loop. I have a few bars/taverns, some guard posts, an armory, some temples, a library, and some professional shops on this level.
The Underground – inside the upside-down cone of the mountain, there are some important places here. I have library catacombs, a prison, a quasi-legal gladiatorial arena, and some lower-class residences here. There are also many warehouses and old forgotten rooms in this section.
The Spires – There are quite a few tall spires built up from the mezzanine and many of them have bridges and walkways going back and forth leading to it’s own area. The rich/elite/powers-that-be reside and interact here. On the spires I have the Prince’s residence, a few temples, griffon roosts, a wizard school, and a few ultra-rich residences.
Aside from city guards and maybe an encounter in the armory or library, what do you think PCs should face? Should I be ready for them to just rampage on an all-out assault or should I steer them toward hiding out and exploring? When they first get there, the city is going to jump from the Plane of Shadow to the Astral Plane in preparation to steel a Githyanki artifact
I’d like to get at least 3 sessions out of all of this, perhaps as many as 7 or 8. The PCs know their foe, know he’s caused general trouble, but don’t know he’s planning on appearing over Waterdeep soon to launch an invasion with the help of Skullport. My hope is they don’t decide on all-out destruction since the bulk of the city’s inhabitants are non-evil (as are the guards) and try to blend in until the Prince of Shade’s plans come to light.
My girlfriend and I enjoy playing PFS together and the majority of our characters are ones we only play in pairs. We're looking for a new pair now and have settled on a barbarian with an anger management problem in a 12 step program and her sponsor, a pacifist.
Aside from the obvious opportunities at humor, we're pondering how best build the characters to still be effective. The barbarian is easy, although she really wants to go halfling or gnome. The pacifist is the one that had me pondering ... bard? Cleric? Other?
Before Unchained came out he was level 10, had an insanely high dex, and mostly focused on melee damage and not being hit. He was a knife-fighter/scout archetype. I'm wondering what feats and/or rogue talents people would recommend. I don't mind keeping him as a melee specialist who does d8 sneak attacks with his knives.
I dig PFS, a lot. One of the reasons I like it so much is because it built on a lot of successful concepts from other campaigns before it. I was most familiar with Living Greyhawk, but I also played a lot of Living Kingdoms of Kalamar, Living Arcanis, and Living Force.
For those of you familiar with these previous campaigns, what parts of PFS do you think borrowed from them successfully? What things from them that PFS doesn't have would you like to see?
I have a PFS rogue 3/Wizard 1/Arcane Trickster 7, and I might be playing him Friday so I was pondering what, if anything, might be better than the trapspotter rogue talent he currently has.
The quick background: the PCs are travelling from Waterdeep to Anauroch via gnomish airship to begin chapter 3 of 4 of my ~2-year long campaign. They are currently level 9/mythic 2
One of my players is out sick tomorrow night and the rest of the players still want to play. I was planning on throwing a pretty epic encounter at them in the form of a black dragon that's been stalking them that will "jump" their airship, but with a player out I want a bit of a lighter encounter, perhaps even one with some humor.
Any ideas for an easier encounter aboard a gnomish airship for a party of 4? Techno mishap? Wild beast? Inter-dimensional crossrift encounter with Gith?
Background: I have a home game running for close to a year now set in Faerun. The players have investigated things from the farthest isles to the highest mountains and are now aware that an exceptionally powerful bad guy is attempting to Do Something Horrible out in a desert wasteland called Anauroch. The need to travel quite a few hundred miles ASAP and have chartered a gnomish airship to bring them there.
The question: Do I succumb to temptation and do the obvious and have some sort of mishap or an attack while on route?
Pros: fights while flying can be exciting. A crash-landing can be the catalyst for a great side adventure. Gnomish inventions can be amusing.
Cons: it's rather pedestrian, and even a bit expected. The main bad guy of the whole campaign has a dragon underling who would be the only obvious choice to attack and a dragon might make things messy.
Has anyone made or can anyone point me to an intro pamphlet that will tell people about what PFS is?
The skinny: I'm at Raleigh ComicCon representing PFS and had a great group of kids, probably about high school age, sit down and play one of the Silverhex Quests. They loved it and wanted to know a lot more. I did a decent job of pointing them in the right direction, but I'd love a 1 page sheet I could hand out to folks passing by and giving interested looks about what PFS is and how to get involved.
PCs will soon be entering an extra-dimensional space where between 2 and 6 slaves were abandoned. What kind of undead would slaves become? This will be for 9th level PCs with 1 mythic level and should pose an easy-to-moderate challenge.
I'm running a published adventure that has a bad guy who is focused on Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration. I've never in all my 10+ years and many hundreds of adventures had a character that did that.
How do I make them effective?
Am I right in saying when they cast the spell it's at the higher spell's DC for a will save to be 100% effective, and if they make the will save the resultant spell is only 20% effective?
For example, bad guy casts shadow evocation at a group of PCs and chooses fireball. A PC who fails the initial will save gets a reflex save just like it's a normal fireball and the damage is applied as if it's a normal fireball. A PC who makes the initial will save gets a reflex save and the fireball is then only 20% effective?
What spells would be good to emulate for Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration?
Arcane Archer seems like a non-optimal prestige class, even considering Paizo generously allowing non-elves access and giving it 7 levels of spellcasting. To me, the key ability has always been the 2nd level one, Imbue Arrow:
PRD wrote:
Imbue Arrow (Su): At 2nd level, an arcane archer gains the ability to place an area spell upon an arrow. When the arrow is fired, the spell's area is centered where the arrow lands, even if the spell could normally be centered only on the caster. This ability allows the archer to use the bow's range rather than the spell's range. A spell cast in this way uses its standard casting time and the arcane archer can fire the arrow as part of the casting. The arrow must be fired during the round that the casting is completed or the spell is wasted. If the arrow misses, the spell is wasted.
By definition, areas consist of a lot of different things, including lines, cones, and spheres. Does this mean an arcane archer -given enough spellcasting levels- put a spell like Cone of Cold on an imbued arrow and fire it? If aiming for a target, who gets to choose the grid intersection the spell originates at? Who/what determines the direction if it's a line or cone?
Say you imbue detonate and shoot the arrow at an enemy, is the spell cast on them? Could they pull the arrow out and just toss it away?
What if you had a dominated ally and imbued Magic Circle on a blunt arrow and shot it at them, where is the spell considered centered?
Most Arcane Archers I've seen have used fighter or ranger levels to get the BAB necessary for the prerequisite, but a straight-classed Wizard or Sorcerer could enter the class after 12 levels just to get the unique Imbue Arrow ability and it opens up a lot of possibilities!
I played a lot of Living Greyhawk - for those of you not familiar, it was in some ways a precursor to Pathfinder Society using the Greyhawk setting with 3.5 rules. To make a long story slightly less long, the "region" I played in was heavily focused on a militarized society with a focus on cavalry. Because of this I used to see tons of characters with the mounted combat feats. I don't really see it that much in PFS
How often do you see mounted characters at a PFS table? What is your experience with them in combat in your average game?
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I'm going to a con this weekend and for the first time I'm hoping to be 100% paper free, I.E. have all my characters on just my laptop using Hero Lab and/or PDFs. I'll of course have all my chronicle sheets on paper and with me, but I'm wondering if there's any esoteric rules that state a player has to have a paper sheet, or that a GM can require one?
There's going to be 4 of us in an adventure path where we're starting at 3rd level. We already have a fighter (heavily armored dwarf type) and a barbarian. I'm trying to decide what to play.
My preliminary ideas:
Cleric of Desna (but what feats? What style of play?)
Bard (what archetype?
Archer paladin
What say you? What do you feel is very effective at 3rd level?
What are your favorite sorcerer/wizard spells by school? Feel free to list a few of each if you can't narrow it down.
For me, it's as follows:
Conjuration:
Glitterdust - No SR and it makes a creature blind, it's a go-to of mine and one I save my rod of persistence for.
Necromancy:
Enervation - it might not be the most effective spell, but there's nothing like ruining someone's day by rolling a "4" ... or critting
Enchantment:
Touch of Idiocy - I like mine empowered and reach, sure it's a 6th level spell at that point (unless you're using a rod), but to drop someone's mental stats by 1.5 x 1d6 is usually going to make it so they can't cast their best spells
Murderous Command - nothing like getting the big bruiser baddy to smack around his buddies for a round
Evocation:
Chain Lighting - Can be useful if you don't have a way of excluding allies
Abjuration:
Dimensional Anchor - so many bad guys are powerful because they can dim door/teleport, take this ability away from them!
Illusion:
Mislead - it's fun describing what the illusionary double will do.
Divination:
Comprehend Languages - how often does an adventure grind to a halt because you can't read/understand something?
Transmutation:
Haste - So many benefits from 1 spell!
Don't read if you're in my Wednesday night Pathfinder in Faerun home game!
I've been running a Pathfinder game set in pre-spellplague Faerun, and it's going well. The characters have a mythic level, there's a suitably mythic theme (City of Shade returning), and people seem to be having fun. The characters are based out of the biggest city (Waterdeep) and traveling to some distant places.
My problem: I've introduced a few side-quests to get the characters some XP and gear and drop a few plot points, but I over-did it and now the players have been lead to believe the side quest in the sewers is the main quest, when the main quest is far southeast in the mountains.
I have a retired adventurer (Durnan) as a patron and a few loosely allied NPCs - an elven bard who is independently researching the main questline and the halfling majordomo of the thieves guild who introduced some of the side quests.
Any advice on subtly nudging the party back to the main quest?
My girlfriend and I are playing a sorcerer/arcanist pair in PFS right now, and we're using the Allied Spellcaster feat. We started out with "snowball" as our go-to spell, but next level we'll be able to cast 3rd level spells. Any recommendations on what to take? Obviously anything with increasing damage dice is good, and magic missile is nice because at even levels when standing next to each other we're able to get that extra missile.
I have a halfling Shining Knight Archetype Paladin who likes to charge foes from the back of his dog. The majority of his feats are mounted ones - mounted combat, ride-by attack, spirited charge, wheeling charge to name some.
If some allies are up against a large-size bad-guy in melee, can my halfling charge at the bad-guy and make a less-than-90-degree turn (thanks to wheeling charge) to make his charging attack at a different square than would be allowed from a normal charge because his allies occupy the square he would normally have to attack from on a charge?
Say the dog wants to attack as part of that charge, does it have to wait until it gets 1 square closer because of the reach of the lance and then make its attack?
Now let's say the attack actually hits and my 9th level halfling paladin is smiting this bad guy using the spell litany of righteousness - does that spell follow the same rules as "adding" to the damage when you already have a multiplier (from spirited charge with a lance) to make it x4 damage, or does it double your whole x3 damage?
I was playing around with race building (as per the Advanced Race Guide) and got to thinking that with the many dozens (hundreds?) of archetypes out there, "does it make sense to start looking at class building more like race building?"
When you build a race you have a set number of points to spend on things like size, stat bonuses, affinity, speed, movement type, etc. What if building classes were like that? You get a set number of points to spend on things like BAB progression, spellcasting, weapon proficiency, class skills, sneak attack, shapechanging, etc.
... or does that make it too much like GURPS (TM)?
I'm curious as to what folks can come up with, I'm currently taking a 2 minute sanity break from writing code for work and trying hard to concentrate on that, but the back of my brain is pondering just how high DR/- can go on a raging barbarian.
Pretty clear with giants that ogres and hill giants would be the baseline soldiers, but on the Fey side who would it be? If you were to make a "platoon" of Fey to go up against a giant force, what would it consist of?
What kind of encounters might a party expect if the barriers between the Plane of Shadow and the Material Plane were weakened? How would local populace act? How would local wildlife act?
It looks like I'd have to have the arcane bloodline, and take the improved familiar feat. Is it worth those two things to have a pseudodragon as a familiar?
So I've been running a Forgotten Realms home campaign using Pathfinder rules and surprise, surprise, the players have stumbled upon a portal. I went over everything I could find on portals, and in terms of keyed portals, I couldn't find anything on forging a portal key. What are your opinions on this? Should forging a portal key be within the realm of possibility, short of a miracle or wish spell? Is this something that plain old Use Magic Device should be allowed to do?
Usual disclaimer: Don't read if you're in my Wednesday Night Forgotten Realms Game!
plot!:
So the PCs have followed a few different trails of breadcrumbs to learn that a massive shortage of supplies (especially food) is due to a huge orcish army from the north (The Spine of the World) moving south toward Waterdeep, pillaging everything along the way. Eventually I'd like to have the PCs fight the leader(s) of this army, but I'm not sure how much troop combat I want (if any) or just how the PCs could break through the rear lines to find said leader(s).
Right now the PCs are level 5, and about to level, so teleporting back there is a bit beyond them. Ideally I'd like to at least give them the illusion of choice on how to get there, from my point of view their options are as follows:
1) travel there via mundane means
2) sneak there through the army
3) find a way to teleport there
4) fly there somehow
5) somehow get their target(s) to come to them.
This encounter is important as the main leader is a mythic character and is the PC's entry point to their first mythic level.
So ... if you were a party of PCs, could you think of any other options to "break" my plans?
If you're in my Wednesday night Faerun home game, don't read this!:
As a forward, my home game is set in non-spellplague Faerun (I.E. the timeline at the end of D&D 3.5)
So on their way to stopping an invading Orc army, my homegame players are taking a bit of a side quest into an ancient dungeon. I want this dungeon to be a former "research" lab where a rogue Illefarn wizard did cruel experiments on all manner of beasts.
What kind of rooms/encounters should I include? So far I have holding pens where test subjects are held in stasis, so even after thousands of years they are still there. I also have a disposal pit where there's an ooze of some sort at the bottom. I'm figuring some sort of laboratory/experiment chamber and maybe a library plus a small number of living spaces.
What other kind of encounters would fit well? This can be pretty out-there since it's a home game and the more bizarre the better.
The party is an Elf swashbuckler haunted one, a gnome arcanist, a Tengu inquisitor, a human monk, a pixie ninja, and a nymph (bestiary levels who will eventually be an oracle)
Picture a 3 x 4 grid with columns A-C and rows 1-4.
There is a "bad guy" at B1.
A fighter is standing at B4 wanting desperately to charge.
According to "Pathfinder Math" he can legally charge to A2, B2, or C2 because all of those squares are exactly 10' away. Obviously real-world math says that B2 is the closest legal charge.
Are there any specific Pathfinder rules which allow or disallow going to A2 or C2?
Don't read if you're in my Wednesday Night Faerun game!
So we have this boat ...:
The PCs in my home game have managed to capture a small pirate vessel that I had already planned for them to not have; essentially it was originally a diplomatic courier under Neverwinter's flag and the treaty that Neverwinter has with Waterdeep says that if the vessel is ever harbored in Waterdeep and not under the control over Neverwinter it must be returned. The real treasure on the boat is a cache of documents written in a secret code in the captain's quarters that I want to tempt them with but not actually have. These documents are essentially "dirt" on a large number of nobles and city officials in Waterdeep, as the pirate captain was something of a Talon Karrde type who dealt more with information than valuables.
At some point the PCs will make a high enough linguistics check to figure out what they have and even decode the documents. How would a good information broker protect their information in a fantasy setting? Is there a "higher" level spell along the same lines as Illusory Script? Can you attach a contingency to an object so that if someone other than the writer tries reading it, it's ruined?
Essentially, the only bit of information I want them to get is the location of a long, lost dungeon because the pirate captain was just going to trade this away - she's a pirate/information broker, not a dungeon delver. She didn't have that document protected because she was planning on trading it, not using it to gain leverage and/or more information.
I'm looking to play a blaster-type sorcerer for PFS, as I am building this character to pair up with someone, there are 2 "restrictions" - I have to be human and I have to have Allied Spellcaster as one of my first two feats.
I'm trying to think of ways a powerful noble in the largest city on a planet would contact an adventuring party when he knows they're in a specific city a quarter of the way around the world.
My girlfriend and I really enjoy playing Pathfinder, specifically Pathfinder Society. We have two pairs of characters that we've been playing together but both pairs are high level and we can't keep playing them forever.
What are some class (archetypes too!) combinations that go well together? They can be the same class (the butterfly's sting combo, for example) or completely different classes (a controller/buffer arcane and a barbarian).
