RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16. RPG Superstar 6 Season Star Voter, 7 Season Star Voter, 9 Season Star Voter. Organized Play Member. 475 posts (591 including aliases). No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 3 aliases.
The premise is to get hi-spec equipment ahead of the level curve to give you more survivability / death-dealing.
- (Optional) Start off with a race which has a bonus to smithing (Nord; Orc; Redguard)
- Choose the Imperial guy (Hadvar) in Helgen
- Finish the starter dungeon at Helgen (note that you can train Sneak on the sleeping bear. Sneak around until it wakes up. Back off quickly and it will go back to sleep again)
- Go to Riverwood (via the "Warrior" Guardian Stone; collect blue mountain flowers) and talk to the smith (Alvor). Clear out the smithy of ingots to train smithing.
- Take Steel Smithing and Dwarvern Smithing as perks as a priority. Others in combat skills.
- (Optional) Clear out Embershard Mine near Riverwood for iron ingots and a Smithing skill book
- Travel to Whiterun Stables and catch a cart directly to Markarth
- If you have less than 30 Smithing (and the Dwarvern perk), go to the mine site just outside the city (Left Hand Mine) and get the Kolskeggr Mine quest to clear out the Forsworn.
- On the way to Kolskeggr, collect hanging moss (makes good potions with blue mountain flowers)
- Kill Forsworn by preferred method
- Mine all the gold
- Make gold rings until Smithing is 30+
- Get the quest to kill the spider from the Wizard (Calcelmo) in Understone Keep
- Kill spider and collect dwemer metal pieces
- Talk to Calcelmo and get the key to the museum
- Steal dwemer metal pieces from museum while sneaking around
- You should end up with around 400 dwarvern metal ingots from all that
- Make dwarvern bows like a maniac (you will need iron ingots)
- Spend your money on: iron ingots to make more dwarvern bows; magic items to improve your smithing; a blessed or banishing weapon (which, when you are training enchanting gives the best return on petty soul gems); petty, lesser and common soul gems; a soul trap weapon (for filling the aforementioned soul gems); orichalcum ingots; ebony ingots
- You should end up with smithing around 60 or at this point. Make yourself some kick-ass orc armour and soul-trapping weapons.
- Scour through Nchuand-Zel under Markarth, killing all the falmer with soul-trapping stuff to fill the soul gems; collect tonnes of dwemer metal again.
- Make blessed weapons with the crappy falmer weapons and your low-rent soul gems to train enchanting (change to the wizard shrine and nap to boost xp first)
- Make more dwarvern bows to boost smithing to 80-90
- Train alchemy with blue mountain flowers and hanging moss
- Use ebony ingots to make a kick-ass set of ebony armour upgraded with high enchantment and alchemy bonuses
- (Optional) Travel to College of Winterhold to buy daedric hearts from Enthir and make daedric stuff instead of ebony stuff
- (Optional) Improve haggling skills so you make profit on the buying ingots / crafting / selling cycle
- (Optional) Travel to Riften – outside town is a shrine which has a necklace of zenithar to improve your haggling
- (Optional) Do the Clavicus Vile quest via Falkreath to get the Mask of Clavicus Vile to improve your haggling
- (Optional) To train Conjuring to get better summons, cast Soul Trap repeatedly on a corpse. Cons: Try to explain to you wife why you are interfering with a semi-naked digital corpse for an hour straight.
Mothman, I am away tomorrow and Saturday attending a funeral. If you guys begin, I am happy for Dementrius to run Haelynn on my behalf (if you both don't mind...)
Yeah, I can run Haelynn for the next couple of days. Mothy, do I make a new alias ("Yumiko's ugly sister") or just post as Yumiko/Haelynn?
As for background, my original idea for Haelynn was her father accompanied the "heir" to Varisia and fell in love with a local woman. He died in battle, and she died in childbirth. Considering the nature of their children, the birth was probably very abnormal and might still be the talk of local legend.
The sisters have grown up under the partial guardianship of Koya (Friend of the Family trait) and by their own skills and talents. I was thinking Haelynn and Yumiko have looked out for each other and supported each other to survive, and probably have a reputation for being quite mischievous in their youth.
Since they were born in Sandpoint, the two have only ever known the town and are long-term locals. Haelynn probably has a strong connection to Ameiko and Xargin as she worships Shelyn and enjoys performing (especially dancing and singing). If Marc is the dashing knight in town, she might also spend time trying to see him sparring or riding about town.
I am seeing a scene where, moments after the sisters are born, the two of them are laid head-to-toe swaddled in blankets while the town's midwife and clerics desperately attempt to save their mother. As the camera pans up and over them, we see the two babies forming a yin-yang symbol with their sleeping infant forms.
I can see Yumiko having a hate/lust/envy thing going on with most of the high Charisma male characters (I like him, he's handsome, but unobtainable because I'm this cursed thing. What a jerk. I'll be mean to him so that he pays attention to me. *Turns to jelly if shown any interest*).
1. Brief summary of tack used ("I'll argue that he'll make a lot of money if we get into the king's treaury").
(equivalent to "I move into flanking" for attacks)
2. GM applies relevant modifiers (the target needs money to pay for his child's medicine - have a +2 to the roll; the target is surprisingly honest - have a -2 to the roll).
3. Roll to determine result
4. Player/GM role-plays result.
I've been planning a post-Earthfall Kingmaker-style campaign for my group, and put together some rules which overlay classes / equipment / spell access / kingdom building rules with a technology tree (cribbed from Civilization).
Basically, pick the technologies you want active and that sets the classes, equipment and spell levels available. The stuff relevant to you starts at about page 12. Tech tree is on the final page.
My "go to" mid-campaign break for the DM and players is to bust out the 3.5 Stronghold Builder's Guidebook and let the PCs build their own individual bases of operations.
...and then you join up with the other players and try to wreck them with a band of NPC adventurers when the characters are out. Total cathartic death stomping.
Rules Guidelines:
Spoiler:
Attacking the Strongholds
Once the Strongholds are completed, each player will take turns to defend their stronghold as GM against the other players.
The idea is to have several fast, one-shot adventures to showcase the style of the strongholds built.
Challenge Rating
The defending player chooses the challenge rating of the dungeon. This will be the level of the other players' characters that will be raiding his stronghold.
Characters
After the stronghold is given a challenge rating, the other players will develop a party of characters based thematically on one of the defending player’s enemies / loose ends. The type of party will be kept secret until the game is ready to be played.
These characters will have PC wealth per level and 10% of this will be in cash.
*DM creates a list of potential enemies (in order of appearance)*
Treasure
A challenge rating appropriate the defending player will put up treasure, going by the total treasure by encounter tables. Portable equipment for minions counts as half towards the required treasure.
Stronghold Effectiveness
Do not worry if the strongholds are too effective. Unfurl every last devious method to defend your treasure. You don't have to be fair. But make it realistic – hidden pit traps and contact poison are just as likely to kill off (relatively) innocent minions as they are intruders.
Creature Features
Cost for keep minions / creatures are as follows, assume 1 year of costs before the raid takes place.
Staff
Typical staff types can be found in the DMG (Table 4-1, pg 105) or the Stronghold Builder’s Guidebook (Table 2-11 pg 42).
The hiring prices for these should be taken from the SHBG.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries employed are hired on the following scale:
CR Cost / Month
1/3 (e.g. Goblin warriors) 6 gp
1/2 9 gp
1 (e.g. War 2 or Wiz 1) 18 gp
2 36 gp
3 72 gp
4 144 gp
5 288 gp
CR 9 x 2^(CR) gp
Monsters
Animal intelligence monsters can be purchased to defend the lairs. The following costs include training (your choice of tricks)
CR Purchase Cost Upkeep Cost / Month
1/3 25 gp (e.g. Small dog) 1.5 gp
½ 100 gp (e.g. War pony) 1.5 gp
1 150 gp (e.g. Riding Dog) 1.5 gp
2 400 gp (e.g. Warhorse) 1.5 gp
3 800 gp 3 gp
4 1600 gp 6 gp
5 3200 gp 12 gp
CR 100 x 2^(CR) 3 x 2^(CR-2)
Monster Manual List price overrides this guide
Flight x 5 x 2
Intelligent (>6) monsters use the Mercenaries list.
Equipment
All equipment purchases are the responsibility of the defender's PC.
Super Battleship Yamoto and Iron Sky were screened back-to-back on SBS last night. They are both cheesy and terrible in exactly the way I find entertaining.
Fighters ignore all feat pre-requisites when choosing their bonus combat feats. The fighter is now a master at switch-hitting and combat styles. Huzzah.
The Schtick Out of Combat:
Spoiler:
Fighters add their bravery bonus to their Leadership score when recruiting followers (not cohorts). I’d probably give rogues a similar bonus through a “Guild-Leader” rogue talent. Or provide a feat which doubles the number of followers for these two classes, or something like that.
Note that followers can make you the “skills guy” for Appraise, Craft, Diplomacy checks to gather information, Handle Animal to train creatures, Knowledges and/or Linguistics, based on the amount of aid another actions your followers can accrue. Concentrate your guys into teams to give +20 to +40 bonuses to a check. You don’t even need any ranks in the skill – your Top Men are on the job and make the roll using their Skill Focused modifiers.
Clarify in the rules that a successful DC XX Knowledge check is equivalent to a divination or know the path. You can get 150+ followers with a maxed Leadership score. That’s +300 to a check if you concentrate your followers like a laser. Or +50 in six skills. Codify that ridiculous results such as this are as, or more, effective than the magical method.
Let followers be formed up into troops, as outlined in PF #71: Rasputin Must Die!, which are swarm-like squads capable of dealing with CR-appropriate encounters (and likely have equipping and training costs similar to calling creatures with planar ally or planar binding). Note that he can then set up his smithing followers to supply this equipment at 1/3 cost.
Give feats that enable non-humanoid followers of a CR equal to the “level” column of the Leadership table. Need a lift across the continent? Lucky you are buddies with a flight of giant eagles! You are now in mass overland flight, teleport or shadow walk territory.
Note that if a fighter doesn’t want to do this out-of-combat stuff for character reasons (like a wizard who chooses to never cast divinations), he just doesn’t take Leadership or takes an archetype that swaps out bravery - no harm, no foul.
The Schtick Downtime:
Spoiler:
Do You Even Lift Bro? (Combat)
You can train to enhance your physical abilities.
Prerequisite: Base attack bonus +6, Improved Unarmed Strike
Benefit: You can train to gain the benefits of a manual of bodily health, manual of gainful exercise or manual of quickness of action as if you had crafted the wondrous item and immediately read it. Training takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp of the item’s price. To train, you must spend half of its base price on training facilities, equipment and mentors. You substitute your base attack bonus for your total caster level and for your skill check to create the item. You may add the ability modifier for the ability you are raising to this skill check. The DC to create the item does not increase for any necessary spell requirements.
If you fail the skill check, only your time is wasted, and you may immediately try again with a cumulative +2 bonus for every previous failure.
Kid #1 lost his first tooth last night. He was sooooooooo excited about the tooth fairy that he went straight to sleep instead of needing me to read his encyclopaedia of space for an hour and explain the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system.
Note that the plan was defensive in nature, in case Commonwealth imperial designs threatened American security. Here's a little secret, we have planned for the possibility for war with Oz, both the nation and the Emerald City, as well. One of my training instructors favorite scenarios was a surprise attack by Klingon Forces.
Gear:
A bunch of bananas (improvised weapons)
2 x Pearl of Power (3rd-Level spell) for greater magic weapon(s)
+2 mithral shirt
Belt dex +4
Amulet of Natural Armor +1
Cloak of Resistance +2
Ring of Protection +1
Handy Haversack
2800 GP in other stuff
Norm cheats by having his wizard pal cast greater magic weapon on his ‘nanas at the start of the day, replacing the spells with pearls of power for no net impact.
His attack routine is to use a quickened true strike with a secondary banana attack to disarm his enemy. His Catch Off-Guard feat then makes the enemy flat-footed against the remainder of his attacks, which then apply sneak attack damage.
Norman has an average DPR of 37.7, which is pretty good considering what he’s beating you to death with. However, Norman has a lot of trouble against monsters with natural attacks, and instead uses his bananas as a bribe to give him enough time to run away.
An interesting variant on Norman would be the banana-fighter who takes Deadly Stroke to inflict Con bleed on his disarmed and flat-footed enemies. What you have to do with a banana to cause Constitution damage is left to the imagination.
So we’re getting arses handed to us on a platter by a certain lamia matriarch after struggling up the “Bell Tower of Resource Depletion”. Our paladin and my fighter are struggling to hit her at all, our sorcerer’s out of spells – things are looking grim. With a burst of insane inspiration, my fighter climbs to the top of the bell tower with the intent of pushing the angel statue onto our flying enemy.
DM: “…sure you could try that but it’s pretty heavy. You’ve really got bugger-all chance of hitting her, plus you’re likely to take out the entire tower and kill everyone in the party.”
Me: (CN alignment taking over and laughing with glee) “PUSH!!!”
DM: “… um OK. First make a DC 20 Strength check to even move the thing”
Me: Rolls an 18 and passes the Strength check. “OK, now what?”
DM: “Make a touch attack at -12, due to a difference in weapon size and your non-proficiency with statues.”
Me: Rolls a natural 20. “Aha! This can best be described as a monumental blow, as I’ve hit her with a f$&king monument! Now to confirm the critical”. Rolls a 17, and after determining that my Point Blank Shot counts, hits exactly the lamia’s touch AC.
DM: “OK that’s normally 10d6 damage for being hit with a Colossal object, doubled for the critical hit, plus 20d6 falling damage…that’s a total of 158 points of damage...”
Me: “…plus two for Point Blank Shot…”
DM: “…shut up Dave, she’s already at -85 hp.”
The rest of the encounter involved us coming up with hare-brained schemes for escaping a collapsing bell-tower.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
