DrSnooze's page

To me, the big problem with the "silver bullet" idea is that saving throws are too high. The worst feeling as a player is having the perfect spell for the exact situation you're in, and then watching it fizzle because the bad guy made a saving throw. As a martial, missing still isn't fun, but if you miss you can just swing again next round. With a Wizard, you only have a certain number of spells, and you probably don't have that exact spell prepped more than once. It's incredibly disappointing to experience this as a player.

The tradeoff is supposed to be that you're doing subpar damage most of the time, but a few times a session it's your time to shine. When these moments are rare, not being able to shine is a bad feeling.

Do the players just say "I'm searching the room" and then roll a perception check for whatever might be there? Or do the players say "I'm going to look through this desk" and roll for that?

I've always done the "searching the room" method, but I wonder if we're missing out on some of the fun of finding a thing behind a painting, or under a rug. But I'm concerned that if we start to do specific searches for different room features, it's just going to bog down the game when there's not really anything to find.

I'd ignore the warnings against the magical slumber, for several reasons

First, as the GM you have the license to start the game however you see fit. You're basically allowing them to play what would be the beginning narration of the game before actually starting the game, ala Fallout 4(speaking of which, this sounds a lot like a Pathfinder take on Fallout 3).

Second, deities, even minor ones, trapped in a decrepit temple have the ability to put mortals into pretty much state they want to. Should they foresee some great calamity that only the heroes can stop at some later time, then a long winter's nap is warranted and highly possible.

I kind of like the bones of your story, though I'd ditch Golarion and make my own world, to better tie in the elements of the story. Tie in the waters to a creation myth, to make a single source (for later purifying). Have the Orcs and other monsters be servants of some evil that has been locked in battle with the "Mother Water" since time began, which is why they poison the water and are also immune to its effects (or maybe they're not and the constant exposure to the tainted waters is what makes Orcs and other monsters). Carrying the last bit of "True Water" given to them at the ancient and forgotten temple/spring, they must then purify the waters they come across and defeat those who would try and stop them from eventually reaching the Mother Water and breaking the curse once and for all.

This here is the core of what I'm going for. The part that I've outlined is just an intro of sorts, setting the table for the triumphant return of the heroes. The deity of choice knew what was coming and couldn't stop it, so he/she sheltered the PCs away so they could fix it after it happened.

I wanted to do some "pre-apocalypse" stuff so they can get to know people and have some ties to the world that was. Finding out what happened to people they knew, rescuing them, etc.

I was definitely going for some mythical "source of all water" thing atop the mountain. Of course with modern understanding of how things work, that doesn't make sense, but this is a fantasy setting. If there's a deity who helps crops grow, creates monsters, corrupts humans to do evil, then it's not really so crazy that there's a "source" of water somewhere. I'm also thinking about making the "decanter" dispense cure potions in some limited capacity, to get rid of the "wand of cure light" concept (which I dislike) and also gives it some intrinsic value so they don't just discard it.

Maybe it's not an Orc shaman who's behind it all, maybe it's some sort of wizard or something. Doesn't really matter, it could be anything.

Hello all! I'm starting put some thoughts together on a homebrew campaign. Right now I'm playing in an Iron Gods campaign, so it's still 6-8 months minimum before I run a game, but I wanted to do a bit of work on it ahead of time.

I'm planning on running Pathfinder 1E, but I'm mostly looking for story advice, so I may post this in the 2E forum as well. I don't know the geography and history of Golarion as well as I probably should, so that's where I'm asking for the most help. But any and all aspects of the campaign are open to suggestions, so have it! Here's what I have so far.

I'm calling it the "Orc-pocalypse". The party starts out in the regular, normal world of Golarion, in a remote village somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A non-descript village of a few hundred people, probably a truck stop on the way to some nearby mines, logging camps, etc. The party will probably start out doing some small errands for some people around town, to get familiar with the village and its inhabitants. The story starts for real when a stranger emerges from the woods and asks the PCs, specifically, to help clear out a temple (Gozreh maybe?) that has been overrun by goblins.

The party goes to investigate this temple out in the wilderness and finds a small fort that is indeed overrun by goblins. They fight their way through and liberate it, and find that it's built around a giant tree, which is apparently the "altar" of the temple. Approaching the tree, it opens up to reveal a small cavern underneath.

The party goes down and finds a small room with a fountain. A statue, with a small jug of water, infinitely pouring crystal clear water into the basin below. Overcome with a feeling of peace and serenity, the party drifts off to sleep.

They wake up and find that the statue has changed its pose, and the water jug is now in their possession, functioning like a decanter of endless water. They wander outside, slowly discovering that months have passed. The fort is overgrown, the woods deepened. As they return to the village, they find it overrun by orcs! They must then work to defeat the orcs and free the village.

Over time, they discover that the entire continent has been conquered by orcs, giants, ogres, goblins, etc. They steadily increase their scope, starting with the small village and working their way up to larger and larger conquests. But how did this happen?

Eventually they discover that the water is the key to all of it. An orc shaman has cursed the source of all water, at the highest mountaintop in the land. The orcs are immune to it, but humans, elves, dwarves are all weakened by it. This weakness causes their weapons to break and their bodies to falter, allowing the orcs to easily conquer them. The PCs must eventually climb to the top of this mountain, defeat the shaman, and use the decanter to cleanse the source.

So... thoughts on this? I'm debating whether this should be the end of the campaign, or a midpoint. Climbing a mountain is not easy at level 9 or 10, but by 15 or 16 it's pretty trivial. Perhaps after cleansing the water, they still need to return and defeat the leader, and with it the army?

As I said, any and all aspects of this are open to debate. I don't know the geography that well, so suggestions for locations would be great. Perhaps some good milestone towns and cities to liberate as well? Some good groups to ally with along the way?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

I know this has been vaguely covered in a few threads, but I didn't find anything that addressed this specific question. Do the bonuses/penalties seem backwards in a certain way? For example, the character associated with Lust (he and Shayliss got chased out of the basement) would have a *bonus* to save against being dominated by Delvahine. This seems really backwards to me - he's clearly susceptible to being seduced, so I feel like he should have a more difficult time resisting such an effect.

I don't really like adding the damage from the two weapons together for Double Slice (or Flurry). The main point is how it interacts with resistances/vulnerabilities, but I think it's better to keep them separate for this exact reason. I think a big two-handed Power Attack should cut through resistances a lot easier than two smaller attacks. Conversely, I think multiple small hits should trigger vulnerabilities more than a single big hit.

As is, the flavor doesn't feel different for these two mechanics.

What's really odd to me is that Line of Effect and Cover are defined the same way. In fact, the definition of Line of Effect actually references the definition of Cover. So if I'm reading it right, that means it's impossible for something to have Cover and still be targetable, because by the same definition, that something would not have Line of Effect.

So what if my players don't want to board the Empire of Bones and instead stick to the plan from book 5? Or board the Stellar Degenerator and try and use it to shoot down the Empire of Bones?

I understand that an AP can't account for everything, but a sidebar about these options would have been nice.

All that aside, seems like an epic ending to the story!

Honestly I have a hard time believing that any party will decide on their own to try to board the Empire of Bones. It's such a ludicrous idea that I doubt most groups will even consider it, let alone actually decide to do it without heavy GM intervention. I ran this with my group last week, and they had planned on going through the gate to get to the Stellar Degenerator, which is by far the most reasonable thing to do. Perhaps figure out how to use the weapon to destroy the Empire of Bones, or stick with the original plan and crash it into a star.

Even if they don't want to do that (I told them the Corpse Fleet had managed to get between them and the gate somehow, which already stretched the bounds of believability) then why would they think it's safe for them to try to board the capital ship? And if they do, why would they believe that the five of them could even pilot a ship larger than Absalom Station?

In the end, I had to railroad them into boarding the Empire of Bones. They hadn't even mentioned it as a possibility, and I told them that's where the adventure wanted them to go. It was awkward and very disappointing.

I've used HLO for managing my Starfinder character, as a player. Honestly, it was very convenient to have access to my characters on all my devices (home pc, work pc, laptop, phone).

I think the online format has potential, it's just very limited right now.

Except I used DropBox with HeroLab Classic to do exactly this, until Lone Wolf removed DropBox support just before they released their online-only model. So no, they won't be getting any more of my money.

Yeah, feel free to add a starship-scale monster! Those can be fun and can real highlight the strangeness of the Drift!

Thanks for the tip! Any suggestions as to what monster I can use? I was thinking about the Novaspawn from the Alien Archive, but I'm also considering maybe a bunch of smaller monsters (CR 4 or 5) instead. Not too many choices available yet though.

Is the Azlanti attack in Chapter 1 relevant to the plot, or is it just a random encounter? I suspect that my players will take it to mean that the Azlanti Empire is now interested, and somehow connected to the Stellar Degenerator plot. I'm thinking about replacing this with a monster-as-starship encounter instead, but I don't want to miss a key plot point later on by doing this.

Any chance Paizo is talking to Isaac Childres, the creator of Gloomhaven? It's currently the #1 game on Board Game Geek, and is an amazing dungeon crawler with long term legacy play. I've been playing it nearly every week for almost a year now, and I'm not even close to being bored with it.

I think Pathfinder would be a perfect fit for this game. A Pathfinder-flavored version would work great, using the Iconic characters. Any chance Paizo has contacted the creator to work something out?

I'm running Incident at Absalom Station right now, and we're running without xp. I'm going to level up the party at appropriate times in the story, but I'm not clear on when exactly those times are. The book provides some guidance, but it's non-specific.

They're supposed to level up to 2 some time while they're exploring the ship. But they never leave the ship, and I don't really like them just jumping up in level mid-exploration. Maybe after the ship and before the asteroid makes the most sense.

Are they supposed to be level 3 before the last encounter? I've heard some reports that it's pretty tough. It's a party of 5, and not 4, so maybe it won't be so bad? Should I bump them to 3 before the encounter? Or just let them fight through it at level 2 and then have them reach 3 at the end?

TigerDave (or anyone else who's done this with 5 players) how are you finding the balance for a 5-player party? I'm about to start it next week with a group of 5 very experienced tabletop players who are going to be fairly optimized. It's written for 4 players, but it's supposed to be fine as-is for 5 players, but I'm a little wary of that. Have you had to modify any encounters to suit?

As a non-creative DM, I hate when my players go talk to an NPC that I hadn't planned out, and I have to quickly come up with a name, description, and persona for that NPC on the spot. So, I often try to generate a list of NPC names ahead of time, and use them as necessary throughout the adventure. Perhaps we can compile a list here, so we can borrow from each other's ideas?

The idea is to provide a very simple NPC with as little or as much detail as you want, even if it's just a name and race. You might have a specific profession in mind, or it might just be an average everyday citizen whose non-description job isn't important to the story or character.

So, some examples to get started:

Jerel Mordhel, the Human shopkeeper. Young guy who had dreams of being a Starfinder but was forced to stay home when his father became ill.

Merilee Trinnic, the Ysoki starship mechanic with a bum leg that keeps her from traveling too much.

Lorgen Wathier, the Human politician who's becoming increasingly frustrated with the red tape he needs to wade through to help the people of his home planet.

Greta Koripsky, the Vesk mercenary with a love of knives.

Thorien Mel'Akin, the Lashunta doctor with a soft spot for children.

Add yours!

I ran the Goblin Pyros encounter this evening, where the party fought three goblin warriors and the warchanter. I had downloaded the goblin song audio, and decided to play it (loudly) on repeat until the warchanter died. This drove my players nuts, because they were already sick of it by the second time it looped. They really wanted to kill the warchanter to make it stop. As soon as he fell, I turned off the goblin song, which they heartily celebrated.

This was exactly the effect I was hoping for! I recommend doing this if you're running this AP. :)

I've just started a RotL campaign, and I'm thinking about combining these two NPCs into one character. She'll attempt to seduce one of the NPCs, either failing or getting caught, and then turn up dead in chapter two. Any foreseeable problems with this setup? I feel like the murders will carry a bit more weight if the PCs know one of the victims ahead of time.

Ah, forgot to mention that the Rogue is, in fact, Unchained.

Hello! I'm about to start up a Rise of the Runelords campaign, and I've got a group of brand new players. One has played 3.5 extensively, the other three are brand new to tabletop RPGs. I let them choose their own characters, and they ended up with the following:

Halfling Hunter
Halfling Bard
Elf Rogue
Human Inquisitor

The Hunter and Bard are going to be bow focused, the Inquisitor melee. I'm worried about this party composition. They don't have a full caster (either Divine or Arcane) and they don't have a full BAB character. The Inquisitor is their main healer and tank, with the Hunter pet also soaking some attacks.

I'm worried about this party composition. I'm hoping to run the module mostly as-is. I gave them 20 point buy, and I'm using the optional Hero Point system. Thoughts? Should I try to talk one of them into switching characters?

Great, thanks!

This came up on the BGG forum, and I think the rules are unclear on the timing here. The question is, does Lem use his "swap a card for a card in your discard" ability before, or after advancing the Blessings deck?

On the "Turn Over" on the reference sheet, it suggests that advancing the Blessings deck is part of your turn. To me, this would mean that if Lem is going to swap a card, it must be done before advancing the Blessings deck.

However, on page 9 it says "Before your turn, flip the top card from
the blessings deck faceup onto the top of the blessings discard pile." This suggests that advancing the Blessings deck is not actually part of your turn (although this paragraph is under the "Your Turn" heading on that page). That would mean Lem can advance the Blessings deck, see what's at the top, and then swap that blessing out of his discard into his hand, assuming he has the appropriate cards of course.

Which is correct?

Could be any of a number of different animals (horse or other mount type) but a "Recharge to move to another location" would be a nice card.

I agree with you Remi, I think the rules should say that if you're using your base strength die to attack unarmed, it should qualify as a Melee attack. This would also apply to Sajan's unarmed attack.

Without using a weapon, you cannot use the Snake and Lini's "bear form" to change the base attack die to 1d10 at the same time.

You can only use the Snake if you're making a Melee attack. Lini's Strength attack is not a Melee attack, unless you're also using a Melee weapon. Therefore, if you use the Snake without a weapon, you are using the default 1d4 Melee check as your base die. This is NOT a Strength check. It's just a Melee skill check, which is not associated with any particular attribute. Therefore, Lini cannot discard a card to change this to a d10.

My experience so far has been that the strategy changes a lot depending on the size of the party. With smaller parties (1-3 players), the Blessings deck isn't really an issue. It's not difficult to get through all the locations before the Blessings deck runs out. The challenge is keeping your characters alive, because defeating the various challenges is tough. Healing is important to keep your decks full.

With larger parties (4+), this is less of an issue because you can help each other a lot, and with proper scouting it's not hard to match skills to challenges. I find that we rarely lose a challenge with a large group, and healing is only used a 2-3 times total in a scenario. But the Blessings deck becomes a problem, so you have to use as many blessings and allies as possible to explore as much as you can. Use Detect Magic, Detect Evil, etc. as often as they come up.

Is "Combat" a mutually exclusive damage type? Or can you have damage that has both the "Combat" and "Fire" traits?

I don't quite agree with this interpretation. The fact that it's Acid damage is irrelevant as far as whether or not it's Combat damage. For example, if I use an Acid Arrow spell to attack something, that is both Acid damage and Combat damage.

I may be wrong, but I think there are two cases where damage is "Combat Damage":
1. You take damage as a direct result of failing a Combat check. Most often, this type of check occurs when attempting to defeat a monster, but not necessarily. The determining factor is that it's a "Combat" check.
2. The damage type specifically says it is "Combat Damage".

I'm going by memory here on these specific cards, but I believe the Goblin Commando does "1 Ranged Combat damage" before the encounter. This is Ranged Damage, and also Combat Damage. The Enchantress does 1 Fire Damage before the encounter. This is NOT Combat Damage. Theoretically, another creature might deal "1 Fire Combat damage" before the encounter. This would count as Combat Damage.

If a creature requires a check to defeat that is not a Combat Check, the resulting damage is not Combat Damage. The fact that it is coming from an encounter with a monster does not automatically make it Combat Damage, as far as I know.

Again, this is my interpretation of the rules, so I may be wrong. As always, I defer to Vic and/or Mike to tell us what's up.

Well, clearly it wouldn't be "legal" per the rules, but I don't see how it would break the game if you did it that way as a houserule. I agree with TClifford though, I think it's more fun if you have some idea of what's available in a given location.

That's not really what the rule says. I know that in terms of flavor, that's what's going on, but its not specified in the rule book that it's a Melee attack. It does say is that you can use your Strength or Melee skill, but it does not say that this check gains the Melee keyword.

Perhaps that's being overly pedantic, but rules are important.

Incidentally, is Sajan's attack (or anyone's unmodified Strength attack) considered a "Melee" attack? It doesn't say anywhere in the rules that it is, so I'm assuming it's not. In terms of flavor, it does feel like it should be.

Just adding my vote for this as well. I'd buy a set of all 11 iconics for this game in a heartbeat.

Picked up this spell on Lem, which is fantastic. It raises a few questions in terms of timing.

The spell gives a +3 bonus to Charisma checks for the rest of the turn. The question is how this interacts with other spells. Now, you can't play more than one spell on one check, so if you encounter a monster, you can't use Glibness and then use Force Missile. But what if you've already used Glibness? Some use cases, and how I'm interpreting them:

1. I encounter an Ogre. I cannot use Glibness and then Force Missile to cast Force Missile with a +3 bonus. This violates the rule preventing me from playing two spells on the same check.

2. I encounter an Ogre. I use Force Missile to try to defeat him, and succeed. I then use Glibness to make my Recharge attempt easier. I get a +3 bonus on my Force Missile recharge, then a +3 bonus on my Glibness recharge. Since I still have a +3 bonus on recharges, I go ahead and use a Cure spell while I'm at it, and recharge that with a bonus as well.

3. I use a Cure spell. For my Cure recharge, I use Glibness and gain the +3 bonus on the recharge for both spells. Then, on the same turn, I encounter an Ogre. I use Force Missile to fight it. I still have the effects from Glibness, so I gain a +3 bonus on my Force Missile attack. This might be questionable, but my interpretation is that I didn't play Glibness on this check - I just still have the bonus from a previous play.

4. So if #3 is correct, then how about this? I encounter an Ogre. I decide to play Glibness immediately, before any checks occur. I play and recharge at +3. Then, I use Force Missile to combat the Ogre, gaining the +3 bonus from Glibness, which was played prior to this check.

I think the two main problems you're going to encounter are these:
1. Valeros and Sajan are extremely combat-heavy, and don't have a good variety of skills. Harsk has a pretty good set of skills, but nobody in the party has a good Int or Cha. What are you going to do when you run into some Explosive Runes?

2. You're going to find a lot of boons that nobody in your party can use. If you find the Meteor Swarm spell (hopefully... down the road some time) then you're just going to have to banish it. Not a huge problem, but it's going to limit what stuff you have available to you.

I don't think it will be untenable, but I think you're going to want to figure out ways to mitigate these problems, particularly the first one.

Wouldn't suppose you'd be willing to give us a ballpark of how many you guys sold at Gen Con?

I'm not interested in metal figures myself. I've made my own pawns and used FFG stands for them.

What I would purchase in an instant would be a single collection of the prepainted minis covering all of the playable characters. I had taken a quick look at grabbing what was available - few (2?) weren't available at all and another few (2?) were rare and had gotten quite expensive so I didn't go that route.

This has been mentioned before by several people, including myself. I would love to buy a set of all 11 minis that are used in this game.

Having a lot of fun with the game, but here are two suggestions that I think would make future versions of this game even more fun.

First, I'd add one simple mechanic: if a character encounters a card, but then fails to acquire/defeat it, he suffers the appropriate consequences as normal. However, another character at that same location can attempt the same encounter if they choose, before it gets shuffled back into the deck. So, let's say Lem encounters a monster. Unfortunately he doesn't have any attack spells in his hand, so he's defeated by the monster and takes damage. However, Seoni happens to also be at that location, so rather than returning the monster to the location deck, Seoni attempts to blast the monster with her Force Missile. She succeeds, and the monster is banished.

I think this would have a number of positive effects. First, it makes the game feel more like a party-based game, just like Pathfinder. Second, it would allow for some interesting abilities that can modify these situations. For example, maybe Valeros has the ability to step in and face a monster instead of the character who drew the encounter. Or maybe Merisiel can evade a monster, but leave some sort of poison that reduces the monster's effectiveness for a followup attack. Maybe Harsk has the ability to dictate who gets to face an encounter, or use his ranged attack to encounter a monster at another location. All of these would require a significant rebalance, but I think it would add a lot of fun interaction to the game.

Second, I'd like to see something different with the villain. I don't particularly like the villain running away from location to location. I'd love to see a "big bad guy" villain deck, using his deck for hit points the same way players use theirs. Maybe the characters have to explore various locations to find "keys" that unlock the final showdown with a villain. The villain is his own deck of powers that he uses against the players, but as players do damage, the villain is forced to discard them. Having a nice "boss encounter" like this would be a lot of fun, and would also add to the party experience.

My plan is to keep them all mixed together all the time. I then set the game up however I am playing it. If I happen to get a card that is from a set that I do not want in this particular game I will pull it and draw a new random card to replace it.

This way I do not have to constantly rebuild the box... and if something does pop up it is easy to deal with at the time it happens. I just need to make sure everyone at the table agrees that any "2" that comes up before the end of Burnt Offerings is redrawn at the time of encounter.

This is a good solution, but it won't exactly duplicate the effect of removing cards when you advance to later adventures. By the standard rules, you'd continue to play Basic cards until they get banished, at which time they are permanently removed from the game. Using your method, you're not going to play Basic cards at all from that point forward.

I'm not up on my Pathfinder classes, so I don't know what this would be, but we're missing a good melee weapon/arcane caster. Also another skill-heavy character like the Rogue, but maybe not as solo-centric.

I believe that by strict interpretation of the rules, you are correct. He cannot use the Amulet of Mighty Fists while he is using his class ability to substitute Dexterity for Strength.

However, I also believe this is an oversight by the designers, because the amulet is listed in Sajan's suggested starting deck.

So, we were playing the other night and my friend had an armor card in his hand. He felt that he didn't need it at that time, so after a victorious combat he wanted to recharge it to "reduce" the damage that he took, which was 0. We weren't sure if that was allowed.

Ultimately we decided against that, and he instead discarded it at the end of his turn.

I was playing Seoni in a game yesterday, and I acquired the Acid Arrow spell during the scenario. This is an "Elite" card, so I was excited to acquire it, but it turns out the effect is nearly identical to Force Missile and Lightning Grasp, which are both Basic cards. Same amount of damage, same recharge, except it's Acid damage instead of Force or Lightning. Is this really an Elite upgrade?

I feel like 4 is too low, and 14 is too high. It's a Basic spell, and Ezren can only recharge it by rolling a 12 on a 1d12. Lem can't recharge it at all. At 14 it's only useful for Seoni.

I'd say 6 or 8 feels about right.

Fight to the death.

This is incorrect. For a single character, you're supposed to use all three of the locations marked "1" on the scenario card. Thus, you have to close down two of the locations and defeat the villain in the last remaining location.

I agree it's unclear in the rules, so I think it's up for interpretation. One potential problem is that you might have players who pick specific items for the upcoming scenario. For example, you might pick up Holy Water if you know the Henchmen are going to be undead. I don't know if this is in the spirit of the rules or not. To me, I think this would add to the prep time of every adventure, so I am inclined to say this isn't allowed.

That sounds like it's going to be a nightmare to track if you're running different "campaigns" with different groups.

Hooray! Thanks for your response.