DragonStryk72's page

One evil (or Neutral going on evil) character in a party of heroes. Once is fun, but we don't need a Dr Zachery Smith in every party. Particularly annoying when players want minion raising or demon binding necromancers and diabolists and other obviously disturbing characters. Save it for an evil campaign or be a DM.

Edit: Equally bothered by Good players in evil campaigns and law abiding pirate hunters in A pirate game.

The trick is to play the evil person as someone working toward good ends, but willing to use means that the party at large would have problems with. This is my path if I decide to play evil in a party of heroes, that's I'm the one who will cross that line they're not willing to cross, and I'll do it on my own, without involving as long as I can get away with it.

Example: In Exalted, almost everyone was playing Heroic types, and I decided to play the bad guy. Now, I'm on their side, we're working toward the same goal, but I was ruthless about it. Need a new ally, but he requires that we take down a merchant prince of Ash? I'm on it, and not only did I crush that merchant prince, but brought the others to heel, all while the party was down below in the catacombs searching for magical artifact 109.

Now, eventually, the party got their back up about it, and accused me of being a monster, to which I went, "You know what? You're right. I'm a monster. But, let me ask you: How many slaves have any of you freed? None, that was me. And how many corrupt rulers have any of you crushed? None, that was me on all counts. And how have you provided for our troops that we need to free kingdoms from tyrrany? You haven't, that's me again. So yes, I'm a monster, I will destroy any obstacle in our way, and I've done more good in this world than all of you combined."

In a campaign I'm in the GM has been very railroady from the start and done a lot to mess with all the characters. All the original characters but mine had either dead or left the party. We are level 9 and I missed the last session. I get a text from the GM telling me that my character did two things that are very out of character for him and when I told him that he undid one of them, the lesser divergence from his character, but wouldn't the one that really was against character. I'm pretty pissed to the point where part of me wants to make a new mechanical character that I'm not invested in and just do everything I can to mess with GM. A lot of my friends are in the group and this GM is only running one of the several games the group plays.

Your GM is acting outside of bounds. Speaking for my own table, I use Proxies, for when a player is not present, which is why I keep the character sheets. What happens is that the absent player picks someone to proxy for them.

I make sure nothing that's happening is violating the characters as written/played. Worst that happens is usually that the character is still useful, but not exactly the life of the party for the session.

At NO POINT should the GM be doing things that are directly against the character, though.

As a GM, I say talk to him, and make it clear that what he did is unconscionable, and a violation of your trust as a player at his table. As a Player who has played under GMs like this (Which is, admittedly, why I'm so scrupulous myself), burn the f~~*er!

Alignment. The whole thing falls apart under a minute's thought, let alone the inevitable arguments over what constitutes Good, Lawful, etc. People have wrestled with those questions since the beginning, and they won't be resolved by pigeonholing characters or their actions into squares in a 3x3 grid. Bad enough that it exists, worse that there are mechanics attached to it.

That's because Alignment is more fluidly than 3x3 can ever use, but many GMs are locked into a concept that says that there's only one layout for each alignment. It's more difficult than that, and here's why:

Both Superman and Batman are Lawful Good, but have different morals and ethics. Bats won't kill, and won't even use a gun, because of the code he holds himself, and basically everyone else who wants to fight crime in Gotham, to. Even when pushed as far as possible by someone like the Joker, he maintains his ethics.

The Blue Boy Scout is the stereotype of the Lawful Good. Truth, justice, and the American way.Both, however, are Lawful Good. It doesn't mean, "Legal Good". Lawful, as is orderly, that's why it can be Good, Neutral, or Evil.

The Punisher is Lawful Neutral, with dips into Evil (Will kill even reformed Villains without much care or thought, willing to use torture and psychological warfare). Post Civil War Iron Man also falls into this category. He started out well, but he's becoming more willing to consider "Ends justify the means" arguments.

The point is that there are SHADES of every alignment, and even two people who share an alignment can have friction between them from differing beliefs (Both examples contained heroes who have been on opposite sides of the fight from each other more than once).

Pet peeves that my wife has:

my biggest pet peeve is someone who stops the game in its tracks to argue about a rule. That can wait till after the game ends or look it up on your own time.

Another one is when i mentioned learning that a rule i had been following for a while was actually a house rule which i thought was cool and then basically being yelled at by the gm saying that i was trying to control his game and being a rule lawyer (i have only been playing about a year there is no way i can be a rule lawyer)

Another one: STORY TRUMPS RULES where it doesn't even apply like in combat. i understand that sometimes to make the story work you need to bypass rules but not in the middle of combat. For example: when i am holding the wizard in my hands and have the ability to smack him when he casts a spell but then the gm says i can't smack him so he is able to do the spell anyway.

Last one: Flanking. People always arguing about what is considered flanking especially when trying to flank a medium size character. Best way i ever heard it explained was it had to be like Adele. it has to be "hello from the other side" to be flanking otherwise it isn't

Honestly, I've been gaming since 1st Ed, and do you know I've NEVER, as GM, had to violate the rules to get my story to work? I know, crazy, right? I mean, seriously, what plots are there that REQUIRE you to ditch the system?

Now, this isn't to say I haven't played a thousand dirty tricks. I'm the reason I had a party start leaving coin and compnonents for resurrections with their church, "just in case".

I've always worked to make anything I'm doing as the bad guys be within the same set of rules that I hold my PCs to, and it's helped to create some truly stunning campaigns. No fudged rolls, no operating outside the parameters, everything finds a way to work within the rules. If I have a bad guy that needs to be able to survive being in front of the PCs, I work to craft it, following the rules, so that he is able to.

Considering the number of times I read that same passage for the Ruler, scratched my head, and thought "what bonus from Leadership?", I'm not surprised other people have missed it.

Yeah, the wording there definitely needs a proper touch up, cause I imagine there could be a number of inexperienced GMs who think it means the total Leadership bonus, including score. That would get broken real quick.

DragonStryk72 wrote:

Okay, so I'm having an issue here on the subject of the Ruler's bonuses through the new Kingdom-building rules. The text reads like this:

"If you have the Leadership feat, the bonus from the feat
applies to all kingdom attributes you affect (one, two, or
three attributes, depending on the kingdom’s Size)."

Okay, that's all well and good.... except that, checking the Core Rulebook, Leadership doesn't *give* you a bonus. Then I checked the SRD figuring, okay, maybe my book is out of date... nope, still the same. Are they talking about the bonuses you get to your Leadership score for having stronghold and whatnot? Need to know, since I'm running a Kingmaker campaign with the updated kingdom rules.

You mean this bit:

UCam wrote:

Leader Statistics: The statistics for the different roles are presented as follows.

Benefit: This explains the benefit to your kingdom if you have a character in this role. If you have the Leadership feat, increase this benefit by 1. If this section gives you a choice of two ability scores, use whichever is highest.

Thank you

Okay, so I'm having an issue here on the subject of the Ruler's bonuses through the new Kingdom-building rules. The text reads like this:

"If you have the Leadership feat, the bonus from the feat
applies to all kingdom attributes you affect (one, two, or
three attributes, depending on the kingdom’s Size)."

Okay, that's all well and good.... except that, checking the Core Rulebook, Leadership doesn't *give* you a bonus. Then I checked the SRD figuring, okay, maybe my book is out of date... nope, still the same. Are they talking about the bonuses you get to your Leadership score for having stronghold and whatnot? Need to know, since I'm running a Kingmaker campaign with the updated kingdom rules.

Also just wanna say thank god for closing the magic item BP loophole. Last time I ran, the kingdom was making 150 BP a turn off the magic item market. Granted, I start making sure to know where the major magic items were going so that they would be able to understand that they still exist in the world, but still.

You can make it up. Draw a map.

By that statement, they shouldn't make a corebook, bestiary, or stat anything out, nor should they make any adventure paths or anything. I mean, we can make it up ourselves, right? For that matter, why bother with miniatures or dice? We can make those on our own if we so desire.

Second would be that I can't draw for crap. I don't imagine I'm alone in this lack of art skill, either. Then there's trying to make sure it's to scale with Golarion.

Some of us would like to have a hex map that is rules compliant with the world, and NOT have to master cartography to do so. Hence why I buy my dice, my miniatures, my battlemats, and my books, because sure, I could make all those things myself, but it's a pain in the butt, and I would rather support Paizo selling it.

As well, this is the suggestions section. If you don't want to read suggestions, I would *suggest* a different section of the forums, as that's pretty much all you'll find here.

Now that Ultimate campaign is out, Paizo very seriously needs to do a hex map of the Inner Sea at the very least, because I know I have a group of Kingmaker players who are wanting to expand and take control of the River Kingdoms, as well as a possible run of Iobaria. They've decided that there are too many dark kingdoms in the world, and they're going to create at least one bastion of hope and light. I mean, they're gamers, it's not outside the realm of their thought.

Especially areas such as the River Kingdoms, Brevoy, and Numeria need to be laid out, as they're used in Kingmaker, where the kingdom rules see their introduction as the main point of the adventure path.

I do realize it's a pain in the butt to do and all, what with having to lay down the entire world into proper scale. Yeah, it'll be a bit before we get the Atlas, but it's a must have for me at this point.

So I've been watching E3, and Nintendo has been showing off the WiiU, their new console they have coming out that makes use of tablets that can be used in conjunction with their games. On some, it works like an inventory system in RPGs, which is pretty cool. Then I heard it was going to have 5-way Multiplayer, and the wheels started turning.

Could Pathfinder be brought to the Wii? Think on it for a sec, you use one tablet for the GM, and then each player has their character sheet on their own tablet, and boom! you have a standard 4-person adventuring party ready to roll. It could be a pre-fab adventure, or even include adventure building tools for the GM to use. The GM, of course, would play the monsters and such against the party, moving them appropriately as needed. I just think the idea could open up a whole new avenue of play, especially for PF enthusiasts who don't have a local gaming group.

remember plant growth increases growth for everything including weeds. How much crop yield are you going to let them get with their antics? Don't underestimate the choking effect of unwanted growth aka weeds.

*Or* it increases the growth of crops, as laid out directly in the spell text, the Druid chooses the function of the growth, and the text reads that it raises the crop yield 1/3 above normal, not just growth in general. It's not a bad plan, but with such huge successes, Brevoy is likely to take notice of this, and sooner than they otherwise might have taken notice.

These aren't "antics" as you put it. This is smart people using their abilities in new and interesting ways, and why I should grind it to a halt is simply beyond me. It's helpful, they're engaged, and they're actually getting out of the "Kill, Loot, Sell" cycle.

They're talking about things like political marriages, and expansion beyond the scope of the Kingmaker campaign. They have actual debates about the future of their kingdom, it's great, cause aside from book, I don't have to do anything as GM. They create their own plots

Okay, so the group has getting fairly interesting with regards to approaching Kingmaker. It took a while for them to get out of the Standard Adventuring Party run, but they're beginning to really think outside the box.

They've not only begun to recruit Wyverns, but also to breed them to create of Royal Air Corps, though they're still haggling over whether it should be cavaliers on them, or bow-specced Rangers.

They're prepping to turn the Abandoned Keep into an Elven settlement, sending word off to the Elven Kingdoms, while they also plot to turn the Dwarven Stronghold Hargulka occupies over to a Dwarven settlement.

The Druid of the party has now taken Leadership, and is running a group of Druids, her cohort at 5th level is now going around doing plant growth on all the fields to enrich the soil before planting season, so that they get increased crop yield (I've had to figure it this way: Every third farm essentially produces another farm's worth of consumption reduction, from the way the spell reads). She has him scribe scrolls of plant growth for aid in this as well. She's actually designing a magic item that reciprocates the effect, specifically the soil enrichment.

She's also decided to set a up a Druid's Grove within Shrikewall, which I have to stat out myself, since nothing like it is really in the book listings. The plan is to start small, and grow the grove out to cover four squares (Think Central Park).

Our Witch is crafting her own magic items for sale with her own funds, and has even hired an NPC for the task. She's starting small with potions, and working her way up. She can do Scrolls, Potions, Wondrous Items, Arms and Armor, as well as wands at this point, and is looking at creating a Witch's coven soon.

The Sootscale clan is about to be expanded since the group wants to build a city district under the silver mine for them.

Plans are already in the works for a Halfling settlement in the southern hill lands.

Edward, the part's king, has rolled a group of Worgs, adding them to the border guards. Add to that the druid is raising Thylacines, one of which is her animal companion, and it's getting really interesting, and I'm fascinated to see what their force is going to look like by the time that they get to the mass combat sections. I just can't help but think they'll have Centaur cavalry added to the mix.

My advice: terrorize your PCs early on, and don't be afraid to punishes for not only their failures, but their overreaching successes as well. I've pulled a fast one on my group in that an old NPC is coming back to haunt them: Dovan fled the Keep, and they never tried to stop him. So now, he's formed his own little gang, and established their first thieves' guild in their kingdom. Meanwhile, he's picked up the quickling after the party let it get away.

On the troll front, they've now killed so many trolls that they've become known as the Reaper, becoming the tales that the Trolls tell their children of to make them behave. This has made any chance at Diplomacy with the trolls almost impossible, as there is no way the Trolls would really believe the PCs won't kill them outright. The PCs love it, even when Dovan took his gang and made off with the entire market's magic item registry, because for once, it feels like it's their own actions that are steering greater events, and that they will have a lasting impact on the world of Golarion.

I've already decided to rule that future campaigns will include the actions taken in Kingmaker, so if their kindgom survives, it will still be there.

Actually, Kingmaker is supposed to have a higher rate of magic to it, representing the fact that the PCs are not *primarily* an adventuring party, although they certainly do get out there. Between the improved access to items, and the increased income potential from withdrawals, they really are going to be a deal more powerful than you're used to them being.

My own group has worked out a plan to make regular monthly withdrawals now, without tweaking off the populous. With a +56 economy, they switched focus to Loyalty, ramping it as high as they could, and now they can make withdrawals while having to only not roll a one to keep unrest from occuring. Meanwhile, even that has been stymied by the party's witch, who uses fortune to aid the roll.

The key is making certain that your encounters are using sound tactics that force the PCs to think around them, as opposed to just bash their way through

I've sort of terrorized my party into being tactically better. I've had some 4 character deaths so far:

Paladin got separated off from the group as they chased after The Stag Lord, and The Stag Lord slipped up behind him, and took a full round to kill him, with two Deadly Aimed sneak attacks to the back.

The Druid got killed when she went off by herself to "scout ahead" alone in another hex while the party went to fetch a boat to cross the Tuskwater, and a Wyvern got her while she was in hawk form, got the grapple, and it pretty much went south from there. I pre-roll my random encounters by hex to save time, so when she went into the hex to explore, she got the encounter that was there. I don't fudge, period.

The Bard, who is also king, died when the party got messed up by a giant spider encounter where they got webbed down, and the spiders took out the bard before anyone could get to him.

And finally, the fighter (who replaced the paladin) got killed by a 7-Troll scouting party when they critted on the rend. He did manage to take down 3 before fell though.

The group has actually taken out what they call a "life insurance" policy at the captial's Cathedral of Erastil, so they have prepaid for Raise Dead and Restoration spells, but they also straightened up their personal tactics a great deal, so by the time they hit the Abandoned Keep, they were ready for it.

Gargadilly did bamf off, and he'll be joining Dovan from the first chapter and the band he's set up in my game, and the crew came to face the Sith, they took it by the numbers, disarming the trap, and sending up only a single person at first to recon the floor. Unfortunately, the dice were against her, and she got attacked for some serious damage. the bard got her back to the main group, but the Sith moved and did the dance, taking control of the tanked out Fighter, ordering him to defend her. It looked sort of grim, but the Bard managed to come up with a solution: countersong. He'd been getting his charisma stat up so that he could get better bonuses as king, and it paid off here. Using the song to counter her magic took him out of the fight, but removed her most direct threats, with the Fighter snapping out of his trance in melee range of her. She didn't last too long after that.

I want to see an Atlas of Golarion made like they did with Kingdoms of Kalamar by KenzerCo, but with the hex grid layout for those of us who are running games with a party of intrepid kingdom builders. That would be incredibly awesome when you come down to it. Kingdom Stats for places like Brevoy, Numeria, and such so that we can use the kingdom build rules to launch campaigns against some of these countries without having to make up the grid layout

That explanation doesn't work on the farms, as I just finished reading my copy of Dwarves of Golarion, and dwarves do keep small above ground farms and pasture lands for cattle, so that doesn't really work on that level. The Dwarves would have long ago died out were that the case.

I think it should be somewhat more expensive than the mountain hexes though, as you have to account for the overhead amounts, with extra reinforcements and requiring a crafting roll either by a member of the party, or a dwarf npc.

Okay, so I've hit a minor snag in the kingdom building rules. As it is, my group has started colonizing the Stolen Lands, but this question is particular to something one of my players was asking about.

The group got an even of New Vassals, shortly after opening up their new gold mine, and so I figured it was a group of Dwarven Miners who had heard of the find and come to help. This has, interestingly, led to the issue- My players want to actually make a start on an underground Dwarven City, and I'm not opposed to it, I just don't know what it would cost BP-wise to prep the area. As well, if the city is underground, couldn't you still build a farm on top of, since the surface would be free.

I will state they are extremely excited about this idea.

A sensible crafting system! You have no idea how silly it seems in so many games the amount of stuff it takes to produce decent items for your own level. I understand that Blues and Purples need to be really rare, or it kills the meaning. I'm more talking decent average items to Greens, with the ability to upgrade items. A simple Masterwork version would even be nice, so that you have the standard longsword, and then the upgraded MWK variety.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if it worked like it did in the book, where you would need a caster with a certain spell and casting level, it would help casters in making money, as well as getting people to interact more outside of combat. That would be great, or if we could even have crafts work essentially like they do in tabletop, with the ability to just put ranks into it, and altered by your stats.

Player-run shops/stalls, houses- I loved FFXI housing, though I do wish there could have been an outside to it,with the ability to paint/redecorate it. Make sure to let players show off their houses to the party.

Kingdom building rules in- I would love so much to see people trying to forge their own kingdoms, with player-run cities, with each kingdom being it's own faction. It would be better than the most awesome endgame ever, because the players would be able to keep going. No more "Alright guys, time for the weekly Zul-Gurub raid!" Instead it's, "Those bastards to the north have broken the peace treaty! Rally the Troops!"

Multi-Classing- Yes, I know this can cause trouble, but seriously, sometimes you get a different feel as you go along.

Character Creation- I would love to have a very unique characters, with the ability to customize my the look/color of my clothing.

Okay so last week during the GM took me aside and asked me how a creature would fight. (New GM) After giving him a basic rundown of how the Giant Spider would take on a party of 4 or 5 characters, he just said that he would take over my character and that I should run the encounter.

And so I spent most of the encounter hidden in the webs entangling the party until one "bright" PC got the idea to burn the webs, which he did. However the entire floor was covered in webs and so the fire spread till half the floor was covered in flames and the other half was covered in webs. So I just had the spider run away, all the treasure for the encounter was destroyed, the monster fled, and the rest of the dungeon was alerted to the PC's making the dungeon even harder.

So I was just wondering how everyone else has used lower lv monsters to scare the PC's into making an easy encounter very difficult?

A single kobold... nope, not kidding. I placed a single kobold on a path, demanding tribute from the party. Okay, I'd thought it would funny at the time, and as it turns out, it was. The party Rogue knows that I plan out encounters based upon the intelligence and styles of whatever creatures I'm using, so even wolves don't just "attack". He scans quickly for any another kobolds, and I inform him that he doesn't see any.

This is where it fell apart. Taking my answer, which is the standard answer I give on any failable perception type deal, he extrapolated that the kobolds must have set an ambush, complete with trap-ridden path, and were using their friend as bait (Actually, it was a randomly rolled encounter). He suddenly shouts for the group to assume "Mad Wizard's Keep" protocols ( A party designation that we came up with during a near fatal- two near-TPKs- in, yes, a mad wizard's keep), and the party figures he knows what's up.

Detect magic, detect trap, detect undead, yup, they cast all the detections spells they could, and then it occured to our Rogue that a Magical Aura spell could be in effect, getting rid of the trace of magic. Rogue does a take 20, understanding it would take hours to accomplish, and discovers no traps. Now he's miffed, thinking that I'm fudging the trap DCs. Instead of the rest of the PCs smacking him upside the head, they all jumped to, doing every stupid thing he asked. I called it after 5 hours of game time, and ended the session.

Okay, interesting issue is presenting itself in my game. Last game, we had a Wyvern encounter on a random roll while clearing a hex. A nat 20 Knowledge Nature roll from the Summoner (+12 for him) gives him a great degree of knowledge on it. What he latches on is that Wyverns are intelligent, speak Draconic, and are often used as mounts by lizardfolk. Since they're neutrally aligned, it reads as them being sort of all about them with it, with no particular malice, but no particular compassion either.

So the Summoner and the Cleric end up working together (Both have draconic and diplomacy), combining offers of food and such, while the other four (2 barbarians, 1 fighter, and 1 rogue/ranger) are using intimidate to make it realize that it just doesn't want that fight (They're rather exceedingly well armed, and have several wagons now, each containing the remains of the owlbears they've killed, skinned, and smoked the meat of). So they manage to get it to agree to service, for 100 gp a month, plus food. I saw that gleam in the eyes of the Rogue, who is Ruler, and I know what's coming, the wings of Wyvern aerial assault. Yeah, it's expensive to pull off, but they'll pull the funds together. What I'm concerned about is how this will effect events in the rest of the series, such as the battle for Tatzlford in Blood for Blood, cause a bunch of archer-mounted wyverns are going to play pure hell on any enemy advance. Even if you assume that the PCs can't find that many to start with, get enough together and the breeding begins, as well, only 5 would even be needed to at least get the whole of the party airborn.

I'd actually be willing to let the methods stack, as they would naturally. especially given the inherent costs of it, of first having to buy 5-6 13k gp items, then as well having every single person using one investing a few levels worth of skill points to get the points needed for them all to be able to use it at all reliably. They're sacrificing 65-78,000 gp, that's not small. This could be money going into power-equipping the party for combat, but they've instead devoted it to kingdom-specific goals.

Name: Abarish
Race: Elf
Classes/levels: Cleric
Adventure: The Stolen Lands
Location: Wilderness
Catalyst: full attack from a Troll
The Gory Details: This one was pretty quick and dirty. Two troll encounter, during which the cleric seperated himself from the group, and got ganked. Party assumed rigorous formation styles after that moment.

Name: Nicholai Volkoff
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Paladin 4
Adventure: The Stolen Lands
Location: The Stag Lord's Keep
Catalyst: Three arrow enema
The Gory Details: The party fights their way through the zombies on the haunted hill, discovering the secret door into the keep, and come around onto the walkway. Telomb, half-elven rogue and future ruler of the Stolen Lands, sees a single guard in the watchtower, and shoots him dead with a sneak attack.

As per the rules, the sound of a body hitting the floor of that watchtower is enough to rouse a fully sober (not only stole his booze, but they've been leaving an upturned empties at the site of any bandits they take out) Stag Lord, who sees Telomb on the walkway, smiles, and disappears into the under part of the keep. While he's hidden, the party follows Telomb over the railing of the walkway, to chase after The Stag Lord, who slips past them in the shadows, and comes up around from the back of the group. Sadly, that is where Nicholai was, having fallen behind due to his Full plate armor (light fortification).

The Stag Lord, hating humans, picks Nicholai as his first target, a fairly natural option, and fires his first sneak attack into his back. A nat 20 and a nat 19 later, the paladin goes from full to teens in one shot. For the second shot, the Stag Lord fires off the helm's ability, shooting a second Sneak Attack into him to put him in the negs. The next round, he fires a single shot into to finish, then disappears off into the shadows once more. Gnome Summoner nearly buys it, being knocked out twice, the second being put to -15 (Con 16), but made his stabilization roll on a nat 20 on open table.

More to follow.

James Jacobs wrote:

There's enough going on in Kingmaker already that's new and strange without confounding things by including bad weather. Furthermore, we don't necessarilly want to FORCE anyone to start their Kingmaker games at any one time of year, and we certainly don't expect every Kingmaker game to take the same amount of time. So even if everyone did start in the month of Pharast, by the time you hit adventure 2, group A might be 1 year in the future while group B might be 8 years 3 months into the future.

In other words... the weather element of Kingmaker is left more or less 100% in the hands of the individual GMs.

Actually, at least by implication you didn't leave it entirely in the GM's hands. The charter states that it comes into effect on the last day of Calistril. Unless the PCs say when they're leaving Restov that gives a pretty clear timeframe for when the adventure is going to begin. Though why anyone would start travel on the first day of "march" in the middle of blizzard-prone country is a little beyond me.

Actually, it makes sense. Being from the Hudson Valley area of New York, March is pretty much one of the better times to start, and I'll tell you why: Because it's gonna be about three months of game time taming the Stolen Lands to get to the point where you're building your first city, so about May-June, with about 4-5 months to build before the real winter hits in. I've personally found weather charts in 3.5 and just used those.

Rain really isn't so much an issue as just rain. It's only the extreme conditions that are really going to hamper the players in any way. Snow, however, is going to slow progression intensively, as noted previously, forcing the party to contend with the elements, which i really believe is the key to making them feel what it's like to deal with the world at large.

Tanis - how do rogues get pounce without massive multi-classing?

If it's mechanically sound that would be something that would boost rogues up into the more playable range that I was looking for.

Also, as I said everyone can get UMD in class with one feat (and they get other things to go along with it).

Two-handed fighters do much more damage and have a better chance of hitting. From my experience at least.

And though you can turn off a wizards spells, there is nothing from preventing them from still having a decent stealth bonus.

Here's my take on Rogues: They have a very particular skill set that is vastly needed in any dungeon setting. Yes, you could dedicate a party to taking over the job of a Rogue, it's entirely possible to get by that way, but think how you're handicapping yourself. you're dedicating slots, feats, skill points, and such all just to cover a single class that one person could play and save you the hassle

Sure, there Wizard can memorize those spells every single day, but those are slots not being used for damage or buff spells for the party.Even more dismal is trying to do it with a Sorcerer or other limited list caster.

also, here's a point: At some point, DMs start throwing "mage slayer" style creatures because, let's face it, upper deck wizards have many benefits. These creatures usually have high saves, sensory abilities that render invisibility moot, and other such things. Against these, a rogue is critical.

As well, you have sneak attack damage in most combat situations, whereas a Wizards would quickly exhaust his spell slots trying to keep up on a round-by-round damage basis. also of worry is that the bigger damage spells are also generally AoE spells that can hit fellow party members, as opposed to the very much directed sneak attack.

One of the consistent themes running through these boards is the assumed (in some minds at least) superiority of the full casting classes, particularly at higher levels, and particularly in those games where optimization is vital and/or combat dominates the game play.

Now, while I personally take the base assumption with a very large grain of salt, for the sake of this thread, I'm going to pretend I accept it at face value.

My challenge is, without breaking the core rules, how do you either bring the casters down to balance with the rest of the classes or raise the other classes?

Specifically, I'm thinking of new monsters, new magic items, new feats, new spells (I know that sounds counterintuitive, but if they are buffs that work primarily for other classes it works).

Just to throw out a few general examples:

-- Monsters that reflect spells
-- Much higher SR
-- Spells or items to buff SR
-- Monsters that radiate permanent anti-magic fields
-- Monsters that radiate permanent wild magic fields
-- Monsters with more spell immunities
-- Monsters with natural freedom of movement
-- A feat to make interrupting spells easier, or to allow one character to interrupt multiple spells in a round
-- Items that grant immunity to enchantments
-- Items that reflect or absorb ranged touch spells
-- Feats that permit non-casters to defeat battlefield control spells

Some of this stuff already exists, but my point would be that, if casters truly do rule the world, they would become more common in reaction to that.

Anyway, I'm interested in seeing what the creative minds on these boards can come up with. Who knows, maybe some of them will find their way into print eventually, or at least into people's home campaigns if the casters start getting uppity.

Wow, all these alterations to just foil the casters? I just can't do that stuff, it's pretty much straight cheating. You want to know how to stop a caster at even high level? Simple, you play like the Antagonists of your world have a brain. Use tactics, don't just send inane crap at them.

For one, Usually, your main baddy is going to likely have some spellcasters on staff, Arcane and Divine.

Allow the construction of an extra building in the city the lyre-PC is at during each monthly build phase. I'd still use the same BP costs, since you have to actually gather/transport/etc the pile of materials to the location itself. You just circumvent the actual construction crew. Used that way it would definitely be an asset, but wouldn't break your game.

Right, but you have to pay construction crews, hence the discount on BP, since labor costs are no longer a part of the equation. I'm not worried about it breaking the game, actually it'll paint a sizable target on the party's back as far as it goes because the three other kingdoms that are being built are also going to want that item, so if I pull the Assassination Attempt event, then I already know who they're going for. I mean, Christ, what king wouldn't want this thing? 6 days worth of labor and construction completed an hour? Yeah, if I were a BBEG, I'd kill for that.

this guy ate my previous avatar wrote:

Since a fantasy world is so much more than just medieval Europe, wouldn't the people inhabiting it know so much more than the people who inhabited medieval Europe?

Why? Because of all the magic spells the average commoner can cast?

Like I said earlier, unless magic is really common, it doesn't change how life works for the average commoner.

I would point out that PCs are clearly not average commoners, being adventurers and prone to travel themselves.

To give a for instance, We were running a Forgotten Realms campaign, and had a run-in with a Troll, which the GM wasn't allowing us to have knowledge of the fire thing. I spoke up, "If you look at the character background I gave you, my character's from Longsaddle, located next to the Trollmoors. There's an annual burning that the Riders of Longsaddle do of the Trollmoors, so yeah, I would know about Trolls being hurt by fire."

This is why I always write a character background, so that it is clear what sort of experiences my character had prior to game. This way, it doesn't feel like I'm just grabbing stuff out of my butt.

Okay, so I'm running The Stolen Lands for my group, which are trying to keep a particular eye out for the Lyre of Building, so I'm trying to prep for the day where it ends up in my campaign. (I've been a GM a long time now, and if I know one thing, it's that the party will manage to get its hands on the one item you'd rather they not have) What I'm trying to figure out is how it will effect building costs and times for when they start building up their kingdom, which is really the central focus of the campaign.

Now, let me start with this: I do not fudge, ever. I'm a by the book GM, as I was a by the book player when I was on the other side of the screen. My player's trust my rulings, which speeds along gameplay alot, since they don't question my rulings, and instead are questioning what makes my ruling accurate.

I was figuring it would cut down the Building point cost by 50% due to the magic of the lyre, and the lack of need for laborers will cut down the time based purely on how long hey play it each week.

Yes, there's a bard in group, I should mention that, and he has stringed instruments as his perform (He designed the character after Sir Robin's Minstrels)

So I've been DMing a 'Legacy of Fire' group which started using the new Advanced Player's Guide. We have an experienced group of players who enjoy the new options but are always aware when a certain power or ability seems destabilizing to the game. The power in question is the Witch's Sleep Hex. Currently, we've run through two of the six modules using the following build:

Elven Witch 6
Elven Barbarian 4, Oracle 2
Elven Monk (Zen Archer) 6, Ranger 1
Elven Oracle 6
As the first module progressed, it became obvious that the power of the witch's sleep hex seemed on par with that of a Sleep spell, though slightly weaker with more limitations. The only thing that stood out were a number of encounters with the module's Beasts and Magical Beasts. Despite having more than 4 HD, 3 out of 4 of the module's unique fauna fell prey to the instant coup-de grace of the Sleep Hex combined with the Barbarian/Oracle of Battle's ability to immediately move on the witch's turn and set up for the kill. When the module's final encounters against the BBEGs were set up (cover-boy and the final monster), I knew by their stats that they had an even chance of falling prey to the instant-kill of the Witch and Barbarian, forcing me to fudge their saves (which ended up failing) so the encounter would at least be climatic. By the first module's end, I knew something might be overpowered with the ability.
Our second module progressed, with similar results to the first one. I began to notice something that generally doesn't occur at 5th/6th level of play: monsters were being forced to make a save-or-slumber, when effects that outright incapacitate a monster are usually very limited in their scope (such as Hold Monster) or didn't outright render a creature helpless (such as Hideous Laughter). More wandering magical beasts, humanoids, and pretty much anything that wasn't undead or a dragon fell prey repeatedly to the slumber. Understand that I had spent a great deal of time Pathfindering out the stats of all the NPCs and monsters in the...

Slumber (Su): A witch can cause *a* creature within 30 feet

So, this ability can only be used at most once per round on a single creature within 30 ft of the Witch for only 1 round starting out.

This is not the Witch character's fault, you just aren't thinking tactically about the problem. If you were fighting this ability, how would you combat it? Your buddy drops into slumber next to you, and you know the witch did something to him. Start having you enemies focus fire on the witch, or interfere with the Oracle's charge. As well, drop the GMPC, as it is clear the party of four in no way really needs it there.

Drejk wrote:

How, with sixteen years of experience player could think of rolling own stats without GM supervision? Such behavior was hint of either ill will or very poor judgement.

His later behavior didn't clarified if it was really ill will or just personal issues. Anyway, have fun without him.

Some GMs don't care, but you are supposed to ask first, then roll. I personally don't care what stats you roll, if you annoy me enough, I'll punish you, and sometimes that means killing your character. I will also kill characters if they are difficult for me to run a game with. Like psychics, if they have the right set of powers they can screw a game up royally, I kill those characters very fast. Though I've yet to see a psychic with those powers, but I do know I'd kill it at character creation, because I need secrets to get the plot moving some times.

Then why even bother allowing psychics in the first place? Going after players in a predatory manner because you dislike the character concept just comes across as childish.

I'd also state that if your plot always rests on the PCs not having the truth out of NPCs, then you really need to work on how you're setting up the story, cause I couldn't trust a GM who ran like that, ever.

I'm running a game with 4 players and i talked with them and they agreed to roll stats. When they rolled they where 3 because the forth was working. After an hour the forth player came and he said he rolled stats and showed them to me. OMFG the stats where 17,17,16,16,15,12 and i said nice but as with other players i wanted him to roll in front of me. He then started screaming and yelling because i dint trusted him.(he plays dnd 16 years he is 32 years old, but he plays only rogue from back then and a friend of mine who was DMing a game with him told me that the same happened to his game with the stats thing.)

I think this happens because of my relative young age (21) compared to his years of experience. The other players are quiet on the matter but i think this behaviour of the rogue player shows lack of respect to the rules, the other players and the DM , and i'm sure more problems will come in the near future.

Should i be patient with this kind of players ? I tried to talk to him but he doesnt seem to hear me..... What should i do?

I would have bounced him. I'm not kidding, I would have sent him right back out the door. If it was clear that he was supposed to roll stats in front of you, then that's it, period. As a GM with that player's approximate age and gaming experience, there's no excuse for the attitude problem. Insisting that all rolls be made fairly in front of the GM is only natural.

Even if it wasn't clear, throwing a temper tantrum is still an automatic ticket back home for the night.

The party is about to enter a tomb in between two cliffs roughly around 200 ft apart. On the opposite side of the tomb, the party notices a pair of sleeping wyverns.

The paladin (Paladin of erastil) says "lets kill the wyverns before we enter the tomb" (he also said out of character that the wyverns are going to attack the party so it's best to kill em before they kill the party and was metagaming).

The party pulls out it's bows and wakes up the wyverns, kills one of the wyverns. And the other one runs away because she was mortally wounded.

I told the paladin that he lost his powers cause he committed an evil act by acting a sleeping sentient being that was not evil. And I told him that he essentially killed 3 wyverns as the pair had a nest and that the one wyvern wouldn't be able to properly hunt and feed her litter of wyverns (2).

His argument was that they were monster and needed to be purged from the land.

So my question is that is what he did an evil act in killing the wyverns while they are asleep. At the very least the action is cowardly, as paladins' should not attack sleeping foes.

Well, no it's not evil, actually. Roles reversed, the wyverns would certainly have killed a sleeping part of adventurers in their territory, without hesitation. By your statement about their non-evil alignment, a paladin would as well as lose their powers every time they hunting, as all regular animals are true neutral. Wyverns are predatory creatures, and killing them before they have the chance to kill you is not evil.

It is however in violation of the honorable status of being a paladin. Tactics are all well and good, but an honorable hunter does not kills females or young of what they hunt, and certainly do not kill incapable quarry, such as sleeping creatures.

I would not have removed his powers, though. That was stepping slightly over the line, but I would have definitely had his god show some form of displeasure at him for his actions.

I personally class 'useful info' as a piece of the monster's stat block. When people get the info, I ask them if they want to know about DR, Immunities, Fast Healing/Regeneration, Vulnerabilities, Resistances, Spell-Like Abilities, Special Attacks or Special Qualities. Every 5 points of success gets them one of the above. Very meta, I know, but it seems to work. I have also occasionally shut people down on knowledges if the monster is totally new (i.e., only exist in the one place they encounter it, likely due to magical experimentation/mishap) and not...

I would likely go with this myself as a GM. It isn't useful to just be given a bit of info you already clearly have. I mean, if a Troll was advancing toward a fire-wielder with no sign of fear, I'd make mention of that, seeing that trolls fear fire, since it's their only naturally occuring vulnerability.

Overall, your GM was trying to keep a "challenge" to the encounter, but honestly, cloakers are challenging enough on their own. Many GMs have this problem though, that they begin picking rare creatures instead of simply making more interesting encounters of the more common creatures, or have a "script" for how the encounter will play out, and don't want to let knowledges steal the show. Personally, I've been able to make my players respect even a kobold encounter, so I don't tend to need the rarer stuff to ram it home for them.