DukeRuckley's page

Okay, I've thought about it a bit more. I think I'm leaning towards trying out an Elf Treesinger Druid with a creeper vine companion. I threw together a level 1 version of this character but haven't had a chance to play him yet. He'll need to be updated to meet your requirements, of course, though I may wait until I'm selected to do so, if permissible.

I'm still working on backstory at the moment, though I have some ideas in mind. I would likely take the "Without a Home" trait.

Where is the game taking place to begin with? Will the party be together already, or will our meeting be part of the beginning of the campaign?

Dotting for interest! I've had a few ideas floating around... I'll think on it for today.

I have an idea for a Kobold Zen Archer I might like to try out... I'll dot for interest for now. When are you ending recruitment?

I am definitely interested! I have a few ideas, but I need to mull them over for a bit. When are you planning on closing recruitment?

Very interested! I'll wait for character creation rules before coming up with something. I have a few character ideas I've wanted to try out...

I'm interested... Let's see what I get.

Color: 1d12 ⇒ 1 Gold
Str: 2d6 + 6 ⇒ (1, 4) + 6 = 11 (-4 race) = 7
Dex: 2d6 + 6 ⇒ (5, 3) + 6 = 14 (+2 race) = 16
Con: 2d6 + 6 ⇒ (1, 6) + 6 = 13 (-2 race) = 11+1 level = 12
Int: 2d6 + 6 ⇒ (1, 3) + 6 = 10 (+1 gold) = 11
Wis: 2d6 + 6 ⇒ (5, 5) + 6 = 16 16
Cha: 2d6 + 6 ⇒ (4, 2) + 6 = 12 12

reroll Int: 2d6 + 6 ⇒ (4, 1) + 6 = 11 (+1 gold) = 12 Not much better :(

Character Name: Pint
Scale Color: Gold
Class: Zen Archer Monk
Attributes: Str 7, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 11, Wis 16, Char 12
Role: Ranged support
Description: Small, golden, and proud despite his stature.
Background: Pint (as he is called in the Draconic tongue) has always been small and weak, even as compared to the average kobold. He spent most of his life trying to prove himself to the rest of the tribe and developed an affinity for the bow.

Dotting for interest as well. I have a couple characters already built that I'll go review to see if I'm interested in playing them in this setting...

I don't really know anything about Lost Lands, truthfully, so my backstory may be a little generic, until I can get a better idea of some specifics (locations, etc.).

Dotting for interest... Will post later today or tomorrow if I decide to submit a character.

Forgive me while I come out of lurking to offer a suggestion:

Perhaps the Grand Custodian and Morvius already know about this ancient item with a trapped elf (or whatever) inside, and Arturus has studied it extensively. The attack on the camp and the loss of N'bellocq (however it happens) may be enough to convince them to play their "trump card" and release the elf for his aid. Perhaps they think he is more powerful than he truly turns out to be.

That would partially solve the problem of why they don't send him away to be studied.

I'll just go back to lurking now :)

I voted for seven of the top eight as well. I personally took Miremane over the Egelsee Cocktail in the end, but it wasn't easy for me to narrow down 10 into 8. Egelsee Cocktail was in my top 10, as was the Abandoned One.

While I agree with the judges that this monster doesn't really play well with Pathfinder rules, I am seriously tempted to use the idea in one of my games. I think that the gimmick of essentially temporarily removing one of the party members from the party is a really neat idea if it is done well. I'll have to think about it more, before I attempt to use it in game.

I haven't had a chance to finish reading all of the other submissions, but I can tell you it isn't looking good for this one to get one of my votes. I really like the idea behind it, but I'm not crazy about the execution... It isn't a clear "no vote" but there are some other very strong monster designs and I have three more to look at. I think I may end up having to go back and look at your previous submissions if it comes down to this one versus another for my last vote.

Good luck!

Follow this link for the Kickstarter.

If you haven't checked out the Strands of Fate book and you are a fan of the FATE system, I highly recommend you do so. Nova Praxis is from the creator of the Strands of Fate book, and it takes the system into a futuristic setting. If you follow the link above, you'll find a lot of information and detail about the system, including links to playtest previews.

As of today, he is at $7500 out of his $10,000 goal with 38 days to go. There are a lot of really great stretch goals as well.

How would you recommend rolling magic items with the new Ultimate Equipment guide? Now that minor, medium, and major items have been split into "lesser" and "greater" should that just be rolled randomly as well? Should it be an even 50/50 chance for each, or should more weight be thrown toward one or the other?

I'm leaning toward just the 50/50 roll for each one until the city has a high enough base value where rolling on the lesser minor items list is going to usually result in an item that can be bought without trouble anyway. But where that point is, I'm not sure yet.

Any other thoughts on this?

I guess if the city is large enough, just roll on the greater item list and not the lesser. Otherwise, you could flip a coin and roll on whichever comes up.

Don't mind me, I'm just dotting as a lurker. I really wish I had the time to devote to PbP, but I just had to give up a few games, unfortunately... Otherwise, I would've applied myself!

Have fun, everyone. It looks to be a very intriguing group of characters.

Oh, and Mark Sweetman, I hate to sound like a stalker, but your character concepts and designs have absolutely astounded me. Should I be ashamed when I say that I follow your posts in recruitment threads to see what kooky character you've come up with next?

Anyway, back to lurking!

The Lore Warden archetype for the fighter class could be a lot of fun. Magus would work out really well for those stats as well.

Ah, okay. That's actually not a big problem because you could just as easily roll to determine which minor table to start rolling on.

Too bad I can't get my copy until after our first big kingdom building sessions. Maybe I can convince sometime to pre-roll me a bunch of items so I don't have to use the old Core and APG tables for this session!

Does the book allow you to easily roll random items sorted by minor, medium, or major? In other words, I have a Kingmaker game going on and I would like to roll a random minor item or two that includes all items from the book. Can I do that pretty easily?

This book can't come soon enough!! My Kingmaker game just got to the point where we'll start rolling on magic items and this will be extremely handy. I haven't had a chance to read through the entire thread, so I apologize if this has already been answered. But will the tables be laid out in such a way as to facilitate rolling a minor vs. medium vs. major item?

Lurking! Have fun everybody, Jonasty is a great DM!

Think about going with the Dawnflower Dervish (or Dervish Dancer) bard and then take a single (or more if you are interested) dip into Urban Barbarian. Urban barbs allow you to put your rage toward Dexterity without any hit to your bardic abilities. It's basically an instant +2 to both attack and damage with the Dervish Dance feat.

I am working on putting together a Half-Elf Barbarian/Bard for you. He'll use the Urban Barbarian and Dervish Dancer bard archetypes for some fun synergy.

Here are the HP rolls:

2d12 + 2d8 ⇒ (7, 6) + (8, 2) = 23

That's better than half, so that's good! I'll post with an alias as soon as I have him put together.

I think taking most of the levels in bard, in order to gain the increases in Inspire Courage and such, would be the best. I haven't taken the build past sixth level, really, and at that point I was at Barb 1/Bard 5. However, dipping into level 2 Barb would probably be a good idea for Uncanny Dodge and a Rage Power (which power is up to debate). A third level dip isn't going to be all that helpful except for the increase to BAB. Trap sense is good, but not always necessary (like if you have a rogue in your party already). If you take barbarian up to level 5 you get two rage powers and improved uncanny dodge, but I wouldn't go any further than that, and you would also be missing out on 6th level bard spells. Inspire Courage goes to +4 at level 17.

About Dawnflower Dervish vs. Dervish Dancer... Dawnflower Dervish seems to give benefits for those that wish to cast more often (bonus to concentration checks and quicken spell at 8th level). Dervish Dancer is geared towards the combat (fleet, Dance of Fury, etc). So I suppose if you were to go with Dawnflower Dervish, you may want to focus more on Bard for the spells, where Dervish Dancer may be more geared towards taking more Barbarian levels.

This would take a lot of thinking and would probably depend on the campaign you are playing in anyway, but it may be beneficial to go up to level 8 in barbarian for the better rage powers. You'll still have access to Dance of Fury as a Dervish Dancer bard, at 20th level.

Deciding when to take the levels will depend on what your party needs while you play. But I would always start with Barbarian 1/Bard 1, I think, and maybe take the third level as barbarian.

The Dawnflower Dervish from Inner Sea Magic (I believe) gets Dervish Dance for free, but Dervish Dancer from UC does not. The reason I went with Dervish Dancer is because it is from a more core book, and because originally the idea came about for a Skull and Shackles campaign and I didn't want to be forced to worship Sarenrae.

Very true though. You could definitely go Dawnflower Dervish and free up some different feats, if you don't mind worshiping Sarenrae. Perhaps this character would be better suited for Legacy of Fire!

I've been bouncing around the idea of an Urban Barbarian / Dervish Dancer bard for a little while now. Here's what I've come up with, up to level 3.

We'll start with Human for the bonus feat, though cases can be made for other choices (anything with a bonus to Dex would probably be okay). Let's assume a 20 point buy. I tend to take the following array: 16,14,14,12,10,8. Stats become:

Str: 12
Dex: 18 (+2 racial)
Con: 14
Int: 10
Wis: 8
Cha: 14

Note that it is probably better to have a 13 in Str to open up the option for Power Attack. Whether this is through the ability score increase at 4th level, or during point buy is debatable.

Level 1: Start off with a barbarian level (Urban barbarian archetype) for the +1 BAB, controlled rage, and 14 HP (max HP at 1st gives 12 plus 2 con). Our two feats will be Weapon Finesse and Weapon Focus (scimitar). At this level, with our scimitar, we have a few options for attacking while raging. If we put all of our rage into Dex, we have an attack of +8 for 1d6+1 damage (+9 attack when in melee with 2 enemies). Putting our bonus in strength, we have +6 for 1d6+3 damage. And splitting it gives us +7 for 1d6+2 damage.

Level 2: We'll now take a level of Dervish Dancer bard, which gives us spells, Battle Dance (inspire courage more specifically), and Fleet for +10 speed with battle dancing. Now we can rage and battle dance at the same time, so our damage and attack from before increases by +1 each.

Level 3: Here's where it gets good. We now qualify for Dervish Dance (since we put two ranks in Perform [Dance]). This allows us to use our Dex for damage with our scimitar. Forget using our rage on Str now, its all Dex all the time. We have a +10 to attack (+4 Dex, +2 Rage, +2 BAB, +1 weapon focus, +1 inspire courage) which bumps up to a +11 if adjacent to two or more foes. Our damage is now up to 1d6+7 (+4 dex, +2 rage, +1 inspire courage).

Future Feats: If we revise our point buy to have a 13 str, Power Attack is an important choice. Extra Rage is probably a necessity. The standard Iron Will, Greater Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, Dodge, and Toughness are good choices as always. What else?

From here out, I am thinking it is best to just stick with bard levels, but I would be open to ideas. Should we dip again in barbarian for a rage power? Which one? Any dips anywhere else?

I imagine this is not the most optimal build, nor what I trying to make it one. I just liked the synergy with the urban barbarian and the bard class. What other classes could benefit greatly from a dip into the urban barbarian? Feel free to post your own build ideas to expand upon this one.

A Halfling ranged Paladin could be a really fun concept! The Grippli idea is neat too, I didn't realize it received a Dex and Wis bonus. Seems perfect for a Zen Archer, but the damage would be low as you said.

The Halfling Sacred Shield has a very high AC at the cost of losing out on damage output. You could use a weapon that benefits from Weapon Finesse to boost attack, but I'm not sure how you'd boost damage. You can't use a ranged weapon with the shield and Dervish Dance would be out as well. If you dropped the Dex back down to 10, you could raise Str and still have a 20 in AC (24 with Bastion of Goodness). Actually, looking at the tower shield closer now, it has a max Dex of +2 anyway, so you wouldn't get the full +3.

If by passive you mean no spells, then the zen archer monk isn't a bad choice as long as you keep both your Dex and Wis high. Unfortunately, you'll also want a relatively high Str (for composite bows), so you start having to sacrifice somewhere. If you go with 16 in both Wis and Dex, or 18 in Dex and 14 in Wis, you have an AC of 16. You may be able to pull off a 17, but at the cost of a lower Str and fewer skill points.

Another good option would be a Dex based fighter or paladin. With a Dex of 18, you can still wear hide and get another +4 to your AC, for a total of 18 AC. You'll have a good amount of starting money (average 175 gold for both of those). If you roll high enough (or your DM allows max gold at start) you may even be able to afford the Chain Shirt, which will give you +4 AC with a lower armor check penalty and no penalty to speed.

If you go with fighter, think about using a scimitar so that you can use Dervish Dance. It's a feat that allows you to use your Dex for damage with the scimitar.

I am interested as well, though I haven't had a good chance to look through the literature yet, myself. It seems very friendly toward multiclassing, and there seems to be a lot of excitement every time you ding. I'll do the same as Jelani and roll up stats real quick and then go take a look at what I can do with it.

Forgive me if I don't have a character written up soon, I may not be able to get to it until Monday or Tuesday.

4d6 ⇒ (1, 6, 2, 4) = 13 = 12
4d6 ⇒ (1, 3, 2, 6) = 12 = 11
4d6 ⇒ (5, 5, 3, 3) = 16 = 13
4d6 ⇒ (3, 2, 5, 1) = 11 = 10
4d6 ⇒ (1, 2, 1, 2) = 6 = 5
4d6 ⇒ (4, 3, 4, 1) = 12 = 11

Comeliness: 4d6 ⇒ (2, 5, 1, 5) = 13 = 12
Social Array: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 3, 6, 4) = 19 = 16
Starting Gold: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (6) + 3 = 9 = 135 gold

Hmmm, any chance I can reroll that 5? Ouch! I may be better off going with the Heroic array in this one...

Consider trying out the Lore Warden archetype for Fighter. You can specialize in tripping with a whip, and if you take the Enforcer feat, you can use the whip to intimidate your enemies. You aid the party with by incapacitating the enemy.

Also, take a look at the Scarred Rager archetype for barbarian, though it is more of a damage dealing class, and less a support role that you are looking for.

I too would love to play. I have a character idea I've been trying to get into Kingmaker, but of course things could easily change based on what you roll.

I've noticed quite a lot of harsh and disrespectful language directed toward the Paizo staff as of late, so I just wanted to take the time give Paizo some well-deserved thanks. Speaking for myself and those I play with, we all absolutely love the work you've put into Pathfinder. All of us find interesting characters to play, and though we have noticed some imbalance occasionally, it is never enough to affect the game negatively and is usually circumstantial anyway. And besides, anything we find to be wrong, we can always houserule anyway!

I can't claim to understand how difficult it is to put out as much material as you at Paizo do throughout the year, but I imagine it is a ton of work. And you deserve more credit than you have been given recently.

So thank you! And remember that the vast majority of us love what you are doing, we just aren't as vocal about it!

I am going to throw my hat into the ring, I think. There are a couple of different character types that I've been wanting to play. I'm going to think about which I would like to put up for your consideration and come back with a character background.

Are you allowing us to work towards prestige classes? I'm considering a Harrower, for example.

I expect I won't hear much more than I already have, but I figured I would bump this one last time just in case in went under someone's radar.

Anyone else interested? I would need four more people to start a game.

I voted for Doom Comes to Dustpawn.

I really enjoyed the premise behind Unsheathed, but thought it fell short in a few places. I also thought Scarlet God was a pretty well-thought through. It is unfortunate that his submission is running into problems with the Shattered Star AP. I am not a fan of the Steaming Sea submission (partly because an underwater adventure doesn't appeal to me and partly because I thought it had too many holes).

In the end though, I decided to vote for Dustpawn because it appealed to me the most. I thought it was very well-written and it looks like it would be a lot of fun. It was a pretty close call between Scarlet God and Dustpawn, and I chose the one I thought would be more fun.

I think we'll see both authors' names on works in the near future (and hopefully the other two as well). Good luck to all four.

I'm just stopping over here to let you guys know that I am hosting a Diplomacy PbP on the forums here (I figured not everyone who would be interested would be keeping an eye on the recruitment forum). The recruitment thread is here, so feel free to chime in if you'd like to play. I need 7 people total to start.

I love how Darian's corrected damage did the exact same as before!

I'm glad to see some more interest! Four more people and we have a game.

Just jumping in quickly to try and send you some of my lurker's luck with your next set of rolls Mi'Dre! What an unlucky streak you've been having!

Well, hopefully we'll have some more interest. We need at least seven people to play, so unless that happens, we have no game.

For any who are interested but have never played before, here's the premise:

It's 1900 and Europe is at war. Your goal as one of the prime nations (Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Turkey) is to take over Europe's supply depots. The game is entirely based on strategy and diplomacy, there is no randomness whatsoever. It's kind of like Risk without dice rolls. The rules can seem daunting at first, but they are actually rather simple when it comes down to it.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer them. Newbies are more than welcome to play (we'll probably take a week before playing in order to give anyone new to the game the chance to learn the rules).

Is anyone interested in playing a game of Diplomacy over the forums? I would run the game as the moderator and we'd have a relatively slow game (I'd say two to three days in between adjudication to allow for some back and forth, with the weekend off). You can find the rules here if you are unfamiliar with them. Almost all of the game will take place over PM, of course. The gameplay thread will be where adjudication happens and the discussion thread will be for any "propaganda," questions, and just normal off-topic discussion.

If I get seven people who are interested in playing, I'll go ahead and set a game up. And if there is a lot of interest, I'll run a second game at the same time.

I am very impressed with this entry. The title is evocative and draws me in as a DM to see what is here. The map shows that this encounter could play into one larger adventure, which is very nice. And best of all, I absolutely love the lore that is here. The Gloomspires are an impressively awesome encounter location and really allows the DM to take off with plenty of his own ideas about them. And Eightfingers is inspiring as a villain, based on the information we get about him here.

The only issue I saw as I was reading this was regarding the difficulty level of the encounter. I'm not going to go over them again, since Neil and the other judges did a good job of that already. Some tweaks, though, and you have a very good, easy to run encounter that can be part of an intriguing adventure.

I still haven't finished all of the encounters, but I can say that this will most likely be on my list of encounters to vote for. Excellent work!

The first thing I did when I started to peruse through these encounters was to look at all the maps. I hadn't read the descriptions, only the title of the encounter location. Out of all them, I thought this map was the most interesting, and it made me want to know what the encounter was there. So congratulations, out of all of the maps (and there are some pretty good maps this year), yours was the first to really capture my attention.

So your's is the first encounter I am reading.

The encounter is very creative and different. It shows that you are willing to take risks and that you have the ability to be creative with your work. Unfortunately, it feels to me as if you bit off a little more than you could chew here. The heart of the encounter is a race against time, but it feels a little too rushed to me. Ten rounds is only one minute, which doesn't seem long enough to repair two boats, flip over three roofs, stop a snake from killing villagers, and convince everyone to stop cowering and get in the boats. It's also a little bit cheesy that there are exactly 10 boats, and each boat can hold exactly 10 people, and there are exactly 100 villagers to save.

I think you could have pulled this off a little better if you had fewer villagers (20 to 30 with each boat holding up to 3?). Up the number of creatures to make them more of a threat, and then slow down the water a bit. Even these suggestions wouldn't be quite enough to completely fix the encounter, but its a start anyway.

Despite the serious flaws I am seeing with it, and the nightmare that it would be to run, I still really like your creativity and your map is superb. It is refreshing that you were able to come with something unique and not the normal kill baddies and take their stuff encounter that is so common. So, with that said, I am on the fence about this one. I'll have to revisit it once I've read the rest.

Congratulations on making it this far!

Edit: I should note that I do not have time to playtest all eight encounters, and will therefore not be playtesting any of them prior to voting. My opinion is based solely off of reading the encounter, not trying it out.

Dotting for interest... I'm thinking of a few different ideas and will probably use one of the monstrous or Dragon Empires races as inspiration since I rarely get to play them.

Something strong and charismatic maybe, like Nagaji? Hmmm...

I was kind of hoping you'd stick around so I'd have the chance to play in a game with you. I really like the flavor of your characters, and that you are so willing to not optimize (Qhude's a great example, with his drug addiction).

Actually, that's one of the reasons I've continued to lurk around this game, because everyone's character seems so well thought out.

I can judge, if you like. We are basically just determining which of the four "players" would be most effective in battle?

Prior approval, but I tend to allow most stuff. Since it's 1st level, I'm sure if you tell me which ones you're thinking about, I can let you know ASAP.

No particular feats come to mind immediately. For first level, with a Knife Master, I would probably only take Weapon Finesse and TWF (assuming I go with human). And there are plenty of Core and APG feats that I would want anyway. I was just curious. Sometimes I like to plan around a particularly flavorful feat or trait, but I'll let you know in advance if it comes from UM or UC.

Thanks! I'll go work on my character now.

And one last question from me before I make a decision. Do you accept feats and spells from UC and UM, or would they need prior approval?

I am very interested in this game, as I have never played Savage Tide before and it sounds like a lot of fun. I'm going to brainstorm a few ideas before settling on a character. But I have a couple of questions, if you are willing to look into them.

There are a few UM and UC archetypes I have been interested in trying out. Would you consider the Knife Master (Rogue) from UC?

I completely understand if you want to limit the archetypes, so don't feel bad saying "no!"

I would like to submit a sorcerer for your consideration. I have not statted the character up yet, but she will fill the role of an arcane caster.

Kara Soltani
Kara was born into Golarion destined for... something. What that something is, she doesn't quite know. She just knows that there have been far too many odd occurrences in her life driving her in a direction not entirely of her choosing to call them coincidences. This destiny, brought onto her by the gods or by fate, drove Kara to try and learn more about the future. She began to study divination, against her parents' will.

During her studies, Kara frequently sought out the advice and tutelage of a Varisian Harrower named Verla, further angering her parents. Though at first she went only to Verla in order to receive a Harrowing, she eventually found herself learning how to perform a Harrowing herself. Verla recognized Kara's abilities as a diviner, and fostered her increasing curiosity by training her. Unfortunately, Verla was eventually accused of being a petty thief and con artist, and was arrested. Kara continued on in her stead, despite the danger imposed by the law.

These new found skills with the Harrow deck caused Professor Lorrimor to seek Kara out. It turns out Lorrimor had a rather pressing concern and needed a diviner to help him figure it out. He paid Kara handsomely to perform a Harrowing (her first professional Harrowing, in fact). Note: I would leave it up to the DM what Kara determined. I don't actually know anything about this campaign, having never played it.

Appearance:
To be determined (I'll probably use the avatars as inspiration).

Motivation:
Kara's life is somewhat out of her own control, as fate has taken a hold of her life. At least, that's how she sees things. She really loves performing Harrowings, and never charges her friends for a reading. She believes luck and coincidence plays a large part in everyone's live, but most have been unable to see it. She leans towards Chaotic Good on the alignment scale.

Character progression:
I see Kara starting off with the Harrowed feat and moving towards taking the Harrower prestige class eventually (probably as soon as she can). She'll gladly perform Harrowings, but I would like to work it out with the DM on how to go about this. Perhaps I could roll the cards using Paizo's number generator, and then have the DM provide the interpretation or give me a clue through Private Messaging.

She'll have access to some divination skills, but I'll also try to keep her effective in combat (with spells like Sleep, Magic Missile, etc.). I have considered making her an up close touch attack caster, but I'm not sure if that's the route I really want to take just yet.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the character and I'll do my best to answer them. And as always, my character may change slightly once I get to know her better, but the core concept will remain.

So many to choose from...

Let's go with:

Arcane Duelist, Archaeologist, Dervish Dancer, and Archivist