Ed Zoller 52's page

Such behavior also may be offensive to Shelyn personally so it may be a good opportunity to use some of the Divine Intercession Curse rules for Shelyn. You can even heighten them in intensity if he proves insincere again down the line.

Thanks for the ideas. Moving toward having him lose the LOH and Divine Ally (loses Shield Warden as well) gave him Shelyns minor curse and RP wise Im going to have an avatar of Zon-Kuthon (Shelyns half brother) to give him an option of going Devastator and give him a boon to entice. Then let him retrain for free into the Devastator class, or just let him atone.

Question though. Anything from RAW that says if his alignment shifts (NG to True Neutral) do you lose the tenents of good powers? Gut tells me you have to be good to get them.

Strangely, it sounds to me like the player wants to keep Champion's powers while actually acting as a Neutral Rogue rather than a Redeemer.Smells like "Con the GM" to me.Or did he just want to change his character while not losing on loot or some other benefit?

OP, did you ask him why he acted like this?

He is the main storyline for the campaign, and is a very good roleplayer. The character has a party he is trying to control, run a kingdom, failing at leading and he voiced that the character is getting frustrated. He lost his best friend(NPC) so I am running with this storyline. Just don't know which direction to take it and what powers I can strip. LOH and a Divine Ally just seemed a bit light, and being he did an evil act, switch his alignment from NG to True Neutral would strip all tenents of good powers. Guess if he embraces this, do I allow him to retrain all powers of Champion which he lost? Ran 5 long campaigns in 1e and didn't know if 2e has a guide for this.

Strangely, it sounds to me like the player wants to keep Champion's powers while actually acting as a Neutral Rogue rather than a Redeemer.Smells like "Con the GM" to me.Or did he just want to change his character while not losing on loot or some other benefit?

OP, did you ask him why he acted like this?

He is the main storyline for the campaign, and is a very good roleplayer. The character has a party he is trying to control, run a kingdom, failing at leading and he voiced that the character is getting frustrated. He lost his best friend(NPC) so I am running with this stroyline. Just don't know which direction to take it and what powers I can strip. LOH and a Divine Ally just seemed a bit light, and being he did an evil act, switch his alignment from NG to True Neutral would strip all tenents of good powers. Guess if he embraces this, do I allow him to retrain all powers of Champion which he lost? Ran 5 long campaigns in 1e and didnt know if 2e has a guide for this.

Ed Zoller 52 wrote:

I am running a campaign with an 8th level Champion Redeemer, who while attempting to calm down a -1 Level NPC commoner, critical hit him with his shield to calm him down. This attack killed the NPC.

Ahahahahah this is gold.

Why did you let the redeemer roll just to scare a lvl -1 citizen?
It's just an intimidate check.

He came up with the action. It is not the first time. He has also bashed lethally a PC to subdue him, struck a surrendering village of trolls, and even retrained out of painting (Sheyln Champion) into intimidation I believe. Alsmost like abandoning his god entirely.

I think you should offer to let him bump his alignment two levels and go Desecrater if he wants.

Not sure if you meant he (the player) wants to be emo about this or the character's going to be emo about this, but either it's worth clarifying.

If he just wants to be a jerk, just find a way to kill off the champion so he can rebuild a CN barbarian or something.

Character wants to go Emo about it. Which makes me wonder which way to take him. Retrain into another class? Go Evil, Go Chaos Champion, or retire character. Cant really go with the latter since the main storyline is about him and the kingdom they are building.

Ed Zoller 52 wrote:

Loreguard wrote:

It seems like this is less falling, and more actively jumping off of a cliff. You might even want to see if he is more interested in an evil aligned champion (assuming this is nota problem for the rest of the table).

Party is very chaotic, but not evil. One player retired his character from the party because of his few but chaos type actions. Think Ill ask player if he wants to retrain into a new class, or go to Chaos type champion.

ETA: And that's murder. Consequences should occur.

(Maybe he's coming in with too much of a video game mentality?)

Definately a video game player and it is his first time playing a role playing game although we have run this campaign for 26 straight weeks. To me it just feels strange he doesnt lose more (i.e. tenents of good feats) than just a lay on hands and his divine ally.

Ouch, if he resorts to violence with friendly PCs, that's... kind of a problem. Have you seen him play before? Is this a pattern with him? Or is this particular character just really edgy?

EDIT: And yeah, odd as it seems, he keeps glimpse of redemption and so on.

He wants to go all emo on this. Running a 2e all storybased 6 player campaign. He is a prince running a new kingdom and is trying to play a spoiled rich kid, who now goes a bit dark.

Loreguard wrote:

Although, if he shield bashed an NPC to calm them down/cause them to stop flailing/creating noise, etc. As a GM, I would have ruled he was attempting a nonlethal strike, and applied the -2 to the hit and had the NPC go unconscious, not dead.

I asked specifically if hw wanted to go non lethal and he said "Nah" really wanted him to be quiet. If this was a 1 off I would have but it is his third time doing this type of thing. Making him redeem 6 straight creatures without violence might be the answer though.

I asked if he wanted it to be non-lethal and his response was "nah" just happened to crit. its the 3rd time he has resorted to violence with friendly PC's and NPC's.

Although, if he shield bashed an NPC to calm them down/cause them to stop flailing/creating noise, etc. As a GM, I would have ruled he was attempting a nonlethal strike, and applied the -2 to the hit and had the NPC go unconscious, not dead.

I asked specifically if hw wanted to go non lethal and he said "Nah" really wanted him to be quiet. If this was a 1 off I would have but it is his third time doing this type of thing. Making him redeem 6 straight creatures without violence might be the answer though.

Thank you for your reply. Makes sense. So he should keep glimpse of redemption then and any tenets of good required feats and powers?

I am running a campaign with an 8th level Champion Redeemer, who while attempting to calm down a -1 Level NPC commoner, critical hit him with his shield to calm him down. This attack killed the NPC. This is not the first time he has done an evil act (hitting defenseless characters, murdered a few passive trolls who wanted to surrender). I deemed that since this is his 3rd time going against his tenets of good, his god abandoned him and he has to atone. I know the rules says he loses only his Divine ally and Lay on hands, but does he also lose his glimpse of redemption and other powers under tenants of good like Aura of Courage, Shining Oath, etc? He has voiced that he wants to go all Emo with this and go rogue until he feels he can atone if he does at all. Thoughts on what powers won't work anymore? Confused as to what RAW says he loses. My thoughts are he should lose any powers with a pre-req of tenants of good, his glimpse of redemption.

2. What ideas do you all have for him to Atone to Shelyn.

My druid in my party is arguing that he should be able to wield a weapon while in this form because the slam attack is weak according to him. Does RAW mention anything about the ruling for this?

So I have been tossing around a character I've wanted to do for a while; basically a bare-knuckle bruiser. I like the idea of bare fists, but the Monk's flavor didn't appeal to the concept, and besides, I needed him to be Chaotic.

Monks are as it sits very powerful. Min/Maxing and power gaming the character will only weaken your party. Build the character you will have fun playing. My party consists of 1 Power Gamer, 3 role players. As soon as the power gamer came in, he was way too overpowered and dominated on the field. To make encounters challenging, DM's will have to up the difficulty. This creates a domino effect and eventually to even challenge the monk you throw monsters and challenges at the party that only need a 2 or 3 to hit everybody else and a 18-19 to hit the monk. I vote from your choices to build what ever you see as most fun. If laying smack down on monsters is your ONLY way to have fun, then just go Brutal Pugilist. Just make sure to self nerf him so his AC isn't the best, his output of damage greatly overshadows everyone else, and his to hit isn't 5 higher than the fighter. (that powergamed monk dishes out 6 hits at average 90 pts of damage/round, has a 37 CMD and all he has to do is grapple a monster 4 levels higher than him and its game over. Very boring for the rest).

Playtested this today. I was wrong. It didnt take 2 rounds, it took 1. More time reading it than anything else. Both haunts were eradicated by a positive energy burst. Again anything under 10 HP die quick. Both haunts destroyed, took out the only thing that had any HP at all. DC 11 fear is nothing for 1st level members, this was for much higher members. Only damage spell was scorching ray. Did I miss something? No vote here.

Interesting and creative as well. Too blocky for a map design. no creativity there. Other maps were much more superior. As far as encounter, others were better, but not many of them. On the fence for me

Love the mini game, and I agree that an encounter should not always be static monsters awaiting their demise. The mini game has its faults, but great idea. If Paizo is looking for a designer who is creative, then I think they found one in Steve. Good job, great map. Vote from me

Good map, 2nd best in the 8 submissions. Encounter was okay in design, and what is with all the undead in these submissions? Skeletons that trigger the rooms obstacles. A bog mummy who commands idiot undead. Feels a bit like Army of Darkness. No combat tactics at all except burst damage that will destroy all the support monters. Never been a fan of multiple layers and only 1 door away. Love that monsters stay in their shell awaiting the PC's to come kill them and the rest just sit in their places. Too static.

Love this map! Reminds me of Heroes quest (hero quest in the US). Best map this round. Encounter was great and combat could be interesting if the players use no real tactics. Leaves alot for the imagination (isn't that what this is all about?). Vote for this one for sure. Playtesting it tommorrow in our own campaign

Good combat design, but it fell short. I actually like the many obstacles. This gives me an idea of an obstacle intense combat session. Did not understand a DC 25 perception check as isn't that too high? Then once you make that, only an Acrobatics of 15? The map wasn't good. Too cluttered despite what others have said. Too confusing, and no detail. Did not see where the obstacles were even supposed to be. also if goblins soap the floor, why would they fall into their own trap? No vote for this one

If map design and concept is what I am voting on, then this one gets the vote. The actual design of combat is way off. Love to make this into a mini-game for the players to enjoy. Design is great, map is great, not using commas, not great, and combat design: Bad.

story oops typo

Almost all of your entries were great! This one is a disappointment. Small map, many things to run as a DM and all for a brief 2 round combat session in my opinion for the level this is designed for. Sorry no vote here. Loved the choir though, using it in my own Kingmaker/Crimson throne campaign as a sotry arc.

I always like to see combat teach a lesson in tactics to players. This one is a walk in the park. Nothing more generic than flanking cannon fodder on the players. Maybe up the HP of the Ju Ju and skeletons so 1 barbarian doesn't just cleave straight through them in 1 shot if they surround him/her. Overall seems fairly weak aa an encounter. Not much for the imagination, nor serves any purpose.

I have been running a superstar type contest with my players for years and I do not like this one at all. First of all a big plant sticking out like a sore thumb in the forest hurling of all things fire around would have been eradicated by druids, rangers, and Ents above all else a long time ago. Makes no sense to me. It is creative and uses a new class in a way, but say a forest fire happend. I guess they would be all that would remain. The mechanics are off as described above. It looks more like it would be a TPK creature with its bomb damage, multi attacks, and a possible 10-60 pts when you kill it, to everyone, with the fire blast attack. Creative, but OP for a 7th level party.

Cleave is You do a standard action and if hit you attack as a free action against to an adjacent creature. I know a coup de grace is a full round action but if you hit, wouldnt cleave go into effect as a full round action is more powerful than a standard. Just interpretation of the black and white. A hit is a hit yes?

no, cleave requires a standard action attack to perform, coup de grace is a seperate full round action. you cannot do both in the same round. and a cleave attack is not a coup de grace on fascinated creatures.

So if cleave says if you hit, you can hit another that is adjacent in Pathfinder, a coup de grace is a hit? This is where the reading of the rules gets gray.

I have a red mantis assassin taken from the crimson series. Either way the question is if you do a coup de grace on a monster/NPC and are surrounded, do you get the free attack with cleave after a coup de grace? What about great cleave if your surrounded. Another question is a Red Mantis assassin has the prayer attack in which they fascinate creatures within 30 feet and after three rounds get a coup de grace against them. If I were surrounded by multiple fascinated creatures, is the cleave and great cleave also a coup de grace or just a regular hit?

Basicly the idea is despite all thats on the line that little piece of plastic doesn't care....

I give poker chips of 2 colors for doing a good job. At the end of session, for each good idea, or creative thing a player does, he gets a character point chip (blue) Who ever wins session gets an additional 2 chips. these chips can be spent in game play to add a 1d6 to any die roll including damage. Players love them, want to do a death drop with swords out at an end battle, spend a couple of chips and add the pluses. Keep a max/session of 6 chips though. If a player levels I give them 2 green chips. These are rerolls for any die being rolled either by the DM or player. My players save these for when I crit as DM which is fine. They do spend them frequently except one of my players that is hording about 10 chips right now. He is saving up to tackle the main main bad guy at the end of the campaign.

What ruined 4E for me I think was the death of character flexibility. Everything is completely pigeonholed.

Hard to say though. In the end, it just didn't feel like D&D anymore. Not the worst RPG I've ever played, but certainly a step in the wrong direction.

Almost one year of playing 4ED my big group played just about every class and build. So then PHB2 came out and it gave us more, although totally overpowered...(see barbarian). I have run/played basic, 1st, 2nd, 2.5 combat and tactics, 3rd, 3.5 and now 4th over a span of 20 years. By far 4th edition for some reason did not feel like dnd ast all. Good game, but not dnd feel for me, but again who am I? Pathfinder from day one felt like dnd again, plus the back compatable stuff is fantastic. My trunks and 100's of PDF's are safe. 4ED was great for combat, everything had differnet names, titles and stuff. My players used to say creative combat kills us, but 4th ed gave more description to combat rather than "I swing with my sword", but it gave problems with the role playing aspect. I agree with monk. It is a great game...but...

Thanks for the links and publishers on board. I just do not see any adventures being designed too much. ERP makes 1 on 1 adventures, Paizo makes society and the pathfinder series (by the way the society sessions are fantastic, and so are the gamemastery modules) Just looking for variety, guess Ill have to wait a bit. IThese things do take time. Bummer goodman-games didnt join on board, maybe in time they will find out what our group over 1 year of playing 4th found out.

I have a question. Just converted to Pathfinder from 4th edition and noticed that I see only Paizo building modules and the society sessions. Does anyone know what happend to all the third party publishers like Goodman-games, Creative mountain games, or AEG? Who sided with who? Is their an open gaming license on Pathfinder and who is going to publish new adventures for Pathfinder or 3.X anymore? We went form having a huge realm of adventures to choose from, just curious who can write for Paizo?

I started DND back in basic. I have always been the DM and over theyears have gone from Basic (red-Black) box sets, Ad&d 1st edition, 2nd edition Ad&d...what I call 2.5 or combat and tactics to 2nd. #rd edition, 3.5 an quickly back to 3.0, and 4th edition since it came out. I am excited and much more thrilled to play Pathfinder. It corrected 3.5 into a better system (No dead levels) and easy game play. 4.0 was a disappointment. We have played a campaign from 1st to 25th and quit. Lost many players and the fun was stripped right out of the game. Pathfinder is all about the character creation again and I have to bive props. Comparing all of them, Pathfinder seems the best and complete system right now.

Our group uses many of the markers from World of Warcraft the board game. the price tag is a little steep at $60-$70 but has numerous markers, Warlock curse markers, many differnet colors markers for marks. Plus the game is pretty fun to play as well. I also use a set of dice with conditions on them like pinned, immobilized, etc I got from a dice dealer. They come in handy as well. Any one else use props (big fan of them also) and from where?

Reading the module ahead of time I noticed Irontooths difficulty. For the last 5 years starting a published campaign I have always thrown in my own beginning module or quests to buff the party a level above designed, then start. With that said, we did the mini module in the back of the DMG. I also instead of roleplaying the town encounter, did it by doing one on one skill challenges with each party member. I also gave them all three hooks and rewards from all of them. This buffed the party to 2nd level and then they got ambushed with the first fight of the KOTSF module. I will let you know how Iron tooth turns out, but 1/2 the party is now 3rd level and we have not even finished the kobald waterfall liar. Maybe throw some skill challenges for your group, reward them with 1 piece of level 5 gear for successfully doing a skill challenge, making the party a little stronger than designed not only makes it less a tpk feel, but also allows me as DM to add a little flavour from time to time as well. Maybe throwing in a scorpion or two just for a new feel and look.

If you could please cancel my subscription to pathfinder. I just received one today but need to cancel my subscription.

Thanks for the feedback, we finished our third session of it. It picked the adventure in the back of the DM's guide and now into the keep. To add flavor I started with a skill challenge as written and all succeeded in their own 1 on 1 skill challenge of complexity 1 level 1. Set the Dc's to 10, 15 and 20. the DC 20 counted as two successes and the DC 15 one success and DC 10 added a +2 to the next skill check but not as a success. natural 20's doubled whatever rule, and it worked great. I gave all characters a level 5 random item to start off with and a hook each. This time around all players remembered their quest and role played each skill check making it more epic. I can tell you that I use the WOW baord game. The pieces it gives work great. Marks, warlock curses, bloodied effects can all be marked on the board with these pieces. I know it costs$60+ and might seem steep but is well worth it. I also use custom dice I bought here that track effects. These work well. Thank you to all for the feedback. I especially like the keep the crit deck use max damage and keep secondary effects rule. I will use that. Fast furious and amazing thing was it took about 1 hour for 3 encounters. I can tell that some players feel that the warlock is overpowered but that mostly stems from the dragonborn pally thinking he is a damage guy and is getting mad that the warlock steals the kills, gets off more damage than he does. I tried to tell them the aspect of roles again. Might have been my fault teaming up on the guy with the kobalds immobilizing him, slinging stomes, and flanking. Almost had a two player kill with the first battle due to great die rolling, but in the end the rest of the battles were quick bloody and rewarding for the characters. We also have the battle of going for 2 weeks ago level 18+ party to 1st level again. always a tough transition. Anyone else believe a race or class is overpowered?

The bes tthing is after over 1 year that itr finally is done. Players hated the abyss (especially the conjuror) Players got to play demon races for the first time ever, and got to 18th level before encountering a batch of flying demons. They were trying to rescue Lavinia from the prison but fell short as they crossed the bridge. In a shortened version of what happended, two of the four characters got knocked off the bridge sand were climbing the 100' of cliff, the demon/angel character tankkd as long as they could but got decapitated. With the hope of continuiong on the mages shoulders, he decided to wish them all back to the prime material plane and end the campiagn and retire. So much for epic heroics at high level. On the 4th ediion we will go.

So now that we have played it and had some time to go into the rules in depth, I have to say kudos to 4th edition. Although it has a MMO feel with the powers and cooldowns, that did not pose any problems to the players! In fact it was a blast. I started out using the hooks as a skill challenge for all players. If they win the skills challenge then the "master" gives them a magic item level 5 and the quest and if fail they just get the quest and a reduction in the pay. The combat encounters were fun, fast paced, and very tactical. The rules were beyond easy and simple. Just look at what promotes opportunity attacks (old A.O.O.) No more figuring out a buff spells duration, although keeping track of spells in effect until save can add up quickly. Players thought that combat was simplified but character creation was very involved, in fact, much better. Players had a choice and now for the first time ranged combatants can "fire into melee" which was always a no no in the old system. Much of the problems 3.x had was too many rules, too many exceptions. My rules lawyer had nothing to say for three entire sessions so far. Players leveled and found it very rewarding. It actually makes more sense to make a human rather than another class which is a first. DMing monsters was easy, fast, and found more time to construct tactics rather than worry about huge stat blocks that 3.x gave with most monsters. Would love to hear others feedback. Please do not make this a 4th edition sucks vs 4th edition is great. Just want to hear about other dm's opinion on
1: how they run the game
2: players feedback
3: Houserules if any (we kept critical and fumble decks, ad hoc for old school rules, )
4: Props they use (we use colored poker chips for ad hoc, action points, and winners of session)

Most importantly would love to hear what other dm's use to keep track of conditions and marks while playing. Do not like the bad cards dm's guide gives.

I pre-ordered the core set and all of you got it. I have not release is June 6th, guess this is a Europe thing? Or will I just have to wait

3rd edition was a great game when it came out. 3.5 in our opinion swung the game to the power of the PC's, making DMing harder, and slower. More abilities, spells, more power etc. Our group actually looking back enjoyed 2nd edition with the combat and tactics guides better because of the balance, but it also was a little time consuming. 4th edition does solve one big problem with 3rd and especially 3.5...speed of combat. The game runs faster, smoother, and no flipping through indexes and books to find a rule, spell, etc. We are finishing up Savage Tides and those monsters stat blocks are a DM's nightmare. We ran the 4th edition module (first 5 battles) and combat ran 3x faster, players had 3x more fun, and no one got confused with the rules (at least not too much). It gave the feel in this matter of times of basic DND and 1st edition.

At least the first module is very lethal. 1st level monsters having 30+HP is lethal enough. I like the use of mooks (referring to the Wicked adventures) 1 hit and dead minions, but this module is a TPK. Interesting to see what a level 15 or 20 creature has when level 4 brutes have 300+HP.

The format I agree is great and the emphasis on role-playing is there, but with enough hack n slash to make the game fun and delve the characters into this realm. The feel of TPK is definately there. I wonder if they used super-players to test drive it. Normal players young and old will have a hard time staying alive the way this is formatted. Also do not like that the module assumes you have 5 players or you have to modify. Most gaming session consist of either 2-3 players and a DM. I had to pick one of the characters which only made trying out a new rule system harder

Being one who owns every type of die known to the geometry world (Yes I bought d5's and d7's, and d30's, d100'd (my favorite)) I do see here that rolling die has been reduced, but in defense of saving throws, it is balanced. Think of a 1st level character with a +2 fort save. They roll against a DC 12 and its a 10 or higher. Now lets blast ahead to a 15th level character having a +19 fort save rolling against a poison DC of 30. Its a 9 or higher, so actually the St system saves time, die rolls, and is exactly the same as 3.0/3,5

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Just goes to show having the short version of the rules makes for many grey areas, but I know there will be grey areas anyway even with the complete rules in place. As far as peoples comments on dying too much, change the 3 failed rolls and your dead to -CON and your dead, and make it possible for any class to heal check another and if it succeeds revert the character back to 0 and have them spend a healing surge instead of just stabilizing them. It worked well for our group.

Pop'N'Fresh wrote:

burst 2 is 20 x 20

One quick correction, everything else looked good: Burst 2 is a 5x5 square, 1 middle square then 2 on each side.

He was talking in feet for the burst.

I looked through some posts recently and saw that Razz was taken out of them?!? Where did Razz go?

I ruled the same way but the desciption reads about the miss being wicked jabs and cutting blows so their argument was just that. Also if a minion has 1 hp then this attack is worthless against them since the miss cant hurt them, but what about a level 1 warrior with 3 HP left? I ruled no different than you. What about the burst issue and the other questions. P.S. thanks for the suggestions. I told my characters that as DM I have enough to handle and wont make it a habit of keeping track of their characters stuff. I got enough to control, but if I spot something I will remind. Its about fun not me killing the party members. They cant wait until the main rule books come out. Hope they have backs to them! They dont really like pre-gens and want to make their classes themselves

Whats with the smudging ink? Cheap paper, no backing, cool maps (definite plus), I love the trapper keeper feel, and the story I loved (although it smells like Village of hommlet to me). Overall worth the $20 I paid on the pre-order, not worth $30. Rules seem great and modifiable to keep some of the best things of d20 3.5.