Egoish's page

Be it so known that the bearer of this charter has been charged
by the Swordlords of Restov, acting upon the greater good and
authority vested within them by the office of the Regent of the
Dragonscale Throne, has granted the right of exploration and travel
within the wilderness region known as the Greenbelt. Exploration
should be limited to an area no further than thirty-six miles east and
west and sixty miles south of Oleg’s Trading Post. The carrier of
this charter should also strive against banditry and other unlawful
behavior to be encountered. The punishment for unrepentant banditry
remains, as always, execution by sword or rope. So witnessed on this
24th day of Calistril, under watchful eye of the Lordship of Restov
and authority granted by Lord Noleski Surtova, current Regent of
the Dragonscale Throne.

With these words on a thick piece of parchment the adventurers set off to the south, heading for the little known trading post "Oleg's" to start their explorations and find their fortunes. Walking or riding down the South Restov Road at the end of winter is a taxing journey for the fittest of hero's, made even worse by the advent of a late winter snow storm. The hero's slowly trudge towards the distant shape of a road side inn for their first night out of Restov, hopeful that they can complete the two day journey in three days through the half foot of fresh snow that now coats the countryside.

No one needs to make saves for avoiding the elements at this stage as it is warm enough when fully clothed and cloaked that there is no danger, the Dog and Goat Inn in the distance is a small affair but is rumoured to serve the best hare stew in Restov. If anyone wants to make knowledge local/history/geography checks for any info about the area i will let you, you will also get a +2 circumstance bonus for any research you may have done before setting off.

Welcome to you all, i just want to get everyone to post in here before we start on the gameplay thread so i can confirm everyone made it in.

Congratulates on being accepted and a heartfelt apology to all those who didn't make it through.

Hello pbpers,

I have been putting some thought into a pbp and have finally decided to try my hand at it after having a great experience playing in one of Lucendars games.

Rules, we play as closely to raw as possible, core/apg/um/uc are allowed as are anything from the campaign setting books as long as its on the pfsrd.

15 point buy
max starting cash
1 campaign trait
1 other trait
max hp for level 1

I will be recruiting 5, maybe 6, players and tweaking the AP as such. I would like to warn you that the first book and into the second book until your kingdom gets rolling can be a little treasure light, i will be slotting some more stuff in.

I'd like a little bit of fluff on your background and the reason you wanted to head to the stolen land, a simple paragraph will do. Recruitment closes at 7pm gmt on Saturday 12th of May, if its a slow response i might extend it. I would like people to commit to 10 posts a week, weekends are understandably quiet but if we are mid combat posting your action to keep the game moving would be appreciated.

Also one last bit of fair warning, if you want to play a summoner your math better be prefect because i hate checking sheets for errors and this class drives me crazy, its not an auto no but if there are mistakes in your first draft it will be a no.

SO i've been writing a kingdom event for an APL 4 party, i found a creature thats ideal, gave it some support so its not a walk over and created a CR 7 encounter, i'm not sure if this beastie should actually be the CR it is though and i just wanted a little advice. My players look away now...

So what does everyone think? is it going to be too hard for a apl 4 party or is it a fair CR?

So tonight in the end of series finale our level 7 party fought an advanced 15HD shadow demon. We were having some trouble with it being incorporeal and having sick damage reduction.

Thinking back to a forum post i read a while ago i decided to arcane bond bestow curse from my spellbook and curse the demon with a physical form, we rolled combat casting and spell resistance and a will save. It worked and the demon lost the rule, we hammered it for a round and it pulled off a last minute escape via greater teleport at 7 hp.

All in all a great fight but i was wondering if anyone else had any unique curses they have used. The guide lines for curse craft are pretty open and i think its hard to judge whats allowable as comparable to the effects available.

A few others i thought of using are curse of severing to remove access to a class feature such as channel energy, or distraction for a DC 10+curse caster level concentration check to cast spells. Anyone done some curse crafting of their own?

So my current party have recently discovered that because we don't hang out in Hooters (thats what we call the temple/tavern of Cayden in Absalom) that our party is getting a reputation, now its not all bad but there are some rumours flying around that we need to fix (some of them are far to accurate).

We currently have done a lot of work for good causes (some of it even pro bono) that seems to have been twisted by the rumour mill to make us sound evil (some of us are), and our aquisition of property (villa in absalom, pirate ship, letter of marque from chileaxian merchant) has been frowned upon by some of the more goody goody adventurers (bloody caydenites) and i'm worried it may start to effect business.

So with that in mind how do i go about boosting my adventuring company "Hired Goons" back up to a stirling reputation?

If i'm rocking around on a phantom steed and i want to move 240 and cast a speel or even do something as simple as move and cast a spell as a full round action i need to make a concentration check.

Now up to level 12 i normally only use my phantom steed outside combat but at 11 i'm planning on taking mounted combat so i can use it all the time, is there a way i can avoid the concentration check by level 13?

In the past i experimented with a bane weapon focused against spellcasters, i'm aware one was published in a 3.5 splat book after my failed experiment, but i found it extremely powerful due to the huge number of creatures it targetted. A large portion of creatures above cr 8 and above seem to have some spellcasting ability. Having scrapped that plan i had a new idea...

Spellbane; gives +2 enhancement and an additional +2d6 damage against creatures who cast spells of a particular school, creatures who have in memory (prepared casters), are able to cast (spontaneous casters) or have on their sla list any spell of the specific school activate the enchantment as per the bane quality.
Req; feat, dispel magic Price; +1 bonus

Basicly i have a paladin who is using the undead scourge archtype who does not need an undead bane weapon as more damage is pointless, what he would like is a better way to fight the necromancer who made them, so a spellbane(necromancy) longsword seems like a useful addition to his armoury without being hugely overpowering. It could also be handy for pc's combating planar incursions with a conjuration focus, i also had a sneaky idea for an elite guard unit equipped with evocation bane subdual weapons to combat blast happy wizards in cities.

My worry is that i'm wrong and the monsters that got minced by my original foray into this kind of weapon will still be getting minced, i was thinking of adding in that the sword will only work in such a way on a target who has cast a spell of the school in the last 24hrs but it seems clunky already and the secondary method will be harder to track.

What do people think?

Well my group of four have just defeated the stag lord and after an epic fight and about 12 sessions are nearing the end of book one so i thought i'd share some bits of the experience. There are to many bits to spoiler tag so if your playing book one i would stop reading now.

The groups made up of Monty a life oracle with a wasting disease curse, Liza a greatsword barbarian who kills most things with minimum damade, Eric a druid with a tiger pet who replaced his cousin Bill an alchemist who passed away fighting the "not a kobold" tartuk and Nefty an evil eye and cackle witch who replaced Monty's bodyguard a cavalier named Tilian who also passed away in what my players affectionatly call the effing illusion encounter.

I've run most of the set peice encounters out of the book other than swaping a few feats or spells or increasing the odd hp total here and there to make the fights a little more epic, we've had a few deaths saved by hero points. Kressle was responsible for one at the thorn river camp, Happs also caused another at the thorn river camp after they showed mercy and let him go from Olegs trading post (on a side note Happs escaped again at the thorn river to haunt the party later).

They enjoyed the two session encounter with the faeries and spent litterally hundreds of gold on bribes while wandering around the northern reaches of the forest, this all paid off as the faeries saved them from encounters with an owlbear at level one, a will-o-wisp at level two and some trolls at level two. They cleared the temple of the elk with no issues at level two but lost most of their horses (and gear) to a shambling mound on the way back to Olegs, quick thinking by the Tilian saved Monty the would be king from a mossy death, then suffered a days camp in a blizzard (random weather generator). After escorting Jhod to the temple they hit the hot springs, Tilian was 1 round away from drowning when Bill finally killed the last frog and pulled him out, this encounter was all the funnier as if they had fallen for it more completely insted of being paranoid about it they would have had much better time swimming without their armour on.

Random encounters ended up being more challanging than some of the set pieces and i have now rolled trolls three times but every time i just use them as a threat to highlight the danger, tracks or in the distance or fae warnings.

The mite lair proved to be entertaining after they realised the mites were basicly no threat, they rescued mikmek whom they had already met and bartered with at the raddish patch (who is also fast becoming a friend of the pc's and may one day be a pc in his own right). After the first two rooms they came to the chasm, Tilian was straight onto the handholds and straight down the the bottom with the giant centipede, after 6 rounds of fighting Bill put it down with alchemists fire however not before Lisa was poisoned to 5 dexterity, that one fight sucked up all the party resources other than a few potions and a couple of channels. Amazingly and bravely they decided on "one more room" and climbed out of the chasm rounded a corner walking straight into the chiefs war room. I made a few changes to the chief giving him a fighter level and the mounted combat archtype so he could make ride checks for his mount, this resulted in the party on the verge of dispair with Lisa and Tillian down, Monty out of spells and Bill heavily wounded until they were reminded that those hero points they had been hoarding could be used to recall channelling uses per day, add to hit, add to saves etc. Armed with this knowledge they defeated the mite chief and his pet in a flurry of hero points then retreated safely to the kobold caverns.

Upon reaching the silver mine they headed straight for chief sootscale and handed him the statue, securing his alliance and fealty if they would remove Tartuk the usurper shaman, sadly for them the shaman was a wily one and had some aoe effects to mingle with his illusions including color spray which i swapped into his spell list and a five charge wand of fireball in place of his magic missile wand. After driving the party crazy with invisibility, silent image and colour spray he spent 3 rounds umding his wand until it went off, for nearly max damage, and dropped the party before they had a chance to hit him.

I blame this near tpk on the precious session when they burned all their hero points to stay alive in the mite warren but thinking outside the box Tartuk did a runner with his loot and left them to bleed to death.

As everyone stabilised before minus con it took them three days of natural healing to awaken, during which time Tilian had become extremely ill from infected tick bites. Unable to clear the disease with his heal skill and fearing Tilian may pass away (on a side note it would appear that a disease which drains str cannot actually kill you, just force you into a coma until you waste away. I house ruled this to if your disease causes double your str score in damage you shuffle from the mortal coil) the party entered a break neck race across the stolen land to Jhod at the temple for healing, fighting througrandom encounters and pushing their horses to the brink of death they made it with scant hours to spare (Tilian was at the point a failed save and a high roll would spell the end). Thankfully Jhod is a highly skilled cleric and easily stabalised Tilians health and nurse him back from the brink.

Arriving back at the Sootscales they set up an alliance with the chief and spent a couple of days writing up a treaty, after that freshly reloaded after their heroic actions saving Tilian and brokering peace with the kobolds they set off tracking Tartuk and his sack of loot (svetlana's wedding ring). A heroic fight insued with the sneaky "not a kobold" illusionist killing both Tillian and Bill before Tillians horse kicked him to death.

Now two months into their adventures in tbe stolen land and reaching level three with just a few hexes left on the edge of the south westerns swamps to explore the Blighted as the band of hero's have come to be known receive a new charter from Restov to finish the bandits once and for all, not a moment too soon as Monty is currently having a recuring nightmare about his home being burnt down with him in it then falling too his death in icy waters as a stag helmed figure cuts the floor out from underneath him which is preventing him from resting and regaining spells. Spending a hero point to pass (just) he regains his spells and they set off with their wagon loaded in loot and booze to the stag lords fort.

Time for a lunch break and this is a little long so i'll post the fort encounter in a while.

RECALL KNOWLEDGE SKILLS

I went through the three books and looked at the enemies they might face, to see which Knowledge skills might be more useful for identifying foes.
Here's the ranking for OoA.
(I might have missed a few things but it should give you a rough estimate, also keep in mind some creatures can be identified with more than one skill, so Constructs will show up on both Arcana and Crafting.)

In order of frequency:
1. Arcana
2. Society
3. Crafting
4. Nature
5. Religion
6. Occultism

Cheers!

RECALL KNOWLEDGE SKILLS

I went through the three books and looked at the enemies they might face, to see which Knowledge skills might be more useful for identifying foes.
Here's the ranking.
(I might have missed a few things but it should give you a rough estimate, also keep in mind some creatures can be identified with more than one skill, so Beasts will show up on both Arcana and Nature.)

In order of frequency:
1. Nature
2. Society
3. Religion
4. Arcana
5. Crafting
6. Occultism

Also, FYI on languages
Hallit is the most common language spoken by opponents by far, next Taldane, Draconic, Sylvan, Abyssal, Necril, Jotun and Celestial with a sprinkling of a few others.

I wrote some journal entries for Ardissa's Journal in Chapter 2, to flesh out her backstory. Took actual hunting tips from online sites, and wrote her journal entries myself. Hope it's helpful for anyone else.
(It took the PCs 22 days to reach the Grandparents, you can adjust the dates for your group)
----------------------------------
This journal is written in Taldane, in a very neat and disciplined hand.

(...)

It’s never too early to start learning the country that you’re going to hunt in.
When the time comes—get there early, stay late, and always keep a weather eye on the horizon.

You can’t control the weather. An early cool snap or rainy spell can turn this into a painfully slow hunt. 

Nothing will sharpen your skills quite like small-game hunting. Get after squirrels with your light crossbow, or prairie dogs or jackrabbits or rats at the city dump.

Invest on some high quality spyglass, whether you’re sitting in a ground blind or glassing from a pickup, the extra magnification is nice for deciphering just how big a goat’s curls and cutters are from a thousand yards away.

Also, read terrain like a book, starting at the top, "reading" lines slowly left to right. When you finish one line, move down to the next, reading terrain slowly left to right again. You'll see more game and gain more enjoyment while hunting by using optics effectively.

When set up efficiently, ground blinds can be a massive advantage for your hunt. Ground blinds are practical for bows, and crossbows, giving you a top choice in your weapon style. Therefore, no matter what equipment you use for hunting, following our ground blind hunting tips will increase your chances of yielding the best results.

Remember the 6P’s (Perfect Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance).

Since most animals we hunt are sharp in sight and smell, you should take the time to camouflage yourself. Don’t just set up along the tree line or at the top of a ridge. This can lead to a poor session, as you’ll be easily spotted. There are several ways through which you can cover and hide your blind according to your surroundings. Blending into your environment with branches, cattails, or other natural vegetation is one of the most underrated strategies when hiding your hunting tent.

Keeping your feet in good shape is pivotal to successful big game hunting. Many expensive mountain mule deer or elk hunts are ruined by blisters or otherwise sore feet.

Spot-and-stalk ploys are typically the name of the game while hunting big game. Once game is located with your spyglass, learning to move quietly can be quite important to closing the last yards required for a killing shot -- especially with archery gear. Stalking like a cat requires practice, but a few beginning tips help you remain quiet. Plan your route well ahead while moving, avoiding patches of ground that make it impossible to step quietly. Avoid clothing materials that create noise of their own; fleece, wool and similar materials prove best. Stalking "slippers" or overboots are also a wise choice. Be patient, plan well, and use these tips and you, too, can stalk close to game.

To regularly succeed on big game, make the best of limited opportunities and work to increase your maximum effective range. This doesn't mean recklessly attempting long shots without practice, but investing in practice that makes longer shots second nature. Archers should strive to improve equipment tuning and shooting form. How far you're qualified to shoot at game is then entirely up to you, but stretching your effective range by even 10 or 100 yards opens a world of additional success opportunities.

The wild can be highly unforgiving. Rough terrain can run you down and leave you far from camp after dark. Weather can change radically and unpredictably in a matter of hours. Be prepared for a worst-case scenario by always carrying essential survival gear in your hunting daypack. Think in terms of staying warm and dry should you be forced to spend the night out. And always carry a means of starting a fire under any condition. Prepare for the worst and come home alive.
(...)

The first part of this journal has a bunch of notes, presumably gathered from different sources on big game hunting, including plans for blinds, basic guides for tracking, best places to strike animals for a quick, clean kill.

These notes are enough for you to learn how to become a game hunter (You get access to the game hunter archetype)

Some of the latest notes read:

(...)

  Oathday Pharast 31st 4722:

We tracked and hunted a whooly mammoth, a nice specimen, it however was too weak to resist my beloved Furybeak and Stonebill's bite, It did manage to trample my dear Furybeak, who we had to leave under the petrified creature's foot. What a waste!

  Starday Gozran 2nd 4722:

We moved east towards the Tusk Mountains, found the area the locals call the Grandparents, to me they just look like any other mountain peaks, but I guess these superstitious people see things were there are none. The area is useful though, there are plains to the north and southwest, hills to the south and it's flanked by mountains to the east and west. There's a cave to the northeast that looks very promising. We have already seen tracks of mammoths and other large animals in the region.

Toilday Gozran 5th 4722:

We found the cave, a limestone rocky entrance that resembles the mouth of a mountain lion. We tried to set up camp there, but these dwarves were spooked and refused to stay there, they said they kept hearing strange sounds from the deep, and movement on the wall paintings.

I must confess I might have heard those sounds, and seen the strange movements, not that I would let them know it. These dwarves are hardy and strong, but I might need to look for more brave employees when I get back south.

  Oathday Gozran 7th 4722:

We went back down to the southwest and found a wonderful place, this will make a marvelous hunting blind, it's even camouflaged from below by bushes. From here I can see many miles to the west and north. I'll see any herd of mammoths approaching from quite a distance.

There's also a strange looking stone embedded into the ground. It's about 4 feet tall, looks like a narrow pyramid that fell from the sky and got stuck in the ground.

Fireday Gozran 8th 4722:

I believe the stone we have found is one of the so-called apakus, that are found in these lands. It seems to focus the power of ley lines...

My limited research has determined that this apaku dramatically extends the range of evocation magics. This location has proved even better than I initially thought. With the power of this apaku, I shall be able to drop fireballs far down into the hills, and shoot magic missiles for many feet at a time.

  Starday Gozran 9th 4722:

We have spotted a small herd of mammoths and other creatures approaching, what a fortuitous find. We also managed to petrify and capture a female dire wolf, thankfully it's only temporarily turned to stone this time.

  Sunday Gozran 10th 4722:

The herd seems to be lead by some of the famous Mammoth Lords, they have camped not far away from our hunting spot. I'm pretty sure they can be caught in the range of a fireball, I'm so close to getting my mammoth, I can feel it. Just gotta be patient.

The second half details Ardissa's current expedition into the Realm of the Mammoth Lords. In her latests entries, she describes the terrain surrounding the Grandparents, she visited Red Cat Cave, but she and her employees found it too unnerving to stay there. She found this hunting spot and the apaku stone recently. According to her, evocation magic is enhanced by this particular apaku.

I had a realization while playing our first session of the AP.
The core theme of the AP is family (Spoken in Vin Diesel's voice)

Pakano in my campaign came out as such a loser. The PCs started bullying him from moment one.
He was last in initiative (despite giving him a +2 circumstance bonus), missed his first and only attack against the moose, he critically failed the Reflex save when being trampled, I had him faint from fear at the charging moose and miraculously be unharmed.
He lost the challenge for the spear and ended up ass-first in the muddy bank of the Gornok river.

But, during one of the PCs interactions, one of my players said something that resonated with me, our Flame Elemental Sorceress, who beat him for the spear:

"Um, about Pakano... maybe don't parade that fight around too much? He's... still a child." Adhain taps her head with a finger. "Up here. Too much to prove to too few people. (...)"

So, I have decided to give him a redemption arc.

Instead of him intentionally ...

He's later humiliated by his fellow scouts, during the Moose Hunt and the wrestling challenge for the spear.
Then, during the Night of the Green Moon, he is given the title of Pakano "Fire in the Eye" and his Glyptodon Broken Tusk amulet. Despite this honor, he was expecting to be named the successor for Falcon House. He's been humiliated and denied yet again, this time in front of the whole following.

So, of course he flees the following that very night. While crying, he gathers his stuff, including his grandmother's shield and goes to those who might consider him family. There he meets Ivarsa, who takes him in and shows him the tiniest bit of affection, so he's immediately drawn to her. His hate for the scouts, those who robbed him of his inheritance and title (at least in his dual colored eyes) fuels him, he wants to see them humiliated and then hurt.