Esquilax hortensis's page

I'm using the slow XP table and I'm doing what I can to keep the campaign relatively low-magic.

After six months of playing every 2-3 weeks, the party is about halfway through level 3. Pretty soon they're going to start getting access to actual magic items.

I like it when magic items are rare and cool, and I like it when gaining a level is a big deal.

Ah, my mistake. I thought you were saying that your writers didn't have a common foundation upon which to build.

Depends on whose origins mythology you ask. We've been deliberately coy and contradictory on this because it's more exciting for that to be mysterious, in my opinion—this also lets each GM decide what works best for his version of Golarion, but ALSO doesn't force us to go with a specific prehistoric genesis at some point later if and when we decide to do something with the topic.

Those are certainly valid metagame justifications, and I know that you're in the business of creating a flexible and open-ended setting, but it seems awkward to me. Not as a GM; I can obviously change whatever I want.

I mean that from a creative standpoint, it's a strange idea to me to create all of these deities and people and their motivations and behaviors with no view to where they came from or why they believe they exist, what they believe the point of their lives is. A race as ancient as the Elves must have given some thought to teleology.

The implication is that it doesn't matter. It also leaves a continuity-minded GM in the tough position of trying to reverse-engineer an origin story that is in keeping with the behavior of the deities, who presumably have asked the question themselves and have some ideas.

Everything that is being written is not coming from a central, common understanding of origin, but haphazardly. At some point a PC or NPC is going to ask who created the gods, even rhetorically, and I'm going to be stumped. Not because I can't make something up on the spot, but because I can't make something up on the spot that will mesh well with all of the currently-existing lore. It's like trying to build a foundation under a house that is already completed, and on uneven ground, at that.

EDIT: And while I'm here, I'd just like to thank you personally for being so involved in the community. It means a lot and it's very cool.

I've wondered for a while about the origins of the races as well as the origin of Golarion itself, but I am not well-versed in the lore of the setting.

Whence came humans, elves, and dwarves? The lizardfolk and the Aztlanti? And what cause the world itself to come into being? The universe? The gods?

Ranger does seem the best fit, but spell-less ranger makes a lot more sense than the stock ranger. It gives you the skilled (and perhaps educated) frontiersman flavor that you so clearly want. I don't know what sort of animal companion you'd go with, but it never hurts to have a fantastic horse.

I could perhaps see cleric working, especially if he's a strong community leader type, which it sounds like he would be.

Would paladin be too obvious? A paladin of Erastil in particular would fit in well with the adventure path and could work for a lot of what your character seems to be.

Alternatively barbarian could work. He'd have the familiarity with the woodland, village construction skills, and an appreciation for the importance of a solidly-built community. Note that his flavor doesn't necessarily have to be "savage," just his skill set and fighting style.

The reason I'm not into the ghost touch mechanic is that it has no bearing on normal encounters, which I want, and that it negates that 50% damage reduction against ghosts, which I don't want.

Brilliant energy against critical threats sounds awesome, and having it not work against undead actually works well, since the undead could (in theory) be cut off from the extra dimension(s).

Only playtesting will really let me know if this is game-breaking, but if it is adjustments can be made.

EDIT: Perhaps brilliant energy against critical threats, but if it misses, the attack misses too? I don't want this to be overpowered. Balancing it this way, though, might make it less useful than a regular weapon, which is not what I want.

Thanks for the support, Symar and Rathendar!

My low-level PCs are going to be travelling to a layer of reality where things visibly exist in more than three dimensions. Creatures will move along unpredictable paths, there will be portions of objects and monsters invisible (and incorporeal) to the still-3D PCs, things will seem to have too many faces picasso-style, and so on. I'll be using a mechanic for attacking the monsters where they basically have total concealment (50% miss chance) at all times due to their extradimensional natures, as long as the PCs are attacking with normal weapons. The PCs can see that the creatures don't conform to normal standards of dimensionality but can't perceive or comprehend the differences well enough to adjust their fighting styles.

The PCs are going to acquire weapons crafted by a traveller from this dimension, which will function effectively against the creatures within it, removing the 50% miss chance. All well and good.

I'm at a little bit of a loss as to how these weapons will affect creatures on the Prime Material Plane, though. The obvious thing would be to give them a 50% miss chance, but I want the weapons to be useful in the real world too. The idea is that even on the PMP everything exists in these extra dimensions, but simply cannot be perceived as such.

I'm thinking something along the lines of one or more of these attributes, but don't know which ones to pick or how to balance them to end up with the equivalent of a +1 weapon:

- Increased critical range (due to wounding the creature's extradimensional portion)

- Chance to ignore armor and allow an attack against touch AC (but not always)

- Maybe a combination of the two - rolls to confirm crits can be made against touch AC?

- Perhaps a penalty to hit

- Decreased critical range, increased critical multiplier

- Occasional miss chance

- Able to hit incorporeal creatures (but perhaps not get over the damage halving)

- Anything else that you guys can come up with

This is a low-magic campaign, and these weapons will be the first real non-mundane weapons that the PCs have access to. A lot of the creatures in this realm (which I think of as "Sevenspace") are based on sea creatures for an alien feel, and the weapons that the PCs get will have the appearance of being made of polished mother of pearl, so I'm optimistic that this will be interesting and memorable.

Clearly this idea is at a low level of refinement and I can use all the help I can get.

I'm running a game with seven PCs and I have a penchant for large battles. Faced with the nightmare of tracking initiative for everyone, I started wondering what the point was in the first place. After the surprise round, it seemed to me that between delays and other actions, the party could rearrange its initiative order anyway.

Long story short, I ended up just abandoning the whole idea. We went back to AD&D style where each "side" rolls a d10 and whichever rolls low gets to go first. If a GM wanted to stay more true to D20 they could instead try to roll high on one of those, I guess. This works for multi-party battles, too, since I also like three-ways occasionally.

Surprise rounds are handled by common sense, with perception checks where necessary.

When the PCs go, they decide amongst themselves what order they'll be going in. They all go, then the other side goes.

Two major results:
1) Combat moves faster and with a lot less bookkeeping.

2) Instead of sitting around waiting for their number to come up, the party gets involved in deep collaboration involving what to do. There's much more of a teamwork dynamic going on, as everyone gets to pitch in on strategy for the round. Some DMs might not like this because of the whole "it's combat, you don't have time to talk about this" thing, but I find that it gets everyone more involved and they have a better time.

Oh, and obviously, the PCs have stopped spending feats on improving their personal initiatives.

Sent the outline for my module, "Song of the Satyr."

Eh, only really matters if your idea is well developed, I mean, my concepts are just that, concepts. I only have one proper name between the two of them. But if it bothers you, try private and third party sites. Id start at Giant in The Playground.

Mine is highly developed. It needs a lot of polish though. I'm thinking that once it's done I might try to publish and sell it here.

There's one that I've been thinking of for a while, and I've really wanted to discuss it with people, but I have the reservation that anything that I post here becomes Paizo's property, if I'm reading the small print correctly. I wonder if there's a board full of knowledgeable pathfinder players somewhere that lets me keep the rights to my comments.

What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or is he just born with a heart full of neutrality?

You can change it into any melee weapon that shares the weapon's same category. You can't turn a longsword into a greatsword, in other words, because a longsword's category is a "one-handed weapon" and a greatsword is a "two-handed weapon."

What about bastard swords?

Thanks, this is definitely some solid content. I'm excited about this character. Now if only I could find a DM I'm excited about!

I think that's the point the poster was looking to make. Plots have very unique qualities, but they also have some very generic ones, and that's the way they're supposed to be. Basically, you can get various environmental ready - dungeons, if you will - like the dragon's lair, the kobold warrens, the decayed keep of the Lizard Men, and leave them in the proverbial fridge. Then, whenever it springs up as relevant for that particular plot point, it's merely a matter of pulling it out and tweaking it to meet the specifics of why you need it.

Precisely. And the really fun stuff is made up on the fly anyway. The point is just to have some easily-adaptable content ready at all times.

I'm running an open-world campaign and have a couple of techniques to share.

1) Player containment: You want your players to be able to go anywhere -- it is a staple of the format -- but you can't realistically be prepared for them to go anywhere. The best way to handle this is to subtly surround them with speedbumps of one sort or another. Note that these can range from monster lairs in passes to dungeon sites to geographical barriers. None of them should be "hard" boundaries however; they should all be passable given some time, effort, and ingenuity.

The point is to have them ready so that the PCs never wander off the defined map into "a great, blank expanse, featureless out to the farthest horizon" or, maybe worse, a reactionary hazard clearly dropped in their path to stop them from going somewhere. If the speedbump is well-conceived and executed, it will seem like a pre-planned part of the game world and they will not feel like they're hitting the infamous invisible walls of video game worlds. The speedbump becomes a challenge to which they must rise rather than a clear indication that the DM isn't ready to handle what the party wants to do.

The idea is that you can drop something in their path that will attract their attention long enough that you can spend time before the next session preparing the area for which they were headed. This kind of "on-demand" content generation is the only feasible way for a true open world setting to work, because fleshing out every location is so time consuming that if you waited until you were ready, you'd never start the campaign.

Having a policy that the players should file a "flight plan" for the next session can also be a life saver. They can either tell you at the end of each session or by email a day or two later, but the idea is that they give you a brief list of goals that they'll be trying to accomplish so that you're not caught with your pants down when they randomly decide to abandon their current objective and rush full-speed into something that isn't ready for them.

To some extent you will never get away from having to think on your feet to generate the world around the PCs on the fly, but there is a lot that you can do to be as prepared as possible.

2) Player activities
The players should never be out of things to do. In their home base you can seed a couple of plot hooks to get the PCs out into the world. Once you've done that the rest isn't hard to manage: on their way from site A to site B, they travel up a hillside and, from there, can see down into a hidden valley where they glimpse site C. But how to get there? In trying to find the way perhaps they will stumble across site D. And meanwhile site E is nearby sending out raiding parties/weird lights/mysterious crashing noises that are likely to draw the PCs back toward it at some point. The cool thing about this method is that everything happens very organically and the ball is (and should be) in the PCs' court as far as deciding where to go next is concerned. Every now and then it's a good change of pace to force some action by setting a time limit on something (e.g. there is a fey queen that is going to cause some serious trouble on the winter solstice if the PCs don't stop her first in my game). But even then, give them time to do it their way and set some sub-goals. They need to find her weakness and the method of entering her realm for example. A time limit can be months, but it's good to have one from time to time.

3) Snap-together sites and plots
There is some amount of criticism about how formulaic plots are in fantasy games, the idea being that there are only the same few plot devices used over and over again with different window dressing. While this can be a valid gripe, it can also be a big strength for you. You can flesh out a few plots and leave sections of them blank because they are so interchangeable. There is a vampire lair for example and the PCs will need to go recover something. Is it a family heirloom? A lost child? Who knows? It could be anything, and you don't have to decide until it "comes up" in the organically-proceeding plot. You don't know who the PCs are going to meet or when you'll need a plot hook, but you're ready with one when the time comes. A great side-effect of this is that you regain some of the enjoyment of discovering the plot along with the PCs instead of knowing in advance what's going to happen every time.

I've seen a very effective Spring Attacking paladin with an Elven Curve Blade. It might not be considered "optimal", but a mobile Paladin can do some neat things...

That sounds interesting, but I'd have no idea how to make that build work. High mobility rather than a tin suit is definitely the feel I'd want, though.

I know that there is a lot to be considered in this contest. I've read the original post, I've studied the map, I've absorbed as much as I can of the criticism, both positive and negative. And after all that I'm still just left with one crystallized thought:

I want to play this. I want to play this so hard.

Paladins are probably the most viable class to take for a melee focus with a racial CON hit,

since their Swift Lay on Hands really helps assuage HP loss.

My thought as well, especially since the WoHL options gives extra Lay on Hands per day, which helps to offset their usage due to the nimbus ability.

Something that doesn't seem to be factored in much here is that if my paladin goes WoHL, he'll be under a +1 attack, +1 AC buff in pretty much every combat, which helps counteract the lack of strength bonus and the constitution penalty (slightly).

I have a character with a very similar build that I keep wanting to play, so I say go for it. Just think of Glorfindel taking on balrogs, and you'll do fine!

Definitely a Silmarillion fan here, though I'm about to go even deeper down the rabbit hole with my recent purchase of Morgoth's Ring. Perhaps we should compare notes on the build. Are you also going ECB?

I'm angling for more of a starlight flavor than sunlight, but mechanically the same. I have a list of something like three dozen star-based Quenya names that I need to narrow down.

Don't listen to those crazies. Back in the days of 3.5, I played an elven paladin for 6 years, and he did quite fine. Was it always optimal? No. Was it fun? Heck yeah, it was! You don't need to min-max a character to make a good character. Min-maxing, is what players and DM's who roll-play do. Building a character with a creative story and a solid core is what roleplayers do.

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm thinking that an Elven Paladin Warrior of the Holy Light with the Lightbringer racial ability (replacing Elven Magic) would be very fun and Tolkienesque, which, really, is much more important to me than an infinitesimal edge.

I guess that what I'm hoping to hear is that an Elven paladin can do his job -- and do it well -- despite not being clearly optimal.

EDIT: Also, the standard Elven racial abilities can be swapped out for cooler stuff in the APG.

I'm not as good at analyzing the numbers as I'd like to be, but it occurs to me that an Elven Paladin using his martial Elven curve blade could be pretty effective.

Pros:
ECB beats greatsword and falchion at higher levels.
The higher crit range on the ECB makes smiting that much better.
+2 INT makes up for the probable hit taken to bring in points.
+2 DEX will add to AC in most cases, improve REF saves, and (if you got it really high for whatever reason) can be applied to the ECB with Weapon Finesse. Or, if you wanted to pursue a switch hitter Paladin, this will add to your ranged smites. Any plate armor made of mithril would allow for the full +3 to AC from a 16 DEX for example.

Cons:
Mainly the hit to CON, but this is easy to make up for. It is essentially a -1 HP each level and a -1 to FORT saves. The -1 to the saves is more than made up for by Divine Grace. The -1 to HP is made up for with your favored class selection (remembering that the +2 to INT is basically giving an extra skill point as well). Also, if going with the ECB, you'll be using fewer feats and can afford Toughness if it's really important to you.

Toss in some cool stuff from the APG and you're in business.

MapTool is great but you need to be ready to invest some time in learning its ways. Do that and you'll be hooked.

While there are many exciting entries in this and I'll possibly take the day off work when it arrives, I'm disappointed that none of the Kingmaker monsters are in here. I take it that they were finished too late to be included?

On the plus side I can just start getting excited about the Bestiary 3 now!