Esquilax hortensis's page

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?

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.

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.