FantheFlames's page

Well thats what I get for not looking at the forum on my phone. Apologies, deleted to avoid further confusion.

As others have said, the CR is based off of him being a 13th level character with PC wealth. However, that doesn't necessarily mean he's as weak as you're making him out to be.

Of course if you throw this guy up against 4 PCs all alone, he's going to get swamped and destroyed. He's a rogue, for starters, which means that if you leave him as the only unit, he's not going to get his best damage dealer, sneak attack, unless he's only attacking every other round. Along with that, The Aspis Agent prestige class is not made to be a damage dealer. It's a flavor prestige class that gets a few good things. So alone, yeah, he's dead. But that could be said about many individuals if they are left alone against a group of PCs.

However, this unit especially should not be left alone because, as even the fluff says, he is a commander. He is meant to take charge of other units and lead them in battle. On top of that, he's made for traps as well. The Aspis Agent levels mean he adds his sneak attack damage (6d6) to all traps that he activates through Ambush Trap if they're flatfooted.

So, instead of this being a simple 1 man fight, this is a unit I'd be using as part of a mini-dungeon. Have him set up traps throughout the stronghold that he has access to, moving through with the PCs to activate them, especially if they're not being careful. Then, at the end of the stronghold, have 3 or 4 5th level rogues to join him for the final confrontation. This would make it a CR 14 encounter, with the Party having to, in theory, expended resources reaching this point in the first place.

Different enemies have different uses, so CR is not always the way to look at power level.

On the other hand Pence might actually read the stuff put in front of him to sign and would probably be concerned with a legacy and what his name is attached to. That might not be as useful to the republicans as Trump for the time being. The horrible policies he's implementing probably won't be felt for a few years, so it's entirely possible he'll survive his first term.

Pence was willing to defend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act for months. I still think he supports it. If anything, Pence is probably more likely to sign off on some ridiculous things, because he's not as worried about his public appearance as Trump.

Pence was both the dumbest VP pick and smartest VP Pick Trump could ever have. Pence brought nothing new to the campaign, and was really there to try and get Indiana (which is odd, seeing as Pence was disliked by the majority), and the hardcore religious vote. And yet, despite how much Trump's policies scare me, Pence actually worries me more. Because he would actually work with the Freedom Caucus and moderate Republicans to get all of the stuff that they want through, instead of fighting it and dividing.

The spell says that it's possible to create wooden form of steel armor if Wood Shape or craft (Carpentry) is used, and explicitly calls out Wooden Plate Mail as a potential use. So there's precedent for this happening. Since the spell says they work similarly to their steel counterparts, I would personally rule that as long as he made it "Masterwork Quality", probably with some exceptionally good, aged wood, that it could be enchanted just like a steel set of Fullplate. Ironwood lasts 13 days at his level, so as long as he casts it once every 13 days to keep the Ironwood property.

That being said, Woodshape and Craft (Carpentry) both involve rolls. I would at least have him roll these in front of you. There's a 30% chance that some moving parts of his Plate Mail doesn't work. The DC to craft a suit of armor from Craft (Armor) is 10+AC, so 19. If you wanted to add another 5 or so to the DC because they're trying to use carpentry, that's possible too.

As for your worry about having Fullplate...without knowing your campaign, Level 14 is very high level. The Starting Wealth for such a character is 185,000 gp. +1 Wild Armor would cost him 17,500 of that, so almost 10% of his starting wealth. Again, I don't know much about your campaign, but the Fullplate doesn't necessarily seem broken at this point. Most devoted melee fighters would be looking to have +3 Fullplate at this point. He's sacrificing a potential +3 bonus somewhere else so he can wear it while Wildshaped. So this is all up to the campaign.

Syria is not who I'm worried about retaliating. In all honesty, I have my doubts about the effectiveness of overthrowing leaders in any area of the world. Our history has shown that typically, an upheaval of power is met with worse conditions, typically for years after the fact, if they can ever recover at all. That said, I do feel that something had to be done, when chemical warfare is involved.

However, this is a more tentative matter given Russia's connection to Assad and the potential that The US did not wholly inform Russia of this attack. That is what worries me. If this was any other country, I would be frustrated at the prospect of another war, but not worried. If Russia is actually willing to push back and continue to support Syria, that is a whole different issue that is far greater than anything we've seen since Iraq.

It sounds like your GM is doing a good job at making you feel uncomfortable. You're dealing with pure evil, so it shouldn't come as a total shock.

There's a difference between "making one feel uncomfortable" and "being so graphic and explicit it's causing active complaints." There's a pretty wide line in many situations.

This is especially true when a DM is actively changing the concepts of specific demons just to add more "evil" to a campaign. Baphomet is a demon lord of rage and destruction and as such has more than enough evil atrocities he could showcase in his portfolio, you don't need to change him. For someone to characterize him as saying "there is only rape" is absolutely ludicrous.

And even if the book was written in this manner, and had these ridiculous atrocities, the most important thing is player enjoyment. If someone is becoming vastly uncomfortable with the description of things in a AP, to the point of actively complaining, that is something that needs to be addressed, not just a shrug of the shoulders and "that's how it's written, there's nothing I can do."

Matthew Downie wrote:

Anguish wrote:

It occurs to me the solution to this thread is: Ye Olde Magic Shoppe.

That doesn't solve the sort of problems that people have.

A typical problem might be:
"OK, we've found a 400gp and a +3 cloak of resistance. Who's needs one of those?"
"I do."
"I do too."
"OK, roll off."
"Natural 20."
"Right, you get it. Then we split the gold. 100gp each."
"Cool, now I can sell my +2 cloak of resistance and buy a magic bow at the magic shop."
"But I only had a +1 cloak of resistance!"
"So?"
"That's not fair!"
"It'll balance out next time we find loot."
"Yeah, right."

I'm afraid it does. The cloak and the gold are worth a total of 4,900gp. Each PC gets 1,225gp. Nobody can buy the cloak. Yet.

If the party can agree to sit on the cloak for a while (until there's another 16kgp worth of loot to divvy up), fine. If they can't... again, fine. It gets sold off any everyone gets their FAIR share and nobody gets the better-than-their-fair-share cloak.

So instead of saying "Hey, this item would be really useful to this guy, and by doing so, would possibly benefit the entire group by shoring up a weak point", instead the idea is "Let's sell an item that would be useful because not everyone can benefit, and thus, screw everyone over equally"?

I'm sorry, that just seems a bit ludicrous. Eventually the PCs are probably going to buy the cloaks themselves anyway. Or, if they truly want to evenly distribute wealth, the next time they receive loot, the guy who got the cloak will not request anything, leaving the loot to the other 3.

I'll admit, I've always wanted to set up a Lawful Neutral Necromancer that had a "Code of Ethics" with regards to bringing people back from the dead. He would have a few rules; he would always receive permission from the soul of the individual, using the spell "Speak with Dead", so as to never be forcing someone into undeath. He would never animate any worshiper and cleric of a deity that abhorred undead, and he would not do children. His basic mindset would be "Why should those still living die when there are willing subjects who have found death already?"

Mind you, this is something that really couldn't work in most scenarios, but it's a nice little thought process.

First off, allow me to say I absolutely love the start of this AP and the start of the campaign as a whole. It's a dramatic, sudden event that throws the PCs into a situation that is wholly out of their league. It is so against what normally happens in the start of an AP. Usually, you don't see an army until the PCs are at a level where an Army isn't much of a threat. Here, the very first image is of a ruthless hobgoblin army in the hundreds appearing out of nowhere. But it still gives the PCs a chance to be heroes, rescuing everyone that they can, while setting up that they can't save everyone. So bravo for that, it had me hooked from the start.

That being said, I'll admit that the amount of potential rolls per day once you reach the Fangwood is a tall order. I can already tell that the players in my game are going to either have a field day, or despise the amount of book keeping necessary to track who needs to have a Full Provision Point in order to not suffer penalties, and who needs to have shelter for a night in order to not become fatigued. It'll be interesting to see how they react once this portion comes up.

I just love Kining Blondebeard and she will definitely play a bigger role in my campaign as one of the PCs is also a female dwarven smith whose family was exiled from Glimmerhold (her mother was a Torag priestess).

My question is: What do you guys think were the "crimes she refuses to divulge"?

I would say they have something to do with the Buckler that you are able to find in her Smithy. Namely, the fact that it has the Holy Symbol of Droskar on it, and she doesn't want people to find it. From what I can find, Droskar is the Dwarven God of Toil, with specifics saying that you should be able to do anything you can to achieve your goal. That includes, but is not limited to, cheating, slavery, and exploitation.

With that in mind, it wouldn't shock me if Kining did some thievery of materials in order to continue her smithing, or perhaps, even though she's Lawful Evil, she was known for shorting individuals in payment.

In fact, given that your PC has a tentative connection to Torag, it makes that potentially even deeper, considering the history between Torag and Droskar.

Inspired (okay...perhaps slightly plagiarized) from a specific greentext story I found once, and developed in approximately a half hour on the drive to a game session where we were starting a simple homebrew one shot.

Jim is a wizard. More than that, he is the mightiest wizard the world has ever seen. While other puny wizards must avoid armor, Jim has no such problem, able to cast at the highest possible ability in his breastplate. However, that doesn't mean he doesn't have robes. On the contrary, he has the finest robes a wizard could have, and a hat to match! He won them in a wizard duel, you see...well, at the very least, Jim declared a wizard duel, and the sudden "huh" from the passing wizard had to be him accepting the challenge. One Magic Missile from Jim was enough to knock him unconscious.

I have Jim classed as a barbarian with 6 INT (Rolled stats), who, no matter who talks to him, believes himself to be a wizard. 1 Rank in Knowledge (Arcana) in order to make the checks. And of course, what wizard doesn't have his spell components. Flour for Obscuring Mist, Fortune Cookies for his variety of Divination spells, the proper components for Charm Person (Flowers for lady folk, shinies for men). He is also wholly unoptimized, taking Catch Off Guard and Throw Anything at 1st Level, just so that he can use his Great Club for ranged attacks (His Magic Missile). It's stupid, it's silly, and normally I'd never have played it for more than a one shot.

...My group has given me permission to bring Jim to the table whenever we run Kingmaker. So yeah.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

he lost the popular vote. Why is no one pointing this out?

Because the popular vote doesn't matter. It's there to make you feel like you made a difference.

The election was decided behind closed doors with plenty of bribes and promises of favors being tossed around. Trump apparently offered more than Clinton did.

No. No No No No No.

This is the sort of thinking that made Hillary Clinton a candidate that you didn't want to see elected. And it was this same thought process that allowed Trump to mobilize his voters. "The Establishment in their ivory towers choose who they want, ignoring you."

Don't sit here and say that it was all a scam and conspiracy. There are heavy problems with BOTH parties. Throwing it to "The elites picked their candidate and that's it" undermines everything wrong and gives no growth.

The Democrats want to succeed next time? Make some changes. And if there actually were Republicans who were against Trump? Take the fact that he won as a clue on what the people want.

FantheFlames wrote:

You know what will be the most dramatic irony of all?

If Hillary does hold on to win the Popular vote (I have yet to look at numbers this morning), than by Donald Trump's own logic, she should be most likely be President. The man was up in arms in 2012 about Obama not winning the Popular Vote but becoming President. But will he admit it if it stands? Of course not. He'll say that the American People have decided he's the one that needs to Make America Great Again.

Obama won the popular vote in 2012 51-47.

Didn't stop him from getting on Twitter after the election was called and saying this.

G!~ d~+n, the irony just keeps getting better and better reading some of the stuff he said.

As I said last night, and still believe, Trump is not the true reason I'm concerned.

I'm concerned that this is going to be the sort of candidate we see from the Republican party, and yes, potentially even the Democratic party, from this moment forward. A Trump victory has proven that this sort of candidate wins. Why fix what ain't broke, right?

Podesta has announced that Clinton would not be speaking tonight. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she just didn't expect to lose, and so didn't have anything prepared. As opposed to being mentally/physically/emotionally unable to speak, or simply being petty.

Hoping for not being petty, I agree, but I honestly wouldn't fault her for being an emotional wreck at this point. This is the second time in a bid for the presidency she's gotten close, but fell, hard. This time probably hurts even more, because every single measurement showed that she should have won this by a landslide, at least based on every major poll...including most Republican

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Killer_GM wrote:

The USA is done with the corrupt Clintons, who have no solution for 20 trillion in debt and how to pay for this failed socialist utopian dream.

Deficits go down under Democratic presidents and go up under republicans.

Tax breaks cost money

Wars cost money, and only make money for defense contractors and oil companies, not tax payers.

THIS is what's frustrating to me: a complete lack of a reality based throught process.

The debt went from 10 trillion to almost 20 trillion under Obama. Who are you kidding. That's the debt of all prior presidential administrations combined.

Funnily enough, we actually had a Surplus for a short while...under Bill Clinton. That disappeared under Bush.

See, the thing is, in order to get out of recessions, you need to stimulate the economy. How do you do that? By setting up jobs and other forms of labor/projects. Those cost money, which pushes us into debt. Logically, once the economy has bounced back, taxes should go up, which will pay back the deficit that was formed. However, we have yet to reach that second part. And that doesn't seem to be coming any time soon.

I suppose we can hope he's been trolling the right this entire time and will actually be a decent president?

This has been my secret hope the entire campaign. That Trump was pulling off the greatest con of all time. Play to the farthest right group he can muster, motivate their base, and then, when he has that group supporting you and are in the White House, turn around and go almost Democrat/Moderate. I'd love it.

My health insurance went up $9,000 last year. It will go up more this year under the ridiculous Affordable Care Act. The elites in Washington are being shown the door. None too soon.

Yes, the elites are being shown the door. Directly into the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives. We've just decided to skp the Middle Man of Wall Street at this point.

A highly regarded expert wrote:

We could see Trump, and a Republican majority in both houses tomorrow morning. Trump will appoint Scalia clones all over the country. A Koch/ALEC wet dream. Any hope for something like democracy will be officially dead.

Mass human die-outs will come sooner, rather than later.

Don't be so dramatic. Life will go on. America survived a man who performed genocide - Andrew Jackson, who won 56% popular and 2/3 of all electoral votes.

Donald Trump will not destroy America. If we're lucky, he'll be a wake-up call. We need to change, we need to tell corrupt politicians that we will not allow them to carry on, and we need to cooperate across party boundaries.

I'm sorry to say this but...you think Donald Trump is going to be the beacon that gets rid of corruption?

The man has already admitted in a debate to taking advantage of tax loopholes in order to avoid paying taxes because it "makes him smart". He didn't say it once, he doubled down on it by saying that because he knew how to take advantage of these loopholes, he could close them. This is akin to Tony Montana running for Police Chief, saying that because he sells lots of drugs, he knows how to shut down the drug rings. Do you honestly expect him to do that?

And do you actually think that the rhetoric Trump has used is going to cause us to cooperate and come together? Say what you will, but there was a large, large portion of Trump's primary run, and even presidential run, that was based around playing upon hatred and fear. Hatred of Hispanics and illegal immigration, even though it seemed he was never specifically targeting the illegal immigration. A fear of Muslims and terrorism, going so far as to consider a ban on Muslims from immigrating to the United States, basically laughing in the face of the First Amendment. The fact that he chose Mike Pence, and evangelical Republican that was known for supporting the "Freedom of Religion" bill, and if I recall, was also perfectly fine with gay conversion therapy. And a man that was willing to call out and throw his entire party under the bus, just because some of them had the utter GALL to be angered at some of his sexist comments.

Donald Trump may very well be the least unifying President this country has ever seen. And the fact that he had such an upswell of support while using rhetoric and insinuations like he has should prove that he is not going to breed "cooperation", just more division.

We will be ruled by people who don't believe in evolution, global warming, or that minorities face discrimination. In fact, they consider themselves victims.

Let's not forget that the Vice President was willing to defend a bill that gave businesses the right to fire someone over "religious beliefs", and that a statistically significant portion of their base believes that your sexuality can be a reason for you to be shunned/forced to "convert". Also, that removing the right to a woman's body autonomy is a good thing. And there's a decent chance they'll be able to put 2 Supreme Court Justices on the stand.

...I'm gonna need a bigger hard hat.

Also, just to make it clear; I couldn't stand either one of these individuals. Personally, I was sort of rooting for Kasich, at least he acted like an adult and a gentleman during the Republican Primaries.

Shame that this is the result for him; guy would have actually had a hell of an argument for 2020 if Trump got blown out.

I'd like to think that a Republican Congress won't simply fall in line behind Trump.

You'd like to think that. But unfortunately, I have a feeling you'll be wrong.

This fervor that Trump has rural America, heck, the entirety of America in, is going to send a message to Republicans. "Trump's way works". What's more, any Republicans that step out of line and oppose him, are going to have to deal with the fact Trump can shoot them down in two years. "Look at them. I'm here, trying to make America Great Again, and all of them are opposing me at every turn. We need to get them out of here, fast!" And of course, his base will, most likely, listen.

And so, the Republicans will fall in line, because I hate to say it, in politics, your seat is more important than your morals. So we shall most likely have our wall passed. We shall have our vetting. We shall have our new Supreme Court Justice, who will sway the balance of the Court. We will have attempt to remove Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion. And we will, of course, have President Trump.

*Puts on helmet* Buckle up, folks.

So right now, it seems like Trump is going to be gaining Florida, and Virginia is almost certainly up in the air.

I've been against commenting on politics, because they are honestly not something I enjoy. I've only had 2 Presidential elections under my belt...and I think I'm already done with politics. I hate to say it, but this is the sort of election that makes me question humanity as a whole.

Even if Trump doesn't win, which it's looking more and more likely like he is going to, the entire rhetoric, and the fact that he's in this position, just makes me sad. A man who uses hateful rhetoric, does almost nothing when it comes to policy. A man that has zero political experience of any sort.

But the worst part? This is going to become the norm for Republicans. This is going to become the "winners" for the party. So we can expect a hell of a lot more of these sort of candidates, just because it's this close.

...Anyone know how Canada is for a very, very frustrated twenty three year old American?