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Since a 5' step is a very slow and careful movement made so that you don't expose yourself or lose balance, I would say that you can absolutely take a 5' step out of grease.

A type of encounter I made for a homebrew campaign in the mountains, this fight takes place on the face of a cliff. This encounter works best when neither the party nor the monsters they face can do a lot of damage. If a character can deal, on average, an amount of damage per attack equal to his or her climb skill, this encounter works best.

Map setup: Unlike normal fights, where the map has a top-down perspective, when running the cliff face counter your map will be a side view of the cliff. Make sure to clearly mark which direction on your 2d map is up and which direction is down. If you have a projector or wall-mounted screen, try to use it to project the map.

Terrain: there are five types of terrain to be found in the cliff face encounter. These are different from terrains presented in the CRB due to the fact that characters must make climb checks so frequently in this encounter that the DC's should be lowered a little.

Passable: DC 0 This includes any part of the cliff face in which a character can naturally stand without needing to hold on to anything with his/her hands or arms. These might be bluffs or even the top of the cliff

easy: DC 5 This includes any part of the cliff face which has easy-to-grasp natural handholds and footholds. It also includes hanging ropes or ladders.

Moderate: DC 10 This includes any part of the cliff face in which hand/footholds are more difficult to grasp but still plentiful enough to climb.

Difficult: DC 15 This includes sections of the cliff with handholds and footholds that are either so far apart or hard to grasp that a character would require immense skill or strength in order to climb this terrain.

Impassable: DC 20 This includes any section whose walls are so smooth that climbing it as a human would be nigh impossible.

Draw your map so that each type of area is clearly marked. Make sure every area is marked by its difficulty. Unmarked usually means impassable.

Moving on the cliff face: Use the normal rules for climbing, characters with no natural climb speed use 1/4 of their normal speed for movement. When a character makes a move action on a cliff, he/she must make a climb check with DC equal to the most difficult terrain encountered in the movement or fall. Characters with a natural climb speed may use their own natural climb speed and earn a +8 on all climb checks.

Attacking on the cliff face: Standard actions which require movement (such as attacking or casting a spell with somatic components) also require a climb check in order to stay on the wall. When making such an action, you must make a climb check with DC equal to the difficulty of the terrain you are on at the time when you perform the action. This also applies to attacks of opportunity.

Taking damage: when a character takes damage, he or she must make a climb check equal to the DC of the terrain they are on plus the amount of damage taken (I am unsure as to whether it should be one half or full damage added to the climb check) if the climb check fails, the character falls. This check must be taken on all terrains, even DC 0.

Combat maneuvers: Bull rush and overrun maneuvers require you to surrender your grip and voluntarily fall onto your opponents. Obviously, these maneuvers can only be performed when you are above your opponent. Succeeding in either of these manuevers will cause both you and your target to fall. Grapple cannot be used (unless you guys can come up with rules for it). Other combat maneuvers can be used as normal.

Falling objects: Falling objects, including characters, will take down anything that they hit on the way down. In order to dodge a falling object passing through your square, you must make a reflex check with DC equal to 20 minus 4 for every 5 feet above you the object was when it originally fell. If the check fails, you fall.

Thrown weapons: Thrown weapons take a -4 on their attack roll for every 5 feet upwards they must travel. Thrown weapons receive a +4 attack bonus if used on a target below the attacker.

Choosing enemies: The most important trait a monster can have in this fight is a natural climb speed. This fight will go hugely in favor of the group which can move fastest and take the high ground. These guys are also harder to knock off of the cliff with attacks and damage. Monsters who do not have a natural climb speed are also fun to employ, as the PC's will have lots of fun knocking them off of the cliff.

I have only ever played the encounter where the PCs were the first to start scaling the cliff, with a large horde of goblins about 2 rounds behind them. Among them were some giant spiders on the side of the goblins to mix things up. The party had a blast with the encounter. The mental imagery of climbing to escape a huge hoard of goblins combined with the fun of knocking goblins down and watching them bowl over others was loads of fun. Plus the party had to think strategically with the giant spiders, which had a natural climb speed of 30 feet and would catch up to the party. Terrain and positioning really mattered when fighting the giant spiders, as placing yourself on a more difficult to climb section meant that it was easier for the spiders to knock you off.

Should specify:

Party is level 5

The hideout is the headquarters for a powerful group of assassins (friends of PCs). These shock troopers are part of the Empire trying to stop the assassins. That's why the shock troopers are trying to locate the hideout and that's why the PC's are trying to stop them.

Minotaurs keep slaves as warriors or for fun.

And I like the idea of traps. I'll have to bring it up as they follow the ST's

Basic jist: The party was en route to a secret mountain hideout when they heard of a group of very powerful enemies lurking around the area. These guys (called shock troopers) are organized and are attempting to find the hideout. The party has decided that rather than go to the hideout, they would like to try to track down the shock troopers and ensure that they don't find the hideout. I need help making the tracking-down of these shock troops a little more interesting.

Details: So my four players are looking for a secret mountain hideout in my homebrew campaign. Along the way they found out that there was a group of six powerful bad guys lurking around the area trying to find the hideout. They caught on to their tracks and are now following them in order to make sure that the bad guys (called shock troopers) do not find the hideout.

There are a few problems with this line of action. First off the bad guys are way way stronger than the PCs, and they are not something that I'm willing to tone down because I've been talking up about the power of these dudes all game and I don't want the party of 4 to be able to stand up against 6 of these guys in straight-up combat, their first encounter with the shock troopers should be dramatic and difficult.

They are currently following their trail through the mountains and are making good survival checks for tracking. I am at a loss of things to throw at them, however, and after a quick encounter with an earth elemental to spice things up I ended the session.

If my party wants to track down the shock troopers, I will let them, after all it is their game. I just need some help coming up with a way to make it entertaining. Realistically it would end in either "you don't find them" or "they just flat out didn't find the hideout" or "they died on their own" but none of those are fun and exciting. I need some help. Any cool ideas you guys have are welcome.

My current plan: The hideout is concealed within the territory of a minotaur. In this world, minotaurs often live aboveground and hold territory and slaves for the hell of it. I especially like this line because one of my players is playing a minotaur and in the lore he wrote for the race he described out how minotaur territorial conquest takes place. So the minotaur and his goons (which probably consist of goblins, orcs, kobolds, and other various monsters) rule over several miles of wilderness in the mountains. It will be up to the PC's to use this minotaur's forces to overcome the shock troopers.

This can be accomplished one of several ways: perhaps the party could attempt to negotiate a deal with the minotaur (a sort of bounty on the shock troopers, for instance) or they could purchase some warriors (slaves). If they don't want diplomacy, they could try to trick the minotaur's goons into finding the shock troopers in order to weaken the shock troopers enough to be able to finish them off. If the party is feeling especially violent, the minotaur in the party can challenge the ruling minotaur to single combat, which if won will transfer ownership of the land and the slaves to the party. IF the party comes up with any other interesting solutions, then those would all work as well.

It's difficult to start at high level. One reason is all the paperwork required to even get there. It's easier to spend all the work required to level up over several sessions, so most players do it that way, but suddenly having to stat out and gear out a high level character is a pain.

That compounded with the fact that high-level characters have an overwhelming number of abilities and tricks makes high-level characters boring and difficult.

That is to say, if you created the character at a lower level and got to level him up then it feels good because you get to feel the character develop.

Therefore the most satisfying way to reach a high level is to actually level one up from a lower level to a higher level. This is of course difficult to do because it takes time and a playgroup willing to stay together for all that time.

Dwarf raised in a mining community never thought much about her future though she often caught glimpses of what others are thinking and feeling. Her mother said she was 'touched' by the old ones. Nothing much comes about until one day when she is mining a tunnel she swears she can see something trapped behind the rocks. She hammers away trying to get a better glimpse of what is back there until she sees... an eye... looking back at her.

She wakes up to find herself being cast out of the mountain. The other dwarves accusing her of collapsing the tunnel and killing dozens of her fellow miners. She cannot recall anything but hears whispering inside her mind... not the occasional glimpses into the thoughts of others but a never ending stream of dark and malevolent whispers driving her mad.

Is this for a PC? It sounds like a very interesting character put into a rough spot. What class is she?

A young Rahadoumi woman with chaos in her blood decides to rebel against her parents by leaving home at night to join the Pure Legion. It is during this military service that she does a remarkable amount of growing up by seeing exactly what her chaotic nature does to her friends and companions. Now she is stuck in the wilderness, her squadmates dead thanks to her carelessness, and she must find a way to atone for her actions and come to terms with her own nature.

A mwangi tribesman discovers his Ifrit ancestry and secretly develops his powers as a sorcerer. When it is time for him to take a walkabout to come of age, he takes a violent journey around the lands, bringing war and destruction to several rival tribes. Upon his return home, the elders are shocked and exile him from the tribe. Now he roams the land in search of a proper challenge for him to test his newfound powers.

I let my players play any race they want, but they have to write a backstory that shows that they have an understanding of what that race is and its roles in the world. This is not a test to see if the players are "right" or "wrong", but just a way to make sure that the players have given some thought as to why these exotic races exist and are accepted as adventurers. If they're understanding of the race is entirely off-whack, then I'll use whatever they say because its our story.

I'm personally not a fan of classes introduced outside of the CRB, mostly because I'm so familiar with the CRB classes and so unfamiliar with the non-core classes. I am also not a huge fan of archetypes. Usually when a player wants an archetype, I try to find some way to make it work otherwise.

As for feats and spells from outside the CRB, most of my players are newer so I tell them not to worry too much about the non-core feats. They can look at them at their own peril but most of them are made for more advanced players. Stick to the CRB and talk to me if you want a non-core feat.

What happens to an Ifrit when it's raining? And I mean like really raining hard, like a big 'ol downpour.

Also, what happens to a fire elemental in the rain? And do earth elementals just turn into mud or something?

All good stuff so far! One of my players did mention a few names of old friends in her backstory so I'm going to throw them a plot arc based off of that.

you have more than one issue here, expect varying responses across a number of different topics

Fair enough. I understand that the players will get more confident over time, but I'm wondering if there's anything I as the DM can do to give them a nudge so to say.

Hey everyone. So I'm DMing a group of really shy people. All of them love roleplaying of sorts in online games, but for two sessions they've been sitting down face to face and nothing really has come up.

They've all written good backstories, but none of them are really willing to bring any of that up. They've all taken up the role of "dark, broody, mysterious dude" and won't snap out of it.

What is the best thing that I, as a DM, can do to nudge them along and get them to be more confident? I know they're good at RP and want to do it, but I don't know what the best way is!

I would say that the world is all in your group's head, so have a chat with your DM and see if you can change up the world to some extent so that you can justify your undead companion.

Just communicate with your DM exactly what you want your character to be and I'm sure you and him can sit down and figure something out. Whatever you decide upon, however, make sure that your character has a real reason - not a weak excuse - for having an undead follow him/her around everywhere.

Were you thinking of This document?

Basically an average encounter (CR = APL) should drain 25% of resources.

Is it this one?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx-o8VAjhUwh3nnfzDQT-JA5eFLnN_BZJiBitGj BMDg/mobilebasic

That's the one! Thanks, man!

Hey everyone. I remember reading a GM guide on google docs that went over the math of creating encounters, EXP per player, combat economy, and so forth. But it had a really good table of EXP values per character level similar to the CR table. I lost my link to the guide and was wondering if anyone else could hit me up with the link real fast.

Welcome to 'not important, so you figure out how you want it to work in your game world' territory.

Well my group finds the concept of "everybody has sex and has a baby" to be really boring, and I'd like to hear how/if other people have thought about it.

So this question mostly stems from a hilarious argument we had in our group over whether our tengu character had a penis, but it got me thinking: What are the circumstances of reproduction for the various races, especially non-mammal ones? For the races such as Tengu or Lizardfolk, do they give live birth like a humanoid or do they lay eggs? For the other strange races such as Aasimars, what are the circumstances that usually lead to their births? I know an Aasimar has a celestial bloodline, but what would cause an ordinary human and a celestial being to hook up?

I'm interested in this because knowing the biological methods of reproduction for each race could give or create exciting and exotic clues as to the traits of their society. For instance: imagine a society where nobody knew who their father was! These kinds of neat tidbits are what I hope to gain from this question.

http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/name/#monstrous

Odd-numbered point buys often mean 1 odd stat. Perfect for bumping up at level 4.

Hm, so for non-fighter it's pretty much mithral or nothing for heavy armor..

Or dump DEX. It's not that much of a problem. If you drop down to 8 DEX, then a cat's grace will bring you up to 12, which is still within the Max Dex Bonus of a full plate.

Make every fight about boarding. It's much for fun than straight sinking a ship.

It's almost become a quirk/inside joke among our group that every time we encounter a female character for the first time, I (or someone else if I forget -- not likely) will immediately inquire: "Is she hot?" The thing is, at first I was greeted with answers that indicated mostly attractive females, occasionally a "hell yeah!" response if she was particularly sexy. But after asking this question incessantly for every single female we ever encountered, the ratio between "hot" and "not" was still about 50:50. I asked several of the people in our group out of session what percentage of the females in our campaigns are usually considered attractive, and they answered around 80%.

I'm no statistician, and I have only limited experience regarding official pathfinder APs, but perhaps it's just that many people will naturally pay more attention to the attractiveness of a hot babe than the unattractiveness of a not-hot babe.

And your arguments have intrigued me on the matter. One half of me wants to start asking "Is he hot?", and the other half of me knows that that question will spoil the joke. As I GM and as I play, I'll have to constantly watch the sexuality and attractiveness of each of the characters. I'm pretty sure that a female player will inevitably encounter some D-bag who persistently hits on her and makes inappropriate comments, and while this is only one way to explore the issue, having more overtly sexual male characters can only really be a good thing.

Funny, that. In my experience "Worst PC" nearly always goes hand in hand with players who can´t disconnect "roleplay" and charakter stats.

It´s a common thing in my erea (where neither Pathfinder nor any D&D edition is the premier rpg in the market) to see a lot of player´s who need to see things translated to stats or they can´t connect to a charakter.
"Hm.. I play an average Human, those guys can cook, so I need Craft: Cooking to show that, maybe he´s a good cook? Skill Focus could show that. He can´t be an adventurer all his life, so maybe Profession: Inn Keeper? Yes, that should do it...."
(Plus: games are more Story-driven around here. It s nearly unthinkable that an player charakter could die in combat as the story would end right there. That leads to people acting stupid in tactical combat as they know nothing bad will happen).

So, most of the time, every new player I have at my table recreates the "Worst PC ever" from scratch, mostly the "Former Apprentice" who can´t do ****.

This is something where I have to disagree with you. I believe that a character's stats should be a reflection of your own character's backstory and behaviour. It's much more fun to get a character concept and then try to stat it out than to roll a generic min-maxed wizard (which we're all perfectly capable of) and play that. It's good exercise in roleplaying, and stats based off of a character concept are never necessarily "bad".

How do your character's stats, skills, and feats reflect him as a person? How does his backstory feed into his behaviour? How does he play to his alignment? What kind of quirks does your character have and why does he have them? All of these questions should help you learn to develop your character's behaviour alongside his backstory.

Next, if you feel uncomfortable with roleplaying due to current group atmosphere, let your GM know! If the GM suggests, encourages, or (if necessary) enforces roleplaying, it does actually help. Try staging an in-character conversation with one of your fellow players, have everyone give their name and rough synopsis of their backstory to each other and play off of that. Try to increase the amount of in-character conversation that happens each session.

Believe me, I started with a group that had literally ZERO roleplaying. Half the people in the group just had the party munchkin roll their characters with no explanation or character guidance, and nobody even knew each other's character names (two people didn't even have a name, only two people could tell you their character name off the top of their head), nobody had any backstory, and nobody ever said a word in-character. I did talk to the GM out of session, mentioning everything above, and he agreed to help improve the atmosphere. If you just explain that you're disappointed with the group and their lack of roleplay, a good GM will do everything he/she can to change things around.

Have multiple spears. When you impale someone with the one spear, leave them be, draw another spear, and keep fighting. Then the opponent has to spend a move action to get the spear out.

A good question is, however, would this apply if you threw the spear? I would think no, since it says "melee weapon of your choice" but it makes sense that if someone was hit by a good javelin throw then they would be impaled.

maybe for the .4 seconds between when you realize that you've been duped and when the club smacked you across the head. Probably enough time for a single free action.

@Rynjin:

And there's also everyone, not just the GM, disagreeing with them. Arguing RAW to be more important than the group's social contract isn't a good sign either.

This was the main thing that annoyed us. We were perfectly fine with and enjoyed sitting back and letting our GM tell his story. It was only when this guy threw a wrench in the plans that it broke everyone's immersion.

And because I forgot to clarify: the GM went with the "you cast the spell and he dies anyway" route. Keep in mind that this was his very first time dealing with this problem, as nobody else in our group had tried to interrupt the story in the same way. If the GM said no, we would stop, but this guy just kept on arguing

6 rounds until one of the animals killed the PC stupid enough draw attention to us and the GM decided to give us a break.

Don't forget silent spell feat.

Agreed with Anarchy. This thread is nothing but moaning about bads in our group.

Another story: had a dude who, when playing a cleric, decided that his level 2 powers could stop the plotline of the GM:

GM: okay, let's see which NPCs died in this giant battle... *rolls*... You find Sir Edward (dude we know, but is of little importance) lying on a cot, nearly dead, with a large hole cut through his stomach from a spear. He's bleeding severely, and the doctor (level 8 cleric) looks at you and solemnly shakes her head.

PC: I cast cure light wounds, bringing him above 0

Everyone else: dude, he's dead, you can't do anything.

This went on for about half an hour. He was trying to argue that his heal spell would bring him out of negative HP and back alive, and everyone else was trying to tell him that this was a moment of gameplay and story segregation, the GM decided that this person would die. He simply wouldn't be convinced. It wasn't even an alignment-based action, he was NE. I swear, he is the single most annoying person I have ever played with. If the GM is repeatedly telling you "no, he's dead" after having listened to your argument, just give it up!

"Hey let's go explore this island and forget to bring any food, fresh water, rope, extra clothes, medicine, nails, tools, or torches with us." "What do you mean we can't throw him a rope?" "What do you mean we can't fix our boat?"

Other knowledge skills, such as knowledge(nature) stem from experience or even learning how to identify certain things in nature. I'm sure that any ranger would take the time off to read a field guide so that they can learn about poisonous plants or dangerous animals at some point in his lifetime. Or maybe the ranger has had personal experience from his many outdoor days.

Say a fighter readies an action that he will attack the first person who enters his range. A barbarian then tries to trip the fighter, provoking an attack of opportunity.

1: Does the fighter effectively get two attacks? One from the readied action and one from the attack of opportunity?
2: In what order does each action occur? Does the attack of opportunity come first because it "interrupts the flow of combat" or does the readied action because the trigger went off?
3: Say the fighter's readied action was instead to disarm anyone who came within range. Would he provoke an attack of opportunity from the barbarian?

snobi wrote:

Does anything really exist?

All we are is dust in the wind.

All we are is ink on a paper sheet.

WAIT UP: Once had a cleric who, with a 20-point buy, decided to put it all into Wisdom. He had 10 in every stat and 20 Wisdom. He also refused to worship a deity and named his character "Hugh Mann". He proceeded to do nothing but cause some serious damage to the party when he channeled negative and got 1-shotted by the same gorilla that killed my cleric. He stopped playing after his character died, which is probably the best thing that could have happened.

Mathematically speaking, yes. There is always some degree of "optimization" that occurs. For instance, say you're playing a two-handed paladin wearing a full plate. You decide that you will not raise your dexterity higher than 12 because the only thing that 14 dex will give you is a bonus to some dex-based skills that you're not even interested in. Therefore, putting points into something other than Dex is optimizing your character.

A merfolk bard whose only real contribution to the party was drowning the occasional enemy who fell overboard. He got killed by a shark.

I think it's a typo of "Warforged", he got the physical description correct at least.

To answer TC's question: I don't think there is one at the moment, but I don't see why a homebrew wouldn't work. I believe the most important aspects of Warforged (from a stat perspective) was the immunity to poisons and diseases as well as both positive and negative energy, and the need for specialized armor.

Thanks, this is all good help!

Why are they there?

I should have specified: Mostly for flavor/people which I want the PC's to like. Fluff characters. edit: Also, some of them may become important when they grow up

For my homebrew campaign, there will be a few characters age 7-12. How should I write them so that they're not all stereotypical annoying children that the PC's will want to brush off? How can I get my players to listen to and like these kids when they really don't have a whole lot of influence or anything important to say?

Knights of the Old Republic 2 had feats for each of the Lightsaber forms. You should go and check them out. Maybe the GM should give each player access to a lightsaber form feat every 4 jedi levels. Also I would recommend researching each of the forms a little bit more, I think you had some minor mistakes about each of the forms (There are actually seven: Shii-cho, Makashi, Soresu, Ataru, Shien/Djem So, Niman, Juyo/Vaapad, in that order)

And do look at the 3.5 books from WOTC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Roleplaying_Game_(Wizards_of_the_Coa st)

And also, these character sheets exist for the game, but if you want to tweak them, feel free: http://swrpg.wikispaces.com/file/view/CharacterSheet.pdf/30060392/Character Sheet.pdf

Best of luck! I really really really want to do a Star wars campaign sometime in the future. Tell me how it goes

And also please bring a broom. I believe Smashomancer may have broken

Tacticslion with this thread.

BROOM-CHUCKS!

I'd have to run the math, but unless the GM loves masses of weak mobs, I'm pretty sure that at higher levels negative infinity AC and a miss chance is better than optimized, possibly even infinite, AC as any melee attacking opponent is going to beat your AC and many opponents don't target your normal AC (spells, area effects, touch attacks)

I see someone plays DDO! What you say is partially true, at later levels enemy casters do become more dangerous and attack bonuses do go up faster than AC, but the value of high AC can't be underestimated. The ability to shrug off power attacks or chained attacks is incredibly valuable.

Of course, what you said about miss chances is also true. It's mostly important to have multi-layered defenses. Have high AC and a miss chance, and if they get past that, have high hitpoints.

You can open it up to all the classes. I don't see any reason to restrict to those 5. Most kids today, if they are interested in a tabletop RPG game, have at least SOME experience with RPG-type games and will therefore be able to wrap their head around all the classes. If one particular person is having trouble, then help them pick a class based on how they want to play.

I think that the issue with leadership is that it's better to give the party NPC followers through in-story means rather than have them take a feat for it, which is much less interesting roleplaying-wise.

Someone breaks the framed party members out of jail and kidnaps them, Marshall gives chase, defeats the crew handily, and then the party can convince the Marshall from there, now that he's physically outside of the town, that they are innocent and need to flee. If they decide to return, someone framed the jailbreak on the Marshall and when he returns to town he finds a large mob setting his office and house on fire.

Then it becomes a quest to figure out who framed the Marshall and who is working against the party.

That's the best I can come up with given the limited information.

Trousers of deception: This pair of thick, wooly trousers provides a +9 enhancement bonus to the wearer's bluff skill. When the wearer begins telling a lie, the powerful magic imbued within the Trousers of Deception causes the trousers to light on fire.

Generally speaking, the whole nat 20 and nat 1 system are there to always leave a chance of failure, however small, no matter how well/poorly trained you are. That way you can't just die immediately, at least you get a chance to redeem yourself. Likewise, your masterfully sneaky ninja can still get spotted, as removal of an instant failure chance takes away some of the drama.