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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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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?

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?

So I'm playing a half-elf who hates magic with a passion. This works out for the most part until it comes to healing. I can't find any way to restore hitpoints effectively without using some kind of magic spell or magic potion. Is there any kind of alchemical solution or other easy way to restore hit points without using magic?