Flying Melon's page

My advice-drop caravan encounters-they make little sense and just slow things down. By the 4th book we were sick of the caravan rules.

I have a group of players that include a bard who can use Weird Words. They are about to fight a boss who has a thundering weapon. Can I have the boss' spellcaster cast Silence on the boss, negating the bard's attack and have the boss still use her Thundering polearm?

I'm running FoS right now and I was finding that my players weren't getting challenged by the encounters in the Mockery pagoda-they are serious min/maxers-so I buffed every monster up with the advanced template-which seems to work well.However, we did get into a big discussion when the players got buried by the rubble. Does rubble block line of sight or line of effect? This part of the AP was not very well written or explained IMO, and turned what could have been an exciting, potentially deadly encounter with the destrachans, into an arguement about what you can and can't do while buried-but this might have more to do with the CRB. The players are also being quite vocal in regards to the idea that having the Withered Blossom Warriors fight with NO arcane or divine support is ridiculous. I actually skipped a couple of the "Hill Giant w/ warriors" fights because they were boring (and this is coming from a DM who loves combat). Over all, I'm liking this AP series, but this one is a little too nonsensical in terms of a self contained dungeon. I'm torn between running the last boss battle as is or tweaking it to really challenge the players without them crying foul.They will absolutely hammer a straight-up fighter. Best fight so far in the series was Katianya's 1st form-challenging and well thought out. Any advice on how to challenge my players without having them complain "How did the monsters get a hold of our character sheets?" I don't like DM metagaming.

Hey everybody, I've read the comments and really appreciate the feedback. It seems like the general consensus is to boost the encounters...which I plan to do once we come back from our Xmas break. Being a GM is both an art and a science...and I'm constantly looking to grow and learn.
This is actually one of the first times I've posted in a Paizo forum...so thanks.
BTW I didn't actually state that the Shogun was a BBEG, but I was really looking forward to a fun fight with a pig loving hobgoblin.
Anyway, me and the player are going to talk more about this over a couple of frosties.

"Basically, the Witch class itself is very poorly designed with most of the Hexes being trap options, poorly defined or outright broken. But what we really have here is a textbook example of an inexperienced or clumsy DM. Remember kids, don't just tinker around with the rules willy nilly or you deserve what you get. And especially don't just allow your players to pick exotic non-standard Feats and exploit vague ability descriptions for their own gain.

I have to wonder why alarms didn't go off in the DM's head when his player wanted to take a monster-only feat to pump the DC for a SLA that was already at-will...?"

Actually-Aunt Tony-I'm neither inexperienced nor clumsy and I trust my players-I'm just going to ignore your smug post and chalk it up to the realization that if you solicit advice on a public forum, sometimes you get solid feedback, and sometimes you get Aunt Tony.

I don't really have a specific topic-I just want to rant a bit and maybe get some feedback. I'm currently running the Jade Regent campaign and we are in book 4. I have a couple of players who pride themselves on some really well thought out character builds-along with excellent craft item checks. One of them is a Cleric negative energy channeler that requires a DC 25 will save from everything in a 30 ft radius or they take 8d6 dm-that he then heals-and he can do this at least 12 times a day. (he sucks in everything else-I was only able to take him out with an army of archers-that were specifically targeting him).
I've also got a player Witch that can cast Icy Tomb Hex with a DC Fort save of 31. They were up against the Swine Shogun and the monster failed the save (I rolled a 1-it happens) in the second round of combat-and with dead minions-courtesy of the channeler-it's game over. I'm not trying to kill the players or be malicious, but I do get frustrated especially when I plan an exciting combat and it's over with a Hex that I think is broken (the boss would have had to roll a 20 to pass the save.)
So now the player (who's a good friend) is pissed off-I'm irritated with his legal and legit HeroLab builds and I don't know what to do. I'm not a newbie GM by any stretch-but I don't want to adjust the module to break the players because it's not fair-I pride myself on not too much metagaming and having the monsters have knowledge of the players that they shouldn't is just as bad as the opposite IMHO-but I'm not having a huge amount of fun and I don't want to adjust the module-I want them to feel challenged and come out victorious because of good roleplaying and exciting combat-not a "save or die" roll.
They player of the Witch did point out that I do have a bit of me vs. them mentality-that I want to "win" as the GM by killing players, so maybe that's part of it too-but I'm really just looking for feedback. Thanks for reading. I love the game and always have-I'm just wondering what to do-beyond sitting down with my buddy over a beer.

I'd like to get these...I really would, but $300 is just too much for resculpts of monsters that I already have as a result of my massive DDM collection.
That being said, if the list had a bunch of monsters that filled in gaps in previous lines or "iconic" monsters (1st ed. creatures that were updated to PF) that did not already exist, I'd certainly consider it. For example-if I knew that Paizo was making a Froghemoth or Wolf-in-Sheep's Clothing mini-yep, i would buy a case-sorry, wife!
Now that I think about it, the two Bestiary books have a lot of 1st ed. Monster Manual 2 and Fiend Folio monsters-get a line focused on those, and you'd have my cash.

We just started a new PF campaign (up to now we had been playing 3.5) and I picked a Dwarf Monk as well-starting at 2nd lvl. I picked Combat Reflexes, Dodge and Deflect Arrows as my first three feats-but only because the GM said that it was a campaign where we fought a LOT of Kobolds.
PF is great-combat moves so much faster now.