If my player powers on a Laser Torch, how long will it stay ignited? I noticed some other weapons were listed as 1 charge/round. So I was unsure if it stayed lit until it was dropped or turned off(which seemed unlikely) or if a charge is spent on every attack. As other weapons declare themselves to be powered for an entire round and this one doesn't, I was confused... does that mean that you switch it on with every attack, what does that mean for multiple attacks in a round or AoO... are you even threatening with it?
Hello everyone, thank you for taking the time to listen. I recently moved and by serendipity heard a fellow player looking for a GM at our FLGS. We have been talking and I am meeting with the group in order to start the game when it was brought up that they were all "uncomfortable with the deity aspect". I told them that it was fine and I could work around it, which I can... but I would like to ask some advice.
I know I should talk to my players more and find where there thresholds are. Personally I am saddened as I always love the religion portion of settings and have grown fond of the Golarion Pantheon, but I feel comfort of the player's comes first. Having never dealt with this issue I wanted to ask if anyone had dealt with this before and has any advice for me so that I can make sure my players have a good time.
I have a player who is going to be taking Leadership. The player already has an improved familiar(imp). In order to keep the board less clustered we decided that his imp could be his cohort and would gain some class levels... however as he is nearing the level he is going to take Leadership I figured it would be wise to ask for some advice.
Has anyone else done this before or have any advice on the mechanics of it all?
Okay so looking through the Artifacts and Legends book I saw an item called the Scepter of Ages, which besides for being an absurdly awesome weapon as far as flavor... allows someone to use it as a time machine.
Paizo was wise and kind enough to include a chart of the different eras of Golarion with this item and the first thing that came to mind was to run a Chrono Trigger style game where the players were era hopping trying to dispatch a villain with the scepter.
I was wondering if anyone has ever run a game with time travel before and if they had any idea/concerns/advice for someone looking at this as a campaign.
I am a player in Jade Regent, so I have stayed away from the particular board but I thought some players may get a kick out of this story.
Spoilers may follow for certain aspects of The Hungry Storm
We had just left the Iritaki village with the intent of killing the white dragon Vexenvag. My character, an ulfen-raised Elf, had the goal of one day becoming a linnorm queen, so testing her strength against a dragon was entirely something she was up for. We left the caravan behind and traveled on foot.
Once we arrived at the glacial rift that served as the dragon's home. We used multiple climber's kits worth of pitons and ropes to secure a line for ease of access. We all clambered down into the dragon's egg chamber and realized that someone had set up the tribe to take the brunt of the dragon's fury. At this point we heard a piton falling from the top of the rift and smashing into the side with a heavy thud. Someone had pulled it out and thrown it into the rift. We heard the dragon begin to stir. We all knew that the one responsible for the piton was the priest of Sithud we had discovered in the Iritaki village, who had unfortunately escaped last session...
The battle with the dragon was hard fought, with us bottled into a small area that offered no protection from its breath attacks besides a 15 foot pit and the dragon spent its first round creating a fog bank. Eventually we did manage to take it down with a brutal hit from our fighter, the dragon slid over the edge and fell 300 feet.
I then climbed out of the rift to re-secure the piton. After doing so, I looked around to see if I could spot who had removed it and then saw the priest of Sithud bearing down on me... having won Initiative I immediately jumped down the rift, casting feather fall, and screaming a warning to my compatriots.
I was now at the bottom of the pit with no way out. So spending a round I looked at my surroundings and my inventory to see what I could use...
I found the body of Vexenvag... and a Scroll of Animate Dead we had found earlier on. It took me two rounds to manage to Use Magic Device on the scroll, during those two rounds the Priest had used wind blasts to throw two of my party members down the rift, luckily for them I had two 1st level spells left to feather fall them.
We all clambered on to Vexxy and rode back into the battle.
The rest of the battle was hard fought and exhausting(these two fights took up our entire 6 hour play session) However the fight ended on a wonderful note. Vexenvag had become incredibly easy to hit and lost most of her hit points upon becoming a zombie, and currently had 3 spiritual weapons on her... she was going to die next round. So I commanded her to grab the priest...
and stop flapping her wings.
So this was without doubt, my favorite way I have ever killed someone... a 300 foot drop while carried in the jaws of a dragon. While I am quite sad I lost my new favorite pet.. I am sure I can find a replacement somewhere.
Norgorber is the god who holds the greatest hold on secrets, and is revered as one of four separate entities; Blackfingers, Father Skinsaw, The Reaper of Reputation, or The Gray Master. So what had recently occurred to me is... would the casual man or woman even know the name Norgorber?
Outside the game we realize the fact that these are all aspects of one god, but would a character know this? I am sure that his priests would know, a personal bit of flavor I would inject in my own campaigns is that uncovering the secret that these four gods are actually one is the final step in becoming a priest of that god...
Still my question remains... do regular people know who Norgorber is? Or simply his aspects?
If a Paladin were to have Eagle's Splendor cast on him, would he gain two additional Lay on Hands for duration of the spell?
Naturally I would see some caveats here, such as if he had it cast on him and used both, a second casting would not give him the additional two again, however if he used one of the two in the first casting he would be allowed to use the second with the latter casting.
Still I am unsure if the casting of the spell would give him the extra uses at all.
Yes, I know that this is usually not allowed. However one of my players was interested in this concept for out Carrion Crown game. After thinking about it I decided if he used the Undead Scourge variant, I would allow it. One of the things I really enjoyed awhile back was the Shelyn Paladin Oath on the blog. I really adore the idea of each deity having their own code for Paladins, it really frees them up role-playing wise to do something different
Anyway I came up with this first draft of a Pharasma Oath, and I was hoping to get some comments and suggestions.
*Death is as sacred as life, and is to be respected.
*To reap another is to take away all they will be in this lifetime. I understand the weight of this and will never kill for its own sake.
*Infants and elderly are at different ends of their journeys, but both can require assistance. If I can help these souls I shall.
*I shall never desecrate the corpses of the fallen. The vessels of others are to be respected. The abominations of the Urgathoa, however must be destroyed.
*Everyone makes their choices in life and it is Pharasma's place to judge. Set aside your predjudices and pride and strive to set aside your own judgement on others. For we all reap what we sow.
*The world has its fate just as people. I shall strive to maintain balance both in the world and in myself.
*I shall never raise the undead, I will never kill a child, I will never eat the blood, body, or bone of my fellow man.
This story is without a doubt becoming my favorite of the pathfinder tales. I really am looking forward to seeing where these characters go, and well assuming they don't die bloody, I would love to see Roubris expanded in a full Pathfinder Tales novel.
Also high credit to the artist of this section, his illustrations really bring the characters to life.
*Daken is a homebrew race that is a half-human/half-dwarf based off of the Mul race from Dark Sun. They gain a +2 to any stat like all human and half-human humanoid races.
**The Crane Tengu variant is found on the Kobold Quarterly website.
The characters were built using 20-point buy.
As far as the characters go I pretty much told the players to go nuts because if something could be broken its better to find out now.
The Gunslinger did his job superbly, dealing good damage for a fighter-type of his level and hitting every single time he shot. However a number of 1's came up and he ended up burning his grit solely on the fixing his gun.
The Ninja worked out very well, using the halfling's usual talents as a rogue only with magical abilities. The ninja actually seemed far better than a standard rogue I would say, however I am not sure I would change anything with it because he didn't make any of the other players seem inferior and the player had a great time with it. Mostly he was able to get sneak attacks in, but the few times he was unable his damage was the lowest in the party. Also interestingly the Ninja had the highest AC in the party, at one point he used total defense and completely withstood an onslaught from 3 gray oozes.
The Samurai.... was the easiest class to break by far. The player gave him a large sized katana and going with Weapon Focus, Power Attack, Furious Focus, and Vital Strike for feats. The player had also maxed out his strength statistic naturally. By a strange twist he always rolled the lowest on Initiative and by then end of the round he would always be able to kill an enemy with one blow, especially since the party had a chance to soften it up. The worst thing was the enlarge person potions... he was a demon in battle. Pretty much everything died before him and he didn't even really need to use any of his Samurai abilities except for By My Honor for save bonuses. The main chink in his armor are his abysmal reflex and will saves, as one of the main enemies in the campaign can cast Dominate Monster I am predicting that the Samurai will end up killing the party or the other way around... either way it will be an interesting test of the classes.
The Alchemist character was there to fill in the missing roles, providing healing and arcane insight while still dishing out damage. Still not a focus of the playtest so not worth going into.
The encounters went very well and the party had fun but they haven't really been in too much peril yet as this module ramps up the difficulty in the third act. Still so far the party's tactics have been pretty straightforward, kill what you can in one round and after that left the samurai clean it up. The samurai really was the unbalancing factor, however I can say that is because of the way he was built and really any of the fighter-types can become just as crazy with their damage. However as far as the samurai goes his challenges are a nice ability as are all the rest, however I do have to agree that the mount wasnt really necessary... it was tethered outside the lighthouse when the tentacles attacked and was killed... and the player forgot that he even had had a mount until a few hours later. That's how much of a non-factor it is, when the player's mount was killed, no one at the table thought about it or cared until hours later. Personally I feel their weapon expertise really does work well enough instead of a mount.
The ninja was definitely a welcome addition to the party, and the player thought that he was a little too overpowered compared to a normal rogue, saying that even lowering their base skill points from 8 to 6 would go a long way towards leveling the playing field.
The gunslinger... I really don't have anything to add. I would allow the class at my table in normal sessions as is.
This was the first session of the game and my initial impressions, the combats have been mostly lower CR and non too telling. When the party gets the chance to finish the module I will post more. Also I am really interested to see what happens between the party if they have to fight their Samurai.. should be very interesting...
The 1st level ability states that you can start the game with a musket(and powder and bullets) or two pistols.
So does this mean that if you choose dual pistols you do not get free powder and bullets. I am not complaining, that is more than fair price-wise. Simply asking for clarification
My party is currently in The Varnhold Vanishing and after losing half their party to Vordekai's Island they are on their way back. Last time they managed to get across the lake and past the Wyverns with a critical intimidate and the location of a nearby recently killed Roc. This time however the Wyverns will be attacking, the party is crossing in their folding boat.
My question: With the grab ability on their bite and flyby attack, does that mean that a wyvern could swoop at the party, snatch someone up, and finish its movement without penalty?
I am having difficulties discovering what this nation statistic is used for. Could someone please shed some light on what the use of this particular statistic is for?
This was an amazing shorter piece. I really enjoyed the darker path this one took us down, and while I have really enjoyed these stories week by week, this shortest tale may be the one that leave the biggest impact on me.
Just really impressed with this tale, I am looking forward to next week's story as always and I would really like to see more tales from this author.
Hello everyone, one of my players is eying the Rage Prophet prestige and after looking it over there were just a couple things I wanted to clear up here.
1. Can you Channel Energy while raging?
2. The Rage Prophet says that its levels stack with barbarian's as far as effect of rage powers, however does it stack for allowing that character to choose powers in the future i.e. Rage Prophet 7 with 5 Barbarian levels, could he choose to take a Rage Power requiring a Level 12 Barbarian?
I am pretty sure that the answer to these two are no, but I wasn't 100% so I figured I should ask.
One of my players has really been wanting to do a zombie campaign for awhile, and I have been scratching my head for awhile to figure out how to manage this. The obvious problem being paladins and clerics who would just steal everyone's thunder. Then inspiration struck me on how to balance everyone out and make low level undead a threat.
Have the players play npc classes.
The game series Left 4 Dead played a huge amount of inspiration here for me, and I had a lot of fun adapting special infected from the game.
Anyways to keep from making this post obnoxiously long I will be using spoiler tags.
Character Creation:
Player Creation:
Stats: 3d6. No Switching. Reroll Allowed if no statistic is over 13 or
if total modifier is +0 or less
NPC Classes Only and only one of each:
One Adept
One Aristocrat
One Expert(Experts receive one free non-combat feat at first, and
choose one save to be their high save)
One Warrior
Players receive full hit points at every level
Fast XP Track
Two Traits
No Bestiary Races
Players Start with 3 Hero Points, a boon from their Deity. A hero
point can be spent during stat rolling to re-roll 3d6.
NPC Class is Favored Class: +1 HP or Skill Point. No Variants
I am also working on special traits for this style of play, as I see
this for more arcade style play. and i could definently see it turning
into a lot more grind and a lot less roleplay. Most of them would be
class specific... some examples
Mass Ego - Aristocrat
You were born with silver spoon firmly in mouth, you feel entitled to
everything and have quite a superiority complex. You gain a bonus to
starting gold due to your pampered lifestyle. On the other hand your
massive ego will not allow anyone to enter a room before you, you must
always walk through a door first.
Beware The Sacrilege - Adept
You were raised to fear and hate the undead. Any undead without a
channel resistance is not allowed a will save against your positive
energy. On the other hand you have a crippling fear of touching their
dead flesh and take a -4 penalty to any roll requiring that involves
touching undead(unarmed strikes, melee touch spells, combat
maneurvers). Attacking with positive energy touch spells does not
incur this penalty.
Militia Minded - Warrior
You have seen combat and are skilled at getting others combat ready.
Your instructions in combat give your allies +1 to attack rolls,
however keeping a watchful eye on them leaves you distracted and you
take a -1 penalty to saving throws.
Pig Farmer - Expert
You start play with your prize pig. The pig behaves just like a normal
animal of its kind, its keen scent is very good at tracking down food
supplies. You may slaughter your prize pig for to supply food for your
party, the succulent choice meats giving the party the will to live
and grants a +2 to either attack rolls, skill checks, or saving throws
for 24 hours. However the smell of that clings to you increases the
chance of encounter of undead with the Scent ability.
Bloody Mess - Any Class(And why yes I do LOVE fallout)
People tend to die around you in the most HORRIBLE manner. Whenever you make an attack, treat your threat range as though it were doubled. Whenever you are attacked, the attacker treats its crit range as thought it was doubled.
So I guess the idea here is for more arcade style action than normal. I am toying with other ideas such as stealing the critical charts from Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader, and having players not go unconscious when below 0, simply staggered and with the chance of taking critical damages from the chart(losing limbs and such).
The plan is to make the basic rules for random encounter hordes and the special infected's statistics. Then we can pass those around my group whenever someone wants to DM a session, with players coming up campaign modules beforehand that they can run the party through. Also when a player dies, instead of having them sit around until they discover the player's new character, you can pass off special-type zombie pages to the dead players at the table when they come up. Allow them to play against the party, less work for you and more fun for them, even better is if you give them an incentive, a hero point for a pc kill, an extra feat for your next character if you manage to wipe them out.
Anyways I definitely want to hear you guy's comments and ideas, if people want me to post some of the specials I adapt or make I can do so, also if anyone wants to try this out and playtest I would love feedback on that.
Thanks for reading, and as always remember to aim for the head.
With one of my players going on tour(the problem playing with musicians) I am going to be DM'ing a couple of sessions, and the current Pathfinder Tales inspired me to make them Worldwound-based.
So the party for this is going to be a Monk(Zen Archer), a Fighter(Critical Focus), and a Ranger(attempting Link from Zelda). So we are going to have no magic(Ranger is a Skirmisher variant) besides Use Magic Device. So we are going for a very epic albeit low-magic adventure. I have a bit of time to prep these games and I really want to make the Worldwound itself seem as much as an enemy as the demons they face... and that is the issue I am kind of facing. t
The players are level 11 for this, and knowing where they were headed I am almost certain that they bought up Rings of Sustenance, and so I don't see them having to worry too much about food and water. At one point I know they are going to be in a magic dead area for a stretch and will have to fight and survive for awhile. However any ideas I can get from you guys would be greatly appreciated.
Oh and if anyone can think of any good demons or appropriate monsters from the AP bestiaries off the top of the head, I would greatly appreciate any of those as well. Thanks in advance guys!
I just had our first session of Kingmaker, and it was met with great enthusiasm from all my players. It got us all role playing, and one of the members of our group who usually begins play with nothing more than a weapon and a name, put a lot of effort into crafting his character and their backstory. So first off I guess I just want to say that this is a really good start to the adventure and this is a GREAT setting, I can't wait to see how it unfolds.
Also breaking the mold, one of my player's is playing a noble and has a hireling following him around. Now I have never had a hireling in any game I have played in, however I really can't abide by having an NPC who is with the group for a length and not flesh them out. I was thinking over why someone would want to be a hireling, and I realized that they are people who go on adventures but stay out of the danger, get paid for essentially being another pair of hands and strong shoulders, and who decided to do this line of work over more down to earth employment. So the traits that came to me was someone who is greedy, opportunistic, clever, and a bit lazy(as in why do work for a month when this lot will let pay me a month's wages to hold a torch for em?).
This has brought me to the conclusion that as my players start to build the kingdom and as it draws attention, he is going to get offered money to spy on them. Personally I see that this could work out very well, and I would start slowly adding levels of rogue(or possibly bard) to him in secret while the players are developing their nation.
So a question I have is well... is this a dick move? I am really going for just a fun campaign overall, and I am not sure if going at them sideways like that may be crossing some kind of line. I had a similar circumstance where I gave a player in a different campaign a list of some npcs they knew that could work as his cohort, and he picked a villain who was hiding in plain sight.
So any comments or suggestions are welcome(as is just overall Kingmaker advice)
Oh and one last bit of praise I wanted to add on, I am running an Obsidian Portal for this campaign, and was inspired to write the Adventure Log entirely in person as an NPC who is with the party, and is chronicling them. So this campaign inspired me to start writing again... for me personally, that is some of the highest praise I think I think I will ever give, So thanks Pathfinder.
I recently had decided that the Holy Avenger is an artifact in my games. After spending some time in thought I realized that it really does a good job of describing legendary swords form other stories, and there is only ever one. So the idea was basically to have all Holy Avengers in the game be the same one, only passing from one hero to another throughout time.
Anyways, I had been wanting to do some more research into swords of that type in legend. There are the obvious of course, Excalibur from the Arthurian Legends, The Master Sword of Zelda, even the Sommerswerd from the Lone Wolf series(10 points if you get that reference). So any recommendation on literature would be most appreciated!
I am currently prepping for my upcoming Kingmaker campaign(my group is holding off until we get our hands on the APG), anyways my group is composed of gamers and I thought it would be kind of fun to make some achievements and rewards for the party, with little bonuses here and there, circumstantial bonuses, extra xp, and the like. I am currently brainstorming ideas and I was hoping maybe you guys could throw some my way.
here are some of the ones I have come up with so far
Tourist Guide
Explore 20 Hexes
+1 to Perception For Exploration
Like The Back of Your Hand
Explored 1000 Miles
While Exploring a new Hex your overland speed counts as though it were 5 feet faster, while traversing through your Nation's Hex's your overland speed counts as though it were 10 feet faster> This bonus is due to the party's mastery of exploration and does not actually increase the party's speed.
And We Shall Call this land... This Land!
Establish your kingdom and name it
Well done! As reward for your success the kingdom of Brevoy will be sending you a good faith package of supplies.
Only a Flesh Wound
A PC dies
The PC is not dead, and is instead stable and unconscious at -CON
We are about to close the book on my first original campaign this next week(should be capping off my players are level 10 so I am pretty proud). Anyways I have really been wanting to run The Shackled City and I am going to be converting things over while our secondary game takes the lead. Anyways I was mainly looking for advice for the adventure path itself, anything I should know before running it, and I am also sure I am not the first to adapt it so any advice is also welcome.
okay so my players have been hounded by a shining child of thassilon after drawing the fiend card from a deck of many things... anyway they are about to end up fighting it on its home turf. As this is going to take place in chaotic plane I really wanted to do something different, and I eventually decided on a system based off of the colored grid system from Disgaea. Basically there will be colored squares on the map(we play on an erasable map using markers), at the beginning of each player's turn they will get an effect depending on the color square they are standing on, this will vary from something positive like fast healing, a bonus to deflection, something neutral like swapping places with somebody on the board or levitating, or something nasty like damage or getting stunned.
the chaotic part is that the effect shifts at the beginning of each round.
now there will be a crystal which is keyed to each square's color, now a player can destroy the crystal, ending the effect but causing damage to everyone standing on the squares, they can throw the crystal into another color which will switch the color of the squares. With a successful spellcraft roll the player's can identify the crystal's abilities and with a high enough roll they can find out what the effect will be switching in upcoming rounds. with a use magic device roll a player can switch the effect to something of their choosing(however without a spellcraft check first they won't know what each effect does until they activate it) and with a high enough check they can even lock the device into one effect. disable device can be used to destroy a crystal without causing a chain reaction(failure by more than 10 creates an explosion)
I do apologize if I this isn't well organized enough or if I failed to explain something, anyway I was hoping to get some ideas about what I could use for effects. I am planning on every color having a theme: Red squares affecting players physically: fast healing, armor bonuses and diseases and ability damage, blue affecting them magically: with positive and negative spells being cast. And green affecting the terrain: teleporting the players around, swapping places, levitation, and my personal favorite, elevating high up to become walls, which will give the players in green squares a chance to attack the flying fiend in melee but on the other hand blocks off other players.
so any advice about this i can get is greatly appreciated
Strange little idea I had for an secret deity that I may or may not use in upcoming session.
Athemaan
Alignment: CN
Portfolio: The Insane, Random Chance, Cowards
Domains: Madness, *(see below)
Worshipers: All unwilling
Favored Weapon: War Razor
Holy Symbol: An entwined centipede devouring itself
Athemaan is a god who makes his home in the minds of the insane, unlike those of Lamashtu's creed who use their madness to fuel their Goddess's dark intentions, Athemaan is a god who appears content to simply enjoy the splintered minds of the masses. Making his home entirely in the psyche of mortals, Athemaan is probably the most active in the day to day lives of his worshipers, appearing to them in their madness, constantly offering inane advice or psychotic suggestions. A god of untested power, the true problem for his worshipers is the fact that their god is only visible to the faithful, and even then they all see him as a different entity, whispering separate nonsense into each of their skulls. Compounded with this, no one sane appears able to comprehend that the deity actually may exist, even the gods are either unable or unwilling to acknowledge the mad god's existence.
Appearances naturally vary from psychosis to psychosis, Athemaan appears to favor the forms of a shower of centipedes, a fang-toothed squirrel, or an infant with the head of an ocelot. While his area of expertise may border on the other gods, the border between his domain is still quite clear, while someone like Nivi Rombodazzle may bless someone with a good roll of the dice, all while the dice are still rolling is where Athemaan dances. When Lamashtu inspires madness in a husband to kill his daughter and wife, Athemaan is the one who snaps open his mind like a jigsaw puzzle when he is holding their broken bodies. Athemaan is both kind and cruel, and while his presence in their mind may be unwelcome, at least they will never be alone in their insanity.
Lore:
Rovagug and the Trickster: This story was originally find scrawled in its author's blood on the walls of an asylum. The text tells of a young trickster god who prepared for battle with the rest of the gods against Rovagug. However upon seeing the great beast, the trickster was became terrified and fled. While he ran he came across a mortal, a seer whose mind had broken when he saw a vision of Rovagug. Seeing this mortal's splintered psyche as the perfect place to hide, he dove into the creature's mind. The young trickster had planned on leaving once the battle had been decided, however when he entered into this Insanity Plane, he mind soon also succumbed, so there the trickster stayed.
*Domains Note: All followers of Athemaan gain the Madness Domain, for your second domain you should roll a die to select your second domain out of the others or if your GM decides you may instead select one yourself. A cleric of Athemaan can never have the Law Domain, Inquisitors of Athemaan must use the Madness Domain, and may not roll or select a secondary Domain and instead use that one
I was wondering about if there was an official ruling on this. I know that while splash weapons deal damage differently, they are technically ranged weapons, so can they be deflected with deflect arrows?
i know that these questions get asked a lot, so please bear with me. What i was wondering is if you take Shield Mastery and you use two heavy shields, does it completely eradicate the two weapon penalties, or do some remain due to you are using a non light weapon in your off hand?
