Hyena

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582 posts. 1 review. No lists. 1 wishlist.



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Vhayjen wrote:
Can we have a redo of the Clockwork Golem? It doesn't work for me at all.

It doesn't work because you probably forgot to wind it up properly.


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The invisibility will be obvious for anyone on the other side, but that is beside the point. This is not about stealth.


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lastknightleft wrote:
I love feats, I'd hate to see them go, I just fell in love with the way that 5e does them, I've always said feats should be nice not required even wrote an article about it a long time ago for the DnD 3.5 forums in the articles that required approval before they got posted. 5ed honestly just did them so well and I think the human variant fits perfectly with Golarion because players think the feat is so awesome that humans become the most common choice for characters so game groups wind up with more humans than any other race.

It's what 5e does with feats that makes them acceptable again.

By removing all feats with minor effects, the ones remaining are impactful. This means that as feats are now big and important again, trivial effects are relegated to being either available to everyone, removed from the game, or given as a class ability.

In addition, as feats are no longer so abundant, they are not part of monster design. This frees up much effort for game masters that was otherwise spent on learning feats.

The effect that feats had on monsters was that they obscured information from the game master. The GM had to research feats in advance, as monsters were equipped with them but the statblocks did not explain the feats.

Lorathorn: I disagree. I've played the game with people both experienced and inexperienced with Pathfinder. Everyone found feats VERY easy to grasp conceptually.

The people I play with have most trouble with favoured class rules and grapple rules. Favoured class rules are NOT intuitive. They make absolute sense to someone who's played 3.5 and then moved to Pathfinder, but for someone who starts on Pathfinder, they are confusing as heck.


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1: Increased combat mobility for everyone.
2: Fewer feats. The existing feats are "bigger".
3: Monsters don't have feats. (this is huge)

If anything, the second and third points are vital to a future version of Pathfinder in my opinion. Pathfinder suffers from having too many fiddly bits.


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This is a spin-off from another thread.

These rules are untested and some would call them too gamist. I call them an interesting option :P

The idea is to balance out the action economy for solo encounters.

Idea in short:

A boss can focus on any character he can see during combat. If the character disappears from sight, it loses focus. Whenever this happens, the boss can chose another character to focus on instead.

Whenever the character who has focus attacks the boss there's a 50% chance per attack that it will miss (in addition to cover, AC and whatever). The boss can also reroll any saves from abilities and spells by the focused character and pick the best result.

The boss can change focus at any time during his own turn.

Any character who has focus will lose focus if another character attacks the boss and/or does something sufficiently cool or dramatic. That character will gain focus instead.

What this does is it forces people to interact better in combat.


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2097 wrote:
Things like overprinted books, problematic developement cycles etc, those I can see how they would show up in the numbers, but how would splitting the base show up?

For this example consider two product pools. We have core rulebooks which are applicable to any setting, and setting specific books.

In a situation with split bases, I imagine the sales of products in the first pool will remain constant, but sales for individual products within the pool of setting specific books drop off though the amount of sales of books in the second pool remains constant.

In short, the same amount of overall sales, but spread over a larger amount of books.


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The big problem with previous edition monsters is how they used feats, and you had to know all the feats involved. Getting rid of monster feats is a very good things.


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David Bowles wrote:

"If you try to play 5e try to forget previous editions, don't compare too much during play, and play it in the lighter, more narrative vein it is created for"

Sorry, I couldn't do that. I compare everything to HERO system. Everything. Also, I have to compare 5th to Pathfinder since they are direct competitors.

The bottom line is that I can make Pathfinder narrative. I can make HERO system narrative. If I want a light rules system, I'll use Storyteller from White Wolf, not another WoTC brain child.

There are degrees of "rules light"ness.

HERO is more complex than Pathfinder which is more complex than 5e which is much more complex than Storyteller.

If I wanted to play rules light I'd play Storyteller, but I don't want rules light. I want rules lightER than pathfinder.

Note: This is from a gm perspective. I don't mind playing pathfinder, I just don't want to gm it.


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I think bugleyman was insinuating that no matter what actually happens there will always be someone complaining on the internet about it and that you, arguing that this information should quell concerns of potential complainers, did not seem, in his/her eyes, to be aware of this fact.

Also you look like acube, not asphere :O


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1: Combat rounds need to be shorter. The combat system needs fixing so that combats don't take entire sessions. There's too much to keep track of.

2: In general the system is too complex. Creating characters is much too involved.

3: Feat chains are awful.


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I haven't been keeping up with the playtests and whatever. I'm curious, though, what's actually new in 5th edition if you compare it to 3.5e and 4e?

I have a vague memory of seeing something a long while ago about how the new weapon system was supposed to make weapons much more flexible... Or something...

But what else is there? Can someone sum up the big differences?


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Wayne Reynold's designs are really great.

How much input does he have on the designs, though? Does paizo give him free reign?


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Lamontius wrote:
A Forlorn Elven wizard who is utterly obsessed with keeping his companions from ever dying, so he delves deeply into necromancy because he can't bear to lose anyone else...ever...again...

What about an elf supremacist who's utterly convinced of the other race's inferiority to elves?... But he doesn't hate them. He pities them. And he quests for a spell powerful enough to turn all humanoids on golarion into elves.


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Core and APG only. Some bestiary 1, 2, 3 familiar stuff is permitted with improved familiar.

Making a long story short and spoiler free (Kingmaker):

We got TPKd at the end of book 3 of Kingmaker in the most idiotic TPK I have ever experienced. The frustration... Gah... I don't want to think about it.

Anyway. Now we're making new characters. My previous character was an elf wizard (conjurer) who was pretty kickass. I decided to change my game up this time so I'm making a gnome illusionist and I want advice.

First of all, I've always had this impression that gnomes were MADE to be illusionists. I mean gnome illusionists are pretty iconic back since whenever... But when I decided to throw one together in PCGen I noticed that they don't actually get an int bonus. They get a charisma bonus, which is... Questionably useful...

Either way, I still want to play a wizard rather than a sorcerer, especially since we are bound to run into undead and I don't want to be stuck with the limited spell set of a sorcerer.

So preferably, I want to make the most out of playing a gnome illusion specialist. Any ideas?


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Sam, the Save-or-Suck Wizard Conjurer lvl 1(15 pt buy)
Str: 1
Dex: 2
Con: 3
Int: 36 (+2 for human)
Wis: 1
Cha: 1

3 spare points :D

His grease spell has a reflex save of 25.


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Mythic +10 Artifact Toaster wrote:
Tequila Sunrise wrote:
LowRoller wrote:
I love rolling for stats, i just don't like playing them if i roll low

I suspect this feeling is secretly shared by many of us, and how D&D went from 3d6 down-the-line to 4d6 arrange-as-you-wish. :)

See also: How to Deal with Low Stat Rolls

lol makes think of the time I played a one shot with an "old school" dm (he was younger than me by almost year, and i'm 23). he had us roll in order(3d6, and no we didn't reroll 1's)...AFTER we picked our race and class. I ended up with the following Str 6, dex 11, con 14, wis 3, int 10, and chr 18. the race i picked before i rolled, human, the class...monk. it didn't go well, I was killed in melee combat by a level 1 elf expert. The dm said that I had to roll up the same character with a new name. I used excesssive profanity and left. That was the only game I ever walked out on, and it was only last week.

That is SO crappy. You definitely did the right thing :D

Imagine if you had said elf, and rolled a 3 in constitution, though. That'd be kinda funny... How long would you survive with a 1 in constitution?


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Scavion wrote:
1. If we assume the Author is lying then we cannot make any assumptions about the literary work whatsoever. Did Frodo destroy the ring? Well Tolkien wrote it, but if he could have been lying...

Of course we can still make assumptions. The point is that the words of the author are not actually that relevant for analysis.

Note that Frodo destroyed the ring within the context of the story itself, as told in the book.

You cannot compare this to an author making a statement in an interview or biography. Especially since your opinion can change, but what you have written cannot.

We must make a distinction between an author writing something in a particular text, and the author saying something about that particular text.

Scavion wrote:
If the writer is unaware of the meaning then it effectively has no meaning. Why did he write it there unless he had a reason?

Of course it still has meaning outside the text itself. You're looking at meaning as if it's something the author implants in the text.

Counterquestion:

If we found a book and the book has no author, can we still analyze it?

Scavion wrote:
2. As for the Blue curtain, the author may have very well just liked the color blue. It was only mentioned to set the scene in our heads.

Yes. This is why we try not to overanalyze small details. For example a particular scene with a particular coloured curtain is unlikely to have that much meaning. It's only when we get to more prominent features of the story that we should look at things really carefully.


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Scavion wrote:
Vivianne Laflamme wrote:
Scavion wrote:
Tolkien said that was incorrect.

It's rather silly to believe that an author not purposefully drawing upon something means that they aren't drawing upon it. It's very easy to unintentionally include background memes in one's writing. For example, consider this thread from the other week. The gist of it is that the way a few dwarven deities were talked about ended up being heterosexist. The general consensus of the thread (or at least, my opinion on the matter) is that this was unintentional. No one intended that Bolka be written to be exclusive of queer dwarves. Nonetheless, it still happened. (I have a post on the second page of that thread which explores in more detail the implications of how these deities are depicted.)

One purpose of the sort of analysis in the linked post in the OP is to better understand these invisible pressures that exist. We are all products of the world. We don't magically avoid widespread social ideas. Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending we are free of any influence we are unaware of doesn't solve anything. If we are willing to self-reflect and look at how these ideas influence us, we can try to resist their influence. We can overcome them.

Uh yes it does. Your posting right now on a board where we have to interpret developer intent as clearly as possible in order to play the game.

If an Author says a particular detail has no extra meaning, IT HAS NO EXTRA MEANING.

The Blue curtain doesn't exemplify the sadness of the author or whatever if he said it didn't.

The Orcs aren't being alluded as a racial stereotype. They're just fugly and evil. Because Tolkien said that was what he meant by what he wrote. In the end the only thing that matters is what the author meant. To say otherwise, just simply...

That is wrong, for several reasons.

First of all, the most obvious reason is that the author might be lying.

Secondly, the author himself might not be aware of the meaning.

Let's use the blue curtain scenario:

The author might say that, "no the blue curtain symbolises nothing", but, and here we get to the important bit, he chose to make the curtain blue in the first place. Why did he make that choice?

That's where it gets interesting. Why do dark elves have black skin? Given that they live underground in darkness it seems more reasonable that they should have albino skin. Someone had to make the decision at some point that their skin was black.


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SAMAS wrote:
Kirth Gersen wrote:

1. Casting in Combat.

(a). You can cast a quickened spell, and a normal spell -- both of which require you to pull stuff out of a pouch, wave your hands in secret signs, and recite the Gettysburg Address in pig Latin -- while tumbling across the battlefield at full speed. Meanwhile, if Fred the Fighter moves, he loses all but one of his attacks. WTF?!?!?!

Ever see a fight in ''Naruto''? That's pretty par for the course. :) Concentrate, rapid sign-cast, move while doing regular casting.

Though I suppose the wrongness is more on the fact that you can't do a lot with Swift actions. Maybe allowing a quick stab with a light weapon so Martials can get on the action, too?

It's not just swift actions. The full-round-action mechanic is broken.

The system works such that non-magic-based combatants are discouraged from moving while fighting at their full potential, while spellcasters have no such restrictions. This is most glaring with certain classes which, ironically, gain both multiple attacks AND increased movement speeds (yes monks I'm looking at you guys).

I don't think wizards should be nerfed. I think the full round action rules should be rewritten


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This would be more fancy if I could post images here, but we'll have to do without that. I've tracked down an interesting formula, and with some manipulations it can be quite useful.

What I have is a formula to approximate the number of rolls you have to do, on average, until you will succeed in negating a poison/disease that requires two successful saves to end.

The formula looks as follows

1 / p^2 + 1 / p

Where p is the probably to succeed in a single roll.

Note that this formula does NOT correctly adjust for the possibility that failing a save would result in lowering the save bonus itself as a result. For example a poison that causes constitution damage would lower your fortitude save, thereby making your future saves even less likely to happen. This is not taken into account because it makes it even more complex to calculate than it already is :P

First: If we insert p = 1 in the formula we get 1/1^2 + 1/1 which is 2. When you're 100% likely to succeed every save, at WORST you will have to make two saves to escape a poison.

If we insert p = 0.5 we get 6. So it'd take on average something like 6 rolls until you succeed.

We can calculate p for any given save with the following formula

(20+s-d)/20

Where s is your save bonus and d is the DC. Example: A character with a constitution save of 5 rolls a save against a poison with DC 19.

(20+5-19)/20 = 0.3 (30%)

If we plug in this in the initial equation we get 14.44, which is really quite bad... It'd take an average of 14 rounds to break out of this poison.

Note, of course, that we can calculate the amount of damage taken on average too. I've made a table of average damage per die below:

1d3 = 2
1d4 = 2.5
1d6 = 3.5

With another formula we can proceed to calculate how much ability damage you will take on average. It looks like this

d = e(1-p)(k-2)

Where p is the probability to successfully save against the poison, e is the average damage value from the above table, and k is the number of rolls from above.

Example: k value = 14.44, p = 0.3, and 3.5 as we use a d6.
3.5 * (1-0.3) * (14.44-2) = 30.475

MASSIVE DAMAGE

I've put together a complete formula here that you can paste into wolframalpha or any other calculator:

damage = e(1-((20+s-d)/20))((1 / ((20+s-d)/20)^2 + 1 / ((20+s-d)/20))-2)

e = damage value from the above table
s = relevant save bonus
d = poison DC

In short: This gives you approximation of how much damage a character would take if afflicted by a poison with save DC d, expected die damage e (from the table) and save bonus s.

I will revisit this later, maybe next weekend, with a more rigorous examination of the probabilities. There might be mistakes in what I have here, but they shouldn't be that severe. If you find anything, tell me.


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LazarX wrote:
Ganryu wrote:

While ressurection spells in general tend to have a rather big impact on issues of immersion, i find Reincarnation the most problematic of all.

We just had a near TPK. 3/4 dead. Two characters reincarnate, the third one is on-hold because he might make a new character. However the reincarnation aspect means that, well, the characters now look and become completely different characters...

This doesn't just affect the players themselves, it impacts other players and it impacts the behavior of NPCs. I mean, one character who reincarnated has already been reincarnated once before, and he's the "ruler" in this kingmaker campaign.

It creates a rather bizarre situation. All people have to form entirely new diplomatic relations with this person because, quite frankly, they have no idea who he is.

How do other groups deal with this?

Show the players some regeneration episodes of Dr. Who.

What's Dr. Who?


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Hey I like the comments here. There's some good inspirational stuff :D


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54: Albertus' Amazing Picture Book: See Them Come To Life Without Magic!

This is a thick volume of several hundred worn pages. Some of them are missing. The pages are illustrated, depicting a slow sequence of two stylized dwarves, one smashing a large pie in the face of the other. Most notably, were one to flip these pages quickly through either magical or non magical means, the two characters would almost appear to come to life!


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I want to make a variation of Summon Swarm that summons a murder of crows:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/murder-of-crows

Those are statted as a CR3 monster, and Summon Swarm is a level 2 spell that summons CR2 monsters. Because of the blindness effect of Murder of Crows, perhaps it should be a level 3 spell? Any ideas?

(Yes I've just recently finished Bioshock Infinite, if you need to know)


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Marc Radle wrote:
Must not go off on rant about people using dumb internet slang ... Must not go off on rant about people using dumb internet slang ... Must not go off on rant about people using dumb internet slang ...

MNGOORAPUDIS


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This thread makes me want to get my hands on Dreamscarred Press' Psionics book.


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Sloanzilla wrote:

Roleplaying messageboard traditional use of character snobbery 101:

1. "Oh my gosh, you heal with your cleric...in combat? That's like sooo 1985."
2. "So you actually cast damage spells, with your wizard? 1979 just called."
3. "You actually expect your Paladin to act lawful good? Wow, that's sooooo restrictive."

~ Turns up nose and walks away from people obviously beneath me for not knowing that wizards should not blast and clerics should not heal.

This is actually a great post which illustrates one of the problems with all dnd derivative systems.

What, exactly, is a class really SUPPOSED to be doing?

Wizards are actually fairly straightforward. They're supposed to cast spells and most spellcasting, unless it's a set of really badly picked spells, will help. After all, even a beginner can see that ok magic missile deals damage I'll use that.

On the other hand, it's tougher to see whether or not mage armour is good in practice. Ok it's +4 AC... But at the cost of one spell slot... But magic missile is xd4+y damage...

The cleric is especially suffering from that because
1: It can actually use weapons.
2: It can heal
3: It has no direct damage magic
4: It has buffs

Buffs are HARD to evaluate. How good IS really a particular buff. It takes gameplay experience to figure out.

The cleric can use weapons, so one might think it's a combat class. Is it?

Few of the spells are direct damage, meaning that the class has spells that require gameplay experience to know which are good and bad. Buffs, again.

As for point two, the cleric has healing. Healing is straightforward. You know EXACTLY what you get from it. You get HP back. That's a tangible benefit. As such, it will be attractive for anyone who doesn't know exactly how to play a cleric.

I'm playing a wizard in a current campaign and my character is fairly effective. Why? Because I know what I'm doing, generally. There's been a few situations when I haven't been able to do anything but they were because I had the wrong spells and got into an encounter with something that couldn't be dealt with using my current spells.

We also have a witch that is less effective. Why? Because the player doesn't know exactly what to do. Doesn't know which spells are effective. Generally, he relies on the slumber hex which doesn't work against a lot of enemies.

We also had a cleric (who died). The cleric spent most of his time healing, because his melee was ineffective and the player didn't know which spells were useful.


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Here's what I just thought up (and I should really go to bed or else I'll have to survive another lecture on only 4h of sleep...)

This might be overpowered as **** and I strongly advice against it in pathfinder, but for a pathfinder v2 it might be something that could work.

Martial classes should all be redesigned to have a "stamina pool" of stamina points that restore upon resting. The pool size is pretty small. Probably not much bigger than con mod +2.

Some feats are then designated as martial feats. Power attack, cleave, whatever.

Martial classes can spend stamina points to
*Take a full round action after a move
*Move 2x movement speed AND do a normal attack (not combined with above)
*Temporarily gain a martial feat for one round

What this would do is that it would eliminate the risks of trap feats to a greater extent as you have the ability to use a feat even i you don't have it, though at a cost. Even a fighter whose player picked suboptimal feats can now kinda compensate for that later on.

The difference between emulating a feat and actually picking that feat is obviously that the fighter who has learned a feat permanently can actually use it without spending stamina.

I'm going to bed now.


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Damage and efficiency are fundamentally important in a system that places combat above everything else. Even 2e described combat as being the "meat" of the system itself. Is pathfinder any less combat oriented? No.

The only reasonable thing to do in such a system is to balance all characters' combat efficiency because a character who isn't efficient in combat is a character who stands around doing nothing.

He's going to be:

1: Bored
2: Dead weight to the rest of the group

Characters who lack combat capability work in systems that de-emphasize combat and emphasize social interaction and adventuring.

Before I played Pathfinder/DnD I came from a system that had a bard class. It couldn't cast spells. It couldn't sing to improve morale or give advantages. It could use weapons, though not as good as a dedicated combat class. What could it do? Smooth talking and actually playing instruments. The game also had a monk class. Hint: Think less shaolin and more Sean Connery from The Name Of The Rose. And a scribe: He was good at writing and knowledge skills.

I was really surprised when I started playing DnD that it had this focus on character balance. Now I understand why it is necessary.


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chaoseffect wrote:
Can you even have a +1 Holy Greatsword? Holy is a +2 enhancement; I was always under the impression that in order to put an effect on an item, it had to have atleast the same enhancement as the effect (so a +2 weapon for a +2 effect). Have I been misunderstanding this for... well forever?

Yes you have been having that misunderstanding for, well, forever :P

You can have a +1 holy greatsword. It will cost as much as a +3 greatsword.

To calculate the price, add the enhancement modifiers.


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Chance to hit:

(6/12)*(7/12) = 42/144 = 29% (roughly)

Because you have above on one and below on one I actually miscalculated at first. I strongly advice AGAINST having one roll ABOVE and one BELOW. It makes the thinking required unecessarily complex if you want to apply bonuses and so on. You'll have to reverse your thinking depending on which die you're looking at.

(i actually had to recalculate twice because of this)

Without knowing any of the additional rules it's hard to say if this is reasonable. I mean if a sniper shot kills instantly it might be acceptable, but if it takes multiple hits to kill it's going to need adjustments.


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I am not by any stretch of the imagination a power gamer or min maxer, but optimization guides are very useful for me anyway.

I don't pick from character options purely to be optimal, at the same time I don't want to pick something that might actually be a trap option. This is one of the great reasons for optimization guides imo.

They're not about only picking blue options. They're about NOT picking the red ones... Or too many red ones anyway.


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Amulet of Stopped Time
Aura: Strong Transmutation CL: 20

This amulet, shaped like an hourglass, allows the wearer to stop or resume the flow of time at any moment. The wearer can stop time at any time and for as much time as necessary. It affects the wearer as well and while time is stopped nobody can act.

Destruction: The amulet disintegrates if anyone, while the amulet itself is activated, utters the phrase "Is it my turn yet?"

Full Plate of the Rook
Aura: Strong Abjuration CL: 20
This +5 heavy fortified full plate increases the base speed of the wearer by 100 feet. It is impossible to move diagonally while wearing the Full Plate of the Rook and the character is unable to change direction mid-move.

Destruction: It can only be permanently destroyed by having a person of royal blood leapfrog over the wearer wearing a crown worth no less than 1000 gold pieces.


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I'll just write up a summary for a quick adventure I ran with my group in Sharn, Eberron. It should still work anywhere else providing you're not hesitant about going underground. Sharn is a city of tall towers and most civilized places to visit are in the mid levels. Lower levels are basically slums and a lot of abandoned areas. This has been adjusted for non-tower use.

Plot Hook: The players chill at some tavern or so when they hear a voice from a nearby table. The voice belongs to Maxirallion, the intelligent shield. His owner is asleep at the table and Maxirallion promises GOLD to the players if they will just help him with this minor little thing.

The players are led deep below a certain gambling den into abandoned tunnels are smuggler hideouts and whatever until they finally reach a large abandoned hall. In the middle of the hall there's a large pillar seemingly holding up the roof above, and around the pillar someone has piled stacks and stacks of barrels (containing gunpowder). A fuse can be seen though its nature as a fuse might not be that obvious. Perhaps describe it as a rope.

Maxirallion demands a closer look and promises "the gold is close now, the gold is close!". If held up, he'll cast some rudimentary fire spell on the fuse setting it ablaze. They have just a short while to stop the fuse before the gunpowder explodes.

The truth: Maxirallion is an insane +1 CN shield who was sold far below market value by a drunkard in the gambling den above. A fight about the price erupted between the gamblers and it escalated until the owner of the place agreed that the price was reasonable. Maxirallion took this as a personal insult and swore revenge and for the last 30-40 years he's spent his time lying and sneaking in order to make other people assist him in his plan... To take the gambling den down, owner and guests alike.

The original adventure was run in the city of towers and the room with the gunpowder was on a floor very close to the bottom of one big tower. If the plan had succeeded he'd have taken down an enormous tower and a lot of innocent lives.


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The paladin issue is pretty easily explained.

Whoever created the feat assumed that the feat itself would be used in combat. It's basically a feat that enables tanking by taunting.

Just houserule it like this, because this is how it was likely intended to work in the first place: It only works against an opponent who is already in combat against you or one of your allies.


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I've read about half of this thread and everything from the other thread.

I'll make sure to avoid information crossover from the other thread so.

The player believes he has a justified reason for doing this. You have to ask him what his reason is, and if it is incorrect you should provide information IN GAME to him shows to him that he is wrong.

If his interpretation of the situation is correct, however, then we have a problem.


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What about this?

In a dungeon, written on a the floor of a passage is the following text

You should hand the players a NOTE with this text written down:

"Behind the wicked stairs a door to untold riches lead
The other one is only there to confuse and mislead"

The passage opens up into a rectangular room. Near one end of this room is a spiral staircase coated in slippery slime that drips from the floor above. Anyone trying to ascend will have to roll climb or something not to fall. At the top is a small room with nothing in it except more slime.

On the wall just behind the spiral stairs is a door. The door leads into a maze of portals that warp back on themselves. Trying to solve the maze is a waste of time. There is nothing there. You might want to make it obvious that this is a dead end if they're too persistent.

On the other side of the room is a huge wall mosaic depicting dozens of faces. Anyone looking at these faces will be confused as per the confuse spell as long as they keep looking in that direction. The mosaic radiates an aura of evil. Pathfinder officially has no "facing" rules, but it's fine for roleplaying... Hehehe :P

I think at this point the players might read the text aloud and realize that STAIRS and STARES are awfully similar, and indeed the STARES are wicked. Someone, hopefully a fighter or barbarian, suggests that a degree of force applied to this mosaic will advance their cause... When the mosaic is destroyed, the wall behind crumbles revealing a door that leads further into the dungeon, and hopefully to untold riches!


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I use an excel spreadsheet (or rather Open Office Calc) to handle passive rolls. I've listed all the relevant PC skills and saves on the sheet. Beneath each stat there is a ROLL button. If you press that button it will roll a die for each character and show the result near their name. This makes it very easy and painless to handle things like bluffing and sense motive.


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I realized from a advertisement perspective I should have begun with a summary of how the adventure will play out, rather that a wall-of-text on the backstory :P

So here comes a writeup how the adventure usually progresses

Each PC has been sent an invitation from Baron Konstantine Sedov. Any PC who declines is... Obviously out of the adventure.

The PCs begin at the Bleeding Pig Inn (the adventure was originally swedish, and the tavern was named Den Stuckna Grisen) where they were told in the invite to wait for transportation. Soon enough they're picked up by the bulky half-orc coach driver Ogrim and the halfling servant Ockham.

The pass a small village before reaching the castle. They're told by Ockham to hide themselves from the villagers, because the villagers hate the baron and they don't want to be seen working for him if they want to go there to visit. Soon enough they arrive at the castle where they're told the baron is out. The players might ask questions about this, but the staff knows nothing. They claim he had to leave quickly to handle some business negotiations and was supposed to be back several days ago.

The PCs are shown to the guest rooms where they will stay, unless they opt for staying in the village which is an option, but discouraged. The players will at this point likely spend the day sneaking around, probably around the castle grounds. As only about 10 people work there it isn't too difficult to get around there unseen. They're warned by staff not to touch anything, because the place is cursed. As almost everything that is magical here is also cursed or otherwise dangerous PC injury or death is possible.

Some places in the castle are REALLY off-limits. Access to the top floors will be watched by atleast one of staff at all times and they will attempt to stop the PCs going up there by any means necessary. There is also an enormours tower, called the Forbidden Tower, on the castle grounds. The entrance to the tower is quite difficult to find.

Not finding any interesting clues in the castle, they visit the village and hear rumours of deaths and disappearances. They hear of The Asylum, a building that was built by an ancestor of the current baron but which is now supposedly haunted.

They have likely heard the following rumours now:

*Lots of people have been disappearing from the castle (true)
*Many working at the castle have fled in horror (true)
*Several villagers have disappeared without a trace (true)
*The baron is a vampire (false)
*The werewolves have been killing people (false)
*The baron's father dug holes through the mountain beneath the castle (true)
*A huge sea monster used to eat people near the lake a long time ago (true)
*Something made all the patients and staff at the asylum disappear (true)

At this point they might formulate some paranoid theories. Atleast my players did. Once they've heard most of the local rumours, sneaked around in the castle and so... Whenever you feel like it the baron returns from his journey. He bids them welcome and serves them a huge dinner.

He explains the situation. His wife has been cursed or is otherwise influenced by dark magic or something of that sort. Nothing he's tried has worked and now he suspects the source of the curse might lurk in the castle. He has a few possible ideas as to where the cause might lie, but first they get to meet his wife, Lilya. She's crazy and keeps talking to herself. Any player investigating her with detect magic will see an aura of magic whose nature is impossible to discern.

The players are now given a few missions by the baron, such as "Check the forbidden tower, the evil might lurk there", or alternatively "The fifth floor is haunted, it might be something there". A fun situation occurs if the players have already been through these places and they realize they don't want to tell that to the baron...

Either way the investigations are futile until one of two things happens:

1: They decide to go to the basement and examine the old mines at which point they find a tunnel that wasn't there before (the entrance was previously hidden by an illusion). The tunnel leads them to the underground temple of the true culprit, the unique aboleth Daquthein who sees himself as some kind of god. He's crazy.

2: The baron's wife tells them the answer is in the basement. She lures them into the mines. (she's being mind controlled). See point 1 for what happens then.

If they win, the curse breaks and the baroness is free. The baron is grateful and pays them some reward.

The whole adventure is generally quite sandboxish as they're free to roam the place and surroundings. Most fights that occur will be encounters they walk into of their own, like ghosts in the basement, the flesh golem in the tower etc. etc. If they go into the forests they might encounter wereolves and so on. You can adjust the length of the adventure easily by having the baron appear earlier, or maybe he's already back home when they get there. For the shortest adventure you can have the barron suggest that they check the basement first of all, though this will be the least suspenseful way to play it.

Almost everything they do until the baron reappears will serve mostly to set the atmosphere and won't really have much an effect on the adventure itself, though neither of my playing groups complained about it. They thought the atmosphere building aspect was the best part of the adventure.


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TheOrangeOne wrote:
I would say spot check or maybe a wisdom (memory check)? more important please go into detail about this intriguing plot :)!.

Well. The whole part with the maid is not actually at all about the main plot of the adventure so you'll probably be disappointed :P

Basically:

A rich baron, Konstantin Sedov, lives as a recluse in his castle in the woods of Karrnath (Eberron campaign setting). He seems to generally shun the light and he has this thing for prohibiting garlic, holy symbols and blocking some windows with sheets to prevent sunlight from getting in.

The baron is, however, NOT actually a vampire, but one of the maids at the castle is (and he knows it). Konstantin has sworn to his father to take care of this vampire (she's not actually evil, though she does drink blood) who has worked in the family for a VERY long time.


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What kind of check would you make to see if a character can recognize another character on a picture?

The PCs are going to encounter a very old painting of a group of people and among that group of people is an NPC the players will have recently met. There will be absolutely NO reason for that NPC to appear in that painting so they have no reason to suspect it at all... Also the NPC in question is going to be a maid in a larger household. Oh yes. The maid looks identical to her current self (20 years old) in the painting...

I'm thinking of a DC 25 spot check.


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I know that Perram has made an excellent utility for printing your own spellcards, but frankly I prefer my cards on real card stock. Any plans from Paizo to release cards with the relevant spell info on them? Those spells with too much text on them to fit on just one card would obviously have to either have their rules text summarized briefly (removal of redundant text) or split into multiple cards.