Hi there, I have several handbooks that I should get around to updating to take into account all the things in Pathfinder of late, to make them more useful for Pathfinder-only or Pathfinder-primary games that only sometimes use some things from 3.5e, if at all.

Here are the three handbooks.

The first one is:

"Making a Post-Scarcity Society in D&D, or
How to do Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom in the Forgotten Realms"

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aG4P3dU6WP3pq8mW9l1qztFeNfqQHyI22oJe09i 8KWw/edit

And also

"D&D 3.5e Airship And Flying City Creation Guide"

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14zilT4WGOyHM0AfpG4-GmD2FkgDg1HZ9HC1cTle QHds/edit

And also

"D&D 3.5e Transhuman Guide"

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z9NJIs751Af3i0IEIJwCkIp9H9YFiZYZ7u-wmYV aheI/edit

And I have not really spent some time browsing through the pathfinder rules to get a handle on them for these themes.

Could anyone help me with this? What should I be on the lookout for? Which existing guides are useful for relevant feats, archetypes, classes, magic items, and spells? What methods are there of making 'items which reliably and regularly cast spells' in Pathfinder? What economy-interaction or economy-breaking or skill-enhancing spells are there? What methods of summoning creatures to bypass various restrictions on spells are there? What other things and concepts shown in these guides are there which are specific to Pathfinder?

Rogue Trader/Recruitment/Skype: DM and Party needed for Skype-Text theme game!

Hello all. I need both a DM and Players for a text-based Skype game of Rogue Trader (with some bits of the other 40k games mixed into the rules, mostly to broaden the scope of possible skills and equipment, will help provide access to crunch rules if needed).

I've tried to get reliable, persistent, interested people to get this game off the ground before, and it has never worked -- so don't even think of applying if you can't commit to bringing . What I am interested in, is a *theme* game. A game that explores the question of, 'what if a Rogue Trader and his retinue were very forward-thinking, liberal (for 40k), perhaps even radical (along a certain spectrum) idealists? What if they wanted to drag the calixis sector and the koronus expanse into a golden age by doing things that the Imperium could never manage to do? Again, the idea is 'choose a goal or three for how to affect some sort of drastic change of the setting. Do your level best to make that change. Good luck!'

Another interesting theme that I would like to look at is the repercussions of what happens when groups start social engineering projects that change the scope of how the Mechanicum acts in the Expanse by simply getting lots of people who are in the various liberal flavors of Mechanicum subcults to be the ones seeding all the colonies the group sets up; if suddenly the entire scope of the arguments of a budding research/proto-forge world shifts to the left, than huge things change in how they behave in general... And what are the repercussiosn or start introducing and selling not technically heretical but very disruptive technologies, often disarmingly low-tech solutions to problems, that someone can make a mint on because no one else is doing it?

Anyway, I'm more interested in a non combat based game, with primarily a scope of social, management of resources, and 'project' based. This game, is a 'theme' game. What this means is that we have a basic overarching story that we want to tell with this group, and it isn't just, 'make a standard explorator and jump in'. The short of it is that the Rogue Trader has been collecting Idealistic Radicals who have a plan (or at least a dream -- but an idea that is plausible is a good start) to go to a place where they can conceivably break some rules, in order to achieve the goals of making money, doing something to reduce the amount of stagnation in their corner of the Imperium, and improve the lives of some group of people that the Imperium doesn't seem to care about. A real sort of group of types that want to do well by doing good, as it were. I am not as much interested in fighting the *traditional* rogue trador enemies (rak'gol or whatever monster of the week you find in the expanse ~yawn~...), I'm more interested in themes of again, exploration, colonization and the buildup of resources, and the leverage of the money and industry with social and intrigue to change the face of two sectors.

To do this, I will need people -especially a GM- who is dedicated to keeping the pacing up, the skype replies coming, the options of moving the plot forward, and people who are at least somewhat willing to let their characters be NPC'ed for a little bit if it would hold up the game. This is intended to be somewhat of a hybrid skype / play by post, with the idea being that there isn't a SET time that the group would be meeting, as long as people can get together, do a few minutes of gaming, and that people would be on to reply to what is going on several times a week. Again, the idea is to keep the pacing up. Further, we should consider the idea of arbitrarily starting with some sort of baseline of this stuff done -- some combination of a colony world or two, or some contacts, or some social engineering already done, or somewhat higher than normal ship points or profit factor or something, so we can get to the interesting 'snowball effect' and 'repercussions of changes' part of the game.

If you are interested, please IM me at my skype name, which is gavinfoxx. In the skype request for contacting me, please let me know that you want to be a player in the RT game. Note I might not be able to see all replies or PM's in time; please, contact me at my skype name!

Still looking for people!

[Recruitment/Seeking/Skype] players needed for a 'Theme' Rogue Trader game!

Hi people. I have been, for quite some time, playing in a 'Theme/Radicals' Rogue Trader game, on Skype. We have been using this game in a nonstandard way, as we haven't been setting particular times, and have been instead using Skype as a sort of play by post. As such, it isn't a traditional 'be here at this particular time' sort of thing.

Anyway, what's going on is that the player characters are in the retinue of a loyalist-but-radical Rogue Trader (played by one of the players), but outside of the game, a bunch of the players won't be able to continue playing the game. So we need some new blood, some people who are willing to either step into one of the many canonical retinue members as is (for several existing players have to leave) or reimagine those characters somewhat, or take control of one of the existing npc retinue, or expand on one of the not-truly-fleshed-out retinue members. This game is NOT primarily combat based; it's social, management of resources, and 'project' based. There will also be a list of houserules. As it will take some time to get up to speed as it were, we only want some people who can dedicate a bit of time to reading some summaries of ideas and what's gone on so far.

This game, as described earlier, is a 'theme' game. What this means is that we have a basic overarching story that we want to tell with this group, and it isn't just, 'make a standard explorator and jump in'. The short of it is that the Rogue Trader has been collecting Idealistic Radicals who have a plan (or at least a dream -- but an idea that is plausible is a good start) to go to a place where they can conceivably break some rules, in order to achieve the goals of making money, doing something to reduce the amount of stagnation in their corner of the Imperium, and improve the lives of some group of people that the Imperium doesn't seem to care about. A real sort of group of types that want to do well by doing good, as it were.

Another thing. We want people who can commit a good amount of time to actually get replies up, and read the game, and such. It doesn't have to be time at any given time of day, but it has to be regular and you have to have some time and energy available to roleplay and do some meta-planning! The idea is that the characters will have goals that will further drive the plot, and it won't just be simple 'adventure and randomly see what the Gm throws at us', it's more 'come up with a particular goal and spend effort to achieve it'. So as a player you have to have some drive to go with that of your character, okay?

If you are interested, please IM me at my skype name, which is gavinfoxx. In the skype request for contacting me, please let me know that you want to be a player in the RT game.

REQ: Replacement GM for Skype text-based, already-going Rogue Trader Game!

Hi there, I am in a 'post when you can, no set time to roleplay' skype-based Rogue Trader game. The current GM is having MAJOR, months-long internet trouble, and I seek a replacement GM, who might be a co-GM at some point. This game has... a lot of history, a lot of reading, and some houserules (it is a theme game!), so we would need to do a lot of chatting to bring you up to speed. To contact me, don't PM me on the forum, email me at my yahoo account (use the name of my profile with the at yahoo dot com afterwards), or add me on skype (again, using the name on my profile). Thanks!

I am interested.

Alpha Centauri and Heroes of Might and Magic are excellent models.

Well go ahead and go to the linked game ad, and read the rules and set up an application!

Hi there, is this the right forum to mention meta-issues regarding the play by post forum, and how it is structured, and how people tend to write their ads and stuff? I have some things I want to talk about in this topic, and I was wondering if this is the best forum for it. Could I put the same post in all the forums that seemed relevant? Thanks!

Oh no GM? Never mind...

Quick question -- will this be a 3.PF game, or JUST PF? An Optimizer's toolkit works better the more tools he has to achieve his goal, be they from 3.5e, 3rd party 3.5e, homebrew 3.5e, PF, 3rd party pf, or homebrew PF. Thoughts?

Than I am obviously not looking for most GMs!

The thing is, this isn't really a balanced concept for a group. This one character would be (for example) far too powerful for all but the highest optimization level of a group game.

Again, a bump... still seeking a DM!

I'm still seeking!

Well, does ANYONE want to run something like this?

Uh... I am willing to negotiate! Really, I'm fine... my position on stuff isn't set in stone. What happened wrong?

Buh? Is there something I'm not aware of?? Is there a game forum somewhere??

I'm thinking Riddleport. Maybe his mom being a seamstress was just what she did some of the time, if you know what I mean... and she wasted away pining for the roguish charm of the man that was my character's father... and, of course, he never came. This could also give my character some reason to be standoffish for the other folk -- the crime in riddleport makes him have a fairly negative view of people in general. His bookishness would set him apart, too Plus, it's coastal...

Also, is there a way to PM or IM or Email you that I am missing somewhere??

I meant that, at first, his travels will be local, and then he will leave his local area, after there is nothing more for him (and his prayerbook) in his area.

Crunch info: Collegiate Archivist adaptation of Collegiate Wizard from Complete Arcane? Yea or Nay?

Entirely by PF Rules? 3.5e has more options for getting spells as divine than PF does, so far; consider the Divine Bard or the Shugenja for example. There are ways to get Cure Moderate Wounds at level one (Runescarred Berserker), even!

Also... entirely by PF rules removes most of the best feats and options for Archivist... Academic Priest, Persistent Spell, Divine Metamagic, Knowledge Devotion, Collegiate Wizard/Collegiate Archivist... Most of the stuff I was counting on to be able to solo challenges meant for a party of four or more before I had a huge list of prayers, you know?

Can we consider access to all stuff that is available online? Whether it is PF or 3.5e?

So stuff here:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/
or here
http://www.d20srd.org/

And for 3.5e specific stuff, things that are found in this thread?

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1109.0

I don't know what 3.5e books you have other than heroes of horror. Do you have Complete Champion? Complete Divine? Complete Mage? Spell Compendium?

Also, some time ago, I made a set of low level characters for a (now dead...) strategy game for the purpose of being example characters that an Archivist could obtain spells from. I used 3.PF rules, which allows more extensive access than just PF rules alone. Here are some of the characters, if you are curious:

http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=17530
http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=17528
http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=17529
http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=17526
http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=17527
http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=17582
http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=17522
http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=17531

and, should you care, the archivist that benefited from these in that strategy game:

http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=16937

If you like, I will send you the Google spreadsheet associated with that (it listed prices and calculations and such), but I can't figure out the private messaging system of these forums, or how to email it to you. :( :(

In those dndsheets links, you'll find access to things like Divine Magician, Divine Bard, Cloistered Cleric, Southern Magician, several 3.5 only spells, etc. -- lots of 3.5 stuff. I'm not saying I *require* access to that sort of thing, just that you consider, if you are sticking to PF only rules for the world-at-large, that you consider that Pathfinder doesn't yet have ways to get such a variety of arcane as divine (yet), without DM Fiat.

You should take a look at the two handbooks if you haven't; I will be using them extensively if I can..

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=3545.0
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=185

Your post didn't say what level we were starting at, but it said something about starting wealth...? Am I starting at level 1 for some reason? If so, why?

As far as backstory... I'm thinking the bastard son of an adventurer. He grew up with his mother, a beautiful but poor seamstress of a coastal town, staring out at the ocean, believing until the day she died that her beautiful man would come back to her. Eventually, the legacy of his (deceased in the field) father reached him: a crate full of journals talking about the wonders of the world, and the only remaining magic item of note was a prayerbook, which his father presumably looted from some tomb somewhere, and that only remained because the people that stole all the magic items as the crate made its way to him, didn't realize that this was essentially something similar to a wizard's spellbook.

After all, it was a bunch of devotions, and didn't detect as magic, so it was just another journal to them. However, this young man spent his time reading the journals, becoming most enamored with the idea of the city of Promise. After all, it was the world at large that had taken his father from him... and that prayerbook would be his ticket to getting into Promise. But first, he had to be incredibly exceptional. He had to be more than most any other human he had ever met... They didn't like gods, so perhaps he could figure out how to reinterpret the prayers in the prayerbook to still do the same thing, but not talk about gods. Studying for years, he unlocked the secrets of the prayerbook, and found that he *could* change the prayers, and still have them work. It seems that he had begun to unlock the secrets of miracles -- no, not miracles. Divine Magic. With this, he could, eventually, be exceptional, and able to convince them that he would be an asset to that place... that perfect city. He could even start an academy!

Sure, sure. So do we want to run this under 3.5e rules or 3.PF rules or some houserules or hybrid thing we come up with? What part of Golarion do you want to start with? I will assume only availability of Cleric spells, Adept Spells (and maybe Paladin?) to start if you want, and have him focus on solving mysteries for people, and occasionally going into a fight pre-buffed to the gills, if he did his detective work right and wasn't caught off guard?

Later, when he has exhausted all the capabilities of the divine classes in his home area, then he can branch out to find more obscure people (and higher level people)? Should I dip something int based to get trapfinding (Factotum? Also to get all skills as class skills maybe)? Or should I count on going Divine Metamagic Persist to solve problems, and dip Cloistered Cleric? While Archivists *certainly* have access to non-Trapfinding based ways of solving Traps (summons!), this particular character might not have it at low levels. What sorts of things do you see him doing to solve problems to start with, before he gets all... crazy capable?

Also, I'm fine with guest stars. I'm a bit surprised that you think I might need help or consider a task to be impossible though. I play at high op (not theoretical optimization, though. I don't want to play pun pun in a pimp hat, you know? Just high op...)

And the guest stars can be the quest giver types. IE, "Do this for me and I'll cast [x,y,z] spells into your prayerbook."

Well, he won't have strategic flight at level 3... it'll be a while!

All over. The character would end up very, very, very mobile, gaining access to strategic flight fairly quickly, and teleportation. Hence the sandbox -- he's traveling all over the world, seeking rare prayer scrolls, or people to pay to make a scroll for him to scribe... or people to cast a spell into a scroll he is scribing so he can scribe it into his prayerbook...

As far as where it STARTS, that's up to you. Whatever part of Golarion you feel comfortable with.

I just thought that, you know, a game set in Golarion, where the adventure paths stuff is happening (though not necessarily to this character), would be the sort of thing that the folk on this forum would find easy to run a sandbox in... seeing as how it is the Paizo forum...

@KK: That wasn't the idea... magic isn't being replaced at all. Spells aren't being lost at all. It's still as strong as ever. It's just that, using the fluff of Golarion, there is one place in particular, which is a very desirable place to live for some people, where the worship of gods aren't allowed. This person wants to find a very useful loophole and thereby establish an academy where people can learn divine magic in a more secular way at that place.

In other words, I want to use *the normal Golarion fluff exactly as it exists in the adventure paths*.

But I don't actually necessarily want the character going on the adventure paths; most of them might not actually interest him due to his motivations, and he is the sort of person to want to just bypass most of the encounters due to flight / teleport / divinations / etc.

IE, the sorts of things in the adventure paths might be going on, but he might very well leave the world to sink or swim as it does.

Well, I have 15 posts here because I am much, much, much more common in other PbP forums; the formatting of this one leaves... something to be desired compared to, say, myth-weavers. I can give links to my roleplaying from other forums to show that, yes, I am a good roleplayer.

I was thinking of leaving that sort of stuff up to the DM, though I would prefer to start at level 3 at the least... and part of the idea was to make it somewhat difficult to get *some* starting spells... ie, it would be a quest for spells.

I have a strange idea for a high power solo play by post game, which would need to be done in either 3.PF (ie, 3.5e + pathfinder), or 3.5e.

The idea is that there is an Archivist (a very powerful base class in Heroes of Horror, a 3.5e book; fairly easy to convert to Pathfinder), who wants to gain entry into Hermea, and be considered extremely valuable to them, and have his name cemented into history as the one who brought all the best divine spells to that 'perfect' city. You see, an Archivist is like a divine wizard, but they have access to each and every divine spell from EVERY class list... provided they can provide a scroll of it to scribe into their prayerbook.

This means that every trick that any character might ever get to cast any spell as a divine prayer, means that the archivist could get that spell from that person as a prayer, and be able to cast it.

So the idea is that this archivist is going all over Golarion to strange people with obscure abilities, doing work for them, paying for the service, gaining their trust, and having them pay him in divine scrolls, or cast various divine prayers into scrolls he is scribing, so he can then scribe them into his prayerbook (or, depending, cast prayers directly into his prayer book to scribe them).

And since this class has such incredibly optimization potential and is possibly one of the more high powered classes in the game, the character should be able to viably solo or bypass threats that would often require a party to deal with... but we MIGHT have to do some minor house ruling here and there to enable this to happen (remove a few of the nerfs pathfinder gave a few 3.5e spell, for example. It's not 100% necessary to do this for the purposes of this game, but it might need to be done at some low levels...)

Is anyone interested in running something like this?

...Sorry. It's past saturday early morning, and I didn't have it in me to beat your deadline. I think I might have bit off more than I can chew!

Okay, Goblins. Here is my basic, preliminary idea (to be expanded upon later, what with names and physical description and changes and such). The basic idea is that this human is an expatriate of Almas in Andoran, who is on a quest to seek the most obscure Divine Spells (he refuses to call them 'Prayers' unless doing so will likely help him obtain said scroll) for his prayerbook. The reason he is doing this is because he wishes to develop a non-religious or non-ideologue method of Divine Spellcasting, which contains all of the most useful and relevant spells from all of the paths of divine spellcasting in the world... and to get an invitation to Hermea, there to set up a school to teach this non-belief based method of 'divine' spellcasting in the glorious city of Promise. He is in this part of the world because there are a large number of nomadic tribes with obscure and unique methods of spellcasting, rumored to be divine, from which he believes he should be able to obtain some useful spells for his (as he calls it) Spellbook. What do you think of this idea?

@Goblins: Okay. I'm going to go download the rise of the runelords players guide, see if that tweaks me some.

Dropping interest.

Sorry, have I misunderstood the requirement for the date of posting an application? I didn't realize it was due so soon. What about the answers to my questions? I still have a few crunch questions outstanding, not the least of which is 'Is Collegiate Archivist acceptable?' and 'What spells from obscure lists can he have at character start already scribed, and how will we be doing the price of that?', not to mention the things previously mentioned...? Perhaps talking over AIM / WLM / Skype / Yahoo would be best for these sorts of things? I am still finding my feet with the idiosyncrasies of this particular forum, it's much different than, say, myth-weavers...

@Gavinfoxx: In fact, you make an interesting point. If you quest for such a scroll, then maybe I will allow you to scribe that scroll's spell at lower levels, but of course, who knows what that spell might be? (It wouldn't suck). I was thinking that you just couldn't exploit Pathfinder's rule about not needing the spell to create the magic item, and writing Cure Moderate as a 1st level because someone else might be able to do so.

Ahhh that. We should totally figure out to what extent an archivist CAN use the 'use Spellcraft to scribe a scroll, and then scribe that there scroll to his spellbook' trick. Perhaps only from base classes? Divine Bard, Cleric, Ranger, Druid, Paladin, Shugenja? No Prestige Classes, no 'not normally divine' classes beyond Divine Bard (ie, people with the feat), no Domain spells? And if it is on a Cleric list at ALL, that is the minimum spell level? What restrictions would you like to place on that particular activity?

Gavinfoxx wrote:

Stuff and things

I...yes? I hope you are not trying to be intentionally difficult, and I only say that because I cannot interpret your tone and demeanor through text alone.

...
I'm glad to see you are challenging me to think.

Ah, sorry. I honestly thought that I might be able to get spells at lower (spell) level if they are on a domain or other obscure list at lower level than normal; provided he goes and seeks them out! To me, 'lost' versions of spell scrolls is an interesting thing for an Archivist to go find or seek out, provided he has to jump through several hoops to do so -- how might someone having a first level cure moderate wounds impact magic-making in a city, for example? Normal clerics making magical items might either get up in arms, or perhaps just congratulate him on his work and spend money buying spellcasting services from him for their scroll/potion/wand/wondrous item-making, etc. etc. To me, going on quests for obscure prayers and obscure variants of prayers is part and parcel of what an Archivist *does*.

@gavinfoxx: I need to double check, but if you don't have the spell, the DC to create magic items increases by 5. In some of the examples given, I world greatly increase the DC. As far as being available to purchase those as scrolls, um, we will see. Let's roleplay it. I love the Archivist, glad to see someone might play it.

So I take it finding that Cleric1/Rogue4/Trapsmith3 (From Dungeonscape) with Alternate Source Spell (Dragon Magazine 325) or Southern Magician (Races of Faerun), and convincing him to give me a scroll of a level 1 divine versions of Arcane Sight, Dispel Magic, Haste, etc. is going to be tough? I might have to do some work for him, pay for the casting, AND scribe the scrolls myself (he just casts the spell into the scroll) and THEN I get to scribe them into my prayerbook, let ALONE what I will have to do to find the Barbarian3/Runescarred Berserker1 (Unapproachable East) to get me a version of Cure Moderate Wounds at spell castable level 1, and the crazy things I am going to have to do for his berserker lodge, which will presumably collectively laugh in my face?

Choppy, by creative do you mean just creative in story and concept, or are you also counting creative and/or novel use of crunch in the purpose of achieving that concept? And I read the player guide to this adventure path... I'm not sure exactly what I want to play (conceptually), yet. Do you have a preference for the categories of capabilities you want to see for this adventure path? How about what power level (ie, not all classes or options are created equal and all...) you want or don't want?

Speaking of Stupid Broken characters, how easily in this setting can Archivists find/buy scrolls of divine spells from:
Non-obscure Domains (ie, of common deities)
Obscure Domains (from uncommon deities)
Of variant Clerics, like Cloistered Clerics
Of Rangers (Including maybe Mystic Rangers?)
Of Divine Bards
Of Druids
Of Paladins
Of Adepts
Of Shugenja
Of Arcane classes (Wizard, etc.) which took one or more of the feats to allow casting of an Arcane spell as a Divine spell?
I think the PF Divine classes don't have access to any spells at any earlier Spell level than the basic variants that they get their list from. If they do, I suppose we could include those too.
Thanks!

What 3. books did you want to include?

Um, I hadn't decided yet. It would depend on what sort of character I wanted to make...? I just wanted to know if the idea was possibly allowed, and any particular books the DM would feel more okay with, so I could possibly come up with something...?

level 2, as required -- do we increase our equipment (wealth) to match?

Ah, right, 1000 gp for level 2 characters!

I'd like to try and change up a druid I already have to be appropriate for this campaign... this druid was made with access to 3.5e rules, and some stuff was updated to fit Pathfinder rules. The Druid is a female Human druid, focused on Wild Shape, buffing, mauling face in melee, and a high quality animal companion who also focuses on mauling face in melee. The character has a dinosaur theme. Would that fit for this campaign?

DM Choppy: No 3.5e books, correct? So this isn't a 3.Pf game, this is a straight PF game, correct?