Glass Castle's page

Quantum Steve and Suthainn
Re: Caster Level Added due to Prayer Beads.

Okay, I'm preparing my answer to the rogue regarding whether the prayer beads can give him +4 caster level. I need to reply with something logical or else I fear it'll be a situation of he's going to be angry with me personally and the group won't accept my statement, thus the fun level of all involved will decline.

-
My attempt.

1. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/use-magic-device
Use Magic Device permits the emulation of class features.

2. Caster Level is emulated.

3. "This skill does not let you actually use the class feature of another class. It just lets you activate items as if you had that class feature."

4. Your UMD check to use a scroll is: 20 + caster level of the spell.

5. Prayer Beads:

Wearer casts his spells at +4 caster level. Effect lasts 10 minutes.

These are not the rogue's spells. The rogue does not have a caster level. He merely emulates a caster level. he can't add a bonus to UMD that is meant to go to caster level.

6. Therefore, Prayer Beads can only help people who have actual caster levels.

Appendix:

Emulate a Class Feature: Sometimes you need to use a class feature to activate a magic item. In this case, your effective level in the emulated class equals your Use Magic Device check result minus 20. This skill does not let you actually use the class feature of another class. It just lets you activate items as if you had that class feature. If the class whose feature you are emulating has an alignment requirement, you must meet it, either honestly or by emulating an appropriate alignment with a separate Use Magic Device check (see above).[/quote[

Orthos-

Thank you for the clarity in the distinction between fey/outsiders.

Elegy-

Thank you for the clarification regarding gazes.

Other Issues-

Sovereign Glue
Where does it say that the "round to set" needs to be outside of timestop? Don't "rounds" occur in timestop? I'm guessing the answer is that the glue is not being manipulated by the timestopper, thus it is outside of the time, so it needs a round outside of timestop to set.

Actually though, it brings up an interesting question, the pc is applying the glue to the bag, so the glue needs to set on the bag. The PC plans to let it set while in timestop. Then the glue needs to fall and adhere to the fey queen to be stuck on her to blind her.

My thoughts and questions here are (and the spells are below):

QUESTIONS
1a. Can sovereign glue set in timestop? (asked above; is my guess-answer correct?)

1b. Can Antimagic field be cast on a bag, or must it be cast on a person?

1c. If antimagic field is cast on the rogue or someone else who gets to Nyrissa first to deactivate her antilife shell and person with the shield is 10 feet away from the 10 ft antilife shell, does the field trump the shell? Usually the attack roller wins when there's a tie- but who wins when there's a distance tie?

1d. I do not understand why you think she can Dimension Door away when she is under the effects of an antimagic field?

1e. "Exiting the Fable: Once the PCs enter the Fable, they can exit it simply by touching any solid surface within the room and making a mental picture of the room from which they originally entered the Fable. Exiting the Fable in this manner is a move-equivalent action."

That is helpful, but wouldn't that be magic? How could I explain that to my players? What precedent do I have to cite that that type of teleportation is possible when under the effects of an antimagic field?

THOUGHTS
2. Does this seem right: If the glue sets and glues itself to the bag while in the time stop, then I don't think it can, on the next round, set again and glue the bag to the fey queen. If it doesn't set and glue itself to the bag while in timestop, then it falls "immediately", as per timestop... so it would fall on the end of the rogue's turn, thus at the end of timestop and before Nyrissa acts?

This immediate fall would provoke an attack of opportunity unless the rogue has Improved Dirty Trick.

2b. If AOO succeeds, no blinding and the queen avoids the falling bag (??).

3. Assuming no blinding, the bigger problem is the antimagic field that is cast on the bag or on the rogue himself. The fey queen is still in the range of the antimagic field (10 feet), even if the antimagic field bag/or person with antimagic field cast on himself it drops somewhat oddly, she will be within 10 feet of it. The antilife shell is only 10 feet. My questions above attempt to get at how to deal with that issue.

(References Below)

This pale amber substance is thick and viscous. Because of its particular powers, it can be contained only in a flask whose inside has been coated with 1 ounce of salve of slipperiness, and each time any of the bonding agent is poured from the flask, a new application of the salve of slipperiness must be put in the flask within 1 round to prevent the remaining glue from adhering to the side of the container. A flask of sovereign glue, when found, holds anywhere from 1 to 7 ounces of the stuff (1d8–1, minimum 1), with the other ounce of the flask's capacity taken up by the salve of slipperiness. One ounce of this adhesive covers 1 square foot of surface, bonding virtually any two substances together in a permanent union. The glue takes 1 round to set. If the objects are pulled apart (a move action) before that time has elapsed, that application of the glue loses its stickiness and is worthless. If the glue is allowed to set, then attempting to separate the two bonded objects has no effect, except when universal solvent is applied to the bond. Sovereign glue is dissolved by universal solvent.

This spell seems to make time cease to flow for everyone but you. In fact, you speed up so greatly that all other creatures seem frozen, though they are actually still moving at their normal speeds. You are free to act for 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time. Normal and magical fire, cold, gas, and the like can still harm you. While the time stop is in effect, other creatures are invulnerable to your attacks and spells; you cannot target such creatures with any attack or spell. A spell that affects an area and has a duration longer than the remaining duration of the time stop have their normal effects on other creatures once the time stop ends. Most spellcasters use the additional time to improve their defenses, summon allies, or flee from combat.

You cannot move or harm items held, carried, or worn by a creature stuck in normal time, but you can affect any item that is not in another creature's possession.

You are undetectable while time stop lasts. You cannot enter an area protected by an antimagic field while under the effect of time stop.

DESCRIPTION

An invisible barrier surrounds you and moves with you. The space within this barrier is impervious to most magical effects, including spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. Likewise, it prevents the functioning of any magic items or spells within its confines.

An antimagic field suppresses any spell or magical effect used within, brought into, or cast into the area, but does not dispel it. Time spent within an antimagic field counts against the suppressed spell's duration.

Summoned creatures of any type wink out if they enter an antimagic field. They reappear in the same spot once the field goes away. Time spent winked out counts normally against the duration of the conjuration that is maintaining the creature. If you cast antimagic field in an area occupied by a summoned creature that has spell resistance, you must make a caster level check (1d20 + caster level) against the creature's spell resistance to make it wink out. (The effects of instantaneous conjurations are not affected by an antimagic field because the conjuration itself is no longer in effect, only its result.)

A normal creature can enter the area, as can normal missiles. Furthermore, while a magic sword does not function magically within the area, it is still a sword (and a masterwork sword at that). The spell has no effect on golems and other constructs that are imbued with magic during their creation process and are thereafter self-supporting (unless they have been summoned, in which case they are treated like any other summoned creatures). Elementals, undead, and outsider are likewise unaffected unless summoned. These creatures' spell-like or supernatural abilities may be temporarily nullified by the field. Dispel magic does not remove the field.

Two or more antimagic fields sharing any of the same space have no effect on each other. Certain spells, such as wall of force, prismatic sphere, and prismatic wall, remain unaffected by antimagic field. Artifacts and deities are unaffected by mortal magic such as this.

Should a creature be larger than the area enclosed by the barrier, any part of it that lies outside the barrier is unaffected by the field.

You bring into being a mobile, hemispherical energy field that prevents the entrance of most types of living creatures.

The effect hedges out animals, aberrations, dragons, fey, giants, humanoids, magical beasts, monstrous humanoids, oozes, plants, and vermin, but not constructs, elementals, outsiders, or undead.

This spell may be used only defensively, not aggressively. Forcing an abjuration barrier against creatures that the spell keeps at bay collapses the barrier.

--

Dirty Trick

Source: Advanced Player's Guide.

You can attempt to hinder a foe in melee as a standard action. This maneuver covers any sort of situational attack that imposes a penalty on a foe for a short period of time. Examples include kicking sand into an opponent’s face to blind him for 1 round, pulling down an enemy’s pants to halve his speed, or hitting a foe in a sensitive spot to make him sickened for a round. The GM is the arbiter of what can be accomplished with this maneuver, but it cannot be used to impose a permanent penalty, and the results can be undone if the target spends a move action. If you do not have the Improved Dirty Trick feat or a similar ability, attempting a dirty trick provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your maneuver.

If your attack is successful, the target takes a penalty. The penalty is limited to one of the following conditions:

blinded, dazzled, deafened, entangled, shaken, or sickened.

This condition lasts for 1 round. For every 5 by which your attack exceeds your opponent’s CMD, the penalty lasts 1 additional round. This penalty can usually be removed if the target spends a move action. If you possess the Greater Dirty Trick feat, the penalty lasts for 1d4 rounds, plus 1 round for every 5 by which your attack exceeds your opponent’s CMD. In addition, removing the condition requires the target to spend a standard action.

So I've looked at dirty trick and I don't think it needs a feat. but without a feat (Improved Dirty Trick), the fey queen would usually get an attack of opportunity.

Quantum Steve-

Thank you.

I am going to do more research on your second point (e.g. checking the Rogue's stats and checking the rules based on the 'key terms' you mention).

re point 4- thank you.

re point 3-
Thank you. The player apparently, however, has a backup plan. If not allowed to stick self to the queen, the new plan is to apply sovereign glue to a sack, place the sack over her head, cast the scroll antimagic field; then when time resumes, gravity will resume and the sack will fall on her head- blinding her and nullifying her magic.

Now, rules-wise, even if gravity does not apply I would be tempted to say that if this is allowed, the sack will not fall until the rogue's next turn (rather than the fey queen's). Does that seem appropriate?

What I'm thinking is that the rogue has to hold on to the sack and can't drop it or let go of it until after time stop ends? (thus, on his turn as a free action) I'm not really seeing the rule that gravity doesn't apply when time stop is on. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/t/time-stop

But, I can anticipate his response- time stop permits interaction with objects... and objects can be placed and are moving very slow... so gravity doesn't apply to the objects once he releases them. Therefore, when he picks it up- real rules of physics applies, but when he drops it in the air, it goes back into Time Stopped time.

I suppose the other question is:
Can you cast AntiMagic Field While you are under the effects of Timestop?

I'll admit, I am impressed with his detailed thinking process. He clearly cares about the situation a great deal. Given that the party of 6 is now level 15, but effectively operates at level 17/18, and this is one of their more effective weapons against Nyrissa; I may just let him try this...but I might make Nyrissa effectively unreachable somehow for a few rounds first so they can enjoy cursing her name.

Good point. Shame on me for not seeing that last line.

Unlike arcane sight, this spell cannot be made permanent with a permanency spell.

...Don't know why my players were insisting that the greater version could also be permananced. And once again shame on me for not seeing that last line.

RE DETECT MAGIC AND PLAYERS' PRE-KNOWLDEGE

>>6° Detect magic is a 60 foot cone, and it takes 3 rounds to concentrate on a single spell, don't forget that. So simply have all spells ready by school (divination, abjuration, etc) and go like this:

I explained my rulings on Detect magic to my players and my players further clarified what they were doing.

Apparently, as Adumbration proposed, the wizard has been using this instead: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/arcane-sight (Arcane Sight, Greater). And he'd been calling it "detect magic" and I'd been doing the weird spellcraft thing. So at least we set the rules straight there. I had been wrong, but it had been leading to essentially the right result.

So it seems that they'll know the queen has antilife shell before she gets to act.

Now, I think the wizard can only cast it once/day.

However,

The players currently assert that he has it Permanenced on him so therefore he knows all spells cast in a 120ft radius all the time. I'm not so sure that's the case, so we're looking into the situation. I suspect the wizard will assert that it is permanenced. I'm not entirely sure how he would have been able to do that. Apparently "At level 11, a Wizard can cast Permanency on Arcane Sight, making it, as the name suggests, permanent.... it's pretty much a given for any remotely competent Wizard". I will keep you posted.

PRAYER BEADS/ ROGUE'S ATTACK PLAN

>>3. I am confused on how this can happen. How does prayer beads allow a rogue to not need a caster level check to activate a scroll? I must be missing something.

Adumbration, thank you.

What the player is doing, is he only bought the bead of karma: "Bead of Karma (Standard string of prayer beads minus beads of healing and smiting),"

>>The power of a special bead is lost if it is removed from the strand. Reduce the price of a strand of prayer beads that is missing one or more beads by the following amounts: bead of blessing –600 gp, bead of healing –9,000 gp, bead of karma –20,000 gp, bead of smiting –16,800 gp, bead of summons –20,000 gp, bead of wind walking –46,800 gp.

>>Bead of karma Wearer casts his spells at +4 caster level. Effect lasts 10 minutes.

>>Not sure how the Prayer Beads help, presuming he's using the +4CL ability of them... he still needs a UMD check unless he has a class that lets him cast Divine spells and has Time Stop on the spell list.

The karma bead gets his caster level up +4 levels.

I guess that would get him there even without being a class that can cast divine spells? He's a straight rogue.

>>Unless he has Improved Grapple he's also provoking attacks of opportunity from her AND trying to blind her sounds like using the Dirty Trick maneuver, again requiring a CMD check and provoking unless he has Improved Dirty Trick. If they invested all these feats and materials in the plan however and can get past the Antilife shell... let them try it!

Now something that he asked last week makes sense to me :(

I think he's planning to grapple WHILE time stop is on.

As he states: "Still Timestopped: Apply Glue to self (skin, specifically, so clothing cannot be shuffled out of).. Stick self to Queen (being particularly careful to leave hands free). If necessary, apply both vials. If possible, a way to blind her or cause another condition would be nice, but entirely unexpected. Let set 1 round. Once glue is set, use scroll of anti-magic field. Timestop immediately ends."

SPELLCASTER REST

I don't believe spellcasters need to completely start over if interrupted - it instead adds 1 hour to the rest they need to take. See the Preparing Wizard Spells, Rest section of the PRD.

Thank you!

>>Divine spells also have the 8-hour recent casting limitation:

And that is going to do a lot to adjust the group's concern that the Druid could cast spells with impunity. Since the druid hadn't needed to rest to gain spells, the Druid had just been on the majority of watch duties in the past (I think he took 5 hours sleep).

BLINDING BEAUTY

Bear in mind that her Blinding Beauty will still be in effect the entire time if he is looking at her.

I see that it's an Aura.

If he does fail his check on that though, how do I counter this argument.

If she took a 5ft step before he acted- I'd make him roll a 50/50 and then I'd make him roll for the usual mirror image check. (I intend to have mirror image up).

RICKMEISTER

>>Is a 1 an autofail like with attacks, and a 20 an autosuccess?

Yes for attacks.

>>>> Other evil solution I use to keep my players in check, if they refuse to let me do this to up and ante the roleplay: Simply mark the damage the dragon is receiving after being ganked in a different column, and 'forget' to add this to its total. Yes, you were succesful, but in game terms I still do what I want to ;)

Not a bad solution, and I can and will use that to some extent but the players reverse-engineer hitpoints and they complain if they think I've done something wonky with HP.

I've often had to justify after the fact when I boost up HP. (This is normal HP boosting during design/planning, not boosting mid-fight to hurt the players, but boosting when I've thought- oh, monster X will go down in 1 round if I don't give it 50 more HP.)

Longer Explanation in Spoiler:

>>4° Rogue uses sovereign glue? Well, be ready to get eaten alive in a few rounds as she uses all her attacks to simply go through his hitpoints in 2 rounds.
A bold move I would allow, but not if they are being such d*cks .

That's a decent argument.
Question though: there's no way the Rogue could argue Nyrissa should only get one attack because she's grappled? His plan, as I understand it, is that by sovereign gluing himself, he gets a bonus to grapple or he auto grapples. So, I may need to explain why she can get her full attacks off on him.

Also 2. Assuming she kills him. Would that get rid of an antimagic field cast on him... I don't think it would.

WITCH HEX DC
>>What's your Witch's Hex DC, if you happen to know it off hand? I wouldn't be surprised if Nyrissa only fails on a 1.

The Hex DC is a 24.

Thank you also for the clarity re: cackling.

SCRYING/DETECTING WHERE NYRISSA IS:

Okay... I'm foreseeing the players attempting to Scry and Blast on Nyrissa. As I explain in session update below, I don't think they can, short of a wish.

SESSION UPDATE:
Had another session. Not much happened. Players gave me their purchase lists and 4 of the 6 players are now level 15 due to the end of the kingdom building turns/epic war phase (we played out the war with Nyrissa's fey with kingdom armies- each fey "day" was a different fey army that marauded around their territory. Many allies fell, but ultimately the players pulled through). Players spent nearly two hours buffing for a dragon fight and resurrecting the dead Ranger and recovering his gear. Players then went in search of the hiding dragons and met my two Mirage Arcanas. One was a castle illusion on top of a Temporal Stasis Sphere. Players ignored that because the dragons went into the Hut. Players entered the hut and were concerned about the vines... Vines were assassin vines, but the Ranger killed the dangerous ones with a barrage... just in time to anger the ghosts who proceeded to bang PCs heads against the wall and to panic 3 of them. We left off at that point, just as the dragons were about to get into the fight.

One issue of controversy and something I had trouble clarifying. Players insisted that the Mirage Arcana should be dispelled because the Wizard had Greater Arcane Sight up and becuase they passed the illusory doorway... I think they were correct. BUT the players are also having trouble with another issue that I'm perhaps not explaining well. I said the house is essentially merged with a castle (which is what I understand the book says) and they're floating on top of each other in a weird symmetry of geometry. Players complain that the rules don't support that. I explain that Paizo changed the rules.

They were annoyed and insisted on knowing if this is a demiplane or not.

My understanding is that the entire fey kingdom is on another plane (I know as per the adventure as written, the fey hut is supposed to crash in the real world, but I kept it in Nyrissa's realm). I also know that the Fable is in a demiplane/pocket dimension from that plane, thus no scrying on Nyrissa is permitted from within the Hut.

They also keep insisting that fey creatures can't be resurrected on the plane because they're outsiders. I think I've dealt with that by saying that it's special rules for this adventure- but they're NOT happy about that. (I told them of the resurrection rule to prevent a battle later- if they know about it, they can plan for it and they'll be less upset if it causes them trouble).

Thank you; this is a lot of good information that I am going to have to read through, ponder, and absorb.

Re: Adumbration:

Thank you for the clarification re: Detect Magic. I'd been telling the auras on round one and the specific spells on round two because the player was rolling very high Spellcrafts. I did not realize the Spellcraft testing thing was a house rule, I thought it was another rule that I just heretofore couldn't find. That solves my concern about Detect Magic revealing too much!

---
Another thought came to me during the day though, so if I may ask one other question:

-Spell Resistance v. Witches Hexes... my understanding is that nothing has SR v. the Witches Hexes. Is that true? Is there any counter for Witches Hexes, like there is a counter for spells?

So, back to Nyrissa.

My players thankfully provided me a little insight into their endgame plan. They understand that I don't have as firm a grasp on the rules as they do, so about a year ago, they promised that they'd let me know ahead of time if they're going to try any rule-complicated things. They have been true to their word in helping me with that.

I am always happy when they plan things out in detail. And I would like to reward the player who put forth this plan...especially since the Rogue hasn't been able to do too much damage to enemies in previous sessions. (The ones who often shine are the Ranger, the Wizard, the Druid, and now (because of reasons noted above) the Witch, whose misfortune ability amplifies the character's utility); the ones who could use a bit more "hero" time are the Rogue and the Oracle.

My only concern with this plan is that it might lead to Nyrissa not being able to act at all.

---
Is the following generally legal?
---

1. Party plans to cast some long-term casting spells, like Heroism, Bestow Insight, etc. ahead of time since they figure they'll know where her throne room is.

2. Druid has a spell that allows someone to reroll their check once to try to succeed again. (can cast it twice I believe).

3. Rogue plans to cast 9th level scrolls without a caster level check. Prayer Beads should get the rogue to be able to cast Time Stop without a caster check.

4. Rogue plans to cast Time stop, get next to the Fey Queen. Ignore all else. (The party has SEVERAL time stop scrolls).

And here's where the plan gets odd.

5. Plans to put glue on self, stick self to the Queen, then try to blind her physically or with a spell. Then activate a scroll of anti-magic field.

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My possible counters:

1. Decoy Nyrissa. Phlomada pretends she's Nyrissa... this is a little cheap... and given that my players said what they were going to do, this might lead to resentment.

2. Nyrissa has mirror image up. Will he know which one to attack? At least this might delay him.

3. Nyrissa has antilife shell... that should repel this plan of attack, right?

What I'm thinking is they cast detect magic, figure out she has the shell and will try to dispel it. Will that give her enough turns to be useful?

4. Your Queen is in another Castle.
There are several places where the PCs may be teleported in the fable- I could put things in them to use up resources and to distract them or I could make the pocket dimensions a lot bigger, so they have to wander around.

5. Retracting wall... this seems like it will be challenged as illegal. I actually just invented it. Fey queen is on a raised platform and has fly on. There is a wall between her and the players. When one mook stands on the pressure plate, the wall is up, when the mook is off the plate, it's down. Fey Queen has another mook who can disable the process from the inside (so players can't pull this same cheese on her).

Players go- have to break down wall to hit her if they win initiative. Mook lowers wall. Fey queen goes, shoots players. Mook2 causes Wall to go back up.

Is there anything like this that I can analogize to the rules?

---
I am thinking that 2,3,4 are the better ones to go with, but 5 seems like it would be fun.

QUESTION

1. The party is going to walk in and cast detect magic on nyrissa. On what roll of detect magic do I need to tell them that she has an Antilife shell?

2. The party is going to toss some dispel magics... would antilife shell be the first to fall? I assume that it would.
Also, can dispel magic work through a glass wall or a full wall if you have an idea of where the target may be (e.g. as an AOE).

3. What would be the consequences if the antimagic field that the rogue has planned goes off?

Re: Phillip Knowsley:

>>Never forget that spells are per day...if they haven't gone a whole day,

It really won't matter how much they rest - they won't get new spells.

Is there a citation for the definition of day as in spells per day?

I see this: "A wizard can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. His base daily spell allotment is given on Table: Wizard. In addition, he receives bonus spells per day if he has a high Intelligence score (see Table: Ability Modifiers and Bonus Spells)."

But there's no definition of "Day" and I'm fairly sure the players have been interpreting it as 8 hours. Especially when the rest rules you linked to state that a wizard gets their spells back after 8 hours.

Thank you for the link to the Resting rules.

>>Run it so that it's not 1 20 second interruption (besides that fact that

the PCs couldn't & wouldn't immediately fall back asleep. They'd be wary
or amped up for another 15-30mins before turning in again.), send in a
2nd & then 3rd wave of annoyances. Common tactic in too many wars to mention.

I will give the multiple waves tactic a try if the players attempt to rest. I foresee some controversy here, because the players will insist they can fall asleep immediately, but I will give it a try.

Re: Rickmeister:

>>First of all, sorry to hear about your group. Really!

Thank you!

Re: Suthainn:

>>Speaking of which, I am unsure and wasn't able to find anything about whether the DR would also stop the blood drain, I know it wouldn't stop a (Su) ability drain but (Ex) like Stirges have has no magic behind it, would it have any effect? By my reading of RAW the attack deals 0 damage, this damage does not get past the DR 20/Magic so no blood drain takes place since the ability is (Ex) and non magical in nature.

That is an interesting question.

Re: Orthos

Thank you for your passionate response. I showed the fly/hover rules to the group and they agreed that the dragons could hover! Your advice was very helpful in both maintaining game flow and in maintaining challenge.

(Orthos said:)

>>Nope. A caster needs a full night of uninterrupted rest (8 hours for most races, 4 for elves) followed by an hour of meditation or study to prepare their spells or spell slots for the day. A late-night interruption means they have to start completely over.

That sounds helpful; where does it state that a late night interruption means they need to start over? I do not see that on this page: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/wizard

>>If they're AOEing her they're having to deal with her SR.

Thank you!

>>Is he a melee or ranged rogue? If melee, he can't get to her thanks to her anti-life shell until it's dispelled or she dismisses it or does something to force it away.

He is a melee rogue.

>>They don't want a challenge. They want to curbstomp everything without opposition.

That sounds about right. What makes it odd is that the fights they still talk about today are the ones that I challenged them a great deal so that they had to pull out all the stops to succeed. The fights that were standard are quickly forgotten, but Vordakai's lair is well remembered.

>>Best of luck to you.

Thank you again very much.

Thank you for the follow-up explanations.

Here's a report of the good and the bad news about what's happened so far:

THE GOOD NEWS.
-The good news is that I was able to run a challenging Ilthuliak/Tarlaxian encounter on the bridge v. the party. Thank you for the suggestions.

One party member died to the twin dragons because he strangely decided to walk over the bridge after hearing two dragon voices coming from underneath it? I am not entirely sure why he kept moving forward. Then, instead of fleeing, he cowered behind the bridge's cobblestone railing. He died to a pool of acid and Tarlaxian's con-draining poison. I hadn't intended to slay the character, but if a character takes a tactically odd move, then the result seems appropriate.

This death led to an amusing use of unseen servant later when the party was fleeing. The party needed a piece of the decedent for resurrection, and his body had essentially congealed into pieces of goo and bone, reduced by the acid, so they sent an unseen servant in to retrieve the viscera.

-The party nearly killed Ilthuliak. They just couldn't quite pull it off. It would have been nice if they could have and if they focused their firepower on her, it would have worked, but they split their attention between the two dragons. So, with 50 HP remaining, she fled into the House. Tarlaxian remained.

-The party used a great deal of thinking and their skills. The session generally ran smooth thanks to your advice- I was able to clarify the flying rules, and I was able to clarify a few other matters by reference here. This kept things moving.

THE BAD NEWS.
1. The players weren't happy that their 6-player Level 14 group had to fight two CR 19 dragons- they estimated the encounter at CR 22. My estimate is that it was a CR 21 encounter because Ilthuliak was down to half health due to being unable to fully "Heal" all the negative levels the stirges had done to her previously. My estimate is also that due to gear and a better stat array than paizo's basic array, the party is ECL 16 or 17. Therefore a 17 v. 21 CR is on the edge, but it is appropriate. Players did not agree and were a bit annoyed when driven off. Not annoyed as in, "shoot, lets try again" but annoyed as in "our GM is incompetent."

2. A ruling I made back when the witch was extremely weak and was facing primarily undead enemies and others who could not be affected by witch spells came back to haunt me.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/witch/hexes/major-hexes/hex-ma jor-ice-tomb-su

Ice Tomb.

I felt bad for the witch, who was doing very little to enemies. Later the witch learned better how to use the character and the group started facing less enemies that were immune to witchy powers.

So we had a long group discussion and decided that Ice Tomb still encased the target in 20 HP of ice even if the target made its save. No negative effects other than losing a turn till the ice could be broken out of.

This allowed the Witch to be much more useful, but it didn't break the game. It could only be used once/encounter against an enemy.

Until.

The witch gained an ability to re-use a hex. So... the witch could use the hex twice against the same enemy.

I figured I'd roll with that. In the second matchup with the party- Ilthuliak spent the most of the time frozen in ice. As soon as she'd escape, she'd be hit by all the characters in turn, then encased in ice again. I was a bit concerned with that, but I figured it could be worked around.

And here's where the dispute came in.

Tarlaxian- the Linnorm- has freedom of movement. I ruled that Tarlaxian is immune to Ice tomb because the point of the linnorm is that it can't be tangled up in anything.

This led to anger. The witch accused me of hating and trying to sabotage the character because Ice tomb is the "only" useful thing the witch has, and the witch threatened to leave because I was not treating the character fairly. Other players rallied to defend the witch and insisted that because I ruled that ice tomb worked like X in the past, that it should work like X and that Paizo wrote a very unclear ability.

My response: A. I'm the GM, I can change rules if they don't work; but B. I'm not changing the rules here- Tarlaxian has freedom of movement- he's not like Ilthuliak. Freedom of Mvt. is a different circumstance and without it- then it's IMPOSSIBLE to counter Ice Tomb.

Their response was that it makes no sense that freedom of movement could protect someone from being encased in ice. My response: Freedom of Mvt. protects against web spells, and an ice tomb is like a web. They were not buying it.

At risk of a walk out of players, I assented and allowed the dragon to be encased in ice. The dispute took between 10-15 minutes, so a relatively short dispute as far as these things go historically in my group- but it escalated fast.

My best guess at countering this in the future is to have multiple enemies, one of which can break the ice tomb. Thankfully one player posited that solution for me.

At this point, I can't have a solo enemy face the characters without getting ganked before it can do ANYTHING, due to this short-sighted ruling I made on Ice Tomb that my players now refuse to let me change.

CURRENT:
Currently, the players are fleeing Tarlaxian. If they escape and return, I could have them face Tarlaxian solo, but I think they'll nuke him fairly fast and the battle would be relatively straightforward. Therefore, I am likely to go with Option B, which is similar to what Orthos suggested above (thank you).

Option B is to have Tarlaxian join the very battered Ilthuliak's retreat into the House itself, don't heal Ilthuliak much... and throw the ghost encounter at the players. My understanding is that this battle will be grueling, but winnable, especially if they focus on downing Ilthuliak first.

ACID POOL (Question)
Regarding Acid Pool, isn't that a ground only effect? My players have stymied my attempts to cast things that have area of effect by pointing that out. Therefore, the stirges couldn't be submerged, the acid would fall off them. Acid Fog might work, though, so maybe I could use that? It would do 2d6; a stirge has 5HP, so it wouldn't necessarily kill them off, but with luck it should.

FULL ROUND ATTACKS
Also, I've been told that a dragon cannot make a full round attack if its flying- so how can a dragon be an effective fighter? I get that it has 200 feet fly, so it could dive bomb if it had a feat, but it doesn't seem to have the charge feat (or whatever it should be) to attack. 22d6 in a breath weapon 1d4 rounds is almost no damage whatsoever--especially when the 22d6 can only hit one stirge.

The players placed the stirges in 8 different locations around the dragon and the breath weapon only works in a straight line; thus it could only hit one at a time.

DISPELLING BUFFS
>>Or dispel their buffs (actually a clue to beating her) When my PCs faced her she was super tough, it looked dire for a few rounds. They figured out that they needed to debuff her so they tried a few dispels. One anti-magic field later she went from OP to chump. Dropped her the next round.

My understanding is that's what they're going to open with. I'm imagining them hitting her with Dispel magic. I think her SR is high enough to bounce most of that though- Ilthuliak's SR was high enough to bounce the dispels leveled against her.

Thus why my current plan is to put most of the lower level enemies in the final showdown room- the ghosts, etc. in the same room with her, to potentially harass the players enough to keep them off her.

Regarding dispelling the players' buffs... decent idea, but it sacrifices an action to do very little damage to them. I think if I put say Philomena or the Hag in the room with the Queen though, that might work.

RESTING (QUESTION)
>>Are your players stopping within Nyrissa's home for an eight hour rest to recharge spells? Something attacks them.

That is a question. If the rest is interrupted, can't the players just rest again? e.g. 6 hours in, attacked for 20 seconds, then sleep another two?

BLINDING BEAUTY
Blinding Beauty is a good point- thank you for the full explanation. I suspect it will mean nothing though since the spellcasters can just AOE her. But I am going to give it a go!

STEALTH
>>The question will mainly be if they can get sneak attack at all. She has true seeing available to her, I'd be disappointed if she hadn't used it, and being Fey gets Perception as a class skill so she should have that maxed out. It should be incredibly difficult for anyone in the Fable to hide from Nyrissa, even if they have something like Hide in Plain Sight or Hellcat Stealth that lets them hide without concealment.

I seem to recall the rogue is able to get a +65 on stealth with invisibility, possibly higher and the rogue does have Hide in Plain Sight. I'll roll the checks though, so that's important.

That being said, if the rogue goes before she does, she'd be flat footed and he could get off his attack.

15 MINUTE ADVENTURING DAY
>>If you let them have a 15-minute adventuring day, this will be stupid easy for them.

Noted. I will try my best to avoid this. I think one of our best series of sessions was the war of attrition in Vordakai's caverns. ... which was then followed by some whining about how I need to let the players rest more b/c it's too unfair to the spellcasters to run 10+ encounters in a row and how I have no understanding of how to GM the game properly. The essential opinion is that the players are heroes so therefore they should always be able to use all their abilities at any time they want.

HIGH LEVEL PLAY
>>If they don't want to face this, they shouldn't play at those levels. Simple as that.

Can't really argue with that. I'm just finishing it now to finish it. Which is a pity because I love high level play BECAUSE it gives the possibility for players and the GM to do some really neat things that break the game... but they INSIST on playing 100% by the book. They often express hate for how Paizo has no understanding of how DnD works. How paizo's enemies are ill-constructed crap and are pushovers and how Pathfinder didn't fix severe flaws with DnD and how the game totally breaks down at high levels... but they won't let me crib together my on-the-fly fixes because the fixes are 'unfair' and don't respect the rules of the game... I used to make many many alterations and do things on the fly, but it led to too much arguing, so I just ask them what the rules are now and let it go by that b/c apparently I'm crap at interpreting the rules. (My interpretations are "wrong" almost all the time and lead to much wailing and gnashing of the teeth).

WAY FORWARD

I'm thinking I will put Ilthuliak Part II (mostly stirge drained, but also Healed and restored partially by the Hag) and the Linnorm to attack concurrently.

The question is if they should attack on the bridge, or if I should put them both inside the House, so they'll respawn.

Just slap them in the courtyard, which stretches to immense height. This seems like a good timer for the players... there's NO WAY they'll want to fight those creatures *another* time.

IN SUM

Thank you again. This has been very helpful and it will really help me confront any disputes and to plan an effective and entertaining game.

CASTING DEFENSIVELY
I did not think of that. Thank you!
This is a consequence of my players knowing more about the rules than I and not always telling me when it is to their disadvantage.

It seems that the check should be trivial for most casters.

This may have been making things easier for them.

WEARING DOWN THE PLAYERS
On a re-read of the section, I suppose that the other fights leading up to Nyrissa should help weaken the players re-usable spells a bit- so I'll keep that in mind! That being said- My characters have argued before that they can rest for 8 or 16 hours and recover all spells; how can I protect against that? Nebulous "nightmares" won't cut it... and I'm concerned that having Nyrissa pop up when they're sleeping will either be anticlimactic- they won't enter the fable... or just annoying. She fights 2 rounds, then TPs away back to the fable... or more likely gets Dimensional Anchored herself...

OLWEN
Yes, thank you for the read of your tale- it will be helpful.

--

example of what I'm dealing with:

A 14th Level Druid with gear of a level 12 or 13 character soloed a CR 19 6-player version of Ilthuliak and nearly killed the dragon.
1. Druid summoned a bunch of creatures to harass Ilthuliak.

2. Ilthuliak's darkness had no effect due to the creatures chosen. Ilthuliak tried to blast them with his line, but only got rid of a few. No matter. Ilthuliak focused on Druid with Enervation... Druid had Death Ward up... so it fizzled. All of his creatures took AOOs on the dragon.

3. Druid summons stirges. They latch on an proceed to annihilate the dragon.

4. Dragon is down to 6 Con when one helpful player points out to me that Dimension door may break grapples, so Ilthuliak tries to Dimension door away and succeeds... about 70 HP away from deaths door.

...And that's just the Druid's can of tricks...

Clarification- whenever a spellcaster casts anything- the players just take AOOs on the caster and strike the caster down in one turn... this happened with Vordakai and Ilthuliak.

Dimensional Anchor
Great that Dimensional Anchor is already present- that would have been a point for debate. I *thought* it might be present, but I hadn't seen it explicitly spelled out.

Room Size
I am slightly concerned that players may be knocking out walls or attempting to increase the size of the room somehow. Is making the walls adamantium a good counter idea?

Fickle Winds
That sounds perfect for defense! The players previously defeated a raging windstorm level of wind (druid in party :() which led to a very quick defeat from a distance for the Nightmare Rook.

Nyrissa Getting the Jump.
I will consider if it might be best to host in another room... Currently I was figuring her to start invisible or something, and her minions to be in the room (I'm moving some in to up the CR) and for the battle to start with them to soak damage, while she taunts the players.

Melee
Interestingly, my players almost never melee... That being said- do I need to worry about her losing concentration checks if she gets tapped by an 80+ damage sneak attack? Was that an issue for anyone? (I am predicting an impending argument from my players)

pennywit-
Nice idea. Not for my game, but I'm sure it will be useful for someone! In my game, I already split things up, one fellow has been defending the kingdom in wargame fashion, dealing with each of the "Day" challenges the Fey queen threw at them while the PCs take on the direct threats. (e.g. - Fey queen sends a couple of mire worms- the PCs deal with them... meanwhile their armies fight an army of smaller mire worms; e.g. 4 water elementals v. pcs while their army faces an epic army of water elementals and defeats them by collapsing a mountain on the creatures).

Notes-
My best estimates as to the issues I need to confront:
1. Players like ranged weapons... I think fickle winds should help there.
2. Players have meleed magic casters before and caused them to lose concentration and waste all their spells.
3. Players will be angry if a save or die or "cheap" spell kills them...and I will certainly have a massive argument on my hands. So it would be better to kill them in another fashion (I intend to let all hell break loose since it's the last game session). Still, I'd rather not lose friends over it, and I'd rather they not feel cheated.

My party, 6 at level 14 (using slightly better an array than normal- so they are ECL 16-17, effectively-they consistently take down the 6-character conversion versions of monsters with little trouble), is quite unstoppable using tactics of flying out of range and making distant attacks with arrows (one can do 80-120 damage with arrows at a range of nearly 200 feet).

I want to give them a challenge while still respecting their individual abilities.

In the showdown for Nyrissa, how could I rules-legally, nerf their flying and any distance issues so they don't just essentially avoid all damage?

My current plan is:

Permanenced Dimensional Anchor on the room? (so mages can't teleport out)
Pillars and walls so the archer can't shoot from overly-far-away.

But how do I deal with flying? will it be good enough to just have a 25 foot ceiling?

Any other suggestions for making the final battle memorable?

It isn't evil if they attack you first!

Indeed. :P

That's a great idea. Thank you for the spell.
Hopefully it also deflects "seeking" arrows... on a read, it appears to do that.

Boss phases actually sounds perfect for Nyrissa.

The other lead enemy I'm trying to improve is the Misbegotten Troll. I am using the 6 player version as a starting point, then I'm giving him Teleport 2x/Day and/or Dimension Door 2x/day, so he can close the distance with the party. Thank you for that suggestion.

---
You are correct with the supposition of how my party prefers negative conditions. Once those hit, they can take out a 350HP enemy with fast healing 10 and DR 10 in 2-3 rounds.

The druid has been shooting out dispel magics, but most of those have fizzled (sorry, Druid).

The witch misfortunes enemies- so they have to roll 2 times. And some enemies, (less now that they have the higher-level better saves) have been ice tombed- good work witch. However, for better or worse, this is devastating when combined with the ranger's range and the druid's versatility.

Current Thoughts:
I think the way forward, with Nyrissa at least, will be to use the 6 player version-ensure that she can hit the players at close quarters- with them getting trapped in the room- maybe cut off from each other with funhouse walls made out of walls of force and fey-like with pink walls that have a chance to cause nausea; and then to design something for Nyrissa's stage 2.

---
QUESTION:

Is there any spell that can protect from magical arrows? Protection from arrows is overcome by a +1 weapons, so that's no good- the ranger has a +3 striking, etc. bow.

Thank you for the wind strength idea.
I cannot believe I did not think about that before: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/environment/weather.

I think the druid might counter it with Control Weather... but I am unsure if he's powerful enough to have that yet. It will at least slow them down, though!

My players could not go farther to the west beyond Varnhold because the centaurs had their ancestral lands there... of course, a less scrupulous group might just massacre all the centaurs, but no Good kingdom, and only a few Neutral kingdoms could get away with that while keeping their alignment...when the centaurs were not actively raiding. So, depending on how aggressive you want the Centaur/Brevic land issues to be, you could skew it so that the PCs would have serious alignment issues if they attempt to seize the Centaur lands, or your could play it up that the Centaurs "need" to be displaced so that civilization can spread.

I gave Varnhold about 4-5 hexes and about 6 buildings when the PCs recovered it. Varnhold had an uneasy tension with the Centaurs, which the PCs managed to resolve.

Fort Drelev, I gave about 9-12 hexes and 2 small settlements, one of which was essentially repossessed by Pitax (who lent Drelev money as the country became mired in a guerrilla war with Boggards who kept seizing their trade goods, and barbarians who raided their supplies from Brevoy).

Drelev's territory was terrible, however, it was all swamp, so no farms could be placed there and the territory was actually failing command DCs almost constantly. Drelev's entire kingdom was a basketcase.

When the PCs annexed both dukedoms, they had some issues with stability rolls, but they eventually sorted out the command DC.

As an aside: Varn, Drelev, and Irovetti are all still alive. :)

Varn I left alive; one PC wanted to have a romance with him...so Varn's wife died in the Calling, and V kept Varn prisoner in a bottle. He was a broken man when released, but as a governor/Duke of Varnhold Province, he's a fairly decent servant of the PCs interests.

Drelev got out because, well, he was mostly just a fool who mortgaged his kingdom to Pitax. He is now sulking back in Brevoy. His wife, who is likely in the process of divorcing him, is likewise returned.

Irovetti, when confronted, lied his head off to the PCs and spouted off some nonsense about generals rebelling against him and Villamor Koth acting without his authority...and the PCs believed him. Thankfully, he's now on their side since he realizes Nyrissa would probably prefer him dead. The PCs left him his "toys", who are now allies in defense of their lands against the Fey.

I appreciate the cheat suggestion and I certainly will do it if necessary, but my players know the game far too well. They reverse engineer almost every situation and get very angry if they don't think the numbers add up properly. I will consider having the rolls for initiative turn out a bit better for the enemies if it's a close call, at least to give them a chance to take a shot at the PCs. Thank you.

Re: Spatula:
1-Before you mentioned that, I did not realize that Paizo only gave out average HP to enemies. Thank you.

re 3- Not a bad suggestion, but what would you suggest to run interference with ithuliak, nyrissa, and the wriggling man? Just slapping on a template won't fix the Rock/Paper/Scissors one shot kill-supremacy problem I have.

I'm looking for a multi-faceted, thinking-person's showdown with each of these bosses.... Kargstaad going down before he could do more than 2 one shot attacks on people (only 1 of his many many attacks), and the Rook getting blasted before he got close enough to do more than snatch one person and move 5 feet in the air, was a bit problematic. In retrospect, I should have had a few swarms of ravens lurking in the forest, harassing the PCs as the big Rook came. (I mistakenly thought the Rook could take the shots... essentially I forgot that one of the PCs had just taken the Staggering Critical feat... and I had not expected he would roll a critical... which gave the PCs a crucial reprise at just the right distance to hit the Rook (even with distance negatives to shoot).

I've had some success with adding in terrain difficulties and I think I need to do something about the PCs air superiority? What might be some of my options? Nixing the air superiority is a bit of an issue.

Question: Could the first nyrissa they fight be an illusion? One of the PCs has a perception about +45 and I have a bunch of elves and half-elves, a wizard who can see invisible, etc. ... just looking for a rules-appropriate way to distract the players (I would homebrew it but this group *will* get exceptionally upset if I do that).

Hello all!

First, I am aware of the 6 Player Conversion; I suppose the first step will be to use that conversion (I used the conversions for books 1 through 3), but I don't think that is enough...

Two questions (rationale for why I am asking them is below):

---
1. Should I really be increasing the power of enemies? I don't want things to be save or die, though, or is that going to be the only real option? I've heard a bunch of people consider this book to be really challenging with its fights, but it has only been challenging when I limit my players by putting them in a cramped space where they can only attack 1 on 1.

2. Is there a better way to run upcoming encounters so they remain challenging? I would like Ilthuliak and Nyrissa to be memorable fights, and I would also like the wriggling man to be challenging.

--

My group is now in book 6 and they are fighting the fey in the fey realm. They are having fun; still, I want to ensure that I am not horribly mis-playing the enemies.

The group managed to take down the nightmare rook (at full power) CR 16 with taking only around 30-something damage to one player who was snatched. (The rook was killed before it could fly away). The ranger could negate its displacement and when he hit with a critical and the creature was 220 feet away, he staggered the Rook, which allowed the players to get another round of attacks on it.

The group also managed to take down Karstagg (CR 17), who only managed one hit before he died.

The adventure recommends a party level 16 before going into the fey realm... but my group, which had little trouble with those creatures, was the following:

Level 14 Ranger (gear is effectively Lvl 15)
Level 14 Druid (gear is Lvl 13 or 14)
Level 13 essentially a spellcaster who only uses fireball (Gear is Lvl 8 or 9-did not spend any money or take anything)
Level 13 Rogue (gear is level 12 or 13)

several others were inactive for this adventure- (a witch and another blaster caster) the above were the ones who participated in those fights.

Now, given the ability score array we used, my estimate is that the party's ECL is one higher, so if it was ECL 14 before, it's 15 after that boost.

---
Environmental modifiers have worked- I combined the cramped spaces Narrow path -2 penalty on attack and dex tunnel with the Adv. lightning treants and had a hard-fight.

But when enemies lack reach weapons, they are destroyed. My group defeated the giants by math. (calculated that the ranger, who has a range of 1,200 feet and the spellcaster who has a range of around 220 feet (?) could blow them up before they could get anywhere near).

The Ranger has Deadly Aim, Manyshot, Improved Precise Shot, Staggering Critical, Precise Shot and other feats. He can do around 120 damage each turn and hit almost anything.

favored enemy (human +6, magical beasts +2,giant +2)

bow: +22/+22/+17/+12 (1d8+9/19-20x3)
favored terrain (forest +4, swamp +2, mtns. +4)

AC 32.

Sure, why not.

Enough of his lieutenants aren't irredeemably evil; see: Akiros, that given the right impetus, they could turn.

Perhaps Akiros is confronted by another PC, essentially a female Kesten, who is in charge of a group of soldiers or explorers who are ambushed... then Akiros decides to redeem himself by freeing "Kesten", overthrowing the Staglord, and you start the campaign there- with a jailbreak of the female Kesten, any PCs there... or start with Akiros planning with other bandits (the PCs) on how to overthrow the Stag Lord.

In my Kingmaker, a few of the bandits are in high levels in the PC's governing structure. Of course, Auchs is dead, but Akiros is around, as are some of the lower-level fellows.

Thank you for the additional menaces.

I am still working on setting up the armies a la Book 5's army system.

It should be an interesting 3-stage conflict.
stage 1: players v. monsters
stage 2: army-based battles
stage 3: w

As an aside... the Wizard ended up with Ovnirbaane after messing with it while trying to identify it...

Apparently, giving the sword to a Wizard is the easiest way to limit its potential to cause chaos.

He can't hit anything with the sword when it dominates him.

The sword despises him.

Thank you again for the advice.

The party has defeated Armag... the fight was probably a bit easier since they never went into the caverns.

Instead;

1. Barbarian King rises... then betrays Irovetti and sacks one of his cities; at the festival, Irovetti learns of this and asks the players for help... but he doesn't cancel his old plans. He just orders one unit to focus on defeating the barbarians. That unit gets drawn out and ends up behind barbarian enemy lines.

The other two units (Avinash and Koth's units) hang back near Fort Drelev and watch its high end mercenary defenders be hit by Barbarians, then Wyvrens and Trolls. As a result of the player's action, a CR 8 barbarian army splits in a civil conflict and half, under a wise sage, join the party after Armag's death (see below Part 2). The other half attack, and the barbarians outside are driven off by the party's barbarians. Then Wyvrens and trolls descend... Wyvrens kill the barbarians, but the high end mercenaries defending Fort Drelev drive off the other enemies.

Avinash and Koth at that point decide that the city is ripe for the taking- and they severely underperform. A mercenary group hired by Irovetti, which was supposed to join in their attack, hangs back, then decides to hire itself out to the party rather than to attack.

Over in Olegton, a CR 1 army digs in... and rolls 19, 20, 20, 19 on defense rolls... causing a CR 5 Black Sister led elite unit to flee, and causing a CR 3 barbarian army to flee. We all had figured Olegton would have fallen.

Barbarians hit hard in the Elk Temple City, home to the cleric Jhod Kavken and wipe out the defenses. Then they wipe out an army of wolves sent to reinforce- and wipe out a Vassal of the players. Then Irovetti's one army which was NOT told to attack the players defeats the barbarians, freeing the city.

Troll Lancers and Trolls nearly take the party's southern city, but the party raises a Colossal army... in retrospect I don't think they should have been able to raise that (kingdom size is below 150); and march it over and engage in a slug-fest. Then they need to split the army because the Catspaw Marauders are marching on the Capital. They split and frighten the Marauders. Finally- they defeat the Trolls.

Party lost no cities, but lost a few armies- player running the armies had a great time; assistant enjoyed himself; another player was annoyed at the rules- wanted to solo-fight the enemies and didn't like the subsystem at all.

War is over after about 10 days of battle-sim. Each day armies attacked twice or could move according to their speed (1-3) on the playing field hex-map.

2. As for the Fight
Five of the party (Wizard, Witch, Ranger, Oracle (Flame), Druid) challenged Armag, the Derghodaemon, and a Black Sister to a battle after winning the right to challenge by carrying the head of Minogos-Ushad to them (M-U went down in only TWO turns!!!). Party won initiative and knocked out the Black Sister in one turn (good call), then they focused on the Derghodaemon while the Druid and Ranger locked down Armag.

Only the wizard was hit by the derghodaemon's anti-spellcaster methods because the Witch and Oracle were flying out of range. The Derghodaemon then destroyed the Wizard's pet undead Cyclops (on which the wizard had been mounted, on a howdah).

It was a tough fight, but I was shocked that Armag (even with sword and effective CR+1) underperformed. The party was about Level 10 at the time. Of course, if the Black Sister had not died on turn 1- the buffs and auras would have destroyed the players.

Players had a great time; and I enjoyed the fight.

--
We will be doing expanded war with the Fey and the Brevic Civil war coming up in the next few months.

Thank you again for your assistance.

Has anyone converted some of Book 6's challenges into a mass combat system conflict a la Book 5?

Essentially, in my setting, fey armies will start spilling over into the River Kingdoms at the same time as the Civil War in Brevoy blows up.

Any hints or links would be appreciated.

My players are nearly finished with Book 5 and I am looking forward to crafting a suitably epic ending for this over 50+ session, 30-40+ kingdom building sessions, and 40+ side-session game that I've been running since May 2010.

6 PCs; currently level 12 across the board, had very little trouble taking down CR 14 encounters at Level 11. I intend them to be level 13 when Book 6 starts in earnest.

Azure_Zero wrote:

Young Characters starting Ages

Dwarf: 20
Elf: 55
Gnome: 20
Halfling: 10
Half-Elf: 10
Half-Orc: 7
Human: 8

Formula is basicially: (Start Age/2) and round up

This is going to throw folks trying to rationalize the childhoods of the longer lived humanoid races for a loop. If a 55 year old elf is truly equivalent mentally and physically to an 8 year old human, that is a painfully slow childhood by non-elven standards. That raises the question of whether the proportionality should be maintained all the way down (in which case elves would spend their first decade or more in diapers, unable to walk or talk) or whether their is a major slowdown after an initial spurt (in which case elves would spend most of their first 55 years as the equivalent of 7 year old humsns).

I wonder at the consequences: With toddler children for 20+ years, perhaps elven parents naturally need to be very patient and therefore, they should be very used to dealing with 'dumber' races. Either that or the elves give their children to the state to be communally raised, so they have time to do other things. The long aging period would seem to have a great deal of social and community-based effects.

I added a significant amount of extra information to book one and two, including DM_Dudemeister's Hargulka's Monster Kingdom. Book three was mostly run as-is, with a few tweaks, such as Varn's survival. Book four was also mostly run as is, although the party skipped the dungeon with the Barbarian King (oops (!)). Book five will have significant changes.

Ah, that's a better idea- destroying their farms will absolutely incense the Kingdom Ruler.

Thank you for the suggestions!

I went ahead and gave the group about 6 more kingdom turns. They earn about 26 BP a turn and currently have 52 BP saved going into the Rushlight Tournament.

For the moment, the players badly need to do some side quests, so I'll have them do that. The party is currently CR 10, effective 11.5, so it is a bit too early to send them onto the next book. I expect to send them onto the next book when they are at CR 11, effective 12.5 or very close to that number.

I am thinking of raising Armag's CR by 1 and the Sisters' by another 1 to reflect experience gained due to ravaging the northlands, before the players have enough good intel to track them down (unless, of course, the players figure out how to scry on the Sisters before then).

The group does not currently fear the barbarians army much since they destroyed not only the army at the beginning of book 4, but also a second, larger army I sent to attack the party's northern city. The party also employs 200 CR 4 mercenaries currently, who've been patrolling their border cities. Now, what they don't know is that whereas they were fighting roughly CR equivalent armies before, now with a united barbarian horde, they'll be fighting a much larger force.

I will need to figure out some stats for the Barbarian army.

I am liking the suggestion of sacking one of Irovetti's cities. In my world, he has a city in the north and it's placed very conveniently near the barbarian empire. I suspect that Armag doesn't want to be pushed around any more by "pitiful self-disrespecting lowlanders", so he'll sack that city first, then move toward Fort Drelev, which ironically is what Irovetti's army of mercenaries and barbarians did the FIRST time when they occupied Fort Drelev to 'support' Baron Hannis until he paid them off, then went north, sacked Drelev's northern city, and moved south to fight the players.

Rickmeister- don't worry too much about putting 3; for the 6 player conversion thread, they suggest using 3. :) If you created 4 PCs at a higher stat array, you'd also be justified.

Thank you again.

Question:

My group didn't stop Armag's ritual; they were scared off by the sisters, and threw a bunch of stones across the entrance. Armag is likely to easily get out when the ritual completes.

Did you have a similar situation happen to your group?

Any suggestions on what should happen now that the party essentially has given up on fighting Armag in his Tomb?

Also, how long do you figure his ritual should take? I would suppose anywhere from 2 weeks to a month.

I figure that if he emerges, he'll ride at the head of a horde with the Black Sisters. Interestingly, it seems that it would be easier for the party to kill him in the open rather than in his tomb.

I read this and did a search, but to no avail: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2m527?Armag-what-is-best-in-life#1

>> Ben Bova's Moon Wars series is a great modern version of Atlas Shrugged.

Thank You. I will make a note to check that out!

*One amendment to my earlier post; turns out I meant "Recount", not "Election". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1000771/

Answer: Sadly no, I have not yet seen part II.

I was interested in Part II until I found out that the ENTIRE CAST was changed :(.

However, to address Part I for anyone who has not yet seen it. I expected Part I to be very poor quality, poor acting, and poor adaptation. It was decent quality with decent acting and good adaptation.

Part I begins in the near future and they updated it to reflect concerns similar to the stock market crisis of recent history and the concerns of peak oil, where oil goes to 40/gallon, thereby making rail relevant and thereby making the old 1950s story relevant about being about trains. Good decision on the directors part.

Dagny's actor is great. She is a strong character and she is very intriguing.

The pacing is done well. But because it's a part I... the rising tension...doesn't end in catharsis. It feels like the film is just getting started when it is cut to an end.

Some adaptation choices are a bit odd and some romance choices are also a bit odd. I won't say the decisions are wrong, though, and they do introduce some narrative tension.

Drawbacks- as in the book Rand's enemies are a little ridiculous, which may damage the movie's impact in two ways for some people. (1) people watching for entertainment may lose a sense of disbelief. and (2) people watching for a political diatribe may be disappointed in not having a robust discussion of political issues. I, however, prefer to watch the movie and the book in the following two ways: (3) futuristic science-fantasy bad guys Ming-the-Merciless or ridiculously evil Dr. Fu Manchu types versus buck rodgers (Dagny). If you can get over cringing because of some limited silliness, it can be entertaining to see the enemies be so ridiculous. And/or (4) as a political warning or political joke like a Voltaire's Candide or an Alice in Wonderland. Ask yourself, do you want your elected leaders acting as short sighted as the anti-industrialists, the collusive monopolists? (note that Dagny is against government-created monopolies but her brother is for them even when they promote inefficient operations).

Verdict: Whatever Part I was, it was certainly a better right-wing movie than the terrible and offensive An American Carol :( or the left-wing An Inconvenient Truth (and far more entertaining than the latter). I would not put it on the level of a Roger and Me or some of the financial crisis warning movies, but it's better than Election, In the Loop, or your run of the will political docu-movie and better than a B-movie. I laughed a lot and I enjoyed Part I.

For the person referencing Bioshock- I did actually laugh out loud at the end of the movie when they

Final Notes: re: rand's book- the first 200-300 pages are gripping... I won't defend the rest of the book, but there is a lot of action going on in the terms of politicking and discussion about industry. Then again, many people don't like merchant-talk. But for a novel about business, it does things well. I'd be open to recommendations for a better novel about business- I think Atlas Shrugged beats Space Merchants (Kornbluth), but Vatta's War series (Moon) is more amusing without diatribe. Also, if you like hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, around page 175 there is a great lecture that reflects the recent environmentalist tactic (which a recent pro-environmentalist TV special pointed out that the tactic was adapted from the tobacco lobbies) of spreading fear and denial so as to promote inaction... "we don't know if pollution could occur, but let us do no harm." to hold up an innovative type of economic development. The book, if nothing else, is food for thought, and I would argue that first part of it, at least, is entertaining--to her great disappointment, Rand sold more books because people thought they were fun reads than because people wanted to follow her philosophy.

Old Drake- Thanks for the pricing information on the fort bonus!

*Correction, said he could get a +6 with the +2 heavy shield due to his feats (not a +4)

>>If you search the forum you will find whole threads about how you should price a true strike item. for sure it will not cost 1.800 gp for an at will item casting a first level spell.

Ok. I will look.

Found: http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz2j03?Item-creation-cost#17
That indicates it should be 2000 gp?

--
Are you really sure about the Heavy Shield v. Tower Shield things; he said he can get a +4 bonus with a +2 heavy shield--it is not a tower shield. He referenced his shield feats.

--
Hm. I HAD thought that the Fly was on the chest slot item; it appears that the player put it as an additional enchantment on his Dragonhide armor. He indicated that he thought that it shouldn't count towards the maximum +7 bonus either on the armor since the rules are unclear on that point... I said No to allowing it to do that. At some point we will probably revisit that when he reaches a +5 or higher bonus on the armor. I intend to still say no. I am also unclear why he can have a spell on his magic sword. He indicated that is within the rules?

--
Good and bad news on one front :D. Re-calculating the fort, et. al. saves, I actually discovered that a few players hadn't received some of the bonus feats that were given out to add +1 to Fort. So, now the players are more even (some had the bonus and others didn't). What would you suggest pricing the bonus for fortitude at? (That is, what is its wealth by level equivalent)? I'd say 2000 to 4000, trending toward the high end there.

--
Hm. I'm getting some pushback on the shield item. They estimated its cost at 2,000 since they crafted it...
--
In good news, we had a discussion about wealth by level disparity and I think that may solve some issues regarding the difficulty vis-a-vis certain characters and it may end some complaints that I dole out too little gold.

I also think that at least one, maybe 2 of the secondary characters will be retiring (a crafter and a fighter/crafter), leaving just one crafter and the Kingdom Ruler as secondaries.

I added a settlement that was sacked by the barbarians on the river to the north near Brevoy and I added Fort Hannis to the West of Fort Drelev.

So I support your additions!

Lex

I really, really recommend you play "by the book" until you have really mastered the system. Every rule exists for a reason. There's a reason characters have the number of feats and ability points they do. Changing things like...

Thank you Lex. That probably is part of the problem... I wanted the game to be special so I didn't give out gold at times and gave alternative rewards, such as the +1 ability bonus, and a few + to saves as well as an extra few minor (situational) feats like the regional feats.

I apologize for my mentioning 32 point buy- based on reviewing my statblocks- it appears to have been 25- back in 3.5 we used 32 point buy... I'm still getting used to pathfinder's changes.

Wraithstrike

After KM I suggest you go back to playing*. When you make a new character come back to the boards with a build. Tell us what you want to do, and most of us will recommend changes, and explain why we have those ideas.

Thank you Wraithstrike.

Diego

- round 2: move another 20' to the window (move action), start squeezing through the small window (full round action initiated this round with a standard action, it end the next round with another standard action).

* Note that the fighter squeezing through the window would have been a wonderful target for the lighting bolt. I would have applied a large malus to his reflex save, but that us bordering houerule territory

So he couldn't squeeze and take a non-full round attack? It seems that you could squeeze and do an attack if you had enough move left?

Courtney

("I'm going with this ruling for now, since we can't find a clarification in the RAW, and we can talk after game if you feel like that wasn't fair. Please remind me. No, please don't look online right now, it's your turn.") in various circumstances. My players have gone on ego trips as they destroy every monster in sight, and have become angry, indignant wrecks over monster/terrain combinations that have been more effective than they thought was appropriate.

That sounds familiar.

The notebook with common rules idea is a good one. I will do it.

Re the Oculus:

Are-

So, it's possible that your players are trying to figure out where they stand, or perhaps to force you to learn the "hard way".

That sounds a little familiar. They are fair, but they do try to push from time to time.

Old Drake
Thank you very much for the in-depth reviews

The player must have gotten really lucky that you rolled red dragonhide full plate on the random magical item table..

Oh, I don't use random item tables. I believe he crafted that. I have limited the crafting by denying them access to materials until they unlock them in-story. There was a great deal of player-directed annoyance when I told them "No Mithril and no Adamantine." Eventually, a side quest unlocked the Mithril.

Re: Ranger

I will ask the Ranger about the perception score.
The saves may be up +1 in at least one category because of a reward I gave out at the Temple of the Elk. The Fort and Will are up +1 because of a reward given out for Kingdom building- when they hit a +50 stability check, I gave out the Fort and Will bonus to all players.

Local beacon was a bonus feat for RPing: +4 Know (Local).

gloves with True Strike at will - how do you run this? What action is required to trigger the True Strike? I believe the norm is a standard action - meaning no attack that round - though I could be wrong here. At will would certainly make it expensive as well..

I seem to recall that he did have to sit out a round of attack to activate it.

shirt with continuous Shield - where's this from? I'm fairly certain that it's not possible per RAW. And it would be very expensive if you do allow it. Either way, the character wears an armor on the body slot, so the shirt doesn't work any longer. Reduce his armor by 4.

belt with +2 Dex, +1 Con - while not okay by RAW, I can accept this; price should be 5,500.

I seem to recall how he ended up with the belt. He posited that if priced appropriately, there should be no problem with giving +1s instead of always following +2s. I said that I agreed with him but that no item in the rules allows it. I argued that a +1 could allow for some twinking- e.g. setting con at 15 with a level up and just getting a +1, but he argued that if priced right, that's fine. I couldn't see any good objection to his point, so It seemed I should allow it.

Regarding the Shirt? Are you sure he can't have it? You can wear a cloak + armor, I recall, regarding the slots. So the shirt is like a cloak, right?

Witch-

but frankly defense and Int boosting are the key concerns for a witch, so this seems odd. Certainly compared to the amount of stuff the ranger had.

You're right about that, the Witch had about 30,000 gold unspent. The ranger said he'd help the witch choose items to buy. Currently we are negotiating about items. The witch wanted an item, but the witch wanted to modify the item... and have it cost the same price. The witch is currently disappointed in me that I won't let the witch have the item at the price the witch wants it. I didn't set a price but I said that somewhere in 10,000 to 17,000 (the cost for broom of flying) seemed appropriate and that I'd have to think what price would be best. The desire was to make the Ebon Fly Figurine activate [once per day for 4 hours each time (a total of 28 hours per week)] for the same price- 10,000 gp. The witch said that if the hours/day went down proportionally, the item should cost the same. I argued that activation daily is worth a lot more than activation for 3x/week even if the total # of hours is the same, but I couldn't point to any rule or the wondrous item creation table to justify that statement. The witch will probably be upset if I charge any more than 10,000 gp, but the witch noted that I could reduce the hours/day for activation and that would be fine. The witch also thinks that I am a fool in my logical reasoning, so I think it is important that any ruling I make be justified. I was thinking of using phantom steed as a base spell and creating this: [(3*9)1800]/ (5/1) = 9720 gp. Other than the cost, the difference seems to be that the AC of the steed is 18 vs. 14 with the fly, and the HP is only 17 vs. 38 with the fly.

Wizard

Okay, first thing that jumps out is that the character was created with vastly lower point buy.

Thank you! I think I'll go over that with him.

As mentioned before the Occulus only works if he's officially neutral evil. And I'm not certain what kind of penalty I'd assign on the kingdom for the presence of undead, but I'd certainly impose something.... maybe a paladin or cleric leads a group to cleanse the realm of undead? Or a popular uprising against their presence.

The other players actually threatened to kill him if he started keeping undead... he keeps them in a portable hole, since they don't need air.

He has one more spell at each level due to a special bonus story item.

Also check the number of HD of undead he can control. 28 HD for a 8th level wizard seems a bit much.

I will bring that up with him!

His items:

Re: Oracle lacking gold.
Ah. The oracle hasn't spent 24,000 gp...so you're right.

Re: the Fighter
Could you please explain what you did in a bit more depth? It went a little over my head. In the following spoiler, I list a few of his class feats-that might help with interpretation.

Full Fighter stats follow, he actually commented that he thought he might have miscalculated and only done 24 point buy or forgotten to give himself his level 8 levelup ability score.

And now the Druid, to round out all the character sheets

--
I really appreciate the comments about potentially too high wealth- the players complained that I was below effective character/wealth level and we did the math back when they were level 6 and we thought I was below. I may have slightly over-corrected. And the players are currently complaining that I'm not giving out enough loot- we've gone 3 or 4 sessions with a total of maybe 3000 gp being doled out per character. Varnhold Vanishing was a huge payday but after that, not much wealth flowed in.
--
And thank you very much for the in-depth character evaulations. Emails are being sent off.

Update to let all of you know how your advice IS helping: preliminary discussion with players about the REAL party Effective Character level was fruitful. At least two players now agree that with the NPCs and/or animals, that adds +.5 to +1 character level and that the higher point buy adds +1 character level, and that 6 players add +1 level, so for CR 9 Players, a CR 12 isn't out of line. A CR 14 is pushing it, but CR 10 to 13 is what should be aimed for I figure- if the whole party is there, and CR 8 to 12 when they are just 4.

Your advice has thus far been fruitful!

About 5 in-game years and over 2 real time years. Just starting Book IV. Had a 6 month hiatus and a 3 month hiatus. About 32 sessions. I used a lot of the modifications from the Boards here. I also posted a number of my modifications in threads back in the day.

I used Dudemeister's Book 1 and 2 threads and all the 6-player conversions. I didn't see Dudemeister's book 3 thread until I was nearly done with Book 3, but I commend him for his conversion :D.

The Ruler is exploring diplomatic options for a spouse.

No one else cares much about romancing any of the obvious NPCs, so that has otherwise been ignored in the game.

...Although the Druid had a bit of a fling with the Dancing Lady...

Re: Old Drake

>>There also seem to be some other fragments of 3.5 rules remaining, that just unbalance the game. What material are you allowing the players to use?

I allow any 3.5 or Paizo product, although I have limits. There used to be more limits, but they keep 'debating' out more laxity. They ask me to justify how limits are different instead of just arbitrary matters of taste. One thing I did manage to do was to ban Summoners.

--

Thank you for the note about 15 pb v. 32 pb. I knew that they were higher PB than the suggested AP PB and that would affect the game, but maybe I did not communicate that well enough to them, especially regarding the adjustments I needed to make.

I tried to reverse-engineer what point buy I must have given... I think it may have been 23 or 25? instead of 32? I know that for 3.5 games we used 32 or 28... Looking at the party's wizard a 25 is suggestive, but the others seem to have higher stats...

The players all received bonus feats (2) of the regional feats at the start of kingmaker and instead of cash, I gave them an ability score boost at level 8, so ability scores should be higher by the amount of +2 (human), +2 (level 4 and 8 boosts), and +1 (my bonus god's blessing boost)

Some characters leveled up after the most recent session:

Note *Essentially the two most powerful are the Ranger and the Fighter. I'm fairly sure they constructed the characters legitimately. Everyone else, I think I can balance around. I've been too tough on the witch (who was designed around mind control and suffered through all vermin and undead in Book 3); the witch and oracle are new to DnD. The Druid and the Wizard are easy-going and for RP reasons choose sub-optimal choices that are often hilarious and advance the story.

The level 9 ranger is:

The Level 9 witch is:

Level 8 Wizard

Level 8 Oracle (Fire)

I don't have the Level 9 Druid's stats right now.

I don't have the Level 9 fighter's stats (I will ask), but I do have his items.
Here are some of his stats at level 8

you could get one of the players to act as a co-DM. You'd handle the roleplaying, and he'd handle combat and maybe certain NPCs outside of combat. It's not easy to coordinate, but it'd allow you to concentrate on making the story fun and let one of your experts make combat fun and challenging.

That's a really interesting idea. I might discuss that with one of the players, although I think they like playing...but it IS worth a shot.

>>immunity to arrows is almost impossible in Pathfinder...

That's what I thought. I thought the claim was really odd.

But here's where it came from, the feat:
"Missile Shield Negate Ranged hit 1/round"

---
Re: Diego

Here you erred: there is no "free spell from ambush + spell in the surprise round". The wizard has the possibility to cast a spell in the surprise round (plus a quickened spell), with the targets getting a perception check to notice the ambush, not 2.

Ah thank you. I was unfair about that. I'll try to remember that!

--
Are

I would strongly consider taking a break from DM'ing for a while.

Perhaps you should ask one of your players to be the DM for a few sessions, and be a player in that game? It might help you learn some of the rules in an easier way (as you'd be focusing on a single character). It might also give you some insight into which kinds of encounters your players prefer.

Thank you. That is a good idea. And it's what I did. I last GMed in January. I felt so disheartened (and I lacked time... but if I didn't have to be stressed about memorizing rules, I could have run several games even though I was busy-e.g. the more they want me to prepare for sessions, the less sessions I can run.) that I didn't GM again until a few days ago. I played in 3 of the players' games, one a Cthulhu game, one a 4E campaign that had its closing adventure (because few in the group enjoy 4E), and another a homebrew system game.

Red Ramage

Additionally, the Kingmaker AP is a sandbox adventure. This means the players aren't railroaded from one encounter to another, carefully designed to be challenging but not impossible.

I agree. I pointed that out... I think I need to be more forceful on that and to specify that is one thing I consider take it or leave it.

Jal Dorak

I'm also curious as to your experience level with D&D in general and 3.5/Pathfinder specifically. How long have you been a DM for such games? Do you play as well? Did you play before you were a DM, and for how long?

I've played DnD since 2E; I've played the games for over 13/14 years and I've DMed as long as 3E has been out. I started DMing even before I had any 3.0 books...I just approximated what seemed fair. I've had all the 3.5 books since 2003 and I probably have about 25-50 DnD 3.0/3.5 books, not counting a large pile of Dungeon and Dragon magazines.

>>"I didn't get that your players are abusive, they just have certain expectations and it seems they are at least trying to let you know when you aren't meeting them."

That's how I see it.

e.g. the players do have some right to be frustrated that I haven't learned the rules very well. Since 2010 I've probably DMed about 30 sessions.

I usually DM because I am a very poor player. I build extremely sub optimal characters and I generally sit around and do nothing effective all game because other DMs build encounters to challenge the other, better built players. More recently I started asking my friends to design my characters- I've actually had somewhat effective PCs since that started happening. My mistake was designing around RP rather than paying attention to rules.

My players have rightly commented that I don't seem to even understand the basic design of the game itself based on design and game choices that I make. I put it down to that YES I have read every book I own, but I didn't study them like I study things for work or school. What I need to do there is to take copious notes. Just reading something doesn't teach me, nor does hearing something--I won't remember it, writing it down does. I realized that I should apply my learning for work/school skills to learning for game playing about 8 months ago and my rules knowledge did improve slightly- I just didn't have time or the inclination to write out everything in the rulebooks-I did try though and I like to think I improved... there are just so many tetchy rules and things that aren't written very clearly...Like the charging in a straight line rule...or charging while flying rules (I think I asked about those on the boards here with a different name identity and that was cleared up).

>>"Don't be afraid to kill some characters, it sounds like some of them expect it on occasion."
Thank you. That is good advice. For Kingmaker, in my first time in 12 years GMing, I finally killed a character. I had warned everyone playing to create 2-3 characters at the start of the game since I would kill characters off. I started holding back when one player quit in part because I killed his favorite character (he does have a monument though). All the kills were from open rolls... but odd rolls. I rolled 3 D20s at the first encounter at Oleg's to kill one player. Another died to a werewolf on 2 D20s, another died on... guess again- 2 D20s. So since Book 2 ended, I tried not to kill anyone and switched to rolling secretly- in part b/c of the killing characters issue and in part because every time I rolled the players were doing math in their heads and challenging how I had converted monsters. e.g. "there's NO WAY that they can have a Base attack bonus that way. Monsters of CR 8 cannot have a +X attack bonus." As a group we discussed that problem and came up with 2 solutions. 1. I learn how to convert monsters (I looked at some programs and determined that it would take too long- e.g. I wouldn't have time to prepare the story if I did that. OR 2. I get slightly better at creating fair encounters and hide the dice to avoid agitating them. I went with 2.

>>"4) They also seem to enjoy powergaming (but you may want to ask them this point-blank). They view each encounter as a puzzle, with the best solution being the fastest, surest victory. They also seem to like the spotlight, showing off their characters abilities. Let them do so, don' take it personally when they trash your monsters, it's what they want. However, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a challenge. Consider increasing the ability scores of all important NPCs in the AP, and change up some of the monsters."

Yes. They've said it's like a puzzle and is a game to be won. :D. I'm fine if the fights are several rounds (of more than just hammering at HP-packs); it's a little concerning though when the players complain that a fight is too easy, followed by them starting to acting like they're epic and untouchable. No need to solve that issue though :D It'll be solved when I incorporate your and others' solutions to the other issues.

Thank you very much for the other comments-told concisely!
--
Wraithstrike

The best GM's make the rule and stories work together. It seems you are more of a narrative GM. There is nothing wrong with that, but it does not work for everyone. Some people like myself enjoy consistency.

Yes. I understand that very well.

How did the fighter get an AC of 33? Monty haul does not just refer to magic items. High PB and allowing the players to get mostly anything they want is also a factor.

Crafting I think. I put a GP limit on the expense of any single item they can buy and 75% of that limit is how high they can craft a single item. I think he crafted the +3 armor at a cost of 9000GP, right on the edge of the crafting limit.

I did NOT allow the party to sell magic items through the town menu, because I knew that was broken, but I allowed them to take advantage of crafting.

There are 3 characters who can craft. All three of them are run by the really good player (who is the only player who has 3 characters any more due to deaths-two other characters have secondaries but one never uses his crafter and the other is the kingdom's ruler...he just rules). His main PC Level 9 can craft (fighter); his secondary Level 5 can craft (comes on some adventures when only 4 Players show up); and his tertiary level 4 can craft (never comes on adventures).

If he wants to die by an appropriate encounter I am sure the posters on the forum can make it happen. I will be glad to help. :)

That is an intriguing offer... maybe I'll take you up on it- in the Barbarian cairn perhaps?

Wall of Stone would have been better or Wall of Ice.

Ah, thank you!

Games like Exalted are more story oriented. The GM is a storyteller in those games.

Thanks! To recap: You've given me some talking points for the characters about appropriate levels, you've given me some possible solutions (add a Combat/monster designer DM; or of course, study better :(; or do something else (don't be a GM); or lay down the law perhaps losing a player/friend; or somehow get them to respect me and my rulings-I think they wouldn't challenge me at the table if they'd respect my authority and knowledge of the rules wouldn't lead to them being unfairly hurt)

Thank you for all the responses.

jjaamm-

I understand your predicament, it sounds very similar to my players' reactions to how I struggle to interpret the rules.

>>"Now I would say just learn from his but it sounds like you dont want to put in the time. Im not saying this to be mean, but stating this with belief it's helpful. Pathfinder is a game of lots of rules, and you have to be willing to invest the time to learn them. If you arent willing to than it might be a good Idea to try a new game."

I agree, and it's frustrating, but it is true. Some people like rules; I like rules in real life- I spend all day reading documents and analyzing them in-depth and making recommendations... I've worked 60-80 hours weeks doing just that for the last 4 months. But I'd like to relax a little and do something different from my work when I'm playing a game.

I actually was trying to use Paizo's adventure paths so that I wouldn't have to spend a lot of time learning rules- I could just plug and play and add some side quest adventures to fill in story... Sadly, the Paizo rules seem to be adding more complications and rules issues than I expected.

In the final spoiler box I noted that I tried Call of Cthulu- a rules lite game... and sadly, my group started buying the books and memorizing the rules- making it very difficult to play even that game without arguments, or at minimum hurt feelings on the part of the players since they don't think I'm being consistent from one CoC game to another...they clearly remember every nuance of how I make rulings... I think I'm consistent *within* the game at least, though.

Once again, thanks!

---
Diego-

First, Pathfinder is no build for groups with people of different levels. Hoe is that you have ended with 2 level 8 characters and 4 level 7?

Different people came on different days to play and some people did side quests, so they are slightly higher level for a session or two-then things balance out. The level 4 person is a 'secondary' character that was an experiment for Kingmaker- essentially players all started with 2 PCs at the beginning and then PCs died off... except for the secondary of the one player who knows absolutely all the rules... his secondary PC and another backup I allowed him to have since I knew he could manage it and the party wanted a crafting bot, lived.

>>Second, your group Average party level is around:

"All the above give us a APL of 10-11, I would call it 11. So a CR 14 encounter is a epic battle but perfectly in range for them."

That is REALLY useful to have! :) It is useful both for my calculations and for any future discussions...although I suspect I'll get some pushback on the Pegasus being = to 1 CR.

Thank you very much!

Extra information:

>>Second it seem that there is a big disparity on how the character are created and managed. so some character is noticeably less strong that others. Having at least one of the strong players (the fighter9 being level 8 while 4 other players are level 7 will only compound the difference (and I am willing to bet that the other level 8 player si the ranger).

You are right on those assumptions. It's a good point that I should be wary of. In contrast, the weakest players are the two newbies to DnD; they are also the lowest level.

>>Third, I get the impression that your players are playing on the limits of your knowledge of the rules.

Yes.

>>"If I get this two piece of text right:
- the fighter, probably in heavy armour), in one round: a) activated the flight property of his armour (standard action); b) flew 30' upward and probably something sideways (moving more than his allowance for a guy in heavy armor) [Fly: The subject can fly at a speed of 60 feet (or 40 feet if it wears medium or heavy armor, or if it carries a medium or heavy load.) It can ascend at half speed and descend at double speed, and its maneuverability is good.] and c) then squeezed through a near murder hole window (DC 30 escape artist check that RAW "takes at least 1 minute". [I would allow it as a 1 full round action in this situation])"

In one round he activated the armor and flew up and hid on the side of the wall.
In round two he squeezed. Yes, in full plate armor. [Red Dragonhide Full Plate +3]
So it seems he should have only been able to fly 20 feet. So he should have only gotten 20 feet in one round and then move action+full round action to squeeze through the wall? Or would he need to wait one more round to do the full round action to squeeze? From what I understand you can move + take a full round attack action. So it seems legal.

>>Fourth: it should have used a greater invisibility potion: small problem, retrieving a potion is a move action and drinking one a standard action, the wizard would have been invisible, but at 5' from the fighter and in a know location. Mirror image from a scroll or memorized would have worked better as a defensive spell. Dimension door (from a scroll or as a memorized spell) way better as an escape plan.

I think the argument was invisibility before the battle started since he knew it would be an ambush. You make a good point though that I shouldn't use invisibility in the future in an enclosed space. I will endeavor to not make that mistake.

On a side note, check what potions they have. If you are hazy on the rules it is possible that you have let them purchase/make potions of personal spells. That can be very problematic, as that kind of spell is not meant to be available to other classes unless they are using UMD on wands or scrolls to cast them.

Ok. I can watch that. I don't hear them talk of drinking potions too much during the game, but one surviving secondary character is a potion-maker.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Hello!

I was harshly criticized by my playing group for my Fort Drelev encounter. I know that there is much I could do to improve.

A.
What I wonder though is if my situation is unique here in that I have very knowledgeable players and/or my skills as a rules-knowing GM are very terrible (which exacerbates the issue-still, I already know that my players know the game far better than I do). Essentially, I want to vent a little and to try to figure out how typical my situation is?

I feel bad about this encounter at Drelev's because I walked away from the session feeling great! For the first time since they hit level 4 I'd been able to actually CHALLENGE the party! And I did it with an interesting battle- multiple levels of battle (ground, 30 foot staircase, inside a tower, on the battlements), three types of enemies (wizard, archers, hill giants) Re. Challenge: (e.g. 2 players never take damage ever in any session, but in this one, I'd finally been able to present them a little bit of a threat).

But then I was criticized for being too tough by some and for being incompetent by others (They thought I should have TPKed them and must have been fudging dice, or that I must have just been incompetent at preparing encounters).

They have given me a lot of good things to think about to improve. I accept the fact that I constantly let down my group because I don't know the rules well enough :(, but it's frustrating. I really HATE memorizing rules. I play the game because I like the stories. Rules are work, and they are unclear. :(. I do what I can to keep the rules straight though for my players because I know they like them. But the game has become very, very stressful for me-I can sense disapproval from the players with every encounter I make for them.

I had so much fun during this session because I wasn't arguing about the rules with anyone, because I thought I was actually playing the encounter properly, and then I received several page-long email complaints. A few months back I had to take a break from GMing in part because I felt so badly after every game- I was very stressed-out and unhappy. I don't want to be stressed out :(. But I like telling stories and creating them with others.

Still, this thread is aimed at questions about mechanical things rather than confronting my group about this- I already did that and they did try to help... but I'm just not good enough and don't have enough time to get the rules to a perfect level to satisfy them. :(

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B. So I'd like to [share out of frustration and to] know:

1. How well optimized are your players in Kingmaker by book 4? What CR level can they take down?

----In mine, they [group of 4 level 7s +2 level 8s+ 1 level 4 +1 NPC bard who just did a singing buff to give a +1 (Fighter, Witch, Oracle (Fire), Druid with animal, Ranger with large wolf), Wizard, another Fighter (level 4)-Point buy is slightly above what paizo recommends; I believe we used 32 PB.] took down Vordakai from book 3 in 3 rounds even though I placed Vordakai behind a glass wall up 30 feet in the air, raised his level by two and added a CR 7 cyclops to the room. (If I recall properly). So that seemed to be a bit too easy, especially since the adventure recommends CR 9 to fight Vordakai. Is that...if not normal...expected?

The Fighter has a 33 AC I believe, at level 8 now and is immune to arrows (?) He also has a pegasus that flies and if he's not on it, he has fly crafted on his armor. IF he's ever on a charge-line, he gets a 3X damage on all charges if he hits...and he will almost always hit.

The Ranger has AC 28 and 3 attacks, at I believe +14/+14/+9 and +4 v. humans with his bow... he could almost win the Archery competition in Book 5 at his current level.

The others are more normal.

The Fighter and Ranger also claim that their characters should be the weakest in the group and that the others aren't playing optimized enough.... It's hard to scale encounters since everyone else's AC is below 22 except the Druid (who is 26 I think?)

I allowed crafting, but their wealth per level is at level 7 or 8-the appropriate amount. It's not a monty haul campaign. I also did not use the Kingdom-selling magic items rules AND I limited the gold level that they could purchase any magic item to kingdom built buildings- in order to slow down the magic christmas tree effect a bit and to make things more manageable on my end.

2. How did your liberation of Fort Drelev go?

--For Fort Drelev, they beelined there, avoiding all other encounters, at level 8 (nearly level 9-essentially 2 minor encounters would have leveled them all up, and they all leveled after this session). Only 4 players (Fighter, Witch, Druid, Ranger) showed up for this game. Now, Fort Drelev should be approached at CR 11. It should also be a sneaking game and they did meet the refugee who told them that they should sneak in--they didn't trust her and they didn't want to mess around with that, so they demanded an audience with Baron Drelev. He put them up in his fort.

They spent a night and then were escorted into a courtyard where they were jumped by 4 archers (lvl 4) on the walls, 4 hill giants at the courtyard exit. And the Wizard was located in a tower 30 feet up, shooting out a small near-murder-hole window that gave him 3/4 cover. I used the 6-player conversion for the wizard, but all that really added was 2 extra level 7 spells... and he failed at using Forcecage on the first round.

The party managed to flee, flying out to safety after barely managing to disable the Wizard.

One player was upset because the hill giants knocked the player down to 0 hp in 2 rounds and that player was not a front line fighter. My explanation was that the particular player was the closest to the enemies...

The fighter was disappointed in the session because in his opinion, the Wizard was played incompetently :(. He said if I had played right, I should have TPKed them since the encounter was CR 14 and they were only 4 PCs at level 8.

He followed that up by stating that he was annoyed that the CR was so inappropriately high and that it's not a fun challenge to fight something far above their expected challenge level. I'm not as worried about that because story-wise, the CR WAS appropriate given that they didn't slink around and decided to face things with guns blazing.

--I opened with Force Cage on the Druid- who the wizard figured
probably had been the big monster in the sea, so he didn't want him
changing forms. (This was a 6-player group spell list)

Surprise Round.

--I followed with disintegrate on the Ranger (Paizo's spell list)

Players finally locate what's hitting them. Roll initiative. Wizard wins.

--I followed with chain lightning centered on the Fighter (Paizo's spell list)

Then the players FINALLY got an action.

--Then I was going to use empowered lightning bolt, but the Fighter was out of sightrange, so I used Enervation on the Druid??. (both in paizo's list)

-Then the Fighter got inside (squeezed in the window) and the Wizard activated his staff for a fire wall. (in paizo's character sheet)

The fighter has the wall centered on him, so he just walks forward (takes no damage) and knocks the wizard to 20 hp. So, the wizard steps 5 ft back and casts his escape spell.

I was told that I "picked the WORST targets for your spells. [I should have] Chain Lightning the Witch. Disintegrate the Druid. Force Cage the Fighter. Target our worst saves, not our strongest." and that the Wizard who they were fighting should have had a potion of greater invisibility and he should have prepared more area of effect spells :(

I really had thought what I did made the most sense... Force Cage the guy who can change his form to be like the lake monster and the Ranger, Disintegrate the guy who can shoot me full of arrows, chain lightning centered on the fighter to get him down a little. On re-reading the stat block admittedly it seems that the wizard's tactics were to focus on people one-by-one... I misread that. I also didn't see his special ability to give +6 damage per spell...

-So the players' current opinion (In their LG nation] is to round up all their army and all the PCs and NPC allies, and destroy the fort of Fort Drelev...which is fine and still valid, but I can't say I've seen anyone take that tact on the boards. That's not a problem- that's more of an interesting point.

3. So Question 3- If you have very powerful characters and almost NO time to prepare for the Rules part of the game; how do you run things? My players don't trust me to know the rules properly so they don't trust me when I say "GM says so." They just say that I'm being unfair because we "follow the rules all the other times."

===I don't know what to do any more. I can't challenge the party AT ALL with CR-appropriate encounters, and when I challenge them, I am criticized for being unfair or incompetent. CR14 v. only 4 of them was a bit too much- but STORYWISE it was very appropriate given that the Fort had an entire day to prepare for an ambush- I actually think I went light on them- I could have sent all the hill giants and all the guards-- and that would have been justified since they had approached the city on a flying pegasus and as a polymorphed druid as a sea monster who looked like Lil Hooktongue (!) [Suffice to say, panic levels in the city and liberation points are well in the negatives].

--
Essentially, I'm so nervous that I'm unhappy to run games for my group any more. I don't have time or the interest in the rules to do things right enough regarding the rules. But I love the story and I'm really looking forward to finishing it.

My group has given me the best advice they can; I've taken what I can. And I'm just very sad. Can a GM like myself, who values a deep and involved story and who doesn't have the inclination to memorize rules or the time to study the rules extensively before every session, run a game on the fly while satisfying players that he is doing his absolute best to be fair? *sigh*. I really just play the game to try to relax and I cannot relax. It's frustrating.

Congratulations! I'm glad that I and others spoke up for you in round 2 to support your Monster Reformation Alliance so we could see you go all the way and produce a good product! :D

Well, if you want all the open source material there's always the

http://www.d20pfsrd.com (Crunch)
and http://www.pathfinderwiki.com (Fluff)
for access to some things that you cannot at the moment afford

You don't necessarily need to buy everything out there to play and enjoy the game.

>>Except I've been running Kingmaker for 2 years and we've only just finished book 3.

Eerily similar to my own group.

I used a lot of your KM additions and added my own and the 6 player adventuring party additions. :o.

We just started book 4 a few months ago. I am very anxious to get to the tournament in book 5!

1. Kingmaker by far

I am very much looking forward to the new pirates adventure for similar open-world reasons. :)

I can't promise I would purchase a Numeria AP, but it would definitely pique my interest. When shopping for APs, I look for something I haven't seen before that is well done that I can use--it appears that a Numeria AP could be that type of AP.

I'd probably at minimum buy one for a unique adventure session to use for my players.