Greil9's page

I've been designing a campaign so I'll have one ready when my groups current one ends, allowing me to have a good amount of headway and not write something new every week.

Problem is that while we usually play in Golarion setting, I mostly prefer the things I write with no connection to that setting. Like cities that don't exist in it, tombs for civilizations that never were etc. Originally I just created one island nation so it would be separate from the main setting and have geography and cities dictated by me, but still be connected to the main settign without changing a lot. In time I got more ideas and it grew to become a much larger setting.

Is it better to make a whole new setting (something I've considered and planned a little bit) or just ask players to accept these new places are now part of an established setting. I just don't like writing with an established setting as it forces me to study up on the material and only plan around what already exists.

My group recently finished a high-level adventure where by the end we were pawning off +3 items since it was worse than what anyone had on. High level loot was taken for granted.

No we started Skulls & Shackles, starting from low level of course. Suddenly my context has changed quite a bit. Since we basically lost all our equipment (asides our primary weapons we were given back), everyone is really excited over getting a bag with 21 gold pieces or a regular leather armor and holy water is considered worth saving since it may come in handy.

Really weird when one session we're throwing anything below +4 to a vendor and next we're glad to have a few gold pieces on us.

I've been thinking about it and can barely find any reason.

The exact wording is: "At 12th level, a monk of the four winds can use his ki to slow time or quicken his movements, depending on the observer. As a swift action, the monk can expend 6 ki points to gain three standard actions during his turn instead of just one. The monk can use these actions to do the following: take a melee attack action, use a skill, use an extraordinary ability, or take a move action. The monk cannot use these actions to cast spells or use spell-like abilities, and cannot combine them to take full-attack actions. Any move actions the monk makes this turn do not provoke attacks of opportunity. "

-If I want it for attacks or combat maneuvers that are attack actions, I'm far better off using flurry of blows with a Ki point. Gives me more attacks with a better bonus.
-If I want to move fast, I can move just as fast by running.
-I can't use supernatural abilities so I can't use Efreeti Touch three times.
-I can't use standard actions like normal so I can't grapple the opponent and pin him down in one turn.
-As a monk I don't have any extraordinary abilities to use as a stndard action.
-I can think of very few scenarios where I'd need to use a skill several times in one round, even fewer with the monk skillset.

What is this ability actually good for?

So I'm making a monk for our next campaign. We start at level 12 so I got a good amount to work with. I'm making a Monk of Four Winds and taking all 3 feats of Efreeti Style.

I usually prefer characters theme over the effectiveness. Thereofre I made him the guy who probably could kick your ass, but prefers not doing that. Therefore he has vows of truth and peace. He will only use Elemental Fists as a last resort against an opponent so far from redemption the only solution is to completely annihilate him/her.

First off, few questions about vow of peace:
1) Can I attack opponents who have not attacked me, but have attacked my friends or companion, or are attacking innocents?
2) Can I do the first attack on opponents that are not going to go down without violence no matter what (such as sentient undead, evil outsiders or straight up monsters who just eat people)
3) Even though the vow says I must use Fight Defensively or full defense for the first 2 rounds, can I still forgo these by using non-harming means of combat like disarm, grapple or sunder?

Due to being unable to use my full power of offence, I also went for combat feats so I can grapple or disarm opponents. One question I have is about disarm: The description says if I do the disarm without the use of a weapon, I can pick up the dropped item. Does this include if I do it unarmed, but as a monk I'm considered armed even with only my fists. Do I need to take the -4 to be able to pick up the weapon? Being able to take away enemy weapons would be massively useful.

Here unspoken rule refers to something that is not outright banned in the table, but everyone or at least most people have voiced a distaste to something and it's usually frowned upon. People might want to do it, but they usually don't to respect the rest of the table.

Ours is the use of "save or die" effects, both for players and GM. Only once can I remember them being used. Even then no one expected it to work when our Magus won initiative and used Phantasmal Killer on one of the bosses. The saves weren't too bad and this boss had good saves on both fort and will. And he rolled incredibly bad for both of them, dying instantly. That was the most anticlimactic fight we had, which really got us all to laugh.

I'd also say summoners are banned, but at least 2 GMs have outright banned them from their games (we tend to rotate who is the GM).

I'm pretty sure everyone has that one character they used they always remember fondly and even wish could return to. Mine will alwyas be my first character ever, an elven rogue Greil.

I designed him to be the trickster and an architypical thief. He was good with bows and 2-weapon fighting, but he always preferred non-violent options. He carried alchemical creations like smokesticks and tanglefoot bags, he had a lot of points in stealth, he put some points in diplomacy and he usually spent a lot of time just planning, learning guard patrols or finding alternative ways inside. He also always carried few arrows with sleeping poison in them (usually he disliked using poison, but he considered sleeping poison harmless enough) and he had a lot of magic items that helped him in that job like Hat of Disguise, boots that doubled his movement speed and goggles that gave him nightvision.

He was usually the idea guy, having a plan to avoid combat or at least tip the scales to our favor. Once GM expected us to go bash a guarding golme statue to pieces, but in my reasoning it would make too much noise and someone would call guards on the house. I just gathered info to learn what the guardian statue was, how to bypass it and then the house owners appearance, allowing me to disguise myself with the hat and walk past it with no trouble.

He also formed a really good friendship with another character in the party, our Samurai. Of course they had their differences, him being lawful good and me being true neutral and a big time thief (in fact our emplyer hired me exactly since I was good at that), but they bonded over being the best close-combatants in the group and shared loss of family, seeing my character was orphaned from birth and the samurai having his entire clan killed by his sister. They'd often be bantering outside the combat and seemed to form a good pair in combat. I'd hinder enemy movement so he scored a sure hit with his Iaijutsu.

Best thing was something always kept secret from other players: I always talked this with DM, but my character had a secret identity as the master thief Yatagarasu. When players were occupied or it was sleeping time, I'd private message the DM (we were playing online due to long distances between players) about what I wanted to do. This secret identity was so he could get known for his legendary thieving skills, but still not have every guard everywhere always hunting him. It was intended to be revealed at some point that the master thief hovering over us was me all along, but the campaign was ended prematurely.

What kind of feats, skills, items etc. have people gotten for their characters that weren't in any rulebooks but GM let you have? Also of he demanded a drawback for it, add that too.

Mine was a custom-made bow that I could separate from the middle for 2 shortswords, kinda like Pit from SSBB. I was playing a rogue who could do both dual-wielding and archery, so this gave me even better ability to switch between the two and stay flexible.

The bow was +2 frost shock I called "Frosted Lightning" and the individual parts were +1 shock and +1 frost shortswords called "Fang of Ice" and "Fang of Thunder". As free action I could either combine them or separate them to switch my combat style. The bowstring was magical and appeared/disappeared accordingly. It cost me the price of both weapons plus a little extra and took a good while to make, but I really wanted ot have a cool weapon that fits my character.

So this happened:

My party was exploring a dungeon. We came across 2 Dark Stalkers, which I recognized OOC, but tried not utilizing this knowledge. Also for reference, all of us were level 4 at this point. One of them rushed us so I told others to deal with it while I dealt with the one behind him. I was playing a swashbuckler so I figured I could hadnle it or at least hold him until rest of the party kills the other in 2 turns max. Not to mention that's how my character would act.

This is where I feel ripped. Apparently these guys had "Gloves of quickened spell-like ability" so it could use Fog Cloud as swift action. This also meant since I was next to it so I could attack, it could do 2 sneak attacks to me right away, both for 3d6 from sneak attack only, which were both most likely to hit since I was a dex-based character fighting flat-footed in darkness and they had +7 to hit, plus I couldn't use parrying in darkness and at no point could I do anything to prevent this sudden death. I was at 17 health at the point and this did a total of 30 to me, killing me right away. Not to mention they also had some magic lenses that prevented them from becoming blind form light earlier, even if it was basically a flashbang we used on them.

Before you ask, I know Fog Cloud wouldn't give him sneak attack. When I confronted him about this alone a few days later, he said my death wouldn't be retconned because he misunderstood the spell and instead it was retconned that the Dark Stalker used Deeper Darkness (spell-like ability which they also have to be fair) so I could stay dead.

Not to mention all the magic items they had: All usable only by Darkfolk for reasons (mostly so we wouldn't get increased treasure to compensate for higher CR, they were apparently worth 100GP total).

I was later resurrected, but it cost us all our money, this death is now a permanent part of my character, and he hinted there'd be some other reprecussions for it in our next game.

So how should I get even with him? I don't want to start jackassing the campaign since my beef is with him only and I don't want to ruin it for other players, so my first plan is to fight fire with fire. I'm most likely to GM our next campaign so I'll split them up (most likely have them chasing severl targets so they have to split up or let some of them go), have one planned enemy use a mask that uses Hold Person as a swift action and then have him slit his characters throat as coup de grace. If he tried calling me out on it, I'll refer back to this event and that it's just as fair as it was here so he can't complain.

In case it fails or takes too long, are there other ways to get back at him for that? Note that it's the only players I know in this city so walking out of the group isn't an option.

This is about sharing your stories of players who are usually nice guys and good players, but just get a major brain fart and do something that has the entire party either laughing or shaking their heads.

First player nominated as "dumbest guy ever" was our samurai. We got into a scuffle with some guys on the street (forgot the exact reason, but they were some major bad guys). Soon after, we see some Hellknights approoaching. Now despite the name, these guys were not evil. They were good extremists who would kill you for your offenses. These particular ones were hellknights of the nail. I'll let your imagination decide why the added part.

I hid before they got to us since I played a rogue who was often stealing things. Never caught on it, but several town had suspicions on him so I figured men and women of law wouldn't like me too much. I can't remember the reason, but our samurai started badmouthing them, eventually picking a fight with one of them. I tried to come out and drag him off, but he insisted fighting. We were around level 3 or 4 so he had no chance of winning and I think everyone realized that but him. We had even heard stories of how strong they were, even if we didn't read on their levels or anything. If DM had been crueler, the samurai would have died. Hard. However, their leader stopped the fight before he died and the samurai left with only low HP and shattered pride.

However, the second player , a wizard, did several stupid things (cast lighting bolt at enemy while 2 of our party were in between him and the enemy, throwing a fireball into a room with people being held as test subjects in it) but this one took the "dumbest thing to do ever" prize and is still something we laugh at over a year later.

We were clearing the laboratory of a guy responsible for releasing some really big monster we never got a name for. Our job was to take him out and get any info on the monter we could. Earlier we had seen some trapdoor on the floor that lead down to darkness. We heard some disturbing noises from down there so we decided "yea, we're not going down there". Later after killing the guy we were looking for, our mage went over to a door with a barred hole in it. Inside we saw some monster none of us could recognize with our skill checks, but we knew it wasn't the monster we were looking for. This was also directly below the hole we saw earlier. The door was heavy steel so there was no way for it to get to us and we didn't see any reason to go fight it ourselves, so we decided to just report it to our employee and let him deal with it.

This is where our wizard gets a brilliant idea. He goes in and says "I poke it with a stick through the door". Well, the monster, surpise surprise, doesn't like it and attacks him through the door since he got close to the door. Since it's a wizard with no AC to speak of, he gets hit. This is where things get fun. DM tells him to roll a fort save, which he fails. Turns out what was in there was a chaost beast.

http://paizo.com/PRD/additionalMonsters/chaosBeast.html

He's instantly turned into basically a pile of goop. We knock him out to save him from further will saves (figuring "mental shock" won't work if he's unconscious) and quickly carry him to be healed before hsi case get's worse. OF course all the healing is taken out of his share of loot.

To this day, "go poke it with a stick" is a running joke in our group.

I'm getting into GMing in my RP group. We have 5 players, me included, and we take turns GMing the games. Though so far only 3 have done so.

I called quits to my first campaign since I don't think I did a very good job and the players seemed to agree with me. the campaign was a bit too linear, too grand a scope and some occurrences which I didn't account for. No one had hard feelings and we just chucked it up to me being inexperienced.

Once our next long campaign starts (we've been running shorter campaigns recently) I plan to use the time to build an open-ended campaign.

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I'd like some opinions for this:

The game takes place on an island nation of Duranheim. (it's the world of Golarion since it's a world we're all familiar with, but the nation is made up.)

Players start at level 7 and won't advance in level during the campaign, except maybe once, though they will keep gaining magic items throughout the campaign. This way I can keep the whole world open and not tell them "you can't go there yet, you'll be eaten alive." But I also wanted to somewhat control them so I set it on the island nation from which there is only one port out and that one is also guarded heavily.

I won't restrict player actions in any way, whether they want to be good or not. They will suffer consequences from their actions, but if they want to ally themselves with the evil monarch, I got some plans for that too.

Duranheim was taken over three years ago by Gailio Khan. He is a powerful ruler, the strongest fighter on the island and holds the city in an iron grip. Law is strict and naysayers are quickly silenced. However, he's not some barbarian who drinks the blood of his enemies from their skulls, but wants to subjugate others to his will without killing tons of people, saying "Any barbarian can slaughter hundreds and claim to be the king, with no one left to rule over. I will make them realize they need me to rule over them". While law is strict and taxes are high, he makes sure everyone contributes to the country and keeps everyone at job, feeding those who are unable to (not if it's self inflicted to screw the system). Only two crimes carry the death sentence: any dealings with or worship of demons or devils and being part of the revolutionaries on the island. His most trusted assistant are his adviser, a cleric, and his high wizard and the general of his army, all high-level NPCs.

The resistance is lead by Tetrick Regias, the former crown prince. He is an extremist, willing to go to any lengths to free Duranheim from Gailio and return the power to people. He is ready to sacrifice the citizen or make deals with some people even worse than Gailio if he believes that achieves the greater good. In the end, if players ally with Gailio, he will actually sell his soul to a devil to gain the power necessary to overthrow Gailio, becoming the final fight of the campaign.

There is also a Thieves Guild in the town. They all reside in a single section of the town. They tell nothing guards asking around and if they get too nosy, they disappear with no trace. They can elude even Gailio since their golden rule is to never tell anyone about who you're working with/for and to commit suicide if someone tries to magically get the info out of them, knowing betrayal is met with a fate worse than death. There is currently also an inner conflict going on about the next leader of the guild, candidates being a sorcerer, and two rogues, each with their own idea of how the guild should be run.

On the north side of the island there lives a tribe of forest elves, lead by the tribe elder Ra'ziel. Since Gailio took over, they've kept to themselves and held off any intruders. Their tribe forbids all use of magic, save for the village elders and his/her proteges (usually son/daughter) druidic magic and using only natural materials in everything they build. They no longer know why, but the reason is buried within the temples around the island. Basically they used to rule over a country in highly magical cities, but they started warring with each others, eventually ruining their civilization and causing Duranheim to be separated from the main continent (it wasn't an island thousands of years ago). Gailio wants to conquer them too, but again not by marching in, burning the forest and enslaving them. He could do that, but sees no victory in it.

Finally the temples around the island hold a lot of treasure and history of the island. The archeologist guild, under the orders of Gailio, has been researching and clearing these temples. Before Gailios rule, the law forbid entering the temples as the elven tribe wished them to stay sealed and the king wanted to keep good relations with them. Once Gailio was done with getting the city in a good enough order, he ordered the examination of the temples, partly out of curiosity of the history inside and partly for the treasure and magic items. Archeologists will often hire adventurers since all of their members are only researchers, not combatants.

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Who the players wish to ally themselves is up to them, though obviously some alliances will anger other factions if they're not careful about covering their tracks.

I plan to write all character sheets and personalities in advance and I'm good enough at improvising what the character would say in the situation. I will make a crude island map (since I suck at drawing) and write all the shops, what NPCs work there and make the temples ready, along with many points of interest.

Can someone suggest changes or give me advice for this? Biggest challenge will be making character sheets for all the major NPCs who could enter combat for one reason or another (not making sheets for the local blacksmith).

I play a rogue and I thought I'd try to get my hands on a Hat of Disguise since I like to steal things and that would make some targets easier. However, the rules say everyone I interact with gets a will save. And seeing I got no caster level as a rogue and the speel level is only 1, the DC is 11 for a will save.

Does it completely negate my disguise if the save succeeds or only take the bonus of +10? If it negates completely, it doesn't seem worth getting since I'm always in the danger of being caught.