The campfire's embers crackled, spitting sparks into the night. She poked at a log with a stick, watching as the orange glow reflected in her eyes. The road was quiet, just a dark line stretching out in either direction.
It was in these quiet moments that the world seemed to shrink to just this small patch of light. The familiar weight of her mithral armor felt different here, less a suit of protection and more a second skin she wore for comfort. She ran a hand over the hilt of her blade, a habit she'd developed long ago. The cool metal was a steadying presence. She wasn't a stranger to herself when she sat here; she was Tessaria Moondown, a half-elf with a sword and a handful of spells, watching the fire die down.
A lone owl hooted from a distant tree, its call echoing through the darkness. She looked up at the stars, a blanket of silver dust against the black. She was just a small part of a larger, epic story, yet in this moment, under this vast sky, the only story that mattered was her own. She sighed, a wisp of breath in the cool night air, and soaked in the peace of the wilderness.
New land has been found, untapped and unexplored. The grand nation of Taldor wants a return to their shining days of exploration. But Empress Eutropia has decided to take a different approach from the Armies of Exploration of old: Use adventurers.
Establishing the Cartographer's Guild as an arm of her government, she put out a call for brave individuals to sail and explore the far away land. The mission is travel this new land, chronicling and mapping out a new world. And because of the distance from the Inner Sea region, it's only the most desperate, the most brave, and the most idiotic who sign up.
Really, there's not a lot of people. It's not been the success she has hoped for.
So now this new and unexplored land has slid from the empress' attention. But that hasn't stopped the slow trickle of adventurers, who hop aboard a boat to explore this new land. Who knows what they'll do?
You are 1st-level adventurers who traveled by boat for over a month to a new continent, and have just arrived in New Ridonport, a small but fortified village where the Cartographer's Guild originally set up. There are basic amenities, but you know that surviving in the wilderness will be very important.
Headquarters for you is an inn called The Broken Sling. The patrons are a smattering of locals, and any adventurers that have made the trip. Bells & Whistles is a general goods store run by Bellis, an absentminded man who outfit teams. The mayor, Kaleb Ashrun, collects reports of each adventurer's findings shares what's learned to each group that goes out into the wilds. He genuinely wants them to succeed… because he's afraid he'll lose his job.
You'll travel the land via hexploration. Most adventurers have met grizzly deaths or fled back to the Inner Sea. The land is very dangerous. There are many rumours of roving goblin bands, giant spiders, and fantastic beasts. One or two groups did uncover old ruins though, hinting at the potential of treasure. The question is: will you survive long enough to find it?
The tribe arrives in Iceferry, a district of Kalsgard located on the northern banks of the Rimeflow River. Kalsgard is the de facto capital of the Lands of the Linnorm Kings located on the opposite, namely southern, bank of the Rimeflow. Iceferry is where many of the gnomes of Kalsgard live, who like to think of Iceferry as more of an independent township.
The trip has been a long sea voyage, one with a starting goal of meeting with Venture Captain Bjersig Torrsen. As a group you make your way towards the Pathfinder Lodge.
Please take a moment to introduce your PC IC as you walk through the small town.
Based on a tweet made by John Compton that discussed/encouraged writing reviews for products, I took the liberty of examining the user experience in submitting a review.
My reason for this is because, as a regular user of the website, I've noted some... well, I can only call it odd behavior. It seemed to me that this user experience might directly impact a persons desire to submit a review. If it's easy and painless, people will generally feel okay to submit reviews. But if it's even a little bit off-putting I would expect that someone would just not bother.
My conclusion? I found the process clunky. Here's the step by step on my process:
Step 1) Navigate to paizo.com. No problem :)
Step 2) Search for a scenario using the top search bar. Since I'd recently run The Lion's Justice, I searched for it.
Step 3) I get search results. Sort of. The first thing I see are all the filters I can apply to the results, and they take up a significant amount of screen real estate (my screen resolution is 1920x1080, so I know it's not that). This is odd because I very rarely even need these filters. A better approach would be to have them on the left-hand side of the screen, or have them collapsed/hidden. This way the search results show near the top of the screen, where a user expects to look. I had to actually scroll down to see the link for the scenario. Anyhow, I then click the link for The Lion's Justice.
Step 4) The product page for the scenario loads, but I am again given a strange starting place. Instead of the page loading at the top, showing the scenario name and synopsis, it loads mid-way down the page at the Product Discussion section. This is probably one of the least pertinent places for a user to start at. Not only that, but I don't actually see anything at this point that tells me I'm at the right page. I need to scroll up first. Once I verify that I am at the right page though, I click on the Product Reviews tab.
Step 5) Ok, time to write a review. I go looking a button. None at the top of the reviews. None at the bottom of the reviews. Maybe I need to be logged in? I login to my account and navigate back. Still no "Write a Review" button. I'm about to give up, because this shouldn't be hard but I don't. I ask a buddy of mine, and he tells me there's a "Write a Review" hyperlink embedded in a sentence. I'm at first embarrassed because I missed it, but... why isn't this a more prominent button? If you want to encourage people to submit reviews, you want this to stand out. Embedding it as a hyperlink in text is subtle. In my mind there ought to be a big button at the bottom of the page as well, especially because if someone takes the time to look at the reviews, it's possible that they'd be willing to submit one too. In any case, I click on the hyperlink.
Step 6) The page for writing a review appears. This is simple and straightforward, which is nice. I quickly write up a review and give it a rating.
This was my first product review, and I want to reiterate that the process to do this was just difficult enough that I felt disinclined to write it. You might feel that this is a harsh assessment. If so, I'm sorry. But I do feel that if you want to increase the number of reviews (a metric people look at when buying products) that it's incredibly important to make that process as simple as possible. The user experience for me did not reflect that.
TL;DR - Search results show huge list of often unnecessary filters. Product page loads mid-way down unhelpfully. Write a Review hyperlink on product page is hard to spot. These three things make writing reviews clunky for a first time reviewer.
Achilles heel (Defect) [The entire eye socket around my left eye was badly harmed in a robot incident as a child. If I get hit there, double damage and can't do anything for the next round. Nat 20 automatically counts as hitting this area.]
Chameleon Power (9) [Body coloration automatically matches the color of any background within a meter. (Clothes don't change) ... Can choose to change to any single color at will, or to look normal. When it is active, the Remain Unseen score goes up by 5 +the modifier (score 9 means modifier 0).]
Heightened Physical Attribute (Dexterity +5)
Radiating Eyes (MP 34 <rolled three times>) [22 intensity (5 base +MP modifier of 11) ***Re-roll the 2d4 for second roll of this power to 4d6-lowest instead*** radiation beam from eyes (recharges one point per round after expended). Head is immune to radiation and add +2 to health score versus radiation. Under radiation, looks like potency (=intensity?) 21-25 does 5d6 damage and causes radiation sickness (gives -4 penalty on PS/DX/THAC/AC/MHAC/MD, moves at half speed, and intensity goes down by one each day) and causes mutation as the person recovers from radiation sickness), 16-20 does 4d6, and radiation sickness at -2, but no mutation, 11-15 does 3d6 damage, 6-10 2d6, 1-5 1d6. We've ruled that the mutation power has to be divided between the targets if I am facing more than one with max intensity only for the first hit, then the intensity builds back up slowly, 1 per round). If MP modifier goes down to zero and the intensity would be 5 flat with no bonus (intensity 1-5 is 1d6 damage). So, I can hit one person for full intensity, full damage, or many for less damage.]
Sonar [I have antennae and I can use inaudible sound to see.]
Teleport Object (13) [Teleport any object from one place to another. Must be able to see it, and object and destination have to be within 60 meters (50 + 10 times MP mod of +1). Can't weigh over 13 kilograms. If held, have to make a mental attack against physical AC to teleport the object. Can use the power once an hour.
Swimming (can... swim speed for Altered Humans is 3)
Use Artifacts +1 Examiner (add +1 each level)
Derived Attributes:
THAC Melee +1 [PS mod]
THAC Ranged +4 [Dex mod] Chameleon Power +0 / Radiating Eyes +11
AC 14 [10 +Dex mod]
MHAC: +1 for Teleport Object, if the object is being held by a creature (otherwise no attack roll is needed)
MD 11 [10 +MS mod]
Hit Points 46 [(CN)d6]
Health 10/12 [+2 versus radiation from Radiating Eyes mutation]
Use Artifacts 1 (+0 from Int, +1 from Examiner) [+1 per Examiner level]
Perception +7 [SN score +Int mod]
Stealth +4 [Dex mod]
Remain Unseen +0/+5 [+5 when using Chameleon Power]
Speed 16 [Base 12 +4 Dex mod]
Robot Recognition 19 [20 -2 Altered Human +1 Examiner]
=== Equipment ===
Arrows (72) [15 Domars]
Backpack [5 Domars]
Bedroll [5 Domars]
Binoculars (X5 magnification) [100 Domars]
Boots [10 Domars]
Chain (10 m) [15 Domars]
Chemical Power Cells (5 fully charged) [to go with taser]
Clock [25 Domars]
Compass [6 Domars]
Computer Lexicon (translator) [Free heirloom item (class/DM) worth 600 Domars]
Copper wire (10 m) [15 Domars]
Hourglass [3 Domars]
Longbow [cost 35, 1d8 base damage]
Map (2) [10 Domars]
Morningstar [2d4 base damage, 7 Domars)
Paper, Quill, Ink (3 sets) [6 Domars]
Rope (60 m) [6 Domars]
Sack (2) [2 Domars]
Scissors [3 Domars]
Shovel [5 Domars]
Studded leather (+3) [cost 25]
Taser [1d3 damage, 7 shots before recharge/per powercell if changing them out, full round to reload, in addition to normal damage, target stunned for 1d6 rounds and knocked back 1d4 minus 1 meters (reduced if larger than human sized, increased if smaller... 1 meter per size increment). Range 3 meters. [
Tech Level III Toolset (free, with Examiner)
Tech Level IV Toolset [Level 1 (+1) 250 Domars]
Waterskin (2) [2 Domars]
Whip
Whistle [1 Domar]
Want to Buy in the future if possible:
Solar Charger (tech level V)
All types of power cells (Chemical, Hydrogen, Solar), but Solar would be nicest, and Atomic would be thematic with the character.
Broken device: You find a good deal of small broken pieces or nograin, live metal and some kind of lights and a speaker of some sorts.
Cash on hand: 324 Domars
Loot:
two revolvers fully loaded and another 13 rounds of ammunitions as well as a whip.
(one revolver and 6 rounds of ammo given to Tintoretto, taking the whip)
Disk with recording of how Daradall was captured by a blue man to which he gave a box with something important.
Also some other recordings... 8 silver discs the size of a large plate: 3 disks are bundled together to represent something called "The Cosmos" and the other 5 are together to talk some kind of a dairy product or a trail covered in milk, it sounds strange and ancient.
Mission Notes:
He then shifts his feet a little and says, "Delightful. Here is the situation: An agent of ours is missing. He had been sent to an ancient installation called the Sagow Enstoot a month ago. He is presumed to be dead. It is our standard procedure to attempt to recover the body in such cases. We would like you to do that for us. "
He continues, "Our base rate for such a venture is 200 domars per sentient, 100 of it paid in advance. If you recover the body, there is a 250-domar bonus for each of you, 500 if you bring him back alive. If you bring back proof that he is alive and some clue of his whereabouts, that is also worth 250 domars each. If you return with the results in ten days or less, that is worth another 100 domars each. Of course, we only pay surviving members of the expedition. Are you still interested?"
Character Notes:
You asked us to write you about membership in a Cryptic Alliance and I think I want to go with the Radioactivists. I also really like the Iron Society, but it doesn't allow you to join both, and the Radioactivists seems to be more fun, and go along with my character pretty well.
I'm thinking the Radiating Eyes mutation is something that has forced her to believe, for her own sanity, that radiation is good. She's mostly a traditionalist, with just a tinge of reformed... she doesn't do experiments for fun, but if she is forced to use her Radiating Eye power on someone, then she sees the result as divine justice.
The benefit for Radioactivists is two extra mutations, but can't roll in these private messages, and don't want to put it in a spoiler in recruitment because it will be obvious what it is for, so I rolled over here, if that is okay: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t4re?Dice-Roll-Test#3
That comes out to Teleport object (mental power) and Radiating Eyes again for Physical Power... and the 2d4 is because I already had the Radiating Eyes power, so it says to add 2d4 to the mutation power score for that mutation.
as far as exposing myself to enough radiation that it will harm me, not sure how those rules work, but I will see if I can find it.
The additional 4d6 at that link I think is the extra power score for the added Radiating eye beam, but need to re-read that. Might have gotten it wrong and left in a die I should have dropped.
