Derwalt that is how I read the spell, but to move things along (the player who made the move is a wee bit of rules lawyer and the game can bog down), but I wanted to get some opinions from some 'experts'.
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I'm wondering if all the rules that would apply to the spell cast apply to the eidolon. For instance, in my game the player cast Dimension Door on his eidolon, but then wanted his eidolon to act right away, even though Dimension Door states "After using this spell, you can't take any other actions until your next turn." We talked about it and ruled that the eidolon could act but that the caster could not. I'm just not sure that was correct. Anyone have a thought on this?
I may be wrong but I was under the impression that you couldn't ready an action until initiative had been rolled. So, unless you're rolling initiative before every door you can't ready an action. I personally think this rule is crap. If the rogue in the party is going to take 20 on a pick locks roll to get the door open then the baddies on the other side can ready actions to smash him when the door finally opens. If I get my guys to roll initiative every time someone gets the drop on them they'll meta-game the crap out of it.
Okay, I'm starting to get the picture. More monsters is generally more fun anyway. I'll rework a few of the encounters and see how it goes. Thanks everyone.
Okay, so more critters rather than one large one. I'll keep that in mind. I don't remember finding it this hard to create more balanced encounters in 3.5. The system seemed to work pretty good. I'll have to be a little more careful with Pathfinder until I get a better feel for the encounter creation system.
Can you give any examples of the problem? Sure. One of the encounters I had was a giant scorpion against the party of six PCs. So the average level of the party is 1 (they're all first), plus one for having a large party, plus it was a challenging encounter, so another plus one, which give a CR of 3. The scorpion is CR 3. But at +6 to hit, with the fighters having an average AC of 17, I'm hitting them almost half the time, and a full attack on the scorpion is three attack rolls, even spread out, that's going to kill someone pretty quick. The damage is 1d6+4 for each claw, and then the tail, with poison. Now, maybe this one is over powered for them, the problem is, even at this level, they killed it in two rounds. So, the monsters die fast, but so do the PCs.
Hello gang My group has just switch over from 4e (which we were luke warm on) to Pathfinder (which we're enjoying much more). I, as the DM, have a few questions though. I've noticed in combat, with encounters built per the core book, that the PC and monsters are pretty well matched, which seems to be a change from 3.5. What I mean is this - I'm finding that the monsters and PCs are pretty easy to hit, and that the damage each does will wipe out the other pretty quickly. I've been doing a fair bit of fudging of the dice because I figured I'd screwed something up. Is this working as intended? It almost seems like the PCs and monsters need a hit point kicker like Hackmaster, a bonus of somewhere around 20 hit points at first level to make things interesting. What are other DMs finding? Should I be lowering the CRs of the encounters, or just beefing up the monster hit points while lowering their damage output? Thanks for your comments.
Well, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the package arrived very quickly, which is great. The bad news is that one of the items I ordered as not included. I ordered Pathfinder Chronicles: Curse of the Crimson Throne Map Folio print version, but received Curse of the Crimson Throne Player's Guide. Just let me know how you want to handle this. Oh yeah, the Pathfinder RPG Beta looks great. Nice going guys.
Cosmo - thanks for the reply. It is odd that so many of the same issue going to Canadian subscribers have gone missing. It's too bad there's not some way you could ship all the magazines in bulk to Canada and then have them be sent to the subscribers - fewer hands for the magazines to pass through would probably help the problem. I'll let you know if the two issues in questions show up, but seeing as issue #355 has arrived I leave very little hope that #354 and #353 will show.
Just letting you know that these issues have not shown up yet. I may be a little early on #146 but #145 is a really late by this point (so I've already purchased a copy from my LGS). I posted in the Dragon section that there seems to be a problem getting my issues of both magazines. I've had a subscription for two years now and when I first got it the service was great, but of late it's gotten pretty bad. Not sure who's responsible for that. As posted in Dragon section, any chance that the magazine could be shipped as other than 2nd class mail? Thanks.
Hear, hear. I am now two issues behind. Today (April 16th) I recieved issue #355, but have yet to get issues #354 or #353 (I've subsequently purchased them from my local gaming store). I'll post in the Dungeon section about those issues being late. I'm not sure why I subscribe anymore. The service has alwasy been spotty at best, but has gotten much worse in the last few months. I don't buy the excuse that it takes longer to ship to Canada when my local gaming store has the issues out on display before i get mine in the mail - on those rare occasions when I do get it in the mail that is. I've asked before about NOT shipping the subscriptions 2nd class mail, any chance of that happening?
Hear, hear. I am now two months behind. I just (today April 16th) recieved Dragon issue #355, but have yet to recieve issues #353 or #354. I'll post in the Dungeon section about those missing issues, but I'm two issues behind there also. Not really sure why I subscribe anymore? Issues are always late (well actually they just never show up). And I don't buy the excuse that it takes longer to ship to Canada when my local gaming shop always has the magazines on display before I get them through subscription - on those rare times when they do show up that is. I've asked before about subscritions that are not 2nd class mail, any chance of that happening?
Hangfire, we'll reship yours. Thanks Vic, much appreciated.
I've yet to see issue #139 either. Can you send another one out to Vancouver Vic? Thanks.
I'm curious to know if the DMs that are removing encounters are replacing them with different encounters, or just scrapping them all together. I know that for my group (which is pretty big at 6 players) had trouble meeting the level requirements for the later issues of the AP. I had to make up side adventures to ensure that they were the right level. I would be cautious about simply removing without replacing encounters, especially if your group is bigger and the XP they do receive is spread out over more players. I have to agree with DM burnout - I'm just about there with the AP. We are about half way or more through issue #133 (the giants and dragons adventure) and it's all I can do to keep the game going. I'm wondering if maybe the AP aren't a little long - 6 to 8 issues might be a better size. Another thing that I noticed is that much of the fun has left the game now that the party is at 18th level. Combat takes forever with 6 players and the games have dragged into long combat-fests with little else happening for a session. I like the AP though, the story line is great, but I'm starting to think I won't make it to the end.
I'm looking for some help with an excel file that I'm building to track XP for my group. I have the basic file built, but I need help with one part of it. I need to be able to compare the current XP of each party member to the XP table, and generate the actually level of each character. As it stands now I have a table that adds up the XP gained at each session and gives me a total at the top - which makes life much easier for me. But sometimes I look at the totals and can't remember how much is needed for 17th level. One cell in each column would calculate the level based on the XP table on another sheet of the workbook. Sounds complicated, and I'm sure with enough trial and error I could figure it out, but someone that really knows excel could probably generate the formula that I need in no time. I'm not even sure at this point whether to use IF(), AND(), OR(), COUNTIF() or whatever. Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I would be willing to email you the file after for your own use. Thanks.
I have the Black Company Campaign Guide which is the basis for the magic system in True Sorcery and it is a great change of pace. I'm looking forward to seeing if they have tweaked anything about the system. Should be good.
I know I'm going to get some eye rolling with this, but this is what we did in my campaign. I gave the players a choice of three arrays: 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14; 18, 18, 16, 14, 10, 8; and 18, 16, 16, 12, 12, 10. They could put them anywhich way they wanted. This made everyone very happy at the beginning of the game. We are also using action points as per Eberron. In addition, they could choose from a list of creatures to play that were LA +1 or +2. All of this buffing made absolutley no difference to character survival! This is a tough adventure, and my players like the combat aspect, and even buffed as they were they have been dropping like flies. Warms an evil DM's heart to run an adventure like this one.
Thank you James, this is exactly the type of advice I was looking for. What would I do without the exceptional support of the people of Dungeon magazine? I think I know how this will work out now. Thanks again.
Okay, I seem to have a problem in this adventure and I'm really hoping someone out there has a brillant bit of insight for me. My party (and they are all experienced players with at least 10 years under their belt) have entered the city of Ahlster and decided to visit one of the lower class bars. One of the players (a guy) is playing a human female barbarian. She sort of stands out, so she's approached by a few bugbears in the bar - they want to buy her a drink. She says fine, if you beat up my friend over there. I don't for the life of me know why she did this, but she did. The bugbears are always up for a fight and jump right in. The rest of the party, and bar, get involved. It's going great until one of the angels shows up to break up the fight. The citizens all quiet down, but the party doesn't want to go to jail and attack the angel, killing her! Now they just want to 'disguise' themselves and get away with it. No harm, no foul. I'm not to comfortable with that, there should be some kind of consequence - but does it mean the end of the adventure path? How is the Prince going to feel about the group that's going around killing his city watch - certainly he's not going to want them at his party. This one has me stumped. Any suggestions?
The reason there are so many high EL encounters is that there otherwise would not be enough XP in this mod to advance 13th level PCs to 15th. That's why they needed to throw in XP awards for seeing the visions. The tough encounters plus story awards barely get the party to 15. It's just an inherent flaw of this module that there isn't enough space in the mag to cover dealing with Manzorian, plus revealing all of Kyuss' history, plus having ~20 balanced encounters to advance the PCs two levels. Obscure you are completely correct, that is the reason that the encounters are so tough. But that still doesn't make for a good adventure. I mean, eventually the players will get tired of rolling up new characters each week just to make it through one dungeon. The logic in making the encounters too hard for the party is lost on me. The makers of the game went to a lot of trouble to incorporate a system for balancing encounters (and I'm not debating the reliability of said system) so that problems like the ones in this adventure don't happen. I was just hoping that the writers for dungeon would use the system, or at least get close. An EL 17 encounter for a party of 13-14th level characters is a TPK (unless the dice roll very poorly for the DM).
Two of my party members died in the encounter with the Swords of Kyuss and their negative energy blast - the cleric failed all three saves and took somewhere in the high 80's points of damage. The nagas in the tunnel took out another player with enervation and then slay living (nothing like lower the saves before hitting them with a good killer spell), and the most recent death was from the naga socerer who cast harm on the other cleric in the party and promptly did 140 points of damage. I realize that a party should be able to take on an EL 14, but my concern is that there are too many EL 15, EL 16 and then an EL 17 encounter. Now if the party was just 13th level when the adventure began then there's no way they can be 15th level when they encounter the lich - and that's an EL 17!! That spells party death. Even with all the XP for the visions my party isn't at 14th level yet, and they are standing outside the door of the lich's chamber.
My party of six players is having a really hard time of it. The party members are dropping so fast that it's hard to maintain any kind of flow to the game. I asked this before and got no respose so I'll ask again: "As I look through this adventure I was struck by this fact - the dungeon is for 4 characters of 13th level, who should reach 14th at some point, so why are all the encounters above the EL 13 that they should be? There's not one EL 13 encounter in the ziggurat!! Most are EL 14 on the upper level, and most are EL 15-16 in the lower dungeon. What is up with that? In fact, there is but one encounter that's EL 14 in the lower level, two EL 15, two EL 16, and one EL 17!! The party is only just supposed to reach level 15 at the end of the adventure, so why are the EL's so high? I mean one or two encounters above the level of the party is fine, if they can rest and recover between encounters, but in the lower level only two of the encounters can be said to be at the party's level (and my group is just in the 13th level range, about half way to 14th, and there are 6 of them, and they are starting to get tired of all the deaths) so what gives?" I'm hoping for a response this time. . . .
The problem of course is that the party's only wizard is a multiclassed wizard/rogue, so no high level spells. Also, the real hard part of this is that after fighting to get down to the bottom of the pit they find 6 swarms. Swarms are hard to kill without area of effect spells, the same kind that may have just been used to kill/get by the worm nagas. My problem with this part of the adventure is that there is no break between one really hard encounter and the next really hard encounter. Now I could change things (which I'm going to have to do) but then I worry about the party gaining enough XP for the next part of the path!! I read on here earlier that making sure the party was the right level was one of the reasons behind the 'vision' awards - if I start cutting out encounters I'll have a party at least one level lower than they need to be for the next issue.
The party has the advantage of being able to retreat over the wall where none of the dungeon denizens can reach them. Vyvyan, what I was talking about is actually getting out of the lower level of the dungeon after having fought 12 nagas and 6 worm swarms. If your party members have anything left after that then they are true heroes. Mine don't have anything. After all the healing and all the spells that had to be used to kill off the swarms they are spent. How to get back up 500 feet of tunnel - and my party only faced 5 of the 12 nagas, and only actually killed one!! Leaving 11 left to harras them on the way up. In fact, at this point, other than climbing - and that's quite a few climb checks - my party has no way to escape the lower dungeon.
That's something that I have found too, the combats are taking a long time to play out. Part of it is me as the DM, there are so many options, and more spell casters than I usually run. It's been cool though - I like the monsters in the campaign. The combat last night against the Nagas and worm swarms took about five and a half hours to fight, which was our whole sessions. And I thought the party would make it through the lower dungeon in one session, now I'm thinking more like two, maybe three.
As I take my party through this part of the adventure path I'll keep you guys updated as to the most deadly parts - and I wouldn't mind hearing from the designer of this part of the path (Mr. Decker) to learn what the intention was to have so many very deadly encounters packed into one small dungeon. So, last night the party decended down the pit, which is 500 feet deep, to the room below. Now, there are supposed to be encounters with Worm Nagas during the decent - I had one encounter occur just 60 feet into the decent, and then I was going to spread them out through the rest of the pit. There are supposed to be 12 Nagas, encountered in groups of 1d3. I had three in the first encounter. The feeblemind gaze hit three members out of six, and they retreated. One of the clerics was alright, and so cast heal on the other cleric, who then healed the rest of those hit with the gaze. They eventually managed to get by these guys by casting wall of stone to seal off the tunnel entrances. The party used air walk to decend into the pit, and when they encounter the next lot (this time only 2). A couple of dispel magic later and the party was floating at 60 feet per round to the bottom of the pit. Where the 6 worm swarms are waiting for them. This is a very deadly part of the dungeon - there's no where to hide and rest, and fighting 6 swarms is going to run the party very low on spells - and there are only a few rooms in the area that have doors where they might go and rest, but they all have encounters on the other side. For my party they managed to kill all the worm swarms, and only one of the Nagas - and one party member died (that slay living spell the Nagas have is pretty good). Peruhain - to you I say this: don't even think about having Kelvos fight with Mak'ar. Mak'ar is an EL 17 encounter with out any help, and your party will have to fight just to get to his room as it's on the other side of an EL 16 encounter. For the Dungeon team I do have a question. As I look through this adventure I was struck by this fact - the dungeon is for 4 characters of 13th level, who should reach 14th at some point, so why are all the encounters above the EL 13 that they should be? There's not one EL 13 encounter in the ziggurat!! Most are EL 14 on the upper level, and most are EL 15-16 in the lower dungeon. What is up with that? In fact, there is but one encounter that's EL 14 in the lower level, two EL 15, two EL 16, and one EL 17!! The party is only just supposed to reach level 15 at the end of the adventure, so why are the EL's so high? I mean one or two encounters above the level of the party is fine, if they can rest and recover between encounters, but in the lower level only two of the encounters can be said to be at the party's level (and my group is just in the 13th level range, about half way to 14th, and there are 6 of them, and they are starting to get tired of all the deaths). I'm at the point now where I'm going to have to go through the rest of the dungeon and change everything to make it survivable - not easier, just survivable! This one is really over the party's ability, in my opinion.
I'd like to get some idea of how other DMs are doing in the Spire segment of the Age of Worms. My party just entered the ziggurat, and they didn't have an easy time of it. I have six members in my group, with five of them being there when they entered Room #5. Now they rolled to listen at the door of the room, but undead just standing there are pretty hard to hear, so the party was surprised when they entered the room (the undead all have pretty good Spots and Listens I noticed - like ~+21, so no problem to hear the party at the door). Party steps into the room and wham! the Swords of Kyuss unleash their 'power of death' as my party has come to call it - 14d6 damage!! Well the cleric failed all of this reflex saves and died. Only the monk and rogue made it through unharmed. Needless to say the combat went down hill from there - the warlock also died eventually. After retreating all the way back to Magepoint, rearming, reincarnating/raising party members they trek back to the city and go for it again. The battle went better, but two party members died again - and the party was ready for undead this time. I know the group thinks this encounter is too tough. What about the rest of you - death trap or not? I'm not sure if the Swords of Kyuss, with that great ability they have, are only a CR 10 creature. I mean, they get to heal and harm at the same time three times a day - a total of nine times in the encounter. Pretty tough.
Okay, I was thinking that each got two of the named abilities (that's the way it reads, to me anyway) - it is obvious what each named ability does for the knight. Thanks for the help.
As a gargantuan creature, the overworm has a -4 size penalty to all attack rolls and AC. Also, the lower number of attacks is somewhat taken into account. It is a 20 HD creature with a lower CR than 20, after all. Besides which, the CR = level for NPCs formula is fairly well contested, but that's a different rant for a different thread... Okay, that's what I forgot - the size modifier for a gargantuan creature. Actually, I didn't realize that there was one (my bad). I knew there was one for AC, which sort of makes sense, but being penalized to hit because you're bigger is kind of counter-intuitive. I mean, do we find it harder to hit an ant becuase it's so small (especially with a natural weapon)? You'd think that when you swing that gargantuan paw that you wouldn't have to be that acurate, it's gonna hit everything in it's path regardless of size!! However, we're not going to debate the rules here. Thanks Demiurge.
Okay, one more question. In regards to the Overworm - the stat block gives it a +21 to hit, but mentions that a 10 point power attack is included in that. However, a 20 HD magical beast has a BAB equal to it's HD as a fighter, or +20 in this case. The overworm has a Strength of 40 giving it a +15 to it's attack, which comes to +35, minus 10 for power attack should give it a +25. Right? Am I missing something (which is totally possible). Also, does the fact that it gets only one attack reflected in the CR? A 20th level fighter would get 4 attacks every round, but this beastie only gets one.
Okay, so I have some questions about the various monsters. First up, the Kyuss Knights - they have some abilities listed and I'm not sure if the bonuses have already been added to their stat blocks or not. Dark Blessing gives Cha mod bonus to all saving throws - is that already added or do I have to do it. It's a 16 HD creature, but has saves of Fort +10, Ref +10, Will +17. Now with a Charisma of 20 (+5), that would give it pretty low scores if the +5 is already added. Okay, on to the second ability - Gifts of Kyuss which states "Each Kyuss Knight possesses two unique gifts . . . . " but which two (is it really supposed to be two?!?). It's obvious which one each gets as the gifts are named, but which other one do they each get? Is it DM choice? Third, is the Martial Calling already added - gain half HD as an attack bonus? How about Unholy Toughness which adds to it's hit points - this one seems to have been added in already as the creature has 184 hit points but a Con of only 10. I did notice in some of the other creatures that it would say if the effect was added, but this one didn't and some of the bonus don't appear to have been added. Thanks for any help.
Ooh! A threadnapping! Gosh guys, at least you could tell me if you think my magic items suck or not. :p ;) Sorry about that Peruhain. I like the items you have come up with. I am wondering how you're going to value them. Both are pretty powerful, although not too much so for a party at the level they should be when they recieve these items. I was wondering about Legecy items - how would one value them?
I don't have a magic item to add to this list, but wanted to ask the DM's that read through this thread to give me some feed back about something related to Tenser's gifts. The players in my group are never all at the game. There are 6 players and I usually have 4 or 5, but rarely all 6. There are one or two that are more often absent then the others (one has a wife that really hates D&D so it's hard for him to get away and play). Anyway, the group is just about to the part where they recieve the gifts, and two guys are going to be away. Now normally this would be no big deal, but both of them have been real steady players, and one is the guy that is really following the story, asking the right questions and that sort of thing. I had suggested that we skip a week so they could both be there. I feel that this part of the adventure is sort of a reward for getting this far - I mean the magic items are really a gift as the Rod has no further use in the adventure path. Also, the one guy that is up on the story was really pumped about using the Foutain of Fortune and Folly (from Dragon). Unfortunately the rest of the group wants to play no matter what. I have agreed as the game is a democracy and not a dictatorship. What do the rest of you do when (if) this happens to you. I feel real bad that two of my best players are going to miss the reward after being there for most of the adventure. Any suggestions?
I too have had trouble with late and/or missing issues of both Dungeon and Dragon. I have not been able to fix the problem, but I have to agree that customer service here is VERY good. I've never had a problem getting a replacement issue.
Take a look at the Iron Heroes system. Skills are grouped and any points put towards the group raise the level of each skill in that group. So for example you might put 1 point into the social skills group (and I'm going from memory here, but you'll get the idea) which would include Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Intimidate, etc. That 1 point would give you a rank of 1 in each skill. Of course you'd still have to allocate 2 points for cross-class skills, and they are on a 1-for-1 basis, no groups. It's a pretty good system. I have to agree with you that it's a little odd to be a cleric and have almost no knowledge of religion, especially if you spend your points in Concentration, Heal, and maybe Spellcrat. Doesn't leave much for anything else.
No, thank you.
I have sent an email to customer service, but thought this might get noticed sooner. I'm sure that the Dungeon has been swallowed by one or the other of the postal services, but not sure if the Dragon is really late or just Canada late. Thanks for any help.
I too have not yet recieved issue #131 of Dungeon, or issue #340 of Dragon for that matter. Thanks.
Alternatively, make it an Epic level Quest after the campaign as printed in Dungeon ends. This is what I'm planning on doing. The quest should fit in well with Epic level characters, seeing as they have to battle greater demons and such. I might wait and see what James and the gang come up with though - an adventure path based on the original writings of the Rod would be great.
Which is a cagey way of saying we might be doing something more extensive with the Rod of Seven Parts in Adventure Path 3. We here at Paizo will know for sure after tomorrow (we're having the last of our "What are we going to do about Adventure Path 3" meetings tomorrow). James, an adventure path based on the Rod of Seven Parts would be great. I'm a big fan of the adventure (and yes, I like the spider demons!!). I would love to see a write up done for the Queen of Chaos and Miska. I also like the way you guys (and gals) at Dungeon update monsters by looking at the original - always a treat to see how you've interpret an AD&D monster. Of course, the other ideas you bantered around also sound great.
Arjen it appears that nobody is home at therpgenius website. Could you please email me the file at hangfire - at - shaw - dot - ca. Thanks.
. . . a 7Meg of inefficient use of numbers and buggy but it works, kinda. I even added a chance that the item is cheaper/more expensive, broken, buggy or fake. Arjen, if you're still prowling this message board I would love to get my hands on a copy of your spreadsheet. Could you email it to me at hangfire - at - shaw - dot - ca. Thanks.
My party accepted the fact that Raknian was out to get them for the destruction of the Ebon Triad - so I didn't really have a problem with that.
Yeah, I had some trouble with this, also with the 'plug' that leads to the ghoul area (and area that I had not populated). As for the doors to the palace I just placed some guards there - the party is not supposed to be snooping around so this caused them to give the doors a wide berth. As for the plug I eventually had to say that they would never get it dislodged, otherwise we would have been there all night. I would totally delete any mention of the plug if you don't plan on having the party explore the ghoul tomb.
Well releasing it from it's slumber is not a sure thing - and remember the party cannot see what is beyond the hallway, there's a stone plug, and it's inside the forcefield protecting the Apostle of Kyuss. My party just wasn't able to get through the forcefield, so that took care of that problem for me (no dedicated wizard in the group, and no Rod of Cancellation). The Apostle won't awaken after the death of Bozah until after it's hit point total has dropped to its regular amount - which would take many days, it won't awaken until well after the games are finished. I had the beast come up while the games were on - it was fun.
Well I must say that I disagree about the syder demons. I always kinda liked them - although I am changing them somewhat for 3.5. They are very distinctive, you know the Queen of Chaos is after you when they start showing up, rather than just some random demon, or devil for that matter.
Yes, that may be true, but the description of the item, its powers and how to unlock them, was exhaustively covered in the boxed set of The Rod of Seven Parts. That should be the basis for any upgrade to 3.5, in my opinion.
You know, I've been on very few boards where one, let alone two (or more), of the principle people involved responded to so many posts. Thanks Eric and James (and the rest, I know it's a team effort), it's a pleasure to post here.
I've taken a look at what is in the Arms and Equipment Guide, and, well, it sucks. Not very true to the original. So, I'll be reworking this, alot, from the original. Once I have something I'll email it out to you.
It occurs to me that the the rod would make a great tie in once the adventure path is complete. What better epic level adventure could there be than searching the lands for the rest of the pieces (or getting them back from the Queen of Chaos). What if Miska is released upon the world and the war between law and chaos erupts once more? Good stuff.
I'm in the process of converting them to 3.5. They will be a little different than as listed in the Rod of Seven Parts boxed set, but they should work out just fine.
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