Holy Stab-Master's page

Ninja cohort for the win!!!

1. Role Playing: Its fairly common for groups to degenerate into out of character jokes and what not. When i run, i try to make each NPC that they encounter have something special about them that makes them unique and fun to talk to.
I took somthing streight out of the game masters guide for a crazy old wizard just yesterday. He sat alone in his room with nobody except 3 air elimentals and his best friend, Mr. Kobalt the hand puppet. My players ate it up interacting with him.

3. Plot Hooks: I usually try to build my hooks around some of the NPCs that my players find most interesting.
For example, one of my players went to sell a gem he had just swiped from some old lady and the merchant ended up ripping him off something feirce. Then his chaotic stupid alignment kicked in, things happen, and now written on the top of his sheet it says "GET RAT BASTARD!!!"
Naturally, i have to bring him up later so he can extract his revenge.

5. Starting Level: We almost never start out at level 1. It is just way to hard for our play styles to start that low because one random crit could kill somebody. It sounds to me like your group is the same way in that respect. We find between 3 and 5 to be a good starting point because by that level you can take somewhat of a beeting before having to run to the cleric for a quick heal.

12. Challenging Players: I usually tend to throw a few moral delemas in for my players as a quick challenge when its out of combat and use overwhelming odds when it is in combat.
Now thats not to be interpreted as "odds that will TPK", i just play to action economy. When there are 5 pc's and 15 mooks there is a whole bunch of tactical things that your combatants can choose from aside from the obvious number of extra attacks they can get off.

Im sorry, i cant give much help on the side missions part, but i can give you some advice on why you absolutly need to think of something for them to do.

So one night me and my buddies were bored, so decided that we were gonna start running an ongoing exalted game.

We rock paper scisors on who would dm and i end up being one of the players.

When i was making my character, i had just watched deadlyest warriors (jessie james vs al capone) and was kind of in a creative slump. So my character concept was al capone. I gave him merits that basically gave him a small army with enough funds to buy anything he wanted and still have enough to buy the world over if he felt like it.

The one other player basically made captain jack on steroids.

So we start playing after about an hour and a half of character generation and the dm hadnt thought of anything for us to do. It was kinda short notice for him, so i dont realy blame him for not having anything.

So we start playing, and without any backstory on how we met, the dm says that we are sitting in a room with each other drinking and discussing our plans.

What plans you say? Well so did we!!!

We fire off a few questions about the setting and what not and he realy isnt giving us much to work with... Here is where the chaotic stupid kicks in...

After about 15 or so minutes of colaberation, we could think of nothing better to do than to load up all my men with the best weapons and armor i had, sail over to the next island and procede to blow the crap out of it.

Yes... at character creation we could think of nothing else to do than to start our world domination tour... Thats why you absolutly need to give them something to do!!!

Wish 1!!!
Wish to be the only person able to use said wishing device

Wish 2!!!
Wish to have an indestructable map detailing all the people who wish to steal said wishing device at all times

Wish 3-9!!!
Wish for 2 rings, boots, gauntlets, amulet, cape, crown of physical perfection (+8)

Wish 10!!!
Wish for a suite of +5 Full Plate made from a combonation of adamantium mytheral and gold dragon scales

Wish 11!!!
Wish to be a 20th lvl fighter

Wish 12!!!
Wish for a +4 Keen Vorpal Elven Curve Blade!!!

Wish 13!!!
Wish to have an army of 10,000 clones of you, complete with all your gear, who are completely loyal and will follow you to the death.

Wish 14!!!
Wish for a bag of endless grilled cheese sandwiches

Wish 15!!!
Wish for the tankard of endless soft drinks

Begin total world domination!!!!!!!!!

P.S. props to martinaj for the grilled cheeses

@haraldklak: Thank you for the first part of your post. I didnt actually realize that if you enchanted your bow and your arrows your could, essentially, end up with a +20 weapon.

I still think its a little weird that the enchantment somehow dissapears because every projectile is as brittle as glass, but i do understand it simply from a rules stand point.

I must not have made my point earlyer. I know how to book reads the rules on projectiles.

When i was talking about projectiles not breaking 100% of the time i was speaking simply from a logical stand point.

If you were to fire a crosbow bolt, something that is completly made of some sort of metal, at a fleshy object and you hit the target you would be able to go over to the target, pull out the bolt, reload it and fire again no problem.

The spear doesn't lose it's magical enhancements when thrown because it doesn't break when it hits something. Magical ammunition does.

It's much more cost effective in the long run to create sets of ammunition to deal with a specific threat (that dragon that decided to come and terrorize your nation) than it would be to add a situational magical enhancement to your main weapon.

I understand that the projectiles breaking is how the book tells it, thats not realy my issue. My issue is that when you shoot an arrow or throw a shuriken or fire a crosbow bolt or whatever, the projectile does not break 100% of the time, so why would the magic projectile.

Especially that when an item becomes magic, if i remember correctly, its hardness increases by 10. It seems to me that they would almost never break unless you purpously shot it at a magically enchanted adamantium wall.

You're confusing ammo with thrown weapons. Thrown weapons are not destroyed when thrown and can be enchanted normally. Ammo is destroyed half the time it misses and every time it hits, and only uses its enchantment once regardless.

Throwing a melee weapon makes it a thrown weapon, not ammo.

I know the difference between thrown weapons and ammo, it still just doesnt make any sence to me because, at least to my knowledge, its still the same enchantment being placed on 2 different things that are the same at their fundamental core. Some wood and metal put together in a way to harm somebody else.

Is there any hard reason why enchanting a projectile is much less cost effective than it is to enchant a weapon?

I know the cost for a +1 on a weapon is the same as a +1 for 50 projectiles, but my point is that the +1 weapon can be used an infinite amount of times where as the 50 +1 projectiles can only be used 50 times before you have to go get new ones.

In my mind it just doesnt make any sence because, at least as far as i know, its the same enchantment being placed on 2 different things.

Heres an example that my group came up with when we first saw that projectiles lose there juice after one shot.

My fighter has a +1 icy burst spear. It is his main weapon and he uses it in close combat and sometimes throws it when he cant get up close right away.

Here is the problem... When he throws it, does its enchantments disspear?

If so, why doesnt it get used up when its used in close combat?
If not, why do arrows and other projectiles get used up when they are used normally?

Another thought just came to me. What about a +1 flaming arrow that has been used in close combat to stab somebody as a last resort because his bowstring broke? Would it lose its charge then?

Ha... This thread reminds me of the last time i ran my game that consists of a party of rogues.

My party had recently been appointed to be "the help" for a rich old lady who was blind, I think you all know what ended up happening there.

So one of the characters decides to run streight to the market place to sell his ill gotten goods, one of which happened to be a rather large chunk of adamantite.

So he meanders on over to the traveling gem merchant, who word had was a rather rich one at that, and offers to sell the gem. The guy asks how much he was looking to sell it for and the rogue quickly responds with a few thousand gold pieces.

So after a few rolls later the merchent widdles him down to 250 gold pieces for the gem. As the character walks away i tell him to make a perception check. He passes, he hears the the guy say under his breath "hehe sucker" and the sound of a dimensonal pocket open up and close.

So he whirls around and puts a knife to the guys throat, to which the gem salesman quickly responds "guards help! this man is trying to rob me!"

The guards come rushing in and order the rogue to put down the weapon. He says that the guy ripped him off but the guards dont believe him because he has no proof.

So because the player knew that he was going to go to jail, he decided to go for broke... He was hoping he could one shot the guy so at least he would feel a little better about being ripped off. Sadly for him, he missed and was quickly dispatched by the guards and hauled off to jail.

And now i have a brand new plot hook because at the conclusion of the night, the player wrote on the top of his character sheet "GET RAT BASTARD!!!"

Next time i find myself making a pathfinders character ill write up a stat block and post it. But at the moment i dont have any extra pathfinder characters lying around.

This thread is dedicated to those awesome lines that either your players have made out of character or something memorable that they made in character.

I was inspired to post this thread because of the last game session my group played.

It had been a long time since we had played in this particular campaign, that i happen to be running, and one of the characters plays a rogue with an ability similar to the cut-purse's stab'n grab ability. Every time he makes an attack on somebody his tail reflexively steals something on the targets person.

I had forgotten this little trick of his, and at one point he was sneaking up on the heavily armored mega general who had been fabled to have never been struck in battle. So he waits outside the building he is in, studying his armor for weak spots. He eventually finds a fairly large gap that was near his spinal chord.

He moves in for the attack and rolls what equates to be a critical hit, so i ruled that he paralyzed him. He started to roll more dice and i told him "you dont have to roll damage, he is paralyzed".

Then he said back to me with the most pathetic sounding voice ever "but i have to steal something".

I laughed so hard i nearly pissed myself!

If the dm can portray his npc's well enough that if something bad happens to them, or the party helps that npc to accomplish a long term goal of theirs and the players actually feel sad or glad that things went that way, that speaks a great dm in my mind.

When i have nothing else to do i often find myself just making random characters for games that i will probably never play.

Does anybody else do this, or should i join gamers anonymous or something?

The dragon took 25d6.

It took me a while to understand why the dragon took so much damage from that. But after reading what the immovable rod does and what the rogue did with it... I totally understand... ITS FRIKIN AWESOME!!!

8000 lbs streight to the eye... that is on so many levels of bad assery.

+2 because 1 just isnt enough!!!

Glad to know that it runs fairly smoothly in game compared to other classes. The setting thing realy isnt an issue for my group because we usually tend to play high on the magic and treasure end of the spectrum.

My players... No need to read here...

I was looking over some 3rd party classes on this one website, linked here, and i was wondering if anybody had ever tryed to run a game as one of these or with one in your group.

The link goes to the class that i was most interested in, and because i am not the number crunchin type i thought i would bring my curiosity to the internet.

Would this class be a good addition to a group and if so, would it be overpowered?

In the group i am playing in right now we have 2 gnomes, one a fighter and the other a barbarian, a dwarf cleric, and a halfling ranger w/1 lvl of rogue for that little extra sneak attack.

Gnome fighter (me): More or less the typical fighter, charge in and give the big thing a good stab in the eye. But if i see a good tactical move i will take it. Example just because i am proud of it: Last night there was a guy wearing a loose chain shirt and he hadnt spoted me yet, surprise round, so i ran up behind him, jumped over him and pulled his shirt over his head droping him out of the fight for 2 rounds so he could get up and put his shirt back on.

Gnome barbarian: Runs to the closest thing and slashes with his bastard sword or whacks them with his giant chain flail

Dwarf cleric: Healing vending machine with a few called lightning here and there.

Halfling ranger/rogue: Enjoys disappearing and playing "who wants to get shot". Usually tags anybody flanking the gnomes first then going after the casters. The exception is when there is another ranger playing "who wants to get shot", then he will harass him untill he has arrows in his eyes.

How did the rogue survive the fall?

Did he just jump back onto the eagle thingy or did you simply rule of cool say he stuck the landing?

Judging by the response of everyone at the table who WASN'T named Stewart, I don't think any sort of rules intervention would have helped the rogue. So all the argument over when you can coup de grace someone in this thread would probably just be throwing pearls to swine, had you tried to tell any of that to the GM in question. :)

<coup de grace on the flame war>

Thanks to everyone for all the replys. There are lots of good ideas listed that i am going to steal!

Seems to me, if Jack the Blacksmith is proud of his adventuring days, his armor would be gleaming and not "rusting".

The reason that he doesnt fix it up is because any rust, chinks, or breaks in his armor and weapons has its own story. He views them as a sort of "trophy"

Samuel needs a family. A wife and at least three kids to help him with the inn. Maybe his oldest takes care of the stable duties while the wife and younger children tend cleaning and cooking. Samuel of course is busy with maintainence and et al.

I was going to add in the extra family members and stuff to people when it came time to actually start up the game. For example, I know that Victor has a wife and a child, i just didnt mention that above. I havnt thought to much about anybody elses familys yet though.

For Mack, it would be nice if he actually had his own signature ale, cider, whatever drink. Something that makes his tavern stand out. Oh. and have you a name for this tavern? Or is it just "Mack's? "

I never thought about giving him his own signature ale but it does sound like an interesting idea.

I'm not sure that a town this size would rate a full cleric, unless it was founded around a holy site, otherwise an Adept would seem more appropriate.

Well calling the leader of the church there a cleric is realy kind of a stretch. I sort of invisioned her more of a 0 level divine caster of sorts. Saying she could cure minor wounds would realy be stretching the limits of her powers.

And once again, thanks for all the advice!

Ok so what you do is you have ocarus appear with his army of Demilichs and his best friend Demagorgin.
Then you have the 30th lvl mage cast a feild of antimagic that he and his allies are immune to.
Then you sit back and watch the limbs fly.

Oh wait... You asked for help on challenging them... Not how to Tpk them...

Disregard my "Advice" lol

First off, to my players, there is no need to read this section for you shall be meeting these people when we start the game.

I am constructing a small town for a game i will be running shortly and I am looking for a little help on some extra NPC's that i could put in it or even some critiques on some existing ones that i have already.

It is a super small town, no more than 50 people max, that is pretty much in the middle of 2 major cities and it basically has all the base elemental places/services that any group of adventurers would need when they make a pit stop.

NOTE: Spoilers are added to avoid a wall'o text

Mack the Bar Keep:

Jack "Ol' One Eye" the Blacksmith:

Elyza the Baker:

Torg the Worker:

Victor the Hunter:

Samuel the Inn Keep:

Sorila the Traveling Merchant:

Imaya the Architect:

This is a bomb waiting to go off area. The charg is primed the fuse is in just no one wants to hold the tindertwig. the thing with societes is that the can teeter on the brink for ever becaus as evil and silfish as people ( gnomes halflings ect..)can be. there is a comon sence awareness that keeps them from utterly desroying the things that keep there day to day lives going. that and that alone is the glue that holds that comunitie together.

I do like how literally you took my nuclear option XD

By the way you put it, it sounds like everyone in the village has sort of a "nuclear option" with everybody else.

Everybody has something on everybody else and are willing to use that information to ruin somebody pending that they are so fed up with the way things are that they dont mind getting shot down in return.

Its just that, up untill now, nobody has been willing to take the risk of destroying somebody else politically, mentally, physically, etc... because they are all to scared that they will in turn get ruined as well.

It sounds like a fun little town that you could get some realy good role playing in. Hope it goes well!

Sometime in the near future my group will be playing in a game ran by me with a group of 3 humans all of the rogue and monk classes.

Each will be a multiclass of a hungery ghost monk and either a scout, sniper, or cutpurse rogue.

We still have to finish a campaign that is coming to a close before we start this one bug i figgured i would post this now so i can see what people think of it and if anybody else has ever done anything similar to this.

I am going to drop the lawfull restriction because its an underground workin for a crime lord kinda thing. (Also, chaotic neutral FTW)

One last note. Lets not let this degenerate into a discution on why there will be a TPK every encounter.

Well if you follow the rule of "There is no charge for awesome" then i dont see why not.

I mean come on, the cavaliers are all about the mounts and nothing would be better then having a fairly young gold dragon as your mount!!!

At one point, we were playing a cross over game of mage and werewolf (world of darkness) and our mages ended up staying with a group of werewolfs for some time. During this time, one of the werewolfs was just being a huge ass to my character for seemingly no reason.

He says he "has his reasons" or "its personal" but never actually asked me not to get involved before he actually started making deals with people to skrew me over.

So after 2 or 3 times of him messing with me i was fed up. This guy was a womonizer of sorts and i happen to catch him walking into his chambers with 2 women.

So i waited to about 10 minutes and then i mozied on over to the guys door. Needing to get his attention so we can deal with some stuff going down on the other side of town, i kick the door open and yell "WE GOTTA GO!!!"

Needless to say, the reaction from the women was priceless!!!

I saw one of my friends game book and said to myself "SHINEY BOOK!!! LETS READ IT!!!"

I picked up the book and read it a little and instantly wanted to make a character.

Thanks for the swift replys. It does help a bunch :)

I think it might just be a balancing rule they put in so that you dont suddenly come up with 50 cure light wound potions (or whatever else that could be made in less than 2 hours) in less than a week.

Doing that would basically give any caster with the crafting feats a ton more spells per day with their lower level spells.

Also because of the fact that you can basically sell 1 of them for the cost that it would be to make 2 of them if you were in the right town with the right shops.

Hyperion of Erastil wrote:

So i was looking over the item creation feats for a character i might be playing in the future and when i was looking over what each creatable item did i stumbled upon somthing a little odd.

As far as i know scrolls and potions are pretty much the same thing besides the fact that you read one and drink the other and you get a one time spell effect.

But then i noticed that you have to be a caster lvl 3 to brew a potion and a caster lvl 1 to scribe a scroll. Even though potions only went up to a 3rd lvl spell and scrolls went all the way to 9th lvl spells.

Is there something that i am missing that makes potions better than scrolls?

Potions are usable by more people than scrolls. They can even be used by familiars and companions. Scrolls have more limitations.

Limitations like what? I am fairly new to pathfinders and DnD in general and dont know what you are talking about.

So i was looking over the item creation feats for a character i might be playing in the future and when i was looking over what each creatable item did i stumbled upon somthing a little odd.

As far as i know scrolls and potions are pretty much the same thing besides the fact that you read one and drink the other and you get a one time spell effect.

But then i noticed that you have to be a caster lvl 3 to brew a potion and a caster lvl 1 to scribe a scroll. Even though potions only went up to a 3rd lvl spell and scrolls went all the way to 9th lvl spells.

Is there something that i am missing that makes potions better than scrolls?

The Blood Sucking Ruby

On the table across from the various torchering devices is a fist sized ruby. (DC 15 perception reveals its 3/4 filled with a liquid of some sort)

When this ruby is held in a bare hand it imediatly begins to suck blood from the hand of the holder dealing 1d8 bleed damage per round its held (DC 20 Reflex negates)

Each turn it fills up 1/4 of the way (meaning that in 1 round it will be full) and when it is full, it burst covering anybody within a 20 foot radius in blood.

Being freshly marinated for the various swarms of undead/vampires/whatever that love the taste of blood that lurk within the temple.

I am fairly new to GM'ing myself so i appologize if my sugestion is a little to obvious to be called a sign.

You could have them run into some kind of cult that wants said evil to come about where they have been doing experiments on various citizens that were basically designed to speed up the process of turning them into the "cells" of the elder.

Obviously it would call for a few good k. (fill in the blank) checks and maby some talking with the nearest high priest. And if you wanted to spice it up a bit you could have the cultests set up a trap that fills the room with a gas that they use to mutate the experiments bodies. I always thought that a little bit of "oh crap we gotta find a cure" is a good way to turn up the drama a bit.

The first game i ever played in was a game of World of Darkness, more specifically mage, and it had been going on for a bit before i was introduced somewhere in the middle.

Our game master was fairly loose with the rules because all of the players were new to the system, including the game master, so we just kinda played and had fun with what we did even if it wasnt technically legal by the book.

My character was a master of space magic and force magic. For those of you who dont know what that means, it means that i can pretty much teleport wherever the heck i want and controll just about any force of energy you could think of.

At one point, for whatever reason, we (and by we i am excluding me) decided to let one of the current players have a go at Dming the game for a whial. The old DM handed him a stack of notes so he could continue the story, but he decided to totally switch gears on us and make a completely new story.

When he is laying down is seeds and wattering with his magical can of cluebat juice, he says to search out the temple of the grand lakes. This game took place in the U.S. and so we all thought he ment it was in 1 of the 5 grand lakes. Seems logical no?

So after our little meeting with magical new deity that said "go over there!!!" I use my powers to teleport our group to the grand lakes. I tell them to wait on the shores as i do some recon. I bend the light around me so that i am invisible, bring a pocket of air with me and procede to fly under water each lake using magic vision to search for a magic temple and after 4 lakes of not finding it i figure i pretty much have it down.

I head into the 5th lake and he says that i see a blip in the distance with my magic vision of an area with magical resonance. I tell him that i fly down there realy quick to get a closer look and he tells me that i swim into the middle of a feeding frenzy of several dozen hydras. He then procedes to tell me that they smell me and begin tearing me apart.

So i end up making it out of there with my life and tell my party that the magic deity lied to us. So i then flew into outer space with my air pocket, harnes all my magical energy into one final middle finger to the universe and blow up the world. Game over... Lets roll up some new characters and you are never allowed to DM again.

What a fitting thread to post my first comment in.

I just so happen to have made an elf alchemist for a campaign that we are about to start up. Our D.M. printed out a list of questions to help us flesh out our characters a little bit besides more than "i keel stuff".

Anyway, one of the questions asks about their spirituality and if so, what they followed. At first i thought to myself that she wouldn't have a spiritual side seeing that she believed that everything could be expressed by science. This came mostly from a personal view of mine that she has never had any physical evidence of a higher power.

But then i realized that one of her closest friends is a cleric/oracle/paladin. So i read up a little on each of the different gods, comparing her personality with the overviews of each deity and i came across Erastil.

I wouldn't say that all alchemists would follow the teachings of Erastil, but after seeing how much her personality matched up with Erastil i started thinking up all sorts of cool story related stuff that our D.M. could use if he felt like it. Its where i got Hyperion of Erastil from, seeing as she is the physical incarnation of one of Erastil's most trusted angels that has been sent to end the blight of the land she is in. (Don't ask me where as i cant remember what it is called at the moment ^_^')