Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend this year. I am hoping to make at least one of these eventually.
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How'd he avoid taking further damage from the Frost Skeletons' aura of cold? Heck, the two Skeletons together inflict 2d6 damage on a foe (assuming they both attack the same person). It's rather nasty, especially for what are likely 1st level characters. He kept away from them by continuously moving around the table, never letting them get close.
I would like to know this myself.
I have rarely ever had a big bad guy fail both saves for this spell. They usually either have a large fort save or a high will save. If they pass the fort, then no problem. If they fail the fort but pass the will, then you have a spellcasting (or other types of powers, like hexes) chicken that can still cause problems for the PC's.
The suggestions included in the AP say that you should allow ample time for the players to craft items if needed because for the most part, they will be away from anyplace they could trade for or buy magic items.
It took my players four entire days to get to the lodge. The were seriously injured after a few battles and with no cleric or dedicated healer in the party, they had to rest up quite often, including an entire day's rest at one point.
During the fight with Rohkar at the end of part one, one player (the Ranger) was in the room with the frost skeletons and was knocked down to one hit point. After Rohkar had knocked two others into negatives, the Ranger played ring around the rosy with Rohkar and the skeletons around the huge table in the planning room.
My group has no dedicated healer and they have almost died for it several times.
I just ran part one this weekend. My players had a hard time with Rohkar but they survived the encounter fine.
I am importing creatures from 2nd edition D&D with the "doll" theme for a few random encounters. In addition, I am adding some extra animal encounters in the forest.
I am looking for players in southern Minnesota or Northern Iowa.
the wording for weapon focus and every other feat in the tree uses the term "weapon", and there is no mention of it applying to natural weapons, therefor with no mention of it NOT applying to natural weapons makes it allowable for natural attacks of that type.
My mistake. I was confusing multiattack with rapid strike, which does allow extra natural weapon attacks. There is also improved rapid strike which allows further attacks with natural weapons.These feats however only apply to one set of natural weapons (such as claw) but applys to all limbs of that type. Unfortunately, my original post lacked access to the books so they were a bit skewed.
Incidently, slashing flurry also works for the claws (slashing damage). Also, improved natural attack from the MM will raise the damage on one natural attack type ( take it twice and increase the damage for both), but can only be taken once per natural attack.
Considering that if you want to play a thri-kreen, which I on occassion, have done, the first thing to remember is that multiweapon fighting is your friend. It is only usable by a character that can hold three or more weapons. Second, a thri-kreen can make one attack with each of its natural weapons EVERY round. This is four claws and a bite at 5 less than the claws, each claw being at full bonus and damage (considered primary attack). If you use mixed weapon and claw, you can still make a bite and the claws are still at the highest BAB.Extra attacks with off-hand weapons requires improved multiweapon fighting or better. Multiattack allows you to make 8 claw attacks (2 each) and two bite attacks in a round. If you really want to get sick, combine multiattack with multiweapon fighting, improved multiweapon fighting, greater multiweapon fighting, a slashing weapon, levels in dervish and slashing flurry from PHB 2 and you come out somwhere around 38 attacks in one round with 4 on each enemy as you pass him.
As with all other races, once an animal gains HD sufficient enough to give it a stat boost it may put that stat boost into any of its stats except for Int(because animals can not have an Int score over 2). It is the same as if you had a construct taht a wizard created and than later improved, no Con score means that you cannot dump a stat increase into it. So the cardinal rule is that a stat increase happens every 4 HD, no matter the creature, but there are certain restrictions depending on the creature.
I ran a Rifts campaign for over three years straight about 6 years ago, but after moving away from the east coast, the only thing my new players want is D&D. So I don't get to play Rifts anymore, but I still have the books. But the same could be said of other gaming systems as well, Have the books, no player intrest.
In the games that I run, I usually have a player with a paladin or a Ranger or Druid with animal companion/special mount that is capable of keeping the other mounts out of trouble.As an altenative, some of the parties in my games travel with a wagon, wich they engage the brake and tie the horses to the wagon. There are many variations on the number of thing you could do. For example as a player, I currently am playing the ranger for which my handle is bases, and he has leadership so that he has a cohort to handele his dozen or so dogs and his three horses.
I tend to make very extensive character histories that include things such as where the character was born/grew up, where they have travelled, who their parents were, any siblings and any other thousands of mundane questions. One thing I do try to do is to leave loopholes for the DM to interpert into adventure hooks. It is no fun for the DM if you make the background so iron tight that there is no room to play with any of the people mentioned in said background.In my opinion, the best thing is to concentrate aliitle on your family and a lot on yourself in the background to leave a little "wiggle" room.
It is true that many members of the WOTC staff have many years of expeience working on table top RPG's. However, they and Hasbro are looking at the bottom line dollar amount when it comes to publishing their books. They figure that because sales of third edition was massive when it fist came out and that with the release of the 3.5 upgrade their sales took an upturn, that if they release a new edition every few years they can cram it down the players throats and they will buy it. Hence one of the many reasons I will not even think about looking at 4.0 for a long time, if ever.
This is a problem that bothers me almost constantly as an experienced DM. They give you exact instuctions for putting together magic items, but as far as poisons and alchmical items, there is nothing in the way of how they are put together except a few clues as to their sources. There is a product for D20 from another company that deals exclusively with poisons, but nothing "official" from the people at Wizards. If they are truely interested in more money maybe they should look into stuff like that instead of coming out with new editions.
I think this is a broken class. You get all of these residual abilities from previous castings of haste? This one rates up there with the frenzied beserker.
You know, I hate to say it, but there are those of use who can not afford an internet connection at home and have to use the public library. If I had wanted electronic content I can't get it. Besides I like to take my magazines everywhere, including sessions away from home. I can see it now with everyone trying to lug their PC around to each gaming session. Pathetic!!!! And before someone even thinks of mentioning buying a laptop, let me say that of all the gamers I game with, and this numbers around 30 or so, only about 4 or 5 can afford them. No what I want is to hold the articles in my hand as I read them. Staring at a computer screen is not the option I want. As for this Pathfinder AP, what would I want that for? I have never bought a single AP ever, I prefer to make my own adventures with my own ideas, it might be nice for others to do the work for me, but in the end these articles are not tailored to the style of play I use. I have also thought of boycotting WotC, but in the long run what would be the point, they would use that as an excuse to stop printing D&D and move exclusively to card games. And just to spite us, they would not release the liscense for D&D to anyone else. Boycott Hasbro? Wouldn't phase them in the least. Where does that leave the people not thrilled about Pathfinder or the new online content? Screwed, thats where.
My last geek moment was convincing my 2 year old daughter to smite one of my players with her plastic sword.
In a new campaign that I am running, I was feeling weird one night and just threw out a spider about the size of a turantula that was orange and had skin flaps between its legs so it could glide and instead of poison bites it had a disease bite.
It produces rather bland characters... I just say what comes to mind. I can understand all the arguments FOR point buy, I just don't agree with them.
Being a pagan myself, I tend to stay away from the whole christian god thing unless it is the only way to make a player of mine fell comfortable.I have stated out all the major pantheons that are recognized throughout history. I have even done the god/goddess duality of the wiccan faith. In the end it is far easier to make up your own gods to wind up with the pantheon you want, or even the one god of your choice.
I have problems playing in games that require you to adhere to point buys. It produces rather bland characters, especially with the people playing spellcasters who have to concentrate on that one stat for spells. I know it can be argued that you can start with around a 15 and buy the stat up at level ups, but you may run into problems with those spellcasters that need two stats(you know one for save DC and one for actually casting the spell). Unfortunatelly, I have been rolling my stats for as long as I have been playing the game and I usually wind up with a decent array. Besides, in a game where the characters have the possibility to start with three 18's is much more believable if your story is to paint them as "heroes", because what is the definition of a hero other than as someone who is extraordinary in some way.
See, the 2 weapon feats allow you more than one attack at a time, however reloading two hand crossbows effectively sucks. Using the ranged combat feats helps with more than just the crossbows, it helps when you decide to start throwing other weapons at the enemys, say the random thrown fullblade or dwarven urgosh. In the end I just went with firearms and saved myself the massive reload time by making it a revolver.
Hehehehe. It must be a very contagious one, because I have it also.
For paired crossbows all you need is 2 weapon fighting feat tree.
If you are to use crossbows, Rapid reload is essential and you may want to look at crossbow sniper from PHB2.
I know exactly how this feels. For the last two years I have been the only gamemaster. Just recently, we started letting one of the other players run. Ha ha ha ha. The player outcry for me to take up the god-stick has been tremendous. And on my part, I miss the chair. The solution to my problem. I run about 2 or 3 weeks and let the other GM run a week or 2 and then back to me.
Most of the people who did like this issue keep stating that the material is easily adapted to everyones campaign. I'm sorry but its my campaign to run and I feel that the information in the articles is completely and utterly useless to my homebrew world. I have a specific flavor to it and these articles would drastically alter things in the world. Use the monsters you say? Why should I? They don't fit anywhere in my world and why should I re-write any of it to include them. I guess what I am trying to say is, people who say they can't use the material are not just dimissing it out of hand. Maybe if you stop to consider, they have a very tight and narrow purpose for the games they run. Maybe they can't stomach the thought of yet many more creatures inhabiting the world that seem "useless" to them.
I'm sorry to say, but I feel the articles took up too much space of the magizine. I have never read the China Mieville articles and if money stays the way it is right now, never will. I am sure they are great books and the articles do them justice, but I would rather have had that info spread over 2 or more issues so that there were articles useful to everyone.
In my recent experiences with building a pantheon of all brand new gods, I have found that it helps to tell the players ahead of time that I may be introducing new gods as I build them. I have already given them a base list of the ones currently done and the ones under work, but I also told them to be patient if I add a few new ones here and there to fill the gaps. I have also found that it helps to have my wife be a part of the creation process, even though she is a player, she has a very deep understanding of how religion is pieced together with the gods.All in all, the task of making an entire pantheon can sometimes be daunting, considering the ways in which they have to be tied to history and places. For example, I have a historical figure, a hero of the old kingdom, that worshipped one of these new gods. This hero is a major influence on all that has happened in certain areas, and the god he worshipped is still prominent to this day in that area. Tie this with the tennants of the faith and you have something that shapes the way everyone in that area reactes to others and with each other. In another note, I find that it helps to have things such as heros and events of the past already figured out from one certain place in time. From there it is easier to determine what events shape the world and its people. To accomplish this, I have enlisted the aid of one of the groups I have playing in this world. You would be suprised how much it helps (and how much faster it goes) to at least have a person bounce ideas off you and between the two of you flesh out the history and peoples of an entire continent based on the land shape and weather patterns in about 30 minutes. Of course, having a brother-in-law who holds a degree in history helps.
I second that :) I third that motion.
I believe the better two of the ones you listed are the Complete Adventurer and Races of Stone. These two books are very heavily refrenced in my gaming group. Cityscape I can't comment on, considering I don't have it yet. Same with Stormwrack, even though I have looked through it and plan on buying it to help with my pirate campaign. Races of the wild is good but it lacks a lot of umph.
I think I will reserve judgment on the whole thing till I can see a trailer.
I really love this idea.
monte cook did an article on 'table rules' in dungeon a while back that should be a good starting point. don't remember which issue though....If someone could find out that number it would be cool, I could read it out to them to make my point and it wont seem like I'm being a dick. :) I would simply just state what I think should NOT go on at the table, and then if there are any problems, take the offenders aside after the game and have a non-aggressive conversation on why you think they are interrupting the mood of your game with their antics.
More like shooting another gunfighter in the back instead of in a face to face quick draw.Yeah, but if you knew some of these guys... I suppose you are right. I was involed in a game of laser tag with some military types way back when, and they liked to do things like grapple you from behind while his buddy shoots you multiple times. Made me get all sniper on them for that one.
I have a person who just joined my group that can't even put his phone down for 30 seconds without picking it up and playing with it. I have already decided that from now on, cell phones go on the little shelf next to the door, if they ring fine, if not they stay there for the entire session. I should also mention that I will be having them put the phones on vibrate.
More like shooting another gunfighter in the back instead of in a face to face quick draw.
I have 2 groups:
2nd: 2 guys (me and brother-in-law 28) 2 girls( wife 21, and her brothers wife 28)
I have a person who just joined my group that can't even put his phone down for 30 seconds without picking it up and playing with it. I have already decided that from now on, cell phones go on the little shelf next to the door, if they ring fine, if not they stay there for the entire session.
Disturbing happenings in Miami. I wish I could have been in that one. One of my friends used the systems rules to do a kind of cross between Starship Troopers and Aliens. That was creepy, especially when a lot of the creatures were made by the corporations trying to bioengineer super weapons. 
I had to deal with the Trekkies at one point who ran my character stright into body-mods posers who looked like smurfs.
The Staff of the Magi article in one of the issues of dragon talks about replacing the familiar with the ability to have an imbued staff that a few minor tricks as the wizard or sorcerer go up in level.
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