Imperatrix_Terra's page

I wouldn't disallow alchemical cartridges, nor make their ammo or guns full price -- they're still going to pay 1.1 gp for powder + bullet or 6 gp for a basic alchemical cartridge by the RAW, and that still adds up over time. Low level gunslingers (1-4) aren't all that great and punishing them even more at low levels isn't necessary. Further, even if they get guns at half price by making them, that really isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, certainly not as big a deal as making magic items for half price.

One thing to consider is the gunslingers need (or at least would like to have) a couple of magical properties that many other characters ignore: Reliable to reduce misfire and Distance to make their first range increment better, particularly if they use a pistol. Those things alone can help keep them in line with other characters, who can often just jump right into properties that offer more damage.

That said, my experience with a gunslinger (currently Gun12/Wit1) is that they tend to be basically fine. Just don't let someone pull some chicanery and dual-wield pistols in *any* fashion, that's really gross (and if they start talking about a synthesist summoner and extra limbs, shut that down real fast). My gunslinger wields a single pistol as a primary weapon with a musket and dragon pistol for specific circumstances, and does fine.

Gunslingers tend to shine when facing an opponent with a high regular AC but poor touch AC -- that's their cool moment, hitting a creature that other people have a tough time connecting with. Creatures that already have bad AC's don't tend to suffer a lot more damage from a gunslinger as compared to another martial class. Enemies that can stay far away, out of the first range increment of their weapon, can really screw a gunslinger.

Honestly the cantrips and/or a wand of magic missile seem adequate to me. Maybe a CL 3 version of the wand if you ask your DM nicely, since making one is not really a good idea financially. Whenever I run a game I usually try and make sure that a few useful low level wands fall into the party's hands -- at least partially charged ones, anyway. I'm not sure that I can see burning through a full or mostly full CL 1 wand of magic missile, even over the first 5 levels, unless you encountered some sort of highly unusual situation (or perhaps a string of them). I suppose that, strictly speaking, every charge you burn is money lost, but I just kind of figure that's part of the "cost of doing business" so to speak.

The reusable 1st level spell would probably make magic missile and burning hands obsolete. I mean, if it's reusable, then it probably has to be more limited than those two already fairly limited spells, right? And if it's more limited than those...well, you probably have something close to a cantrip anyway. So either it's probably going to make MM and BH irrelevant, or you'll wind up with essentially a 1st level cantrip-ish spell. YMMV.

Indeed, max-3 gives a d12 class more than the decimal issue takes away; I'm okay with that though, since hit points are supposed to be one of the advantages of being a barbarian (one of the few classes with a d12 at all). In other words, the wide gap of base hit points between a wizard and barbarian in our system is completely intentional. :)

For d8 classes it's a wash (you wind up with base 5 either way), and most classes are sporting d8's, so most of the time it's even with your system (which is identical to the PFS system, which is what I generally compare it to).

Imperatrix_Terra wrote:

I'm a fan of hit die maximum -3 for standard games or hit die maximum -2 for games with few PCs or a lot of new players, personally.

We've been using a houserule we call "sunny side of average" where you simply add the average HP roll each level, rounded up. D6s get 4 HP, D8s get 5, D10s 6, D12ss get 7 and so on.

While better than rolling randomly (ugh; can we kill this sacred cow already?), I think that doing it that way is a bit unkind to people with a d10 hit die and really unkind to someone with a d12 (especially the barbarian, who has little AC and usually needs those hit points, at least IME). The "rounded-up" half point is a smaller percentage chunk of a d10 or d12 as compared to a d6, as well.

Honestly, I think it would be easier to just swap in fixed hit points as the standard (and rolling for them as an optional rule, I suppose), and make "retraining" hit points unavailable and irrelevant. It seems like the better idea if you care about keeping everyone at a playable hit point total.

I'm a fan of hit die maximum -3 for standard games or hit die maximum -2 for games with few PCs or a lot of new players, personally.

If it were me, I wouldn't pay them in actual gold that they could put on their character sheet. I would assume that they are earning a salary though, sure -- it's covering the presumably luxurious lifestyle that they are leading (you could use the Average/Wealthy/etc scale but we mostly just handwaved it). Were I the DM, I wouldn't let them "game" this and try to say that they are living poorly in order to stockpile extra cash; it just lets them break even but still live "the good life".

What turns me away from using the downtime system or anything that makes it more complex than the above is that to me it seems like an awful lot of extra bookkeeping that doesn't add much value to the game. YMMV, though.

Heh, it looks like this has inspired a significant amount of debate in the past. Which is fine, I was mostly looking for community opinions before I brought it up to my GM anyway.

Thanks.

The Oracle Curse Blackened says that it gives you a -4 penalty on "weapon attack rolls."

Does an unarmed strike count as a weapon for this purpose? Would it be reasonable to allow an Oracle with this curse to take Improved Unarmed Strike and fight without penalty, provided they are using unarmed strikes?

It hasn't ever really bothered our group to allow new Paizo spells, though we are only moderate powergamers at the most. We don't allow 3PP material without DM approval, though.

In my case, I've usually managed to keep chatty players quiet by just raising my voice (not yelling, but enough that they know to be quiet). Without knowing how strong your own personal charisma is and the players in question, offering advice is hard. Being honest with them away from the table and telling them to be quieter may work. I tend to shy away from docking XP for this kind of thing -- it may or may not work, but it strikes me as a bit juvenile. This is a rudeness/respect issue, primarily (if docking XP gets you results, then by all means -- I just can't see it being something I would do).

I have a chessex map that our group has used for over a decade now. Black usually works well for me; it's red that stains mine the worst, but usually any kind of stain comes out eventually. If your map is being weird then I'd consider trying out Gaming Paper. It's cheap and you can cut it up and draw things in advance.

If your group is large, you may also just have to lay down the law regarding dice if you want to speed things up. I keep my dice organized admittedly and don't really understand why other people don't, so I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who have to constantly hunt through their random dice pile for a d20 and a weapon die every round. Just be honest with them: this is a large group, and everyone needs to have the dice they need ready to go when their turn comes up, as a matter of respect for everyone else's time. Dice used frequently need to be kept separately from ones used rarely, and gigantic dice piles that are not needed should be put away.

Like other people have mentioned, I give people a time limit on their turns, and use an easily visible initiative board, and both of those things helped out quite a bit. I wait a few moments and then hold up my hand with all five digits out, and count down from there. The time before I start counting down varies depending on the group size; in small groups (say, 3 players) there's less reason to hurry people along unless they take a REALLY long time, but with 7 players, I'd probably start counting them down more or less immediately. You can delay them or skip their turn entirely depending on how mean you want to be if they run out of time, but I tend to lean towards the latter with a larger group, since they have more between-turn time to figure out what to do and time (or the lack of it) is more of an issue in general.

Is Black Powder Inquisition really that bad? I like the idea of playing an Inquisitor with a gun, but if that option is so terrible compared to using a bow, I may rethink that.

We mostly just ignore the ship to ship rules. We use the chase rules, but once those are done, we just run a normal combat with the two ships connected by a plank.

I like the idea of ships firing weapons at each other, but most of us are just too apathetic about it to learn and use all of the ship combat rules.

We use the medium track and most of the stuff on the wiki. 3.5 material is allowed on a case by case basis.

Our house rules are here: http://thebiggame.wikidot.com/pathfinder-house-rules

The author of the adventure says Isger.

Thank you!

Does anyone have any advice on where to place the Red Hand of Doom in Golarion?

We're currently in the middle of Kingmaker, and in that AP if you are interested in filling certain roles your character needed certain ability scores (presently, I am the Queen of the Glorious Nation of Zeltenia).

I usually wind up in the "leader" position in my group when I PC, so I was wondering if I would need anything (read: Charisma) to pull that off. Can I wind up a pirate captain with an average Charisma? Is there anything else I should consider taking?

Does this AP even have "roles" like Kingmaker?

Are there any feats, magic items, or abilities that allow you to dismiss a spell faster than a standard action? A few quick searches haven't turned up much (except the Dismissal spell, heh), but I was thinking that there was something more obscure hiding out there.