IrishWristwatch's page

Hey guys, this is Raspy's brother. Never thought a character creation could get so complicated.

My guys's alias is Black Sheep, he is a Troll weapon specialist who also knows boxing.

Would this be okay?

Im sorry that i havent posted in a while, just this was my first full week at work for the summer and i havent thought much about the PBP. I know it's not much of an excuse because my brother is in the same situation.

Wounds: 1d5 ⇒ 1
Fate Points: 1d10 ⇒ 2

You know, that really is such a great and simple idea. Thank you.

Hi, Im trying to figure out a way to work XP into a game that does not fit the mold.

I started my campaign about a month ago and so far the players have been digging it for the most part, most of the themes being that of deception and war, where the players have to deal with NPCs that are holding secrets but also each others secrets.

The problem has arose however about XP. So far in the campaign there has not been much combat at all, only one battle that was about CR 7 for a bunch of LVL 8 characters.

The Players however, have been mentioning that they dont think they have been getting enough XP. Most saying they were thinking that they wanted to be lvl 9 in the next 3 sessions.

For what i have planned in the campaign there will not be that much small scale combat, and when there is a battle it will be something that has major consequences. What that might mean is there could be sessions where they will not do any combat. They are expecting to climb to the next level every 3 or 4 sessions.

So far i have been giving an average of 5000 XP for story completion or whatever excuse i could give, but it does not seem to be working.

Some suggestions i have been given are just axe XP all together and just do every 4 or so sessions a level up, but i am not sure of it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Or the soldiers have Mystic levels. Not sure which is harder.

This really makes me think of the Derlavai War, which was basically World War 2 with everything re-written as magic and monsters instead of Technology and Machines.

Pound-for-pound the most popular trick would be the Force Missile Musket, which actually only costs 2k gold using standard rules because it's caster level * spell level * 2000 for a use-activated item.

Of course the range is crap, in fact it's crap (close range) for anything that isn't essentially "artillery" if memory serves. I suppose you could apply the Reach Spell feat, and (illegally) stack it with itself.

Then there is the issue of ammunition, normally it is an all-or-nothing thing, you have to make a new one after 50 shots or you never have to reload ever.

So anyway, with RAW being a lousy guide, we start getting into questions of what "feels right." (Ohnoez I amz the White Wolf! Arooo!) I would start with guns that fire 1 shot per magical "bullet" at 2d6 points of elemental damage, with the element determined by the ammunition. But until recently a single type of Magic Rifle (Hereafter called, "Stick") could only fire a single type of ammunition and using the WRONG ammunition ran a 5% chance of causing a misfire (hits Stick-wielder instead of target, Stick has to be unjammed using magic ritual). Newer models have variable fire and even multiple-round chambers but are more expensive.

Energy resistance applies to a hit target, meaning you can make yourself "bulletproof", but otherwise the effects are interesting. Lightning conducts straight through metal armors and defenses, fire will deal another 1d6 damage to most targets because it burns a while, cold will produce a cubic foot of ice in liquids or a 5-foot square of slippery frost (DC 11 not to fall) on the ground and can be used in massed fire (if the company is trained and thus knows where to aim) to modify terrain, and Acid cuts...

Thank you so much, this works perfectly within the Eberron landscape, especially the idea of what you said with leeching elementals, as that is exactly what they already do to power their airships and boats.

Now all i have to do is come up with mechanics for massed fire. During the Napoleonic wars regiments were lines were formed up with hundereds of men into either 2 or three ranks, but i doubt my players would be facing a fulisade of that magnitude. I just need to figure out how it would work with maybe 15 people or fewer, so if my players face them they would have some sort of chance.

Soon i have decided that i want to run an Eberron campaign but with some twists. I have kept most things that were in the book already intact, but i wanted to make some slight and some major changes to the setting.

I have been fond for a long time of the 18th century and the Napoleonic wars, and from that i loved reading both the Sharpe and the Hornblower series. When Eberron described it's tone as Dark Pulp Fantasy, i felt like i could incorporate a lot of the styling of Bernard Cornwell with his sharpe series into ebberon, with its pulpish yet gritty feel of it's action, and even incorporate some of the technology into the setting.

So i looked at some of the technology in the setting such as the lightning rails, basically 18th century technology with magic as the catalyst instead of steam essentially, and took that further. What i want to try and homebrew is a mass produced elongated wands that would be wielded by men dressed in Napoleonic style, essentially conscripts, that use these wands in 18th century gun lines because of the fact that most people would not be able to guide any of the spells put out by the wands.

So my question ends like this, how would i go about creating the stats for something like this and how would i giving stats to rows upon rows of people all firing their weapons at the same time.

Have you thought about trying him as a Inquisitor?

Yes, i have thought about that. My only problem is we have already started playing, and at that point i felt dipping or even multiclassing into inquisitor would not be as great a benefit to my character. If he would have a falling out with the church i might try it.

-That's not heresy, that's infidelity. In other words heretics disbelieve a teaching or teaching of the church. You are disagreeing with the whole focus of the church. You'd simply convert to something else in that case.

-You need to have an issue with either undead, divination, or some other doctrine of the church.
-You character is having a crisis of faith, not a heretical stage. He is doubting weather he has done the right thing. This doesn't make him a heretic.

You're right then about it not being heresy, but see the problem is I, nor my character does not necessarily want him to leave the church. What i am thinking of is he disagrees with the churches interpretation of pharasma's teachings or in The Bones Land in a Spiral (Basically the churches bible), where he might believe that it actually says to focus on the persons life, and his actions and choices instead of celebrating his birth and death.

Would that be Heretical?

Hi, so i have made a Cleric of Pharasma, and to cut to the chase I wanted to make a character who would eventually separate so much with church doctrine or believe that the rift could either lead to him finding a lot of conflict with the church.

My character is an elf of about 250 years of age, and essentially i saw him as almost going through something of a midlife crisis. Basically, he is asking himself what he has done with his life working for the church for so long, whether a life of focusing on only two parts of a persons life (the birth and death)is really the way one should go through life. Essentially he disagrees with the church's concrete believe in destiny and it's focus on death and birth.

My only problem is finding an action to be truly heretical against. Ive been looking around for certain practices of Pharasmans that this believe could go against, but so far i have not found much. I'm just looking for something that my character would find conflict with the church.

Also, if somebody thinks I'm misinterpreting the church of Pharasma, please tell me.

When i was designing my character I was originally thinking of a tinkerer, a know it all and a engineer who has seen something horrible and therefore is more solemn and edgier.

So it got me thinking if down the line i could modify the gun (musket) to accommodate certain modifications. Nothing extreme like inventing modern bullets or ammo types or inventing the revolver or anything like that, i was thinking more along the lines of keeping it in the timeframe of early muskets.

Say I wanted to invent rifling, which is when the inside of musket's barrel has been carved with groves in a spiral pattern going up the barrel, making it more accurate. Or the attachment of a modified looking glass to the top of the musket to basically add a sniper scope. Or even something of the nature of a springed bayonet that would flip out from the end of the barrel like a switch blade.

I have already asked my GM about this, and he is ok with it, the only problem we both don't know which skills would be used or what the DC to do this would be.

My character is only level one, and this is obviously for further down the road.

IrishWristwatch wrote:

How could i get the other people in the group to act up and be interested while they are sitting there waiting for their turn.

Suggest everyone gets 30 seconds to state their action. If there is a rules question they have that 30 seconds to read/quote the rule, if they can't, then the DM gets to make something up or cancel their action.

If they want to be into the game (i.e. get a good return on investment for purchasing the books) they will do more than just stand and try to hit the enemy. They will try tactics, such as flanking, overrun, charging, grappling, etc. (Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to feats to do those things, the feats just make them easier or less risky)

with 5 players and the GM running the monsters, each player should have 2 and half minutes to decide their action and have the rules reference ready so that they get to do what they want during their 30 seconds. They can then explain outside of their 30 seconds to other players, what they hope to accomplish and how the other players can help. Such as, I want to flank this guy and backstab him, can you move 2 spaces this way so that on my turn, I can do this... or, I'm going to cast color spray, but I go after you, can you try to push this goblin 1 space back so I can get him as well. (Now they have to look up the rules for pushing an opponent) As they do this more an more, things will move quicker.

Oh, and grapple isn't just wrestling on the ground. A medium size character can attempt to pick that goblin up and chuck him over the ledge. The goblin can in turn attempt a second grapple to not be thrown, basically grabbing onto the monk's arm for dear life.

That is a great idea, thank you.

IrishWristwatch wrote:

It would have been great to do the pregens for our first characters. The problem is that none of the people at our table would have wanted to. They went out and bought all their own core rulebooks for themselves and probably would not have done anything but make their own characters.

There are two people at our table who are not very quick on the draw. As in one of them is still trying to wrap his head around D20 die rules (Even after five times of explaining it to him). They were both given the pregens for their characters and were basically allowed to copy those stats.

Ok, now i understand that our die rolls werent as slow as we thought. But now is the point of how do i make this interesting? Is there any tips on how to make constant dice rolls interesting? So far my brother seemed to not be very expressive with everyones actions.

It will take time for everyone to get settled on the rules after all there are alot of them and some of them can be counterintuitive to say the least.

But one problem I think you may be having is that you sound like you expect your brother to express what you're doing, why not just do that yourself? For example after your 3rd miss in a row you can yell out in character "Errr uhhh ... I meant to do that, die you damn filthy cockroaches!" And say that your character managed to give the floor a real whooping.

To me it sounds like none of you are acting particularly engaged and expect the DM to weave a story while managing combat which is pretty difficult for him.

Oh i understand how difficult it is, and yeah i am probably being too hard on him.

How could i get the other people in the group to act up and be interested while they are sitting there waiting for their turn.

Thank you for the replys guys.

IrishWristwatch wrote:

Should basic characters not be able to hit armor class 16 goblins? Im thinking something could have been wrong with our characters or something was missing.

Also i want to understand how fast does combat rounds usually go, because that was the largest factor that led to slowness of the session.

My first level group has 5 players in it, 4 have never played pathfinder before, 3 of them are 12 and under. Each round of combat can take about 3-5 minutes with rules look ups for spells and special actions.

As far as hitting AC 16, My son plays a half-orc barbarian (20 pt buy) with 18 or 20 strength, and uses an earth breaker which I think is a 2d6 weapon. +4 or + 5 for strength, +1 for weapon focus, and +1 BAB gives him a +6 or +7 so he only needs to roll a 9 or a 10 to hit. When he rages he gets an additional +2 to attack and damage.

My other son plays an elven rogue with 18 or 20 dex, can't remember, but with weapon finesse he gets a +4 or +5 to hit. Add in flanking for an additional +2 which he does a lot, and that helps the barbarian. Or he is using a short bow to great effect.

We have a magus, cleric, and wizard for the other three characters. I don't remember their stats, but the cleric uses summon monster 1 to great effect (goblins hate dogs, so guess what he summons). The wizard is working on being a god-mage, so he doesn't do direct damage spells, instead he uses battlefield control type spells. I think he has had the greatest effect on combat so far.

The magus player is new to role-playing, the cleric player hasn't played D&D since 2e. The wizard player (Magus' father) and I are the only ones with 3e experience (been playing since it came out back in 2000, plus we started back in the early 80's with basic, advanced, and 2e). This has helped and during off turns while I'm helping my sons with rules options or explaining things to them, the cleric's player is looking up spells and getting ready for his turn, the wizard player is helping his son

It would have been great to do the pregens for our first characters. The problem is that none of the people at our table would have wanted to. They went out and bought all their own core rulebooks for themselves and probably would not have done anything but make their own characters.

There are two people at our table who are not very quick on the draw. As in one of them is still trying to wrap his head around D20 die rules (Even after five times of explaining it to him). They were both given the pregens for their characters and were basically allowed to copy those stats.

Ok, now i understand that our die rolls werent as slow as we thought. But now is the point of how do i make this interesting? Is there any tips on how to make constant dice rolls interesting? So far my brother seemed to not be very expressive with everyones actions.

1.) How large was the party?

2.) If you've not played Pathfinder before, where did you get the different classes from?

Due to the game's inherent flexibility, it can be a bit of a balancing act to have everyone enjoying themselves, but teamwork is rewarding. As a GM I've found out-of-character but relevant chatting between turns fairly harmless. And if the group has yet to acquire a passion for the game, or attention span, then you'd be missing out on a classic experience by not taking the first sessions of the rpg somewhat... goofily. Seriously, you can't really do it when you're more familiar with the game, but it's golden.

We had five people. 1 Dwarf Cleric, 1 Half-Orc monk, 1 Human Wizard, 1 Human Barbarian, 1 half elf rogue.

We have never played pathfinder before but because everybody was so excited to play it they all basically went out and bought the core rulebook. We had played Call of Cthulhu before this though.

I understand what your saying. Its just that we have played at least 5 other sessions of COC before so we understood the basics of roleplay. What happened to our group was we basically got stuck in one part of the dungeon fighting goblins and losing... terribly. Not only that though everybody was having to wait so long for their turn. It just became boring so i supsect we were doing something wrong. Should basic characters not be able to hit armor class 16 goblins? Im thinking something could have been wrong with our characters or something was missing.

Also i want to understand how fast does combat rounds usually go, because that was the largest factor that led to slowness of the session.

So, yesterday was the first time we tried Pathfinder. This was not the first RPG we did, we actually started with Call of Cthulhu but everone was really excited to try this game.

We started off with the beginners box while my brother was DM. This was his first time and in the greatest scheme of things he didnt do that bad. He rewrote a large portion of the beginning of the scenario just to give it context and to get rid of the rather corny start. We also played with a lot of classes that were not in the beginners box, being that no one in the group wanted to feel confined to a class and person that had no input on.

He explained we were all mercenaries, who had come to Sandpoint in order to deal with a problem they were having. After a meeting with a extraordinary dumb mayor we went in search of the Sheriff. Through speach we managed to learn that unlike what was originally in the scenario, some people have died so far from very large bite wounds. We wanted to investigate this, so we did.

We ended up grave robbing, and through one of our parties knowlege in nature, my brother had to begrudgingly tell us it was the bite wound of a dragon. This was apparently supposed to be a surprise.

Everything was going fine so far, but it all went down hill when we got to the dungeon.

The first encounter with the goblins was at first tedious and slightly overkill. All of our fighters including a monk, barbarian and a cleric all tried to go in and attack without success. Our wizard then took several hits totaling in seven points of damage, while everyone else was trying to hit and basically swinging at thin air. It took a very long time to kill these goblins but in the end one of our players was very low on health. We decided to sleep, only recovering a small bit of health.

After we went through the room with the golden liquid in the center we came upon a room filled with goblins and a goblin boss. And this was when s%+$ hit the fan.

Our rogue tried to sneak around the corner and hit them with a sneak crossbow. He missed. Everyone else made it into the room and a few more characters with ranged attacks went to fire, they all missed. Then the goblins charged.

Again, we were swinging at thin air, hitting nothing. While the goblins came in and started beating on us left in right. And then i, the monk, found myself completely surrounded.
This seemed to all be going bad, but at the same time it was incredibly dull. We rolled for initiative and came up with a long list of who went after who.

My brotehr told me afterwards that he should have probably rolled initiative for all the goblins instead of them individually, but im not sure that would have helped out making every single goblin have to roll to hit. In fact that would have just made all the goblins be able to hit in quick succession.

Meanwhile every single person at the table is bored. Two people across from me are sitting there playing with magnets, my brother told them to stop but they just simply told him no because they were just sitting there with no input until it was their turn.

This was a crapfest and we basically ended the session at this point, broken, bloody, beaten but worst of all bored.

I really need to understand what we did wrong. I cannot believe that this is how the game is played.