Jigg's page

Hi all, I have taken a big interest in Pathfinder recently.

I figure the core book and bestiary are important to have.

What about a module? Is there a specific one I should get? I see the pathfinder adventure path and the modules. I am wondering if I should get the adventure paths or start going with modules. Sometimes I create my own but I am curious to see how the pathfinder pre-created adventures are.

Thanks!

I started my game last week with Hollow’s Last Hope. Once they get through that, I'm going into homebrew mode to lead them into the Pathfinder Society. I've decided that I'm going to run a campaign somewhat based on the videogame Borderlands (The Society is looking for a vault that contains the greatest wealth/knowledge/power to ever exist.)

tejón wrote:

Oracles seem like they should be Bard-equivalent to me. Light armor, and all.

... In so much the Oracle seems to be equivalent to the sorcerer. "Bloodlines" and spontaneous casting. They even have the same spell progression.

It seems to me as well that the Oracle is the divine version of a Sorceror.

I have an alternate thought on this...
Give Trance a percentage chance to go into effect when an oracle begins casting a spell. This percentage would increase as the oracle levels. Limit it to once per 24 hour period. The Trance effect would allow the spell being cast to be cast at 1d4 levels higher than the oracle's current level, possibly increasing to 1d6 levels higher at some point.

This wouldn't be tied to curses or revelations. It would just be a state of being that the oracle is placed in due to divine overload pretty much.

I had a thought...maybe split Oaths into 2 categories: Maintenance (purity,loyalty,protection,etc) and Task Oaths (vengence,greed,etc)

Task Oaths are very specific and somewhat more difficult to obtain while Maintenance Oaths are somewhat vague and easier to obtain.

Different reward structures could then be placed on the different categories and still keep a somewhat streamlined mechanic.

I think the oaths could use a good streamlining. The oracle already has the Orders to pick from; the variableness of the oaths just kind of muddies the issue. You might even consider rolling the oaths into the Orders? Dunno. I'll try to brainstorm it some more.

Hmmm, maybe certain Orders improve the bonus of certain oaths?

Jigg wrote:

Kolokotroni wrote:

If it doesnt list language dependent that I would say no, after all most battlecries are not language dependant, they are rarely language. Something loud and gutteral normally suffices.

That's what I was thinking, but I wanted a second opinion on the matter.

Thanks for the response!

How about mine?

If it does not say language dependent, then it does not require the targets to understand the user.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

Excellent! Official responses are always the best ;)

Though I think now I'm going to make up the most ridiculous battlecries (in Abysmal) I can and only the Tiefling in the group will get it and become very confused (He's not the sharpest sword on the sword wrack)

If it doesnt list language dependent that I would say no, after all most battlecries are not language dependant, they are rarely language. Something loud and gutteral normally suffices.

That's what I was thinking, but I wanted a second opinion on the matter.

I was wondering, for PCs to benefit from Battlecry, do they have to understand what the Oracle is saying? I made an Oracle npc to keep the group alive for our adventure last night and I gave her the speak in tongues curse. She has battlecry but hasn't used it yet and I got to thinking about if it would work since she'd be speaking a language most of the PCs don't understand?

Jigg wrote:

2) Walking around narrow passages and low ceilings with a banner aren't very practical, though could cause some comedic relief before getting annoying (catching on door frames or rock walls, keeping the cavalier from going through a door, etc.)

Though it may not be RAW, you could rule for this type of cavalier that "displaying his colors" ie the symbols and colors of his banner on say, his shield for all to see would satisfy this requirement. Honestly if you wanted to get technical about it, you would have to speficy that he had a bannerman or was mounted to display his banner otherwise, unless you are now asking the cavalier to give up his shield to hold a flag :) So maybe the banner when mounted, and his shield colors when on foot?

This is what I was thinking...the Cavalier is granted the privilege of bearing their Order's crest upon their shield/armor. In my head when I read banner, I envision either someone mounted on a horse racing across a battlefield or of a samurai with the banner strapped to his back.

One of the TRICKIEST things with these classes is to make them cool, fun, and exciting, but NOT to make them something that replaces one of the 11 base classes. The cavalier's a great example, and we'll be looking at it very closely (and studying the playtest feedback) to make sure he's not poaching too much from the fighter and the paladin.

I may not be seeing the big picture properly with cavalier, but it seems to be built more for large scale skirmishes than for close-knit dungeon crawl groups. As a DM, my adventures are dungeon heavy and as I'm reading the cavalier rules, it seems like it would lose a huge chunk of its abilities in this case.

1) Mounts don't do very well going into caves or any other indoor structures, so nullifies the mount based class abilities.

2) Walking around narrow passages and low ceilings with a banner aren't very practical, though could cause some comedic relief before getting annoying (catching on door frames or rock walls, keeping the cavalier from going through a door, etc.)

So in a dungeon setting, they'd be little more than fighters with a lot of feats and a couple of nifty tricks. Unless there's something I'm just not clicking with.

I'm also not seeing a big benefit in oaths as they stand, as some adventures may only last a few hours - 1 day in game. Though some will go on for several days in game a lot won't. Is the DM to assume that a character maintains their vow during down time between adventures and then apply the bonus at the beginning of the next?

To me, it seems that oaths should gain the bonus UNTIL the task is complete because the cavalier would be focusing 100% on the completion of that oath.

Great Idea,

I'm not personally a Heroquest devotee but my lady would like this sort of stuff. Keep us posted.

Thanks

S

I'm glad that this can be of use to someone other than myself!

Once I've converted the core game, I'll be looking into finding info on the expansions as well.

I would recommend a human fighter 2-3 with the Chaos Warrior. It gives a little bit of the "Hey, they can do the same stuff we can!" feel that other creatures don't, and introduces them to smarter, more-versatile foes.

I'll probably introduce more monsters later, but the game has 14 premade adventures including monster placement and such. I'm trying to keep to the same feel as HeroQuest but with the rules of Pathfinder applied to it...It's going to be interesting seeing a ranger, bard, and who-knows-whatelse on the game board (The game only had barbarian, dwarf, elf and wizard).

I haven't read through all of the quests yet, but I'm going to try my best to change Chaos Warriors into whatever would better fit the quest.

Like in Quest 4, the Chaos Warrior is the leader of an orcish bandit group...Bugbear fits that much better and stays at CR 2. In another quest it is in a dungeon with undead, so Skeletal Champion (CR 2 also) seemed like a good match.

I'm wanting to test the Pathfinder waters on my fiancee's 2 little brothers (12 and 13) so thought I would break out my old HeroQuest board game (1990) and do a little conversion work on it. If anyone out there has the HeroQuest stuff, this might be a fun activity. I've converted the first 5 quests so far, and they take a party of 3 to level 5 after completion of quest 5.

==================================================================
Monster Conversions with CR and XP
==================================================================
Orc - Orc CR 1/3 135
Goblin - Goblin CR 1/3 135
Skeleton - Skeleton CR 1/3 135
Zombie - Zombie CR 1/2 200
Ulag - Hobgoblin CR 1/2 200
Fimir - Lizardfolk CR 1 400
Chaos Warrior - ** CR 2 600
Gargoyle - Gargoyle CR 4 1200
Mummy - Mummy CR 5 1600
Chaos Warlock - ? CR ? ?

** - Typically replaced with Skeletal Champion, except on quest
4 when it is assigned to a Bugbear.

Quest 1 XP: 4490 (Enemies) + 610 (Quest Reward) = 5100
Quest 1 Notes: Remove the 2 Mummies

Quest 2 XP: 4570 (Enemies) + 680 (Quest Reward) = 5250
Quest 2 Notes: Add 3 Lizardfolk and 2 Orcs

Quest 3 XP: 4690 (Enemies) + 710 (Quest Reward) = 5400
Quest 3 Notes: Add 2 Lizardfolk, treat Ulag as a Hobgoblin

Quest 4 XP: 4765 (Enemies) + 785 (Quest Reward) = 5550
Quest 4 Notes: Add 3 Lizardfolk, Add 1 Orc, treat Chaos Warrior as Bugbear

Quest 5 XP: 8015 (Enemies) + 1375 (Quest Reward) = 9390
Quest 5 Notes:
==================================================================
The noted Quest Rewards were calculated to take 3 Adventurers to
level 5 after completing Quest 5. You can scale up for 4+
Adventurers
==================================================================

I will add to this as I continue the conversion work (if they enjoy it, or if there is interest for it here). Let me know your thoughts.

I built a roller for pbp that generates an image for the result and remains static through preview refreshes. You can still get a different value by altering the parameters you've specified, but aside from that it is a static value. I built it when I was getting into Savage Worlds, but it works great for any system involving dice or cards.

There is a wizard page that will generate code in HTML, Wikidot Code and BBCode.

Forum Roller

though I now see the img tag is disabled here so I can't post a sample :D

Anyways, hope it may be somewhat useful to someone.

Jigg wrote:

Thank you both for the input :)

What I'm wanting is a calendar that I can embed into my wiki I've set up for my gaming group to show them the current in-game month and what holidays and events are going on in the world. I'm probably just going to continue digging into the google calendar stuff until I have it worked out, then I'll share it with the community.

I made a template that appears on the PathfinderWiki main page that converts the current date into Golarion time. It's not completely accurate, though, because the best conversion I could do was just to substitute the month name and add 2700 to the year. Thus, some months have 31 or 28 days based on the real calendar, which differs from the Golarion calendar. You're welcome to take this template for your own site and improve it if you can think of a way.

nice! That's basically what I've done, but my added years were different...was going off the "current" date specified in the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting. It still needs adjusted for the leap year difference and days in a month.

Thank you both for the input :)
What I'm wanting is a calendar that I can embed into my wiki I've set up for my gaming group to show them the current in-game month and what holidays and events are going on in the world. I'm probably just going to continue digging into the google calendar stuff until I have it worked out, then I'll share it with the community.

I'm curious if there is or are there plans for an official online Golarion calendar? I'm currently in the process of trying to hack up google calendar to display Golarion days and months with not very stable results so far. If there isn't anything already available, I'll continue working on getting google calendar to do my bidding and then share the file needed to make it work.

There were a few ways I was thinking of getting around this, mainly because one of my players wanted to bring in a teifling and another wanted a half-dragon both from their old 3.5 game.

I made them basically reroll the character, and just keep their names and such. I didn't allow the one to be half-dragon, but instead a sorcerer with draconic bloodline. The other is indeed a teifling.

If the level adjustment is just +1 I'm not too worried about it wrecking game balance, so this is one of my basic thought processes:
the core rules book provided 3 levels of xp gain (fast,medium,slow), so I decided to go with this system:

Level
Adjustment....XP Path
0 - 1...............Fast
2 - 3...............Medium
4+..................Slow

That was one of my thoughts, but one I decided not to go with.

In my own house rules, I've put xp levels back on the classes instead of on the character so that it takes the same amount of xp to go from level 1 to level 2 regardless of the class you choose to xp in.
I then grant hit dice for the lower level classes at every other level instead of every level so that they take a bit of an hp hit on the alternate classes. I feel this is enough of a reduction to help balance things out to a degree. Though I still wouldn't allow players to take a non-standard race of more than LA +2.

Soul Scorched

Wow, thank you for the detailed reply.

All that have replied have saved 4 adventurers from quick deaths I think.

Ah,so basically...scale back!

I was going to put them up against a lvl3 Rogue, and a couple of lvl1 goons because I'm sadistic like that. I'll drop the 3 to a 2 and that should about even it out, correct? Since 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4 / 4 = 1 and 2 + 1 + 1 = 4 / 3 = 1.33~.

This isn't the main encounter though, but is a significant mid-point encounter. And I am planning on the final encounter being tougher...I don't want to hand it to them, but I also don't want to hand it to them...

Hi all, I'm fairly new to DMing 3.5 and Pathfinder. I'm trying to work with CR and EL to make some good encounters for my homespun adventure. Things are a bit confusing...

Looking at the DMG, it says that an ECL 1 encounter would be 2 1/2 creatures (if I'm reading the chart correctly). The thing is, I know 4 characters can wipe 2 orcs out with no problem, so I don't see that as very balance...is there something I'm missing or not reading right?

My group is comprised of 4 level 1 characters, so their party level is 1.

I like that there is a system to help prevent dropping the death stick on the party, but it isn't clicking with me for some reason...

What about addding it as a class ability for spell casters?
Call it Spell Grafting or something and slide it into one of the caster's levels on the advancement chart. Give it a fairly high DC and give some kind of penalty for failure, like -1 CON. I would also put in that Craft (Tattoo) is required, the ranks get applied to the check and they recieve the untrained penalty if they do not have ranks.

Also, I would make it that each tattoo has a 1/day charge.

Just thinking out loud on this part...maybe spell grafting is addictive? Maybe the character gets some kind of "rush" from the magic being woven into their skin. This could cause them to, over time, try to cover as much of their body in spell tattoos as they can. NPC's would probably have worse reactions to those who are so heavily covered in tattoos and full of so much magic. This addiction would be on the receiving end...you're addicted to getting the spell grafts, not addicted to performing spell grafts. This addiction would apply to any character recieving a spell graft (from someone in the group or an npc).

I don't really understand why perl and C are not used for pretty much everything. I know so many Java, ColdFusion, ASP, C#, PHP, and other programming friends experiencing so many problems that I wonder why (and some of them also) their companies continue to use the languages. But hey, I'm not a programmer. I had a class in college where the prof write a whole chalkboard of Fortran, another of Pascal, another of assembly, and a final 2 line C program that all did the same thing. He told us we could use any to do the project. I'd used both Fortran and Pascal, but chose C (having never heard of it prior) and finished the project in a brand new language (the class didn't teach C.)

All, languages...at least the compiled ones all get boiled down to assembly. Though if you know your stuff with assembly, you can make your programs do what you want a lot more quickly.

I started in the (much lazier) VB6/VBA languages, but have fallen in love with C#. I'm also a big PHP fan for the web.

Lael Treventhius wrote:

VFP

?

VFP = Visual FoxPro

C# is actually free to use and there is a linux port of the .NET framework, so it's not as closed as older languages were.

For me this would be one of those issues that needs to be handled on a case by case, player to GM/DM basis. The odds of this coming up frequently enough to merit any type of official ruling should be few and far between.

Personally if you were in my game, and I allowed it in the first place, I would say, taking the Sorcerer class with the Draconic bloodline, means any pre-existing abilities you have due to the template increase by one step, or are replaced as with the better of the two abilities. Each power, gained class feature, ect would be handled on a case by case basis, and yes I'd be making notes so that if I ever had to deal with it again, I would have guidelines for myself to follow.

Same said for Dragon Disciple if you chose to PRC into it.

The long and the short, there really shouldn't be an official answer, as this should be something you work through with your GM/DM.

I'm most likely going to write up a house rule to override the draconic bloodline in the book. I've got a thing for making house rules *shrug*

Mad Beetle wrote:

[The Half-dragon template] is in the new bestiary, it should not in any way be given to a PC, templates arent meant for PC's anymore, as LA has been removed. RAW wise, you should just take levels in the Dragon Desciple PrC.

With respect, Mad Beetle, I'm not sure that's the case. James Jacobs has commented often that the prescribed Level Adjustments were taken away so that GMs could use their judgement as to what kind of exotic races they wanted to see in their worlds, rather than requiring them to deny players' requests.

So it's not the case that half-dragons "should not in any way" be used for a PC, but that the GM should use her judgement in deciding what kind of impact it might have in her campaign, and what kind of LA would be appropriate.

Regarding Pathfinder's sorcerer bloodline and the Dragon Disciple prestige class, I agree that it might be a good choice, depending on the character's level. (Dragon Disciple has a requirement of 5 ranks of Knowledge (arcane), so can't be taken before the character is 6th Level.) The other concern: Dragon Disciple is for non-dragons, to gradually grow into their draconic heritage. It may not be right for a character who is half-dragon. (Indeed, dragons cannot enter the prestige class.)

I also agree with your edit, that the D&D version of the template may be the best bet.

Thank you for the input. I see I've got a few places to look to help me with this. I'm not too strong with non-standard races, these characters are being brought over from someone else's now dead game and I'm having them start over for my game. I'll be doing my homework tonight to get something worked out. Thanks again for the info.

Jigg wrote:

Hi everyone,

I'm converting a character to Pathfinder and had some questions that I need help answering...

The character is a Half-Elf/Half-Dragon Sorcerer/Monk.
In Pathfinder, there is a draconic bloodline that grants some of the same abilities/features of being Half-Dragon...but there are also things missing plus she wouldn't get her wings until much, much later.

Has anyone converted the Half-Dragon template to Pathfinder? Or anyone have suggestions on how to best handle this character?

Thanks for the help!

It is in the new bestiary, it should not in any way be given to a PC, templates arent meant for PC's anymore, as LA has been removed.

RAW wise, you should just take levels in the Dragon Desciple PrC.

edit: You can also just use the 3,5 version, it is more balanced if needed for a PC anyways.

Thanks for the response!

Thank you again for the input.

Hi everyone,
I'm converting a character to Pathfinder and had some questions that I need help answering...

The character is a Half-Elf/Half-Dragon Sorcerer/Monk.
In Pathfinder, there is a draconic bloodline that grants some of the same abilities/features of being Half-Dragon...but there are also things missing plus she wouldn't get her wings until much, much later.

Has anyone converted the Half-Dragon template to Pathfinder? Or anyone have suggestions on how to best handle this character?

Thanks for the help!