JoeOutside's page

Quick survey answer: I play weekly with three friends. We complete one scenario and joke about how far behind we're getting.

Longer, probably more pedantic answer: Gaming takes time--it doesn't matter what the game is. Even if you love the game, the constant updates may be too much for you. That is OK. Perhaps you might want to not get the next couple master sets while you explore your options with the sets you have. That is also OK. I don't think anyone here will think less of you for playing at a rate you're comfortable with (at least I hope not--it continually astounds me how quickly some of the regulars here start posting info about updates--I've seen them appear within hours of receiving my own copy).

One thought, though. If you're still in adventure box 5 of Rise of the Runelords, there's no reason to "abdicate" use of the warpriest in Skull and Shackles. Finish Rise of the Runelords first and the add-on deck for Skull and Shackles will be there in plenty of time for you. You may be stressing overmuch about strictures set only by you, yourself.

But if PACG isn't for you, it isn't for you. There's no such thing as a perfect game that appeals to everybody, no matter what the advertising says. I doubt you'll be judged negatively by forum-goers for playing what and how you want to play, and even if you are, what business of theirs is it?

Opium, found in the Gamemastery Guide, is cheap and easy to make, and for the cost of granting an enemy a few hit points it makes them fatigued for the next hour, no save. It's a handy debuff, if that's what you're looking for.

Character Name: Sajan
Role Card: Zen Archer
Skill Feats: Dexterity+4, Wisdom+1, Charisma+1
Power Feats: +1 hand size, proficient with weapons, When you attempt a combat check without playing a weapon you may use your Dexterity die instead of your Strength die and add the magic and fire traits, When dealt damage other than combat damage reduce that damage by 2, When you play a weapon with the Ranged trait, you may recharge it instead of discarding it.
Card Feats: Weapon+3, Item+2, Ally+1, Blessing+2
Weapons: Deathbane Light Crossbow +1, Frost Longbow +1, Shock Longbow +1
Items: Amulet of Mighty Fists, Belt of Physical Might, Headband of Inspired Wisdom, Staff of Minor Healing (x2), Sihedron Medallion
Allies: Black Arrow Ranger, Father Zantus, Jakardros Sovark, Sheriff Hemlock
Blessings: Blessing of Abadar (x2), Blessing of Calistria, Blessing of Erastil (x2), Blessing of Iomedae, Blessing of Irori, Blessing of Shelyn (x2), Blessing of Torag

Character Name: Lini
Role Card: Wild Warden
Skill Feats: Strength+2, Dexterity+1, Wisdom+3
Power Feats: +1 hand size, proficient with weapons, you may reveal an ally with the animal trait to add 1d4+4 to your check, add 2 to your divine check when playing a spell.
Card Feats: Weapon+1, Spell+2, Item+1, Ally+3, Blessing+1
Weapons: Mokmurian's Club
Spells: Augury, Dominate, Fiery Weapon, Holy Light, Inflict (x2), Major Cure (x2)
Items: Belt of Giant Strength, Staff of Heaven, Robes of Xin-Shalast, Sihedron Medallion
Allies: Cat, Crow, Dog, Eagle, Sabretooth Tiger, Toad
Blessings: Blessing of Abadar, Blessing of Gorum (x2), Blessing of Pharasma, Blessing of the Gods

Character Name: Ezren
Role Card: Evoker
Skill Feats: Intelligence+4, Wisdom+2
Power Feats: +1 hand size, add 2 to your check to recharge a card, add 2 to your arcane check with the Force, Acid, Cold, Electricity and/or Fire traits, add 2 to your check to acquire a spell.
Card Feats: Spell+3, Item+3, Ally+2
Weapons: Chellan, Sword of Greed
Spells: Blizzard, Corrosive Storm (x2), Disintigrate, Incendiary Cloud (x2), Lightning Bolt (x2), Poison Blast, Scorching Ray, Fire Sneeze
Items: Bracers of Greater Protection, Robe of Runes, Sihedron Medallion, Sihedron Tome, Staff of Hungry Shadows, Wand of Enervation
Allies: Guide, Pyromaniac Mage, Sage, Standard Bearer, Poog of Zarongel

Character Name: Kyra
Role Card: Healer
Skill Feats: Strength+2, Wisdom+4
Power Feats: +1 hand size, proficient with weapons, heal 1d4+3 and draw a card, add 1d8+1 with the magic trait to defeat a bane with the undead trait, when you play Blessing of Sarenrae you may recharge it instead of discarding it
Card Feats: Weapon+2, Spell+2, Item+1, Ally+1, Blessing+2
Weapons: Greatclub +3, Runechill Hatchet+2, Shock Greatsword+2, Karzoug's Burning Glaive
Spells: Fiery Weapon, Holy Light, Raise Dead, Restoration (x2)
Armors: Demon Armor, Magic Full Plate
Items: Belt of Giant Strength, Ordikon's Staff
Allies: Sacred Killer, Vale Temros
Blessings: Blessing of Gozreh (x2), Blessing of Norgorber, Blessing of Pharasma (x2), Blessing of Sarenrae (x3)

No deaths, although we were sweating bullets in the last couple of rounds.

The only damaged stuff I've ever received from Paizo was stuff I bought from their scratch and dinged bins. What's more, their customer service folk are awesome and quick to fix things if something should happen to go wrong. You're fairly safe.

The book you're looking for is the Inner Sea World Guide. That's the general gazetteer-like book for the setting.

Indeed. Leveling up is awesome, and something I look forward to as a player. But I also like to get the chance to use the nifty new abilities I've gotten before leveling up again. A good rate of leveling is the one they worked out for PFS--around once every three sessions.

With the exception of level one, which I find worthless and like to get out of as soon as possible.

Character Name: Sajan
Role Card: Zen Archer
Skill Feats: Dexterity +2, Wisdom +1, Charisma +1
Power Feats: +1 hand size, +magic and fire traits to unarmed, reduce non-combat damage by 1
Card Feats: weapon +1, Blessing +2
Weapons: Deathbane light crossbow +1
Items: Amulet of Mighty Fists, Belt of Incredible Dexterity, Sihedron Medallion, Staff of Minor Healing
Allies: Father Zantus, Guide, Sheriff Hemlock
Blessings: Abadar x2, Erastil, Irori x2, Lamashtu x3, Torag x2

Character Name: Ezren
Role Card: Evoker
Skill Feats: Intelligence +3, Wisdom +1
Power Feats: +1 hand size, +2 to recharge cards, +2 to arcane check with force trait
Card Feats: Spell +1, Ally +2
Weapons: Icy Longspear +1
Spells: Charm Person, Fire Sneeze, Frost Ray, Haste, Incendiary Cloud, Scorching Ray x2, Scrying, Swipe
Items: Ring of Protection, Sihedron Medallion, Wand of Enervation
Allies: Brodert Quink, Guide, Poog of Zarongel, Sage, Shalelu Andosana

Character Name: Kyra
Role Card: Healer
Skill Feats: Strength +2, Wisdom +2
Power Feats: +1 hand size, Heal ability 1d4+3, add 1d8+1 to checks to defeat undead.
Card Feats: Item +1, Blessing +2
Weapons: Flaming Mace +1, Vicious Trident +1
Spells: Cure, Holy Light, Major Cure
Armors: Magic Full Plate x2
Items: Belt of Giant Strength, Holy Candle
Allies: Vale Temros
Blessings: Calistria, Iomedae x2, Irori, Sarenrae x2, Shelyn x2

Character Name: Lini
Role Card: Wild Warden
Skill Feats: Strength +2, Wisdom +2
Power Feats: Prof. with Weapons, reveal animal to add 1d4+3
Card Feats: weapon +1, Ally +2
Weapons: Impaler of Thorns
Spells: Aid, Cure, Inflict x2, Major Cure, Strength
Items: Sihedron Medallion, Staff of Minor Healing
Allies: Cat, Crow, Dog, Sabretooth Tiger, Toad
Blessings: Desna x2, Gorum, Iomedae

Lorand, my gnome barbararian from Rise of the Runelords, named everything he owned, especially his weapons. His +2 adamantine greataxe was named Knock (Stand back, I'm gonna cast Knock!), and his +4 gluttonyforged mithril greataxe (he followed the golf bag method of adventuring) was named Diplomacy. The tiny returning dagger was named Thumbtack (and was his go-to weapon whenever he was swallowed whole), the skinsaw mask was named New Friend, his spiked breastplate was named Undies and his codpiece was named Monkey.
...Lorand had an interesting relationship with things.

I have done exactly what you are suggesting in the past, and it works better than you would think, although a few house rules dealing with magic, finances and armor had to be cobbled together.

Because I was still going for a fairly high-fantasy feel, I had my players start at 4th level so that they could have their first advanced class level. If you want something grittier, starting them lower would definitely do that. For finances I reverse engineered the d20 modern system where 1 dollar worth of value was equivalent to one silver piece, but using pathfinder's equipment setup would probably be easier at this point. For AC I kept the defense rating of the classes, then took the piecemeal armor and armor as DR rules from unearthed arcana. My magic system was skill based, but that was as much because I wanted to play around with magic systems as any need to fix the rules. We played that campaign for a year and a half and I still occasionally get requests to go back to it.

So yeah, d20 modern is quite doable for what you want. It's just going to take some work.

Awesome, Liz, thanks for the heads up.

I as well, also on Firefox 27.0.1.

The stock number for the die is KOP02814. Your FLGS should be able to order it for you if their distributor carries Koplow supplies (I know Alliance and ACD does, not as sure about other distributors)

Why not just use the literal translation: "Great Armor" or "Lord's Armor"?

Recently all my characters have started buying bottles of expensive alcohol, usually absinthe, although none of them actually drink it. I've used it as bribes, gotten enemy commanders drunk, used it as a makeshift molotov cocktail--it's just handy to have around.

It's a 3.5 source, but in the Eberron campaign setting there is an eighth level spell, True Creation, which functions as Major Creation but is permanent. The material component is the gp value of the item being created. Maybe something like that is what you're looking for?

As so many others above me have said, the PDF is an excellent option no matter what other options are available. I personally would pay for the $8 POD option as well, mostly because my friends are tired of putting up with my weekly update meeting, but also because I love supporting support (I only hope I can be as incredible with support as you guys are in my own little game design attempts.)

Well, now I know where my next bit of surplus RPG budget is going.

Southern Utah would be warm desert, Roosevelt Park would be cold desert. (I'm more sure of the former than the latter as I live in the former.)

When I replay a scenario I've already completed, I shuffle the total locations for the scenario and deal out the number of locations proper for the number of players. So far this hasn't changed much in the play of the scenarios except for Black Fang's Dungeon, where the lack of the desecrated vault made the scenario easier.
Mildly funny story: the first time I attempted this reshuffle trick was in a solo game of Brigandoom, and I ended up dealing the normal three locations. In order.

The Cartographer's Guild (www.cartographersguild.com) is all about the maps--gaming, non-gaming, even some tactical. You could try there. The only downside is that searching for a specific kind of map is less than user friendly.

Glee~!

I don't particularly recommend it. There are circumstances that will keep your party pressing forward most of the time, with probable repercussions if you don't.

143. (Synthesist) An aasimar kidnapped by a cult and put through a ritual to turn him into a demon, only to have the ritual go awry before it was completely finished, causing him to occasionally turn into something horrific.

144. The ratling broodmaster that summons a quartet of anthropomorphic turtles in colored eyemasks, wielding weapons from Minkai.

I think that for small groups in small fights this would be fun, but in the 42 goblin scenario you're talking about, you're ultimately effectively doubling to tripling the real time duration of this combat. A fight that felt like it was dragging on before will take even longer this way.
I personally feel that for large melees you want to minimize the dice rolled rather than increase them.

This is a concept that I've been intrigued with for a goodly time now. I have to say that what you've got covers a lot of the bases well. I would probably have separate combat skill and non-combat skill groups with their own pools of skill points (although it's not completely necessary, I think it would help maintain utility balances between classes--otherwise, wizards, witches and rogues would potentially be some of the biggest combat monsters in the game) and these pools of skill points would use different attributes to determine bonus skill points, with Intelligence for non-combat skills as usual and probably Dexterity ("muscle memory") for combat skills. At that point, I would probably also use armor as DR and include defense skills for use as AC as well--probably by armor category as per Skyrim.
Option one of your feat solution would work well at this point, as skill affinity feats would obviously be meant for non-combat skills, while feats like Weapon Focus would become the combat skill version of skill affinity feats.

To conclude: I think it's a good start and merits further development.

This is a fascinating idea and I may have to use some form of it in the future.

Not particularly interested, actually. Any potential love I could have had for RPG action figures went down the drain with the debacle that was Shadowrun Duels.

As the aforementioned autistic player, I thank you for your responses.
That was an extremely frustrating encounter, made worse that the weather rules you (Tangent101 and zimmerwald1915) were kind enough to remind me of were just not coming to memory, making an already difficult encounter a potential TPK with an unseeable micro-sniper out there plinking us for a point of damage at a time, staggering us so that we couldn't even get into the igloos for defense. I'm going to be so happy to get out of this module--every encounter has been frustrating in one way or another.

According to the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana gestalt rules, you take the better of the two progressions. In your example, the fighter has the better Fort save progression while the Wizard has the better Will save progression. Your gestalted Fighter/Wizard would have strong Fort and Will save progressions while having a weak Reflex save progression.

As you get into higher CR monsters, the attributes of the monsters spike upwards, leading to greater survivability on their parts. We had a witch in our RotR campaign who, despite starting with an 18 intelligence, found herself being more and more irrelevant as our opponents began needing lower and lower numbers to resist her hexes (with some of them needing low single digit numbers in book 5). This happened partially because we weren't able to acquire headbands and the druid "didn't want to waste spells" buffing party members with those attribute buffing spells. She managed a small boost with the threefold aspect spell, allowing her to assume crone form for an Intelligence boost, but it often wasn't enough. The late game was very frustrating for her.

There is a book from Necromancers of the Northwest called the Book of Beginnings that has three alternate attribute generation methods. I'm fond of the tarot based method from that book, as it combines the balance of point buy with the randomness of rolling.

Our witch in RotR had that spell and managed to acquire a cloak of immolation.

Remember that in order for the Bishop (a Cleric)'s powers to function, he must remain within one alignment step of his Patron Deity. In this case he must be LG/NG/LN.

If he becomes evil (such as preaching / inciting / actively participating in acts of genocide) he will lose all his powers, as will clerics / paladins who follow those instructions.

However, if he's just taken a bump to the noggin or otherwise truly misguided or deceived (alternatively replaced by doppleganger or other illusion/shapeshifting), it is possible that he may misinterpret the cause of the loss of his powers. eg "We're being tested by Iomedae, we must eradicate all of these beasts of evil to regain our Lady's blessings!" He's still lost the powers, but he might ramp up the genocide rhetoric.

There may be some insanity/madness related traits & feats that allow you to fake an alignment or otherwise gain cleric powers without the proper alignment. Haven't got my source books on hand ;) But another trope from literature is that if the deceit is coming from a suitably powerful evil outsider or Deity, they may grant the powers to the cleric/bishop once Iomedae ceases (often without the cleric's immediate knowledge).

Does the bishop have to be a cleric? The office of Bishop is a rank within an ecclesiastical system rather than a rank within a class. The bishop could be a wizard, summoner or even monk or bard (or even an adept!) with ranks in Knowledge: Religion and Profession: Clergy, using diplomacy and manipulation to get his way a la Cardinal Richelieu. With the cult of Razmir extant there are feats and options to help pull this off even more cleanly.

These are awesome and I will likely use them when I get my group to the forest.

Hopeknives are small, easily concealable blades that historically were given to young noble women so that, if they were abducted, they would be able to kill themselves so as to die with their virtue intact. If you want to have it statted as a weapon, I would probably use the stats for a kerambit.

It's not a missing handout, there was no need for one as, by the description, it's basically a lopsided oval with four Exes. It would have been a waste of space and art resources to include it in the module.
I did what you're planning myself, as the idea was awesome. Just remember--goblins aren't exactly scribes. My group had to enlist the help of a goblin they'd spared to figure out that the scrawl was even a map.

The cheapest tokens I've been able to make were so:
At my local art supply store (a scrapbooking store should work as well) I bought a 1-inch circular punch for about $9.00. I then got packs of thin foam sheets in the craft section of my local dollar store. Each pack has about 50 sheets, each sheet produces about 16-18 tokens. So $10.00 got me around 800 tokens, with 800 more tokens costing me another dollar. If you just got the foam and cut it with scissors, it'd be messy, but even cheaper.
As an added note: I usually just write on the foam with sharpie and accept that these are very lightweight, disposable tokens. to make heavier tokens for semipermanent use you can do the following (I did this to make minature bases) I bought a second punch, this one 3/4 inch. Each token is two 1-inch foam circles, one with a 3/4-inch circle punched in it. Glue the two circles together, then glue a penny into the 3/4-inch hole. You can then glue whatever on top of the penny and have a 1-inch weighted token with artwork of your choosing.

If I think back on rules compendiums that have been printed for various roleplaying games that I can think of (the D&D 3.5 and 4e editions come quickest to mind) and think about what happened to the systems shortly after their release (4e was announced very shortly after the publication of the 3.5 compendium and the 4e compendium was connected to the essentials line, which I consider a colossal mistake), then I find myself lacking any interest in a Pathfinder rules compendium, no matter what you end up calling it. (Yes, I realize that there may not be any causality in the aforementioned examples, but I don't claim that my mental processes are completely logical.)

What I would like to see, instead, is an update-able master index that allows me to easily find whatever rule I happen to be looking for--knowing where to find the rule is all I really need and would have the tablet and smartphone functionality others are talking about. While not likely to be as pretty as a rules compilation a no frills searchable index would be cheaper and potentially faster.

This however, is merely my two cents. Such an item could be completely unnecessary with the existence of sites like d20pfsrd.com (although I do tend to need to look things up outside of internet access.)

This is definitely my cup of tea--put me in as interested.

Recently, I quite suddenly needed an alchemist NPC in my game, so I went looking for a statblock to pull. No dice. I ended up using a shaman with Craft: Alchemy from the GMG, but I felt the lack. I'm not sure what kind of book these would go in--certainly nothing that's currently on the production docket--but it would be a useful utility that I'm sure that more GMs than just myself would appreciate.
So would such a thing be possible?

Well, the main reason I believe is price. Magical healing will cost significant amounts of gold per casting (at least for the non-adventurer) while a physician with the heal skill would cost some silver by comparison.
Adventurers use the heal skill largely as backup and do rely largely on magical healing, in my experience.

In regards to 13 Hungry Stirges: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Flight of the Bumble Bee

I would just like to add my thoughts on a few good performances/variations:

Andre Kostelanetz--This version is symphonic and the arrangement has the main line played in fifths for the majority of the piece giving it an enjoyably creepy undertone.

James Galway--Flute with accompaniment. Nice thematic link to the piper.

Ron Rhode--Organ. Again, a nice creepy, frenetic vibe.

Nuno Bettencourt--Electric guitar, and not actually Flight of the Bumblebee per se, but a variant similar enough for someone who wants something a little less common.

Hope this helps someone in the same boat I was.

And I agree that Riptide777 is awesome for putting these lists together.