Joex The Pale's page

Not worst crit, but weirdest. It was a 1st ed game, attacked a guy with a longbow, nat 20. Rolled again, another 20. DM rolls on custom chart (as he did for dual 20s), rolls "severed left big toe". Damage was enough to one-shot him. I shot him in the foot and he died. O.o

Or, maybe he declared a fast rising PC as his arch nemesis. As long as he didn't actually try to kill the PC, he'd gain levels with no risk. Level 20, here we come! :D

I'd say he'd most likely be Nodwick

A mouse skeleton that glows like a Light spell and will run up and down any hanging rope or chain it is placed on. Light color can be changed from white to red, blue or "black" on command. Completely harmless, AC10 and 1HP.

I want to play a fighter with these now. That would be fun. "Healing? No thanks. I'll just stand here and look stoic for a few minutes, that'll fix me right up..."

Oooh, hit-and-run types, ring of invis and these boots. Fight until half hp, invis and run off to heal for a minute, come back and kick more ass. Excuse me, I have an encounter to write...

Also, Reciprocal Gyre existed to punish mages for being heavily buffed with spells. I highly encourage porting the spell over to PF, btw.

OUCH!! Yes, I think I will be taking that into my arsenal, that could be an interesting spell to toss against my PCs... >:)

And now you've all met my wife. ;)

Wow. Just, wow. I love this forum, you guys are all great!

Excellent posts all, even the ones telling me/her not to do it. I know monk is one of the more challenging classes to play, but she's my wife and making her happy is Priority #1. (All you husbands/boyfriends out there get what I'm saying, right?) Plus, she's willing to let me help her build it, so I think we can make something she's happy with and will still be useful in combat.

I should have mentioned as well that none of the party are particularly optimized. They are all playing interesting characters but none of them are real powerhouse builds, so I'm not worried about a sub-optimal monk choice being overshadowed. The party could really use someone with some stealth/skills and she would slot in there nicely with the proper guidance. Plus I have another player on hiatus that's running a rogue, so she didn't want to step on her toes if/when she ever returns. And I do a very generous roll style for stats, so the MAD shouldn't be a problem. (The players are Big Damn Heroes, they should have stats like them! ;D)

I will point her to this thread and encourage her to read it. Perhaps she'll amend her "must have" list once she's read the challenges and options, you never know. Once again, thanks for all the great tips and if anyone has more to add, keep it coming! Great stuff!

I think the problem is that people are trying to shoehorn caster BBEG plotlines into a fighter setting. It's not going to work. They have specific abilities and need certain plot requirements to shine. They require a bit more support then casters, agreed. They require a different scenario than casters to work, agreed. This is why there are different classes, for different scenarios and different challenges. I think a fighter would be a great hit and run expert, especially if he could get the drop on his target. Pop up, full attack for a huge amount of damage and disappear again. That's the first thing I thought of when I found this thread. I think I shall create such an assassin-style fighter, just to see how he works. Straight up level 20 fighter, no prestige classes, no templates, just archetypes and non-artifact items. Instead of everyone piping up with reasons why it couldn't work, why don't you get out of your comfort zone rut and challenge yourself to think up ways it could?

If this thread is about Fighters and BBEGs, why are we arguing about Solar stats? Shall we get back to the topic at hand, please?

Well, starting things off with a level of barb is never a bad idea. That's the way I'd go. Following that with the cleric level for better will save and early healing? Sure, not a bad way to start.

I am inspired by the character creation coolness that is RavingDork, so I thought I would begin a thread as he has done, posting some of my favorite creations in a shameless bid for worldwide fame and adulation. Or just the occasional "that's cool" would do as well, I'm easy. ;)

So with no further ado, let me start with my first evil duo. I give you:

Randy SilverWind and his fair maid, Marion.

I'm new to this and using Google Drive, which I'm not really familiar with, so let me know if anything isn't working and I'll try and fix the problem.

Also; Disclaimer! As with RD's creations, feel free to use these in personal games and for general PC-bashing happy-fun-time, but refrain from doing anything that would turn a profit or entail lawyerish-type people becoming involved. Is cool? Is cool!

Oooooo, I found this.

That critter is perfect, considering it's an intelligent, spellcasting rat swarm doing the raising!!

So, consensus is that the uncontrolled undead would begin trying to find a way out of the building to attack any nearby locals they might sense?

"Welcome, to Vampiric Island!"

Or perhaps a tad later in his career?

"You will make excellent Corinthian leather once I've finished flaying you."

Or perhaps his best known role?

"No...no, you can't get away...from hell's heart, I stab at thee...for hate's sake, I spit my last breath...at thee..."

Hmmmm, perhaps this has merit... :)

HaraldKlak wrote:

1) The people at the bar does not detect as evil, unless they have 5 HD, or are clerics/antipaladin to an evil god. I'd guess that most common bar patrons isn't that high level. Maybe they were, but then there is probably something going on at that place (and his cause might be more just than it first seem).

Basically this. If the paladin walks into a bar full of antipaladins and evil clerics there's something very bad going on and he should be more likely to lose his paladinhood for walking away than for trying to do something about it.

Nonsense! If the paladin immediately draws down screaming, "DIE, EVIL-DOERS!", well that's just plain dumb. He's in a bar with 30+ evil-pinging patrons. Three things are happening here.

1) Something is wrong with his ability.
2) Something is badly wrong with these people and they need help.
3) There are a huge batch of powerful, evil people here and he needs back-up, BADLY!

I would allow, even applaud, a paladin that backed out of the bar and went for help. There are more ways to deal with evil then immediately trying to kill it.

Oooookay, I gotta say, sounds like this fellow was playing Lawful Stupid, not Lawful Good, no insult intended despite the harshness of that statement. Let me explain.

There are many reasons why someone might ping evil that have nothing to do with them being evil. Off the top of my head the Succubus' profane gift and (I believe) being on the receiving end of an evil controlling or buff spell are two such ways. There should have been investigation, then a decision could be made. Walking into a bar full of patrons that ping evil and immediately begin making plans to murder them all is NOT paladin behavior.

Second, walking up to two strangers and asking them if they would assist him in the murder of several (to them) innocent strangers, regardless of whether or not they were actually hired to protect them, would be an INCREDIBLY foolish thing to do. Imagine such a scenario;

"I realize you can't see these people's auras, but I can and they are all evil. Wanna help me kill them? No, really, they're all evil! You must trust me, I'm a paladin, not a crazed mass-murderer!"

Nope. Not going to happen.

So, that being said, I don't think that the punishment was out of line, although odd. They had strange and harsh penalties for crimes in "olden tymes", so something like that could be explained away, but personally I wouldn't have done it that way. And I most definitely wouldn't have allowed the paladin/rogue swap. It sounds to me like this player was going out of his way to be disruptive, and best thing to do with that sort of player is ask them politely after the game to stop it, after explaining what and why you found disruptive, and removing him from the game if he continues his disruptive behavior. Is this the case?

They meet him last game. Everyone was incredibly creeped out. I feel good. :-D

A young Quickling. Crazy fast and crazy Dex. Natural invisibility, SLAs, hit-and-run type feats. I'd love to try this!

I've always had a problem with this myself. Fluff-wise, it makes no sense. These characters are all wearing these articles 24/7? While sleeping, bathing, entertaining, performing *ahem* "private acts"? Really, they can't take them off for a moment or they lose their bonuses and open themselves up to surprise attack? Or does all this get hand-waved into the background?

For example. The PCs are invited to a swanky ball. They go out and buy new outfits and dress to the nines. They then have their assorted headbands, tabards, bracers, helmets, masks and goggles on overtop (or underneath, remember; can't take them off!) of all their finery?

“Fools. You dance to the strings of the veiled masters and are ending your only hope of freedom with every blow you strike.”

-TimD

I Have a BBEG That This Is Perfect For!

The next time the current paladin uses her Detect Evil she should notice his sudden dark aura. Use the telepathy thing liberally, having the succubus question his choices and showing him "alternate paths" (read; Dark Path) that he might want to consider. Succubus are subtle, but they are also demons, so she might get a little impatient and push things, perhaps giving herself away. Since she has managed to dupe a potential paladin into accepting her gift, she would likely be telepathically "riding" him almost exclusively to make sure he turns, or at least cause him maximum pain when he realizes his mistake.

Buckle your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen, the ride is about to begin... :)

And, yes, you can still provide flanking because you're not debuffing the target but buffing your ally. You're standing there behind the opponent; sure, attacking him would break your sanctuary, but that doesn't mean he can completely disregard you as if you were a statue.

I'm imagining some guy just standing behind an orc with a creepy smile on his face...

I Stand By My Assertion That If You Delete "As a Whip" From Scorpion Whip's Description, All These Problems Go Away.

@rorek55 - I like the Court Bard archtype, fits well with my image of him.

@Eltacolibre - I prefer the Bard since this guy likes the spotlight. No hiding in the shadows for him. I like the idea of him being a disguised Fey, but the only one I found that would remotely fit is the Satyr. Granted, I'm working mainly off the phone app since I'm out on the road and don't have access to my books or the web most of the time. I'll look at other Fey later. I like that idea though!

@pendothrax - Succubus bodyguards, I like the concept! Fits well with his hedonistic nature, and I imagine they could easily flatter their way into positions that would benefit them and their demonic masters in the future. I'm going to have to think on that more...

Keep it coming folks, this is good stuff!

Baobhan Sith as Mrs. Clawz? A Stroke Lad as Santa?

I was thinking of a rat swarm variant. Idea comes from the Tome of Ultimate Evil. (or some-such, I keep blanking on the name but LOVE that book!) It's a Hive Mind rat swarm. Every few dozen rats added to this thing give it another +1 to Int and eventually it gets minor spellcasting. The PCs first bumped into it about 3 months ago game time and are about to bump into it again. At the first encounter, there were about 200 rats. A buddy who knows rats says there could easily be 9000 now, and that if bred selectively and aggressively, they could have as many as 20,000 in their swarm! This would put them well into the 20+ Int range and give them the spellcasting equivalent of a 4-5 spellcaster. Now, my question is this; what sort of caster should it be and what spells would make for the most awesomeness??

I look forward to everyone's ideas. People on this forum come up with some of the most wonderously evil ideas to throw at players... ;)

You folks are missing one. The Mystic Thuerge's capstone ability.

"Spell Synthesis (Su)
At 10th level, a mystic theurge can cast two spells, one from each of his spellcasting classes, using one action. Both of the spells must have the same casting time."

With this, a Theurge could cast two standard action spells and a Quickened spell. Combine it with the Pathfinder Chronicler boost and you could have a potential of four spells in one round, plus any extras from Contingency or Feather Fall. :)

Design enemies that are actually much more dangerous on their backs.

Heh heh heh, that sounds dirty out loud. But I mean it. Make another Monk who's a BJJ master or something.

Oh, and THIS doesn't sound dirty? :-D

I have been brainstorming a BBEG and have sort of fallen in love with the idea of a dueling nobleman with a little extra punch behind his rapier. Now, dueling with a rapier screams Duelist, and magic+swordfighting is the whole concept of a Magus (roughly). My question is; can this character be an effective threat?

For stats, I was thinking human dual talent, giving him 18 in both Dex and Int, on a 25 point build.

Now, I had a couple of ideas in his Magus build. I was thinking, him being a rich noble and a BBEG, that I would load him up with magic. He has a house wizard that could craft him all sorts of goodies, so I was thinking of a Wand Wielder arcana (perhaps combined with Wand Mastery?) so he could spam whatever spell he chose, plus be a very versatile "caster". I also like the idea of the Familiar arcana for a Greensting Scorpion for the +4 Init (although the optics of a refined gentleman carrying around a bug doesn't sit right...) and maybe the Spell Shield for some fast AC, brings me to about level 9-ish.

From there, I was thinking head into Duelist territory. The first few levels seem made to pair with Magus. Good Ref saves, more Init bonuses, more AC, Combat Reflexes, static damage bonuses. I tell you, it's like Christmas in June! I love Duelist all the way to 10th, but I could live without the stuff after 5th if there's better levels out there to dip into.

So, I was looking at creating this bad-boy to be about the 15-16th level range. Originally, I was thinking of tossing in a few levels of Aristocrat for flavour purposes, but I am ok with dumping that idea for a short dip into something that would fit the motif I'm heading towards here. Gear, feat and archetype suggestions are welcome. I'll post my working build once I get it roughed out.

I FAQed it as well, although I would go with a more liberal interpretation myself. The spell states "any spell that spellcaster knew." For a memorization caster, this would clearly be any spell he was capable of memorizing that morning. I would, however, restrict it to casters of your "type"only. Just as a split class caster can't use slots from one class to cast spells from the other, you shouldn't be able to learn an arcane spell from a devine source. Doesn't work for scrolls, why should it work for this spell?

Peter Stewart wrote:

I think every DM has had this experience

I once ran an entire encounter with hostile Storm Giants... and forgot to give them their turns. :S

Don't ask, I have no excuse.

This gave me a much needed belly laugh! Thank you! :D

Alan_Beven wrote:

It's not meant to be "fun". It's meant to be a creature using its strengths to destroy its enemies.

sigh

Now, now. Don't quote him out of context. Yes, this sentence, could have been phrased better, but he explained his point properly in the rest of his post. Beating an improperly played monster is little different from finding a code bug in a video game to beat a powerful creature with no risk. The fun is in the accomplishment, not the gaining of the loot. After all, you could have that first kobold encounter at first level sitting on a Dragon hoard, but how fun would the rest of the a game be with +5 weapons and mighty magic staves in party hands? Might as well play the game on cheat codes!

The GM shouldn't bail, but use this as a learning experience and work to fix it. The paladin/wizard thing could work. Also, are the PC's *really* the most powerful band on the sea now? Slightly higher level and much smarter/stealthy pirates could easily steal the kraken sub from them and now they REALLY have a problem on their hands! Aquatic enemies could be deadly here, sahugin, merfolk, hell , this would be a feast for a large band of lacedons! And a powerful undead would LOVE such a mount/servant. For that matter, servants of a God of the dead, trickery or chaos could give it back it's mind...

Kill me once, shame on me. Reanimate me and use me as a boat, shame on you. Shame, and my everlasting enmity, mortal peons!

I remember these! I based an order of the lawful neutral paladins in my home brew world. Glad to see an update, now I can stat them up again. Thanks! :)

I would imagine the most effective way to do this is with the Create Demiplane spell.

It deals with all your temperature/daylight/weather/vermin problems automatically.

+1 this. Plus, unless you use construct labour, it makes "commuting" interesting for your workers.

Peasant: "Going to work now, dear. See you tonight."
Grabs his hoe, climbs onto the back of a waiting Nightmare and flashes of into the sky. Wife waves briefly, then turns to her washing with a sigh.

"Now he roams around in search of more people who have guns to kill them and take (or destroy) their guns so that they don't use these evil weapons ever again on his people. He's using the evil to defeat the evil basically. In the process, he's become one of the greatest gunslingers to ever have lived..."

I like this, but to work it into the world there would probably need to be some changes. In pretty much all of the cities you can find guns. Old guns are pseudo-commonplace (not everyone has them or knows how to use them, but many do) so my character would have their work cut out for them, and would probably be hated or considered KoS for almost every major city if he just wanders in guns blazing on anybody else who has a firearm. Not to mention he very likely would be insta-gibbed by the Duke/King/Earl/Royal Family's guards if they found him. (Though not so much at 12th level, he could probably give a few of them a run for their money before going down).

Just because he hates gun wielders and seeks to destroy them, doesn't mean he needs to go in "guns blazing" at all. He's not Lawful Stupid, after all. He wanders the world, seeking ways to limit or even reduce the spread and usage of guns. Clandestinely destroying factories, or using his gunslinger abilities to put all gunslingers in a bad light and bring "negative press" to bear, making guns socially shunned. There's just two thoughts off the top of my head how he could accomplish this.

Edit: what if the skin rashes are actually forming symbols that summon demons randomly that can only be seen by and effect the infected? People who are uninfected would see the infected as loosing their grip on reality due to their illness and would quarantine them. Raving? check. Self inflicted wounds? check. Seeing things? check. Prognosis? Cray person. Cure with fire or holy water.

Holy. Crap. That is brilliant!

*yoink*

That's the sound of me stealing the idea for my campaign.

And speaking of crazy people, I created a villain once that might suit this scenario. He was a charm specialist wizard who ran an asylum with his mentor, experimenting (in good ways) in ways to cure various diseases of the mind with their charm magics. They had some success and unfortunately, one of these were a CE psion that thanked them by sparking an inmate revolt and torturing the two of them. The mentor died, but the apprentice lived, now quite mad. He became obsessed with control of others, "for their own good." His familiar only responds to him when he's in his rare, lucid moments (CG) and actively looks for someone to help his master. The mage is well known in the area for his good work in the asylum and can be cured, if the PCs can find and subdue him. He is essentially still a good man, but in his insanity, does evil things for what his warped mind thinks are good reasons. I reflected this by having his alignment "flicker" between CG and CE. If the PCs just found him and killed him, the backlash of the populace would bring harsh consequences down on them. I tossed in liberal hints as to the mage's predicament. Never did play that to completion, game fizzled for other reasons. :-(

Found this in the online monster description;

"Anyone who treats a graveknight’s armor as simply battle spoils risks both body and soul. Graveknights rejuvenate when destroyed. Their bodies literally grow back, with tendrils of undead flesh coiling out from recesses in their armor like gruesome creepers, unless opponents take pains to also obliterate the armor. These unholy strands have no objection to infesting a living host instead of producing a new body for their master."

There's much more detail there, much of it gruesome. I think I may have incorporate one of these into my game... }:>