JohnHawkins's page

Have been away for sometime
I did give the princess Nereids grace as a permenant spell via tattoo , most of the pc's had the same effect. I believe the PC sorceress also had , the Arshea effect via one of the devils, and an orcale dip and her Charisma so high that I had trouble getting a Solar to hit her at all.

I can't remember the quality of the npc's in the campaign I know I rebuilt all of them, but I have never run an AP were I did not rebuild every notable character as my players optimise to a higher level than writers expect and I am too generous to them . Plot wise it is at least as good as the average paizo AP ,better than some worse than others but a lot of that is going to depend on your group.

The only AP I have ever had a serious problem with the mechanics of is Wrath of the Righteous but there are whole threads on that. The CR/Wealth and so on are all guidelines and any writer should be willing to break them when needed, I regularly ignore them when rebuidling encounters for balance and I have not used xp in 20 years so the CR serves no purpose anyway, and is a very rough guide a level 1 Goblin and a level 1 Orc warrior have the same CR and they are very different threats to characters

Giving the princess levels in gragon disciple would be a solid nerf to her, trade in severel caster levels for strength and natural armour , thats great for a primary caster , really great could not persuade one of my players to do that if I tried.

The main thing I learned from this AP was to never give templates to pc's they are far too effective. Vampire sorcers are terrifying as they get all of that lovely charisma bonus on their hp

Feels very foolish

1 The Hecontires is really scary, I seem to remember my players felt it was more dangerous than anything else in the campaign and set up an impressive trap for it and burned multiple wishes to get it to go away. It is intelligent, ruthless and wants to destroy everything . So it could be manipulated but only with extreme difficulty and then after is has slaughtered the good guys , the forces of evil still have to kill it.

2 If you have a character who is a skilled techno arcanist , spends a lot of the book6 downtime and resources of the kingdom working on it why not. It slaughters a lot of the army (possibly both armies) and now you have hundreds of soul sucking wraithes messing up your country

3 This is all subjective, If I had used the 2 solar ending the pc;s would have just killed both of them. I had to boost the final battle a lot more with all sorts of extra's but I let my party pick up lots of powerful enhancements like vampirism and being grave knights as well as crafting their own gear.

4 Live with it. The nature of D+D is that the small party of 20th level characters can slaughter most armies unless blocked by peer level opponents. My players made this point to the princess and there was no battle , the pc's fought the princess and her elite guards and the army of the losing side surrendered or fled the country. The Gravekight antipladin could probably have killed an entire mortal army on his own without the others helping him

5a - Dessiter is small fry the Princess is aided my many eqully capable angels and in the same way Asmodeus prevented the witch hunters running down the pc's Mithra protects the princess. Sure let the players spend a lot of their time and effort on this instead of securing their kingdom , let them wipe out a bunch of minions as you said above it won't matter at all at the final showdown

5b - I assumed the Dragon had moved out with her horde and was using it to fund the army of light, so my players never looked for her lair

Out of interest can anyone with the book find the Level 6 reality warper spell 'Subjective Reality' it is in the short decriptions and sounds interesting but I cannot find the full description of the spell ?

Can I cancel all of my Pathfinder subscriptions after the last 1st edition items. Keep the Starfinder subscriptions

That is indeed more confusingly worded than when I thought when I first looked at it.
I think that I will rule that it only takes effect when a divine caster other than yourself casts a spell which effects you. This would include an allied caster.
Out of combat I may well rule that the effects are not worth bothering with. Further as it is a curse spamming divine spells to get the effect you want will probably never work and may irritate the gods. The out of combat no effect is to reduce unnecessary dice rolling but if the situation is one where the effects may be significant then I would roll
I may also occasionally in particularly appropriate situations modify the table of possible results, particularly as there are some places in the likely campaign which could result in divine oddities.

There are certainly other perfectly valid interpretations, but the one above I think fits my gm style best.
For anyone except Doki-Chan this can be read as just one attempt to reconcile how this badly worded rule fits with gameplay

Thanks , better than I had managed

I could have sworn there were some archetypes which gave access to these talants for other classes but I can't find them. Can anyone think of a way to get them for other classes.

I always use milestone leveling and so far in every AP I have had to rebuild most encounters as my players optimise more than the level assumed by the designers. I don't have a problem with this as I enjoy rebuilding opponents.
In Rise of the Runelords I held the players back at level 16 and still had to rebuild the final battle to make Karzoug an appropriately terrifying opponent.
The final battle of this AP may actually be dangerous enough to not need a complete rebuild , we will see when my players get there in a few years

As a compulsive power gamer I just spent a while rebuilding Sorshen. I can get everything except her strength to match , her strength has to be at least 20
minimum 7 at character design
+2 Azlanti human
+5 inherent bonus wish
+6 magical belt

It looks like the stat block has a belt of Physical improvement +6 Dex and Con included rather than +6 to all stats.

I really do appreciate her build it is a nice build making fun use of mythic powers. It is of course crippled compared to an optimised mythic archmage but that makes it usable in play while a mythic 10 archmage would probably be too powerful.

Edit
And I just read the discussion about her strength in the main AP thread so please ignore this , only about a fortnight late to notice it

Now I'm really curious about this final chapter. Except my subscription hasn't granted me access to a PDF because it's been stuck in pending for nearly a week. Didn't do that for the other 5 and I know I'm not broke. (At least not yet...)

This is utterly normal.

It would help Mystics a lot in combat and they already have good combat spells so it would make the soldiers and Solarions feel less useful as Mystics would be closer to them in combat prowess. It would also make technologist players hate you as it improves mystics without helping them at all.
I think it is a huge boost and should be at least a seperate feat taken after Mystic Strike and if you are going to allow it consider having it add best of Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma so anyone who wants to have a high casting stat can also be a master of combat not just the Mystics.

Sounds interesting but I expect it stops in the mid levels again which will be yet another source of frustration

A suit of armour provides a lot of environmental protection and what it takes to recharge it is going to depend on what you have been using.
On this planet all you are using is the temperature control, this is essentially going to be the batterries running the cooling system, maybe water reservoirs but the environment is not an extreme desert or similar. So I would allow recharging the life support reservoirs just with electrical power.
Now if you are trekking across a Luna surface then you are using up Oxygen and other consumable supplies so if it was necessary to recharge a suit you would need access to oxygen or similar supplies to recharge the suits reservoirs. Probably.

If the suit is a sealed recycling system with sufficient power you may be able to reverse the respiration process and break down the C02 and other waste products to regain fresh Oxygen, water and food paste. Even then though I suspect that after sustained use filters and similar components are going to need repairing or refreshing as they suffer a degree of irreversible degradation over time.
Or of course the life support systems could use magic and over come all the real world issues possibly instead having new ones of their own.

It all depends how much effort you want to put your players too in surviving in hostile environments which is going to depend on the story and other factors. Also of course given the wide range of races in play what passes for a hostile climate to one race may be quite comfortable for others and visa-versa

Thanks again

I have not received a second confirmation email. Not sure if that is a problem
Thanks for sorting out the address change

Is it possible to change the delivery address for this one to the address I use in Wigan rather than in Leeds.
I am going into hospital for routine surgery and only discovered the date today , this means when the package arrives there will be no one in Leeds and there is a good chance the royal mail will bounce it back to you before I am back in Leeds

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There are 3rd party supplements that I hear good things about that give advice and guide lines to help with this. Although I've had non mythic folks wipe the floor with their CR appropriate encounters. One group I ran through RotR took Karzoug out in 1.5 rounds. Perhaps its a function of the core system rather than the add on system?

I am a competent GM capable of adjusting challanges to meet the group, I enjoy and run high level PF games regularly. However Mythic without 3rd party support(I have not looked at the 3rd party material, instead I threw out my mythic rules) cannot be balanced . I could easily produce opponents which could kill my pc's the problem was providing a challange .

In RoTr my pc's did indeed kill the end boss in only a few rounds, but they were rightfully afraid of him, had to work hard and even then nearly lost as it was a challanging fight, In Wrath the Paladin could have just walked up to deskari and killed him in single round and nothing Deskari could do would stop him. Changing things just tended to mirror the problem so that if an NPC won initiative he killed all the pc's hence I had to produce silly numbers of hp so that there was an illusion of challange. As I say running the mythic rules after book 5 was the worst gm'ing experience of my life including running some very badly written games over the last 30+ years. It is a pity I really like the AP but the mythic rules are dire

Are handwraps really as exciting as I think they are?

I thought so. Finally magical weapons for monks and Brawlers at the normal prices

In the end the Empyreal Knight paladin (Named Menas) ascended to godhood and became Iomadae's divine husband, while the unfettered eidolon became their housecarl and part timer for the other good gods. She also managed to find her old master in the outer planes and get closure.

Bizzare coincidence the Paladin in my campaign was called Menas as well. Married Arushalea though and lead the crusade to liberate Cheliax.

Starfinder is not a science fiction game it is Science fantasy or Space Opera. I like Hard Sci-Fi and in a Hard SCI-Fi game combat in vaccuum is really dangerous , also one hit from most weapons is potentially fatal. I also like Science fantasy games for these I turn off my reality expectations in the same way I do for Star Wars or High fantasy games. Worrying about armour in Vaccuum is in the same catagory as worrying about that fact that putting a gun to your head an pulling the trigger is none lethal , it is a necessary convention of the setting.If you want realism go for a Game like Traveller a fun but different experience trying to force realism into Starfinder will just make your head hurt and hurt your fun.

Thank you
I thought I had ordered it a it late for this months subscription shipment so it won't be a suprise when it comes with the november subscription

I just placed this order expecting it to go in sidecart and ship with next subscription but it seems to be an independent order so clearly I did something wrong, can it be set to go with my next subscription order

Thanks its there now.

Blood of the ancients seems to be missing from my download page , I am not absolutely certain but Chromes search functions cannot find the title and the built in filters do not work at all , and I could not find it by reading through the long list

I largely did not bother with the interludes I did ramp up the combat stats for all the actual encounters, most of them went fairly well for the party but the flying paladins on winged mounts came very close to killing several pc's with good use of spells and brutal lance charges.

The improved stats for all these encounters are earlier in this thread.

And the three month gap was last year when I finished the campaign, it was mid may until september while I was convalescing from surgery in a different city to my gaming group

There is not a chance I would allow this sort of attempt at rules abuse. It is a clear attempt to gain a bonus which no sane person would believe is intended.
If your gm (or you are the gm) likes this sort of rules abuse and is willing to cope with the assorted silliness all the better for your fun. If you are attempting to gain a ruling which you can use to attempt to convince your gm he has to allow it because the internet says so , I suspect you are deservedly doomed. I would have to audit closely the character sheet of anyone who tried this one on me to see what shenanigans they have tried to pass off on me

I completely agree with Dave

Yes they can or the feat is pointless.
If the pc gunslinger in my campaign is reduced to a smaller size he will continue to be able to use guns one size larger than him. If an enlarge spell was used on him I would allow him to use guns one size larger than his new size.
I am slightly less certain about the interactions of him, guns and a large size steam powered battle suit but most campaigns don't have the steam suits

If you are not going to let a goblin with this feat use a medium musket just be honest and ban the feat so your player does not take a wasted feat

All games require discussion among the players to ensure that their characters and expectations are compatible. Adding a necromancer to a game with an exiting paladin would be a bad idea, adding a paladin to a game with an existing necromancer is equally bad.
For a new campaign one of the concepts may be a worse fit than the other and so would give way, failing that I would expect that if for one campaign a player had to make a concession so that another player could have his concept then in the next campaign he would expect concessions from the player who won out the first time.

Also given your description of the paladin players play style he would have fallen in short order in any campaign I ran since I was 14, he may have got away with it then but that was a long time ago.

If this is another low level AP it will be time to unsubscribe as support for Starfinder will not be meeting any of my interests

I do think that the new samurai archetype is one of my favorites of all time and I want to find a way to fit one into a game

So what are the alternate racial traits and what do they do?

Not got the book here but one I remember -- Draconic breath weapons for dwarves as a racial trait.

I ran this module in PF several years ago unfortunatly I moved it to the WFRP World rather than Golarion.

I think that the moathouse is fine as a base except for the fact that for most of the campaign it is in the wrong place near the ruins of the old temple were the finale occures but not near the main temple where most of the action occcures so it should not cause any issues.

Page count is not important to me provided the quality of the adventure is good. I am unimpressed with 3 part and low level AP's , so far none of the AP's inspire me to run them. The current one comes close but unfortunately at the point the game is getting interesting it comes to a crashing end at low level so I have to write my own mid level plus material and the whole point of AP's is that at this time in my life I don't have time to do that. After part 3 of this AP I will probably drop the subscription until we get something that meets my minimum requirements.

The biggest problem I have is that the filters on the digital download page do not work at all ,even slightly,

I filter for wrath of the righteous I get the Azlanti players guide, I filter for pathfinder AP's amongst other randomness I get starfinder AP's and player companions.

It does make the page almost useless if you have a large amount of stuff and do not want to have to read down line by line to find it as the material is also displayed in a random order,

Actually I am impressed by how random it is , I spend a lot of time with databases and I have trouble randomising this much when I want to

Someone did this in a campaign I was in once and we failed to recieve a story based clue because of it and the party ended up failing the quest and dying as a result.

I suspect that if the GM had been less annoyed at the player's tendency to interrupt flavor text with initiative rolls there would have been alternate methods of gaining the information readily available.

This is true. I have a player who has the annoying habit of saying he attacks midway through scene descriptions or speeches. I intend to let him however I also intend to move vital information to the end of all such introductions so he attacks allies , kills of clues and generally spreads his annoyance around until he learns better.

GM's are players too and annoying them a lot can make your life more difficult

13th August according to Esdevium so your Local FLGS will probably have it Tuesday or Wednesday

When it gets here.
Typically I would expect to see it on Esdevium games release list around the week I got mine in the post, so next week or the week after. In this case before I get mine as it was delayed.
Unless you get the pdf in which case its available now

Because I want abilities to be useful and also because I tend towards high powered games I would allow
Followers of Mithra
and
Followers of Asmodeus

Just to keep it simple the first would cover all Knights, Paladins, clerics who serve Mithra and the second would cover the pc's and their minions

I agree with BNW, it comes down to how you want to handle the issues of mental health conditions in your game which is down to how you and your group will be affected by this. It is plausible that magic can fix any and all issues, it is plausible that some or all mental health issues are too complex for simple spellcasting, it is plausible that for your group ignoring the issue of PTSD and other mental health issues is better for that group. As a result there can be no simile one size fits all solution

Thanks for sorting it quickly while you are busy.

Order 5205438 is still pending with my subscriptions, I suspect the cause is a Side cart Item I cancelled at the last minute which is still attached to the order and listed as cancelled.

Added in its own thread now

Everytime I start a new thread the website crashes so
Order 5205438 is still pending with my subscriptions, I suspect the cause is a Side cart Item I cancelled at the last minute which is still attached to the order and listed as cancelled

True, but there's nothing that says praying has any actual means of reaching your deity as far as I am aware. Certainly given there's little evidence of them responding to such prayers that weren't made as part of a spell, you can pray for divine intervention, but unless you're doing something like Summon Creature, Planar Binding or similar spell, there is no means to ensure anything will happen. The GM might allow it in a plot-convenient moment, but I doubt many would want to set the precedent that simply praying to a God will guarantee that they will hear and respond in some fashion.

What makes you think that sending cherub number 765748985743 to talk to Iomedea will get a a response quicker or more plausibly than prayer? There is nothing short of a miracle spell which will grant you miracles on demand.

I actually think Prayer has in a fictional setting a better chance of working than random summoned messenger spam. Gods are by definition somewhat aware of their worshippers particularly those who gain divine spells from them so they will be aware in some fashion of prayer and if it is important to their faith or portfolio will recognize it's significance and in all probability continue to do nothing after all the pc is their divine presence in the area and should resolve the problem.

In any case I work with the method that the Summon Monster line of spells creates a generic summoned creature and does not call one from heaven etc. If you want a specific called creature which may work as a messenger (and still produce no actually useful effect) you need the planar binding spells

Fundemenatlly as a GM my viewpoint is that nothing you are going to be able to do routinely will result in a Deux Ex Machina turning up to save the day and solve the plot if that worked there would be no need for heroic pc's as every time Joe Blogs standard worshiper was threatened he could call for divine intervention and make the universe safe and boring.

There is always variance at the moment I do not have this months PDF order, in other months I have got it on the first day of shipping. Patience is a virtue.

Named Bullet runs into serious problems particularly from a wand as more and more opponents get SR, also it needs time to use it or a known opponent if preparing in advance. I say this after players made extensive use of the spell in a campaign.
Also once the GM and the opponents are used to the spell high level opponents will often use Spell Immunity to remove the threat.

It is good but do not depend on it

There is thread in the Wrath of the Righteous AP area with someone else's improved monsters those did quite well for me until book 4 although I often increased HP .

For beating SR as a sorceror a limited number of times per day look at Bloodline mutations one of them allows you to reduce SR by your charisma modifier a limited number of times

Having run this AP and discovered how awfully broken mythic rules are.

For my group it was necessary to have a mythic healer at high levels they were casting either 2 heals or mass heal every round to keep the melee standing as it is hard not to take damage. Really as a GM I found it almost impossible to have opponents which were not helpless which could not kill a pc in a single round. Of course each of the melee pc's could kill a demon lord or two as written in a single full attack action.

TO the GM the story is great the plot is great, look seriously at nerfing the mythic rules before book 4 when it starts to get really broken. The final boss of the final module I gave 16000 hp and he died in 3 rounds.....

There are a lot of threads discussing this usually with me whining about how broken mythic is I recomend looking at some. Good luck and I hope you and your players manage to enjoy the great story despite the rules.