Jonathan Michaels's page

Sorcerer all the way.

For one thing, the party tends to get bored when the wizard takes a long time deciding which spells to prepare and how many.

Sorcerers are the wizard's cooler sibling

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Could it be that you just had bad luck?

You decided to put the sword in. You could have let a party member do it.

You also read the book, when you could have given it and the protective item to someone else. Might have been bad luck.

I once put rust monsters in small cages, and there were holes along a corridor on the other side of the room. Our fighter put his magic sword inside because he was curious. Do not put metal sword in a rust monsters cage. It was just bad luck, there was no specific agenda, he simply put his sword in a bad place at a bad time.

The sword thing was intended for her, she was the one who could grow and put the sword in, it was setup to bring Zeus into it, I knew nothing about it until it happened..

And we believed she was the only one who could safely carry the book, because the black energy that came out of it was absorbed by the amulet the vampire Chance had given her when they left the Underdark.

Which brings me to what happened.

We entered a hall with an obsidian wall and eight paths, each one marked with a riddle, the solutions would tell us what demon laid behind each door.

We solved the riddles eventually, and decided to fight a Nalfeshnee, We climb the stairs and eventually they get bigger and bigger until each step is thirty feet high (thank the gods for fly spells).

The Nalfeshnee proves extremely difficult, it uses tactics and keeps it's distance from us, but we finally corner it and manage to put it down, but not before we lose the Druid.

Until the gem the Leaf Leshy left behind when it died brings her back to life.

We continue up the stairs ip until we reach a veil of darkness, we peek inside and see twenty small demons, paired up at writing desks, making more books.

In the center of the room, slumbering and talking in his sleep, is Orcus.

The demons spot us and each pull out a wand, at which point twenty magic missiles come right at us, and every single one is aimed at me.

I take 79 points of damage, at which point I am forced to flee back down the stairs since I can't take another hit like that.

The party proceeds to attack the demons, wiping them out fairly easily, they're low level.

Meanwhile, before I get more than 100 feet away from the fight, a voice emerges from the darkness.

"Pathetic"

I turn around and see a huge storm giant sneering down at me.

Ares.

He says he's going to do Zeus a favor and eliminate me for being weak, he swings his weapon, the DM rolls damage and tells me the blow would do 108 points of damage.

But before it hits me, instinct kicks in and I clutch the amulet and disappear.

I appear before Chance.

He's been expecting me.

He said he knew I would return to him.

It wasn't the book that turned me, it was the amulet.

It was Chance.

He said how wonderful it was that I had returned, DM asks me for a will save.

Natural 20.

At which point my character breaks down in tears.

I tell him I was so close, mere feet away from destroying the book and quelling the dangers threatening the gates, that I had failed, and now everyone I loved was about to die.

DM asks for another will save, I pass.

I tell him I have to go back.

He say he understands, but he refuses to let me go again.

Final will save. I pass.

He hands me a scroll of teleport, with a time restriction built in.

I have one minute to finish the job and say goodbye.

Ten rounds to throw the book in Orcus's mouth and save the world.

He then hands me a spear, which he calls a Titan Slayer.

He says it used to belong to an old storm giant, one I might know.

So now I know, he knew everything, he knew who I was, that's why he's not surprised that I've become a giant since we last met, he planned for all this to happen.

I sigh, resigned to my fate and use the scroll.

Meanwhile, the party has wiped out almost all the small demons when Ares appears before them, chuckling that if this is the best Zeus could do, then this would be too easy, because nothing will distract him from his beautiful war.

When I teleport behind him and run him through with the spear.

But it's not enough to even knock him down (it was a critical hit doing 146 points of damage) and I take 26 points of electricity damage from the weapon as well.

The fight is on, I immediately go into gaseous form and make a beeline for the mouth, I know I'm screwed, but I'm going to make certain that book goes in the mouth, Ares attacks me, knocking me down to two hit points.

The blow takes me out of gaseous form and knocks the book out of my hands, the rogue rolls to dive for the book and knock it into the mouth, she succeeds.

Ares prepares for the killing blow, when two more Titan Slayers strike the ground from above and land in front of the Druid and the Rogue.

Ares screams, cursing his father, they each grab a spear, I grab the third and we strike at the same time.

All hits.

The combined damage is enough to take him down as the book is swallowed, the abyss trembles, Zeus appears to take the party out of there before it's too late.

All except Felandria, the damage from using the Titan slayer was enough to drop her, She's back in gaseous form, floating around, looking for her coffin, Zeus drops his head in mourning as the cloud disappears, teleporting back to Chance's realm and into her new coffin.

Zeus gets the others to safety, the gates are saved and the campaign is ended.

So, I wasn't the final boss, but turns out he had something pretty diabolical planned anyway.

He basically put us in a position where the last battle, against our toughest opponent, had only ten rounds before it was game over.

If we hadn't had some darned lucky dice rolls, we'd have failed, everything had to go exactly right, but fortunately it did.

Turns out ever since the turn into a vampire, the periodic will saves I was rolling were to keep me from ditching the party and running into Chance's arms.

One failed save and I'm out.

I would have still gotten the minute to say goodbye and pass the book over, because it turns out the rest of the party could have carried the book, it was a collective misunderstanding on the party's behalf, nobody else wanted to touch the book to double check, fearing the worst.

And I also shouldn't have let the party convince me to read the book, turns out the right move was for nobody to read it and just focus on destroying it.

So the rogue ended up saving the day with a key roll, we beat the final boss, but now my character's stuck as a vampire bride, basically, Chance wasn't malicious, he wasn't wishing doom on the party or it's goals, he just really, really wanted to make my character his bride.

Which as fates to, could be worse, but it'll be a long time before she gets over the whole being tricked into becoming his bride.

And hey, it gives the party something to do now.

Go rescue her.

So what happened with this? Do tell! :-)

Okay, gang, here's the update.

We found ourselves in an extremely long hallway with prison cells on either side, we walk for a long time, eventually the cells are all occupied by black skeletons, a hideous, nauseating demon with a series of keys appears at the end of the hall as the cells open and sixty black skeletons begin to surround us.

The demon has significant spell resistance, rendering my magical attacks useless, the cleric (the dwarf's replacement) begins taking the skeletons out in clusters while the Druid is assaulted by the demon and the rogue hides behind me.

I eventually draw the demon's attention, we grapple and I use the slam attack to knock a couple levels out of it, weakening him enough to allow us to take him down.

The rogue takes the keys, which can be used to summon skeletons, I fail the will save and feed off the disgusting demon.

We keep going, finding a room with six different paths, each representing different temptations and sins, we figure out which room is which in terms of what they do to us (my perception right now is +26)

We decide the room representing the darkness is the best option.

The imp at the entrance hands us a single torch and we enter.

The torch only lights a five foot radius around us, my dark vision does nothing, and any attempts to create light in any way fail as arms claw at us and try and steal our torch, it gets grabbed a few times but we get it back, the cleric thinks the lesson is to be selfless and suggests giving them the torch voluntarily, we immediately put the kibosh on that.

The rogue gets panicky and starts to seperate, trying to flee, but when she get several feet away the light starts to dim and I devise the solution.

Everyone hug the giantess.

The rest of the party wraps themselves around me and the light grows brighter, we shuffle our way across the hall, making all the reflex saves and get to the exit.

(DM later tells us that we picked by far the best possible option)

We make our way out of the hall and make camp, the rogue snoops around the next area and finds a pearl with an etching of Charon the ferryman on it.

We continue on the way, making our way to the river Styx, we hand the pearl to Charon and climb aboard.

Partway across the river a number of tentacles shoot out of the river and grab at us, one snags the Druid, who turns into an air elemental and escapes, the rogue uses her chainmail shirt the king gave her to fly into the air out of reach, and I debate using Righteous Might to become too big to grab before deciding to just turn into mist.

The cleric and Druid make fairly short work of the tentacles and move on.

Further down we each hear voices calling for us to jump off the boat and follow, it somehow even affects me, despite my vampire powers, we all make our saves and escape the sirens.

We're almost at the other bank, when an undead Beholder appears (the DM had a hard time figuring out how to put one into Pathfinder) it shoots a ray and disintegrates the druid's leaf leshy companion, leaving only the jewel in its chest, I immediately cast blindness on the beholder and it quickly flees.

And that's where we stopped, we're halfway to our goal (we have to throw the book into the mouth of Orcus), and we discover that we've dinged twice, bringing us all to level eleven.

I'm not out of the woods yet, there's still plenty of time for me to turn somehow, but we're more optimistic now.

The improvement to the skills are invaluable (nothing like rolling a 20 on a perception check and telling the DM you got a 56) and the improved AC and DR are keeping me out of death's cold grasp.

There's still the uneasy feeling something bad is in store, but my friends theory that I had to become powerful to keep us alive may have been correct.

In general, we had a lot of fun, but we had to work to stay alive.

And on a side note, I assume Bolstered Resilience would be a good idea to take as my new feat?

Well, actually, I get it to an extent. The use of Greek mythology through Zeus is actually a nice flair. In Greek mythology, and other mythologies I suppose, the idea is that in the age of Great Heroes, men were more mythic in nature, reflected in their superior stature.

This applies in practice in several ways. Some claim that George Washington's main qualification as a commander was his height, rather than actual expertise. The fact of the matter remains that superior size often demands respect. This also translates into better IQ due to confidence resulting from this respect. Jonathan's character in particular wants size since elves are typically marked with slightly greater height than humans and half-elves, allowing them to literally look down on others. So becoming a giant would allow this character to tower over its peers, gaining a sense of majesty and power.

The blue skin and vampirism are a bit much though.

Exactly what I was intending, was also thinking Xerxes in 300 as well.

Although, Blue skin?

My character became a giant a few sessions ago, now out of the blue he's turned her into a vampire.

So now if I die, I can't be resurrected, but I'm now really powerful for a 9th level character, and I'm really disturbed by it, because it means he's got something bad in mind for the party.

The more I think of it, the more I believe he plans on turning me against them and making me the final boss.

I don't want to be the big bad, though, what should I do?

I asked him and all he'll say is wait and see, I'd be less worried if he was turning the rest of the party into more powerful beings, but it's just me, forcing me to be in charge, it's making me a bit uncomfortable.

What do you think?

Should I keep trying to talk to him or should I just make her go away and roll a new character before he makes me kill the party?

So a while back I made this thread.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p67d?I-Wish-I-Was-Big#44

In it, I was trying to figure out how to become larger, but the DM was one step ahead of me and had a plan.

Here's what's happened.

The party made it to the king and informed him of the dangers facing the kingdom, we were sent to obtain further information to help quell the threats.

The king gave us new items, including a sword and shield we found in our first dungeon, the markings on the sword (a storm cloud) spoke to my character deep in her subconscious, he claimed them from a previous foe who stole them from us and banished us from our home village.

We went into the underdark where my half elf encountered a handsome and mysterious vampire, he showed great interest in her and proposed marriage.

As he flew her back to the rest of her party, a bolt of lightning struck, she awoke in a tower, an evil wizard stole her body, the party rescued her but another party member died in the battle, which sucked since I was the one who had to do it since I had to play the wizard.

We returned to the kingdom with several maps confirming our worst fears, the king held a celebration in our honor, where we each (including our fallen party member's replacement character) received an extravagant gift (Basically our DM giving us Christmas presents), mine was any spell I wanted within two levels of my CL (I chose Righteous Might.)

We were directed toward an ice cave on high cliff, we encountered a dais under an archway, and resting on it was an exact duplicate of the aforementioned shield.

We melted the ice and figured out that this was a gate between worlds, there was a slot for a sword to activate the gate, my character took the sword and placed it inside, but the slot was too big.

So I enlarged person, tried again and the gate glowed with great power, I began to glow and power surged inside me.

And that's when my Aberrant Sorceror bloodline disappeared.

I stepped back, and didn't get any smaller.

Now my bloodline is the Giant bloodline.

The earth trembled and giant worms were on their way after us, so we read the runes on the gate and went to the first place we found.

Olympus.

We step through the gate, Olympus is beautiful and suddenly an older bearded gentleman appears behind us, he asks if she recognizes him.

It's her father, the father she never met until now, the rightful owner of the sword and shield.

Zeus.

Zeus and the Olympians once ruled over our world, he ruled over the elves (explaining her desire to rule them, it was her subconscious hinting at what she really was.)

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So that's the backstory ( our DM is very good), now I am a Large half elf Sorceress with the Giant bloodline.

So the problem we have now is of nailing down the specifics of what this means, the physical, statistical implications of it.

So aside from the obvious numbers, what else do we need to make this work, for example......

The giant bloodline says you become particularly large and muscular at third level and can qualify as one size category larger if it's advantageous to you.

So we doubled the height from 6'4 to 12'8" but with that in mind do we need to make her bigger?

Does she need to be closer to the 16 feet dividing line between the sizes for that to work, is that what that would do, make you big enough to be right on the line?

Also, we don't know if there would be any nat. Armor bonus, or what other stats the size would affect, such as saves or BAB.

Plus, at the time of the growth, she was carrying a Handy Haversack, and all the gear she was carrying grew with her, how would that be affected?

I would appreciate the help, and also any comments on our current storyline.

Oh, and I'm really interested in the bloodline's ability where after I cast a spell, I get a bonus to strength equal to my Charisma modifier plus half the spell's level unti. The end of the next turn.

So after the shift, my strength is 17, I cast Righteous Might on myself,, making it 21 then I get another +7 because of the spell level and my high Charisma.

28 Strength, not bad for a Sorcerer.

Title says it all. What do you consider the main roles that you think should be filled in any Pathfinder party?

I play almost entirely Pathfinder Society, and I have a wide variety of characters, most of them low level. So I frequently sit down at low level tables and ask what everyone else is playing, then decide which character I'll play based on what roles need to be covered. I pretty much always start by asking "Do we have a healer, and do we have enough front liners?"

It just seems to me that having at least one person capable of at least using a wand of cure light wounds is necessary. That, and you need at least one or two meat shields up front to keep the bad guys off the archers and casters. There's a large variety of meat shield types, whether they're armored tanks who focus on AC or heavy hitters who focus on damage output. But having someone up front for the bad guys to trade melee blows with instead of the squishies is essential.

But how often do you wish you had an archer in the group when that role isn't filled? It's a possible role, and they can be handy to have around for the sake of high damage output, but it's not something you really miss when it's not there. After all, the barbarian on the front line might be your heavy hitter for damage output instead, and then you don't need the damage from an archer as badly.

I can maybe see needing an arcane caster. I played a level 8-9 adventure in PFS recently, and we didn't have an arcane caster, despite having 7 players. My level 6 cleric was the only full caster at the table. And there were times when we wished we had more variety of spells, instead of having three rangers and two rogues. But at lower levels, having full casters isn't quite as important, as long as you have someone with detect magic.

And party face is probably important for any adventure that's not a pure dungeon crawl. It's not something I ask about when planning what to play, but we usually have at least some coverage in that area at every PFS table....

We have a smaller party, four members.

There's me, the arcane caster/party face/skill monkey, there's our dwarf, he's the meat shield/damage dealer/smith/parkour expert, there's the Druid, our healer/summoner/animal translator and until our bard/pirate/lush/jar of ashes gets resurrected, if she can, we're acquiring an albino drow.

So in smaller parties, you sometimes need to fill multiple roles.