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Can anyone point me in a direction that gives more background detail to the psionic Elan, the councils, motivations, adversaries etc. I already have Psionics Unleashed by Dreamscarred Press, and I was just wondering if theres anything out there that adds more fluff.
A map depicting an ( larger than reported ) arena pit type thing for various goblin celebratory hijinks. I found the idea of the pit compelling and wanted something more than just a skill check. I felt it deserved some love. Ideas for all sorts of goblin 'arena games' spring to mind... complete with barely magical goblin games equipment, infamous/star players, dirty tricks, yada.
So, running a 3.5 AP which I wont name to hopefully avoid obscure tentacle spoilers - which I hand wave on the fly to run under Pathfinder. All well and good. To complicate matters things started largely in 3.5, and for the most part have transfered drip by drip to Pathfinder as things have gone on. This sometimes - and rarely these days - brings up little rule changes that drop into the world like a lead weight. Thunk. Grappling. Specifically the capability to now hack away with not just a light weapon ( and the rest of it ) , but now you can use your trusty one handed weapon of choice too. Fine and dandy, the rule is in, hack away with your usual weapon oh frontline melee fighter types who specialise in one handers. The problem I see now is that monsters that kind of rely on groovy grapple attacks, and generally, the eating of people whole have been nerfed because of that subtle rule shift. This is of course especially true when trying to take a 3.5 grapple monster and use it under Pathfinder. But it makes me wonder if the whole tentacle beast grabbing you, locking up the fighter and his favourite one handed weapon - forcing him to switch to his sharpened hair pin has not now been totally chucked out - and a less dramatic hack away as you like series of events has replaced it. I feel this is a shame. I like tentacle monsters that pin your arms to your side. My thinking follows the line that : Grapples now don't force a change of tactics on the part of someone being grappled. If they were happy hacking away before, they may well take the risk of being in a grappled state, and continue to happily hack away - they have lost none of their optimum hacking capability. A melee PC who has specialised on a particular one handed weapon can now freely use that, plus all their feat bonuses accrued for it et al, as opposed to switching to a secondary, less buffed, less optimal small weapon - or gasp, having no such secondary weapon at all to rely on.
I understand the rules shift was to make a lighter touch grapple - holding hands as opposed to wrestlemania - but I feel it has penalised a whole bunch of tentacled monsters who enjoyed grabbing people and eating them. Is it just me ? Are grapple monsters now less of a threat than they were ? Are they buffed under a Pathfinder system to counter it ( certainly the pathfinderised stats of the beast that I saw did not seem to take account of the grapple change ) ? Sensible suggestions other than just increasing hit points of the critter ? Was the consideration of grapple type monsters being less effective / less dramatic tested ? Whilst I guess its not a huge deal, the rule change has made me frown whilst the lead fighter has made kalamari of the tentacle beast - and pretty much made zip all difference to the tactics employed. It seems something has been lost in the move . . . I preferred the desperate stabs of a pathetic little weapon whilst being strangled. Much more satisfying. Think of the Tentacle Beasts ! On a related note. Whats the deal with cutting yourself out of the belly of the beast - is that open to one handed weapons now too, or do you finally have to fall back on your hairpin of sharpness +1. I was despondent about the whole one handed grapple hacking and just ruled you could continue to hack your way out with your weapon of choice. No need for hairpins. Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
So, the PC's subtle tactics were to hack at it with a main weapon, followed by hacking at it with a main weapon, before the tour de force of hacking it at with a main weapon. And round we go again. Mmm. Yes. Does that seem wrong ? It seems wrong . . .
Two maps for the one source warehouse from The Jackal's Price. I have extended the warehouse to a second underground storage level and added in a cargo lift, as well as putting some streets on the upper level. Warehouse Street Level
The second level is designed to fit in between the two published maps - and provides an extra floor for you to plant encounters and the like. The cargo lift is a simple device that allows items to be shipped between floors - either magical or a geared ratchet system. Storage area below the offices are for the more important / personal items, whilst the second level storage space is for longer term goods or those that could do with being out of plain sight. Is it just me or do the sizes of this map seem a bit off ? The doors feel like the scale should be 10' and the description implies the warehouse is bigger than depicted, yet the crates are about the right size, and at 5' a square the overall space is about right for a normal warehouse. Ho hum. Enjoy
Hi there,
Players are all GMT based, over 21, and roleplay only when they have to. Due to the length of time and life players are now down to two with a third currently struggling to get on regularly. GM posts are once a day, sometimes more, weekends are often GM silent. Rules are pathfinder and a pick and mix from 3.5, no real rules lawyering going on, more of a narrative drive. Narration often takes precedent over chronology just to keep things moving - but only ever to help not hinder players. Looking for - Any Class
Roleplayers are very welcome, the NPCs are all roleplayed, the players tend to talk more in practical terms, but sometimes indulge - roleplayers may get bored talking to themselves or just NPCs :) If interested reply here with some contact details or drop me a line at meeples2070 at googlemail dot com and I will send you the URL details and you can take a look to make a better decision.
I have a recurring niggle with the passage of time whenever my PCs go exploring that just feels off to me.
By default I take their speed as the slowest member, which is 15' a round. For normal walking around and taking the time to look about as they travel I usually end up multiplying the distance they walk by half or double again, thus slowing their effective travel rate down to 10' or even 7.5' a round. Even so, they can cover huge amounts of ground with this, and end up completely exploring a place and coming back before lunch ! I end up ignoring such times so that the passage of a day instead whizzes around, and am often vague about the exact time, other than it being early, mid, late morning etc. I am playing PbP so the issue is heightened by the fact that it doubly feels like a lot of time should have passed when a couple of real time days have gone by, a location has been travelled to and explored, and yet its only been 20 game minutes ! Am I missing something with the time and motion ? I almost have to come up with my own guidelines for how long something should take to walk around and explore based on a feel rather than hard mechanics. If I did a strict interpretation, including combats, they could romp around a site in 20 minutes. It seems off... yet... the distances and times seem fine at a tactical level. Does anyone else struggle with this ? Any suggestions ?
Glutton for punishment, I have ended up making two battle maps for the set piece. This second one is slightly larger at 20x30" @ 300 dpi and depicts the ruined temple.
Another map I made for my group - this ones a little rough however. A small battlemap based on a small section from the set piece.
I have created an Oasis Map for my pbb group. Thought I'd share it for anyone else that may need one - or a different one to the map supplied.
A map of Kelmarane that I used in between the first and second parts of the adventure path.
The gnolls, led by a Kulldis leader who had fled the players the first time, assaulted the town making a beeline for the battle market hoping to oust the humans and take ownership. Aided by a mountain troll, brought to specifically counter the players, the gnolls failed in their attempt, and turned to petty arson instead - which also ended up failing. A chase into the night of torrential rain split the party, and nearly ended in tears, when the troll - regrouping with the gnolls - found half the PCs and launched a savage attack. The players limping back to town - one of their number carried bodily back - managed to avoid detection by other regrouping gnolls - and made it back to be safely healed. I had planned to write up the whole encounter, but I have become swamped with stuff to do... so I thought I'd just publish the Kelmarane map, as it may be useful to people.
I am not sure this is the right place for this question - I've eventually decided to pose it here as its about LoF. I am going to run a large skirmish in Kelmarane, and for my group I have taken the Kelmarane map, overlaid a grid, notated defences and the like, and in the GM notes I have indicated where things will happen, where they are likely to progress to etc. My question is, if I possibly maybe wished to release the work as a free encounter for the ppl on the paizo boards, what can and can't I use ? Can I use Kelmarane content at all ? Its layout, its buildings, whats where. Also can I draw a map of it and include it ?
If a map is drawn is there any sticking point about what kind of quality it can be ? If it ends up a professional quality map, would this be too much of an infringement ? Is there a quality cut off ? Pencil drawn map is fine, a professional artist rendering that may or may not be better than the original is not fine. Whats the score with using the already published material for Kelmarane, and effectively adding an expanded piece to the story ( or a piece that was hinted at but never fleshed out ). Is this kind of stuff only ever doable with your own private group, doomed to never be shared with anyone else ? From reading the Community Use I think that taking the original map(s) ( and also editing them ) is not allowed - a great shame as I think the Kelmarane map is great - and as for the content of Kelmarane itself, I am not sure. Anyone enlighten me ? Copyright sucks, I know why its there, and I agree with it, but I hate having creativity forced to jump hoops.
So, this is more of a question about the usage of the Blindness/Deafness spell - but in context to the first part of the LoF campaign.
As there are six of them I up all the encounters, add in extra bosses and generally maximise the hp range of a creature rather than take an average. In some cases I also up the levels. I am finding that the Blind spell has been extremely effective at taking out high status individuals, and basically halving their difficulty by making them blind. Kardswann got the same treatment in the battle market and fared badly - I had him turn invisible and fly away, to seek aid with a gnoll shaman ( an extra leader ) and the infusium to remove his blindness ( some GM hand waving ). But he was promptly blinded again during the full scale assault. The PCs barricaded the stairs to the top floor of the battle market, and held it against all comers, 2 of them skirmishing on the balcony to remove any threats trying to fly or scale up to the level. 4 boss gnolls (2 fighters 1 ranger 1 shaman), a genie, a host of cannon fodder, gnolls, bugbears, and human bandits failed to crack the position. ( They had allied with Undrella earlier, who took her leave and left them to their messy fight once Kardswann figured out she wasn't helping him remove his blindness ) With Xulthos much the same has happened - the first round, some of the party succumb to the buzzing affects - no one is fooled by the confusing whirl of colours. The sorc blinds the demon. The bard strikes up countersong. Paladin casts protection from evil, cleric casts bless. The melee'ers - now including a reunited Haleen - charge the beast and beat the living daylights out of it, including a crit ( from Haleen of course ) which reduces it to only one (blinded) action next turn.
The demon is in trouble. Blind, half dead, and no one has taken a hit yet. Blindness. Its less showy than big flash bangs, but boy, it can instantly halve the difficulty of a creature. Any thoughts or experiences with this ? Am I missing something ? Everyone is enjoying the campaign, so its not a problem, its just beginning to dawn on me what a game winning spell blindness is...
Hi there,
My question relates to the healing of serious injuries. Arms lopped off. Eyes taken out. Serious disfigurement. What kind of healing could restore such an injury - if any. Is it commonplace - such injuries in a magically fuelled healing industry are simple to fix ? Or is it more than likely a life changing injury ? I am looking for opinions, suggestions, guidance. On the one hand having the player have to employ a false eye or an eye patch adds a certain level of gnarly cool with a tale to tell. On the other hand its a downer that the character now has a permanent penalty. My gut feeling is that perhaps the injury is too severe for mudane magics, but theres a possibility that a really skilled, expensive, rare treatment can restore such injuries. Or maybe theres even room for having a magically crafted false eye that does something... odd.... I can see that this level of disfigurement may come up again - a fighter that loses an arm. So it would be good to get it fixed in my head how I handle it.. What do you think ?
There are a lot of spoilers in this post . . . you probably dont want to read further if you plan to play LoF and havent yet completed the ruined monastery and dont want to spoil things for yourself ! Hello all, just looking for some more feedback about the experiences of groups in the Monastery. I can see that another group has struggled with the pugwampis "special gifts", and to my thinking I cant really see how the monastery king pugwampi encounter in particular is supposed to end well. My group left the chapel to the end - they had explored the rest of the monastery, had gone back to camp to lick their wounds, and were left bright eyed and bushy tailed for the chapel. After having difficulty in getting to grips with the tricky pugs, with the help of oil they set the place ablaze - an enraged King and entourage escape the blaze, and a fight kicks off in the nave. . . . Now heres the problem. The King has an AC of 19, and with the unluck, this means you need to roll that twice. A character with a +4 on their melee will hit 25% of the time against an AC of 19 - with a double roll and the worst taken this reduces to a mere 6.25%. Add in the king has 20hp, a dr of 2 . . . . and the result is not surprising. The fight went on, and on, and on and on and on ! Fortunately for my group, they had access to a powerful summoned ally ( precocious apprentice, level 2 summon creature ), which helped them. The other arcane firepower in the group had been expended targetting rudely gesturing and dancing pugwampis in the rafters ( before frustration set in and the lot was burned ... say... that cloth nest looks highly flammable... pass me a flask of oil... ! ) I am currently playing this via boards, so the pace is much slower than table top - making long slog fights like this even worse admittedly - but even so I cant say I enjoyed the King fight much - I eventually took the step of calculating all the odds, and just fast fowarding the combat to a conclusion, rather than everyone roll yet more rounds of unlucky misses. I like the unluck aura, its a great spanner in the machinery, and a nice bit of flavour, however, because its effectively a square function, the further up the scale you go in either DC or AC, the much more impossible / frustrating the task becomes. A normal pugwampi has a relatively low AC, the unluck makes them much more tricky than they first appear, but ok - the King has a much better AC, and and a result of the square function is very tricky indeed to hit. In the circumstances, standing off with a bow out of range of the unluck may be the best idea, but tbh its not a completely obvious step - it never occurred to my group. So, what experiences have other people had with the King fight ? Seemed reasonable ? Seemed unreasonable ? Maybe I am missing some key element ? Apart from the King fight - everyone is very much enjoying LoF - the group is now out and about beginning to explore the environs of Kelmarane.
Hi guys,
In the stat block for some of the gremlins it says for instance that a pugwampi does 1d2-4 dam with their dagger. This means they never inflict any damage ? Even with a (x2) critical ? Is there a minimum of 1 damage that should be applied, or more likely if its zero or less the damage is negligible / ineffective ? What am I missing... |
