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How game-breaking, or special-snowflake-melting, would it be to rule that spontaneous casters of any stripe -- arcane, divine, whatever -- could undercast any numbered spell, and swap out any earlier numbered versions they'd learned, just as psychic types can?
As a generic name for kineticists' powers, this seems waaaaaaay the heck wrong to me. I mean... historically, "wild talent" in D&D psionics is used for a randomly rolled minor psi power that you have in addition to whatever psychic or non-psychic class you have. And it could be almost anything, not just telekinesis. Having an entire class whose innate powers are ALL called "wild talents" is just weird, and seems to deny the possibility that the character might actually have been trained. Surely there's something better to call kineticist powers?
Most of the robots we've seen have very clear functions, except for Gearsmen. On top of that, they seem to have a very different visual aesthetic than the other Androffan robots, with a distinctly lower-tech look. What purpose did they serve aboard the Divinity? Will their slightly-off appearance be a plot point?
So my group have finally made it through Stolen Land and are about to found their capital, which has me looking at some of the finer details. I've already ruled that settlement characteristics are solely the province of the GM, though the players may try to influence at least some of them into existence; but there's one that's obviously something that would have to be deliberately planned for and built right from the start, the Planned Community characteristic (Decrease Crime -1, Society -1. Increase Economy +1). My thinking is to have a delegation of Abadarian priests offer their expert guidance in civic planning (one of the Abadar holy texts is a guide to city building and maintenance, after all), for a small sum of BP and the promise to build at least a shrine to Abadar as space permits. I'm not sure how much BP to charge, though -- any thoughts?
Over on RPGNet, someone asked about ideas for using the FF summons as gods for 3.5, which sparked some ideas that'd been percolating in my head for a few years. I'm too sleepy to write much up right now, but here's a little something as a starter. (In my mind, the "classic" summons are a pantheon of good/neutral deities, while the Scions from Tactics/12, including the classic villains from FF 1 - 5, are their evil counterpart pantheon.) ALEXANDER
God of cities, justice, protection, and light
Alexander is the Great Protector, at once the guard on the walls, the guard's armor and shield, the walls themselves, and the City the walls surround. He is the wielder of Divine Judgment, the holy light that sears away the darkness of undeath and evil. Watchmen, constables, paladins, and urban druids count him their patron. The Protector does not lightly grant his power, and he is known to sponsor fewer divine casters than any other of the gods. It is said that Alexander's might could cause unimaginable disaster if it were to fall into evil hands; in the youth of the gods, in a time long forgotten, the Light of Judgment was stolen from Alexander by a nihilistic madman and ravaged an entire world to the brink of ruin. Thus he takes great care to empower only those RAMUH
God of thunder, magic, knowledge, and history
Ramuh is the Sage of the Gods, master of all magic, and Lord of Storms; thunder and lightning are his to command. He is closely allied with Shiva and Ifrit, together representing the three primary destructive magical arts. All those who seek knowledge or wisdom pay him homage; researchers, librarians, and genealogists can all be found in his service. Ramuh sees the struggle between good and evil as ultimately less important than the greater struggle between existence itself and the forces of Oblivion, as represented by the Cloud of Darkness; he is more likely than most of the pantheon to cooperate with lesser evil, for a time at least. He has not, however, forgotten the cruelties visited upon him and his people in ancient times, and if his allies of the moment include slavers or torturers, they will not be his allies for long. (Extremely sleepy, more later maybe. In my headcanon, FF6 is first in chronology; most of the summons were humans mutated into Espers during the war of the Triad, and after the events of the game were revived in the now completely separate Esper World, where they slowly grew in power and developed the ability to see into other worlds, eventually offering their power as summoned beasts to heroes in those worlds. Different laws of magic in each world dictate the way they manifest as summons.)
So one of my players is running a bladebound magus, and he'd like it if his sword were more able to interact with people. Does this sound reasonable? Bladeservant
CASTING
EFFECT
DESCRIPTION This spell creates a variant unseen servant to act as the avatar for the mind of an intelligent magic item. The bladeservant is visible, shaped to the target item's liking, and can speak all languages known to the item (if any). It is under the control of the target item, and its range is measured from the target item's current position. The bladeservant otherwise has all the abilities of a normal unseen servant, but cannot pick up or move the item controlling it, even indirectly. Both the item or the caster can dismiss the spell. If the item attempts to do something that conflicts with the will of its owner, this can result in a personality conflict, although if the owner is the caster the bladeservant can simply be dismissed.
My group just finished off the Stag Lord, and we'll be moving into the kingdom-building stage soon. We're using the Roll20 virtual tabletop. Can anyone recommend a good set of map symbols for kingdom improvements -- farms, mines, et cetera?
Gaining a third mythic tier is, it seems to me, of particular note in the characters' careers -- because it is at that point and beyond that they can take the Divine Source universal path ability, and claim the mantle of demigods. Will there be any advice for the GM on how to handle this leap, and for the players on how to acquire a following (or convert preexisting followers to your new religion), etc.?
On a cursory reading, it looks very much as if alchemists have the short end of the stick. Since extracts and mutagens aren't "actually" spells -- aren't even mentioned aside from a handful of trickster powers and one artifact -- it looks like all three of the Archmage arcana are useless to an alchemist, and there's no way to apply mythic spellcasting to the alchemist's stock in trade. Granted there are other ways to use mythic paths to beef alchemists up, but this still seems kinda sad. (It would also be nice for witches to have specific mythic hex upgrades, but they get mythic spellcasting so it's not as urgent.)
Last Sunday I finally ran the first session of a Kingmaker game I've been trying to organize for many months. Using the six-player enhancement, all available Legendary Games Kingmaker plugins, and probably going to throw in tons of community-created extras, so thank you to everyone. :) Our heroes: Adeleke, human teleportation-specialist wizard and future Magaambyan Arcanist who's traveled all the way from Garund for reasons yet unknown. Alyosha Ublyudok, half-orc ranger, bastard nephew of the last king of Brevoy and only known survivor of the Rogarvias, who was passed over by (first) whatever took the rest of them and (second) the nobility who refused to countenance an out-of-wedlock halfbreed heir. Avrelis Orlovsky, human bladebound magus, kicked out of the family estate after he somehow "liberated" a sword of mysterious provenance from a secret vault that he could not possibly have known about, let alone gotten into. The sword's blade is etched with what might be strange runic inscriptions, or possibly the occult pattern that Numerians call "printed circuitry." Her name is Lily, and she whispers to him. Erebar Lodovka, half-elf cleric of Nethys. Kendal Hunt, human cavalier of the Order of the Cockatrice who is absolutely not a former bandit and is shocked, sir, shocked at your insinuations. Rides a camel. Has no idea that it isn't an ugly horse. Keth Warren, human, former street kid taken in by the Church of Abadar, now a dedicated inquisitor of the God of Cities. Thanks to very good tactical planning, the use of tactician-spread Stealth Synergy, and very bad rolls on the part of the villains, Happs Bydon's entire party went down to one well-placed color spray. Now they're off to the Thorn River camp and with any luck some combats that will last more than one round... ^.^
This building doesn't have any benefits listed. Not sure if it should be enough water to provide for irrigating nearby hexes, but at the very least it should give a Productivity bonus for the guaranteed fresh water supply.
There is of course an official ruling that you can't apply metamagic feats or Augment Summoning and similar effects to a wand spell. But there's also the rule that you can enchant a wand with a pre-metamagically-enhanced spell. Is it possible to craft a wand of summon monster X with Augment Summoning built in? Augment Summoning isn't a metamagic feat and doesn't change the spell's level. How would one calculate the extra cost of such a thing, or of a wand using related summoning-enhancement feats?
Because THE ANGRY RED PLANET. :D Okay it's probably no more angry than most other worlds in the system. (Does the sun have a name? Because calling this "the solar system" makes me twitchy.) So first let's talk about Elder Things. And how they warred with the aboleths on Golarion to decide who'd get to create life and control its evolution, according to the Jameses. On Golarion? The Elder Things lost. Aboleths have been influencing life on the Cage for a long time. Akiton, though... it's not a planet where any self-respecting aboleth would want to live, now is it? But let's move that comma and say "would want to live now," because the Red World had oceans once. Did the Elder Things freeze the seas of Akiton in a desperate bid to prevent aboleths from doing something they just couldn't allow? Something to consider. And have a look at the adventure hooks on page 19 to see that Akiton's own scholars have also considered something similar. Races: we've got Ysoki rat-men, red-scaled desert iguanafolk, the Contemplatives of Ashok (and what is Ashok? A place, a philosophy?), and of course the big two: the Red Men and the Gray, humans and shobhad. The reds are called out as being "more of a different ethnicity" from Golarion humans, able to interbreed -- for the sake of sanity, I'll assume they're not egg-layers until someone official says otherwise. Some degree of technology is present on Akiton, but how much? They have guns, we know that -- not radium pistols so far as we know. The only statted example is a simple rifle built for low gravity, but "flechette rifles" are mentioned in passing. They have solar collectors -- for what purpose? Simple heating of a chill desert? Electrical power? And airships, oh yes airships, although they're called "magical" here. Fun fact: there's a portal to Akiton in the Hold of Belkzen (the Pillars of Kreth, "Skeletons of Scarwall" page 62). Only one orc (Kreth) is known to have vanished through it -- what became of him? Could he have found a new life as the orcish John Carter of Akiton? ...And what if that portal works both ways? Hypothesis: Gorum is actually an ancient Akitonian war god, whose worship was brought to Golarion by missionary warrior-priests who found themselves in Belkzen during the first major battle between orcs and humans. Some questions: What conflict drove the Shobhad city-dwellers of the north pole to move to Golarion and become the Pactmasters of Katapesh? (This is in fact canon.) What social forces have encouraged the people of the city of Arl to still consider themselves a client state of Azlant, despite ten thousand Golarion-years with no contact at all? (I know Arl was visited in a PFS adventure, but I have no idea what happens there.)
Even though this isn't a Society module, I think it'd be interesting to give the players the option of having their PCs be members of the factions. Any ideas as to what kinds of side quests the faction leaders would want their agents to accomplish?
So with the characters beginning as Pathfinder agents and having access to those nifty Society traits, I'm wondering if it would be too unbalancing to allow PCs to have one campaign trait, one Society trait, AND one other trait of their choosing (from a third list, of course). Is this a minor enough bonus to work with, or might there be some unforeseen three-trait combos that would blow their opposition out of the water?
Page 66: "A flagship cannot be damaged or sunk during a fleet battle..." No. Seriously. NO. If you build your ruleset around something that stupid, you need a new ruleset. I don't care how abstract it's supposed to be.
I can't find any references to machetes in the entire body of rules and adventures, except for the Machete of Clearing magic item and the adamantine machete found in Serpent's Skull. Do they use the stats of some other weapon? Do they have any kind of bonuses for moving through overgrown terrain? I DON'T KNOW.
As I'm going to be a player, I've resolutely avoided reading the adventure portion of the PDF, so if this is answered there I can't check it. Is the ship we start out on considered to use one of the ships in the Flip/Pack combo, and if so, which one?
...tell him you're going to give him a decent burial. :D Straight to the River of Souls, no lichdom for you, bub! The beauty of it is that you're threatening him with a purely good act. Torture? Nuh-uh!
So our group has been making more noise than we really should have (who thought towing a longboat into town was a good idea again?) and going into Asvig's place as stealthily as possible seemed a good way to reverse our fortunes. Ideally, we figured, the sword might still be in there and we could just snag it and scarper. So my trixie-blooded* gnome scout rogue-4 shrinks to 11" tall, stealths all through the steading, notes the location of the treasure room, and heads back out. That evening, with a feast in progress, I head back in with a bag, make my way past Asvig's bedroom (where Asvig and his wife have retired to do the Ulfen Shuffle), carefully unshrink, pack all the nifty-looking stuff up, reshrink, and exit. Easy as taking candy from a baby. No sword, but those boots almost make up for it. A few hours later, after nightfall and most of the thanes falling asleep, Asvig finally notices he's been burgled and raises the alarm. The few conscious thanes head out to search the area. They completely miss our little encampment, and we go in past them. Just As Planned. We came in through the sheep-shearing room, and... an offhand comment from the GM inspired us to try disguising ourselves as sheep. No, really. And we all rolled really well, and the tiny number of people left on guard -- and Asvig and his witch-wife -- all flubbed their rolls. So they were under the impression that a band of savage sheep creatures were raiding the hall. Would Beowulf turn out for weresheep? With my sap-adept feats and our blue rose cavalier's abilities, the chief, the witch, and her familiar were subdued in moments and our flock headed for the hills to interrogate them in safety. Baa. When the skalds try to capture this portion of our saga, they're just going to throw their hands up and skip the whole thing out of shear bewilderment. ^.^ *(see 101 Alternate Racial Traits from Rite Publishing)
There's shadows, vampires, wraiths, specters... apocalypse zombies are an official thing now and there's even a quarantined infestation somewhere in Avistan... After playing through Carrion Crown #2, the prospect of a vargouille apocalypse is pretty terrifying. The burn is long and obvious in its late stages, but they can fly. What's your favorite contagious apocalypse monster?
...the vast majority of second-round entries don't strike me as superstar quality at all. Really, only Polak and Vaneekhoven deserve to advance -- can we skip rounds 3 and 4 this year and just have these two go straight to 5?
Does a pilgrim with the travel domain grant 10 feet of extra speed to everyone in the caravan bond? If so, does this last all day?
I'm gearing up to run Age of Worms in Pathfinder, and of course converting its iconic monster was the first step. (Since even 4th Edition has gone back to "Sons" from "Spawn," I went with the classic version.) I think that all the straightforward conversion has been done right. The only part that needed choice was a new feat and skill distribution, and I'm not entirely happy with either; perhaps some racial skill bonuses are in order. (The 3.5 Spawn had a heck of a Jump check, but that was back when Jump was its own skill that ran off Strength.) So, fellow Paizonians: is this a suitable CR 5 critter? SON OF KYUSS
XP 1,600
DEFENSE
OFFENSE
STATISTICS
ECOLOGY
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Kyuss's Gift
Curative Transformation (Ex): Any remove curse or remove disease effect, or a more powerful version of either of these effects, transforms a son of Kyuss into a normal zombie. Sons of Kyuss are disgusting undead creatures created by Kyuss, a powerful evil cleric turned demigod. Completely mad, the sons of Kyuss wander caverns, crypts, and sometimes the open countryside searching for victims.
Wormspawn Subtype: Wormspawn are undead or aberrant creatures created by and in service to Kyuss. Mindless wormspawn instinctively obey the orders of intelligent wormspawn.
So I'm considering running AoW in Pathfinder, for an audience of gamers who are young enough that they have never heard of Sons of Kyuss. Poor bastards. :) What I'd like to do first is make a set of campaign traits, similar to the modern APs', that would focus around the idea that these chars are all near penniless and in debt to a mining company or some other local agency. They'd start with basic equipment and their remaining cash would be in miners' scrip at best, and any trait that gives money or expensive goods would be banned. In return, the traits should give somewhat better benefits than even ordinary campaign traits. Something like this: Sixteen Tons: You or your family are indebted employees of one of Diamond Lake's mining concerns. After purchasing equipment, convert any remaining starting gold to miners' scrip worthless outside of town. You gain one free rank in Profession (miner), and it is always a class skill for you. Select one of the options below. (Different options for each of the six mine managers, owe whichever one something like 50 gold.) Other options: Allustan's apprentice, novice monk, alchemist working for Benazel at the smelting plant, freak at the Emporium... ...brain seizing up, not enough sleep last night. I'd be very grateful for any ideas/help/criticism/whatever.
I'm going to play a gnome with a third-party alternate racial trait (which is probably my first mistake :) ) that allows him, as a full-round action, to become Diminutive. This is proving to be more difficult to stat out than I assumed, as it seems there is nowhere in the Pathfinder books to find all the rules about size categories in one location. My initial question is, are there any hard rules about speed changes as a character goes up or down the size chart? Base speed isn't altered by Enlarge or Reduce Person, but I have a hard time believing that an eleven-inch-high gnome would be able to cover the same ground as his four-foot-eight Small normal form. (Which is not to say that I'll object if the rules say he can.) (Looking into the bestiaries, I see that Small or littler humanoids and fey tend to be able to move at least 30' per round, leading me to the suspicion that halflings and gnomes have been unfairly slowed. Especially gnomes, who in Pathfinder are depicted as lithe and quick rather than the big-nosed stumpiness found in prior D&D editions.) Then we come to what looks like a hole in the rules. Tiny and smaller creatures have to enter their opponents' space to attack. No creature may end its turn in an opponent's square. Should we conclude that Tiny creatures literally cannot make melee attacks unless they have Mobility, Flyby Attack, or use combat maneuvers? I must be overlooking something. Do they automatically bounce out of the space at the end of their attack, and if so, does this provoke additional AoOs?
Or a rogue, if gninjas aren't available. Please? Google is surprisingly unhelpful. :(
I can't help but notice that this feat has no limitations on type of spell whatsoever. Ectoplasmic summon monster x: summoned creatures gain ghost touch on all attacks for the duration? Ectoplasmic alarm: ethereal creatures trigger the spell? I'm inclined to think that Ectoplasmic align weapon wouldn't slap ghost touch on the sword -- it'd be usable on incorporeal swords if you could find such a thing though. Ectoplasmic animate dead: turn the corpse of a creature on the ethereal plane (that you can see from the material for whatever reason) into an ethereal zombie that you can command from the material plane?
Is the slayer of a tarn linnorm expected to present both heads, or could a party get away with claiming two kingdoms from one dragon?
Over the development of Golarion, there's been a lot of contradictory statements about the sizes of the continents. It used to be that Casmaron was consistently referred to as a "supercontinent," the largest around by a long shot -- and this was explicitly not counting Avistan, Tian Xia, or the Crown of the World as being part of a single landmass, it was just Casmaron. More recently, Tian Xia and Arcadia have both gotten mentions as "possibly" the biggest. Is this still up in the air? (And does Golarion have more land area than Earth?)
Because it's almost certainly too late for Bestiary 3. :) To start: Recent discussion of ghost ships indicates that there's a niche for skeletons and zombies that, while not necessarily any tougher than standard issue, retain skill ranks and can be commanded to perform profession- and maybe even craft-related tasks. Sailor dead, that sort of thing. (Could easily be a variant, just a couple of paragraphs in the back of the book.) I'm assuming we'll see demodands sometime soon, but... there have only ever been three kinds, and the other fiends keep getting additions to their ranks, so... New demodands please! RPG Superstar monsters. The Hunger that Moves deserves an official writeup!
What exactly is the difference between a count and a "paracount?" Is this something like a statement that their titles are better than other countries, or inferior to Hell's nobility, or what?
I had to buy this after seeing the indicia in the preview. As the guy who created the "Our Gnomes are Weirder" page on TVTropes, I had no choice. So it's a good thing that it's an awesome little book, and I heartily endorse it. :D
I know witches get a lot of respect in Ustalav, but how far does that respect -- and knowledge of a witch's capabilities -- go? To get to the point, if a small house on chicken legs is seen walking down a main road, will passersby panic or realize it's a powerful witch (and then will they panic again or just nod and give it a respectfully wide berth)? Would it help if the house was cheerfully decorated, and set up with a front porch with some ordinary-looking person sitting on a bench and acting like a carriage-driver? :)
One: I see no reason why fey subtype should be a prerequisite for Tiny size. (There's plenty of room in the concept of fey for Medium and even larger size, and room in the concept of non-fey for very small. On the other hand, having giant as a prereq for Large makes sense.) Two: A cursory reading fails to turn up a four-armed option. ^.^
I know the general rule of Golarion is "humans are everywhere, other races are localized," but halflings are supposed to have followed humans everywhere. Does this extend beyond the Inner Sea region? Are there Tian halflings, Native Arcadian halflings, Sarusan dreamtime halflings? How unusual will halflings seem to Tians?
Can an alchemist with the tumor familiar discovery take the Improved Familiar feat and get a celestial/fiendish tumor, or even an outsider tumor? ^.^;
Used to be, a lot of the classic spells were named for their creators (who, as often as not, were the Lake Geneva PCs). Of course, Pathfinder being an OGL game and Golarion not even being in the same cosmology as Greyhawk et cetera, we can't have the old names back. But... there are now a bunch of established historical casters of note. What spells did the great wizards of the Elder Days create and stamp so firmly with their legends that even now they're still remembered? The Runelords may be too far in the past even for their names to be remembered properly... but what of Geb's horrid wilting? Jatembe's phantom steed? (Obviously the core books are setting neutral, but it would be nice to have a few such notes in the Companions or Chronicles.)
So I tossed around a couple of Castlevania ideas (Dhampyr magus = Alucard), but then inspiration struck from a different source: Jack Kirby. Take a halfling. Give him Childlike and Pass for Human, along with the Perfect Servant trait reskinned so aristocrats mistake him for a very well brought up noble child. Dress him to the nines in the sort of twee clothes that only the very very rich can afford to inflict on their offspring. Now make him a witch with a cat familiar. And you have... Klarion the Witch Boy! ("Ba dum bum" strongly discouraged.) Still working on him -- I'm looking at a debuffing role with the Halfling Jinx/Evil Eye/Malicious Eye combo, and the cat will get upgraded to a silvanshee at 7th level (add anthropomorphic animal and enlarge person and you've got Teekl's werecatgirl mode). I'd appreciate suggestions for patron and general spell list in the "trickster" mode (the actual trickery patron is obviously an option, but not the only one), as well as critiques of the following build (we'll be rolling stats randomly tomorrow, so I can't give you a point breakdown there): RACIAL TRAITS Halfling Jinx - replaces Halfling Luck (HoG) TRAITS Perfect Servant (HoG) On the Payroll or Making Good on Promises(CCPG) (Because there seems to be no tab feature, everything after a / is a hex.)
01 - Childlike (APG)/ Evil Eye
Just bought SoPM, and I'm wondering if anyone has converted the ToM vestiges (and the extras from Dragon) to SoPM style?
...It's one thing to present tengu oni as the creatures of the older tales, who are more likely to be violent than protective. And it's true that tengu are associated with yamabushi. But are you aware that yamabushi are an actual, still-extant religious order? Seriously, this is like calling a new monster "Franciscan Demons." It's inappropriate and insulting. "Karasu Tengu" or "Konoha Tengu" would have been much easier to take.
In an ancient Elder Thing ruin, maybe not even one worth exploring, just some rubble the caravan passes... A statue of an Elder Thing... with butterfly wings. Cue the religious panic when the PCs realize this is a representation of Desna. She's a very old goddess, after all. :)
There's a niche, I think, for a mirror image of the Master Chymist: some guy who's so hopped up on cognitogens that he's developed a new personality to handle the extra brainpower. Think Alan Moore's Marvelman (or Miracleman), whose vastly enhanced intellect just completely outshines his mundane form. Other than the obvious cognitogen versions of the MC's mutagen powers, I'm not sure what to give such a prestige class -- surely bomb-throwing is far too vulgar a pursuit for such a rarefied mind... Slower BAB progression, good Will save, obvious... new list of discoveries, some mirroring the MC's... (I've been considering creating a goblin mindchemist with this class, should it come to fruition. Think normal goblins have big heads? Tremble before the PULSING WATERMELON-SIZED SKULL of the ULTRA-GOBLINITE!)
The vivisectionist archetype would go fairly well with the Master Chymist except that vivisectors get sneak attack instead of bombs, and MCs stack bomb-throwing with their alchemist levels. Is it reasonable for a V/MC to get stacking sneak attack instead of bombs, or would that wind up as significantly more damage output?
So let's say my shiny happy Stolen Lands kingdom wants to sponsor a trade caravan carrying shoes, ship (part)s and sealing wax to... oh, somewhere in Vudra. What's the conversion rate from Build Points to caravan stats and back? Would a 1 BP investment be 4,000 or 2,000 gp worth of stuff?
Have any PCs tried to get two or more of the five factions to mount a joint expedition to Saventh-Yhi instead of stabbing each other in the back all the way there? (Of course, the preceding two options are not mutually exclusive, but still.)
Been wondering about the New World, Golarion-style, and what the Paizo crew have in store for us there. It's an interesting situation, y'know? Like and yet extremely unlike the relationship between Eurasia and the Americas. On the one hand, Avistani civilizations have known about Arcadia and been in intermittent contact with it for five thousand years. Let's let that sink in: five thousand years. That's ten times as long as it's been since that lucky idiot Columbus stumbled across the West Indies and kickstarted a new era of colonization and exploitation. On the other hand, there are a LOT of factors preventing the Avistan cultures from overwhelming the Skraelings: * Difficulty of the voyage. I get the impression that the actual distance is longer, plus it's not a simple sea crossing like the Atlantic -- you have to navigate the storm-wracked shattered remnants of Azlant, dodging sea monsters every step of the way. * Lower population density than Europe (probably) means much less pressure to immigrate -- this isn't a world where humans can spread everywhere they want, there're too many monsters and savage races keeping the wilderness wild. * Local Arcadian monsters and savage races, which the Skraelings will be used to and the colonists won't have been familiar with at first. * The ubiquity of divine magic, and possibly even some of the same gods being worshipped over there already (as with Garund). * Disease, working by Pathfinder rules, bears very little resemblance to real-world factors. (As far as I can tell, no one who isn't inherently immune to disease CAN develop immunity or even resistance to particular pathogens, so everyone on all continents and all situations is at identical risk to pretty much everything. That could maybe use some extra rules?) ...So even though there are apparently some current long-established colonies that are still in touch with and consider themselves to be part of their mother nations, the Skraelings probably haven't had near as bad a time as the Native American tribes did. What I'm really wondering now is, with five thousand years of observation of, trade with, and adaptation to the Old World colonies, are modern Skraelings pretty much technologically on par with Avistan? Surely they should have gained not just horses but herd animals, crops, and the lifestyle that goes with it... not identical to the colonists' culture, but thoroughly adapting these tools to their own needs? Iroquois Confederation with actual cities and farmland? I really hope so...
I'm looking at my Archivist Bard, 6+Int mod (3) skill points per level, and realizing that there just aren't enough points to get all the monster-identification Knowledge skills plus everything else he needs. Is there, anywhere in 3.5/Pathfinder, a feat that would just grant more skill points to be spent as desired? If not, should there be or are there game balance reasons against it? In building such a feat, how many points would be appropriate from a feat slot? Would a feat that increases your points per level be too much?
All a cavalier has to do to qualify for the Hellknight prestige class is be 5th level, lawful, and kill a devil of equal or greater Hit Dice. Since cavaliers are already classic knight-types, it's an obvious entry into the Hellknights that gives you a slightly different (and arguably more appropriate) base skill set than fighter or paladin. This raises the question: if you're a cavalier-type training as an armiger within a Hellknight Order, with or without the intention of formally qualifying for full knighthood, would it not be appropriate to have a cavalier order package to reflect that training? Those who flunk out completely could still function as support troops for the Knights, and full knights of the Measure who don't advance all the way into Chain or Hellion could fall back on their base class advancement while retaining some hellish flavor. At least some of the Hellknight Orders can probably be represented by the existing cavalier order writeups -- a Godclaw cavalier by the Star, for example. I'm gonna try a writeup for one or two, see if it works without either making the resulting Knights too uber or unnecessarily duplicating their abilities. Order of the Chain Edicts: The cavalier must obey the Measure and the Chain at all times, and must never stand aside and allow a slave or convict to escape justice if it is within his power to prevent it. Challenge: Whenever a cavalier of the Order of the Chain issues a challenge, he receives a +1 morale bonus on all nonlethal melee damage rolls made against the target of his challenge as long as he is threatening the target. This bonus increases by +1 for every four levels the cavalier possesses. Skills: An Order of the Chain cavalier adds Perception (Wis) and Survival (Wis) to his list of class skills. In addition, whenever an Order of the Chain cavalier uses Survival to track an escaped slave or prisoner, he receives a bonus on the check equal to 1/2 his cavalier level (minimum +1). Order Abilities: ...and right now I have too much of a headache to figure those out. >.<; Tracking, capturing, nonlethal damage, that sort of thing. I'll get back to this later, just wanted to throw it on the mercy of the forum... |
