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I have a channeling-focused Cleric in my campaign that is now 13th level. He has been using a Phylacter of Positive Channeling to great effect since he first crafted it at 3rd level (the entire party pooled funds to purchase the materials).

He now wishes to increase its effect. He would like to bring it to a +3d6 or +4d6 bonus to his channeling. How much should this cost?

The base item is 11,000gp. Basing the formula for the cost off of that used for magic weapons and armor, I get aaprox bonus^2 *2750. This would make a +3d6 phylactery cost 24,750, or a +4d6 phylactery cost 44,000.

Do these numbers seem about right for the bonus he'll get?


So my crew, that doesn't have a rogue, finally figured out how to get through the locked, living brass doors without making a ton of noise - they cast silence on the cavalier, and let her bash away. One of the two druid also shape-changes into a Rhino and does his thing.

As a result, they mostly snuck into Memrach's chamber. Being shocked by their forced entrance, he was immediately hostile, and wouldn't listen to any diplomacy attempts - didn't help that the character trying to talk to him blew his roll...

He led with his Rain of Debris, and then plunged the room into darkness. The party was able to dispel the darkness and corner him before he could cast any buff spells, so he backed into a corner and fought with his sword. After a protracted whittling down of HP, he finally teleported out.

Needless to say, he's pissed.

I'm fairly certain that once he's had time to heal and buff himself, he's going to be a very nasty opponenet. However, he's also smart, and realizes that he won't be able to beat the entire party all in a head's-up fight. So he's going to want diversions, slealth, and allies.

The party has already mostly laid waste to the contingent of fire giants (all the ones on level D and the hounds are dead - but Gilbans has allied with them), and the lizard-man are also all dead. They haven't entered the palace, and haven't encountered the Flickering Candle (yet).

They brought along an imentesh protean and a Xorn with them from Kakishon. The protean is nursing it's wounds as well, and is looking for some payback. The Xorn is tagging along like a puppy dog, eating any stray metal that crops up (living brass doesn't taste good, and gives him a stomach ache...)

I'm thinking of having Memrach team up with the protean to make life difficult for the group, but I'm having a hard time resovling that meeting in my head. The group has been in Bayt Al-Bazan for 3 days already, so the protean has healed nicely hanging out in the ethereal, but I haven't figured out what else he has been doing.


We're doing a one-off this weekend, and I need to create a character - so far, we've got

1) Arcane caster - wizard or alchemist
2) a Tank (massive defense fighter or cleric)
3) Ranger or Magus
4) Almost definitely a Druid
5) Me...

I'm open to playing just about anything. Suggestions to round out the roles?


We're starting a new campaign next week, beginning at 5th level. So far, the party consists of an alchemist, inquisitor, magus and ninja. I'm the 5th player, and I'm not sure what to play - I'm open to just about anything. What would be best to round out this group?

These are the guidelines from the GM:
The Basics:
-Character Level: 5
-Starting Gold: 10,500 gold pieces, Normal purchase restrictions apply
-Race Restrictions: Common Races, others might by accepted but only if discussed with me first.
-Terrain: The common terrain of the land is plains and forests, but there is a mountainous region as well as seafaring merchant ships.
-Racial Bias: There is a lot of tension between all the races, especially between Humans, Half-Orcs, and Elves. However, the players will all come from one kingdom in which all the common races can reside.
-Starting Point: All players will be a low-ranking member of the King's Army. This campaign will have a running theme of a militaristic campaign.
-Role: More information will come over the weekend, but each character will be choosing a role within the military. It is fine if more than one character has the same role -- but once it is chosen it cannot be changed. These roles will have various affects on your characters as they level up, such as enhancements and benefits.


A buddy is visiting town, and wants to run a 20th-level one-off. We've got 5 players, and we're trying to put together the party.

I know the game will require heavy combat skills, but will also require some info-gathering/diplo-type work up front.

So far, we've got a Druid, and Inquisitor, a Magus, and possibly another arcane caster - sorceror, most likely.

So that's two divine casters, and two arcane casters, with a fair amount of combat ability strewn in. What's missing?


My group just finished House of the Beast, and are moving on to The Jackal's Price. They're trying their damnedest to derail the plot, without really knowing anything about it.

Derail #1 - No Introductions in Katapesh:

For some reason, they have decided to keep their possesion of the Scroll of Kakishon as secret as possible. They haven't told Almah, or anyone else in Kelmarane about it. They ARE researching it, and having exhausted both their own abilities and the resources in Kelmarane, have decided to move on to Katapesh in hopes of finding out more. Because they haven't told Almah, they don't have an introduction to Rayhan.

Almah DID manage to send Garavel and some troops with them, though.

New Sub-plot #1 - The Jilted Lover:

Zayifid survived the final battle in the House of the Beast, and is stirring up trouble with the Sons of Carrion. At the same time, Undrella, who has fallen in love with the party's bard, was given a task by said worthy to find out whatever she could about Zayifid, and to meet the group in Katapesh in a couple weeks. He plans on ditching her at some point - so I need to flesh her out as a valid adversary, perhaps give her some Alchemist levels.

I'm not sure at what point in Katapesh she's going to show up.

Zayifid will make another appearance in the battle at the Oasis

New Sub-plot #2 - Playing with Fire:

The party's cleric has been dealing with Lesaar - promised him that he would help send him back to his own plane in return for safe passage under the House of the Beast. To do so, he is researching a variant of the Dismissal spell (which he can now cast) that does not have a chance of sending awry. His research in Kelmarane has failed to find what he needs for this, but I did manage to drop Rayhan's name as an expert in Planar Travel.

Lesaar, meanwhile, is playing a waiting game. He's a little disgruntled in how long it's taking the cleric to come through on his end of the bargain, so he's hedging his bets. He alone knew about the scroll; and is bargaining with emmissaries of Father Jackal - Radi Hamdi, who has managed to join the group under guise of a merchant in need. The party is VERY suspicious of him, however.

So Lesaar and Radi are plotting together to steal the scroll. Lesaar is smart enough to let Radi take the fall when/if the attempt fails, but I need to figure out how that is going to play out.

I like the recurring characters and villains in this AP - and want to keep them involved. Any suggestions?


Had a quickling PC in a recent campaign, and the sheer speed of the character brought up some interesting questions. Can a really fast creature outrun a magic missile?

Magic missiles (almost) always hit their targets: "The missile strikes unerringly, even if the target is in melee combat, so long as it has less than total cover or total concealment."

Could a sufficiently fast target dart behind cover to avoid the magic missile?

I have this vision of a quickling running around the battlefield chased by a couple glowing force balls...


Running my group of 5 players through the "Fortress of Ghouls" player-contributed set-piece to the Legacy of Fire AP, we ran into a possible Total-Party-Kill situation.

The party's Fire-bloodline Sorceror had previously acquired a type III necklace of fireballs, which still had all of the fireballs attached.

Fighting the Great-Ghul Boss at the end of the set-piece, which had a necklace of fireballs of his own. The Ghul tossed a fireball, doing 20HP damage, which the sorceror did not save against, taking 10 HP after his Fire Resistance 10 absorbed 10 points.

His necklace also failed to save, exploded with a 7D6, 2x 5D6 and 4x 3D6 fireballs, for a total of 29D6. On average, this would do 102 HP damage to the party and the Ghul, more than twice the highest party-members remaining HP. In fact, even with saves, this was enough to kill everyone in the party outright, except the sorceror, who ended up taking only 4HP damage from his own personal immolation, due to lucky saves (against each fireball) and fire resistance. The Ghul also would have taken very little damage due to his own fire resistance and saves - and could easily have killed the sorceror by himself with no one else to worry about.

To avoid this TPK, and because everyone in the party (except the sorceror) had Sarenrae's blessing, I read the the last line in the description of the Necklace with a variable ruling:

"If the necklace fails to save, all its remaining spheres detonate simultaneously, often with regrettable consequences for the wearer."

Consequences only affected the wearer - so only the sorceror was affected by the mass explosion, and no one else.

Was I too lenient? I try to give each player one "Hand of God" ruling per character, so this was his. And I didn't really want to end the campaign at this point.


Ok, from my reading of the rules, this is what I've got for a 5th level Cleric to craft a Lyre of Building.

Requirements: Craft Wondrous Item, fabricate; Cost 6,500 gp

Cost to craft: 3250gp (half of base cost)
Spellcraft target number: 24
- Base 5
- Caster Level 9 required: +9 (calculated from minimum Wizard level required to cast Fabricate)
- Less than caster level: +5
- Fabricate spell required, not on spell list: +5

Time to craft: 7 days (base cost 6500 / 1000, rounded up)

Am I right?


Playing Howl of the Carrion King - my group of 2nd-level players has gotten in a little over their head, and I'm trying to decide on the response of the defenders of Kelmarane.

Avoiding giving anything away...:

The group infiltrated Kelmarane on the night of the first day, after a successful scouting mission. They've made friends with Undrella, killed the snake, and made a camp in the manor house by the docks.

The next morning, they woke early, and made their way up the hill. They already knew about the dire boar (from the scouting mission, knew exactly what it was), and lured it into a trap, killing it handily, but not without taking a few lumps that were easily healed.

They then headed up the hill, leaving most of the buildings un-explored. They skirted around the backside of the battle market, meeting a gnoll patrol along the way, which actually managed to get the drop on them. Didn't help them much - the party won hands-down - only one member was even scratched.

Rather than fall back and regroup, they continued on, and got right up to the back door of the battle market. There Kezurkian appeared, with some extra gnolls, responding to the noise of the previous battle. During this fight, more gnolls appeared, with the pack of hyenas from the guardhouse. All told, Kezurkian, 6 gnolls, and 3 hyenas (one had been killed during the scouting mission, by the boar no less!). The party went toe-to-toe with this group, and after a long battle, managed to defeat them with a few very lucky blows (the monk stunned Kezurkian, allowing the rest of the group to really beat up on him). However, two of the party fell to the demon's attacks (stabilized short of death); the players retreated all the way back to the monastery to heal up.

Now here's the problem. The party retreated in full daylight, directly back to their stronghold (I had pity on them, and let the dust-digger be sleeping during the mid-day heat). There's no way that Kardswann doesn't know they're out there. I'm tossing around two choices for his response: Either he sends a scouting mission that day (in force, not just a single patrol, since he knows the group was powerful enough to defeat Kezurkian), or he does a full-scale assault the next day, with the entire company in the battle market.

The first option is doomed to failure - the party is more than a match for any gnolls sent against them. Even wounded as they are, I wouldn't give the gnolls much chance, especially with the guards and mercenaries in Almahs party.

As the party is only second level (still, we're using medium progression), the second choice would probably be a TPK, even with the reinforcements that Almah can provide. I *could* have Almah intervene, and have them abandon the monastery for another stronghold because of their mistake. She'll have their report (they learned the number of gnolls and the fact that Kardswann is a genie from Undrella, and know about the bugbears as well), so she'll have a good idea of the strength they'll be opposing. She won't be pleased with them for the frontal assault or leaving an obvious trail. The problem with this tactic is that the party is heavily wounded; they're out of healing, and would have to rely on Father Zastoran to beef them up (he's an alchemist in this game).

Anyone have any additional options, or better suggestions for Kardswann's response?