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What do you call a cleric of Aroden?
What do you say to a cleric of Aroden on church day?
Best advice an Ulfen warrior can give his son/daughter:
Kindly Chelaxian inquistor: Be faithful or have your intestines fed to a small hungry imp. Now, that's not too much to ask, is it? What do you call the guy who names all the new hurricanes in the Shackles?
Years ago we're playing in Greyhawk and the party is hired to foil an assassination attempt on a visiting ambassador. He's put up in a mansion on the edge of town, guards put in place, and we're told we keep him safe or else. We do all the information gathering and such and can't get a clue to when or who or how. So, in a flash of brilliance, we decide to lure the assassin out by hiring him to kill the "ambassador" ourselves. As someone points out, "Who would pass up the chance to get paid twice for the same job? It's fool proof." We spread the word we're hiring someone to kill a "visitor" to the city, must be very skilled at his trade. Through our drop message system we get a bite, and pass on we want the ambassador killed and when and where he can be found. "We'll leave the door to his room unlocked." Then we prepare the "ambassador's" room. We board up the window on the inside, move a cabinet in front of the window for good measure, station the guards away from that part of the mansion to guard the ambassador in his real room, and settle in to wait. Kind of smirking, too. At midnight the door opens, someone slips in, and we spring the trap. We light up the room, slam the bar down on the door and turn to face the poor doomed assassin. Imagine our joy to see a mind flayer standing there. And us all of level 5. Oh, and for some reason he has an imp, too. Well, the battle was mostly a lot of screaming in panic, trying to tear the boards off the windows, trying to get past the mind flayer to the door, and shouting for the guards. And the mind flayer and his imp having the time of their lives. Now whenever the group is stumped on how to deal with a problem, someone will often suggest, "We could hire an assassin to kill us."
Thanks. You can download the entire slide using something like DVDvideosoft's Youtube to avi program. It's free and super easy. Just copy and paste the URL into the program and hit "download". I use their Youtube to MP3 all the time to download music.
I created a 3D map of the ruined cyclops city in the "Island of Empty Eyes" module, part 4 of the Skull and Shackles adventure path. I made the cyclops city map so my players would have a better visualization of how the ruins looked in relation to where they were. As GM you might not want players to see all the city map from the beginning, but this was no problem with my group. The map doesn't show building interiors or underground areas. I did this by pasting the GM's map into Sketchup, then drawing the buildings atop it to exactly match the scale and locations. If you'd like to view it, it's on Youtube: Go to 3D Cyclops City Ruins. I have several Pathfinder setting slide shows there, including 3D Kaer Maga, 3D The Black Keep from Shattered Star adventure path, and a History of Golarion slide.
Glad you like it. With the different layers, connecting stairs become excellent ambush spots and those arteries become choke points. Also the idea that in many places, roofs would run up to the ceiling and provide support for the next level; and maybe in a few places there are hidden stairs within buildings to traverse levels without going into the streets. Our group bought a building and converted it to a "secret headquarters", using the Ultimate Campaign book as a price guide. We joke that it must be the best known secret location in the city, with our group so oddly diverse as to stand out even in Kaer Maga. (Currently a fetchling always surrounded by shadows, a schizophrenic half-orc who's sometimes a savage brute and at other times a refined gentleman, a witch with undead henchmen included a troll skeleton in full plate, a 5' 6" Shoanti with a polar bear animal companion, and a goblin npc the party adopted. As a reward for loyal behavior, the fetchling wizard put continual flame on both the goblin's dog slicers, and he can't resist brandishing them as he walks the streets.) And if that weren't enough, during down-time, the half-orc took it upon himself to hire a maid to come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rest of the party learned about her when they came down one morning and she was chasing the goblin out of the kitchen for helping himself to hot cakes before breakfast was served. "Who is she!"
Looks a lot like the model I made of Kaer Maga :) Yes, I saw your model some time back on the message boards, before we started playing in that setting. When I researched what was written on Kaer Maga, I remembered that your model was much more accurate than the faces-on-the-cliff painting. Probably using the same sources as you, I tired to make my 3D images match the descriptions. When I first started playing around with Sketchup, the first major thing I made was the Alamo. Then I made a keep for the campaign we were in, and then I decided to make Kaer Maga when we moved the campaign to there. And I did go back and look at your model again when I started making it. :-)
Very nice. I think sketchup would be good for 3—d dungeon illustrations... Yep, I've played around with that some. Moving about inside is tricky, because if you rotate around to a wall you go through it and it's easy to get disoriented trying to get back to the view you want. The program has a walk-through feature that's pretty good, though. I downloaded a castle someone made that you could walk through and it was pretty nice.I also made the cyclops city from the Adventure Path "Island of Empty Eyes". That came out really good. I don't have it posted on line yet, though.
It took about a week, several hours a day. Sketchup is great, but because you're working with planes that might cross across the entire creation, if you make a change to one part of it, you might also change something else that you don't catch till you're beyond the point of being able to undo it. Making all the buildings was very time consuming. Copy and paste is really a pain because it's so hard to get it lined up with the plane you want to place the copy on. Most of the buildings I did one by one.
The godsheads are on the painting but not in the map plans nor on the drawing that shows the levels below. But doing them would have been incredibly hard. In Sketchup, the hardest thing for anyone to create are 3D people or faces. It would require creating a lot of planes. As to more levels, by the description of the height of the walls, about 80', I can't imagine very many levels. The City of Strangers source book mentions 8 levels, but only in some sections. In others the sections are one vast level, such as where the broken roof sections are above the Cavalcade.
From a distance, Kaer Maga appears to be an enormous outcropping of gleaming, white stone extending straight up from the cliff ’s edge, its 80-foot-high walls forming a seamless, six-sided ring and its squared-off skyline broken only by a cluster of towers and minarets at the south end.
I am currently running a campaign set in Kaer Maga, taking over from another GM who was running an excellent game set there before he moved away. As players, we were always trying to get a handle on just what the city looked like. The maps available from Paizo are great, but it's hard to appreciate the unique nature of the city presented in 2D. As often as not, I didn't picture the multi-layered sections within the walls. When I took over as GM I used Sketchup 8 and drew the city. For my players I load up Sketchup and can rotate around the city with the mouse to give them any angle I want. I decided to post it on Youtube but the conversion to .avi possible with Sketchup isn't very good, so I made a slide show from shots I took of the 3D model I drew. I posted the slide show on Youtube if anyone is interested:
(Or go to Youtube and do a search for Pathfinder Kaer Maga) Let me know if this is helpful to your players.
I've thought of my story for round 2. I'll probably write it and then spend two weeks trying to chop it down under 750 words... sigh. I went to bed with an idea for a story, then woke at 6:30 AM with it in my head. I lay there an hour writing it mentally, then decided I better get up and type it out before I lost it. I'm at 746 words and it's complete, but now comes all the tweaking. I'll let it set a few days then read it again, decide I see a lot of things to change and do that. And so forth.
Is the same theme from round 1 still in place for round 2? I don't think there's a theme this time, just flash fiction set in Golarion. Oh, and your tiefling story was very good, nice twist.
It's harder to write less than it is to write more, for sure. I can think of a hundred words to describe an oak tree, but only three words, now that's a challenge. By the way, very good story about Abrogail.
Today is the 9th right? Does anyone know where we go to get the guidelines for round 2? I'm not seeing anything on the home page..... This is it: Round Two
goblin idea has been done. good suggestion though....want a good dungeon crawl for 4 level 1 they will arrive with that day. i'm letting on pc play a centaur barbarian LOL... All of those are appropriate for your party's level. It depends on where they are in the world now. One is in Osiria, one in Taldor, and one in Andoran. We haven't played any of those so I'm not familiar with the adventures, but we've played a lot of the scenarios and all have been short and well written.
goblin idea has been done. good suggestion though....want a good dungeon crawl for 4 level 1 they will arrive with that day. i'm letting on pc play a centaur barbarian LOL... Check out the Pathfinder Society scenarios. They're short adventures that can be completed in a single session. We use them to fill in spots in larger campaigns when we want a side-trek adventure.
Probably for the same reason in the real-world a company doesn't make just one size of clothing or cars that only a left-handed person can drive. It would be cheaper if Levi made just one style and size of jeans, or GM made one model of car and that for left handed people, but they would greatly reduce their market and have to raise prices. If a PC is a crafter, he makes the class/alignment based for himself at the reduced price. But if he's making the item to sell, he would probably have to raise the price because he'd have his gold investment tied up longer waiting to sell it. Or he'd sell it to a magic item dealer at the same 30% he spent making it to get a quick sell. The DM could easily handle the situation with an NPC spell-caster by having him tell the fighter it was more time consuming to make that specialty belt just for him because he has to attune it, etc, so he would have to charge 4500 GP for it. Even if it's not true that it cost the NPC more to make doesn't mean he wouldn't do it that way. Look at how much more they charge for sugar-free items than for items with sugar. You know it's not costing more to leave out the sugar, but it reduces the potential customer base, and therefore they raise the price. However, if the manufacture was making the sugar-free items just for their use, it would be cheaper to them. Of course, this is a fantasy world, but the economic system is still based on the real-world economy model of supply and demand.
We've never had a problem with the discounts in our games. Sure, the wizard made his Boots of Levitation "for wizards only" and saved 30%, but the rogue got his +1 dagger in a drop and it cost him nothing. And, the wizard used a feat to be able to craft the boots, while the rogue used his feat to get "weapon focus-dagger". Besides that, when someone suggests the wizard loan his boots to the rogue to attempt to disable that trap set in the ceiling, the response is, "Sorry, they only work for me." Should the wizard try to sell the boots later, he's going to find a much narrower market AND have to sell at 30% less than for out-of-the-book boots. Finally, it makes sense that dwarves would make armor and axes that only work their extra wonders for dwarves and elves make bows that only elves can use to full effect. We incorporate that into our games, so the players know that they will sometimes find restricted items because NPC's have access to the same discount.
This contest is a great challenge for anyone who wants to be a writer. The editing/revision process can be tedious, especially if you have a full time job and other concerns.
I've been very impressed with the quality of the stories in both and I'm currently reading all of them in their final form. I can honestly say, after reading over a dozen so far, that I haven't found one yet that disappointed. On the down side, I've written a story for the next one, but as I read the other stories in II and III, I keep thinking I need to put a lot more effort into my story before I submit it, because they are so good.
We use hero points in our campaigns and it isn't unbalancing. Most of the time they're used to re-roll saves. On rarer occasions they get used to try confirm a crit with a re-roll, when a battle is really tough for the party and the baddest of the bad guys needs to drop soon. They are good for balancing those times when the character did everything right, the DM wasn't trying to make the character pay a price for a really bad move, and they still rolled a "1" on something they could save with with a die roll of 7 or better. When I DM, there are times I do want the characters to make their saves, I just want to add a little tension to the game. But if it's a fluke round of rolling and I see a "1", a "2", and a "4" come up, and it means all the party is going to fall asleep with monsters with sharp objects ready to do some throat cutting, I might even suggest using hero points if the players don't think of it.
The Skeletal Dragon is fantastic. And I'm really looking forward to more aquatic creatures. If you have a Hobby Lobby in your area, check out the animal packs you can get in the section with model train terrain. These come in tubes and there are a lot to choose from. The sea creatures pack has sharks, rays, and sea turtles, all of similar scale to 25-28mm figures.
On the road to the village they encounter an old woman, who gives them a cryptic warning, "'Ware the village ahead. Evil has come from a cold, dark place, and only true hearts, and brave, can save it now." If the PCs ask questions, or give indication they might be able to help, she looks them over and says, "I'm not sure you're up to the task. Perhaps killing goblins and the occasional wolf is within your ability, but this might be beyond you. Or maybe not. That is for you to discover, I'm thinking." Hopefully this cuts a little to their pride as adventurers. When they arrive, the townsfolk are boarding up windows and hanging garlic above the doors. If there's a cleric or paladin in the party, the villagers are very welcoming, offering free rooms and meals in the inn if they'll help them with "a little problem".
If asked about the garlic and boarded windows they are evasive or outright lie. "Just local superstition. Some of the silly folk think the baron has a touch o' the old plague... probably nothing to that, or a mild case at worst. Garlic is supposed to ward off plague, you know." If reluctant, as they should be if not a high level party, the villagers try to encourage them by mentioning Father Preston probably has some healing potions and such in the temple, and surely wouldn't mind if they used them for the baron. A little information gathering by the PCs could turn up some clues: After a couple of disappearances, the villagers got the "vampire jitters" and the priest got tired of trying to convince them there was no vampire and went up to the old keep to check it out for them. He didn't return. The lord of the keep died five years ago this week. The lord was a retired adventurer who made a fortune exploring the darklands and had some strange ways, including sealing off every cave in the area. The priest was also an adventurer and companion of the lord when they were both younger. (In fact, you could have every disappearance connected, such as all members of this old adventurer group.) On his deathbed, the lord made the priest swear he wouldn't bury him in the ground, but would instead seal him in a stone crypt in the highest chamber of the keep. The villagers think the lord has returned as a vampire. Of course, the truth is the derro are behind the strange disappearances, including the priest. When the PCs explore the old keep, they find a tunnel coming up into the cellar. They also find the crypt broken open and no body. (Which might get them convinced the lord IS a vampire) Make a connection between the dead lord and the derro, perhaps some relic he stole from them as an adventurer. Now they've finally located him and find he's dead. But not to be deterred, they have a plan to call him back from the dead, to tell them where their relic is hidden. The old priest is captive and to be used in their ritual.
Having played D&D almost since the beginning (and our group calls PF D&D still) I've had many enjoyable characters. But most recently, and among my all time favorite, was my gnome druid, Krundalbar Glimberek. I was able to totally immerse myself in the eccentric nature of gnomes, which borders on insanity by the standards of other races. He rode a giant toad (and had a miniature to match) which he named Hoppiton Webfoot III (since it was the third animal companion he tried to get. The first two were giant frogs and as he explained, one tried to eat him and one tried to drown him... and then eat him.) The gnome would never walk in front of the toad, unless out of reach of his tongue, explaining, "When you're only three feet tall, you can't be too trusting." The party quickly renamed the toad "Hoppy" and he became a popular member of the party. When Krundalbar would do something really weird, a player would say, "I bet Hoppy is rolling his eyes and shaking his head." When the adventure path took us on a long overland journey and I suggested leaving Hoppy behind, the party all chipped in and bought a wagon and insisted Hoppy come along. He always introduced himself with,"I'm Krundalbar Glimberek, of the Sanos Forest Glimbereks." He wore boots with the toes cut out, "Have you ever been walking along and started to wonder if you still had all your toes? Then you have to sit down, pull off your boots, and count them, or else the doubt will drive you crazy. This way, I can just glance down and save time." He explained how his father encouraged him to become an adventurer, "My father said, 'Krunbalbar, you should get out and see the world. And you should get out now.'" He was taught the secrets of druidism by Arkman Elmspirit, a kind and gentle fellow who’s only real drawback was that he was a werewolf. ("It were best to be high in a tree when the moon was full, if you catch my drift. Otherwise, old Arkman was a cheerful old fellow.") He encountered his first brothel, which he mistook for a tapestry shop, "Everything was only 5 gold, the lady told me. So I said, 'I'll take that tapestry'. The ladies all thought that was funny, for some reason. Anyway, I didn't get my tapestry but I'm going back tomorrow." Afterwards, he would divide his share of all loot into stacks of 5 gold. Eventually he convinced the party (even the priest) to invest in an upscale "Tapestry Shop", and would hang posters throughout Varisia "Visit Krundalbar's Tapestry Shop, in beautiful Magnimar!" (When the Magnimar book came out, Greg, owner of Comics Emporium, said the first thing the players asked was, "Does it have Krundalbar's Tapestry Shop?") He also had a caparison made for Hoppy that advertised his shop. For a time he wore a hollowed out watermelon for a helmet. He collected buttons and had a vest with four rows of buttons, no two alike. A typical party looting after a battle would go: Wizard: I cast detect magic on the bodies. Barbarian: I search them for gold. Krundalbar: Do they have any buttons? He bought and took along on adventures anything with moving parts: folding chair, hinged box, astrolabe. He would assemble the astrolabe, take a reading, and then, with all seriousness, declare the party should continue to follow the trail. His advice on fighting undead was, "First you stake them to the ground, then you fill their mouth with waffles. I read it in a book." He only learned one phrase in dwarven, "Did you kill those people?" and used it as his opening introduction to every dwarf the party encountered. Even now in another campaign when the GM says something is written or said in dwarven, the players respond, "Did you kill those people?" The party soon learned not to have him change to an animal and go for help or deliver a message. (He spent three days "hanging out" with the bats in Magnimar when he was supposed to be taking an important message to an npc) When the party encountered giant tracks, he explained how to tell giants by type, "If they live in the hills, they're hill giants. If they live in the forest they're forest giants. And if they're on fire, they're fire giants. I've never seen a cloud giant, but one time I saw a cloud shaped like a dog. It was probably an omen but I couldn't figure it out." He was my character though the Rise of the Rune Lords adventure path and I was able to play him so over-the-top that I might never be able to play another gnome just because I'd find myself cloning Krundalbar.
Please cancel Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Race Guide and Character folio. I'm going to try picking up most of my Pathfinder stuff at my local hobby store to support them.
I bought it expecting the same detailed map as in the free download and was very disappointed to find an unlabeled map. Are my players supposed to write on it as they explore? I don't see that happening. So what use it it other than it looks good? It looks like I'll have to print out section by section the downloadable, labeled map, just for my use as I run it. The hand out "hand drawn" map is great and I can see using that. I'm considering putting the town map and unlabeled map under a sheet of clear plastic, so the players can write on it with grease pencils, but that won't be nearly as useful as a labeled map would have been.
I've been playing rpg's almost since D&D started, and have seen cross-gender role playing done well most of the time. It's more a matter of the maturity of the group than whether the player with the character can do "voices". I've played female characters many times, though 90% of my characters have been male, but I never try to speak with a female voice. At most I will talk quieter or do a few feminine hand gestures. Usually I mix my role playing between speaking first person and stating things like, "Sarina says,'They look like trouble'." I find that stating the character's name often helps remind everyone it's a female character. In fact right now in one of my Pathfinder games I'm playing Estellyn, a female elf rogue, very young (about 15 in human development) an orphan and street urchin who's a kleptomaniac and pathological liar. She's fun to play and drives the party paladin crazy and forces him to role play even more. The paladin lectures her, or says, "We're not here to steal their silverware, Estellyn!"
Not the same, but this reminds me of something that happened when I was playing WOW. I had a female night elf character and fell in with another player doing some quests one night. After awhile he made some comment about my character being "hot" and I said that's why I like to play female night elves. Then it went like this: Him: You're not really a girl?
With a dwarven wizard I'd consider going Universalist and take the hammer as a bonded item. You would get "Hand of the Apprentice" which allows you to throw a weapon and have it return instantly to you 3 + your Int bonus times/day. What dwarf wouldn't want a dwarven thrower variation?
I would suggest having an amulet as a bonded item. You will get to the level for "Craft Wondrous Items" quicker than craft wands, weapons, staff, etc. and can add something to it pretty cheaply, such as a skill bonus.
You have considered this will also be doubled or tripled on criticals? For a weapon that does, say 1d10 X2, and is only +1, wielded by a character with +4 strength bonus, that's a healthy 2d10+26 on a crit.
Borgus Sharvin who insists his surname is old Azlanti for "Swamp Viper", while the townsfolk secretly joke it means "Mud Turtle".
I had a player who managed to get killed three times in four sessions by reckless play in what was not a character killing campaign. After the third death I wrote this up and presented it to him at the next session, printed out in fantasy font. Mutual of Greyhawk
Dear Sir:
Three untimely deaths in such a short period of time, four adventure "sessions", would have been excessive during the Greyhawk War, much less while doing low to mid-level adventuring. We paid off your fist claim, which I believe was "Death by Hill Giant Bashing", even though entering an obviously occupied hill giant cave to "do a little looting" is the reason your third level rogue never made fourth level. We questioned "Death by Falling in Lava" because you do not technically carry lava insurance and at least two other party members warned your new rogue not to try to flank the owlbear by getting on the cliff edge overlooking the lava.
We only agreed not to drop you after the second instance because you elected to try a druid rather than another rogue. (As the druid survived two sessions, there was a glimmer of hope you might actually take part in a "treasure split" and therefore keep your policy up-to-date.) However, if you will look over your policy again, which is only a Mid-Level Adventurer Term Policy, you will see that "Death by Being Eaten by Giant Sea Snake While in Seal Form" is neither covered nor implied. When the real seals are bolting onto the shore, the water is churning and red with blood, and the rest of your party is shouting "Don’t go in the water!" in common, elven, dwarven and pig-Latin, we can’t understand how you thought it was a good idea. We considered continuing your coverage when you wanted to start a fourth character who begins as a stable hand in a very peaceful small village but as soon as someone at the meeting said "pitchfork" that option was rejecting unanimously. We hope you will find suitable coverage elsewhere, and suggest you take out a low coast liability policy just in case you get someone else killed next time. Sincerely,
I recommend the book "Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows" by Howard Andrew Jones. Much of the story takes place in Galt and it's a well written book and very good story.
Many years back I'm DM'ing a game and the party is on a ship far out in uncharted oceans seeking a fabled island. As an encounter, a massive whale attacks the ship and starts ramming into it. (Think Moby Dick). The always overconfident fighter announces he's drinking a potion of water breathing and jumping overboard while the rest of the party is discussing what to do about the situation. The whale swallows him and starts diving to the bottom of the ocean. Fighter: I'll cut my way out. Shouldn't take more than a minute.
After some fun, the party finds itself, along with the surviving crew members, sitting on a small reef with nothing but ocean in every direction, trying to gather enough from the debris of the ship to make a raft. Wizard (Looking at fighter): I really, really wish I had a wish ring. I know what I'd wish for...
You could have the prison divided into sections, each built to contain and neutralize a specific type.
The Wet Wing: a section where it's always damp, to contain fire based creatures, with guards immune to fire The Silent Corridor: permanent silence spells to contain creatures with sonic attacks, with guards who are deaf. The Dark Cells: section always in darkness to contain creatures with gaze attacks, like the medusa, with blind guards who have blindsight.
The Silver Cells: Built to hold lycanthropes and devils, guards armed with silver weapons. For more normal prisoners such as humans, special security sections: The Wheel: A circular section with a slowly revolving inner wall containing a single opening that only lines up with each cell once per 24 hours, for maybe an hour each time. This gives time to feed the prisoner, or remove them, but could force the players to wait a long time for the cell they want to come into play. The Aquatics: A section completely under water, with gillmen guards and/or sharks. The cells are elevated and contain air but only reachable through the water filled passages. The Furnace: Corridor with permanent walls of fire on each side, heat side inward, with the door-less cells on the cool side. Guards are salamanders. Prisoners are brought in or out by means of energy resistance rings, fire.
I think this is good advice. Something simple but with lots of action. I'd add a bit of background and some roleplaying to give her a sense of why she'd go into that cave. For example:You're the daughter of the only soldier your small village ever produced. Most everyone else is a farmer or craftsman. Your father is dead now, but while he lived he taught you how to hunt with a bow and gave you some lessons on swinging his old long sword. He even let you try on his chain shirt just to show you how it felt to go into battle in armor. Since his passing five years ago (Your mother died earlier)you've been the village hunter, and on occasion dealt with wolves that come too near the livestock. Now something terrible has happened. First there were rumors of something moving about the old mine a few miles from town and some livestock went missing. But yesterday, a farmer didn't return who went looking for a lost cow. Today villagers found blood and his old crumpled hat beside a trail within a mile of the mine. And a footprint that was small and humanoid in the blood. They're sure whatever has moved into the cave killed him and took the body or maybe even captured him. As the closest thing to a fighter the village has, they're asking you to do something to protect them. You've told them you'll need a little time to think about it and, while they wait, you've entered your little cottage to make up your mind. You've laid out your father's chain shirt and sword on the bed and stand staring at them. You're not a soldier like he was, but you are his daughter. And your people are begging for your help...
I began playing D&D in 1976. My group and I changed to every new addition, upgrading our characters to the new rules and moving right along. We loved the game. And we were loyal to the game, and felt it was loyal to us. Then came a total change in D&D. Not only was 4th not the same game, but there was a feeling of being just the next guy in line to give money to an unappreciative sales clerk who wouldn't even make eye contact. Along came Pathfinder and again there was that feel of community, of a game made and sold by people who loved the game themselves. The people of Paizo have treated players with the respect we once had from D&D. When I stand in that imaginary line to buy my Pathfinder product, the sales clerk says, "Hey, did you see the cool artwork on page 33? What do you think of the new feats in chapter five?" Paizo makes eye contact, the way D&D once did. Why would I consider abandoning that just because the rude sales clerk now wants my input? Sorry, WOTC, you got my input when I got out of the D&D line and moved to the Pathfinder line.
Close range is a trap. Arcane mark let's you use spell combat/spellstrike for a 0th level spell and there's so many other useful arcanas to take. Ah, but with Close Range you can use 0 level Ray of Frost with spellstrike all day long. And with Liquid Ice as a focus you do 1d3+1 with it. If you're going to take the -2 penalty to get in two attacks with spell combat/spellstrike, why not do some damage with it? And because a crit with the weapon is also a crit with the spell, you double the Ray of Frost for 1d3+1 X 2, which is 4-8 damage. I use a scimitar, so crits chances come up fairly often. I also took Dervish Dance so my Dex bonus is my damage bonus. At 5th level I'll get to add Keen to the scimitar from my arcane pool (Already a +1 weapon) to have a 15-20 critical threat range. Or I'll add one of the energy damage effects, as the situation demands.
I'm currently playing both classes in two campaigns, the inquisitor is level 13 and the magus 4th. So far, the magus is much more destructive in combat than the inquisitor was at this level, but the inquisitor was able to do a lot more to help the party outside of combat, including healing. The real difference is the inquisitor can burn through his judgments very quickly at low levels, which weakens him in situations where multiple encounters are happening each day. This is really annoying when you turn on judgment because it looks like a serious fight coming only to have it over in 2 rounds. Judgments would be better if they were so-many rounds per day and not have to be used consecutively. By the mid to higher levels the inquisitor doesn't seem to suffer resource depletion too often. My magus has never used up his entire arcane pool between rests. Your arcane pool is 1/2 level (minimum 1) + int modifier. So, assuming you at least have a +3 Int bonus, that's 4 times per day you can make your weapon magical at 1st level. By contrast, a 1-3rd level inquisitor only has 1 judgment a day. So all in all, while both are front loaded, the magus seems to have more stamina as far as class abilities across multiple encounters at lower levels. I went kensai on the magus and skipped bladebound. The problem with bladebound is you give up the 3rd level arcana, and you really want that to get Close Range arcana. Also, you go from 1/2 level arcane pool points to 1/3 level. And finally, even though you can expend a point from the blades pool to add +1 to the blade, it only has 1 point in it's pool initially and doesn't get a +1 bonus to it's Int until 5th level.
He's cheating the rest of the party members as well as the other players; he's stealing resources from the party and some of the enjoyment from the players. Pathfinder and D&D are not competitive games, they are cooperative games. If the rogue player wants to role play his character as a pick pocket or shop lifter, let him do it against the NPCs, who after all didn't invest time and money to playing the game and won't resent him for it outside the game. As a DM, I've always been against anything that causes people to leave the table with hard feeling towards a fellow gamer. A player in my game stole a ring from treasure and more than a decade later other players in the group still remember it. They aren't resentful of his rogue, they're resentful of the player himself because they trusted him. This game requires trust around the table. You can't see everyone's dice rolls, so you trust them to have actually rolled a "hit" when they say they did, to erase the gold off their sheet when the party all chips in to buy potions, and to see that everyone gets an equal share of the rewards for the risks they took as a party.
Put another way, I can talk to non-gamers who are nonetheless pop-culture savvy, point to Sir Lancelot, and say, "That there is a Paladin. He's real good and rides a horse and swings a sword and stuff." Nods. Actually, Lancelot wasn't a paladin. His son, Sir Galahad, was the paladin. And for a great read on the Arthurian stories with some real grit to it read "Parsival or a Knight's Tale" by Richard Monaco. Parsival and Galahad are two differing versions of a paladin to use as examples for RPG play; Galahad is pure by choice and Parsival by naivete.
Have you seen the Solomon Kane movie? It's pretty awesome IMO.Check out Howard's Solomon Kane short stories. You'll get a better feel for the Inquisitor. Yeah, I thought they did a good job with it. Much better than they've pulled off with three Conan attempts now. They made Howard's version of the world seem like just the place a Solomon Kane would be needed.
Check out Howard's Solomon Kane short stories. You'll get a better feel for the Inquisitor. Exactly how I interpret the class. I made mine along the lines of Solomon Kane, even to using a figure that looks like Kane and painting it that way. I made mine a Cheliaxian with heavy leanings towards enforcing LAW. The fun is in having him interpret Law in his own way. His overall philosophy (which I used in my Pathfinder Chronicle story "The Politics of Hell") is, "The law cannot persuade where it cannot punish."
My gnome druid rode a giant toad throughout the Rise of the Runelords AP. For long overland journeys the party had a wagon and Hoppy (Hoppiton Webfoot III) would ride in it so as not to slow the party. I took appropriate riding skills so as to fight mounted (which was no longer used once I could wild shape into effective combat forms). Along the way Krundalbar had a special saddle and leather armor barding made for Hoppy, as well as a colorful caparison advertising an up scale brothel the gnome convinced the party to invest in. Reaper makes a cool figure of a druid on a giant toad, which inspired the character. Go to Gnome on Toad.
Not to nit pick, but most vipers don't have heat sensing ability, only pit vipers do. The western world has pit vipers (rattlesnakes, cotton mouths, and copper heads). Old world vipers lack the "pits" that sense heat. Also, some of the large constricters have a more primitive heat sensing nerve system along the edge of their mouths. I used to work with pit vipers (and other snakes) and their ability to strike at heat sources with pin point accuracy is amazing. Take a balloon that's been blown up for a little while, then blow up another one and extend both towards a rattlesnake on a stick and the snake will strike only the one with warm air in it. In absolute darkness a pit viper can strike with something like 95% accuracy. We used to try to educate people on the dangers of messing with rattlesnakes with a garden hoe, stick, or something similar. They step up to poke the snake with the stick and are surprised when it instead strikes their foot or hand. An odd bit of trivia but it wasn't even discovered that pit vipers had this ability until we had invented heat seeking missiles ourselves. Then someone said, "I wonder if that's why rattlesnakes are so accurate?"
I have a 16th level cleric of Mitra (before TSR defined all their gods we put together our own pantheon).But you didn't list him as the most interesting high level caster you've ever played. True. My archmage was my most interesting.
I think it says something about the cleric class that there's no high level straight cleric in this thread. I have a 16th level cleric of Mitra (before TSR defined all their gods we put together our own pantheon). He actually became too powerful and purpose-focused to play. We played the original Judges Guild "Dark Tower", and a cleric could become very powerful in the course of that adventure. He ended up with a gem embedded in his forehead and a number of Mitra artifacts, as well as two 10th level paladins he could summon up daily (Lions of Mitra they were called). The downside was he was compelled by the embedded gem to destroy all evil he came across, and he also had trouble playing well with chaotic types. Eventually I semi-retired him; built a temple and had him start a knightly order to roam his territory dealing out justice.
OK, now I get to expose how ancient I am. The first character I rolled up for D&D was in 1976 and it was a wizard named Thondomain. I played him (as well as other characters) through pretty much every D&D module as well as scores of original campaigns. It's a few years since I've been able to play him at all, but he's sitting at 28th level. Having gone through every incarnation of D&D (except 4th), he's immensely powerful in spells known and magic items, not to mention sitting on around 5 million GPs. (Remember when gold was XP?) He has a rock troll for a henchman and is on friendly terms with a couple of dragons that occasionally are involved in the campaign. Our group has a core that's played together since around 1980 and play Pathfinder now. We created an order called The Silver Band, on an island off Gradsul, Keoland. Thondomain is the head archmage, but there are 3 other PC archmages, several in the 12-16 level range, as well as high level fighters, clerics, etc. All PC's. The island and the complex there is fully mapped out, inventories of all the Silver Band has in its library and treasuries, etc. When the Greyhawk Wars took place in the campaign world, our group took an active part, even fighting against Iuz in his territories. Also fought Loth in the Demonweb Pit and Grazzit in the Abyss. Since we never allowed our characters to become "god killer" in power, none of these powerful foes were destroyed by us, keeping us grounded in the idea that gods should always be more powerful than PCs. Our Greyhawk campaign was very rich in detail and PC interaction and we're working now to develop our Golarion campaign the same.
If a player does something really "above and beyond" you might give them an XP bonus, but the best course is to give XP on a party basis. Yes, the rogue disarmed the trap, but the cleric healed the party, the fighter hewed the monster, the wizard cast a useful spell, and the bard restrung his lute or something. In other words, the rogue did his job as a member of a party that works together. Now, as Has'Kar said, if someone role played well (especially if others didn't even make an effort) it's not a bad idea to give them a bonus, and let it be known in a positive way.
An additional point, as all these real world figures are given for ancient times on Earth; people of those times didn't know those figures. The Roman Empire did a Census, and perhaps the Chinese, but most nations probably never had anywhere near the information on their populations that we have. That lack of hard numbers allowed for the belief in many mythical lands and lost continents. It encouraged a belief that elves lived in the deeper forests or trolls underground or dragons in the mountains. In Golarion, they do! Of course, taxes are collected and borders more or less defined, so there is at least an estimate of populations within the civilized regions. But how accurate are those tax figures and how recognizable those borders? I personally like a fantasy world where there are vast areas of dangerous and unexplored regions even within great nations, where nobody can say with certainty how many people there are in the world, much less elves and dwarves, and where far off lands are just "that way, somewhere." Or as Lord Dunsany once said, the most intriguing phrase in the English language is "Over the hills and far away". |
