Karnov's page

I took over GM'ing in the middle of the campaign. At the start of Sins of the Saviors. The only thing I have changed so far is the fight at Rimeskull. As written I thought it was pretty bad since the boss just shows up pre-buffed WITH SPELLS THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW. I changed it so he actually confronted the party first. I mean he has been slumbering for the past 400 years or so. He gets waken up and the first thing he does is cast very specific spells and then immediately fly out and attack.

I had him fly down and confront the party first. He has 16 int and knows common. I pictured him as being somewhat curious about what was happening. It is not like he had anything to be afraid of. I was also trying to give the party some non-combat ways of resolving the fight if they wanted to go that route.

I have also added a nameless cult dedicated to Karzoug that is has been causing the party some grief and giving them bouts of paranoia. A gnome sapper alchemist was at Rimeskull boobytraping the Runelord heads. It was going pretty good for him until he got exploded by Arkryst.

During a sidequest I cooked up to tie up some loose ends the party Skald summoned a pack of monkeys to fight one of the monsters. After successfully disarming the monster of its dagger, the Skald made them try to disarm the monster's natural weapon. The natural weapon being a giant claw made of ooze and bone shards.

The goo from the monster's arm poured in to the monkeys eyes and mouths and suddenly there was a pack of evil, rabid monkeys.

The Skald got the bright idea to summon some more good monkeys to fight the bad monkeys which the bad monkeys pretty much instantly devoured. In a fury of blood and hair IIRC.

The same Skald would later go on to accidentally discover the "brown note" while rolling a critical failure in the presence of Arkryst. He had to take 1d4 of fecal damage.

Part of the fun is adjusting stuff on the fly to fit the player :)

Did they have fun? Did you have fun?

If yes, proceed.

If not, consider alterations.

Fun? FUN!? What's next? Suggesting that they actually try roleplaying!?

271. An unnamed red, leather-bound tome. Inside the tome are pages upon pages of drawings of mouths. When the pages are rapidly flipped, the drawings of the mouths appear to move as if speaking (through the magic of flip-book animation) and the character that is flipping the pages can hear a voice whispering a secret to them. Each time they flip the pages, they will hear a different secret.

275. Anyone passing through a specific 5ft square on the street gets goosed. A DC 25 perception check reveals a drunk wizard peering over the rooftop holding a ring (of permanent mage hand).

It was a tough fight all around. Elena almost died due to inadvisedly trying to bite a fire elemental, and Perry got hit with a Bestow Curse that made 50% of his actions fail, permanently.

This is really odd, because I was running a campaign where my bard obtained a panther amulet that was enchanted so that 60% of the time, his actions worked every time.

Only thing I can say is that dominating the will of an intelligent humanoid long term (enslaving them)is an evil act. In fact, i'd bet a paladin of Iomedae would have a huge problem with it. Also, since Desna is one of the major/popular worshiped gods in the town the people would be very displeased once they found out what was happening ( a DC 15 sense motive check per the spell).

This should definitely be brought up!

And, if Mr. Fancy Pants wizard refuses to cooperate with the wishes of the villagers of Sandpoint... maybe the spirits of the giant's fallen comrades arrive in the night and use the last remaining bit of their astral energy to help the giant nullify the Dominate Person spell, and then point him in the direction of the wizard's room at the inn? Or maybe the giant simply shakes it off on his own and bides his time until he has the wizard exactly where he wants him.

Their grandfather made them wear his old heavy plate armor every day and then he would hit them with a stick for 12 hours straight. When their grandfather died, they vowed they would never wear heavy armor ever again...

It's only fun if I make the DM cry.

646. Explosion at the tavern. Nothing proven. But you think it better to move on.

Goblin Samurai and his horse companion.

The Goblin Samurai used to be a human samurai, and the horse used to be his druid lover. The druid used a resurection spell which brought the samurai back as a goblin. The druid used wild shape to turn into a mount for the goblin, but then found himself stuck in pony form. The goblin samurai often finds his new-goblin nature getting the better of him and bites the druid pony (a percentage die roll). The pony puts up with it because he still loves the samurai.

Why is it I very often see PC's who 'got lucky' with their rolls, but I never, ever see a character being played who got unlucky?

That's why we don't roll.

Because ancedotal evidence makes it true: my first character for the most recent running of RoTL rolled terrible stats. They were so bad that the DM even said I could just straight up do a point buy if I wanted instead, but I stuck with them because it fit the concept of a character (a guy pretending to be Paladin so a woman would marry him).

But yeah, you are right. When somebody shows up with 3 18's it is kind of hard not to call shenanigans.

6. A group of travelers standing around a giant, boulder-sized gemstone. It is far heavier than a gemstone of that size should be. Pinned underneath it is a very alive and worried person. The only immediate danger they appear to be in is dying of thirst because they are trapped underneath this enormous gemstone.

452. Human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together... mass hysteria!

Name of PC: "Sir" Percy Darling

Class/Level: "Paladin" (actually a Fighter pretending to be a Paladin)/3

Adventure: Not sure. We were exploring the tunnels under the glassworks.

Catalyst: Going back to save the party from the minions of the quasit

Story: After making their way through the perilous tunnels underneath Sandpoint, our party made their way to the the blasphemous cathedral. Percy took one look at the place and was like "*Lana voice* Noooooope! Not going in there." He shut the doors and proceded to walk back the way they came.

The Druid in the party insisted on going inside, and when she did, the Quasit and her sinspawn showed up. Then the Quasit summoned about 7 monsters. They pretty much surrounded the Druid and the Ranger so Pery did the noble thing and waded into the fray and hacked a lot of them to death. Ultimately a summoned panther (!) bit into his arm and grappled and pinned him. He swung his sword and decapitated the beast, but its head remained lodged on his arm where its fangs latched onto his armor. After this heroic display, Percy was felled by the onslaught of the few monsters that remained.

For the record, the DM rolled max damage for every single hit against Percy. :(

1. Our ranger managed to convince the dwarf in the party that if he drank from one of the monster birthing pools he would get "awesome monster powers." The dwarf was about to do it too, but then the cleric came over to see what we were talking about and ruined our fun :(

2. This same ranger and dwarf decided that the best way to deal with Foxglove manor was to hook a bunch of horses up to and and pull it down. The horses all ran off the cliff and died :(

Goblin Samurai - he rides around on his pony and is constantly biting it. The pony puts up with it because he was a masochist transformed into a pony against his will via magic (basically, Bill Murray's character from Little Shop of Horrors).

No DM has allowed it so far!

When my group ran this part of the AP... I was playing a "paladin" (really a fighter that was just pretending to be a paladin so that he could get a woman to marry him). I might have called her a trollop and a slattern the first time I met her, and when she later asked me to kill rats, I denied her request because it was beneath a paladin to kill lowly vermin.

Later on, when our catfolk ranger went into the general goods store to buy arrows, she discovered he was part of my party and called out to her daddy that the catfolk ranger was trying to grope her. The ranger flipped out and took a swipe at her daddy with his claws and her dad proceded to beat him senseless.

Meanwhile, across town while this was going down, my paladin hired a bard to come with him to stand in front of the church to serenade his beloved Say Anthing style.

Good times!

If your character is of a race that an NPC hates, the NPC should begin chasing you around with a pitchfork while the Benny Hill music plays. You can attempt a diplomacy check but you are at a -4 penalty because of the pitchfork.

Karnov wrote:

Being able to turn your fist like unto a thing of iron.

Which I guess, uh, would fall under physical enhancement :/

...sloting keywords to your anarmed attacks/defences.

I meant like this: http://marvel.com/universe/Iron_Fist_(Danny_Rand) :O

Gold.

When the apiculturists expansion goes live I think we can expect

Now out of all games I've played, Neverwinter was the best one at combating this. By giving you the ability to use two words for your name. It is a really nice idea! And it makes perfect sense! I know four Dennis's in real life and it is their last name which makes them stick out.

Are you talking about the Cryptic/Perfect World incarnation of Neverwinter? Because if that is the case it is actually much deeper than that. They allow duplicate names because it resolves out to Battlemaster Bloodmourn@Moridian, but no one ever sees the @Moridian except in certain menus,tells,etc.

It was the same system they have in Champions online because it was one of the most requested/desired features out of City of Heroes.

I would love PFO to follow suite.

Cats and Dogs living together. Where will it end?

It's not that I expect any of the Daily Deals to be OP or anything... but for the sake for flavor for a character, i desperately want to get my hands on the Wrap of Shadows(date: 1-09). Would anybody that got access to it be willing to shield mate with me? (wow, i just pictured shields mating. awkward.)

I will because you are my favorite rare earth magnet.

What are peoples thoughts on not publishing weapon or spell damage stats? A bastard sword might hit harder than an equivalent longsword, but no stats are published and the combat log just indicates a hit or some type.

Might make things more interesting for those that want to work this stuff out for themselves and it might avoid a FOTM build.

More like Flavor of the Months build since that is how long it might take to train up to it, hehe.

Anyway, if people want to crunch the numbers, more power to them. It is not going to ruin the fun I will have sticking pointy blades into people's organs.

How many other video games out there have a slavery mechanic? I can't think of any.

And yes, it could easily turn into a Public Relations nightmare. Just look at the uproar over something like the "feminist whore" code left in Dead Island, or the Anita Sarkeesian kickstarter. I do not envy the Goblinworks employee that would possibly have to sit down with IGN or Kotaku or whoever and try to spin why having a slavery mechanic in the game is a good thing. Of course if instead of calling it "slavery", they just called it a "indentured servitude" or "forced labor" or heck, since we have magic "mind dominated labor" or something, they could probably avoid the whole possible PR nightmare. It is all in the presentation.

Let's not even get into the Fantasy vs Reality debate on this. That is going down the No Mutants Allowed Fallout 3 child murder rabbit hole.

As long as we can play as Django too.

Do they have a pickle extractor as part of their starting equipment? This is important to know.

60. Mind Control @_@

To go with the theme of another thread:

"You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part"

hahaha

Imbicatus wrote:

The problem is it's not at all fun to play against in PvP. No one likes playing a statue.

I totally agree. I think the problem is that designers just lock a player down when they're being mezzed, instead of giving them some kind of "battle" to break free.

This is one of the areas where I think the 6-slots for abilities isn't great. I think it would be really cool to be able to train specialized Mental skills that unlocked abilities that helped you fight out of a Mezmerize more quickly.

What? Like Will of the Forsaken? Man, this game is nothing but a WoW clone.

The same could also be accomplished by mashing movement keys or blocks etc the way other games handle this (DCUO for example... or the "Saving Throws" IE wiggling the joystick in the old D&D arcade games).

I would really love to see a "Soaking Wet" debuff that gets applied when you go swimming.

Dragon's Dogma had this actually. If you fell into a body of water you became drenched and until you dried off you were more vunerable to lightning damage (and maybe ice), but got a little bit of fire resistance. They also had one for oil that made you take DOT from fire.

I suppose one would also have to consider aoe healing spells in the problem also.

Selective channeling ? Ie just the people in your current party? I imagine the fun to be had if your bubble heals ended healing that dragon the party was fighting for the last 20 minutes.

8 points. However, if you choose to not spend these 8 points at character creation you will be able to purchase several fine hats as well as the pickle extractor with them instead.

When it's ajar. Wait, wait. Nevermind. That's a door.

I don't think I'd put my stuff in the bank if the mattress was safer.

But your mattress could only hold 500 gold or whatever, while the bank could hold 10 times that or more. It would give players a much greater stake in a settlement raid if their potential life savings could go up in smoke. Don't want your hard earned money to end up in the hands of raiders? Fight for it!

Plus, if someone did take over your settlement, were would the money go otherwise? Do the River Kingdoms have magic tubes that can send coin to other bank branches? Better to have the potential to get it back than for it to be lost forever.

“Lootable” banks and warehouses/storehouses. They would function like a normal MMO bank with a significant amount of storage depending on the structure. Say 1000 slots on the warehouses and storehouses but you could only store crafting mats or food etc in them. However, whenever another faction conquered your settlement, if the banks and storehouses were intact they could raid the coffers and help themselves to whatever goodies were stored there.

To counter the fact that you could suddenly find yourself without 2 copper to rub together (unless you threaded them), all Inns would have a personal stash/storage that only you the player had access to. It would not hold anywhere near as much money or items as a bank, but it would be a safe spot to store things. Maybe you could upgrade the number of space you had available by paying money to the inn, or by sticking a bag of holding in there.

Ideally this would encourage inter-kingdom warfare as well as prevent players from being completely hosed if the barbarians ransacked their kingdom.

Roleplaying table in the corner with NPC players role-playing a modern world game with polygonal dice.

Like the dwarves playing Malls n' Muggers in SMAX?

The should just outsource Rockstar's Euphoria engine :D Of course I think that would require it's own kickstarter to raise the money for that...

Wizard/Sorceror type and a Bard.

I would also like to see the leadership feat in game at some point. Nothing says badass like rolling into town with your own goon squad. I don't know how well it would work out balance wise. Perhaps you would be able to lead a unit of NPCs in a formation during mass combat.

Ah, so like the CoX Mastermind powerset :D

(3 minions, 2 lts, 1 boss, plus with thugs you could summon an additional 9 or 18 non-controllable NPCs to go berzerk for ya)

Undead armies? Plague weapons? Assassins? All speculation.

I like the idea of "Jelly monsters" (or maybe magic goblins? LOL) taking care of dropped stuff from time to time, to allow dropping itens in the game without causing much technical or aesthetical problems.

Domesticated Rust Monsters.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/rustMonster.html

IIRC I beleive that you only got the public group option for rifts/invasions. I don't think those enemies dropped gear or items, just money and rift crystals/tokens that you could then use to purchase gear/items from the right vendors.

The Red Dead Redemption approach would be nice. Random NPC out in the woods. "Help me stranger! A bandit stole my horse! I could use your help to get back to town." If you help them back to town you would gain some money and positive alignment. Or you could kill them and take their possessions. Or they might turn on you and steal your horse. Or they might be a were-rat and eat you once you got away from witnesses.

Of course potentially most of these ideas would already be duplicated by PCs out in the world, but I always loved those encounters in RDR. They go a long way to making the world seem much more alive.

Also, it is probably in the devs' best interest not to include a SLAVERY mechanic in their commercial MMO game.

One system I really thought that had a impact to final product was SWG (Star Wars Galaxies). The various crafting components had a different degree of quality each rotation (usually 8 days). So, on tuesday you harvest some iron near your town with an hardness of 87, but the following week, that hardness was only 80. As a crafter you tried at acquire the highest quality so that you can make the best possible item. You'd use the lower quality components to grind your skill up.

Firefall has a similar mechanic. The four main components come in 4 different levels of quality: white, green, blue and purple. White being the lowest, purple being the highest. Gear crafted with better quality creates better gear. It is randomly determined by the server so you have to actively seek out better quality veins. They are dynamic as well.

I personally love that system and would love to see something like that implemented in PFO as well.

Being able to turn your fist like unto a thing of iron.

Which I guess, uh, would fall under physical enhancement :/

Being able to increase your rate of natural healing and also remove poisons and toxins and the like.

Being able to transform players into cats against their will via magic? That's boffo box office baby!