Keldarth's page

Hi folks!

Not wanting to spam or anything such, but I found a new Patreon (not mine) trying to take off, I think it looks quite interesting. It offers RPG city maps which look quite nice, for every genre. For those like myself, who run sandbox hexcrawls with a healthy dose of random content generation, this is a boon.

https://www.patreon.com/Heriss

Hi guys,

I'm currently DMing a sandbox campaign in my homebrew world, with a huge emphasis on exploration and wilderness adventure. (Insane amounts of work, BTW, but immensely rewarding in my experience). One of the concepts that I want to implement is the idea that the setting is the home of some legendary masters of the arcane or martial arts, living in the wilderlands as hermits, wanderers or reclusive loners (such as a mythical, reputedly immortal shaman; a legendary elven archer; a lone and eccentric wizard in his remote tower; an old heroic swordsman; etc) and that upon finding them, they might train the PCs, passing their secrets unto a new generation of heroes. I think it's a cool concept, one that might interest my players and give them additional incentives for exploring the vast wilderness. The part that keeps me struggling is the rewards to be gained from such training. With casters, this is not difficult (access to rare spells, etc), but martials require extra thought. Some of the ideas that are bouncing in my head:

1) Restrict the access to some of the feats in Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, APG, etc, adding as a prerequisite "being trained by master whatever". If so, would you keep these rewards within the normal feat progression, or would you find acceptable to give the new feat as a special reward above and beyond the normal class-and-level feats? I'm partial to the former, but perhaps this is seen as unsatisfactory after a long quest to find the reclusive master.

2) Make the training an essential requisite for Prestige Classes. With the rejection of PrC in favor of archetypes (at least in my group and at the current levels), and the added amount of work that designing or adapting the classes would mean, this is not an ideal option, but flavor-wise it makes a lot of sense.

3) Award optional mechanics that are not usually allowed in the campaign (hero points, for example) to those trained by a legendary master.

4) Additional combat maneuvers such as those found in The Secrets of Martial Mastery by Rite Publishing. The problem I find in this is that I see those maneuvers as tricks and stunts that everyone should be able to try, most of all veteran warriors and rogues. Too pedestrian for a "legendary" master, in a way.

That's mostly all the options I'm considering right now, and not a single one fully convinces me. What do you think, fellow Paizonians? Ideas? Suggestions?

As a frequent player of rangers and other wilderness-related classes, I have found that the survival rules, and specially the tracking rules, while good and simple to use, are somewhat... lacking.

The rules for tracking describe the difficulty of finding and following a track, but what happens to one of the most important and useful aspects of tracking, the reading of the tracks and the information-gathering aspect. This is an aspect very used in fantasy and non-fantasy fiction and movies, but the game does not allow it.

I would like to see something that add to the current rules, not changing them. I use some house-rules in my own campaign that let the tracker to extract additional information the higher he rolls above the base DC for following the tracks... If you barely make the roll, you can only follow the track, but you only know the basics (boot, paw, hoof, etc). The higher you roll above the DC, the more info you discover (exact type or number of creatures, pace, etc etc).

This helps the ranger more than everyone else, and it gives a real meaning to the tracking bonus they get, since with the static and somewhat low current Tracking DCs, it's not really needed once you get to mid level.

This rules would crown the ranger again as the king of trackers, and the bonus to tracking would be a much more meaningful addition.

I would also like the adding of more situational modifiers for the survival rules (for the winter season, for example, or expanded visibility and situational modifiers with the different modes of vision in mind, rules on making camps on the spot, etc...)

Am I the only one that thinks Acrobatic should give a +2 to Acrobatics and Fly checks, and Athletic should give a +2 to Climb and Swim checks?

It's a minor tweak, but it feels much more in synch with the feat's names...

Me and my fellow players are about to start the Age of Worms campaign. I will be the DM, and I'm thinking about a way to balance the fact that the party will consist only of three characters, a gnome rogue, an elven fighter (future tempest) and the last one is still uncertain but will be a human paladin, druid or wizard. Has someone played the adventures with only 3 characters? Any suggestions? I'm thinking in playing it by the book, without changes, and perhaps the extra xp will make them gain levels fast and it will balance by itself, but perhaps I should scale the CRs of the encounters... What do you think?