Kendrick Buckley's page

Over the course of the COVID-19 shutdown I've had a lot of time on my hands, so I've started working on something I haven't had time to do in a long time: Write my own adventure material.

Of course, I know that once it's over I'll be back to work and won't have time to keep up with it, so what I'm doing is writing a framework designed to slot the Villain Codex and Monster Codex into. My start was reading the various geography-based cues in the Villain Codex and making a map to fit.

Map gallery on Imgur.

I plan to run this as a sort of intrigue-filled sandbox. I'll write up short gazetteers over the coming days, but here's a quick rundown.

The Unified Kingdom of the Marklands is the working title for the conjoined realm ruled by the Regal Court. The elven nation that the elven spy represents as ambassador is tentatively slated for the unlabeled landmass east of the Tramian islands.

The Barony of Westhaven is the holding of the Baroness who has allied with the Lord Marshal of the Cruel Musketeers - it's a larger territory than the other western principalities because, as noted in the book, she has expanded her holdings with the help of the Musketeers.

The Tramian Atoll is an obvious source of havens for the Scandalous Pirates.

The hills and forest on the northern boundary of Northmark is intended as a home for elements of the Musketeers and/or the Ruthless Brigands - who may be hired as mercenaries by the Baroness or the Regal Court as events progress (the petitioning paladin from the Regal Court entry is the lord of the border settlement on the road to Northold and will appear in the Court at the proper time asking for help with the bandits). The free cities dotting the southward coast are there because they're mentioned in the Ruthless Brigands introduction, and variety in locations is always a good thing.

The southern forest, by contrast, is home to the Merry Outlaws - and may be overtaken by Nature's Scourge as events progress.

The Arcane Society, Secret Society, Thieves' Guild, Slayers' Guild, and Corrupt Guard can slot into any of the cities as needed. I'm thinking the Secret Society might be best based in Southaven, filling the role of nobility loyal to the Queen as well as their clandestine role.

One of the ruins in the mountains can be home to the Fang Monastery, though I'm admittedly not sold on including them.

The Diabolical Church can start insinuating themselves into one of the western territories apart from Westhaven - possibly setting themselves up as a counterbalance to the burgeoning power of the Baroness. If the players' intervention makes things go to hell in the Marklands, though, they might set up there and make the expression literal. ;)

The Savage Marauders, and later the Demon Knights, are more an event than a pervasive threat; they can sweep in from the north or east at any appropriate point if the players seem lost in the sandbox and need something to do. The same can be said for any of the villainous organizations making a power play, of course; the world isn't going to sit around waiting on the PCs to do things.

The Brutal Slavers, Merchant Caravan, and Carnival Troupe are all by nature mobile and prone to sticking to small towns - and possibly even preying on each other.

The Death Cult can arise as a threat basically anywhere, coming from within the realm familiar to the PCs in contrast to the marauders. The Sinister Cult is set up as a sort of ultimate threat, and I don't know that I'll use it; I don't tend to like Lovecraftian horror.

The Monster Codex (which I picked up for $10 in the spring sale!) comes in as you get into and east of the mountains, where I've marked a few orc villages, but that will get developed further when the book gets here.

My fellow GMs are free to use any or all of what I put in this thread. I don't intend to homebrew rules content for it; this is purely a setting project using Pathfinder 1e rules. I hope you like it, and I welcome feedback. :)

The party in my game entered the upper entrance to the Vekker cabin, encountered the Hungry Dead haunt, and the immediate reaction is to reduce the cabin to cinders via massively metamagiced fireballs (as the sorceress, as good a pastiche of Lina Inverse as the player could manage, was the one to fall victim to it) and teleport out. They haven't even explored the ore shaft or lower levels of the cabin yet. The snowstorm is driving outside, but her stated plan is to blow up the cabin, take the party, and teleport out to try to locate Xin-Shalast through research at Jorgenfist and divination, which we as GMs know will not work. Fortunately I planned to end the session on that haunt anyway as we were running out of time, so this isn't irrevocable, but if they go ahead and do it, what do I do? Without what Silas' ghost tells them, they can't find Xin-Shalast, and that's the end of the AP.

So my party, after nearly wiping against Arkrhyst, got to his morale threshold and made him retreat, which he did by flying his maximum fly speed back towards Rimeskull and casting dimension door into the cave, so they didn't see precisely where he went. They then climbed the stairs (fighting the elementals) and... decided to rest in the mouth of the dragon's lair.

Obviously the dragon attacks that night; there's no way he doesn't notice. I'm halfway inclined to say that not realizing that there's literally nowhere else the dragon could have DDed to that they couldn't see AND that such a cave is the obvious choice for a dragon's lair is a big enough screwup that they deserve the impending TPK, but what would you do in this situation?

The Runeforge Lore knowledge chart on page 248's DC 43 entry contains an obvious copy-paste error from the Xin-Shalast lore chart in the previous book that has nothing to do with Runeforge. Do we know what's actually supposed to be there?

My second Runelords party has taken to letting the named stone giants live. The sorceress is a bit of a braggart, and when Barl Breakbones begged for his life, she actually let him have it and told him to go to Mokmurian and tell him to bring three of his mightiest champions to face the party in one to one combat. (Mokmurian, of course, will do no such thing.) Then they triggered the giants routing in Sandpoint by killing the requisite number of giants/bears and the dragon without confronting Teraktinus, so he also fled in the rout. Should I stick them in Jorgenfist somewhere? The dungeon is already hard as hell without extra class leveled giants in the mix.

One of my players asked me this question: He's playing a magus, and enjoys using hydraulic push on things. If he were to buy pauldrons of the bull, would its ability work on this spell or the combat maneuver function of telekinesis?

Like the title says. They cleared out the courtyard and first floor of the keep, then hightailed it back to Turtleback Ferry. I imagine Jaagrath will notice before they're back and probably send for reinforcements and otherwise prepare. I suppose I could just reset the number of ogres, but that seems a little cheap; what do you guys suggest?

I have two questions; I'll put the second one in a followup post to make it easier on the dev team to answer them in the FAQ.

First question: How is the swashbuckler's Dizzying Defense deed supposed to work? In the first playtest document it was simply the ability to take Total Defense as a swift action instead of a standard action (allowing Total Defense in combination with an unmodified full attack); this was changed to being able to fight defensively as a swift action instead of a standard action. The problem is that fighting defensively modifies either the attack action or the full attack action, and is not a standard action in itself. Is this an editing mistake held over from the playtest and it's actually intended to simply modify the bonuses and penalties without taking an extra action, or are you supposed to be able to use your swift action to start fighting defensively (at -2 attack and +4 AC) after you've taken other attacks for the round without penalty?

I have one rules question for writing NPCs for a submission I'm working on. That is: Do NPCs get the favored class bonus? I've checked against different scenarios and it seems to be inconsistent. Examples in the spoiler.

I haven't done a more thorough survey of the scenarios I own than that, but the immediate contradiction I ran into justifies the question. I'd like to be sure that I have everything in order in the nuts and bolts rules-wise before I submit. Thanks. :)

I have one rules question for writing NPCs for a submission I'm working on. That is: Do NPCs get the favored class bonus? I've checked against different scenarios and it seems to be inconsistent. Examples in the spoiler.

I haven't done a more thorough survey of the scenarios I own than that, but the immediate contradiction I ran into justifies the question. I'd like to be sure that I have everything in order rules-wise before I submit. Thanks. :)

What it says in the title. If the answer is yes I don't need to know which ones; I'm kicking around ideas for an open call submission and would like to be sure I'm not rehashing anything by accident. :) Thanks for any answers.

Back in April I played a session of #2-13, Murder on the Throaty Mermaid. The session was reported, but my records on the website say that I played in Session 2 and don't get credit because I played the scenario in Session 1 on the same day - when said session doesn't show up at all (and didn't exist to begin with). What gives?

My PCs attacked the Seven's Sawmill last night. They did this at night and not on Oathday, so by the building's description the only cultists/mill workers on duty were the night shift maintaining the waterwheels in the sublevel. These they summarily dispatched when their attempt to bribe them to go away didn't work (and resulted in their described reaction to the PCs not leaving when asked) before proceeding to thoroughly loot the otherwise shut down mill - including, of course, the office. So they have the ledger and I rolled four days to decode it. Critically, they also burned the collection of skinned faces and neglected to dispose of the bodies.

Of course, Ironbriar is more than capable of casting locate object, so now I'm deciding what course of action he should take. (I take it as a given that he can acquire a wand of that spell and case the whole city if necessary, given his connections.)

First, round up his cultists and attack the PCs at night. This seems the most obvious solution, and of course is also the one they're anticipating. But until they decode the ledger, they don't know who's behind all this, and they destroyed the other evidence, which leads us to the second option: The city watch.

The PCs broke into the sawmill, murdered the workers, and stole everything that wasn't nailed down (including a few woodworking tools). The person who owns that mill is a justice of the peace. Should I have Magnimar's guards summarily arrest them at Ironbriar's behest? Surely he could make that happen, but then again it has serious potential to be campaign-ending; if they don't reveal Ironbriar's guilt at their trial (which he would obviously recuse himself from, as he's the victim of their crime - and a guilty verdict is still assured, since they obviously did it) then they'll be sent to the Hells and that's that.

Ideas or advice? Anything I missed?

I'm trying to report a scenario from last month, and get the following error:

Important

One or more characters cannot play this scenario due to being the wrong character/scenario type.

I am then not allowed to save the scenario as reported. I have double and triple checked, and I am certain I've entered every player and character number as written on my reporting sheet. Only two of the characters were already registered by their players, or so I take it from the fact that only two of them auto-populated when I put their numbers in. What gives?

I ran a scenario not too long ago at the local shop when we only had three people including myself turn up to play. One of the store co-owners (the one who doesn't play Pathfinder) sat in with a pregen to make a legal table since he'd been meaning to try it anyway, and I think we had a pretty good time. But being a first-time player he had no player number and I wasn't equipped to issue one. How do I report the scenario? I'm pretty sure I can't just leave him off since the report would show I ran an illegal table.

I'm not sure he'll actually play again (he had a good time, but has a lot on his plate game-wise and with actually running the front end of the store) so issuing him one now may be a waste of time, but if we need to do that to get the scenario reported we can.

I play PFS at a monthly session at the local game store. When the area Venture-Lieutenant was running to get us started, everything was fine. Now that he's stopped showing up, though, the primary GM isn't reporting anything. I've been through six scenarios and hit level 3, but my events page online says I've only completed First Steps.

I've talked with him about it, but nothing's changed. It doesn't really make a difference for playing with the local group, but if that's what this was about I'd just play in home games; I really, really don't want to show up to Gen Con, decide to drop in on a session, and get told my character's not legal because the records show him several levels below where he is. I do have all the chronicle sheets (though I have to twist his arm to get him to sign them at the end of sessions) if that makes a difference. Do I have any recourse?

I've secured the kind permission of Squirrel_Dude to use the scenario he playtested a solo warpriest in to test out the Slayer. I'm not a charop genius and the build could probably be a lot better, but I'd like to think it's competent. :p

At any rate, our intrepid hero, Slayer McSlaytester, has been hired to retrieve some stolen items from a chest in an old temple ruin that is currently a Basilisk's lair. The stash is relatively small and lightly protected besides the nearby hostile inhabitants that sometimes wander through the area. It is located in a canyon cut into the mountains west of the Katapesh desert, so the Slayer may need to be prepared for less than hospitable conditions during the 2 hour trek back and forth. You've heard rumors that some gnoll mercenaries have been hired to prevent you from achieving your goal, and that they left for the region the evening before.

The challenges required are:

1.) The two-hour trek through the desert.
2.) 2 Gnoll mercenaries at the mouth of the canyon CR 4
3.) Climbing a cliff face
4.) 2 Ships in a bottle CR 4
5.) Locked Door
6.) Basilisk CR 5
7.) Trapped Chest CR 3

Challenge 1: The Trek Across the Desert.
The DC for Survival checks to keep from getting lost and to gain a bonus to saves against extreme weather are 15. Slayer's bonus is +14. Fortitude save each hour against extreme heat: 23, 20. Success.

Encounter 1: 2 Gnoll Mercs As Slayer walked towards the location of the cave entrace, he moved around a hill and saw smoke rising from behind the rocks in front of him. It was clear, the gnolls had already arrived and were waiting for him. Slayer drew his longbow and began sneaking toward the cave, moving between rocks and scrub sage trying to catch the gnolls before they caught him.

Challenge 2: Climbing the Wall
On the path to the stash, there is a large stone wall with some small handholds that the slayer is going to need to climb (DC 20). The wall is 30 ft. tall, so it will take at least two success for Slayer McSlaytester to successfully climb it. Failure by 5 or more slides him 10 ft. back down the wall. It’s a simple skill challenge. Trying to see how long this takes.

Encounter 2: Flying Bottles

At the top of the cliff was a large open area of sand, across which was the ruined temple Slayer sought. As he tucked away his climbing gear and stepped out towards it, however, he noticed the sun glinting off a pair of objects in the air between him and his objective. Looking up, he saw a pair of model ships in bottles flying towards him, miniature ballistae drawn back menacingly.

Challenge 3: Getting In

Slayer has found the entrance to the lair, but the door is locked. Not being particularly skilled at picking locks, he resigns himself to an unstealthy entrance and gets out his crowbar.

Encounter 3: Basilisk

Warned of the nature of the beast he hunts, Slayer got out the set of smoked goggles in his rucksack and put them on. The sunlight dimmed, but he could see well enough, and would be protected from the basilisk's baleful gaze. He moved to the ruined doorway, looking inside at the L-shaped room. Besides a chest lit by sunlight from a hole in the wall, the room is dark. There is no sign of the basilisk. Slayer lit the hooded lantern he carried and, sword in one hand and lantern in the other, stepped through to the room beyond. He heard a hiss and snapped his head and sword to the right to find himself starting straight into the eyes of the monster.

The beast slain, Slayer took off his smoked goggles and turned his attention to the chest at the back of the room. Sheathing his swords, he went to pick up his lantern and examined the chest.

Two hour trek home through the desert, still DC 15 per hour. 6+14=20, 8+14=22. Success.

Overall, having a lone, non-magical melee type go on a solo mission is just asking for trouble. Barring specialist equipment he'd have failed beyond recovery. However, he chewed things up and spit them out in melee and was competent at ranged combat.

Favored Target being a move action to activate was kind of a pain. It limited mobility, greatly limited two-weapon fighting (though that's more an issue with two-weapon fighting than the class; I could have just used a greatsword), and was just a general drag on the action economy for a pretty minor bonus. Of note: When you get multiple favored targets at 5th level and beyond, I presume it's a move action to designate each one, as readers of the playtest may have noted. I'm pretty sure that's how it reads, in which case it becomes more of a drag on the action economy until 10th level when it can be done as a swift or move action, but even then you can designate two per round (if you still lose your move action for it) and have 3+ simultaneous uses of it to distribute.

Sneak attack only came into play once in a surprise round. Not too shocking considering he had no one to flank with, but there it is. The class needs to look elsewhere for reliable damage.

Skills felt a little constrained; you may notice I chose to use my favored class bonus on skill points rather than HP, and that was with being human.

Mobility was pretty nice, but then I consciously chose the light armor route and ranks in Acrobatics and Climb.

That's about all I've got. Hope it's useful. :)

Hello, Paizo. I would e-mail this to someone, but contact information for project staff seems scarce.

A friend of mine and I have been working on a project similar in idea to this one on our own, but, being two people, we haven't gotten very far with it.

I'm more than glad to pay for a product that does what I want rather than have us do all the work ourselves, especially if we get to help test it, but one of the things we got very far on in our own attempt was the ranger class. Now, I note that your version of the ranger won't be out until Alpha 3, and was wondering if you'd take submissions or at least consider doing so. My collaborator agrees that we should to turn it over to you if you would take it. We've based it entirely off of Open Game Content and developed the rest ourselves (and will gladly release our own work under the OGL), so if anyone would like to at least give it a look, I can e-mail it to someone or simply post our build here.

Thanks for your consideration.