Buffy
Female human monk 9
Buffy was raised at one of Ravenloft's few monastaries. She was trained from an early age to fight the undead, demons, and devils that permeated a land. Her skill perfected, she has given herself the moniker of "Slayer" and headed for Castle Ravenloft to end the reign of its evil ruler.
Shouldn't Buffy be a Paladin?
Buffy lacks the discipline to be a Monk or a Paladin. She is a Brawler pure and simple, and wins her fights purely through the dint of being tougher and stronger. Even toward the end of the series, the 'clever' ideas tend to come from everyone else. The best her cleverness gets is taking Dirty Fighting.
Baker and the thief, effectively, have two diferent ethical systems, because their utility functions likely differ. So what's your point? They are both correct in their own ethical systems. As far as "failing as a structure", I've never said utilitarianism creates happy communities by default or whatever it is you think I have said, but it is a consistent ethical system in which you were wrong.
The point is more "In a world where Evil and Good are clearly defined, there is only one Ethical structure". Philosophy can change, though.
And now my game has been paused long enough to be yelled at for not paying attention to it, and The Lady has heard "Butcher Pete" six times; I apparently need to go deal with that.
[EDIT: Klara, I see what I did there. :p I apologize, and typing this out really quickly, I need to stop jumping between the two worlds. Let's stick to Golarion. Oh GODS SHE'S COMING FOR ME...]
All that matters, to me, is that my character is altruistic, protective of life, and concerned for others, and avoids hurting, oppressing, and killing whenever possible. If my character is going to go to Hell because she went around casting infernal healing on people, so be it. She's only all the more altruistic for damning her own soul to save others, and thus more heroic to me.
That is Truth versus Fact. Nothing wrong with it, just the way it is.
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I'm going to pause you for a moment here.
You're quite right about it being a new concern about digital media and IP issues. It's still theft, which is ethically incorrect. The only question is and always has been "What do we do about it?"
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False equivalency, for reasons mentioned in my posts.
No false equivalency detected. I am discussing the need to understand and accept the consequences of your actions, not whether or not those consequences are correct.
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It's exceedingly humorous that you not only committed slippery slope fallacy, but you did so while also using the phrase slippery slope.
No slippery slope fallacy detected. My example states that in a world in which Evil is Real, Evil must be tempered with education, something you had not mentioned. I provided the middle ground, which you had not.
Specifically pathfinder ethics or all ethics? Because I know a bunch of ethical systems where "performing an informed action that is causing harm to another person" would be considered quite ethical and not evil.
We are on a Pathfinder thread talking about a Pathfinder spell in a Pathfinder world. Nothing I've said is ethically incorrect in the real world, either, but we're talking about Pathfinder. But there's no real world analogous situation, because in the real world, there's no absolute fact behind "Good" and "Evil".
And you were discussing real-world piracy which doesn't exist in pathfinder, hence my question.
>Nothing I've said is ethically incorrect in the real world, either
Utilitarianism begs to differ.
Not really. Consequentialism just cares about "the ends justifying the means", and utilitarianism takes a step back and looks at "the big picture". "It's okay to draw on little bits of evil to perform good" is fine, but the problem with it is always no one steps back far enough. That's why ultimately, utilitarianism fails as a structure. Most people step back only to "themselves" or "their families" and doesn't expand it far enough.
Valjean steals bread from the baker. He looks only at his situation. "I harmed one person to save seven; this is fine based on my viewpoint of utility." The baker, however, states that he pays taxes based on the bread he cooked, and now doesn't have the money; he has to take the money he would buy wheat and instead pay taxes, which means less bread made, which means less income. His family now suffers, as does the community that now has less bread total, causing more than seven people's worth of suffering. But the utilitarian doesn't go back far enough to look.
Weirdly, Satanism encourages more cost/benefit observation than utilitarianism does.
I do apologize for the back and forth, I am discussing two different worlds; that was not meant to be confusing. If I include a spell, it's probably about Golarion. :)
You seemed to miss the point. You enter a room, and see a person. You cast detect evil, and it returns " yes, evil ". Is the person actually evil or just under a spell making him detect as such? If your testing equipment is 100% accurate, there is 0% chance it is giving you a false reading, so the person is definitely evil. Except, obviously, that is not true.
No, I understood your point perfectly. There is still nothing wrong with the testing equipment. "If I can fool the equipment, then the equipment is flawed" is not correct. If I put a piece of uranium inside a Geiger counter, the equipment still works fine, even though it's always detecting radiation.
Okay. You're advocating for evil being a label more than a rigorously tested ethical extreme. It doesn't matter what the spell does, only that it has that label. You're basically arguing for ashiels position by pointing out how silly that labeling is.
There's nothing silly about the label, because it's an accepted fact of the world in which the characters live. It's minimalist to call it a "label", because it's a fundamental force. It exists, it's real, it's fact. This isn't "oh, that man might be evil, he did something my religion disagrees with". This is, "He performed an evil act. Evil acts have consequences. He will have to deal with those consequences." "Rigorously tested ethical extreme" is actually not necessary, because the very first time a mortal cast detect alignment, all those questions were answered 100%. What is left is the discussion about the ramifications about the results.
In the Golarian world, you can use whatever truth you want, regardless of sociopathy or argument, but the fact doesn't change. Like the man said, if it's Truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.
Specifically pathfinder ethics or all ethics? Because I know a bunch of ethical systems where "performing an informed action that is causing harm to another person" would be considered quite ethical and not evil.
We are on a Pathfinder thread talking about a Pathfinder spell in a Pathfinder world. Nothing I've said is ethically incorrect in the real world, either, but we're talking about Pathfinder. But there's no real world analogous situation, because in the real world, there's no absolute fact behind "Good" and "Evil".
Before you even begin to test something, you need to insure that your testing equipment isn't broken and that results you will get aren't determined by arbitrary factors. E.g. if you are trying to measure your body weight, you buy an accurate weighting scale, go into a room and weigh yourself. You do not try to weigh yourself on a bus driving down a bumpy road, because what the scale would show won't correlate much, if at all, to what you are trying to measure. In case of the evilness of the spell, it is practically impossible to insure proper conditions for an experiment, because it is possible to mess with the experiment and then make it seem(to any observer, including the experimenter themselves) like nobody messed with the experiment. And at that point your results are useless. Are they accurate? Nobody knows. How inaccurate are they? No idea. How can you decrease the inaccuracy? You can't.
The testing equipment is 100% accurate, because they are detailed by a specific fundamental force. The Cosmic Force Paizo, in creating the world, has stated "This spell will tell you the fact of alignment". Illusions and methods around that do not change that. My scale is accurate regardless of the piece of tape I put on the readout. You can interpret your results all you want, but you cannot change the fact.
Same with good, but because they are altruistic, protective, and concerned with furthering the dignity of others.
I can definitely accept that piracy might be evil because of the argument that it harms. I cannot accept that it might be evil just because you tell me it's wrong. People have to do better than that.
Oh, that's easy. Ethics does not play games. Piracy is by its definition theft. You are performing an informed action that is causing harm to another person. That is evil.
The actual arguments about piracy have never been about whether or not it's "wrong". People who have that argument are deluding themselves, and are amateurs in this argument. It's a question of the magnitude and scope, and whether the resources spent to stop it are worth it. "Is it better to be complacent in the realm of piracy, which will then be viewed as tacit approval of the action, or to fight a pointless war of technology to stop it?" That is not an ethical question. That's just the balancing of resource management.
The real problem with all of your arguments, Ashiel, is that they are all based on, "Whatever, I don't care what the fact is, I have a truth." That's fine, and there's nothing really wrong with that viewpoint if tempered with an eye toward society. For example, when you say, "I'm happy being in hell for casting evil spells because I'll know I did right", that's similar to saying "I'm happy for being in jail for stealing food, because I know it was the right thing to do." Sure, Jean Valjean, you might be able to justify it to yourself, but you are still committing evil (and interestingly, Valjean himself never disagreed with the fact that he was a bad person for stealing bread, he just said he had to do it).
The slippery slope in a world where Evil Is Real is that when those children you're healing by 'just summoning evil' need also to be tempered by (in-character) conversations about how it's okay to steal 'little bits' of evil for good purposes. Otherwise, when the incubus shows up and goes, "Hey, you think healing was impressive, check out this other thing!" the children will have no reason to believe that they shouldn't accept it.
So casting protection from evil on random strangers becomes an 'anti-corrupting' influence?
does that really sound like a good idea to you?
Sure it does. You have a limited number of resources per day. You spend all of those resources ensuring that others are protected from the fundamental forces of evil in the world, which is a real, proven threat. That is an ethically good act; you could be use those spells for self-gain, but are instead using them to protect others.
I think the closest relative argument in the real world to this infernal healing thing is the legalization of marijuana, which I completely understand is a can of worms to open, but bear with me.
Marijuana. It's illegal, so utilizing it can result in consequences. Should it be? Nope. There are lots of arguments on both sides. However, the fact is, it's illegal. Every time you use it, you're aware of that fact. Whether or not you choose to use it is still your [character's] choice. But you're still making an informed choice.
The important part isn't the "is it illegal?" question, much like "is infernal healing evil?" isn't the question. The fact to both is, "Yes." But whether or not you choose to live with the consequences of your actions if they come home, is up to you. The only difference is, if you're suffering the consequences, at least with marijuana you can still affect the system, instead of being in Hell and just suffering forever.
Back in the game world, if your class abilities don't care about your alignment (read: most people that would cast infernal healing), why do you care? If you care about other's opinions of you or what aura they see, you as a character should not be casting those spells. If you don't, they have no impact on you. Other than, you know, that ultimate reward.
"Wait", says John the wizard," how do you know that? "
"How do I know what?" Answers Pete the cleric
"That it is Evil. How do you know that?"
"Well, I wave my arms around, chant some words, magic happens and I know wherever something detects as Evil. My God beams the information straight into my mind."
"And how do you know that it works correctly?"
"What do you mean? It never failed me before."
"Watch this." *casts misdirection on his planarly bound succubus and the paladin * "check our Robert the paladin."
Pete checks the paladin and finds him quite evil
"Well this proves nothing, you cast a spell on him"
"So your God can be tricked by a second circle spell? A very reliable source of information, that. How would you ever know if your detector stopped working?"
Sorcerer Lara chimes in "We can detect that spell you cast"
She tries casting Detect Magic, but wizard is faster and slaps Robert with Magic Aura. Lara detects no spells on the paladin.
"Well, I guess you don't actually know if Infernal Healing is evil or if it just detects as such. Guess we will have to stick to old-fashioned ways to find evil, like finding things that hurt and oppress sentient beings, which infernal healing is not."
Hylen the Ethics Major sits back and says, "You are deliberately corrupting the test, John, by not only introducing a new variable, but changing the rules of the test. The question is not "can I hide evil?" but is "Is this one action, by itself, evil?" The test results are clear; the ability to check if a spell is evil or not is not necessary to come from a God, but is a fundamental force."
Jacola the Atheist Cleric pipes in. "Ya, I can still cast detect evil, and I don't believe in gods at all. My spells come from unfettered access to the core of magic, which all people should have access to, if not for higher beings claiming they were deities blocking our natural growth as a species."
Hylen nods sagely. "And the better question is, why are we even discussing this? You know it's evil, and you're fighting a vanguard action to... justify it? One of two things are true: Either you do not care if the spell is evil and will cast it anyway, which is ethically incorrect but is then based on your viewpoint so is your decision to make, or you have a fundamental doubt in whether or not you should be casting the spell, in which case you should, from a purely ethical viewpoint, wait until you have an answer. The observed fact, not truth, is that this spell is evil. If you choose to use it or not is up to you. Using evil tools will make you more evil, regardless of the end result, because you know there is an alternate option that you simply choose not to utilize. You could, for example, make scrolls or potions that you sell or barter to purchase more potions of healing, but you instead choose to use this option. As you are an educated, informed user, you must accept the consequences of your choice."
I guess that would depend on how common spell casters with Detect Evil are in the games you run; in your example, only 2 of them can actually tell. Wouldn't the majority of the population say "Evil? A wizard used Infernal Healing to save me when I was savaged by an owlbear. An owlbear, I might add, which Holy Joe the Paladin and Granola Steve the Druid both agree totally isn't evil; nuts to Paladins and Druids!"
Owlbears are animals (INT 2). You wouldn't use the same argument on a wolf that attacked you; it was just acting like a beast.
If you remove the ability to detect alignment, then moral ambiguity can exist in a game, yes. To truly do that correctly, you have to remove all spells that directly affect good or evil (so no dispel alignment, holy word, etc.). Once you do all that, you can then begin to debate the nature of good and evil. :)
It's not as limiting as you think, because you are specifically creating an item that functions exactly as desired. The fact that I can "only" assume a form that can fly, gets a bonus to DEX and AC is not limiting enough for a discount. It's very like saying that another ring "only" lets you turn into a panther, not a bear, or "only" a red dragon, not a blue dragon. It shouldn't be discounted for unique magic item creation.
Only being allowed to speak with one specific type of animal is a severe limitation on the spell. But if you created a unique spell that let you turn into a bat when cast, it would probably be the same level as the minimal level of the appropriate beast shape spell.
For the same reason, I like good characters, because I respect and admire characters that are altruistic, protective of life, and concerned for others. Being good means you are a good person who does good things. Not that you're simply acting like a normal person but wearing the right uniform.
But, if it's just how many celestial badgers you can poop out in a day, or how many times you used magic circle against evil as the circle used to conjure an earth elemental, it's pointless. It has little to no
narrative value to the character, and so I simply don't care.
It's particularly wonky when your wizard goes to planar bind a night hag to try and recover a stolen soul (evil spell! good act?) and having to cast protection from good as a prerequisite (good spell!) and your good alignment descriptor peanut butter gets all up in your evil alignment descriptor chocolate.
The wizard also had the option of summoning another creature, and chose the left-hand path. The action of the choice solidifies the ethic definition. In this highly undefined example, the character could have summoned an equally-powerful good-aligned creature. There was no good act here.
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It's always been a narrative question of whether it's 'more good' to cling to your ideals (such as a code against killing) even when the world is burning around you because of it (an example being Batman constantly putting Joker, etc. into the revolving door that is Arkham, instead of going all Punisher on them, which is the fault of the writers, obviously, since multiple life sentences are generally more effective at preventing mass murder spree recidivism in the real world than in a serial medium that requires iconic villains to be back on the street every time a new creative team is on the book) or 'more good' to sacrifice your own ideals and go all morally-relativistic-boddhisatva and make the 'hard choices' or 'realistic choices' or 'practical choices' as a Punisher type would maintain, claiming that by holding to a code against killing, someone like Batman or Daredevil is valuing his own shiny moral code over *other people's entire lives.*
This is not a question of a moral code versus the value of others. Placing the Joker in Arkham the first time was the ethically correct thing to do, as it was the correct location to prevent the most harm. The second time, Batman was still ethically correct, as the comics have shown that Wayne Enterprises invests a lot of money on better security, better cameras, and Batman has been shown to spend all the "downtime" he gets monitoring Arkham himself. It has gotten to the point that when villains break out, it was either due to an unknown flaw or due to the actions of another person outside of the control of Batman, which means placing the Joker back inside the secure prison is still ethically correct, if the loophole has been closed.
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There's no real right answer there. If a new writer wants to use the Joker, and code-against-killing hero has put him away, he'll escape, and if 'I'll kill him to...
Well, this is just a problem with the serial nature. There's legit bad storytelling there. :D
Which also makes me think about control and the urge to resist control. We exist in a game world with characters that we create. There are powers in that world, but ultimately:
We are given the power to reshape the physical world through our actions.
We accept that there are gods with mandates, but ultimately we enslave those gods.
We grow exponentially more powerful than other sentient lifeforms, with a clearly defined and quantified justification for considering ourselves "superior".
Then there's only one thing to rail against: The Great Cosmic Force, which is our GM. The only barrier to our growth is the decision of something more powerful than us. In the real world, we fight against things that limit us. Then in the real world pertaining to the game world, we can only argue against the ruleset, which is made easier as there is an intercessor right in front of us. We can change the rules of the universe if we can argue loud enough.
That's likely the real victory to most of the players that would argue Good versus Evil.
Why do players feel it necessary to argue the alignment rules? In my experience? Storytelling and game creep. And honestly, bad storytelling.
At character creation, you declare your character's alignment, supposedly based on the character's background and upbringing. Then, you grow as a character. So if you make your wizard NG, you should be a fairly decent person. That's your storytelling character.
Then a new splat book comes out and has a new evil spell that sounds cool, and you want it. As a player, you start to argue about why it's not really evil, my Good character should have it, he'll research it himself if you won't give it to him, blah, blah, blah. Basically, the player is now changing the role of the character to try to take advantage of the change of the rules, but doesn't want branded as "the person that changes alignment just to get new powers". So the argument begins.
A good player should recognize that the character knows what is right and wrong, and act accordingly to further the story. But when you add in a score and a victory, the drive to win beats the drive to maintain original concept.
And just to throw out a few ethics problems in the examples given:
Obi-Wan performed an ethically correct act by leaving Anakin there. He, as a person needing to stop a murderer, went precisely as far as was necessary to stop him from murdering again (to the best of his knowledge). To kill Anakin would be to commit murder from an pure ethics point of view; Anakin's ability to cause harm was removed.
In a world where Force Lightning exists as the only Jedi power, the option to utilize it may be open for an ethics debate. It is not the only power available. So when the character makes the decision to learn the power and utilize it, they are making a conscious decision to cause unnecessary harm and are therefore knowledgeable of the Dark act.
There is an interesting ethical question in this: A woman suddenly manifests Force Lightning, and only Force Lightning, and there is no other knowledge within her isolated social culture of Jedi powers. She uses it exclusively for hunting non-sentient animals to make her tribe's life easier. As she can receive no feedback of "the agony", and uses it only on ethically non-existent beings, is she being evil? In the real world, no, she is not. The first time she receives any form of feedback (from a reliable outside source, or from using her powers on a being that provides feedback she can understand, say, an animal large enough to survive the first moment of exposure or a human, and that she understands the screams of pain), continued use becomes an ethically inappropriate act. However, as she exists in a universe with a semi-sentient pervasive Force that dictates the effects on her soul, she is always committing an evil act, as she is corrupting herself and will eventually become, by those mandates, a person that will lose control.
Favored Form Ring Aura moderate transmutation; CL 10th
Slot ring; Price (see below); Weight --
Description
This thick brass ring is ornately carved with a specific tiny animal in motion and religious iconography, and regardless of the polish and care to the ring, leaves a green mark on the wearer where the ring rests. A favored form ring bestows the following abilities to the wearer:
+1 deflection bonus to armor class
speak with animals, only with the species depicted on the ring
twice per day, the wearer can assume the form of the species depicted on the ring for up to ten minutes (per beast shape II)
Construction Requirements Forge Ring, beast shape II, shield of faith, speak with animals; Cost (see below)
Figuring the cost of the ring, you have the following:
+1 deflection bonus to AC (2,000 gp)
beast shape II, CL 10, 2x day (12,000gp)
speak with animals, continuous, one species only (4,000gp, arbitrary to 2,000gp)
So 12,000gp + (2,000gp*1.5) + (2,000gp*1.5), or a base cost of 18,000 gp. Given that the ring lets you assume a tiny animal twice per day and speak with that animal continuously, this might be a very fair price.
That means the +2 AC version would be 27,000gp by raw math, then +3/39,000gp, +4/53,000gp, and +5/71,000gp.
Here's something I've learned at my tables that works very well for adjudicating races. Do a point buy. Increase the points available by the average race of your world (in most worlds, that's humans, so nine points). So, if you're allowing a 25 point buy, everyone has 34 points and has to buy the character's race first. Remaining points can be spent on stats. So a Suli, valued at 16 RP, means you then have 18 points to buy stats.
So far, this has balanced the table very well in several campaigns. Maybe it will assist you as well. :)
I would posit that Gorum would be fine with it. Fighting in a war should be all encompassing, and anything that removes distractions would be beneficial to the warrior.
Alternately, you could argue that only the greatest warriors and survivors are welcomed to the victory orgy with the sacred prostitutes, with the highest kill counts being permitted the first selection from the men and women in the camp. This would encourage more ferocity and greater competitiveness in war, which would also be approved.
23. Weapon speed this piggybacks on the above mention of weapons. I loved the idea of weapons impacting how quickly they could be brought to bear in a round. I recall with fondness the suffering of my battle axe wielding dwarf as he almost always went last in the round.
Weapon Speed would simultaneously placate the people who whine about Iterative Attacks and enrage people who decry "Martial/Caster Disparity!"
I like the idea in theory, but don't think it's viable in practice.
Except you'd bring back casting initiative as well, and for most things, those were much slower than weapons. Wizards used to have to track initiative and weapon speed much closer than the fighters...
The question is, do animals have the anatomy to mechanically make use of IUS.
I say no.
The game rules, mechanically define unarmed strikes by animals as natural attacks. As such, teaching an animal to hit with its head or fist would become a slam attack. Not an unarmed attack.
IUS does not grant a slam attack and both in real life and in game mechanics terms, an animal needs to have been taught a trick to make non lethal attacks. And in some cases may need to be pushed.
The game mechanics just do not support an animal learning IUS.
Based on the question above (anatomy), you're wrong. If you believe otherwise, you have never seen an animal, acting as an animal without training, act. The llama's "natural attack" in the real world is a kick, when fighting off predators. When reprimanding offspring, they perform untrained, nonlethal strikes with their heads. Goats do the same. Horses kick opponents, and headbutt to both reprimand /and/ to make Diplomacy checks; it can be a sign of affection. Cats claw, but headbutt and make nonlethal paw strikes.
[EDIT: You can't argue that the untrained nonlethal strikes listed above are Diplomacy/Intimidate checks, because animals that are not trained do not have those skills mechanically. And since it is not a trick that can be mechanically taught, the mechanics do not support representing those as skill checks, only as "beating my children until they somehow learn, which I am not intelligent enough to know if it works this way or not".]
Again, the mechanics of animal companions simply state: Animal companions with an Intelligence of 3 or higher can select any feat they are physically capable of using. No other checks are required. Unarmed strikes only ask for a body that is capable. Any creature with moving parts can make unarmed strikes. Regardless of what those strikes are considered based on type, the only check for "are you capable of unarmed strike?" is "Do you have a body that could be capable of it?", not "Do you naturally choose to do so?"
Those two checks are /all/ that matter. "Is the animal's INT 3 or higher?" and "Do they have a body that is capable?" If they are both yes, and all animals will be a yes to the second one, then they can take the feat. This is RAW. This means that the mechanics you're referring to completely support animal companions have IUS.
Feats do not care if you can use them or not, provided you meet the prereq. An intelligent tree can take Fleet or Run, even if it has no locomotion abilities, because it has no prereq. I has a fighter can take Combat Casting, even though I have no spellcasting, because it has no prereq; in fact, there are several builds that "prebuy" feats for later. In fact, I may be wrong on this, but I can't find where most metamagic feats have a prereq of actually being able to cast spells.
All the potential gateway feats later could be explored outside of this discussion, but I'm having a lot of problems picking out ones that would be physically impossible for an animal to accomplish as well.
Even once per day, it seems overpowered to me. But that's just the way I'm looking, I suppose. How many natural 20's do you roll in a day? Compare that from a 5% to a 10% chance when you need that to happen.
I didn't realize that about the skill checks, but since "once per day" powers aren't mandatory, you can still store it if you rolled it at the wrong time.
Ru-shi Dhamphir are allowed to take the racial trait below.
Numerological Gift: Since birth you have had an intimate connection with a certain number. When you select this trait, roll 3d6. The resulting number becomes your numerological totem and can never be changed. Once per day, when you roll your totem number on a d20 (such as an attack roll, save, or skill check), you may treat that roll as if you had rolled a natural 20 on the die.
So my question at this point should be obvious: Does this gift the character two critical numbers? If my totem number is 10, do I critically hit on both a 10 and a 20, and succeed on all skill checks on a 10 and 20? Or was this intended to move the critical location on the die to somewhere else? If it's the previous method, it seems a bit overpowered for a race trait, especially compared to other ones that tend to give limited +2 bonuses to skills.
I don't need to control my wife or her beliefs. She we share the same values, she just believes many of those values are reflective of her reading of the bible (she is actually a christian who has read the bible cover to cover, which I find to be rare...) as allegorical stories that fit the times they were written in, rather than as the absolute word of "God".
I didn't mean that to be control, only that you seem to have a good breadth of understanding of the necessity of differing viewpoints. As long as we all end up at the same "Don't Be A Jerk" landmark.
I like you. Thank you for understanding that it's the morals and values, regardless of the origin or whether the beliefs are from a caring soul or from a logical mind. Vaya con Dios... o su equivalente lógico y su creencia en la moral humana y la igualdad, I guess.
Or, more realistically and in keeping with the tenants of Lawful Good, a paladin would exert every lawful means in his disposal to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the person was innocent, while using the law to delay the execution.
If the paladin in question is a well-respected member of the community, he should be able to request a few days to delay. A law-abiding, just court would listen when the character states he may be able to find evidence exonerating the prisoner. A secretly-manipulated-one would probably still give the time extension, either because they feel they cannot be unraveled, or they need the populace to be shown that the paladin was wrong.
After that, we have to make an assumption that the paladin cannot simply "detect lies" the prisoner for whatever reason. We'll claim we're in Cliffport, where magical testimony is not considered valid. We can't time-scry, then, either. But the paladin should have his own contacts. In some feudal settings, a simple "God wants you to tell the truth" to a serf-witness would cause them to break and reveal themselves.
Of course, that's not even factoring in what the paladin's companions would be doing. When a anything-but-evil rogue hears the paladin's lament, he's going to start digging as well. And while the paladin cannot condone spying or burglary to get evidence, the rogue can act independently.
Generally, this kind of thing should not be a "one-hour game session". It's a serious question of the character's motivations and his take on his own alignment, and therefore should be played out slowly and methodically. There should be small questions of faith and righteousness before this kind of "hard break" moral dilemma, and something everyone at the table is going to enjoy. If your paladin is more interested in the notion of the jailbreak, then they're not really a paladin, they're a fighter that wants a different set of powers.
As for the jailbreak... Lawful Good can't think that way, or it will rapidly use the ends to justify the means, and cease being Lawful Good, just Self-Righteous Good.
There are a number of posts that are "this is the problem with Christians", "This is why I hate Christians", etc. I understand it's currently still chic to hate Christians. Do you hate the people, or do you hate the church? Do you hate the message, or do you hate the doctrine?
Tolerant Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc...are all fine. Hell I married one :)
When they want the doctrine of their church to be law I have to live by, purely because it is the doctrine of their church, I have a problem.
That is the line, period.
You married a tolerant Christmusjew? Seriously, though, that statement implies that you don't agree with all of your partner's beliefs... and you are a wonderful person for not letting your love be blinded by labels. Or vice-versa.
I /am/ with you on that one. I see the double-standard of having a "you can't tell us we have to provide birth control, you don't have any right to say what the Church does!" with "We enjoy tax-exempt status and the law should reflect our beliefs because it's the right thing to do!" But that might just be me... my wedding present to my little brother was a box of condoms because they couldn't afford birth control.
[ANNOTATION: This applies beyond religion, though. "Corporations are people, we deserve tax breaks and your worship!" versus "We are corporations, you cannot hold us accountable for actions that would get a person jailed!"
[ANNOTATION SECUNDUS: I don't agree with that picture you linked to, cire, but only because it feels hurtful. Read incorrectly (or perhaps correctly, I don't know the author personally), a reader may infer that "Christians are idiots and are therefore easy targets, and arguing with them is not fun, so I will stay intellectually superior and not do so, because by not being Christian, I am automatically mentally superior". That has become a large part of my frustration with my atheistic friends. When I become infallible in my logic and statements, all too often the retort is "Ya, but you believe in the Sky-god". And suddenly they're in the Ivory Tower again, gaining one life for... wait...
But I am willing to admit that's my own cross to bear, and not something that factors into the global argument.
I just wish I could be Christian and not lumped in with all the others. I'm tolerant, intelligent, and while I have faith, it's in people as much as it is in God. I don't pray for magical healing from the stars, but if God is willing to nudge the surgeon's hand from time to time, that's cool.
But I have too many friends that are have had so many bad experiences with Christians, or that are their own personal brand of atheist (where their atheism is a religion, or it's not atheism, it's just Christian-bashing), or just plain believe that Christians have to be idiot Westboro jacks, that I find myself giving up on trying to convince them that you can be a person of faith while not being a hate-mongering fifth grader, and instead just be a loving, peaceful person.
There are a number of posts that are "this is the problem with Christians", "This is why I hate Christians", etc. I understand it's currently still chic to hate Christians. Do you hate the people, or do you hate the church? Do you hate the message, or do you hate the doctrine?
And I know, I know. There's always someone that's going to stand up and say, "But Kistune, you amazing stallion, /you're/ tolerant. /You/ love. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about how the church or a community treats people." I'm not blind to that, honest. No, I don't have the power to stop it on a grand scale, but I will stop and have stopped it if I see it happening. I can be there for the people that were mistreated. I don't have to participate in the bashing on either side. Even if I never affect a change in the world, I can know that I care about people, and do what I can to stop the injustices when and where I see them. Wasn't it the "hippies" that said "Think Globally, Act Locally"? I have my grand wishes for tolerance and understanding, but I'm realistic. I just want people to be happy around me, and if it ripples outward, which I believe it does, maybe a change can happen.
Reading a lot of these posts, I see some very open-minded people in both directions (gays are okay, and so are Christians!) that I am happy to be here.
Honestly, I like this one. I like all the other notes here, it's just that the player is much more interested in the concept than having a battle bear. She's not the kind to be min-maxing, more the kind that tends to forget the animal exists. I already told the player I would have to stat the creature, so I'll just use pig stats, write "polar bear cub" on the sheet, and she won't really know the difference. Thanks!
{EDIT} Also, I rather like the idea of the Diplomacy bonus... there's something to be said about the person that walks into a negotiation with a polar bear, even a cub.
Alright, so I have a player as a Witch, from a mostly frozen world and an ice coven. The player is interested in having a polar bear as a familiar, and while a full-grown bear is obviously out of the question, I do see that the stats for a "small bear" is an option for a druid companion.
The player is fine with the notion of having a polar bear cub that will eventually grow up. What do you all think about that as an idea? I was thinking that for the sake of balance, the familiar can be the basic "small bear" option under Druid, and give no skill mods for its advanced combat abilities. It will only age if the player takes Improved Familiar or when the familiar hit points hit average for the adult bear, having it grow to full size slowly with the witch. Given bear stats, especially polar bear stats, I'm figuring that will happen around Witch 14 or so, at which point the bear is still technically underleveled as a companion (and thus likely appropriate as a familiar).
Alternately, is there a witch mod that gives better familiars? I looked at Beast-Bonded as a template, and it doesn't give you a better familiar, just makes the familiar you have more effective.
I'm just looking into ideas to maintain game balance while letting the player have what is a fun and neat concept.
I am mostly familiar with 1E and I'd like to help my players on the mechanical side but I am not necessarily well versed in the system yet.
The player is interested in playing a cook, and he saw the Alchemical foods from treasure vault.
I am sure he doesn't have things set in stone yet but he was inclined to play a barbarian.
He was also thinking of perhaps multiclassing as Druid.
The issue here is, he could of course get Alchemical crafting and produce food as downtime actions but I have the feeling that he would enjoy crafting them as infused reagents, or at the very least on a short rest kind of interval.
What are all the options for it? Reclassing into Alchemist is an obvious one, multiclassing into alchemist archetype is another one. there are other archetypes but as far as I can see most of them lock you into creating a specific brand of alchemical items and none of that are food.
Hi, I am going to start playing Kingmaker on 2e and I already have a character in mind but being relatively new to 2e the concept is thematically solid but I am a bit lost about the build.
The intention is to be a Human Champion(Desecrator) of Szuriel.
Furthermore I would really like to get the 4th level class feat Sacral Lord, and it's upgrade at 14th Sacral Monarch as I feel they are perfect for Kingmaker (but they get in the way of a lot of possibly optimal choices)
I was exploring the horse ally line of feats and it seems cool but it's really difficult for me at my level of experience with the system to understand how crippling it would be to spend 4 feats on a pet rather than my character.
I am also struggling a lot with ancestry feats for humans. everything seems very good in theory, but not really working for me in practice.
Natural ambition seems great for everyone, I would love that on other characters that I tried to make, but desecrator level 1 class feats seems to be kinda meh.
Level 9 multitalented seems the better choice but I really have nowhere to go with it when I would literally kill for that kind of feat on other characters.
I do understand that Desecrator is not the best class, but I am trying to figure out how to get something good out of it.
Any advice?
Hi, I am quite new to 2e having played mostly 1e and I am going to build a character for the Extinction Curse AP.
I am well versed with rpgs having played every D&D edition, pathfinder 1e and many others but generally I take a couple of sessions to get in touch with a system.
As such I want to avoid building something "wrong" or failing to notice good character options at character creation.
Mind you, I don't need to be super min/maxed, just viable, not having redundant or incompatible feats, not getting things early that would have been a better choice later. For example I see many Oracle feats that give you an extra focus point but knowing your maximum number of points is 3 clearly you want to pick no more than two.
My idea was to have an oracle of lore but I am not adamant about it, the main thing is that I want a caster focused build, so probably not battle.
Is there any pointer you could give me, if not a full build, on building a Changeling(human) Oracle?
More in the specific, if nobody has directions or a full build to suggest, there are specific issues I want to have clarified.
1) what is the most effective use of "1 free recall knowledge roll per turn"? not having played with the system I can't tell if it can be really impactful or just a quirk.
2) Should I build an extensive array of lores or should I go the opposite way, almost ignoring lores and relying on effects that give me lores on command?
3) what feats that increase my focus pool should I aim for? Getting a second point at level 2 seems great, but the level 4 and 6 feats that give focus points sounds better and I get the impression that getting 3 focus point giving feats is a total waste.
4) any consideration or pitfall I should look out for?
Hi, I am in the process of building some villains and I wondered if there is any option, feat, class feature, archetype, prestige class, spell effect or anything else that allow to improve or override the save Dc from magical items or artifacts.
I know Arcane Savant can do that with the caster level but I haven't seen an option that work for DC and would work of a wide array of items including artifacts.
I was approached by a friend with the idea of playing a one-shot game of pathfinder and I had to build a level 3 character.
I went for a Pitborn Tiefling Brawler2/Anti-paladin(insinuator)1
As feats I have Enforcer, Hurtful and Power attack.
My traits are Adopted ->Fiery Glare & Omen
Basically the trick is Flurry nonlethal unarmed strike -> free Intimidate -> swift action for a falchion hit, second unarmed strike (lethal this time).
The thing is... after the first session this is no longer a one-shot and I didn't really think about where to go after the first 3 levels.
The campaign is one where the humans are the main antagonists and my character is positioned as a somewhat unsavory but trusted and respected member of the anti-human resistance (of course, my status as an anti-paladin is not in the open)
The other time I went for a Brawler with intimidation feats I was going for a Jabbing style but it was a more agile, less armored and purely unarmed kind of character.
Should I progress as a brawler with 1 antipaladin splash?
As an Antipaladin?
Is there a specific balance between the two that I should try to strike?
But most importantly, what would be a good set of feats (for sure I think I will go towards Cornugon Smash, soulless gaze + another damnation feat also seem like it would work particularly well)
Hi, one of my players is going to play an Aasimar with the Halo alternate race trait.
*Halo Some aasimars possess the ability to manifest halos. An aasimar with this racial trait can create light centered on her head at will as a spell-like ability. When using her halo, she gains a +2 circumstance bonus on Intimidate checks against evil creatures and on saving throws against becoming blinded or dazzled. This racial trait replaces the darkvision standard racial trait.*
There is no mention of actions.
I am somewhat assuming that it is a free action to manifest the halo, but is there any kind of errata or official word on whether or not it takes any sort of action? if it can be used out of turn or what else?
I found nothing (dunno if because no one asked or is just my own poor wisdom and perception bonus :D )
Hi Everyone
I am in the process of building a character for the Skulls and Shackles AP and I set my mind on a Merfolk Bard.
I have ideas on how to build it but I am undecided on which options to commit to nor if there are things about those options I am not considering and I also wanted to hear from the board for anything I might be missing.
First of all I am pretty sure about the Alternate Racial Traits.
Seasinger: +2 on Perform and a +1 save DC of language-dependent spells
Secret Magic: +1 to the DC of any enchantment spells (untyped so it stacks), At will—speak with animals, 1/day fins to feet (self only), hydraulic push.
I intend to be a buff machine, probably getting Master performer and Grand master performer. I am a bit torn on going full Flagbearer-banner of the ancient kings route. For sure since I am going to be a mostly immobile fish with a 5ft. land movement it seems like the ideal role. Give people that can move bonuses while hugging my pole.
my other roles are going to be party face and Enchanter
Charisma is most likely going to be boosted to 20 unless there is a strong argument against it.
So far just from race I have a +1DC on enchantment spells and +1 on language-dependent.
The charming trait to get another +1 seems interesting
Same for Signature Skill on perform sing (which already gets a +2) for +2 on Bluff, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, or Intimidate checks, another +1 on spells with the emotion or language-dependent descriptor, eventually a +1 caster level on the same spells.
When it comes to bard spells that are enchantment and language-dependent the top of the list is suggestion, which is possibly one of my favorite spells anyway, and it sounds like the AP will be full of human pirates, monstrous humanoids, Giants, none of which is particularly immune to suggestion.
Geas sounds like another great Language dependent enchantment for a campaign where you need to rely on having a crew.
for equipment I already mentioned the banner of the ancient kings, but there is a lot of other very juicy stuff.
Lyre of Building sounds absolutely insane.
protects inanimate constructions within 300 feet in a campaign with Naval battles?
Then there is the issue of Archetypes.
Basic Bard? Pretty decent but....
Diva seems pretty amazing and surprisingly Campaign appropriate, at least for what I understand.
Gain bluff and intimidate bonuses on specific settlements? you could almost say specific ports. Reading how the infamy mechanics work and knowing that I am totally going to be the designated storyteller, that sounds perfect.
Prima donna is definitely interesting although not sure how much use it will get
Costume Profiency is covering what I feel is my main issue (being squishy while being able to walk away from enemies only 5ft. at a time without magic assistance) but at the same time I was thinking about dumping STR all the way to 7 so, maybe this needs me to reconsider?
Although at the same time, if my movement is already 5ft. my reduced speed for carrying a heavy load would still be 5ft.
Scathing Tirade seems pretty good in normal circumstances, amazing for the 5ft. fish that doesn't want enemies to get too close and Phenomenal on a ship where running in fear 30 ft. away from the screaming bard (and for 1d4 rounds more) likely means jumping overboard and taking yourself permanently out of combat.
Hell, I could board the enemy ship and start kicking their crew out until it's my ship.
The only downside of this is that it will stay relevant for 6 levels until Frightening tune likely becomes a better option.
Another other option is Dirge Bard
Mind affecting spells usable on undead
Be a super buffer and raise your own buffed minions?
Debuff fear saving throw + Frightening tune?
Gain necromantic spells?
I have to admit... I am totally thinking about building a bone Fishtank with legs and claws as a necrocraft.
The part that hurts is losing Versatile Performance.
Then there is the Sea Singer
Interesting songs for the AP.
The Familiar can be Useful.
Losing Versatile performance still stings.
Losing suggestion and mass suggestion as songs it's not the end of the world, but not great either.
Most of what Sea Legs would give me is already negated by being half fish.
Most of all I have too many options and can't take them all.
It will be difficult to have the banner, and the Lyre, and fully upgrade my defenses and everything else that is needed.
and obviously I can't have all the archetypes as they are incompatible.
Feats are also a concern.
the whole tree for buffs is great but expensive.
Discordant voice is great
Improved initiative is almost mandatory
Extra performance is a prerequisite for the buffs, but with all the good songs, Virtuoso Performance and Shadowbard, should i take multiple extra performances?
Should I go for lingering performance instead?
But most importantly? Is there any other option that I am overlooking?
I am trying to read everything I can find about Arcadia so far.
It seems like most of the stuff on Arcadia come from Borne by the Sun's Grace and Distant Shores.
This is what I managed to put together of the geography.
Valenhall is in the north, south of it is Degasi and to the east of it the land of northern lakes. On the eastern coast of Degasi there should also be the avistani colonies of Elesomare and Anchor's End, along with the ruins of the former colony of Canorus.
South of both is Razatlan.
Further south is Xopatl which borders Innazpa to the east and Nalmeras to the south.
Of the last two I found no description nor if they border any other land, Just a mention that the hero-gods who founded Xopatl and rebelled against Razatlan were from Innazpa.
A Segada Protocol is mentioned as a treaty that regulates trade between the Avistani colonies and Degasi plus 3 other Arcadian nations, but it is not mentioned which nations they are.
Is there anything I am missing nestled in some other book?
I am trying to build an Arcadian campaign which would allow me to do some limited worldbuilding, but at the same time I'd like to remain consistent with all published material.
Hi, I am trying to wrestle with a little bit of a monsterbuilding issue that I am having.
I am DMming in a new campaign and some constructs are heavily featured.
It has been established that the BBEG is using a variety of them including clockwork spies.
I would like to give my clockwork spies the ability to use arcane wands. Nothing broken, the use of them amounts basically to a plot device.
I am completely aware of the fact that I can homebrew this and just go "Screw it, they use wands, here is a custom template that let's them slot one wand and use it" but before going that route I wondered if there was an already established template that could serve that purpose.
Everything that I managed to look up would simply do not work with the clockwork spy values of no intelligence and 1 charisma.
Hi, I made an interest check post a couple of weeks ago about a new game.
Now I am ready to start the recruitment.
If you want to read things that we said about the game and questions people interested asked here is the interest check post, I suggest you give it a look.
The game will be using a custom ruleset that I have created and can be found Here
you will play as the ruler of a noble house. After the fall of your lieges you will find yourself suddenly as independent rulers among your peers and it will be up to you to decide to strike on your own, form alliances, start invading or peacefully try to unify the empire once again.
Here is the Map that we will be using and here is a brief history of the empire and the setting.
The ancient Empire of Glasya’s origins are lost between history and legend. The story says that when the race of men was young and still afraid of the dark a baby was abandoned in the woods and raised by the fair folk of the forest. Growing up with the wisdom of the forest dwelling creatures, and a sacred pact to not ever hurt the boy or his followers, he founded a city at the center of the great lake, Glasya, and for a thousand years the influence of the city grew, at the start people wanted the protection the boy and his bloodline offered to their subjects against everything that go bump in the night in the wildest corners of the land, then they came to revere and respect the wield of political power that the boy’s descendants, the Ericine dynasty, could command.
But the stories of Goblins and gremlins and pixies and faeries living at the edge of civilization started to be just stories whispered in the ears of the paesants, a powerful bloodline and the right of rule by the rules of men became the only real claim to power.
Then in the year 2465 of the glasyan empire the rule of emperor Hadrian Ericine came to a sudden end. Some say it was sickness, some that it was poison, all said that with his two twin sons as heirs his death would start the most brutal succession war the empire has ever seen.
And so it was, many of the major nobles threw support to one side or the other while none of the heirs had a more true claim than the other. Battles, assassinations, the siege of the capital city. The war was never won.
Both sides destroyed each other, most of the nobles involved killed, either in battle or murdered in their sleep by faceless assassins. The once proud capital reduced to a ruin, a graveyard for the empire former glory. Chaos and anarchy swept through the empire.
The political landscape of the empire was forever changed. No emperor was sitting on the throne, no archduke governing vasts amount of land. What remained in the empire is a handful of noble houses with no direction anymore.
And from the smallest villages the rumor rises, with the emperor of men gone, would humanity still have its truce with the creatures of the wild?
The area of the map occupied by the hexes 2413, 2314, 2414 will be the place where the old capital used to be.
I would like to have a lot of players as such I will not really make much of a selection, but I would like to have good roleplayers so here is what we will do.
I would like for you to have a declaration of intent, not a real process of character building (as I would like to have you confirmed and in an environment where you can talk with other players, establish ties and engage in a little bit of collaborative writing) so I would like to have from you a vague idea of what you aim to build. Like for example: "I would like to take some region in the mountains and make some sort of high economy mining community, with a regent very involved in commerce and being sort of a merchant prince." Or "I would like to be in the desert and create something with a Mesopotamian feel to it" or "I would like to make a land with very strong ties to a religion of my invention and with a mission to convert the empire to it" Remember, this used to be an empire, by definition it can host many different cultures under its roof.
I would really appreciate if people that have something to show for their roleplaying talent would link to some PbP they had here or any other type of roleplaying writing anywhere. Is not a requisite to participate but the proof that someone can roleplay interesting characters is really appreciated.
the game itself will be run mainly on discord and I will create a server and send invites as soon as we have a few entrants.
I am in the process of finalizing a set of rules for a new game.
The idea is to have a somewhat permanent game where every player controls a noble, ruling his own land, and participates in the game of diplomacy intrigue and backstabbing expected from people in that position.
The game would develop mainly on a discord server where people can give public announcements, and private chats where the players can plot with each other.
Every "Turn" the players will be able to send privately to the GM (me) the actions that they actually want to put forward and I would resolve them all in a predetermined end of turn date (I was thinking maybe twice a month, still have to decide).
In general the game would be always on, you will be always able to write letters or have meetings (secret or not) with other rulers, plot together, establish alliances, making promises etc.
I will publish a set of rules soon but for the most part they will be really simple.
The setting will be in part determined by all the players at character creation. You will be able to give inputs about the culture and style of your little domain. but as for the world it will be a low fantasy, mostly historical medieval with some unconfirmed rumors of the existence of some kind of supernatural creatures and some vague and non pervasive presence of occult practices, like alchemy, some folklore amulets and lucky charms. For the most part in peace and war kingdoms rely on the strength of the common man rather than harnessing any supernatural phenomenon.
Also the game will be set in a collapsing empire where the imperial line and a few worthy successor candidates just recently went extinct and all the little states and vassals under it (a.k.a. you) still have to figure out how to proceed from this point. Some might try to claim rights to the imperial thrones, other might just decide to forge their future as an independent nation, some might recreate a new system of vassals and lieges and start the formation of a new empire all together.
I would like to have a lot of players, by its nature this game would be more fun the more factions and the more shenanigans will be in the game.
Having to resolve the actions maybe twice a month would allow me to have no issues with handling a huge number of players.
I already have 3 or 4 interested, but I would like to have something more like 20+. I think that even having 50 players would not be out of the question for something like this.
The requirement for frequency is also extremely variable.
People that want to play 24/7 can do so freely.
People that just want to turn in their actions twice a month and be done with it, maybe just answer a couple of message while sending their actions for the turn, also work.
In the middle of the Thuvian desert, hidden from view by endless dunes that looks one identical to the other to the untrained eye, lies a swamp like oasis.
Here lies the spire upon the marsh, an old wizard's tower possessed by inscrutable purpose.
The tower use to hold a veritable fortune of magic treasures and arcane lore before the Grubstomp tribe settled into the area.
Being far from arcane educated and with their notorious fear and aversion for the written word, The goblins ended up burning most of the spellbook and scrolls, they dismantled precious magical items of untold potential to harvest the precious metal and gems from them and left most of the magical collection of the old wizard a useless, inert pile of junk.
It was only after many weeks in which the tower suffered the mindless pillaging of the goblins that the more spiritually inclined among the tribe started to realize the tower had potential beyond the precious items they could wreck and scavenge.
When Albarath woke up in his blood soaked apotheosis it was already too late to prevent the destruction of most of the magical wealth it once sheltered.
Even as he extended his influence to the tribe, goblins had a hard time abandoning their ways to embrace Albarath inclinations.
A civil war occurred between the more traditionalist and obtuse goblins and those who would condemn the whole tribe to the curse of the written word.
The magical tower taking life proved like an unstoppable force to the rebellious goblins, and Albarath's chosen won the day, but that left the tribe depleted in numbers. A tribe that was numbered by the hundreds was numbered by the dozens.
Even among Albarath chosen, who learned to respect magic and the arcane texts, few were bold enough to look at the written words, let alone read them or learn from them.
As powerful a portent as the awakening of Albarath was, the day to day life of the goblin tribe suffered.
While the goblins look to Albarath and the people who are seen as chosen of the spire, they lack any other real leadership, and the tower, up to this day, seemed obsessed with finding adepts outside the goblin tribe, leaving the goblin tribe in a state of anarchy, lacking a leader who tends to the goblin needs. At the same time, the idea of a leader that does not receive such mandate by the tower itself is unthinkable to the fanatic remains of the Grubstomp tribe.
Still the raids came and with them the abductions. Unk was among the first, a sharp mind, unencumbered by goblin superstition and able to learn magic to the satisfaction of the spire.
Many other apprentices came but the goblins have a hard time to recognize genius and attitude towards magic.
Many kids prove to be unsuitable to be wizards, or slow in their magical progress, and Albarath hardly has use for apprentices that would start to become semi competent mages as middle-aged men.
Lately Albarath took interest in a kid named Andra.
She proved to be incredibly precocious in her magical development, courtesy of one of the items that survived the goblin's pillages.
A simple wizard hat.
The hat registers as enchanted to magic detection but conventional methods to discern its properties have failed so far.
Aside the overwhelming magical aura that exudes, only Andra reported any kind of unique behavior from the hat as she claim it talks with her and tutored her through her magical studies.
Yet to this day, to anyone else, the hat has been completely unresponsive.
Other halls of the tower remained untouched to the goblins. A magical laboratory remains intact containing 250,000 gold pieces worth of scrolls, magic items and ingredients to forge some more while hidden safes held 100,000 worth in bars of gold and silver and precious gems.
To the outer world, Albarath, its swamp, and the Grubstomp tribe are unknown aside the occasional goblin incursion and the occasional, not fully believed tale of wanderers lost in the desert who swear they saw an oasis stretching for miles in the heart of the uncharted desert.
And while the abductions makes the humans surrounding the swamp alert, the goblins are adept to make their track lost in the desert, and Albarath is not the only thing that makes the nights of Thuvia unsafe for its children.
Do you feel like you don't want to follow quest after quest anymore and want to carve your path of Evil yourself?
Feel like the last boss of the AP you are playing is way cooler than your Player Character?
This is the game for you.
Create an Arch villain worth to attract the enmity of the forces of good and choose your evil plot to pursue.
Have the world around you react to your plan rather than having you reacting to the evil plans presented to you for a change.
This recruitment will have 2 Phases, one for the Archvillain, and after selecting that the recruitment for his evil minions will begin.
There is no starting level set in stone. You decide how powerful is your Villain, the world will merely react accordingly to the threat you pose.
Any wild combination of classes Races, monsters templates that you can imagine is available (except for psions because I never touched them and never learned their rules)
Having a complete statblock ready by the day I will pick a villain is really not necessary. The important things are others
Your Character: Give it a name and describe your evil persona. Make sure to build a memorable Villain
Your Plan: What is it that you are plotting and why should the rest of the world be concerned and try to stop you?
Your Fluff: How does your villain think, what is your personality, what does it drives him to evil, is he truly evil or just terribly misunderstood? Are you the kind of villain that roam in his dark castle practicing his evil laugh? Or maybe one that enjoys capturing the heroes alive to have the chance to explain their convoluted plan before executing them? Let us know what we should expect from you in your rise to your dark throne.
I will not set a date for The villain recruitment yet as that depends a lot on the amount quality and flow of villain entries.
If you want to play as a minion of the dark lord feel free to comment and to give your opinion on the various villains presented but please, wait for the selection of the villain before entering a minion, I am sure you want to know who are you working for before you build a Dwarf minion for the Elf Racial supremacist Villain.
Also... Remember. This is a game that will require you to be the creative ones in many aspects. You will not be fed a plotline. you are the plotline, you are what is happening to the world. So let those creative Juices flow and hit the world with your best shot.
P.s. The game will still be set in Golarion and use pathfinder rules. You are free to pick the geographical region you want as your base of operation. It is not required to pick where to be immediately but I imagine for a lot of villains is useful to define in the background so go for it.
I am fairly sure that everyone here had their fair share of being an adventurer and crawling through dungeons stopping the plans of whoever dwells in it, and for once I would like to reverse that.
Not even in the simple "evil campaign" way as that is still adventurers following a quest someone gave them.
What I would like to run is a game where you are the villain. The people who makes the nefarious plot and who other people pay adventurers to get rid of.
I would like to have a villain, humanoid or otherwise, and a few trusted minions as players and for once have them run the game. Instead of having a plot in place of what is happening to the world and have the players react to it I would like the players to be what is happening and have the rest of the world react to it.
This time you are the BBEG at the end of the AP, you will need to build and secure your secret lair from where you plot against the world, gain the service of minions to carry on your will and make sure that those pesky adventurers who want to stop you meet an untimely death.
Now, recruitment will be kinda unusual as in I will have to choose one BBEG and a few henchmen which likely require a separate bbeg recruitment drive and once defined it a minion recruitment drive as the big bad gets defined.
But first of all I would like to see how many people would be interested in playing such a game.
Scarletrose Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
This is a thread for all us sad people who got culled to cry on each other shoulders.
I have a lot of trouble with RPG Superstar, this is the 4th time I enter the contest and there has never been one time when I remember about that in any significant time to seriously work on an item.
December is always a very busy month for me between festivities my birthday etc...
Last year I completely missed it... by the time I checked on Paizo the voting for the items already started.
This time was no different ... I just didn't even knew that RPGSS in august was a possibility.
I probably seen the logo thousands of tie and in the back of my head was "well.. it surely is a link to the contest at the beginning of the year.
so once again I came up with something on a rush in the last few days. I hoped it was good enough nonetheless but apparently it wasn't.
Seems like I will have to wait for next year. hopefully without having to resort to last minute ideas this time.
Scarletrose Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
The answer to my questions seems obvious enough to me, but I felt like asking anyway because ... better safe than sorry.
One of the rules says:
Submission is not a specific armor, specific weapon, or wondrous item, or involves rules elements specifically disallowed (intelligent items, cursed items, and so on).
Cursed Item is a very specific subset of items characterized by the fact that the Item has a drawback (and sometimes that's all it has).
Still, the type of drawback that identifies a cursed item is usually very specific.
On the other hand there are specific items like the Life Drinker or like the Vicious special ability that include drawbacks but are still not considered cursed items.
It appears clear to me that similar drawbacks should not disqualify an item, but still, I would like to make sure of it conclusively.
Are items that feature some sort of potential drawback allowed? As long as they don't mimic in any way the rules of cursed items of course.
I always hated to hear the words "your characters cannot be of X alignment".
I don't really get it that much.
I get "The party must be able to work together" or "Tour character must be able to behave himself up to some decent human standards"
It usually happens with Evil characters, which is sad by itself because sometimes you want to play someone evil, but lately I see it happening with Chaotic Neutral too.
Even Way of the Wicked that is supposed to be a campaign for Evil characters says "Ok, you can be evil, but not chaotic evil"
I get it that there are people that really take some alignment to become a character impossible to play in a group. But that is what a bad player does, not what a bad alignment does.
I feel many people started to evaluate alignments not for what they can potentially do, but for the wackiest stereotype they can think about it.
So whenever someone thinks Chaotic evil they think acting like a total psychopath without control instead of someone who is probably just selfish and rebellious with little respect for strict protocol.
While Chaotic neutral is not just a rebel and a free-thinker, but obviously someone who is raving mad and out of control.
Why do so many people let some bad actors define what alignment are allowed in their campaigns?
I'm running a PBP campaign of the Savage Tide AP converted for Pathfinder.
we are still fairly early in the AP and the characters just reached level 1.
Formally I have 5 players, but before the holidays we fell to 3.
Now one already said he wants to return, the other is interested to return but is not sure if she can.
I could manage a party of 6, but I would like to avoid continuing the campaign with a party of 3.
So I'll open a new slot.
You can find Here. all the information you need.
The current party is
Erick Bonestihl: Cavalier (Honor Guard/Emissary/Musketeer) [confirmed]
Gavin d'Bourgemont: Oracle (Cayden Cailean) [confirmed]
Tessa Steele: Swashbuckler [Confirmed]
Bedu the Barber: Bard [said he will be back soon]
Kutsya Saltenlock: Witch (white-haired) [she is interested but not sure she will manage to return]
In the original topic you can find all the information you need. Of course for further information feel free to ask questions.
Feel also free to look at the discussion and Gameplay topics of the PBP
I have no clear deadline at the moment, I'll let you know about that.
I am playing a sorceress in a PbP campaign.
I did create the character without a particular plan in mind but now I think I want to turn her into a reliable magic item crafter.
She is an arcane bloodline sorceress by the way.
I noticed how pathfinder is way more flexible when it comes to magic item crafting and a sorcerer crafter seems to be pretty viable to me, at least in theory.
I plan to get a mnemonic vestment and buy scrolls just the way a wizard would do to add spells in his spellbook. possibly even carrying an actual spellbook around.
I also have high charisma and plan to raise use magic device to a pretty good level which would get me some sort of access to divine spells for crafting purposes.
As a matter of fact, I might get scribe scrolls to craft my own scrolls to use as a prerequisite, since is just a +5 Dc to craft a magic item without a prerequisite.
Does anyone has experience in turning a sorceress into a magic crafter?
Any advice?
I returned to the original topic to look upon the reply and see if there was a reply to my post only to notice that
1) there was a lot of them, pages and pages. I did not expect that topic to be so prolific.
2) the topic eventually turned into people accusing each other of having fun the wrong way.
I still do think the topic was very interesting and deserved to be continued, so I hope it will be possible to go on with the discussion without the mods having nothing against it and the people involved in the topic turning it once again into a "My game is better than yours".
It's natural that everyone argues about their point of view on the issue, but that doesn't mean we can't respect others point of view.
That being said...
Deadmanwalking wrote:
Scarletrose wrote:
Anyway... I consider a characterwith a chaisma 3 like gollum.
pathetic, submissive and generally awkward.
My suggestion is to make clear what kind of character would result from low charisma. no matter how high your skills or level, you still are that creepy spineless self-loathing creature that creeps people out.
And it's not about beauty...(even if beauty without the proper attitude could be hard to be made apparent) but about personality.
The old an ugly veteran who barks orders is not low charisma.
The one who is to shy and spineless to give orders away is.
It's not the 'being bad at social stuff' part of that description I disagree with, it's the bolded parts, that indicate the character as weak willed and self-loathing. That's...not part of Charisma at all. It's Wisdom, because, y'know, willpower.
The example you list seems entirely reasonable to me...but wouldn't be allowed in Scarletrose's game, at least not according to the post I was disagreeing with.
I'm not arguing Gollum's charisma wasn't bad (or even that certain parts of his personality weren't good examples for low Charisma), I'm arguing that wasn't his only bad stat and certainly wasn't the reason he was weak-willed.
I can see your point but I do disagree.
First of all I do agree on one point, Gollum is clearily plagued with several sub-par stats, and willpower is certainly one of them.
But I also believe there are many facets of "willpower"
And I think Wisdom mainly involves itself in the passive part of willpower. The one that makes you resist to external stimulus.
While Charisma is more about the active part.
So to put them in contrast, a person with high charisma and low wisdom would be a person who's will is easily defeated.
He is easily stopped in his endeavors by fear, or temptation. He is easily distracted and put off tracks.
But still, he would have a huge driving force. He could be a coward maybe, but he is the kind of coward that runs from the problems when he faces opposition. Not the kind of coward that doesn't act upon his desires and ideals out of fear.
He can be easily swayed from his course, but until he is, he will put a lot of faith and determination in whatever he wants to do.
While a character with a high Wisdom and low charisma is quite the opposite. He's a person that is not easily swayed from his path. he is pretty much unfazed by intimidation or temptation.
But he has no strong driving force.
Is exactly the opposite of the high charisma low wisdom.
He is not an initiator. He is not the one to act upon his desires, is the one that think it would be good if something happened but doesn't bring himself to do anything to make it happen.
They lack initiative, and therefore they lack leadership.
That's why I feel low cha characters are usually the followers and high cha characters are usually the leaders.
Because high charisma characters have huge motivation and sense of purpose, while low charisma characters just don't and chances are they need to be ordered around to shake out of their lack of initiative.
While spineless goes two ways and i agree that many interpretations of spineless actually fall on wisdom, high or low charisma determine your force of personality and thus your attitude towards your goals.
Whenever something goes wrong the low charisma character will tend to brood and whine about how things were not fair with him while an high charisma character will swear he will get even with the world with burning determination.
Since people tried to point out for and against my case actual creatures with determinate scores, I would like to to the same but with a couple of little premises. Not to say "neener-neener I am right and you are wrong", no one is really right or wrong.
It's just a matter of making assumptions that have a certain consistency.
1) These kind of things are particularly noticeable on the extremes. I won't expect a 8 cha character to be much different from a 10 cha character. In any stat and any circumstance an 8 is slightly below average. I think no one should expect the 8 charisma character to be utterly devoid of driving force of personality.
2) The game is not and could never be a perfect rendition of human psychology. It is not and it never tried to be. every discussion about correlations between stats and personalities are to be considered intrinsically flawed. All we can attempt to do is to make as much sense as possible. Making perfect sense in every circumstance with one simple ruling is simply not in the cards.
Let's take the quintessential high-charisma monster. The succubus.
Her charisma is off the charts, how does it impact on her?
I can see her being scared, I can see her being tempted. But what I can't imagine a succubus doing is giving up upon her desires.
Being scared away from acting upon them? sure.
Being tempted in another course of action? yes.
Passively accepting that "well, my goals are not that important to me anyway"? No way.
She will always use every possible occasion to have it her way.
She can wave the white flag and concede the battle, but never the war.
Let's look at the opposite spectrum.
Constructs.
Usually Charisma 1
Lets' be specific and take one.
Stone golem
Charisma 1, Wisdom 11
Do they have a will? not really.
They get orders and they execute them. and they may be pretty unrelenting in the execution of orders.
but at charisma 1 they will never ever act upon their own will.
One may argue that they do so due the utter lack of intelligence or the fact that they are created and controlled.
So I offer you an alternative.
Undeads. Skeleton and zombies.
Both controllable, both without Intelligence.
Except they, unlike the golem, have an average charisma score.
When a golem is leaved without instructions and without a master to control them, what do they do? Nothing... they lack the drive to act upon any personal desire.
What does it happen to skeletons and zombies that are leaved to their own devices?
They act upon their hate of the living.
ok that's it...
Again I hope we can maintain a certain level of civility that doesn't requires the moderators to intervene again.
As a matter of fact, I do hope there are people that do not agree with me and that want's to expose a different point of view because that's what debating on an argument is all about. If we would all agree on everything there would be no point in debating at all.
It's a warm evening in Sasserine. The winter has passed, and lately the weather has been nice. Not as cold as in the winter but not yet so hot and humid as Sasserine is used to be.
Here and there there are people working to build parade floats of giant Locustlike creatures.
It is almost the Locustfall festival, a time where Sasserine rejoice for the news came from afar.
A band of heroes sealed the Worldwound.
Deskari, the locust, the prince of Demons has fallen, and the greatest threat to the world has been vanquished forever.
Not that Sasserine was anywhere close to the Worldwound.
Nonetheless Sasserine citizens do jump at the occasion to celebrate at anything after 50 years of confinement and oppression.
While the city is busy working for the festival to come, each and everyone of you were approached by a Wizened-looking Halfling woman who introduces herself as Kora Whistlegap.
She presents to each of you a letter from her employer, Lavinia Vanderboren.
ok, here we go. You are all separate right now, an you don't know each other (but you may have heard about the things that made you famous lately)
Feel free to ask questions to Kora, To ask for knowledge rolls or do pretty much everything you may think to do in the next 24 hours.
Whenever you are ready Just write that your character go to the Vanderboren mansion (which is pretty much railroaded, the AP won't even start if you don't). When you are all ready I'll set up the scene for you and give you a chance to introduce to each other.
Welcome to the Savage Tide OOC thread.
I will set up the game in a few minutes
Meanwhile I'll give you some Informations about the way I will run this game.
1) Interruptions: Tessa is able to parry and reposte attacks, Erick I believe will be able to intercept attacks aimed at adjacent party members.
I want to try to just announce the attack and wait for your response on whether you want to let it pass or intercept it. If we see it's slowing the game too much I will try to find swiftest solutions (I have a couple in mind already)
2) knowledge rolls: I use them a lot, and the AP itself features a lot of them. I will never ask you to roll for knowledge. hen a knowledge roll is automathically triggered I will roll myself off screen and, in case you succeed, I'll give you the info, otherwise you will never know a roll has been made.
When you want to make a knowledge check on your own initiative, you just have to ask about a topic. I will roll the dice and give you eventual answers. This way, you will never know how good and accurate your informations are.
Anyway, no matter the result, when you ask for a knowledge roll I will at least tell you what kind of knowledge has been rolled, so that you know how good is your general knowledge on the topic and if there is someone else better than you at finding the information.
3) Perception: Same goes with perception. I will never ask you to roll a Perception check. I will roll and tell you the results if there are any. You can request a perception roll every time you want. Just try to specify what you are searching for and when. It's ok to say "I search the room" but "I search the fireplace in the room for a secret stash" will translate into a lower DC.
4) Stealth: You guessed it... same with stealth. You don't get to know how well you are hidden. You just hide, I roll, and if you are confident with your abilities you hope for the best.
5) Appraise: From time to time I am used to place "extra treasure" around that requires Appraise checks to be noticed. Maybe among the old dusty books there is an amazing first edition of a very rare book. Or among the cheap beverage there is a bottle of top shelf expensive wine.
Keep it in mind for the future. A character with high appraise may translate into extra loot.
6) be weary: there is a topic in Paizo forums in the savage tide messageboard called "Savage tide obituaries" (don't go there, there are heavy spoilers).
The savage tide is known to be kinda unforgiving, especially at the first levels... and in a story arc that has been renames "city of broken monsters"
I ran the AP several times and every time I had my share of PC corpses.
7) You are officially in no Affiliation at the moment. Let me know what are the affiliations you are interested in and I will inform you about the tasks you can perform to advance your standing with them as they comes available to you.
Welcome to the Savage Tide recruitment topic.
Savage tide is an Adventure Path published by Paizo for D&D 3.5 and the Greyhawk setting (and with a pretty big chunk of Mystara attached to it)
For this campaign we will play in Golarion, the standard Pathfinder setting.
HERE you can find the Savage tide Player's Handbook for free (or buy an hard copy for 1$)
Of course there are several changes to adapt the setting to Golarion. So I will list all the changes you have to consider. There are quite a lot.
Gods:
All the gods mentioned in the Player handbook are changed into Golarion gods.
Wee Jas--> Nethys
Pelor --> Sarenrae
Fharlanghn --> Abadar
St. Cuthbert --> Irori
Olidammara --> Calistria
Kord --> Cayden Cailean
Osprem/Procan/Xerbo --> Gozreh
All the shrines you can see in the map are changed too.
Champion district
19: Shrine of Chadali
21: Shrine of Erastil
34: Shrine of Gorum
Cudgel district
25: Shrine of Soralyon
26: Shrine of Nivi Rhombodazzle
31: Shrine of Magrim
53: Shrine of Daikitsu
Merchant district
18: Shrine of Kofusachi
24: Shrine of Desna
29: Shrine of Hanspur
32: Shrine of Milani
37: Shrine of Gyronna
44: Shrine of Torag
58: Shrine of Gaidz
Noble district
2: Shrine of Eritrice
4: Shrine of Thoth
6: Shrine of Shelyn
15: Shrine of Picoperi
24: Shrine of Nalinivati
Shadowshore
2: Shrine of Sun Wukong
20: Shrine of Besmara
Sunshine district
4: Shrine of pharasma
28: Shrine of Iomedae
29: Shrine of Korada
Geography:
Sasserine is located in Arcadia. West of the inner sea region.
Here you can see it's position relative to the inner sea region.
Every time the guide refers to somewhere outside the Amedio region saying "in the north", it's supposed to be "in the east" referring to the inner sea region
History:
Sasserine is a little more than 500 years old.
Replace the whole history of the city with this version.
For 450 years after its foundation in 4148 AR Sasserine experienced phenomenal growth. In 4608 AR, Sasserine had it first conflict with Chelish slavers. Chelish wizards and clerics from house Thrune managed to destroy the stone bridge known as Teraknian's Arch and burned much of the waterfront before the defenders managed to repulse the attack. Over the next century, Sasserine would be variously assaulted by the Chelish navy and local tribes of giants and bullywugs once or twice a decade, so tempting were the vast plantations of coffee and spices the city protected. Yet with each assault, the soldiers of Sasserine grew more adept at defending their city. Teraknian's Arch was rebuilt and destroyed nearly a dozen times. The final decision to abandon the bridge entirely and leave it in ruins marks the only remaining physical scar from years of warfare.
Over the years, a line of lord-mayors descended from Teraknian ruled Sasserine in conjunction with advice from the churches of Nethys and Cayden Cailean. In the year of 4650 AR, Orren Teraknian ruled the city. For the first time in centuries, the church of Nethys was stripped of its power when fabricated charges of devil-worship led to the arrest, imprisonment, and even execution of its faithful.
Just as Orren's rule became unbearable, a great fleet of ships arrived -- representatives of The Grand Admiralty of the Fever Sea.
Promising an end to Orren's cruel rule, the invaders were aided in their assault on the city from within as the citizens rose up in rebellion. Orren Teraknian was overthrown and the Grand Admiralty claimed Sasserine as their own. Over the 50 years to come, Sasserine's resources were savaged. The Grand Admiralty pretended huge tributes, imposed harsh laws and kept Sasserine a secret from the rest of the world, hoping to hide the valuable port from invaders by destroying any references they could find to it. Ship captains who knew the route to the city were bought off or murdered. Sasserine suffered in these 50 years, but the underlying spirit of her citizens did not die.
Their prayers were finally answered in 4704 AR, when Celish privateers killed most of the Grand Admiralty navy holding Sasserine. The resulting turmoil threw Sasserine into chaos. Without the support of Bloodcove, the leaders of the city were overthrown in a fortnight.
In the decade since their emancipation, the people of Sasserine have rebuilt their city with astonishing alacrity, but they still work to restore their navy, to re-establish trade routes with lands to the east, and to heal the rift of hatred between the churches of Cayden Cailean and Nethys. Burgeoned by events in their sister city of Cauldron (which recently survived a disaster of its own), the city of Sasserine seems to be perched on the edge of glory.
Also, the local festival in Sasserine is no longer the Wormfall festival but the Locustfall festival, celebrating the closure of the worldwound (as it happens in the end of the Wrath of the righteous AP)
This is supposed to be celebrated nearly everywhere in the world. Also, the defeat of Deskari and the end of the Worldwound is known to anyone.
Before the fall, Deskari was known by the scholars as the Prince of Demons.
Local factions:
Every reference to the Scarlet Brotherhood, or the scarlet Embassy is replaced by Cheliax.
Sasserine is a multiethnic place, but lately, there are small groups of Chelaxians promoting ideas of Chelaxian ethnic supremacy. The Chelish Embassy is of course deemed responsible for that by many people. Those supremacist groups are small and have little influence anyway and are far from being a menace to the public safety.
Also, the Church of the Whirling fury patron, Gwynharwyf is not an Eladrin Paragon, but an Azata Empyreal Lord
Now... for the Character creation, here are the rules.
Creation:
20 point buy
- 2 traits, 1 must be one of the district feats described in the player guide (it will be treated like a trait)
- Average starting gold for class
- All Paizo material approved (with emerging guns)
- Core and featured races plus Phanaton race. Weird and exotic races are allowed but races like Drows, goblins, hobgoblins etc. may attract unfavorable reactions from the locals. Chelaxians are the majority but all human ethnicities are present in good numbers the city.
- 3rd party material is generally not approved, but you can try and ask for a specific class or feature provided that is available on d20pfsrd.com or another online resource available for free. I may consider it.
- Dumping stats is ok but not without consequences. Especially when it comes to Charisma. You would not be allowed to dump charisma down to 7 and act like The Fonz. If you plan to dump Charisma to 7 consider the following.
I consider Gollum from LotR a Charisma 3 character and Grima Wormtongue a Charisma 5 character.. So every point below 10 is a little step away from a regular guy and towards a sniveling pathetic guy, which sometimes makes for a great fantasy character, but hardly a cool guy or a leader.
Phanaton Race:
Phanatons possess the following racial traits.
• –2 Strength, +4 Dexterity, –2 Constitution.
• Small size.Phanatons are Small creatures and thus gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a –1 penalty to their CMB and CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.
• A phanaton's base land speed is 20 feet.
• +1 natural armor bonus.
• Darkvision out to 60 feet.
• A phanaton has a climb speed of 20 feet, and gain the +8 racial bonus on Climb checks that a climb speed normally grants.
• A phanaton has a +2 racial bonus on Fly and fly is always a class skill
• Glide (Ex): Phanatons take no damage from falling (as if subject to a constant non-magical feather fall spell). While in midair, members of this race can move up to 5 feet in any horizontal direction for every 1 foot they fall, at a speed of 40 feet per round. A member of a race with gliding wings cannot gain height with these wings alone; it merely coasts in other directions as it falls. If subjected to a strong wind or any other effect that causes a creature with gliding wings to rise, it can take advantage of the updraft to increase the distance it can glide.
• Prehensile Tail (Ex): Phanatons have a long, flexible tail that can be used to carry objects. They cannot wield weapons with their tails, but they can retrieve small, stowed objects carried on their persons as a swift action.
• Languages: Phanatons begin play speaking Common and Phanaton. Phanatons with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Elven, Goblin, Halfling, Sylvan
Racial Feats
Adept Tailfighter
Prerequisites: Phanaton
Benefit: you are able to wield a light weapon you are proficient with using your tail.
The tail can be used as an extra hand for Multiweapon Fighting and grants a Phanaton a +2 competence bonus on grapple checks and Climb checks.
Forest Empathy
Prerequisites: Phanaton
Benefit: You gain an empathic link with the forest surroundings, alerting you to danger before it arrives. This grants a Phanaton a +2 racial bonus on all saving throws while in a forest.
Spider bane
Prerequisites: Phanaton
Benefit: Phanatons are considered to be expert spider killers. When in combat with spiders and spider-like monsters, the phanaton gains all applicable bonuses of the Favored enemy class ability like a ranger of equal level.
Background:
I will need at least a brief background of your character.
Not every character must be a native of Sasserine, but all must be living in Sasserine for at least one year. They must live in one of the 7 districts of the city and their campaign trait must be a trait available for that district.
I will also need you to include one recent event that made you publicly known for either your martial prowess, diplomatic skills or skill at theft and infiltration.
I guess that's a lot to digest...
Let me know if you have any doubts or if you feel there is something about the settings that I did not cover and need to be converted to Pathfinder.
I am planning to run a Savage Tide game converted to pathfinder rules and Settings.
For that purpose I wanted to prepare a modified version of the Savage Tide Player's guide.
There is any legal way to make it available to my players online? (I think it would require some sort of permission by paizo)
I would of course leave all the original credits, warn that the modifications are not canonical in the Golarion settings and keep all the copyright notices.
If there is no way to do anything of the above, would be Paizo ok with private distribution to my players?
The alternative would be of course pointing out case per case the differences between the original Player's guide and my game.
The campaign will be played in the online campaign session of the Paizo messageboards.
Thank you for your time.
As a GM I don't usually run modules or AP's but I rather make my own campaign.
But sometimes it happens, and that's how I run for 3 times The Savage Tide AP for D&D 3.5.
I love to run this AP, and I'm working on converting it for Pathfinder.
I think Sasserine has many reasons to be located in the Arcadian continent.
Sasserine is supposed to be a remote colony that was unknown to most of the civilized world until a decade since the campaign starts.
Also, Olmans features prominently in the campaign, and they are clearly Inspired by the Aztecs. It make sense that Sasserine is located in Golarion Americas.
So.. I offer you a campaign of navigation on the high seas, exploration, piracy, colonization, and ultimately, planar warfare on the highest scale.
If you are interested you can find the Savage Tide Player Guide and keep in mind the following changes.
The Amedio Jungle will be on the east coast of Arcadia.
We will be playing in year 4715.
Cheliax will take the role of The Scarlet Brotherhood.
The sea princes will be replaced by The Grand Admiralty of the Fever Sea A.K.A. Bloodcove
The special feats for sasserine districts will become traits.
The 7 official churches of Sasserine mentioned in the manual will be:
Wee Jas--> Nethys
Pelor --> Sarenrae
Fharlanghn --> Abadar
St. Cuthbert --> Irori
Olidammara --> Calistria
Kord --> Cayden Cailean
Osprem/Procan/Xerbo --> Gozreh
Before I start the actual recruiting I will create a document with all the player resources converted.
It's early to give you complete guidelines to create a character but...
I will allow every manual officially published by Paizo (that does not include material currently in beta testing)
Every race is permitted, just keep in mind that people will react accordingly.
Every alignment is welcome, but I expect characters that are able to relate with the party and the NPCs so.... no psycho killers please.
Hopefully I expect to go from level 1 all the way to 20.
I have read many topics lately about what a paladin can and cannot do without losing his powers.
To be honest, this kind of argument is as old as the paladin itself.
Instead of listing a huge comprehensive list of things a paladin can or cannot do (which is stupid, and in any case would be wrong in one way or another) I wanted to address something in particular that comes up quite often.
The no-win situation.
The scenario were a paladin is facing two possible choices, both morally ambiguous.
Of course, this is just my opinion ... but I am totally right anyway, so whatever...
Let's define what is typically considered a no win situation (which will be exposed in a deliberate simplistic way)
The bad guys are holding some hostages and demands that the paladin personally execute a person the paladin know is innocent, otherwise they will start killing hostages.
If there are only two options that are both Bad from the paladin point of view, will he lose his powers?
My answer is no.
What i feel should lead to the fall of a paladin is either a heavily misguided morality or a deliberate betrayal of morality itself.
When facing with this kind of dilemma, there is no right answer, killing an innocent to save many, condemn many to save one single man, there is no morally high ground to be taken.
By removing a obviously right answer, I feel you automatically remove the wrong one.
I expect a paladin to grieve, to feel remorse and regret whatever decision he makes, but not to lose his powers or change alignment.
(this could affect his personality, his view of the world and eventually push him to do something that is indeed wrong, but that's if you are into deep psychological roleplay)
People may argue that a paladin should try to choose the lesser of two evil, but I feel that this statement is true only when the difference is enormous.
If a paladin have troubles deciding if it's better to stop the child who is stealing candy or the man who is burning orphanages, that falls into the heavily misguided morality.
I want to also address another situation.
Let's say a man is being persecuted and a paladin gives him shelter.
Then the persecutor come to the paladin searching for the fugitive.
They threaten the paladin and make sure he knows that if they ever find out that he is sheltering the fugitive he will die.
The paladin then hands the fugitive to them.
Should the paladin fall?
IMHO no.
If mechanically speaking the bad guys used intimidation and the paladin failed to resist it would become apparent, but even without the rolls...
I think this makes for a pretty lousy paladin.... but still a paladin.
I would consider it a failure on the paladin behalf in the same way as if he tried to save someone from a killer and just failed to save the victim in time.
It surely denotes weakness of character and determination, but I don't see a misguided morality (he knows he is supposed to defend the guy) nor a betrayal of his values (he sheltered him after all, he is not forsaking his values, he just surrendered to an evil that in his mind was going to win anyway, he just choose to survive to fight another day).
Now, let's change scenario a little and let's say that they don't threaten the paladin, and they don't seem particularly near to getting to the sheltered guy regardless of the paladin action.
Let's just say the bad guys let everybody know that they are willing to pay anyone who can hand them the guy.
If the paladin hands the guy for money, THAT is a betrayal of his morality.
Self preservation of any kind is never paid with the fall of a paladin.
The ultimate self sacrifice of course is still the most Iconic paladin action. But is the extreme, is not the minimum requirement of paladinhood.
Now, this way of thinking about paladin ways to fall serve for the paladin, but also serve for the bad guys.
In my experience there are a lot of evil or at least non good characters that cannot help but actively try to make a paladin fall.
The bottom line is .. you can't force a paladin to fall... you can tempt him to fall.
You offer an immoral but easy and convenient way opposed to the virtuous one.
You don't set things in a way that the choice is between two evil.
You set things in a way that a good way is very doable, but that the evil one is tempting enough that every man would consider it. and possibly, coat it with some falsely good justification that is ultimately not good enough (misguided morality).
In the end, you can't push a paladin to fall. You have to convince him to make the leap himself.
Hi everyone.
In a campaign of mine the party is traveling from Osirion to Geb to retrieve some long lost artifact.
I tried to find some information but looks like there is very little about Nex, Geb, Alkenstar or the mana wastes aside from the basic description of the campaign settings.
I know that sometimes there is some extra info thrown casually into some modules so I wonder if anyone stumbled in any relevant information about the area and the characters that populate it in any official published material.
Scarletrose Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
I will post a single review to every monster as soon as I can.
Meanwhile since I hinted at my disappointment in another post I want to explain that, and it is not tied to one particular item, is about the entirety of them.
I was pretty excited when I read the rules of this year round 2 contest, particularly if I actually had the chance to participate, but even as an observer there was something I really looked forward to.
And that is the Urban Environment.
Urban environment allowed the contestant to engage in some deeply social monster. Monsters able to mix with society and influence it. Antagonist material rather than simple dungeon fodder waiting for an adventurer's blade.
I feel most of the monsters failed to bring that to the table and opted for a dungeon monster that simply circumvented the urban environment by using sewers or cellars as their own personal dungeon.
The impression is, most of the monsters were already prepared way before rpg superstar started this year and were simply put into the urban environment box by brute force.
I'm not saying that the monsters proposed are mechanically bad, and I'm not saying that among them there are not some pleasant surprises when it comes to flavor. Most of them are actually very well conceived monsters on their own.
But the impression is that most contestant treated the urban environment as an obstacle rather than an opportunity to create something exciting that belong in an urban settlement.
I was really looking forward to an addition to the vampires, the succubi, the corrupt nobles, spies, and read 32 great monsters that could be used in a social environment. Monster that lived the city rather than just being there by coincidence.
Then again, I hope my disappointment doesn't let anyone down.
Quite the opposite, I really hope that the ones of you that will manage to become freelancers will one day publish one of those great social monsters that I was expecting for this round. Maybe as a main antagonist.
Good luck to you all and always give your best.
I'll provide a feedback to every monster in the next days and do not fear, despite my disappointment I have definitely seen interesting monsters.
Scarletrose Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
Looking at the top 32 it looks like items where judged or at least discussed on the forum.
Is there any chance we could see the topics of the discarded items and read how many keep and reject the items took and maybe the reasons the judges rejected or promoted them?
Scarletrose Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
We are almost there...The top 32 will be revealed in a few hours.
Aside from waiting for the items themselves and to know if I am one of the 32 there is something else I wait for every year.
The reviews of Ask A RPGSupersuccubus
Appealing to the judges is... good I guess, but to me her judgement is more valuable. Considering the kind of characters I use to play or use as a Dm is probably out of some sense of kinship.
The only turn off is that her fealty lies with Orcus, which is obviously less than glamorous.
I would have preferred a follower of Nocticula or even better since she is (or at least claims to be) such an advanced succubus, an independent little princess of the Abyss with her little entourage, her small slice of abyss of her own and no demonlord to call her master.
Such a shame...
Scarletrose Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
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Here I present to you a database to add all the items that you see and have survived the cull.
Please use it responsibly.
that means
Do not edit or erase entries made by other users
Only add items you will see from now on
be sure to not write in a cell where someone else is writing(also, you don't need to use the first free cell, you can write wherever you want in the first column)
Always use a free cell in the first column so that we can sort it in an alphabetical order
If the rows are finished add more rows (the button is at the end of the sheet)
Do not give indication about your item
Entry the item via copy and paste to make sure is spelled correctly
I hope everybody will use it correctly as a tool to discover the item that have survived and the actual number of survivors.
Hi Everyone.
I Started a new campaign a few months ago after finishing the Savage Tide.
This time we play in Pathfinder.
I am the DM of a party of 5.
The campaign is initially based in Maashinelle in the river kingdoms, the Year is 4716 and a few events changed the history of Maashinelle since 4710. They were all detailed in a player guide that I provided to the players along with description of the city districts, factions and a list of bonus feats (just like in savage tide player guide).
A Player of mine started a Journal and I wanted to translate it and sharing with you guys (we are italians, if you can read italian feel free to follow the original diary at http://pathfinderadventurespath.blogspot.it)
Hi.
Since this october I fulfilled my dream and became a Game Designer on a small new company.
I saw the details of this project and I have to say I am instantly hooked.
I'm very fond of both Pathfinder and Sandbox MMOs.
Then I saw the crowdforging thing.
Making games for me is not just a job, is a passion, and I would be very happy about contributing to the game, however...
Could Crowdforging create problems when it comes to NDA?
Is the kind of information that the crowdforger will get subject to an NDA?
There is a draft of the NDA we can read?
Do you trust someone from the industry to be a Crowdforger?
Would crowdforging constitute a violation of a NDA that requires to not work on products that are on competition with your company? (I should probably ask my company for that but still what do you think?)
and the most important question of them all... do you plan to need more game designers by January 2014? Just kidding ... or maybe not...
well... I'm not really asking for suggestions... it's more like I'm sharing what just happened in my game and hope that you enjoy it and maybe come up with good inspiration about what's going to happen next.
I restarted the savage tide with a new group of players... one of them is a Illumian Chaotic evil bard follower of malcanthet wich aims for the thrall of malcanthet class...
so... she brought in the sea wyvern a scroll of planar binding to summon a succubus (she needs to lose a level and she want to feel how is like to be drained by a succubus anyway since he wants to be just like them) and so she proceeds into summoning the succubus.
after a little chat and playing cat and mouse the succubus got free from the spell (failed caster check against her spell resistance).
So .. she fulfills her part of the bargain anyway (and let be honest... it was about draining a naughty 26 charisma bard, she would have done it anyway) and then said that she was going to leave her room looking just like her until she found another passenger to kill, throw into the open sea and then replace for the whole journey.
And of course, she implied that any try to warn the rest of the ship about her existance would mean that one day or another she would have been killed in her sleep (and the succubus has the mindreading skills to be sure of any information leak)
now ... I'm not an abusive DM .. and quite frankly the succubus does mean no harm to the bard. In fact she found her amusing and gave her a great opportunity to escape boredom and break havoc in the material plane.
Now ... the succubus already admitted that she is no servant of Malcanthet and she serves only herself (in fact if her lord Pazuzu heard that he might disagree since she is in his court)
Nonetheless I don't plan to play her as an agent of pazuzu... certainly not yet... right now is just a playful succubus
isn't that just pure gold for any DM?
Let me know if you come out with funny things for my little Deliliath
The PC finally arived to farshore and they immediately started to help the local economy.
the problem is ... with the improved gp limit there is no direct connection between gp limit and assets anymore...
Considering the starting value of 800 gp limit and 9600 assets I house ruled that gp limit is 1/12 the assets value. thus ... rising the assets will also rise the gp limit...
If the population is going to rise I have absolutely no Idea of how to apply the effect into the economy.
This week the party is going to the dark mountain pass...
Our cleric/master of shrouds just raised a tyrannosaurus skeleton (the one from the beach)
the problem is ... the t-rex is huge and dark mountain pass is not a dungeon designed for huge monsters.
making the T-rex unable to pass through the pass seems unfair anyway, expecially when two gargantuan centipedes are just inhes away from the entrance.
I was thinking about granting passage to the t-rex but making him slower, inable to combat and inable to cross occupied squares (and making everyone unable to cross his square) while in a 2 squares space (worse when he cross a double door)
And o course he could not for any reason cross rooms number 3 or 4.
reduce animal is druid or ranger only (and the party is classical fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric)
