I would be interested in this. I used to run a lot of PBEM BR games.
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One word: yakuza. These are the mafia of Minkai. They do business and have their hand in all sorts of criminal activities. They are lead by their oyabun, who is like a feudal lord to his underlings. These may consist of fighters, rogues, assassins and other sorts. Some yakuza specialize in certain sorts of activities so there is no reason why one or two could not specialize in...problem solving. Keep in mind that the oyabun is almost never accused of committing a crime. If he is, one of his underlings will step up, admit it, and take the fall for him.
The Godsmouth Heresy or Crypt of the Everflame are awesome 1st level modules, though they are unlikely to take your party to 3rd level. However, you can fix that by adding a couple of encounters.
Raging Swan Press has dozens of detailed villages in their product line, each one with a write up on all the important npcs. Most with some different theme, make up, environment, or even geographical location.
You should also pick up a naginata or longspear for reach to employ a 3-deep zone of damage (range, reach, melee). Samurai were known for their versatility in using a wide range of weapons, all to best effect to gain an advantage. The trope that samurai are katana wielding dervishes is a Hollywood creation. This is detailed in the Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi.
Change the goblins to another variety that maybe came off the ships and populated the village: bakemono. Just swap the -2 from Str to Dex and swap the +4 from Dex to Str. Same evil wackiness, just stronger and less dexterous. The players will probably want to find where these strange critters came from allowing you to lead them towards the ships.
The easiest tweak would be to change them from Warrior 1 to Fighter 1 (gives full hp at 1st level and another feat). With that extra feat, give them Weapon Focus. And if you really want to make them more dangerous, take away Improved Initiative and give them a teamwork feat like Pack Attack or Precise Strike or Distracting Charge.
Flem-atic
Rage quitting is immature. 'nuff said.
From the Dragon Empires... The Price of Ichimeiyo Location: Shokuro
1. Lord of the Moon - In the quiet fishing village of Nura, the adventurers have arrived in time for the local Tsukimi festival. During the celebration, the local yakuza make a play for control against the local lord with hired mercenaries from nearby Kaoling, but the mercenaries have designs on more. After saving the lord, the party is asked to visit the yakuza and discover they have been betrayed by the mercenaries. Trailing the mercenaries to their camp near the Sea of Eels, they find the conspiracy points to the capital of Mukinami. 2. The Price of Ichimeiyo - Word of their exploits has reached Shogun Toriaka and his advisor summons the party for an audience, interrupted by ninja. After, they are told to report to Jing-ko keep in the wild lands in the south east beyond where the Shogunate army has pacified, the border with Shenmen! This small outpost in the forested hills has attracted some loggers and farmers to the area. Several monsters plague the nascent village and need be cleared, culminating with a naga. 3. Spirituality - Bandits raids from the Gossamer Mountains threaten the stability of the burgeoning new land of Shokuro. Tracking them back to their base the party discovers they are former sohei from the Gossamer Cloud Monastery, high up in the mountains. They were forced out by an unspeakable evil. Traveling to the monastery, the party must defeat horrific undead. Clues point to a greater evil in the Spectrewood. 4. Blood and Honour - Making their way through the Spectrewood, the party eventually comes to the ruins of a long abandoned monastery where they face the undead minions of a powerful jiang-shi vampire! However, it does not want to defeat the party, it wishes to ask a favour: free it from the curse given by a powerful circle of nagas, the Godai Five. 5. Journey to Destiny - Travel through to the darklands, facing many hideous monsters, on the way to the Temple of Godai. 6. The Temple of Godai - Face off against the Godai Five. This will be a mega dungeon/temple where the party must defeat all five powerful naga, each representing an element.
The opening sequence to Burnt Offerings, arm the little guys with some fireworks, scavenged from the Kaijitsu Blossom, instead of torches. Starcandles, papercandles, and one or two starfountains for setting a building on fire. Change them to bakemono if you want by making them strength focused instead of dexterity focused. I actually did this as my opening to Jade Regent instead of some of the swamp stuff, too. Except instead of having the party start outside during the Swallowtail Festival, I had them in the common room of the inn. A bakemono burst in and starts gleefully firing off a starcandle, creating a stampede of commoners. Only the (future) party members do anything constructive and it bonds them from the get go as they chase him outside to see pandemonium.
Have the mooks throw alchemical items like fire. Kobolds and other monsters can throw wicker baskets containing centipede/rat/snake swarms. The smaller/weaker the monster, the more they rely on 'tricks' to keep the larger, more powerful adversaries at bay. Also, terrain. If the baddies are small, like kobolds, use smaller passages so that medium characters have to squeeze (-4 to attack, -4 to AC). Have difficult terrain between the party and the monsters to remove charging and double the time to contact, allowing massed ranged fire. Reach weapons mixed with regular melee weapons to create a phalanx effect. Cover (+4 to AC) for mooks either behind rock outcroppings, trees, or merely turning tables on their side. Massed combat maneuver attacks ie dog piling. Mix and match for extra fun and flavour :)
The monk is not going to be so useful against the zombie cyclopses. But if you must, add 1 more here and there.
If APG is allowed, have the front 3 take the Shield Wall feat. It'll make you pretty hard to hit. Later on take Precise Strike or Outflank so that you can engage in a little more maneuvering. The character with the formation bonus should take a ranged weapon like a crossbow instead of a reach weapon. If he's a wizard/sorcerer, take a cantrip that does some damage.
I like your elemental associations, but at the risk of throwing a wrench into it...I think I have a solution for your 10 dragons and alignment issue. 5 Chinese dragons (lungs) on the corners/extremes of the alignment chart with one at Neutral. On top of that, layer 5 Japanese dragons (ryu) in the center of each side (NG, LN, NE, CN) plus one at Neutral since the Japanese are more about concensus. That gives a dragon for each alignment plus 2 neutral dragons. Godai:
Wu Xing:
I haven't looked in depth at your elemental associations and powers, I'm still a step or three behind. But a comment about Stone Dragons. Give them the Earth Glide power of earth elementals.
Neither do I: dereklee@shaw.ca
Wow, that's a lot of writing that I missed over the weekend lol One note, Minkaian for dragon is ryu. Lung is dragon in Tien. If you want to stay with 5 elements and 5 dragons in the Minkaian theme, why don't you do a 'pie' quartered into air, earth, fire, and water with void above it? Or in a 3x3 grid use the 4 corners for the alignment chart and the center and that brings you: air = Sky imperial dragon, LG, electricity
In fact, I might even use that myself! Depending on how much asian stuff you want, I could send you what I have for Jade Regent. PM me if you're interested.
Concerning the five elements, if you want to read more (wikipedia has a great article on each that I use for my Jade Regent game), the Chinese refer to it as Wu Xing and the Japanese call it Godai. Uqbarian has the right elements with each one. Bitter Lily, I suggest you read the articles on wikipedia before you go to far in associating elements and breath weapons with asian elements because asians associate each of their elements with aspects of nature and aspects of the human existence more so than the western alchemical elements which are well associated with things of their nature (eg fire with fire). Some of the asian associations are initially counter-intuitive but make sense the more you read about them. The page on Wu Xing has a very nice (if circular) 'grid' showing the proper elemental associations. A 5x5 grid might be a better way of representing the five elements. If you assume the top left is #1 and number from left to right, downwards, then: Wood = 3
And all are exactly 2 squares away from each other.
Ooh, thanks! Would you believe that an imperial/noble family would turn to a Spirit Dragon for help in constructing their ancestral blade, or turn to a human enchanter to help them fight off attacks by them? Any Imperial or noble family would love to turn to a spirit dragon for help in constructing their ancestral blade. But a better idea might be that the family is forseen to have a descendant gain the mandate of heaven and the dragon chooses to help forge the blade since dragons take a very long view...
Well, since Jade Regent is a lot about kami and oni, why not go old school 1E OA and go with shen lung, spirit dragon? Water or cold based powers, dragon of storms and rain. I believe they were chaotic neutral.
The sorcerer must be running out of spell slots for this fireball unless you're running a 15 minute adventuring day. Extend the dungeon with twice as many encounters as the sorcerer has slots for their upgunned fireball. And then make 1 or 2 of those encounters immune or at least tougher using the many great suggestions above.
Chinese Mid Autumn Festival! Decorate in red!
Tian Xia
In no particular order: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 1 and 2
I gave a list which includes many non action movies to give insight into Chinese and Japanese cultures so that a dm can add flavour to their asian campaign. I find that having realistic npcs and their reactions has really helped my (western) players acclimate to the different mindset required for roleplaying in the Dragon Empires.
White Plume Mountain I remember as pretty generic fantasy with a touch of Michael Moorcock thrown in for good measure. What are you doing to customize it towards Tian Xia? The most important thing is to replace the 3 magic items with asian flavoured magic items. Then replace some of the monsters with their more asian counterparts such as the vampire. Some of them don't even need replacing :)
Several old AD&D modules are ripe for conversion to the Dragon Empires, which I'm doing for my Jade Regent campaign: I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City (Valashmai Jungle)
And (Pathfinder module) Fangwood Keep (Kaoling or somewhere near)
I am playing an antipaladin in Hell's Vengeance, Tyrant archetype. Even if I wasn't LE I would still be playing evil smart. My personality is based on Baron Gavin Tael (for you young'uns see Birthright: Barony of Ghoere). Smart, law abiding, patient, plays the long con. So far we've only killed a dog, a cat (strange fey critter), and a chicken (cockatrice). We're trying not to fan the flames of rebellion because WE LIVE HERE and we want the town to still be standing when we're done. That said, we're still menacing and intimidating to the peasants. We just don't take many steps to correct their incorrect assumptions :D
I've always wondered why there are such discrepancies in inventory left for all 6 issues of an AP? Wouldn't you usually buy all 6? Or at least just the first one and not the rest if you didn't like it?
I'd like to see an adventure with Kaoling. No AP has featured hobgoblins yet that I know of. Nagajor would also be a good place to host an AP, nagas!
I run 2 and play in 1, all are biweekly and go for about 2.5 hours.
Thinking about making one of the PCs the heir. Good idea. Thanks. That is totally what I'm doing in my JR campaign. No troublesome npcs to deal with.
My mistake, Carter was right, it's book 2 that has ninjas.
You can easily reflavour the first three books for the Dragon Empires setting by subbing out monsters since a dungeon is a dungeon. Hobgoblins work particularly well in the first book. The third book has a lot of ninjas in it, so you'll at least want to reflavour parts of the third book at a minimum.
Jade Regent: Across frozen land
I went with an (Un)Holy Tactician and Tyrant archetype for a home campaign with the intent of guiding the other characters to excel in melee. One of the other characters and I grew up together so we are taking a couple of teamwork feats. Charisma heavy. Traits: Ambitious, Tactician, Chelish Noble
Zatar hopes to be Golarion's Baron Gavin Tael
Go for a Cleric (Crusader). Take Heavy Armour feat as your bonus feat. Take Extra Channel and tell the party you're only using channels to heal, the rest of your feats are yours and your spells are for buffing.
Carrion Crown: Poltergeist meets Underworld
I totally agree. I love every adventure that Raging Swan Press has published and the Shadowed Keep is my favourite by far!
I use the Fighter class for my bushi which was basically what a 1E OA bushi was, a fighter with an extra ability to buff himself once per day along the lines of Heroism, I think.
As some people have commented above, the Wood element comes from the Taoist elemental system, specifically from China, Wu Xing. It is earth, fire, metal, water, and wood which is the system in Ultimate Magic. Wu Xing is used in many aspects of Chinese culture such as Feng Shui, Chinese medicine, and martial arts. In Wu Xing, all of the elements are merely representative of different matter, organs/bodily functions, emotions, natural phenomenon, etc. For wood, it represents anger, altruism, the tendons (flexibility and resilience), wind/sound, minerals, mana, acid, the mind, poison and health amongst other things. The Japanese have something similar called Godai which has the air, earth, fire, water, and void. Thus the true spell lists for Wu Xing and Godai are not 'element' related as one sees with western elemental beliefs. I did do a spell list for both Wu Xing and Godai that my players are using for Jade Regent. If anyone would like a copy, drop me a message with your email address.
Rise of the Runelords has a very old school dungeony feel to it. You get goblins and undead early on along with several encounters with a monster designed for the AP. Dungeons are around Sandpoint so the players can learn to roleplay as they go along and do as much or as little of it as they want. And the dungeons keep coming, virtually every level of play has a dungeon of some size and form.
Inquisitors have proficiency in repeating crossbow.
Oh there's a new Tian Xa book out I missed that in my notifications I'll have to take a look at it although I am sad it sounds like western monsters got a big look in rather than eastern ones or eastern cultures it could have had. What book is that? Did I miss one?
I have played in Rise of the Runelords and it was awesome. I was really excited because our DM at the time was going to run Shattered Star afterwards but he suffered burnout. I guess we broke him :D I've also read most of those and I picked Jade Regent to run as the next AP I dm (we're finishing up Kingmaker very soon).
We Be Kobolds?
If you are looking for good 3rd party for Jade Regent you might want to check out the Way of Ki books by Legendary Games. It basically takes the ki mechanic and cranks it up to 11 with a bunch of new mechanics for ki, feats, and I think an archetype or 2. The biggest thing that always comes to my mind in this is that it gives you a feat tree to get the ability to do a Haduken. I've got all of the Legendary Games add ons for Jade Regent, too, but thanks for mentioning them for others who might be interested :)
Since the next campaign I am running is Jade Regent, I was ecstatic to find this: Dragon Tiger Ox by Little Red Goblin Games.
Hook Mountain Massacre (RotRL 3) from that list would be the best fit since it is mountainous and at 6th level the B Team would be looking eastwards to the mountains.
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