So we played a few adventures and the party is up to level 3. Now I've decided, and the players think it would be fun to run an AP (Rise of the Runelords).
So in order to not have to keep adjusting encounters over the course of the entire campaign, what should I do?
One idea I had was to give them more ability scores instead of levels. They started with point buy 15, so I could slowly move them to point buy 20 by the time they end the first chapter. I think chapter two wants the players to be level 4.
Any ideas on how I should execute this? What I'm trying to avoid is just not leveling them for a whole chapter, while raising encounter levels enough to not bore them to death.
I see a lot of people that are new to TTRPGs but somehow found roll20.net and I'm looking to start running sessions for these new players. Some of the posts I've seen don't specify the system they are looking to get into, usually just some form of D&D.
If I were to start running a Beginner's Box session, is there a resource that is like the pathfinder SRD to point them to? That contains BB rules?
Or how much of the beginner's box is OGL, and if I did my own wiki of the BB rules, is there some guidance on what I could/could not include?
My hope is that they become Pathfinder players (start buying stuff) and I can expand my bullpen of players, but the Pathfinder SRD is a bit to intense to point them to without guidance.
Was thinking last night after the game. Dangerous idea, I know.
There's a lot of people that have been playing 3.x of the most famous RPG since Monte Cook and company released it back in, what 1998? This system has chugged along for a long time. What do you think has kept it going more?
The system mechanics itself? Or Paizo? Would you still be playing the 3.X ruleset were it not for the Paizo development?
Does continuation of a game depend on new content?
I was thinking about this because last night I realized how crazy and convoluted some of the rules are. But I keep playing anyways, because I can't wait till Ultimate Campaigns comes out.
So a player casts grease within sight of all enemies. Enemies fall. During the same combat player casts grease again in narrow passageway (bottleneck), within sight of all enemies.
Does enemy (normal intelligence) need to roll skill check to know going through bottleneck is a bad idea?
Anyone know of any bloggers that have a focus on tech and tabletop RPGs? Looking for inspiration around VTT work, maps, web apps. Basically anything that exceeds actual pen and paper.
So I've hit a writer's block in terms of encounters. I've got a game this week, and I'm just feeling stuck, so I thought I'd pose the questions here. What are the most memorable and interesting combat encounters that you've designed? And what made them different?
How did you keep the encounter dynamic? How did terrain and character movement come together to create a unique experience?
I don't mean particular monsters or plot (though I wouldn't mind hearing short versions of how that added to a specific encounter).
Played 3.x for about 6 years, and then spent about 2 years playing a 4e campaign, and have just recently started DMing a Pathfinder campaign. Needless to say, the rules jumbled in my mind and I find myself trying to do things, or allow things, that are in one ruleset and not another.
So I wanted to start this thread that I could share with my players (who have been with me throughout the years who are also having the same issues. If you spent any amount of time playing 4e, which rules do you often confused between games?
For instance: In 4e you could take a move action, and then a standard action to charge. In Pathfinder it appears that your whole movement must be in a straight line to your target.
So most of my RPG buddies are spread all over the world, and I've been itching to get a game together. I've done a bit of research but I wanted something a bit more PF specific in terms of opinion, since that's the system we want to use.
So a few questions:
1) Have you used a virtual table and been in a "successful campaign", meaning finished a campaign arc.
2) Which system did you use? Wizards VTT, d20pro, roll20.net, maptools, or other?
3) If you've used more than one virtual table extensively, which one did you prefer and why?
Got the box in the mail yesterday. Popped it open, was very impressed by the production quality, as well as the density of box.
I had only skimmed over the "Black Fang" adventure in the GM's Handbook. But I was confident enough in my xp as a GM to basically wing it. And the box was sold to me on the fact that it should be able to get quickly going right out of the box without a deep reading.
We had four players, only one of which had played TTRPG to any extent at all. He and I would both be considered rusty. The three new players used the premades, the Cleric, Fighter and Rogue. The other rolled his own sorcerer, which we shoe horned in BB rules. The power level was even across the board.
Part 1 (Spoilers):
First hour was spent on background and motivations. Two of the players (the rogue and fighter) were both returning from a war, and had heard of opportunities in Sandpoint to make some money. They were both broke. One had a serious case of PTSD. The other was a bad gambler. There were both dealing with a tremendous amount of baggage from the prior experiences in death and carnage.
They were staying at the local temple, where the Cleric was a novice priest of Sarenrae (sp?) Seeing that these two blokes were down on their luck, broke, and in serious need on therapy, she offered them the mats in the temple storeroom, for exchange of a bit of physical labor to help around the Cathedral.
The Sorcerer was a local kid, who had exhibited signs of natural spellcasting. This freaked his parents out, and so they forced him to attend classes at the Cathedral, hoping that he would become a priest or anything but a sorcerer.
The day everything pretty much kicks off, the Mayor came to visit the High Cleric, who inconveniently was out of town. She came to ask for help, and instead found only the cleric and a couple of drunkards. Without many options left, she explained that something had been destroying live stock, leaving a few corpses of half destroyed bulls in the farms right outside of town. The only piece of evidence left behind was a single blackened tooth, about 6 inches long, found embedded in one of the destroy cow corpses. A few nights ago a shipment of Dwarven Octoberfest came in and her normal go-to adventurers have been out of action after a night or three of binge drinking, but she the farmers were beating down her office door demanding that something be done.
After examining the Fighter and Rogue, she asked if the Cleric knew anyone else that could help or when the High Cleric would return. Feeling the cabin fever, she suggested that she knew just the people.
The first thing the Rogue and Fighter wanted to do was examine a scene of one the attacks. Here are the clues they got: One of the victim bulls was torn in half, after making a decent perception check the fighter noticed something odd, and tried to lift the bull, or the half that remained, and he noticed that the bone structure was completely destroyed. Some had "broken" bull, and then tore it to shreds and left no tracks, though there had to have been gallons of blood about.
The Rogue, went to question the farmer, and he was told, that on the night of the most recent attack, the moon was nearly full, and then it seemed to disappear, and then reappear. There was only lite cloud cover and no rain. The bull cried out from across the field for only 5 minutes. There was a thud, and the silence.
More background about how the roles were playing out. The rogue and fighter got into, for lack of a better word, sort of an a$$hole grove. Their characters were being cocky and their internal monologues were sort of mean. Basically leaning neutral evil, though their stated alignments were otherwise. Here's how I pivoted that.
With the rogue, the lady at the farm that they interview first thought the two were there to take the corpse away (the Mayor had said she would send someone). She pleaded with the rogues to help, because it had been two days and they didn't want the meat, and it was rotting and destroying their property. At first, he was like "This is not my problem," but after her heartbreaking story about her dead husband and young disabled child, he folded and he would talk to someone in town to come remove the corpse. She gave him a gold piece.
After they returned to town, the towns folk seemed different. Crowds slowly parted for them. Everyone was looking, and there were whispers. They almost freaked out, but then a young child approached, maybe 6-7 and she gave the 6'5, 250 lbs, donned in Scale armor, scarred from battle, with a generally bad disposition, a flower. She send thank you, and that she "had never seen a hero before. Where they really going to kill Blackfang."
The next day, the fought their way through the first two goblins at the door, the five goblins arguing. They drank from the fountain. They had sparred three of the goblins, and after showing them the black tooth they had from evidence. The goblins pointed. They tied the goblins up.
I had misread the map/adventure and thought that the path was a 20ft drop and not a 20ft cliff above them, so the sorcerer threw the goblins over the side to "anchor the rope". Cleric was appalled. This also "woke" the skeletons who attacked the first two to climb down (sorcerer and fighter). When the cleric finally got down, she did her AoE cleric thing and totally destroyed the two remaining skele's.
Then next room, black fang circled the room and landed on the opposite side of the room. The whole moon disappearing thing all made sense. The broken bones came from being picked up and dropped. And that's where we stopped.
All in all, it was a fun game, with perhaps 10 mins of prep time.
Review (or things to note):
After playing in a couple 4e campaign if felt that with the later encounters, starting with the five goblins, the enemy AC seemed a bit to high (unless I'm doing something wrong). AC: 16. The fighter had +4 to hit, which was the best in the group, rogue was +1 (+3 range, with no precise shot), cleric was +1. Even with flanks most the PCs we're not hitting 50% of the time. Granted combat in PFBB is a lot faster than 4e, but still, I can recall 3 whole rounds were the PC were hitting no one, even with flanks. Bad rolls, I know, bad enough they might not have hit AC: 12, but still, it wasn't building tension. It was just sort of annoying. The battle starting taking long enough I subtracted a hit point or two, so that they were one-shoting, just to keep excitement alive. I still try to keep it so they are hitting mooks around 55-60% of the time. Players just have more fun when that is the case.
NPC damage level was great though, 1-2 points was my average roll on a 1d4, and they felt the sting, since it took a while to hit something.
The pawns are a bit to tall to mix with the prepainted minis from Wizards or WizKids. I was standing, so I could see, but the players that were sitting, had a hard time figuring out who was who and who was where. One solutions is to not mix them, but I think I read/heard from Paizo was that the idea was to be able to use both.
On the good side, combat was really fast. I think we'll leave AoO out, even after we transition to the Core Rule Book.
The basic options were easy to explain to new players. I think once we get to Core they will appreciate the plethora of options Paizo has developed since CRB release.
So I have 3 new players to TTRPG, and one player that has lots of 3.5 experience.
Anyone have a suggestion on how to narratively meld the adventure in the BB to Kingmaker? I really like Sandpoint, but I want to maintain the fidelity of Golarian. So I'd like to get the players from Sandpoint to Restov and have it make sense.
Also, the 3.5 player already has a character in mind, which is a sorcerer, and does anyone have any experience combining non-BB classes with the BB versions. We can leave out all the non-BB rules (AoO, Combat Maneuvers, etc). I just was wondering if there were going to be any problems with doing this. Maybe only let him take spells that are in the BB and let him respec latter.
I have a bunch of new players that aren't all that familiar with TTRPGs or the Pathfinder Campaign Setting.
Which Pathfinder Paizo product would be best to have them read to get a taste of the flavor of the campaign world? I think the Inner Sea guide is a bit much. Is there another sourcebook, that does a good job, without giving to much away in terms of things characters just wouldn't know.
We are running Kingmaker, and I'm looking for something similar to the Player's guide to Kingmaker, but Inner Sea focused.
Been playing on and off for about 18 years (mostly off). Consider myself a veteran of DnD 1e, 2e, 3.5, and 4e.
Bought a few PF books because they looked awesome and 3.5 was my favorite edition of DnD thus far. Fell in love with the production quality, and quality of care of the developers that seems apparent from the message boards.
Paizo, seems to me, to be a hobby company run by hobbyists (that are still extremely business savy), and that is awesome.
I'm putting together a new group of players here in Denver; one hasn't played since 2e, one is a 3.5 player, one is a lite player of DnD (all editions), and the last has never played before. I will convince them each to buy one Paizo product, either Core RB or something I don't have. If you are in Denver and interested in filling our fifth spot, please let me know.
I'm going to run Kingmaker.
I own Core Rules, Bestiary 1, Kingmaker 1-6, and Advanced Players Guide. Which other books do you think are must haves and how has that product enhanced your game? Please don't answer the first part of that without answering the second part.
Also probably going to get a case of the pathfinder battles minis. Already own the black dragon. Though I swore off WoW, I'm giddy of the the thought of playing a PF MMO. I hope it's good, and if other Paizo products are any indication, I'm think there's a good chance that it will be.
It's my first attempt at running a published campaign, not to mention AP. I've ran tens of campaign arcs levels 1-12 usually, in 2e, 3.5, 4e. I bought a bunch of Pathfinder books because of how fun they are to read and because of the high production quality.
I'd like to try and illicit some advice from veterans. Veterans of APs in general, but also veterans that have run Kingmaker specifically.
I plan to have 5 PCs. We are a busy group, so I actually only expect to have 4 PC attend on average.
How important is it to have 1 character of each power type represented. If so which ones can we not live without? By power type I mean, divine caster/healer, arcane, martial, rogues. (In order to play the modules as written, and not to create more work for myself).
What materials should I buy besides the KM vol 1-6 and Guide to the River Kingdoms?
Any advice on particular minis that are frequently useable through out the campaign?
Any dangers I should avoid, or seek out!
Any general advice would also be appreciated. Also, it's not to late to give a review of what you though of the AP if you manage to finish it, scale of 1-10 (10 being the shizzle).
