Lewis Varner's page

And of course: there is also the very real possibility that there is something terrifying behind that door.

If you are of a particular mind to set the mood of the game, and therefore how your players approach your game; here is a lesson I learned.

Kill them.

It's not usually fun. As a player, it sucks. There are two different kinds of dying however. The one the gm throws at you to be a dick, or due to inexperience, and there is the one we as the players choose to jump into. We can walk away. Once you make that a possibility; that the players should be very careful about what they do sometimes, what they poke with a stick, because you will in fact let whatever it is take an arm, there will be a considerably less amount of...bravado. The willingness to just kick the door down because were players, and we can't be killed. They will certainly understand that the game is not easy mode, which I have found makes characters less chaotic evil.

It is largely on your part, however, to know exactly what may or may not be behind that door. If, say, its not supposed to be open, and is beyond the scope of the adventure, take that as an opportunity to foreshadow events, spring a little encounter, or otherwise reward them with 'something'. Even if its bad. Even a little something. Heck, a latrine with a corpse whose face has been opened up and his brain pan is now used for a tiny garden of fungus from the little ogrekin sewer goblin living in the corner... Regardless, its a door; always consider the possibility that the players will open that door, even if they don't, its coding hidden in your game they never saw, and will probably never know about. But they certainly will when if they open the door and the game freezes...

As a side note; "Welcome to Wizards" is a very, very, very profound statement. Watch Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit if you have not done so. The dichotomy of power is a very real thing, and as a gm, most of your time later in the game (lvl 8+) should really be spent asking all spell casters--very specifically--what spells do you have, and how many. In the event of said wizard, ask him, after every rest, what spells do you have. Not a bad idea even at the start, so the players don't get lazy with monitoring their spell availability/usage. If you don't lean on them to do so, they won't, and you will see fireball about eight times in a game day. (make sure to melt the treasure). You do you, but spell casters define reality, break rules, waste armies, control armies, stop time, and usually do it in a single standard action. Non-casters swing a weapon. Smart non-casters carry ranged weapons. :(

Happy Story telling :D

I wrote out a very long explanation for this question, and realized that you are probably a very busy person, and it would just be polite to try and minimize the flood of stuff you will need to read on a daily basis.

First, I ask you to inform the rest of the staff that they do an excellent job and shutouts of appreciation from this subscriber :D

In short, is there any official information that goes a little more into detail about the whereabouts, plots, machinations, status, and reawakening 'plans' for:
Belimarius
Krune
Xanderghul

I find terribly little information on them. I vaguely recall seeing something offhanded about a post or blog you (James) made about the Runelords, but I do not quite know if it would help in this case, or even what it was called.

A small chunk about Belimarius I have found, and some options, but they are more or less in the view of a scholar of modern Magnimar it seems. Super super vague. Alaznist is a whole different story. I have not looked up a lot about her recently, I just remember it being contradictory; one said she was about to win her war with Karzoug just before Earthfall, but I think (and I do not have the book on my person at the time) the continuing the campaign chapter in RotR mentioned something about her literally caught in the midst of a summoning ritual to bring about the Oliphaunt of Jandelay...because she was desperate or something. Not sure. I can look at what I have on her throughout the copious books I have.

Now, what I find exceptionally funny, is that she was trying to 1:) summon, 2:) an exceptional powerful and pointedly tricky thing to summon 3:) for being a sin wrath specialist...who does not even have conjuration. Just want to throw that out there :P

I have an exceedingly complex mega campaign (15 campaigns, I have a timeline for each to coincide with relevant events and when they will effect the other games...and how; and I changed up the timelines a little bit, most of the AP's are happening at the same exact time, and the interactions between them are an incredible. Saul has, alas, so far the only one who seemingly has nary a glimmer of hope for a future. The remainder of his offspring are well included and loved NPC's :D

I have Karzoug, Soreshen, Xin, and Zutha covered in either AP's, or Paths of my own. (particular is Zutha's in which a necromancer pc has the idea of trying to test out if its possible to do a hostile takeover of a lich's phylactery, and if so, replace the Runelord of Gluttoney, and the Whispering Tyrant once and for all--will be a 1-20 10 mythic kinda game)

Case in point, I am trying to make Rise of the Ruenlords THE campaign title. A wizard declared herself Runelord of New Thassilon and is taking measures to secure and elevate Golarion under a single (ish) direction; an organization as opposed to a nation. The truncated explanation of this campaign was almost two pages and figured if you were interested in more, you would ask. :)

Cheers

Hello

(this excessively long post is in relevance mostly to the actual roles the players will play as officers, and making it tangible, as opposed to what exactly they want to play class wise. There are a ton of options. Absolutely ridiculous amount. You could have a charismatic Vigilante, who uses his disguise skills and possibly even class feature to change the designation of the ship, so your crew could (like we did, though without the vigilante class,) be the Ivory Corsairs pirates, ironically manned mostly by women, but when approached, becomes the Stained Sheet, a traveling sealocked bordello run by the handsome and witty Kitsune 'priest' of Calistra (he was a prostitute by profession, pirate by need, and Sorcerer by blood).

I am well aware that you said no third party things, and I totally respect that. I personally usually find them distasteful, and not designed entirely with the parameters of most of the adventure paths in mind, nor in sync with the design team at Paizo. A very quick synopsis of myself is that I am running a time line in which (with the exception of Carrion Crown, and Kingmaker; both of which having been completed 50 years, and 20 years prior, respectively) where almost every AP is taking place at the same time. Yes. Jade, Mummies, and Iron Gods are set to take place later. My players have fourteen characters each (its a ridiculous amount of work) and I am running Just about as many campaigns, with tie ins, and noting things down which effect other games (Reign of winter froze the ports of Absolom which increased trade through Skull and Shackles, closed down the mountain valley for Runelords when they assaulted the fortress of giants, sent a storm which nearly froze everything in book one of Serpents skull; the final event of Book one of Second darkness sent a title wave that flooded half of poor Sandpoint and the lower reaches of Magnimar whilst Shattered Star was trying to reach the pillars...you get the idea. Anyway; my point--Look at Fire As She Bears, from Frog God Gaming.

We played throughout S&S, tied with the timeline, where a friend ran it. Were now neck deep into act V, and whilst the entire campaign was great; I myself played a Kitsune Enchanter Sorcerer named Vexx who solved 90% of our issues, is looked upon as the captain (he is NOT the captain, and generally refuses to have that kind of responsibility and daft amount of work put on his plate), and we have had explosions of fun, what I really felt lacking, when it even happened, was ship combat. It was bad, and for a campaign like this, where Ship to Ship combat can have its perfect time to shine, I found the lack of engaging rules to give it any real spotlight; when it did, it was one or two characters (usually Gunslinger Sniper and Enchanter) completely owning the entire encounter. Shout out to the witch, and stacking of different curse/mind effecting effects on poor bosses to have to roll like four times and take the worst result, and wreck their ships, but I digress. Ship combat was a chore we shied away from, did it quickly to not leave to many players out in the cold, and it all could have been so much more with this supplement.

The problems I had, as did the GM who ran, and all the players, is that the Ship customization, and rule sets presented, were very lack luster, and completely vague on many many many issues. You will see items for ships, and even see times where your players (as pirates) will take ships. Each was rather cookie cutter, and very dull. What to do with them, and the implementation of what the items did, was pretty much flavor. Even though the ship mastheads had in game mechanical effects, we never used it once...any of them. From the dragon breath to the curse on ram (Spoiler alert). Maybe none of this will be a problem for you. Most of our fun came directly from just role playing with each other. Ship combat was a...thing...in the background...that we mostly ignored.

FaSB (Fire as She Bears) re approaches ship combat, gives full rules for building ships like characters, outfitting them (even with armor...magic, different builds, materials, etc.) but also re-invents combat for ships so that each role on the ship is important, and it does combat on Ship to Ship combat incredibly well. Its combat system has the specific goal of include everyone at the table and make them useful, and make them FEEL like officers. Everybody gets their own CRB turn, and then a second roll in the initiative gives them their officer actions, directing crew under them to carry out orders. The navigator is not just a Profession Sailor checker. The Captain does not just shout orders. Cannonade fire targets locations on ship, killing or debilitating precious crew, a resource, that once runs low, becomes the burden of captain to decide to man the guns or put out the fires...It has vastly increased the fun of Ship to Ship combat, and I wish very much that we had it at the START of S&S rather than damn well near the end. We missed a huge amount of opportunity due to the chore of mindless combat on two platforms, which was more or less skipped over for a majority of the campaign.

Note that it is intended for Pathfinder, and was written more or less for, but not exclusive to, the Razor coast setting stuff. I was so impressed with FaSB that I started a different game where I mashed Cerulean Seas, Razor Coast, and Freeport supplements into one large Age of Sails setting. None of those are needed for FaSB however. And no I do not work for FGG, and I am not trying to adv for them...I just saw hat you may be starting it, or are in the early phases, and felt strongly enough to suggest this little book for this specific campaign, as a result of my experiences as a player in said AP

The first time a GM ran us through the game, He instead chose another character to be the inheritor of Tar's powers. One night, my paladin, and magus, were up with her doing research (I got to play two characters as we only had 3 pc's and the gm did not want to run a npc as it would interfere with the game quality and it would ultimately make metagamed choices), when the door came to a knock. Then we proceeded to have a 'cutscene'. Paladin went to go get the door, and Kendra absolutely insisted she get the door. The blood splattered vandalism's, unruly mob attempting to halt her father from being buried in the cemetery, the strange stirg attacks, and request from Prof. Lorrimor to help and watch over her did not seem to have any viable points in why he should have gotten the door. Kendra answered the door, and a zombie killed her outright without our ability to do anything about it. Do date, because the final third of the entire campaign was 'narrated' as to what happened; a die roll would not be made again for the entire campaign until i demanded it at the end which I will get to-- we came to the vampires, where the Paladin(now also dabbled in inquisitor) established a tentative truce in order to hunt the whispering way, where he would deal with them at some point after, followed the breadcrumbs to its conclusion and shortly after, the bard, who came within a point of death multiple times a session, every session, disappeared. We thought kidnapped, but ultimately decided to willingly go to the tower of doom). We traveled overland as fast as we could. The Magus who was pregnant by then, could not come. The bard was no where to be found yet, so the Paladin and ranger both went through the whole dungeon, alone, and it was described to us as creepy and hard, but we made it through. at the top, whoever the hell was the one in charge of making the elixer (the guy in charge of...places) gave us an ultimatem. turn back or die. Of course neither of those were chosen, and we marched to the top. The gm proceeded to say "you die. Fiora (The bard) drinks the potion and his mind gets shoved into some recess with a straight jacket and the game ends. I wanted to know why--he said because there was a huge black dragon, a 20th lvl necromancer, and a 16th lvl magus vs the two of you. I demanded a battle. We won; the paladin and the ranger managed to beat all of it and not kill Fiora. Thank you Deathward. but regardless, the first time around was not very satisfying at the end. Just very bitter.

another friend who had been playing in the game (The bards Player) has decided to run it with mostly the same characters. We will see what happens this time around.

Artanthos indeed has it right; Alignment Channel specifically is there so you can channel your holy energy to deal damage to Evil Outsiders or vica versa. One could be a Anti-paladin who chooses alignment channel (evil) in order to channel his otherwise negative energy to heal his Feindish servant. Maybe he is also a Hellknight and has an Erynies Cohort, or otherwise summoned Devil. Now bam, a villain has a viable heal without helping the enemies, and without damaging any other cultist which may be with them at the time. Without Alignment Channel, this IS NOT POSSIBLE. Otherwise, why would holy powers be remotely useful against Demons or Devils? There is the Holy weapon property, but where does that power come from? As well as Radiant Charge? Expending Lay on hands (positive energy) to deal radiant damage, regardless of living or dead. Be that as it may,any outsider who could channel its own deities powers to heal/harm could not do so for its own wounds. What kind of sense could that make? "You are my angel of wrath, but...my clerics nor the powers I bustow upon you are capable of healing you?" NOWHERE IN THE OUTSIDER SUPTYPE/TYPE DOES IT STATE THAT OUTSIDERS ARE IMMUNE TO POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE DAMAGE. In essence, the only 'things' not targetable by heal spells are really constructs and swarms(for single target instances, as it would do nothing). These both however are still targetable. They just have no effect. If a player said I am going to cast cure light wounds on the construct, I will warn them, see them cast the spell, touch the construct, and burn the spell to no effect as there is nothing there for the positive energy to effect. Elemental is a grey area that I cannot entirely speak upon; they may or may not be viable (While they are not undead or constructs, I cannot see how positive energy would heal 'water' or 'fire' or 'wind'. I know there is an Elemental Channel feat, but I have never looked into nor had to deal with healing them. Something I think I will do.

We had this discussion many times, as one of my frequent players loves the summoner. A Synth Summoner is screwed when it comes to healing, because short of rejuv Eidolon, the Eid's HP is considered temp and therefor not replenished for cure's such as Heal, channel, Cure light-Critical wounds, et cetera. Since for all intents and purposes the rejuv refils the Eids HP bar, it only works for that bar (I.E. it does not heal the summoner himself even though they are 'fused' because other healing will not work on the Eidilon, only the summoner. Likewise, if rejuv did not work on the Synth Eidilon, than it would not be viable, because the Synth could not ever see his eidolon heal from damage, and therefore make the archetype completely nonviable.)The normal summoner however indeed has an Eidolon who is capable of being healed. It is living. It has stated that the Eidilon does not heal naturally (a specified variant on a living creature in regards to natural healing). It can drink potions of cure light wounds, is subject to negative levels, it can receive ability damage, it can be restored, and it can be healed.

In all, the rules as written were play tested in the spirit of how they were intended to be played, and has the publication space because of this. Until I come across someone with the publishing and playtesting authority (Like James Jacobs) who states that 'No, an Eidolon cannot be healed by a cleric), Than I say treat the Eidolon as a living creature as per a summon monster spell. When they die, they are banished back to their plane. Same with Eidolon. A summoned Eagle can be healed, same as a deer we use to run down an explosive trap filled hallway (it has PTSD now; were working on therapy).