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You find yourself in a dank ten by ten room that smells like it was, until recently, inhabited by livestock. "The Hell?" You ask. "Why don't we get a Magnificent Mansion like the other group?"

Well unfortunately your DM only has limited spells per day and a few old moldy magic items and the other group asked for an OOC thread first. If you brought some magic of your own go ahead and spruce it up if you like.

This is the OOC thread for your out of game commentary. You don't have to just talk shop though, feel free to chat about whatever you like.

As you plop down on a La-Z-Troll recliner an unseen servant brings you a glass of fine wine.

"Take a load off." A spectral voice says. "You're safe for the night from your enemies. Stay awhile and chat."

This is the thread for all off topic discussion from your Eberron Game. Talk about anything you like, from your DM's tendency for seplling errors to what's up in your favorite TV shows.

Prologue

Rodi swallowed hard as he gazed upon the cavern entrance. His people needed him to succeed and so he would, he hadn’t traveled this far or fought this hard to give up right on the doorstep of his people’s salvation With a torch in one hand and his bastard sword in the other the leather clad barbarian started forward into the darkness. He picked his way through a winding tunnel for the better part of an hour, fighting to control his anxiety step by step until he stood in a vast chamber which was bisected by a seemingly bottomless trench.

“Who are you?” A sleepy voice asked from somewhere in the dark, its sonorous tone echoing weirdly throughout the chamber.

Rodi nearly jumped out of his skin and spun in a circle, raising his torch to inspect every stalagmite and stalactite as quickly as possible to find the source of the voice. His manic search came up empty so he slowed his spin, trying not to appear frightened.

“Rodi Dagen, Brave of the Storm Crows Clan.” He announced, succeeding in keeping his voice strong and his tone level. When no acknowledgement was immediately forthcoming he asked a question of his own. “Who am I speaking to? Are you the one the Shifters call the Knowing Man?”

“Perhaps.” The voice mused. “I have been dreaming for a long time and I’m not entirely clear about what’s going on in the world outside. Tell me; what year is it?”

“The Year of the Seventh Star, fourth cycle.” Rodi answered hesitantly.

“Which would make it what? Year thirteen hundred and thirty-three on the Galifar Calendar or there about.” The voice was sounding more wakeful and cogent. “Interesting… our rebirth is nearly at hand. Why did I let time slip away from me so?”

“I…what?” Rodi responded, trying to process the mysterious voice’s words.

“I was there you know.” The voice continued. “I saw it all. The Last War they called it, the conflict to end all conflicts, what a joke! Compared to what followed it was the gentle breeze before the hurricane.”

Completely confused about what the voice was referring to and almost intoxicated with fear over this sinister, perhaps mad voice’s rambling Rodi decided to present his case in as clear a way as he could manage and then, if the situation called for it, flee.

“Powerful one!” He shouted, getting down on both knees and bowing to the darkness. “The Daelkyr armies are marching into the lands of my people, we are helpless against them but an ancient legend tells of a powerful Scourge that is buried in this cavern that may-“

“Be silent.” The voice commanded in an offhanded manner, shutting Rodi up instantly. “Perhaps my fellow ‘Scourge’ and I would be interested in helping you, but it will take us some time to awaken. In the mean time it behooves me to tell you our tale so that at least one mortal in this world knows the full truth of why the darkness is now so all consuming. History must not be forgotten you know. Sit a while and relax your shivering body, for this is a bit of a long story. It all began in the year nine hundred and ninety eight....”

Prologue

King Kaius roared in agony as the burning brand was applied again to the bare skin of his chest, adding another, slightly different magical rune to the long bands of script being systematically seared into his flesh.

“Damn you!” He snarled at the impassive Warforged artisan who calmly tortured him. Once again he tried to call upon his dark powers to shift form and escape the chains that bound him but the only result was a quivering of his flesh and a shooting pain behind his eyes.

I must be ensorcelled. Kaius thought as hatred warred with fear over which was to be his dominate emotion. How did I get here? He asked himself. The last thing I remember is being in my throne room talking to an envoy from Breland. I was surrounded by minions and body guards, what happened? How was I taken captive?

Kaius hung suspended by chains over a pit of hot coals in a cell in some nameless dungeon. His only companion since he regained consciousness a few hours past was his Warforged tormentor who went about the business of scarring his flesh without a single word or visible emotion.

There was a loud screeching noise as the heavy iron door that provided the only visible means of egress to the cell was thrown open. A slightly built figure entered the room.

Kaius couldn’t immediately tell much about his visitor for the person wore the heavy hide of a black bear as a long flowing robe and had the bear’s fanged upper jaw pulled over his head like a cowl leaving only his lower face visible. Two black onyx gems glittered from the eye sockets of the bear’s skull reflecting the glow of the coals in such a way as to appear as tiny flames themselves. In his left hand he bore a crystal goblet which was filled with some dark liquid that he raised to his lips and tasted.

“Nightwood Ale.” The strange figure commented. .“As bitter and uninteresting as the Karrnathi people themselves.” He let the goblet drop to the ground and it shattered, spilling the expensive drink across the floor to mix with the older, less savory liquids that decorated the torture chamber floor.

“What is going on here?” Kaius demanded as the Warforged paused in his dark ministrations. “Are you some new minion of Vol’s sent to torment me?”

“Vol?” The figure asked, seeming genuinely surprised. “That hedge mage? No, I’m not interested in anything as petty as her ambitions. While her Emerald Claw has been useful at times, I have more important matters to attend to.” He turned to the Warforged. “How is the Dominius Enuncia coming along?”

The Warforged gave a slight nod in response.

The strange figure’s thin lips pulled up in a smile.

“Soon you will be my willing slave ‘King Kaius ir’Wynarn the Third’ and the best part is you won’t even know it.” The smile became a wide grin.

“My warlords won’t allow this, even now my agents will be seeking me out, you’re dead! Dead, you hear me, dead!” Kaius threatened angrily, but a tight fist of cold dread clenched at his heart. He had been through some extremely hair raising episodes in the past but this? What was even happening here?

The figure shook his head slowly side to side.

“No one even knows anything’s amiss, my minions are exceedingly capable at what they do. By the end of the day you’ll be back on the throne, doing my bidding.” He turned away, laughing.

“Who are you? What is it you want?” Kaius spat at the figure’s back.

“My name is Himetsu.” The cloaked man answered over his shoulder. “And you’ll find out what I want soon enough, with you as my puppet and my agents in The Twelve making the houses dance to my tune all of Khorvaire will soon shudder before my ambition! But don’t despair too much your majesty. At least this way the people of Karrnath will get to live, I would hate to have to do to them what I did to Cyre…”

Kaius screamed his hate as, once more, the brand blackened his flesh.

This is the place to begin discussing how we would like to form parties for this Eberron game. I have decided that I want to place a hard limit to the numbers of players in each group which I am setting at 5. However I am willing to run more then two games if necessary to give everyone a chance to play the type of game they want(yes I can handle this, no worries.) I figure we will give this a few days to work itself out, so chat with your fellow players and figure out how well you think your in game desires and character mechanics mesh and compliment each other and who you'd like to have at your side for the foreseeable future in the dark and dangerous world of Eberron!

Greetings and salutations all, I’m starting this thread to gauge possible interest in a PbP Eberron game. It would be a game starting at 6th level with the following considerations:

Material from PF core and APG would be automatically allowed. Any other PF, 3.5, or OGL material would be allowed subject to DM approval. (Eberron material will quite likely to be approved because we are, after all, playing in Eberron)

Characters start with 20,000 gp worth of treasure.

I do not use rolling or point buy rather you may simply choose your starting stats which may be anything between 3 and 18 before racial adjustments. This allows for maximum flexibility in choosing stats to fit your character concept. Yes this does allow you to have 18s across the board if you choose to, I’m fine with this but at least have the decency to tell me a good tale about why your character is such a paragon =)

Your character can select up to two traits from the APG. You may make up your own traits if you wish (subject to DM approval).

I use Hero Points from the APG instead of Eberron’s action points. You start with the max 3.

What to expect: I run a largely player driven game. The players tell me what their character’s ambitions are (often tied to their back stories) and I craft a game around that (with all the complications that arise whenever a character is trying to achieve any great goal).

I’m looking for 4 or 5 players who have a basic working knowledge of the PF game. My only real requirement is that you be a nice person who plays well with others. Party synergy (from a social standpoint) is important to me and while interparty conflicts do happen I expect players to be kind and mature with each other. Beyond that I enjoy all player styles and can DM for them quite effectively.

House Rules:

The five main things that are different in my games are as follows:

I basically ignore encumbrance rules. They bore me. If you could reasonably carry something then you can.

I straight up just tell the players what magic items do, this makes spells like identify largely useless. The only exception is artifacts which often have storyline powers in my games that I obfuscate for the sake of fun. Analyze Dweomer, Legend Lore or similar spells are necessary to figure out how these tricksy items work.

Some spells I prefer to work as the 3.5 version. The list includes rope trick, force cage, save or die spells like finger of death and implosion, divine power and mind blank.

I often times ignore WBL in the players favor.

I run combat in a far looser and more narrative way then RAW requires. I don’t use maps simply light descriptions of where the combatants are standing etc. The way this works is basically positioning is often ignored (in the players favor). If you decided to flank an enemy you have, if you drop a fireball “so it hits all the bad guys but not my friends!” you succeed. Sometimes this leads to mildly nonsensical situations (if you are imagining the action happening on a battle map), but you will never be screwed by it and it is the way I like to play so oh well.

So that about sums it up. If you have any interest in a strongly player driven Eberron game post a reply, I look forward to hearing from you.

So basically here is the situation I find myself in. For the past year I have been DMing a homebrew PF game for four of my friends that started at 1st level and has recently reached 17th level. This is by far the highest level game I have ever DMed and while we are having a blast yesterday we had a conversation that got me thinking.

So what is happening is the final confrontation with the campaign villain is coming up and we were all planning on ending the game once his evil butt was finally in the ground and we wrapped up a few story elements in a satisfying way. Now however my players are thinking that they love this game and the characters they are playing and would like me to continue it with another story arc that leads them into epic levels. I have no problem with this from a story side (I can always spin a fun new tale) but I have no idea how to handle it game mechanically. I have done a bit of research before putting this out to the community but I think I should ask for a little help. Here is what I have read so far: The PF core rule book’s rather slim notes on epic levels, The wotc 3.0 epic level handbook, and numerous threads on this website and others on the subject.

My questions off the top of my head are these:

The epic level spell system from the ELH, it seems entertaining and fun but how should I even handle this? I don’t know it well enough to decide what I should allow or not.

Are epic monsters actually worth their challenge rating or are they more or less powerful. The reason I ask is because of the experience I have already had with high level monsters where the CR seems either a little situational or just plain wonky.

What is appropriate treasure for epic levels, I know Pathfinder treasure is a bit more than 3.5 but are the numbers in the ELH even close to where I want to be?

How should I handle Pathfinder Core classes abilities increasing into epic levels, the ones that increase at a set level can just continue I suppose but how should I balance this?
Some Epic feats will work fine I think but what about ones like Ignore Material Components, in PF?

Some classic plots don’t work very well at high levels any suggestions on which ones would work well even into epic?

As farther info about the party it consists of a wizard, cleric, druid and fighter from core book only as we have only recently got the APG. 25 point buy, newer players with character’s wealth close to WBL (at little over at this point).

I’m not asking for an entire rulebook’s worth of advice about these issues (unless you want to give it) but I do want to hear the advice of veteran players who have messed around at those levels.

Also if all this has been covered on a blog or thread elsewhere feel free to just post the link =)

Hi there everyone! I'm new to Pathfinder and this is my first post on the forums so I thought I'd make it about house rules. It seems most everyone uses them and I am very eager to find out from others which ones they use and how they feel they enhance the game.

In my current game (based on the world of Berserk with some DnD conceits, i.e. high magic, high magic items) I am using the following house rules:

Initiative is a set number, we don't roll. If the monster and a PC have the same number the PC goes first. (We did this because for some reason I have a hard time keeping track of the turns and I'm so lazy I refuse to just use a marker or write it down.) This leads to the PCs always going first because they choose abilities that inflate their initiative as high as possible but I don't mind.

Area of effect damage and negative effect spells cast by PCs don't effect other PCs. We did this because we originally thought that's how it worked and once we found out that was not true we still liked it enough to keep it around. I always remind my PCs though if they play in someone else's game at some point don't keep dropping fireballs on your friends=)

Rogues get a talent at every single level and hide in plain sight is a major talent. This is for a single player who joined recently and has played pathfinder before but thinks rogues are to weak but wants to play one.

Spells that do die/level damage now do 2 die/level. This is because I give my monster's high hp but don't want damage spells to become to completely obsolete compared to save or defeat spells.

Max hp and 30 point buy for characters. My players become a great deal more invested in the game when they are playing superheroes =) Still use regular treasure though.

I never use monsters from a book but just make up the stats for them on the fly, allowing my players to know some of them if they make the appropriate knowledge checks. In general my monsters have lower AC and higher saves than most book monsters so that melee types nearly always hit even on their last attack but casters are less likely to completely disable a beast in one shot. No real complaints from casters though because if I can tell the player in real life really wants the spell he is casting to work I often fudge the numbers so he is successful.

I cheat constantly but in ways the players never figure out to make the story more dramatic and exciting. I'm very good at making a boss monster seem nearly unstoppable at first but then juggling the numbers so that the PCs win by the skin of their teeth for a emotional satisfying victory that appeared to be gained through sound game mechanics and clever play. As my players get more experienced with the game they're going to figure out at some point that I'm full of it but oh well I'm sure they'll still appreciate it.

The last two things were more play style things than house rules I guess but I'm interested in what people do with those in their games too. So please share I'd love to hear all about your house rules and play styles to get new perspectives and perhaps adopt a few of yours for my own games.