Ma Gi's page

So my friends and I just got to book 2 and have begun divvying up the governmental roles. Then we thought, rather than hire NPCs to fill in the gaps we'd all make secondary characters. I thought about doing something a bit different for the Spy Master and suggested I make a druid. It seems pretty cool because I could use nature to spy and also the druid tends to be neutral/objective, so wouldn't likely be swayed by outside influences or his own motives.

I was wondering what archetypes/feats/traits/spells/magic items/strategies you think would be helpful in accomplishing this. For example, I saw the Pack Lord archetype that lets you have multiple animal companions and empathic link with them like a familiar.

Also we like to play with some party intrigue and so I was thinking about sending secret messages to the DM of various ways to try and weed out if there are any traitors in our party/secondary characters.

For example, one of the PCs secretly turned in a bounty and gained a large sum of money. He wasn't very covert about it, but we didn't know exactly how much he got. But then when we said like, "Dude we need that for the kingdom," he said "oh here's 5000gp" like it was nothing. So we kind of suspected him of potentially being a spy/thief. So I thought maybe feed him info/string him along via the Spy Master to see what he's up to whether it's treason or stealing from the kingdom or if he is in fact innocent.

If you have ideas on how to weed out certain potential problems within the party for various other PCs, without my actions swaying them to do wrong, let me know also.

So my friends and I thought about ways to make magic more interesting, especially learning spells, especially the ones that every spell caster gets by default, such as invisibility, fireball, summon spells, or whatever. We thought making it so you had to collect certain spells from magical creatures such as dragons, lamasus, demons, angels, etc. could be interesting.

So I'd like your help to present some of those too common/powerful spells and/or creatures that could teach you. And maybe ways to locate said creatures or what they might want in return.

Example:
Lammasu; teaches greater invisibility and dimension door; they want wisdom and learning; they will only teach those who prove themselves good-hearted and just;

Legion Archon; teaches greater teleport; they want to know how you have spread peace and mercy in the world; they want help defeating some demons that are reeking havoc nearby;

Imp; teaches invisibility and commune; they want you to pull a vile prank; they want your soul;

Green Dragon; teaches dominate person; they want gold and treasure;

Hey so I've been working on a spell idea for a while. It's not really "new" more of just a mixture of a few spells and fits with my character so I wanted your opinions on its mechanics.

6th level Abjuration
20ft radius of bright light (as daylight) w/ 20ft more of other light
All within the 20ft radius are affected by Magic Circle against Evil and gain the +2 AC, saves, etc against evil creatures.
Evil outsiders (undead too?) can't enter as per Magic Circle against Evil without SR or Will save.
The spell is centered on the caster and follows them around.
Duration is 1 min per level.

Sorry it's not formatted but you get the idea. It's similar to repulsion which is 6th level, except the repelling is limited to evil outsiders and maybe undead. The radius is fixed instead of variable and they get bonuses against evil. Also it gives a little light (I imagine beams of light projecting from the ground in a circle that wards off evil)

What do you think?

So in general save vs death effects are kind of lame, mostly when fighting one bigger dude. Either it works and instant win, or it doesn't and there is little reason not to keep trying. There are other spells that are similar, but still have a chance of survival if the save is failed. I'm thinking of harm and disintegrate. Both do a lot of damage, but you can reasonably survive on a failed save.

Example One: fighting a dragon, he gets baleful polymorphed because he rolled bad and encounter over.
Example Two: Dragon gets suffocated over and over and will probably always make the save, but is still staggered and loses a lot of its power as a dragon to do all of its bites, claws, wings, tail, etc.

One thing I thought about would be to house rule that such effects would be delayed, such as baleful polymorph decreasing their size each round until they fully turn into whatever little animal and suffocate staggering them the first round, and then dropping them unconscious, etc.

Another idea is just to self regulate and not cast such spells on obviously powerful monsters, since your character would probably not believe it possible to affect such monsters with spells-like that and instead rely on buffing/debuffing/other spells that would more likely work.

So I was wondering what you all think? and any experiences you have that have been successful.

I need some ideas of things to furnish an air themed dungeon. It should be around 8th level. The point of the dungeon is that the eye of a god is supposed to be there which is a large orb that is controlling the weather in the local region. So I also need to figure out how to disable such an orb. The bad guys of the campaign are the ones who activated it, but they just need it to cause a diversion whilst they do a more devious thing.

So I had this idea for a Paladin who was technically LG as per the requirements but really only followed the Code of Ethics for his order to the letter, but found loop holes.

Examples: Thou shalt not kill. (But he still beats people up)
Thou shalt not lie. (But he only tells part of the truth)
Thou shalt not work with evil. (But he justifies that evil is arbitrary that if there is a good reason, like common objectives its okay)
etc.

So is this bending too much the LG alignment? Or is he still lawful because he follows the code? Or is he more chaotic because he bends the rules? and still good because he still has good intentions? or evil because he is trying to cheat the system?

Does it really matter that he is goody goody paladin?

So I was thinking of a campaign based around a Beholder as the main bad guy. But I can't seem to get my ideas in one direction/having difficulties coming up with ideas to flesh it out. Any ideas would be appreciated.

So it would be called "In the Eye of the Beholder." Kinda like the saying so it would play off of that a little.

Main Antagonist - Beholder
Other antagonists - Lamias who disguise themselves to lure PCs or something.
Lair - would be a cave or castle or something

Other ideas - I want to make sure that a large variety of abilities/skills would be necessary and useful so that way everyone would have a chance to shine.

But I need help to flesh things out. Like plot hooks. Motives of beholder etc.

I thought it would be fun to construct a campaign with the community to see how you all play homemade campaigns, etc.

I need help with the murder mystery part of my adventure I'm writing. Basically the PCs are locked inside an old keep with a group of twelve friendly elven rangers. One of these elves is a vampire (the murderer) and the rest is just figuring out who.

Somethings I've thought of are:
- Earlier in the quest I describe the killer as 'a little pale'.
- They'll find a dead elf with punctures in his neck.
- They'll see an elf who has blood on his lip and says its from the fight earlier (truth)
- A shadow demon is also in the area and can add havoc.
- Most of the elves should survive (six or more)

But I need other ideas/events/advice on running this part.

Thanks.

Chimeric Coils
You can expend a spell of any spell level into the coil-like bracers as a standard action to animate them into a small animated object, for 1 minute per spell level, which is bolstered additionally based on the spell level. For each spell level higher than 1st it gains an additional ability chosen from the two which may be gained more than once.
Increase Size: +3 to CMB/CMD, +1 to hit, +2 dmg, increased weapon dice, +10 hp, -1 AC, +1 construction point, takes up more space
Increase Power: +2 to hit, +1 dmg, +5 hp, +1 Natural AC

So basically its like a summon / animate object spell which is activated by casting a spell. It doesn't matter if you have summon monster prepared or known or even able to cast and it lasts longer so I think it might be more useful than summon monster in some cases. Its hard to determine a price since it doesn't cast a spell for you and gains additional benefit based on how powerful a spell is put into it. What do you think it should be priced at?

Any other suggestions for improvement are also welcome.

After reading the Drizzt books I've been thinking about a campaign where the PCs are drow and must live their lives in Menzoberranzan, goto either the fighter school or the wizard's acadamy. They would go through training and rankings as they would but I'm wondering what else I can do?

-Have the PCs make up a house w/ background (more I like it the higher rank they'll be and better starting equipment)
-Let them design bonuses for their piwafwi
-Training sessions
-Ranking Tournaments
-A plot happening at school for someone to rise in rank?
-Make the PCs come up with a plot like they're the villains?

Any suggestions, thoughts, comments, etc. would be appreciated.

Are there any other variants for the druid besides Wolf Shaman in APG, which would allow me to choose the Travel domain?

I want to have a 1st Barbarian/Druid character to have 50ft base speed.

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

Recently my GM has decided he didn't like how fighting defensively works and says you should be able to defend yourself as well as you can attack. The rule is thus. You can subtract up to you full attack bonus with the weapon you are using to add the same amount to your AC, effectively giving everyone an uncapped Combat Expertise feat for free.

Anyone else think this is broken? If yes, how would I abuse the rule so he'll want to change it. I have already suggested alternatives like only your BAB and unless you have C.E. it's only 2att:1ac ratio but he just won't listen.

EDIT: The subtraction applies to all bonuses to attack: ability bonuses, magic item bonuses, feat bonuses, etc. Just to make that clear.

I have a question, how do you go about making an adventure/quest based in a dungeon?
A. Do you draw out the map then add encounters and flesh out the dungeon.
B. Do you create the encounters then add a dungeon map for them to fit in.
C. Do you draw the map and add encounters when ever you draw a room.
D. Do you completely randomly generate a dungeon.
E. Do you do something completely different which works much better that I didn't think of.

So I'm wonder what the Acrobatics DC would be on stone stairs slicked with oil. Also do any other penalties apply such as x2 movement? From what I can tell its just DC12 (10 base + 2 slippery)? Or is it considered sloped on stairs? Maybe just treat this as a non-magical grease spell?

And then just on a side note what would happen if the oil caught on fire?

I'm trying to make a list of random encounters, events, hazards and more so you can just roll and get more than just "1d6 zombies". These are supposed to be random at least somewhat significant events for in town, on the road, or anywhere at all. They don't need to be hostile necessarily and don't necessarily need to be the next adventure hook or get the PCs involved. I have an appendix of tables in the document saved on my computer to randomly determine certain things about different rolls. The appendix tables are something like roll 1dX on this table to find out what someone is selling, what cache of supplies you find, or something like that.

Rules
1- It shouldn't be too specific
2- It can have random rolls associated with it
3- It must fit into generally any climate, world or current happenings.
4- It can be silly but should work for serious players too.

Here's what I've got so far: (some of these I have taken from different forums or based them off of ideas on different forums so I didn't come up with 100% of these.)

Check it out HERE.

So go ahead and post your ideas. Hopefully people can get behind this.