Mangenorn's page

Set wrote:

Cheliax is specifically racist to halflings, elves and tieflings.

Pretty much everyone is racist to orcs, goblinoids, gnolls, etc. ('monster' races, even non-evil ones like lizardfolk) but that might be more survival sense than racism, since a fair percentage of them will eat you as soon as talk to you.

Even if a specific country isn't racist to one or more core PC races, doesn't mean that you couldn't have racist individuals or regions.

If it serves the story, a Lumber Consortium influenced community in Andoran could be not just anti-fey, but anti-gnome and anti-elf, because of their connections to the fey / claims to the ancestral elven woodlands (which they want to be 'free' to pillage and exploit).

Why does Cheliax not like tieflings? They mainly worship Asmodeus so I would think at least devil-born tieflings would be accepted.

Tieflings in Cheliax are especially not accepted, and probably have it worse than halflings, as tieflings tend to be used in the worst possible forced labor, experimented on, thrown into ghettos... Cheliax likes to pretend that the contract Thrune has with Asmodeus puts humans firmly in charge, and they don't like to have evidence to the contrary, which tieflings are, just by existing. Throw in some extra crazy rhetoric, and a philosophy that worships strict hierarchies, tieflings end up at the bottom.

Such things usually aren't sane.

The year-long in-game mission they are on, unless I completely change the way the PF Society is running in Magniamr, will require party activities any Hellknight would refuse to participate in.

Things like: False-flag operations, vandalism, spreading false rumors, burglary, forgery, bribery of city officials (or manipulating them through deceit), framing others for crimes, etc.

I can't see any of that being things Hellknights would do, much less an aspirant being allowed to act independently to do them.

There's a solution. All the Hellknight who breaks his law has to do to atone for it is to undergo a reckoning. For the Order of the Nail, it consists of piercing flesh with sharp metal (1d6 damage, leave to heal naturally), per infraction. Creepy and all, but would be acceptable to a crazy fanatic a Hellknight would have to be to really be accepted into an order.

Goblin hero gods, obviously, Zarongel especially (god of dog killing and pyromania, goblin style). Kostchtchie, as depicted comes pretty close to being chaotic stupid himself.

In addition to Rovagug, worshiping the Horsemen would be pretty stupid, too. Zyphus encourages some pretty harebrained schemes himself, and is as low end as evil gods get. Arhiman also has a "destroy all mortals" policy.

Ghenshau is an empyreal lord of ignorance, placidity and simplicity. He's LG, though, and doesn't really match the meta ideas we're discussing here.

Some that don't get enough mentions, Korvosa, a city state with so many major ancient evils (IIRC, around 5) lurking around that it should really be a competitor to the Worldwound for a bad place to live. At least in the Worldwound you know that there's Demons around, what they're likely to do, and that you need cold iron weapons...

Dagermark, one of the river kingdoms, which is also a city where every citizen has the right to order one assassination per year, from either the Poisoner's Guild, or the (mostly) separate Assassin's Guild. What a wonderful place...

Hell's Vengeance (if I have the name right, the second Chelish AP - the evil AP)

You got the name right, but it's the third Chelish AP.

In any case, I would recommend doing a timeskip, skipping to Book 6 (which is awesome, and pretty much everything they said they want), leveling up the characters and gearing them up to WBL standard for that level by fiat. While doing a quick cut scene style telling of what roughly would happen for the characters to get to that point.

I know it's not usually done this way, but I'd really like to see them tackle Book 6.

I've seen plenty of irritating players, and a few ridiculous DMs, but my favorite bad for both come from the same campaign. And to get to that, I need to start with another bad player.

I met this first guy, let's call him Dwarf, on a recruitment thread for a roll20 RotR game. Dwarf is the kind of player that wants to be a really smart problem solver, but is more often lazy and possessing a bad understanding of the rules, and he likes to abuse other characters IC.

In that campaign, he played a Dwarf bard who found a third-party spell that depantsed people--he proceeded to use this spell on everyone who even mildly slighted him. This was later upgraded to a spell that hit people in the nuts. We later found out these spells had saving throws he wasn't giving us. He also bought a pack of six hound dogs that the DM let him control effortlessly in combat. Finally, by the end of Burnt Offerings, he paid a ship captain to fire a barrage of cannons at Nualia's hideout, and was fuming mad when the results were not a giant pile of rubble and a level up; he kept swearing we'd go back and force that captain to give us a refund.

Now, shortly after this, the campaign ended due to scheduling, as most do. And I thought that was the end of it. But a month or two later, Dwarf messaged me on Skype about a new game he was getting into--an Exalted game where we would play as Deathlords. At the time, I was between contracts, sitting at home and not doing very much. So I figured, it was time I'd just be wasting anyway, and accepted. This became the routine--Dwarf would invite me to a game, the game would last a few sessions before scheduling or terrible players/DMs would kill it, and then I wouldn't hear from him for another month or so. It was a bit like eating well-prepared pufferfish--no campaign lasted long enough to properly poison me.

This brings me to the GM of the last game I ever played with Dwarf. This final campaign was presented as a Rogue Trader game. I initially drew up my character as an Arch-Militant, but...

Congratulations, you managed to have more heresy than the average campaign of Black Crusade (Chaos RPG).

Thinking about it, my worst experience was test running a printed adventure for Only War (Imperial Guard RPG), I had a player that went a bit too out of the box when it wasn't called for, which lead to pacing issues in an extremely short timeslot. As a result, they didn't even kill the first Tyranid Warrior... wasn't my best day either.

Rub-Eta wrote:

pennywit wrote:

Each player must play a vigilante (magic child) who dresses in a different color and has a different animal as a familiar. And each of the players has access to a Huge golem modeled after its familiar ...

... what's the problem with this?

Trying to ram a square peg through the round hole that is Pathfinder is what I'd say if someone legit ran that premise past me.

There's probably far better systems out there to play Power Rangers than PF.

Funny, because there are official adventures that do that.

Mangenorn wrote:

Sorry to disappoint.

Oh, I don't think anything of it. If anything, she's an Azlanti embryo or something silly, which would explain why there was a level 11 Bard in a Tribe being ruled by a Bard of lower level(although I guess NH's machinations made the Radiant Muse way more powerful).

Radiant Muse would still outlevel an 11th level bard, even without NH's intervention.

Considering that the starting town has a wizard as it's feudal lord, it makes sense that the wizard was simply too busy to oppress his peasants properly, and he's now taking steps to rectify this situation (probably because he's pressured into it by the government), mainly by hiring thugs (PCs) to do it for him, as he has wizard things to do in his own time.

Oppressive regimes tend to be a bit messy in what can fly under them. Just because something is law doesn't mean it will be followed, or needs to be followed if the right people are bribed (though these bribes would probably have some doublethink formulas behind it, like being called "tokens of honesty", it just has the right hypocritical sound to it).

Mangenorn wrote:

Drejk wrote:

Hmmm. Azlanti as a race have +2 to all ability scores, but that would mean that Narlock was built on 4 points... When calculating her ability scores as a normal human (+2 to Cha) then it fits 15 points buy.

That's only for ancient Azlanti, last of which was Aroden (barring GM fiat for whatever plot reason). Human(Azlanti) is an ethnicity, much like Human(Ulfen). It only gives an extra language (Azlanti, obviously) and an excuse to have purple eyes with a roleplay requirement for mononymy (aka, having just one name).

At first, because we were too lazy to mess around in Hero Labs, NobodysHome and I agreed that Narlock would be Azlanti since she was a native of the Sacred Serpent and they were in Saventh-Yhi. Would she actually be considered Azlanti?

Only as far as anybody else who is still around is considered Azlanti. Nobody born in the modern era of Golarion would have the wild bonuses that the ancients had. They are the cool precursors, creatures of legend. After all, we're talking about a civilization destroyed 10k years ago. By comparison, the Great Pyramid is less than half as old.

So no, she wouldn't be even be much more Azlanti than the morlocks you met.

Sorry to disappoint.

Hmmm. Azlanti as a race have +2 to all ability scores, but that would mean that Narlock was built on 4 points... When calculating her ability scores as a normal human (+2 to Cha) then it fits 15 points buy.

That's only for ancient Azlanti, last of which was Aroden (barring GM fiat for whatever plot reason). Human(Azlanti) is an ethnicity, much like Human(Ulfen). It only gives an extra language (Azlanti, obviously) and an excuse to have purple eyes with a roleplay requirement for mononymy (aka, having just one name).

Out of curiosity, which deity?

Looks like we're getting reruns of Charu-ka fights, but without Malek dominated all the time.

IIRC, this is supposed to bean Erastil's artifact or something along those lines specifically. So, yes, he should wear it, and it should be a great honor/holy object.

For the replacement of Mahathallah cult, Folca would work even better than previously proposed solutions.

Folca is an NE Daemon Harbinger of abduction, strangers and sweets, with the net as a favored weapon, so perfect creepy cult as drop-in replacement. Charm, Evil, Travel, Trickery are his domains. You'd have to swap the devil with an advanced Ceustusdaemon for it to really fit.

Don't forget the digestive juices all over it, once it's carved out of the corpse.

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, aka Turkish Star Wars is a hilariously generic adventure film. It would have been a better choice.

By hilariously generic, I mean a guy who watched this at a party where I was watching this left for a 10 minute phone call, and, coming back, he tried to guess what happened by the weird stuff that was going on on the screen. He was wrong about the number of monsters in a particular scene.

I have to say, obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/653/

Hello Kitty parasol, that's actually an unbeatable monster.

I'd say attrition in the early stages. You could always make more characters to die easily on the early levels.

I'm not much of a fan of Bara, but I'm looking forward to seeing you all handle what comes after this.

Rangers being broken is the current reason for your success, by all appearances.

In fact, especially because of the misleading name, I would expect paladins to be informed about Hellknights being more often neutral than evil (and as often good as evil).

Most orders tend towards evil as portrayed. Hellknights of the Torrent are the only order that's really LG, to my knowledge, and they're pretty niche.

Hellknights will enforce laws without mercy, though to themselves a bit more than towards others. That doesn't mean they won't occasionally break laws, it means that they'll undergo creepy rituals of self-harm after they do so, such as burning themselves, drowning themselves, crushing their own bones, carving weird sigilia in their flesh... depending on the order.

Well of Many Worlds:

Okay, this should really be either a cursed item or a GM plot device. 82,000 gp for a Portable Hole(20,000gp, for comparison numbers) that... opens a temporary gate to a random world, planet, or plane, and if it's moved, it's another random location. Added 'bonus'... it goes both ways... Never seen this one.

Only shows up in an AP as a plot device.

So, yes, GM plot device. Easy way of justifying a minor invasion of evil outsiders.

One thing to note. Human temples tend to be lust oriented. Elven temples tend to be essentially assassin's guilds which are revenge oriented.

Unless you're in Kyonin (assuming Golarion), there's not much of a point in getting too hung up on the revenge aspect.

Bill Dunn wrote:

But don’t forget the 18 javelins for 36 lbs and 6 bows or staves for at least 18 lbs more.

Because anyone with a bow uses javelins and staves for....?

It's more of an item for high level wizards. Nice way to store wands, metamagic rods, and staves.

I would be inclined with having him be included in the fighting around the Worldwound in some way. He would be fighting against the demons, at least initially.

Zhangar wrote:

We already have an instance in the Serpent's Skull AP of an actual god having stats. And the PCs actually annihilating that god is on the table.

This actually isn't true. The enemy in question is an avatar of a God, not the god itself. The god even specifically lives after that encounter, they PCs just stop the threat of him returning anytime soon.

Not quiet. He is fully killable (though the knowledge of how to do it isn't just given to the PCs). It's more that his divine essence continues working and granting powers to priests unless he is finished off.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how the cleric changes his spell list this time.

...I wonder if the cleric can gain levels from defeating PCs.

IIRC, there's a legend of one of the early GMs giving XP for defeating PCs to kobolds. They defeated a lot of PCs through the years.

I'm not talking about Tucker's kobolds, those were simply basic kobolds played smart.

This is a really funny thread for me.

Within my local gaming group, I've GM'ed several times and I've frequently used cultists as villains. Hobgoblin cultists of Moloch, cultists of Baphomet, cultists of Orcus, cultists of Dagon, and so forth. It's become an in-joke that I'm obsessed with cultists and always use them as villains. Or specifically "irredeemable demon-worshipping cultists who can't be reasoned with".

Try irredeemable devil-worshiping cultists who reason with you in order to take your soul, and offer you whatever you want in exchange. Should be an interesting change for your players.

As far as I am aware the only canon method it is mentioned that he tries to use to extend his life is the Sun Orchid Elixir

But surely he can't rely on winning that auction all the time (another fascinating piece of lore by the way since it is implied that this is a blind auction where the bids can be in any format, not just gold pieces)

He needs to win once every couple of decades, if my recollection of how the elixir works is correct. But he's also competing against newcomers and others at the auction.

- Philosophers Stone - would work through most usual interpretations of the legend but not mechanically in the PF rules. (Although as the Sun Orchid Elixir is also a 20th level alchemist ability it is arguably connected)

Thuvian alchemist PRC can have an equivalent for personal use at level 15. Not that that helps Razmir.

- Bargain with a Devil/outsider

There's an NPC in Hell Unleashed with a contract with Asmodeus personally granting her eternal youth.

Another possible route would be to serve a demon lord, who can transform followers into half-fiends (which already grants immortality), and then full demons (but not those more powerful than the original being).

He's not going to do that because he's passing himself off as a god, so won't serve another, but, with another level, and enough villainy in service to a demon lord, he could, by RAW, become a Balor with 20 levels of Wizard, which sounds a bit gamebreaking.

- Becoming a Lich (either of these he would have done by now if that was his aim)

He might consider this if he starts to get desperate, he does have the resources of an entire country, so he should be able to arrange everything at a short notice.

In a city full of ancient evils, built by colonists from a nation of devil worshipers on top of an ancient evil, piled on top of other ancient evils, with even more ancient evils in the general neighborhood, you fight some ancient evils corrupting the city along with some more or less fresh evils hand in hand.

I'm not sure how spoilerific it is.

Also, it is highly likely that various deities will be trying to interfere with each other's elections influence each other's worshippers in a direction favorable to themselves. I would expect Asmodeus to make this a fine art, but several other deities are probably no slouches in this department either.

This is Geryon's department, really. He even takes churches as actual buildings to Hell as trophies.

He, or his followers/servants would be pretty good candidates for what happened with the Cult of the Dawnflower, for example. Baphomet among demon lords, along with his followers is another clear suspect. Anyway, it's a good campaign plot hook. You don't need adventurers when everything is just running smoothly...

In any case, Asmodeus (and Mephistophles, who shares his church, who is effectively the Antichrist) would definitely have the most hierarchical church in Golarion without a doubt.

In any case, according to Inner Sea Gods, Saranrae has one of the stronger churches around as well (even if we ignore the Cult of the Dawnflower completely).

Among Lawful deities, Erastil's church would probably stand out as particularly disorganized, given that the emphasis is made on small insular communities by the faith itself, as well as the god.

NobodysHome wrote:

It's even worse. Nobody's been monitoring him. His ninja "tricks" have indeed been taken; they're just a who's-who of, "What's useless now?"
Lvl 2: Finesse Rogue
Lvl 4: Fast Stealth
Lvl 6: Bonus Feat
Lvl 8: Fast Tumble
Lvl 10: Acrobatics Master

So, "I run around like a chicken with my head cut off, and I can do it while hiding".

Not exactly a high-DPS selection.
And the feats?
Dodge, Improved Initiative, Jaguar Strike, Piranha Strike, Stealthy, Toughness, and Two-Weapon Fighting.

Again, a bit mish-mash that means... nothing.

I may allow a rebuild. What a mess!

If they do leave him in this room alone, you won't need to worry about a rebuild - he'll have a whole new character to play with... Heck, even if the party doesn't leave him alone, have the bush devil make him target #1 ( he's in melee after all). That should do it, call it a mercy killing...

I, for one, am curious to see the next useless character.

Yes, I'm imagining the pile of dead bards from The Gamers 2, to head off the obvious question.

I had a player like that. He played a meat shield in a system that doesn't really support meat shields, among other things.

Giving her Hellfire Breath as breath weapon instead of the normal electricity if you're making her a DD would make sense, given her infernal connections.

Also, maybe Handmaiden devils would work better than Erinyeses.

They were talking about Curse of the Crimson Throne, not Hell's Rebels.

Hell's Rebels was mentioned by taks back there.

Edit: your edit makes me think you knew that, but I'm unaware of any involvement Ileosa had with the Order of the Torrent.

She has none, which is part of the point. Order of the Torrent is a Hellknight order for which providing the city with a hero makes sense. I was mainly thinking how to work it in. Just an idea, even if it doesnt get used.

Order of the Torrent is LG, and their job is finding missing persons. They also have a particular grudge against the main villain (it's in the basic backstory of the AP, so not a spoiler), so they're flexible, at least in the terms of the AP.

Order of the Nail is LN (though I don't see how), their job is the elimination of all nomads. Not the nicest crowd.

Edit: now that I think about it, an Order of the Torrent armiger accompanied by an older Hellknight supervising him might work, especially if he starts on a missing child case to get his feet wet, so to speak.

Well, instead of the Queen sending the PCs to the Guard, the Guard could send the PCs to the queen to return the pendant they recovered. This could happen if they get the thing appraised and someone from the Guard is walking by, or, if they're giving Gædran's records to the Guard, someone may spot the pendant, ... or something along those lines.

That is, if you really want to show off that encounter. It's like free money for them anyway.

In homebrew, I'm thinking of creating a random generated star system thread, with 1-4 suns being orbited by 1-10 planets or dwarf planets.

Posters can add interesting stuff such as comets, abandoned death stars, volcanos full of diamonds, or whatever.

Then a ship full of explorers will have to roleplay discovering these systems.

This sounds almost like Diaspora.

Mangenorn wrote:

That reminds me, I wanted to do a game with multiple characters sharing the same body, played by multiple people, with varying skills.

So sort of like this, but with a human? :D

I haven't read that yet. My idea was to use the Eclipse Phase system, as it is specifically built for such experimentation. I'd probably have them share a body of a giant cyborg coconut crab.

The system allows for plenty of options regarding the body and the origin of the mind (human, AI, uplifted animal, AI based on uplifted animal). And there are several implants that allow one to share a brain with others, or to have several of yourselves in your brain in parallel, though only one copy can control the body in that case, etc.

One of the player made adventures had an NPC with 3 minds sharing the same body (essentially a face, a barbarrian and a hacker, practically a well rounded party).

Shapeshifters were covered before, but outsiders capable of possessing people don't get enough attention. Things like Invidiak, aka Shadow Demon, or Bdellavritra - the Belier Devil. Especially if you treat them as changing the personality of the possessed if they stay in a person for a long time.

One of these could really wreak havoc in something like Kingmaker.

This thread. :D If you don't want to look, we're talking about having the party consist of two PC's with familiars... and two people playing said familiars.

That reminds me, I wanted to do a game with multiple characters sharing the same body, played by multiple people, with varying skills.

I've already done a game with multiple people playing copies of the same personality in different bodies.

102. Running a 40k game, player returns to the table just as I'm saying "Tyranids are immune to pinning."

Given how many people have problems with 9th level casters, now complaining about the option of a 6th level (prepared) divine caster looks a bit misplaced. It's clearly meant for those who don't want to go through the trouble of balancing a game around 9th level casters, and that's fine. They have an option.

Warpriest should be compared to Magus if anything.

I personally like playing prepared 9th level casters, so I'm going to continue to play them.

Mangenorn wrote:

Black_Cat wrote:

One of my players is rubbing his hands together with glee as he wants to try and take control of the portal... They've only just started to explore the Wood so there's a little time before they get there, but the idea of him getting control worries me a little!

Is he likely to read the fine print?

Probably... maybe...

There are detailed rules about that, but in Hell's Rebels.

One of my players is rubbing his hands together with glee as he wants to try and take control of the portal... They've only just started to explore the Wood so there's a little time before they get there, but the idea of him getting control worries me a little!

Is he likely to read the fine print?

I'd like to try a Conjurer, I keep playing universalist Wizards. Maybe a Cleric. Maybe I'll try a summoning oriented Cleric next...

It's legal if you can trust them. It can remove the bonus and do 2d6 charisma damage as a free action.

I don't see how this is a viable path to a bonus unless you are playing an explicitly evil character and your GM is not enforcing anything at all.

Not saying it's illegal, it's just logistically impossible for a temporary award and 100 percent risk only for evil casters.

It's covered in a guide for people who want to summon and bind outsiders. I'm not going to do the digging right now, but a petrified succubus counts as unconscious, which means she grants you the boon and can't rescind it. If you just put her in a box and leave her in a basement somewhere, you should be fine with a permanent +2 to whatever stat you want.

A lot of people have commented on how stupid it is for Book 3 to focus on closing a devil portal (which House Thrune would presumably want to keep open) while an entire nearby city is under the control of the Glorious Reclamation.

It makes more sense than it's portrayed. The official policy of Cheliax is that devils serve humans, and that's the only way it is. Any evidence to the contrary is to be suppressed, such as tieflings, or, indeed, uncontrolled portals to Hell.

Even a generous GM is not going to let you take advantage of a called outsider like this. I wouldn't count these bonuses towards a smartest character possible.

Using a Succubus this way is explicitly legal in Pathfinder.

The important question is, can you petrify Nocticula, and keep her petrified?