Thril Kreen Barbarian

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If a person under the effect of a Dominate Person spell is subsequently turned to stone by a medusa, are they still under the effect of the Dominate Person if they are restored via Stone to Flesh or is Dominate Person ended because they were effectively dead as a stone statue?


Hey there -- looking for some advice. In the near future, the PCs in my long running campaign (currently 7th level) are going to be physically going into the Dreamlands via a magic gate (as opposed to the usual method of going there while you get your zzzs or via occult ritual). As I plan this adventure, I have two things I'm trying to figure out:
1) What to do about treasure they pick up in the Dreamlands once they return to the material plane? Should it go poof like they would if they were standard dreamers? If I go that route, how do I avoid demoralizing the players when their booty disappears on them or leave them significantly behind on equipment? Should I give them fantastical treasure in the Dreamlamds that becomes more mundane (but level appropriate) when they return?
2) I'm trying to figure out ways to make the Dreamlands more "dream-like" to differentiate them for characters who are porting in from Golarion -- otherwise they're just characters going from one fantasy world to another. Some ideas I currently have:
-Encountering "dopelgangers" of NPCs they know in the waking world
-The unless there's a specific reason to the contrary, the weather is always perfect.
-Uneventful travel passes instantaneously with the characters only having a general memory of the travel.
-Use of impossible feats as described in the Dimension of Dreams/Dreamlands entry in the Planar Adventures book.
Any other ideas or feedback on these ideas?


Thanks for the advice. Note, they won't actually be dealing with Nyarlathotep, my reference to Masks is more about the way that that classic Call of Cthulhu campaign kicks off where in the first session the players get five or six clues which could send them off in about as many different directions (Harlem, London, Shanghai, Cairo, etc.) but doesn't tell them which way to go first.

Perpdepog wrote:

1. As far as I know there are only a couple of archetypes that reference the Sleepless Agency, mostly for the investigator. A shock, I know, heh. I know of this one and ... actually that's all. I thought there was another but looking it up now it is a Lepidstadt Investigator, not a Sleepless one. I imagine the two groups have some overlap, but just as much rivalry.

2. It should be enough to make living less of a hassle, but not so much that the party starts dragging their feet to rake in a bigger paycheck, though I imagine their overseer would frown on dragging down the reputation of the organization like that. I might say something around 2 to 5 gold per day. Enough to be good pay and afford nice meals but not enough to bankroll major purchases like magic items, unless that is what you want them to do.

3. As for resources, the Sleepless Agency seems like the kind of organization who banks a lot off their reputation and street cred. You could lend them help more in the form of information than actual material goods. Maybe someone who hired them before is favorably disposed and offers advice, or they can ask around in places not normally available.

4. How long do you want this mystery to be? If it's supposed to drag on for a while then I think something like scattered, ranting scribbles on the walls or maybe torn fragments of journal pages would be more appropriate. They are dealing with the Crawling Chaos, Haunter in the Dark and the Faceless Sphynx, after all.


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Background: I’m thinking of running a campaign where all of the players are novice field agents for the Sleepless Agency assigned to Absalom. Taking some inspiration from Masks of Nyarlathotep, I’m planning on having my players uncover a cache of clues left by another agent who’s gone missing that could potentially lead them to a number of different locations/adventure opportunities and let them choose which ones to follow. I’m not planning on figuring out too much specifically about where the clues lead at this point beyond some general concepts (e.g. Osirion tomb, mountain excavation site, wizard’s tower, etc.), so that I can scale the adventures for whatever level they happen to be at when (or if) they follow that lead. 

Had a few questions for you all:

1) Beyond Rule of Fear, Pathfinder #110 “The Thrushmoor Terror”, and the Sleepless Detective prestige class in Paths of Prestige, is there any more published  information on the Sleepless Agency?

2) If my players all work for the Agency, presumably they get some sort of stipend or per diem. What would be a reasonable amount to give them?

3) Also, if they work for the Sleepless Agency, what sort of other resources would they reasonably have access to? I figure they may be able to call in help from other agents occasionally, but I don’t want to make this available too often. I don’t see the Agency having other permanent offices outside of the Sleepless Building in Thrushmoor, so i don't see them having access to something like that. I'm thinking of giving them an intermediate supervisor so they aren't reporting directly to Cesadia Wrentz, at least at first.

4) At first, I thought it might be fun to given them the clues in the form of a crazy conspiracy string board left by their missing colleague (inaccurate and incomplete, of course), but the more I think about it, laying out a bunch of the connections between the clues for the players right at the start feels like i'm giving them too much. Opinions?


Partway through Haunting of Harrowstone, and my players keep using the spirit planchette. Unfortunately for them, however, it's 0-3 for telling them anything truthful thus far. When asked who was writing in blood on the memorial, the planchette fingered both Father Grimburrow (which led to some amusement as the rogue followed Grimburrow and his acolytes around as they handled suspiciously collected various risen corpses for re-sanctification and re-burial) and Kendra. They final caught Gibs on one of his nocturnal jaunts, but because of the doubt planted in them by the planchette, they think that it just happened to be Gibs that night. Upon asking the spirits who had possessed Gibs, they decided to again misdirect and only replied "the tyrant". Now the players think that the Whispering Tyrant is much more directly involved in Harrowstone, and as a devious GM, I couldn't be happier.

What whoppers have the spirits told your players via the planchette?


I'm looking to start Carrion Crown next month and one of my players suggested that the PCs could all belong to an organization that functions like the hunters in the tv show Supernatural. i like this idea because it gives the characters a reason to work together beyond just the professor's will and provides a place to "order up" replacements if any of the PCs died. I'm sure that I could come up with such a group, but thought it might be better to suggest an existing organization. Looking through my Golarion stuff (which is arguably sparse), though, I'm not sure what to suggest, so I thought I'd see if anyone on the messageboards had suggestions.


Are there any conversion guidelines out there for using 3.5 templates (like those in the Advanced Bestiary) with Pathfinder? I'd suspect that most of the conversion would be covered by the 3.5 to Pathfinder monster conversion guidelines, but I'm particularly interested in the effects on CR and LA.


yoda8myhead wrote:
F. Wesley Schneider wrote:
DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

It's one of my favourite poems ever, and it'd be pretty nifty to see a Jabberwock, Jubjub bird and frumious Bandersnatch!

Okay, okay, since we keep seeing this come up over and over again, I'm going to squeal right now.

The Jabberwock will be in Bestiary II.

OOO! I hope it is designed with the 1985 Alice in Wonderland miniseries as a source of inspiration. Best. Jabberwocky. Ever!

I'm rather fond of the Jabberwock from the Muppet Show.


Disenchanter wrote:

You could base it of of a template class idea, presented here on the WotC archives. (Left box in the main pane.)

Weretiger seems too powerful to base it on, so the Werewolf might be better.

The last article even discusses acquiring the template mid campaign.

In a previous campaign in a jungle setting, I had a PC who wanted to play a werejaguar. Assuming that roughly jaguar = leopard statwise, and using the weretiger template from that WotC article as a guide, I created a custom werejaguar template class that the character used. Overall, I'd say that it worked pretty well, but you just have to keep in mind that the player is going to be stuck to this template class for 5 class levels or so; they'll develop a number of animal-type skills and attacks (plus the always fun DR/silver), but it'll put them behind on their class abilities. Which is probably ok for a warrior-type character (in my campaign, the character was a ranger), but may be very frustrating for say a wizard.


Queen of Shadows wrote:


Well how far into the game are you, first Adventure, not yet started etc..?

They just had their first zombie encounter under Parrot Island.


One of the players in my campaign decided to play a cleric of Rao, the God of Peace and Serenity. This suits me fine because Rao would obviously be opposed to the Savage Tide pearl plot that Demogorgon is working, and it gives that character some extra motivation. I'd like to push the point a bit further by giving the character some foreboding dreams which will foreshadow coming events and emphasize to the character that Rao wishes him to continue his line of investigation. Any ideas or suggestions?


My PCs are under Parrot Island at the moment, having just fended off their first zombie attack. No deaths yet, though there's been at least one close call. At this point the party is:

Freydis, F Dwarf Fighter
Methune, M Half Elf Cleric of Rao
Piper Reed, F Human w/ Marid Bloodline Druid
Nori, Piper's dire rat animal companion
Gerno Lagrada, M Halfling Rogue (NPC)

Interested to see how this will play out without an arcane spellcaster. So far, Freydis and Nori (bumped up by the Natural Bond feat from CA) have been acting as the battle tanks, Methune as the lead investigator/diplomacy guy, Piper as backup healer/fighter and sailing expert, and Gerno's been pretty useless, next to ineffectve in combat and only partially helpful in the vault and search for Vanthus.