I might not have even noticed it if not statting him up in HeroLab.
Someone has done all of that work already FYI.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/hero-lab
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So I bought the pdf map pack and screen cap the maps without room id tags and then make a maptool map of them. maptool is not the easiest but, with a little trial and error you can pick up enough for doing light and vision blocking. My group rotates hosting by about 3 of the players usually they have a spare monitor or big screen tv I can connect too (I have a 25 foot hdmi cable). I then start two sessions of maptool and connect one as the client. In a pinch when a monitor is not handy there is usually 1 player with a laptop that we can use as a maptool client (it's java based and will connect over a network). I use maptool for exploring so I'm moving one token around. The vision blocking is kinda cool. Also when dealing with maps players unconsciously can kinda meta game it. i.e. your start in the lower right of the map they have an idea the map will expand to the left and up. Maptools prevents that because they are in the middle of a black screen. When it comes to a fight I use the mega battlemat by chesex. I actually have two good battle mats and one that is so old its hard to drawn on. I usually have a good idea what rooms will have battles and in what order. So I'll predraw the maps and use the crappy battle mat as a cover to hide the maps underneath. Also I've got my players trained to use interchangeably either hexs or square grids so now I can pre drawn four possible sites of battle.
What ckdragons said. I've noticed the maps in this AP are constrained. Increase the size....
Very very handy also my group drinks a lot when we play...math hard...
Also I'd recommend getting Hero Labs someone has done portfolios of all the bad guys and adjusting them is fairly easy in HL
I'm dealing with this right now. I started with 7 players one of whom is now a 50 /50 proposition if he shows up. Joey Virtue on these boards has a decent write up geared towards the 3.5 edition for 6 players in RotRLs. I used that for a starting point. A couple of things I've found going into the later chapters is it becomes harder to balance BBEG fights. If I raise the power level too much I run the risk of TPKs if I don't they walk through it (my players are min/max experienced gamers). I've found usually applying advanced template and increasing HP by 30% and a few extra mooks works best YMMV.
I agree it's time for the goblin in the closet. Also they should have drunk combat penalties just for giggles.
I'm currently wrestling with this right now. I did have Morgiv tell them that the Dragon and the Devil were lieutenants. Morgiv had no idea about the Hidden Beast cause well it's hidden. I have a party of 6 (occasionally 7). I think I'm going to have some rune giants random encounters drop some amulets as they've destroyed all of the other amulets. AFAIK the ring in Thisltetop is only a ring of Force Shield in the shape of a 7 pointed star
In my campaign during the Black Magga event one of the parties fighter rescued her and the child from the school from the night night boa. She was ...ahem very grateful and I've used her as a foil to mess with the player. She became with child and moved to Sandpoint where she is talking up the locals about her and the players intention to marry (unknown to the player until he got her first letter). Needless to say that player has not dared to go back to Sandpoint yet since she arrived there.
I was under the impression that armor automagically resized. I've allowed my players to sell large magic weapons in Magnimar under the guise of the Golem works buying them. Although they've flooded the market so initially they got 25% of cost and now they get 10% of cost
Whoa ok lots of negative feedback. I'm not sure that time warpage necessarily benefits the bad guys as they've been playing a long game as it is already. Also the runforge is for crafting rune weapons not really research so much. Mostly I wanted to make the game feel less like a video game and have events external to the players immediate scope continue to happen in the back ground. Personally I think it would focus the players more at the task at hand and avoid having to deal with a bunch of crap. I'm gonna do it I'll let ya all know how it works out.
So my group has gone into the runeforge and completed 4 wings. They found the component to plane shift back and they plan to do so at the start of next session. I what to make the game feel less static and have things going on in the back ground. Now the timeline in RotRL is fairly fast paced so doing so is kinda hard. I've decided that time flows drastically different in the runeforge. Something to the tune of 1 day in runeforge equals 2 months outside. So off the top of my head heres what I'm springing on my players One player has a townhouse in Magnimar which is their main base there. It's going to be looted and a locale frequented by transients A player will have a parent die Two players in the Magnimar city guard will be dishonorably discharged from the watch for dereliction of duty One PC had a fling with Tillia Henkensen after the Black Maga incident, She became pregnant and moved to Sandpoint and is awaiting his return to marry him. ANNNNNNND I'll take any suggestion to mess with my players. I think of this as more of a RP possibility than a punishment so anything fun would be awesome
Sigh this question is fairly fundamental to Druids and I had hoped for an answer from Paizo. However I can tell your all players cause you all argued for either WIS as the Druids casting stat, CHA or CON cause most Su abilities use them. I however as a meanie GM think I've found the answer which is NO stat (the fourth argument). No where anywhere do the rules state a default stat for Su abilities. It does for Sp abilities but, not Su. Looking to the description of Supernatural Abilities says this... Supernatural abilities are magical but not spell-like. Theres your answer. There is no relevant caster stat at all. Wild shape functions as a spell but, is not actually a spell. So the DC is 10 + Spell level which is 7. So Whirlwind (which is kinda OP anyways) is a static DC of 17 for elemental body IV. Thats by RAW AFAIK. This of course would change if Paizo put a stat for Wildshape or made a default stat for Su abilities Mapes (why yes I am an evil GM)
Yeah what NobodysHome said. I'd also nix any evil alignments and make it a requirement that the majority of PC's be good aligned. This will help you drive the story a bit. Monetary rewards seem to be significantly less than WBL and agreed any player who touts that needs a smack down. I would also second 15 point buy and I limited it Core and APG which seemed to work ok (although I have now opened it up). My group is mostly optimizers with some RP folks. Although I'm an experienced player this is the first time GMing and I personally need to take a page from NobodysHome's second post there...
I scaned the sandpoint map. Then over laid a grid scaled to 30' ontop of that then I used posterazor a java app to print out a 3 x9 letter sized sheet. i then labeled t pins with all of the combatants names. I put the big map on an easel and drew on a battle mat for the actual battles. It worked very well. Just an idea I thought I'd share
So I used software to scan and print the map out in a letter paper in a map measuring 3 x 9 sheets of paper (on works color printer of course). I was able to grd the map in a grid measuring 30 feet at scale. I then taped it to a cardboard backing and put that on an easel. I took T pins and labeled them with all of the combatants names. My players were all pre buffed of course and this helped immensely as almost everyone could fly. Although the non regularly flying PCs would have to land to fight. For each combat I used a normal battle mat where I would draw out the town and for the most part the PC's smacked the heck outta the giants.
Oops I forgot and Mujba reminded me I do have the dice set. Which is fun although on dice I don't use as much my players mock me a little because I don't easily recognize the rune for max damage. Although all the players now recognize the d20 rune for crits so thats worth it for that right there. Also I forgot to mention that I have been using the face cards since day 1, I like the face cards. At the start of every game I whip out the deck and sort the people they've met into two piles ...dead and and alive. The player seem to like this
I'd also get the book Magnimar, Citiy of Monuments. It's not that great but, it helped some and it was cheap. Trust me your PCs will be hanging out there a bunch. I Also got the pwn collection and they rock. Be sure to get bases for em.
Thanks all I think I'll copy Story Archer
We rotate between a few houses for play so we use what ever wall is available. Sometimes its just even a sheet over a large screen TV. I only use one character its really so I don't have to draw a map in a hurry. Plus I'm always outta scale :)
As for speeding up the game I second Hero Labs. All of my players play with it on ipads and I use it for running the game. Some one has already created all of the monsters in hero lab format so that helps. I usually farm off the init order to a player. There are free or cheap apps for that. Since I've been playing with the same group for 15 years I convinced my self that I could spend the money on a used projector. I prep the maps a head of time and run two instances of maptool. I project the instance from the clients instance view which allows me to reveal the map as they explore a dungeon. For battles I have three battle mats that I've pre drawn the most likley battles they are about to encounter. All this tremendously speeds up the game. The next campaign my group is doing is "Wrath of the Righteous" which I going to co DM with another person. So the game should speed up even more
I have the anniversary edition and I'm looking at the guards and wards on the Scribblers lair. How did you guys run this. It says that the hallways are obscured. there is not much in the way of hallways here. Also that each intersection theres a confusion chance of 50% going the wrong way. Again theres like two intersections. Did you roll for every character or just the lead party. How did you handle this via a map tool like err map tool. Lastly it says all doors look like plain walls. I'm assuming they look like walls with scribbling since all of the walls have scribbling on them. Otherwise they'd stand out. Thanks for any input
OMG thanks for the google doc! People you rock!
I would also suggest magical lineage trait. My sorc player uses it to great advantage with Arcane bloodline. Basically it reduces the cost of meta magic feats by one level. He combines those with the meta magic feat Elemental to change the damage type for free with no extra casting time. Which is kinda annoying to the GM
One thing I'd like to bring up is that in the battle of Sandpoint the giants are hurling wagons and chimneys at the players. If a player is normal sized and a giant hits with such a thrown weapon then that counts as a collision. How the rules read is Collision While Flying: If you are using wings to fly and you collide with an object equal to your size or larger, you must immediately make a DC 25 Fly check to avoid plummeting to the ground, taking the appropriate falling damage. Which is going to hurt folks who don't have high fly skill ranks Edit whoops I just saw the "flying by wings" part...disregard
Keep in mind spoiler: The young wizard seems to be accruing pride sin points
Yes bump the hp of the scarecrow he went down hard and fast with my group
Good point and yeah its endemic with my players. With a 12th level generalist wizard and a Sorcerer they are constantly doing this. So much so that I made the tunnels under Jorgenfist block teleport. I am totally stealing this right now.
That's intentional. The fighter should put a few points in fly. Well you need a reliable way of flying per the skill You cannot take ranks in this skill without a natural means of flight or gliding. Creatures can also take ranks in Fly if they possess a reliable means of flying every day (either through a spell or other special ability). The fighter did ask the sorc to cast fly on him once a day. I said that would work sure. However the sorc would have to permanently mark off one spell slot. the sorc for some reason was not into that
OMG this so happened with my group too. Paladin of Sarenra + Gogmurt +coup de grace = Wrath point. As an aside the PC's call Gogmurt gogurt in remembrance. I've had a few others In my game I've found it easier to award XP to the whole party even if the player is there or not. The one thing we do do is at the end of every game each player makes a suggestion for something that another player did that he likes and I award XP (fairly small award but, my players love this). Typically this has resulted in award XP of less than 5% of a players total so variance is not a big deal. I did have on player b$&!+ing about the XP variance and yes I gave him a envy point for it. Another was the Sorcerer trying to charm the towns black smith to reduce his price to smelt the gold giant helm. Thats a greed point.
I thought I'd mention something the fly rules are kinda whacked. There is a fly skill check an even if someone has fly cast on them it's rarely enough to do most things other than move your full distance and attack. Even with my PC's at 12th level if the wizard casts fly on the fighter who will still have a fly skill of suck the fighter can't really hover. Although he could move 5 feet and reduce the DC to hover. We found this out at the start of the battle of Sandpoint where everyone was flying. Said fighter went from being a ground attack dive bomber to air cav on the next game once we figured the rules out. Meaning it was better for him to fly there, land and fight normally
Thanks all - I probably won't use roll20 or d20pro but Fantasy Grounds 2 instead. And I want the maps and stuff to be visible to me only. The players will have their sheets and the tabletop mat to look at as wel las their books. I just want to streamline my references and save a bunch of pageflipping and "hsang on" moments! I use hero labs and I love it. It totally speeds up game play. Some one has already imported all of the monsters into hero labs so it's fairly easy to get started with
I also draw as I go along. I have three large battle mats. Well one is really old and even though I swore I was going to throw it out I still keep it. There is nothing more annoying then drawing a map, erasing it and drawing another map, erase that and having to draw the first map all over again. My group rotates hosting games if I had more of a dedicated game setup I'd prolly use a projector
I've not looked at the service but, could you not fire up another browser and then move that browser screen to a projector for the player view?
Well along time has passed and so too have some of the PC's. Willow the witch and her sister Zenovia were seperated from the other PCs when the portcullis fell in Thistletop. Willow bravely stepped up to let Zenovia flank Nualia. Nualia crited her and she died. Cass was turned to a red smear by Xenesha Zenovia (the rogue that had wis as a dump stat) was totally charmed an enthralled with Xenesha. While the party was fighting and then killing X Zenovia snuck back to the PC's safe house and robbed them blind. She then went on to have X raised. X and Z where abouts are unknown ATM. Zenji met his end at the hands of Jaagrath Kreeg. The new party members Zakkar and Cillyra live on Sgt Gabrial Corax hailing from lastwall and a fauchard trip AoO fighter
Plus I've added a 7th player (egads) Shera'Kahn Monk/Druid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU
In my case I now have 7 players, All 20 point buy (yeesh that was a mistake), All optimized and very experienced gamers so they've got their tactics down. So I've actually had to do this.
You might also want to think of the purpose for getting together. For us it's a social occasion. Gaming is the excuse. What's your group's motivation? This 100%. My group has been playing together for 13 years. We are are all 45+ and for us it's a social occasion. When we started in early 2001 a bunch of were friends who happened to work together. Only two of us had kids and one of us was married. Now only two of us do not have children all of us have been married. One divorce and one widowing. We also booted a disruptive player. Our schedule is friday every two weeks. Our wives know this and respect it as our guy's night. I mean would you rather your husband is at the bar or drinking beer and rolling dice with his friends. We keep the momentum by some RP, shopping and crafting in between by email. Generally we want to hang out with each other and have fun.
Yeah good points. I've decided that when a dragon almost dies when it heals it has a growth spurt. Even with that he can't take the party unless he can single them out and get surprise. So good idea... he will play the long game. Incidentally X was killed by the party but, she had charmed one party member (player didn't want to play a very unoptimized rogue). So the old party member stole the parties gold and had X raised. hmmm There might be an anti party forming?
A couple of questions on FotSG. If the fortress is on alert where is Cona hanging out. I assume BR. Also the book never mentions how many giants comprise the Kavaratti clan.
OMG thats just so tragic and... hillarious
So the party repulsed the giant army attacking Sandpoint. They also drove off Longtooth. I decided on his way back home Longtooth landed at some farm house outside of town and interrogated the farmers for as much info as he could get about these "Heros of Sandpoint". Anyways fast forward to Jorgenfist. The party uses an invisible flying sorcerer to fly to all of the caves and study them. They pick a cave at random and teleport the party to.... Longtooths cave. Longtooth is dissatisfied with Mokmurian and wants to parley with the party. He specifically names the paladin to talk to. Longtooth and the paladin are discussing terms, how much treasure for his betrayal as well as some info on Jorgenfist when the LG fighter who thinks parleying with an evil beast is ..well evil Corax the LG fighter Leroy Jenkins into said Longtooth. Which surprised everyone not just me and also led to some great RP. Longtooth who had a readied action fires off his frightful presence. Next round he breathes on the party and leaves the cave telling the party " You will now be known throughout Jorgenfist". Longtooth flies to Jorgenfist. One of the PC says "Oh they can't get up here" thats when they see two rocs, Longtooth, the two other younger dragons, three wevryns and some harpy monks lifting off from Jorgenfist with as many giants aboard as possible. The party says "F This" and teleports back to Sandpoint. Where they rest up for a day and then teleport to Deathweb cave. They find the secret entrance to the small tunnels and plan on going forward into Jorgenfist. Now the obvious thing is the fortress is on high alert and also poor Gavin Deverin is doomed to die a sacrifice. The not so obvious thing is what is Longtooth gonna do. I'm sure he wants to hurt the party. I'm looking for something nasty that a pissed off Red Dragon would do. The obvious would be to fly to Sandpoint and raze it to the ground. So lets hear em....
I can only think of only one voice for Karzoug... Vincent Price. Sorry for me it's Christopher Lee
I think advanced creature is +4 to all stats and +2 natural AC
I'd say he has duties to perform for the cathedral and they require robes not chainmail. Secondly an interesting thing that could be we all know Nualia was kinda picked on perhaps he was one of the bully types who actually had a crush on her or was just perhaps one of her main tormentors. In which case I would tell him just the fluff of her upbringing (i.e. his tormenting her) and her supposed death and leave it at that. It makes it more personal.
Good read so far...keep going...please
So my players are just about to fight off the stone giant attack on Sandpoint. Reading ahead a few chapters I'm struck by the infiltration of the fortress. So if no named NPCz were captured and the stone giants are successfully repulsed I'm not sure the players will get the hint they should sneak in. They may recon and then go back and report. Also how visible are the river caves from the watch tower? Is the only entrance to the valley by the watch tower? So lets say they get the hint and sneak in and kill Mokmurian. Does that mean the Stone Giants just melt away leaving the party alone? I realize that Conna can help with that but, it seems a bit odd. Lastly is there any reason to go into the upper structure and say deal with the black monk. It seems if the party gets to the library, meets with Conna and kills Mokurian they could just bail. Am I missing somthing?
I will throw my 2 cents in. My group looked at the level track instead of XP. The level track was voted out. Shame really. However If theres one thing I fudge it's XP points going out to keep them in check. We use a google doc that everyone updates. So at a glance I know where everyone is in level progression. Some players might get upset about this but, whatever it's way more effective than worrying about over powered players I also agree on using hero points and like Jester have done the same. My group was seriously meta gaming the hero point system. The group would know if they're at the end tough boss fight or not generally and would save hero points for use in those fights. If every player gets an extra attack for three rounds at the end fight that fight seems a tad out of whack. When I mentioned this to my players it was the players themselves that suggested making every hero point action cost just one point (even avoiding death) and limiting accrued hero points to just one at any time As previous posters have said (and is in effect in my PCs) healing can be bought. In this case we got two people with UMD and a pally with healing spells in his spell list so he can even use wands. The rest of the party always has potions. On classes though there is some debate about needing a wizard. I don't think it's necessary although there is tons of wizard loot in the AP. Although after a PC death the player made a generalist MU and I have to say that has been handy for tons of things for the party. I think Ideally a party should have a tank, a face man, a skills knowledge person and an arcane caster (these could be blended in various ways. I also second that it is key to get the PC's invested in Sandpoint. This needs to happen. After an almost TPK (Lady X of course) I was worried that there was not enough of a Sandpoint hook left in the party. We worked that out but, it was a worry.
If you have the cash buy Hero Lab and use the RotRLs por files from d20pfsrd. I am in no affiliated way with Lone Wolf software. Although I've been playing RPGs for almost 20 years I can not understate how much easier Hero Labs has made GMing. My group tends to drink...alot and Hero Labs tends to help me remember special abilities and spells plus retooling encounters is way easier
I run a 5 and an occasional 6 player group through RotRL. Although I've been playing for years and years this was my first time GMing. As Skeld suggested Core+APG is a perfect place to start. I have since opened the game to the other official sources at the end of chapter two. This was partly for us to get used to Pathfinder. Do this it's very helpful I seriously dislike increasing mooks by 50%. My players are 20 point buy and are also good min/maxers and tacticians. Instead of more mooks and more fireballs for mooks I tend to max HP and apply the advanced template to everything (fairly easy to do in Hero Lab) I find that because I usually have 5 players instead of a constant 6 I tend to give them the XP listed in the book divided by 4. We do have a google doc where players are responsible for posting current XP. Which is a very handy thing to have.
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