Matthew Bellizzi's page

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

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

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....

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?

If I'm a halfling staff slinger with both of these feats (Far shot and Arc Slinger) would that make a sling user who effectively has no range penalties at all. If so 800 feet of range with no minuses is kinda crazy

Hey all

For the next game session for my group I'll be running them through the anniversary edition of retaking Fort Rannick. I had some questions I can't seem to figure out.

The chasm at B14 does this lead into area B37?

Also how much knowledge can the Black Arrows give the party. I mean they lived in the keep for years and Vale has some skill with architecture. I'm sure they could draw them decent maps of everything indoors. However am I reading it right that they know nothing of area B37?

I'd also like advice from GM's that have run this before. I'd especially like to know if anyone had to deal with orges make perception checks and showing up in waves. How did you handle this?

Lastly any other gotchas I should be aware of?

Thanks

So weirdness abounds... to cut to the story my gaming group has seen hard times. Not the type of hard times you'd expect of a gaming group with people moving away but, just life really. 10 monthes ago one one of our group had his wife brutally stabbed to death and of course we took a hiatus. It was after this that I accepted the mantel of GM and started running RotRL. Well my party was just finishing up chapter 2. However one player playing a rogue tried to sneek into the tower and was grappled by the Scarecrow. Well X being X turned her mentally inside out and learned everything there was to learn from her about the party. Which resulted in one PC death and the rogue for the most part going unstable and becoming a NPC. So the stage is set for the next game .which is this coming Friday. My friend Yarry gets to play his new character and we are playing at his house. Turns out today I was stuck in meetings all day. Until I noticed an email from Yarry. To make things clear Yarry is married to his wife Cricket and one of their daughters is Ember. Anywas this is what Yarry's email said (sorry for any swear words)..

First of all, this is a true story. It happened to me, last night, in my own home.
No s+~%.

My very own RL random encounter. Brief details are as such:

Woken up at 4:40 AM to a pair of armed men wearing masks standing in my bedroom doorway. One is wielding my decorative skull sword that was hanging on my wall.
They look confused at first, then the smaller one, whom I have dubbed "Weasel" started demanding money from us.
They were horrible at their job, giving us conflicting instructions, and generally bungling things.
The bigger one, who reeked of alcohol, came over to the bedside. I have dubbed him "Thug".
I mentioned we had kids in the house, and they tried to keep us quiet.
Weasel had me get out of bed, get on my knees, and face the bed with my hands behind my back.
He (Weasel) brandished the decorative sword and had Thug come over behind me to tie me up with duck tape.
Thug was wearing disposable food-prep gloves and was extremely inebriated, and could not manage to use the duck tape. They had brought it themselves, and it was extremely old and was sticking to itself too much.
Thug cursed in slurred Spanish and ripped the iPad and cable off the bedside table, using the cable to "tie" me up. He bungled the job, and by the time he was done, my left hand was already free without me trying (DC 2 Escape Artist Check).
At this point Weasel was pointing the Big-Guns Sword (which I won the right to have for a year by winning the last yearly Magic the Gathering Tournament) into my neck while Thug generally bungled things.
This is when Cricket got mad. She had been standing on the bed, and threw a heating bag at the back of Weasel's head. It hit and succeeded in distracting him.
With their attention diverted towards Cricket, I realized it was "Go Time".
I sprang up and engaged Thug and Weasel. Both turned their attention towards me, despite Cricket repeatedly hitting Weasel in the back of the head with the palm of her hand.
Weasel lunged at me with the sword, which I sidestepped. I then grabbed the blade with my hands (its a dull ornamental piece after all) and ripped it from his grasp.
Realizing it was a s@&$ty weapon, I threw it away to get it out of play.
Weasel was fully engaged with Cricket at this point, and I had joined the melee with Thug.
I grabbed a hold of Thug and began grappling him. (I made sure to follow the flow chart). We fought back and forth for a while.
I looked over and saw that Weasel had an arm around Cricket's throat and was wielding a screw driver. He raked it across her throat, raising an angry welt. This made her mad. You don't want to see her when she's mad. She redoubled her attacks.
Meanwhile, at this point I had started yelling at the top of my lungs, trying to wake my children and alert the neighbors. I think my grand soliloquy was "HELP! HELP!".
The yelling panicked Weasel, and he pushed Cricket away and dodged through Thug and I's melee and out the hallway, knocking into Ember in his haste to leave.
Thug was a little slower on the uptake, and we fought for a while longer. He threw a pair of punches, that I cleverly blocked with the sides of my head.
Still grappling, he pushed past me into the hallway, and then out into the living room. There we fought among the boxes upon boxes of girl scout cookies littering the room ready for distribution.
The fight spilled out onto the front lawn, all icy and covered in frost. Still grappling, I grabbed ahold of the front of his jacket, stuck out my leg, and performed the most basic of martial arts throws, Basic Trip Number One.
Thug fell over onto his face, and I jumped on him, getting him in a head lock, still yelling all of the while.
Ember ran to the neighbors and pounded on their doors, waking them. She then ran and dialed 911.
Cricket came and sat on Thug's legs to immobilize him. He resisted at first (and tried to pinch me to get me off of him) but the fight soon left him.
The neighbors soon showed up, one wielding a baseball bat, which was superfluous at this point, but it made me feel reassured just the same.
The cops seemed to be taking forever to arrive, but in all honesty it was probably only ten minutes or so. My toes and feet were freezing, as I was pinning the guy to the frost covered lawn in my pajamas. My Battle Pajamas, as they will now be known.
The cops showed up in a torrent of lights and sound, converging from three different directions at once.
They got out of the car quickly and took over apprehension of Thug.
Then all of the paper work started...

Will regail you with more details over beer soon. Be safe.

~~yarry "Battle Pajamas" gonzalez

So my players just finished with the sawmill. Ironbriar escaped and the players released the raven etc...

So currently I've been playing up the paranoia. About who is or is not part of the cult. I've even had a small hit tried on them by assassins dressed in city watch clothes. They do have some support of a friendly guard sergeant but they are totally noobs here in the city. Anyways they are resting at least for 8 hours. In the mean time their talking about buying fly scrolls and just flying to the top of the tower.

So Xanesha was warned by Ironbriar. I was going to have Xanesha wait a few days then start hunting if they didn't get off their asses. Well now I'm a little worried that they'll bypass the Scarecrow and the Bell and aw wheres the fun in that.

I could of course limit what they can find in the way of scrolls. I have mentioned that the city is in the grip of fear. Not a lot of commerce has happened and when they did go shopping before they had a native guide who did intros and who is no longer around.

So my question is Is it a punk move to block them on this?

So my players just did the sawmill where they took out all of the mooks and Ironbriar was able to escape. Ironbriar is still under the charm. One of the players went up to the ravens loft and released one and was able to watch it go to the clock tower. However my players are now talking about resting. So ok that means X and all her minions will be ready. She may even have more faceless stalkers, the Scarecrow and Ironbriar as minions. I'm wondering what you fellow DMs would do? Does X take the initiative and ambush or just buff up everyone at the top of the tower.

Since Varisians are wanderers I've decided to make any character who is a traveling or roguish sort of Varisian fluent in Varisian/hobo signage. For those who don't know during the depression hobos would leave marks indicating that a house was a good place to get food or a town that had cops who would harass the hobos. Of course I have to modify it some as there are no train tracks here..... For an example of hobo signage have a look at

http://www.cyberhobo.com/signs/hobosigns.html

I'm running the AP version of RotRL. I'm finding it both hilariously funny and incredibly frustrating that for a game that uses squares none of the maps are aligned along the squares axis. Everything is at an angle. Currently what I'm doing is drawing the map on a battle map as the party moves along. Note doing this for the Foxglove manor was kinda of obnoxious. Luckily I have a couple of battle maps so at least I didn't have to redraw some floors as they went up to the attic and then back down. I keep thinking of using something like maptools however the way my group rotates hosting the game would require me to lug around two laptops along with everything else which is not really what I want to do. So I'm curious how other gm's handle this... Did I mention Foxglove manor was a pain....

I'm curious as to what red herrings other GM's have thrown at their party. I'm planing to include Jubrayl as one. Also I got lucky the PC who is the obsession target (lust) has a name that starts with Z. In my party of 6 half my players have names that start with Z. So the first note will be addressed to Z. Which is great because another player with a Z name was Shayliss's target and some of the party had to intimidate her last game to get her to stop spreading nasty rumors. So they are going to be quick to jump on Shayliss especially with her familial connection to one of the victims. I however am always looking for more.. So lets hear it.

So my party killed off everyone else except Orik and Lyrie. The rogue in the party has it out for Lyrie and they bound and gagged her. Meanwhile Orik helped the group in the final battle and now everyone is headed back to Sandpoint. Their trial is going to be in Sandpoint. Sandpoint is a major town so I see no reason the town would not do this. Anyways the end result will be Lyrie remanded to the Hells in Magnimar. Where Ironbriar will of course get her transfered out of prison and working for him. The groups paladin is supporting Orik and I'm going to have him serve a sentence doing a stint in the Black Arrows. So I''ve decided Sandpoint is going to convene a Grand Jury to try them. So this is where I'd like input. I'm going to use this as a mechanism to introduce more of the towns NPC's to the party. So I'm looking for suggestions for which 12 NPC's should be on the Grand Jury. Obviously

The mayor, the sheriff, Zantus, a representative of each of the 4 noble houses, Madam Mvashti and other suggestions?

The other thing I'd like help with is the charges leveled against them. I'd love to read of a huge list of charges. So far I've got

Conspiracy to commit murder
Conspiracy to commit arson
Aiding and abetting the enemy (Goblins)
Consorting with Demons
High Treason against the Lord Mayor of Magnimar

Anyone else got any good ones I can throw in there? Thanks

I'm curious other GM's how much have you given away on the Sihedron Medallion when players identify them?

So my group has just dealt with Nualia and crew. How things went down was that half of the PC's were trapped on one side of the hallway/portcullis trap with Nualia and Lyrie. While the other half were battling Brathazmus, Orik, Erylium, and Tsuto. The players who were dealing with Nualia and Lyrie were a summoner and two Varisian sisters one a rogue one a witch. The summoner kept Nualia on her ass with grease. The witch after hexing and debuffing Nualia decided to move into a position so the rogue could flank. After the rogue viciously (and critically) backstabbed Nualia Lyrie shattered the rogues masterwork rapier. Nualia casted her Sanctuary spell to stand up. Next round she used a villian point and did two attacks and killed the witch dead as a doornail. Things started to look desperate for Nualia and Lyrie as Nualia was at 1HP. Lyrie turned on her employer with burning hands and killed Nualia and begged for mercy. So we ended the session at that point with Lyrie who had shattered the rogues master rapier and helped the BBEG kill the rogues sister (Lyrie also pissed off the rogue by getting the killing blow in too).

So talking to the player who died he was ok with the character death in fact he was a little bored with the witch. He didn't have two hero points to cheat death so the witch is dead. One thing I pointed out is that there are two NPC's right there. The party is fairly melee heavy at the moment so he was not interested in playing Orik. However from a DMing point of view I could not think of a more awesome RP event than to have Lyrie join the party. Sorry that this has been a bit rambling but, to the point. What are your guy's thought's on this. To be honest I'm not too keen to have an evil player (I'm a fairly new GM...) I could of course change her alignment to CN or something. Also I'm not totally sure if this would upset the story line somewhere down the road.

One thing is sure... the paladin in the party is all about granting mercy at least initially. However the rogue has lets say other ideas.. Form the player and I quote "That Lyrie is gonna have an accident" and "It may not happen immediately but, Lyrie and I are going to having a meeting AND SHE"S GONNA DIE". On one level I feel pretty good about provoking such passion (and sin points) from my players. On the other hand I don't want to derail the story line.. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Hi all I'm running a PF game and one of my players is a Summoner. He's currently third level. His Eilodon has an AC of 20 broken down as follows

10 baseline
+2 natural armor (3rd level eidolon stat)
+2 natural armor (serpentine base form bonus)
+3 DEX
+1 Dodge bonus (feat)
+2 natural armor (improved natural armor evolution)

Yea gods is this right? When he buffs with Mage Armor the thing has an AC of 24! One thing I'm curious about is the serpentine base form natural armor bonus. That bonus seems to be specifically Natural Armor. Where as the Eilodon normal level AC bonus progression states you have to choose either Natural Armor bonus or just Armor Bonus. Would the base form nat armor bonus stack with the normal level armor bonus if that bonus was all put into Nat armor?

Thanks for any insight and help