Matthulu's page

2nd edition ravenloft was great. "A light in the belfry" was good, I think they did a "Masque of the red death" module but I can't remember if that was ravenloft or not.

The cat in the hat. Also I'm going to say Tony, Danny Torrences' imaginary friend from "The Shining".

Matthulu wrote:

I agree with Bandw2, I someone is just breaking stuff with no force of personality behind it, even if they are jacked up walking muscles, they look more like a child throwing a temper tantrum.

Go to a bar, interact with a body builder who has no force of personality, have him look at you with a death glare and break a bottle with his bare hands, and tell me again that's not intimidating.

You can intimidate without force of personality. I've seen it before.

Right, this hypothetical body builder pulled off a good death glare. Without that they are just breaking more stuff. Granted, he could probably break me too, but that doesn't mean I'm intimidated by that fact. Just being strong isn't always intimidating, maybe they seem too nice or something. it's the look combined with the display of strength that tells me that they can break me and are WILLING to go through with it.

One of the things that Mutants and Masterminds did is give GMs advice on running what they call "Power Level X" characters, meaning that the character is basically a plot device and as such does not need or have stats. This is what IMO should have been done with Cthulhu; no stats, no possibility of killing him, but advice to the GM on how to use him in a campaign in a way that doesn't frustrate the players or ruin the game.

I like that idea, it really isn't that hard to use. It would go something like: "RUNE NUKE"........no effect. "CHEESE SPRAY"......no effect. "SUPER SNEAK ATTACK OF DOOM"........no effect. Plot time ;)...... If we must......

I agree with Bandw2, I someone is just breaking stuff with no force of personality behind it, even if they are jacked up walking muscles, they look more like a child throwing a temper tantrum.

15. Your mentor/teacher/parent tells you to get out and get a job/experience the world/do some field work.

Matthulu wrote:

aceDiamond wrote:

I do have one thing I think at least throws a wrench in the projected strategy. By rules, Cthulhu is a Great Old One. As far as we've seen, Great Old Ones have cults. Ergo, it could be assumed that great and terrible Cthulhu has high level clerics who wish to do his bidding and defend him from non-believers.

At least the addition of this resource makes things possibly interesting.

Maybe, but the hypothetical wizard probably has hypothetical minions [a.k.a. his fellow party members] to deal with these cultists.

I love Cthulhu as much as anyone, but pathfinder is not his game. It's generally a game of smash and grab and stats mean mortality, which means you can be killed, or at least banished, very quickly. Unless he gets elevated to God status, but that's not part of this conversation.

He already is a deity. The fact that he can be killed isn't actually that surprising, after all, anything can be killed if it has stats. With enough planning, Schrodinger's Wizard can be killed. Its kinda a game fact that if it has stats, it can die[at least temporarily]. That is why the devs don't stat gods. That already seems to be taken into account due to his Immortality, saying that if you kill him, that aspect of his Non-Euclidean self just takes a few-thousand year nap in R'yleh and comes back somewhere else.

So, if I'm following the conversation correctly, Cthulhu and Schodinger's Wizard will eternally battle for ever and ever, each one only actually killing clones and simulacrums, or banishing the other to another plane for a few millennia?

That's the issue with higher level play in general, most problems can be solved with either "BOOM" or "DIVINATE", while the other party members watch the magic show. It doesn't have to be like that, but it can. It's not "wrong" or "cheap" it just is. Some people enjoy it. Loopholes exist. I'm sure the game designers didn't intend to have their [pretty minor] trap spell become the bane of all existence, but it was written that way, with a very easy to exploit way to use it, so it just gets added to the numerous ways a high level wizard can literally destroy anything with minimal effort.

Frankly, I see far less problem with Intimidate being based on charisma than on Perform (Dance) being based on the same ability score -- with the implication that you do not suffer any armor check penalty for dancing in full plate.

I don't know, I'll bet one could pull off a good robot in full plate. I'd like to see that lol

I do have one thing I think at least throws a wrench in the projected strategy. By rules, Cthulhu is a Great Old One. As far as we've seen, Great Old Ones have cults. Ergo, it could be assumed that great and terrible Cthulhu has high level clerics who wish to do his bidding and defend him from non-believers.

At least the addition of this resource makes things possibly interesting.

Maybe, but the hypothetical wizard probably has hypothetical minions [a.k.a. his fellow party members] to deal with these cultists.

Matthulu wrote:

Some people said Sam Gamgee, but I would say Frodo was more likely a commoner. Sam at least fought pretty well. Frodo only survived because of some sweet armor someone gave him and he had some powerful friends. He also would have gotten some sweet XP for solving the word puzzle to enter Moria. He did pretty much nothing on his own, but survived tons of epic stuff.

he did one thing, walk across the entire continent with pure evil hanging from his neck, I think he did exactly as much as he needed to.

True, he definitely has Iron Will and all the other feats like that

Some people said Sam Gamgee, but I would say Frodo was more likely a commoner. Sam at least fought pretty well. Frodo only survived because of some sweet armor someone gave him and he had some powerful friends. He also would have gotten some sweet XP for solving the word puzzle to enter Moria. He did pretty much nothing on his own, but survived tons of epic stuff.

dot. this is a great thred btw

It would seem to me that the biggest problem you have is not how the player plays their paladin, but how they play in general. If they are throwing temper tantrums or pouting every time anything actually challenges their character you should talk to them about fixing that problem first. Making their paladin fall won't have any impact on them other than "DM is being a jerk and took all my powers away", Where falling is supposed to be a hugely major thing thing to happen to a paladin for doing something incredibly bad. It's usually either a last resort wake up call by their God or for someone beyond redeeming. It goes beyond the stats, but someone who doesn't care about roleplaying won't care about that.

Awaken

Dethklok

dotted. Grandfather Coyote is a pretty rascally fellow

I'm actually going to run a Halloween one shot where my current pcs are going to have a shared dream experience where they all wake up in different parts of a haunted mansion type of thing. Most pcs, in my experience, are very much on edge when alone. Modified spectral undead, some haunts, "traps" and maybe a few things that go bump in the night should keep the tension high.
I think in a game that is so statistic based, description is the most important way to really strike fear into a player. That, or breaking their stuff, I suppose.

I don't think he meant all magic items just the enhancement bonus ones. The barbarian in his example could probably stand to lose a point or two off of his strength belt to get some other kind of ability from it give a little more variety.
Also, I think that spell resistance does a similar thing to spellcasters that DR does to warrior types. Besides, there are so many ways around both that they are minor annoyances at best.

I didn't think they would go so far off the source material. They should have called it something else so that impression wasn't planted firmly in my brain. I really enjoyed most of this book, but most of the characters are changed just enough so that I don't really like any of them.

Not positive but I believe trap making is its own skill under the craft skill.

At the end of an episode of That 70s show Alice Cooper and a couple of others are playing during the end credits. It was a pretty funny little bit. Also, who could forget the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon :)

Matthulu wrote:

In the AP where the star spawn of Cthulu is found there is a blurb about Great Cthulu that says that he would be as powerful to a star spawn as a star spawn is to a normal person. That would put his CR at 400..... I would love to see that stat block! (Assuming a CR 1 character)

That was written before Mythic Adventures was anything more than a distant future possibility.

Cthulhu is CR 30. The maximum CR we can really do in the game, pretty much.

I figured as much. Just thought that would be funny. Also I need to learn to spell Cthulhu.

In the AP where the star spawn of Cthulu is found there is a blurb about Great Cthulu that says that he would be as powerful to a star spawn as a star spawn is to a normal person. That would put his CR at 400..... I would love to see that stat block! (Assuming a CR 1 character)

If the players are really into the campaign thus far, and enjoy their characters, any final, campaign ending fight had better have great tpk potential or it will feel cheap and unearned. Nothing worth gaining is easy. If the tpk happens, then perhaps some greater power saves them or something like that, or it just ends with the bad guy winning, which can set up a whole new campaign if you choose.

The right music can make a bland encounter memorable and a good encounter legendary. It's not necessary but makes it better.
Midnight syndicate is good for creepy BGM and for battles anything with a fast beat and guitars is good. I would use a particular set of songs for big boss battles that the players would all recognize and know that it was time to stop screwing around.

I've noticed that a lot of players have a hard time changing tactics dramatially after around 12 or so levels of being used to certain things working all the time. Same goes for gms too, myself included, they fall into a kind of pattern most of the time and it can get stale quickly.
It can be an incredible ammount of work to design interesting encounters for high level pcs. Also, trying to hide a villans evil plots can be very hard with all the info gathering magic available to even mid level characters.

I found the Colour out of space in the Carrion Crown AP was pretty nasty. Huge Incoporial ooze, flight, Disintigrating touch with vital strike, and ability drain. Sure its weak against force effects but it also has a high SR and many resistances and immunities. Also an aura of malaise that has a huge range. All at CR 10.

I hope it never happens personally. There is no way that it can be done right. There is just way too much that happpens. The Lord of the Rings was only three books long and had three long movies based on them that had tons of stuff taken out. Imagine trying to do seven movies. A tv series would have a slightly better chance to be good, but not much I just dont think there would be enough interest for a network to pick it up for that long.

I actually enjoyed most of it, not all of it, but most of it. Flagg getting killed how he did was almost enough to make me stop altogether, but, the biggest problem was that you had to read a lot of other SK novels and short stories to really understand everything right. Such as "the artist" was a character from the book Insomnia. I honestly dont think SK wanted to ever finish it. I'm also not sure I want to read this new one coming out either as I dont think its going to add too much to the overall story.

It kind of sounds like the old D&D cartoon, Lol. Escape the "real" world, discover amazing powers, and wonderous creatures.... and learn a valuable life lesson at the same time. Seriously though I would completely homebrew something like this. Maybe even tweak some of the racial personalities.
E.G. Maybe dwarves are overly warlike and subjugate the other races or orcs are all peaceful nature loving creatures, just taking a slightly different take on the way the mythical races are portrayed could change how everything feels in the game world.

Hey, all!

I know that in the old days, encounter design used to include monsters that vastly overpowered the party. Gives you that 'world doesn't only exist for us' feel.

If I wanted to throw something like that into my campaign, and then reward the PCs for just... successfully running away...

Are there guidelines for experience point awards in that situation? Or am I on my own?

Thanks in advance for the help!

I would definately give them something, maybe half, maybe less. Just because they didnt kill anything doesn't mean they didn't learn anything. It's the experience that matters I think.

I might add a couple here: Interview with the Vampire ST has a couple and if you can find it the "Nightmare Creatures" soundtrack is great but I imagine is hard to find because it is an old playstation one game.
I have found that a well placed track can make a pretty bland encounter pretty memorable. Ex: I put a group against a Wheep and played a track called "The hands of small children" by Marilyn Manson during the fight and one of the players said later that he had nightmares about it later :)

Thats the great thing about these types of monsters and scenarios, if you are creative enough in the way they are used and described, players will still be weirded out despite what their crazy-silly stats are. At least that was the goal when I use them, to keep my players on their toes and guessing "what the heck IS that thing".

Matthulu wrote:

I ran a low level adventure with the Pseudonatural template fom 3.5 being put on some animals and had the group investigate the source of the mutations. That worked pretty well for a low level group, and was able to be carried on to higher levels as they dug deeper into the problem. Or if it doesn't convert well ( I have not tried it) just throw some tentacles on them or give them a strange attack form and have them act strange.

Pseudonatural? How does that alter the creature? Thanks!

It gets DR and SR based on HD and a little acid and electricity resistance, plus true strike once per day and an alternate form, which I believe is up to your creativity. I don't have it in front of me but I don't think the alternate form has any in-game stats, more of a flavor thing. Either way it's out of the Complete Arcane and it went with the Alienist class.

I ran a low level adventure with the Pseudonatural template fom 3.5 being put on some animals and had the group investigate the source of the mutations. That worked pretty well for a low level group, and was able to be carried on to higher levels as they dug deeper into the problem. Or if it doesn't convert well ( I have not tried it) just throw some tentacles on them or give them a strange attack form and have them act strange.