Maugan22's page

Not a problem Bombadil, sent it over this morning.

I'm not going to be able to attend the con this year, too much afoot at home.

I have a free con ticket available.

I also have a much sought after banquet ticket that I'm open to offers for, a $25 paizo gift card would for instance work well in trade.

Alright.... 5 months later they finally made their move.

What the Rogue has done.
After much consideration the rogue individually approached each of the party members in the group save for the NPCs PC love interest. One by one he sold them on his plan to trap the soul of the NPC. They have given the player of the other PC the option to either:
Know what all the plotting is about out of game
or be in the dark so as to not risk metagaming on information her character doesn't have available.

She has opted not to be put in the loop in the interest of more faithfully playing her character.

The plot at this point is flawless, unless the party's barbarian opts to seek out the advice of a third party diviner after the 2 day duration of the mind-blank has concluded there is no conceivable way that all her compatriots kidnapped her love interest.

What I've done:
In the second act of their penultimate adventure the party is going to come upon fragments of an ancient prophecy that hints that the NPCs involvement is crucial to their victory over the mage-bred monstrosities. If they had the other fragments they would learn that the prophecy is actually directed at another member of the Party.

I'm pretty happy with the present state of affairs, I think it'll create some excellent opportunities inter-party drama/conflict for the campaign climax.

Also, I'm never running a 1-20 campaign again, it takes eons to write adventures that need to factor in the ability of party members to cast wish and so forth >.<

Just when I finally get up the willpower to cancel my subscriptions they pull me back in :P.

Now that the adventure path is complete I should really get down to some new year's belt tightening.

Don't worry I'll be back :P

I just found the product I was after much cheaper from a FLGS. As such I'd like to use my Christmas gift card for something more interesting. Is it possible to cancel an order in the sidecart?

So after mulling it over and building a rudimentary spreadsheet looking at shipping costs vs local sales tax I bit the bullet today and renewed by subscription for the Pathfinder game. Now the subscription starts with NPC codex and part of my justification in doing so presumes that I'll get it shipped via sidecart as a cheaper consolidated shipment with the adventure path...

Unfortunately I now realize this means that I might be waiting until the payment is authorized a month from now to see the PDF, and I'm impatient, is there a way to issue payment sooner to get the PDF now without sending two shipments.

This is proof that Paizo really gets what the needs of the modern GM are. Can't wait for Wednesday.

Again, Glabrezus twist wishes. To debate the value of the wish twisting is irrelevant. The wish would be twisted regardless of weather the terms were honoured. But the terms being violated can't help.

To everyone who is saying that twisting the wish is unsuitable and to stop being a jerk.

Please read the descriptor of a Galbrezu:

With its ability to cloak its true form in pleasant illusions, the glabrezu uses its magic to grant wishes to mortal humanoids as a method of rewarding those who succumb to its guile and deceit. A wish granted by a glabrezu always fulfills the wisher's need in the most destructive way possible—although such methods might not be immediately apparent. A struggling weaponsmith might wish for fame and skill at his craft, only to find that his best patron is a cruel and sadistic murderer who uses the weapons to further his destructive desires. A lonely man who wishes for a companion might have his wish granted in the form of a lost love returned to “life” as a vampire, and so on—the glabrezu is nothing if not creative in addressing a mortal's desires.

Lots of good ideas so far, few comments

A) demon horns/features I like it, but so would the player, he's been claiming to be a demon for years.
B) Stealing con from other players, good but the rogue is already way more powerful than most in the party.
C) Cannibalism, awesome but it's already been done this campaign via an expanded deck of many things. player was upset he didn't draw the ghoul card.

My favorites at this point are slow polymorph into an oxen and pseudo demonic possession.

Ok, so as per usual my players will be fed to a Tarrasque if they read this post.

In the last session our party's CN rogue agreed to spare a Glabrezu demon's life if it granted him a wish. He wished for more constitution (+1). Now immediately following the wish being granted the rogue summarily executed the demon, (which most of the CG party members found no issue with)

Now I'm all for slaying demons but if there was ever a wish that needed to be harshly twisted about this would be the one.

Who's got an extra helping of nasty for me?

2. You, the GM, have essentially created an immortal spy to be sent into the PCs party and consistently feed the enemy with all the information they need and the PCs are powerless to stop it.

Thanks for your comments, no offense taken.

ONE of my players sees it this way. He may be correct that the NPC is evil but the Kianna is neither omnipotent nor immortal.

As I'm not yet reading the other thread (pending my player's permission) I can only speculate on what perspective he's putting forward but he might be a tad cross at how the clone in the last adventure screwed up the party's stuff.

The players (particularly the rogue PC Taylar) are constantly telling me "We're building a fortress city, We have elaborate magical traps, we have a vault of our unused treasure safe from prying eyes, we have guardian creatures"
no-one has ever given me any specific details on these defenses save for some lines representing curtian walls and a few half baked plans regarding trapsmithing magic items from advanced race guide.

In a vacuum of hard defensive info I presumed that a clone with the NPCs knowledge (supported by an epic level lich) could perform an inside job, steal, kidnap, sabotage etc. It was very much a case of hitting the party where they live to drive home the villany/power of the BBEG.

Taylar's player was a bit irked saying "we wouldn't be caught with our pants down like this" but went along with the adventure anyways. He seems to mis-ascribe the godlike ability to mess up the party's stuff to the lower level NPC rather than the epic level big bad.

The same NPC lich has proven the ability to clone other party members also.

Anyways I don't agree with the Players logic or the character's logic but I can't disuade him from this course without vetoing it so we'll see where this road leads.

A lot of good advice here, but I would be absolutely sure of the player's motivations before carrying through the more extreme parts. After all, the player did tell you beforehand what his plans were, instead of just carrying through with it before you have any chance of reacting or planning stuff, so I'm guessing he's not doing it to break the campaign.

There are several possibilities:

1. The player has misunderstood something essential about the whole situation.

2. The character has misunderstood something essential about the whole situation, and the player wants to roleplay that.

3. The player is tired of having a Mary Sue DMPC with the group, and just wants her out of the game.

4. ??

I would probably let the player try what he wants to, without making it superficially hard to do so. Maybe the sorceress has a Contingency spell, maybe not. But making it extra hard because he warned you in advance is not a good idea. Let him try, let the other PCs have a chance to find out. Maybe he will need to explain his actions to the other PC, maybe he will be the next BBEG - at this level it's not much to lose anyway, he's had an almost full career already.

Thanks Friend of Dork, I found this really useful.

3 is a non issue, this character isn't a DMPC. any time she joins the party she is controlled by the players (unless I need her as a mouthpiece for knowledge checks).

If I were to poll the other players they would say it's 1 and 2.

The four other players AND characters in the group as of the last game came out with radically different conclusion they said:

"Wow our NPC/Cohort friend was just captured by the Big Bad, refused to join the BBEG's ranks, was subsequently Tortured extensively, we thought she had turned on us but the real her never wavered." In light of this all the other characters think she's now beyond reproach

The lone PC (Taylar) seems to be saying
"Kianna's clone made a mockery of our defenses, stole our loot, kidnapped our guard chimeras and mutated them horribly. If the real thing ever turned on us we'd screwed even if she won't turn she's too much of a liability but I can't convince the others so I'm taking matters into my own hands."

Now I'm not going to say who's right here, I do love my plot twists. I will say that all my players don't have all the information yet and some characters aren't reacting rationally to the information they have available.

NEVER let your attraction for how you planned things to supersede a characters ability to have an effect on the story.

I'm actually in the nice position of not having one firm plan for the end of this campaign.

The campaign has the players sandwiched between two big bads who are at war. Agents of death and magebred monstrosities, BOTH big bads are bent on world domination. At the end of the campaign the players will make some choices that will decide the outcome of this conflict for better or for ill. Infact some of the choices they make may reshape the world.

The player's (Taylar's) actions don't run off the rails, I'm still comfortably within the scope of the plot as I foresaw it. The unfortunate aspect of this is that if not handled correctly his imprisonment of a key NPC (Kianna) may limit the choices the party can make that affect the campaign outcome.

I want the party to make these big choices not one player. Given that the taylar could take the rest of the party (NPC included) out in combat and has superior command of the rules to let the dice fall where they may favorers the powergamer over the others at the table (myself included)

Right, I agree.

You now have the following choice to make.

1. Your plot line.

2. Your romantic in-game relationship with your wife.

3 Your friends/players

PICK TWO.

From my perspective I think the situation is a bit more fluid. framed this way honestly I could see this going down as any of these outcomes.

1 2 & 3

1 & 3

or just 3 on it's own.

IC Relationship is a non-issue, I'm not about to ruin anyone's fun for the sake of preserving imaginary relations between a fictional characters. In truth killing, abducting or tormenting Kianna has proven to provide high drama situations that the wife quite enjoys. I see a PC driven abduction of Kianna as no exception to this trend.

I would frame this issue more along the lines of:

1) Satisfying agency of PC (Taylar) who has desires that conflict with group.
2) Satisfying agency of other players who ALL like this NPC(Kianna) (even against some suspicion OOC)
3) Having room to do something awesome with plot.

Right now I can pick 1&3 or 2&3. I want all three.

Illidyth is totally right -- this is NOT a book. And as a GM of decades also I'll tell you -- I've had my endings inexorably altered too -- and it's a challenge a good GM must rise to meet, otherwise we should be writing stories and not running campaigns.

I agree fully. As it happens I'm horrible at writing stand alone fiction :P

I want everyone at the table to have fun. However respecting the agency of a single player (who is far more rules savvy and powergamey) than the others shouldn't ruin the agency of everyone else at the table.

Let the dice fall where they may.

Two campaigns back ,my absolute favorite pet NPC of all time tried to recruit a like minded PC to help him attain evil godhood. PC pretended to go along with it and stole the godhood out from under him at the last second, killing another PC in the process. (Betrayed NPC, betrayed the party, became a the god of Death) It was very much an "empire strikes back" ending to that campaign and the in game repercussions are being felt to this day. Respecting the agency of that player made for some awesome ending but it also lead to some hurt feelings IRL. Looking to improve things this time around.

And as for Mrs GM? Why shouldn't her character be the one making out with the NPC? Do you want to play such a situation in front of the other spouse? Don't you think that's jsut a tad icky?

I'm not sure I understand the question but I'll try to answer.

I cater to the desires of my players, some players want a bit of romance on the side. There can be an ick factor but it can often ramp up the drama.

Lets name some folks:
The rogue (Taylar) has an NPC (sarah) wife with class levels.
My wife's character (Tammarack) the Fighter has this pivotal NPC (Named Kianna) as a squeeze.

And if memory serves prior to these relationships the Tayar and Tammarack had a brief fling.

The key NPC is not just crucial plot element but also something of a mulligan for my wife's character and we're getting some quality dramatic mileage out of "rescue the princess" plots so far.

Aaaaaaaaaand I'm back...

When I last perused this thread (about 70 posts ago) I got some good suggestions (and some bad ones), discussed with my player a whole lot, read up on spells, and figured out some ways of playing this. Then got talking to an important Kobold and failed to notice the thread growth entirely. Thanks everyone for your interest so far :)

A few general comments before I respond to some individual points)
A) My player is a rock star, he's not a jerk and he very respectfully told me his intentions and let me plan around them accordingly. If this was too much of a wrench in my plans I trust that I could tell him not to and he would respect that (not necessarily happily but he would) We have been having productive and respectful phone discussions about this on an ongoing basis and I don't think I'll need to play that card.

B) The fact that the NPC is involved with my Wife's character was withheld but not for the purpose of a conflict of interest on my part (at least any that I'm aware of). I come from a background where two female characters in a romance can be... controversial and wanted to sidestep a potentially useless tangent discussion, now that the cat's out of the bag I'm very glad to see it's been a non-issue.

C) This character is important to the plot line, but she's not immortal or all powerful. I have pet NPCs, she's crucial to the plot, and I make no apologies for this. I consider myself a storyteller first and a ref second and storytellers need key characters. This doesn't mean the rogue can't succeed but his success or failure will have a *profound* effect on the campaign world I've been building for over a decade. I feel this power is best put in the hands of all the PCs not just one.

D) I'm on here looking for options not allies, as such criticism of my approach falls on deaf ears. If you like my style that's awesome, if you don't like my style I respect your opinion but I don't much care. I don't need strangers on the internet to validate my DMing skills, I just want you to show me new avenues of awesome.

E) I'd like to lay my cards on the table but with the second thread going there's too large a chance of more information leaking (Intentionally or accidentally) I'll need to continue to be somewhat coy. If anyone's paying attention a few months from now I'll post a behind the scenes look at what eventually went down.

Now on to some specific comments...

Bad guy made clones of Sorceress. PCs killed one of the clones; Sorceress herself wasn't involved.

Now Rogue wants to "take Sorceress out of the equation", but this won't actually remove any of the clones. So the clones will still be running around, but he'll have killed an ally. Did I get that right?

Pretty much

As per usual, my players shouldn't be reading this post.

Ok so 3 real world years ago in the very first encounter of our campaign I introduced a 10 year old townsfolk NPC child who, in the midst of a goblin attack discovered she had arcane talent and fought back against the invaders. The campaign has progressed well,, the party is reaching level 18 and the NPC (now an adult, a level 16 sorcerer, and all but married to one of the PCs) has occasionally joined them on adventures in a henchman capacity where her bloodline has proven to have a connection to and power over the monstrous minions of the big bad.

Now the group has been joking for years that this particular NPC will turn out to be the campaign final boss so when I started riffing on this particular idea last adventure it was pretty epic. Unbeknownst to the party the big bad kidnapped and cloned her a bunch of times, the party had a big final battle against a lesser Jabberwock and a couple of casters, one who they presumed to be this NPC but it turned out to just be a clone.

Upon rescuing the original most of the party think things are back to normal, with the potential exception of dealing with her clones cropping up in the future.

One of my PCs however doesn't see it this way. The party rogue, the usually lovable loose cannon, has decided that the NPC is too much of a liability in the face of the Big Bad's looming apocalypse and has decided to kill her and/or trap her soul such that she can't escape or be resurrected. The player wants this plan to be kept secret from the other PCs both IC and OOC.

Now the rogue is the powerhouse of the party, I have zero doubts about his statistical ability to push this plan through. However this is really going to cramp my style as I wrap up this campaign, plus upset both the PCs and their players.

These are the options I've come up with so far and I'm not entirely happy with any of them.
-Tell the player not to despite he's convinced "it's what my character would do"
-Let him proceed with the plan and give the party tools to find out what he's been up to so they can fix things, party turns on each other.
-Let him proceed and have a pivotal NPC simply vanish from the campaign.
-Give the NPC a sudden boost in power such that she can unexpectedly ward of the attack.
-Have the NPC grow wise to the threat on her life and vanish for a few sessions only to come back and make a preemptive strike against the rogue.

Any ideas as to how to best handle this for the enjoyment of all.

Those are really cool, might invest in the PDF

Due to a glut of positive feedback, I'm thinking of running my perilous paths adventure on the digital projector again Sunday morning at 8am, need 4 players to make it work please reply to this thread by midnight if interested and available. Will be playing under the tents.

About time someone released a Yeth hound!

Now all I need is a blink dog

Should I disqualify you for failing to follow directions?

CJ
WA VC

I'd love to GM, failing that would like to NPC,
Can bring costumes, minis, maps, just give me a list :)

I do a bunch of Live Action Roleplay where i come from (vancouver), mostly European style boffer LARP as seen in movies such as rolemodels. My idea is as follows:

Event: Gollarion themed LARP session, based perhaps on a dungeon from an adventure path such as RotRLs
Site: Nearby Local Park, or potentially the Seattle Underground tunnels*
Gear: Bring your own costume or we can provide one. Weapons will be provided.
Players: 5-15 players plus need 1-3 volunteers to crew (play NPCs/Monsters)

Pros:
Friggin awesome

Cons:
Travel time
*Extra costs possible particularly if we use the underground site.

Thoughts?

Sounds interesting but seems a shame to spend an entire slot for an hour of play. then again if there are interesting panels durring that time.

I'm not one to turn down some feedback

Mindari’s Maddening Mittens of Myriad Missiles
Aura faint evocation; CL 5th
Slot -; Price 1200 gp; Weight 1 lb.
The magic in these unremarkable half-fingered leather gloves is apparent only in the hands of arcane spellcasters. Any mage pulling them on feels a mild urge to fidget with their fingers. Those that give in to the urge find themselves tracing out portions of the somatic gestures of a magic missile spell obsessively. The gloves may be used three times per day, any character regardless of their class, who casts magic missile as a spell, spell like ability or from another magic item launches one extra magic missile above those permitted by caster level, up to a maximum of six total missiles. The gloves may only be used once per casting of the spell. Upon the third use a caster no longer suffers from compulsive fidgeting, at least until they next prepare or regain spells.
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Magic Missile; Cost 600 gp

Thanks in Advance!

I don't have strong feelings on the matter but I'm in agreement with Are for the most part.

Note that from the base skill:

If you try to take something from a creature, you must make a DC 20 Sleight of Hand check. The opponent makes a Perception check to detect the attempt, opposed by the Sleight of Hand check result you achieved when you tried to grab the item. An opponent who succeeds on this check notices the attempt, regardless of whether you got the item. You cannot use this skill to take an object from another creature during combat if the creature is aware of your presence.

So if you are invisible stealing from an unaware creature you wouldn't need to use the talent at all, and I don't think as skill use it would constitute an attack.

Now the talent makes a disarm attack with the slight of hand skill so If you do use the talent it removes invisibility... which doesn't make perfect sense to me.

I'm interested in Tier 3, who do I e-mail?

+1 for option 3 keep them alive and write the next adventure as them as dragon thralls.

Another way you could go is for the dragon to let them live but take all their gear. Perhaps maim them a bit to "Set an example" before sending them back through the gate.

Sets up your dragon as a longer term villain that they can come back and kill once they are appropriate level.

Note that a level 7 party has allot of resources at their disposal buffs, magic items from their tok'ra wizard friend, + clever tactics. If they go in knowing they are up against a high CR dragon and the dragon doesn't see it coming I would give them even odds of pulling it off.

Rhino!

Ninja
Samurai

Ninja should be a rogue archetype, or group of archetypes
Samurai should be a fighter or cavalier archetype.

That being said, i think Ninja in pathfinder is the best execution of the class I've ever seen in any system, though I have no use for it in my world.

I was super concerned about this in my campaign a while ago, the rogue was uber, the rest were low average characters. Had a sit down discussion with the rogue's player and he agreed to help the others out a bit.

Surprisingly some players took his advice, some ignored it. Seems that most were happy to have the rogue save the day from time to time.

I also try to balance out the party in other ways. Light weight characters often receive neat artifacts that are best in their hands.
Also giving the spotlight to a player and making the adventure enjoyable for them doesn't need to hinge on making them the combat powerhouse. Centering your plot around the character or giving them non-combatant ways to excel through diplomacy, puzzle solving, or pure theatrics can be fun.

Give the non-min maxers more leash.
One of my favorite character's in my present campaign is a aged male cleric stuck in the body of the youthful female criminal, his good mental stats, her stellar physical stats. It's only possible cause I know the player isn't in it to be a combat god, He just like's the concept and we get allot of mileage out of the many questions the character's dual nature brings up and we're about to go into our third adventure centered around that character.

I've got a bit of experience as an archer, both with LARP combat archery and target archery. So I'm coming at this as a guy who knows his way around a bow.

I would say this would be plausible but somewhat ineffective.

A) you sight down the arrow to aim
B) ideal archery stance has the bow at perpendicular to the ground

you would only be able to sight down one bow and would be firing somewhat blind with the other. Also you would need to slant both bows enough that they wouldn't clash perhaps 10-20 degrees off perpendicular

I would say you should take -2 with the primary and -4 or more with the secondary at very least.

This sounds to me like you would want a dedicated feat instead of/ or in addition to two weapon fighting.

There's a 3.5 precedent for this, and a good image to visualize
Check out arrow demon p34 in Monster Manual 3
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/iw_arrow_demon.jpg

Awesome Set, I'm very excited, My one big request for Pathfinder minis is this:

consistent color schemes.

This drove me nuts with DDM, different sets had wildly differing color schemes for the same race

If a goblin's skin color is green in this set don't make them gray or neon orange in the next. If I'm fielding a tribe of goblins I expect them to be thoroughly inbred not inexplicably genetically diverse.

If you're my player, no looking at this thread, yes that means you Phil :P

Has anyone tried to run a logic matrix puzzle at a tabletop RPG?

I'm working on adapting one for a pathfinder adventure. I figure it'll be a nice puzzle for which I as a GM don't need to babysit the party on. They can break off into groups or singles and solve it/argue with each other and I'll sit back with some light roleplaying options for the non-puzzle people. IF they get bored/stuck they can wander off kill monsters and come back.

I'm thinking something along this line would be thematically appropriate,
http://www.braingle.com/brainteasers/29529/battles-for-the-gods.html
I'm just going to sub in my own gods/landmarks/artifacts/calendar and fiends

I figure the vault they are trying to break into will ask a random question of them, if they answer wrong they get disintegrated, so they can either risk it %80 chance of disintegration, or they can work out the entire puzzle (spend an hour or two) and save their skins.

Likely include a high int henchman/hireling or two for players who want to participate but feel constrained by a low int character.

Thoughts, advice,

Handed this out as treasure last week:

Cloak of resistance +4 which confers an immunity to paralysis and petrification.

I eyeballed it at 22,000 gp but now the party wants to make copies of it and I'm thinking perhaps I've undervalued it.

I'm sure it's just hiding on me but I've been looking for a while, clearly other folks have no issue finding it.

Using Firefox and IE

Wife just got laid off, need money for groceries.

Really sucks as I was looking forward to Bestiary 3

Yup, gonna need to get me two of these bad boys.

Sigh...

When World of Warcraft came out it decimated my 3.5 campaign, I don't want to see a repeat. Fact is many pathfinder players still play pathfinder because they dodged the WoW bullet as it were.

To be blunt MMO are a dangerous, addictive, life disrupting pastime which steal and detract from the art form of pen and paper RPGs.

Why get together in the basement around Mountian Dew and Cheetoes when you can play at home in your underwear.

I do not support this move, I think it's doomed to failure, I think even if it works it will detract from the base of support for the pen and paper rpgs and pathfinder in particular.

I very much hope Paizo isn't tying up any of their own capital in this endeavor.

First off, if you're in my campaign, don't read this.

So my level 14 group has got it in their head that they want to rob a bank... They want the loot to fortify their home town against a growing threat of minions run by the big bad.

Not just any bank mind you but the richest, most highly guarded, bank on their continent of my little home brewed world.

So now I'm looking at writing a heist adventure, as with any good heist story I'm hoping that half (or more) of the adventure will be spent plotting and scheming.

Presuming PFRPG magic, and practically unlimited resources how would you build a bank vault to be not only seemingly impregnable, but also really fun to knock over.

So far I'm thinking the usual suspects like:
Walls that can, with difficulty, be tunneled through from next door.
Antimagic fields
Teleportation barriers
guardian constructs (even inevitables)
encounters that require social engineering/disguise/bluff work.
Traps
Labyrinths
And a head honcho for said bank who the party should love to hate.

I'm looking for your ideas, particularly stuff you have used in your game, on a similar note does anyone know of heist adventures, ideally for pathfinder or 3.5 that may be applicable/available?

I think the map PDFs are great, Corey's maps are of course works of art and it's awesome to have older one's available. however at $9.00 each for what amounts to 9 pages of information (18 for a double sided offering) I don't think this would be worthwhile.

I would be interested in buying all of them but only at a lower price point, say $3-5 each. At this price I could see buying one or two.

Another way to make these maps more palatable would be to improve the customization available perhaps through a different file format. A document in Photoshop for instance would permit people to remove certain elements (say the layer that contains the cannons) while leaving the rest of the map intact. I don't know that there's a widely available file format this would work for (I don't know that gimp would be appropriate) but I'll just throw it out there.)

Anyways still very excited, very cool to see a PDF offering of this nature.

I have a bit of hands on experience with foam larp weapons, which are relatively light compared to steel.

Lifting a weapon and swinging a weapon in a combat situation are vastly different animals. In combat you're not only swinging the weapon in a simple arc but also changing the angle mid swing to compensate for the opponent's attempts to block/dodge. Using a huge sword one handed is wildly impractical for this.

If I were forced to write a PF feat simulating monkey grip I would limit the character to one attack a round, at a -4 to hit penalty. Further it wouldn't be compatible with other feats like vital strike.

I played map-less in 2nd ed, all through high school, found it kinda irksome.
I remember getting my hands on the TSR Player's Option:Combat and Tactics and they had the first chapter devoted to using a battle mat and it was love at first sight, I knew from the troll combat onward that I wanted battlemats and an oodle of minis, but didn't have cash for either back then.

Now 11 years later, I've done some map less "theater of the mind" stuff at the request of players or for simple combats, often cause we're to lazy to position minis for a simple fight vs a lone NPC. Generally though I feel generally it detracts from the experience.

I've also had some luck with 40K style ruler play, works really well for players who have warhammer/wargames experience and particularly for outdoor combats. Come to think of it I should do more of that.

Of course d20 introduced mats&minis to make more money, and that's even without considering mini sales. A better game will sell more books, a mat makes a better game (in this system). Vis-a-vis a OGL game employing battle mats is more profitable. To support this highly opinionated argument I'll point out that both before and after WOTC was making pre-painted minis they have had licensed offerings of paper tokens for use with battle mats.

I think that battlemaps are great for pathfinder and feel generally that theater of the mind is regressive for the OGL based games. Then again I have players who jump at the chance to ditch the map.

Back in 3.5 we had Titan fighting, (races of stone p145) which seems pretty popular at my table.

I noticed that every single gnome/dwarf etc took it which says to me to go get the nerf bat. Also it's closed content which I prefer not to use (not fair to folks who can't get the old books)

So I came up with this.

Nimbleness of the Short Folk {Racial}
You have trained to adapt your ancestral defensive tactics against giants to be of wider use against creatures larger than yourself.
Prerequisite:Gnome or Dwarf, Dodge
Benefit:You may declare a single bipedal creature larger than yourself as "giant-like". Against that giant-like creature you may apply half your racial dodge bonus against giants (typically +2). You may specify a giant-like target, change your target, or stop using this feat as a swift action. As a dodge bonus this feat bonus stacks with the Dodge feat however while using this feat you lose all dodge bonuses against all other creatures.

I'd welcome your opinions, thoughts as to comparative balance.

This is open content see tuskmountain.wikidot.com

Maugan22 wrote:

it would be nice to have something in the published rules to back me up.

I'd also suggest that you talk out with your player how/why he chose to do such a thing, he did invest 20k gold just so he could do some silly fun.

Well the cannon was treasure from a past adventure, they looted it from a pirate ship. If he doesn't use it to sneak attack I suspect they'll mount it on a ship of their own.

I think the motivation here is bragging rights. We're using cannons right from inner sea guide, though the rules are a bit sparse.