Mawgrim's page

You're in luck - there are two weapon mounts on the Hippocampus, so both Orlam and Private Eye can act as gunners :) can everyone also check the skill modifiers are the bottom of the stat block to make sure I have them correct.

As each of the Starfinders take a seat at one of the six stations in front of them, the HUD monitors reconfigure themselves to provide quick access to the predominant systems they would use for their chosen roles. After the system checks are complete and the airlock doors are sealed, Absalom Traffic Control opens the outer door of the bay's airlock, revealing the tranquility of space on the other side, and after the doors are fully opened gives the all clear for the Hippocampus to leave the station.

The thrusters of the freighter take a couple of minutes to fire up completely, sending a subtle vibration through the entire ship as it lifts off of the hangar floor and launches forwards. As Xera navigates the Hippocampus around and through the Armada, getting used to how the ship handles, the navigation system automatically begins setting the suggested heading and coordinates as programmed by the Stewards - a nearly two hour voyage out to the quarantine zone where the Acreon and the Drift Rock are floating.

After a short trip of weaving through the ships and other space-bound buildings in the Armada, the Hippocampus finally enters truly open space and Absalom Station retreats behind the group. About an hour into the journey, a cursory glance at the ship's sensor array reveals that a small ship has broken away from the Armada and appears to be following the Hippocampus, closing in on an intercept course. Strangely though, the other ship's transponder does not appear to be working and it is not broadcasting any identification codes.

My group just got to this point in the first book, and it was awesome as a GM to watch them crowd around a tablet to view the video. Being able to see the NPC give her last will and testament to them made it all the more real for them.

Thank you and your friend for making this video - it was brilliant, and I highly recommend any GM that runs the AP use this video when they get to this point.

I am looking to run The First Mandate (1-05) as a segue between the event just after book 2 begins and the PC's making their way to their next destination. This would allow the PCs a chance to enjoy their new-found celebrity status and give them a bit of time in the limelight, and it would make sense that the Starfinders as an organization would attempt to capitalize on the fame of their newest recruits to try and reinvigorate their ranks after the losses suffered during the scoured stars incident.

Someone on Reddit recommended that the DCs could be fixed by being changed like so, with the CRB DCs on the left and the changes on the right.

10+2*tier -> 10+1.5*tier
15+2*tier -> 15+1.5*tier
20+2*tier -> 20+1.5*tier
10+3*tier -> 25+1.5*tier

These make way more sense and allows non-ultra-specialized skill monkeys to hit most of the DCs and completely remove the impossible DCs entirely once you factor in a decent on-board computer.

EDIT: Here's some maths that shows what the changes do: Original maths vs altered maths.

For me personally, I'd probably change the last DC (which is easier in low tiers, and harder in high tiers) to be 10+2.5*tier (rounded up).

This will keep all the DCs in the same pattern as is currently in the book as well as achieving the outcome of DCs not ramping up and becoming harder as a ship's tier increases (provided that the character keeps up with putting skill ranks into their starship role's key skill).

Apologies if this has already been hashed out earlier in the conversation.

Father Zantus peers at the harrow card presented to him by the cartomancer and shakes his head. "I only knew Ezakien Tobyn with any degree of closeness as a student of his before his untimely passing in the fire five years past. And while he was an extraordinarily compassionate man and an expert teacher, he was also very much sane."

As the priest muses over the nature of the card's portent, another man's voice cuts in. "Haelvor, my boy, there you are! Alma said you were around here somewhere," Brodert says as he ambles up carrying a backpack and a spear, while behind him trail three young children of about nine or ten years of age.the two boys are carrying a set of scale mail with a buckler on top of it, while a young girl proudly carries a morningstar in her arms like it was the most important thing in the world.

"I was getting some bread for breakfast and Alma said you were here with Sheriff Hemlock, and I've also heard that you were involved in saving people at the Cathedral last night - is that true?"

From what I can gather, Zhu has not been online since the middle of the June or there abouts, so for the time being he has been written out of the game (but not yet out of Sandpoint, so there is still opportunity to have him reappear if he returns to the game. For the time being I am not intending to replace him, as I generally prefer groups of 4-5 as a GM, and will mean that I only have to scale up the encounters by a quarter again rather than by a half.

Poor Jubrayl - thinking he knows better than you guys about what's going on, and attempting to sow division.. :)

Again, I must apologise for not sticking to my advertised posting schedule of late, but I am going to make amends on that and pick up the pacing of what's going on, even if it's only with small updates to nudge and push the scenes along.

Thank you all for putting up with me as a DM so far on my first attempt back at running a PBP - even with my not-so-strict posting schedule, I have been enjoying following all your characters through the journey so far. All of you have been thoroughly entertaining so far :)

:) having a quick read, it seems like we're going to have a pretty interesting group with you all. Am very much looking forward to running this game for you all.

I've checked over everyone's character sheets and cannot find any more issues or things that need any clarifying, so now its time to get the game started soon.

Over the course of the next day or so, I will be getting the first post up and running. Please feel free to ask any question in the meantime and I will answer as quickly as I can. I'm usually on gchat as well, if you want to hit me up there for any reason as well. Just shoot me a message and I'll give you my email to use.

Cheers!

Hi Serolt - you've pretty much hit the nail on the head when it comes to things like animal companions and the like in that they are as much an extension of the main character as they are an autonomous creature/npc, so I'm good to go along with all of that. Having him delay to your initiative works for me as well, as realistically an animal companion will wait for the orders of their master/handler, and so their initiative will only change if you have them delay/ready an action by way of tricks.

If we find that at a later stage it's not working as well as we would like, or you'd like to have Regin be a little more npc-like or what have you, we can work out a way to handle things on an as needed basis :)

Not to mention it's the prerequisite for Improvisation, and getting a 10th level Bard ability at first isn't something to sneeze at, either.

This is also a very valid point. I was only judging the two feats side-by-side at 1st level :)

Dot.

I've made characters for this Ap in Rl thrice, and the furthest I've gotten has been an entire session. So I'd like to know more! 4th time's the charm, maybe...

Question: What's your take on firearms?

Firearms aren't being included in this game, so while the gunslinger is allowed it is limited to using the bolt ace archetype.

For five years, the faithful of Sandpoint have attended church in temporary structures erected after fire destroyed the previous temple, and while their new religious leader was helpful, kind, and wise, church wasn’t the same. Now, the new cathedral is finally done. All that remains is for the Swallowtail Festival to renew the site’s blessings from the gods and it will be as if the Sandpoint Fire had never occurred.

Hi everyone – I am looking to put together a group of 4-5 players to run through the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition. Whether you’re new to PbP or a veteran, players both new and experienced are welcome!

A bit about myself: I am a long time face-to-face GM, having started running games soon after D&D 3.5 was released, I’m reasonably familiar with Pathfinder and D&D in both 3.5 and 4th edition, and am currently dabbling in 5th edition D&D as well. I have done PbP GMing in the past on a different forum and have recently started getting back into it on here as a player, which in turn has caused the GM bug to bite.

About the game: As stated above, I am looking to run a group of 4-5 PCs through the Rise of the Runelords. One spot has been reserved already for an Oracle, so I will be recruiting an additional 3-4 PCs depending on the other character submissions. I am more interested in making up an interesting group of PCs than a balanced group, and like with my real life groups I will urge people to create a character they want to play rather than one to fill a particular niche.

I am committed to running through each of the 6 chapters, and will check in with the players at the end of each in order to gauge interest in continuing, recruiting as necessary. As some players may be checking these forums from places of work, school, or other public places, the tone of the game will be expected to be kept as SFW as possible.

I’ll be looking for people who can post at least once a day during weekdays and as time permits on weekends. I am an Australian, so my posting times can vary somewhat, depending on when I am checking the boards, but I will be posting at least once a day under normal circumstances.

In order to apply for the game I will not require you to have a fully completed alias ready to go, especially if there are more than 5 characters having applied by the end of the period. If you are chosen, I will expect you to then have your character’s alias profile ready in a timely manner. Applications will close at midnight of Tuesday May 3rd, and I will notify the successful players by way of private message before posting in here.

Cheers for reading this post up to now - I look forward to seeing what people create!

I'm just about to run this one for a group of 4, and I'm thinking of how to encourage the PCs to explore the locations as one shots, rather than as hit-and-run tactics.

What I am thinking of doing is, when all of the teams are given their locations, they are given a token that they can give to the Voices of the Spire who are guarding the gateway of the necropolis, who will allow them to leave (anyone person or group who does not have a token is assumed to be an unsanctioned grave robber and arrested on the spot).

In order to receive their next locations, they have to present something of value to the Grand Mausoleum as proof of their exploration to the church of Pharasma. Cant take credit for this idea as I believe it to be used

These are just ideas at this point, but I hope they will work to encourage continued exploration rather than a hit-and-run approach over several days.

On the plus side, if you did use a starter deck, then finding stalker armor can be really pleasant :)

This is kind of like the reaction from our player of Adowyn when he came across the Stalker Armor (we all started with the suggested starter decks). Although I believe there was less "oh, how pleasant!" and more "OMG I NEED THIS!" involved in his reaction.

jones314 wrote:

the Haunted Jester wrote:

Is it possible to get an update on the shipping status of subscription orders? As well as any unforeseen delays/ issues. Thank you for your time.

This is the reply I got earlier today:

customer service wrote:

I'm working on an email and tech is working on some code which should be tested and ready tomorrow to address an issue that came up with card game subscription shipments for August. My hope is that this is all ready to go by tomorrow, possibly Monday at the latest.

So fingers crossed.

That doesn't sound very encouraging. Really hoping to see PDFs released by the original target. I'm really regretting my card game sub this month.

Me too, mate, me too. If I had have known that adding the card game subscription would have caused this much of a problem, I wouldn't have bothered with it.

I understand that the shipping target is the expected date, and getting a confirmation any time before that is just a bonus, but with now a day to go before the Expected shipping date is due to pass, and very little communication about issues that have come up to cause these delays, I'm not feeling very encouraged at the moment. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is genuinely the first time I've felt rather disappointed as a subscriber since I started.

Yes, I know that GenCon was this month, but honestly it's not like the issues that come up due to GenCon are new, nor were they unexpected given the fact that the subscription spawn dates were all moved to much earlier to allow extra time as advised in the very first post of this thread.

One of the few things that I think is annoying about the Mummy's Mask is that The Ancient Gods should have been part of the Half Dead city, so the players could build Clerics of that pantheon from the start, rather then in the second book, where the players can only retcon characters to the old-new deities.

Fortunately that isn't a real problem, in that I'm only beginning setting up the game now after getting the 4th book as an AP subscriber, so I can give the players the option from the start.

I believe it's a question of word count and page space available - in HDC, the main article/gazetteer is on Wati (page count: 10, including title page), a city that features in 3 of the 6 chapters of the Adventure Path and is a city that all PCs will interact with regardless of class, race, or deity worshipped. Whereas the article in EG on the 20 Ancient Osiriani deities (page count: 12, including title page), whilst a very interesting article and delivers the flavour of Old Osirion, is only going to impact a very small number of PCs (notably those who take the Devotee of the Old Gods trait, and others whose flavour/concept revolves around cleaving to the old ways).

There's not enough room in the AP books to have both articles in the same volume along with the write up of 4 key NPCs, the setting specific magic items, fiction piece and bestiary entries, so a decision would have been made as to which article went into which volume. I think that the developers of Mummy's Mask made the right choice in putting the Wati article first, as it is an article that all DMs will find useful in their preparation of running HDC (especially given the events of EG taking the city into something of a sharp decline) - having the gazetteer for the main city in which the AP takes place be included in the second installment is just not good design, especially for those who run the APs right out of the blocks when they come out.

Best thing you can do is go to the paladin code for Erastil (Faiths of Purity and Inner Sea Gods both have Erastil's code in them, I believe) and measure the PC's actions up against each of the tenets of that code.

Based on what you have stated his actions are, he would fall because his reputation as a leader of his community is no longer wholesome and unsullied and could no longer stand up to scrutiny - after all, if he is willing to allow a dissenter in the kingdom to be kidnapped and tortured for information, what else is he willing to let slide? As the word gets out that he has let this happen (which only requires Grigori to use charm person on the guards who keep watch over him to let the rumor of Grigori's unjust persecution and treatment spread beyond the confines of the dungeon cell), the paladin's reputation amongst the people will fall, and as such so will he (part of Erastil's code for paladins is all about the maintenance of one's reputation).

While plausible denial as a defense works with most people, it doesn't work with a god, because Erastil knows that he knew about it and chose to do nothing, risked his reputation and his honor as a paladin. I would rule that the PC in this case has fallen (particularly because you say that only the druid's player was against the kidnapping in the first place, meaning that the paladin's player was ok with it) and requires an atonement spell in order for him to restore his paladin-ness. He would also have to work at restoring his reputation amongst the people in order to fulfill the part of the paladin's code that he broke in the first place.

Was debating whether or not to post something up, but figured I might as well give it a shot. So I present for critique..

Devil Bone Rosary
Aura: moderate abjuration and evocation; CL: 9th
Slot: none; Price: 40,650 gp; Weight: 1 lb.

Description:
This string of pale yellow beads, evenly interspersed with nine devil's finger bones, whispers a litany dedicated to the nine lords of Hell in Infernal to anyone who holds it.

When a divine spell-caster uses the devil bone rosary during their daily preparation of spells (or meditates over the rosary for one hour in the case of spontaneous divine spell-casters), the user gains the following effects for twenty-four hours:
• +2 enhancement bonus to caster level checks made to overcome the spell resistance of chaotic creatures.
• The user gains protection from chaos as a spell-like ability, useable for up to nine minutes in one minute increments. These minutes do not need to be used consecutively but any minutes remaining at the end of the twenty-four hours are wasted.
• Additionally, if the user is a worshiper of Asmodeus, they may invoke the deity’s name once per day as a swift action, causing the next spell cast by the user before the start of their next turn to not expend the prepared spell or spell slot. This ability can affect only spells of 3rd level or lower, and can be used a total of nine times as each finger bone blackens and crumbles away.

The devil bone rosary can bestow these effects to only one person every twenty-four hours, and must be carried by the user to confer the above effects.

If the user is chaotic in alignment, they immediately gain two permanent negative levels for twenty-four hours that cannot be overcome in any way (such as by restoration).

Construction Requirements:
Craft Wondrous Item, dispel chaos, imbue with spell ability, protection from chaos, creator must worship Asmodeus; Cost: 20,325 gp

My guys just had their second session last night - the paladin has so far attempted to redeem the Huecuva from the defiled shrine, but was disinclined to continue after it tried to claw his face off.

Also, after subduing Millorn in his cave, the paladin managed to turn him from Hostile to Unfriendly with successful Diplomacy and agreed to let him go with all of his possessions except for the potion of cure light wounds which was used to recover the hit points from being hit by the magic missile that Millorn had sent flying his way. The party's illusionist wizard was very upset to be leaving behind the spellbook and the scrolls, while the tiefling rogue pilfered a single platinum piece for the group as he left.

I'm thinking that Millorn will be tailing the PCs to try and foil their plans as he makes his way back to his mistress Hosilla and the mongrelmen, but also somewhat curious as to why these agents of the Crusade Above didn't simply arrest him or kill him when they had their chance, and will be ripe for redemption if the PCs catch him and don't try to kill him outright next time they meet.

Earth Blessings seem to be assigned to the wrong Deities (If the Blessings are tied to the Domains of the same name).

Earth is not a Domain for Gorum or Nethys, but for Torag and Abadar.

Also, Torag and Abadar only currently have 4 Blessings associated with them (Artifice/Good/Law/Protection, and Law/Nobility/Protection/Travel), while Gorum and Nethys have 6 Blessings, including Earth.

Couldn't find anywhere that this has been spotted in already - apologies if this has.