Dosgamer's page

I just now saw this and am very excited by it! Our group has been playing in Golarion since PF1's release, but we moved to 5e when it came out. But we base our adventures in Golarion. We just really like the setting. Which means a fair bit of conversion has to take place. Seeing a Pathfinder AP converted for me is very exciting! Hopefully this product sells well and there may be more conversions done in the future. Thanks for this!

I think that the destruction of the shield is what actually killed him, though it took a while for him to die. The shield exploded and lodged a piece of itself in Tar-Baphon's hand; it's reasonable that a piece of the shield might have lodged itself in a part of Arnisant as well, which wouldn't have instantly killed him but could have caused him to die shortly thereafter. The magic repelling nature of the shield (and its fragments) that saved him from Tar-Baphon's wish could even have been the very thing that prevented healing magic from saving him after he survived the initial explosion.

It's as good an explanation as any I can come up with, even if it really sucks for Arnisant. His artifact shield saves his life only to cause catastrophic injury and prevent magical healing from saving his life leading to his demise. A tragic end for a heroic figure, but then he was always going to have a tragic fate.

Stealing Arazni's body and turning her into a lich was a punitive action on Geb's part against the Knights of Ozem who dared to challenge his power. Not only did he transform the failed knights into powerful undead servants, he had them steal her body and bring her to him so he could raise her as a lich in a huge symbol of "screw you!" to the knights.

It really is up there on par with what Tar-Baphon did to her in the first place (killing a demigod) in the annals of cool stuff that bad guys did.

Holy cow! I just took a look at that map and fell instantly in love with it. Thanks!

Lazlo, I don't know if it's at all helpful, but you might consider having Lastwall be akin to Jerusalem during the crusades. The main point of Lastwall is to keep watch over Gallowspire and be a hedge against invaders. Think of it as a focal point for crusaders intent on coming in to either take the fight to Belkzen (or Virlych), with a rich tapestry of competing religions vying for control. Something like that. Good luck!

To be perfectly honest, sit back and listen while the players decide how they want to tackle the situation. This is something that is best left to player agency imho.

But bear in mind that the Consortium is a business first and foremost. They are motivated by profits, but also extremely protective of them, and they have controlling interests in many of the legal ways of protecting their investments. All of that is to say that your players should hit them where it hurts, in the coin purse. Good luck!

P.S. In my version of Golarion there is a definite undercurrent of "you mess with the Lumber Consortium and you could wind up dead or worse" due to their ties to the Aspis Consortium. *nudge nudge wink wink*

I was thinking a chaotic good Invulnerable Rager barbarian with Come And Get Me would be a good counter. Beat him up before you ever get to attack, then "Finish Him!" on your turn. Don't forget to do the Matrix-Neo hand gesture before you roll initiative for extra style points.

Way back in the day I played a solar in the Throne of Bloodstone module (it allowed PCs of up to level 100, after the DM threw down some nerfs I opted to play a solar instead of a PC).

The whole point of the module was to visit Orcus in his abyssal lair, take his wand from him, and destroy it once and for all. Well, our group failed miserably. My solar was the sole survivor. Once I got back on the prime material plane, I used gate...successfully...to bring in the following one at a time in an attempt to get them to help me take down their nemesis Orcus, all to no avail:

Demogorgon - not interested (um, Orcus is his sworn enemy)
Fraz-Urb'luu - too busy (prince of deception, his whole shtick is tricking other demon princes into accepting his gates, boggled my mind when he actually showed up)
Graz'zt - yawn
and so on and so forth.

Nobody would help me. Campaign ended. Abject failure. But the gates worked like a champ!

In our Carrion Crown game...

Forward on to after the AP ended and we continued playing the characters through a modified version of A Paladin In Hell. In the course of that adventure we encountered an extremely powerful linnorm (think it was a homebrew of some sort, but I could be mistaken) and murderized it. Lop goes its head and we give it to our barbarian for later use.

After the plane-hopping adventure concluded, the DM and I (I was running the next campaign) decided that Sveinn Blood-Eagle would happily grant the barbarian PC his kingdom since she procured not just a linnorm head (or two), but an extremely powerful one at that! So in our version, Sveinn has stepped down and the PC is now a Linnorm King!

In a previous campaign, I came up with an anti-party (lieutenants of a BBEG) to look at some of the "new" classes that had just been announced. Mind you, this was many years ago.

My 6 PCs were level 8 at the time (APL 9 due to 6 players). I think I made the NPCs level 6 (CR 10 encounter)? Anyway, the NPCs were:

cavalier (mounted), inquisitor (archer), wizard (evoker), alchemist (bomber), cleric of Abadar (nothing too special), and monk.

This group, because they were NPCs and could nova for their one and only encounter during the day plus they had time to buff due to a previous encounter, nearly murdered my party of PCs. I rp'd the neutral monk to remove him from the encounter because he would have tipped the scales in the NPCs favor and likely caused a TPK.

The cavalier never got off her big hit. The party wisely took her mount out from under her. The inquisitor was murdering the PCs. The alchemist helped and the wizard added some damage, but it was really the archer inquisitor that was putting the hurt on the party.

I found it to be a very satisfactory encounter as the DM.

Carrion Crown is the only AP I've played in, but I have to say it felt pretty railroady to me as a player.

I'm running a modified version of Giantslayer and I would agree it has some sandboxy points in some areas.

Related to Giantslayer, just know that there is a feat the GM can give to giants that help with their Will saves. I don't have my books available to me, but the writers of the AP knew that weak Will saves would be a problem for a majority of the AP and offered a possible solution. That may be impacting what you are experiencing.

I hadn't even considered that it was Iomedae who summoned Arazni, but that is a very cool piece of information for a backstory in my games. Thanks for asking, OP, and for answering, Erik!

Arazni's page on PathfinderWiki has her as a former demigod and Herald of Aroden. I always took her to be a demigod in any case (and it makes TB's thrashing of her all the more enticing).

Spoofing the antics of the enemies you face, making light of dire situations, putting your allies at ease in the face of danger could all be aspects you could expand upon.

On the flip side, telling a bunch of "yo mama" jokes to the enemy can be quite infuriating. Real life story...

I once had a coworker who (humorously) picked on anybody and everybody he met. He had a whole littany of yo mama jokes. We just happened to work on the far side of bullet-proof glass from armored car truck drivers. One day this new driver came in to make a delivery and my coworker started in on him with his yo mama jokes. The poor delivery guy got so incensed we both thought he was going to draw his gun and start shooting! Thankfully, my coworker stopped his antics and the delivery guy cooled down.

Bottom line, never underestimate the power of yo mama jokes!

I get such a kick out of your alter-ego posts, captain yesterday. =)

I always assumed Norgorber cheated his way past the Test of the Starstone (ala Kirk in the Kobayashi Maru), and that's why his past is such a mystery and will undo him if it becomes known. Clearly, it's not possible to do such a thing, and yet...

Once had a player spend 2 hours creating a character. Party sets off into the mountains on their 30-day trek to get to where they're going (this was mentioned ahead of time). Said player forgot to buy any rations and died on the trail.

I played a druid who took spell focus conjuration in order to get augment summoning. Pretty sure the spell focus feat was never used (since initially I summoned things to fight for me and later on I was using wildshape and buffing myself/AC). It was just considered a feat tax.

When required, I think it's part of the fun to have adventurers try to figure out where to hunker down in the dungeon so they can rest and regain their strength. The aesthetic totally depends on the dungeon, though. I don't have a problem with it in general.

I have observed it, including within myself. I've played characters that under other circumstances would be perfectly acceptable and which matched my "vision" of that character pretty much spot on... until I realized I had had a "vision" of, for example Daredevil, while everyone else was having a "vision" of Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, and Doctor Strange. Meaning I was feeling badly outclassed and very much like a fifth wheel.

I felt bummed because I didn't feel like I was contributing meaningfully. Even when I did something "cool" and that seemed to be of some significance in combat, maybe getting a lucky set of iterative attack rolls with subsequently lucky high damage rolls, putting the BBEG within a few hit points of death, the next guy would come along and dish out a large amount of damage and end the fight. Was I setting them up for that? Sure, but given how much damage they put out my contribution was probably not needed anyway.

The epitome of this (to me) is the scene in Iron Man 2 where Black Widow and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) go after the bbeg and he takes on the doorman while she takes out the rest of the agents. The look on his face when he realizes what happened is priceless. And it pretty much sums up what many characters might feel in a similar situation.

It's not numbers that drive it, it's the level of contribution.

Rain down pamphlets on the city that contains a treasure map to a hidden treasure within the city. Oh, and the pamphlets all contain explosive runes, too. Boom, baby.

Hand of Vecna
Eye of Vecna
Head of Vecna...

In games of yore, dragons were to be feared and anticipated. PCs loved it when they could get the drop on a dragon in its lair while it slept. Free attack round! But once the dragon woke up, look out! It was breath weapons and dragon fear galore!

These days it is a lot more tactical. It really depends on the age of the dragon and the importance of the dragon in the overall context of the adventure. Are they an encounter or a BBEG?

I like to foreshadow dragons if they are to take on a larger role. That can be with stories heard by the PCs as they travel or take refuge in an inn.

I had PCs in a Pathfinder game team up with a party of NPCs to take on 2 green dragons in their lair. The NPC party lured out and fought one of the dragons (brother and sister) while the PCs took on the other dragon from within its lair. The dragon used the natural terrain to its advantage to bottle up the PCs so its breath weapon would have full effect, its entangle ability slowed them down buying it time to recharge its breath, and it hid in a pool in its lair to confuse the PCs when they emerged out of the tunnel and found the lair empty. That was an epic battle!

I have another black dragon I have been alluding to with lots of rumors from around the campaign area. It has a motivation (part of the larger campaign goal) and a role in the realm. That campaign went on hiatus before we got that far, but that would have been a brutal fight for the PCs given the dragon's lair (underwater) and its traps and defenses.

My favorite evil dragon is still the powerful red. I do have a soft spot for shadow dragons, though. Love me some shadow dragons.

According to book 6 of Kingmaker PCs end up at level 17.

Characters that are optimized to do a thing/few things very well (to the point of them being almost auto-success every time) are problematic for DMs. Pathfinder makes it very easy to do this. It sounds like you have a history of doing this type of thing. Maybe try to make less focused characters and more well-rounded ones instead? Failing that, talk to your DM about your witch and possibly include him/her in the character creation discussion the next time the situation arises.

As a DM, I like it when players include me in the discussion. It helps us avoid situations that I fear are going to become problematic and eases tensions before they arise. Good luck!

Ninja'd by FamiliarMask by 3 seconds! Doh!

I try and give the benefit of the doubt when I can, but I don't care for people who cheat at the game. I'll give a warning, in private, about what behavior is causing a problem and let them know that I'm not interested in excuses or what ifs, just please don't do it again. If it is a mistake, let's not do it again. If it's on purpose, don't do it again.

We had some bad cheating back in the old, old days when you colored in your own dice (remember that?) For people who missed those halcyon days, you'd have a d20 with 0-9 repeated twice, and you'd color them two different colors to indicate 1-10 and 11-20.

One player, who was problematic to begin with, tended to color all his dice in shades that you couldn't tell apart on a bet. He always seemed to manage to get an inordinate amount of high numbers and 20s. Or even better, his dice hit the floor and wouldn't you know it, high number.

We bought him some dice, colored them ourselves and told him he could roll in this box on the table and no where else. He stopped playing soon thereafter.

I had a player who modified his D6s. They were actually quite good, too. He made them with extra 4, 5, and 6 sides replacing the 1, 2, and 3 sides. I confiscated them from him after they were discovered in his dice bag and used them against him (but only him). I still have them, safely tucked away in a sandwich baggie in my dice bag to show others the folly of their ways. /evil grin

Does the god-king drive a mini van? :)

It's actually Nethys' Magnificent Minivan. It looks like a humble minivan on the outside, but it's a stretch limo/time machine/'70s luv machine/Ferrari on the inside.

That's how we did it back in the old days. No one complained.

Yep, 1st ed was all about who got in the final blow and felled the monster. You contributed 50 hp but the thief felled it with his dagger for 4 hp? Thief gets 100% of the xp. People used to haggle over magic items, too, because of the xp they were awarded for receiving them.

I'm glad those days are long behind us/our group. Now we split xp evenly for encounters among all party members, even absent ones. I didn't always used to do that, but we're mature gamers these days and folks show up if they honestly can. No reason to penalize friends if they can't make a session.

Personally, I secretly like the idea that Razmir was part of a band of wandering murderhobos who quickly rose to power in some other part of the world (as wandering murderhobos are known to do), but in the final scenario his companions died leaving him solely triumphant. He then took his vast wealth (and theirs) and power and decided the western River Kingdoms looked like fun, so he did what murderhobos do and marched in and killed everything.

Just FYI, here is something I came up with in regards to Razmir and his cult a while back. I tend to be fascinated by him and like the charade he keeps up.

What if Razmir (who is a wizard 19) had a high charisma score (or relatively decent one) and built his cult using leadership?

Assuming even a modest CHA of 18 (likely it is much higher) and level 19 that gives him a base leadership score of 23. He also has a stronghold which pushes it to 25, which is as high as the leadership table goes so that's good enough.

That gives him access to a level 17 cohort and 163 followers of levels 1-6. Now have his cohort take leadership and give him a decent CHA of 16, giving him a leadership score of 20 plus a stronghold (Razmir's) pushes it to 22. That gives him a 15th level cohort and 91 followers of 1st to 6th level.

Repeat for the 15th level cohort giving him a 13th level cohort and 48 followers of 1st to 5th level. That cohort has an 11th level cohort and 28 followers of 1st to 3rd level. That cohort has a 9th level cohort and 11 followers of 1st and 2nd level. That cohort has a 7th level cohort and 6 1st level followers. That cohort has a 5th level cohort and 0 followers.

For a grand total of 163 + 91 + 48 + 28 + 11 + 6 = 347 followers and a number of moderate to high level cohorts to draw upon. Not too shabby.

Still doesn't explain his kingdom or his cult, though. Darn.

As a DM, I typically ask my players at the end of a session what they intend to do next time, assuming that they have choices to make (and aren't in the middle of a dungeon crawl or something similar). I like it when my players have choices and I try not to plan too far ahead of them so they can make decisions and I can react accordingly. It's worked out well for me over my years as a DM. Granted, we play every other week so I have 2 weeks to plan out the next adventure.

It doesn't sound like that was the case for the OP. Glad your group has come to an equitable solution, though, by using APs. If he wants to add in some personalized side quests of his own design, he can easily do that with APs.

He needs to figure out (in character) why he is staying with the party. The party, in turn, needs to figure out (in character) why they keep him around. If those two things can't be done, it's time to have a sit down and come to an agreement on next steps. Good luck!

I applaud your players. /clap

We had a similar situation in a different module that contained a demilich (Throne of Bloodstone or whatever, it was for level 100 PCs). We were in the Abyss in some tunnels heading to Orcus' lair and came around a turn to see a demilich rise up off the ground. I should note that I was playing a solar rather than a PC. We backed up, I used some 2e spell that allowed me to create nonmagical items to make a metal bucket. Then I turned on my antimagic shell, walked up to the demilich, and stuck the bucket over him. Then I turned off my AMS, used stone shape to fashion a hole in the ground, and stuck him and the bucket in the hole, then covered over the hole. We still laugh about it to this day (many, many years later).

So enjoy the moment with your players, and don't forget to laugh about it for years to come!

I would avoid in-game efforts also. After ignoring it, if pressed, I would look straight at the rogue's player and say, "Why are you being a jerk and stealing from my character? I don't mean your character. I mean you. It might have been funny once, but it's not funny now." Then, give him one of your best "I mean it!" stares.

Then, look at the GM and say, "If this continues I'm going to have to leave the game because I don't want this to degrade into pvp, and that's what would realistically happen. That's not good for anyone. You don't want that, do you?"

If they are your friends, they will knock off the jerkish behavior. If they don't, well, then you have your answer.

Back when I was a teenager, this type of behavior was fairly common among thieves (1st edition), but it never got out of hand. Players that I played with knew when not to cross the line for the most part.

I would just recommend the following, which I saw posted on these boards in another thread a long time ago...

When the rogue whispers to the DM and the DM tells you, "You can't find the potion you are looking for. It is gone." you just tell the DM to his face "Well, I get it back from the rogue then." and don't erase it off your character sheet. Basically, ignore it.

Anytime these two troublemakers (DM + rogue) get together to rob you of your stuff, you simply ignore it and keep playing. The DM might choose to escalate the matter, but if that's what they decide to do then you should realize you have no choice but to leave that awful group. Good luck!

If you go a-wandering on yer own,
Be prepared to not come home.
If in over your head you get,
Don't complain, worry, or fret.
It's all just a game
And tomorrow you'll have new fame.
As your new hero has learnt
Stick with your friends or you'll get burnt.

Rent the movie Zero Charisma and sit down and watch it with your friend. Laugh, snort derisively, laugh some more, and at the end look him square in the eye and say, "don't be THAT guy."

It sounds like a knee-jerk reaction to a very lucky rogue who may have successfully sneak attacked multiple times in a round?

We played a high level game once where the two-weapon fighting rogue managed to successfully hit on 7 strikes in a round (hasted) and promptly rolled 70d6 (plus weapon damage plus bonuses) for damage. Fight over, man! But nobody complained because we knew the struggles the rogue went through to get to that point, and because my druid could dish out over 500 points of damage a round when fully buffed and others could dish out solid damage on a consistent basis (barbarian and archer ranger). It was high level play and to be expected. We congratulated him and moved on.

An arcane caster shouldn't be fixating on damage dealt in any case. Maybe the rogue got lucky. Maybe the rogue does that every round. Learn to support one another or switch to a different class. All classes have ways of contributing to the success of the group. Good luck!

I'm not sure who enemies should target in our party of 6 PCs. Frankly, unless they can take us all out in 1 round they are in for a whooping.

Life oracle keeps us up despite taking a beating. If you don't take her out you aren't going to win.

Barbarian has strong melee attacks and is usually in your face making you eat a dangerous AOO or just full attacking you to death.

Bard archer gives all of the group massive attack and damage buffs and on subsequent rounds will fill you full of arrows from a safe distance.

Scout rogue is hard to pin down but often has the hardest hits due to spring attacking sneak attacks.

Wizard can either blast or offer buffs or debuffs depending on our needs at the time.

Cleric Holy Vindicator can lay down some serious smack with his mace if he novas but mostly offers interference with his high AC or provides buffs and some melee damage.

So, yeah, have fun enemies. Realistically they should be targeting our life oracle, because as long as she is up they won't win. But we have a very strong backup healer in the cleric/hv who fills in a pinch. If they ignore the barbarian or the scout rogue or the archer bard they will be dead very quickly. The wizard isn't often their first target, and rightfully so in our case. YMMV.

Since it says you must wield it in order to receive the spell's benefits, I would be inclined to say that throwing it causes it to revert to its normal nonmagical form. I interpret "wield" to mean using in melee. I don't know of an official definition of the term wield, but the dictionary definition is (verb) to hold and use a weapon or tool. Hope that helps.

You had me at "catacombs beneath a glorious cathedral."

For what it's worth, at our table if it requires an attack roll then it benefits from buffs affecting attack rolls. Rays are defined in the magic section of the CRB under Effect.

Ray: Some effects are rays. You aim a ray as if using a ranged weapon, though typically you make a ranged touch attack rather than a normal ranged attack. As with a ranged weapon, you can fire into the dark or at an invisible creature and hope you hit something. You don't have to see the creature you're trying to hit, as you do with a targeted spell. Intervening creatures and obstacles, however, can block your line of sight or provide cover for the creature at which you're aiming.

If a ray spell has a duration, it's the duration of the effect that the ray causes, not the length of time the ray itself persists.

If a ray spell deals damage, you can score a critical hit just as if it were a weapon. A ray spell threatens a critical hit on a natural roll of 20 and deals double damage on a successful critical hit.

FYI, the Orcus article on PFWiki is complete as of today.

Cool, thanks! Orcus will play heavily in my homebrew Golarion game's endgame. This is good to have.

When you drink alcohol while playing tabletop games, you are likely to get inebriated.
When you get inebriated, you think things are funny that may not be.
When you think things are funny that may not be, you make bad decisions.
When you make bad decisions, you burn down taverns full of goodness.

Don't burn down taverns full of goodness.

Just throwing this out there, so feel free to take it or leave it. Does your GM know you are preparing in advance for this fight? In other words, does your character know that you are going to be facing this tree and what exactly it is and how it works (knowledge nature roll anyone)? If not then it might not be kosher with your GM. May be best to ask if you are unsure. Good luck with the encounter in any event!

From the PRD on trolls...
A troll's appetite and its regenerative powers make it a fearless combatant, ever prepared to charge headlong at the nearest living creature and attack with all of its fury. Only fire seems to cause a troll to hesitate, but even this mortal threat is not enough to stop a troll's advance. Those who commonly battle with trolls know to locate and burn any pieces after a fight, for even the smallest scrap of flesh can regrow a full-size troll given enough time. Fortunately, only the largest part of a troll regrows in this way.

Bolding mine. Enjoy!

To add to what Big D said, I would consider an adventure path a campaign (albeit a prewritten one). A campaign in my mind is where you take an overarching story line and play it out from beginning to end. That is what adventure paths do, so I consider them campaigns.

My personal campaigns don't use adventure paths, however. I create the content for them myself, although I incorporate the use of published modules in them to make things easier on myself.

But, basically, a campaign is a meta story. An adventure path is a published campaign in 6 chapters (at least those that I have seen for Pathfinder). A module is a single adventure published piece. Good luck!

If you haven't ever experienced the "you find yourself in a roadside inn" trope then you need to use it at least once. It's a classic!

PCs don't know each other from Adam, but are bonded together by some unforeseen circumstance that only their mettle and abilities can remedy.

In my last usage of this tried-and-true beauty I had a slaver enter the inn disguised as a soldier, round up all the able-bodied (i.e., PC's plus 2 slavers disguised as travelers) and march them off out of town in search of bandits reported to be in the area. You could either run the slaver ambush or turn it into a fiasco (as I chose to do) where the slavers' plans get turned on their ear by something completely unexpected (in my case a necromancer happened along his waiting companions, killed them, and then raised them as plague zombies who attacked him/PCs when they showed up at the ambush site).

Have fun!

Thanks for bumping this. I had missed it. After reading your review, though, I will pick it up. You can't beat the price point and that sounds like a lot of adventure for the price. Thanks!

Later on in college I fell in with a group of physics and math majors who had a regular game. It wasn't DnD but some form of homebrew loosely based on DnD. The only thing was, these guys (often led by the DM) would often fall to bickering among themselves about game effects and how to resolve them using real-world mathematical equations. I recall one 2-hour delay while they figured out how much "force of will" was required to throw up a wall of force capable of withstanding 200+ mph straight-line wind effects using Bernoulli's equation. Argh!

Welcome to the world of running a game! Some tips I might offer you based on my earlier experiences with running for a group of 20-somethings include the following:

1. Set a realistic start time and end time. If 1:00 pm is too early for your friends who drink on Friday nights, set it at 2:00. You can still get together with your friend(s) at 1:00 to hang out and catch up if you like.

2. Realize that gamers will never fully appreciate your efforts as DM. They may appreciate you on occasion, but you are also responsible for harming their precious PC, or not giving out enough xp, or enough treasure, or...

3. Always try to talk it out. Sounds like you are already doing this so job well done. This is also probably the hardest.

Good luck with your efforts!