Neriathale's page

I believe the correct order is: (1) primary, (2) iterative and (3) after the bard’s player reminds you that he cast haste at the start of the fight and please can you stop forgetting his contribution.

One possible issue I can see is that you are going into an AP where there are long stretches with no options to buy magic items, and from about halfway through you are in Tian (I trust this is not a massive spoiler) which has its own weapons and armour types. You’re investing heavily in two culturally specific weapons that aren’t going to be replaceable with better versions later on.

It seems to me there are two. advantages to flying, first to avoid ground based threats or second to get to airborne or terrain benefitting ones. Most of the replies so far are looking at the first approach so I’m going for the second, and say monk or brawler. You don’t want to be wearing heavy armour if you are flying, instead go for something fast moving and agile that can deal with those pesky goblins on top of the tower or the one bandit who turned and ran.

The alternative approach I’ve seen used in another game is to say that only some people can be raised from the dead. Most ordinary people die and that’s it, but a few have ‘vitae’ - they are chosen by fate to change the world and can come back from death. This isn’t tied to your social status or even character level, so it could be that the old king had no vitae, but that farm boy over there has loads because he’s a PC, or PC in waiting.

If the rest of the party are handling the encounter just keep performing and save your spells for later.. We have a non-combatant bard in our War for the Crown game, and we are at the stupid level of play where there are so many buffs flying around that we rarely get past two rounds per combat. He doesn’t need to cast anything in round 2 or the rare round 3.

Look around, study the situation, ready in case you need to use a saving finale.

The muppets no longer on Treasure Island have been courted by every dodgy group in Sargava to get their support in Serpent’s Skull book 2. In the end we went with

My Oxford group decided to play Serpent’s Skull, so we are currently level 2 on Serpent’s Shiv. Tabby the catfolk oracle (with inevitable cat animal companion), Krok the lizardman Barbarian (‘if you’re looking for empathy, ask a mammal’), Jacomo the kitsune summoner (with Quodlibet the rainbow-tailed fox eidolon) and Venuqour the tengu investigator.

It probably looks a bit like Muppet Treasure Island to the GM.

I play several non-D&D games, but if I’m playing a D&D-esque one it will be PF1.

5E is too simple and I dislike the fact it is nigh on impossible to pick up new skills/change a character’s direction. Classic example being playing the entire Saltmarsh campaign and never having the opportunity to learn to swim.

PF2 we tried… but it just felt like someone was sitting there ready to slap you on the wrist and say ‘you can’t do that, it’s too much like having *fun*’ every time we tried to come up with clever ways of using spells or abilities. This was exacerbated by a couple of the PFS GMs who were PF2 evangelists telling me I was playing my character wrong (I’m pretty sure the people you first play with have the biggest impact on whether you enjoy a game system).

In contrast I know PF1, I know I can create pretty much any character idea I can visualise, and I am still coming up with new things to do - e.g. in our current campaign I am playing my first ever summoner and having fun figuring out how to use the toolbox of summonations most effectively.

We finished Jade Regent after something scary like six year's real time (with a big break in the middle due to pandemic). Minkai is now rued by the woman who picked Wisdom as her dump stat - so there will probably be another revolution in a couple of years.

Just to add a class you haven't mentioned to the list, have you considered an infernal blooded Bloodrager? Can use swords, has innate fire abilities and your racial background is more than just flavour text.

You are misreading the table for invisibility. It says the perception check to spot an invisible opponent is 20, but this is then modified by various things, one of which is -5 for them moving at half speed. That's for a situation where the invisible person is not using stealth.

e.g. Bob the fighter with zero stealth skill is invisible. Difficulty to perceive him is 20. Bob starts moving at 1/2 speed (he got hit by a Slow spell or something) Difficulty to perceive him is now 15 (20-5) because he is making noise, kicking up dust or moving the furniture as he goes past.

BUT If you are actively trying to be stealthy (reducing noise etc) you make a Stealth check +20 -0 (because there is no penalty for stealthing at half speed), and that becomes the target for the opponent's perception check.

e.g. Fred the rogue has a stealth skill of +10 and is walking next to Bob. He rolls a 15 on his stealth skill. That means the difficulty to perceive him is now 45 (10+15+20) i.e. vastly harder because he is using his skill to stay silent and not disurb anything as he passes.

On a slightly related note, fighting enemy casters just sucks because their biggest weaknesses are being grappled and taking damage from prepared actions while they try to cast. The entire combat turns into prepared actions to attack if the caster tries to cast or grapple them.

My first thought is "what on earth is the wizard doing getting themselves in range of grapplers and prepared attacks?" It sounds as if your DM isn't fighting terribly tactically, because clever use of terrain can make a huge difference to a fight - the wizard who pops out from behind a tree 100' away, casts a spell then drops into cover as a free action is not going to be so easy to catch.

All these years later, what is it you love about PF1 and/or 3.5/3.0 that you keeps you running what is arguably the most burdensome system to run as far as prep time and weight at high level play.

This feels like a very weighted question (you don't like PF1, I get it), but my answer would be:

1. It's one of the two fantasy systems our play groups really like and want to play (the other being my OH's self-published system, which I think is a better game, but that's off topic :)) and you can't ref without buy-in from the players. In contrast, we tried PF2 and half the group hated it so much they were coming up with increasingly lurid excuses not to turn up for games night... including the GM.

2. We don't play super high level campaigns, generally finishing around 14th after multiple years of play, so the whole "high level gameplay is broken" thing isn't an issue.

3. Flexibility and range of options to play. Just flicking through a sourcebook can bring up all sorts of new character ideas becaue there are so many out there.

4. There's a lot of background material, published adventures and so on to use. The prep time needed for coming up with your own world and adventures is (for me at any rate) a lot more than the prep time needed to run a published module or AP.

Many years ago I played a high level wizard in a different (LRP) system who specialised in debuffs. One campaign ref believed that the "best" fights were the ones where the party combatants faced off against the NPC combatants and they hit each other, so he set every single monster with an ability that allowed them to "no effect" the first spell that targetted them.

He thought it made for cool cinematic fights. The party all hated it, not because it made the fights harder, but because it made some of the characters look and feel useless.

The point of an RPG is to have fun, and the trick to being both a good GM and a good team player is to come up with things that allow everyone to have fun. So to extrapolate the above to Pathfinder, if a player has a "trick" that they use to trivialise every single encounter (pits) then maybe that isn't fun for everyone, *but* equally if that trick never works because every monster has a get out, it's not fun for that player either. The hard bit for the GM is to come up with a balance so that the player's thing works often enough that they feel competent and cool, but doesn't work just often enough that they can't afford to get careless.

I give up trying to run Paizo APs.
Because it’s already a case of 1e, 2e or 2e remastered, so which rules do the not very rules-oriented players in our group have to remember this time?

If you also have to add in ”pre- or post- death of (insert deity), pre- or post- destruction of (insert country)”.. or whatever shennanigans Paizo pulls next people get confused about their knowledge of the gameworld.

Trying to pick an AP with a theme that all the players like, with a ruleset they all have access to and can remember (yes I know AoN exists, but we aren’t always on line) and now a confusion about the world state at the point at which that AP was written just becomes one complication too many.

TLDR it feels like a plot for devoted Paizo fans and a disincentive for more casual players.

Jade Regent book 6 and the wannabe -Empress of Minkai is being bodyguarded around an underground labyrinthe by the PCs because the plot says she has to be there (otherwise we would have left her at the last teahouse). There hasn't been a chance to stop and rest in this chapter so our Arcanist is running out of spells and the rest of the party are looking at all those consumables that have been in their bag since book 2. Her majesty-to-be even triggered on of the White Phoenix Crown's gems to help out in an encounter.

I’m in the d3 camp. If you do it as a reflavoured acid splash and allow an alchemical focus component then it’s d3+1, which is a good low level wizard default attack option when you are out of other spells or are mopping up, which is what attack cantrips should be for.

(I’m playing aa PF2 sorceror at the moment, and at L3 cantrips are the best thing to throw each round. But it is so bloody boring. I hope the game gets more varied at higher levels.)

The Exploiter Wizard archetype gets Arcanist exploits, but you would need to take that from L1. Assuming the character is past that you could multiclass Arcanist, but the exploit you get would be at whatever Arcanist level you have so unless it's one that isn't level dependant probably not worth it.

Nearly at the end of Book 3 of Jade Regent, my most heavily rewritten chapter yet. The Under Frozen Stars plug-in was, predictably, better than the main book. Currently trying to figure out where to add 'Ruby Phoenix Tournament' into Book 4. I've allowed the group to find a Scroll of Greater Teleport, so they can in theory zap themselves straight there once they find out where and when the tournament is taking place, as long as they're willing to temporarily abandon the caravan. Then I just have to figure out how much of the actual book to run, since a high proportion of it is linear dungeons full of unexciting encounters designed to provide XP for anyone still using XP...

Iss book 4 the Forest of Spirits? As a player I found the dungeon bits some of the most fun in the campaign because we got a proper combat challenge having to go through multiple encounters without resting. I felt it was a good change of pace from the ‘one random encounter per day’ routine we had got into.

Are we being hired to deliver her to some relative/guardian or are we expected to do the job for free? Either way, take her to somewhere safe as fast as possible and dump her there, but in the first case it's a specific 'somewhere' and in the second it's the nearest town/temple/friendly hermit.

Unless it was my Delta Green party, in which case she would suffer a horrible death because there were extremely good reasons for that being a better option than the alternative.

I guess it isn't as useless-seeming to me as the Bardic Pretender talent.

Both exist purely to give characters the prerequisites to take the Lion Blade prestige class, which is thematic for the AP that they are in. Sadly it is a rubbish prestige class - our party playing through War For the Crown included a bard, a rogue and a vigilante, all of whom looked at it and all of whom realised it wasn't as good as sticking with their base class.

If the Paladin wants to take a villain to the magistrate but the Barbarian wants to murder-hobo him, the group votes and everyone supports the results of the vote. If the Wizard discerns the true nature of an ancient Artifact, he reveals it to the group even if he knows they'll vote to destroy it instead of let him keep it.

A good suggestion I heard recently - if there is a difference of opinion and player X's character is the minority, then that player has to come up with the reason why their character changed their mind, rather than walking out or forcing the rest of the players to talk him round. e.g. In the first case, if the party vote to support the Barbarian, it's up to the Paladin's player to come up with the reason why he agreed to kill the villain after all, while the party get on with the rest of the adventure.

If you do false priest which is a Sorcerer archetype, that is the best arcane and divine caster mechanically ever.

With the minor downside that you have to be a follower of an evil dictator whose divinity is only accepted in one small and untrusted country that controls its population very tightly. It’s the Golarion equivalent of being in the North Korean PR corps.

We TPK’d in the last part of book 3, so I can’t guide you on the entire AP, but it’s one of the ones where you all need to do social stuff (for the plot) AND all need to do sneaky stuff (because of the setup) AND fight (because APs have level appropriate fights) AND have the right stats for the additional subsystem that Paizo has tacked on to track how well your revolution is going. You can’t say ‘person X is the skill monkey so the rest of us don’t have to worry about that’ as you might in a more traditional adventure.

I really wanted to like the AP from the premise, but my actual play experience was that if you had enough skill monkeys to deal with the plot you couldn’t take the fights, and if you built a party for combat you failed at the plot stuff. It also has the worst bit of railroading I have seen in any AP.

I don't really know PbP as compared to normal play, but from having GM'd a bit in various systems my suggestions would be:

1. Start with something small. Gallows of Madness is a really good starting module for this as it contains three adventures that can be run in any order and a lot of roleplaying bits that allow the players to flesh out their characters. If the party enjoy that, an obvious next adventure if you can get hold of it is Feast of Ravenmoor.

2. Don't use house rules unless you are really sure what you are doing. I know a lot of people have them, but my experience is that most of the time a house rule is "I don't understand how this bit of the system works, so I've interpreted it my own way", and that has knock on effects when it doesn't interact with other published rules.

3. If you are going to restrict what people can play, do so at the start of the campaign. There is nothing wrong with saying "only core rulebook" or "only Core, APG and ACG", and those might be good places to start if you want to avoid players pulling out some leftfield character build that you don't fully understand. But banning something halfway through the campaign after a player finds it and wants to use it is a good way to annoy players. Better to start with a limited selection of rules and add more rulebooks as you go along that the other way around.

4. Avoid 3PP rules. Some are balanced, a lot are not, and you don't want to spend time wading through piles of rulebooks to see what works and what doesn't.

5. This may be controversial, but if you're a new GM, I suggest a "no evil characters" requirement for your first game. Most published adventures assume the PCs are basically heroic and willing to help the NPCs who are in trouble, if they aren't then you are going to have to do a load of rewriting to motivate them. Also, reffing PvP is painful.

that still doesn't answer why the comeback of the god would be to revoke the power to give orders after it already finished performing the order and after the character no longer has the power that is now being revoked.

I think you're misreading it. I understand that to mean that just because the target has done what the caster asks for, it doesn't mean they can't undo the effects of the command. e.g. if the order was something like "make me the strongest man in the world" or "bring me every diamond in Cheliax", if the god has the ability to do this (which presumably, being a god they can), they also have the ability to put the caster back to his original strength 10 straight away, or send all the diamonds back home after the caster has drooled over them.

Unless you referee is violently opposed to power components, a vial of acid give you a +1 damage on acid splash, which at 1st or 2nd level is a nice boost.

Obscuring mist can turn a fight if the party need to regroup or run away. Ray of Enfeeblement can be a massive debuff if it hits. You won’t use them at higher levels, but that won’t matter.

Above all, do not forget the Arcanist’s first rule: Grab Every Spellbook. That first level kobold witchdoctor you just killed has a spellbook. The ancient wizard whose ruined tower you are exploring has a spellbook. You can memorise spells from them as well as your own book (yes, there is a check to be made, but you should be maximising your spellcraft anyway) and that increases your repertoire.

Ninja is a variant class of Rogue rather than a completely separate class of its own, so rogue level and ninja level are the same thing.

Dungeon Master Zack wrote:

Big enough to contain a library with every book ever written.

Nah, too much work gathering such a library. Make a magical book that can be turned into any book you name.

I (briefly) worked in a library which contained every book published in the Britsh Isles since 1662. It had a *lot* of underground storage.

I would go for a quick & dirty resolution that you wildshape as normal , but in animal form have undead traits. That avoids any fudge involving wildshaping to get healed by normal means.

IIRC you keep the stats of your base form apart from dex changes due to size, so the +4 strength still applies.

How big would it need to be to have a functioning ecosystem of temperate woodlands/meadows where the apex predators were two domestic cats? That plus an acre or so for a cottage, garden and chicken run.

Undead are evil because some writer just liked that idea. It’s not inherently evil without that conceit.

Undead are evil because the vast majority of the real world myths and stories that inspired them portray the unquiet dead as a bad thing, and necromancy as evil. Your campaign may be different, but if you ask the average non-gamer what zombies, vampies etc are, they are not the good guys, and this general belief is the source material for the monsters created for the game.

Then there is the fact that from a system viewpoint the game needs some low-level unequivocally bad monsters for the PCs to fight in a game that at it’s heart is about killing monsters. Given you can’t fight goblins any more without getting told off because they are really lovely charismatic people, undead are the safest go-to bad guys.

Our system is simple. If someone in the party can use it and wants it they get it. After that if an associated NPC (cohort, hireling, future Empress of Minkai) can use it they can have it. The remainder sits in a big pile on the offchance we can find somewhere to sell it to turn into crafting materials or the rare usable magic items that are on sale.

Money from selling goes into a general pot to pay for crafting, expensive spellcasting, hiring ninja clans and so on. I doubt any of the characters have any money of their own, it all belongs to the party fund.

If Earth exists in the same reality as Golarion and the same laws of 'magical physics' therefore apply, why aren't there people who can use magic on Earth? I can see three scenarios:

1. The ability to use magic is in some way genetic, even for wizards, and no one on Earth has the magic gene any more, but anyone who can cast magic can do so at full effect. This seems to be Mysterious Stranger's assumption.

2. There are people on earth who can use magic, but they are rare, and for various reasons (historic persecution, not wanting to become government pawns) hide from general society so most people don't realise they exist. In that situation, if a wizard from another world turned up and started causing political trouble they might get involved out of self preservation.

3. There is something about Earth which means that magic doesn't work here, even though people understand the concept and try to cast spells - maybe universal belief in technology generates anti-magic fields, maybe there's something in the air that leaches the magic out of people. This magic dampening effect will affect the Golarion wizard as well. It might not happen immediately, but the longer they stay here the harder it becomes to use magic.

Personally, were I creating an Earth/Golarion crossover campaign I would go with option 2 because it's the most interesting. Consider this scenario: Mr 17th level wizard comes to Earth having finished an AP and decides to take over the US government. He's just succeeded in phase 1 of his plan and has two dominated senators on the payroll when there's a knock at the door from a tall gentlemen who introduces himself as Mr Dresden, wanting a word about breaking the rules.

Based on having played the AP:

- Don't be a paladin. Really, don't be a paladin.
- At least one knowledge skills character, but you don't have to go overboard on it (I specialised that way and hit all of the DCs on 'Library Research' encounters ridiculously easily).
- I'm not sure if it says it in the AP, but characters that are human or look human fit some parts of the AP better than obviously non-human ones.
- Because of the way the AP plot plays out, playing an iconic at 1st level and swapping to a preferred character at L2 doesn't really work.

Our party was Human Witch, Dhampir Inquisitor (with a dip into warrior) and Human Cleric of Nethys/Wizard/Mystic theurge specialised in summoning. We had a pet bard for a couple of books, and a lot of the combat was done by summonations. That seemed to work fine.

I agree entirely that an 18th level character plus AC / summonations / cohort can deal with all of the combats in the first half of an AP. I’m more thinking that a lot of those have contrivances which force the PCs to go along with the plot which such a character could trivially bypass, thereby meaning they could ‘Win’ or walk out of the adventure in book 1.

Are you telling me that a 18th level wizard with a cassisian familiar, a 16th level summoner with an angle themed eidolon, a couple of devas, 2 9th level simulacrum wizards, and about 8 4th to 6th level followers are going to have trouble with the first book of any adventure path?

Yes. That group would not make it to the first encounter of Skull & Shackles because (spoilter alert) they would never have been knocked out and shanghai'd in the first place, which is the setup for the entire AP.

Depends on the APs in question. A character who survived RotR could stroll through most of Giantslayer, but might crash and burn in book 1 of War for the Crown because it’s all about the influence system and needs multiple characters to be making checks at the same time.

I wonder how many people miss that warpriest fervor can be used to cast spells, because the large first part of text is all about being a weaker lay on hands.

Only the ones who don’t know Divine Favour is a spell.

Last night's adventure best summed up by a Sending I cast "Koya, where have you taken the Empress of Minkai? Bring her back to the fort at once... Ow, Ow OWW.. belay that last request, keep the Empress away from this massive Oni".

D&D 3.5 had a ring that swapped between two sets of clothes/armour, holding the second set in an extra dimensional space. Perfect for swapping your ballgown for a set of full plate when assassins crash the Winter Ball.

I’m not sure I have a perfect top 10, because to a degree it depends on the character and campaign, but in addition to those listed above, Prestidigitation, Glitterdust and Magic Missile would be on my list.

Prestidigitation is the classic ‘I am a wizard, I can do magic all day long’ spell, and has potential for all sorts of clever tricks if used imaginatively.

Glitterdust is a great battlefield control spell that also counters Invisibility, which can be a wizard killer.

Magic Missile is the spell that hits when so many others don’t. Force damage, huge range, ignores cover… it may not do a lot of damage, but it stays relevant for a long time.

Grease over the other two because it's so versatile.

I probably wouldn't bother with mage armour at L1. It only lasts an hour, so depending on how your ref runs things one casting may not last the entire adventuring day, and spending a slot on it is a slot you can't use to have an impact in combat. Yes, survival is good, but standing at the back casting acid splash because you spent all your spell slots on slightly decreasing the chance you get hit is boring.

If your ref allows it, Ears of the City is a great spell to get at some point.

My go to example of an overpriced item is the Fan of Flirting, a wonderfully flavourful item rendered useless by the way the DC for effects is calculated. 1700gp for an item that casts a 1/day hypnotism effect that the average peasant will resist half the time.

Why are we on a ship?
What is that massive storm ahead?
Why is there a Chellish warfleet on the horizon?
Er… whose crown is this?
There’s a voice in my head.. it’s saying ‘come to me my minion’ and I have this difficult to resist urge to jump overboard.
There’s this spell I’ve got memorised and I have no idea what it does, but it’s a biggie.

I know that the alignment system is meant to serve as more of a loose structure for characters rather than strictly control their actions, but I still need help finding what official alignment my character’s personality is closest to.

To try to make a long story short, my character has become very jaded and ruthless towards certain (usually) evil races or groups, specifically vampires, witches and werewolves. It has become his life’s mission to purge the plane of them by any means necessary. Although his primary target is evil, he is willing to offer equally sadistic treatment to those who get in his way. He also gets a certain satisfaction from killing the creatures he hunts and sometimes makes them suffer.

He has a code and doesn’t kill simply for the sake of killing, but he doesn’t regard law or authority either. He primarily hunts evil, but is willing to harm others by association. Any ideas for the alignment?

From the description he's coldhearted, sadistic and willing to kill people just for getting in his way, or because of their race which takes anything goodly out of the equation.

He sounds more lawful than chaotic, but not heavily aligned to either. I'd probably go with NN with strong evil tendencies.

Jade Regent Book 5 is proceeding slowly - the party knew we were being followed by a ninja who was taking occasional potshots at us, so we decided that the best way to put him off our trail was to go on a sightseeing tour of various bathhouses, mulberry orchards and interesting landmarks (i.e.roleplaying a game of Tokaido). Eventually we caught up with the ninja, and had a bit of a fight, followed by a long day's shopping and food tasting.

I think we are supposed to be putting Akeiko's sister on the throne or something, but the sightseeing tour takes precedence.

War for the Crown and Hell’s Rebels both have tacked on downtime systems that grant some additional feats from a restricted list of things like skill focus and alertness.

Are you including unique items as ‘boons’ or are those just loot?

Final encounter of Curse of the Crimson Throne.

Round 1 - Ref: none of your abilities work beause 'reasons'. Wizard spends 20 minutes cross checking rulebook for a spell that might get round "reasons".
Round 2 Ref spends 20 minutes looking at rulebook for a counter to the player's counter. Wizard spends 20 minutes looking for a counter to the counter. My abilities still fail to work because 'reasons'

...

Round I don't know what but it's been three hours: Wizard "I use the once ever item of Gate to summon the biggest angel I can". Ref: "It appears, it pulls the end villain to pieces. You win."

Assuming you can’t round up a couple of other players from somewhere I would suggest starting with a character at higher than 1st level because the numbers in the game assume multiple characters, and a single 1st level PC isn’t going to be able to handle a CR1 fight, especially if the player is still learning the basics of the game.

Don’t, as a previous poster suggested just run an AP, because on top of that issue, a lot of them have extra weird mechanics to bring in the flavour of the adventure - e.g. the first half of War for the Crown book 1 is an extended use of the Ultimate Intrigue social rules.

Have a look for pre-written 1:1 adventures. We found a couple which were for D&D 3.5, but easily converted to PF1 that specify ‘for an X level class A or B’ (e.g. A 6th level ranger or druid), because that then allows the writer to limit the type of skills & spells included to what that character will have. Failing that, there are a couple of modules that are specifically designed for new players (Gallows of Madness is one) which have simple plots and introduction to game concepts. Because every new player has to kill their first goblin.