NotAgainMatt's page

Hello, I'm Matt. I have been playing for about four years now and GMing for a year and a half. I in no way consider myself to be a great GM, but I am the favored GM in my 5-man group. I'm running a new campaign in a few weeks and I've been spending a lot of time planning.

The basic plot is that the PCs are childhood friends who live bland lives in a farming village. They tire of their lives and go to the great oracle in a nearby city. The oracle reminds them of the stories they heard as kids about the pirates in the West. They decide that this is the life for them and journey toward the west with the help of some NPCs, doing odd-jobs along the way. Around 10th level they will become full-fledged pirates and start piratey things.

The issue I'm having is that when I run through the game in my head, it feels like I, as a player, would be combat-starved playing this, maybe even so much that I would pick fights with town guards and go looking for boss monsters, derailing the story while I'm at it. I don't want this to be how my PCs feel. I have tried making adjustments but it feels like the story doesn't flow well into random fight scenes. I have bandits, cults they stumble upon, and even a mind flayer ruling over a kingdom who have never seen their king. It still feels like a lot of social encounters and puzzles.

I turned to the messageboards because I needed help. Can you think of any easy encounters to add in? I have a few: a bar fight, bandits, a cult, mind flayer, a cave with a wyrmling dragon in it, a group of goblins conning everyone into thinking they control a massive army, and a few other encounters.

Hello, I've been working on a fun build that I will be likely using in my pathfinder group's next campaign. I've been reading these threads for a while and so I just joined today and I thought I would showcase this off.

So, his name is Noghag Hammersmith because dwarves. I did druid and took an animal companion instead of a domain because I was seeing how some of the charging feats are really cool. I chose a riding dodo from the list just because why the heck not. Archetypes are one of my favorite things in Pathfinder so I rarely play a character without one. I edged into 3rd-party territory with Rogue Genius Games's Spellhammer, which as far as I can see appears to be an archetype of every class (Could someone explain that to me?). Spellhammer allows me to expend one spell slot into an amount of extra damage dice equal to the level of the spell slot times 1d4 (This goes up dice steps as you level).

At first level I took Martial Weapon Proficiency (Dwarven Longhammer) just because I thought the weapon was fun and would look funny handled by a dwarf on a dodo bird. At third level I take mounted combat to allow the charge feats. At fifth level I take Ride-by-Attack which could be helpful with touch heal spells. At seventh level he shines when he gets spirited charge, and at this point we have him (Because of a high wisdom score of 20 and bonus spells and spellhammer) dealing 12d6 in an attack if I expend my fifth level spell and am charging through spirited charge.

I'd love ideas and suggestions for the build as I've only been playing about a year and a half and didn't actually start understanding things until a year or so ago. I think that this works for a damage build but it might be tricky deciding what spell slots to convert into damage and which ones to use for spells.