My nephew has recently become interested in TRPGs, and I have introduced him to Pathfinder. After a few sessions he now has a Ranger 4 / archer PrC 2, and I am thinking of starting him on one of the adventure paths. I wish for advice on which would best suit as a followup to his current situation:
Recently he gained a magic bow, only to realize soon afterward that it was curst and he cannot be rid of it. Any time he reaches for any bow, he finds this one in his hand. Also, he has a strange compulsion to bath the bow in the blood of a creature recently slain by it at least once a day. Not doing so causes a cumulative -1 penalty to all attacks for each day since he last did so.
Now he is en route to an oracle that he hopes can tell him more about the bow and how to remove its curse, but instead he will learn that the bow has a fragment of a deceased (and now mostly forgotten) minor deity of cruelty, bloodsport, slaughter, and murder that is now starting to slowly awaken. If it completes its awakening at best it will be a powerful intelligent item likely more than strong enough to possess him indefinitely, while at worst it may become some kind of demideity that will seek to regain its former strength - and again will be more than strong enough to possess or kill him if it wishes.
As the bow seems to be indestructible by mortal means, he will learn that his best option is to purify the bow, but that such will entail a long and difficult process involving collecting rare materials and using them in obscure places once dedicated to the foes of that ancient deity to enact ancient and sometimes complex rituals. But with every successfully completed ritual the bow will be further purified, both reducing the power of the fragment and also little by little granting him the ability to use ever more of the full ability of the bow.
I intend the process to take about 8 - 10 levels. Whatever adventure path is chosen, I will made some adjustments to its rewards, such as - for example - instead of gaining a magic item, he might gain one of the rare materials he needs or gain permission to access a place normally off-limits where one of the rituals can take place.
The party will consist of 3 members: the 6th level Ranger / archer and two 5th level NPCs (a Barbarian seeking to become a wereboar and an Antiquarian** whose first discovery (a decocted oil that weakens the will of constructs for 24 hours after washed in it) is necessary to halt or at least greatly slow the bow's awakening).
It is a low magic party, and it is only 3 in number, so I expect they will need to be 2 - 3 levels higher than the suggested levels of the adventures in the adventure path.
Which adventure path would suit this situation best?
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An Antiquarian is a hybrid Bard [archaeologist] / Alchemist class with a touch of Bard [archivist] that I created a few years ago and often use as a supporting NPC. Start with the Bard [archaeologist] and then make further changes as follows: The Alchemist extract system replaces the Bardic spellcasting, but it is delayed to 4th level, it does not receive the bombs / mutagens / poison specials of the alchemist (although such can be taken via Rogue Talents gained from Archaeologist), and it only receives 4 discoveries (at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20; the first discovery is named Beginner's Luck). It receives Brew Potion at level 1, Infusion at level 4 (when extracts becomes available), and Swift Alchemy at level 7. Thus it cannot fully replace the Alchemist.
Furthermore, in a nod toward the Archivist, Magical Lore is gained at level 2, Jack of All Trades is moved to level 7, and Probable Path is added at level 10. Uncanny Dodge is moved up one level to 3rd to decrease the crowding of level 2. Finally, Woodland Stride is gained at level 8, and Improved Evasion is gained at level 14 (filling the empty level). For the remainder: medium BAB, good Fort & Refl, 6+int skill points, and a skill list that - minus the Perform skill - is a combination of Bard and Alchemist (ie: Bard + Disable Device, Fly, Heal, and Survival). Finally, mostly for thematic reasons, at level 2 he gains Keen Appraisal, which grants half his class level as bonus to Appraisal checks.
Regarding feats already existing for rolling two and taking the better, those feats presume the +3 benefit is present, while this would negate that. Also, I can see removing them from this, as it would otherwise mean rolling 3 and taking the better of the 3 rolls whenever the feat would be used with a class skill.
Regarding taking a 10, except with a feat or rogue talent, that is only possible "When your character is not in immediate danger or distracted", which I would consider combat to be.
Regarding doubling the chance to roll 20: I think this is acceptable as a difference between a class skill and a non-class skill.
I am not entirely sure about the idea of reducing the risk of rolling a 1 to one roll in 400 (0.25%). A person who has spent years training in Craft (bow) or Profession (miner) - I can see such a N/PC rarely rolling a 1, but it would definitely affect the game in a manner I had not considered. Thank you for bringing up this point.
I will also have to consider what has been said about reducing the maximum final result by 3. I do think it will be an issue, but I will have to run a few test cases to see whether the current DCs (for Knowledge, Craft, etc) checks may need adjustment for level appropriate challenges. If that is the case, then simply lowering those DCs by 3 across the board should be sufficient. But I do not think such an adjustment will be necessary.
Thank you for bringing up these points. I will consider this further.
This suggests that Advantage / Disadvantage grants (on average) a benefit / penalty of ~3.321 points.
So if a skill is a class skilled, and the N/PC has at least one rank in it, instead of gaining +3 they would instead roll 2d20 and use the higher of the two.
What do you think?
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Incidentally, since I also sometimes play using 2d10 instead of 1d20, I tried simulating variants of that as well:
Normal 2d10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.997
2d10 twice, taking the higher . . . . 13.321 . . . a difference of 2.324
3d10, taking the 2 higher . . . . . . . 13.456 . . . a difference of 2.474
So it would seem 1) the benefit to 2d10 vs 1d20 is less by a full point, and 2) there is no real difference between rolling 2d10 twice or rolling 3d10 and taking the highest two dice.
- make a skill called Dodge (dex) and perhaps a skill called Parry (str).
- - when attacked, the PC must decide which to use; some are better parriers, while others are better dodgers; there might be some other benefit to choosing one or the other. This will also prevent Str-focused combat PCs from being penalized for a low Dex.
- - if struck, armor acts as DR.
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- weapon categories as skills, with a -2 or -3 non-proficiency penalty if the N/PC has no ranks in the skill and the usual +3 bonus for having ranks in a class skill:
- Axes, Hammers, Picks (str) - Heavy (weapons that have a significant head on the end of a shaft)
- Axes, Hammers, Picks - Light (str*)
- Blades, Heavy (str) (non-finesse-able blades, from two-handed great swords to long swords)
- Blades, Light (str*) (daggers to short swords to rapiers)
- Clubs, Maces (str*) **
- Flails, Whips (dex) (flexible weapons)
- Reach Weapons (str) (halberds to quarter-staffs)
- Unarmed Strike (str*) (might also include Natural Weapons)
- Unarmed Strike, Enhanced (str*) (gauntlet, punching dagger, tiger claws, spiked shield, etc)
* (typically use Str, can use Dex via the feat "Weapon Finesse")
** (maces are basically clubs with a relatively small head at one end, sometimes flanged or spiked.)
- - exotic weapons are each their own skill. Racial weapons fall into this category, with the race either having a racial bonus to the skill and never having a non-proficiency penalty, or with members of the race always treating that weapon as a class skill (with or without the non-proficiency penalty for lack of training).
- - improvised weapons use the nearest equivalent weapon skill, but with the non-proficiency penalty even if the N/PC has ranks in that skill.
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- make most combat skills Trained skills (like Knowledge skills); martial skills might be allowed to choose any 6 or 7 as class skills at first level, while non-martial classes are only allowed to choose 3 or 4 or - for 1/2 BAB classes - just 1 or 2. Dodge is a class skill for all classes.
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In regards to Thrown weapons, I am not sure that it needs to be separated into two skills (one for potions, bombs, etc and one for daggers, throwing axes, etc). While I can see the point, I am unsure that it would be game breaking to have them in one skill.
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This leaves the question of Shields. My thought would be to have them offer their AC bonus as a Parry bonus while also offering the same bonus as an addition to any armor DR. Tower shields might be excluded from the Parry bonus part, considering how unwieldy they can be (each weighing as much as a suit of heavy armor). While this makes shields a bit more powerful, it also reflects the fact that they can be used to knock aside blows in addition to helping weather those attacks that strike solidly.
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Final Considerations
While the attacks will be +3 higher than expected due to being from a (sometimes class) skill, so too will the defense (from dodge being a class skill).
This would still change the balance of the game a bit. At level one the difference between high and low BAB classes would be 3 pts instead of 1 pt, while at level 20 the difference would be 3 pts instead of 6 pts. Also, it would tend to be consistent between high and low BAB classes throughout the 20 levels, rather than gradually shifting in ever greater favor of the high BAB classes.
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Of course, if you are going this far, why not make more of it skill based? Caster level could be replaced with skills in each school of magic, for example.
You might also consider dividing skill points into distinct pools, so that a rogue does not become a master of many weapons. In this case, there would be a General skills pool, a Combat skills pool, a Magic skills pool (with non-casters not receiving any), and perhaps a Knowledge / Linguistics skill pool. The latter would allow wizards, for example, to have many Knowledge skills without also granting them the potential to have many General skills.
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I'll admit I wrote most of this in a single rush as inspiration struck, before reading all the posts on this thread. I then went back and editted here and there - such as adding 'Kinetic Thrust' to the list of dex-based weapon skills, commenting on Thrown weapons, and changing the penalty for non-proficiency from '-3' to '-2 or -3'.
I tend to have true dragons develop their incredible perception with age. It is not until they are a Great Wyrm that their senses are as sharp as indicated in the RaW. But even with the RaW, you need to consider the incredible limitations of Blindsense (ex). Extraordinary Blindsense is not supernatural because it is based upon natural senses that are incredibly sharp. So if a foe is invisible (Greater Invisibility), Silent (Silence), Scentless (Pass w/o Trace) and (if you presume some form of Tremorsense is involved with Blindsense) not touching the ground (any flight or even levitation spell), the PC should not be detected by Blindsense (ex). Of course, Blindsense (su) is another matter entirely.
That said, when the player moves near enough to the dragon for the 20 ft bubble of Silence centered upon the Player to also fall upon the dragon, the dragon is likely to realize something is amiss from the sudden exceptional lack of sound. Also, a dragon still receives Perception checks to notice the player, and even a young adult dragon often has a high enough Perception to cancel most of the benefit of moving while invisible (+20 to Stealth). Great Wyrms are perceptive enough to cancel out the benefit of Invisible even while still (+40 to Stealth). And if the dragon has See Invisible or (at later age categories) True Seeing active, well ....
I believe that Keen Low Light Vision, with their Perception rank, represents their apex predator nature. Dark Vision and Blindsense I have develop more gradually, as a result of their increasing magical nature (thus Dark Vision) and their increasingly long experience in using their exceptional senses (thus Blindsense).
Wyrmling . . . . . . Low Light Vision
Very Young . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 15 ft
Young . . . . . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 30 ft, Blindsense 10 ft
Juvenile . . . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 40 ft, Blindsense 20 ft
Young Adult . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 50 ft, Blindsense 20 ft
Adult . . . . . . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 60 ft, Blindsense 30 ft
Mature Adult . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 70 ft, Blindsense 30 ft
Old . . . . . . . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 80 ft, Blindsense 40 ft
Very Old . . . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 90 ft, Blindsense 40 ft
Ancient . . . . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 100 ft, Blindsense 50 ft
Wyrm . . . . . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 110 ft, Blindsense 50 ft
Great Wyrm . . . . Keen Low Light Vision, DV 120 ft, Blindsense 60 ft
I like the idea, but I need to think a bit more about it. The strange commonality of Dark Vision has long irritated me; I tend to house rule it into Low Light Vision except for creatures that spend most of their time in the dark, and even then I consider Tremorsense and Blindsense first. Adding a default Light Sensitivity / Blindness for having Dark Vision 60 ft / 120 ft is a good idea (perhaps negated / reduced by feats; I'm nearly certain such feats already exist).
That said, there seem to be a few misconceptions about vision in the real world.
Insects often can see into the Ultraviolet, but no creature in real life can see heat with the exception of a few Families of snake, and the detail of their heat vision is still questioned. Also, nearly all mammals have red-green colorblindness; they see the world like this. Apes (or all monkeys?) regained their ability to see red / orange, as have a few other mammals.
Most birds can see from ultraviolet all the way through to red. Most reptiles and amphibians can see red just fine, although UV vision is spotty (some species have it, some don't). Fish and other underwater creatures can sometimes see red, but it is rare; UV vision is a little more common. What some of them (especially crustaceans) can see (that most out-of-water creatures cannot) is various forms of polarized light.
Having said all that, I will remark that I tend to remove undead Dark Vision and replace it with Low Light Vision and a supernatural Blindsense that only reveals the direction toward any living creature within X ft (varies by undead type: 15, 30, 60 ft), the fluff being that the negative energy that animates them is reacting to the positive energy of living creatures. The spell Hide from Undead specifically hides creatures from this undead sense.
The cost of a castle can vary greatly. Is the keep built of stone? How far away is the quarry? How many peasants were used to ferry it to the work site? They can't work all the time - or even most of the time - on the keep, as growing crops to keep them from starving will use much of their time. Only if you live in a place with high population can you afford to have peasants work continuously (excluding winter) on building the keep.
What about the local terrain? Is the castle built on a hill? What about the wall? Will it be a stone wall or a wooden pallisade? Will there be a moat (whether dry or filled with water)? How many stories will the keep be? Don't forget you will need to support multiple artisans for all the various work needed to build the keep.
You say it is a simple keep, so I am presuming only 2 or 3 stories with a wooden pallisade surrounding it. What about monster attacks during the building of it? If any goblin or gnoll tribes (or human bandits or outlaws) are nearby, I can see incessant attacks occurring both to raid for supplies and to try to prevent completion of the work. After all, once complete it will be quite a bit more difficult to drive out those soon to live within it. Wild beasts and even smaller dragons might also attack, simply because the work site is a concentration of prey (humans).
How magically advanced is the setting? Can you afford the cost of magic users using spells to hasten the work? Are their ruins nearby that could be used as a source of stone - or upgraded into a working outpost?
These are all the ideas that come to mind when I consider the idea of the cost of building a castle.
Hypocrisy. No one said they actually followed the tenets of the faith -- just that they claim them. If people can be hypocritical of their religion in the real world then I don't see how they couldn't do the same in a fantasy game.
The problem with this answer is that clerics who are hypocritical lose their powers in a fantasy world.
There is less penalty for non-clerics, of course, but eventually those lay people who least follow the teachings of Sarenrae would find themselves receiving some degree of punishment - even if it is only the social stigma of clerics refusing to cast spells for those they find most offensive.
The corrupt clerics, on the other hand, risk losing their powers entirely if they continue to cast spells for those working against Sarenrae's causes, so they might also withhold spells at times - if only to put off the risk of losing their powers, although possibly also to keep up the illusion that they are not walking the knife's edge of losing their powers.
It does not allow characters to see anything that they could not see otherwise—invisible objects are still invisible, and illusions are still visible as what they seem to be.
Thus dark vision does not allow one to see any better through mist or fog than normal vision - which per the rules gives concealment to creatures beyond 5 ft (Obscuring Mist, Fog Cloud). For a light to moderate mist, I would suggest a penalty to perception checks of about -5 or -10. And also recall the -1 per 10 ft penalty to perception checks when using such. At 50 ft even a light fog would result in a -10 check to notice the creature's presence.
And while mist and fog form more normally during dawn and dusk periods than elsewhen, it can also form in damp places near bodies of water - such as near and in / around some ruins, and even without supernatural aid it may last well into the day (or night) if the sky is overcast.
Thus just increase the occurrences of mist and fog and require perception checks for those with dark vision for any creature beyond about 5 to 10 ft - as only they have a chance to perhaps see what may - or may not - be there. Add in a few false checks just to stir things up a bit. This might work to actually increase the fear of those with dark vision. To be fair, have occurrences of mist / fog during the day as well, of course, so everyone can make checks while wondering if anything is really there.
I second the idea about greater masterwork items having higher bonuses than the basic +1 of masterwork.
Also, I wonder how casters will be treated in your world - specifically, how will a higher level wizard work, when higher level spells are apparently rare? Will the player receive other options (lore, bonus item creation or metamagic feats, etc) to make up for their notable decrease in power and playabiliy, or will play never reach even medium levels (ie: low level play along with low magic world)?
Another idea to consider: what if a low magic world means it takes more time to gather the magic to cast ever higher level spells? So it would take a normal amount of time to cast 0 level spells, 1 full round to cast 1st level spells, 2 rounds to cast 2nd level spells, 9 rounds to cast 9th level spells, and so forth. This might also increase the time it takes to make magical items - thus a further reason for their rareness. Wizards would still have a problem with having enough spells, but otherwise I think this might work. The fighter holds off the bandits for a few rounds while the wizard mutters and gestures, occasional flickers of fire around him showing the type of power about to be unleashed upon the bandits.
As for foes, I agree that standard foes from the beastiary could be an issue, as most of them presume that the players will have the magical items, wands, spells, etc to deal with creatures of their CR. You may need to limit yourself to humanoids and large numbers of usually lower CR creatures - or lower CR creatures with class levels (barbarian 4 gnoll, rogue 3 doppleganger, sorcerer 5 kobold, etc).
First, regarding anti-magic fields, they may be line of sight, but doesn't that mean that the hand that just pushed out of the wall is now also within line of sight of the field - and so no longer under the spell effect of Elemental Body? So just how do they pull their hand back into the stone? It would seem to me to be a good trap, effectively immobilizing them. They can still leave the stone, of course, but they will not be able to re-enter it.
And what about brick and mortar? The ancient Egyptians didn't just carve into stone to make their tombs in the Valley of Kings and elsewhere. They sometimes had slabs of stone or brick lining the walls, painted over with various statements and images. So have some brick and mortar (or even large slabs of worked stone bound together along their edges by mortar), and require a strength check to break through the brick wall into the chamber. Even if they make the check (I'd give them a bonus to it, actually.), the bricks come tumbling down, making both a mess and a lot of noise.
And if it is slabs of stone instead (which might be ruled to be something they can glide through), recall just how heavy those can be - and so likely how small they are in area. They may be thin enough to break through or knock off/out of the wall, but they will still rarely be more than a foot or two wide at widest (and only an inch or two thick). Or perhaps they are one foot by three feet. Either way, they are lined along their edges with mortar, and the PCs will have to effectively crawl between said lines rather than walk through, putting them at a disadvantage if anything happens to be in the room that might attack them.
Or you can rule they can break through with ease (as only the mortar is holding them back really), but knocking out the mortar destabilizes the slabs lining the wall, risking their falling - again creating noise and mess. In this case I wouldn't even require a check for breaking through (it is just mortar), but I would roll a d20 to decide if the slabs held or fell (10 or higher perhaps).
The paint upon the walls gives me another idea. What if it were a form of magical alarm? If the paint job is ruined it sets off one or more alarms, activates traps perhaps, etc. The paint is not stone, so those coming out of the stone will find themselves with a thin layer of dusty paint upon them - likely falling off as dust as they move, perhaps leaving some mark upon them. Could the mark be magical? Perhaps even a curse that might grant a -1 to their defense for a minute or two against those guarding the tomb? Or perhaps it can act as a focus for divinations used by those who received the alarm from the painting upon the wall being so disturbed?
Others have already mentioned incorporeals, so I won't go into that except to mention that even at their level numerous incorporeals - even if low enough level to be slain easily - can be a problem. Sooner or later one will get lucky or a PC will get unlucky and fail a save - and lose a level or two. It doesn't *need* to happen often, and with incorporeals low enough in level not to send the PCs fleeing it *will* not happen often. But just a level or two can be enough to inconvenience them, and that might be enough to discourage that type of route now and in the future. After all, do they really want to risk even one level being drained just before a major fight? And if they are gliding through the earth they could stumble upon a major fight at literally any moment.
Incidentally, the idea another suggested of a series of minute holes bored into the walls so that an anti-magic field can thus 'extend' into the stone is genius.
Not really. I was already convinced that 4e was not for me. It has some nice mechanics that I might decide to borrow and adapt to my game, but I disliked a lot of the rest of it. Don't get me wrong - it is a good (okay, adequate) gaming system, but it is not for me.
It seems to focused on combat (and especially the use of battle-maps and figurines), its classes seem to have noticeably shifted their focus (The wizards remind me of 3.5e warlocks - mostly blasters with some occasional utility abilities tossed in.), the setting is totally revamped (some aspects I like, others I do not - especially what they have done to Faerun, according to the previews), and the monsters are . . . odd (almost no fluff, and many have multiple variants that do not seem to make sense except perhaps as pre-determined figurines).
I may need to adjust some things to make pathfinder work for me, but at least the adjustments are minor. With 4e D&D the adjustments would about make a fourth book.
It actually wasn't until 3.5 came out that I and those I play with realized that we had been doing it 'wrong' the whole time.
We had always just looked at our level and (if the bab for both classes was the same), we then looked to the chart. Only if the bab for the classes differed did we add the results together, and even then we tended to use fractional bab. We did the same with saves. Since the start of 3e until the start of 3.5e we simply assumed that was the correct way to do things. Granted, this meant we sometimes thought there were mistakes in online and inbook examples, but considering all the other mistakes, these still did not make us think we were incorrect.
Needless to say, we immediately 'house ruled' in fractional bab and saves, once we realized that technically it was incorrect - which basically means we continued as we had been doing.
I like the idea of fractional bab and saves, and will continue to use it with pathfinder.
