Phased Weasel's page

This is huge. HUGE! I just started staring at the screen about three encounters in on the island. I can't begin to process this all in one sitting.

It's a fountain of creativity and breathless adventures, and with some serious editing time a fraction of the ideas presented here would make a solid adventure. As submitted it's "Boomer's Adventure Path to Insanity" (in a good way).

It is definitely not a 32 page submission, and that hurts a lot. But boy am I going to mine this for my game. The "Mountains of Hubris?" The "Song of Disharmony"? Awesome, it's so over the top yet excellent.

EDIT: It completely reminds me of the PA: "I Hope You Like Text"

I do love sitting down at lunch to discover another story.

You've clearly delineated where cinematic begins an ends in your game.

Allowed:
Cutting off your own arm with a knife in one round with a Fort save

Disallowed:
Breathing the air out of a dead corpse's lungs underwater though a knife hole.

That sounds about right.

My issue is with the save or die effect. It also doesn't quite square in my mind with a tower built for an inevitable. They are lawful creatures, but why execute before judging? Hence why I think a mass hold monster trap would be more in keeping.

Huh, good point. If I had a criticism of this encounter, that would probably be it now. The traps seem kind of pasted in there, and out of flavor.

I love the lighting element. Even if I don't end up using this encounter in my game, I will have a dark chapel supported by electric glass pillars. I'm sure they'll get broken at some point. I'm always looking for ways to make the terrain more interactive, and it is very easy to picture the dark, flickering blue glow, almost like the domed room is deep under water ...

On the mechanics side, I like how you handled Power Attack and the punch dagger. One the one hand, the rules say you can't. On the other hand, it is satisfying and cool to do so. The solution of requiring a Weapon Focus feat to Power Attack with it is excellent. You're skilled with this weapon, you can take appropriate actions with it. I'm definitely borrowing this idea.

- Too much history, and not enough info / motivation for the players. It's a common mistake, and one I used to make all the time until good designers opened my eyes.
- Excellent setup, and I can see where I plan to drop this in my campaign. The setup is the hard part, creatively speaking. Why vanilla goblins? Goblins are cool, sure, but these could have been fleshed out more, or given more fun abilities to make the DM excited to run them.

Strange monster combo. It reminds me of the a free adventure on WotC called "The Sea Witch" featuring a partnership of a barghest and a sea hag.

Excellent campaign journal. I've read the entire thing now over a span of three days (which hurt my productivity at work). I especially love two aspects of your game:
- Your ability to guide your group through some complex and very adult situations. Explicit sexuality isn't often a recurring theme in a game without dominating it or ruining it, but you've worked it in seamlessly.
- The incredible, action oriented, swashbuckling and improvisational feel. Every fight is action packed, not just "The monsters swings" "I swing", ad nauseum. It makes for a great read.

Escaping the pirate ship must truly be one of the most epic games ever run, and thank you for sharing it with us.

In the "Attack" section of the thunderstruck template, you refer to the creature as "the vampire". Cut and paste this section from the vampire template?

That said, the thunderstruck template is awesome. I agree with some earlier posters that it is very obvious in hindsight, and I am going to use it as soon as possible. Perfect.

I DM for a mixed party: druid, ranger, monk, sorcerer and bard. There's no stereotypical anything, really. The sorcerer focuses more on social skills, the druid spends most of his time as a crocodile, the ranger is a halfling axe fighter (so therefore not the min-maxed ranged artillery) ... Everyone can heal a little bit (monk has self-healing, ranger a few cures, druid a few cures, bard a few cures, sorc can use wands).

Any group can work, as long as you have an understanding DM. I don't even have to pull my punches, I just design encounters of an appropriate level. You don't have to go by the book in choosing EL for a given party level, and you don't have to base XP off of CR defeated. Make the game work for you.

Only four votes allowed per voter hurts this round. I think that was an excellent choice by Paizo, because it does not allow many "defensive actions" to be fought. Only those with clarity of vision who touch the voters will advance. Sadly, I think this was a "safe" entry, but may find itself out in the cold on the four vote policy.

I think a lot of these design choices add depth (heehee, "depth", deep ones, sahuagin, get it?). The alternate paladin class, the choice to go for corruption over combat, both of these give any GM a lot of room to work with. I think this is an excellent villain, because by his design he should recur. He should plot, he should be intelligent, fun, and pervasive. I can't wait to find an excuse to incorporate these elements, and that's what this is all about!

Limited, so very limited ...

I can see myself using a "Woah, it was the magic shop owner!" idea in my campaigns. However, and it's a big however, that means the magic shop owner had to do something.

What did Limro do? He wants to be a construct. So what? He never leaves his shop, he doesn't even cheat his paperboy. There's no trail to him, and no crime to take him to task over. You have a few words about "he wants to remake the world as perfect constructs", but as other posters suggested, this is far more interesting in a later-stage Limro. This one is an old man, albeit a fun one, who cannot really challenge a party. I don't think his secrets are shocking, or even that the average PC would care about stopping him.

Nicknaming her "Hetty" was brilliant, and I think takes a lot of strain off the name (I may be biased, though, because I tend to use old English style names in certain countries in my games).

I really like the design choice of a low CR villain. To some extent, it's a cheap trick, but no other contestant had the chutzpah to try it. I don't think you completely succeeded: her ability to be dropped in a campaign is very limited. Like I said on other entries, if there was a solid paragraph at the end of this submission which gave a series of solid hooks / motivations / whatever, it would be an easy vote.

However, I'm still won over. The more time I spend thinking about the entries, the more I like Hetty. She beats her obvious competition handily (the hand collector) in my mind, and she is both creepy, motivated, and fleshed out.

I really like the "it's the HORSE!" twist. However, this entry is truly weak in motivations. Many of the other open ended entries I liked, but I could clearly see how the author would use them, and how I would want them in my campaign.

Because of the sheer ingenuity of this villain, I believe the author owes it to us to give a few examples of plots and hooks. A solid paragraph developing Avinash with hooks would have been invaluable here. Undecided so far on this one ...

Excellent writing, poetic descriptions, an all around fun villain with potential? I like it. For this one, I really would have wanted more hooks and motivations for the villain, but I think it easily shines in the top half of the field. What's next?

As I see it, the biggest complaint by far is the organization presented. This is only round three: if the design is solid, I think this should advance. The rest of the field at this level I've mostly had mixed reactions about, but Torquil is just fun. He has possibilities, potential, he's not a one shot, and his character has depth. After sleeping on it, I like this guy. I definitely like him more than half of the other villains presented.

Hate to have this as my first post, but the traditional phrase is "bury the lede", not "lead". Lead makes more sense when you think about it, but it's a modern construction (like "wreckless" driving, hehehe).