PhineasGage's page

Please cancel my Adventure Path subscription.

Thanks!

I was hoping some of the folks running Mummy's Mask might provide me with some feedback on a divergent storyline I've been working on, and where the best place to make the break would be.

Some background, the party consists of:
A Samsaran who believes he was royalty in a previous life and is searching for clues of same.
A Tien fortune teller who believes she's called by fate for a great purpose.
An Ustalavan academic who believes Osirion's power was granted by aliens.
A halfling interested in fame that has since gained a higher purpose in defeating undead (he joined the Voices of the Spire).
And a wanderer devoted to Cayden Cailean and sees the liberation of slavery as the highest ideal.

An odd group of tomb robbers.

To give the storyline a more epic scope and to tie in some character background (and because they keep making references to hoping the adventure gets more Stargateish) I'm changing some things.

1) Samsaran's are aliens. They comes from another planet. They have advanced technology that they combine with magic.

2) The Samsaran homeworld was/is threatened by Eox, that undead world.

3) When earthfall happened on Golarion, the Samsaran sent people to help rebuild, and to gain allies in their fight against Eox. Golarion was a new world ripe with magic, whereas on their own homeworld magic was dying.

4) The Samsaran provided great technology to the people of Osirion, as well as elsewhere. (I may add a bit about Nethys originating from the Samsaran world) Shory technology originally comes from them as well.

5) After landing (teleporting? stargating?)on Golarion, they found they were unable to return home.

6)An unfortunate side effect of being on Golarion was that Samsaran lost their identity upon rebirth (which is not the case on their homeworld). They eventually lost who they truly are, forgetting their homeworld.

7) Hakotep, he was actually a Samsaran. His obsession with the Shory was actually a twisted fragment of his identity seeking a way home.

8) When his soul was further fragmented by those Blue Feather folk, Hakotep was unable to be reborn. He became trapped.

9) When recombined he will briefly remember everything (and relate it to the PCs) before his soul departs and prepares for reincarnation.

10) Based on what recombined Hakotep says, the mission becomes to activate his pyramid (which he'd discovered how to travel to other planets just before his death).

11) PCs travel to Samsaran homeworld and find the people subjugated by the undead of Eox.

12) PCs free Samsarans by triggering some cataclysmic event (I haven't thought of yet) that destroys undead and begins a cycle of rebirth for the entire planet.

I was originally thinking of changing things up in book 4 with Hakotep's memory returning when they kill the Forgotten Pharaoh, but might leave it till the end and simply consider this an epic continuation of the storyline. I'm uncertain though, since high level games typically don't last very long for us, and I'd like to include breadcrumb teasers connecting backgrounds to storyline a little earlier on.

Thoughts anyone?

Fellow Mummy's Maskers, I'm seeking creative suggestion and helpful input regarding what various groups have done with all the herring in the first part of the AP.

The further along we get into it the more the party is seeking for meta-plot (they're gamers, they can't help themselves!) and the most obvious plot point is the Plague of Madness. Our party has already been to Tephu to do research on it, and generally seem to consider how what they encounter might relate to that event.

Further, I'm anticipating that when the dead start rising, they'll jump to the assumption that the Plague of Madness has come back again!

Then there's this necromancer guy - where'd he come from?
Then there's this other cult that's totally not devoted to CE Lamashtu - huh?
Then they're off to find info about something totally unrelated to what they thought they be doing.

So, my question, is this:
a)a good thing ("hey you, stop trying to meta your way through this!")
b)a not so good thing (ie players typically don't enjoy the feeling of being confused, and like solving the puzzles and figuring out the riddles - its much more satisfying)
or c) just a thing that I, as the GM, can either turn into gold or fumble horribly ( this is where I'm hoping maybe suggestions on how to roll with this assumption come in!)

Thanks Team

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone might have already compiled, and perhaps even have a handy link to said compilation, of the information Goblinworks has provided about PFO.

I've tried to stay up to date, but to be honest, the mixture of official "this will be a game mechanic" information primarily from the GW website itself, the "we're working on this proposed mechanic" corner information from all the numerous blogs, the numerous additional developer clarifications within threads and then the suppositions and guess work done by forum regulars, some of which are in alpha and some of which are not, makes this all kinda overwhelming.

I feel like I'm already too casual for PFO on the forums, let alone the game itself! I'd like to work back to my original excitement of "this is the game I've always wanted!" rather than my current, "perhaps if this game would have been around 10 years ago I would have had the time necessary to invest in it," and I'm hoping perhaps just putting all the pieces together will help.

Also, is the September 15 EE date solid? Should I book that day off work now? :P

I'm looking for mini representing a character that enjoys the feast! We're tired of all these muscle bound heroes! Where's the mini with a little bit more to love?

Specifically, I'm trying to make a "Strong Belwas" type barbarian character - and am seeking a mini that would fit.

I'm not entirely sure what the challenge rating for something I'm tossing into my next game session should be, so I'm wondering if you lovely folks could provide some insight.

I've made a mithral rat swarm - ie hordes of rats, transmuted into mithral, and now swarming.

So, the basic CR2 rat swarm gains the following:
Construct traits
Immunity to magic that allows spell resistance
Increased hit dice to 10d10 (roughly 50ish HP in this case)
Distraction DC increased to 18
Damage dealt increased to 2d6
Lost the Disease special attack

Any ideas about CR?

Also, I'd rather replace Distraction with something that seems more applicable to hordes of tiny metal creatures piling on top of someone, but things like Crush and Trample still don't seem to fit right.

Any thoughts?

Looking for some simple tips.

GMing RotRL right now and we're quite a ways into things, and its generally going well. My only problem seems to be that the PCs are too successful!
I never thought that I was necessarily bad at combat strategy, but my players have pretty optimized characters, tight tactics, and they're steam-rolling through encounters that should be challenging.

I've done some fudging of the baddies hit points on the fly just so I can draw combats out longer than a single round, but I'm not really comfortable with that.

I love letting them have their shining moments and feeling like true heroes, but I'm worried without some challenge the game will become lackluster and boring.

So, experienced GMs, any hints about how to amp the challenge level, without necessarily fiddling with stat blocks too much?

Or disabling traps both mundane and magical?

I'm building a character and trying to think up concepts. So far the party will likely have a spontaneous caster (sorc), ranged attacker (gunslinger) and some form of melee, tanky fighter/barbarian.

I'm thinking about filling the niche of both a party face and a trapfinder/disabler/skill monkey.

I've been leaning towards the Archeaologist bard archtype, which seems to fit all of those things, but I'm not sold on it...I have an itch for something a bit more combat...heavy.

So, while I have all the modules through the AP subscription, I'm wondering if someone can provide me with a spoiler-free general sense of how "trappy" the AP is. Particularly because the AP we're in now (RotRL) has very few, and to prevent my curiosity from peeking through the books!

Can I please cancel my current AP subscription.
I'd like to cancel it prior to first portion of Reign of Winter being processed, but I'll understand if getting the "we're getting your order ready to ship" email means I'm already too late.

Thanks.

I'm toying with some ideas and wondering if any of you can offer some advice.

We just completed the encounter with Black Magga, which was quite a bit of fun, except that everyone in the party was hit with her energy drain. And they all failed their saves to prevent the negative levels being permanent. Now, they're making plans to head back to Magnimar for some Greater Restoration. I'm uncertain whether they'll plan to come back, but I can certainly include to NPC persuasion to get them to do so. My problem is: what should happen in the meantime?

I'm thinking the dam will have broke and the entire town of Turtleback Ferry will be flooded out. Most of the people will have died (which is funny, cause after finding the Lucrecia's list of those tatooed, my party assumed they were willing participants, and decided all 200ish people needed to "meet justice.")

Not entirely sure what to do with Fort Rannick, or what will motivate the PCs to investigate the Clanhold. They were about to investigate the commander's lover, but I'm not sure that will be the case after the flood.

Ideas?

Most of my questions are likely born out of ignorance not having played PFS at a convention or gaming store, but please bear with me.

Some context: A few of us in my home group are planning on flying out to PaizoCon this year. As such we're trying to get some experience with PFS, and not having a lot of opportunity to do so outside of our regular game night, we're tying to run Society stuff just with our group.

The questions: Should we play the scenarios in order, or can we bounce around a bit? After making it through a few scenarios the party TPKd. (the old 'lets stand in a small group and get rained down upon by an area effect') No one likes the idea of "grinding" through scenarios we've already played, especially when we don't get all that much time to do so.

Can we stick to sanctioned modules,or bounce back and forth between modules and scenarios and build our own camppaign that way?

I know the questions might seem silly, but none of us have any experience with organized play.

I'm interested in hearing all of your thoughts on GMs mandating an alignment shift of a PC based on their actions.

Do you need to see stable, consistent behaviour before you force a shift?

Do you explicitly state the shift at all, or simply converse with the player about how their actions don't fit their alignment and would they like to make a shift?

Can a single incident spark a GM directed alignment shift?

A bit of contextual information:

Recently, in our campaign, the PCs arrived at a city where they were advised to keep their heads down, as some powerful group is out to get them (we're running Jade Regent). To make things interesting, and to see how the party would react to trying not to draw attention to themselves I had them encounter a large group of drunk, unruly men coming home at the end of a long days work. The men insulted the PCs, harassed them a bit, and made lewd comments about a female NPC tagging along with them.

The party attempted a little bit of intimidation to run them off, but that failing, they began attacking these mostly unarmed, unarmored men in the middle of the city. After murdering 5 of them, a few of the PCs realized their error and went into hiding.
Two of the PCs decided they wanted a little more fun and attempted to head down to the local brothel. Various guardsmen attempted to stop them, and were slain. After killing 13 guardsmen, one PC was finally taken down and the other slipped away.

I ruled the captured one was almost immediately executed for his crimes.

Both characters initially started off as having True Neutral alignments.
I dictated that the one that slipped away's alignment shifted to NE based on this event.

Too harsh, too easy? Any thoughts? This was a really odd situation, and not something typicaly for my players at all...and I'm wondering if I handled it fairly.

Kicking jade Regent off tonight, starting things with an intro scenario that involves goblins attacking the caravan the PCs are with. I'm going to make it a little bit different than a straight fight in the hopes that it will help build teamwork and unity. So, it will involve some chasing down and killing goblins, some putting out fires from goblin fireworks hitting the caravan (stolen from CC - town hall event) and some calming panicking horses before they take off/kick the wagon to pieces.

My problem is, I can't settle on a DC for calming the animals. I'm assuming I'll use Handle Animal, but the skill description isn't helping me out any.
I'll also probably have the drivers helping and either aiding the PCs the vise versa.

Any thoughts...would 20 be too high at this level?

In the past most groups I've gamed with have somewhat glossed over the overland travel portion of an adventure/campaign, pausing typically only if a "random encounter" occured.

Now I suppose that this could be done with Jade Regent, but I really feel that doing so would result in a loss of the 'epic journey' feel of the AP.

I'm fairly green when it comes to GMing (I've done it a couple times in the past, and our regular GM is really excited to play a character in this AP) so any thoughts or ideas on what more experienced GMs have done in the past or are doing for Jade Regent to flesh out the caravan travel portion would be a huge help!

Thanks!

I'll be running the AP soon and I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about media (books, film, etc) that I might be able to take in to help me get a sense of the flavour and feel of this AP.

Anything thats an epic journey or with a strong Norse/viking theme (for the second part), as well as the eastern themed destiny calls sort of thing.

That might have been a touch muddled, but I appreciate any thoughts!