Pooh's page

A bunch of us were talking about making magic rings of various kinds and I jokingly brought up the one ring to rule them all. This prompted a discussion on how to make such a ring.
It turns out none in our group are fimiliar enough with high level magic item creation to know.

So: can you make the Tolkien's one ring in Pathfinder and what would it take?

Pooh

My group is going to start a new campaign in August that will be a classic dungeon D&D dungeon crawl. I'm told it is any old Gary Gygax adventure series updated for pathfinder.

My character is going to be a human rogue. I have run rogues before so pretty much how to set on up for finding/disabling traps, sneaking around etc. On of the things I want to do that I have never done before with my rogues is have him be a cutpurse. I've seen the trait that gives you a +1 for sleight of hand but am wondering what other things I can do to make him successful at this.
Note: I don't plan to go around robbing everyone I see or other party members, but if I see someone who offends my sensabilities, he's fair game.

In particular, what tools are available in the game. I think in 3.5 there was a cutpurse blade that was concealable in your hand. We will be using the standard Pathfinder books only I think.

In a related question, how worthwhile is the improved dirty trick feat. My inclination is to go the dodge feat progression route but I'd like this rogue to be a little different.

Pooh

I'm GMing a pathfinder game with 6 PCs. I'm only occasionally giving them enough a fight to seriously challenge them so I'm planning an ambush to try and give them a test. The party is 5th level.

The party will be traveling down a road with refugees going the other way. The refugees will thin out until there is only 1 wagon of them, a pathetic looking group comming toward them. When the refugees get close, they will be revealed a a bunch of zombies which will attack the party.

The party, if it follows its normal course, will deploy fighters to the from and magic users to the rear. Its the magic users I'm after. Once the fight is joined, an antipaladin with vanish cast on him will come out of the woods and attack the magic users from the rear.

Questions:
1. The antipaladin has aura of evil, will the cleric (NG) have a chance to detect him coming because of it.
2. If undetected, are the 2 magic users (cleric and warmage) flat footed. I'm assuming there is no surprise round as the battle has been joined and the antipaladin does not have sneak attack and I'm also assuming there is no flanking. The 2 being attacked have no special feats such as uncanny dodge or evade.
3. The antipaladin has power attack, cleave, smite good, touch of corruption and cruelties. If he is planning to use cleave, how many of these can he use in a single attack round. Smite would be against the cleric who will be the initial target.

Pooh

I'm running a campaign and for many of my monsters, I build them as NPCs. Most of the monsters the party (just turned 5th level) run into are goblinoids or evil humans. One character I'm planning to introduce to the party is an anti-paladin. I'm hoping he will survive long enough to become a re-occuring villan.
I'm finding that the character generators out there are rather hit or miss on being able to build evil NPCs on. In particular, that anti-paladin which is straight out of the APG.

I tend to like the excel based character generators. Any suggestions?

BTW: the Anti paladin
Black Bart 6th level human
Str=16
Dex=11
Con=14
Int=10
Wis=14
Cha=17

Init=6 perception=5
HP=58
Attack
+10/+5 +1 unholy greatsword 2D6+4 (2D6 vs good)
+6/+1 Javelin 1D6
Def
Fort=9, Refl=4, Will=9
AC 21 Tough=11 Flat footed=21

CMB=9 CMD=19

Gear
+1 unholy greatsword
Javelins x3
+1 Agile half plate
Buckler
Broach of shielding,
+1 ring of protection

Traits
Reactionary, Poverty Stricken

Feats
Power, attack, Cleave, Improved init, Toughness

Special
Aura of Fear, Detect Good (at will), Smite Good (2x day), Touch of Corruption (2D6 6x day), Aura of Cowardess, Plague Bringer, Cruelties (Sickend DC16 & Diseased DC18, Channel Negative Energy as 3rd level,

Spells
Protection from good, cause fear

Pooh

My players have been pretty much plowing through whatever monsters I put in their way so I'd like to throw a change up in their path with an encounter that involves little or no combat.

The party is currently in the wilds of the 5 Kings Mountains and will find a path that is only visible in the right moonlight. If they follow the path it will lead to the very old ruins of what was once a grand manor house in the middle of the forest.

A detect magic will reveal the whole house is infused with residual magic. The obvious way into the house is through the still intact front door. When the door closes, the ruins vanish and instead the PCs are in the manor at the height of its glory and an elaborate ball is in progress.

If they try to leave, they will see a very changed landscape. Instead of wild forest they will see farms and orchards in the moonlight. The guests will try strenously to prevent them from leaving.

They will be welcomed as additional guests and offered food and drink and can engage the others in conversation and dance with them.

The challenge will be to figure out what's going on and how to get back to where they started.

In fact those in the house are from the distance past. an unspeakable horror was engulfing their community and there was no way for them to stop it. A powerfull enchanter who could not bear to see his friends and neighbors suffer the horrible torment that awaited them, invited them all to a last ball then performed a spell that removed them from the material plane to a place where they will enjoy this ball forever.

I've a number of ideas but could use some help putting this together.

Pooh

I'm running a Pathfinder campaign and have let a couple of players bring 3.5 classes into the campaign with as close to a straight conversion as possible.

The party recovered a scroll that had arcane spells on it and the warmage wanted to use it even though it had spells not on the warmage list. Our cleric, whose hobby is reading rule seets under he knows them by heart, says that the warmage can not use the scroll without a use magic device check. He states that anyone who has taken skills in use magic device could try (including him as he's taken a number of points in that skill). Our warmage is arguing that he is an arcane spellcaster so ought to be able cast off a scroll.

any oppinions on this?

Pooh

I'm setting up a plot device for my adventure party. They will discover a bag of holding that looks like a little girl's play bag. Pastel colors, lacy frills and even a pink pony stiched in the side. In fact it will have a number of her things in it. Combs and braiding things, play clothing a rocking horse etc. When a PC takes possesion of it the little girl will appear. The PC can use it for anything he/she wants as long he/she doesn't remove any of her stuff. She will adopt that person as an aunt/uncle as long as the PC is in possession of the bag.
The little girl will be incorporeal, will appear and disappear from time to time and will mostly annoy the uncle with typical little kid questions and demands but will occasionally know things because she is from the area in the past and the PCs aren't.

Her history is that her father became obsessed with material wealth, especially after finding a cursed item (which the PCs may also find)and dragged his family into the dungeon. Her mother hid her in the bag of holding and disappeared (was killed mostly likely). I'd rather the little girl wasn't actually dead but had been transported to another plane.

What's the best mechanism for handling this? If there isn't one, I'm going to make one up and any thoughts the more knowledgable folks on this site are very welcome.

Pooh

Hi Guys

I'm GMing a pathfinder campaign set in Golarion. This is my 1st time as a GM since D&D 2.0 and our group's 1st venture into pathfinder.

I need to set up a Wizard/Necromancer as the main villan (that the party knows about) but have never run a high level wizard before.

The necromancer has sworn vengance against the home town of the PCs and sent goblins and bandits against the town in an attack that was repulsed. The town has now sent a large number of adventurers into the hills after the goblins and bandits. They know about the necromancer and know he was behind the attacks but not where he is or exactly what he is doing.

What they don't know is that the necromancer was sure his attack would fail. He did it to provoke just the response the town has made. He has all the low level bad guys he wants and needs some midlevel (4th thru 8th level) followers in order to get his revenge. He plans to "Recruit" them from the adventurers trying to hunt down the goblins. I want the necromancer to be 10th or 11th level. The PCs are only 2nd level right now so he will need to groom them for their future roll. I don't plan for the necromancer to succeed (necessarily) but that is the outline for this part of the campaign.

The necromancer resides in some forgotten underground ruins in the mountains and has numerous minions to throw at the PCs before they ever face them plus all the normal dangers of a mountain wilderness. So, I need him to not only be individually tough but be able to command followers through money, leadership and, of course, undead.

He is a human male and his base stats at 1st level are:
str=9
dex=12
con=10
int=20
wis=10
cha=17

He will be about 50 years old by the time of the campaign and 10th or 11th level so those stats will adjust accordingly. He will also be buffed a goodly number of magical devices but may campaign is not especially magic item rich so nothing over the top like a "Staff of the Magi". He will have a magic staff of some sort though.

Pooh

I need some help setting up an ambush for the party in my adventure.
The party is on a rescue mission to save some survivors of river barges that were attcked by pirates and necromancers and/or evil clerics.
The party will find the barge that was taken run aground in a side channel with the bodies of some of the crew still on board. The barge is about 60 ft. long and has a beam of 20 ft.
They find the captain dead at the wheel with the holy sysmbol of Gozreh in his hand. He's dead but the other 5 are zombies who've been ordered to lay down.
Unknown to the party there are still 4 bad guys on board. 1 will run for it on the shore to warn the other pirates and while they are focused on that on the other 3 will strike. 2 of them are pirates but the 3rd is a magic user. Ideally the magic user would be able to cast silence, darkness and send the zombies in but its a 1st level party.

So what is the best setup for the evil magic user.
He can only be a 1st or 2nd level villan.

Pooh

As I get ready to kick off my 1st pathfinder campaign, I'm having a bit of trouble understanding the methods of setting up encounters and setting a monsters xp value.

As I understand the system in the core rule book, a party of 5 1st level characters has an APL of 1. If you want to make a tough encounter you set the CR 1 higher or 2. This gives me a budget of 600 xp from table 12-2. I'm planning to run the party into a bunch of goblins who are worth 135 xp each giving me about 5 goblins to fight my party. 5 goblins aren't going to cause the party to break a sweat. Am I doing something wrong or is the better way to figure the CR?

Awarding xp for standard monsters is easy. Its listed in the book. I'm also planning to run the party up against human bandits. Most of these will be 1st level themselves. If I have a gang of 1st level bandits who are varying classes (fighters, rouges, etc) are they all CR1/2 200 xp each? If 1 has chain mail and a great sword and another has padded armor and a dagger, does that make a difference?

I'm looking at the explanation in the Beastiary page 290 and am quite sure I don't understand it?

Answers anyone?

Tim

I'm going to be running a pathfinder campaign shortly. I have the 1st few adventures planned out (they will be homebrew set in Isger). But after that the party will have several choices in which direction they take. Many of these directions lead them into existing adventures. for example if they go south they run into Darkmoon Vale. One of those directions is over the 5 Kings mountains toward Macridi. There I want them to encounter an ancient underground ruin of a city that has been taken over by a 9th level necromancer (their arch enemy).
The party will be 2nd level when they enter and will have to fight many low level minions (goblins, hobgoblins, human bandits, zombies, skeletons etc..) before they get anywhere near the necromancer.
Any suggestions for a good dungeon that I can adapt to my needs. I've got a lot of specific ideas that I want to drop in but having the physical dungeon and many inhabitants already there would be a huge step forward.

Tim

What does a goblin warchanter do? In prepping for my upcomming campaign I've bought a bucketload of goblins (just too cute to resist) including 2 warchanters. So what do I do with them other than providing a feminine presence on the battlefield for the goblin side.

Tim

I'm preparing to start GMing my 1st Pathfinder campaign. This is the 1st time using pathfinder for our group as we've played 3.5 for a long time and its my 1st time as GM since AD&D.
There are going to be 5 players (3 humans, 1 halfling & 1 unknown). One of our regulars doesn't like to play anything that to closely resembles a human. In past campaigns she's played a centaur, a wemic and most recently a gnome. This time she wants to be a big tough barbarian. She's an integral part of our group so I'm happy to make some allowances for her. The question is, what race to make her. Half-Orc doesn't have the edge over humans it did in 3.5 and I'm setting the campaign start in Eastern Isger so there isn't likely to be many of them there. I've suggested a Hobgoblin as that area was recently swept up in the goblinblood wars and a stray hobgoblin child might have been taken in by some kind hearted soul.

Anyone have any suggestions? My criteria are that it can't be some overpowering creature, creature unable to team up with humans or very difficult to keep track of (this is my 1st time GMing in a long time remember).

BTW: probable enemies for the 1st few levels are: goblins, goblin dogs, hobgoblins, human (or humanoid) bandits and undead.

Tim

Hello all,

The group I game with has been using 3.5 for all long time including all the complete book series. Its my turn to gm, for the 1st time, an adventure and I've made the decision to move to Pathfinder as it does a lot of things I wanted to put in my game anyway.
The thing is that many of the players want to use character classes found in the complete books and I want to to be able to also. Classes they may want to use include: War Mage, Swashbuckler, Scout, Favored Soul and Beguiler.

Has someone worked out some standard conversions for these classes?

Pooh