Search Posts
I'll be running Age of Worms using Pathfinder and maptools for all the maps and tokens. If anyone is interested in specific maps that have been perfectly sized to fit the maptools grid, just let me know. We are starting on the 3rd module, blackwall keep, as we did the first 2 modules in 4E and are now going to try Pathfinder.
They won a number of gold Ennies at Gen Con this year for 4E D&D, so I just wanted to say bravo, and here's hoping Dark Sun turns out just as good!
In the DMG, on page 159, it has the rules for the Endurance checks needed to resist starvation, suffocation and thirst. One sentence in particular has me puzzled as it can be read 2 ways. "When a character fails the check, he loses one healing surge and must continue to make checks. A character without healing surges who fails a check takes damage equal to his level." Does this mean that a character who fails a check keeps making checks until he succeeds at one, possibly taking damage more than once in a single day? Or does he fail the one check, take the damage/loss of surge, and then is safe until the next day? I am assuming it is the former, deadlier interpretation. If it is the latter, this potentially means that a 1st level character could fail Endurance checks for 3 weeks in the middle of the desert with no food or water before even coming close to death, which is ridiculous.
I was skeptical of 4E when it came out, but after running my second session of Age of Worms in 4E last week, it became apparent that this is actually quite a good game. My players are all quite experienced in 3.5 D&D, or some other incarnation. No newbs here. Why do we like it? There are a few reasons that I noticed, but I'm going to talk about the DM side of things for now. 1. Monsters are easy to run and keep track of and stick around just long enough to do something. The one elite monster actually felt like 2 monsters and it felt tougher to the players than a regular one. Haven't used a solo or minion quite yet, but they are coming up. 2. Options options options! I noticed my players constantly communicating and interacting with each other. Sometimes they would shout out advice to each other such as "if I use power X, you can use your power Y and take out that beetle over there". I never saw this in older editions where players were always focussed just on what they alone could do. At no time did a player simply say "I can't do anything" or "My attacks are useless against that thing". Every single turn for every player had some kind of action or roll to keep the suspense going, even if it was a death saving throw. 3. Game flow. Holy crap this game flows well! My players completed 1 hard encounter, then 3 standard encounters at 1st level without a single extended rest! This makes way more sense to me than back in 3.5 when a regular group would have had to take an 8 hour rest at least once after the first or second encounter. They loved the challenge of going for the next milestone and using their action points. The group is still pressing on this week to the next encounter without taking an extended rest. That's right, encounter number 5! The downsides of 4E can be apparent at times though. This does feel a lot more like a "game" and lacks a lot of realism that other systems can offer, but IMO a game should feel like a game. Power names can be silly at times, or not match up to what the power actually does, but this is a minor complaint. Finally, yes the monsters and PC's do get more hit points, but I still saw cases where a monster was almost taken out in a single hit....and this was NOT a minion. A barbarian with a 3d12+4 encounter power is not to be taken lightly.
Highly recommend this show if you get Showtime in your area. Fantastic actor playing Dexter. Good stories, very dark and creepy sometimes. The English chick in season 2 had some nice bewbies. And Vince Masuka is absolutely hilarious.
As much as I love Pathfinder, I simply cannot afford them anymore. And since my Canadian money is worth so much less now, I'm afraid the conversion rates are killing me as well. Please cancel all my subscriptions.
Hi Cos, Can you change my Pathfinder Modules Subscription to a Pathfinder Chronicles subscription? Or if not, just cancel my Modules subscription and I will create a new subscription to the Chronicles myself. Oh, also, can you remove the Dungeon subscription as well? It's still showing up on my subscriptions page. Thanks,
I'm running Dark Legacies with the Savage Worlds rules for a group of brand new players. I have the DL books as well as the SW books, but I don't have any adventures for it. Can anybody point me in the direction of some good adventures that are set in a dark, low-magic world? Preferrably some good military or mass warfare type adventures. The rules system doesn't matter as I'll be converting them to Savage Worlds stats anyways.
I'm running Dark Legacies with the Savage Worlds rules for a group of brand new players. I have the DL books as well as the SW books, but I don't have any adventures for it. Can anybody point me in the direction of some good adventures that are set in a dark, low-magic world? Preferrably some good military or mass warfare type adventures. The rules system doesn't matter as I'll be converting them to Savage Worlds stats anyways.
*bump*
After reading the DMG and the MM there are very few specific rules for monster creation. Most of it seems fairly adhoc and "use your own judgement" or "change something that's already there". For example, how are you assigning ability scores to monsters now? 4e uses different abilities for different things now and if you try to reverse engineer at lot of what was in the old 3.5 MM and what's in the new 4e MM, it doesnt' really match up that often. The best example is the Hyena. From what I can gather, I've made the following assumptions: HD is now monster level.
Hyena 3.5
Hyena 4.0
For powers I guess you'll need to look in the 4e MM and convert them over as needed, but this more of an art than a science. Everything else about the monster is derived from its level, role, and ability scores it seems. But then you look at the Gelatinous Cube, and almost none of its ability scores match up anymore. Any ideas?
I'd like to help once I get more familiar with the rules in the coming days.
I can see that I have an order which shows up as 2 items: Pathfinder Ongoing Subscription
Preorder, expected March 2008
But I can't see anywhere which issue of Pathfinder this will be. My subscription says it is Pathfinder #7 (which is correct) but I'm just wondering why some other people got emails that theirs has shipped and mine still says pre-order.
Perhaps the Paizo guys can comment on this, but are the cannons in the sides of the ship pictured in today's blog actually functional? Are they magical or gunpowder based? Does this mean that gunpowder weapons will exist in Golarion perhaps? I have yet to run a D&D campaign that used black powder weapons, but I could see some PC's loving this extra bit of flavor. Maybe even having them be a relatively new invention that isn't widespread yet. Comments, suggestions, deep thoughts?
Just wondering if anybody out there is considering running Pathfinder in any systems other than D&D? My players have gotten quite bored and a little bit jaded with the D&D rules and I have been looking into alternatives. Right now the top contenders are True20 and the Warhammer FRPG game, with the latter being extremely new to me. True20 looks like a very simple system that is VERY easy to convert from any d20 source. While the Warhammer FRPG game seems a lot more gritty and realistic, with more rules, but more emphasis on player backgrounds and their upbringing. Anyone else have any ideas? Or have you already started a game with another rules system?
When's the True20 guide coming out for Pathfinder 3 and 4? And are they going to come in batches of 2 all the time? Just curious :)
These conversion guides are fantastic, as I love the True20 system for its simplicity, speed, and the fact that is doesn't rely on magic items to make effective characters (which I find to be the main crutch of D&D). If you have not checked out Green Ronin's True20 RPG game, have a look, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Here's some Goblin stats from Burnt Offerings: Goblins
Goblin Pyros
Goblin Warchanter
Spoiler warning, if you haven't played Lightless Depths yet, and you're a player, read no further!!! So my group has made it into Golismorga now, and began following the cavern walls around the outskirts of the city, they found the ziggurat first, and after scouting it out and seeing the sheer number of foes in and around it, they quickly decided to leave it for later. They went the other way around the city and found the crater with the tear in it. After a long hard fight against the brain eater, they descended the crater walls and identified tlaloc's head. However, now the group has decided to leave the head where it is and attack the temple!!! So last night we ran through this encounter, as the group decided to try guerilla tactics on them. The monk snuck up the temple while the group stayed back in ambush on top of two buildings with a narrow alley between them. The monk steps out of hiding to shoot 2 arrows into a kopru, and the fight is on. Monk then proceeds to lose initiative and is dominated by the kopru, who take him to the temple and present him to Ulioloth. Ulioloth decides he will make a great sacrifice and proceeds to have him annointed and stripped of his possessions. Meanwhile, the rest of the group knows something is wrong, and promptly casts 3 improved invisibilities and 3 fly spells, and soars over to the temple to check on things. Next thing I know, the group has begun dropping fireballs and black tentacle spells onto the temple, while the sorcerer attempts to dispel the domination of the monk. 7 rounds and 2.5 hours of play time later, the group has wounded Ulioloth who retreated back into the temple from his invisible assailants. About 5 regular kopru lie dead, and 3 behemoths are dead or wounded. The second wave of monsters is nearing the base of the temple, and the group's invisibility spells are almost expired. Knowing the behemoths have potions of fly, they now realize their invisibility is the only thing keeping them alive. I am dreading next session though, since as soon as the group becomes visible, they will be bombarded with dominate monster spells and there is a good chance at least 1 or two of them will fail their saves. Hopefully the group has thought this through and can come up with an escape plan, or even if they can seal themselves inside the temple somehow, that may give them some time to rest after defeating Ulioloth.
I just finished running the end portion of Here There Be Monsters, and I had to skip the mob of fiendish baboons encounter because I couldn't figure out how to adjucate certain effects with it. Can somebody please explain the whole mob anatomy to me? Can it be targeted by melee or ranged attacks? Do these target a specific creature or the mob as a whole? What about magic missile spells or spells that target individual targets? What about spells like colour spray? I think I'm just finding the text of this template a little confusing. Basically I couldn't tell what effects imposed negative levels on the mob, and which effects just reduced its hit point pool.
I'm curious as to what all the groups out there are using for Savage Tide's playing surface? Currently, I'm using one of those large notepads with 1 inch graph paper and just scribbling down the rooms and maps as I need them. This is proving to be more and more difficult though as there are a lot of caves, outdoor encounters, and such that don't follow the square room dungeon models, and they are really hard to draw. Anybody have any other ideas for this that don't require any artistic talent? Also, I use D&D miniatures or tokens (colour portraits printed on cardstock) for all my encounters and my players love them, as they tend to add a lot of realism to the game. But seeing them on that white paper with red or black lines for dungeon walls seems like a waste to me.
I figured I'd start this thread off since this new AP is nearly upon us. Judging from the looks of issue 139 we'll need a Tyrannosaurus miniature and I'm betting some gorilla and pirate minis are a given as well. Any others we should be looking around for Paizo peeps?
Hi everyone, I was considering running the Savage Tide adventure path and allowing my group to choose monstrous characters, such as orcs, aquatic elves, or even minotaurs and medusas. Basically, using the stuff from Savage Species. Can anybody think of any monsters that would unbalance any of the adventures or basically ruin certain parts of the adventure path? I realize its still early in the AP as the first adventure has yet to come out but I just wanna be prepared and allow my group to make their characters ASAP so they can properly flesh them out. Cheers
Couple funny things happened last night when I was running this adventure. Some spoilers, but I'm sure you guys are well on your way through this AP! 1. Upon reaching the brown mold area, one PC decided the best idea was to make a new door in the thin wall. He quoted the scene from Robin Hood Prince of Thieves where Robin uses a statue to knock down a door. After watching the wind duke's head crack and crumble, they finally pounded a hole into the wall big enough to enter. 2. They found the trigger plate for the magic face trap but couldn't figure out what it did. So they tied 100 ft. of rope to a large sack of rubble positioned on the far side of the pressure plate. The barbarian held the rope in his hand while clinging to the chain down to the lantern room and pulled. The weight set off the trap, he became paralyzed, and just before he was blown away, he made his Will save and slid down the chain just as the sack of rubble was blown down behind him. They even drew a picture of the whole mechanism :) 3. Upon asking Alastor's ghost about his family, and discovering his dad's name was Anders. One player, his last name being Anderson, quickly replied "So that means you're Ander's son". We all had a good laugh at that, as he was on his fifth beer at the time and this kind remark was totally unexpected :)
I love the new Conan RPG by Mongoose Publishing and I also love the AoW campaign arc. But has anybody used these adventures in a Conan setting? I'm extremely tempted to do so, but I'd like to get some feedback from GM's here who may have tried this already. Obviously, significant conversions and substitutions would be required.
I had a PC attempt to grapple the Ebon Aspect last night and looked at its grapple check modifier of +22 and said huh? After adding its BAB of +10, Strength modifier of +5, and size modifier of +4 (being large) I only came up with +19. Does this thing have a racial bonus or something that I am missing or a bonus for multiple arms?
I just thought I would post some interesting tidbits of information here in regards to my rather unique WC sessions. I have a group of 3, 4th level PC's but they have 2 1st level NPC's that travel with them as well (bodyguards). We are playing in the Birthright campaign setting, so I had to do some serious work to fit this adventure path in. Anyways, most of my players commented that this adventure would be absolute death for a 1st level party. I disagree for a number of reasons, but mainly because my group seems to approach every single room/encounter in the worst possible way. For one thing, they don't have the rogue go first to search for traps. The shooting iron balls trap, sprung by the paladin, the wind tunnel trap sprung by the cleric, the poison gas trap, also sprung by the cleric. 2 of the 3 players are accomplished D&D veterans, yet they still seem to bumble into every monster lair and trap in the place. Luckily, the monsters seem to be rather weak against the party as I didn't beef them up too much due to their trap problems :) The grick was dead in 2 rounds, the strangler didn't do a single point of damage before it was sliced in half, the medium water elemental was dead in 2 rounds. The worst monster the group faced were those acid beetle swarms, and that was because they had no area of effect spells and NONE of them had torches :P They do manage to roleplay relatively well though, and figured out how to find the Land family bodies, Kullen, and Filge's hideout all without ever encountering the owlbear or the severed arm. The Tomb Mote encounter was absolutely hilarious though, the party didn't know whether to attack the thing or throw a leash on it :) I can't wait until they enter the observatory and encounter Filge and his minions. That fight will be one to remember. I am anticipating the undead will be of little use against a paladin and a cleric, but the necromancer is gonna get some serious beats in before he is killed.
I am a bit behind in this adventure path at the moment with my group (we only play about 3 hours a week) and they ran across the insane small water elemental in the whispering cairn last night. I had a question about its vortex ability, as I found something rather weird in the description. The vortex of any elemental apparently only affects creatures at least one size category smaller than it (according to its v3.5 writeup). Most PC's are Small size or larger, at least in my group, and thus would not be affected by the vortex. So this battle turned into a simple trading of blows until the elemental was destroyed. Am I reading the vortex ability incorrectly? Or was this a goof in the adventure? |
