Rakless's page

I've tried to find an answer for this in the forums and FAQ, but it seems to be much more of a corner case than most: would a fused eidolon be effectively hidden by disguise spells like Alter Self and Disguise Self? Could a character use these spells or ANY spells to remain fused(as in, fully armored with his eidolon suit on) but appear as defenseless as a demon pretending to be a small child?

I only ask because Summoners in particular seem to have that weird glyph that can't ever be hidden(or so some threads say).

In a campaign I'm running now, I'm trying to populate a dungeon with some nasty critters that were bred/engineered to be perfect killing machines. Initially, I used Unfettered Eidolons rebranded as aberrations, but now I'm having second thoughts. I don't have a lot of skill crafting eidolons, and while it was an effective challenge the first time, I'm worried if may get a little dull for the party to keep running up against the same one that's listed in the Bestiary.

Anyone who's familiar with Book of Vile Darkness or can get their hands on a copy, there was a truly nasty aberration in there called a Kython, with multiple challenge ratings and variable abilities. I'm curious how the two stack up next to one another in terms of lethality and variability as foes. Anyone have any opinions or advice on which to use?

Now, bear with me here... could a paladin enter the Gray Gardener prestige class? Assuming, of course, that they never knowing executed an innocent(and probably came from somewhere other than Galt)?

The prestige class doesn't have any alignment restrictions or requirements, and Pathfinder allows for combinations like rogue/paladin now that the multi classing restriction has been lifted from paladins... is there a consensus?

I've been running a group through Carrion Hill, and they're digging the setting, even bringing some fun backstory to the game that I'm trying my best to integrate. Originally, I was going to adapt Carrion Crown to higher levels, but now I have a more challenging idea.

I'd like to adapt Red Hand of Doom to Ustalav and use it as a bridge to get them to Wake of the Watcher and beyond. Some of them have already played through parts of Carrion Crown, most have only ever heard of Red Hand.

Since the Whispering Tyrant has history with using orcs from the Hold of Belkzen, I was thinking of replacing hobgoblins with orcs, making the force empowering the Horde's charismatic orc leader into something more squicky and Lovecraftian. I'm using an agent of the Whispering Way as a long term antagonist. He encouraged the events of Carrion Hill and is seeking power for what's to come in Gallowspire. In the Horde, he's seeking to distract or outright conquer the population(either helps the Whispering Way achieve their goals).

Any thoughts or suggestions on merging these two stories?

I ran the first three chapters of Kingmaker and had a blast, with characters like Kressle and the Stag Lord growing into allies of the PCs through much role-play and diplomacy. Now I find myself running it again with a mostly different group of players, and I've decided to shake things up and make some changes.

One of the things I love most about Paizo Adventure Paths are the maps. They're always interesting and atmospheric... which is why I don't want to just draw a sloppy approximation of them with dry-erase markets. For my upcoming Kingmaker game, I want to do something really special.

Assuming they look decent when blown up to the proper grid size, I was going to either have color copies made of the major maps, fiddling with them in GIMP so each part is an individual file that prints at the correct size to link together, or I was going to try building 3-dimensional versions out of Terra-Clips(World Works Games).

The main problem with the Terra-Clips maps is that I'll lose the exact shape of the maps. Just looking at the Stag Lord's Fort map, I can already see it's impossible to do with the pieces WWG currently sells in their sets.

Likewise, blowing up the map images will likely distort the fine detail.

So here's my question to the Paizo community: which would you do, assuming the issue is quality of gaming and not price(I think offhand that Terra-Clips will be cheaper in the long run, since they can be reused)?

I'm putting together a small group for a Sunday game in New Port Richey, FL with a carpool traveling from Brandon, FL along I-75. It's a solid group with strong roleplayers dedicated as much to character as to crunch. Anyone carpooling can expect to split the cost of gas three ways. I allow a pretty exotic mix of character concepts as long as they play well with others.

I'm trying to put together a small group of dedicated role-players for my favorite campaign of all time. I tried running it online but suffered some player atrophy and burned out on the massive amount of prep work required to do Kingmaker justice over a virtual tabletop.

Now I'm trying again, but I'm a tabletop DM at heart. I loved running the first half of Kingmaker online, and I can only imagine it's going to be even better around a table. I'm looking for potential players around the Tampa area who can make the trip to Oldsmar, FL for a weekly or biweekly game. It's even conceivable that the game will run only once a month if all we can manage are all-day sessions.

If you're interested, post here or email me at charlatans dot web at gmail dot com.

Are there any gamers up for a monthly or weekly game in the Tampa/Lakeland area?

Is there a ruling or rules text that explains/addresses why creatures with energy drain can sometimes channel their energy drain ability through a melée weapon instead of a slam attack?

Since my players are locked into their classes for a while, I was thinking about trying Magus for one of the campaign's recurring villains. The problem is that Magus is clearly designed with a player in mind and the villain in question is a Will-o-Wisp.

Many of the spell book issues can be handled with Mage Hand as a cantrip, but I notice that Spellstrike seems worded in the same way as certain feats--it refers to "held weapons," which some have interpreted to exclude natural weapons. Is a Wisp's melée touch attack a viable option for Spellstrike(treating it as -4 when combined with a spell)? Can a wisp cast a touch attack spell and hold the charge until the following round and combine it with its shock touch attack?

I suspect that the will-o-wisp is more atypical than most monsters that might benefit from this class, since it only possesses a supernatural attack, unlike other monsters with natural attacks OR a special attack...but it is an important question for monsters like wights who could possess weapon proficiency as well as their energy draining slam(which seems to work even with melée weapons in some Paizo stat blocks, so how energy drain and Magus interact would be equally good to know).

Since the prereq for Extra Discovery is "Discovery Class Feature", does having the class itself act as prereq or is 3rd level the earliest an Alchemist can take Extra Discovery?

I don't normally post in this region of the site, but here goes.

I normally DM but recently found myself playing in a Pathfinder update of the Legacy of Fire AP. Because it looked interesting and I was fairly certain no sane DM would allow it, I asked to play a Tengu Artificer(the class is from Tome of Secrets and is SRD but not Paizo content). The DM allowed it, even though it allows a character to effectively cast one spell per level simultaneously.

I tried it out for three levels and realized even a player with the best of intentions can't make something incredibly broken function without self-gimping to the point of not being fun anymore. So I asked if I could rebuild the character as something similar, like an alchemist, but was told I could keep playing as is or I would have to play an NPC that already showed up. At least until the end of the first volume.

My biggest concern was that this class was just not fun anymore since the temptation to make a broken character was too great and getting into a power level arms race with the DM is never fun, especially not for the rest of the group who chose acceptable classes and can't cast multiple spells simultaneously at 3rd level.

Now, in an effort to redeem the class, the DM has rewritten the class with severe limitations(likely justified) and is offering them as his solution to my problem with the Artificer. Instead of allowing a class swap, he is actually forcing me to play a different version of the Artificer that he designed, for reasons that pass my understanding.

Am I being selfish for just wanting to swap out my levels for something else? Is my DM being difficult by forcing me to play something I just don't want to play anymore? What would you do if you were either of us?

Okay, my favorite moment in our Kingmaker campaign so far was when Topper Red(in our campaign, a woman who pretended to be a man and was eventually made Spymaster of the group's new kingdom) arrived in town to tell the group that there is a town to the north that seems to be run by Nugrah, the Stag Lord's father, a reincarnated goblin version of Dovan, a hated NPC, and a Will-o-the-Wisp that survived two combats with the group and has become a recurring villain. Serving them as they build their small but evil empire are the defeated but since-ignored Mites and a tribe of Kobolds that has resisted all efforts to assimilate and has a yellow-skinned leader who was raised from the dead after Tartuk slew his tribe.

The moment that made it awesomesauce for me as a DM? The player character who said, "A town full of villains? Are you effing kidding?"

The most fun part for me will be the later reveal that explains what force nudged the old druid into creating a mirror image of the community the PCs are building. Until then, I will have to be satisfied with knowing that they have a vile enemy to the northwest that financed its kingdom with the buried loot they never found because they were too honorable to raid a burial cairn(until later, when the exact same situation happened but involved a "treasure map," go figure. For those DMs of Kingmaker reading this, yes, I did add substantially more treasure to the Barbarian Cairn in Part 1 than it lists...it was necessary to find some explanation for why creating a kingdom is possible for anyone without a 50 BP head start when our group in particular came very near to collapse when they started building.

Anyway, I was just giddy after tonight's session and wanted to celebrate by sharing with all of you. Good night to all and Kingmaker continued to be the best AP I have ever run. May the Grim Harvestman overlook you all.

I'm hoping for an official answer to the pounce/rake question since the text for the abilities is unchanged: does a pouncing eidolon also get its rake attacks or do they only function during grapple(per the APG text, not the Bestiary)?

Also, it seems like a simple wording issue, but does an eidolon with the energy attack evolution do an additional 1d6 of the appropriate type or does it replace the existing attack damage? I ask because the wording omits the word "additional," and I could easily see either interpretation since one seems less useful than additional damage and stackable energy damage is potentially overpowered at higher levels with multiple attacks.

I'm just wondering if there is a canon explanation. The article on Brevoy in Pathfinder AP#31 makes their recent silence sound a little sinister but I don't know if this ties into another module or if it's just meant to be a mystery for DMs to expand on if they want.

My group has finally reached the Stag Lord's Fort, entering the fort as elite bandits under Kressle's "command." This was something she offered to do for them on the condition that they consider working for the Stag Lord, who she remains loyal to, and fighting him honorably if they can't come to some sort of arrangement.

Here's my question. What sort of understanding could a diplomatic group reach with the Stag Lord? He's a tragic, tortured figure who drowns himself in alcohol, possibly too self-destructive to ever be redeemed, but if there was a way to reach an understanding with him, I'm curious what course some of you might take. How do you go about negotiating with a damaged man who rules by default? Is there a path to redemption for someone whose worldview is tempered by years of brutal abuse at the hand of your only parent?

It goes without saying that the best case scenario will still lead to some sort of coup attempt by the most vicious of the Stag Lord's men, but I'm curious how my players will approach this and would like to prepare for as many possibilities as possible.

When my gaming group's Druid left about a month ago, we arranged a little backstory for the occasion. Her ex-fiancé, a very high-level and dangerous Elven prince(think a cross between Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen), had tracked her down and staying with the group was going to endanger them. The plan was for her to eventually return with a plan to defeat the prince, a plan that would require the group's help and that obviously we haven't worked out quite yet.

With an AC that borders on untouchable and fighting skill that would likely drop any member of the party in two rounds, how does the group defeat a much more dangerous foe?

I've let many a play-by-post down since starting my Kingmaker home game, and with good reason. I have never put more into a campaign than I have with this AP, and while my players were initially skeptical, all of them love their foray into the Stolen Lands and can't wait to see where it goes.

Unfortunately, real world issues have kept two of my original six players out of the campaign and I think it's time I start looking for qualified replacements.

This is a virtual tabletop game that runs every Thursday from 8pm eastern standard time to about midnight. The group also earns extra XP by writing journals, either by themselves or as a group, and I've even contributed some journals myself(my Stag Lord fort journal has been posted in the Kingmaker and Campaign Journal forums). We use Ventrilo for voice communication and the latest version of Maptool for the tabletop(both free programs that work on all platforms).

The party currently consists of:

• A human male Cleric of Erastil 3
  
• A half-elf female Ranger 3 with a tiger cub companion
  
• A gnome male Summoner 3 with a pouncing four-legged worm creature companion
  
• A half-elf male Rogue 1/Fighter 2 with a houseruled heirloom Urumi that still has reach
  
• An elf female Druid 1 with a polar bear companion who may or may not return to her love, the half-elf Ranger

If you are interested in joining the group, post your character concept here or email me at charlatans dot web at gmail dot com.

We use 20-pt buy and build characters according to the Pathfinder Society Guidelines(2 traits, max hp at 1st level, 1/2 plus 1 hp for each additional level), but all Pathfinder material is allowed, including crafting feats and the new base classes. 3rd party material may be accepted, but I value story over crunch and reserve the right to disallow anything that's not official Pathfinder RPG.

We're a close-knit group, and many of us have been playing together for years. Roleplay is as important in our campaigns as knowledge of the rules, and being able to work well with others is an ironclad requirement.

Hi all, my group has been playing through Kingmaker and I've been writing small interludes for the group to read, giving them insight into their prisoner, Kressle, and their adversary the Stag Lord. I thought I might share this entry and crosspost it in the Campaign Journal forum, although it is not strictly speaking a campaign journal. Full credit of course to the brilliant Tim Hitchcock for giving these characters so much depth and to Alexander Kilcoyne for his excellent additions to the Fort in a 6-player group.

Fair Warning: the journal contains some brief adult language, themes, and all that you might expect from a bandit fort. There are no real spoilers if players wish to read it.

Life at the Stag Lord's Fort

Hi all, my group has been playing through Kingmaker and I've been writing small interludes for the group to read, giving them insight into their prisoner, Kressle, and their adversary the Stag Lord. I thought I might share this entry and crosspost it in the Kingmaker forum. Full credit of course to the brilliant Tim Hitchcock for giving these characters so much depth and to Alexander Kilcoyne for his excellent additions to the Fort in a 6-player group.

Fair Warning: the journal contains some brief adult language, themes, and all that you might expect from a bandit fort. There are no real spoilers if players wish to read it.

Life at the Stag Lord's Fort

I don't suppose it would be possible to slip Kingmaker 3 out of its scheduled monthly shipment into a shipment of maps I plan to buy. I prefer getting everything at once, but I really want a look at the next volume as soon as I can.

Hey everyone, just wanted to crosspost this.

Hey everyone!

I'll be starting Kingmaker for my home game this week and while I was looking for pictures of Owlbears for the Maptool tokens, I came across this interesting little art contest, which got me thinking...wouldn't it be cool if the strange and exotic owlbears depicted in that art contest had variant stats to go with them?

Now, I've never actually run a contest before but if RPG Superstar has taught me anything, it's that Paizo.com has a huge wealth of untapped talent in the form of creative posters and insightful commentators. With all due observance to any and all copyrights that may apply to the artwork depicted on ArtOrder above, I'd like some of the more enterprising and clever posters to create Pathfinder stats for the unconventional Owlbear in ArtOrder contest. I'll even award a prize to the best variant Owlbear as judged by me and my group of players(your choice of a single Paizo AP or Module PDF, which I will pay for and gift to your account).

The rules are simple. Your statblock must be original, reference one of the variant Owlbears on ArtOrder(linked above) by the artist's name, utilize only Pathfinder rules and/or OGL content, and must be submitted before June 6, 2010. More than one submission is allowed, but in the interest of fairness, only the best submission from a single poster will be considered against all other submissions, so post as often as you like but don't expect to win by crowding out other entries. I reserve the right to cancel the contest if there aren't enough worthy entries(but certainly hope that won't be the case and would consider two great statblocks from two different posters enough to award the prize).

All right, Paizonians! Get statting and good luck!

Hi, I'm having a hard time telling how much I had to pay for shipping this month, but it looks like my books have been split into as many different shipments as humanly possible rather than the single monthly shipment I requested. I've received three packages so far this month and the Adventurer's Armory is still on it's way in yet another package. Is there any way to make sure this doesn't happen again or maybe credit me for the difference in shipping charges if I've been overcharged by splitting my order up this way?

I just wanted to pass this idea along because I buy a lot of Paizo material but my players, not so much. I can share relevant campaign stuff with them but there are a lot if books I'd love them to dig into themselves without me spoon-feeding them then parts I like. With this in mind, I'd like to suggest some kind of discount code that players can use to buy certain materials, like the companion or chronicles books. If someone subscribes or pays a little extra for a GM subscription, players in his/her campaign get a special code to buy books from the campaign at a discount.

The idea is to encourage more sales from people who ordinarily wouldn't because their GM bought the book. Even if it's a PDF only discount, I would love to tell my players there's a special price for them if they want their Adventurers Armory now that I'm using it for the campaign.

Well? Paizo likey?

I just want to be sure I'm reading this correctly, so forgive me if I'm making the exotic proficiency question more complicated than it needs to be. When it says to treat a scorpion whip(for example) as a whip if they don't have the exotic proficiency for scorpion whip, does that mean someone proficient in whips but not scorpion whips must use normal whip statistics? Or is someone proficient in whips automatically proficient in scorpion whips?

I've been upgrading Demon Within for Pathfinder characters and I just noticed that the possessed knights may function differently under Pathfinder rules. Should the possession ability of the sons of perdition allow them to use the listed abilities of the paladins? Have changes to magic jar made the sons of perdition less effective when they possess the knights?

Update: It seems on closer look that magic jar wasn't changed all that much. That leaves me wondering what, if anything, the sons of perdition can do with the possessed paladins. Are they considered proficient with their weapons, at least, if not with any of their abilities?

We currently have 3 players who've expressed interest in remaining and perhaps one or two more might float back, but I won't be able to resume the game(which had barely started when Nameless disappeared) until I have at least one more player.

Any takers?

Given the importance of the hippogriff in Korvosa and Curse of the Crimson Throne, it seems like an odd omission. Is an updated hippogriff in the works or are they doomed to 3.5 obscurity?

Was going to run it for Halloween, couldn't find the players. Live game, Maptool and Ventrilo for voice and map, Pathfinder Core rules, 11th level characters.

Unable to find enough players for any of the dates mentioned, I'm revising this to be an open call for players with flexible dates. The rules are the same: 11th level Pathfinder Roleplaying Game characters using 20-point buy and core rules. If I can get together enough players, I will run this over a period of 2-4 non-consecutive nights.

Outside material will not be allowed, except for the Bestiary, and a few 3.5 prestige classes including Fiendbinder, Demonwrecker, and Knight of the Chalice.

The nights of the game will be decided by consensus.

Looking to start a regular Pathfinder Society slot in my area. Anyone interested?

The Dirty Druid Job

I apologize if this has been covered before, but I'm trying to figure out why rapiers are considered light weapons for the purposes of Weapon Finesse but aren't actually light weapons. Given that they have the same weight as most light weapons, similar damage, and seem downright weird if wielded in a Power Attack, I'm not sure what justification, if any, leaves them in the heavier weapon category. Aside from the Power Attack strangeness, a rapier wielded in the off-hand yields a higher penalty than a shortsword...which seems counter-intuitive. So counterintuitive, in fact, that I've been treating it as a light weapon for the purpose of Two-Weapon Fighting for years and only just realized the mistake.

The last reason why the whole thing has me scratching my head...wielding a rapier two-handed. By the rules, can you actually do it? Isn't it a little...well...hard to picture?

What's the deal with this? Why is the rapier on a list of exceptions to the rules instead of just being on the list of light weapons?

I'm thinking about running a tabletop Pathfinder game in Brandon once a week, probably on Tuesday or Thursday. I'm looking for interested players in the Tampa area. Any takers?

As near as I can tell, 3.5 allowed players to take both Two-Weapon Fighting and Rapid Shot if they were throwing weapons and the rules in Pathfinder are worded in the same way. I realize it would be a -4 penalty and thrown weapons have very short ranges, but would a character be able to make three throws in the same full attack with only these two feats(well, three feats, counting Quick Draw, assuming it's not a Shuriken)? Is there an official Pathfinder ruling on this?

The problem I had at a session last night was a group of players with minimal knowledge of the Pathfinder(or any other rules) coming up with an attack plan that was more cinematic than rules-based. As a result, I wasn't sure whether it could be done and had no idea how to simulate it.

The group knew that a trapdoor in a warehouse opened to a dungeon with four monsters guarding the entrance. The room with the monsters below had two sealed doors and the monsters had no natural ability to open doors. Their plan was to load up on flammable liquids and alchemists' fire, flood the room with oil, attack with the alchemists' fire and shut the trap door. Basically, torch the monsters and let them burn to death while they waited.

My problem is that I couldn't find any price for a barrel of oil or anything like it, nor could I find a rule mechanic that worked for what they intended to do. In the end, all they ended up doing was lobbing the alchemist fire at the monsters, which had the disappointing effect of 1d6 for two rounds.

Also a problem for them was the time crunch. Once they initiated combat, they couldn't do nearly as much before closing the door as they wanted. One standard action, one move action. It all turned out to be moot with the monsters winning initiative and having a climb speed, but I would like some thoughts and opinions on how to accomplish what they wanted mechanically, as it was a clever idea...just a little too clever for me to do on the fly.

For characters still working on their background, here are the Golarian-to-Trelania country conversions:

Andoran=The Southlands: South of Sasserine, west of Palajia, the rugged terrain of the Southlands is rich with natural resources and fiercely independent of its neighbors. Dominated by barbarian tribes, the Southlands has long protected those oppressed by other nations, particularly Palajia. Pockets of civilization exist, often marrying the sensibilities of Orc or Human tribes that such communities absorb with the seafaring traditions of former Palajian citizens.

Cheliax=Palajia: The Palajian Empire is a vast coastal kingdom to the east with unfulfilled designs on the port of Sasserine. Sasserine was once a distant outpost of the empire, but centuries of lax enforcement and pirate-ravaged seas ultimately lost them control of their prize(Sasserine has since reverted to self-rule and opened up trading routes with Borsch and the Southlands). Slavery is common in Palajia, as is open worship of devils by the aristocracy.

Osirion=The Skree Wastes: Skree was once the most fertile and prosperous nation of the civilized world. Now, it is a swampy wasteland, cursed with a living death along with all those who lived under the reign of its last and greatest king, Voltang the Northman. The living share an uneasy peace with the undead in Skree, avoiding those areas that have been claimed by malignant undead and relying on the protection of Voltang, cursed as a lich since the fall of his empire, to keep the mindless undead at bay.

Qadira=Clockwork Oasis: Founded by the Gnome wizard Widnipper Nackle in the vast deserts east of Palajia, the Clockwork Oasis is a city-nation on thousands of mechanical legs, protected from the harsh climate and desert raiders by engineering innovations and powerful magic. It is a technological marvel made possible by the union of Gnome and Kobold craftsmen, long enemies elsewhere in the world but united by Palajian oppression, and the labor of intelligent constructs who tirelessly operate the walking city.

Taldor=Borsch: When Skree was a vibrant Empire, Borsch was already in decline. A thousand years later, the small, wealthy state to the west of Skree is not so much a nation as a collection of cutthroats, thieves and pirates living under a mass delusion of nobility. The last noble Borsch bloodlines died centuries ago, but their mansions and noble names live on, purchased by pirate captains seeking a decadent retirements, won in Scuttlecove card games by unsavory assassins and rogues, or simply stolen by charlatans claiming to be long-lost descendents. Despite questionable pedigrees, the current lords and ladies of Borsch play their roles with applomb, and a thriving economy has grown around the deception.

For characters still working on their background, here are the Golarian-to-Trelania country conversions:

Andoran=The Southlands: South of Sasserine, west of Palajia, the rugged terrain of the Southlands is rich with natural resources and fiercely independent of its neighbors. Dominated by barbarian tribes, the Southlands has long protected those oppressed by other nations, particularly Palajia. Pockets of civilization exist, often marrying the sensibilities of Orc or Human tribes that such communities absorb with the seafaring traditions of former Palajian citizens.

Cheliax=Palajia: The Palajian Empire is a vast coastal kingdom to the east with unfulfilled designs on the port of Sasserine. Sasserine was once a distant outpost of the empire, but centuries of lax enforcement and pirate-ravaged seas ultimately lost them control of their prize(Sasserine has since reverted to self-rule and opened up trading routes with Borsch and the Southlands). Slavery is common in Palajia, as is open worship of devils by the aristocracy.

Osirion=The Skree Wastes: Skree was once the most fertile and prosperous nation of the civilized world. Now, it is a swampy wasteland, cursed with a living death along with all those who lived under the reign of its last and greatest king, Voltang the Northman. The living share an uneasy peace with the undead in Skree, avoiding those areas that have been claimed by malignant undead and relying on the protection of Voltang, cursed as a lich since the fall of his empire, to keep the mindless undead at bay.

Qadira=Clockwork Oasis: Founded by the Gnome wizard Widnipper Nackle in the vast deserts east of Palajia, the Clockwork Oasis is a city-nation on thousands of mechanical legs, protected from the harsh climate and desert raiders by engineering innovations and powerful magic. It is a technological marvel made possible by the union of Gnome and Kobold craftsmen, long enemies elsewhere in the world but united by Palajian oppression, and the labor of intelligent constructs who tirelessly operate the walking city.

Taldor=Borsch: When Skree was a vibrant Empire, Borsch was already in decline. A thousand years later, the small, wealthy state to the west of Skree is not so much a nation as a collection of cutthroats, thieves and pirates living under a mass delusion of nobility. The last noble Borsch bloodlines died centuries ago, but their mansions and noble names live on, purchased by pirate captains seeking a decadent retirements, won in Scuttlecove card games by unsavory assassins and rogues, or simply stolen by charlatans claiming to be long-lost descendents. Despite questionable pedigrees, the current lords and ladies of Borsch play their roles with applomb, and a thriving economy has grown around the deception.

Once everyone has their characters finished and approved, this is where we'll begin.

All right, I think we've waited long enough to start. Some of you haven't put your characters on Myth-Weavers yet or finished your backgrounds, but I have seen some version of all characters.

I'd like each of you to write a brief post showing where your characters are in Sasserine and what you're doing.

Maybe I'm a sucker for punishment, but I wanted to try running this as a play-by-post. I've got a lot of love for this little AP, and I've been wanting to try my hand at a play-by-post for a while.

• 20-point Pathfinder buy for ability scores
  
• All characters are 1st level
  
• Only core classes, feats, spells, equipment from the PFRPG(for now, but I will be dropping some non-core material into the game in the form of NPCs and the various affiliations)
  
• I see Sasserine as a melting pot, so races other than core will be allowed. Any of the Dragon Compendium races(with some minor tweaks here and there) will be allowed. Kobolds, Goblins, and other cannon-fodder, evil by Monster Manual decree type races are not automatically monsters in my games and are grudgingly accepted in Sasserine. If there's a race you really want to play, let me know and I'll see how I would rework them to be Pathfinder-friendly.
  
• No Evil alignment. No Lawful-Good-as-excuse-to-be-a-tool characters need apply, either. It's a long AP and parties that don't work cooperatively suck all the fun out of an adventure, IMO. Paladins are welcome, as long as they exemplify goodness rather than trying to ram it down everyone else's throats.

I'm sure I didn't cover everything, so feel free to ask. Any takers?

After successfully running Savage Tide for a group of seasoned vets a year or two ago, I have taken on the strange and sometimes frustrating task of teaching Pathfinder to a bunch of new gamers("Isn't D&D that game where you dress up and stuff?" new, not "Oh yeah, I played that back in high school" new). The campaign of choice? Savage Tide.

Perhaps you're reading this because you're a fan of Savage Tide. Perhaps you're just curious what happens when completely inexperienced players attempt the long and arduous journey to save the world from Demogorgon. Either way, read on.

The Players:

Radascot, also called Orky - a Kitsune rogue disguised as a Human
Obediah - a Human barbarian whose endless rage was born the day he saw his village destroyed by the Crimson Fleet
Soupy, real name unknown - a dour Human ranger, trained in the military arts
Zuran - a Human sorcerer who draws his arcane power from an undead ancestor
Slurry - a Dwarven cleric of Gorum, who revels in destruction, strength, and precious metals

Session 1

I've been DMing for quite a few years, but I lost interest a while ago and stopped near the end of the Savage Tide adventure path. Our rules were a muddle of 3.5, houserules, and the Pathfinder beta and there was only one or two players that could be depended on to show up. I just got tired of doing a lot of work to get the game ready and never having any fun(such is the nature of high-level adventures, I am told).

Anyway, some friends I made through my local comic store got interested in gaming and convinced me to run a few things for them. I started out small, kept it exclusively Pathfinder core rules, and we all had some fun. I talked the group into playing through Savage Tide, which I was anxious to try again since I had so much fun for the first half of the adventure path and wanted to see how much Pathfinder rules would improve the second half.

The first session started off rough, with most of them not taking anything seriously at first, but then that magical moment came where they started to get into it and think like characters. The second session was a blast. These guys, who had until recently thought of Dungeons and Dragons as kind of dorky were now talking about their characters outside of the game, planning their background...it was awesome.

Last night was the third session and things went...off.

The rogue character, who had previously found and kept some gold for himself, become a huge obstacle for the rest of the group. A particular obstacle in the first chapter of the adventure required a combination that only the rogue possessed and he decided to pretend he didn't have it. Things went downhill from there, with half the players trying to solve an unsolvable puzzle and the other half plotting to kill anyone who got in the way of robbing the family vault of the woman who hired them--including the woman that hired them.

I tried to explain what the consequences would be if they kept refusing to work together as a group, as well as what would happen if they did things that were blatantly evil in a civilized city, and they took things down a notch, didn't go chaotic evil.

I'm worried that the damage is done and the players that got a taste of evil and enjoyed it aren't going to have any fun now that they've toned their antics down, while the players that weren't interested in robbing everyone blind and killing the witnesses are going to have trouble trusting the rest of the group. I've seen these sort of things happen with more experienced groups, but these are new players. I don't know if they have the maturity yet to push past these kind of issues.

Has anyone else ever dealt with new players that went a little overboard with their characters? I feel like they haven't quite gotten that this is a cooperative game about pooling resources to achieve larger objectives. I honestly don't know if I want to keep running games for them if all they want to do is play an "evil" campaign. I definitely don't want to run that and half of the group doesn't want to, either.

Will they grow into their roles as they gain more experience gaming? Will they eventually figure out that collecting as much gold as possible isn't the point of the game? That playing some sort of evil, wish-fulfillment type of rogue wears thin and irritates the hell out of other players?

Sigh.

I'm looking at these two prestige classes for a Pathfinder Barbarian and while each of them was a favorite for 3.5 Fighters and Barbarians, I'm not sure how they stack up in Pathfinder.

Looking them over, I think Bear Warrior needs a little work(maybe filling those empty levels with "Choose a new rage power from the list of Barbarian rage powers, add an extra two rounds, etc").

Frenzied Berserker probably works fine as it's originally written, but the levels might need to be shuffled around a little. That and the entry requirements have always seemed a little excessive(two feats from Complete Warrior? Isn't there a better Pathfinder feat that could sub for those?)

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Homebrew conversions?

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone had looked at these two prestige classes from Complete Warrior since the PRPG core rules were published. I think they still hold up pretty well, but I wanted a second opinion. They're both very rogue-flavored and with the makeover given to Pathfinder rogues, I can't decide if they're on-par with levels in rogue, better than levels in rogue, or not worthy of a rogue's attention.

(Improved Evasion at level 2 of the PrC if you're already a rogue? Feint as a free action after only 5 levels? Thrown weapon tricks?)

I just lost a player who's been part of my Savage Tide campaign since the very first adventure, with only three chapters left to go. While I still have four players, the game is biweekly and without a fifth or sixth player, anyone who can't make the game effectively cancels it... and with a biweekly game that's so close to its conclusion, this is just killing the pace. I would love to add another player or two, but it's hard to imagine players knocking down the door to join an adventure path that's 75% over.

I'm hoping some of the Pathfinder Society members who had me as GM at Gencon might be interested in playing a high level character in a Maptools game with Ventrilo for the voice over IP... with a GM that (hopefully) gave them as memorable a game as all of you gave me as players.

The game runs every other Saturday from 5pm to 10pm, Eastern time. We have a great group, including an elf archmage who has lived through the entire adventure path so far, a half-orc battle cleric of Hextor, a human ranger raised in the Nine Hells, and a blind bard. We just lost our favored soul kobold (Churtle, who was introduced in the earliest sessions of the campaign as an NPC and taken over by a player), but the group is seasoned enough to manage without a healer.

The two scenarios I ran at the convention were Frozen Fingers of Midnight and The Hydra's Fang Incident.

If you're interested, I can be contacted at charlatans.web@gmail.com or in this thread. Even if you just want to shoot the breeze about playing together at GenCon, I'd love to hear from all of you.

I ran Hook Fang Incident and Frozen Fingers of Midnight at Gencon and would be happy to run them locally for fledgling Pathfinders, but what I'd really love is to play as a Pathfinder. If you're a local gamer who's joined the Pathfinder Society but didn't get to Gencon, let's use this thread to get organized.

I'm planning to start Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in a short while with the added twist of only allowing monstrous player characters. My idea is for a Seven Samurai set-up... basically, Barovia has become so desperate to find adventurers to free their land of evil that they're willing to fight fire with fire and put together a dirty half-dozen of monsters willing to take on Count Strahd. From a roleplaying standpoint, I think it could be massively fun.

Before I issue guidelines to my would-be players, I'm looking for advice on what limitations, if any, to place on the PCs. Most monster races have both hit dice and level adjustments, for example, that far exceed their challenge rating. I can think of a number of monsters that wouldn't stand a chance as PCs against creatures of a CR equal to their ECL. By the same token, if I chose to ignore level adjustments... or let the players substitute levels for monster hit dice, a monstrous PC might become hopelessly broken. I don't care so much about the fine points of the rules, so long as things stay balanced enough that it's as fun for them as it is challenging.

I'm aware of the monster class levels in Savage Species, and in some cases I like the approach, while others seem grossly underpowered and fragile (6th level characters with half as many hit dice would be incredibly vulnerable). I'm open to all suggestions at this point as to the best ways of handling this.

Thanks!