Ranaul's page

Here's a piece of advice no one mentioned. If you are GMing to a group of new players and they come across a monster that is much more powerful it is completely okay to just say "You guys have a feeling that this is thing is pretty tough."

I always give the players the benefit in these situations. As you can see there are multiple interpretations of the rules here. Like everyone else here it depends on the specifics of the situation. Was he aware that the PC's might end up attacking him?

If I had an NPC speaking with a group of players and he was under the idea that it was a friendly chat with no chance of getting stabbed I would give the player the spell.

If the NPC was weary and waiting for action then let initiative decide the outcome.

When I have players that are as diverse as this I design the adventures with their characters in mind. Throwing each one a bone as often as I can. Do things like give the player that likes to play for laughs a little side project to run off and take care of.

Something simple, that can be taken care of quickly but lets him stretch his legs.

Give the character who loves to roleplay some NPCs to interact with that matter to him but not necessarily the main plot. So he can have conversations and make decisions that don't always affect the entire party.

If you can give details on their current characters and whats going on in the game I'd be happy to write up some more specific ideas for you to tinker with and draw ideas from.

I know my opinion will differ here from most people, but have you thought about spending some time trying to get better at basic arithmetic? Get some arithmetic tables, go through basic exercises once a day. Even something as simple as spending 10 minutes doing a quick work sheet will show improvement after a few weeks.

http://www.math-aids.com/images/add-zero-twenty.png

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic/addition-subtraction/basic_addi tion/e/addition_1

Or you can write down a few bonuses and sit down with a d20 and roll for like 5 minutes, writing down the total every time. You'll start to get faster.

I understand some people have trouble with math. I never really did so its hard for me to understand so my suggestion may just be way off base. But practice makes you better.

I think this is a great way to get players not to dump charisma. But you have to expect that your players will have higher saves then normal and it will change game balance. I do not think that your oracle's ability further unbalances it. Also a Paladin could get even better saves by putting a high score into charisma just like the oracle.

Also I think adding +1 to a d20 roll is enough for people to consider not dumping it. Or maybe cut it down to only effect one save instead of all.

Wow Movin, thanks for all that info. Great stuff.question about how that poison would work. With a high chance of getting multiple doses would that increase the DC by 2 for everyone one?

Lets say they get hit with two claw attacks, the save against the first one at a DC13, then fail the second one. Would the second one have a higher DC? And if they get hit with a third after already being at stage 1 how does that effect the DC and stage of the poison. If it needs two saves to cure, does a new dose start tha over?

I know that's a lot of questions, but I usually don't use many poisons in my game. I will hopefully get a chance to rebuild the character with some of those suggestions tomorrow.

I don't see anything that says you can't so I would say yes. Although common sense says that you can't select it twice for the same school.

Perhaps they gain their animal companion at level 2 instead of 4 and the companion is at a -1 instead a -3. Also add 1 or 2 skill points a level.

But I have to say this is a very strange request. I've never had anyone say that they are dissatisfied with their BAB being just too damn high.

I went ahead and put together something pretty quickly. The idea is that the assassin has daggers sheathed all over his body. Easily has atleast 20 with poison already applied.

Do you think that is a CR 3 creature? I'm not used to building monsters like this so I just made a human with 3 rogue levels and made some adjustments to the human.

Hmm, Wouldn't a Dragon Slaying/Bane Arrow be easier?

I would agree with that, but I was trying to find a good way to create an arrow that could stop a dragon from moving. I think the main problem with an immovable rod being shot into something is that their really aren't any rules for a weapon/object staying lodged in a creature.

Here is the text about the Archer Archetype's ability:

Trick Shot (Ex)

At 3rd level, an archer can choose one of the following combat maneuvers or actions: disarm, feint, or sunder. He can perform this action with a bow against any target within 30 feet, with a –4 penalty to his CMB. Every four levels beyond 3rd, he may choose an additional trick shot to learn. These maneuvers use up arrows as normal.

At 11th level, he may also choose from the following combat maneuvers: bull rush, grapple, trip. A target grappled by an arrow can break free by destroying the archer’s arrow (hardness 5, hit points 1, break DC 13) or with an Escape Artist or CMB check (against the archer’s CMD –4).

So a magic arrow that could emulate the 11th level ability could be made of Adamantine to prevent easily being broken.

I do not know of any way to filter by level prerequisites other than using PCGen. Which is really handy. But other than that I use the Feat Tree layout if looking on the SRD. That lets you see the parent feat, then if you like that you can look at the ones that build off of it. Here is the link: Feat Tree

I would say instead of treating it like an immovable rod, you create an arrow of 'grappling'. Basically when the arrow hits you roll CMB to try and stop the creature from moving. The arrow can give bonuses to the roll depending on its power.

I think this may be better instead of an instant stop with the creature making a strength roll (DC 30 for immovable rod) to try and move it. Makes it a bit more active, also I imagine would be cheaper.

You know I think you are right. I was thinking undead because thats how they were portrayed in the comic but they don't really resemble traditional fantasy undead.

Well a CR 5 Troll has Regeneration 5(acid or fire). What would adding Regeneration 5 (Cold) do to a CR 2 creature?

I am basing this partially on The Court of Owls from a recent Batman comic run. So possible spoilers if you read Batman and haven't finished the Court of Owls story line.

The assassins are called Talons and they are trained from a very young age and once they pass the trials to become a Talon they undergo a procedure that turns them undead. They feel no pain, all of their wounds heal. Even a head will reattach to its body if left near by. The only way to stop them is to freeze them, but as soon as they thaw they will start to regenerate.

Their weapon of choice are throwing knives which are all poisoned with a paralyzing agent. In fights they usually end up stabbing upwards of 10 into their victim during the fight.

I basically want to recreate them in pathfinder as opponents for my party which is currently APL 4. I can scale them up later but 2 should be a tough fight with 4 or 5 being a "We need to run" situation. I was thinking of just building them as NPC with 3 Rogue class levels. Taking TWF, Quick Draw, and Weapon Focus (dagger). I'm unsure as to how to handle the regeneration, maybe Fast Healing/3ish. Or what poison to use, I want the players to be able to be poisoned and feel like their character is getting weaker. But I want to make sure it doesn't feel like Save or Die.

Any advice or thoughts would be great.

I have to agree with Grick. It can be amazingly refreshing when you have new players come in and want to do crazy stuff like that. I generally let them, or tell them what rolls would be needed and let them decide if they still want to. Makes everyone a little more excited compared to I 5 foot step and attack.

Just got the iPad edition and I am going to try it out for the first time tomorrow but there are a couple issues that I am having.

How do I delete .cmpt files once I've saved them? I don't see a way from within the app, but I could very well be missing something.

Also, this may be something that you cant do with the ipad for one reason or another. Is there a way to get rid of that radial dial when changing numbers in certain fields? When I am editing monsters it is a huge pain to always scroll to the numbers I want. Why not just put a keyboard option?

And one request would be the ability to bookmark spells, just create a favorites list that I could quickly select from say the "All Classes" options.

Overall seems like a great app!

I am having trouble with designing this class. I don't like the Gunslinger class, but I want my players to be able to have a class that uses the firearms in my game. In which they are incredibly rare and the sale of black powder is strictly regulated. I wanted the feeling of the classical musketeer, ala The Three Musketeers. Here is my work in progress.

This is my first try at creating a homebrew class and I feel a bit in over my head. Any advice or critiques are helpful. I realize I don't have much yet, but I think some direction or discussion could help. Is anything way off balance already? Ideas for fun abilities? Thanks in advance.

Well I have to be honest I usually never do stuff that takes away something like a favored enemy, etc. But design an encounter, or an enemy that takes advantage of their weakness and you can see if the players will rise to occasion. I am always trying to get them to panic and come up with new ideas and it works. The ideas or creativity that they come up with often surprise me.

If my players are starting to abuse something all of the time I make sure the run into the reason not to. Let the melee characters chase some enemies further away from the casters than they normally would, because of increased speed. Then have something sneak up on the caster, something big and nasty. And have a slight cave in from the monsters roar that it creates difficult terrain everywhere. No 5' steps and half movement speed.

That might be a bit excessive but it would be fun, and show that they always need to be looking for new strategies.

Also I aggree with JaceDK about multiple dice. Anyone who has more than one attack knows that they need more than one set of d20 and weapon damage. Who can count up their hit and damage rolls the fastest, is always something we do at the table.

I just wanted to update everyone who gave me ideas. It went far better than I expected. We only got through half of the planned material but that sort of thing happens when players get creative with their roleplaying.

The ship was attacked by the green dragon, but all anyone saw was a shadow. They swam to shore with the crew and were attacked by tiger sharks, only the players made it to shore. As soon as they get on shore the fang dragon rushes them from the tree line, taking off and grabbing the Elemental Air Wizard and flying up 120 feet next turn andlets him go in mid air and the wizard casts levitate and smirks at me like, my plan didn't work. The next round starts with the fang dragon right next to him. All 6 attacks hit and one crits. Dropped him to negative hitpoints ,and the cleric waiting at the ready spends a hero point to channel energy right before the wizard hits the ground. The wizard then spends a hero point to cast levitate again right before he hits, thus saving his life. The next two rounds the dragon circles and is deciding how to attack. The players spend this buffing with their best spells and healing. Smiling, the fang dragon flies away and drops into the jungle on the island.

What a start... This was only topped with the next time they see the dragon they corner him just a few hours later under the canopy of the trees where he will have a hard time flying away. The cleric and wizard proceed to throw everyone of their highest level buffs on the barbarian as he charges. Only to discover he was a major image.

The game ended with the cleric activating his magic cutlass. This cutlass is an intelligent weapon that was blessed by his deity, the god of the ocean and weather. The cutlass can cast control weather once per month. He figures the dragons can't fly away in a monsoon. Well he's right. He rolls the duration and it is 43 hours.

So now I need to determine how to handle the effects of this rainfall and how much flooding will happen. Also I'm not sure if they realized that they turned this enviroment to the absolute perfect place for a green dragon to stalk them. I really need to come up with fun ways for the dragon to use this.

Edit:They also fought some jungle wildlife and met a ranger that lives on the island and doesn't want them there. So they still had a blast.

Bear in mind a young green dragon (CR 8) does not have caster levels yet and does not have a SLA other than entangle. So if your players find out it was a major image somehow created by the young dragon, they might balk.

Yeah I think not knowing what took out the bottom of the boat is going to be best. I plan on using Major Image throughout the night for a lot of fun. As a rule with dragons I usually add spells and other immediate actions that I feel will enhance the encounter. I actually deviate from RAW when it comes to spells pretty often. If I find a spell I want to use, or a combination of spells I want to use against them I never let caster level or other silly things like that get in the way. They are used to fighting things that aren't as they are in the books. For us it is always storytelling & fun > rules

So if you don't want them to know they will be fighting dragons maybe, depending upon their magical abilities, conjure something nasty to wreck the ship to throw them off-track (like, it was a demon/elemental/undead kraken, dammit, we didn't expect dragons!)

Well the green dragon is going to break the bottom of the hull and conjure a major image of a dragon turtle swimming away.

So it rather won't work again, Green Dragon is too cleaver for it (I do not remember Fang Dragon overall intellectual capacity, however).

The fang dragon isn't too smart, well he is but his rage gets the best of him. The green dragon is going to use this, probably to the untimely death of the fang dragon.

On another note, how many illusionary dragons until they lower their guard for a real one? haha They are going to hate me.

Two dragon encounter ;)

By the way. Have you thought about one of the dragons attacking the ship with short climatic battle on the deck? And ship sinking due to the attack? Of course that would make players know that they are up against dragon. Which might be good if you want them to prepare. On the other hand if the attacker will be green dragon they might be surprised by fang dragon cooperating with green.

Also, knowning that players would try strange thing be warned that they might play one dragon against the other given chance. Maybe that would be their chance of escaping?

Haha nice video. They actually know the two dragons are working together. But they won't know they were behind the shipwreck until after they are on the island. And the part about playing the dragons against each other? Yeah they did that about a year ago, and got away. The dragons figured it out before ripping each other to shreds and have been tracking them down since.

I really need to post on these forums more. This is far more than I hoped for when I asked for advice. The game is tomorrow night so I'm getting everything prepped right now.

The party is going to sink about a mile off shore and have to swim in. I'm thinking that a few sharks on the way in will start off with a good amount of excitement. When they get to shore the fang dragon will swoop down, and cause some chaos. After the party gets their footing he'll grab one and drop him in the middle of the jungle. The party will have to try and fight through the jungle as fast as they can to regroup. The green dragon is going to have traps set up all through the jungle and stalk the the whole way. Attacking only for a moment if they get caught in a trap or split up further. He will lead wild animals to them to provoke them into attacking the party as well.

And that is just the beginning. After night fall that jungle is going to seem like it is full of a dozen dragons through the use of major image and other illusions. Not sure about how to end it yet.

Wow, these are some fantastic ideas. HalfOrcHeavyMetal, I really like the idea of the island being alive. Going to use that and see if the PCs can use the fact that the island is attacking the dragons as well to their advantage.

Dogsgamer, I think I am going to go with staggering the dragon fights where they see them separate throughout the day, mainly because the dragons get in each other's way. (ie green dragon doesn't wait for fang to move before he uses his breath weapon.)

Here's one more question. I want to make the green dragon huge instead of large because the players are known for casting enlarge on themselves thus making the fight seem less epic when the dragon is the same size. I know it won't be RAW but what adjustments can I make and still keep him CR8-10

I really like the idea of the green dragon using water, Perhaps an underground lake in the center of the island... lots of ideas there.

Also what tactics do dragons that you use, or that you've seen work the best? The party is weakest with range, so how long should I keep fly by attacking? Or what other strategies work to stop the party from surrounding and just beating to death and healing through the damage. (It's their favorite strategy)

I've reached a point in my game in which two dragons that were wronged by the party have finally caught up with them and want their revenge. These dragons went to the trouble of paying someone to ressurect the players so they could have the joy of killing them, since they were robbed of it the first time.

The party will be departing on a ship accross the sea that is captained by a man that has been hired by the dragons. He is going to get them stranded on a small island in the middle of the sea.

So here it is:
-The party is made up of a Cleric, Barbarian, Rogue, and Wizard. All level 8
-They are stranded on an island approx. 2 miles accross, (it has thick jungle like vegetation and caves)
-The dragons are a green dragon and a fang dragon. Fang dragons are from forgotten realms, they have no breath weapon but their melee attacks do one size category larger damage and their bite attack has 1d4 con damage.

The dragons have not been statted out yet because I'm really unsure how to handle it. I've always been bad at determining how difficult a fight with a dragon is going to be. Any help will be appreciated, help statting out the dragons, help with fun ways to mess with the party, ideas of making interesting fight involving two dragons at once. This fight has been a very long time coming so I want it to be very interesting.

I've always seemed to have trouble reaching the proper balance for level appropriate gear. I'm about to start a new game with all the players starting at level 8. (I am resurrecting the player's favorite characters that all died over a year ago in an accident with a dragon and a cowardly rogue.) What magical weapons would be appropriate. I can look at their approx. wealth by level for how much money I have to spend. And the book says that you should not spend more than 1/3 of your total gold on any one item. Is that an important rule to follow?

Basically it comes down to what level of enchantment is okay for a level 8 barbarian to have on his greataxe? ie, +1/+2/+3/+4?