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Game #1 includes my two oldest children, my ex-wife (Hell must be freezing over), and her friend. Male, half-elf Alchemist (CN)
First session went well aside from the bard unable to get very far in the rigging and then falling down on the descent to the deck.
I have a ninja tabbed to play in one of the two Sk&Sh games I'll be running. His master is a Tian Xian expatriate who takes in wayward souls to groom into tools for the Will of Achaekek. Some pupils are simply rogues, information gatherers for the Red Mantis, others became assassins (PrC), and the best learn the art of the ninja. The proximity of Mediogalti and the potential for all kinds of subplots made this the best opportunity for me to allow a ninja in a game I GM...in fact the only time. Pirates and ninjas? 'ell ya!
I had bought a few of these back in '05. The ships are pretty cool for what they are but aren't "to scale" with the ships as they are laid out in the Sk&ShPG. So I doubt I will use them much, if at all. As you find ways to utilize them, please post. They're a nice resource for the resourceful (read: people with time to think this through).
Some of my players are looking at S&S as an opportunity to branch out of the core races, in particular with tieflings, another insisting a drow would be valid, and finally a couple of catfolk advocates insisting this is the perfect scenario for a PC. I'm having flashbacks to the old Spelljammer games of 2E when no one played a core race, not when you could be a giff or hadozee or scro or...you get the idea. I'm relatively new to the Golarion setting after years of making Greyhawk the default setting and my GH sensibilities are struggling with the Golarion norm. Sure, I can make the world my own, yadda-yadda-yadda, but what is "logical" for Skulls & Shackles? A catfolk ship? Tiefling crew? Looking for opinions across the board....GO!
To be more precise... caravans just don't do enough damage at higher levels. The best and easiest fix, and the one that I recommend, is to assume that a caravan inflicts damage equal to its level in d6s. Thus, a 1st level caravan does 1d6 damage, while a 10th level one does 10d6. On average, a caravan against a CR appropriate fight will do enough damage to take out the foe in 4 or 5 rounds—sooner, assuming the PCs use tactics and that the caravan's got more defenses and whatnot. Good to know. I had already noticed that the caravan fights were skewed towards the adversaries for damage ability at the low levels. It seems that the caravan should be earning some additional ability points as it advances as well. There aren't a lot of options to raise Mobility in the Caravan Feats and many of Mobility-based feats have prerequisites that may never be achieved without some sort of increase from a non-Feat/equipment source. So I am thinking the PC's caravan should earn an ability point increase at 3/6/9/12/15 levels. Is that reasonable or am I missing an established rule that does this already in some fashion?
Product Identity has been removed, great. Are the caravan job salaries listed somewhere in the update? Having purchased this (and that's my review, btw), can I download this again with the updated info from DriveThru?
Been out of the loop for a couple of years, was digging around for tirapheg stats and stumbled upon this old thread. I'd expect nearly three years later your need is long past, Callum?
I've been working on homebrew mysteries of Time, Dimensions, Numbers, Harmony, and Discord for an upcoming Planescape game I'll be running. What have you put together for a Time Mystery? I have an oracle of Lendor ready to go using the Lore Mystery, but Time would be a much better mystery and frankly, I don't have the time to engineer a mechanic.
I have wished that this Greyhawk mapping project had gone farther. A great resource for your Age of Worms or Castle Greyhawk game though.
Late to the party... I haven't run a game since 4E was announced and I'm finally getting back in the saddle again, running this scenario out of Narwell in the Wild Coast of Oerik using the PF rules. Looking at all the locked doors and considering my "noob" players, I can imagine that a lot of door hacking is going to happen. Are the doors in the dungeon standard wood doors? The only mention of doors I've come upon is the swollen doors with the frogs and just want to make sure I didn't miss something about "unhackable" doors. Thanks for all the previous insight folks...Paizo's boards have always been a godsend for that.
Yeah, this all "blows" quite honestly. After the death of Dragon and Dungeon I have had zero interest in RPGs. Weird? Then 4E was announced and I promptly boxed up all my 24+ years of accumulated RPG stuff and put it in storage. Even weirder? I haven't run a game since mid-June (much to the dismay of the gaming group) and really doubt I'll ever pick up the dice again. Maybe my kids will show an interest in the dusty tomes one day...but I'm through with "new and improved" RPGs. Sorry Paizo, I love your products (okay, I'm a homer for Greyhawk), but WotC has screwed you out this high $$$ spending gamer's interest in RPGs. Best of luck 4E, I hope you suck the big donkey balls people are predicting. BTW, all that $$$ I haven't been spending on gaming "crap", the family is having one helluva of fun Xmas this year. So thanks for that, WotC.
My only quandry is, who should be the cultist, Skunt, or Capt. Trask? Lt. Skunt. Trask may be in a dead-in town in the twilight of his career but I think he'd be more likely to be focused on "retiring" than potentially finding himself at the end of a rope. Lieutenants can vanish for illicit activities more easily than the commanding officer of the garrison. Build a backstory for Lt. Skunt that ties him to Alhaster and as a worshiper of Hextor. It won't mean much to the players at this point but later on they'll have a "oh remember that cultist traitor SOB we snagged"-moment later.
Last night would have been one for rolling behind the screens, except that for the last three years or so all of us have been rolling right out in the open, for all to see. It was bound to go badly one of these days. Well then...go DM! Sometimes it is nice to bask in the anguished grimaces of your players as you rip them apart with good die rolls. It sounds like you have a lot of catalysts to keep the game going. I wish you luck and enjoy the AP! I (we) certainly have.
"DM's can curve dice rolls whenever necessary." Usually the words I hear frequently on the nights that I am rolling "hot" behind the screen. Indeed a lot of discussion on TPK's in Three Faces of Evil have already happened. Using the search engine with the key words of "TPK" and "TFoE", I came up with three other unique threads and scores of other individual posts. Poke around through what has already been written and you may find some nuggets of guidance to help get your game going again.
Actually, I don't believe you can make the spell "Longstrider" into a potion at all because it has range Personal. As Joren casts longstrider on himself, his adjusted 40-ft. movement rate checks out then when the encumbrance of the hide armour is taken into account. Silly armour penalties... The potions of longstrider listed under the gear of the gnoll halberdiers must then be a complete gaff on the Rules Lawyer Supreme's part of the editing. Obviously I can empathize... Any other nuggets of error in the rest of the stat-blocks for The Champion's Belt?
Three Faces of Evil has had a lot of great "corrective" threads that have added a lot of good material to help with PC/antagonist motivations. These are a couple of my favourites...yeah I'm biased. How to spin the PCs slaughter in the three temples to be the Faceless One's real intention. Make Balabar Smenk the crafty business man scared for his life rather than "the bad guy".
The point is for the party to find the lair, and spend a couple of days getting beaten up by the nasty environment before they get there. Make the lair be two days travel into the Mistmarsh, however far that is for your characters. I couldn't agree more. Unless you want the trek to take longer, don't get hung up on the distance specifics. The flow of the plot is more important than how many catoblepas riding green hag random encounters you throw at the party. Swamps/marshes/bogs/bayous are pretty dangerous places to begin with...don't exacerbate the danger at the cost of the driving objective of the scenario. As for "non-trackers taking a little longer", this isn't so much a hard rule but the assumption of Mr. Reynolds that the trail would get lost, found, lost again, and this process would cost time where as a ranger with a +12 Survival and a water walking spell would cover the ground a lot quicker.
A half-full wand of cure light wounds will go a long way to helping the "non-traditional" party configuration survive below the Dourstone Mine. Not to sound like a skipping record but make use of the Search Engine for the AoW forum. There have been a number of threads on how to survive the Three Faces of Evil adventure and should help you think of ways to adjust the scenario so your players can rest/recoup/survive/win the day. This thread may help you rationalize the motives of the antagonists and allow the PCs a chance to rest between temples. From this tweak, the players are paranoid of killing cultists; even in The Champion's Belt the PCs are paranoid of killing gladiators/blue cloaks for fear of feeding another Aspect.
Gawds, tell me about it. I have this fighter and there's always these pesky monsters you have to fight constantly. Every critter in an adventure is against the PCs and they seem so... stupid in an RPG. If your fighter rolls (AC's and hit points seem so high) not great and misses the monster, boom. Get whacked by the monster in return, take a lot of damage, possibly die, heck TPK even. I guess I hate that. ::wipes sarcasm from his beard:: Monsters, traps, puzzles, NPC diplomacy...all standard fixtures of RPGs, computer games, a lot of board games, and everyday life in school/work/home. Some people don't like certain aspects of the game but for every person that doesn't like traps there's someone that does. I bet there's someone in your party that does; let them take lead and build on their trap solving synergy so overcoming the obstacle becomes a team victory rather than a reason to hate something about the game. If you're playing a rogue and hate traps, then perhaps it's time to start taking some levels in another class... As ASEO keeps mentioning, this has been a topic of discussion for two years. This thread has Mr. Jacob's explanation and links to the previous two threads on the same subject.
This concept is doable but can put PCs in awkward positions of interaction and survivability. I tried this concept with a thieves' guild campaign back when adventures had their difficulty scaled by "total party levels". Higher level PCs tended to take the limelight and then complain when I divvied up "equal XP" to the whole thief squad. No "I" in "team" but sure is one in "thief"! Then the game where I had 14 players show up...well my head exploded with sensory overload. The pressure on me to find "episodic" situations for each session also became a burden. No matter how hard you try to wrap up a "job" in six hours, there is still some adventure that slops over to the next session and when the player make up changes it's hard to explain where Grimble wandered off and why Kinndyr suddenly arrived and didn't bring refreshments for everyone. For this to work smoothly, you'll need to have a relatively large pool of scenarios to pull from to fit a variety of players/class/level mixes. It helps to have one steady player the designated "captain" and the rest of the players willing to fall into accepting orders and not doing their own thing (which suddenly reminds me how I tried this concept with a Spelljamming ship as well...that worked much better actually) as that slows down the scenario and jeopardizes its chances of being finished in the allotted time. Be wary of level differences of greater than six levels as middle ground is still deadly for the lower levels and boring for the higher. Good luck and let us know how this works out for you.
This order has been in "Pending" status for three business weeks now which is a new one for me compared to past orders with your company. In the past, I can usually see which items are in stock and which ones are holding things up. Generally three weeks of "limbo" would drive your typical customer away considering the abundance of other online outlets that have a much quicker turnaround. Some clarification to the status of this order would be appreciated. ~~~Rodney in CA
Getting punched in the chest is a good way to describe how I feel right now. It's like somebody just kicked my dog or something... O.o Like playing Row-sham-bow with Eric Cartman. And that's after the initial shock and reading about the circumstances a little more. It's been a rough week...VA Tech, taxes, death to my "kin" in Dungeon and Dragon. What's next? Prohibition returns? Ice cream causes cancer? Like so many, I'll put my remaining tab into Pathfinder but I will need to be experiencing d20 OGLagasms with each release to commit to further months. Loyalty to a company/brand takes a hit with events like this. TSR's death throes were survived, I suppose our favourite magazine will be too. I just hope aspiring writers, artists, and editors will have a chance to contribute through Paizo's guidance.
After the Land Family are laid to rest, have the PCs feel a great sense of relief as the spirits of the long departed are finally joined by their lost kin, Alastor. They sense that the door will now yield to their attempts to enter and that the total experiences of freeing these souls has prepared them for what lies beyond that door. In otherwords, *ding* before the final foray into the Cairn. They'll need it.
Just what my old eyes needed. Thanks, jthilo.
Not per se. The Domain of Greyhawk forum is the AoW stuff on the Difonix site. I broke up the portions of the campaign thus far that roughly match each adventure. There are some bits of "journalesque" material there, but mostly it's a bunch of friends rambling about available dates to game. ::wink:: And a bit of morbid humour. A lot of the "original" material I've written for the campaign I've posted on Paizo to some extent, but it's all in one spot on Difonix.com if you care to sift through Part I-IV and the campaign primer info. I'll go with "Age of Empires" for the current age unless something more "canon" pops up before game time tonight.
Thanks, Eltanin. Oddly enough, I've had Eligos refer to the current age as the "Age of Empire" with the implosion of the Empire of Aerdy and the Greyhawk Wars being the big warnings that a New Age is imminent. I know I've read a treatise on the "ancient days of Greyhawk"; it was more a outline of Ages for Oerth. It may very well have been on Erik Mona's own site. Or was that his "eras" of the Multiverse going back to "The Beginning"? Senility has already begun to settle on this brain of mine. There are some true Sages of Oerth on these boards, I hope one will take the time to toss a link my way. As for the change of avatars, there's an explanation under my profile. Besides, the sighing Doctor Lucky doesn't fit now that taxes have been done and Spring is going strong here in California. If Paizo would put up the "Beholder Tan Line" picture as an avatar, I'd use that. ::smirk::
The Age of Worms is around the corner and the goal is to stop this from happening and preserve the current Age of....? What do the majority of sages call the current Age for Greyhawk? When did this Age start? What was the Age before that? I'm taking the Titan's House portion of the Coenoby in The Champion's Belt and making it pretty clear it was an ancient settlement destroyed by some sort of cataclysmic event. The priest of Pelor and paladin of Sehanine Moonbow have visions of the ancient settlement being destroyed (in a rather cheesy rip off of Sara Conner's visions of doom from T2...but it works) and I'd like to link this event somehow to the end of one Age, perhaps the Age that the Flan nations imploded. These visions then can become the parallels to the visions of what may happen to Greyhawk if the Apostle is loosed on the populace. I know there's something out there on the Ages but my search checks keep failing. Can anyone provide some insight, please?
The embedded link colour for the text is too subtle a colour difference from the standard black text colour. A lot of new users would have trouble telling the difference between this and this and realizing the significance of the slight colour difference. If the font colour was cyan or magenta it would be clearer that an embedded link is in the text.
I ran *A Night On the Town* as a prelude adventure to get the PCs integrated into Diamond Lake. The adventure works well as everyone leveled after their first session in the Whispering Cairn. Also one of the PCs were culled from the gang (Gerzy, aka Gerzin, aka Spade) and is a 10th rogue at this point. *Link embedded in text.
Supe up the sons of kyuss for this encounter, you set the precedence of all future encounters with the critters. Rather than suping up the spawn, you may find that having 5 or 6 of them is enough; I had seven spawn and that was too many. My party of five PCs were 7th level by they time they reached the end encounter and seven fear effects to save against assured everyone but the paladin failed. Lure the PCs away from the stairs with noises and then have the spawns near the stair pop out to block their exit. I would have had a TPK on my hands if the I hadn't "curved some dice rolls"; I realized too late that I had too many spawns to overcome considering the odds of PCs making seven Will saves aren't as good as I had thought. Fear affected, kyuss worms crawling over the PCs...spawn are ugly enough as is, especially en masse. If you need a premise for all the spawns in the cellar, run *Peter Fuesz's soldier side story* to get the numbers up. A lot of us have used this to spectacular results; I played this on Halloween last year and the players still talk about it being the best gaming session ever. I had two "sick" soldiers go down to the basement to start so there were three spawns to begins with so Duncan, Walton, Yerell, Hammond, and Santos ("where is he from?!") had their hands full. Hammond escaped, otherwise everyone both enjoyed seeing their "soldiers" attacking their PCs and hating them at the same time. Good stuff. You may want to save your "suped" sons of Kyuss for Spire of Longshadows considering the taint of the area is enough to make them uber-spawn. Good luck. *Link to Soldier Story embedded in text.
I just don't want some rules lawyer PC raining on my parade. One of the beauties of Greyhawk is the setting is fairly open to such specifics as NPC names and the like. It sure isn't the Forgotten Realms where every privy in Waterdeep has grid coordinates and lists of how much tp is in stock at each locale and the name of the commoner handing you a towel at the sink. Generally a 5-minute Google search ought to turn up the obvious choices for any Greyhawk query. If those answers are not satisfactory, dig a little deeper. If you're still not coming up with anything then surely your "rules lawyer" isn't either. Make stuff up then. Once upon a time, there was a 2E document that someone had done for Dwarves and Gnomes of Greyhawk that broke down Clan names by region and the like. My five minute Google search came up empty and I apparently don't have an electronic version on the work PC but I'll check if I still have it at home. If so, I'll pass that information along.
Greetings Betote. Your grammar is excellent, so no worries errors in translation. I was in the same situation of needing to fuse HoHR and CB into a large "Free City" installment of the AP. My reasons were the PCs were a little ahead of the game in XP and I really felt the doppelganger-based elements were a bit hackneyed for my players to do again. So I had to lure the PCs into Zyrxog's machinations. I used the drow thralls to set ambushes and make it clear that someone wanted the PCs dead. I also had an old PC from the early parts of the campaign that had gone missing reappear with the drow and escape into the sewers. This led to a chase through the undercity until they found themselves at Zyrxog's doorstep. I realize you likely haven't devised a lure as intriguing as a missing companion, but perhaps the drow have snuck into the PCs rooms and have stolen personal effects, items that can be used for scrying and the like. Maybe the arcane caster's familiar was stolen, or the favourite animal companion was taken. Hopefully that's enough to get the PCs to follow after. If the PCs do not want to be railroaded, a natural instinct for some, then it's easy enough to place the hints you need in the time leading up to the Games. Eligos approaches the PCs about the Apostolic Scrolls and rumours that a powerful citizen of the City has purchased them. All the "celebrities" of the City will be at the Games and that's a likely place for the Scrolls to take affect. That should give the PCs enough material to go on to entice them into the adventure's plots. Drow, disguised as Arcane Auriga, attack the PCs the first night, sapping them of resources for the first match and making them realize that they're not safe in the Coenoby either. That may get them to explore where the drow came from and lead to the discovery of the Apostle. Best of luck.
If I were to run HoHR over again, I would change the gaze attack to a single eye ray attack (ala Beholder). That would preserve one of their key elements but buy some time for the party to get their shots in before they are all moving slowly. Hmm, that's what I did but not because I thought I was altering the way the critter was designed. Apparently my mind melded their penetrating gaze and slow gaze into ray attack. In reflection I goofed with this encounter(s) but they were challenging enough as it was.
I'm glad the Spottle Parlor worked for someone! I ran this as well and only ended up getting frustrated when the barbarian PC ended up eating the frog to avoid losing a huge bet. Here's an instant that the 3.xE skills could have saved the day, especially with Bluff and Sense Motive checks. The barbarian blurts out and points behind the spottle dealer "Look, Haley's Comet!". I had the dealer make a d4+2 x WIS check on d% and ended with a bad luck roll. The dealer bit on the bluff and the barbarian bit on the frog. ::sigh:: After the dealer realizes what's happening the game session degrades into a Three Stooges episode with the barbarian spitting up the frog, the cleric trying to revive it, and the dealer calling in the toughs rough up the PCs. Still to this day, when the players attempt a Bluff that fails, they try again with "Look, Haley's Comet!!!" So good call on "memorable" adventure site as the memories flooded back for me!
My kids (8 & 6) liked to watch this and I had seen a few episodes out of context and thought it was okay. I had caught a Season Two episode after not watching Avatar in months and found myself thoroughly confused with the development of the "bad guys". Netflix to the rescue! We're through Chapter 5 in the Book of Earth and I absolutely love this show. Hell, my son's birthday was a convenient excuse to hit Great America and get everyone Momo plushes and my own Appa. Great characters, humour that is actually funny without losing the younger viewers, and great story arcs. The d20 info on Avatar may be enough to get my daughter interested in Daddy's "dice games". ::crosses fingers:: Does anyone have a "favourite" they want to share? Episode, character, quote, critter, or the like? The pirate episode where the cabbage salesmen makes a second appearance was great; Iroh is wise, witty, and entertaining; "penta pox? Didn't your cousin have that?" was a line right out of my own D&D game; and Appa is my favourite critter though Momo has the exact personality of my cat Charlie and why he's a huge favourite with the wife and kids.
I haven't seen an adventure that made me think 'wow' as often as this one since The Whispering Cairn. Strong kudos, I'll have to read that one as The Whispering Cairn holds a special place in my heart. The Whispering Cairn brought me back from the brink of walking away from D&D entirely to DM a campaign once more. Great players help with that too, but that adventure site was so much fun to interpret and relate. My most memorable Dungeon local would have to be Flame's lair as depicted by Keith Parkinson. That picture alone in the early ads for Dungeon that appeared in Dragon was enough to get me subscribing to the magazine at issue #2 and I haven't regretted a subscription renewal since, especially that one I did at the brink!
I want to confirm that the spell reciprocal gyre spell from the Spell Compendium targeted on a adversary that has imbibed five "buff" potions before combat would be subject to 5d12 damage as potions are a "targeted spell effect" and not "magic from an item"? Is this a correct interpretation or am I off?
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