Rich Howard's page

One of the many things I love about Paizo is their willingness, excitement even, to hail the praises of other companies work. Bravo.

Also, I've seen two of those products and they're awesome.

J.M.,

I pledged.

If I can make a adequate commoner, I can use the same strategies to create a ultimate adept!

That touches on a whole other level of AC. The tactics and choices John points out to make your commoner more survivable, are the same tactics and choices that can improve any NPC or PC class. Finding more interesting ways to use alchemical items, racial abilities, common weapons, etc, will make every low-level game more interesting.

Just finished editing "Cooks' Day Out", the adventure included in the core AC. We playtested this module with John when he first came up with the idea, and it's even more hilarious now. Reminds me of "We Be Goblins". It's a great intro for new players, and is a fun way for jaded grognards to put serious thought into threats their standard PCs would destroy with greatswords and spells.

Just finished editing "Cooks' Day Out", the adventure included in the core AC. We playtested this module with John when he first came up with the idea, and it's even more hilarious now. Reminds me of "We Be Goblins". It's a great intro for new players, and is a fun way for jaded grognards to put serious thought into threats their standard PCs would destroy with greatswords and spells.

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5ldw0?The-FAQ-That-Time-Forgot

This deals with it for the moment.

A couple of things to watch out for in the relationship system:

The adventure itself doesn't give the players much in the way of reasons to interact with the NPCs. Most of the game time is the PCs off exploring something while the NPCs do their own thing. If you want to develop relationship storylines, you'll have to do that yourself.

If you follow strict relationship mechanics, then players may start trying to mechanically pursue the relationship system.
"Right, in order to gain another relationship point with each of the NPCs I'll have to leave the dungeon and give each of them a presents from my bag of pre-bought gifts until I pass the diplomacy check. No, it can't wait - if we keep going I'll level up and miss the opportunity."

Good advice. My players are already deep into the backgrounds of the NPCs, some investing two or even three traits, with the NPCs woven solidly into their origins. I suspect I won't have an issue adlibing interactions and keeping the players interested.

With only 4 players, I'm anticipating at least one of the NPCs accompanying the PCs on their missions, particularly the early ones. The rules anticipate the NPCs being in danger, giving each player a +1 to attack foes when they're threatened. I'll be setting the scenarios up so at least one of them is involved significantly.

We probably should have been more clear about the XP thing, I suppose. Our standing is that whenever XP gets handed out for ANY reason, it's split up among the party. If it's intended to not be split up, we specifically say so in the text—and we almost never do this. We DID experiment a bit with this in the start of Skull & Shackles, but beyond that, when you see XP, it's split evenly among the party.

"The first time you reach this Relationsihp Level with an NPC, you gain 400xp." There are a lot of "you"s in that sentence and, personally, I love that.

I want to encourage players to develop friendships and rivalries with the NPCs and am lucky to have a group of roleplayers already excited about the idea. Once a player gains an XP bonus, the others will be even more encouraged to participate, whether by building a friendship, a maternal or sibling dynamic, or a rivalry. One of my players is a vivisectionist alchemist and the younger sister of Amieko. If that doesn't develop into a sibling rivalry, I'm not sure what would.

In short, I don't see a few hundred xp making more of a difference than I can compensate for.

First, you should understand that I'm running caravan combat differently than as provided in the rules. For any caravan combat, I take the PCs out of the caravan (and the caravan loses the bonus from having the heroes in it). The caravan fights an abstract enemy, per the normal rules, while the PCs fight one or two "bosses". The sooner the PCs finish their own fight, the quicker they get back to the caravan and get the hero bonus back to its stats. So far, the players are really enjoying this. We talked about it at the end of the game and they agreed running the whole combat on the map, with all the PCs, would be tedious but just doing the caravan mini-game would be boring (to them; YMMV).

I've been considering the same thing. We'll be starting Jade Regent in a couple weeks and I'll keep these things in mind. Sounds like a great encounter, very well handled.

Will there be a miniatures set for Jade Regent?

I'm looking for a template showing how spells are formated for PF products. One for magic items would be welcome as well. The recent Superstar competition netted me a great one for creature stat blocks.

For aquatic elves, see "Elves of Golarion." The short version is in the Inner Sea World Guide, on page 25. (Essentially, aquatic elves gain the aquatic subtype, the amphibious special quality, a swim speed of 30 feet, and replace the standard elf weapon familiarity with proficiency with rapiers, short swords, tridents, and any weapon with the word "elven" in its name.)

We haven't said much more about aquatic elves, and even less about merfolk in Golarion.

On purpose.

Because we've got plans for them. Eventually.

An aquatic campaign/AP (that wasn't just sailors and islands) is decades overdue. I've spoken with cartographer Chris West about ideas for underwater terrain maps and am working with Christine Stiles on introducing more aquatic shapeshifters into the Bite Me! Guide to Lycanthropes for exactly this reason. If written well (and what Pathfinder product isn't), an underwater AP could change the way games are run.

Sassone leaf residue, blue whinnis and drow poison all have secondary effects with a single save. How does the secondary effect come into play?

edit: i've decided that not having seen my own item is good- it means it hasn't been getting kicked back into the queue by people who can't bring themselves to vote for either item... (at least, that's what i'm going to keep telling myself)

Me, too.

Can't wait to run Jade Empire and am inspired by your posts. I love that you're putting in the use of various card decks. I'd also be interested in a note on how long each game session runs.

I love the flip mats and have found them, in combination with the map packs, a great addition to my game. I'm pretty disappointed that the opposite side of the arena is just another arena. I'm not sure what the thought process behind that was. Even a blank terrain map of something that hasn't been done yet, like an open desert landscape (without an oasis) might have been a better choice.

On closer inspection I suppose it could be representing a water filled arena, but I'm still not quite getting the point. In general, the more diverse the sides, the better.

I'm having a hard time locating on the site where I can find all the available online supplements for the Dungeons I have (maps, etc). Are they all collected in one place?