I think I'm a little late to the party. What is Mythic and where can I find more information about it? I can't seem to find anything about this on the paizo web site.
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Pathfinder and D&D in general is a really bad fit for Discworld. Something like Savage Worlds would work SOOOO much better.
I'm running a Legacy of Fire campaign that I'm converting to use the Savage Worlds system. The characters are currently: Hashama al Baquir (male human) - big strong tough guy who likes to hit things with his fists. Na'elen (female elf) - a dual scimitar wielding dervish who's wanted by the law for killing an off-duty guard who was assaulting a young woman. Mahir Al Qadir Al Adawat (male human) - basically a fantasy arabian version of MacGyver. Pretty much no combat abilities, but could build a sand-ship out of paper clips and a stick of chewing gum. Badi Amjad (male human) - An ex-thieves guild member who left on not-so-friendly terms. So far the conversion is working amazingly well. The savage worlds system allows for much larger fights, which suits the AP really well. It also allows me to trim a lot of the fat from the AP (by removing encounters that only exist to give the PCs enough xp to gain a level). If anyone from Paizo reads this please, please, PLEASE make an AP for the savage worlds system. As good as the APs are for pathfinder, a paizo AP for savage worlds would be AMAZING.
If I'm paying $4-6 for a single miniature I'll go with a company like Reaper. Those are prices I'd expect to pay for metal miniatures, not prepainted plastics. In fact, you are better off getting the metal pathfinder miniatures from Reaper.
You know, there are companies out there that are starting to make amazing plastic miniatures for very low prices. Mantic, for example, is able to sell plastic miniatures at about $1-$1.50 each. I have to assemble them, sure, and most of them will remain unpainted for a good long while, but with cheap plastic miniatures like these out there, why on earth would I shell out $4 for some random plastic miniature that I probably don't even want? The PF minis look really good, but paizo really dropped the ball on the whole random prepainted garbage. There's a lot of reasons why all the prepainted collectable miniature games failed horribly and died out.
That's true, there is supposed to be that ultimate edition of End of Eternity. I wonder if it's still possible to get a copy of that.
In my opinion, The Impossible Eye seems to be a colossal waste of time. The heroes are desperate to get back to the prime material plane, they finally escape kakishon, and they end up stuck in the city of brass. I can see some of my players walking out at that point. I mean it really seems like the heroes should go right from The End of Eternity into The Final Wish. It's like the writers suddenly realized the campaign was ahead of schedule and needed to stick something in as book 5 to get the heroes their extra 3 levels (I so hate D&D's level system). So, what's the best way to remove The Impossible Eye? Should I just get rid of it and reduce the level of The Final Wish? Should I increase the level of The End of Eternity and find something that can go between it and The Jackal's Price? Is there something that can be done on the material plane that can be used as a direct replacement to The Impossible Eye, like maybe the heroes return home and find that they need to do something before they can face Jhavhul in The Final Wish?
hmm, instead of figuring out a way for the gnolls to get the death worm to the oasis, what about figuring out a way for the gnolls to trick the heroes into approaching an oasis that happens to be the current lair of a particularly old, large, and nasty death worm? What could the gnolls do in that situation? Maybe a simple "attack and then retreat towards the oasis" type of tactic?
Was a solution to the death worm issue ever figured out? I've been looking at other CR 9 creatures to see if I can find a replacement but so far nothing seems to be good.
This is sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't type problem. There's a few other threads out there that are criticizing Pathfinder for being too "railroady," a claim I think is unfairly applied, since we do try to present a story with multiple options for resolutions. I think the problem is that D&D is railroady. It's a basic fact of any system that uses levels. You have two areas, one designed for level 5 characters, one for level 6 characters, so of course you're going to force players to do the level 5 area first then the level 6 area. If you want an adventure path that isn't railroady, paizo will have to start using a system like Savage Worlds.
There is one solution to the xp and advancement speed problem: get rid of xp, then you wont have to worry about things like whether there are enough encounters to get the heroes to level X so they can do the next part of the campaign. Just have the characters level up at the points suggested in the Advancement Track sections of each adventure. When doing something like an adventure path, getting rid of xp makes things so much easier. It also means you don't need to add extra encounters to feed xp to the characters, in fact it means you can actually remove tons of the pointless xp-feeder encounters that seem to populate the adventure paths.
I think I may have missed something. I was reading House of the Beast and got to Shirak's Crypt. I was expecting Shirak's body and belonging to just kind of be lying out in the open, but was very surprised to find they were all in a sarcophagus. How exactly did Shirak's body and belongings get into the sarcophagus? None of the gnolls ever made it down that far and so far I can't find anything that says who could have put her in there. Is there something somewhere that describes how Shirak got into the sarcophagus?
Fantastic, that's exactly what I was looking for, thank you.
Does anyone happen to have a list of the Reaper Pathfinder miniatures sorted by what AP they appear in (those that actually do appear in APs)?
I actually prefer RotR over what I've read of CotCT (up to book 5 now, which looks like it would make an excellent stand-alone adventure actually). I think I'll check out Council of Thieves and see if I like it better than CotCT. I'm not opposed to the occasional side-quest, but when the majority of the campaign is side-quests I start to have a problem. I also don't like how the heroes just abandon the city half way through the campaign. If all those mini quests are meant to make the players/characters invested in the well-being of the city, why do the characters just leave after all that build-up? No, the main story behind CotCT is a really cool idea, but in my opinion it just wasn't executed very well.
I've finished reading the first two books and so far I'm not liking what I'm reading. The AP seems like nothing more than a series of disconnected "mini-quests" that have nothing to do with each other or the main plot of the campaign. In book two the only parts that are worth running are the very first and last parts. I'll try reading through the next book or two, but I don't think I'm going to be running this AP after all.
Part 4 is Ok enough because at least it has something to do with the chaos going on, but part 5 just seems so random and pointless. Since I don't need to worry about experience and levels I suppose I could do part 4 and skip part 5, or maybe find something to replace part 5 that's actually tied to the events of the adventure. I just hate how D&D always seems to have all this filler just to get the PCs to the next level.
I've just started reading through CotCT (thinking of converting it to Savage Worlds to run with my group). I was just wondering if parts 4 and 5 actually serve any purpose other than feeding the PCs some xp? They seem completely pointless, but I may be missing something that's important later in the campaign. Or can these parts be completely skipped over without causing any problems?
OK, there doesn't seem to be any mummy templates that allow you to customize the mummy's special abilities. So, what would the CR be for a mummy that doesn't have despair or mummy rot? Would that reduce it to a CR of 4, or 3? What if I halved the mummy's HD as well?
Does anyone know if there are vampire and mummy templates where you can choose from a list of special abilities, kind of like the ghost template?
Here's the Celtic pantheon. Well, actually it's the Irish Tuatha de Danann with a few additions from Welsh, Pagan British, and mainland Celtic pantheons. This was not easy to put together. I'm still not sure I got all the portfolios correct, but all the domains have been covered (except Madness. I'm not sure if there were any Celtic deities that had madness/loss of control as part of their portfolio). The only D&D book I have that includes a Celtic pantheon is the AD&D 2nd edition version of Deities & Demigods, which doesn't include domains in it. So, this list is mostly based on my own opinions and some reference to the other pantheons. Hopefully I haven't made a complete mess of it. As always, suggestions and comments are very welcome. Aengus (god of love and beauty): Charm, Luck, Trickery
Seriously, Demeter = Law. I'm not kidding. It's in her portfolio. Really? I can only find info about Demeter being the goddess of agriculture and sometimes the seasons. Do you happen to know where you found the info about law being part of Demeter's portfolio?
Artemis and (especially) Apollo were closely associated with plague-bringing and death as well as healing. Not sure which domain would be good for that, though - the death domain is more about undeath than anything, and I don't see anything else appropriate either. No domains that include diseasy stuff. Oh well, forget that one then. A plague domain would be great. Anyone want to take a stab at making it?
OK, here are the revised Greek and Egyptian pantheons. The Good and Evil alignment domains have been left off, but I added Chaos and Law to a few of the deities. I removed some of the deities from the Egyptian pantheon (Geb, Nut, Tefnut, and Shu) as their portfolios are already pretty well covered by the other deities. I also added a couple new deities to the Egyptian pantheon (Khonsu and Sekhmet). The Egyptian list is still missing the Community and Madness domains. Madness I may leave for Apep (the demon-god of chaos, darkness, and destruction. Today he's more well known as Apophis) but I'm not sure what to do with Community. Greek Pantheon
Egyptian Pantheon
OK, regarding alignment domains, how does this sound: It's always seemed strange that just because a deity is Lawful Good he should have Law and Good as domains. What if the deity's portfolio has nothing to do with law and order? I think that the Law and Chaos domains should be treated as ordinary domains. A deity of law and order should have the Law domain, a deity of chaos should have the Chaos domain. The actual alignment of the deity shouldn't have anything to do with it. The Good and Evil domains are a bit trickier. I don't think there were any deities that specifically have "good" or "evil" as part of their portfolio. Maybe it would be best to have the Good and Evil domains depends on the cleric and not the deity. A good cleric of Dionysus will have Charm, Chaos, Good, Madness, and Plant as domains. A neutral cleric of Dionysus will have Charm, Chaos, Madness, and Plant as domains. An evil cleric of Dionysus will have Charm, Chaos, Evil, Madness, and Plant as domains. Of course, alignment domains are optional, so a CE cleric of Dionysus could have neither Chaos or Evil as his domains, maybe choosing Charm and Madness as his two domains. The alignment domains in D&D are so confusing. It's difficult to tell exactly what they're supposed to represent. It would be really nice if the Good and Evil domains are just removed entirely, and the Law and Chaos domains had all alignment-specific rules removed so they better represent the actual concepts of law and chaos. I may think about doing this actually.
Weren't the big pantheons covered in Deities and Demigods? I only have the 2nd edition version of Deities and Demigods. I've been using Testament and Lore of the Gods as reference, but both of them were made for D&D 3.0. Neither of them have the new domains that were added to Pathfinder, and they both have a bunch of new domains that aren't in Pathfinder.
Demeter still needs Law. It is actually in her portfolio if you look around. I think I'm going to remove all alignment domains again. It would be better just to limit the alignments of the cults that worship each deity. So, for example, Dionysus can have cults with Chaotic, Good, and Evil domains, but not Lawful. So for now I think I'm just going to try and figure out 2-3 non-alignment domains for each deity.
I was just looking over the Pathfinder deity list and I suddenly realized that all of the deities have 5 domains. Was this intentional? Should each deity have 5 domains? Was this just a decision made by the writer of the book? Or was it just coincidence?
OK, here is the updated Greek Pantheon and what I have for the Egyptian pantheon. Is there a Greek deity of writing? That seems to be the only kind of deity I can think of that would have the Rune domain. A couple of the Egyptian deities ended up being a bit too similar than I'd have liked. It's hard to figure out how to make, for example, Nut and Shu different when one is the goddess of the sky and the other is the god of air. Some suggestions on how to make the deities a bit more different would be appreciated, if they should even be made more different. Maybe having a couple similar deities is OK? There are some domains I wasn't able to find deities for in the Egyptian pantheon. I'm not sure if I should just leave them out, or if I should try to find other deities I could add, or there are deities already in the list the domains can be given to. The domains I wasn't able to place are: Community, Liberation, Luck, Madness, and Travel I'm working on the Celtic pantheon now. It's going to take a while as it is not an easy pantheon to put together. Greek Pantheon
Egyptian Pantheon
There were alot of gods and goddesses worshiped as if Olympians, that was my point.But she is a staple in most of the cults in Greece, look back in 2nd Ed. D&D. They also included Hecate. I'm not saying you have to use her, I'm just saying that is was worshiped as if she was an Olympian.If you are going to count in non-Olympians, you have a ways to go.Also, Hecate isn't an Olympian.That maybe, but she was still worshiped. I included Hecate because she fills a hole in the pantheon and because she's fairly recognizable by people today. The other gods and goddesses are mostly just splinters of existing deities anyway, none of them fill a role not already covered by the deities on my list. They'll still exit in the campaign, but really they aren't worth including in the main pantheon lists.
One thing that I always try to keep in mind when working on a campaign like this is that it's just for fun, it's not supposed to be 100% historically accurate. If you were to make a Greek pantheon for a D&D campaign what would it look like? There are some things that have to be done because that's the way it works in D&D. You can't make every deity lawful good just because the people of the ancient world would have thought "God did it, so therefore it's OK." The historical stuff is a good starting point, but in the end you have to think of it more from a gamer point of view and not an historians point of view.
In pantheonic mythology no deity will have every domain. The whole point of the pantheon is that each deity has their specific areas of control. So, each deity should only have a handful of domains. I think I may add alignment domains to a couple of the deities. As Set points out, I don't think any cult of Hera will be anything but lawful. What are favoured weapons for exactly? They just give proficiencies right? Since clerics are already proficient with all simple weapons what's the point of having simple weapons as favoured weapons? Are there other effects that utilize favoured weapons, like certain spells or something? I'm reworking the Greek pantheon a bit. Hopefully I can get it and the Egyptian pantheon up soon.
Recently I've been messing with some ancient mythology pantheons for a campaign I'm working on. I've got the Greek pantheon sort of worked out and I'm working on Egyptian and Celtic pantheons. I may also throw in the Mesopotamian pantheon, although I don't know much about Mesopotamian mythology. I've left out the alignment domains on purpose. Each deity will have one or more cults and each cult will have it's own alignment. If a cleric belongs to a cult he/she/it will get access to that cult's alignment domains. This was a lot easier than trying to assign alignments to each deity, and seems to fit better with how deities worked in ancient mythology. Opinions, suggestions, alternate domain lists, etc are all very welcome. I'm not the best at coming up with things like this, so the more feedback I get the better. Anyway, here's the Greek pantheon I've come up with: Aphrodite (goddess of love and beauty): Charm, Trickery
I'm not sure what the Rune domain is supposed to represent. If it's supposed to be magic then it should go to Hecate. If it's more about crafting then it should go to Hephaestus.
The idea that rogues should be high dps combat monsters makes me laugh. If you want to play someone who's good at killing stuff play a fighter or a spellcaster. Rogues should be skill-based characters. They should be the ones sneaking around, disarming traps, picking locks, etc. They should not be front-line fighters. The whole idea behind rogues being able to sneak attack is silly. It's an ability more suited to assassins than rogues. In fact, the way rogues are going you might as well just call them assassins. But, I guess this is D&D, where anything not tweaked for combat is immediately deemed "useless".
Adding multiple d6s to all of a character's attacks seems pretty powerful. Even the most powerful of magic items rarely gives damage bonuses higher that +5 or maybe +4 and +1d6. Sneak attack is more limited than a magic enhancement bonus, but those limitations have shrunk to almost nothing in Pathfinder, and really, how hard is it to stay flanking an enemy. Maybe sneak attack should be changed so it's only added to the first attack made during the character's turn? Or maybe it should be changed to a flat, cumulative +1 or +2 bonus (each d6 of the sneak attack becomes +1 or +2)? It just gets a little annoying seeing characters built for combat rolling a single die and getting piddly flat damage bonuses when the rogue is carving up opponents with his 3-4 dice of damage (which becomes even more ridiculous when the rogue starts getting iterative attacks and follows the Two-Weapon Fighting feat tree). A rogue getting 4-5 attacks per turn with each attack rolling several dice of damage just seems absurd and way overpowered.
I've started working on the alignments and domains of the deities from each pantheon. I have both Deities and Demigods and Testament that I can use as reference. Are either of these worth using? Is there something better? Is there a 3.5 book with mythological pantheons in them??
For a while now I've been wanting to make up some adventures and campaigns based on ancient mythology. Recently I decided to give it a try with Pathfinder. At first I was thinking about what I would need to modify and add to get Pathfinder to works with an ancient mythology setting. But really, apart from removing non-human races and limiting the equipment that's available, what else needs to be changed? Are there any classes, feats, spells, etc that really need to be changed or added? Or can everything be used as is? I've been looking at books like Testament and thinking "some this new stuff is good, but is any of it really necessary?" None of the new classes and prestige classes were really that different from the core ones, and none of the new feats and spells really screamed "ancient mythology". Has anyone here tried using Pathfinder for an ancient mythology setting? What changes did you make, if any?
When an ability possessed by a prestige class says something like "This ability functions as shadow conjuration, using the shadowdancer’s level as the caster level.", does it mean total character level, or just the levels of the prestige class? So would a Rogue 10/Shadowdancer 4 use the above ability at caster level 14, or 4?
I'm converting some prestige classes in Testament to Pathfinder. I've come across one, the Desert Hermit, that has Track as a bonus feat at 2nd level. What would be a good replacement? The Skill Focus (Survival) feat, a flat bonus to Survival checks made to follow or identify tracks, or something else? I was thinking of replacing it with Favoured Terrain (Desert), like the Ranger ability, but how will that work is a Ranger takes this Prestige Class, particularly one that already has Favoured Terrain (Desert)?Just copy the ranger's version of track: add half level to survival checks to track. But, again, what happens when a ranger with Track takes this Prestige Class and gets Track again? Does the Track ability from the Prestige Class get ignored, or does it stack with the ranger's Track ability?
I'm converting some prestige classes in Testament to Pathfinder. I've come across one, the Desert Hermit, that has Track as a bonus feat at 2nd level. What would be a good replacement? The Skill Focus (Survival) feat, a flat bonus to Survival checks made to follow or identify tracks, or something else? I was thinking of replacing it with Favoured Terrain (Desert), like the Ranger ability, but how will that work is a Ranger takes this Prestige Class, particularly one that already has Favoured Terrain (Desert)?
If I make it so that weapon focus and weapon specialization feats apply to categories of weapons, like the fighter's weapon training ability, will that make the feats too good? Has anyone else tried doing this for their campaign?
Spectres have the Weapon Finesse feat, but incorporeal creatures already use their Dex bonus for melee attacks. What feat should they have instead, Weapon Focus, or something else?
What happens when a creature has both PC and NPC class levels, like an expert/rogue for example? Would that be -1 or -2?
I don't know how this would work, but I'd like to see undead get "fixed". Mindless undead, like skeletons and zombies, should not be templates. When you become a skeleton it doesn't matter what you were when you were alive, all skeletons should have the same stats (modified by size). Same goes for zombies. Intelligent undead like ghouls, mummies, wights, vampires, liches, skeleton champions, zombie lords, etc. should be templates because the person remains what he was in life and gains some new undead abilities.
I'm a little unsure about how Rake is supposed to work with the new Pathfinder grappling rules. Does it allow for two grapple checks with each doing claw damage? Or does it allow the creature to inflict claw damage twice with a single grapple check? Rake makes sense when used with pounce, but it doesn't seem to make sense when used in a grapple.
This is because Erinyes (pardon the spelling) which were devils in 3.5 and thus immune to fire were removed from pathfinder and amalgamized into the succubus. At least that is my take on it. Erinyes still exist in Pathfinder. I think they were removed from D&D 4e.
With feats like power attack and combat expertise, can you choose to take less of a penalty to get less of a bonus? Or do you have to take the full modifiers?
Can a creature use spring attack while flying? Or does it need fly-by attack? Does a creature need spring attack to not provoke an attack of opportunity when using fly-by attack? If you can spring attack while flying, why would any creature ever take fly-by attack? Fly-by attack does exactly the same thing as spring attack but provokes attacks of opportunity.
Can a creature use spring attack while flying? Or does it need fly-by attack? Does a creature need spring attack to not provoke an attack of opportunity when using fly-by attack?
A blue dragon's Sound Imitation requires a Bluff check, but none of the blue dragons have the Bluff skill. Does this mean they're all really bad at imitating sound, should one of their skills be swapped out for Bluff, or was Bluff mistakenly left out of their skills entry?
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