ShaperMC's page

Background: Our group has been together for three years now, and one of our members is moving to a new state and will be leaving the group. I've decided to put together an "end" to their story (the rest of the party wants to reform w/new characters in the same world/story, so it will be a big ending) and I've been having a hard time of making this interesting.

Advice needed:

So, my party is all level 9 (Oracle, Magus, Investigator, Inquisitor, Summoner), yet due to some early power creep from pre-written materials, they can handle a CR14 fight pretty easily. The story has led them to make a contract with Pharasma who has them hunting down a Lich (which happened to be the same enemy that's been menacing them for the past year or more). They know what the phylactery is, and I will have Pharasma deliver it in an epic style after the fight (which will actually create a major change in the world after this happens, but they don't know that yet).

I need this lich fight to be AMAZING. I'm not sure what to do to make it more exciting though... The player who is leaving has requested that he is either killed, or sent to a demonic plane, and I need to figure out a way to have that happen through the lich (or something the lich summons). What are some ways to make this happen?

I also do *not* want this fight to be a Party vs 1-lich fight. I was thinking about making the lich also a necromancer (as this would piss off Phrasma even more), but not sure how to make this happen and also have the lich himself be exciting in combat?

Also, I'm looking for advice on what to make as a target CR for these combatants? This should be a VERY dangerous fight, and they know it, and are prepared. (very prepared)

I've built a couple of ideas for this lich... but ultimately end up not creating a great enemy, so I'm looking for all the help I can get! Thank you so much for the advice :D

So, I’ve been the GM for an amazing group for almost 2 years now. We finished up Dragon’s Demand late last year, and they really hooked onto the extra-planar themes in it (sorry not going to spoil things, so I’ll just leave it at that). Long story short: I originally wanted to tie that story into The Slumbering Tsar Saga, since I’ve had that book sitting on a shelf for a long time. While we were in down time between campaigns the Druid switched characters over to an Investigator because no one had the ability to find traps… and decided to focus on finding Demons and Evil Outsiders.

So, this resulted in the campaign turning into Demonbusters for Hire in Oppara. I’ve since done a bunch of research on Oppara, and surrounding towns, and they keep finding everything I’m not prepping (they told me they wanted political intrigue so I made a sub-plot about that with a whole confrontation related to the “rebel lords” on the outskirts and a Phallanx [I adopted it from a Season 0 PF Scenario], they told me they wanted to dungeon crawl so I prepared a subterranean dungeon crawl. I’ve poured hints and clues about these things all over the game… yet they intentionally go after the demon story line I haven’t prepared). So I’m about ready to embrace the demon story line.

I’m looking for help with tips on story line ideas, and demons that will fit my story needs. So far the party has picked up the Secrets of the Dreaming Dark. They have found out that all traces of the god Orcus have been erased from history. They have uncovered a hive of Viduus Psychopomps, which the PCs know have probably been sent to remove the memories from certain people. I feel like I have the start of a great story line wherein Orcus comes back to rise in power, and I can take elements of Rappan Athuk or Slumbering Tsar piece-meal out of those books to use to save on prep time… but I’m honestly drawing a little bit of a blank on how to connect these threads together, have a good reason that they’re happening (since the reasoning that I had has since become moot), and how to unravel these secrets in layers.

I also am not sure much about demons! I’m looking for spidery, memory altering, or other things that would work well for this setting. What are some reasons that Demons/Planar creatures would want to cross over for? Why would Orcus want to erase memories? Who would try to enforce this? What would a good mid-boss be who’s been put in charge of this memory wipe? I think that this will also involve politics, what sort of political advantages could someone get to be involved in this (possibly use it to tie into the removal of rogue lords)?

As a new-ish GM to running mid/high level adventures (haven't done it since the early 2000's with D&D 3.0), and I’m doing an OK job of balancing encounters for a group of 4 level seven PCs, but the encounters are all very straight-forward. I am hoping to snag some good dungeons/encounters/sub-plots that I can take and re-purpose easily (i.e. I’m already using the level 7 Thornkeep dungeon, and I’ve used that one PFS Scenario) that are either from other Modules, Adventure Paths, or PFS Scenarios that I would have to only make minor (superficial) modifications to drop wholly into my campaign. Also, anything that can easily be taken from Rappan Athuk or Slumbering Tsar.

Thank you so much for anything that you can come up with. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that I need to prepare for this as I allowed the cam

TLDR: I need help with demon-y planar creature recommendations that are either spidery, or memory altering related. Also, tips on story lines that involve rewriting massive amounts of history by demons. And finally a list of pre-written demon based modules/adventures/dungeons for level 7+ that I can piece out and drop into my campaign.

I would like to recommend the three part module series that starts with Crypt of the Everflame. While I can't vouch for the sexual content of the second and third book (I've only browsed them, but my guess is they don't have any), the first one is completely devoid of that. The adventure also starts as the "first" adventure that any of the characters have gone on. It's a fairly standard affair of a dungeon crawl with lots of variety, traps, and enemies. There are also some really helpful tips in the book on rules explanations for new GMs as it was the first series (iirc) to come out after the conversion from 3.5 to Pathfinder. To be even more helpful there is a podcast that goes over most of the ins and outs of the scenario for the GM, and what possible pitfalls it has and how to avoid them: LINK HERE (the first part of the podcast is a sort of general news from a few years ago, then it goes into extensive coverage of the module). I also believe that the next podcast after that was for the second part of the adventure, Masks of the Living God. I've only run the first of this series, but I found it to be a lot of fun with some really excellent moments.

Best of Luck!

I recommend looking over the forum specifically for RotRL here: paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/adventurePath/rune lords

Also, specifically this thread is super helpful: paizo.com/threads/rzs2i3wa?Community-Created-Stuff

As for how to start, there's some great threads on how to play up the swallowtail festival with games in the forum, and I recommend doing just that. Some archery, wrestling, ring tossing, what have you. The community stuff has extended scrips for speeches too.

Best of luck!

So, it seemed like you wanted experiences relayed, and that is what I'll do.

I see them used somewhere between 1/4 to 1/6 of the encounters in my home games. I see it a bit less in PFS games.

I used to not see them at all, and then I printed out a handy little cheat sheet for all the martial PCs and handed them out at the beginning of a game oSuddenly I saw CMs getting used.

Also, for those that have never seen a bull rush: best use I ever saw was a BBEG that was blocking a passage way so only one person could attack at a time (essentially) get pushed back enough to allow for flanking.

I recommend dropping the plot onto the derpers. While in the Forrest away from the wu-jen have one of the cults with an important piece of... something cross their path and get aggressive with a little interchange about how they "better not be agents for so-and-so" or that they "need to get this piece back to BBEG in Location X". Or when they finally find a tribe of fey they agree to help only on the condition that the derpers perform a mission that is in line with your main story.

It sounds like you've designed a sandbox, and you have a few players who need some clear cut mission based objectives. I could be wrong on this as I don't have any info outside what you typed. Drop the main plot on their heads, give them missions, and change the witch to a sorcerer. If your witch really wants those few things you've listed use them as the carrot on the end of a stick to motivate her. Perhaps she'll eventually not need that method if she starts to care about the story, but if it works use it.

I have a GM who thinks he's doing an awesome job of giving our group plot hooks for his homebrew world that he wrote from scratch. To him his whole story and layout is super obvious. After about 6 months in this world I finally sat down and told him that I have no idea what the main story is and that it seems like all his plot hooks lead to dead ends that we end up abandoning. He was astonished to find this out, and thought we were intentionally ignoring things. Since then I've taken the initiative in the party to seek out people to give our group missions to get us going on the right track and things are moving smooth for the first time. The reason I tell this story is that your players may be oblivious to what you feel you're plainly laying in front of them. (again I don't know for sure since I only know what you've written)

Best of luck!

I really love clerics, I am currently playing two (one in a home game and one in a PFS game). Guidance (level 0 spell) keeps me exceptionally viable out of combat, and allows many roleplay moments (May the power of GODNAMEHERE be with you... yada yada yada). You can still make all the plans and make every other player better in almost every roll.

With that said, I think the problem is mostly that you're concerned about healing: Clerics can heal no matter what you build them into. Design your cleric to do something besides heal primarily. There are some good recommendations in this thread to look into. I don't recommend aiming for being a ranged caster though, other classes are much much better at this. I recommend building as some kind of combat based classed, and a dip into one level of Fighter is amazing for a Cleric (heavy armor + extra bonus feat).

Also, head over to the Guide to the Classes sticky post and read through the cleric guide that has a lot of great advice. Also, I haven't been able to do this yet because of campaign reasons, but see if you can be an Undead Lord (which I think is in Ultimate Combat).... it looks amazing.

I just spent a majority of my evening reading this 5 year retrospective on queer Pathfinder. I can't tell you how happy the Paizo staff responses have made me. It is these kind of things that make me buy more of their products than anyone else's.

Also, Samnell, I congratulate you on sticking with the thread for all these years. I think I'm your mini- fanboy.

I would love to see some sort of product in the future promoted as a queeRPG experience.