Shiftybob's page

The Varnhold Vanishing is probably my favourite book of any adventure path. I don't see the pattern at all. I think maybe it's just the level range that's your problem, as around about level 7+ is when Pathfinder really starts to get complicated.

Well... paint me corrected. I always interpreted any move action to be a "kind of movement". And I've been doing it that way every weekend for almost a decade. It's amazing, the little things in this game that you can get wrong.

I am totally swooning for Hollow Graves right now.

Dotting, despite my minor distaste with the term "beefcake".

I like it.
It looks dark and gritty, and all the women are wearing normal people clothes!

I keep them in plastic sleeves in seperate folders, divided by adventure path. Then I just punch them out as I need them for each session, and put them back in the punch cards they came from... If you get what I mean.

It gets awkward when the players go somewhere I don't expect them to go, which they almost always do, and I haven't brought the appropriate pawns. Because I sure as hell couldn't be bothered to lug those big ass folders to every session. So it's not the best solution in the world. But it keeps them pretty well organized.

Just run Tomb of Horrors... Only fill it with Rust Monsters.

The smurf thing itself feels like an April Fools joke. Does it work every day?

Yep. It's April Fools every day at Paizo.

I was wondering that too.
And I'm totally okay with it if that's the reason. Them gods need some hardcore hardcover support. I hate it when it comes around to character generation time and my players start asking me the god questions... I have to refer them to about 40 different books they've never read. It's going to be a delight to have a single solid source of information.

I've always been kinda intimidated by this thread and its ever increasing number of posts that I couldn't possibly ever find the time to read, but I'd just like to mention that, for me and my LGBT players, Golarion's various depictions of transgendered, homosexual, and bisexual characters have been a massive drawcard for us.

For some of us, it's the main drawcard.

It is such a massive relief to find a fantasy world where the fantasy is that nobody gives a crap what you do with your genitals. Or, at least, that the philosophy of acceptance always wins.

That is all.

I would love to see a sherlockian steampunk mystery set in Alkenstar. Because of the uncertainty of magic, they wouldn't be able to just use divination magic to uncover the mystery, so they'd have to actually do detective work in a whodunit fashion, maybe exploring more of the local politics and steam tech in the process. It might be a good way to bring in an Investigator as a main character. With its proximity to Geb, perhaps a female Dhamphir Investigator? If not Dhamphir, then I'd love to see a female dwarf be a main character.

I would read the hell out of that.

First session of Dragon's Demand.
A player drew his sword on Lady Origena in the middle of the town square because she refused his proposition of marriage.

I just...
I just don't...
How do you even?

Back in the days of 2nd edition, a player was playing a Wild Mage. Which is basically a wizard that does totally random things occassionally drawn from a "wild surge" table.
We were playing the campaign "Night Below", and there is a point early on where a high level necromancer and his cronies ambushes the party on a river, with virtually no possibility of escape. It's written as expected that he will capture the party without breaking a sweat.

The wild mage uses her last spell to cast a wild surge on the necromancer.
She rolls on the wild surge table. Result comes up "Swap bodies with your opponent for 1d4 rounds".
Player asks what equipment the necromancer has in its pockets, while the rest of the party pin down the big bad, now in the wild mage's totally unarmed and ineffectual body.
I reply: a spellbook, a key, and a dagger.
With three rounds left, the wild mage then announces:
"I throw the key at the party, I throw the spellbook in the river, and use the dagger to cut off my spellcasting hand".

Dispel Magic.
A party without at least a couple of dispels prepared is just a sacrificial offering to the dice gods.

Well, if you make an oracle with the deaf curse you get the -4 to initiative without having to worry about spell failure.

To refine more, maybe a:

Stupid/Loud Human Fighter
Serious/Dour Dwarf Cleric
Witty/Funny Halfling Rogue
Serious/Intellectual Elf Wizard

Party dynamics include the human and halfling playing jokes on the elf and dwarf, the dwarf and elf hating each other due to racism, and maybe the wizard's logic being trumped by emotional reasoning (a la Spock and Kirk).
Oh, and the big human fighter should call the halfling "little buddy."

Not sure if it's the *most* cliched, but it sounds pretty cliched to me.

If that ain't the most cliched, I don't know what is.

Perhaps something like this:

Have the party head back to Sandpoint unobstructed, and deliver Ameiko back to the rusty dragon where they can rest up over night and make plans. But...

“You are woken by a worried Bethana Corwin. She looks at you: "It's Ameiko again, come quick". Hurrying behind the halfling up to Ameiko's room you go inside.

Ameiko is laying on her bed, deathly pale, her pupils pinpricks and brow covered in sweat. The smell of decay hangs in the room. Bethana looks at you 'It gets worse I'm afraid'. She lifts up the bedcover to reveal Ameiko's naked belly, there are some slash marks across it, gleaming with corruption and putrescence. Ameiko is barely conscious, only able to mumble something about Nualia and 'she touched me there'. (Knowledge roll to recognize Lamashtu’s mark).”

Note: Ameiko has been afflicted by Lamashtu's curse, something that the players will find they have no way of lifting. Her condition will get steadily worse.

The next day after they players have had time to try and fail to help Ameiko, Sandpoint receives a visitor: a dazed looking goblin riding a mangy goblin dog. He bears a message for the PCs which he hands over:

“You have something of mine. A half elf. And you have another problem. Your Tian girl is not long for this world. If you bring me what I want I shall let you have her life. You know where to find me”.

The goblin can’t supply any additional information, he’s been charmed into coming and wants to get back to Nualia as fast as possible.

I would have the players encounter a hostage handover situation with Nualia back at Thistletop, which turns nasty when it becomes clear that Nualia has no intention of lifting the curse Ameiko and is intending to kill the PCs as soon as she has Tsuto. She could have gathered some extra goblins for support, plus Orik and Lyrie could have returned. If the PCs hand over Tsuto then Nualia just laughs, commands her forces to attack the PCs and disappears into the depths of her fortress. If the fight runs...

Wow, Yossarian. That is genius. Cruel and sadistic genius. I take my hat off to your malevolence.

I'm loving the Wild magic and Kobold magic goals. But what the hell is the point of a stretch goal if they don't tell you what the goal is? That's hardly really a "goal" is it? It's more like a pre-election politician's empty promise.

I suspect that, come June 26th, there are going to be a lot of players out there that will suddenly find themselves stuck in a labyrinthine cavern complex, riddled with suspisciously sized murder holes.

God I love kobolds.

Does anyone have any good ideas for a character build that specialises in strangling? Because I'm a bit stumped about how to make him effective in combat. Ideally, I'd like something a bit more interesting than just making him hold enemies down for the players to beat up.

He should probably start out at third level, but if he survives long enough to gain exp with the party, he could end up going all the way to 15th-ish level with them.

NOTE: I know this might sound like the dreaded DMPC, a syndrome I am largely against. But I'm going to keep the Drenchport Strangler largely under the command of the players. So please keep the pro/anti-DMPC discussion to other threads.

One of the major reasons I didn't like the Lord of The Rings movies was that they edited out Tom Bombadil. I guess it's just a question of flavour. I really wanted to see that hopping, dancing forest queen.

For the record, I would totally feel Kyuss' taint. I love that band.

We had one session where a couple of vampire spawn snuck up on the party while they were camped next to a river, but since I had a couple of players for whom English was not their first language, they misunderstood, and thought they were vampire prawns. It was very confusing at first, because they couldn't understand how the prawns got out of the river. Eventually, I just rolled with it, and added the vampire template to some sharks. The prawns were so desperately hungry that they'd beached themselves just to pull someone into the river. It turned out to be a much more interesting encounter.

I really don't understand why you think you need a DMPC. They're something that should be avoided at all costs. If it's the survivability of the PCs that you're worried about, there are a tonne of NPCs already in Kingmaker that the party can easily get to tag along with them. Just toss them all in, having a drink at Oleg's Trading Post, and let your players try and convince someone to join their cause (if they think they need it).

I'm running a kingmaker campaign soon and I want to run a permanent DMPC. Currently the group is a Paladin, a Cleric, and a Master Summoner. I'm opposed to running a wizard because as the DM I don't want to be the main problem solver. I'm also not really excited about running a rogue or bard because i've played several of them in the past. Any Suggestion? All books and races are available.

The bolded section worries me. A DMPC, if it really must exist, should not be solving problems at all. You're the DM. You're meant to CAUSE the problems.

Oh, I have a good one. It was a one-shot I ran ages ago, so I almost forgot about it.

After a lengthy dungeon crawl, the players finally arrive at the BBEG, beaten and bloody. It's a hideously powerful orc, sitting on a throne of bones, on the other side of an immense pit of lava. The orc starts cackling, and starts telling them a lengthy diabolical speech of his totally cliche plans to take over the world and such. Right when I was getting to the part where he flips a switch beside the throne, thus releasing a dozen war hounds on the party, the party monk says he's going to leap over the fire pit.
Monk wins initiative.
It's a really big pit, so he needs a 20 to make it over.
He rolls a 20.
He attempts to grapple the orc.
He rolls another 20.
The orc can't reach the switch, and can't escape the grapple.
He starts choking the orc.
By this time, the rest of the party have run around the pit, and managed to pin his arms down, so the orc still can't flip the switch.
Several rounds of terrible rolling later, versus a lot of assisted grappling, the orc is choked to death. Choked to death, in the middle of his evil genius speech, while his hounds bark and howl madly from their cages, all while never even managing to get out of his chair.

...I thought Walter White would be here.
Nary have I felt more misled.

The size difference would eat at your disguise bonus.

You get the look, but not many will believe it.

The spell description from Disguise Self says that you get a +10 to the disguise check, but the skill description for disguise says that you would take a -10 for each size category difference from your own. So I figure it would amount to +10 for the hat, -20 for the two size categories of difference -2 for a different race = -12 to disguise yourself as a child.

The tricky part is imagining what a Living Monolith disguised as a 4 foot kid would actually look like. Perhaps you could just paint a picture of a child on your leg, and the rest of your body could be painted the colour of the sky.

Hmm, lets try and get this thread back on the rails, shall we?

Last session, the DM decided he would play my character in my place, just to advance the narrative of the campaign. Not only he did some actions and took some choices I would never have played, but he actively placed my character against another player's one (we're playing clerics of different faiths), because "the religious splinter within the group will be a defining element of the next adventures" - again, something we players have always underplayed in a friendly competition of sorts, just for the laughs.

I've been DMing and playing RPGs since the late '80s, and this was the first time I was that close to having a fit, and leaving the table with a big "$#&£§ you!".

Wrongbadnonono.

DMs taking control of players is an absolute deal breaker for me. If I were you, this would've absolutely called for a table flip or two. I remember being in a game once where the DM assumed something as minor as opening a door, and I even lost it then. 'Did I say I opened the door?' I asked.

One truly beginner dm, ran kingmaker for two sessions. An un-exciting world, we kept hearing bunnies disturb us, but no real threats. A hardy warrior couldn't sleep outside in a forest without being fatigued. You needed to haul a tent round or the dm punished you. Crits that would absolutely kill a bandit two times over were turned into K.Os, hits were made into misses because the dm tried to use a luck system. Then a will-o-wisp almost killed us all at first level.

Then we weren't given much xp, and the bar to level was raised (we had already levelled by the rules). Rage quit. Threw my character sheet at the dm and left.

In the DM's defence, Will-O-Wisps are SUPPOSED to kill you in Kingmaker. They're random encounters that you're supposed to run like hell away from. I can see how a rookie DM might not notice the threat they pose, and just toss them at you like it was a regular encounter. The rest of it does sound a bit nonsense though.

Oooh. I have another good story.
I was running a very long running campaign, and suffering from a bit of DM fatigue, so I decided to set up a bit of a rotating DM situation. One of the players was keen, so we let him run a session.

The PCs are hanging around at the local tavern when a creepy old man approaches us. He asks us if we want to join the Assassin's guild. We all say no, because none of us are rogues or assassins (It should be noted, the DM's regular character is an assassin, so maybe you can see where this is going). Creepy guy insists that we should join the assassins guild, and pulls out a magical cube. We still say no. Apparently we have to roll will saves to prevent ourselves from touching the cube, and we all fail, despite some of us rolling 28+. All of us touch his cube, and are permanently magically compelled to be in the Assassin's guild, never to speak about the Assassin's guild, and to automatically accept an assassination quest (yes, even the paladin). The quest is to kill a guy in the house next door. So we grudgingly accept. We decide to set fire to the house, and stand in the doorways, readying actions to carve up anything that steps outside. DM says we can't set fire to the house, because it's not Assassin-ish enough. We say, the house is made of wood and straw, and we're not assassins, we set fire to the damn house. Argument continues for about half an hour, until DM finally throws his hands up in the air, allows us to burn it down, but says the house collapses and does obscene amounts of damage to anyone next to it. Three characters fail their reflex saves and die.

Needless to say, the next session I went back to DMing again, and ruled that everything that had happened in the previous session was just a horrible nightmare caused by some bad cheese they ate at the tavern that night. A couple of players buy some more of the cheese, and later sell it on for great profit to some drug smugglers.

To this day, whenever anyone feels like they're being railroaded into anything at the gaming table, they pull out an imaginary object and shout "TOUCH MY CUBE".

EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it. I don't think the creepy old guy even mentioned the Assassin's guild until after he'd made us touch his cube. He just wandered up to us, pulled this cube out and said "TOUCH IT". There was something weirdly sexual about the whole thing.

The encounter was set up such that the PCs were flying on griffons a few thousand feet above the ground. They had griffon-riders (1st level experts) so that no one had to Handle Animal or Ride.

A white dragon swoops down out of the clouds and attacks! The druid attempts to cast call lightning, which does additional damage on cloudy days. The DM said no, it's not cloudy. Well then, said the druid and ranger, we have Perception scores of 20+, we saw it coming. Nope, said the DM, it's cloudy and the dragon had total concealment. It went around in circles for a bit before the GM basically said "DM fiat" and cut off discussion/argumentation.

We never sat down with that GM again. This wasn't the only ruling of that sort he had made, just the final straw.

Haha. I think the cloudy/not cloudy paradox is my favourite story so far. That's gold.

There was the time we played in a guy's campaign where we started the game in prison. After a few hours of his NPCs talking at us, we started trying to escape. Every time our rogue tried to pick the lock, he failed without a dice roll. The DM's response: "Because it's magic". So we start casting spells, or trying our spellcraft checks. "No, not that kind of magic" he says. Oh... So it's the kind of magic that means you won't let us do anything until you've finished exposition?

About four hours later, he still hasn't allowed us a single attempt at escape, or even to interrupt his characters' lengthy monologues. We're still in prison. Not the same prison we started in, though. He did at least have us transferred... to another prison.

None of the players ever came back for a second session.

Another good one.
Playing Spelljammer. The party bard had a ridiculously high bluff skill. He'd been drinking a lot of some sort of intergalactic ale, but managed to very successfully convince everyone he was sober enough to drive the spelljammer ship. We lost two players that day, and the majority of the cargo, in the resulting crash into a volcano.

7th level Dwarven Slayer (homebrew barbarian), after fighting off a dragon, complains that nothing can kill him. So I roll on my wandering monster chart. A CR 1/2 badger drops out of the tree above him. I roll two consecutive crits while he was still in rage, just enough to knock him down to 0, he loses all temp hp from rage and goes way into the minuses, dying instantly.

Hands down, the most hilarious player death of my entire dungeon mastering career.

I not sure if it fits here since you people have had far worse players than I have...

But there was this one guy I played with right after college. I will call him "Z" in case he is on here. To this day I wonder how he is going to make it through life. He had no sense of boundaries or timing. I mean he wasn't a bad guy, in fact he was VERY charismatic. I always saw him with a new girl on his arm each time. But he would show up to my game when he felt like showing up... anywhere from an hour early (He liked to watch me set up I guess) to an hour late (he was always busy with someone). He was lucky he was charming I guess or he would be pretty creepy. Sometimes he would show up at my place out of the blue and invite himself in... no game that day or anything. Just to talk.

Ouch. That really sounds neither charming nor charismatic.

...one older gentleman who had a noise maker where every time someone rolled a 20 or a 1 who would push a button and make obnoxious noises...

Am I the only one who thinks that older gentleman sounds HILARIOUS? No? Oh, Okay then.

Oh yeah, and I don't have a car. So whenever we have a session at someone elses house I have to pack about a dozen hardcover books into a backpack and ride there on my bicycle. But then whenever it's at my house, they complain that it's too hard to get to... in a car.

Tell me about it. No really, tell me about it. It would make me feel marginally better to know I'm not the only one. Two of my players just cancelled on today's session with abolutely pathetic reasons. Reason A: "I've got a sore knee". Reason B: "I've got a house inspection tomorrow". I'm almost certain that the real reason in both cases is that they are just too damn lazy to get out of bed.

I think a lot of players don't really realise how much preparation it takes to make a roleplaying campaign happen. I spent about 6 hours yesterday drawing maps, making notes, and printing out handouts, then another 3 hours this morning transferring their character sheets from an illegible scrawl. All for them to just flake out and forget to show up. I've been DMing for about 15 years, and been with this same group for about 5 years. What does it take to make them realise how much work goes into this stuff? I love doing it, but sometimes I feel so taken for granted.

In a way, I see where the GM is coming from. I think he/she is just taking it a bit too far. Generally speaking, I like to keep numbers out of my game as much as possible. It's a lot more vivid to describe how a monster LOOKS, rather than how many hit points they've got left. For example, if they've got a monster down to 5 or 6 hit points, I'll describe it as limping around the battlefield, going pale from blood loss. I'll tell them they can see the whites of its eyes, as the realisation dawns that its doom is fast impending. I'll have them behave more erratically, and more desperately when they're dying. While they'll behave more arrogantly if they're still feeling healthy. They'll be more likely to taunt the players, and they'll fight more confidently. I don't think it makes sense that the players should know EXACTLY which round will be the killing blow, but I think it makes even less sense that they should know nothing at all. If they really want a number, they can count the litres of blood on the ground.

Also, no skeletons involved...they're too Lame. ZOMBIE apocalypse, not skeleton wimp-fest... :)

Exactly.

Okay, so my players have just finished the first book of Kingmaker, and everyone seems to be loving it so far. They barely scraped through the fight with the Stag lord and seem well on their way to establishing a violent, lawless society of vagabonds, miscreants, and villains. I've read ahead through the next few books, and skimmed the last book, and there's something that's been bothering me.

The Big Bad of the campaign seems almost invisible.
I like the bad guy in my campaigns to be a real force of evil, something that taunts them at every turn, and something that they can shake their fist at from the window of a distant tower. One of my favourite campaigns was an extended game of Castle Ravenloft. Where Count Strahd was an ever present madman, but always out of reach. Now, I might have skimmed over a few things, but it seems to me that it's entirely possible for the PCs to have absolutely no idea who Nyrissa is until the very last book. So far, the only way they could've discovered her vaguely to be pulling the strings of it all was the very slim possibility of using Speak With Dead on a random dead unicorn. They didn't have access to the spell at the time, nor do I think they would've bothered to use it. They just sorta molested the corpse for a while, and promptly moved on.

So here's my question:
Does this bother anyone else?
Have you figured out a way to make Nyrissa a more prominent, obvious evil? I understand that she is trying to be subtle about her influence, but I just don't think that's the approach I want to take in my game.
Is there anything I can do to foreshadow her as the great big nasty badness? And can I do it without being too sledgehammer obvious?

There happens to be rules about smoke already. It obscures vision, granting 20% concealment, there is a fort save each round with possibility of nonlethal damage. So, yes, it seems you were being a bit harsh, namely with the attribute damage. But I think you handled it well enough.

Thanks. I don't know how I missed that!

Plus, they had to do a couple of climb and jump checks to get out of the cave... and I thought I'd work on the drama of attempting that with slowly failing strength.

A few I've used, some I haven't:

39. The PCs awake in all too familiar tavern, they are hungover again, and have dim memories of agreeing to go on some kind of adventure the previous evening. What they don't know is: They've only just been born. The tavern is a covert cloning factory designed by mindflayers to mimic what adventurers expect of their clichéd lives. The town, and all its cardboard cut-out environs are just a way of farming the hapless sods. Mimicking their expected experiences, so that their brains might one day reach a high enough level to be suitably delicious. The end of the world actually happened a very long time ago, but the Mind Flayers got bored/hungry.

40. (I sorta stole this from somewhere, can't remember where). The Tarrasque has been captured. Yes, that's right, CAPTURED. It is forced to live bound in magical irons. The heroes who caught it are praised as saviours, and people come from all corners of the world to see this great beast. Gradually a town has been built up around the poor creature. People carve off souvenirs with magical weapons. The blood of the tarrasque is found to have certain healing properties, and business is booming. The tarrasque once slept for hundreds of years, but now it is tormented, kept awake and above ground. The PCs are forced to question if this is the right order of things. What impact will it have on the natural world? What if it escapes? Perhaps a cult intends to release it? What if the Tarrasque did not really sleep underground? What was it doing down there? What if the peaceful sound of the tarrasque's snoring slumber was the only thing keeping the Aboleth from surfacing?

41. The PCs fight a war they cannot win. In a desperate attempt to escape, they stumble on an ancient shrine and a peculiar scroll of Mass Petrification. With their infinite enemies snarling outside, their last resort is to use the scroll on themselves in the hope that the marauding army will mistake them for statues. They may, of course, choose whichever pose they want to stand in, but they may not know for how long they will be frozen solid. 100 years later, they awake to find themselves worshipped as gods (probably according to how they were standing). Worshipped, that is, by an enslaved human race, surprised to find the statues of their gods finally come to life. How will they react to this resurrected fame? Will they have to fulfill some kind of bizarre prophecy they know to be false? Can they fight a guerilla war against their oppressors, and gradually free mankind from enslavement, town by town? I imagine this would fit well with those King Maker rules.

42. The world is a sphere, much like ours. But, unlike ours, each hemisphere rotates in opposite directions. The northern hemisphere is populated largely by the humans, elves, and dwarves, or 'pinks', while the Southern is inhabited by the 'greens', orcs, goblins, kobolds, bugbears, etc. Once every 100 years the continents get close enough to launch boats of war, each remembering the bitter, bloody war of the previous generation. This time, something is different. This time, a small volcanic island stands between them. Perhaps, whichever side controls this island, will finally turn the tide of the war. I originally ran this campaign with two seperate groups on alternating weeks, one playing greenskins, the other playing pinkskins. Neither was aware of the other's movements, but each fought against the armies of the other side according to whichever parts of the island each side chose to capture. It would've ended up quite strategic, if not for the entire party of pinksins being utterly useless and getting themselves killed in the first session.

I'm sure I had more, but I can't remember them right now.
In case you hadn't noticed, my campaigns tend to be a little apocalyptic and gloomy in theme.