Shiftybob's page

I have been running Curse of The Crimson Throne for a long time now, and there's one question that I've been putting off, and I can't put it off any longer. Because my players have finally assaulted the Deaths Head Vault, killed Cinnabar, and captured Koriantu.

Why do the Red Mantis Assassins do it?

What is in it for them to instigate a plague that kills thousands of innocents? (it doesn't seem very... assassiny, does it?) and why do they act against the one code they live by, - to never assassinate royalty?

I've been trying to come up with a good motivation for this, and I just can't seem to think of why they'd do it, aside from your standard motivation of money/power. Is there something I'm missing here?

They're no doubt about to question their captive, and I feel like I need better answers!

I have a very peculiar question for you all.

My campaign has taken a rather grim turn, as they so often do. A character has died while 3 months pregnant. Is there any spell you can think of that could conceivably keep the baby alive? It's a disturbing thought, but in your opinion, do you think Gentle Repose on the mother's corpse would be enough to bring the child to term?

I shall put the context behind some spoiler tags, for obvious reasons...

So, most APs are written with the expectation of being played on the medium XP track. The exception is Rise of the Runelords, which my group is playing at the moment on the fast XP track. We're about half way through book two, and (while we're enjoying it a lot) many of us are finding it a little TOO fast. It's almost as if the players are levelling up before they get a chance to fully come to grips with the abilities they gained from the previous level.

Hypothetically, if Paizo were to release an adventure path that was designed for the slow experience track, possibly finishing at around about 10th level, would you be less, or more interested in it? Would you find it frustrating?

Personally, I think it would be ideal for my group. I think I prefer a much more relaxed pace to a roleplaying game, but I'm sure a lot of groups would be very different. I also think it would solve a lot of the inevitable mechanical problems that come with high level play. And I don't think you necessarily have to have high level characters to tell an epic story. After all, if Lord of the Rings were an adventure path, what level do you think Frodo would've been by the end? Commoner 2/Rogue (Scout) 3?

Long story short: I've merged the two campaigns I've been running, so some of my Skull and Shackles players are now playing in my Rise of the Runelords game. The interesting thing is they've brought their pirate ship with them. The players have been running around in Magnimar for a while, distracted by a lot of side questing, so are now a bit higher level than expected for the attack on Thistletop. The party is currently roughly half 3rd level, half 4th level, and I expect they'll probably all be 4th level by the time they go for Thistletop. Their pirate ship is currently equipped with three light ballistas.

So, my question is this:
How do you think Nualia and crew would respond to a piratical seige from the sea? How do I prevent this encounter from being a complete walkover?

I will be running Dragon's Demand this evening, and we've decided that we're going to ham it up as much as possible. It's going to be nothing but tacky oneliners, tavern brawls, and dungeon smashing. None of this boring-ass political intrigue or three dimensional character nonsense. We are just going to embrace our inner 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

It's a 4 player party.
What would you build?
I would like to take some helpful character advice to my players this evening.

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.

I'm considering using some of Kingmaker's kingdom building rules in a Ravenloft campaign I'm running. Has anyone tried this before? Does anyone have any advice for how I can adapt it? or what I should keep in mind? So far, my main concern is the amount of time it takes for kingdom development, considering...

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.

I was thinking of designing a kinda quirky character class that specialises in casting cantrips and orisons. Does anyone know if something like this has been attempted before? My perception check uncovers nothing.

First off, I'd like to say that I've been really enjoying reading through the Jade Regent adventure path so far. It has done an excellent job of capturing the aesthetic that I want from a pseudo-asian role playing experience. There is just one thing that I am finding a little incongruous, and that is, mortality.

I think we can all accept that the mythology surrounding this adventure path is predominantly Japanese. So, my problem is this: How can I, as an obsessive fan of Japanese cinema, make the mechanics of this campaign fit in with my idea of the cinematic samurai?
Given that I'm fairly sure that each and every one of my players has watched at least one Kurosawa movie in their lifetime, how can I expect them to accept that a swordfight could last longer than two rounds?

Of course, I accept that Pathfinder is not intended to be a system based on realism. It's a fantasy world, where heroes can get shot point blank in the face with a blunderbuss and live to tell a tale at the tavern about it. I'm quite comfortable with that. But when I'm asked to be influenced by samurai films, as I am in the foreword to Forest of Spirits, I just don't know how to make it fit in.

Take this for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3r9z0Kmzvk

This is not the best example, I admit. But if this scene were to play out in-game, it would basically only amount to; First, a couple of intimidate checks, Round 1: Samurai A rolls a miss, Samurai B uses some kind of 'blindness' causing power, Round 2: Samurai A fails the saving throw, Samurai B hits, causing death. That's it. Over in two rounds.

But if we were playing Pathfinder rules, and those were two high level samurai, that fight would've lasted about 8 - 9 rounds consisting of two dudes, standing in a field of wheat, carving great big meaty chunks out of each other. I just don't know how to describe that to my players while maintaining the idea that this is still some kind of Japanese-ish setting, when everything they know of Japanese sword fighting tells them that the fight should be over the instant Itto Ogami draws his sword. I don't want realism. I want authenticity, and I don't know how to do it without houserules breaking the game.

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?

Last session one of my players took a shine to Mikmek when they were in the mites' cavern under the old sycamore tree. Mikmek swore to fight alongside them, and then proceeded to score 3 consecutive critical hits on Grabbles and the Giant Centipedes, he was accidentally the hero of the hour. Then one of my players died a rather unnecessary death by smoke inhalation. So I'm toying with the possibility of statting Mikmek up as his replacement character for our next session.

Has anyone done a build for him already? Does anyone have any ideas or advice for how he could be played? I was thinking of having him somewhat haunted by his experience of being captured and tortured. I'll need to make him level 2 or level 3 to be on par with the other players.

My players tend towards the more chaotic and evil alignments already, so I'm not too worried about having a kobold in the party.

Last week, my party had the rather stupid idea of trying to 'smoke out' a group of mites from a cave. It was particularly stupid because half the party was already inside, and it resulted in the suffocating death of one player and the very near death of another.

I winged it, and decided to give everyone poor visibility, huge miss chance at medium range because of the smoke, and they all had to take gradually increasing DC fortitude saves each round, causing 1d3 Str damage from smoke inhalation.

It got me thinking, is there a better way I could have done this? Was I being too harsh? Not harsh enough? How would you have played it?

There's a player in my group that is a bit of a roleplaying pyromaniac (there's always someone, isn't there?), so I expect this is a problem I may have to face again in the very near future.