Yes.
There are many reasons beyond simple morality that characters may fight. It's easily possible for good people to end up on opposite sides of a battlefield.
Loyalty to opposing nations, for instance.
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You are correct on the masterwork prices for weapons and armor, good sir.
Always have to keep the players in mind. The base assumption is that the party is at least partially balanced. I like to tailor challenges to the party. This doesn't mean purely catering to their strengths, it also means challenging their weaknesses in a reasonable way. Personally I also use a lot of homebrew creatures or homebrew edits of creatures. Sometimes this gets wacky. I think it's perfectly reasonable to change something on the fly if you deem it necessary for maintaining reasonable challenge. This can be anything from tweaking the enemy count, tactics or fine tuning some numbers on the horrific monstrosity you dreamed up. What I most want to optimize is the player's experience.
Such is the chaos of the dice. We rolled for stats, and I must admit I was a bit jealous of other people's stats. Some of them were absurdly lucky with multiple 18s, while my highest, without racial, was 15. I felt better after it became clear I could still thrive via the untamed power of system mastery. I still joke about using a wish to steal people's stats, though. I'm just more used to point buy. It is my preference. Seems more equal, although I would say dice rolling is still fair. Everyone has the same chances, after all.
One could argue that the lower level raise spells have trouble because the outsider's soulbody is all beaten up from the death thing. If you have an intact outsider soulbody, then why not go for it? At worst, you create some horrific new breed of monster or something! Win-win!
Campaign I'm playing, my paladin has no deaths. Just one story sorta-death that lasted a round. I'm not alone in that, though certain party members are not as fortunate, with several deaths. The campaign has ridiculously available wealth, so the party can afford to fix death pretty easily, though one opted to go for a new PC at one point. Campaign I'm running, only the tengu alchemist/ninja has died, but she got better. A Zuvembie got her with a Ghoul Touch spell and ripped out her throat. The party might've been able to save her, but didn't. Been plenty of close calls, but no other deaths as of yet. I have a system set up where 'dead' characters wake up in a sort of Fugue plane specific to their character where they meet an outsider based on the character who died. The alchemist met a metal tengu with blades for feathers and a kabuto mask modeled after her face. It demanded her arms if she didn't want to face oblivion. She hesitantly accepted, interpreting it as being a demand for service, but awoke to find that her arms no longer did anything but hang limp uselessly. The others never perceived her as dying at all, and found her new problem and belief that she had died somewhat troubling. She had to get a regeneration to fix her arms, bit cheaper than actual death. She hasn't found out what it's using her arms for, as of yet.
I tend towards evil, but I mix it up a lot. I have a serious case of altitis, but DMing alleviates the pain. As does Leadership.
You could have the ability damage and level drain not persist outside of the encounter.
Mythic is more comparable to Epic levels in 3.5, than Divine ranks. Some similarities, though.
As a lover of the strange, the humble underdog that is the Flumph has a special place in my heart.
Hm, I haven't really had any problem with constant camping, personally. My approach would be to advance time appropriately, which might mean bad things if there is something urgent they need to do. A few hours could mean the different between interrupting the dread ritual and arriving just after the dread ritual has been completed. This need not be 'campaign lost' thing, but more of a matter of changing the nature of upcoming events. A group of fanatic ritualists vs a newly summoned demon, a fleeing bandit vs a bandit that just found his friends, a damsel in distress vs a damsel cursed/drained/otherwise in a bad situation etc.
Hmm... I've been experimenting with different approaches to stuff in my campaign. I've sort of settled on sprinkling in 'Elite' creatures into numerous encounters, and 'Boss' encounters aren't typically against one big creature, but at least one of the creatures present are typically powerful and unique. Elite creatures are typically named NPCs usually on par with the PCs or more powerful if appropriate, named advanced monsters or named unique homebrew monsters. Each with maxed HP for their HD, (the PCs have max hp by default, just what I'm used to, I guess). Boss creatures are the same, but with more power, additional abilities or some other unique advantage (like environmental advantage or some form of control over the battlefield). There's a lot you can do to make stuff interesting.
He would have the feat, but it would be inactive. But, as mentioned, you can ignore that and have it operate as you wish.
I seem to recall Flumphs having the favored class of Paladin, but can't seem to find where that was stated. Must've been a beautiful delusion. But really, Flumphs are perfect for any class and any role. Especially with a top hat.
I haven't heard of mythic drawbacks before, can you point me to some info on this? Possibly because they're actually called Mythic Flaws. Insanity was renamed Mercurial Mind.
For the mythic playtest I had a character that was part of an evil organization that had gotten hold of an artifact longbow that contained mythic power. She had been chosen to wield the artifact on behalf of the organization. Empowered by the artifact she became an extremely lethal agent of the organization, but the power was a bit too much for her. She had the insanity mythic drawback as a result. She was essentially a non-mythic character with power beyond her control. The playtest campaign was pretty short. By the campaign's end she had attempted to kill one other PC for their similar mythic artifact, who opted to destroy it instead, and ended up murdering another one after the campaign had ended. - Current campaign my paladin got her mythic power after beating the 'hell' out of Satan's Butler a few times in the defense of an innocent soul contained in a soul gem. Her deity was directly involved in the victory, however, and the implication seems to be that the deity is slowly ascending her to Goddess of the Gnomes or something along those lines. There may have been some other magical things involved, but my knowledge-less paladin hasn't found out what those things were. - The campaign I'm DMing has mythic power, though no PC has claimed it. Mythic power is an ancient power thought to be similar to the power of the Divines that has existed for the longest time, but has been lost and forgotten. Only fairly recently has it been reawakened by the threat of apocalypse. If they want to get it, they'll have to find a way to claim it.
The Slumber-loving Witch in my campaign was actually beaten by an opponent who used the Slumber Hex on her. That said Slumber-loving Witch was an elf and gave up the sleep immunity for another racial trait was... interesting, since I was not aware of that when I created the encounter. She still lives, though!
A humanoid who dies of ghoul fever rises as a ghoul at the next midnight. A humanoid who becomes a ghoul in this way retains none of the abilities it possessed in life. It is not under the control of any other ghouls, but it hungers for the flesh of the living and behaves like a normal ghoul in all respects. A humanoid of 4 Hit Dice or more rises as a ghast. Now, if I'm understanding zombie movies right, the correct course of action is to conceal the sickness until he turns at the worst possible moment to infect everyone else. If you can get him to leave a series of journal entries documenting his slow transformation and the ignorance of the group, all the better. Best case scenario, your horrible ghoulish selves will make a great encounter for the next party coming through.
My campaign has had the party, (three neutral, one vaguely good, one vaguely evil, overall quite grey), fight LG opponents on a few occasions thus far. The first was in a nonlethal tournament which had some paladins partaking in the festivities. The good Summoner had to swarm one of them with summoned cockroaches to win his match. Not exactly a clashing of ideologies, though. The second was in an assault on a farmhouse that was being used by a group of rebels the party had decided to hunt down for a bounty. The rebels were rebelling against the mostly neutral empire with a somewhat corrupt ruling class with a long history of expansionism. The party never discovered what they were doing beyond bandit-like activities on the nearby roads. Among the rebel's number were a trio of paladins who followed a God of Liberation. By the time the trio had entered the fight, the farmhouse was already on fire with some rebels dead. The neutral alchemist/ninja entered solo combat with one and after a few rounds realized what the paladin was doing to keep itself healed (lay on hands). That paladin was spared, but the other two were already dead in a large flaming melee. They're set up to possibly come into conflict with another one, this time a 'hero cop' type of guardswoman, but that is somewhat likely to be solved peacefully or avoided entirely. Heavily grey party, though, despite the good member. Might not qualify as good vs good, but it does involve good opponents.
I have a Slumber-loving Witch in my campaign. Has been quite effective in a few encounters, but I like using multiple opponents and robots, so it hasn't been overpowering. First I read about it, the hex seemed crazy, but it hasn't been bad at all. It should be noted that the listed 'Raiding Party' of Frost Giants is actually 6-12 giants, a higher level caster giant, 1-4 winter wolves and 2-3 ogres. Good luck witch!
The goofy high WBL is intentional, and challenges have increased accordingly. We recently fought off a pack of mind-controlled Wendigos. Beat up a pair of mythic earth elementals. And got chased down by a lesser Jabberwocky. At level 10! Wonky as hell, but entertaining. Antimagic field, iirc, also works to counter most mythic abilities, too.
I figured. Inverting defenses is interesting, but it seems sort of out of character for the system. But along the same thematic lines I could see an aura that makes certain bonuses into penalties. Perhaps a gremlin related to Pugwampi, (the one with the aura of unluck). Or, similar to how a crafter can mess up a magic item, a messed up cursed construct with temporary item-cursing powers. Or some variant of a Demondand's faith-stealing strike to temporarily sever some divine class features. Or directly turning someone's bonuses against them, such as a Mirror of Opposition or similar effect. I sort of want to stat up a cursed construct template or creature now. - But if you're really into the original idea, I'd probably not put it onto a monster, but rather make it into a existing hazard. Such as ripped dimensional seam into a alternate world where everything great is terrible and everything terrible is great. Bizarro! A creature, such as the distorted arcane abomination mentioned above, could have an ability that interacts with this distortion, spreading or ceasing it at will. That could be interesting. - Well, I have been working with him. Part of the problem is system mastery. Roughly half the party is successful, like myself. The other half, however, is less successful. One had the unfortunate distinction of dying in an effortless encounter with an animated bed through a series of terrible rolls and bad decisions. The other part of the problem is that mythic has been widening the power gap between the two halves, as doing badass mythic things has led to badass mythic ascension. The less successful half of the party has had less... success doing badass mythic things. Darth has attempted to make up for this gap in other ways, though. One player is a werebear, and another was a Grave Knight for a while, for instance. It's been a colorful campaign.
I'm the paladin! For the record, I am a Gnome Paladin 11 / Mythic Guardian 2. I have 26 Fortitude, 18 Reflex and 21 Will. The deets:
Charisma based, with a hefty 28 Charisma. I had 180 HP last level. I usually hover at around 34-40 AC. I am very well geared, as the wealth level of the campaign is rather high. As mentioned, I have a +6 CHA Headband, a +5 Cloak of Resistance and some other goofy defensive items like a Ring of Blinking and an intelligent Obsessive Ring of Protection +3 (it likes to drink and hates arcane spellcasters). Other notable items are a Winged Shield, Glamoured Full Plate (usually in fancy dress form). I also have an artifact +5 keen battleaxe. And an airship. I also have Leadership. My cohort is a Gnome Paladin 8 / Stalwart Defender 1 / Mythic Guardian 1. She's STR based. My followers number around 109 in gnomes and a single half-orc. Thanks to wealth, they all retrained into PC classes, but are still mostly of noncombat use. I believe the intent is less to see me fail and more to have the others shine. ...couldn't you just willingly give up on a saving throw if moon-logic made successes failures and failures successes?
That's from 3.5, though. I don't think that line made it to Pathfinder.
Huh. My understanding that was that it could be used the following ways. Two Weapon Fighting - Used in both hands for the purposes of two weapon fighting with both ends of the weapon. Two Handed - Two handing one end of the weapon for 1.5 Strength bonus. For when you can't full attack, etc. One Handed - One handing one end of the weapon. Would allow you to use a shield with it. Or have a free hand, such as for a magus's spell combat. Which would give you similar versatility as being a two weapon fighter with two weapons, (which, with its two enchantable ends, a double weapon essentially is, with some perks/drawbacks).
I have a four-armed Tengu alchemist ninja that dual wields Nodachi in my campaign. Our interpretation, which I doubt many would share, is that she gets 1.5 STR and .75 STR on off-hand attacks, (1.5 with double slice). I believe in actuality she'd probably get full STR and half STR regardless of how many arms the weapons are actually wielded with, although she'd probably avoid improper weapon size penalties and get some superior base weapon damage for the trouble. Rather poor attack bonus when dual wielding, low hp and poor unbuffed AC, but hits like a truck, especially with sneak attacks. So far she hasn't been particularly overpowered. Most of the party members have been quite competitive so far at level 4. Having free hands for reloading crossbows or firearms is something else you could do with extra arms. I believe regardless of how many arms you have you cannot actually get more weapon attacks than a normal dual wielder, as you only have a single main-hand and single off-hand attack slot, regardless of arms. Natural attacks don't care about that, though.
Matter of preference, really. The change it damage dice probably won't matter that much, since it'll still presumably have the muscle behind the attacks. Neither the Centaur nor Lamia have claws on their humanoid bodies, as humans do not have claws. Nothing stops an Eidolon who happens to resemble them from doing so, though. I just imagine a more bestial version. Won't be able to use them with a sword occupying the hands, though.
Notably, the d20 SRD Centaurs have large weapons, even though the Pathfinder ones do not. You could make an argument for large natural attacks for a centaur-like creature. As for the damage the natural attacks do... Medium claws do d4. Large d6. Quite a few bestiary creatures alter these numbers when appropriate. But by default these values. For a lamia or centaur-like creature you could argue for large claws, but most true to the actual creature is medium.
I had a cleric who wore heavy armor and wielded a tower shield without the proficiency for either. I think I was able to get him to a -21/-26 attack bonus at level 8. It was great. Did terrible things to touch spells, but still, amazing. Man could hardly move at all. Had to bust out the Ant Haul to even move at one point. I think it was... 6 BAB - 1 Strength Penalty - 2 for a Broken weapon - 4 for weapon non-proficiency - 2 inappropriately sized weapon - 2 Tower Shield penalty - 6 Full Plate non-proficiency armor check penalty - 10 Tower Shield non-proficiency armor check penalty for... -21! I had him wielding a broken scythe in one hand for giggles. His AC was good though. I just wonder what a -21 attack bonus would look like, visually.
I played an obviously chaotic evil cleric necromancer of Urgathoa, who wore a bloodied skull mask. He was both the party's healer and tank. He picked up the separatist archetype and the healing domain and was obsessed with keeping his 'patients' alive, whether they wanted him to or not. Made him very loyal to his party. His definition of alive didn't exclude a bit of necromancy, however. Didn't come to that, though. While the party may have wanted to replace him in normal circumstances, the campaign started in the Abyss, so they didn't have very many options, especially since they reeeaaally needed a healer. An alternate incarnation of the character, who followed Velsharoon, once gave a paladin of Kelemvor an undead graft after she gave him a bit of trouble, for bonus points. - But yeah, more on topic, the problem here is not the evil, but the seeming desire to dick the party at some point. Evil can work with the average party. Maybe they're his friends. Maybe they're his safety net. Maybe he likes the cut of their jib. Maybe they have a common cause. Maybe he knows adventurers tend to make shit loads of money.
Dwarven druids are easy to justify. Caves and mountains are still nature. Druids like nature. Dwarves like caves and mountains. Dwarven druids of caves. Dwarven druids of mountains. I mean come on, Golarion dwarves even invented Stoneplate for use primarily by dwarven druids. Also, all you really need to love dwarves is the Dwarven Boulder Helmet, the weapon created for the express purpose of headbutting your enemies to death.
Farfetch'd is my spirit animal, so I understand your deep need for duck. What these fine fellows suggest is what I would do, as well.
A friend and I once played as commoners, spending what feats we had on proficiencies and the like. I forget, but I think we gave ourselves completely average stats as well. We set out to fight some goblins, looking to earn a little extra gold, since those adventurers make it look so easy. We got our asses kicked. - Your concept is interesting. The challenge would be playing something like that and still being consistently useful to your allies. I'm all for non-standard concepts, but I like making it work in a functional way.
I like gnomes. I think the only thing I've really taken from garden gnomes is that all of my gnomes have some form of head wear. Be it pointy hat, feathered beret or over-sized helmet. Gnomes are also probably the most fun to name.
I happen to be running a gnome Paladin of Shelyn in a non-PFS game. She's CHA based and tends to do quite well. The DM is a bit silly with WBL (in a fun way), so her AC and Saves are quite goofy. Especially when the foe is evil. As a gnome paladin of Shelyn, you should keep this in mind. Gnomes are natural illusionists. Do not be fooled by appearances; strive to see things (and people) as they truly are. Consider humor a form of art. Share your art. Prank. Gnomes are, physically, very mutable. Because of this, you may have a very different standard of beauty than others. Your personal image of Shelyn is probably that of a gnomish Shelyn, especially if raised among other gnomes. While gnomes are very capable of being obsessed fanatics, many take a more relaxed view of religion, and see their god as an old friend, rather than a deity to be worshiped. I'd be careful with this last one, as your DM may not agree. Gnomes are natural tricksters. A gnome paladin may not consider acts of trickery and deception dishonorable. Your goddess may not mind such things either, (being NG.) Above all... gnomes are... unique. Feel free to disregard any or all of this! Find your quirks, and play with them.
Gnomes became my favorite race. I used to avoid them because they were deformed gorilla-armed midgets in Neverwinter Nights, but I came to enjoy them quite a bit. Their brand of insanity and weirdness appeals to me. There's really nothing stopping a gnome from having normal skin and hair colors. They just happen to have a colorful range of options.
Likely. They could have maybe done the one-step rule for them, like cleric alignments and gods. A good cavalier of the Cockatrice would have a hell of a time.
This is the morality of the game. If you're not doing THAT then you're not a good character. Personal opinion does not matter there. Oh man, the eighteen billion alignment debates would have something to say about that. Oh right. We're in one. Honestly, hard to comment about the actions of a character without actually knowing the character. Alignment is a label and it doesn't tell the whole story. It seems weird that the orders don't actually have an alignment component attached to them, since actually keeping the edicts of them often requires you to be lawful, or strongly suggests a certain alignment.
Or you could go weird with it and pop out a Mongrelman. ...I sort of doubt that's what you're looking to do though!
I'd say he's within the realm of chaotic good, there. From the sound of it he's not killing out of convenience, but rather doing a bit of cowboy justice. Clearly played out as a Law vs Chaos thing. As for the Order of Sword, I'd say it's arguably alright. It's really up to you, but I'd say they didn't really 'wrong' him so much as try to murder him and his fellows with swords, not to mention the murder of that messenger. I really read the 'mercy to those who have wronged him' bit as an edict of not being a petty vengeance seeker over slights and insults not a declaration of having to show mercy to people that tried to kill you. I mean they came at him with a sword, right? Either way, the player seems to think it's right, so if you decide otherwise, I'd just let him know about it for future reference, and not hit him with any penalties for playing the character the way he thought was right for this particular incident. |