Solidchaos085's page

I hope I'm putting this in the right place.

So, I had an idea that seemed to make for a strong structure for an AP length adventure set in Absalom based on the previous seasons of PFS (specifically the factions). When I thought of this, I was inspire by Serpent's Skull (faction conflict), Hell's Rebels (organization building and management via the rebellion rules), and Kingmaker (eventual Rulership of the city, should the players desire it).

Here's what I've got, I'm still working on certain details, but I'm really just dropping this in for other to use.

Absalom adventure idea:

Grandmaster Torch was found dead in one of his hideouts. With no one to represent them in the Pathfinder Society, the Shadow Lodge breaks away once more.

The Decumverate of the Pathfinder Society were brutally murdered by the Shadow Lodge.

Lord Gyr was found dead and no one to succeed him when he died. There was a Wayfinder at the sight of his murder.

Seeking revenge, the army of Absalom accused the Pathfinder Society of killing Lord Gyr and demands that the guilty party turn themselves in.

In desperation to avoid an incident, the faction leaders of the Society turn on each other, trying to pin blame on their hated/old enemies, Cheliax on Andoran, Taldor and Qadira.

The army was not prepared for the conflict that would erupt between factions and was decimated in the crossfire. Who would have though that an entire organization of powerful adventurers would be so dangerous?

Current situation:

The major fighting has died down, but the factions still conflict with one another. Each faction's leaders have taken up residence in a different district of Absalom to direct their followers.

Cheliax is set up in the Ascendent Court, seeking to take absolute control of the slave traffic in the Coins district and later, all of Absalom. Paracountess Zarta Dralneen frequently sends her favorite "pets" on slave acquisition run in other districts. Slaves are less likely to resist order than rivals and free willed individuals.

The Sczarni are set up in the Docks, running scams and assassinations against all non-Varisians, always looking to make a profit from the conflict between other factions.

Andoran has set up in the Coins district. With no army or Pathfinders in their way, they have set about the task of freeing the slaves of Absalom, earning them many allies within the chaotic city.

The Lantern Lodge has established themselves in the Ivy District and allies themselves with Osirion for protection.

Taldor has set up in the Petals District, determined to take over the city for the glory of their nation. They frequently engage in conflict with Qadira, not wanting their age old enemies to find any weakness to take advantage of.

Qadira is set up in the Foreign Quarter, trying to wait out the other factions fighting before moving in.

The Silver Crusade has set up in the Puddles district, not minding the poor conditions there. They see the misery of those who live in the district and instinctively work to uplift the downtrodden.

The Shadow Lodge still exists in secret. They can be found all over the aqueducts of Absalom, instigating the fighting between factions by selling information of each other's actions while posing as a neutral party.

The players will be expected to side with one of these factions OR make their own organization with the intent of bringing Absalom under their own control. To do that, they'll need to earn respect by attacking other factions or performing deeds to assist the common folk. They'll also be expected to eventually learn how this whole mess began.

If you have your own two cents on how to improve this, by all means, drop an opinion. I know that this is by no means perfect and I may have some faction motivations wrong and am just operating on a single matter: the factions were using the Society to build influence in Absalom with the intention of eventually taking the city for their homelands.

I would expect at some point the Aspis Consortium would get involved (if they weren't from the beginning, dun dun dun!) I would also expect various faction leaders to eventually go nuts from the conflict and some irrational things (like attempt the Starstone test in an effort to use godlike powers against their enemies, it's a long shot, but that's how desperate some groups might get).

"Pointy end goes in the other guy." :)

"What's to understand about swish swish stab? It's a f$%@ing sword, dude. Not a fighter jet."

I can answer that, the first official pathfinder AP was council of thieves, though the first AP, Rise of the Runelords was recently redone as pathfinder. Now if they'd only convert curse of the crimson throne to pf we'd be set.

Edit: ninja'd by Liz (who has the iconic ninja as an avatar, so bonus points)

Its not like either player is evil or malicious, but the other people just really dont like your pc? For example, ally paladin choses not to lay on hands me because he thinks I'm evil (I'm not) which almost kills me (2hp from the grave). He also attacked me when I fled an encounter that, if not for gm fiat, would have been a tpk. Wat do?

Just that one part has the potential to make this a paladin hate thread, but the simple solution to this is to talk to the GM and the player on the side, see what the issue is, and if an agreement cannot be reached, request the GM to have the paladin fall for such unwarranted hostility for a non-evil entity.

Greenrager

Not gonna lie, I briefly misread that as Greenranger, and thought, do they get a dagger flute and a giant dragon robot eidolon?

I was kinda hoping the iconic arcanist would be the dwarf, as I don't think I've *ever* seen any dwarf in ANY kind of arcane role. Oh well, she's still really cool.

And yes, both her parents are alive and she had a happy home life. Can we please please PLEASE stop bringing this up in every new iconic thread now? :p

You should check out Neverwinter nights 1 expansion: shadows of undrentide, not only is there a dwarf wizard, but it's a dwarf wizard that mentors your PC and his/her three friends.

You could make a dick move and have them show up slightly before, during or just after the fight in book 2 with Isabella.

MrSin wrote:

Auxmaulous wrote:

Hama wrote:

Yes, an atheist in a setting where gods are real would be idiotic. A person who refuses to worship said powerful outsiders, however, is not.

So why discourage that style of play?

No one is discouraging it - just don't die. Or if you do die, have a God.

That sounds like incentive to me. Permadeath sounds pretty discouraging to me, and there really isn't an upside to it.

Auxmaulous wrote:

While playing a "I don't bow down to any man, or any God" has it's perks and freedom (like playing CN) there are sometimes drawbacks to that approach. This is one of them.

.....The biggest perk is probably the fact you get to roleplay who you want and make the character you want.

And that ends when the faithless PC (mechanically) runs out of juice.

So you get to do what you want (Cartman in my head) until you cannot do it anymore. No one is opposed to "roleplay who you want", if you go that route don't die and have some spare "free-from-Gods" characters as backups.

To me permadeath also sounds discouraging, luckily for us this is just a game.

"How many spare characters do you have?"

Mechromancer

Wouldn't that just be a summoner with its eidolon resembling a floating mecha torso armed with laser claws and blaster eyes?

Here's the best answer to that question, spell casting requires a FREE hand, which two weapon fighting as a rule would not allow, there's a specific magus archetype that lets you manifest a force dagger that removes this limitation.

Be it a dedicated mount or a special occasion.

Silver Dragon! :D

Let's see... if DOOMTRAIN has the 3.5e generic 55-65HD that most deities had and probably a Str of around 60-80 but only a Dex of 10 (He's a train after all), size of colossal because he's like half a mile long... Hmmm

I'd say it'd be at least 108 at a minimum assuming 65d12 HD, 60 Str, 10 Dex, and Colossal size modifier. But probably a lot higher once you actually put together all of his abilities and stats and such. I guess I could throw that together but it'd take little bit of time.

What does that say about Sabin's CMB?

It has just occurred to me that part of the problem may have been that the player considers death in Pathfinder to be a non-career ending injury. When the other players tried to convince him not to kill it he did respond "you can raise dead it afterwards if you like but I'm killing it".

I had mentioned to them that the other party I'm running through the campaign has as part of there health care system a Speak with dead and free Reincarnation offer to any citizen that is murdered. So this may've contributed to a feeling that death isn't serious. Although I have stressed that I have house ruled that there is a finite limit to the amount of times you can be brought back based on your Con score.

Okay, based on that quote alone, it sounds like this paladin has a callous disregard for the lives of others (sure, he's not slaughtering villagers, but it essentially makes him think he has free reign to kill all enemies with little regard for moral consequences, that kind of thinking makes me wonder if he should have been a paladin at all, since the act of killing still HURTS, it essentially amounts to torture to bring them back and threaten to kill them again 'because you can be ressurected later')

From Shelyn's code

Quote:

I act to prevent conflict before it blossoms.

Quote:

I accept surrender if my opponent can be redeemed—and I never assume that they cannot be.

Quote:

I lead by example, not with my blade. Where my blade passes, a life is cut short, and the world's potential for beauty is lessened.

You won't find a code for a paladin of any good alignment who OKs killing a surrendered enemy. It shouldn't even need to be written out or discussed beforehand.

Unless you're a paladin of Torag, then you slay the enemies of your people, no questions asked, no mercy given.

Frankly, I love the npc write ups, love the characterization, so does my most frequent player.
So I hope that Paizo keeps writing them, and someday make a book dedicated the major personalities of Golarion (we already have the npc guide, but could always use more)

I am running Kingmaker for two of friends. I am giving them each a squire, from one of the houses to add political intrigue later, 25 point buy, and starting them at 2nd.

I would just like some notes from anyone else that has done this or other GMs that have ran this adventure. I am also relatively new to GMing but have been a player for over 15 years.

Thanks!

Well, the two players may need extra NPCs to fill the kingdom roles, tho the AP provides those. One of my favorite things to do was add extra explorers to the Greenbelt, with their own charters. Sometimes these characters would ally themselves with the party, other times they wouldn't want the competition and would demand the map the party made so far, attacking them if they refused (this was for a game between just me and my GF)

Something that just popped into my head:

If you choose a god whose favored weapon normally does 2d6, you don't get that damage until 15th level under the current system.

Why? The moment you select Weapon Focus in that weapon, your 1st level Warpriest is wielding a 1d6 weapon, because that portion of Sacred Weapon isn't denoted in the text as optional. It simply says that by taking Weapon Focus, that type of weapon becomes sacred, and deals damage based on your level.

Not certain if I like that, personally. It obviously helps out Warpriests of Pharasma, but it also means that by choosing a deity with a more powerful favored weapon you penalize yourself for a number of levels, until the normalized weapon damage 'catches up'.

[edit]
Am I late to the party realizing that? :P Somehow I'd bet I am.

Excerpt from the book, last paragraph of Sacred Weapon:

In addition, the warpriest sacred weapon damage is
based on his level and not the weapon type. The damage
for Medium warpriests is listed on Table 1–13; see the
table below for Small and Large warpriests. If the weapon
normally deals more damage than this, its damage is
unchanged. This increase in damage does not affect any
other aspect of the weapon. The warpriest can decide
to use the weapon’s base damage instead of the sacred
weapon damage—this must be declared before the attack
roll is made.

Edit
Well, last paragraph before the table :P

Solidchaos085 wrote:

First off: LOVE the update

But I'm going to have throw my hat into the "sacred weapon damage should only apply to the deity's favored weapon" camp, as it is, there's too much potential for players to select weapons like the scimitar for the high crit range. It'll probably send more players into being Sarenrae warpriests, and that's fine, I'm more for flavor anyway (the fact that this helps control the potential abuse of ANY weapon focus is a plus)

Absolutely not, as that would kill a lot of the appeal. However, for the sake of balance, what if the Sacred Weapon provided a crit range and multiplier of its own?

If I may, the appeal of the class was it's increased dpr with sacred weapon, as it was mentioned, some deities wouldn't even HAVE warpriests so the argument about weapon choice could very well mean nothing if that deity doesn't have the class in the first place (Shelyn comes to mind, possibly Erastil too)

I understand that some players like choice, but I see this as a role playing game, sometimes you must sacrifice choice for what makes sense in the setting. I could see an archetype that allows you to choose any (and if that doesn't appeal, there is the option to not follow a deity and choose your own blessings AND sacred weapon)

First off: LOVE the update
But I'm going to have throw my hat into the "sacred weapon damage should only apply to the deity's favored weapon" camp, as it is, there's too much potential for players to select weapons like the scimitar for the high crit range. It'll probably send more players into being Sarenrae warpriests, and that's fine, I'm more for flavor anyway (the fact that this helps control the potential abuse of ANY weapon focus is a plus)

I personally second the "apprentice to Shalelu" suggestion, if you're willing, you could take it further by allowing that player to take the Jade Regent campaign trait: Student Survivalist that binds them to Shalelu.

If you can wait, I would suggest saving their rising to Mythic status as part of completing the ritual at the end of the second book. It's the first really impressive moment after all, and their mythic power becomes something they've earned for themselves. Getting it in book one would probably feel a bit rushed and maybe anticlimactic.

I can't really see Thorn giving minions Mythic power, after all, or imagine Asmodeus just handing it out to the members of the Knots just because they signed on with Thorn.

True, but I meant it in a symbolic sense, the ninth knot was (as Thorn planned it) meant to be the most elite and capable of the knots. Extra bonus for the ninth of nine, with Asmodeus ruling the ninth level of hell.

I'm surprised no one's pegged Terra and Vincent's transformations as Synthesist Summoner (in Terra's case, with heavy magic evolutions. In Vincent's as heavy physical)

So I hope to eventually start this AP after wrapping up others and I researched the books ahead of time and had a question: the Gorilla King is clearly listed as an animal creature, yet has higher than 2 Int (making him a magical beast).

But I also know his history, given his true heritage, would human qualify? I fully expect my players to have at least one ranger in there group given the strong survival themes of the AP.