Spawn of Rovagug's page

I had a situation come up in the game I ran today where the party wizard with a penchant for Craft: Alchemy used 5 gp worth of gold to boost the spell Infernal Healing with the intent that it would add one to the total hit points healed per round with fast healing 1, effectively doubling the healing power of his spell, for 20 hp of damage healed. I was unsure if that was the authors and game designers intent and couldn't find any clarifications, so I house-ruled that it only added +1 hit point to the total healed over the course of that minute (for a total of 11 hp) with the proviso that I'd look into finding a clarification.

However, after game I've looked through several of my books including the Adventurer's Armory and the Alchemy Manual and can't find anything that helps clear up this nebulous region of rules interactions. As I can see how a ruling one way or the other could have a significant impact upon how much or how little of his resources the wizards devotes to Alchemical Power Components, I'm hoping someone on these boards knows the answer.

Any help or clarification would be most appreciated. :)

Yesterday I went to go check up on what was shipping for my next subscription total and discovered that there nothing listed. I checked again just a few minutes ago and still the same thing - I'm still subscribed, there is just nothing listed for my next subscription shipment. Help?

I'm currently GMing a game where one of the players (who is playing a wizard) informed me of a potentially unbalancing (yet clever) way of getting wishes on a daily basis at 11th level: take the True Name Arcane Discovery and summon forth an Effrit to dole out wishes whenever the character wants.

Looking at the wording it's clear the True Name acts as a Planar Binding spell, so while the player was expecting to get 3 wishes a day I realized after the first service was completed (the first wish granted) it could immediately return to where it came from. I feel reasonably justified in curtailing the number of wishes granted to one.

However, I dislike the entire idea of an 11th level wizard with a daily wish-granting servitor, though I think the route to doing so is clever and don't want to say no just out of hand. Ingenuity should be rewarded... but abuse should be curtailed.

If the player decides to go through with the daily wish-a-thon I want to make him seriously regret trying to blackmail an Effrit so I ask my fellow GM's and players: Do any of you have any ideas or advice on how an Effrit might plan and prepare to gain revenge upon his tormentor? Could the Effrit eventually change it's true name, and if so, how? What sort of plan might an Effrit exact to free itself from the one who knows it's true name? Murder, or something more heinous?

Last week I slipped in a Pathfinder RPG subscription onto my order at the last minute so I could get the Mythic Adventures pdf, and yesterday I received the email notice that my order is shipping, but alas, there is no Mythic Adventures pdf. Help?

Ok, Thassilon question time:

Looking at the map in the Inner Sea World Guide on Page 213 of the Lost Empires of Golarion, it appears that Haruka, the domain of the Runelord of Sloth, contains the the pyramid of Sorshen of Eurythnia (aka Korvosa). Is this an obvious error or is there some interesting territorial-dispute story there? I only noticed this because I was trying to identify in which domain the valley of Mundatei lay (it appears to be on the borders of Haruka and Shalast) for an upcoming side-quest for my campaign.

I ran a side-quest for my campaign yesterday where the characters left Sandpoint to go hunt down the Sandpoint Devil within the Pit on Devil's Platter. Sad to say, the Devil left the party with two fatalities and a serious maiming (the character lost his right arm - he was killed, but had 2 hero points to spend to survive).

And so the Legend of the Sandpoint Devil grows...

Going through the WoP section in UM, I noticed that all of the Healing effects have a Target Restriction of Personal on them; is this correct? If so, it radically weakens the Healing effects and makes a wordspell of Soothing Touch near worthless ("I can only stabilize myself when I'm dying, yet I have to be conscious in order to cast a spell..."). I also noticed this Target Restriction on the Life effect of Purify. Is this correct as well?

In RotRL #1, in the Thassilon chapter, it gives each of the domains of Thassilon a brief summary, and under the Edasseril heading it claims that Xin-Edasseril has been gutted in modern times for the stone in order to build the city of Melesa nearby. Yet having looked at numerous maps of Varisia (including THE MAP of the Inner Sea) I can't find any listing of Melesa anywhere.

Am I missing something or is this an oversight on the part of the various authors?

I'm currently running a RotRL campaign and having received Ultimate Magic, I immediately took a liking to the Words of Power chapter (which could have something to do with my love of Ars Magica's magic system) and want to incorporate it into my campaign. So I'm throwing this out there to others who are interested in the Words of Power rules and have played/are playing/have read RotRL for their input and/or ideas.

My first thought is to incorporate the new magic system as a deeper understanding of the Thassalonian runes of power developed by Old Xin and later expanded upon and codified by his Runelords. The runes themselves are described as derived from the language of creation, so I figure it's a perfect mesh for the campaign. I mean, if inscribing runes upon the flesh can alter a person's lifeforce (i.e. Inscribe Rune feat), what might speaking them in the proper sequence and intonation do?

Yet the language itself presents a hurdle in that it is a dead, three part construct based upon positive, neutral and negative symbols, so the chances of a modern speaker actually being able to utilize it are next to nil. So this brings up a problem: How do the casters in the group have the chance to learn it and utilize it?

I figure they need a primer or two and a good dictionary, or someone fluent in spoken Thassalonian to instruct them; luckily, the campaign gives me both at the Therrasic Library with the Clockwork Librarian and the volumes of lore housed there.

However, I'm not sure when to actually incorporate it into the campaign and the additional question of how much to give my players. Here's my initial thought on how I might handle that:

I figure the library will be a good time to hint at the system and to field test it in my campaign by giving Mokmurian a few words to play around with instead of spells. In the library itself the casters could uncover some of the basic words and maybe a low-level effect word, and learn from the Clockwork Librarian how to pronounce (use) them properly, yet I'm thinking that Runeforge would be where the real trove of rune magic lies.

My idea is that within Runeforge a truer understanding of the spoken rune could be found among the Lords of Sin lab notes. I'm thinking I could scatter different types of words among the various labs of Runeforge, matching their primordial sin (and/or school) with the most appropriate area for it to be found in (Death effects among the Ravenous Crypts, Concealing effects among the Shimmering Veils, etc.). Yet I'm also thinking that some of the more exotic stuff (Gravity, Time, Power effects) can only be found in Xin-Shalast; specifically, I'm thinking at the Pinnacle of Avarice, where Leng seeps down into this dimension and space/time is corrupted.

This is just my first thought of how to incorporate this new system of magic into the RotRL campaign, but if anyone else has any idea or comments on it, I'd love to hear them. It helps stimulate my imagination when I see it from different angles.

Being a long-time fan of the Cthulhu Mythos, I'm curious how many other GM's out there incorporate the monsters and dark lore concerning it into their own games and to what extent?