Summon Monster VI's page

Here is the group I'm running Jade Regent for:

M half Varisian bladebound magus (childhood crush on Shalelu)
He is the son of a Curse of the Crimson Throne PC, who was in turn the son of a Council of Thieves PC, all played by different players. The blade is actually Kazavon sealed inside a weapon, now guarded by his family should he ever try to resurrect himself again.

M half-orc cleric of Cayden Cailean (Shalelu is a friend of the family)
The grandson of a Second Darkness PC and Sama'ritha Belldusk. Shalelu fought beside his grandfather in Second Darkness, and has been a long time friend of the family.

M elf Houndmaster Cavalier (friend to Koya's family)
He was a friend of Koya's mother, and promised her that should Koya ever get to go on her grand adventure, he would accompany her.

M Varisian martial artist monk (younger sibling of Sandru)
He has past Sczarni ties, and doesn't get along with his older brother Sandru at all.

M Tien wood wizard (younger sibling of Ameiko)
He lives outside Sandpoint as somewhat of a hermit, his only real tie being his older sister Ameiko.

I purposefully requested that at least one person claim each of the major NPCs with a trait so that all of them would be integrated into the party.

The last thing is what Paizo has said before a few times. Mooks serve to make us shine more

It's weird since my group feels the exact opposite. Everyone at my table only feels like they're really shining when they defeat a monster who is actually there to challenge us. My group doesn't like to waste time fighting low CR monsters because we already know that we're going to win easily no matter what we do.

I'm not saying that everything needs to be a boss fight, it's just not fun for us when the monsters are too weak to pose any sort of threat at all. The other trap that mook-centric modules fall into is making us fight the same low CR encounter multiple times.

Generally, I feel that every encounter in a module should be different from every other encounter in that module (if not different creatures then at least different class levels or different tactics), and that all of the encounters should be CR appropriate. Otherwise combat becomes grindy and boring.

Good stories and fun modules to play aren't always one and the same. If a particular story only makes sense with a ton of mooks, then maybe it isn't a good choice to make into an adventure. Maybe it's possible for the bad guy to have mooks, but not bring them up in actual gameplay. The story could be written to be a stealth mission where the party gets to avoid the implied mooks.

My group gets really crafty with avoiding these types of encounters when we have a feeling that they're coming. We love it when a module gives us a portable hole because we can stuff all but the stealthiest party member inside, make the stealthy person invisible, and have him sneak us to the next encounter that is something new. Or I shouldn't really say that we love it. We actually kind of hate it when we need to resort to that.

One thing that would really kinda help as well would be for folks to actually list specific adventures that they felt DID avoid having a "grindy" feel to them. Or alternatively, tell me what adventure AUTHORS you think did a great job handling the pacing of the adventure and its encounters.

I'm part of Ice Titan's group and read his forum posts. I saw this and decided I wanted to comment because this is something we talk about a lot at our table. I'm also his DM who ran Kingmaker for him but got burnt out part way through and conned him into finishing it for me (I quit because of the Niel Spicer book, but Ice Titan has already summed up my thoughts about that much more eloquently than I can).

Combat is actually my least favorite part of the game because it can get repetitive easily. However, I do enjoy combats that are very important to the story and ones where there is a lot at stake. I also like secondary objectives like having to protect or rescue an NPC or something while we fight. I like it when new things I wasn't expecting happen so it doesn't feel like just rolling dice over and over until we can get back to the story. My favorite part about stopping the execution in Edge of Anarchy was actually all of the planning we did beforehand to make everything go smoothly. I like when encounters have a gimmick to make them feel less hack and slash. Mook fights are never fun. They feel like they're only in the game to take up space and waste time. We always wonder why we're fighting these crappy random guys instead of people who matter. It's fun when we beat a difficult encounter because we played intelligently, not when we stomp all over the monsters because they're actually not challenging enough for us to be fighting.

Modules that have us fighting the same or very similar creatures over and over feel grindy. City of Seven Spears was super grindy because every session we fought some trivial low cr monsters on top of a ziggurat. Fighting serpentfolk over and over again later in the AP was annoying too. Changing the class levels of a creature usually helps vary them up enough to where it doesn't feel like you're using the same encounter over and over again. It was different with the serpentfolk because they have absolutely infuriating racial bonuses. The alchemist won pretty much every encounter for us because he only had to hit touch AC. Everybody else just got mad because the game was putting us up against these creatures we couldn't hit reliably because whoever designed the modules chose not to put the amount of treasure we needed in the game for us to be able to hit them. The DM who ran it for us, while a cool guy, was not a fan of editing the modules to be more playable, so we had to suffer books 3, 5, and 6 in most of their full glory. Way too many of the same/similar encounters over and over.

In general I love investigating, puzzles, mysteries, having to plan things out, knowing who the villain is early on, side "games" for lack of a better word (like the play in Sixfold Trial), strong story (I honestly don't care if it's a railroad or not, I just want a good story). Kingmaker didn't have a story so it was boring for me to run. I understand that the point was for the PCs to make their own story, but it just wasn't an interesting way to play for us.

Here are my favorite books (in no particular order) and why:
Haunting of Harrowstone - We're not done playing it yet, but so far it's been great. I really like all of the investigating and mystery.
Shadow in the Sky - Working for Saul Vancaskerkin and getting screwed over by him and stuff was fun. I liked that there were casino games at the beginning for us to play too while the PCs met each other. Leaving Riddleport and never coming back after this book was disappointing though.
The Sixfold Trial - The play was awesome. I absolutely loved getting to act it out.
Souls for Smuggler's Shiv - We had a lot of fun exploring the island. We felt very Indiana Jones.
Edge of Anarchy - My favorite part was crashing the execution. It felt very dramatic and we put a lot if planning into it. I also liked that somebody we met in the first book turned out to be the BBEG instead of us meeting them for the first time in the last book. Most of the rest of the AP was very cool too, though I know my DM changed some things to make the weaker parts of the AP more fun. If I had to pick a favorite AP as a whole, it would definitely be Curse of the Crimson Throne.

I expect the impact on the game to be minimal, maybe even slightly beneficial since it gives me an easy way to tell my PCs the contents of Vordakai's notes. I can guarantee that my whole table will get a lot of laughs out of this random choice of a silly language actually turning out useful.

Maybe that makes it worth it. This player wanting Cyclopes as a language was just so out of the blue and unprecedented that I was wondering why it was even an option or if it should even be allowed. I think he plans to take the language for his eidolon too so they can have a secret language together and write all of his journals in it too so he can roleplay how paranoid his character is about anybody reading his stuff.

I discussed the rarity of this language with him and told him that he better give me a really fantastic reason for how his character learned it, so I guess I'll see what he comes up with.

One of my players plans to switch characters after the party defeats the giant owlbear at the end of Rivers Run Red next session. He uses a character builder program and while building his new character (a summoner) he noticed the Cyclopes language among his options and decided that he must have it because of how ridiculous it was. Unknown to him is that Cyclopes is actually a relevant language in the next module, The Varnhold Vanishing.

Does it make any sense for a PC to have this language? Even in a world where people can learn the languages of angels, devils, elementals, and all kinds of other crazy creatures, I feel like this might be stretching it a bit for some reason. It could be that I'm just reluctant to allow it because it's almost too perfect to be coincidence (even though I'm sure it is) :|

My players actually kind of solved this by making another town in their kingdom where they put all the unsavory places like brothels, jails, black markets, etc to keep it all out of their capital, Staghaven.

Now the funny part is that they chose Oleg's Trading Post as the place to found this town. Before they decided what they were going to do with the town, I had Oleg not so humbly suggest Olegton for the name as the module suggests, but my PCs decided that his wife Svetlana deserved a town named after her more, and thus Svetlanaville was born. Nothing good ever happens in Svetlanaville :(

She's such a nice lady too! It was really unfortunate for her that her town just happened to be the best place to build these things at the time.

In the next campaign I'm playing in, each of the PCs is supposed to be some kind of specialist called in for a job Ocean's 11 style. I want to play a shapeshifting specialist who uses transmutation spells for disguise and out of combat utility purposes. The idea is to take every shapeshift spell I possibly can (alter self, beast shape, elemental body, plant shape, form of the dragon, giant form, the works) so I have a very wide variety of things to turn into to fit the situation at hand.

Is there any way to make this at all combat viable using only core Pathfinder materials? I was a big fan of the Master of Many Forms class in 3.5, but never really got to play one in a serious campaign so I guess I'm trying to recreate that as much as possible with Pathfinder.

The two options I see are either an aberrant bloodline sorcerer or a transmutation wizard. I was leaning more towards the sorcerer because I tend to dislike prepared casters and also really like the idea of being able to turn into whatever I need on the fly. The wizard, however, has a huge advantage in that he doesn't end up with a bunch of disappointing spell slots when he gets higher ranks of the spells since a sorcerer can't unlearn enough spells as he levels to ditch all the lower ranks as he gains levels and thus ends up with a lot of redundant spells known. Not to mention that he gets bonuses to physical stats. Druid is out since they're limited to animals, magical beasts, elementals, and plants and don't gain a thousand faces until 13th level (not only is that very late to get to turn into other humanoids, but the game is planned to end at 12th level).

Is there anything brilliant I'm missing here that would make this work better? Is wizard the only real option? I'd much prefer to be a spontaneous caster, but I'll consider all options for the sake of the rest of the party.

Brown or polar bear
Mountain goat
Snow leopard
Arctic fox
Walrus
Pseudo dragon
Griffon
Owlbear
Hawk and/or Falcon
Mammoth
Woolly Rhinoceros
Wolverine
Maybe giant octopus or squid or something to get more sea creatures on the list?
Caribou
Snowy Owl

I think that's all I've got for now.

I'm kind of worried about my players murdering all of the kobolds too, but before I start running the AP I plan to drop them some serious hints about how there are creatures that may initially seem hostile that there is a much more diplomatic and interesting solution to (kobolds, faerie dragon/grig, Akiros, etc) and that this game is ultimately a sandbox with many possibilities, some of which will be much more fun than others if they don't murder everything in sight. I guess I'm basically going to let them know that it's ultimately up to them whether this AP turns out awesome for them or turns into a crappy meat-grinder and ask them to please not poop in the sandbox because that will make it much less fun to play in for them and for me. I hope that if I set the tone that there is potential to make friends in unlikely places, they'll be more likely to befriend the kobolds.

That said, I'm personally hoping that instead of out-right evicting the Sootscales, my players will get the idea to invite them to be a part of their kingdom. Am I the only one who thinks it would be great if the PCs put Chief Sootscale in one of the leadership positions in the next module? I like Akiros too and think he'd maybe make a cool adviser or something as well. If I end up with a "spam detect evil and never compromise" type character, I'll just change them to a neutral tribe. I think it's silly that all kobolds are apparently evil anyways.

I'm actually about to play a neutral aasimar in a Curse of the Crimson Throne game starting very soon. The same party also has a good tiefling in it.

The fun part is that my dm wanted to power us down slightly so he used the variant tiefling rules in the first part of Council of Thieves for both of us. I forget what the tiefling rolled, but my aasimar ended up with the ability to be healed by both positive and negative energy (would be kind of disappointing normally, but we actually happen to also have a negative energy cleric in the party) and no shadow.

It sounded silly at first and I kind of wanted to reroll for something I could re-flavor to sound more good aligned, but my dm believed in my ability to make it work somehow. I eventually had the idea that my celestial ancestor was actually a servant of Pharasma, which had these two effects on him/her that they also passed on to me.

Alright, here is where things started to go downhill. Thankfully, my players went easy on me.

At this point, everybody besides Mr. Crane was at home, either in bed or getting ready for bed. Then they began to hear the sounds of combat outside. Ichigo and Huck tied for the highest perception roll, so I placed the first two enemies in a place where both of them could see the them if they stepped outside their houses. They were the elf-like creatures I mentioned above and had an unnamed villager cornered with their short swords. Ichigo's player (our usual DM) kept going through misinterpretations of the situation on purpose to guide me into giving some more appropriate details. In order to make it not look like a mugging I ended up adding that they could hear more sounds of chaos throughout the town and that a nearby building was on fire. At that, Ichigo decided to help out the villager.

I originally intended to set up 3 small combats on the map individually for them to fight one at a time, but my players pushed me to let them know where else these invaders were causing trouble so I went ahead and placed all 3 battles on the map. They were able to down all 3 groups at once by just attacking whichever ones were closest to the building they happened to be in because I made them level 1 warriors with unoptimized stats, no feat or racial modifiers, and a one handed weapon (since I was throwing so many enemies at them at once I built them a little over cautiously and underestimated my players ability to fight intelligently and destroy) The only character who ended up significantly wounded was Chyuu, so after her original enemy was down she decided to go help put out the fire while the rest of the group finished up the combat. I could have easily killed her character because she ran by herself into a group of two. When she decided to fight them, I decided they were both attempting to beat a door down and only had one of them turn to fight her while the other one continued with the door.

In the end, Ichigo and Huck finished the original encounter of 2 by themselves. Huck went to assist Chyuu with her 2 and they defeated one each. Mr. Crane and Archimedes were the first to take on a group of 3, but were shortly joined by Ichigo and then Huck while Chyuu started putting out fires. After the battle there was an earthquake (Mr. Crane immediately dropped to the ground). Then, the town elder came running out of his home in typical "the sky is falling" fashion and said that the earthquake could only be connected to a breach in the shrine of the wind and that the attack must have been a distraction. My players were kind to me even though my story made little sense and decided to go investigate.

This is when it started to become blatantly obvious that loosely outlining the events I had planned, but failing to come up with a means for them to happen that made sense beforehand just wasn't going to work for me. The hook was poorly executed and the story only gets worse from here as my players investigate the wind shrine.

After we had this day of roleplay and things were starting to slow down, I said that the sun was going down, which prompted most of the characters to go home, with two exceptions.

Mr. Crane had been busy at Doc Brown's house for hours discussing business with him about producing more robots like Archimedes (Huck met Archimedes for the first time on Mr. Crane's porch and when asked where the robot came from, Mr. Crane successfully lied about being the builder. Huck decided that he must have his very own robot like it. After finding out the truth from Ichigo, Mr. Crane felt this was a good business opportunity and told Huck he would get back to him with an estimated price and time frame.) So, every time I cut to what Mr. Crane was doing, he brought up several more variables, which Doc Brown did some very complex math over. I kept throwing arbitrary numbers in years and thousands of gold at him as he kept trying to think of more variables to make it more cost efficient and faster to mass produce. This is actually convenient for me that they're taking this kind of interest in him because I had already wanted to include a side-quest where the players help Doc Brown expand his business to another town later (I work in retail and wanted an excuse to roleplay out some of the awful customers I've had, which I hope my players will get a kick out of) It also gave me a few story ideas for later that I won't mention yet as a couple of my players read these forums.

The other person who didn't go to bed right away is Huck. He was part of the crowd around Felix earlier that day when he was showing off his newest magical artifact find, the harp that summons Chyuu (she had just arrived so I immediately cut to her entrance so she could play too) In addition to deciding he wanted a robot after seeing Archimedes, he also decided that he must have this harp. After everybody went home, Huck broke into Felix's house, but he and Chyuu were not asleep yet. Huck climbed on the roof and Chyuu followed him, but decided it wasn't worth pursuing him further after he jumped over to the next roof.

Next up: I tried to move the story along and completely botched it, but my players forgave me.

I don't think you need to go so far as to envision custom-built warforged bards - they were built for war, so most of the non-combat classed warforged are either fairly new (and built in illegal forges) or have multiclassed into those professions. The flute thing is more of a joke than a serious consideration - and a bard doesn't have to sound wonderful to produce his or her magical effects ;)

That's all Eberron fluff though. In a custom setting I tend to take a lot of creative liberties with how things came to be and generally work. In the game I'm running now, nobody even calls the warforged character a warforged. The guy who built him just thinks of him as a sentient robot, one of the other PCs has nicknamed him "Frying Pan," and we all crack jokes about how he can make toast. One of the characters was trying to explain to someone else what exactly the warforged character was and he said that it's something that the NPC seems to have built out of some pots and an old stove. Of course he doesn't actually look that haphazardly put together, but it goes to show that in this world he's not just a warforged, he is something wonderful and mysterious that nobody short of a mad scientist like the guy who built him will ever fully understand. The name "warforged" only applies in the sense that it's the race we used to create this unique character.

I always picture warforged as being custom built to be whatever class they're going to be. I imagine a warforged bard who uses wind instruments as having the required number of smaller, more dexterous fingers, and some kind of built in mechanism that blows out steam for him to play his instrument with. That or maybe mechanical lungs that he only uses to play the flute or whatever.

I kind of want to try a warforged druid who turns into robot versions of animals sometime.

Warforged:
+2 con, +2 int, -2 cha
Medium
Base speed: 30ft
Living Construct type
Composite Plating: +2 armor bonus, upgradable at any level by a specialist at the cost of a feat, money, kittens, whatever is appropriate for your game (see Mithral and Adamantite Body), occupies the body slot, enchant-able, arcane spell failure as if wearing light armor
Automatic languages: Common

I was thinking maybe +1 hp/level or the toughness feat would round it out nicely, but they're already immune to so many things they're probably fine without :<

I've decided that before I can accurately balance this race I need to make clear my Pathfinderized living construct type.

Living construct traits:
—Living constructs have both low-light vision and darkvision.
-Living constructs are immune to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, disease, nausea, fatigue, exhaustion, energy drain, and the sickened condition.
—Living constructs cannot heal damage naturally and receive only half the normal effect from healing spells and supernatural abilities that cure hit point damage or ability damage, however they receive the full benefit from spells such as the repair damage line of spells.
—Living constructs are affected by heat metal and chill metal as if they are wearing metal armor. They are also affected by repel metal or stone, repel wood, and rusting grasp, but not spells such as stone to flesh, stone shape, warp wood, and wood shape as they affect objects only.
—Living constructs with 0 hit points do not risk further injury from strenuous activity. When their hit points are less than 0 but greater than their –con score, they are inert, unconscious, and helpless, and cannot perform any actions, but do not lose additional hit points unless more damage is dealt to them.
—Living constructs do not need to eat, sleep, or breathe, but can still benefit from the effects of consumable spells and magic items such as heroes’ feast and potions, and living construct spell casters must still rest for 8 hours before preparing spells.

Oh, we both know he can drink potions and I never plan to keep him from doing that, he just really liked the idea of giving his character more of a robot flavor by changing up the descriptors for his alchemy. It doesn't affect the rules in any way and puts an interesting spin on the class so I don't mind.

The reason I picked charisma is because a lot of people might find it strange to talk to what is essentially a sentient robot. I hadn't even considered them in my setting until the player expressed interest in playing one, so they're not exactly common but I found a way to accommodate his character anyways. I opened the game with another player helping the village tinkerer put the final touches on building the warforged character. He's been roleplaying having to learn the rules of society and such really well. In this way I guess either penalty would make sense as you can explain some of his socially awkward behavior as low charisma or low wisdom or some combination of the two. I picked charisma this time because it seemed to highlight how being a warforged affects his interactions more with other people who find him strange. He's not exactly going to be the party's diplomat.

I didn't want to give him two penalties because I wanted to make it as in line with the rest of the Pathfinder races as possible. I already consider the Composite Plating to be more of a detriment than a benefit since it limits him so much (which is why I'm willing to let him upgrade later anyways), and he's losing his Light Fortification as a result of changes to the construct type that we decided would only logically pass down to the living construct type. Furthermore, the slam attack he gets is going to be mostly useless for him as well. Adding any further penalties would be a bit harsh and I actually feel that I should be giving him something extra, hence why I'm considering low-light and/or dark vision.

The character in question is actually an alchemist, so he's only proficient with light armor. I might have allowed it if he was a class that wore heavier armor right from the start, but for him I think I'd rather just allow him to upgrade his parts later to keep him more in line with the rest of the party. He thought the trade off of having to wait a little while for it, but not having to spend a feat on it was worth it.

Also, if you're thinking that warforged alchemist makes zero sense, he decided to flavor his potions and such as being small gears and parts he carries around with him that he uses to temporarily change his mechanics. I also added the "Repair" line of spells to the formulae list for him.

I'm sure it's been done before, but here is what I changed when one of my players wanted to have a warforged character:

+2 Str, +2 Con, -2 Cha. I know it goes against the usual pattern of a + to each a physical and a mental stat, but this just seemed to fit better.

Light Fortification is also obsolete in Pathfinder due to constructs not being crit immune anymore so I removed this feature. This is also why I didn't feel guilty about giving him bonuses to two physical stats.

I left everything else as written.

I also decided that I didn't want him to have the Mithral Body feat (Eberron Campaign Setting) at 1st level (which is technically a 1st level only feat) but I promised him that I'd find a way to upgrade him with something like it later in the adventure when the rest of the party starts getting magical armor.

I'm thinking about giving him low-light or dark vision or something to make up for the loss of Light Fortification. Thoughts?

I originally introduced Ichigo and Archimedes by having Ichigo help Doc Brown lift the final parts so he could bolt them on, after which Doc Brown asked Ichigo to take Archimedes with him around town for a bit. I had Ichigo's sister Mia find them outside and suggest that they go show grandpa. Enter Mr. Crane. They knocked on his door and he immediately asked if they brought him his oranges through the door. Rather than risk his wrath, they decided to go find some before entering.

I decided that where they found some was next to the building Huck happened to be in and I gave him a perception check to see a robot giving a teenager a boost up to pick some oranges. I was a little vague, but Huck assumed he was in Sheena's house (lady he has been staying with). He also assumed that the orange trees belonged to her (I actually didn't mean for it to be that way, but I decided to run with it). Huck called Sheena over because some kids were stealing her oranges, but by the time she got to the window, Archimedes had decided that it would be easier to just uproot the entire tree and bring the whole thing to Mr. Crane. I have no clue what the DC to pull a tree out of the ground would be, but they were having fun and it had little impact on the game itself so I just let it happen.

Huck asked Sheena for some money intending to go to the bar. I rolled poorly on her sense motive and since she's so naive I figured she's probably got negatives to the skill anyways (didn't actually have her stated out, but it made sense) so she assumed that he had a plan to get her tree back. He saw the tree thieves down the street on Mr. Crane's porch and began walking towards them. Mr. Crane told his grandson to put the tree back and after accidentally covering his porch in leaves and squished oranges, they did just that (Sheena will of course assume that Huck managed to get it back for her).

Chyuu's player arrived a bit late due to a convention, which is why she wasn't involved in these initial shenanigans. I'm glad my players enjoyed playing like this for a little while to set the tone and establish their characters before the action started. It also gave me some time to get used to being in the DM chair. I've got another story or two like this before I had the town get attacked and started introducing plot elements. I might type up what happened, but I executed it poorly so it's a trash story so far. I'm thinking I might just have everything that happened after this day of roleplay be a nightmare and start again when the characters wake up in the morning with a (hopefully) better story for them.

On second thought, it might be better to just summarize and highlight a few notable moments instead of the massive play by play I had typed out earlier anyways.

I started the game with a (slightly) normal day in town and actually got a lot of great roleplay between my players. Our typical games don't generally have much free roleplay time in them, but my players seemed to enjoy goofing off with each other in town to establish their characters before the action started.

Of all the NPCs I mentioned, I think only two of them are actually worth mentioning. I normally have a slightly hard time exerting my own character's personality when I'm just playing instead of DMing, but for some reason I had how Doc Brown acts completely nailed down. He's eccentric, avoids danger, and solves everyday problems with super complex mathematical equations. I had him put the finishing touches on Archimedes at the beginning of the session with help from Ichigo to lift a heavy part. While Archimedes was following Ichigo around town, there was one point where he was showing off what he could do to Mr. Crane and actually tossed a bomb in town. There wasn't any terrible damage aside from a smoking hole in the ground, but it drew a bit of a crowd. Doc Brown, knowing full well what the source of the explosion was, attempted to diffuse the crowd by insisting that it must have been a cat. Later, after I had the town attacked by a race I made of elf like humanoids with some slight reptile traits, Doc Brown hid under the desk in his house until the PCs fought them off, then came out with his crossbow and rusty sword pretending he was just about to help. He coughs a lot on purpose and complains about his hips and such to make himself seem more old and incapable than he actually is.

The other NPC that didn't turn out completely 2-dimensional in the end is Felix. He has lived in town for a few months and occasionally comes across interesting magical artifacts. I introduced him by having him show off his newest find, the harp that summons Chyuu. I made him intending for him to travel with the party, but serving no combat role and having little to no bearing on where the PCs go or what they do (definitely trying to avoid making him a DMPC). I have some plans for him story wise for later, but for now he serves two purposes for me. One, he is the one with the harp and gives Chyuu a friendly NPC to interact with. Two, I plan to include a bunch of puzzles in this campaign and Felix will be how I deliver small hints to the players to move things along if they get stumped. The first "dungeon" was, surprise, the wind shrine, although it was probably the shortest dungeon I've ever seen. When I had Felix offer to go with, the players said they weren't interested in bringing this flat character with them for no reason, so I started personifying him like Professor Layton and they decided that made him cool enough to come with. I also conceded that he was missing two fingers on one hand since one of my players happened to have an old Warhammer Fantasy character named Felix who lost those two fingers.

Next I want to talk about some of the things my players did and how I reacted.

Thanks for the advice! I spent about an hour typing up the first half of my session, but I made the mistake of assuming that the submit button would submit my post instead of taking me to the store blog, leaving no evidence of my work. I'll get my story up as soon as I can work up the will to type it all again :|

I just DMed my first real session last night. I personally feel that I did an awful job, but my players said they had fun and are willing to work with me while I improve my technique. I'm going to tell my story here and would love any kind of feedback that will help me do my players justice with this campaign.

Characters:
-Ichigo, human fighter. The player wants to play a character who evolves from kid from a small town to true hero. He lives with his little sister named Mia and his grandpa, who is another player character, Mr. Crane.
-Mr. Crane, human bard. He is an old man who gives his grandson, Ichigo a hard time, drops to the floor every time something dangerous might happen, and is always looking out for opportunity to profit.
-Archimedes, warforged alchemist. I updated the race a little for Pathfinder because the player had the great idea that he could flavor his potions and such as instead being small gears and parts he uses to alter his mechanics temporarily. I also added the "Repair" line of spells from 3.5 to his formulae list at the same levels he gets the respective "Cure" spells. He was built by an eccentric old man living in town who's original name seems to have been replaced with Doc Brown by my players. I accepted this name change willingly.
-Huck, human rogue. He's only been living in town for about a week, but he's already swindled his way into the house of Sheena, a somewhat rich, but incredibly naive lady. He's pretty much the last person she should ever trust, but he's a practiced con artist and like I said, she is incredibly naive. If you didn't guess yet, he intends to somehow get his hands on her small fortune.
-Chyuu, human (kind of) monk. This player is actually the little sister of Archimedes' player and frequently has anime conventions to go to on Saturday nights when we play. Because of this, I thought of the idea that she could play a summoned entity of some kind, who is summoned from a magical harp whenever she happens to be at the table. When she can't make it to the game, the harp needs to recharge or something and conveniently is ready to be played again the next time she is present. This allows her to customize her character in a way she finds exciting with silly animal ears, strange hair colors, tails, etc, without it being as strange as it would be under normal circumstances, and it also helps her frequent absences make sense in the context of the story.

The town these characters live in is small and situated in a slightly wooded area at the base of a mountain containing a shrine dedicated to the wind. I wasn't prepared with a good name for it, so Chyuu's player started calling it Townsville. I have a feeling this name will stick.

Next post: the campaign begins! D:

Would it be possible to build a Witch/Rogue/Arcane Trickster if you spent the rogue talent on minor magic for mage hand?

I'm in love with the concept, though I'm sure it's probably mediocre at best in actual play. Just wanted to know what other people thought about it.