That Kind Of Orc's page

Hey folks. The ship combat rules from Skull and Shackles...bother me. They're random in weird places, actually shooting ship to ship makes no sense, pursuit and evasion don't care how fast you are...

And I've read the Fire as She Goes rules from Razor Coast, but in addition to not being...super fond...of Bill Web and Frog God Games, the rules ALSO don't make a lot of sense in a lot of places but have the added downside of also being near impossible to teach my GM (I am the player, helping my GM with finding better rules).

Are there other 3rd party or homebrew ship rules anywhere? My priorities:

* Ship customization
* Ship-to-ship combat being fun and rewarding
* Captain Skill and Ship Design both being important to success
* Easy for me to explain to my GM

Not a priority:

* A bunch of varied ship roles - this is a one-on-one campaign, me as the captain and the other person as GM. (I'm a gestalt character - Privateer Stalker/Gunsmoke Mystic ftw.)

If nobody's done it I shall have to GO TO THE DRAWING BOARD MYSELF, but I would love to see if anyone's done good work here.

Erastil. Misogynist bastard.

I just want to say that I absolutely love the thought the OP gave to this. The Empyreal Lords make me actually want to be a demonstrably good character for once in Pathfinder.

If I ever run them, I'll almost certainly buff them a bit. If anybody ever does make homebrew buffed Empyreal Lords, I'd love to see. On my part, they'll be getting Shapechange and buffed mental stats across the board, and probably a nudge upward in HP.

Hi! I'm playing through Kingmaker solo (just me and a GM). We are using Gestalt rules from 3.5 and Dreamscarred Press material - I'm a Harbinger | Malefex gestalt. We use super OP attribute rolling rules for solo games, so I managed a 16 Charisma...but that doesn't feel like "enough" as a Ruler.

What I'm asking you is: how early is it important for me to snag a wife to help me rule? Any suggestions on high-Charisma types I should keep an eye on? We just finished our first session and I've defeated the bandits at Olegg's and taken their leader captive.

Is there anyone I should absolutely NOT kill so I can recruit them later as a ruler? >.>

Ship your colonists in stasis, as cargo. Crew is awake the whole time, has quarters and a HAC and a gym...but 25 tons of people is a lot of people.

Get your pilot to make a close flyby, strap on a jetpack, and you and the mechanic's drone jump out an airlock, grab the other ship...and the drone hacks you into the airlock. The two of you start killing crew while they're distracted trying to fly the ship. :P

I'm playing in a game with my son, with my wife running. We do pretty much this - when we don't need a science/engineering action, one of us pilots and the other guns. When we do, we BOTH have ranks in Engineering and Computer so we just glide and snapshot while reinforcing the shields or patching glitched systems. We're actually BOTH mechanics. He's got a drone and I've got an exocortex. It works remarkably well. I can't wait until my exocortex can start hacking s!%* while I'm doing other things.

Remember that inhaled poisons are going to be basically useless against armored foes. Armor has built-in environmental suits.

For hamsters, cheek pouches go down to their HIPS. So they're not carrying them in their mouth, they're carrying them in pouches accessed via the mouth which reach down the sides of their bodies. Thus: No trouble talking.

Are these still in existence anywhere? The links are dead. D:

Thank you so much for this! I've been wanting something like this for forever - and now, with me joining a new game starting up as a Warlord (and trying to convince others that playing initiators isn't any more complicated than spellcasters), having these cards will help show how easy it can be.

Thank you! I'd forgotten both the scrolls and the diadem.

Hi guys! I ran Age of Worms a few years ago, and the group got to Spire of Long Shadows before we went our separate ways. We're back together, and we're about to restart.

However, there is a distinct lack of saved character sheets. Everyone knows what they played and are capable of rebuilding. We can go with 13th-level WBL guidelines, but - other than the Rod, the twin swords, and the amulet to control the Sphere, what other items might I have forgotten to make sure the PCs include in their gear at this point?

Is there anything else I might be forgetting that I need to make sure is included before we start back up with Spire of Long Shadows? I'm going to reread the adventure summaries and probably the intro text of the adventures, but I really don't want to have to comb back through every adventure and encounter.

So, is this AP just not nearly as deadly as the others? This Obit thread seems kind of...dead.

Those ellipses were me genuinely hesitating as I realized what I was writing.

Str 15
Dex 7
Con 14
Int 13
Wis 14
Cha 14

Hell yeah. I've been blessed by Gygax. I will now create a cleric who worships Zagyg.

My "Group" is simply my wife, as a single PC.

Maro, male Chelish CG Paladin of Freedom (Desna)/Warlock gestalt with the Enlightened Spirit PrC. Level 12, doing Fortress of the Stone Giants right now. The balance of one really self-reliant all-day-long Hideous Blow Warlock at a couple levels too high is making the CRs work really, really well. He dishes out a lot of damage and has a nice high AC/HP to survive, and being a Paladin of Desna with a frighteningly dark background contrasted him -incredibly- well with Nualia at the beginning and built instant investment in the campaign (a girl with a frighteningly nice/good-aligned background who went evil against a guy with a frightenly dark/evil background who went good).

I think I've got to agree that Mary's stress seems to be self-induced: as a DM, you have to help your players act in-character. You're not -supposed- to blow 30 spells on one encounter. Those thirty spells are supposed to last you all day - if you're doing one encounter and retreating, you're not torturing your PCs with the consequences of this enough. When the PCs retreat, the bad guys aren't just sitting there waiting, they're planning, rebuffing, healing, setting up ambushes, or maybe leaving to hunt the PCs.

I'm running RotRL with just my wife - she's playing a Gestalt character, and she's about two levels above the suggested level for the adventure (I've been carefully managing XP to keep her about here - I gave her full XP for awhile until she stopped getting her butt kicked, then dropped her down to 1/4 XP to keep her at that level). With just one player especially, it's easy to simplify the harder parts of D&D because you don't have to worry about balancing an entire party. You make sure the buffs last just long enough, you make sure the challenges are just hard enough, the talking lasts just long enough, etc..

Being higher level makes for a little more number crunching, yeah, but a lot of this can be estimated for the NPCs - your players will never know. When a PC casts Dispel on an NPC that has 8 or 9 buffs, I try not to let it lag my combat. I scribble a few quick notes, and my players (or player) assume(s) that I did a lot of prep and know what the numbers will be if X gets dispelled. I guesstimate, and I try not to let game-breakers hinge on the results of the roll. If the PCs have been cakewalking due to good rolls, the bad guys will get in a few lucky hits. If the PCs have been getting hammered even though they're doing everything right, sometimes I let 'em have a break (and sometimes I don't. The wife is still irritated with me for one epic-level death where a level 24 PC died to a large group of Dread Wraiths.).

Anyway, I think the way to enjoy D&D of any level is to relax a bit. If you're spending 2.5 hours just to get -ready- to have a combat, you're putting too much thought into it. It's a game. Play it.

I started running this for my wife tonight. We normally game one-on-one because it can take a lot to get our regular gaming group together, and we jones pretty hard for game in between sessions. However, we know each other so well that sometimes it's hard to surprise one another.

So the Dungeon APs, and now Pathfinder, have been our saviors. I ran Shackled City and Savage Tides, she ran Age of Worms, and now I'm running Rise of the Runelords (I tend to run more for some reason...).

She started making a character while I read up on Burnt Offerings and -loved- it. Since she's a single character in a 4-person setting, she's playing a Gestalt Paladin of Freedom/Warlock. Her main theme is to overcome the inherent darkness in her character (a male, incidentally). His parents (Cheliaxian nobles) made a deal with a Devil to make sure he acquired the powers of a Warlock, and hired an assassin to force him to use them.

He survived, thanks to his trusty holy symbol (after the crossbow bolt, it's a holey symbol), and became quite devoted to Desna, goddess of luck.

All of this happened BEFORE she -OR- I knew about the temple, the priest of Desna, or Nualia.

The absolute mirror of the two (Nualia wanting to purge her 'divine' taint, him wanting to purge his infernal taint, her killing her father, his parents trying to kill him) have made me -extremely- excited for this campaign.

Also, the goblin song was amazing, I -loved- singing it in goblin-voice. And when our Paladin got cornered by the Shopkeeper's Daughter and got punched in the nose by a level 7 commoner father (and suffered several points of nonlethal damage before escaping), it was a truly epic moment that we'll always remember.

I just want to say: Thank you, Paizo. If your APs continue to be as truly excellent as Savage Tides, Age of Worms, and Rise of the Runelords, you'll -never- have a lack of fans.

I'm currently running this AP and loving it. My wife and I run solo campaigns for one another; she's running through Savage Tide alone as a Gestalt Shadowcaster/Rogue. She almost got killed upon sneaking into the Blue Nixie, and through liberal use of Sight Obscured managed to actually get belowdecks unseen...and tangle with six smugglers plus Soller Vark, one of whom fled and freed the Raghodessa on the way out. One Powerful Bite later, she was one HP from death, and had to flee the boat, thanks to many lucky Tumble checks!

She just finished the AP after wiping out the entire Lotus Dragon hideout by herself quite handily. She suffered after the Blue Nixie, so I ran a side adventure (Something's Cooking, from the Wizards website...the mage and her chef husband were friends of Lavinia's, I've been wanting to run this for -forever), got her up to level 3 for Parrot's Island, and by the time she finished the Lotus Dragons, she was level 5. I started cutting her XP in half after she hit level 3, so I wouldn't end up with a 20th level character by the time she should be level 5. If she starts having too much of a cakewalk, I'll cut her XP in half again.

She's running Age of Worms for me, and my Gestalt Cleric/Dread Necromancer/Wizard/True Necromancer is level 6 at the end of the first adventure. We're both having a blast. If Dungeon weren't going away, I'd subscribe just to get the next AP instead of gathering together back issues. I'm going to be running Shackled City for our regular gaming group. :)