So, I've been sitting around creating playtest characters with friends all day, and I gotta say: Monks have the lowest AC of any class. This feels really odd for a frontline fighter—am I missing something? Expert in Unarmored is only the equivalent of padded armor, and every other class starts out with something better (Mage Armor is equivalent at level 1, but grows much faster than the Monk's AC bonus, meaning even wizards and sorcerers wind up with higher armor).
Like, an 18 Dex monk (and that's burning quite a bit on maxing dex) has the same AC as a raging 14 Dex barbarian. I guess by level 20 the monk is sort of catching up, but considering most gameplay happens at low level, why is the monk the single easiest class to hit/is there a way to fix this?
Okay, so—it's far later than I had originally planned, and it appears another GM took over in the meantime (in a game that is also no longer active), but there seem to be enough people still around who like their characters for me to bring back this campaign.
(GM update: I wound up spending the past year on academic probation, to the point of not wanting to commit to GMing when I might have to completely shut down and work nonstop for two months at a moment's notice, but I'm out of the woods, no longer getting kicked out of school, and back to the amount of free time I had when I started this campaign, forseeably for at least the next year or two).
Here's a short summary of where we are in the plot:
The party journeyed into the lowest level of the treasury of a small Drow city, which was built on top of a very small Vault of Orv full of Gugs and Bebiliths. After charming the Bebiliths, and killing + reanimating the Gugs, the party proceeded into an ancient forgotten tomb.
From the tomb, they rescued a mithral-engraved skull, which Illia- immediately teleported back to the Crimson Stranger, who restored it from a demilich into a tall and ancient warlord (who offered the pseudonym "Sir John the Black")
Out of petty vengeance, the party decided to murder the Drow queen, put the entire city to the torch, and loot it for everything it's worth.
Which leaves the following options:
1. We proceed straight to a battle with the queen and her guards. Could be entertaining. Should the party succeed in this, you'll get a around 1 million gp of miscellaneous city loot (which you won't be able to spend all at once, but could form a party wealth reservoir for future crafting or kingdom-building)
2. Everyone just teleports out instead.
My sister's visiting tomorrow through Friday, so I won't be starting any sort of combat or posting plot until afterwards either way, which gives people time to get things settled and see who shows up.
If we fight, current group resources:
-Our mindflayer, as a last act before departing, released the two Bebiliths and a large number of Drow thralls into the lower treasury. These should murder everyone on the path between you and the throne room itself, allowing the party to run straight towards a confrontation with the queen if they want.
-Delyliath has successfully dominated two of the city's four guard captains (a succubus, and a shadowdancer). If she gives the word, these captains should be able to turn most of the city guard against each other—instead of a standing army of 400 drow, only around 100 will reach the palace, and that's only if the battle lasts for long enough for them all to show up (gradually, in waves).
-Anaxian has some number of skeletal Gugs. He also has a pre-set trigger that, on command, will set several crucial points in the city on fire. Effectively, I'm ruling this means that once the queen and her higher-level guards are dead, the city descends into fiery mayhem (Drow are not known for their fire brigades).
-A mysterious and powerful black-clad warlord who may have been the same one who tried to invade this city thousands of years ago (before becoming a demi-lich) and has offered to join in the mayhem once more if called.
Regardless, here's where characters are:
-Currently level 9 (I believe Illia- is over-leveled, and Anaxian under-leveled, though we can fudge this a bit). Regardless of whether or not the queen is killed or you just flee, the extra XP from destroying the city puts everyone at level 10 (we could level now if everyone preferred that).
-Rebuilding is totally fine, either now or a bit later. There have been a few new books since this campaign started, and some people may be interested in changing choices. I've also revised my 3pp position for the campaign to be "Path of War is allowed, but PoW prestige classes only with permission."
-I've heard from Drisquar, Shimsil, Anaxian and Illia-. I'll see if I hear from anyone else, but we can definitely make a party work with four. Shimsil is interested in creating a new character, in which case "Shimsil" will persist in-game as an intelligent +X Speed Scimitar with the same item abilities, but no class levels or ability to auto-attack.
-Shim, if you want to introduce a new character now, there is a mysterious stranger who's offered to join the party or send help (If you want to play, say, a millennia-old former lich who may have forgotten some knowledge and power to bring him back down to party level. It could work well with the idea you've mentioned, since the NPC was intended to be a high-leveln cleric, or you could just be a new evil adventurer hired to join the cause)
So, I'm still relatively new to Mythic Adventures, but I'm playing a Mythic Monk/Guardian in a low-level game; and as I look at mythic guides, there seems to be a continuous stream of disappointment and recommendation to never play a Guardian that doesn't seem to have much explanation behind it.
With Retributive Reach, Cage Enemy, and Mythic Combat Reflexs, a Tier 3 guardian gets two free attacks at max BAB against anyone who tries to engage them in melee; with Enlarge Person and Lunge, this goes up to four free attacks at max BAB. With Dimensional Grappler and Inescapable Gloves, they can take out any spellcaster in a single round. And this is the low-level end of Mythic. Am I missing something that makes the other paths better at martial combat?
A 10th level Oracle with the "Blackened" curse gets Wall of Fire as a bonus spell... but there is no mention of spell level in curse bonus spells. Does this take up a 4th level slot, as a wizard, or could an argument be made for casting it from a 3rd level slot, as a summoner? (It's possible for an Oracle with the right favored class to get the spell at level 7—but at that level, they can only cast up to 3rd level spells)
I've been trying to figure out the maximum possible number of languages a PF character could speak. Here's what I've got so far:
(not counting Gold Nodule Ioun stones, as those stack infinitely)
Aasimar (2 base)
Starting Int 22 (+6)
Headband of Int +6 (+3)
+5 innate bonus to Int (+2.5)
5 level-up points into Int (+2.5)
Venerable age (+1.5 from Int)
Lvl 1 Druid (+1)
Lvl 2 Rogue (+4 from Guileful Polyglot)
Lvl 5 Oracle (+2 from Lore Curse)
20 ranks in Linguistics (+40 from Aasimar's Truespeaker)
Appropriate traits (+3, from Campaign, Regional, and Social)
_________
67 total languages spoken at level 20. Am I thinking too small
With this spell you designate the target as your favored enemy for the remainder of its duration. Select one of your favored enemy types. For the duration of the spell, you treat the target as if it were that type of favored enemy for all purposes.
With the kicker being "for all purposes." Does this mean that my ranger with a favored enemy: undead and an Amethyst Pyramid ioun stone can use Instant Enemy to become invisible to any one target?
Other possible abuses:
-With favored enemy (animal), use Animal Growth as a far more powerful substitute for Enlarge Person.
-Use Speak with Plants/Animals as a substitute for Tongues
-Use Charm Animal/Command Plants to be a backup bard
-Hold Animal
-Make an ooze vulnerable to critical hits by changing its type
So, here's a rules question I can't find anything about on the internet. A cavalier with mighty charge can use a free combat maneuver when he hits. If he has greater bull rush or trip, he can make a free maneuver against the enemy that also provokes an AoO.
Does this mean the cavalier and his mount both get an AoO that resolves during the charge? (If he's using ride-by-attack, the attack occurs in the middle of his movement, not after he's stopped moving). If so, do charge modifiers or lance damage multipliers apply to it?
It gets worse. If the cavalier has (and this requires a lot of feats) greater bull rush, greater sunder, sundering strike, combat reflexes, and his mount has greater trip, he gets:
-1 Attack from the charge
-1 Bull rush attempt from charge
-1 Mount attack from charge (which is instead a trip attempt)
If the trip and bull rush succeeds, and he scores a critical hit, he gets:
-2 additional AoOs as part of the charge
-2 additional mount AoOs as part of the charge
-1 greater sunder attempt, which should shatter his opponent's weapon and deal another attack's worth of damage to the target
Is this legal? If so, which attacks get which bonuses?
Hi, y'all. I recently started playing a ranger in a certain undead-heavy adventure path, and it's been a lot of fun taking out skeletons with blunt arrows, but suddenly we're fighting nothing but zombies, and the DR 5/slashing is something to notice.
Does anyone know of a decent way to do slashing damage as a ranger other than the Versatile Weapon spell? I'm currently trying to break through by using Abundant Ammunition with Raining Arrows (from Elves of Golarion), but am curious if there are any actual slashing arrows out there.
The promised meeting place is an ancient, crumbling ruin.
These ruins were once both a church and a fortress, built by a forgotten race and dedicated to some long-dead religious cause. Its mighty walls have long-since crumbled, blasted and burned rocks strewn about as glowing moss digests the last remaining fungus wood support beams, a single stone spire the only structure still remaining.
The Darklands are full of places like this, forgotten and forsaken, and the only unusual thing about these ruins might be the lack of any oozes or monstrous vermin infesting the place.
It is here that the Crimson Stranger has asked you to meet. Perhaps you walked here alone, or came with other members of the group, or teleported through the shadows.
Many of the others look just as out of place as you feel. A Dark Elf who moves followed by a strange, ghostly master. A surface Elf with odd, scaly features. A possessed suit of Armor, decorated with symbols of Asmodeus, that may or may not hold a person inside. A magic weapon that similarly seems to move through the air without a wielder. Beautiful servants of both Hell and the Abyss, who eye each other warily. A fallen Azata, who eyes the other outsiders with an uncomfortable expression. A creature the size of a cat that fancies itself one of the Darklands’ most powerful rumors, a so-called Dracolich.
Perhaps one of you attempts small-talk or conversation, though with this crowd, it might fall on deaf ears. And as you wait, uncomfortably watching each other, you can feel the Stranger’s footsteps approaching.
Note: I’ll be using spoiler tags to post extra details that a very observant character might notice. Feel free to roll knowledge or perception checks about these things either in-post or on your own, if you think you might be curious about them.
Knowledge (history) or Linguistics check, DC 25:
The ruins have a name, and a history, carved into the very stones of the place in faded and worn runes. Escarra, the place was called, or the "House of Eternal Scholarship.”
You may have heard a passing mention to the tale once, long ago, or perhaps you can make out the general sense of the inscriptions, which appear to be an archaic dialect of Ossiriani. Escarra was a peaceful cult of magical scholars, hidden deep underground, who held that knowledge was more sacred than any of the gods. The burned stones and scarred fortifications around you attest to just how much that knowledge helped them.
Detect Magic:
The air around the place hangs heavy with magic. You can’t make out any traces of particular spells.
Detect Magic, Knowledge (arcana) DC 20:
The air around the place hangs heavy with magic. While you can’t make out any traces of particular spells, the sheer volume of ancient magic cast here seems to have sunk into the very stones, exuding a faint but tangible aura of necromancy, divination, and transmutation.
A hint of illusion magic, much newer, hangs in the air.
Feel free to take a few days to flesh out character details—at the pace PbP moves, I’m guessing it’ll take that long before we wind up in combat or require the whole party to make especially difficult skill checks.
If anyone wants to discuss if/how their characters know each other beforehand, the discussion thread is a great place to do that.
Meanwhile, I’ve created a spreadsheet for characters to put in useful at-a-glance details. It’s not vital to keep this updated to a tee, but it’ll generally help me save time when rolling saves against everyone, initiative etc.
Hi, Pathfinder PbP forums. I'm running a campaign for people to play characters of unacceptable alignment or strange and monstrous race, with a rather open-ended scope in which players can play around with whatever weird build or personality they've always wanted to try.
This would take place in Golarion (or something close to it), and feature frequent travel between the surface world and the grimdark kingdoms of the Darklands.
There’s a lot of stuff below here in spoilers, but I figure that’s because there’s a lot of unusual things that might need to be addressed for some people in a campaign like this. If you just have a character concept and a bit of personality and story, that’s fine for now, but some of us like to see all the details before a game starts.
Recruiting will (potentially) close this upcoming sunday, but might go a bit later if I'm too busy over the weekend.
The Premise:
Every evil society, no matter how cruel and alien their morals, has its outcasts—Drow who study magic outside their caste, Liches suffering from wanderlust, haunted Tieflings and fallen Aasimars, Mindflayers who care more about the world outside their cities than the flavor of the brains they eat, Werewolves who prefer to hunt with non-lycanthropes.
A wanderer moves through the Darklands, unseen by most, clad in the garb of a simple human traveler—and, somehow, she is gathering an army. There are rumors spoken in the dark places and undertaverns of an ancient queen a fallen god, a demon lord of trickery risen from the Abyss. All you know is that, when you heard her summons, you came. She has assembled a team of you, the strangest collection of outcasts and exiles Golarion has to offer, and she has a few tasks for which she is willing to pay you your heart's desires.
Help! There are already five characters I want to propose!:
Think about what would actually be fun and interesting to play over a longer campaign—a minotaur barbarian who prefers silence and has no interests other than murder might get boring fast and have little to do outside of combat.
In my experience, a fun character to play usually involves both interesting options at start and room to grow.
Character Creation: the Hard Stats:
This would be a relatively high-powered campaign, following fast experience progression. Here are the basic character creation guidelines:
-25 point buy
-2 traits + 1 per flaw (3 flaws max, flaws cannot have a negated effect)
-Starting level 7, plus two "bonus levels" that can be spent on races or templates
-25,000 starting gold. At least 5,000 gp of this must be towards a single item (or just a pot of cash), which was given to you as “advance payment” for heeding the call of the Crimson Stranger and agreeing to perform a mission in her service.
-All races are fine
-10-30 RP races costing one bonus level
-30-50 RP races costing two bonus levels, etc.
-Templates or advanced monster races cost one bonus level (or real level) per CR
-Characters can acquire templates later at the cost of levels gained or unspent bonus levels
-3pp content generally acceptable for content conversions (races, traits, psionics). 3pp feats and classes might be possible with DM permission, as long as it's not one of the really broken ones.
-Homebrew stuff acceptable for things like Mindflayers, as long as it's balanced.
Character Creation: the Softer Stats:
-All characters must start knowing Undercommon, so that the party can communicate.
-All characters must have a Humanoid disguise, magical or otherwise, although it does not have to be an excellent disguise. Infiltration may sometimes be necessary.
-No good alignments; but also no murdering your fellow players for sport.
Some things that might be fun to play:
+Drow Noble/Drider
+Phasm (or other shapeshifter)
+Fleshwarped Creature
+Fungal Creature
+Skeletal Champion
+Alchemically-Invisible
+Vampire
+Lich
+Half-Fiend
+Lycanthrope
+Worm that Walks
+Devil-Bound/Demon-Possessed (would require roleplaying the actual possessing demon as well)
Character Creation: Backstory and Fluff:
Characters should have a backstory, and a bit of a central personality. This does not need to be long and detailed, but it should ideally include:
-Why your character does not behave like a typical member of their species, and what has led them to be an exile/outcast/wanderer/adventurer. This could be due to some transgression, curse, heresy, or just a conflict of personality.
-What motivates your character. The party of potential anti-socialites has come together because of the mysterious Crimson Stranger. She appeared to you in a dream, or a projected image, and offered you something: powerful items, forbidden knowledge, piles of treasure, or just a chance at adventure. This reward will be paid out as the campaign progresses.
How many players?:
This is a tough one—I’m naturally someone who doesn’t like to say no to people, but I recognize that more players may slow down the game or require some botting.
I’m thinking probably 6-8 players, depending on how many people submit interesting characters. One or two of these spots may be reserved for friends of mine, depending on their interests, but I will choose at least 5 other players as well.
Distribution of combat roles will also be tricky, but like any campaign, this will probably require at least one healer, arcane caster, skill monkey and melee tank, although unusual characters may be able to effectively combine roles.
I’m also disinclined to pick more than 2 characters of any one monstrous species (since the party is made up of outcasts), although a bevy of diverse undead or aberrations could be totally fine.
I’m looking for people who want to play something that wouldn’t be easy to do in a normal game, who think they can effectively play an unusual alignment or mentality, and who are comfortable with character interactions and skills as well as combat—since this game will, in many ways, be a sandbox for villains and antiheroes to interact and shape the world around them.
If you want to play a Lich:
Normally, becoming a Lich requires caster level 11. There are ways around this—a level 12 agent of the grave can become an 8th level lich, or you can find unusual ways to boost caster level, etc.
However, a phylactery is still a very expensive item, unavailable to characters around 7th-level starting gold. So, I’m giving lich-curious players two options:
1. Start as a non-lich. Take levels of Agent of the Grave, or some other Undead template (which you’ll be allowed to swap out later). The one thing you truly crave is the immortality of lichdom, and this is what motivates you—as you perform quests and grow in power, you’ll be granted knowledge of the ritual that will make you immortal and the material resources to perform it.
2. Start as a “lesser lich.” When you tried to perform the immortality ritual, something went wrong. Perhaps you were not strong enough, or lacked the right materials. You have all the qualities of a lich except damage reduction, and you must always stay within 100 feet of your phylactery (This faulty phylactery only costs 10,000 gp). Someday, with the right knowledge and wealth, you can fix your mistake and become a full, proper lich. (This is a template I’ve created in response to questions).
If you want to play a Master of Disguise:
This is the sort of campaign where it would be totally okay to play a character disguised as something entirely different to the rest of the world (for instance, a shapeshifter disguised as something innocuous, or a human pretending to be a hideous aberration to learn more of their ways and powers). If this is the case, just PM me what you’d actually want to play, what face you’d want to present to the party, and make sure you’ve got enough Disguise and Bluff to pull it off.
Pace, and Roleplaying:
I'm interested in running a PbP because I think it might be a slower and more flexible time commitment than a standard tabletop campaign.
Unfortunately, I am a busy graduate student, and thus sometimes have tons of free time to post while occasionally having no free time for days in a row. The campaign would thus be somewhat player-driven and character interaction-heavy, and I'd let players queue up multiple actions (this round plus potential next round options, etc.) if they wish to do so.
I'm a seasoned LARP writer, so expect to see a fair amount of NPCs, both colorful and ordinary, at least *attempting* peaceful interactions with the party. This would be a campaign where skills will be quite useful, especially if they're applied creatively.
Most quests will probably start with social interaction, feature some impersonation, stealth, sabotage or infiltration, and end with the party fighting their way out of town past a horde of angry guards or pitchfork-wavers.
What sort of quests would be in a campaign like this?:
Evil stuff, mostly, but rather freeform—assassinating rulers, stealing relics, maybe some guerrilla warfare against the Drow kingdoms.
Assuming the campaign runs long enough, the players may eventually get to build and defend their very own castle.
Hi, Pathfinder PbP forums. I'm thinking of running a PbP version of an old campaign idea of mine—a party of generally villainous monsters from the depths of the underdark, where people could play liches or mindflayers and still fit into the party/campaign alignment.
This would be shifted to Golarion (or something close to it), and start in the Darklands, but otherwise generally follow the same principle.
The tl;dr:
A campaign for people to play characters of unacceptable alignment or strange and monstrous race, with a rather open-ended scope in which players can play around with whatever weird build or personality they've always wanted to try.
The Premise:
Every evil society, no matter how cruel and alien their morals, has its outcasts—Drow who study magic outside their caste, Liches suffering from wanderlust, haunted Tieflings and fallen Aasimars, Mindflayers who care more about the mysteries of the world than eating brains, Werewolves who prefer to hunt with non-lycanthropes.
A wanderer moves through the Darklands, unseen by most, clad in the garb of a simple human traveler—and, somehow, she is gathering an army. There are rumors spoken in the dark places and undertaverns of an ancient queen a fallen god, a demon lord of trickery risen from the Abyss. All you know is that, when you heard her summons, you came. She has assembled a team of you, the strangest collection of outcasts and exiles Golarion has to offer, and she has a few tasks for which she is willing to pay you your heart's desires.
Tentative Character Mechanics (subject to change, open to suggestions—this is an interest thread):
This would be a relatively high-powered campaign. If anyone is really excited by the premise and wants to think about some character ideas, here's what I was thinking of going with:
-All characters must start knowing Undercommon
-All characters must have a Humanoid disguise, magical or otherwise, although it does not have to be a *good* disguise
-No good alignments; but also no rampant party-murdering
-3pp content generally acceptable for content conversions (races, traits, psionics). 3pp feats and classes might be possible with DM permission, as long as it's not one of the really broken ones.
-Homebrew stuff acceptable for things like Mindflayers, as long as it's balanced.
-25 point buy
-2 traits + 1 per flaw (3 flaws max, flaws cannot have a negated effect)
-Starting level 6, plus two "bonus levels" that can be spent on races or templates
-All races are fine
+10-30 RP races costing one bonus level
+30-50 RP races costing two bonus levels, etc.
-Templates or advanced monster races cost one bonus level (or real level) per CR
-Characters can acquire templates later at the cost of levels gained or unspent bonus levels
Some things that might be fun to play:
+Drow Noble/Drider
+Phasm
+Fleshwarped Creature
+Alchemically-Invisible
+Vampire
+Lich
+Half-Fiend
+Lycanthrope
+Worm that Walks
+Devil-Bound/Demon-Possessed (would require roleplaying the actual possessing demon as well)
A note on disguise:
This is the sort of campaign where it would be totally okay to play a character disguised as something entirely different who manages to keep the whole party guessing and just tell the DM.
Pace, and Roleplaying:
I'm interested in running a PbP because I think it might be a slower and more flexible time commitment than a standard tabletop campaign.
Unfortunately, I am a busy graduate student, and thus sometimes have tons of free time to post while occasionally having no free time for days in a row. The campaign would thus be somewhat player-driven and character interaction-heavy, and I'd let players queue up multiple actions (this round plus potential next round options, etc.) if they wish to do so.
I'm a seasoned LARP writer, so expect to see a fair amount of NPCs, both colorful and ordinary, at least *attempting* peaceful interactions with the party. This would be a campaign where skills will be quite useful, especially if they're applied creatively.
What sort of quests would be in a campaign like this?:
Evil stuff, mostly, but rather freeform—assassinating rulers, stealing relics, maybe some guerrilla warfare against the Drow kingdoms.
I'm not sure exactly how many players a game like this could accommodate, but I'm thinking probably around 6-8. Let me know your thoughts!
