Character Name: Santorum
Classes: Warpriest 8
Adventure: The Choking Tower
Location: 5th Floor Animal Lab
Catalyst: Aurumvorax grab
The Gory Details:
So the party was able to easily dispatch the pair of Akairai that escaped from the infernal testing lab and went to investigate the room. The Aurumvorax, dubbed "Mr. Grabby" by it's previous keeper, was munching on some Gearsman parts when the party showed up. Santorum missed his attack roll on the kitty as did the other party members. One full-round into the blender that is 4 claws, 1 bite, and 4 rake attacks (8 hits and 1 critical) and he dropped like a sack of potatoes. Thankfully the dose of Cardioamp was able to bring him back from death.
I love the Aurumvorax. Those things are like mini Dire Tigers
Awaken is a spell I seldom see druids cast because of it's costly, takes 24 hours to cast, and the roll for mental stats can either make the animal a genius or a complete dunce. The real payoff though is how glorious the outcome can be in some circumstances.
For starters, the druid in the party is a saurian shaman who spends a majority of his time in dinosaur form and can talk to reptiles as a bonus. The party had a few days to do anything they wanted for preparations before moving on to the next dungeon, so he decides to spend an entire day taming a dire crocodile. He succeeds of course, and in the process he decides to take another day to awaken the crocodile.
He rolls an 18 on the intelligence roll for a total of 19 intelligence.
He is the smartest crocodile to ever exist.
Behold Richard Montague the Third:
Richard Montague III CR 11
Awakened Dire Crocodile
N Gargantuan magical beast (augmented)
Init +4; Senses low-light vision; Perception +25
DEFENSE
AC 21, touch 6, flat-footed 21 (+15 natural, –4 size)
hp 175 (14d10+98)
Fort +16, Ref +9, Will +8
OFFENSE
Speed 20 ft., swim 30 ft.; sprint
Melee bite +24 (3d6+13/19–20 plus grab) and tail slap +19 (4d8+6)
Space 20 ft.; Reach 15 ft.
Special Attacks death roll (3d6+19 plus trip), swallow whole (3d6+13, AC 16, 13 hp)
STATISTICS
Str 37, Dex 10, Con 25, Int 19, Wis 14, Cha 4
Base Atk +14; CMB +31(+35 grapple); CMD 41 (49 vs. trip)
Feats Improved Critical (bite), Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Run, Skill Focus (Perception, Stealth), Power Attack, Critical Focus
Skills Perception +25, Stealth +0 (+8 in water), Swim +23, Knowledge(nature) +18, Knowledge(nobility) +18, Knowledge(history) +18, Survival +19;
Racial Modifiers +8 Stealth in water
SQ hold breath
A mysterious portal that leads to a 30ft by 10ft demiplane that has the dead magic and low gravity properties and is suspended in space.
As soon as the party walks through to the other side the portal closes behind them and a Mithral golem appears with the words: "NO MAGIC, DAMAGE ONLY, FINAL DESTINATION" etched into its body.
185. A teleport trap that puts the recipient six feet underground in a steel coffin. Bonus points if the coffins are swarming with ants that eat them alive.
Raise your hand if you've ever heard/experienced this one before.
GM says:I want to play through my own campaign created from scratch that I've worked on for years and put a huge amount of effort into creating the story, the characters, and much more.
How it turns out: The GM begins the campaign by touring you through his New Zealand sized campaign world, dropping more exposition than an audio book on Moby Dick. All the NPCs are overleveled to the point where mere sneezing in the party's general direction results in a TPK. However the campaign villains are all under leveled goofballs that fold like cardboard when fought. BBEG is also fond of making guest appearances like he owns the campaign world on a silver platter, and any attempt at fighting them early on is shot down either by force or by them teleporting to their cozy siesta on the astral plane.
Playing through the first chapter of Serpent's Skull, the party had to activate a serpentfolk artifact to enter the next dungeon. One of the steps to activating it required an ordinary snake to taste the stones surrounding the artifact. The druid, being a saurian shaman, could talk to reptilian animals so the party sent him to collect various snakes in the jungle to do the job. His entire monologue had us laughing for a good 5 minutes.
"Come forth serpents, I need your help to activate this artifact"
ssssssnakes, it's always sssssssnakes
"I need you to lick these stones"
I'm not going to lick the ssssssstones
*shoves the snake's face against the stone*
"You're going to lick these stones right now!"
But I don't want to lick the ssssssstones
I enjoy playing and breaking the limits of my characters. Always have since 3rd edition D&D. It gives me a sense of accomplishment when I do incredibly well with a class considered to have weak class abilities. This is why the rogue is my favorite class to play.
So when the GM stops me during character creation and says "Why don't you just play a vivisectionist? They're so much better than rogues." I die a little inside.
Running the Serpent's Skull AP tallied up more kills on our group of players than any other AP I've run to date. I like how it spams saves vs. paralysis/poisons and supplements +2-3 CR encounters with TPK machine monsters *cough* shadow demon *cough*. That combined with the low WBL makes for a rough campaign.
Athos, a true neutral conjurer that would make any GM pull their hair out in frustration.
Quote:
*OOC behavior at the table that makes you cringe now?
The above character was killed in the 1st round of combat despite all the defensive preparation. I threw his character sheet in frustration. We had a laugh afterward as that character was deemed too powerful to exist.
Quote:
*Shameless plagiarism you passed off as original? (I'm looking at you, Driz'zt clones!)
Athos wasn't based off any D&D characters, but a fire emblem character of the same name.
It's only worth taking if you have the ring (of spell storing) for conjuration since its the most used school of magic and countering summons/teleports is a great way to turn a fight in your favor. If you really want to counter spells like a champ its better to be an Arcanist since they have an exploit that allows them to counter spells as an immediate action instead of readying an action.
Athos, 16th level human conjurer. Killed in the line of duty.
Rolled low on his initiative. Endgame boss cast clashing rocks for 20d6 damage. The resulting cave-in pinned Athos, who took an additional 8d6 points of damage from the falling rocks. Instant death on the first round of combat.
Never underestimate the power of casters with 9th level spells.
So between 5th and 8th level spells which ones stand out the most? To get the most out of your spells its best to do research on where they will be most effective, like in certain campaign settings or with certain characters. I'll list two spells for each level 5th through 8th that are good in almost every situation.
5th:
Teleport: Incredibly versatile for its level. Good at all stages of the game and in many campaign settings. It allows instant travel from point A to point B provided you've already been to those locations. You can also use it in combat to re-position if you run out of dimension doors.
Overland Flight: 24 hour flight for yourself that turns you into superman. It also works as fast travel for yourself (and allies if you brought a portable hole)
6th:
Legend Lore: Saves your party a knowledge check which has the potential to fail or give false information. Never wonder anymore about the mysterious artifact. You now know not only which god got his lunch money stolen, but also the person who stole it.
Contingency: Takes practice to use effectively but you will love this spell forever once you create a contingent event that auto-casts your win condition.
7th:
Limited Wish: Son of the almighty wish spell. Take it, even if you don't have the gold on hand to cast it. Even late game the power of the wish should never be underestimated.
Mage's Magnificent Mansion: Gives your party a place to hide, to gear up, and protects them from the elements of whatever plane you create the mansion. Plus the materials components only cost 5gp which is a huge value.
8th:
Moment of Presience: Protects you from three things: Save or die/suck spells, attacks that have the possiblity of killing your wizard in one hit, or rolling a 1 on a skill check that could save your life. Use it at the start of every day and never forget to cast it.
Polymorph Any Object: Turns anything into anything, even capable of making permanent changes. It also doubles as a transmutation swiss-army knife that you can use on friends and foes alike.
I've been wanting to do a game based off a popular manga series. Everyone plays as a summoner, their name has to be that of a famous American musician, and their eidolon's name has to be the name of one of that musician's top singles. The plot revolves around fighting other summoners like them.
Right now I'm DMing a party with a deranged, paranoid gunslinger. He always shoots first when someone approaches him without permission.
The cruelest thing he ever did? He decides to purchase a sack full of shredded glass one day. Didn't think much of it until the party captured an escaped convict. They wanted him alive to get the bonus bounty. So the gunslinger didn't bother cuffing or restraining the criminal. Instead he beat him unconscious and rubbed the shards of glass into his eyes to make him permanently blind.
His excuse: "He won't try to run away." He says this after beating him unconscious. I think he just wanted to do it for flavor but it ended up going too far.
I played rogue in 3rd edition a lot, the skill monkey rogue. More often than not I was the appraiser, trap disarmer, and party face rolled into one. I picker up the monocle for the additional +2 to appraisal checks which stuck with my character and the name was born.
Name: Saurkos
Race: Half-Orc
Classes: Druid 9 (saurian shaman)
Adventure: City of Seven Spears
Location: Sozothala's Fortress
Catalyst: I told you bro! I told you about the wights! It keeps happening!
The Gory Details:
So chapter three was coming to a close. The party was about to face off against Sozothala and his undead minions in the fortress of doom. Saurkos found the perfect opportunity to turn into a celestial dinosaur and charge through all the undead minions to get in the necromancer's face. He even displayed his prowess by devouring the mummy in two rounds taking minimal damage himself. He thought the fight would be a cakewalk.
He focused all of his attacks on Sozothala the rounds after, ignoring the wights surrounding him which he could have easily dispatched. Fun Fact: Even though Saurkos had damage reduction that negated the wight's damage entirely, energy drain only requires that you hit the target to take full effect. Before long he eventually failed a fort save against paralysis, died, and was turned into a wight a few rounds after that.
Pooling together resources in the form of both prestige points and gold the party was eventually able to resurrect Saurkos' remains.
I also hate campaigns that are homebrewed from scratch.
Does this mean you only prefer pregenerated worlds (like Golarion) or pregenerated campaign arcs (like Adventure Paths)?
Just curious. ^_^
Campaign settings, APs, and modules. The published campaigns are good source material not just because they are pregenerated, but because months of work and playtesting were put into them. The worlds have great lore woven into them, heroic/villainous characters you sometimes get to meet in the campaigns, areas unexplored, artifacts yet to be uncovered. All tools for an aspiring GM to use in their campaign.
Yes, constructed campaign settings can be fun at times, but over the years I've found them to be one-dimensional if not enough time is put into them. And that trope of 7/10 homebrewed campaigns starting in a tavern? It's true.
I came up with the term when one of our players created a Paladin evangelist who crafted fake money with quotes from the god of charity. He would litter the streets with it and give it to beggars.
Ultimate trolling ensued when he piled all his fake money together and used it to pay off some bandits who were harassing our party.
He died a noble death, taking one for the team and opening the only trapped chest in the dungeon before my rogue could do anything.
Story: The elemental lords
Plane: The elemental planes
Important individuals: Ayrzul (earth), Hshurha (wind), Kelizandri (water), Ymeri (fire)
The four elemental lords rule over their respective planes of existence. Each one embodies the worst qualities of their element and are dangerously cunning. Like any elemental that respects power the elemental lords are said to be the most avaricious of all and will go to great lengths to expand their domain.
Unlike the rulers of other planes in the great beyond the elemental lords have no good counterparts. This is because long ago they defeated their good counterparts by imprisoning them for eternity. In the battles that took place, it is said that the evil elemental lords bargained with their opposing elements to imprison the good elemental lords forever. Thus they bound the good elemental lords in gemstones of their opposing element. In return the elemental planes were to be separated from each other.
The location of the gemstones that imprisoned the good elemental lords is unknown, though each one continuously cries out to be discovered. Legends tell of one such stone that is rumored to exist in one of the elemental planes.
IIRC, my group put a bit of a nerf on mage's disjunction. No chance for item destruction unless deliberately single-targeted. However, suppression lasts (1d4) minutes and keys off a single dispel check by the caster.
Anything that makes the game play faster is good for us. I'm hoping that Unchained will provide some viable options for doing so without feat taxes.
Not a bad idea. I might borrow this for my next campaign.
Ditto, I'm borrowing this for the SerpSkull campaign I'm currently running.
Mage's disjunction is ridiculous. Removes every buff with no check, turns off all your items and has a chance to destroy them? it turns anyone into a joe, considering that at 19th level you can have upwards of 10 buffs running at a time, conceivably more
It's more an annoyance factor than actually game breaking. Like walking into an anti-magic field and having to recalculate all of your modifiers, you now have to recalculate all of your gear that was disenchanted. Other than that it is a balanced late game spell, one which several enemies who don't have magical gear or use SLAs won't be affected by.
Imagine if the DM for real life didn't run encumbrance rules. Airport security would take forever and the bellboys at hotels would cease to exist.
What's more? You could arm yourself with rocket launchers, machine guns, grenades, and medieval weaponry while sporting a suit of super heavy ballistic-proof armor and still move at a running pace. Imagine the permits you would have to sign to lug all of that around.
107. On a random encounter d% roll of 99 walk away from the table, circle around, and come back with a look of disgust and say "I hope at least one of you survives this"
Brutal Throw comes up plenty at the table for martial characters who want better ways to deal ranged damage. The prerequisites are low for the amount of awesome it gives.
I've seen some DMs ban it in 3.5 because it made dexterity focused ranged combat an even less viable option. Now that pathfinder archers are way better damagewise I don't see any problem with asking for this feat.
There's a room with a small spherical object encased within a force cube sitting atop a pedestal. Upon its surface are what looks like buildings, trees, lakes, and other lifelike things. The most striking of objects on the sphere is a portal that looks very similar to one in an adjacent room.
Walking through the portal in the adjacent room transports you to the sphere's surface which is actually an entire planet shrunk down to three feet in diameter. This strange demiplane was the creation of a wizard who retired from adventuring so he could re-create his adventures on his own demiplane, though he died of old age before he could complete his creation.
Entering the portal causes the demiplane to malfunction, slowly destroying portions of itself until it implodes entirely. The only way to escape is to find the dead wizard and use his research to fix the damaged demiplane and return safely.
Paragon Surge. Only usable by half-elves, gives a free feat and an enhancement to your two best ability scores. Almost every casting class has access to this spell. I see it taken often.
Magic missile is a classic for when you need to add some unavoidable damage to your kit as very few monsters have a shield spell to block it.
Imagine you are a wizard toiling away in your laboratory while your apprentice is practicing spells, mixing chemicals, or doing other equally dangerous things. What's the worst possible phrase you dread hearing from him/her?
I like the idea of humans becoming core races but my answer is no thanks, I'll stick with being human. The most beautiful elves still fart and poop like everyone else.
You contract lycanthropy, do you try to hide it or flaunt your hybrid form at every opportunity?
Opposite gender is too funny to pass up from a roleplay perspective. I'd go with that. Besides, disguising yourself as the enemy means their enemies will come looking for you which could spell trouble for the rest of the party.
Find a treant in a dense forest full of similar sized trees or a doppelganger in a densely populated area?
The cosmic entity known as the corpse spinner injects her young into GoatToucher's brain. You are now a corpses-spun zombie. An incubator for her young.
