The Shifty Mongoose's page

No, but it is possible to cast Delayed Blast Fireball set to go off in X rounds. So unless you guess exactly how long the spell will last, either the fireballs go off harmlessly during the Time Stop, or the targets get maybe a round to run away.

In one adventure, the DM gives out a little extra EXP to the party for a recap of the previous session, and encourages everyone to take turns retelling part of it. Unfortunately, one or two players tend to get carried away and try for the whole thing at once.

In one where I'm the DM, I set up an Adventure Journal thread on the VTT and offered a Hero Point to the last person to post something non-consecutive. It worked until it was the turn for the player who has anxiety or something similar. The player has notes written down and means to post something, and I'm thinking of encouraging one of the other players to post something.

"Here, have some dumplings before you go. We made them ourselves, and they're sure to keep you warm!"

In case they ask, "Oh, no, not of anyone you know. Just some ogre who outlived his usefulness. We asked Barl and everything!"

EDIT: I did this myself, and the PCs just accepted them without asking. Then one of the hags told Barl they quit, incidentally also tipping him off that Those Guys were here.

I liked Words of Power, having used them once or twice. I would've liked even a web enhancement for them, and hope they'll get put back in to 2E (though I doubt it'll happen).

I don't normally think of "20 point-buy when the AP expects 15" or "roll for HP (reroll 1s) OR take half-hit-die+1" really count as boons so much as options.

I do give PCs boons on occasion, by means of NPCs they help. If they get in a random encounter with reasonable/sensible people ("knowing when to give up" counts), they can get clues or information. Anything from, "you returned the golden locket to the baker rather than pawning it, so you get enough Baked Goods of Gratitude that you don't have to pay as much monthly rent for the next year" to "The orcs respect both your power and cunning, and some of them will want to spar with you the next time you pass by." Rewarding Good alignments, while still setting up dangerous fights.

Similarly, if a religious PC goes out of the way to do something for a religion, they'll get a boon from that religion:

• Kill a bunch of especially dangerous undead and bring the corpses to the Pharasmin mortuary for last rites? Pharasma gives you all a boon so that the next death effect that hits you, you can just place the d20 down on a 20 and declare that your saving throw.
• Murder a proponent of justice, implicating someone else whose alibi is suspicious because you had previously drugged that person? Norgorber notices, and gives you +5 on skill checks relating to establishing your alibi.
• Throw a really loud party, all through the night, where everyone tries to learn how to play the flute with no instruction, and you ignore anyone who tells you to keep that racket down? For the subsequent 27 hours, a boon of Azathoth gives you a +2 size bonus to whichever ability score relates to the roll of 1d6, even if it wouldn't make sense, like WIS!

Basically, I like giving little one-time benefits to my players for doing something important. They get rewarded, and they can pull out those rewards in a dangerous situational circumstance.

The book does say to modify his tactics. Say, if GM & players agree more books than Core are on the table, you can give Karzoug Firey Body. 9th-level Transmutation that renders him immune to a lot of things, as well as healed by fire. Karzoug's Burning Glaive has 3 healing spells, but unlimited Fireballs. I'd also recommend a Wall of Suppression. He can goad non-flying PCs through it.
He'd also be able to plan for what the PCs would do if he'd seen them fight while spying on them.

As for the Meteor Swarm, my idea was he'd prepare spells like Cone of Cold and Polar Ray for the Karzoug Holograms to use on the PCs. Hopefully, they'd protect themselves against cold, only to get blindsided by a pocket plane made of molten gold. Then, Round One: Meteor Storm

"Taken on the whole, the writing makes no sense. Looking at one character at a time, you can figure out that this one's from Aklo, that one's ancient Thassilonian, that one's either the schwah from Infernal or the 'zh' from Draconic written upside-down.
"The most generous interpretation is that the calligraphers just wanted to be mysteriously foreboding, but couldn't agree on how."

Graham made something hauntingly beautiful.
Cosmic horror doesn't always have to be about a great big screaming blob in deep space: it can be about paranoid fears coming true, of loneliness overtaking one's entire sense of self, a search for meaning in random happanstance, and the resulting indecision when you find some.
Or, potentially, "What's so special about all that? It's just another week on Aucturn."

Matt Dusty, the reason Krune wasn't in any of the APs is because of PFS1, season 4: Year of the Risen Rune.
In my take on Shattered Star, I'm inserting one PFS scenario in each chapter, to show them what the Lissalans are doing, and interfering with them. Then, when they hit level 11 or 12, I'll run The Waking Rune, in which they'll tell the Runelord of Sloth that giving up and just reading up on history will be the path of least resistance, to which he'll reply with, "...Nah," and roll initiative.

Plus, when you get to such dizzying heights of personal power, individual people tend to blur together. Though Baba Yaga does keep a bit of a personal touch, (what she seems to get up to involves "Being A Grump" and "Eating Her Children") it doesn't look like she has any destructive designs on Golarion (I mean, she did get helped out by people from there once). Of course, that doesn't mean she's wreaking havoc on some other setting with a Mythological Russia analogue, but she can't do that when she's on a lunch date with the Old Mage.

As it turned out, my group did, in fact, get the Bad End. Now they've begun Shattered Star, six months after the Rise of Mhar.

My advice? Put Karzoug's box text in the mouth of Khalib, and have Special K complain that he's the only one who could stop someone like Xanderghul or Alaznist from ruining everything, and your attempts to murder him show how much you need him to own all of Varisia and everything in it.

...Then, when they need help from Dead Karzoug, he can say something like,

"...You mean to say that Alaznist is destroying the world, and even time itself, and you need my help to stop her?
"I recall saying the exact same thing, when I was alive. To a group of people, not unlike yourselves.
"Then they killed me, destroyed everything I had worked so hard to build, and awoke the World Thunder to do it, even at the cost of their own lives.
"Golarion deserves what it has earned. You are welcome to it."

She took over from him as Runelord of Wrath. In my opinion, if she hadn't gone to an enormous waste of magic to make him suffer endlessly in an act of horrifying pettiness, I'd have found it out-of-sorts for her.

To be fair, a lot of fantasy RPGs involve dealing with traps, and a great way to stop them from being a pair of Perception/Theivery checks is to make them intricate or elaborate. Slowly rising water, a shooting range maze where nothing is as it seems, swarms of cannibalistic rats (who hopefully don't eat each other before they get to the PCs)...

I do admit, I once had an idea for a Bond-style PC, who'd specialize in calmly walking out of cover and doing Sneak Attacks via Shot-On-The-Run. Also, who would get humorously rejected by every NPC on whom he'd advance. But I had to shelve the idea.

Ah well. Sean Moore will return...

I've always thought of Old-Mage Jatembe as the kind of man who would - now that his glory days of spreading literacy back around Golarion, Ten Magic Warriors with him, are over - encourage small, subtle, yet much-needed acts of kindness and compassion across the many worlds of the Material Plane. Why not have lunch with Baba Yaga in some Taldan place, for old time's sake?

This makes me want to run an RPG in a different setting, and have Jatembe cameo to offer a clue or some advice when the PCs are in a pinch.

(To preface, I'm talking about 1st Edition here)
I do like Hero Points in theory, and I implement them sort of like Shadowrun 5th's Edge: as a cushion for humiliatingly randomly generated numbers. Though that may be what they're actually for in the first place. I hand them out for stuff like who wants to write in the adventure journal, or who figures out an important plot point. Rewarding the players as well as their characters, and not just the numbers they roll.
Similarly, rolling a natural 1 is more like Shadowrun's Glitches: in combat, you still miss in an embarassing way, but you don't drop your weapon/target yourself with your spell. Or, you underestimate your foe, who dodges in an awesome way.
For skill checks, if you can still succeed on a 1, you do, but something happens. Your nat 1 Stealth still beats their Perception? You make it, but you accidentally leave clues to your passage that could make later tracking with Survival easier. You balance across that plank with a 1 on Acrobatics? You did it, but you forgot your shield on the other side, and one of your allies should probably toss it over or something.

As for house rules I don't like: Critical Skill Checks.
As the house rule goes, if you roll a 20 on a skill check (or initiative), you get to roll the 20 again and add that number to what you already rolled.
Predictably, the bard who always made multiple Perform checks at every city stop got Perform: 50+ on multiple occasions, leading to Shelyn and Desna stopping by his performances when they were on a date; the wizard got one while making a Bag of Holding and inadvertantly made a lesser artifact, which was used to cheese a good portion of the AP (though I didn't mind the part where we got a hundred or two captives out of captivity safely); and I only got them on Acrobatics checks with a flat DC, or Perception checks when there was nothing hidden. Also, there were a couple of times where my (15)+18=33 Stealth check was rendered useless by a (20+12)+3=35 Perception check.
That house rule ended up giving everyone else times where they ended up being like Mythic Tier 8 all of a sudden, and I was afraid to sneak by anyone in case Aroden made his Second Coming just to point out where I was.

They do have another niche: they talk bigger than both ysoki & goblins. They're the super-intelligent little dinosaurs who claim to actually be little dragons instead. That's gotta be worth something.

Though I'd expect a lot of them on Verces: while the others pay a lot of money for super-gentrified housing that goes up, they can dig down all under the place and set up their own subterranean arcologies.
Though Triaxus & the Diaspora also work for them.

Yeeeaaahh, even though I trust the people at Paizo to make an adventure where you get to actually help out the community and protect people from getting killed by other people, this is too touchy a subject. I'm glad there are lots of other things I can try, though.

Yeah, multiple 1s in a protracted fight scene tends to turn everything out more like something from Dreamworks.
Fortunately, they won't be as often. Unfortunately, they'll still be memorable.

Sort of a mix. I have bought APs and I do use them, but I alter them a lot and add in some other stuff.

Two other things: during the entire AP, nobody died (though Wilfred came close, 1 HP away from it after getting ambushed by a tiger in Part Two), and that my character's only stat-boosting item was a Belt of DEX +2 that he got toward the end of Part Five.

After a horrible shipwreck, we came to the Eleder's Pathfinder lodge with our findings, eventually found out where the lost city was, we eventually managed to figure out what to do. Not only did we set out determined to stop a race war, we spent months after the final conflict working toward reparations.

Here's who ended up calling themselves the Keys of Yhi:

On the whole, the AP was enjoyable (most likely due to GM edits) though I was hit hard with the Middle of Serpent's Skull Issue. Between getting swamped by so many sidequests at once and repeated spa days wherein my character, who had CHA 5 (rolling dice for stats makes it fun and exciting, and prevents dump stats!) couldn't really participate for a big chunk of it. Worse, one dungeon crawl had all the other PCs hiding in an expanded extradimensional dwelling carried by mine, who snuck around invisibly; this effectively had the same problem from the other direction.
Fortunately, the end bit was a return to form, because everyone was involved with the whole thing. The battle with the high priest went off almost perfectly, between Wilfred's opening Polar Midnight and god-familiar attacks, Roquefort's many buffs, Aki's holy bombs, Tim's nigh-unhittable AC, easily passable saving throw numbers, and haste qi flurries (monks who roll for stats under generous stat distribution!) and a combination of Duvri's early Great Dispel knocking away Vyr-Azul's buffs and his summoned tyrannosaurs eating Vyr-Azul's bodyguard.
Against the Avatar of Ydersius Reborn, it was basically a matter of everyone rushing him and biting/chopping his head off. Fortunately, we had a god on our side so as not to have to deal with a potential Mythic Ascension.
I did like how the GM or the AP or both managed to turn the anti-semitic conspiracy theory on its head: it was the cavern-dwelling reptiles who were planning the race war, due to a patriarchal progenitor whose last words were "Kill All Humans" and a high priest who never let go of that anger. It was why the only two groups we did drive out were the Red Mantis and the Aspis Consortium. I was worried about serpentfolk explorers finding them first, and deciding humanity was still full of avaricious conquerors.
My favourite thing that I think was a GM addition was serpentfolk who tired of thousands of years of propaganda and who didn't want the race war. Between that and PCs who weren't sneering Chelish imperialists or foppish Taldans or what-have-you, the AP became less about "taming the savage jungle" or "we have to finish what Savinth started!" more of a focus was on inherited trauma and multilateral solutions.

"MY HAND MAKES THINGS F***ING EXPLODE!!"

Plus, there's Talmandor, the avoral patron of Andoran.
He actively refuses worship, so as to avoid the sort of political religion that gets in the way of democracy. I imagine Andoran having posters of him with a caption of "Don't Pray To Me".

My first impression was that Paizo said "etching" when they actually meant "soldering" or something similar. But I do like the idea of carefully sticking the runestone itself onto the item. The wizard harmonizes its aura with the flow of the Ethereal Plane, the cleric keeps a vigil over it in prayer, the bard spreads rumors of this awesome new magic shield that can block anything and that you can also use like a sled!

If the runes are obvious enough on an item, would it be possible to figure out what they do just by looking at them? Presuming there isn't a standardized iconography all over Golarion, or that magically empowering runes aren't universal, an Arcadian wizard would probably have a harder time telling what a Vudran cleric's armour does, especially if the rune isn't just Vudrani for "slick" written on the front.

Similarly, there's a reason Alaznist doesn't plan out a spell-by-spell strategy to hard-counter the PCs: she isn't aware of them or their tactics and they sort of show up by surprise. Not like a minion of hers draws her attention to them via a way for her to easily scry on them from then on.

With someone to organize it, people could just form into one of those super-efficient bucket chains wherein everyone Readies to pass the bucket on to the next one, and the one at the end pours it out. One round to dump it out, another to send it back. No ranged attack rolls necessary!

What about a wererat ratfolk? Once a month, they just grow in size and turn viscious? Or do they start looking human and freak out?

Ooh! How about if the townsfolk spread rumors that someone resurrected him, or he became a revenant or something? Then Grigori could use that to his advantage.

For beginners? Fighters tend to be my go-to suggestion, or, if you want to do magic, pick maybe a sorcerer or an oracle. You can pick blasting spells, or ones that alter/obviate the terrain. Or a witch, who can pinch-heal, summon, buff, and have a few fight-ender spells, in addition to hexes you can use round after round.

Or a standard bard. Stand back and make everyone better at everything. You can be the Pathfinder who takes care of all the documentation. If you don't want to sing or dance or play an instrument, make your Performance skill Oration, and just yell at everyone to do better!

I don't recommend classes who come with animals or anything, since that'll require having a second character sheet. Summons work okay if the GM is willing to take care of the monsters for you, or if you just open up the beastiary and know what the monster can do ahead of time.

Though really, ask your GM and the other players for help. If you've already got an idea for characterization, they should figure out how everyone can accomodate each other.

I recall reading a thread about this topic a while back.

While there's no official secret reason why it's called that, I liked the idea that it's like a portmanteau of the Celestial and Elven words for "World" stuck together.

I'd be okay with orange/yellow/brown kobolds who claim metallic heritage. Or even ones who relate in some way to primal or imperial dragons. Black & red kobolds who claim their tribe was once chummy with a magma dragon, or similar.

Personally, I like yellow kobolds. I did once have a PC who kept claiming, "the gold ones are the good ones, so so am I!" while actually being sycophantic LE. Either way, you can't judge a kobold by their colour.

Also, if it hasn't been said before, if they know you're hard of hearing, the GM and the other players should take that into account. If you missed something important, it'd definitely be a show of good faith to allow take-backsies relating to it.

Ooh, nice. Keep us posted!

Wall of Ice is handy when you need some cover or line of sight broken right now, but don't want/need a higher-level spell slot dedicated to a sturdier wall.

Also, if your wall is going to be made of stone, I recommend also packing Stone Shape so you can easily make an archway, in case you've blocked off a way you were going to go.

Ooh, is Special K going to have his own villain song? Or is he going to get Ratcliffe's song?

Huh. I always presumed that Xanderghul's Flawless Hammer was made from a skymetal alloy, and considered its' Full Potential ability to mean it could get around any sort of DR.

Plus, since the Runelords are all wizards, none of the Mythical ones would need mythcial weapons, since they relied so much on their spells and the polearms were usually more badges of office.

This reminds me of the disappointment over the gravitational powers of Starfinder's solarions. When you use it to pull people toward you, it doesn't cause random unattended junk to slide toward you and stick to you.

As for collateral damage, I just figure it's reasonable for players & GMs to be careful around fragile/flammable objects. Lightning Bolt through some debris, so you can step aside from the now-open charge lane? Sure, sounds strategic. Throwing a Fireball in the library? Bad idea. I guess the GM would just have to eyeball Table 11-4 and take it from there. (It's the Material Hardness/HP/Broken Threshold table, by the way)

English? Efficient?

Anyway, I've always found it better to not substitute real-life languages for fantasy game ones. Difficulties can arise. Though there's always Esperanto!

Okay, while gross, that does make sense if you're thinking of specific rules for intellect devourers.

Also: at this point in the AP, Tongues is easily available for people who don't want to put a point in Linguistics. Considering how this AP is all about learning about stuff from Thassilon, it's reasonable for PCs to want to learn the language so that they can read things like how to get to Runeforge.

Of course, if they don't, you can always let the Scribbler cast Tongues on himself, or give him a sort of empathic communication where everyone around him gets the feeling he wants to know about/tell you something.

I'm slightly confused and disappointed with some of what goes on in here. The ghost iron sword was supposed to be Xin's attempt at his own Blade of Conviction, but Runeforge was built long after his death; his dismantling of the Sihedron was the time for the assassin to strike, yet he only breaks it after the assassin appears. Also, Xin being also condescending in the past and bent on conquest in the present makes it look like all his talk of virtue was mainly lip service, so I'm thinking of a different take on this:

PCs:
Koji Yamaoka, kitsune Life Oracle 17
->Akiko Yamaoka, kitsune Vigilante 15 (Leadership cohort)
Nordramel Embermaw, kobold Pride Illusionist 4/U-Rogue 3/Arcane Trickster 10
Dreg Embermaw, kobold Sandman Bard 17
Atropos, (formerly catfolk, now reincarnated as aasimar wyvaran) Fighter 6/Huntmaster Cavalier 11

Location: The Pinnacle of Avarice (they hadn't found the Leng Device)
TPK, Bad End achieved

The party, all invisible with only one person able to See Invisible, scattered in an open area. They were fighting three Advanced cloud giants and one rune giant. With nobody else to attack, multiple giants surrounded Atropos and killed him faster than Koji could heal him. Akiko was under attack from an elemental summoned by the currently-hiding Khalib.

I also crit like three times in as many rounds >_<

Chellan was on its way (I wasn't going to announce Chellan's arrival until a round after the rune giant fell, but he didn't fall), the party had gotten itself surrounded, they'd forgotten some of their preparation, and were too spread out to attempt to D-Door to safety.

So they surrendered.

Khalib, Chellan, Ceoptera, and the rune giant marched them all up to the Eye of Avarice, where they reverently awaited the rise of the Claimer.

A denizen of Leng burst in, arms flailing and head shaking, but nobody would be dissuaded.

Karzoug stepped upon the Soul Lens.

The Eye of Avarice activated.

With a piggy-back from it, the Leng Device activated.

The Leng Device broke.

Then Mhar arose in a furious conflagration, instantly destroying the Pinnacle of Avarice, with a resulting pyroclasic flow that destroyed most of Xin-Shalast. The Ancient One then pulled itself up on legs of living ruby, and stumbled its way down the mountainside.

At least Karzoug is dead, but the rest of Varisia has to contend with the Rise of Mhar.

Hero of the Hour sounds like a fun & useful way to refresh Hero Points. I was thinking of ways to get the players involved with them, since it'd keep them engaged when it isn't their turn, and it'd encourage cameraderie.
Plus, everyone would enjoy a re-roll cushion in case their whole plan involves one die roll that'll fail on a 1.
I wonder, though, would it be inadvisable to give certain NPCs a similar point? Just one, to be used, say, if a PC decides to Intimidate a noble who honestly wants to help them, or any villain who has their own write-up at the back of the AP? Partially so said villain won't lose in an anti-climactic tumble after crit-failing something in Round 1.

I ran into the same issue, and came up with a few other ideas:

In the Pinnacle, there's a banquet table that's a fixed magic item that can do a 1/day Bountiful Banquet or Heroes' Feast. You can also swap out one of Ceoptera's spells, and those of the other lamia, for them.

As for the lesser minions, give them a transmutation that makes garbage edible, as long as it's successfully eaten before the spell wears off.

Original blog post wrote:

{. . .} As a note, some of these feats are restricted to particular faiths, such as the Sanctify Water feat that only functions for followers of a good or evil deity as it allows you to create holy water or unholy water respectively. {. . .}

How come nobody ever does Axiomatic water or Entropic water?

Have you ever tasted Entropic water? Stuff's probably frozen at room temperature but melts when it gets loud enough.

Also, it might not fit the setup for Pathfinder, but I always liked the idea of a Good-aligned, peaceful religion whose favoured weapon was the unarmed strike or the net. Though I admit those would work better in times of lasting peace, than Golarion's current uncertain instability.

Hmm, this makes me wonder: what in the PF2 bestiary has neither low-light nor darkvision? Or what has no special sense whatsoever? Just boring regular humans?

Grr, those whiny, pompous allgolthu... This is why we can't have nice senses!

Huh, how can players abuse non-infectious diseases? I mainly see this as a problem, though purely for Urgathoan anti-champions of the "Gotta Catch 'Em All!" mindset.

I'm unsure, but you can always add those bits in yourself. It should be even more fun if you mention events of other APs your players have previously done!

Hm, my reaction to the first paragraph was, "Malfeshnekor was supposed to stay trapped even with the doors open. It sounds like you let him out - and you let a PC be an anipaladin? Uh-oh..."

But at the end, this might be a surprising plot twist. As for how Malfy gets the rings to the PCs, keep in mind that any ruse is doomed to fail the second the conned minion goes to ask one of the Karzoug Holograms what's really going on.

Though this could work to your advantage: Malfy doesn't know about those, so the door opens, and Karzoug Hologram says, "That's a barghest, most likely allied with Alaznist. Fling that worthless thing down a crevasse."

So the giants chase down Malfy, underestimate all the class levels/advanced templates you've given him, and steals rings while invisibile or tries to lure them into the Leng spiders.

As for how to give the rings to the group, he could turn into a goblin, turn invisible, then track the PCs, get in front of them, then make an offer. He can truthfully say he was sent to attack Karzoug's minions, but now found the opportunity to attack Karzoug himself. He has these magic rings and knows what they do, and will fight alongside everyone. Sense Motive could reveal that he's being truthful, yet sounds overly excited at the thought of all the incoming violence. Also, if the last remaining original PC is there, due to being one of the ones who freed him, Malfy could always aim for that one last.

I mean, with what I said, I don't mind. I'm just wondering if/when/how it'd get implemented for when it can become a plot point. Maybe in the GMG?
Plus, it lets GMs decide which ways what diseases are spread in which ways, if at all.