The Unfortunate Pumpkin's page

I would like to cancel this order. There was a problem with my original payment method, and then I updated the payment method, but I've decided to just cancel the order then buy the book on Amazon. If it's too late to cancel at this point, that's fine, but if it's still possible I would like to cancel.

I find myself in a somewhat similar situation. During the infiltration of Fort Rannick the party's sorcerer charmed an ogre and convinced him he was working with Lucrecia (he was wearing the Sihedron amulet and everything). Now here's the problem, The sorcerer went alone without the rest of the party. He chatted with Lucrecia and decided to join with her and do her bidding. Now it was partially to stay alive, but I believe the player means to have his character go through with just about any mission she sends him on. Now the other players know he is working for the enemy, but their characters don't. I had her first order to him be for him to prove his usefulness by slaughtering the Ogres currently inhabiting Fort Rannick. I'm not sure where to go with things after that point. I'm not sure how things are gonna work out, I kinda like the angle of Karzoug's minions controlling the party, I'm just not sure where or how far to take it. None of the characters are really by any means good guys, but how should I spin this while still keeping them slightly on the Adventure Path tracks? Things are obviously going to be different, I won't be able to follow the book exactly anymore. I'm going to go ahead and say, I'm not going to punish my player for joining Lucrecia. I won't make him stop playing his character or anything, at the end of the day he won't kill or harm any of the other PC'S, but he may convince them that following Lucrecias orders may be their best option.

The Unfortunate Pumpkin wrote:

Maybe it's just me, but looks like there is an error on the full color one. I don't see the symbols for actions in the top left.

Yup, the ligature set wasn't loaded properly. I am looking into it and will have it fixed ASAP.

Cool, other than that these sheets look awesome! Can't wait to put my first 2e character on one.

Maybe it's just me, but looks like there is an error on the full color one. I don't see the symbols for actions in the top left.

I'm sorry to bother you again about this order, but I added a couple more books to the order and was wondering when I should expect to be charged? As far as I can tell I haven't been charged yet and I just want to make sure everything is okay as I really want to have the second edition books on release day.

Number one for me is Gunslinger, I really want the Gunslinger to be a class people actually want to play this time around and not just take some level dips in it.

Next I want some more Occult stuff, new or old would be nice tbh.

38
Name: Mack Mountain
ABC: Human/Merchant/LG Champion of Sarenrae with MC Alchemist archetype
Catchphrases: "I sell Alchemist Fire, and Alchemist Fire accessories."
"I tell you h'what that bard ain't right"
Weapon: Longsword and Alchemists Fire

As you can probably tell by now he's based off of Hank Hill. I think he'd be a really fun to play paladin and of course he would constantly be trying to get people to use Alchemist Fire as a clean burning alternative fuel source so you can taste the meat not the heat.

Nightfox19 wrote:

The Unfortunate Pumpkin wrote:

Ah man, I am also running Rise of the Runelords converted to playtest rules and barring my players getting way off track or dying they should beat Xanesha next session. When I was wondering what to do with the mask I had decided to replace it with a Demon Mask, but it still does irk me that it doesn't fit her snake motif as you said. I may just give her the ability to cast flesh to stone once per day though I'm thinking the DC would be 23 since I'm running her stats as using the Night Hag from the bestiary but with different spells, and without some of the night hags abilities.

Pumpkin

Do you happen to have a listing of changes that you made / implemented? Having something to base mine off of as well would help. DC's are probably one thing from the Playtest that will probably need to be done again.

Nightfox

Back on the playtest forum there's a change log somebody made. I will say I have some big creative differences with many of their choices. I made a change log for Ironfang Invasion I haven't updated in a while. But if you have specific questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Yeah same I've got a lot of creative differences with them but it was helpful as a jumping off point, as were your backgrounds.

The Unfortunate Pumpkin wrote:

Ah man, I am also running Rise of the Runelords converted to playtest rules and barring my players getting way off track or dying they should beat Xanesha next session. When I was wondering what to do with the mask I had decided to replace it with a Demon Mask, but it still does irk me that it doesn't fit her snake motif as you said. I may just give her the ability to cast flesh to stone once per day though I'm thinking the DC would be 23 since I'm running her stats as using the Night Hag from the bestiary but with different spells, and without some of the night hags abilities.

Pumpkin

Do you happen to have a listing of changes that you made / implemented? Having something to base mine off of as well would help. DC's are probably one thing from the Playtest that will probably need to be done again.

Nightfox

Unfortunately, I don't. I'm kinda old fashioned about stuff like that and any changes I've made I keep writing in a physical notebook. However this thread is a good starting point.

The Unfortunate Pumpkin wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

Lanathar wrote:

Does the user wear the mask ? I assume not

Because if it does that is another wrinkle where a level 7 party would be decimated by it and never get a chance to earn it

Yeah, the boss is meant to use it on the PCs. Which was another tough moment-- It got used on the party wizard and the bard burned a 4th level dispel magic and a hero point trying to end the spell before the petrification fully set in. The DC for an 11th level item would be 26, which the bard hit on the reroll... Except that a 6th level spell would add a -10 penalty to the 4th level dispel slot. Which is impossible for the bard to hit with his +11 spell roll.

I wound up letting the bard save his wizard boyfriend, and after discussing my dilemma with the group we decided to have them sell the mask for a bounty to the Church of Abadar to be destroyed. An 11th level item usually retails for about 1400 gp, so they took half of that to invest in upgrading their weapons and armor rather than have this once per day unbalancing spell.

If I run this encounter again, I will probably just replace it with a 6th level Demon Mask. It doesn't fit the boss's snake motif as well but it is very desirable and is level appropriate.

Ah man, I am also running Rise of the Runelords converted to playtest rules and barring my players getting way off track or dying they should beat Xanesha next session. When I was wondering what to do with the mask I had decided to replace it with a Demon Mask, but it still does irk me that it doesn't fit her snake motif as you said. I may just give her the ability to cast flesh to stone once per day though I'm thinking the DC would be 23 since I'm running her stats as using the Night Hag from the bestiary but with different spells, and without some of the night hags abilities.

Another possible way to spin it is to have the more potent properties of the mask be a property of Xanesha herself. The game actually has a...

That's absolutely an awesome idea! I love it, I'm stealing it, thank you.

Lanathar wrote:

Does the user wear the mask ? I assume not

Because if it does that is another wrinkle where a level 7 party would be decimated by it and never get a chance to earn it

Yeah, the boss is meant to use it on the PCs. Which was another tough moment-- It got used on the party wizard and the bard burned a 4th level dispel magic and a hero point trying to end the spell before the petrification fully set in. The DC for an 11th level item would be 26, which the bard hit on the reroll... Except that a 6th level spell would add a -10 penalty to the 4th level dispel slot. Which is impossible for the bard to hit with his +11 spell roll.

I wound up letting the bard save his wizard boyfriend, and after discussing my dilemma with the group we decided to have them sell the mask for a bounty to the Church of Abadar to be destroyed. An 11th level item usually retails for about 1400 gp, so they took half of that to invest in upgrading their weapons and armor rather than have this once per day unbalancing spell.

If I run this encounter again, I will probably just replace it with a 6th level Demon Mask. It doesn't fit the boss's snake motif as well but it is very desirable and is level appropriate.

Ah man, I am also running Rise of the Runelords converted to playtest rules and barring my players getting way off track or dying they should beat Xanesha next session. When I was wondering what to do with the mask I had decided to replace it with a Demon Mask, but it still does irk me that it doesn't fit her snake motif as you said. I may just give her the ability to cast flesh to stone once per day though I'm thinking the DC would be 23 since I'm running her stats as using the Night Hag from the bestiary but with different spells, and without some of the night hags abilities.

I accidentally selected the wrong address for this order. I was wondering if I could have the shipping address for this order changed from the Alabama address to the Louisiana address.

An update on my game, like you guys said it wasn't the end of the world. Actually as things went on my players started doubting it was really Aldern committing the murders. When the reveal with the key to Foxglove manor happened my players were still surprised, one of my players even let out a pretty loud gasp, it was great. Overall it was one of our best sessions with this AP, I was worried for nothing

I've always wanted to see an adventure path set in the Mana Wastes, hopefully we will see that in 2e. I'm super excited and I hope we get to see guns in 2e sooner rather than later, I'm itching to see how 2e handles gunslingers (please let them be good).

One of my players immediately knew it was Aldern as soon as he saw the note with the players name he was obsessed with on it. We stopped right after they investigated the bodies in the sawmill. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on how I could throw him off the trail of Aldern a bit? I thought I had a decent number of red herrings. I had Titus Scarnetti and Caizarlu show up in book one so I thought that would help, but one of my players is just too smart I guess.

The Unfortunate Pumpkin wrote:

Hi Mark, I loved your Arcane Mark episode where you covered Jade Regent. Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch it live. I have a few questions, I know it's unlikely but will the rest of the ultimate relationships ever be released? Also do you ever think it possible you would release written notes of your changes to Jade Regent?

I recently purchased the Jade Regent AP and I would love to run it using Ultimate Relationships and your caravan system. Would I be able to do that with just the stuff you covered in the last episode or is there more stuff you would have to cover on it for me to use it properly?

I don't keep written notes that are usable for anyone else (they just have words that I've written down that remind me of what I want to do). But good news! Last night's episode saw a voting spike in general, directed towards Mark's Adventures, so Saturday will be Jade Regent Part 2!

The Ultimate Relationships line as I originally envisioned would cover pretty much all of the characters, but it had a crucial problem: While the short, sweet, rules in the original Ultimate Relationships sold amazingly well (and with Legendary's commission policy, actually helped me out more than writing for Paizo, rare for a 3rd party job), the characters were getting great reviews and a lot of passion from the few people who read them, but almost nobody actually bought them. I think it might be because more of the audience wanted to make their own. Unfortunately, it takes many hours of work for me to get the NPC's info together into a publishable form, so if very few people will buy it, I can't justify doing it over other options.

I can't wait to hear more about your changes to the AP, it's inspired me to attempt to recreate your social link idea with the harrow deck and caravan. I'm a huge fan of the Persona series and it's awesome to learn that ultimate relationship is somewhat inspired by it (although I had my suspicions). So I gotta ask which Persona game is your favorite? I prefer 3.

Hi Mark, I loved your Arcane Mark episode where you covered Jade Regent. Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch it live. I have a few questions, I know it's unlikely but will the rest of the ultimate relationships ever be released? Also do you ever think it possible you would release written notes of your changes to Jade Regent?

I recently purchased the Jade Regent AP and I would love to run it using Ultimate Relationships and your caravan system. Would I be able to do that with just the stuff you covered in the last episode or is there more stuff you would have to cover on it for me to use it properly?

Wow this Backstory is very similar to one I wrote for my goblin PC. I love fumbus and I love goblins, can't wait till goblins start getting even more love!

A7 - This one is already a bit out of wack. Supposed to be Severe which is 120 XP building budget. Commando (40) Pyro (40) 3 Warriors (20x3=60) totals 140 XP or halfways between Severe (120) and Extreme (160). Adding 1 PC to Severe = (150) and Extreme = (200) so maintaining the halfway point would be A 175 xp budget for the encounter. Adding 2 more Goblin Warriors adds +40 xp for a total of 180 in the encounter. (+5 XP for 5P) [Note you could also add a Commando or a Pyro for the same amount of xp.)

Yeah I noticed that too, I can only guess it's some kind of error and either it's supposed to be labeled extreme, or they accidentally had one too many Goblins in the encounter.

Regrading the rat: There is no "Dire" rat in the Bestiary; there is a Giant Rat, however. It does look incredibly out of place, and no text mentions the rat, other than the creature block.

Yeah it was confirmed in another thread (this one) that the giant rat was a copy/paste error that ended up in print, so it should just be ignored and cut from the encounter even with a regular party of 4 players.

I'm going to be running Doomsday Dawn soon, unfortunately my usual gaming group consists of only three players (not counting myself as the GM). I was originally just going to have my players build a fourth character that they would unanimously decided how he acted in combat, however once I read the rules for adjusting encounters I figured I would give that a try instead and avoid them having to control an extra PC. This is what I came up with.

A1.Slime Cistern: Trivial 1
1 weak Sewer Ooze: Creature 0
I gave the sewer ooze the weak adjustments from the bestiary.

A2.Mudchewer Central: High 1
3 Goblin Warriors: Creature 0
Removed one of the goblin warriors.

A3.Vermin Den: Severe 1
4 Giant Centipedes: Creature 0
Removed two of the giant centipedes.

A5.Fungus Bloom: High 1
Mindfog Fungus: Hazard 2
I didn't change this one, but this being a complex hazard with a level of 2 changes this from a low encounter to a high encounter for a party of 3.

A6.Purification Fountain: High 1
1 Elite Quasit: Creature 2
Removed one of the quasits and made the remaining one an elite.

A7.Goblin Headquarters: Extreme 1
1 Goblin Commando: Creature 1
1 Goblin Pyro: Creature 1
1 Goblin Warrior: Creature 1
Falling Rock Trap: Hazard 0
I removed two of the Goblin Warriors. I'm pretty sure this encounter has an error in it somewhere. It's listed as severe, but when you calculate the monsters it comes out to extreme. Either it was erroneously labeled as severe or there's one too many Goblins here (or I could be missing something entirely).

A8.Room of Ruined Repose: Severe 1
4 Skeleton Guards: Creature 0
Removed two of the skeleton guards.

A10.Befouled Shrine: High 1
Weak Drakus the Taker: Creature 2
I gave Drakus the weak adjustments. I also removed the giant rat, but according to James Jacobs the rat wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.

My afterthoughts

So this is what I got so far, if you have any feedback or ideas let me know. I think the Goblin Headquarters might still be too hard, and I might have made the Drakus encounter too easy.

One last concern I have is if by changing the encounters like this my groups playtest data won't be useful anymore. Will my group still be able to take the surveys and provide useful feedback with me making these changes? Should I just scrap all of this and go back to having my players control an extra PC?

I also feel like the poisons cost way too much, I didn't like that poison wasn't very useful in 1E and really want them to make poison more viable. although I also do like the new mechanical changes.

My playtest core rulebook and doomsday dawn has shipped and is in my city, so I should get those tomorrow, but the maps still have yet to ship so idk when I'll get those.

Oh my god yes! Finally my favorite class gets the buff it so rightfully deserves! Bards rock!

I'm cool with most of this. I love snares and I don't mind them being spell-less (I actually think that makes more sense to what a ranger should be in a fantasy setting). I do miss the old flavor of favoured enemy though. I want to have a grudge against certain types of enemies and be able to track any creatures of that type to their lair because I've been studying them most of my life. I love the way you can make a great backstory just from this one simple class feature so I'm going to really miss it.

226) In pf2 will all characters still be orphaned murderhobos?

41) Will we actually be able to catch Carmen Sandiego with the new proficiency system?

225) If we cant catch carmen sandiego. Can we atleast find waldo?

So is investing in the staff the only way to restore charges? can I manually restore more charges if necessary if I'm not high enough level to invest all the charges back?

I Like what I'm seeing so far, I just hope that martial classes will be as good as spellcasters at higher levels. probably won't happen, but I'm hopeful.

MMCJawa wrote:

about what I expected. I like that they have the potential to be really closely tied into an AP, although I agree with folks that it's going to be pretty rough until enough AP's and splats come out to allow a full range of character concepts.

Honestly worthy it for me.

Issue i had with some home games and traits is that they were just forgotten after you pick them, no in world value outside the mechanical side.

Im not blaming any GM for this either, they just didnt stop to create their on traits since the system was often side lined. Im hoping by this being in core, more people will think about making their own gist for their stories, so when you pick one, you can better integrate with the story about to be told.

The few campaigns i played, outside APs which have their own, that had a GM prepare their traits ahead of time were trully awesome from the get go, since you often started with all players already integrated with the story and its NPCs, with motivations...

Had moments were traits had real story significance and a real inworld impact, like completely changing how certain events went because that one guy was there and that one guy had the trait for the situation we got ourselves in...

I'm of the school of thought that you should find ways to incorporate characters backstory into a campaign no matter how crazy it seems, as long as it's done well. this way players always feel like their character has story significance, I mean they are the heroes after all. I had the same issue with traits being forgotten after being picked, because players only wanted to take the good ones and didn't care too much for the flavor of them so they just wrote their backstory completely ignoring the traits they took. This lead to me not really using traits too often.

Have to say, I'm still torn about backgrounds. I don't really like the fact that half of the paladins you meet in PF1.0 were found in the wilds as a child, bearing fey markings. I've always felt that traits (and other mechanical advantages) should be divorced from backstory. Why should someone have to be bullied or adopted by elves to have quick reactions. Or why should you have to have trained from a young age using armor to know how to move efficiently while wearing it. Can't someone just be good at something because they have a natural aptitude?

On the other hand, background really does seem to fit into the new intuitive character creation system they have going. And there seems to be an effort to make backgrounds more diverse and open to many character concepts. So, really my hope is when we finally get into the swing of things, and have a few hardcovers out, that we're not going to see the same backstory popping up because there's a wealth of options to choose from, and there's not one best choice for every character build.

I feel the same, my group didn't use traits too much because it's was really limiting in terms of your characters backstory, where everyone wanted to pick the same traits for obvious reasons as many are plain crap and a few are really great. I liked the adventure path traits because it gave less creative players an easy way of making a character that fits the story, but I never forced players to use those to build their character.

Not a fan.

These options are restricting, whether people want to admit it or not.

Paizo could save a bunch of book space by just having the following text.

"For your character's background, pick 2 ability scores and increase them by 2, then pick a feat from the table X, and a skill from table Y. Your GM may require that you explain your choices with a short description of your background."

Now I don't have to worry about my character having to pick a background that doesn't fit my envisioned character's actual background, or being stuck with the cliches associated with said backgrounds.

I know I had a horrible time with 5e's background system, as NONE of the choices fit my character, so I ended up picking the one with the best mechanical benefits to my character. It felt more like I was clicking boxes in a character creation menu on a cheap MMO than I was applying mechanical benefits that fit the character I envisioned.

Yes! This! I love this idea, it gives you freedom without making it too convoluted.

The Unfortunate Pumpkin wrote:

I just hope there are enough backgrounds in the final version for me to write whatever backstory I want for my character and still be able to find a background that fits it. One of my favorite things about character creation is thinking out and writing my characters backstory, so I hope the backgrounds don't limit what I can create as a backstory.

In starfinder they had a themeless theme so I am imagining they will have something like that as the my background does not fit any of the listed ones well so here is a generic one that I can use for whatever.

That would be acceptable, as long as it's actually just as good an option as the other backgrounds to pick from and not a downgrade mechanically.

The Unfortunate Pumpkin wrote:

I just hope there are enough backgrounds in the final version for me to write whatever backstory I want for my character and still be able to find a background that fits it. One of my favorite things about character creation is thinking out and writing my characters backstory, so I hope the backgrounds don't limit what I can create as a backstory.

Well, with 19 backgrounds in the Playtest book and 6 in the Playtest adventure, you're starting with 25 options. And I would expect that the eventual PF2 Core will have more than 19.

But more to the point—it should be pretty easy in this system to write a new background and just follow the same mechanical pattern of the published ones, or to flavor or reflavor a published background's mechanical package to fit the precise story you want to tell with your specific character. I mean, "urchin" or the "Pathfinder" background are both very, very broad and can be filled in with a lot of different stories as long as there's some loose connection to the theme.

yeah I guess you're right, however I'm very lazy so I'd rather just have that stuff already available for me rather than having to spend time actually making something for a very specific purpose.

I just hope there are enough backgrounds in the final version for me to write whatever backstory I want for my character and still be able to find a background that fits it. One of my favorite things about character creation is thinking out and writing my characters backstory, so I hope the backgrounds don't limit what I can create as a backstory.

If the other alignments get their own paladin I wonder how they will prioritize the Good-Evil Law-Chaos spectrum. for example the LG paladin seems to prioritize good over law. How would other alignments work?