TracerBullet42's page

In a little less than a month, I'm going to be running a game at a birthday party for a group of young teens. The birthday boy is turning 16 and requested a game be run at his birthday party. (Cool, right?)

Anyway, I'm trying to decide what I want to run, and I thought I'd turn to the community for a little help.

I've run games for some of this group before, and they want to use the same characters, so here's what I've got so far:
-6th level Evoker (the birthday boy)
-6th level Druid (the birthday boy's sister)
-4th level Psuedodragon Rogue (birthday boy's brother...acting as his familiar: I know it's not totally within the rules, but we don't care.)
-6th level Paladin (birthday boy's father)

There will be two other players, characters to be made later.

So, looks like it will be a party of 6 PCs, all CR 5. I think we'll stick with that.

So, now for the adventure/plot:
I am thinking that it would be fun to have it be the Evoker's 16th birthday within the game, and perhaps he's just received an inheritance that he must claim...and adventure ensues.

Beyond that, I'm not sure.

If you were in my shoes, what might you do? I'm looking to keep this a light-hearted, fun/silly game. Any thoughts/tips?

Greetings! I'm going to be running a one-shot this weekend and have a fun idea (in my opinion) for an adventure, but I could use a little help bolstering it.

Here's the basic premise: A "find familiar" ritual has gone horribly awry, and the familar has taken the wizard on as its familiar instead of the other way around. (Think "Little Shop of Horrors," where Audrey the plant bosses Seymour around).

Now, because I am strange, I was thinking about how goats eat just about anything...and so I want to use a goat as the familiar who takes over in this scenario. I may even go ahead and call the goat Audrey, because...why not? Anyway, following in the vein of "Little Shop of Horrors," I think Audrey will feed on spellbooks and scrolls, much like the plant in the famous story fed on blood. So there will be this poor wizard (probably named Seymour) who is now enslaved to Audrey, and he's running around stealing spellbooks and scrolls for Audrey's consumption. I'm imagining a final showdown in a barn, where the goat sits on an throne of straw. :)

Here's where you guys come in...how do I build to that conclusion? What sort of encounters might make sense in such a scenario?

I'm planning on running this as for 5 sixth level PCs. (A druid, a paladin, a rogue, a wizard, and a barbarian)

Thoughts? How can I fill out this scenario?

Perhaps I'm off my rocker...but wasn't there a DM's guide that gave a brief overview of all of the adventures at one point? I can't seem to find it.

I'm getting ready to start running a new Savage Tide campaign and have been gobbling up all sorts of wonderful information from the boards.

My question now, however, is about the Pathfinder deities. In running a "Pathfinder Savage Tide," is there some sort of deity conversion I should be attempting? Or should I just take it case by case as it comes up...I didn't know if someone else had already attempted to do such a thing, so I figured I'd pose the question here. Thanks!

So my group is nearing the end of Sea Wyvern's Wake. I expect next session will get them stuck in the sargasso (after a "suprise birthday party" for one of the PCs). I'm looking forward to the sargasso event, very much, but one thing I'm not crazy about is the "let's have them make a bunch of Profession: Sailor checks and then they crash into the island due to a storm" way that the module has them end up on the island.

I'm thinking that I'll use the "Living Shipwreck" wandering monster from the back of the very same Dungeon magazine that has the Sea Wyvern's Wake in it.

I like the image of a tattered ship approaching (I'll probably keep the storm going so that there can be dramatic flashes of lighting and such) and then a huge crab-like monster emerges from beneath it to try and claim more trophies with which to decorate its shell. This just seems like a more interesting way to achieve the goal of having them wash up on shore with much damage to the Sea Wyvern.

What I'm wondering is did anyone else take this attempt? Anything I should be worried about/prepared for?

So, as a little excercise in "what if" some of my players and I started to come up with a list of who should play the major characters in the STAP. Here's what we came up with. (Granted, the HEROES would be different in every campaign, and I included my minor NPCs...but you get the idea)
Lavinia Vanderboren: Angelina Jolie
Kora Whistlegap: Angela Lansbury
Idae/Adamaeus: Orlando Bloom
Ornrik Durthas: Michael Chiklis?
Saris Van Sky: Val Kilmer (The Top Gun "Iceman" version)
Viselys Mortaum: Chris Evans?
Tolin Kientai: Clive Owen
Zan Oldavin: Paul Bettany
Kaskus Kiel: Terry O'Quinn
Liamae Teslikaria: Shannyn Sossamon
Vanthus Vanderboren: Tim Roth
Soller Vark: Crispin Glover
Shefton Rosk: John C. Riley
Nemien Roblach: Kevin Bacon (come on, he had to make it in somewhere)
Rowyn Kellani: Christina Hendricks
Heldrath Kellani: Geena Davis
Brissa Santos: Keri Russell
Harliss Javell: Gina Torres
Diamondback: Summer Glau
Martha the Parrot: Gilbert Godfrey (voice)
Captain Amella Venkallie: Nicolette Sheridan
Urol Furol: Tony Shaloub
Skald: Johnny Depp
Father Feres/Conrad Horst:Joe Pantoliano
Lirith Veldirose: Courtney Love
Avner Meravanchi: Burt Reynolds
Quenge:
Banaby:
Tavey Nesk:
Miranda Rivers: Nicole Kidman
Jacob Weatherby: Isaac C. Singleton Jr.
Aiden Turlough:
Druce Calligan:
Bryson Talbot: Gary Senise
Gwenlian Talbot: Claire Danes
Gidrick Talbot: Connor Stanhope
Thunderstrike: Docs Keepin Time

Just thought it was a fun idea and might be fun to discuss here.

My group will be resuming tonight after taking a week off. We're currently in Sea Wyvern's Wake and have just made our way around the bend where the Brotherhood Blockade would have taken place. (I replaced that encounter with an ambush from the "Fire Trolls," but that's another story all together.)

Anyway, tonight they ought to be encountering the hydra at the water-refilling area.

Here's my thought...

This encounter just doesn't interest me much? It could be that I'm just too anxious to get to the sargasso...which just oozes mood and atmosphere. How can I make this encounter more interesting? Should I just skip it? I get the feeling that my group is going to steam-roll the poor hydra.

One thought I had to make it more interesting is to have it attack the Blue Nixie's passengers, rather than the Sea Wyvern's passengers. Suddenly they are launched into rescue mode instead of defend/conquer mode. It might amp up the drama a bit.

I don't know...just thinking out loud. Anybody got any ideas on how to spice up this encounter?

Don't know if this is something you'd want or need, but I created a document with a short description of the crew of the Sea Wyvern, along with a sheet that can be used for counters on the map of the boat.

If you want to download it, I just posted it over at the RPGENIUS site. It's in pdf format there, but if you would rather have the Word document, you can email me at TracerBullet42@gmail.com and I can send it to you. (It's a much bigger file that way, though, but you can edit it to suit your crew.)

First, love these boards. I've ready many-a-brilliant idea here and want to say thanks.

Ok, to my question:

In my game (we're in the middle of SWW right now), the group consists of a rogue, a swashbuckler, a marshal, and a wizard/cleric. They've also managed to "reform" Diamondback and have her accompanying them as party of the "party."

The player of the wizard/cleric has asked me to consider letting him run his PC with the Spell Point Variant as presented in Unearthed Arcana. (LINK).

Now, I am aware that allowing him to suddenly switch to this will give his character a bit of a boost. However, there are really no ranged combatants in the group, otherwise. I don't think that giving him a bit of a boost would necessarily be a bad thing, for him or for the group. They've managed to get by so far, but it's only going to get more difficult once they reach the Isle.

I'm thinking that I may allow it with a feat. I'll call it "Adaptable Caster" and it'll have prereqs of Know: Arcana and Know: Religion of 8 ranks each. He can take that feat when he reaches 6th level and be able to use it then.

In the meantime, before he gets there, I can have Liamae have her "religious experience" a little early and talk with him about it. Her favored soul levels plus sorcerer levels could help explain how he "figures out" how to cast in this new manner.

All in all, I typically don't like to just say "no" to players when they pitch ideas to me, but I want to make sure I'm not about to open up a big can of worms.

Any thoughts?

Why is he even on this trip? We started Sea Wyvern's Wake tonight and the players asked why a young boy was even on board...

I replied..."Um, I don't rememember...I'll look it up and we'll get to it next week." (It was pretty much the end of the session.)

Really, though, why is there such a young boy on board? Just saying, "He's the cabin boy," doesn't really feel sufficent.

I'm thinking I may make him an aspiring sailor or something...but why would he end up on this trip?

Where's this thread in the messageboards? It's only showing when I search through my posts? I wonder where this post will end up, too...

So my group is getting ready to start Sea Wyvern's Wake pretty soon. The cleric/wizard of the group has yet to obtain a familiar, and is getting the itch to do so. He would like something "exotic," he says.

Well, I told him that it'll work well with the story if he just holds out a little longer. I figure that there's pleny of exotic animals on the Isle.

He's willing to take the Improved Familiar feat, too, although I may not make him. (He's the group's only caster, and a split one at that.)

Anyway, what awesome, exotic familiar should I push his way?

We're not even out of the Bullywug Gambit yet, but I'm trying to anticipate the question of why Lavinia isn't on the Sea Wyvern with the group. They're probably going to try to have that happen.

So why is it that she's on the "other" ship for Sea Wyvern's Wake?

So the group is nearly done with the "clear out Vanderboren Manor to save Lavinia (and Kora...I love that little halfling!)" section of the Bullywug Gambit and they're in pretty bad shape. I was thinking that it'd be kinda fun to let them do some "fun" stuff while the Wormfall Festival winds down.

Any ideas?

So I decided to start up a blog for my group. I think it's going pretty well so far. Granted, I just started working on it yesterday, so it has a long way to go.

We're currently in the middle of dealing with Kracken's Cove in the game. I'm not caught up to that point in the blog yet, but I'll get there.

Anyway, I thought that it might be of some interest to other GMs, so I'll throw you a link if you want to take a look at it.
My Savage Tide Blog

Also, I'll gladly take advice on ways to improve it.

So I've been trying to DM this adventure path, but my group has been very, very slow about going through it. Topping that, we only played once every two weeks (we rotated between two games) for about 4 hours. With some bad weather and illnesses popping up, we've missed a few weeks and over the past three months we've probably only had three sessions.

But there's good news! The group has decided that they want to jump in to the Savage Tide and we're going to start playing every week. They're showing signs of excitement about it and I'm really psyched to be getting the game going again. We play on tuesday nights and tomorrow night should be the first game under the new "enlightenment."

All that to say, I'm excited and I hope to chime in here more frequently.

We left off with the group just finishing up TINH and the group was considering a raid on the Kellani manor. I don't think they'll go through with it though, given the urgency of Vanthus's recovered notes.

Can't wait for tomorrow night!

So my party just finished clearing out the den of the Lotus Dragons. They seem pretty bent on starting up some trouble with Heldrath Kellani, even before tailing Vanthus to Kraken's Cove.

Any thoughts on how to discourage such an action? I'm thinking that I'll have some hefty guards patrolling the grounds or something. They're only third level...I don't think that they ought to be moving after a noble family in Sasserine just yet...

Ok, I officially love running this AP.

First, let me say that I was a player in this AP up through HTBM. That group broke up for a while, and now I am running the AP for a different group of guys.

Needless to say, it's interesting to read up on how things might have gone differently from when I was a player.

For instance, as a player, we had a TPK under Parrot Island because we had no cleric and no slashing weapons. (Yeah, I know...we were stupid, but it was fun anyway!)

As for tonight's session, the group insisted upon splitting up to follow up on several different leads. One PC, a rogue, went with Shefton Rusk (the Vanthus informant) to check out Parrot Island all by his lonesome. I had Shefton using the guise that they were going there to help out with a smuggling run.

I tried so hard to get the group back together, but they were insistent on tackling several tasks at once.

So I figured that I'd sent Shefton down the hole first so that Idae (the PC in question) wouldn't be COMPLETELY alone. Vanthus waited for them to get down the hole, spewed some appropriate taunts, then covered the hole with the boulders.

I played up how scared Shefton was and I think that the players around the table may have been genuinely scared as well.

I thought back to when I was a player and our first attempt TPK down there, and I wondered how I should alter things so that he'd have a chance.

Then I thought, screw it...he isolated himself from the party. He's toast. I'll run it as is.

Well, fate threw me a curve as he ran from the zombies straight towards Penkus's rotting corpse. He used the narrow tunnels to face off against the zombies one by one. (Great tactics.) After dealing with six of them, he moved further back and found the treasures behind Penkus. He then decided to go back out and try to figure out how to get out. When faced with the Huecuva, he retreated back and used the elemental gem to plow through the damage reduction and kill poor Veldimar in two rounds.

I couldn't believe it!

Good fun was had, and there's a lot of Vanthus-hate now.

Can't wait for next session!

Anybody else use these cards? link

I've just filled them out for all of the monsters in There Is No Honor. It was a hefty task, but I think it will help make the combat much easier.

I'm a little nervous, as I've never run a campaign before...just one-shot games here and there.

Any tips?

For the record, I was a player in the AP up through HTBM, so I can't wait to get to BE Avner, rather than hate his guts...

Anybody know which issue featured an adventure with a big elephant-type creature that carried a small city on its back?

I'm not sure, but I think that it might even be included on the cover art.

Thanks for any help you can give me!