Trayce's page

Hey guys,

My group is starting a short game that will be low level + mythic levels. We've decided to go with a pirate theme.

The group so far has a sea singer bard, an evil alchemist and an oracle. We have one other player undecided and myself, who was leaning towards a druid build - either undine adept or a shark shaman. To be honest I was leaning towards shark Shaman and go caster, but I'm having doubts after seeing the rest of the party go more or less completely support.

I'd rather not go completely marshal character, but could you suggest other build ideas that might fit in and benefit the group? Our only rule so far is no lawful characters (it is a pirate campaign after all)

So I'm running Carrion crown for my group, my first adventure as DM. I've had the group running through the town and thrown pretty much every event the book has suggested, bordering on railroading the group from entering the prison proper before they've encountered the bulk of the suggested events. Note that I'm running with a group of 4-5 players. I'm noticing 2 things that are bothering me:

1) I've had to start drastically ramping up the encounters as they're extremely underpowered - even for level one. I'm not playing with min maxers, but 2-3 flying skulls - even in a burning building - is about a half hour encounter that leaves the players board and unfulfilled.

2) Even with ramping up the encounters (and therefore subsequent XP) and borderline railroading them into going through the majority of town events before entering the prison, and despite the fact that the AP mentions that the players should be level 2 by the time they hit the prison, the players are still several encounters short of level 2.

Am I calculating XP wrong? If a monster gives out 200 XP and I include 5 of them, each of the 5 players should get 200XP right? (200 * 5 / 5 = 200) - or am I not supposed to devide it up (e.g. each player gets 1000 XP for that fight)

Or is that AP particularly underpowered at level 1?

EDIT: one last gripe: the XP gains for the research left me particularly angry. Without really trying, they got the main NPC to look it up for them and got a whaktonne of XP for it. While I like that they got the XP, it would have been better if the records actually required some work - like winning over an NPC or something.

OK, so Im playing in a campaign with a GM who likes really knuckling down on the rules - he tends to call out anything the players do as too powerful, and then throw optimised monsters at us that we can just barely handle. He's the type of guy who will use the random monster encounter tables and sucks to be us if it throws something too powerful at us. I've discussed it with him (that sometimes fighting a fight that we can handle without a tonne of difficulty can be fun, not every fight needs to be a boss fight) but at the same time, I've come to the realization that its how he likes to play, so I should probably get used to it.

So, I'm planning out my next charactor after my current halfishly optimized Magus dies. With him gone we'll have a group around level 6 consisting of a monk who likes to run ahead, an extremely defensive paladin who has no spells due to archtype, a summoner and her brutish playing the face of the party with her axe wielding summon, and a healing oriented oracle.

We have no central castor, nor any trapfinders short of letting our monk trigger everything.

I'm leaning towards either a rogue, or a Kitsune bard with one of the rogue like archtypes. I'll let someone else take on the job of item identification and do the scout thing with trapfinding, and hopefully use the bards skills to get out of trouble and be an alternate face of the party as well.

Any thoughts? Suggestions for hard to kill characters?

So, I went with a Staff Magus for a game and am about to rapidly level from 3 to 6 thanks to a deck of many things. I chose this build knowing that it was not an ideal build (crit fisherman)... but someone pointed out that with wand mastery, you could effectively dual weild with a staff in your casting hand, so I'm wondering if there's a way to make it work. I realize this is a situational - when you have a magic staff (not yet) and are specifically casting from it while full attacking, or else not casting at all that round (so far, at the low levels that seems to happen a fair bit.)

So far, I think the major problems are flexibility (dropping / putting away your off hand weapon when you want to cast the old fashioned way) and of course the two-weapon fighting feats AND the additional penalty to two weapon fighting + spell casting.

I want to ask though, is there any way to use this to my advantage realistacly? I'd assume that even with the feat, a quarterstaff still isn't a light weapon.

So, I have a fetchling staff magus with meh stats. I'm hitting level 3, and it's beginning to seem like I need to min max a bit more if I'm going to survive. I'm thinking of taking Wand weilder and Familiar for my Arcana and feat at level 3 - Wand weilder so I can add some wands and cast magic more regularly, and Familiar because my perception is really low, and a boost while on watch at night might be for the best.

I'm doing this to try and optimise a bit better since so far I've had a hard time keeping up with the group and have nearly died already. Would anyone suggest anything more optimal? My thoughts are that Wand Weilder will be useful both now (start using wands to augment my low spells per day) and later, when I start using magic staffs after level 10. My plan is also to take Imp familiar later and get a Shikigami familiar since they seem like they'd be useful for the whole survival in the wild aspect of the adventure and covering the weaknesses of the Magus. Beyond that, I'm thinking 'craft magic staves' and otherwise all metamagic feats and arcana's going forward.

Any suggestions? Does this seem to be the most optimal build for what I've got so far? And yes, I've seen the guide. I'm looking for more specific advice, since min/maxing seems to be necessary.

OK, so I started a new campaign a few weeks ago and rolled up a Magus (with essentially a 20 point build, despite it being rolled stats)

I'm currently leveling to 3 and trying to chose an Arcana and Feat, so I thought I'd ask for some input on what others would do. I went with the Staff Magus archtype and have an int bonus of +2 so far.

Now, the thing is, I'm playing with a more challenging GM. I always seem to get ambushed in the middle of the night (no perception skill) so I'm actually considering taking the extra trait feat and taking something that makes perception a class skill, along with possibly survival since so far it's necassary to forage for food. I'm hoping my DM will allow that, especially since my backstory makes it somewhat appropriate.

As for Arcana's, considering my archtype, I thought I'd take Wand wielder so that I can cast from wands and staffs, since nothing seems especially useful yet. I'm hoping we'll find somewhere where I can buy wands and get a wand of shocking grasp for the foreseeable future. The shield Arcana would be a runner up, except my int bonus is currently only level 2, and the magus archtype grants me shield bonuses instead of heavy armor later anyways.

Runner up ideas for feats so far seem to be dodge (to help me survive) and weapon focus. All the Arcana's seem to suck imo, short of Arcane Accuracy. I don't have a big pool yet, and +2 int isn't much of a boost, but I could see it being useful in the right circumstances.

Any thoughts? Recommendations?

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but has anyone found any good android apps to aid pathfinder games that they can recommend? I'm going at this from the point of view of a player. Personally I'd like a tablet version of Herolab, but I'd be happy with something that helped me track my charactor sheet and let me look up rules quickly I think :p

I'm also an aspiring developer, so if I can't find something, I may just build it instead. Feel free to suggest tools and features you'd like to see in such an app.

I'm gearing up for a new game, and my friend who isn't exactly a pro is looking to play a summoner. She's not a complete newb, but in my opinion she's still lacking in the roleplaying area, and can be a bit of a misfit when it comes to remembering all the rules. She's only ever played rogues and Rangers, and our last game she did a whole lot of 'I steal the shiny thing because that's what rogues do.'

So, I'm kind of looking forward to giving her a charactor that should force her to play out a different, more complex personality. In the mean time though, I'm trying to come up with ideas for her to use as an eidelion. I'd rather convince her to go with a theme rather than just try to power game some sort of speghetti monster that doesn't make any sense.

So far, the only idea that has shown any promise is building essentially a Grim Reaper that follows her halfling summoner around, and play it out as a sort of 'I have no idea why he protects me, or seems to be at my beck and call, but I'll go with it' sort of theme, and let the GM figure out the rest. I'm looking for other interesting themes though... any ideas?

OK, so I'm trying to come up with a potential new charactor for my next game. I'm leaning toward a staff magus - I've never used staves before and would kind of like to try, and playing a new class will be a nice change of pace.

So, I need two things: suggestions for personalities, and suggestions for how to build him combat wise. I kind of like the idea of a warrior who actually has a collection of magical staves strapped to his back at all times, but unless our group has no dedicated wizard, I don't see this being feasible. If it is, I was entertaining the idea of either taking a cohort to craft staves for me later, or become a traveling crafter.

I'm guessing all races are options at this point, so long as I avoid major min/maxing and anything that's obviously broken.

So, obviously, people have very skewed views on the monk class. I've seen more than one GM try to avoid or ban them because they don't fit the preferred swords and sorcery theme, and more than one player RP them as a looney old man that sputters off goofy sayings and punches things.

Suffice it to say, not particularly fond of this line of thinking.

I'm currently playing a monk/sorc/dragon disciple who will become a natural weapon fighter as soon as his claws start outdoing his unarmed strike. I like to play it as a martial artist of sorts who focuses on discipline and control (RP wise) - I generally picture someone dressed in adventurers robes who is more of a brawler then a swordsmen, rather than a bald headed weirdo who fights while imitating monkey noises.

So, the question is, how do you RP your monk? Any existing fictional characters you tend to get inspiration from?

So, I want to post this up because it seems like an incredibly fun, powerful, and somewhat original build for a Dragon disciple. I'd like people to look through and make sure it works the way I think it does.

Straight out, I want to point out that my ability scores are through the roof and this build wont really be feasible for everyone. Literally, I start play with 14-18 in every slot except cha, so I got very lucky.

First, the basics. Classes:

Level 1: Sorcerer (Dual blooded Draconic and wildblooded Empyreal)
Level 2-4: Monk (Master of many styles - flurry is useless anyways and running two different styles will work nicely with natural weapons)
Level 5-15: Dragon Disciple
15-20: Probably sorcerer

Feats (The important part!)

Level 1: Combat reflexes
Level 2: Dragon Style
Level 3: Dragon Ferocity, Panther Style
Level 5: Weapon Focus (Claws)
Level 7: Feral combat training (use claws as unarmed strikes - works nicely with Dragon ferocity) - Mobility bloodline feat from Celestial
Level 9: Arcane strike - Added in for DR circumvention, although this might get replaced with Potions of greater magic fang +5 and permanancy. I intend to do the same to my claws ability to get them constantly anyways.
Level 10: Blind fight - Bloodline feat 'cause it's useful. Later, I can use darkness to my advantage.
Level 11: Panther claw - Now things get scary. Run past enemies and counter attack 5 times? Heck yes.
Level 13: Panther Perry, Toughness bloodline feat - I just became all sorts of tanky with extra HP, an already high AC, and I counter attack before enemies get an AoO when I trigger them.
Level 15: Combat patrol - Now things get interesting. I can use this, and if anyone comes withing 20' of me I can move up and strike. If I trigger attacks of oppertunity in doing so, I get to hit them first...
Level 17: Noxious bite: 'cause why the heck not?
Level 19: Weapon focus bite: It too now counts as an unarmed strike, increasing its damage and what I can use it for.

Any thoughts? By the end of this I'll have something like 26 strength, 20 wisdom, 16 int and 16 dex, not including any gear. For single opponents I'll just full attack with my 3 attacks, or use breath weapon, or even toss out some spells. For swarms of enemies, I can run past them and counter all of their attacks, or use combat patrol when they try to pile on me to constantly reposition to avoid being flanked. And all of this will only get more powerful when I assume dragon form. I can use touch spells like shocking grasp beforehand to probably OHKO the lead charger

OK, so I'm running a monk/Sorc/Dragon disciple and I have a question. Which is better: Grapple, or trip?

Trip seems more powerful - Knock someone prone, leaving me to do what I want. Cast spells, etc. But it's also a longer feat path. Later on, I can get Ki throw and in a pinch trip even larger creatures.

Improved Grapple on the other hand is a much shorter feat path, and seems like it'll synergize well with being able to transform into a large dragon later on (Dragon wrestling match anyone?) The downside is it doesn't lend itself well to say, casting spells, or fighting against multiple enemies. I can also get feats later that make pinned opponents act like cover, and although unwise, it's still an option to tackle a flying enemy.

Any thoughts? Experience with combat maneuvers and their usefulness towards higher levels?

Making a dragon disciple and a little curious as to how full attack with bite and 2 claws will work at higher levels (once I have +6 BaB)

My understanding is the claws ability (as per the rules) grants me the ability at first level to use a full round attack to essentially do a double attack - one with each d4 claw.

Later, I add a bite attack to that. So my full round attack becomes 2 claw attacks and a bite attack at highest bonii

So what happens once I hit +6 BaB? Do I get 1 more claw or bite attack at -5 BaB, on top of my regular claw and bites? Same at 10 BaB?

I'm not going to get into too much detail on my personal character, but I'm looking at suggestions for feat and spell selections for a monk 4(master of many styles) / Dragon disciple

For feats, I'm thinking Dragon Style path and pick up elemental fist as well as Shaiten style (Acid damage) - any thoughts on stuff that'll scale well with more levels of dragon disciple?

As for spells, I originally took shield as my first level spell but I'm finding I have a lot of spells for day and will be getting Mage armor soon. Perhaps the mage armor / shield combo is a little overkill? Are there any other spells that can be very useful to a monk/Dragon, other than shield? Preferably something that is not necassarily a buff, although I wouldn't object to a more utility spell...

It's probably a moot point, but what are the rules for licensing?

Theoretically, if I put my home-brew campaign on a website online (for free) but had adds on the web page, would I get in any trouble for profiting off the web page? I ask because most publishers are more agressive and sell physical documents, and I don't see many websites just posting everything online.

I ask in this case because I want to build a web page for my campaign setting, but it occurred to me that I could make it public for everyone to see so others could use it, but I don't want to get in trouble if there are adds on the site. How open IS the open gaming license?

Alright, so to summarize:

I've been playing with a group for a few months now, and our GM is quitting. I wont use this space to gripe about him: In his words he's upset with the game because we've been playing like 'beer and pretzels' gamers - just show up and roll the dice. Not interested in plot or RPing, just eating treats and having a good time.

Now, while we do have a very good time and it is true that we bring food (it's a six hour session every other week, what do you expect?) I humbly disagree with him. I think it is a very good group that is interested in plot and RPing - the problem is that there are too many of us to properly focus on any sort of plot. He's trying to run a game with nine players! To further complicate things, we weren't really encouraged to get together and discuss our backgrounds with each other, so we have a group of people with very different ideas about good and evil who are still trying to reconcile the group mentality...

I explain this not to gripe, but because our possibly former GM seems to be more interested in griping and quitting the group than saving the game. The rest of the group who've really enjoyed playing together would like to salvage the situation, even if it means one person we enjoy playing with (our former GM) walks away from the table. So, since I've been thinking of starting a campaign of my own for some time, I'm nervously stepping up to the bat. Or at least trying once the dust clears, since we only have strong suspicions as to how this will all end.

Here's the thing though: Just because our GM isn't really trying to fix the problems doesn't mean that I don't agree that they're there. If I end up running a new game I want to give myself the following advantages:

1) Game will be shaved down to 5-6 players. 4-5 would be more ideal (since I'm new at this) but I'd rather cut out as few people as possible.

2) I will ask the group to roll new characters and to discuss basic strategy before hand - I don't want people constantly infighting because it's IC - it wastes time. I'm not going to demand any specific traditional roles, but a group that synergizes with each other both in backgrounds and strategy seems like it'd go a long way towards keeping a good group mentality.

3) I'm going to ask that everyone roll a 'good' character - I'll allow exceptions only if I can be given a very good reason why they'd be loyal to the rest of the group. This is partially to avoid the whole 'infighting' thing, and partially just a personal preference - I want a heroic campaign. I want to write a story around a group of heroes, not a group of people of interest who want to search dungeons for treasure. I don't want to get into moral debates about this: I like the idea of heroes defeating villians so I want to schew things in favour of the PCs trying to do the right thing.

Any other suggestions? Any tweaks to my rules? This is my first time playing and I'd like to sort out some ground rules that'll give me a strong start so that this sort of GM drama doesn't repeat itself.

So, to sum things up real quick:

I'm writing a campaign setting from scratch. I'll be using a lot of the PC playable (but not source) races quite liberally. For instance there will be a race of humans, a barbarian tribe of Catfolk/Orcs and half orcs, etc. Most of the factions, while having a mix of different races, will be primarily formed by the government of one or two specific races and their cultures.

For the setting, I'd like one evil faction to have invaded out of nowhere. Originally I was going to use drow, but now it's seeming kinda cliched to have the Drow be a driving force in all of this, rather than just be along for the ride.

So basicly, I need some ideas for an invading new faction that has either hid underground up until now, or has gone unnoticed for some reason up until they invaded. Any thoughts?

So, I've been considering trying to GM a bit. My biggest problem so far is I don't have a location (physically) to run a game. I'm working on that problem for now. The plan is to put up an add as soon as I find a place to host a game and run a few one off adventures until I can recruit 4-5 players that I'm confident will be both active and fun to play with (again, kinda new to this, so I'm gonna try to avoid the big veterans unless I'm confident they'll be more helpful then rules lawyerish.)

Once I have said group, I'd like to run my own campaign. Running a campaign is new to me, but coming up with ideas is not. My first campaign will likely start at level 1 and will involve first escaping from the prison camps of an occupied city, running a few missions for the resistance and eventually helping to take back the city. Once this is done, the rest of the continent will likely still be occupied so I'll be able to work a campaign around essentially starting a large scale war, with raiding compounds and such central to the story.

Is this really a good place to start though? Will level 1 PCs be able to survive in an occupied city without feeling like they're not guarded very well?

OK, so I'm playing a lawful good monk, and struggling on the 'lawful' part. For the most part, I RP as making self-control central to my PCs personality. The group is massively chaotic neutral, so a lot of my lawful good acts thusfar have been things like 'stepping in and putting the bad guy out of his misery instead of letting the group torture them some more for info (out of misery generally meaning knocked out, not kill.) Generally, while he doesn't like it, he's come to accept that he can't be responsible for everyone else's actions, but still tries to stop the worst of it.

Well, there's a recent incident where we discovered a priest is hiding something from us that might be of vital importance to not only us but several nations. Since we've recently been betrayed by an ambassador who was supposed to be dealing with this issue, I took it upon myself to take the only course of action that made sense: recruit the rogue, sneak into the church and investigate his office for proof.

I kind of accept that this might not have been the lawful thing to do.

As a result, as part of the action the chaotic rogue decided to steal like it was going out of style, including the deeds to the church, a large chunk of the town and a church a town over. Obviously, this bothers my charactor as he is now responsible for breaking the law on a large scale, and potentially doing some major damage to someone whome we haven't found any real evidence to suggest they were actually guilty. I now have a mess to clean up.

So, my question is this: was a I completely wrong to attempt to sneak in and investigate? Did I have other options (considering my char is not built for diplomacy or charisma?) How would YOU have handled the situation?

Other than don't do it! lol

I had my heart set on a Dragon disciple/monk, a combination that essentially gives you no real dump stats. I was almost talked out of it, until I got high stats - all but one was 14 and above (1 18, 2 16, 2 14 and a 9) So I decided to take a risk. It's a fun character concept and an interesting backstory, and high stats should mean I can hold my own still.

So now that I've made this terrible decision, any advice on how to minimize the damage? I'm using my ability score from half elf to bring up the last stat to an 11 and putting it in Con - with high defense and maneuverability I should be able to live long enough to get to DD's D10 hit dice. I'm currently level 3 - Lvl 1 sorc and level 2 monk. I intend to take 4 levels in monk in total before moving on to DD. Once claw damage surpasses unnarmed damage I'll probably use that, taking a talent so I can use claws with flurry of blows once they catch up.

Any thoughts?