Ullapool's page

Hey folks! I've been getting requests on a daily basis the last few days for these cards and I imagine people are lurking on this thread. Back when I posted these in 2011 I didn't understand how Google docs worked. So the link I shared above required permission to view it (sigh) so everyone who clicks on it sends me a request. I'm so sorry!

Here is a link - do with these what you will, make a copy, edit them up yourself, do something great! Carrion Crown was such a great campaign for my players.

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE HAUNT CARDS THAT SHOULD WORK.

I don't think it is possible to edit my post from 2011 to fix the earlier link, sadly, or else I would replace the link there. Hopefully people will find this post deep in the thread.

I have tested this using different browsers that are not logged into my Google account and it seems to work and let me right into the document.

Happy haunting!

My players are on Bonewrack Isle. They have no desire to stay. They left the ship looking for food and water saying "we'll just conjure it when out of sight of the captain". Recall the captain says he won't eat magical stuff.

I'm having a hard time keeping them there and outright out of game asking them to indulge me. Even the thread to go after Sandra isn't enticing to them. We're talking about scoundrels here in this campaign (explicitly suggested in the beginning of the first module) and these guys just don't want to stay.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. This module requires a bit more leaps of faith than I've usually had in running modules and I don't want to bash it so I'd love some ideas how you handled it.

Thanks, appreciate it.

Brodyz wrote:

OK, I did the Spawn before I completed Keeper Crove. . . .

Brodyz,

I don't understand the 3 versions of the Spawn. Can you explain a bit more? In particular, I don't understand the 3rd version you presented with the 6 levels of drain.

Thanks for all this work. It's very helpful!

To be clearer. I understand the 6 negative levels coming from the module (as per needing to eat the keepers to gain those levels back) but can you show me where they appear in the versions you created? I'm a bit worried about a CR15 encounter for what should be level 9 or 10 characters by that point - if it's not really CR15 due to reduced levels, I'd love the help seeing that in the stat block.

Thanks again.

OK, I did the Spawn before I completed Keeper Crove. . . .

Brodyz,

I don't understand the 3 versions of the Spawn. Can you explain a bit more? In particular, I don't understand the 3rd version you presented with the 6 levels of drain.

Thanks for all this work. It's very helpful!

Robin, I like the way you think. Thanks for the suggestion and inspiration.

I think I missed the threads on the variants for Raven's Head. Why the need for a variant in the first place?

The Wand of Animate Dead. Obviously using it is an evil act. My PCs are already talking about selling it. Any opinions on whether the SALE of the wand is an evil act? They were saying they might try and sell it to a goodly church saying "We can sell this to you here, or to those guys over in the marketplace" under the assumption that the church would dispose of it.

That seems like extortion to me and, again, bordering or maybe outright evil.

I'd like to think about what I can do for the PCs if they go down this line. Any clever ideas?

This is going to be full of spoilers. Be warned.

So I had mentioned last time that we lost a PC to the encounter with the demon wolf pack lord. Let's move on from there.

My PCs took on Vrood last night. Rather than trying to get through the door they decided to use a rope of climbing and an invisible gnome bard to get in there and see what was going on. Once he landed in the foyer I had Vrood's alarm spell go off. Vrood then walked in and tossed glitterdust in front of himself - sadly, the bard was standing right there and was lit up.

The other PCs, not knowing what was going on, did nothing. Vrood then cast eyebite and the bard panicked, used jester's jaunt to get out of there and then spent the next 4 rounds running at max speed (he had already cast expeditious retreat) - so as you can imagine, he was pretty far away during this combat.

The other PCs heard the spell being cast and teleported in (we have a teleportation specialization psion). Vrood then immediately Circle of Deathed the cleric of Desna and the trip-specialist fighter. Both failed their forts and immediately died. +2 character deaths.

Vrood started taking high damage from the ranger firing xbow bolts into him in rapid succession. He would have easily TPKed the party had the psion not summoned a construct, large, that easily grappled Vrood and then pinned him to the ground. With all the somatic component requirements of necromancy spells, Vrood literally could do nothing - he never could get loose and just sat there taking stabs from the inquisitor/rogue and bolts from the ranger.

While he seemed ineffective at that part, he had already killed 2 PCs so I let it go.

Some thoughts afterwards:
Eyebite is brutal - I only used it once but after it was cast I could have been using it each round as a swift action, even while pinned. I can't imagine the party could have survived if they were all running and sickened.

COD is deadly but that's no surprise. Be careful not to let your PCs get to level 9 before Vrood or this spell is useless. That being said, he can easily take out 2-3 level 8 PCs with this. For a normal party of 4 PCs this is surely a TPK.

He's got cloudkill and confined spaces. I also didn't feel like being a bad guy and using this - but it's at your disposal.

If he wasn't pinned, he would have been using his wand of animate dead on those dead players = awesome. If I'm not mistaken, you cannot resurrect a PC that has been animated? I think that's true.

He has stoneskin = 10 * caster level, so that's, what, 110 hps of stoneskin? Ugh! Unless the PCs are packing adamantine (our ranger had adamantine bolts and the story has provided them if I recall) or bane weapons (our inquisitor has an ability to bane her weapons to whatever she wants) this guy is going to be brutal.

He also has fly. I should have had him try and fly while grappled since it's already cast before combat.

In summary, for my party it was effective - it was scary and killed two people. But all that being said, I could have easily killed more. I also didn't even use the skeletal archers or the "hands" Vrood had summoned. My Vrood also never got to use his lich touch supernatural ability because the construct he was grappled with had his hands pinned (and also is itself immune to necromatic energy).

How did you guys handle Vrood? Was he deadly? Did you scale him back?

Great point about the dark riders. This also might provide some sort of hook to get the characters chasing the Way. I'm guessing the players will burn the body - there was the classic witch "burn her" joke. Might have to have the riders try and get the body from them - will be a challenge not to be too heavy handed / rail-roaded about it.

Some thoughts / problems IMO with Broken Moon.

I'm just going to start this around Feldrau and not go back to Ascanor.

1: Duristan the wolf. There is no freaking way any party is going to be fooled by the "oh hay guyz, sup? Yeah I'm good. Hey can you follow me over here to this building for a second?" trick. My party immediately freaked seeing Duristan, tossed up a detect evil and knew something was wrong. I had to improvise on the spot. I went with a "Yeah, I've been bitten.... but I can control it. Look, if you kill me, you'll never find the secret entrance into the tower where the Whispering Way are." It didn't work, they slaughtered him on the spot trivially. Additionally, not only is he not a challenge at all he has to expend rounds to shift because he's not fully in control yet. So basically they slaughter a hunter while he's trying to shift. Just be prepared.

2: Feldrau in my reading is intended to have the players crawl through building to building. It might read like that. Then your players find that in near every building there's baddies reading to attack them (wolves, cultists, haunts in several room, ghosts trying to hang themselves) and my party saw absolutely no reason to continue that. They made a direct line for the tower. Maybe they did that because I gave away that's where the Way was hiding or maybe (as other people have mentioned in their threads on this board) they did that because it's the obvious place anyone would be holed up. So be careful because most of this content was skipped by my group and several other groups on these forums - the biggest problem being (1) not getting to talk to the ghost who can read Vrood's memories and (2) the experience they won't get - #2 is certainly less of a problem. Also (3) they might not ever encounter either of the wolf packs (prince's / demon wolves).

3: Acrietia and her wights looked devastating to me on paper. In practice my party annihilated them. The wights are CR3 with +4 to attack. Considering the fighters in my party are sporting 23+ AC right now that means we need a 19 to even hit them. This brings up another problem with the module - between the werewolves and the wights we've got a lot of low power monsters that are really 1-trick-ponies. IF they hit you, omg it's gonna be bad (lycanthropy, energy drain, etc) but in reality they don't really pose any real threat. The dread wight monk was a joke - 60hps? I upped her hit points 3 times during the fight trying to have her be SOMEWHAT useful and she just kept being worthless and I gave up and let her die. By the end of that combat I had drained exactly zero energy. Note teh energy drain is terribly low DC (15, yawn) - about the same as lycanthropy.

4: All the curates and cultists are terribly low powered. They have about nothing that is a challenge to the players. Their 2 level 4 spells are Death Ward (entirely defensive) and unholy blight (improves, slightly, undeads in an area - yawn). Their 3rd level spells are animate dead (thematic), bestow curse (lame), blindness/deafness (DC 16, easy, not bad if you can hit the one character that's doing all the damage), and dispel magic. They are just nothing to be scared of.

4.5: That fight in the town square with Eugenie and Vicenith, with all the skeletons? It is even written that all they should do is stand around reading dispel magic to counterspell. (1) these guys don't have improved counterspell (not that they need it in this case especially), and (2) so - what, they're going to just stand there defensively? I don't believe you can counterspell channel positive energy and I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that most Carrion Crown parties have a positive channeler in some form. Our cleric just ran up into the middle, channeled and nuked all the skeletons in one hit. The party thought these were necromancers, not clerics, and so were really scared. They had set up an elaborate trap and were all holding back. As it would have it, the cleric ended up standing there and soloing not only the skeletons but both Eugenie and Vicenith. Ugh... was embarrassing and left me scrambling to come up with more things to throw at them.

5: F14. Armory. At the very end of this room block it says:

Treasure: On the ground beneath the map rests a small clay pot of marvelous pigments.

Umm.... what map? I've searched the PDF and there are no references to this map.

6: Adimarus Ionacu - it says he opens with smite good (which, btw, is an awesome spell and totally rocks the target if you can get it on someone you really want to slaughter). And then it says he:

He uses his touch of corruption to sicken opponents who face him in combat, and tries to spread his curse of lycanthropy with his bite whenever possible.

OK so touch of corruption. Let's look that up:

Beginning at 2nd level, an antipaladin surrounds his hand with a fiendish flame, causing terrible wounds to open on those he touches. Each day he can use this ability a number of times equal to 1/2 his antipaladin level + his Charisma modifier. As a touch attack, an antipaladin can cause 1d6 points of damage for every two antipaladin levels he possesses. Using this ability is a standard action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Alternatively, an antipaladin can use this power to heal undead creatures, restoring 1d6 hit points for every two levels the antipaladin possesses. This ability is modified by any feat, spell, or effect that specifically works with the lay on hands paladin class feature. For example, the Extra Lay On Hands feat grants an antipaladin 2 additional uses of the touch of corruption class feature.

OK so two problems with this. The first is that it says absolutely nothing about "sickening opponents". Secondly, for every 2 antipaladin levels? OK so he's:

Male fiendish human natural werewolf fighter 4/antipaladin of Jezelda 3

So that's 3 levels so 1d6 points of damage? 2d6 if you're rounding up (which I don't think you should here :)). I get that it's a touch attack and that's awesome.

But then also notice in his attack block:

smite good (fiendish; 1/day, +1 attack, +7 damage)

That +7 damage is from smite good where it says +1 damage for every antipaladin level. Wait a minute, he has +3 antipaladin levels, not 7. I can't see why they are adding in his fighter levels. If he should, well then touch of corruption becomes 3d6 on a touch attack and that's not bad (but still doesn't have sickening by my reading).

7: The chandler haunt. I've said many times how I feel about haunts but this haunt does 8d6 damage when a player slams their own face into a copper kettle. I get that it's not from blunt damage, there's psychic / magical damage going on here but 8d6 is freaking huge for a haunt. The Will save is only DC14 though so it's not terrible. It does just add to the discouragement of PCs from entering these buildings.

And I haven't even gotten to Vrood yet IMC. I like the way the module reads as a story, I don't like the way it's implemented under the Pathfinder rule system.

But that's my opinion.

There are way more problems with Broken Moon than this one.

This is full of spoilers, be warned!

In last night's session our witch character was killed - as in -50hps killed - dead-dead. The story was pretty cool.

The group had taken on Acretia and her wights and pretty easily handled them. So easily in fact that I wanted them to be resource drained some more. I had the demon wolves and their pack lord show up and charge the armory (the PCs and the wights had been fighting out in the town square). The pack lord ate the heart inside for a few rounds like the demon wolves held the PCs off. A pretty intense fight ensued (my particular party found these wolves considerably harder than the dread wight monk and her wights). In the end the witch ran up into combat to heal our front line fighter magus and expected to run out next round. Except our psion character teleported the magus to him, leaving the witch in the middle of the fray by herself. She was summarily critted by the pack lord (he hit on all 3 attacks, 1 of which was a huge 37point crit) and she went down hard.

Yes, I know, dumb move by the psion but a good lesson.

OK so here's where I'm going with this.

That witch character's story was that she was the daughter of Professor Lorrimor - long lost sort of thing. So she's a sister to Kendra (who is still alive IMC). I'm wondering if I can do anything interesting here with the witch with respect to the Carrion Crown. There's threads on these boards about the Lorrimor bloodline being required for the CC; some DMs have talked about replacing the 5th module (I think it's a vampire) with Kendra . . . perhaps I can do this with the dead witch?

Maybe Vrood (who has not been encountered yet IMC) could raise her as an undead? Perhaps he could use a scroll of resurrection on her (my player will not play this witch anymore, not implying that).

Anyway, just shooting from the hip here looking for some clever ideas from my fellow DMs.

Thanks!

Right, so you need to start keeping initiative track of when the condition was created is what you're saying.

If init 10 was a big bad monster who did some nasty "everyone save or be dazed for 5 rounds" then in essence you insert an "invisible" <decrement dazed here> at init 10.

Then, if/when the big bad monster should die and be removed from tracking, the invisible decrementer (above) would still go off.

Correct?

I'm speaking of Conditions here - like Bleeding, Dazed, Hypnotized.

When these are applied to a character they are applied for a specified number of rounds (1d4, for example).

Can someone explain to me when the number of rounds remaining on a condition decrement?

I think the *BEST* solution would be for them to decrement on the turn of the character that caused the condition to appear but that has numerous problems in pen and paper including:
1: The character that causes the condition may end up dying and being removed from the initiative tracker (for convenience, sure).
2: Tracking conditions in this way seems really painful for knowing when they will fall off all characters.

If you instead track them on the victim's turn you obviously get into a situation where the first round they exist for some amount less than a full round. In the worst case, an NPC right before me goes and applies a 5-round staggered to me and then it's my turn and that decreases from 5 to 4.

I'm interested in (1) where it says in the rules how to do this (I've looked and I really cannot find it - so if you're going to talk rules to me it'd really help me if you pointed to where it is in the rules) and (2) what YOU do in your games.

Thanks!

I thought about this a while today and I think I'm going to make the tower be a defensible location that the Demon Wolves are throwing themselves against and dying in great numbers (of course this changes the amount of wolves in the pack, but whatever).

The PCs hopefully will realize they can't get in that way and I'll have the Prince's Wolves say that they have discovered that there is a secret entrance hidden somewhere in town that connects to the tower through an underground passageway - sort of an escape-route for the tower.

Maybe the PCs will then go stomping through the buildings looking for this entrance.

Just an idea. Thoughts?

If you're looking for something a bit more stylized, our Combat Tracker app might fit the bill:

at iTunes

Explanation of features

. . .

Once they got to Feldgrau itself, I found it hard to ask "where do you want to go?" without them just saying "well, the big tower, duh" and they skipped a huge chunk of the written content.

warning if the group skips much of the town, they will end up skipping the ghost that can pull memories out of people's brains. Since Vrood drinks the deathgag elixir, this can cause the plot to fall apart. Make sure you have a backup plan to feed the next bits of plot to the PCs. Putting more info into the coded journal is a fine way of doing this.
. . .

This is precisely what my group is doing and it's really derailing this railroad. I'm interested in any ideas you guys can provide.

I tried to get them to hop between buildings to see what was inside by having patrols outside but my group decided that they needed to take out the patrols - they started following them. I put up thick fog so that they couldn't see very far ahead (50 ft) and was making them roll stealth and the other guys perception.... they managed to track a large group of the Way for a while. I made the group large trying to scare they off but they weren't, so I added 3 packs of Demon wolves that descended on the event - trying to scare them by sandwiching them.

They did what I had hoped, ducked into an alley and into a building. I thought things were good until they then went outside and waited for both sides to be weakened and then went in and mopped up the bits (sigh). Then back to tracking. They've taken to just circling the town.

I redesigned the town so that the tower was in the middle so that they wouldn't just circle around to it but they are now scared to go into the buildings because the first one had a wolf ambush and the second one had the candle haunt (two of them took almost max damage from the haunt and were REALLY hurt from it). As such, they're basically intending to skirt down the alleys between buildings to the town center (where the tower is IMC).

I had the Prince's Wolves intervene once, tell them that they could help - could tell them where the demon wolves leader was and my party was like "that's your war, we're after the Way".

I have another week to think this through now. Can I get some suggestions from my fellow DMs here about what to do?

Do I really NEED to pull them into some of those scenes? They're going to miss the butcher shop, the inn (and the inn keeper), the demon wolves ambush in the mill, adimarus, hell they're going to miss Acretia (as written).

OMG Ullapool, that audio is great. How funny it is to hear things with American accents (we're British). I definitely would like to hear more.

We'll definitely be doing these again as we move forward - the crew really enjoyed them. Next time I'll even have the audio going appropriately early.

What did you guys do for resting in the area? My party likes to pull the old sleeping in the dimensional cabin (drawing a blank on the spell now, /blush). Usually I've been not allowing them to really get a lot of rest and it's been putting a strain on the casters. In your above discussion, Zhangar, I can imagine the casters would be really drained of spells.

These are great tips! Thanks all.

Version 1.1 was approved today and should appear on the iTunes store soon (it takes a while to get pushed out and will vary based on region - given the fact that I can see we have people using the app from around the world, I can't promise you when you'll see the update other than "soon").

It took us a month to get Apple to approve this version and we had to eventually go through an appeals process with a review board. This new version has some pretty cool tech in it that allows you to add your own databases (see previous post from July 31st about custom databases). Apple didn't like the way we were doing some things so we went back and forth and got something through that they accepted.

We're already submitting the next version since we know how long the lead times can get to get things approved (/grumble).

Thanks, Erik. Great points.

I'll add my own comments in case someone else reads this.

SPOILERS!

The party ran into Delgrose whom they immediately cast detect evil on and then insta-killed. The huntsman really was in no position to offer up anything. It's pretty sad that you can just walk around detecting evil (at will, we have an inquisitor). Maybe I should have shielded his alignment... nevertheless, the entire "fool them into an ambush" requires an especially naive party.

That was pretty inspiring, Blayde. I hope my campaign goes that epically (we're only at Feldgrau).

. . .

Script 5: Vrood vs The Shudderwood
Script 6: The Fall of Feldgrau

Paul, I actually ran your script, The Fall of Feldgrau last night before our session starting Feldgrau. I asked my group to entertain this and offered them up some parts. We hadn't pre-read the story and this was entirely off the cuff. Some of the voices are pretty funny - the player who played the candlemaker was playing it very timid and scared, the player who read for the margrave played it like an orc. :)

Anyway, if you'd like to hear the audio I uploaded it to youtube. I recorded it as a 'video' with my iphone during the session and it picks up about halfway through the reading so it's not all of it.

I thought some of you would get a chuckle out of it. Maybe this'll encourage you to add more stories, Paul.

Thanks man!

LINK TO AUDIO ONLY IS HERE.

You probably already heard about this one . . .

Thanks. I remember reading about that but forgot. I'm not a fan of save or die spells so I'm not sure I would have cast it anyway. Still, thanks!

My group is moving along slowly - the group is very RP heavy so we move pretty slowly. I'm interested in any changes, enhancements, or ideas anyone has for Feldgrau. There's been several times I've missed cool things on the forums and didn't locate them until we had passed the area.

Thanks.

Wolvesbane like magic must be delivered within 3 days and they must voluntarily fail the initial save and suffer from the poisons effects before retrying the lycanthropy save, then trying to make the saves to end the affliction.

Vrock, can you help me by showing me where you found this information? I wasn't able to find it and you speak with authority like it is written down somewhere (surely it is).

Thanks.

The rules (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/afflictions/curses/lycanthropy-werew olf) state:

Type curse (injury); Save Fort DC 15 negates, Will DC 15 to avoid effects

Onset the next full moon; Frequency on the night of every full moon or whenever the target is injured

Effect target transforms into a wolf under the GM's control until the next morning

So I have several PCs which have failed their fort saves and I have noted which ones are infected. Am I reading this right that every time they take damage they need to roll a DC15 Will save or xform into a werewolf? Meaning multiple times per combat (assuming they are taking damage in that combat)?

Further information is here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/lycanthrope):

A creature that catches lycanthropy becomes an afflicted lycanthrope, but shows no symptoms (and does not gain any of the template's adjustments or abilities) until the night of the next full moon, when the victim involuntarily assumes animal form and forgets his or her own identity. The character remains in animal form until the next dawn and remembers nothing about the entire episode (or subsequent episodes) unless he makes a DC 20 Will save, in which case he becomes aware of his condition.

A remove disease or heal spell cast by a cleric of 12th level or higher cures the affliction, provided the character receives the spell within 3 days of the infecting lycanthrope's attack. Alternatively, consuming a dose of wolfsbane gives an afflicted lycanthrope a new Fortitude save to recover from lycanthropy.

When the PCs in this AP are likely to be infected they are (1) less than 12th level, (2) are unlikely to have access to remove curse scrolls (though there is at least one to be found in the stairs of the moon), and (3) are fairly far (maybe really really far) from any reasonable town where they could hope to get cured (that might be 1.5 modules away in Caliphas, for instance).

If you're not careful, the PCs will try and detour (maybe even backtrack to Lepistadt) totally ruining the urgency of the adventure path.

OK so wolfsbane. The above quote simply says it gives you a new Fort save. How often can this be tried? Daily? Does it require being tried within some time from the onset of the disease (what if they wait a week before they try the wolfsbane?). Does this need to be made into a tea, potion, or just shoved down someone's throat?

In fact, what if one of the PCs xforms. Can the party subdue them and force wolfsbane (I assume it's a plant) and just push it into their mouths? If so, does the (currently transformed and unwilling werewolf) get a Fort save, or maybe a save to resist like it would to resist a helpful spell?

I just feel the lycanthropy rules are really vague, maybe intentionally so. I was really excited to read more about it from a rules-perspective in the additional material in the back of Broken Moon but it's almost entirely flavor text.

So, if it's all house ruled what are you guys doing in your campaigns?

Thanks.

There's a Scroll in the chambers below the tower on the corpse of the WW cultist that has map coordinates of everywhere Auren Vrood has been and is going including Feldgrau. The Devil is in the Details.

--Schoolhouse Vrock

Yeah they have that map but it says that the other location is somewhere off to the southeast. None of my PCs knew the location (know: geography / local, etc).

They actually said they thought the map was a map of places we've been - like "these guys have been tracking us! where we've been!" It was pretty way off base. I'm not saying that was smart of them, but it's what they did heh.

Thanks guys, I had forgotten about the Prince's Wolves. I kept reading over that section but stopping before reading the ambush section and going "darnit, I know they are supposed to figure this out somehow!"

Sold me. I look forward to the August update.

The August update, version 1.1, has been submitted to the Apple store and hopefully will be approved shortly. To see a taste of the main feature of this update, you can check out this HOWTO page we created to explain how to use this new feature.

That feature is - adding custom NPCs/monsters and databases / spreadsheets of monsters.

http://www.failedwillsave.com/combat-tracker/custom-databases/

You can read about it and see screenshots of this feature in action at the above link.

Thanks everyone for the support!

Spoilers inside.

My PCs smoked Mathus and the druid wolf he had with him pretty easily last night - completely charring the druid to -35 hps with a maximized fireball when she was only at 2 hps (so no real hopes of getting info out of her dying corpse).

They got the Dusk Moth communion ritual scroll but I told them, as the story is written, that the temple would need about a day of reconsecration. None of them worship Desna so there's no real motivation for any of them to commune with the goddess.

So where it stands, I have 2 dead NPCs and no motivation to commune with the goddess and, therefore, the PCs have no idea what to do next.

Essentially, the trail has gone cold. They were coming to Mathus to learn about where the Way went and ended up just killing everything.

I'm looking for some suggestions on how to address this. The PCs are planning to camp at the top of the tower tonight since they are totally spent.

I'm considering having the wolves in the woods go into disarray with the fall of the pack lord and wondering if I might be able to lead them to Feldrau that way.

Any clever ideas - especially to encourage them to commune w/ Desna for the fun reward?

Any chance of adding the 3.5 SRD in there as well? I have a free one I use, but I'd consider paying for yours if it supported 3.5

Greg, forgive me but I don't really understand what you're asking here. Are you asking for D&D 3.5edition monsters and NPCs added to the database? If that's what you're asking, I'm not familiar with the licensing of those bits but was under the impression that those might be owned by Wizards of the Coast.

If you're asking for combat initiative rules from 3.5, I could add those in time I guess if there is interest. I haven't played 3.5 since Pathfinder came out so it would take a bit of work for me to dig back out my source books and refamiliarize myself with the content.

If neither of those are what you're asking, please try again so I can grasp what you're after.

It looks like a good app. Would it be possible to add conditions to players and npc's such as "staggered" or "prone". Also is there a way to add damage to more than one enemy at a time like with an area effect spell?

I'm looking forward to the update so I can add my own creations to the list.

Condition tracking is on the short-list of things to do. This next update (almost done) is the big one that incorporates your own databases. It's fully implemented and working and right now I'm working on cleaning up the helper scripts that I'll release to go along with this and making some web pages and screen shots to explain how to use this (a bit complicated for non-computer nerds like me) new feature.

But yeah, condition tracking is definitely of interest to me as well and it will get done ASAP.

I am the creator of the Combat Tracker for PFRPG iPad application and wanted to describe what motivated our company, Failed Will Save Productions, to build this app, detail its features, and discuss some upcoming changes.

MOTIVATION:
For at least the past decade my gaming group has been using The GameMastery Combat Pad. You probably use one too in your sessions. It's a dry-erase magnetic tablet that tracks initiative. You scratch down monster names on little magnetic bits and move them around on the initiative tracker. For years I had been using this in conjunction with a module and several Bestiaries open in my lap or behind a DM screen. Space was at a premium at our gaming table and so this was all a very taxing and complex balancing act (literally) as I flipped between bookmarks in multiple books / modules while maintaining initiative tracking and rolling dice. In all, I found it difficult to evoke an appropriate mood given the tasks I was juggling as a DM in combat.

The Combat Tracker for PFRPG iPad application was made to address these complications. Since early implementations of Combat Tracker we have been using the app at our gaming table and literally I do not even open my bestiaries anymore - instead leaning back with my iPad and managing combat with ease.

DESIGN GOALS:

• Ease tedious and often long Pathfinder combat, especially for a lot of NPCs and PCs
  
• PC dice rolls are NOT emulated. This is important to understand. This is a GM aid, it is not a replacement for players. Your players still roll to attack, roll damage, roll initiative - you are provided with easier-to-access views and manipulation of monster hit points, AC, etc (more below).
  
• Provide digital searching and manipulation of NPCs and monsters from standard sources (more below on what this gives you)
  

FEATURES:

• Deployment tracking - PCs and NPCs can be added to the 'deployment' area - a staging area of PCs and NPCs you might use or need in a coming session (easy access).
  
• Initiative tracking:
  
• ---->PCs and NPCs can be dragged and dropped onto the initiative tracker. For NPCs, their initiative values are automatically rolled. For PCs, you as the GM enter a player's rolled value.
  
• ---->Initiative order is tracked including who's turn it is, what is the round number
  
• ---->NPCs and PCs can hold their actions. This causes them to be placed into a holding area, ready to jump into the fray when they choose to take an action.
  
• Combat:
  
• ---->NPCs added to the initiative tracker automatically roll their hit points. Remember those complex hit point rolls such as 12d6 + 18? Rather than take the average (as is provided by Paizo), instead Combat Tracker actually rolls those numbers.
  
• ---->GMs have the final say and can manipulate monster hit points, kill NPCs, and change their turn order.
  
• ---->When damage is to be applied to an NPC, you as GM pull up a damaging screen which lets you apply this damage. If an NPC has DR that is reminded to you here and you can choose to bypass it (DR: 10/silver but your fighter is using a silver sword? Tap to bypass the DR) or let it apply the DR (in which case it subtracts off the DR from the damage you apply).
  
• ---->NPCs hit points are managed and when they are reduced to 0 they are automatically moved to the 'graveyard' area.
  
• ---->---->The graveyard tracks the amount of experience awarded this session (or since the last time the graveyard was cleared).
  
• ---->---->Can automatically divide this evenly by the number of PCs in the campaign for easy GM math
  
• NPC and Monster Management:
  
• ---->Inclusion of all of the monsters from the Open Gaming License (OGL) Paizo sourcebooks (Bestiary 1,2,3, Ultimate Magic, GM Guide, etc). This is over 1,000 monsters.
  
• ---->GMs can search for monster names. Any letters typed will return all monsters with those characters in them (not just starting with). So typing "were" will return all the "were<wolf/badger/etc>" monsters as well as "meowwere" if that monster, perhaps, existed.
  
• ---->Each monster has a monster "card" with multiple "tabs":
  
• ---->---->There are tabs for attack, offense, defense, statistics, abilities, ecology / environment, and more
  
• ---->---->The "attack" tab parses the melee and ranged attacks of a monster, automatically rolls their ENTIRE attack strings, and puts information for you to read about their attack roll and damage. As a GM, you would just ask if the attack value hit and then read off the damage. This makes rolling combat damage super fast. It even handles critical threats and critical hits (including crit multipliers), different attack values (+20/+15/+10 is rolled separately) and reminds you about special effects ("plus grapple", "plus curse of lycanthropy", "plus poison").
  
• ---->---->Simply tapping the "attack" icon rerolls everything if you want to "fudge" some GM dice (ack! That string of lucky crits is going to kill that PC!)
  
• ---->---->All the attack, defense, stat blocks, everything from the monster stat block is presented broken out into categories.
  
• ---->---->The description you might read to your PCs is provided as well
  

WHERE CAN I SEE IT?

• The official Apple store link is here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/combat-tracker-for-pfrpg/id532579558?mt=8. Be sure to scroll to the right in the screenshot section to see all the screenshots.
  
• Our company site, Failed Will Save Productions is here: http://www.failedwillsave.com/
  
• To see some videos of the app in action check out these on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/FailedWillSave
  

You will notice that the colors, backgrounds, etc are different from the first link and the following two. The first link, the Apple Store link, is the released colors and the earlier versions are from beta screenshots. You can certainly see the functionality in these 2nd and 3rd links, however. Also notice that the earlier versions did not include the background images and icons that you can see in the released version.

WHAT'S NEXT?
The review process for IOS apps is particularly long. This app spent about 30 days in the queue until approved. As such, the next version is well underway and we expect to submit it in early to mid August (unknown how long it will sit in queue, especially with some of the feature changes below). Its features include:

• The ability to add your own databases:
  
• ---->This is the big feature in the next release. If you want to add your own NPCs, other monsters from adventure paths you have purchased, etc you can now do that.
  
• ---->We are releasing scripts that help you manipulate Excel spreadsheets (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-filter/ and http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-db for example) and convert them into the Combat Tracker database format.
  
• ---->These databases are then added to your iPad by file transfer using iTunes. The Combat Tracker app then just "sees" them and lets you add all the monsters from each database you add
  
• More font options (than the 3 we ship with)
  

Further off goals include:

• Graphical "skinning" so you can change the background images, colors, etc.
  
• While you can add player-controlled summoned monsters to the tracker at this time, they are identified still as NPCs. This is nice since you as GM can roll their damage for your player(s) instead of them having to look up how to attack with a Fiendish Dire Bat. However, we intend to add a "summoned monster" colorized template in the future to differentiate between enemy monsters and player-controlled monsters.
  
• Condition tracker to track effects (poison, stunned, hypnotized, etc) that includes reminders of what the effects are, the amount of time until they go off, DC, amount of rounds in effect and round tracker, etc.
  
• GM assistance for other dice rolls (saves, CMB)
  
• GM dice rolling for spell effects cast by monsters / NPCs
  

QUESTIONS:
Why not do this with just drop-down menus, radio buttons, and normal features?
We wanted to create a game-like pleasant to look at interface. As such there are animations, fades, pulses, and colors. We felt that the other combat trackers out there lacked an interface that a GM would want to use.

Why iPad only?
Real estate. I haven't yet redesigned the application to fit onto an iPhone and worry that the real estate (literally, screen dimensions and resolution) will not be sufficient for what we want to do. However, this is a stretch goal.

What about Android tablets?
Sadly, porting from IOS to Android is not simple and is more complex than we have the manpower to tackle at this time. Efforts instead will be placed into new features. We understand the appeal of Android, particularly for the Paizo / OGL community, but it is not the target platform at this time.

What does it cost?
$4.99.

Why isn't it free?
This project took us over a year of coding and several tens of thousands of lines of code to produce. Apple also requires a developer license fee and we used a few pieces of not-particularly-expensive but not-trivially-free software packages. And secondly, as myself a purchaser of several for-pay Pathfinder community generated iPhone and iPad apps, I realize there is a market. Furthermore, the app is really only of use to a GM so the volume is particularly low for this app.

What if I have an idea or bug?
We'd love to hear from you. We are players too and poured a lot of our heart and energy into this app. If you have suggestions, complaints, ideas, we want to hear it so that we can make the app better for everyone. Contact us at support@failedwillsave.com.

Any chance the grappling rules will eventually be included?

Maybe in time. The grappling rules certainly are complex and it's not high on the to-do list to tackle these at this time.

Looks interesting, but I would suggest looking at Hero Lab as it has a combat tracker built in already and I use that in most of my games.

Certainly Hero Labs was a motivator for this app. However, my intention was to replace the GameMastery magnetic thing we have used at our table for over a decade and do away with the stack of books I was having to balance on my lap and flip between pages of to look at monster stats.

This accomplishes that.

It is further my understanding that while Hero Labs intends to put out an iPad app it has not done so at this time. Their products are also generally pretty expensive (comparatively).

After a month in the queue the app was finally approved (in a matter of hours once under review).

Check it out on the iTunes store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/combat-tracker-for-pfrpg/id532579558?mt=8&am p;ign-mpt=uo%3D2

The link above has new screenshots in case you've only seen the previous one.

The next version is well under way (Apple doesn't allow you to upload new versions during the queue time, so we have over a month of additional development into the next version).

The version up there has all the OGL monsters, over 1,000 of them. The new version includes the ability to add your own databases of monsters and NPCs.

I've been using this at my table for months and obviously have tailored it around my own needs as a GM.

If you have any problems, bugs, suggestions, or accolades, feel free to contact me as support@failedwillsave.com

Cheers.

For iPad GMing we just released the Combat Tracker for PFRPG app. You might be interested in it:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/combat-tracker-for-pfrpg/id532579558?mt=8&am p;ign-mpt=uo%3D2

It has all the OGL monsters and the next version (soon to be out) will let you add your own monsters.

Take a look at the link / screenshots and see if it's interesting to you.

It would be really nice if something like this had clear plug-ins for collaboration from the technology community. Paizo has a very 3rd-party friendly stance in pen-and-paper and I'd really like to see that transfered to digital products.

For instance:
Add my own maps
Add new rulesets
Adding new, custom generated monsters
Adding visual effects (fireball! call lightning, animations, etc).
Mapping
Character generators
Spellbook management
/etc

I'm not saying these things will or should be present on launch, I'm suggesting there be 'hooks' that allow technology creators to develop products to connect in and add functionality.

Absolutely the best things that have happened to me in role playing, either as a player or DM, have been related to moral questions like this one. I know I'm joining this ultra-late but I totally would have approved of making the wizard deal with what he did.

I've had entire in-game arguments and personalities develop based on events like this. The other characters should have considered kicking the wizard out of the party, turning him into the constable, etc. The wizard should have been dealing with ramifications from his deity, if appropriate.

Love these situations. Hope my party does the same thing when we get there.

Videos are up and posted. I put them on Youtube but the video quality didn't turn out great. Until I figure out how / if that's fixable you can take a look at the videos where we demonstrate combat damage, searching for NPCs from the database, managing initiative, etc. Just assume the image quality on the app itself doesn't look as bad as that :).

http://www.youtube.com/user/FailedWillSave

We are nearing the final stages of our first iPad app - "PF RPG Combat Tracker". We welcome your thoughts and comments. This was built by a GM specifically looking for a way to offload some of the tedium of GMing so he could focus more on storytelling and mood setting.

I'd post screenshots here but that's not allowed, so check it out at the link if you're interested:

http://www.failedwillsave.com/2012/05/04/combat-tracker-ipad-app-preview/

Send us an email if you have any thoughts: admin@failedwillsave.com

We are going through the final stages of publishing this through the iTunes store and hope to have it online in a few weeks (though their review process can sometimes be lengthy).

I'll be making a movie soon to demonstrate how a GM interacts with the device.

Love it too. Your bold regions refer to how to handle what the PCs say. How about some suggestions what happens when the PCs outright accuse him of having Petros killed and try and attack him.

I appreciate the replies, all. I'll let you know how it plays out (it'll be almost a month due to some travel with several of our players). Cheers!

I am a huge fan of character deaths but I can see how you're concerned about the motivation for the characters being slight (how many of them that are left knew the Professor)? I would be most concerned about writing new characters into the story that had strong backstories that tie them to the storyline and that will require a lot of cooperation between you (as the DM) and the new (or replacing) player.

That said, again, I love character deaths. I think they add a level of fear to the story and really reduce the level of heroics that the players feel. I don't think, personally, that gothic horror protagonists should be heroes. To me, Van Richten is the exception - not the rule. I really prefer to think of my gothic protagonists as just barely above average farmers/blacksmiths/scribes that were for some reason motivated into action. Perhaps that's from all the years of playing Ravenloft . . .

Without exception at my table the most talked about events are the ones that involved character deaths. Make them meaningful, make them painful, make the players deal with the body, the belongings, make them deal with "how do we tell his family? does anyone even know how to contact them?", make them take upon themselves the dead player's quest ("we will avenge you!"), etc.

I ALMOST killed a bard at my table last night fighting the Weaverworm. He got off 50 points of damage on him and paralyzed him. It was going to coup-de-grace him next round if the other PCs hadn't rushed in, dragged him to safety, and kept the worm busy.

Spoilers, please don't read if you are a player.

I have a diviner in my group that has a pretty high concentration and has already informed the party that he intends to spend his time at Ascanor Lodge talking with the guests and using Seek Thoughts. He intends to do this to find out more about why the Whispering Way came to the Lodge. I'm talking about Seek Thoughts here, not Detect Thoughts.

I'm mostly concerned about him doing this to Estovion as we know Estovion is the one hiding the most.

I'm looking for some early advice from my fellow DMs on how to play this out.

I realize that Estovion has an extremely high Will save (+12) and is a conjurer himself - so perhaps would recognize what's going on. Perhaps he just Spellcrafts it and puts up some protection himself and becomes even more paranoid about the PCs (which moves us along in the Events).

Since I have some time before the next session (a couple of weeks) I was hoping I'd get some cool ideas from you guys about how to play this out, what he might be thinking about, what maybe some of the other NPCs at the lodge would be thinking about, etc. It'd be cool for me to write these down ahead of time and be prepared. I find spells like this somewhat hard to do off-the-cuff at the table so am trying to prepare ahead of time.

Thanks!

Nice. So is the drow good or evil? Or would that be too spoilery in case your players read this? Two evil characters working for different agendas might be crazy -- whether it's crazy awesome or crazy bad depends on the players!

The drow is neutral and the evil ninja/inquisitor took himself out of the party and replaced himself with a sorc that's neutral. The party had a general feel that we lacked any magical firepower and when the cleric dude brought in a ranger instead of a magic user of some sort, it was more solidified. So we just had 2 characters swap :). It went over real well.

That was an awesome role playing encounter. I would find it way cooler than just a straight fight or a retreat until the trap wears off.

My only question is how the player of the cleric feels about it. How is he going to get another PC back into the game? I hope he won't have to wait until after the whole Schloss.

He's already back in - the very next session a Drow Ranger replacement showed up. He wrote a cool backstory about tracking the Whispering Way for some time due to <some story he made up>. He tracked them here when they came into the Castle and hasn't been able to get in himself. Then he saw this party on the bridge, trekked around the backside using his awesome climbing and terrain whoosie-whatsies and came in during the attack on the Mummy and Mimic.

It was great, he and I had talked ahead of time and prerolled his initiative, damage, and hits. Early in the combat xbow bolts started flying into the room and hitting the Mummy. It really surprised the party! They don't know about this guy now. He's a race none have ever seen (though have heard/read about), and they are really on-guard around him.

In summary - the cleric player didn't mind at all. He's now playing / trying something else fun. If he doesn't like it, we'll just have it leave and he'll try something else. That's the way our group rolls.

This thread is nothing but win. As DM, I would strongly force alignment shifts on people and consequences. If people aren't happy with it I'd have them bring in replacement characters. But, again, this is a great story - love it.

I LOVE character death. I think it adds so much to the story. Still, I can see how people could get attached to a character.