Urdal's page

I'm considering GMing Giantslayer for a new party after we've done a one shot to get used to the rules. The players are in to classic LotR style fantasy type stuff and I think it puts an interesting twist on that by essentially starting them in an outpost behind enemy lines rather than in a sleepy woodland town.

The problem is that I don't see much love for it when I'm reading forums for reviews. Is there something inherently wrong with the AP, is it because it's still relatively new, or is it backlash for traditional fantasy after Paizo did something so out there with Iron Gods?

I'm listening to the Glass Cannon podcast, and {spoiler=spoiler}I've just caught up to part way through the keelboat section (They're about to stop off at the first trading post) I quite like the flavour of taking a river boat ride without committing to a full on pirate AP.[/spoiler] The way they are playing the AP is really making me want to run it.

Does it get a lot worse after that?

I decided on Everflame because I want something that can get done in one shot.

I think I'm going for the change that most people seem to do, which is that players aren't teens coming of age, but rather they have to go to the crypt to rescue the teenagers who stumbled in to the trap. I didn't want to make the module open ended, I wanted some closure at the end.

I'm thinking of adding a few side quests at the start, basically detailing the teenagers who went, and offering a reward from the families for each one who is brought back safely.

I think I'm going to make the twist that the tomb was once under a minor curse, and the town sent teams up to it yearly to clear it of undead. One year they decided enough was enough and had a cleric lift the curse. To keep the curse at bay, the cleric created two matching Everflames. One was in the crypt, and the other was in town. Once a year the flame in town must be fueled by the flame from the crypt in order for the crypt to remain under the town's control.

Edit: Now that the crypt is benign, the town use it as a coming of age ritual for aspiring adventurers. They pick several every year to go and fetch the flame for them.

This year one of the teenagers was the rebellious son of a wealthy couple who are actively disliked in the town, partly because their son causes trouble for everyone and partly because they're just shady. The father is secretly a necromancer, the son gets chosen to go to the crypt and steals his dad's robe of bones, intending to somehow break the curse and cause some havoc.

The players go to the crypt, figure out that it was the kid who did it (but it got out of control when he raised the skeletal champion), save the kids who haven't died and retrieve the flame in the process. I was going to have Roldare be one of the teenagers who's clearly out of his/her depth. When they get back, the father is arrested and they've saved the day.

Are there any problems with this? I was also going to make the shadow something with a similar CR, by the way. Maybe a coffer corpse or one of those CR 3 flesh oozes.

I've downgraded from GMing a complete homebrew setting, to Rise of the Runelords and now to a one-shot module just to reduce the strain on myself. I have new players and I was probably asking too much of them to commit to the same character and story for months, if not years, of playing.

Anyway, I want to go for a Level 1 module with a classic fantasy feel. If they enjoy it and want to carry on, I'll probably see if I can continue it in to the beginning of an adventure path.

I'm not interested in We Be Goblins, otherwise I'm looking for a one-shot dungeon crawl preferably with goblins or a similar race, maybe some undead. I know the classic level 1 trope is fighting rats in a basement but to be honest I don't want a whole module of critters, but not too many of the more esoteric monsters either. I might be asking too much.

I've done a lot of searching, but I still don't know what's worth playing and what looks better than it actually is.

I'm about to start running RotRL with slightly more challenging encounters for a party who are all basically new:

Ranger - Focusing on ranged combat
Paladin - Doing the whole white knight thing
Druid
Witch
Cavalier

We might also have a Rogue. My problem is with the Cavalier. He's a Dwarf and I can't really see a mount being useful for most of the campaign. In addition, I'm really struggling to figure out what a Cavalier (Especially unmounted) can do that a Paladin can't.

Anyway, I'm toying with actually allowing the Gunslinger class. I was against it previously, however I've been reading up and listening to a few podcasts etc and I'm coming round to the idea. The problem is that the vocal majority seem to think that Gunslingers will outshine every other class and I really don't want any of the players getting a bad first impression of Pathfinder because they find themselves useless in combat.

I'm also wondering if a Gunslinger would work as part of the above team, in place of the Cavalier if I were to suggest it to him.

So I guess my question is how difficult would it be for a new player, who doesn't have an awareness of optimisation at least for now, to break the class? I'm aware that there are a ton of rules regarding the class which are intended to constantly mini-nerf it and I intend to keep on top of them. Also, I'd probably adhere to the 'guns are incredibly rare and expensive, and you're lucky to find one that isn't a rusty piece of junk' idea.

Still though, all I can find are forum posts that descend in to bitterness with no clear conclusion.

Hi,

I'm still in the early stages of GMing, although I've absorbed as much information as I can outside of actually sitting at a table, and it's for 5 or 6 players with varying levels of experience in tabletop games.

I'm looking to introduce the players to the idea of creating and developing a character, leveling up, choosing skills to suit the adventure they're on etc. They're all expecting relatively high fantasy, and to be honest that's what I prefer. I don't mind a bit of flavor from other genres, however the Pathfinder world gives me problems that I seem to experience with every designed-by-committee fantasy setting in that there are inevitably aspects that I find silly, even in a made up universe. Off the top of my head I'm thinking about the WWI thing in RoW and Iron Gods in its entirety so I would like to avoid those and any others that deviate too much from straight up fantasy.

I'd also like to do a lot of dungeon crawling and dump the players in to skill and combat-heavy action as soon as possible. I do like the idea of using maps, and I think this would give the players who are more comfortable pushing tokens around a board something familiar to do while they're acclimatising to roleplaying. Mummy's Mask seems like the best for dungeon crawling, but again it's too far from traditional fantasy for new players, I think. I'm also only familiar with it from second hand accounts.

Ideally I'd like a fair amount of fantasy tropes. Goblins/Orcs. Undead if possible. Kobolds, gnolls etc etc. Some of paizos interesting monsters. (It sometimes kind of annoys me how many encounters involve rats, bats, dogs and ruffians from the local docks)

I'm not a hundred percent familiar with all the APs, although I have several of them. I'd be happy to buy more.

Here's the ones I'm familiar enough with to consider -

Giantslayer (Lots of combat, love the setting although there seems to be at least an hour of roleplay at the beginning and I think a main criticism is that it devolves in to tedious fights against similar giants)
RotRL (Straight in to the action, but then seems to slow down and I'm not sure there's much in the way of dungeons although I only read the first book about two years ago)
S&S (The boat is interesting, starts with some combat, only read the first book so I don't know where it goes. Firearms could be an issue)
CC (Lots of dungeons, lots of Undead, perhaps not good for martial characters?)

Here's the ones I'm looking to avoid -

Iron Gods (Too sci-fi)
Kingmaker (Too much sandbox. Mass combat and kingdom building rules aren't representative of the game)
Jade Regent (Eastern flavour seems silly. I hear that the caravan rules are horribly broken)
WotR (We have a morally suspect character)

Players are going for druid, cavalier, witch, rogue, ranger and paladin if that makes a difference.