Vilrandir's page

I am in favor of non-static dungeons. I like the addition of the monsters attacking the town. Monsters should be monstrous, not just live a quiet life in their cave. There are reasons people are afraid of monsters and send adventurers to kill them after all.

I do hope you won't make the paladin fall though, see my past post on that. No reason to repeat myself. :)

Yes, I've very much decided I was completely wrong on that. Also, as I mentioned I wouldn't have made him fall if he wasn't agreeing to it. I must say he is a very fair player and I've never distrusted him yet.

Having GM'ed that particular module, my fist question rather is "why did those monster go to the village and massacre it?"

Spoiler alert carrion crown.

The PCs explored a couple rooms of the underground dungeon and teleported back to town to rest. Right after having encountered the Mi-Gos and the Oracle. They were taking a beating and decided to escape, I decided the monsters would probably take actions to respond the incursion from these humans who slayed all their slaves (they had killed the skum). I also decided that timing the birth if the dark young if Shub niggurath to the second expedition they would make was cheesy so I decided that because the PC's left the MiGo alone the first day they had enough time to complete the transformation on the Rider. So the MiGo devised the following plan for revenge: the cleric room the Dark Young to town to draw the adventurers back to the lair. The rest of the MiGo and the Oracle would slay the invaders when they came back, having laid some traps and thinking they had home field advantage. As it turned out, in the second expedition day they slayed the cleric and isolated the MiGo on the cavern they come out of. Thy circles out through the secret door and tried to sneak behind through the main entry but another wall of force stopped most of them again. This effectively trapped the PCs inside for a few rounds, the MiGo decided to exact vengeance an left for town, where they summoned some GnopKhes from the Dark Tapestry to help them tear through the village. Being scientists, the MiGo were laying the bodies in the town centre for some twisted final experiment when the party (after exploring further and a couple encounters) returned to the temple.

I chose to do this because a few comments like "we can come back later, the monsters aren't scripted to do anything but wait in their lair". It felt like a sensible approach based in the MiGos fluff and it helped develop the adventure path's race against time feeling. It was also one of the most memorable sessions, everyone enjoyed it a lot btw.

I thought some answers were a bit rude too but as you said I didn't take them personally, but that specific answer I quoted was in my opinion a direct insult. It's hard to not take something personally when they say "it's because if people like you".
Thanks to everyone who took the time to give constructive feedback

DMs like you are why....

Paladins are Lawful Good, not Lawful...

Excuse me? Don't you think you're over-reacting a bit? I had the unforgivable error of mis-interpreting something and I guess I'm guilty for making the whole world hate paladins or something?

I came here for feedback, precisely because I talked to the player about the situation and we disagreed. I wouldn't have enforced anything without mutual consent with him.
I've been nothing if not receptive of the feedback, but there's a clear distinction between being "harsh" and just plain judgmental.

Ah, you’re using an alias.

They do come up a lot here, and most of the time by trolls.

But my suggestion still stands: Since you are clearly having issues with Paladin, give your Paladin a free slotless Phylactery of Faithfulness. Next time you have a issue, have the device warn him.\

Zhayne, from these and other posts, I think you have had some sort of issue with a Paladin in the past. The paladin no more forces his way of doing things on the party than they force their way on him.

In any case, one of the assumptions of the game is that the PC's are heroes. If you act heroic, and everyone is mature, then there's really no issue having a Paladin in the party.

That was a weird thing, SeaBiscuit is an alias of a friend of mine that sometimes uses my computer, I didn't check and it autologged with his user.

When situations I think go against his code come up (only happened maybe once or twice) I always talk about it with him so you could say we're already doing the slotless Phylactery approach. But I think it has more to do with my pre-existing paladin conceptions, which was my main reason to ask the forums as I thought I needed to calibrate with other people.

Sorry for the double post. Writing from my iPhone is.A bit trickier than I hoped for. And I can't figure out how to delete it from here to boot.

Vilrandir wrote:

Odraude wrote:

Also I'm surprised you'd allow him to sneak, since he's a paladin. Wouldn't sneaking be "acting without honor"? ;)

Well, from the "abide no evil..." Section, I also took that it's sometimes OK to do things like this if the enemy she's facing is playing dirty to begin with.

I could name quiet a few people that have a problem with the idea of it being okay for a paladin to 'stoop down to your level' behavior. Your kind getting picky about what the code is and how to handle it, which is why I said it would probably be best to talk that out with the player.

We did talk about it and agreed the Sarenrae code quoted above would be the guideline, but this situation makes me think we need to go over how we interpret all of it so this doesn't become an issue.

You said initially "They had no way of knowing if everyone was dead or not, all they saw was a pile of corpses and a huge polar bear-like thing chewing carcasses."

So which is it?

What I meant is that they did not have an absolute certainty meaning they didn't see any live villagers, but also the pile of corpses was not large enough to account for all the villagers so they inferred there had to be some of them still out there somewhere.

Sorry if the writing confused you, English isn't my first language.
Anyway, I think all your comments ring true and it was probably an over-reaction to think I losing paladinhood.
Thanks for your feedback

Also I'm surprised you'd allow him to sneak, since he's a paladin. Wouldn't sneaking be "acting without honor"? ;)

Well, from the "abide no evil..." Section, I also took that it's sometimes OK to do things like this if the enemy she's facing is playing dirty to begin with.

Also, By fleeing she would have abiding evil to go on without even attempting to do something about it.

I meant that they had no absolute certainty as they didn't see any alive villagers. But they did see the pile of corpses and it wasn't big enough to account for all villagers and so concluded that probably some were still alive. Still, they didn't have a way of knowing versus inferring.
Sorry if the writing confused things, English isn't my first language.

Anyway, from what you're saying I think it may have been an over-reaction to think about losing paladinhood, thanks for the feedback.

So, this situation eventually didn't matter but I thought I'd calibrate my GM judgement with you folks.

After exploring an underground facility, the PC's decided they could take all the time in the world to go through the dungeon as the Monsters wouldn't dare come to town while they rested. After setting up some traps, the monsters waited patiently and then tried to lure them back to the caverns, with the PC's valiantly following. After a short battle, they were able to isolate the monsters via Wall of Forces, so that the monsters still had access to the cavern exits. The monsters literally went to town while the PC's decided to keep exploring. After a very challenging encounter, with resources drained the party decided to go back to town and rest. By the time they arrived back, the small fishing village was massacred and yet they were able to hear the monsters outside, chewing through the corpses. One party member is a paladin of Sarenrae and she decided it was time to flee and return later to "finish them through". They had no way of knowing if everyone was dead or not, all they saw was a pile of corpses and a huge polar bear-like thing chewing carcasses. In the end they defeated them, but my question to you is:
In your opinion, had the paladin fled (via teleport), would this action have been enough to lose her paladinhood?
The code of Sarenrae says to abide no evil and when words don't suffice, to bring swift justice, but the player insisted that since the code also says that "if you die you don't get to keep fighting evil " (in summary) she was entitled to possible abandon the remaining villagers and flee.
In the end I ruled she would and it don't matter cause the polar-bear-things spotted them and the PCs barely made it out alive.
Anyway, I'd appreciate your opinion, I wouldn't want to be making overtly "unbalanced" calls but I also think the paladin code should not give her such an easy out.

I was the magus in there, I still have my /SaddestPandaFaceEVAH! that was so anticlimatic I still imagine Karzoug casting that quickened Wail of the Banshee. . .2 freaking years...man it sucked.

Oh, don't be a crybaby. He was only a 20th level wizard versus a 15th level party with almost twice the gp they should have according to level and 6 PCs. :)

Don't feel frustrated, I think it made for a good story.

I have a Paladin in my group (although much lower AC) and what I've found out is that bigger groups of lower level tend to make for much more interesting encounters with him. Also as some others have pointed out, combat maneuvers and an interesting disposition of terrain may make the encounters more challenging

Why aren't you happy about the Seabiscuit01 seeking advice about improving the game? Okay, he wasn't especially friendly about you, for he opened with, "I think I entered a stalemate with my GM." But would you rather he...

I wasn't happy because the real purpose of the thread was looking for "weaponry" to use in a discussion about this. He did approach me afterwards to talk about it and he mentioned all the points in this discussion that favored his "side" but failed to hear all the people that didn't support his view. I only recently found the thread and connected the dots. In short, I don't think he was looking for advice on improving the game, but for advice on "proving he was right".

I'm also unhappy because I think he's misrepresented the situation. He's failed to mention that the Rogue has made other contributions to the table akin as those you mention your non-combatant rogues made. As I briefly mentioned he's the kind of Rogue that will find tricky ways of solving things.
I don't think there's a right or wrong here (though I guess I might be wrong on that!) just as there's no absolute right or wrong way to run a table. In fact making it about being right or wrong is probably what I disliked the most.

+1 regarding Burning Wheel as a better System for that setting.

Otherwise, i think that you should ban most of the Spellcasting classes, until the Magic is back into the world.

In order to keep my comment spoiler free, i would state that its a Low magic setting while the dragons are dead. As its said in the books, "magic died with the dragons"

Add me to the suggestion of Burning Wheel for this. In fact my group is considering starting a short story playing Burning Wheel in a campaign setting in Westeros after Game of Thrones. The system is gritty enough for that truly medieval feeling that ASoIaF conveys

I was unsure if I should reply or not, but given that I'm the DM in the mentioned situation I thought I would drop in some more background information.
SeaBiscuit01 plays the Magus and as the Monk and Paladin, they do love their min/maxing and optimization bit. Which is pretty OK, I'm way cool with that. The Rogue player falls on the opposite camp, he loves the roleplaying part, he loves being the sneaky guy that scouts ahead, figures inventive ways of progressing and defeating traps and such. Not being a min maxer, his role in combat is very small. Knowing this, he falls in support roles and tries his best at not being a burden.
As some people have pointed out, its the DM's job to harmonize the table, all the players are friends of mine and my goal at DM'ing is to provide a fun environment where all the players are having fun and getting what they're looking for. So in order not to burden the rest of the group, fights are calibrated not considering the Rogue and so far have never been unbalanced or unfair. PCs have died as in any other game and I even dare say the death rate is probably lower than any standard table (I'm not a killy killy DM) but this has never been way over the top and never because of the lack of combat skill from the Rogue.
Short story, the min/maxing side of the table gets their fun with the fighting (and roleplaying too, they also RP a lot and as some other people say optimizing and RP'ing are not mutually exclusive) and the part of the table that enjoys other kinds of challenges gets their way too. I think the conflict arises when one side tries to push the other into having fun THEIR way.
I hope this brings some light into the conversation, sorry if I'm a bit defensive but I wasn't way happy being "told on" to the Interwebz.

Hi !

Could you send me a copy of your files? my email is vilrandir@hotmail.com

Thank you for pulling so much work for this! I see that a lot of people have appreciated your work, so I'm sure it must make you happy that your efforts paid off for all of the community

Hi. I saw this question discussed elsewhere in this messageboards, but no official answer was given, so I hope I can get one of the designers to clarify.
In a gaming session yesterday, I had a Mummy hitting on a lvl 5 Monk. The way I'm reading the Mummy rot, I had him make a saving throw for it (which he passed, so there was no big deal in the end) because the rot says its "both a curse and a disease". Being immune to diseases, but not to Curses, I figured the Mummy rot should affect him. He made the argument (that I've also seen in that other thread) that the disease part is the one causing the ability damage, although that is no specifically pointed out. I believe that he says this because the Mummy Rot does read that to get rid of the disease, you need to get rid of the curse first, but that doesn't necessarily imply that the disease is the one causing the damage (maybe if a way was found of removing the disease but retaining the curse, the Mummy Rot would still remain).

If possible I'd like to get a designer to clarify this (pretty please, its almost Christmas !!)

I'm guessing that the point was not that there's an actual moral dilemma, but that it could be a cool scene to have the BBEG sit down and have a moral debate to try and tempt the PCs into accepting his rationalization of his actions?

Yeah, I agree that the dragon's rationalization is in fact flawed and in the end there is no actual dilemma. But I believe that the confrontation will at least put the PCs off guard and provide some interesting roleplaying opportunities.

Thank you.

This question arised in my last game of Pathfinder. An invisible creature abandons a threatened square. Does he cause an attack of opportunity ? Can someone take it? We ruled that a perception check would be made for the PCs to notice the creature abandoning the square, therefore allowing the AoO for those who succeeded. Does this sound right?

By the way, your english is excellent. -=)

*blush* and you're awesome ;)

Who is the outsider? Barrur is a dragon, so he isn't the outsider. Or do you mean an outsider from the Drow perspective?

Yeah, I meant as an outsider to the Drow perspective

I thought about having her be the one that trapped the Drow, but that would mean she's millenia old and way too powerful for the dragon right now. But maybe she could be a reincarnation or something along these lines. Thanks for the advice!

It is for reasons like this that DnD systems (and the like) deal with moral absolutes most of the time... The laws of society play little role, as alignments deal in absolutes.

I can see your point on the good / evil axis, but what about the lawful / chaotic axis then?

Regardless, the dilemma is not really about the Drow's actions, but the DRAGON's. He has done something that the party obviously won't like, and will want to take action against. But from the dragon's prespective, he has not wronged the PCs more than they would wrong him by taking action.

Thanks to everybody for the feedback

I will try really hard not to turn this into a creepy "conversation about my paladin" type of post.
I'm running a Pahtfinder campaign and the plot I'm coming up is developing into a really interesting plot twist. However, I'd like to share it to get some feedback from whoever is interested in taking the time to go through it. Who knows, maybe you'll like it and take something from it.

It all started as a simple mission to help a trader. His caravans kept getting mugged and his hired help kidnapped by a local band of Bugbears. The PCs looked into it and found the Bugbear hideout in some ancient dwarven ruins (mostly collapsed now). While rescuing the prisoners, the PCs found out that they were being used as forced labor to dig out some old tunnels that had collapsed, by a mysterious stranger in league with the Bugbears (its the other way around actually, the stranger is called Barrur and he's actually a Green Dragon in disguise, posing as the very same dwarf giving this information to the PCs !). Barrur is looking for the location of an ancient tomb of a Lich, and he believes clues to this location may lie deeper in the tunnels. His problem is that he has found an old Drow fortress beneath the ruins. He planned on striking some deal with the Drow, but the arrival of the PCs posed new problems that might solve themselves by throwing the PCs into the Drow lair, so he tricked them into it. However the PCs got their behinds kicked by Drider warriors, so they kind of left and tried to hit the "Ignore Quest" button.
This is the current point in the story. My plans are as follows:
With the Heroes out of the Underdark, but the Drow still in there, Barrur has kidnaped the local druid to offer to the Drow. As it turns out, the druid is the heir to the druid cove that entrapped the Drow millennia ago and a dear friend to the party. While the party was away shopping (literally) Barrur has made the trade and getting ready for the travel to the tomb. The PCs are currently tracking the druid and will soon find out her demise. It’s very likely that they will hunt down Barrur for justice/revenge. But here’s where I think it all becomes a brilliantly evil plot. Barrur took the druid back to the Drow, to have “justice” (even if Drow and twisted in nature) exacted upon her, for wrongs done to the Drow. As an outsider, whatever judicial system is alien to him, and as a neutral party he has no reason to disregard one law system over the other. The dilemma here becomes that if the PCs try to take him back to justice (as they’ve done in the past numerous times), aren’t they commiting the same act as he did? I hope I make my point on this one (I’m Mexican, English isn’t my first language and sometimes its hard to convey the exact thought).
So, Barrur will probably have already left when the PCs find his lair, although he’ll leave back minions to guard his stuff, but I’m planning on having him make an illusion (of his dwarven form, remember he hasn’t shown his draconic nature) to engage the characters in discussion over dinner about the above point (scrying over one of his minions, while maintaining a major image or something). So in case the PCs decide they’ll fight him anyway, he’ll already be well on his way.
I’m not sure if I’ll go this way or if they’ll catch him in his lair and the confrontation will lead to the reveal of the Green Dragon.

So, after the extensive text block, what do you think?
Any brilliant ideas?
I probably skipped over a lot of relevant information, so if something doesn’t make sense to you I’ll try to explain.