Vin'Kethriel's page

I would also love this. I suspect the people at work at wondering where all the ink is going. I use my own paper, but I'm sure at some point they're gonna start asking questions.

I rather like the idea of a setting with no good drow. When I ran Second Darkness, I changed Jhondron's alignment to NE and spiced things up a bit for him.

Death to the Drizzt Do'Urden clones.

This is how I run my PCs in my worlds.

I hate the idea of everyone starting at the same level, it always seems too contrived for me. At character creation and in front of me, the player rolls a d2. They get to start at first or second level. Upon death, the player rolls a d4 to a d6 depending on the level of the party and sometimes even higher die values based on the ECL of the party. The player then rolls a character of the ECL minus the value of the die.

I implemented this due to my players throwing away characters a tough challenges. In their minds, they would just reroll. This death tax not only broke them of their habit, but also made them invested into their characters.

To fair to my players, they are all new to roleplaying for the most part. To also get them to get them more attached to their characters, I reward them for writing character backgrounds. Depending on the starting level of the character, this can be a bonus trait, a bonus feat, bonus starting gold or even bonus experience. The level of the reward is based on the detail of the background. They know my nuances and have begun writing more in depth backgrounds. After all, they're players and want the "fat" rewards.

Thankfully, none of them have figured out min-maxing/power gaming yet. We'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

If they have had a cakewalk exterminating two entire goblin tribes, I think a couple of things are in order:

First, you need to ramp up the threat level of Thistletop considerably. The Thistletop goblins survived, despite being a relatively smaller tribe, because of their awesome, defensible lair. I'm not sure how the Licktoads and Seven Tooth tribes were wiped out so easily, but you need to make sure that the 'focal point' tribe isn't easy to exterminate too. Otherwise, a major point of the first AP just kind of goes away.

Second, the Thistletop tribe already had refugees from the Birdcrunchers at their gates begging for admittance. If you've wiped out the Seven Tooth and Licktoad goblins, then there's probably going to be a LOT more refugees huddling around Thistletop, hoping for some refuge. All of those goblins are going to be motivated to hate the PCs, since the PCs attacked all of their tribes.

Instead of 10 goblins moping around hoping to get accepted into the tribe, maybe you could have 30+ goblin refugees actively patrolling the Nettlewood. After all, the PCs seem to be on a pogrom against goblins, so the goblins should be expecting an attack. And, after all, the PCs stopped to exterminate two tribes, so they should have some time to prepare as well.

With the thistle maze well guarded (especially those small tunnels where the PCs have to stoop over), and Thistletop itself on high alert, I think the challenge would be much greater. Storming across a trapped bridge with 20+ goblins defending the fort (along with their human and bugbear allies), should be a pretty stiff fight, I would think. By deliberately making a big fuss of things, the PCs won't be facing a poorly guarded fort which can be taken in a series of small encounters. They will be facing a fort on high alert, fortified with desperate allies, with (basically) all of the encounters rolled into one very challenging fight, with the enemies holding a superior position.

My players realized that the Thistletop goblins (or, more...

It sounds like you need some big damn goblin heroes...

** spoiler omitted **...

These two are some of the best ideas I've read.

In addition to whay Butch and thelesuit have to add, what I'd do is have a few goblin survivors take up classes as rangers, each taking a preferred enemy race of one of the PCs. Give them some time to think they're in the clear and have the leveled up, more powerful goblins with ranger class levels extract revenge.

I think calling it something other than its name is hardly going to reduce confusion.

D&D:Next may be a poorly chosen name, but that's what it's called (for now, at least).

Yup. I don't see what's wrong by calling it by it's proper name.

After looking at the DnD Next ruleset, I don't think Paizo has anything to fear. I find the system to be inferior and I think it's going to hurt WotC in the end.

Vin'Kethriel wrote:

I've guess I've done stuff like this myself for so long, I just don't get it. I'd rather see you guys do something more innovative or some more of re-imaginings (I can't get enough of those) than a splatbook for lazy GMs. *shrug* To each their own.

This is actively insulting to every GM who has a job ( And a family. And other hobbies. And so on ), and so doesn't have the time to write his homebrewn stuff. You just basically dismissed Bestiaries, AP's, pre-written modules.

----

I'd rather have this book with a lot of pre-made statblocks and rules for different kinds of mass combat than most of the books which actually come out in 2014.

Not only do I have a job and a family, I still manage to find time. It's not dismissive, it's my opinion.

Races

Every race gets a racial bonus feat. Each race has a specific list of bonus feats that it can choose. Culturally specific racial features, such as giant-fighting and weapon proficiencies, have been changed into racial feats to separate them from inherent physical aspects of the race.

Personally, I love this, and is something I've been tinkering with in my own homebrew. I'm glad that someone else was thinking along similar lines.

Overall, I liked quite a bit of what you did, but didn't have the time to finish. I'll read more of this tomorrow.

My only real question/gripe is why wouldn't Prism's own police handle this? Surely between the demons, angels, assimar, tieflings and other inhabitants, there would a detective squad.

Other than that, I found it interesting and liked the idea.

Vin'Kethriel, you are, of course, entitled to that opinion, but with the Ultimate Campaign and other references, I believe you might be misinterpreting what this product is proposed to offer. Armies of Golarion would provide Bestiary-style statblocks of creatures using the recently-revealed troop subtype. Unlike Ultimate Campaign's mass combat rules, the troop subtype is mechanically identical to regular creature statblocks, which means PCs can fight and interact with them on a one-on-one level, rather than the much more abstract mass combat rules you reference in that book and other sources.

In other words, the statblocks presented in Armies of Golarion would be anything from gibbering hordes of pyromaniac goblins, to River Kingdoms bandit skirmishers, to Hellknight Inquisition units, and statted in such a way (like the Russian troops in the link above) that PCs could scrap toe-to-toe with them (which the mass combat rules don't quite account for) while presenting them with the fantastic flavor of soldiers, warriors, and hordes of vicious creatures found across the breadth of Golarion.

I've guess I've done stuff like this myself for so long, I just don't get it. I'd rather see you guys do something more innovative or some more of re-imaginings (I can't get enough of those) than a splatbook for lazy GMs. *shrug* To each their own.

Am I the only GM that thinks this book isn't needed? With the Ultimate Campaign, the Inner Sea World Guide, and something similar to this you can easily figure this out yourself.

We're in the same boat, Clark.

Dotting to follow.

I give the players bonus xp for contributing to the setting. Adding a settlement or monsters. Always use the rules of something in pathfinder though. Example would be in our world we have these little werecats called Brakshi. They use Goblin rules.

Oh! I like that idea! I'm gonna implement that.

I would suggest keeping things as similar to Earth as possible;

- stick to a single Moon. Multiple moons could wreak havoc on tides.

By keeping the "general stuff" similar it helps players become immersed in the world as its already relatable.

Here's an interesting article on multiple moons on an Earth sized planet, using earth as the example.

http://www.universetoday.com/92148/what-if-the-earth-had-two-moons/

Lol yeah its my issue. However to be a major player in Faerun, meaning you can, defy and survive iconic locations, villans,.cities you need some serious exp. At least that is how it felt to me back in 3.x. Whereas Gol seems a much thinner population of high level people running around.

Yeah. That and the inevitable, "You can't do that in the Forgotten Realms because __________," arguments.

I like this idea.

Dotted to see what you do with it.

If you're not opposed to spending a little cash, I suggest the following invaluable tools in my arsenal.

The Tome of Adventure Design
GameMastery Guide
Ultimate Toolbox

Wow. I'm surprised. I didn't think there would be so much dislike for the smaller races. If I decide to keep gnomes, I think I'll pull a lot of inspiration from the Paizo re-imaging of the gnome.

My reasoning for this is as such: I have a few players that usually play in my game that love the little races. I don't know why, but it has to do something with their personality. Another reason is as previously mentioned, the Paizo re-imaging ties in closely to what I want to do with the elves. According to early Norse and Germanic mythology, elves were essentially the kings of the fey races. I'm keeping the roots of that essence, keeping the idea of Elfhame (though going to rename it).

My problem with these kind of gnomes (thank you Evil Midnight Lurker), is that I really hate the concept. And wanted to do something different with the race as a whole.

I'll be working on outlining my thoughts and racial notes on the elf and dwarf races this week, if anyone is interested.

For those interested in my thought process behind the elves, you can find most of it here and notice this to see how I do my approach to Dark Elves, pulling from a story from Christian mythos. I like Paizo's stance on there are no good dark elves. I'm really sick of the Drizzt phenomenon.

For dwarves, you can find them here and here.

First off, I apologize for the massive word wall you're about to commit to if it doesn't scare you off immediately. Secondly, I imagine this thread as an evolution to my ideas, gleaning feedback from other creative types and seeking help from said creatives when I hit writer's block as I encroach on the horrifying task of organization.

I have filled close to four notebooks of varying sizes over the years working on my own homebrew world/campaign setting and have finally started to sift through all of my ideas and thoughts and have come to a point that I'm starting to organize everything into Microsoft documents. I've reached a point that I'd like some input and I figured here would be as good of a spot as any to ask for opinions and advice.

I've already decided that I'm returning to more classic roots and am trying to avoid the Tolkien theme as much as possible. I know that this unavoidable at certain points (at least in my mind), but I don't want to stray as far as say Dark Sun. By classic roots, I refer to our own world mythologies that Tolkien did draw most of his ideas from.

Before I start a lot of work on the world itself, I wanted to tackle who lives in it first. As far as I'm concerned I see it working like this. One, who lives in the world shapes the world. Two, once I've decided on the races, I will work on the creation mythos, cosmos, etc (which I have rough ideas on but and stumped with, but one thing at a time). Three, start fleshing out areas, kingdoms, etc.

So step one. I want the "core" races in my game. Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, half-elves. I'm still torn about halflings. No matter the setting, well excluding Dark Sun, they've always seemed a bit silly to me. As far as humans are concerned, I'm not going to screw with the "stock" fantasy human over much. They're the core, identifiable race that no matter who you are, you can identify with them. I want to return to our mythic roots concerning dwarves and elves. I've already done a ton of reading on the Germanic and Norse roots of elves and I'm going to take that to heart as I create the race from the ground up. Same with the dwarves, though they will take more of the Germanic mythology as the elves will lean more towards the Norse side.

What I am stuck on is gnomes. Freaking gnomes. Personally, I hate them, but I have several players in my group that like them, and if I don't include halflings, will gravitate towards them. While researching the mythological source of gnomes, I'm stuck. They're too similar to elves and what I'm wanting to do with them. I'm not opposed to Paizo's re-imagining of the gnome and actually like what they did with the race. It would also fit into my master plan of what I'm wanting to do with the elves, which is to return the elf to the master of the fey fold, returning him to his Norse roots.

For now, I'd like some feedback about what some of the players who like gnomes think and from fellow GMs as well, if I haven't bored you already.

Many thanks.