Gestalt is a great option for a smaller than normal group, more competent individuals who can cover more role territory with fewer big weaknesses, but no increased action economy and their power is broader, not spikier like it would be with higher stats, free LA races, or wealth.
For your paladin be aware of the differences from pathfinder, particularly in the one attempt smiting and standard action lay on hands.
Paladin cleric can mean a great cleric who can use swords with a few extra hp/bab/and divine powers who is expected to be the big tank, or a paladin with a ton of strong spell options.
I ran my game online on Fantasy Grounds so it was not an issue for us.
You can abstract it a bit and just use desert maps for the part the party's miniatures are on and use descriptions for where enemies off the map are. perhaps using a smaller scale map side by side without minis but just tiny markers for mobile things. This could allow you to make the dome area bigger if you wanted.
Alternately just run with the biggest map you have.
I ran a Pathfinder Reign of Winter Game and at one point in the first module expanded a fey portal into a full trip into the primal timey wimey First World where reality is similar but works differently. I had everybody convert their Pathfinder characters into 1e versions of themselves and used AD&D1e rules throughout their time there, even pulling out the early Dragon/The Strategic Review version of a bard class to use at low level.
People felt it was fun as an experience, but a number said they would not have liked it if it was the standard and not knowing it was a limited thing.
The classic modules work well in their original editions and as conversions. I ran ToEE in AD&D and played through it in 3e and both worked great.
For conversions the general issues are monster substitutions, treasure awarded, leveling point expectations, and encounter designs.
A friend of mine was playing an elven mystic theurge and used animate dead in a necromancer run land to have a zombie carry him around in its arms because "Real spellcasters do not touch the ground." and "It will be a nice change from fly spells. I am so tired of fly spells."
I just ran this with a party of six 7th level pathfinder PCs as a one shot. It ended when the two amazon PCs got tentacle snatched to death and the rest of the party bugged out for good. Before the end one PC got swallowed whole, one was energy drained, two had their internal organs rearranged, and at one point four out of five remaining PCs were confused. A good time was had by all.
Just out of curiosity (not as a 3pp publisher, as a player)- I see a lot of folks talking about subsystems and classes, do people use 3pp races? (I know I've used them from other publishers :-D )
A couple years ago before the ARG came out when I ran a pathfinder Freeport game one of the players expressed interest in playing a grippli. I pulled out the Remarkable Races Compendium and he played a Mogogol bard with a banjo. Many Kermit jokes and riffs were made.
Having just gotten The Genius Guide to Simple Class Templates for Monsters I really want to second the earlier suggestions to continue this line with the SGG classes for a sequel. Other third party ones like Dreamscarred's Psionics and Path of War sets of classes would be great too. And eventually Occult classes.
With a little prep-work, a truly creative necromancer could use a haunt to kill a very evil person. Then they could de-bone it and cut off it its head.
Because it was an evil creature killed by a haunt it would become a Geist. (intelligent)
The bones could be used to make a Skeletal Champion. (intelligent)
With a casting of Restore Corpse on the pile of meat and it's ready to become a Zombie Lord. (intelligent)
Just for good measure, the head becomes a Beheaded (unintelligent)
Then, the eyes are used to make a pair of Isitoq (Intelligent)
The way I conceptualize and house rule it is that they are [Evil]. They are powered by supernatural cosmic [Evil], the creation magic uses supernatural [Evil] as a component of their creation and they therefore tag as evil regardless of the morality of their actions.
Similar to [Evil] outsiders.
I also have no problem with uncontrolled skeletons and zombies being mindless malevolent wandering monsters that attack any people they come across. Conceptually that is very Moldvay Basic and appeals to me. I'm conceptually fine with neutral style mindless 2e and 3.0 animated dead automotons too.
In 3.5 there was a monster book from Bastion Press called Complete Minions. It had an outsider called that forlorn that is a mix of celestial and fiendish with appropriate powers.
Pathfinder has the forlarren born from a fiend and a nymph and containing internal conflicts.
So I saw on rpgnow that Fat Goblin Games put out a $20 PDF bundle covering lots of Tricky Owlbear old catalog and current FGG PDFs, $372.18 worth of stuff total.
However they put so many PDFs the alphabetical listing display cuts out midway through the Racial Ecologies PDFs.
Is there a full listing of the offered PDFs anywhere?
Is this offer a promotion that terminates sometime soon? If so when?
In the PRD succubi are described as her while incubi are described as him.
According to the Pathfinder wiki Succubus entry they are always female though they can take on any form their victim prefers and that Nocticula is reputedly the first one. I don't have my Demons Revsisited or Lords of Chaos books on hand but that seems right.
The male succubus image is apparently from Monster Summoner's Handbook with the caption in the wiki article about taking on forms their victims prefer.
A friend of mine was playing a magic user with a rabbit familiar who could warn him of danger. He knew he was going after a big white dragon so he loaded up on fire spells and acquired a protection from white dragon breath scroll which temporarily provided absolute immunity against white dragon breath.
He saw the giant dragon flying towards him and his party and his familiar started thumping "Danger! Danger! We need to get out of here!" He turned to it and said "Yes I know, don't worry. The trick is knowing when you can handle these dangerous things and the dragon is no match for my magics. You'll see." He stood his ground and read the scroll while the dragon was flying in, he then drew himself up dramatically and cast a delayed blast fireball that washed over the dragon harmlessly.
The gigantic albino red dragon then breathed a massive cone of fire that incinerated the magic user so far into negative hit points he was nothing but ashes.
So I’m wondering what other GMs have done in this situation. There’s bound to be a solution, but I have yet to found a solidly built “social interaction/conflict” system, so I’m looking to everyone else. How do you manage those situations where someone would like to play a face but isnt one themselves?
I explain my style of DMing up front. I tend not to use dice rolls for social interactions unless it is an offscreen abstraction or second person roleplaying and I expect a character concept of talker to actually first person talk to NPCs in character. Character concept and narrative is more important to me for social interactions than mechanics. I have no desire to roleplay out interactions based upon die results contrary to how roleplayed interactions have actually gone. These are my play style preferences so that's how I run games.
I will, and have, worked with people who are uncomfortable roleplaying a face but want to stretch and try it out. The guy who played a face in my last game normally plays tanks, rolls dice and shouts "beer!", but he wanted to try a face for the first time. His kitsune bard had a lot of first person interactions that were fun for both of us and garnered useful plot information for him to bring to the rest of the party. It went well, he interacted in character with fey and tavern types and kid NPCs and his fellow PCs but was cowed when dealing with Baba Yaga directly, which was not inappropriate in-character to his concept. I also had some second person face activities we didn't want to roleplay out such as diplomacy information gathering which could be handled with dice mechanics or fiat.
My advice would be to work with such a player to enable them to meet their goal of playing a face by assuring them you want it to be fun and structuring some first person interactions specifically to give them their spotlight time and some opportunities for them to do some face interactions second person as well.
I would suggest going more with fiat and results based on narrative feel of how things are going than on rolling for mechanics to decide how things result. I would prefer to have such a player succeed based on a situation set up for him to succeed in a fun way than on his character level and his ability to maximize relevant stats and mechanics. Diplomacy skills in Pathfinder are generally static DCs so a low level face is significantly less likely to succeed at his role based solely on level of play, and you want them to feel they are actually a face and not someone constantly failing to be a face.
It's weird. Such a classical monster, and I've never seen one, much less seen one eat the rogue.
One of my favorite encounters was straight out of a 2e Dungeon. My and my brother's characters are walking through an empty spooky ghost town on our cross-country mission. We keep feeling we are being watched but see no people around. Then the road dead ends and the houses try to eat us.
Multiple house-sized mimics ambushed us at once. A tough combat ending with a dicey and memorable escape.
I appreciate the concern and it is noted. A writer has to make some choices sometimes and this was one of them. I'm not perfect, but I know I have great Editors like Judy Baur to help when I don't see my own biases.
I like having her in there, her story is an interesting addition. Being a lesbian in an existing relationship already subverts the female prize trope. I changed her story slightly to make her more of a secret milanite revolutionary in Cheliax which tied into Solveig and the Heralds spy ring a little more, but the default gives a bunch to work with.
Reign of Winter is a Dark Fairy Tale theme and a pretty princess captured by a dragon in need of rescuing works well for that theme. Nobody is going to look at RoW or the Shackled Hut and come away with an impression that women are portrayed as nothing but damsels in distress. There are a ton of female villains, competent women, and brave female NPCs standing up to evil.
She is a first level bard in a dangerous setting between trolls and a dragon. I expect her to be scared as in a fight everything there is way above her weight class. I too had thought of her potentially inspiring courage in the Logrvich climax despite the text about her being too scared to help in a fight but since my party already had a bard it was not something that played out.
Though I'm still not sure where the asians are in Dragonlance, I vaguely remember some mongol types in the other continent boxed set but nothing in the novels or modules.
And I don't recall any of their gods being portrayed directly as black either, although they had each culture picturing the gods appearing as themselves.
After glancing through the areas of concern for the evil and neutral gods I think Gyronna's spite is the best match for petty lashing out at everyone because something bad happened to you.
The 3e books were not released under the OGL. The 3e and 3.5 and d20 modern SRDs containing rules material identical to that in a few non-open WotC books were released under the OGL. So those components of those rules sets were released under the OGL. Compliance with the OGL is fairly easy for 3e based stuff.
4e did not have an SRD released under the OGL. The 4e rules were not released under the OGL. Some companies released OGL stuff for 4e. Early 4e Goodman games modules for example. They had to be careful about terms they used and such to comply with the OGL.
5e does not have an SRD released under the OGL. Anyone releasing 5e stuff under the OGL has to be careful about how they do it to comply with the OGL.
A couple comments after reading the World of Aetaltis section.
Atlan is very similar to Aetaltis and causes a little confusion. Similar for Endroren and Enaros.
Atlans are the humans and non natives which is a neat twist.
No summoning or teleport magic, no druids or monks, no half races, no gnomes. Dwarves have volatile gunpowder, but there are no firearms.
Divine magic comes from the Enaros gods, but we only know one is Aelos who rules the moon, the last stop before the gods' afterlife. We also know Endrorden is the evil overthrown former ruler of the gods.
At first I thought the Drothmal were a human ethnicity, but I think they are a fully different race, not sure how to conceptualize what they look like besides barbarians. Same with the intellectual Newardins. I thought the Cheebats were halflings at first but it looks like they are different.
The follow up history in the village section is useful for a lot of world details.
Odin could legitimately be chaotic (trickster), lawful (Allfather, war leader, shaper of the world), or neutral (elements of both). There are lots of contradictory ways to portray gods. So don't worry about getting them to match the real way norse gods were, focus on how you want them in your game.
There will be stories that contradict any portrayal you put down as the source myths are multiple and contradictory, so don't sweat that issue. You want evil Loki? Go for it. You want helpful trickster blood-brother to Odin and travel companion to Thor ally Loki? Go for it.
While some say that clerics get their power from gods they actually get it from tapping into divine power directly through specific magical traditions. All clerics are godless whether they know it or not, they are simply magic users that tap into a different type of power than arcane casters.
Gods worshipped by clerics may be actual gods, misunderstood gods, outsiders powered by divine power, powerful outsiders, powerful beings like dragons or giants or aberrations, or even complete myths. If they master their magical tradition they get their power. There are also organizations not devoted to god worship that practice divine magical traditions.
Since one of my players has a PC with profession (cooking), I have ruled that everything has to be boiled in a huge cauldron. So probably they will have to cook chicken soup.
"Fine centaurs of Vunirin! We are going to make a wonderful soup for the whole encampment today! Made with a magical recipe that only calls for one ingredient. Stone soup for all of Vunirin, come and see!"
"Our magical stone soup is wonderful, universally praised in Irrisen, Ustalav and Mendev, but if only we had a little bit of salt. Stone soup with salt is truly superb . . ."
Reign of Winter [67-69, at least]: six (one of which isn't used).
That's about as many as Council of Thieves, though CoT had one more and had one more unused monster. It's a bit of a wash for which one has more in that case.
Thanks!
Close, 69 uses three, four and two of the same type at various points, so nine of one type with 1d4 bleed showing up in the module, and they can potentially summon more. That plus the unused bestiary one.
There is moral evil and there is supernatural force [evil]. All undead creation spells tap into supernatural [evil] and animate dead bodies with [evil] power. Animate object can work on dead bodies without using supernatural [evil] and make shambling servitors that are not evil aligned. I see skeletons and zombies as evil because I view them as wandering around and attacking living creatures as a default if not under command. If they were neutral like in 3.0 or AD&D they would just stand there if uncommanded.
I am very in line with the PFS ruling, the spells are [evil] but the morality of using it depends on the circumstances. Similar to using an unholy sword.
Rise of the Runelords: pg 19 of the last volume, there's one guy (deals 1d8 per round for 4 rounds, though, not just 1).
Curse of the Crimson Throne: not that I can find.
The Second Darkness: pg 64 of the third volume, the greater demonic boon to Andirifkhu causes bleed 1 (not stacking); no specific NPC has this.
Legacy of Fire: pg 41 of the fifth volume has some guys with bleed 1 (it doesn't stack with itself).
Council of Thieves: pg 88 bestiary has a swarm with bleed 1; these creatures do not appear in the adventure or random encounter. Pg 28 in part three has a creature with bleed (1d2). Pp 18-19 of part four has a fellow with bleed (a rogue with the talent), as does pp 11 and 25 of part 5; speaking of part 5, there's a creature in the Bestiary on pg 84 that does so from the Bleeding Critical feat, but it does not appear in the adventure or random encounter tables. Pp 10-11 has another rogue-y fellow with the talent, as does pg 52; a critter in the bestiary on page 80 and another on pg 86 from the feat mentioned before (again, neither appear in the adventure or random encounters) round out the AP's bleed installments. That one has a lot!
I'm out of time for now, but that's what I've found to date.
Of five, one lacks it altogether, three only have a single instance (one of which isn't actually part of the AP), and one is chock full of it!
More later! (Unless someone else takes over - please, someone else, take over.)
Neat. :)
EDIT: for clarity.
I'll check the three I have access to right now.
AP 67 Snows of Summer page 28 has one with 1d4 bleed.
AP 68 Shackled Hut Page 20 bleed 3.
AP 69 Mother Maiden Crone Page 18 three with 1d4 and can summon more, Page 27 four with 1d4 and can summon more, Page 40 two with 1d4 and can summon more, Page 90 unused new monster with 1d4.
On the one hand, it means you'll be back to full health after each fight. On the other... that's pretty much something we assume anyway.
In fights, unless your FH is really, really high it's not going to be noticeable. Fast Healing 4 is DR 4/- once per round. Um. Woo? And there aren't any ways I can think of to get a Fast Healing higher than 4 on a PC so that's pretty much your limit.
It does give you some semi-useful immunities-- Bleed effects auto-fail against you, for example, and you don't need to roll to stabilize. But that's minor stuff.
Mythic can give it as the first mythic power.
Quote:
1st-Tier Guardian Path Abilities
You can select these path abilities at any tier.
Fast Healing (Ex): As a swift action, you can expend one use of mythic power to gain fast healing 5 for 1 minute. This ability can be taken a second time at 3rd tier or higher and a third time at 6th tier or higher. Each additional time you take this ability, the fast healing increases by 5.
Pfff... You WoW players care only about optimization, DPR and rollplaying!
Back in my day players roleplayed so well that Robert DeNiro, Marlon Brando and Al Paccino would be jealous of our players' performance! And our storylines were so deep, emotionally involving and thought-provoking that they put Citizen Kane, To Kill a Mocking Bird and Casablanca to shame!
Oh, yeah... We had roleplay-heavy games! Like Tomb of Horrors... And great freedom and focus on character customization... With our random rolled stats and attribute prerequisites for base classes...
Grumble, grumble...
But did you have to carry the Ring to Morodor up hill, both ways, in the snow?
Uphill only, obviously. First off we never expected to make it back down the mountain. Then suprise eagles.
Kids these days, no sense of history or the classics.
Wishlists and Lists
Wishlists allow you to track products you'd like to buy, or—if you make a wishlist public—to have others buy for you.
