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Hey I know this is almost a 20-year-old comment I'm applying to so I 1000% I get why you might ignore it or otherwise not have the file available, but if you still have that Pathfinder prestige class list I would absolutely love to see it. There's a website to help with that: https://aonprd.com/PrestigeClasses.aspx
Page 66 has a sidebar that states their breath weapon and immunities are dependent on their colouration.
But neither supporters nor members (whether allies or team members) are actually invested in the organization—they don't support it with dues (no, pooling funds to make gifts to the leadership is not the same!); they have no input on decision-making or on who's leading the organization (the PCs are unassailable in this); they don't organize internal factions that push agendas and need to be managed (and if some allies come with preexisting factions attached, like the Rose of Kintargo or the Order of the Torrent or the Lacunafex, nothing is made of this); and they do nothing mechanically that the PCs can't do (indeed, don't end up doing) themselves. At all times, the rebellion is a completely passive extension of, and a slush fund for, the PCs. If that's how you choose to run the NPCs and teams of the rebellion, then that's on you.
That's not the problem. My group just doesn't like the extra paperwork from some of Paizo's mini-games. My group went into Hell's Rebels right after finishing Kingmaker. There was NO WAY we were going to track anything for the rebellion, but looking at the rules for inspiration for NPCs and things the rebellion could do lead to some fun sessions.Yes, you can completely ignore the rebellion, as Zimmerwald suggests, but for my group that would've taken away a lot of the fun of this particular AP.
Why? There's no point to it. No point to interacting with a massive group of NPCs that you're meant to be leading? That's.... an opinion.Alternatively, it's fun to use teams from the rebellion rules to cause distractions or events, which is something you're able to do even if you're not using the rules or tracking anything.
Obviously there's nothing specific about it in the rules, but as a GM, no, using something that makes it so you don't need to eat wouldn't count as fasting. I would rule that it's a spiritual-like connection caused by the sacrifice and weakness... negating the risk negates the ability to connect with the stone. But, really, this all comes down to: Ask you GM.
You can also ignore the narrative aspect of it too, the entire effort ultimately comes down to the PCs assassinating most of the government. Or, you know, you can have your PCs interact with the rebellion... "[insert any AP here] ultimately comes down the to PCs killing the bad guys"
Other than using it as inspiration for events and a rough idea of how many people were in the rebellion I didn't use the mini-game system at all.
I will just say my winter witch was heavily focused on dispel and being Elvana’s antiparticle for the combat. Ah, that makes sense! The group I ran it for didn't have a way to dispel it. :)Which, honestly, lead to one of the best combats we've ever had.
Just finished the Elvanna battle. She went down when hit by three straight hits by a fighter and rogue totaling 300 points of damage. Oof... she should've cast "Unwilling Shield" on the rogue earlier :) I was so relieved when the Kineticist failed that save...
Improved Sunder, Greater Sunder, Mythic Improved Sunder are no-brainers. Check with everyone else on that one first... it can easily be seen as "destroying loot" instead of "making the fight easier" (And the GM might hate it because it can make fights really boring for them.)
I'm with Melkiador... I had the random encounters be encounters / signs of the creatures instead of fights.
If you're looking for something that will likely be helpful: Gold Dragons have: Divine Aid (Sp) Once a week, a great wyrm gold dragon can call upon celestial powers for aid. This functions as a miracle. Solar Angels have Miracle as a spell Manasaputra, Solar Pitri (Agnishvatta) have it as an SLA 1/day Star Archons have it as a spell There's probably more... go to AONPRD, put "miracle" into the search and refine it so that it shows only monsters.
That's a pretty solid list of APs to go through! I've ran about a 1/3 of them, and read through another 1/3 with serious thoughts of running them. And as for what's next, this weekend we start Hell's Rebels where I get a break back to the player side and then I have Strange Aeons ready to go after. Hell's Rebels = hands-down my favourite AP that I've run. Strange Aeons = I wish I could've run this one, and the first book is one of the best I've read.Best of luck for both of those campaigns! I hope you enjoy them.
I'll take a second to congratulate our group on our 14th adventure path completed. Been playing every Sunday for 20 years now. Some of the faces have changed, but it's been a good group of guys and gals. Cheers! That's really impressive! Which APs have you lot played through?
With only reading the first post I knew it was Kingmaker :D Yes, you did the right thing, hopefully the players (and characters) have learned. Even if they were fully playing in character (I can understand not trusting Perlivash or Tyg when either are telling you to run away) but after seeing one of their friends drop after (I'm guessing) a single hit... wait, 2 attacks per round... it killed both PCs in the first round of attacks, didn't it?.... If they weren't insta-kills, they all should've realized to run and to make a plan to clear it out of the area later on. If they were insta-kills, yeah, the other two running at the first chance was the right choice. The Stolen Lands is a dangerous place. It should feel deadly. (The ruler in the game I ran died at the end of book 2 and it was great!) As for replacing PCs later on, it's still easy... it's not "some random person joining them to explore the wilderness." Instead, it's the woodsman that they've seen around town quite a bit, it's the trapper that wants to help build a community, it's the wizard that set up shop months ago and wants to get out there making the area safer, it's any amount of characters doing whatever the players want to have been doing before they decided to become part-time politicians and joined up with the ruling council.
My gaming schedule looks like this: That's roughly 16 sessions a month! (not including the PBP games) If I were strictly a player I could maybe, maybe pull that off, but if I were GMing a weekly game, not a chance!
We finished Passing the Torch last week, and with that our curated 12-level campaign came to a close. We won't be meeting again until at least September, due to a couple players' summer schedules and the need for time to discuss what to play next and then prep for it. I've enjoyed the game, but am grateful to have one less weekly game for a while. And I may end deciding that I prefer it that way. Congratulations! Any favourite moments / modules worth mentioning?(How many games are you in?)
In the middle of the Elvanna fight in ROW. i hope you had/have as much fun in that fight as my group did!
Why not just go forward with Paizo Plus, but continue to thank your biggest supporters (4 or 6+ subscription customers) by automatically adding scenarios to their account, just like you always have? Because Paizo wants the perks to be about the same as they currently are but with the added benefit of people having the option to get what they want instead of only giving them the scenarios. Why would they keep it as it currently is PLUS give people extra stuff? At least with Paizo Plus it's, minimum, the same rewards for subscribers (albeit, with more work from the customer to pick what they want to get for free) with the added benefit of people that don't have 4+ subscriptions getting some rewards as well.
Due to the amount of complaints on here, I feel like I'm missing something.... The current Paizo Advantage requires 4 subscriptions to get you 15% off of most things, upcoming Paizo Plus gives you 15% off of most things assuming you spend enough in a year which looks like if you subscribe to 4 things (minimum required for current Paizo Advantage) you reach that dollar amount.
Current Paizo Advantage automatically gets you PFS or SFS scenarios for free, upcoming Paizo Plus gets you enough Gold to get them for free (but now you'll have to add them yourselves) but also gives you the option to buy other stuff instead.
What am I missing?
Wait, what's "Hard mode" then? (I ask, while realizing you probably mean without reducing things due to 4 players...)
Our round-robin Torch/Shadow Lodge game has reached its capstone adventure, Passing the Torch. We're playing Parts 1 & 2 over two sessions each due to the time required for high-level combat, and will be concluding Part 2 his Tuesday night. We're playing Passing the Torch on "hard mode" because our characters are pretty effective for their level (12th), and we might never play these characters again after this, so why not? (It's all PFS play, so we could theoretically play them again if they survive, but probably not with this group, since this concludes the campaign arc we planned out.) I assume you'll be playing the level 14-15 tier? (17-18 tier feels like it would be too much of a jump) Best of luck! I hope your group has fun.
We finished!
These have been a lot of fun to run, but I'm going to take a break and rest now. Happy gaming, everyone. May you always roll crits, without killing the PCs.
We've wrapped up the Scarab Sages storyline, and everyone really enjoyed it. The last scenario (Salvation of the Sages) was nearly a killer, but super fun!
For a short campaign, I'd highly suggest the 7 main scenarios, although it would require some work to have them played in order due to the level discrepancies. I have next week off, but then it's on to the finale! (Passing the Torch, Part II - Who Speaks for the Ten)
And then, after that session, I'll be taking an indefinite break from being a GM.... possibly a forever break, but we'll see. (But at the very least, I'm pretty sure I'm done running Pathfinder.)
You guys are right.
Our DM likes to put everything in his computer to print or send the character sheets digitally depending on the player. Also it helps keep the character sheets accurate(right number of skill points, feats/class options they quality for, etc.) Why doesn't the GM trust the players to level up properly? Like, I don't know how old you all are, but... that reads like a weird level of mistrust and possibly control for what I assume is a group of adults.
I suppose the actual couples could couple their PCs, but that often feels cheesy, cliched, or cringy. Plus, my husband and I would have to play characters that didn't drive each other mad :p I'm with you, that always feels weird. My wife and I used to be in a game where 2 of the players were a couple and their characters always coupled... Wife and I always made characters that didn't get along / were always at odds with each other because it was more fun for us.
We played this past Sunday, finished volume 4 of Reign of Winter, and of course we leveled to 13th. Well we got to 13th level but we still to actually level, so that will take up most of the next game day. Is levelling a group activity for you? If not, why don't people level up on their own between sessions that way you're able to play instead of having everyone sit around doing their own thing for the session?(And what is the GM doing while people are levelling up their characters?)
Also, the perceived condescension from the marketing campaign really irritated a large group of people who had been playing D&D for years. The marketing campaign spent way too much time attacking 3.5 in an attempt to convince people that they didn't really enjoy playing in that system and 4e would be much better (without providing much detail as to how). I had forgotten about that! To be fair, I think that type of marketing was really "in" at the time.... "This ain't your dad's D&D!" type of thing.
4e wasn't as good as what I'd read of 3rd edition, but that DM taught me that "the roleplaying is what you bring to the game" and I have many happy memories... 4e is definitely not the best system, but I'll never agree with the hate some folks throw at it. I love your whole post, but especially this part in particular.
I welcome people dropping by and saying - 'that does not make sense for me for reasons A, B and C. You should try D, E and F' - but saying it once is enough :) You're right. I've said my piece, I've pushed back too much, and I'm not helping this conversation so I'm stepping away.As I said earlier, I hope this works out for you and I wish you the best of luck.
"Hey, players, I don't want this game to be a big, complex thing so it's going to be more of a hack-and-slash adventure." I went from running Hell's Rebels, which fits your first description to running Mummy's Mask, which fits your second because I needed a palate cleanse and it worked great.
HD isn't mentioned therefore it's not changed. Also, they're still outsiders.And Hero Lab is wrong.
The players would not come up with or decide what is happening in the World - that is the DM's job. The players simply decide what their characters want to do when faced with what is going on around them, as usual :) Isn't that what happens in games normally? I assumed you saying "They don’t sit around waiting for the GM to hand them a plot — they go out into the world and make their own." meant you don't want to provide plot / plot hooks and that the characters have to go out and do their own things.With the APs that I've ran, players see what's happening in the world around them and then decide what to do about it, which is what you want the players to do. Honestly, it sounds like you're looking for an inelegant solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist.
Being a GM involves coming up with a story... Okay, yeah, being the GM involves presenting the world and what is in it. If the players decide that goblins have been attacking the town and they want to go and stop them then the GM comes up with challenges and goblins. (If the GM decides goblins are attacking the town then that's the GM coming up with the story, but you don't want the GM to necessarily be the one coming up with things for the players to do).If that's the type of game you're running and the players are going to come up with stuff to do they're going to come up with it whether gold is XP or not. If the players aren't coming up with that type of thing then they most likely want story hooks presented to them and they want a kind of game different than what you seem to want to run. Either way, I don't see gold as XP making a difference. Putting all that aside, I am now pondering what to do with monster XP in this scenario. It would probably need to be drastically reduced. If you're using gold as XP and monsters as XP you'll need to change how much XP it takes to progress through levels. Especially if you're going with "total gold value" since WBL assumes you're selling some of the treasure for half of the total value. (Which, as said earlier, means the group will be behind on WBL because some of their total gold will be sold for less).So now you'll be giving XP out for two different reasons, redoing how much XP monsters give out, calculating how much gold is worth, and redoing how much XP is required for each level. Yes, all of that CAN be done in Pathfinder. But again, I can't see it making ANY difference to motivating players to play the game.
So for me, Gold-as-XP isn’t just a progression mechanic — it’s a gameplay philosophy. It creates momentum and gives players a reason to act. They don’t sit around waiting for the GM to hand them a plot — they go out into the world and make their own. I don't see how gold as XP achieves this any different than killing monsters as XP or exploring as XP. Being a GM involves coming up with a story, whether the story is "go explore these ruins" or "here's 4 different things happening, which one do you want to do?" or "the mayor of the town is secretly a bad guy, here's the intrigue involved in that" or what-have-you.
I think I'm having a hard time understanding how rewarding players for getting wealth with XP is any different than rewarding players for getting XP with wealth.
Since WBL exists and therefore the expectation of the game is XP = Wealth Amount then the reverse is true so then Wealth Amount = XP is going to be played out the exact same way.
I ran the group through "Destiny of the Sands, Part 2: Race to Seeker's Folly" yesterday (I removed Part 1, as it felt like a scenario of fetch-quests to introduce the PCs to Torch and since Torch isn't adversarial in my campaign I felt like it didn't add anything to the story.)
There's only 6 sessions left and the system I'm using is designed for campaigns to only be 6-8 sessions I'm going to see if I can run it even more closely to how the system is designed, and with each of the upcoming scenarios leading from one directly into the next it should be pretty easy and I'm quite looking forward to it!
That being said, if you want to use Gold as XP, using WBL makes the most sense. My thought on that is to do one of two options:
(For some reason, my brain is telling me that the PF designers expect PCs to keep about half of the gear they find and sell the other half, but I have no idea where I'm getting that from.) Both of those options include anything the group keeps. Mathematically speaking, A specific XP total should equal a specific gold total* therefore the reverse of that is true and a specific gold total equals a specific XP total. *EG: Level 10 = 62,000 gp, Level 11 = 82,000 gp therefore 62,000 GP = Level 10, 82,000 gp = Level 11.
My characters adventure because I want to play the game. Being involved in a story, helping to build a story, is why I want to play.If I didn't want to play the character any more I would work with the GM to find a way to write them out of the story. I don't excitedly talk about how much treasure I've found. I might excitedly talk about an impressive fight. (But probably not.) Getting XP for gold or for killing monsters or for simply exploring has never been a reason for me to play the game.
Eight sessions or less for a whole AP volume seems pretty quick to me, I salute your GM but I don't think I could ever match that pace. That would be the equivalent of running a 1-20 AP in 12 months which seems effectively impossible to me, in terms of timeline. Looking at the actual numbers, all of the APs I've ran for my group have lasted around 42 session +/- 5. But that being said, the sessions are also 6+ hours long each. (Clearly, there's something wrong with me.) Earlier books typically take longer than later books.I imagine PBP would take significantly longer though.
My first RPG was AD&D 2ed, followed by GURPS and Vampire and a bunch of systems for short periods of time including 3.5 for a little while.
It's a fun system, my players all enjoy it, and I have at least a few more years of pre-written adventures I want to (eventually) run.
Two books is still realistically 1-2 years of gaming. Oof. Sorry that your group doesn't get together very often.My group, on average, get through a book in 2 months or less with weekly sessions.
Why are you considering doing this?
EG: Are you hoping for players to become treasure hunters that use skills to avoid fighting enemies?
It feels like a lot of work, including trial and error, without any gain that I can see.
I could be wrong, but you're asking about Kingmaker for Second Edition, right?
I would have it as whatever kind works best for the story being told.
We finished the Shadow Lodge War portion of my (super) truncated version of the Grandmaster Torch Saga!
Before we get to Destiny of the Sands and then important Jewelled Sages scenarios I'll be running a Shadow Lodge epilogue for them to go off and rescue Eliza Petulengro by playing through a slightly modified version of "Abducted in Aether" (I didn't have her come back after she disappeared in Eyes of the Ten) My thought with offering promotions is so that they aren't as active in the field as normal, which is why I'll be able to pass a year between each of the scenarios I'm planning on running (Destiny of the Sands all count as 1 in my mind). And with the Osirian accepting Amenopheus' offer it doesn't matter that the Eagle Knight took the Captaincy and therefore won't be much of a Pathfinder going forward.
We've had a few weeks off due to life getting in the way, but I ran "Shadow's Last Stand, Part II: Web of Corruption" today and it went great!
I was wrong. They split up, 1 taking on one fight, 2 taking on the other. I thought there was going to be at least 1 spin on the death roulette* but they somehow managed to all make it without having to take that chance!
*"Spin on the death roulette" = when a hero goes down instead of dying they roll a d6 and have to get a number higher than the amount of times they've had to "spin". Assuming they roll high enough they keep going; if they get hit again in the fight, without healing, they have to spin again. (The number never go down so it gets harder each time, but getting hurt enough to have to spin doesn't happen often.)
I actually place my version of Freeport south of the secret red assassin island which is a small island called The Hermitage I think. For my Skull & Shackles / Return to Freeport campaign I erased Port Peril, put Freeport in the cove on the northern portion of the western shore of Jeopardy Bay, and made it the capital of the Shackles :D (But kept the population numbers from Port Peril)
I have run a number of APs and haven't changed / added to the loot listed in the books and it has never been a problem. (But apparently Carrion Crown is drastically short on loot, so keep that in mind if you're running that AP). I've ran: Kingmaker, Hell's Rebels, Mummy's Mask, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Reign of Winter, and a heavily added to Skull & Shackles (so I don't know about the treasure levels on that one.) Zethrimar Alteunfel has not participated in any online campaigns. |
