Westerner's page

As the title suggests, one of our gaming group members is contemplating taking on GM duties for the first time ever. Several of us have suggested that an AP may be just the prescription for his fever.

Our group finished Shackled City and I am currently running Kingmaker, so those two are out of the running.

I know there are other threads out there on this topic, but some of them were created before the publication of many newer APs.

First and foremost the AP should be fun for the players. Of secondary concern is an AP that is fairly easy to run, without too many complex mini-games, alternate rules, or complex encounters to make it really difficult for a novice GM.

Any suggestions are much-appreciated and will be shared with our prospective GM. Thanks in advance for your suggestions and reasoning.

So our Lord of Darkness Antipaladin fell to the smiting blows of a Paladin and now he is deciding what to play next.

Our party consists of the following other classes (we are fifth level):

Cleric- fire/trickery domain. Focuses on channels, deception, calling undead to serve him, only real healer also. Good with bluffing and diplomacy. Good channels with high charisma.

Wizard Conjurer- focused mostly on being a controller with a bit of damage thrown in.

Rogue- skill monkey and backstabber moving towards assassin.

Bard (archaeologist) 1/Cavalier (daring champion) 4- dexterity fighter who is finally doing some really good damage with his cutlass due to slashing grace and precise strike deed. Uses antagonize for some control as well as being a good intimidator (order of cockatrice).

So the question is obviously, what build would you do were you in his position and given the current party make-up? Right now, the Daring Champion and the Rogue (sometimes) do the most damage, with the Cleric and Wizard throwing in a bit. Formerly, the antipaladin and daring champion were the main sources of damage.

Obviously given the adventure, we have created some pretty sneaky and deceptive characters. That is pretty well covered by the daring champion, the cleric and the rogue.

Thanks in advance for the ideas everyone.

First, thanks in advance to everyone for the helpful advice.

As mentioned in the subject line, I am going to run a Daring Champion Cavalier or (less likely) a Swashbuckler for an upcoming run through the Way of the Wicked AP.

I will be running a Human in all likelihood as my understanding is that they are prevalent in the campaign setting. I do like Halflings also, but they may be hindered with penalties for small size for the intimidate skill and with having more trouble "blending in".

My initial thoughts are to place an emphasis on either or both intimidation and dirty tricks besides straight DPR dealing. I am pretty sure I will take the antagonize feat fairly early (not barred to my knowledge by the GM).

We rolled for stats using the unique system in the AP. With a human, I know that my stat array will look something like this:

Strength 8 or 10
Dexterity 20
Constitution 16
Intelligence 8 or 10 or 11
Wisdom 8 or 11
Charisma 16

I am leaning towards using a rapier for the weight and crit stats given my low strength, although this is still not resolved (cutlass or scimitar are other possibilities).

The DM is doing an unusual thing in making our group keep secret our character choices from the other players until we start, so I cannot tell you our group make-up.

I may well dip a level of archaeologist bard for the luck pool to help with saves, to hit, damage, and skills (especially intimidate and diplomacy with antagonize). If I do this dip, I will for sure take Fate's Favored as one of my two traits. Also, this will help me hide my alignment and with my disguise skill, along with opening up Bard wands since I am unlikely to take UMD.

There is no doubt that I'll take either slashing grace or fencing grace depending on my weapon choice.

some feats that sound interesting include lingering performance (only with bard dip), improved dirty trick and its iterations (including quickened dirty trick etc.).

Any thoughts on ideas for this concept along these lines:

1. Swashbuckler or Daring champion cavalier?

2. If Swashbuckler, base or an archetype (inspired blade sounds good with rapier)?

3. If Daring Champion, what order? (Flame and cockatrice both look good)

4. Trait choices?

5. Feat choices?

Thanks so much for your input!!

The d20pfsrd section of the Swashbuckler dealing with panache/luck synergy reads as follows:

/Quote: Grit, luck, and panache represent three different means by which heroes can gain access to the same heroic pool, using it to accomplish fantastic feats. For characters with a mix of grit, luck, and panache, they pool the resources together into a combined pool. (Those who use panache and luck gain twice their Charisma bonus in their pool.) For feats, magic items, and other effects, a panache user can spend and gain luck points in place of grit or panache points, and vice versa.

A luck user does not count as a grit or panache user to satisfy feat prerequisites. Unquote/

Assuming that I have a Swashbuckler who dips a level of Archaeologist Bard and the character has a 16 Charisma (+3) how many points would the character have in the combined panache/luck pool?

Thanks for your answers!!

Hey everyone, thanks in advance for your help here!

We will be playing wotw ap as indicated in the subject line. We will have a party of five players, but the GM is asking us to keep our character choices secret from one another, so I can't answer the inevitable questions concerning the other characters in the group.

I do know my base stats (to be assigned as I choose): 18, 16, 16, 12,11 and 8.

While I had been heavily leaning towards playing a zen archer monk tengu, I have also been considering a slayer or an alchemist. Obviously, there are some great choices for evil characters that would otherwise not be readily available for a predominantly good group.

It would be great to tap into the collective wisdom on these boards to hear suggestions for character class choices, race and builds through any level you may see fit (the deeper the better since we will get to a pretty high level eventually). We will get one campaign trait from the AP and likely a second trait, but that is yet to be determined.

Thanks again for your thoughts.