Wickaninnish's page

Up close and personal? I dunno, a couple hundred.

But if we count how many people certain characters of mine have killed by doing things like manipulating an orc army into butchering a nation or destroying cities by making pacts with powerful beings... Well that's quite a bit higher now isn't it?

A wooden box of Vargouilles. Have a strong PC throw one into the center of an enemy ambush, the result could be disastrous, but it'll definitely be hilarious.

"Metamagic rods hold the essence of a metamagic feat, allowing the user to apply metamagic effects to spells (but not spell-like abilities ) as they are cast."

So I'd say no.

As a player I once stuffed my huge sized eidolon full of mundane wealth to carry home. He still couldn't carry all of the wealth, but the fact that I was walking around with a massive snake full of money was reward enough for me. :D

Favorite? I'm not sure really. But I do miss some of the crazy "what were they thinking?" monsters. Like the Julajimus from the monster manual II.

"Villagers often tell stories of the julajimus to their children. At some point in such a tale, the main character, a child, takes in a cute animal as a pet despite repeated warnings from his or her parents that there isn't enough food or space for the creature. The story ends with the rebellious child hiding the creature, only to have it turn into a julajimus one night and eat the child alive."

It's a scary 18 foot tall baboon with the ability to polymorph into cute and cuddly animals like kittens, puppies, or rabbits.

But what am I complaining about, the Vargouille made it to pathfinder; a creepy flying head that flies around kissing people, then a day or so later said kissed person's hair falls out, their ears become wings and their head flies away a new vargouille. That's plenty weird.

Well, the Spellbane spell can potentially negate any problems you may have with spells that nerf encounters. Provided the monsters are capable of casting it they can just specify the spells that hurt them most and become immune to it. Unless of course the spell the players are using gives them the advantage without being in the range of spellbane (like flight).

And unlike the players, you're tailoring the encounter to them and have the benefit of know what your monsters are going to be facing. I'm not saying you should make your monsters seem to be metagaming and somehow know the PC's bests spells, but they could be aware of their own weaknesses and use spellbane to cover them to the best of their ability.

Baldur's gate II ToB briefly touched on this, I realize it's not pathfinder and that it may have been meant to be specific to the forgotten realms campaign setting, but I've taken the liberty of finding an excerpt from the time that the safety of an unborn child of an adventurer is called into question. I won't spoil who it is that's pregnant or who the father is for those who haven't played the game, but here's the quote:

"While the babe still dwells within me, it will draw its strength from me. The healing magics that restore my health will restore the health of the unborn child in my womb - even resurrecting it to life, if that should be necessary."

Again, it's not pathfinder but It's how I'd rule things; namely that spells that target and affect the mother also affect the unborn child. Which could be good or bad depending on the spell obviously. At least with this ruling any spell that heals wounds or reverses a spell with a negative effect would simultaneously work on the unborn child.

Not that that's any excuse to go gallivanting off to fight a dragon with a great sword when your heavily pregnant mind you. I'm not even sure how a dragon would respond to that sight.

I know that is probably isn't what you intended - but this really comes across to me as - I wanted the entire game to revolve around how awesome my PC was.

I mean, why would your group have to investigate your actions? What story advancing purpose does that serve other than, "I'm so smart and amazing that you guys need to rely on the direct intervention of a god to even figure out what I'm doing."

Because they'd already expressed interest in discovering who the murderer is. The victim may not have been friends with the wizard, but they were friends with the other PC's.

All this withdrawn if you are playing in a game where the PCs are not working as a group and you are in fact intended as the antagonist of the story rather than the protagonist.

The group of people I play with generally play characters with a wide variety of (often opposing) viewpoints, so they're rarely united. In fact there's already been some PvP murders in the campaign. For a while I thought maybe we might unite against the arrogant wizard, but that seems to have fizzled.

To be truthful, after the whole legend lore reveal of my characters actions my GM actually approached me about making me a primary antagonist since the PC's pretty much unanimously decided that my character should be confronted (some more enthusiastic about it than others, but all were for it).
So really it's my GM that put me up to the idea of actually being an antagonist to the other PC's. Up until that point I'd been content to operate from the shadows to cause chaos.

As for legend lore - although you use meat puppets to forward your goals, are there aspects that link those goals together? For example, if this was a Criminal Minds and all these crimes were popping up, what would the profile based on victimology say?

My character is chaotic evil, the only real link in his motivations and goals is to cause chaos as he sees it as a defining force in the universe. After all, the paladin wouldn't even be remembered after his death if there was no chaos to quell, and the neutral good fighter would have no reason to fight. Without chaos the world is mundane and life is meaningless.

It's really why he committed the murder in the first place, the victim had been placing themselves in positions that made them high profile, but they neglected to take any precautions. My character did what he did to shake things up.

But I digress, this thread wasn't made to discuss that. Just to get some opinions on how legend lore should or shouldn't be used.

Ultimately my GM is a pretty generous guy and he's good at what he does, so I don't hold it against him at all.

If the wizard is powerful enough, maybe he knows you "did it" because he enthralled you, planted a bunch of fake memories in your brain via illusions, dressed you up in girls' clothes and took pictures, and then dropped you off at home. Meanwhile, the guy you thought you'd killed is over at the wizard's house, drinking a few ales, thumbing through the pictures and laughing at how utterly contemptible your character is. The wizard "being on to you" is simply a joke to see you sweat.

Lol. I may not always agree with my GM's rulings on certain issues, but he's not a jerk. He knows full well he could do something like that or worse, but I'm lucky enough to have a GM who's pretty nice to his PC's. :)

Then maybe you should ask why the wizards taking an interest maybe they were hired by someone who was going to meet with the victim, maybe they were looking for somethin else and stumbled across this, maybe they are just looking for an assasin and thus was what came up?

Nah it's nothing like that, he's been a major NPC for a while now and he's kind of appointed himself a protector of the city we're in (and he's powerful enough that the city officials can't really say no to him). So naturally when I killed someone of relative importance he started snooping around.

He's thinks he knows better than anyone else what's best for the city and that's actually put him in a bit of conflict with the PC's. Well, all but the overzealous paladin (but I can evade him pretty easily since he took a variant that doesn't get spells).

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts on this guys and gals. I don't think I'll press the issue with my GM as I'm fine with the final outcome regardless of the methods, but I may mention it in passing.

There are also a number of spells (all available to the "sleepless detective PrC" that can otherwise do the job:

1) Blood biography: While he cant reveal HOW the blood was shed, he can reveal WHEN

Blood biography requires the victims blood. The GM had already ruled that no blood was spilled with the way the victim died. Plus I couldn't care less if people knew WHEN it happened.

I'd also like to point out I can see the wizard doing this especially if the guy had a habbit of dissapearing. I know if I were his high level friend I'd have status monitoring spells on him so I'd know he was alright even though he'd gone walkabout. The first thing I'd do on finding out he'd dies would be to make funeral arrangements when I can't find the body even though I knew he was home the day before I'd get suspicious. When I find out I can't raise him I'd start looking for the killer in case I were next.

Except the high level wizard isn't really friends with the victim. The victim was simply a high profile target that neglected to take any real precautions to keep themselves safe, they were incredibly reckless. So the high level wizard simply took an interest in the disappearance.

I'm not contending that there aren't methods by which the act can be investigated (namely speaking with a deity or other higher power), and I understand that maybe I was a bit hasty in calling it the "perfect" murder since there are divination spells and other methods by which even the perfect murder can be made imperfect, I'm even okay with the result of all this as my character is the type who enjoys a good chase and I have no problem with playing villain to the other PC's.

I was just a bit miffed that the GM chose this method after I put so much effort in leaving absolutely no evidence (I seeped into the victims room via gaseous form and the only evidence I would have left would have been on the victims body, which was taken care of).
I just wish the GM had drawn things out, maybe make the other PC's conduct an investigation over a session or two that ends with divine intervention or something. Not just sic his high level wizard on me by making him cast legend lore over and over during down-time.

Okay, I need some opinions on something my GM did a while back. Here's the scenario, my character basically performed the perfect murder, killing someone in their sleep and leaving absolutely no evidence behind whatsoever. In fact, the character killed has been known to disappear for long periods of time (sometimes unexplained) and there's no reason to believe that the character isn't simply "missing" and not dead.

There's no signs of a struggle, no body to be found, no forced entry, I wasn't even in my own body when the murder was carried out. By the time anyone checked the person's room all magical aura's had long since dissipated. There were absolutely no witnesses, and since the target died in their sleep then even their departed soul is unaware of what happened. I also utilized an ability the GM had given me earlier that prevents any form of resurrection or reincarnation (even blocking wish and miracle).

My character is one that is virtually unheard of by all, all of his dealings are through a possessed body and nobody knows he's a possessed man. Even the man who was possessed only knows that he's missing memory of certain dates and times when he was possessed (and his piss poor int generally means he doesn't make any kind of connection) My character is so low profile that practically nobody really even knows he exists.

My GM however decides that a high level wizard repeatedly cast legend lore to determine:
A. What happened to the person.
B. Who murdered them.
C. Detailed information as to how the murderer did it.
D. Any of my characters significant activities within the past year or so (most of which wasn't related to the murder).
E. Information on my characters defenses.
F. Pretty much everything short of telling the mage my exact location.

Now my understanding of legend lore is that as far as thematics are concerned it tells the spellcaster the legends about a given person, place, or thing. And since my character very existence is nigh unheard of and the very few who have met him aren't even aware there was a murder (after all, those few don't know my actions in a possessed body that is many many miles away in what is effectively an enemy state).

So as far as the spirit and themeatics of the spell are concerned the spell was miss used (IMO). Mechanically things get a bit muddled, as the spell more or less states that due to the severe lack of information on the event or peoples involved that it would take 2d6 weeks to cast and only provide information that is "vague and incomplete". Now the spells says that it will likely point you in a direction that may lead to better info and thus allow a better casting of legend lore at a later date. But the fact of the matter is, there's no possible place it could point you towards in order to gain better knowledge, as only I know of the act (and possibly a deity, although due to the circumstances of this campaign's plot I find it unlikely).

When I mentioned the possibility of gaining info from a deity to my GM he said that the spell doesn't need that and that it can simply draw out the information without a source.

I'm not sure what to make of this, but it seems like he's stretching things to find a way to make my actions known to others. Any thoughts?