Search Posts
Is this still available in print? Print-on-demand copies can always be ordered from our store at lulu.com
In my campaign, the Dark Folk are the stuff of fairy tales - no one seriously believes in them, and they are generic boogeymen used to frighten children. Which makes it weird when they actually show up to bother the PCs. Later, one may find out that they serve/worship something called "The Shadow King" which is another weird fairy-tale like entity that features prominently in nursery rhymes and folk takes. If one is really lucky/unfortunate one may hear the dark folk refer to the Shadow King as "His Divine Shadow". If my PCs were to try to remove their robes/wrapping they would immolate in the process, leaving nothing but the rags.
I'm going to assume some things other haven't, but which are likely based on my experience with this card from the DoMT: Scenario 1: Card was drawn in a civilized area. Castle was magically placed in an open area within someone else's political domain. - The castle is indisputably yours (it's magic, remember!) but since it's in an established domain, it probably comes with responsibilities and it will get you irretrievably involved in local politics. If you have the stomach for that and are skilled at diplomacy, then it will eventually be a base of operations that can make you money using the downtime rules from Ultimate Campaign. Downside: If you put it in the wrong place you may have made an enemy of someone. Scenario 2: Card was drawn in a dungeon or wilderness area, hopefully not too far from Civilization. - The castle is indisputably yours (it's magic, remember!) but since there is no infrastructure to support it, you will have to find some way to create it. You will need to attract farmers, homesteaders,tradesmen, and merchants to the area, so figure out what the local resources are and how to exploit them. (Fertile Land? Coal/Iron/Gold mine? Unique local plant/animal? Fur trapping?) If your castle sits on top of an old dungeon, you may be able to attract merchants with exotic monster parts and ancient art objects, etc. Eventually, you can establish your own fiefdom and connect it to civilization with a road. Downside: you have to keep local monsters/fauna from eating your homesteaders.
Alignment can be a fin and inspiring part of play when done right. This book provides a lot of helpful ideas.
Every fighter should always have at least one slashing, one bludgeoning, and one piercing weapon, as well as one light weapon, one reach weapon and one ranged weapon. Some of those can be combined for multiple effects in one weapon. My current favorite combo is Longsword (slashing), Light Flail (bludgeon, disarm, trip), Guisarme (slashing, reach, trip), composite bow (piercing, ranged) and a dagger (light, piercing). And really, everyone should have a dagger.
There are options for Riding Cats and War Lions in this book, along with a host of other options for mounted characters.
The mounted combat rules are a little confusing and under developed, but there's a book you can get which provides a lot of great options and which explicates a number of things in the rules.
3d6 or 4d6 is fun if everyone is into it and you're open to a random gamble on who's playing what. Point-buy usually leads to a more functional party, though.Random stats work better in systems designed for one-shots. I've never had an issue rolling stats in Call of Cthulhu, but I've only done one-shots in that system. It's Call of Cthulhu. If you're not losing an investigator every other session, your keeper is being way too lenient. :) Still, I take your meaning.
Can't tell if serious. Maybe not 100% serious, but not ironic either. I do love playing and running games for Fighters. They are certainly easy to build and play, so they're especially good for new players. Also, I have no interest in grouping classes into "tiers" and consider that kind of power-balancing contest to be a largely academic matter.
Straight fighters are easy to build and easy to play. With the number of feats you get, you can usually afford to have one primary combat style and then have a secondary combat style that you're less good at. Finally, even outside of those two styles, you're still going to be decent in combat no matter what. Or, you can hyper-specialize and become an absolute beast at your preferred style. Fighters aren't MAD, so you can have decent scores for non combat roles: Int for more skills, Cha for more socializing. I love a good Fighter. :)
Again, past a certain point the party will become too powerful to truly challenge with standard combats. Stuff starts to scale in weird ways past level 10 as your players find funky interactions and synergies in the ever-expanding pool of rules. Don't worry about making ALL combats interesting or challenging: Sometimes it's okay to let the PCs steamroll an encounter and feel like big damn heroes. Just make sure to start throwing in "weird" battles or fights that happen under strange conditions: - Aerial or underwater combat - Combat in a structure which is collapsing/falling end-over-end down a mountain/falling out of the sky - Illusions or mind control to set the party fighting each other (always a favorite) - Weird gravity or topography (inside a spherical room, for instance, or among the gears of a giant clockwork.) - Time dilation effects (time moving slower or faster in different parts of the battle-space) - Lots of environmental hazards (lava, spikes, poison gas, fog, etc) That kind of thing will challenge and engage the Players more than basic combat mechanics ever will.
I love running sandbox adventures. In a previous campaign of mine, the PCs found a treasure map leading to dungeon. Getting to the dungeon took a large number of sessions, and over a year of in-game time. On the way, the party got involved in a minor political struggle, visited a number of haunted ruins, led a small army to take down a Frost Giant King, and re-established a fallen nation. And gained five levels.
For me, low-magic actually means that the campaign world is MOSTLY mundane: no magic shops, few real wizards/clerics, no friendly NPC casters above 3rd level and even those are few, etc. Leaders of nations are likely to be 5th-7th level, mostly NPC classes. Magic items are hoarded and hidden when not being used, most common people resent and fear spellcasters for their power, and magic is generally dangerous even when it's being beneficial. The PCs get to be the exception to that rule: They are the heroes after all, they can have all the magic they can get their hands on. They just have to be wary of the dangerous bits, and know that most of the magic in the world is being safeguarded by their adversaries. So the only truly magical, truly powerful entities in my campaign world are the PCs and their potential foes. The players want to portray "big damn heroes", so let them have their fun. A 3rd level PC fighter should be a local hero.
A 3rd level PC wizard should be constantly pestered by villagers looking for help and the local nobles should be spying on her.
A 3rd level good-aligned PC cleric will be beset by villagers asking for small blessings and advice, and called upon by the nobility to provide healing.
I could go on like this with other classes for some time. :)
Also known as the "Charles Dexter Ward" contingency. :) Also, with regards to the phylactery: The best place to hide a needle is not in a haystack, but among a lot of other needles. Hide the phylactery in the tomb of a Saint or something, alongside a bunch of other trinkets and relics that aren't really valuable but maybe are part of a big pilgrimage site or something.
Encounters on the road should reveal things about the wider campaign, hint at things to come, and even foreshadow threats and obstacles that the players are not even aware of. Here's an example from one of my own campaigns: The Party is entering relatively settled/civilized lands, but they are going overland, avoiding the main road. They encounter a farmstead and need a place to rest/recuperate. Elves are rare in these lands, but the party contains two. The poor farmer and his family have only heard of one elf in the region: a local warlord with a reputation for violence. As such, they treat the PCs with extreme deference and are obviously terrified of the elves. This makes the PCs suspicious and sets off a series of social interactions/skill checks. The PCs figure out that they've been mistaken for somebody else, and now have been set up to meet the warlord later on, who eventually became a recurring antagonist.
Hey, another discussion about Alignment! Having thoroughly researched the problems associated with Alignment, I recommend you check out this book here for solutions to common problems and a guide for adjudicating alignment issues.
If the players refuse to let him die, you can always have him attack them after they heal him up because he's pissed off at them. Oooh! Or, after they save him, he can say something like: "You have denied me an honorable death in battle! Very well: I will accompany you on your quest. If death does not find me before the end, then I shall challenge you to honorable combat and we shall settle this blood debt then!"
The Very Last Book About Alignment covers this in come detail. Slavery is pretty much defined as anytime you coerce work from someone though threats or intimidation, usually threats involving physical violence against them or their loved ones. The operative clause is that the worker doesn't have the option of refusing to work for you and seeking work elsewhere. TVLBAA scores it as pushing you in both a more Lawful and a more Evil direction, but as long as you are acting as a Slaver it also "depresses" your ability to be good, so it keeps you from earning too many points for good deeds until you stop. There's also a separate entry for "Cruel Slavery", which is just as bad as it sounds, and shifts your alignment even further towards Evil to the point where you can never be good while you're doing it.
There are some additional options for you in this book, along with some templates to bring the mount of your choice up to the proper CR.
I would be remiss not to mention that there are a set of graduated "Thoroughbred" templates available for purchased mounts in The Very Last Book About Mounted Combat which allows for very survivable mounts at higher levels.
If you're looking to make more use of the outer planes and outsiders in general, there is some excellent material for that in this book here.
Let me offer an alternative suggestion to everyone else: Let it go. Let's say you think he's cheating his rolls somehow. So what? I know it sounds like I'm not taking the game seriously, or that it maybe violates the purity of the game, but I do take my players' enjoyment quite seriously and I do care about the game. At it's heart, this is ultimately a game of make believe, and if someone at my table wants to pretend he's Poe Dameron rolling nothing but natural 20's, then where's the harm? I know this will rub a lot of people the wrong way, but in my experience there is a lot more to the game than rolling D20's and there's plenty of ways to spread the spotlight around and make sure that everybody gets to feel like a "big da#n hero." Ultimately, if he's cheating, then he's only cheating himself out of a fun part of the game. If he just has great dice mojo, then that's just his thing and why bother trying to change it? Pathfinder is not an MMO, it's a group of friends having fun around a table. If he plays well with others, is considerate at the table, and contributes to the overall level of fun, then that's good enough for me.
Guys, frenzied rages that force you to attack everything standing (even your allies) are not a drawback, they are a feature. :) One of the most entertaining half-hours of roleplay I have ever heard in my life was a game of Rolemaster where the raging, hulk-style half-giant barbarian botched a series of rolls to calm down, but kept getting open-ended/exploding crit rolls(rolling multiple stacking crits) whenever he went to hit anything. He took down all of the bandits attacking the party, and then proceeded to take down all of his teammates one by one. They survived (barely) by falling down and playing dead/unconscious when he hit them (some of them didn't have to pretend). One PC thought he was safe because he was flying, but then the barbarian critted a jump role to leap 40 feet in the air and knock the guy out of the sky. It was awesome. Yes it was bad news for the party, but a very fun time for the players.
If you're open to third party material, there's some information on Hell Hound mounts (as well as some other equally cool exotic mounts) in this book here. It's a great book for Cavaliers in general.
|
