Xenophile's page

Guys i don't think that Carrion Crown is the best AP for an all occult party and it's not the lack of a full bab melee character.

First of all it's going to be difficult getting through book 1 alive without someone who can channel positive energy.
Secondly i think that this is a bad AP to go with a substitute for the divine caster role (cleric, oracle, healing patron witch), i am saying this because, from what i have heard/read about the AP, the delayed access to "remove/restore" spells that a 6th level spells class (with no early access) brings, coupled with the below WBL feature of this AP means a lot of cursed, diseased etc. adventurers.

Hmm, that's definitely a good point. The Psychic's Faith Discipline* gives them energy-channeling and "free" cure spells, but curing status effects might still be a significant problem.

*Thematically speaking, I really like this specialization but I find it hard to develop a character who's devoted to a specific god and yet doesn't have divine class levels. However, since their power can be interpreted as coming from the faith itself, I stumbled upon a juicy idea: a worshipper of Aroden! And it fits CC because he had such a personal beef with Tar-Baphon.

I've actually been putting thought into an all-occult Carrion Crown game, though I'm not sure if the absence of a designated melee class would be an issue or not; the Spiritualist's phantom and/or a Medium with the right legend might be able to fill that gap. That said, from a thematic perspective it seems like an excellent fit, right down to the opening hook (the Professor would naturally take an interest in practitioners of such esoteric magical traditions).

There isn't a load of science behind this but I tend to build "dream parties" for every AP I take interest in, so I might as well share.

Barbarian (consider focusing on the harpoon, it's versatile at range and good underwater)
Sorcerer (Elemental or Aquatic bloodlines are the most obvious, but Undead also has appeal if you want some of that zombie/voodoo pirate goodness)
Rogue (best choice for the wide range of skills that you'll need to be a good sailor)
Cleric of Gozreh (or Besmara, Calistria, Cayden, anyone chaotic)

Any race is fine, though I'd suggest going for the tengu because they fit the setting very well. I like the idea of making them all at least half-human and give everyone that "child of a famous pirate" trait to stack the Infamy boost, say they're all siblings.

For context: I ran S&S over Skype, and for various reasons the game petered out halfway into Book 2, but I had plans for how to handle things up to and including Book 3. Looking over the AP again made me want to share some of them.

When I was looking over the NPCs, I couldn't help but notice that Tessa Fairwind and Sandara Quinn were almost identical, both in personality (Pretty Girl Who Thinks You're Cool) and appearance (Skinny Pale Redhead in a "Sexy Pirate" Costume). In-game, I used the Besmaran Priest from Isles of the Shackles for Sandara's character portrait. Personality-wise I focused on the fact that she's a devotee of the pirate goddess who's new to actual piracy; enthusiastic but out of her element, acting on holy teachings instead of practical experience. She ended up in a casual romance with the party's captain, a female (but very androgynous) half-elf barbarian who she saw as embodying the true pirate spirit.

As for Tessa, I decided to play up the traits described in her NPC Gallery entry and present her as comically decadent. Not Caligula decadent, just Oscar Wilde decadent. She almost always has someone on hand with a platter of fruit and drinks. She reflexively lounges whenever she sits down, even at important meetings. She flirts with everyone to the point where other Free Captains just block it out. She gambles with those lucky dice of hers, often for small and petty stakes. She says "yes" like "mmmmyeees" for some reason. To her, piracy isn't about fame, fortune, or power, though those certainly help achieve the real goal: doing whatever she wants whenever she wants, and never doing anything that isn't fun if she can help it.

"Alright, make yourself at home, just don't sit on any documents. Or move any documents, I have a very precise organizational system. Well it won't kill you to stand for a couple minutes! Look, you asked me what I've been working on all this time, and against my better judgement I'm showing you, so I'd appreciate some gratefulness.

"It all started in 4707. I was in Magnimar when the murders started: bodies with ancient symbols carved into them popping up left and right. It was pretty hairy for a while. But then four adventurers mosey into town and take down the whole cult behind it and just move on. Not long after I start hearing rumors about giant activity in the region, a whole army of them gathering from all corners, but before anyone can separate rumors from facts it gets busted up by the same four people! So I start asking questions, looking for patterns, and there are signs that the cultists and the giants were both being influenced by some kind of ancient wizard-king. What do you think happened to him? Killed by our mysterious champions.

"Now, that's all pretty wild, but Varisia is a pretty wild place. I didn't think too much of it until the very next year, when Korvosa had its plague-rebellion double whammy. Can you guess who got mad Queen Ileosa off the throne? No! A different band of adventurers! And barely a month later, Riddleport had that falling star incident. According to some very reliable sources, the whole thing was a part of some secret dark elf scheme, and the only reason they didn't do worse is because of yet another fighting foursome. All different people, but all packing more skill and resources than most small armies could muster.

"After that the region cooled off for a while, but I knew something big was going on, so I started to look outwards, and everywhere I looked the same pattern started cropping up. In Cheliax, the former capital gets overrun with fiends; four heroes save the day. In Ustalav, a cult tries to resurrect the Whispering Tyrant; four heroes save the day. In the River Kingdoms, a new nation springs up practically overnight and fends off an incursion from the First World; its leaders are four heroes. I'd bet you anything that the same things have been going on in Garund, maybe even Tian Xia.

"And then it all comes back to Magnimar. The tsunami of 4713 hits and a whole city rises off the coast ready to launch an invasion; the only reason we all survived is because of those celebrity Pathfinders who had been dashing around the region. After that, I wasn't surprised to hear that the Worldwound had been closed. It's just an extension of what's been happening for almost a decade, on a larger scale. Crisis after crisis is averted by relative outsiders with the power to take on armies alone. It can't be a coincidence.

"This isn't 'one of my crackpot theories,' everything I've been telling you is fact! Here's a theory: this whole world is coming apart at the seams, and someone or something has been coordinating small, elite teams to counteract it! Right now signs point towards the Pathfinder Society; they have considerable reach and grasp, and the groups seem to follow similar tactics in the field, but the Pathfinders almost never get involved with political power like these people do. I briefly thought that someone could be masterminding these incidents as excuses to put their agents in control of local governments, but I don't know anything that could mastermind the kinds of extraplanar forces involved. Maybe Aroden's disappearance has something to do with it all... if prophecies have no power, that means the end of the world isn't some fated event, it could happen at any time or be postponed indefinitely. It's all heavy stuff.

"I don't expect you to believe all of this at once, but if you look at my findings-- What? No! This is all real! Just because you don't care about anything that happens more than two miles away from-- Get out of my house!"

Hell yes,sir. I am so excited for all of the new Paizo releases tomorrow. My group is doing a similar thing with Emerald Spire, only ACG. My suggestion? Make someone play a hunter and give the companion the mutant template. Think about a hunter with cyber implants, roaming Numeria with a mutant panther or something. Too cool.

This is exactly the problem I have with every game I run: I end up creating hypothetical parties in my head and there's always the shameful ghost of frustration when the players follow their own, equally awesome ideas. I would never dictate class choice to this degree, though I always nudge them in the direction of unfilled roles when needed.

THAT SAID, I do have a lot of cool ideas like that. The Brawler with Against the Technic League would make a great escaped gladiator, especially if they use that mutagen archetype (you just know the handlers would dope their fighters up with whatever they could find). A Warpriest of Gorum with Robot Slayer would probably see the so-called "Iron Gods" as affronts to Our Lord in Iron.

Oh yeah, and that reminds me: I'd probably make one exception on the class rule for Gunslingers, because this seems like the first AP that one would really fit into with minimal adjustments.

Okay, so I have a dumb gimmick idea, and I want to tell someone about it. I don't expect this to be a long-lived thread, unless it gets hijacked by arguments, but I want to get my thoughts out there so they don't fester. And maybe someone else will like the sound of it.

What if I ran Iron Gods and restricted the players' class options to ACG originals? I have two reasons for this: 1, it's the first Adventure Path to come out after the ACG, and 2, the setting and themes have a certain "gonzo fantasy" flavor that might suit weird hybrids better than the old classics. My third reason was that the new classes would be more balanced against each other, but that doesn't seem like the case based on my second-hand impressions. Luckily, I'm not terribly worried about that side of things.

Granted, between the cost of buying a whole AP and finding enough willing players, I don't expect any opportunities to execute this plan in the near future. But there you go.

Would have preferred Kyra over Karsk for that classic quartet of party roles, but I don't blame anyone for wanting to fill the dwarf quota. Everyone sounds very true to their characters, especially Valeros.

EDIT: D'oh, I wrote Karsk instead of Harsk because that's the name of the dwarf PC in my own RotR campaign.

There is no reason why a 7th or 8th level Fighter would be a better

Charismatic Warlord than an Incubus Fighter 1.

Even with rules in place, there's still a story element to the game and a reason to choose certain enemies besides mechanical optimization. No one's going to look at a human warlord and say, "Why does he bother if a demon can do the job better?"

Sure the Pete with the Bard maxed out Bluff and cast

Glibness and has a Charisma of 22 and put a lot of mechanical
resources into being a great conman and liar character but Pete just cannot ROLEPLAY.

Then Steve playing the Fighter can roleplay but he has nothing to indicate that his Fighter is even merely mechanically competent as
a liar, much less "Potentially the best liar in the kingdom" that Pete's Bard character is.

Could Pete roleplay his Bard as having a Full Attack Bonus and Bravery and Armor Training and Weapon Training and Armor and Weapon Proficiencies? No. So why do you want the Fighter BBEG to "roleplay" being somebody with suave statecraft and master plans?

His role is to be the FIGHTER not that other stuff. Make the enemy a Magus or an Antipaladin or a Monster or a Bard or a Wizard if you want that stuff. "The Fighter" is limited as a BBEG because he has a limited role by his name...FIGHTING.

Well first off I feel like your analogy with Steve and Pete doesn't reflect the matter at hand because you're talking about two player characters. I said that the mechanics exist to facilitate the PCs interacting with the setting, be it through trade, seduction, murder, or whatever else they want to do. NPCs are a different matter; yes, they use the same systems when they're dealing with the PCs (or the PCs' NPC companions if they get involved), but everything "off screen" generally proceeds without needing to roll for anything. And if you don't need rolls, you don't need the numbers that exist to modify rolls.

Second, even if we are cleaving to the rules here, saying that the Fighter is capable of nothing beyond his namesake is flat-out ignoring the options presented. Granted, the class skills are limited and the skill points are few, but a good Intimidate or Profession (Soldier) is potentially enough to justify leadership depending on context. Plus, there is nothing at all preventing a Fighter from buying respectable mental attributes or putting ranks in non-class skills. And of course, archetypes like the Cad and Tactition open up new class skills and even more skill points in the latter example. So while the Bard might have an edge in those departments, there's no reason to flat-out say that Fighters simply cannot do more than bash people.

Actually, to follow up, "suave statecraft and master plans" aren't Bard class features either. They're encouraged to have high Charisma and have access to useful skills, but their innate performance abilities are generally more useful in combat than social maneuvering (except Suggestion, but using magic to influence people can easily backfire if anyone figures it out). Plus, there is no game mechanic for plotting and scheming; it can be assumed that high Intelligence helps, but nowhere does it say that there's any kind of minimum for having and executing good ideas.

I don't want to step into the mathematical crossfire going on, but since the "no mechanical justification for leadership" thing has cropped up again...

Should I make my NPCs roll off-screen to justify their achievements? Does the town blacksmith need to make Craft checks if I want there to be weapons and armor available for purchase? By the same logic, does a BBEG's master plan require a series of Intelligence rolls to formulate, followed by numerous Diplomacy checks against the DCs needed to make their minions Helpful? If I want the PCs to encounter a town ransacked by said minions, is it necessary to play out the attack beforehand, complete with Profession (Soldier) rolls to properly coordinate?

Mechanics are only relevant in terms of how the PCs interact with everything else. Granted, this doesn't mean mental Attributes are meaningless; a spellcaster might raise his eyebrows if one Touch of Idiocy reduces a mastermind to a vegetable with minimal damage. But narrative questions like "how did he rise to power?" don't need to be answered with numbers.

Follow-up: more and more I'm seeing this as a good argument for the old-fashioned ways before Skills became a big deal. A character's ability to locate hidden treasure or negotiate with uncooperative NPCs was based on the player's ability to describe what they did rather than a bonus and a roll. These two methods have equal merit in my eyes, but things like this definitely cast the alternative in a better light.

I'm generally less concerned about things "making sense" than I am about providing fun and viable options for gameplay, given that the system is geared towards action/adventure fantasy and already uses abstractions like HP and AC. I'm not saying that simulationist elements are verboten, but if the rules work in such a way to make basic race/class combinations inherently inferior, then they're interfering with the core purpose of the game itself.

I must disclose that I don't have enough experience with Small PCs to verify if this is actually an issue or not; maybe the attack and defense benefits are enough to compensate for smaller dice. But if you're arguing that it DOES suck for them but that's okay because the math says it should, then I question your reasoning.

I don't think anyone is saying "you can't do cool fantasy with humans anymore," it's just that 99% of cool fantasy is about humans and human lookalikes already. I don't think it makes you a special snowflake for wanting something that hasn't been the default for forty years.

Though the obvious rebuttal to that is, "Then why are you playing Dungeons & Dragons?"

I've always thought it's a little amusing how Gygax didn't like the idea of people playing elves and dwarves (God forbid orcs and drow), but caved because there was such a demand from people who wanted to play as the Fellowship.

Well then I can certainly see where you're coming from. I can picture both of those parties working, but it depends on the campaign and setting (that first one sounds like prime Carrion Crown material). To be honest, if a player's reaction to NPC conflict is "kill 'em all" rather than "how do I win them over," then the problem may have deeper roots than their choice of species.

The best compromise I can think of is to use a setting where weird half-elemental animal people ARE the homegrown heroes, but that doesn't seem up your alley.

Might as well join in, why not.

Short-Lived First Attempt at Running the System in College:
3 humans (2 Shoanti, 1 Varisian)
1 half-elf
1 half-orc

Skull & Shackles:
2 humans (1 Mwangi, 1 unknown)
1 half-elf
1 half-orc
1 catfolk
1 gillman

Rise of the Runelords:
2 humans (Varisian)
2 half-elves
1 dwarf

And if we include campaigns where a party was assembled but it never got off the ground...

Skull & Shackles
1 half-elf
1 half-orc
1 goblin

Kingmaker
2 dwarves
1 human (Taldan)
1 half-elf

(just for the record, I totally know what you mean about 3.5/PF's mechanical hangups, I'm mostly in it for the APs rather than the system itself)

Okay, I see this topic crop up on a pretty regular basis, but it never reflects what I perceive as the norm. Are traditional "some humans, an elf, and a dwarf" parties really in the minority after decades of being the only option? Sure, you see the occasional band of exotic adventurers, but they're more visible by virtue of being exceptional.

If you ask me, adventurers are ALWAYS weird; the only reason it isn't "immersion breaking" to see an armored soldier, a healer-priest, an arcane sage, and some sneaky guy with knives all wandering around together with no ties to a larger organization is because that's the kind of absurdity that we've come to accept without questioning.

FOLLOW-UP: It should probably be noted that Golarion acknowledges this old game logic concession as an actual element of the world; most people are familiar with the idea of adventuring parties and their unique line of business, and the Pathfinder Society has all but standardized it. And I like that, because it's a game setting that really KNOWS it's a game setting and doesn't force you to awkwardly explain all the old cliches that necessitate a campaign. But I'm getting off-topic.

I haven't been keeping up with the Mythic balance debate, but it occurs to me that slapping a couple tiers of Champion onto a Fighter can give a considerable power boost along with some flashy tricks to make the battle more interesting.

Granted, that probably breaks the "no templates, no multiclassing" clause for some people.

As others have already said, I really don't care for anything that just takes you out of combat (though making everyone else rush to save a paralyzed ally, for example, can still be interesting). I once houseruled a fear effect so that once you've run away from the source it expires; the players were only incapacitated for a round or two and then had to scramble back to the fight.

I haven't encountered level loss in any of my games yet, but it seems almost antithetical to the whole way that threats work; they run the risk of killing or inconveniencing you, but you work through them to keep gaining levels. A threat that reverses that progress just doesn't fit in, especially if you're in an adventure specifically made for people of a certain level. If you ask me, it's an an element of older editions that got carried over because it's "traditional" rather than something that works in a different paradigm.

That said, I think that you can make an argument for arming your NPCs to the teeth with "cheating" magic so long as A) it doesn't overwhelm your players or B) your players are old school hardcore and want to be overwhelmed.

Rust monsters really sum up the D&D monster aesthetic to me. Their natural habitat is sprawling abandoned underground complexes, and their primary food source is the equipment of overconfident adventurers. They look like crosses between beetles and glyptodonts; I think they might have been created when Gary Gygax used a box of cheap plastic "dinosaur" toys as miniatures. Plus, they're kinda cute in a buggy way.

Owlbears probably take second place for many of the same reasons. When you run into either of those guys, you know what kind of game you're playing.

That's pretty interesting, actually.

Though, even though I'm no Metal Gear Solid expert by any means, isn't that series built pretty much around mechanical and biological "equalizers" (super-soldier cloning is where Snake came from, Raiden has mechanical implants IIRC, and of course "Nanomachines, son")?

Still a cool idea, but it seems to me that falls in with Templated BBEG Fighters (in this case a series of custom templates), which people have said work pretty well.

True, but that's because it's basically cyberpunk, and cyborg samurai are to that genre what sword-and-board fighters are to high fantasy.

On a thematic level, the series puts a lot of weight on being a soldier, which is what fighters do better than any other class.

Honestly, all the talk about Fighters always being minions (right-hand-men at best) makes me think that you could rip off Metal Gear Solid for BBEG motivations. Maybe someone wants to create a world where mundane soldiers aren't beholden to magic-users, a world where martial skill is valued and respected rather than used and abused. Throw in some oversized constructs and you're golden.

Xenophile wrote:

I think that it's very easy to see the rules as your master instead of your tool...

Wow. This sums up what I've been feeling for a good time. During my early D&D 3rd edition days (also my earliest DMing experience), justifying plot stuff as rules components made me feel more confident and rules-savvy. As the time passed, it became more and more of an obligation to my rules-lawyering players.

4th edition broke that mold incidentally saying "OK, this goblin shaman has this special power that only he has". Say what you will about that system, but you could really design a monster/NPC with whatever power you felt it needed. Paizo has done that many times over the years (most important NPCs have special, cool and unique abilities) but we're still somewhat shackled to this "must follow every rule" attitude.

Yeah, that's where I got that mindset too. 4E was my first taste of D&D (having only played GURPS before), and between the system itself and the painful edition wars I learned a lot about game design philosophies. Unfortunately, I also have a strong sense of insecurity when it comes to houseruling, so it can be hard to put those lessons to use.

I think that's still a pretty reductive viewpoint, but then again, this is a pretty reductive game (see: alignments). The nature of intelligence is far, far out of my areas of expertise, and even if it was, arguing about it would just cause derailment.

Now, if you want to make a mechanically smart fighter with a limited point build, here's something that can help you: there are literally magic hats in this world that can make you smarter, wiser, and more charming. I can actually see some random amoral adventurer putting on a headband he found in a dragon's lair and suddenly thinking, "Whoa, I've been going about this all the wrong way! Political power beats loot every time. Let's see, if I invest what I have wisely and start building support, then in a few years I might be able to organize a local coup and..."

I have to say, this thread has been a great source of ideas.

In a fantasy setting, Boudicea is probably a reasonably leveled aristocrat with high Charisma and just above average Intelligence, maybe a 12. She has Diplomacy and was able to unite several tribes. (While she doesn't need to make those checks, being an NPC, I would feel bad as a DM if I didn't give her the ability to do so.) She had loads of poorly-equipped troops. Her opponents were far fewer, better trained, disciplined and equipped (higher level) and had a commander with lots of ranks in Profession (soldier) and a higher Intelligence score.

Honestly, I would not advise tacking Attribute scores onto actual people, historical or otherwise. In real life, things like how smart and skilled you are go far beyond a single numerical value, and you can't claim that anyone won or lost because of some fundamental difference in brain power.

A lot of the things I wanted to say in this thread have already been said, so a big thanks for that. I think that it's very easy to see the rules as your master instead of your tool, but in the end the mechanics are just there to keep combat scenarios balanced (at least primarily). You can have a BBEG with Int 7 who's still a tactical mastermind, so long as it's expressed through roleplaying elements rather than feats.

Just for fun, I decided to come up with a narrative explanation for the fighteriest fighter that ever fightered becoming an evil leader.
You start off with Gladius McSword, yet another disposable soldier in the army of Malevoland. He's as smart as a horse and half as charming, but he's physically fit and he knows how to use a weapon. He survives battle after battle, honing his martial talents along the way and climbing the ranks. It quickly becomes obvious that he's useless in a position of leadership, so his superiors decide to put his skills to use elsewhere: as the king's bodyguard. This works out, until the king is swayed by foreign diplomats to halt Malevoland's military conquest. War is all that Gladius has ever known, and he can't comprehend any reason to not kill people and take their stuff, so that's exactly what he does to the king. Naturally, Malevoland's royal vaults contain a number of powerful artifacts, and he has just enough cunning to use them as leverage and stay in power. Meanwhile, the royal adviser, who's actually quite brilliant and prefers to influence things indirectly, offers his services in guiding the kingdom towards Gladius's vision of glory.
And so you get King Fighter, an unsurpassed master of stabbing with the mind of a rabid dog, armed with the resources of an entire nation and hell-bent on taking over the world because he can. I think that would be an enjoyable BBEG.

Barbarians are right at home in Numeria, and I'm in love with the concept of some all-brawn-no-brains warrior stumbling upon advanced otherworldly technology and beating monsters over the head with it. Maybe make them distrustful of magic, which is totally justified in this case, given what the Technic League did to this country.

Yeah. It's probably safe to assume that creatures with one or no biological sex have no gender roles within their own cultures, if they have any.

Ropers are weird though because they have a philosophical predisposition, and individuals (especially those that regularly interact with humanoids) might develop their own notions of gender or sexual self-identity. Given that their societies never extend beyond limited clusters, however, I would assume that it's not something that would develop and become widespread on its own.

I gotta say, if this is what this thread becomes from now on, I won't argue.

This thread has raised a very serious and pressing issue:

Do mimics have a gender?

Don't see why they'd need any, since they don't seem to have their own culture and (I assume) reproduce asexually. If a humanoid decided to keep one as a friend or minion and started calling it he or she, it just might pick that pronoun up, but I can't see how an amorphous being that spends most of its time pretending to be inanimate objects could actually fill any gender role.

Giving this question serious thought was more relaxing and worthwhile than a lot of the reading I just did on the way here...

As a side note, I'm now wistfully imagining an alternate timeline where there is a 72-page-and-growing thread labelled "Homosexuality in Golarion" that is exclusively about how non-straight people are viewed and treated in the various cultures and regions of this fictional roleplaying setting. 72 pages of on-topic discussion of this touchy but very interesting subject, doubtlessly containing disagreements and debates but always sticking to the core concept, rather than diverging into other topics such as what material should and shouldn't appear in certain published works.

Shisumo wrote:

Set wrote:

I know Seltyiel is the male half-elf, but who's the female half-elf?

Lirianne, the iconic gunslinger.

Ooh, she does have little points on her ears! I had not noticed!

She also has a real interesting backstory; her elven mom had a lengthy (by human standards) relationship with her human dad, but left them in a moment of capriciousness while Liri was young. I'm pretty sure it tied in to her fascination with stories of faeries and princesses and dragons and knights, which in Alkenstar are almost as fantastical as they are here.

I briefly had the beginnings of a Kingmaker game set up, but player issues brought an end to it. Since I already have half of the books and really like the core concept, I'll probably try running it again sometime, and this will definitely come in handy. Whether or not I show my players is something I'll have to decide later.

Wrapped up my last session with this encounter; I was reeeally worried about it being too awkward for my party, but everything turned out fine. From our perspective, at least.

Shayliss's target was a half-elf barbarian with a big ego and a habit for wearing armor similar to this; he didn't have the highest Charisma score in the party, but I figured that all of the other factors would more than compensate in her eyes. She approached him while the party was having lunch at the Rusty Dragon and rolled a natural 20 on her Bluff check. He was very eager to help with the rat problem, but a couple of the other PCs wanted to come too, so she gave up. Egged on by the party's alchemist (who had an idea of what was going on), our hero went after her.

Cut to the barbarian and the shopkeeper's daughter in the basement, both very disappointed and embarrassed. You see, his primary interests are (1) fighting and (2) men. She would have let him go on his way, but then Ven came down to see his daughter hurriedly dressing herself and a strange man trying to hide behind the shelves. One failed Diplomacy check later and the poor guy's fleeing the wrath of a protective father who doesn't buy his (completely true) excuses.

The rest of the party was just amused by their companion's obliviousness, but when the -2 Diplomacy penalty kicks in they'll have to find some way to clear things up. We don't really have a designated "face" yet, but the monk is friends with Hemlock, and the Sheriff's word might be enough to put this to rest.

I'm... on the fence. A lot of these do sound interesting, and the magus did pull off the old and notorious fighter/wizard hybrid very well, so there's some precedent.

But one of my favorite things about PF as a system is that the archetypes allow the handful of "vanilla" classes to cover a wide range of concepts, even by combining elements from other classes sometimes. Unlike in 3.5, you don't need a special scout class (for example) when you can just tweak a ranger or rogue to fit the niche. In fact, I'd argue that the ninja and samurai should have just been meaty rogue and cavalier archetypes, but that's behind us now.

Furthermore, a lot of these concepts were already very close together. Rangers were already pretty similar to druids and rogues, and "battle clerics" have never been very hard to make. The magus works so well because wizards and fighters have virtually no overlap, so combining them creates something very new. From what we've seen, the battlerager is probably closest to this formula, and I'm actually pretty interested in seeing it. The barbarian and the sorcerer are already like dumber, flashier cousins to the fighter and wizard.

ALL THAT SAID, I'm interested in all the other material this book offers, even if I'm not guaranteed to buy it (or let my players use some of these hybrids if I'm feeling really curmudgeony). If there's one thing I'm always grateful for, it's the online reference document.

I can vouch that my party's half-orc sea-singer is a massive boon to the crew (though everyone is, in their own way). He once boarded an enemy ship and insulted the sailors SO HARD that they literally CAUGHT ON FIRE (Boiling Blood is crazy). I know the mass combat is supposed to be glossed over in favor of officer-versus-officer swashbuckling, but after a display like that I decided that the enemy captain would just give up.

Yeah, the type is probably the minimum for this. If they make the base DC they should get at least the type.

"Oh, it's a demon."
"Oh, it's a dragonspawn."
"Oh, it's a fey."

And if you know the type, you know everything that the type entails? I'm just a little uncertain about how much people are assumed to know about monsters.

Funny story, last night my RotR party managed to discover virtually everything that skeletons can't (easily) be hurt by through trial and error. The monk smashed one to pieces with a single punch, but the second undead withstood swords, bolts, enchantments, and non-monk unarmed attacks. Went down when the cleric used his hammer to great effect.

Aw dang, I missed the official rules and just let the player look at the Bestiary entry if they met the base DC...

Do you think a default roll should be enough to know the creature's subtype and the features that come with that? So someone who rolls a 13 against a quasit could say, "I know it's a demon, so that means it probably has (standard demon strengths and weaknesses), though I can't say much about this particular specimen."

Honestly, Wrath of the Righteous reminds me of Pacific Rim more than this.

My first thought is that they wouldn't have the full power of their mythic tiers, because they couldn't spend all their mythic feats without the actual feats to piggyback on.

That was my initial concern too, but given that you can hold mythic feats in reserve if you don't have the prerequisite, I'd actually interpret the mythic feats less as an aspect of the tiers and more as an aspect of your regular stats that are influenced by mythicness. Sorry if that sounds confusing, it's the only way I could think of phrasing it.

It is an issue though, and I wonder if a PC who can justify more mythic feats than another of the same level and tier would be drastically more powerful as a result. Maybe something to put a limit on, if that's the case.

First I want to establish that I don't have Mythic Adventures yet, though I do have the playtest PDF.

The core of my idea is this: I want to see how a 1st-level party with 10 mythic tiers plays. From a mechanical angle, I'm interested in seeing how they would approach challenges intended for PCs five levels higher than them, and from a fluff angle, I like the idea of newbie adventurers somehow gaining immense power.

Thoughts?

Xenophile wrote:

Question: would there be any mechanical issues with giving 1st level characters 10 mythic tiers? It's just a little thought experiment I have.

In the playtest, the biggest issue with that was that most of the mythic feats have normal feats as prerequisites, and (aside from human monks) no one's going to have five feats already at level 1. This is also assuming I didn't overlook some kind of rule like "mythic tiers cannot exceed class levels."

This is covered: A character can delay their acquisition of a mythic feat until they meet the prerequisites. Thus, your 1st-level/10th-tier character would only have a few feats, but as s/he grew in level, newly acquired feats could be made mythic.

Sounds fair. The other issue was that a lot of path abilities seemed to only be useful when you had multiple attacks/high-level spells/etc, but all the preview material I've seen looks like there's a wider selection now. I'm gonna have to try this out after I get the book...

Question: would there be any mechanical issues with giving 1st level characters 10 mythic tiers? It's just a little thought experiment I have.

In the playtest, the biggest issue with that was that most of the mythic feats have normal feats as prerequisites, and (aside from human monks) no one's going to have five feats already at level 1. This is also assuming I didn't overlook some kind of rule like "mythic tiers cannot exceed class levels."

Well this thread certainly answers my question about how mythic tiers will accumulate; my old theory was that the leveling would be normal and that you'd also gain 1 mythic tier per adventure, ending up at 18/6.

I feel proud of my guys; it was never a question of who'd be in charge because our Half-Elf Barbarian was just full-on "I'M GONNA BE KING OF THE PIRATES" from the very beginning (which got her almost-one-shotted by Harrigan for giving him lip in the first session). Everyone else in the party just instinctively fell into step behind her and she's been the ringleader ever since, though she always listens to what the crew has to say. It's one of those treasured parties where everyone is very much friends with everyone else.

No. No, they were rotten to the core.

** spoiler omitted **

Well that can be changed, is all I'm saying. DM gets retcon powers, especially with stuff the players don't already know about.

This might sound a little Care Bears-y, but hear me out.

What if the Runelords' shift from virtue to sin was not a simple matter of psychology? What if they began as genuine avatars of Thassilon's magically-aligned virtues, but something caused them to change in such a way that would actually be reflected by their statistics. Maybe the empire's corruption caused its leaders to follow suit, or the aboleths cast some manner of curse upon the wizards to corrupt them from within. Maybe there is some way, either deceptively simple or near-impossible, to reverse this effect and make his return a boon to the world rather than a disaster.

Granted, Wealth isn't really that much better than Greed, but one more avaricious but non-evil wizard king in the world wouldn't be too bad; if he decides to turn his resources towards trade, there could be significant but mixed impact on the region. If you go all the way and make him the new Runelord of Generousity, that's a very interesting path to explore. Just think, an extremely powerful transmutation specialist who lives for the betterment of others!

Pathfinder's already a step ahead of many other fantasy settings by actually including Africa and Asia equivalents and making interesting things happen there instead of just shoving them off the borders so not-Europe can have more attention. That said, sometimes I take a second look at some of the material and think, "If I had a friend who didn't want to play this because they were offended/uncomfortable, I wouldn't blame them."

I haven't seen the poster, but I think it could have been improved by replacing the gnoll with an actual citizen of Alkenstar. There's a lot of really cool "civilized" stuff going on down there alongside the pulp jungle monsters.

Well, you get there using Baba Yaga's Hut, the goal of the mission is to rescue here, and the whole AP has been about that, but I suppose if you could come up with other reasons for that to happen you could probably plug it in. The last book is supposed to transition from this very directly, though.

I'd at least give the rest of the parts a quick look to come up with a plot contraction, but that wouldn't be hard.

"Baba Yaga has gone missing! There's money in it for you if you get her back! Here's her hut!" Would probably suffice on short notice.

Hmmm... would there be any problems resulting from jumping into this adventure with characters created at level 13, rather than starting at the first one in the path? The only possible one that comes to mind is magical items from previous adventures playing a vital role.

I'm not (currently) too interested in playing the whole thing, but I definitely see the gonzo appeal of making Rasputin Must Die! its own mini-campaign.

This is definitely something I'd like to see used for less "exotic" Pathfinder enemies; in fact, after GMing my party's first independent boarding attack in Skull & Shackles this Thursday, I wouldn't mind a troop statblock to represent the enemy crew!

Maybe make a booklet for it? Armies of Golarion or something along those lines? I think there's already a thread with that name...