Xenophile's page

"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!"

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.

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?

Sometime next month I plan on kicking off S&S with a group of six friends via Skype. Exactly who they'll be and who they'll be playing are up in the air, as I currently have more prospective players than I'm willing to take on at once.

My question is: will a slightly-larger-than-average party mitigate the adventure path's notorious fatality? I know that you can't overcome every hazard by ganging up on it, but at least it raises the odds of someone having the particular spell/skill/misc to prevent a tragic death.

If that's not enough, I've also considered giving the characters 25-point beginning builds, though I'm very cautious about doing so. 20 points always seemed like just the right amount to me.

Despite its numerous issues, I love the summoner class because the creative freedom presented by a fully customizable magical creature is downright mouth-watering. So let's see just how many neat concepts we can think up for a first-level summoner's eidolon, using just three evolution points.

The Boxer: has the body of an muscular man with disproportionately large fists and the head of a square-muzzled dog. Biped; improved damage (slam), scent, slam (replaces claws).

Slithers: a halfling-sized slug-like thing that compensates for its weakness with tough and slippery skin that lets it avoid most attacks. Small serpentine; improved natural armor, ability increase (Dex).

Personal Armorer: a slightly gnomish, slightly dwarven lackey that supplies its master's party with equipment. Small biped; skilled (Craft (armor)), skilled (Craft (bows)), skilled (Craft (weapons)).

I really want to see your ideas.