ZebulonXenos's page

I've been GMing Paizo's Crypt of the Everflame for just over a year now, and we've recently completed the first adventure. We started with six excellent characters, but unfortunately, as is wont to happen with play-by-posts, a couple of folks quit posting.

For those who're interested, here is the campaign thread.

Masks of the Living God is the second in the trilogy, and takes place immediately following the triumphant (yet somber) return of the Chosen of Kassen, having completed a coming-of-age ritual that was disrupted by the machinations of mysterious interlopers. Several of Kassen's citizens are dead, and the ones that brought the disaster about remain at large... Not to mention the treasure trove they seek, the same one that allowed Kassen's namesake and founder to establish the village in the first place.

Crypt of the Everflame had some strong guidelines for characters - the original recruitment post still holds true, and there are a few dramatis personae listed further in the thread. These were originally meant to be mentors for the young PCs, but serve equally well as friends or acquaintances for 'out of towners' if it would fit a character's background better.

My only requirement for roleplaying is that the character have a tie to the town of Kassen - either by being a resident, being friends with one, or perhaps having it as a favored rest stop in their travels. That said, I'll likely have a bias towards folks with a posting history so I can get a feel for their writing and their posting habits, although I'm a sucker for long backstories and well-thought out applications. Don't consider either of those a must, though.

For those who enjoy tying their characters to the Pathfinder setting, Kassen is a backwoods town in Nirmathas, and this adventure will heavily involve the capitol of Tamran.

Another option, if anyone wishes to consider it, is to step into the shoes of one of the two characters with absent players - Garik Randor or Grukk Tornlock. Garik in particular was well-integrated with the group, and I would be sad to write him out of the game. That said inheriting a character is usually awkward, so nobody needs to feel beholden to take one of them.

With all the roleplaying bits out of the way, a few mechanical and otherwise metagame considerations;

- The ideal posting rate was advertised as 1/day, which has scarcely been followed. The campaign has been fairly stop-and-go, though I keep promising to be more diligent about it.

- The current party consists of a combat manuever-focused fighter, a rogue (who I assume is leaning towards arcane trickster), a cleric, and a fey sorceress; the bases are well-covered, so any character that meets my other prerequisites is fine.

- For simplicities sake, the only material I'm willing to allow is what's on the PRD, and I have a preference for using the seven core races.

- Characters will start at level 2, and level 3 is very close around the corner. As far as wealth goes, rather than audit the current characters, I'll likely grant new characters 750 gp, one magical piece of equipment (i.e. a +1 something or other) or an equivalently priced wondrous item, one inexpensive wondrous item (no more than a couple of thousand GP purchase price), and a handful of consumables. This is, obviously, negotiable.

- I don't intend to set a hard deadline; the Paizo forums are good at churning out apps, so if I leave it open for too long, I'll likely wind up considering running a whole 'nother group.

- Likewise, I'll do my best to make myself available for questions and feedback, so don't be afraid to bounce ideas off of me.

The day has come. The 4th of Neth, the day Ekat Kassen and his men set out to bring down the mercenaries that had been plaguing the town nearly two centuries ago. The chill winds mark the beginning of the season's change to winter, though this particular morning has been warm with the sun shining upon the town.

It has been a fortnight since you were chosen, and you haven't been given a chance to forget or even think about much else. Your mentor, your family, the people on the streets, have all congratulated you and treated you with solemn deference. Though it's well known that nobody ever gets seriously injured during this venture, the townsfolk treat the ruse with all seriousness. If you didn't know better you would swear you had really been chosen to clear out a nest of raiders!

The ceremony is due to begin at noon sharp, at the toll of the church bells, though each of you has been urged by someone or another to show up a little early. You are to arrive with with only what you absolutely need - weapons, armor, spellbooks - as receiving your packs and gear is a part of the ceremony.

When you arrive, the square in front of the Temple of Erastil is deserted except for the other chosen. The bright, brisk weather and empty square mirror the mixed feelings of elation and somber reflection the ceremony is intended to invoke.

The town square is a basically an open area at the middle of town, with little in the way of decoration or vegetation - regular traffic has turned it into something of a circular dirt road. The church is on the south side, the town hall and guard headquarters to the north, and the Seven Silvers tavern to the northwest. Braggar Ironhame's primary competitor, Renet's Steel, is located on the southeast side of the square.

Welcome, folks. This is for OoC chatter big and small.

As I said in the other thread, the first order of business is finishing up charsheets. If anybody is still a work in progress, lemme know, but otherwise I'll go over 'em with a fine toothed comb.

I'll put up the IC thread later on. I'm considering starting with the morning of the ceremony in the interests of getting things off to a quick start. That should let everyone get in a few rounds of in-character reactions as they gather for their quest. My main reason for not going ahead and putting it up is so you guys can mingle here in the OoC and come up with any in-character connections you wished.

This is a game I decided to run as 'PbP practice' after reading and participating in this thread. The short form is that it's a Level 1 adventure, core + APG (no playtests, no other material whether it's Paizo or 3rd Party). I'm shooting for 5 or 6 players. While the title says it's a one-off, if everything goes hunky dory it is part of a three-adventure series and I might continue on past the end of the module.

So, full disclosure. This is not my first time GMing (PbP or otherwise), but it is my first time GMing for 'strangers', as it were. I fully intend to do my best to run a fun, quick (relatively), and complete game. In the event something does go wrong, I intend to observe the common courtesy of letting ya'll know instead of just winging out without warning.

Now, the long form!

About 200 years ago, an adventurer by the name of Ekat Kassen decided to settle down. Having adventured all around Nirmathas, he tamed an area of the Fangwood on the banks of the Tourondel river and founded a small town there. After ten years of prosperity, the town came under attack by Asar Vergas, an old adventuring companion of Kassen's, who felt that the man had slighted him during their last adventure together.

After two months of raids, the townsfolk discovered the enemy force was using an ancient crypt as its base of operations. Kassen himself set out at the head of a posse, defeating Vergas and his men in a bloody battle. He himself was mortally wounded, and entombed in the ancient crypt. An eternal flame was placed over his resting place, which has become an important part of the town's history.

The town, named after Kassen himself, sends a small group of townsfolk on a yearly autumn pilgrimage to light a lantern from the flame and bring it back to town, where it burns all winter as a symbol of the town's resilience. Usually, this is done by the mayor and a small group of dignitaries, but every few years - like this one - a group of young townsfolk are chosen for the task, a special coming of age ceremony meant to mirror Kassen's triumph.

-

The town of Kassen is a hamlet, with a population of 750. While the predominant character type should be adventurous younglings, an older mentor or bodyguard character is certainly possible as well. All of the characters should have some reason for currently living in Kassen regardless. The module also includes a mentor for each of the original 11 base classes; those who wish to tie their characters more strongly to the town by selecting a class mentor (or an associate) should state their preferred class and ask me, and I'll provide a brief description of the mentor.

The game rules are as follows:
- 1st level, 5-6 players
- Core and APG only. Please do NOT request other materials.
- I will allow traits, using the standard rules.
- 20 point buy, average starting gold
- Application deadline is midnight Central Standard Time (GMT-6) Friday, February 7th
- My preferred posting rate is 1/day, excluding weekends (though I have plenty of free time so I'll likely respond whenever necessary). Remember, keeping your fellow players informed of any potential delays in your posting rate is common courtesy.

My metrics for selection will be biased towards well-written characters tied to the town. Feel free to have a back-and-forth with me; anything that shows you'll maintain interest as a player is a plus. As little as one solid paragraph is enough for background. If you wish to go longer, the sky is the limit (so long as it's well written!), but keep in mind this is a one off.

That said, since this is a module and I'm trying to keep things as simple for me as possible, I will have to bow somewhat to having a 'balanced party'. While offering to play the cleric won't necessarily get you a spot, if a 'role' is oversaturated you should consider altering your concept.

I just wanted to clarify a little about how a 'critical' roll on a bomb would work. Since I can't find anything to the contrary in the section on bombs or on Splash Weapons on pg 202 of the core book, I would assume they have the 'standard' setup of 20 / x2.

The questions that come to mind are;

1) This passage:

The damage of an

alchemist’s bomb increases by 1d6 points at every oddnumbered
alchemist level (this bonus damage is not
multiplied on a critical hit or by using feats such as Vital
Strike).

I would think this means that a successful crit would do 2d6+(2x whatever the Alchemist's intelligence modifier is) + the extra d6s from levels (which aren't multiplied).

2) This passage:

Bombs are considered a weapon and can be

selected using feats such as Point Blank Shot and Weapon
Focus.

A player wants to pick up Improved Critical (Bomb). I assume this would be the same as above, except the threat range would be improved to 19-20.

Also on an unrelated errata-ie note, Point Blank Shot isn't something you select a weapon for, so I don't know if that's simply an error or means bombs function appropriately with PBS, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, and their ilk.

Thanks in advance for any insight into whether I'm interpreting this correctly.

I DM a group online (utilizing Maptool), and we started a ‘short’ session about a week after the start of the playtest. Between some technical issues, the rush of college finals season, and the fact that one of our players lives across the pond (England while the rest of us are in Central or Eastern time), we didn’t get a chance to finish ‘til this weekend.

The PCs themselves were level 9, built on a 25 point buy with HP as per the PFS guidelines. I wound up with 5 characters spread amongst 3 players (one of whom is brand-new to 3.x) and the adventure itself was hastily prepared, so the actual parameters of the playtest wound up being ‘see how the classes fare in roughly-equivalent CR fights’, which is probably not entirely helpful.

For the curious, here are the charsheets of the PCs;

Amy, a human battle oracle.
Riyn and Asgan, a human shield cavalier and his lupine mount.
Kagata, a half-orc bardic dragon disciple.
Rhys, a human Illusionist wizard who was cobbled together on short notice.
Theil, an aasimar celestial bloodline sorcerer with a focus on summoning (who will likely be converted to/exchanged for a summoner in the next adventure).

Anyway, without further a-do, the playtest itself;

The PCs encounter a man mounted on a large cat on their way back through the forest , heading to the trading town of Fiore after some unspecified adventure. He spun a tale of meeting friends to adventure out into the nearby fens in search of some unspecified treasure in some ruins there; a series of Sense Motive, Perception, and Knowledge (Local) checks revealed that the area was not known for any ruins, there were bandit problems, and there was somebody moving noisily through the brush off the road.

Fun fact: The only oath that was remembered in this session was the enemy cavalier’s Oath of Greed I assumed he had from some earlier heist; The +2 to bluff was counteracted by his rolling a 1, though.

Battle is engaged with the bandits, which consist of a 10th-level Halfling dragon cavalier riding a panther*, an 8th level druid wildshaped as a hawk flying above the fray, and four 8th-level warriors flanking the party.

The group progressed to town, where they learned the mayor’s (estranged) daughter had been kidnapped by a particularly brazen group of veiled bandits. The requisite information gathering and RP turned up that there was a nearby abbey that hadn’t contacted the town in some months, and that some of the dams they had used to claim land from the fens had fallen into disrepair and/or had been damaged. With the blessing of the mayor himself (and with his youngest daughter insisting that the bandits be returned alive to stand trial), the group set out into the fens.

They encountered a group of bog-standard chuuls (no pun intended) hunkered down around some pools along one of the areas of relatively dry land the group was using to traverse the fens. The battlemap was cramped and the ambush was sprung very close to the party.

The group continues toward the abbey to finish off this first short adventure in the series, and face a battle that didn't go anywhere near as planned and was (sadly) largely un-fun. The druid from the first encounter reveals (through a purely ad-libbed sequence as the Halfling cavalier earlier wasn’t supposed to die) that he has been assisting the bandits because they enabled his eco-terrorism against the brothers of the abbey who had so drastically altered the ecology of the fens. Some diplo-mancy leads to him agreeing not to brutally murder the group (and to consider a parley with the mayor of Fiore), but he clues them in that not all is as it seems.

A woman matching the mayor’s daughter’s description steps forth from the shadows, naming herself Mollie McTynker and helpfully informing the group that she has been leading these Black Veiled Bandits for the past months, using her insider information gleaned from connections and tavern hopping in town to get the best shipments and most goods. Villainous monologue delivered, she informs them she has to kill them and aggresses.

The map was originally intended to be a great cathedral-type thing cleared of pews, the main terrain feature being pillars (behind which are hidden four 8th level rogues). The original idea was for the non-cavaliers to skirmish along the sides with the mounted folks tilting and aiding where needed. Of course, my NPC cavalier had died, so I was left with four woefully squishy rogues, the dragon cav's mount (who joined the fray), and a 10th level battle oracle who lost initiative.

So to give a brief recap:

Fight 1 (10th lvl halfling dragon cav, 8th lvl druid, 4x 8th level warriors)

- PC cavalier did well with charging, and with his wolf attacking the player as a whole was able to contribute well enough. Challenge never came into play due to obvious mooks and phantasmal killer shenanigans.

- The oracle’s player enjoyed war sight and had a bit more freedom to throw spells into melee buffs than a cleric likely would.

- The NPC cavalier, on the other hand, was just plain unlucky. He literally rolled a 2 on his Braggart special ability then died due to three consecutive failed saves, at least one of which he had a strong chance to make.

Fight 2 (3x chuul)

- The cavalier’s melee ability was diluted (as he didn’t have much call to challenge here and he couldn’t’ charge), but he held up with the help of his mount again.

- Oracle’s War Sight ability proved useful, as did Improved Critical.

Fight 3 (10th lvl human battle oracle, 10th level cav's panther mount, 4x 8th level rogue)

... was just badly designed and a letdown for everyone; no relevant playtest stuff really came into play (except that, non-surprisingly, battlefield control can give a cavalier a headache.)

OVERALL THOUGHTS and CHARACTER CREATION FEEDBACK

I liked my NPCs. Had Braggart succeeded (or had I done something else) my cavalier probably could have gotten in some nasty damage after he maneuvered around the summons. Mollie (the oracle) had a routine involving tripping with a whip and utilizing her spell list to lay the PCs low for her minions – this didn’t work out largely because the minions were designed before I knew the party’s exact power level and because she lost out on initiative. All in all she had some good numbers and her spellcasting was still pretty decent; better than what I expected for an oracle.

The oracle’s player has been quite vocal in his feelings that the oracle is a somewhat-gimped cleric. The cleric can already spontaneously cast cure spells, which is a big part of their retinue. He also remarked he had some trouble picking up spells that weren’t overly circumstantial (though he made excellent use of divine favor and divine power’s extra castings per day). I noticed this when building Mollie, too. Hopefully this will be alleviated by the spells in the main part of APG. The same goes for the relatively few energy damage spells on the cleric list for some of the revelations of the other cleric types (which is what lead to the selection of the battle focus).

The cavalier player has expressed he had a blast and felt relatively useful (though he did gripe at me for not providing a really good target for Challenge). He glossed over the Oath mechanics, but he really enjoyed Stem the Tide (which kicked in twice) and had some trouble deciding which Order to take (which is a sign of a significant decision).

As an addendum, I've been working on villains for the next adventure, and the other foci seem better than we thought at first glance; I'm probably going to wind up with several oracles showing up just to see how all their permutations look.

All-in-all, despite some grousing, fun was had. We should get some more testing in over the holidays, and I plan to work in all the new classes as NPCs as best I can.

Sorry if this double posts, but I'm pretty sure the forums ate my first attempt...

My online group and I were attempting to get in a last-minute APG playtest for the Cavalier (in particular), and came up on a question we couldn't hash out after the session collapsed due to technical difficulties. Namely, exactly how a lance works with a charge.

The rules seem to say that the mount itself is the one doing the charging, which would mean it would wind up adjacent to the target and the rider would be unable to attack it. My thought is that you treat the two as a single entity, where the rider's attack is the pertinent one and thus the mount stops when the lance gets into attacking position. This obviously only allows the rider to attack (unless the mount has reach somehow, too), which seems fair to me.

I'm mainly asking if there's an 'official' stance (be that word-of-god from the designers or just a widely accepted way to do things), since this seems to be one of those times I can't get everybody to agree.

My online group and I were doing an APG playtest when the Cavalier's player noticed some discrepancy in our understanding of the rules.

Since your mount is the one making the charge, it must end up in a space it can make an attack from, which usually means a reach weapon can't attack since you must wind up adjacent to the target. One could also consider the mounted pair to be their own entity, with the mount stopping as soon as the rider's weapon can attack with its reach (or perhaps choosing one or the other). That keeps both of them from attacking, though, which may or may not be the intent.

I'm mostly curious as to whether there's an 'official' stance on this (be it actually from a designer or just widely accepted), as it seems to be the only part of the mounted rules I can't fiddle through to the satisfaction of myself and my players.