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Partially inspired by this thread, I created a Letter of Marque fro my campaign: Link
This blog (link) had very good info on PaizoCon / GenCon in the past, and it seems like it's going to repeat this in 2012.
You can ask the artist for permission and go from there. But if paizo owns the rights to the art, wouldn't you have to ask paizo's permission?
How about a PDF version?
So at least one of the examples could be done with a weapon: "...hitting a foe in a sensitive spot to make him sickened...". With a little creativity you could describe all the penalties caused by using a weapon:
So I would definitely rule that you can indeed use any weapon to perform a Dirty Trick, as long as the player provides a cool description... but RAW, I'm not sure.
An observation from our last session: druids can have an immense impact on the hexploration part of the campaign. The first 2 levels, the group had a hard time exploring the map, with slow horses and slower ponies. But then they reached 3rd level, and the gnome druid got the eagle eye spell from the APG. At 3rd level, the eye appears at a height of 520 ft, which means the horizon is about 27 miles away, that's more than 2 hexes.
When the druid will get wild shape, he can turn into a bird and, combined with eagle eye, get an overview of large parts of the map very quickly. Later on, when he gets commune with nature, he will even be able to explore the hexes very easily.
I made up an additional competition for the festival:
The rules of the Drinking Competition are easy: every competitor has to drink every drink served, and the last man standing wins.
The drinks served are: 1. 3 kegs of Darkwater Mead. This dark-brown and flavourful mead is quite strong.
2. 3 kegs of Darkwater Mead.
3. 3 kegs of Darkwater Mead.
4. 3 kegs of Darkwater Mead.
5. 3 glasses of Sarain Spice Wine. The best red wine Sarain’s vineyards have to offer, heated and flavoured with imported spices.
6. 3 glasses of Sarain Spice Wine.
7. 1 tumbler of Mwangi Fire Whiskey. This is a taldan whiskey infused with fire chilis imported from the Mwangi Expanse.
8. 1 tumbler of Mwangi Fire Whiskey.
9. 1 tumbler of Mwangi Fire Whiskey.
10. 1 goblet Daggermark Special. This cocktail is used in Daggermark to “test” protections against poison.
11. 1 glass of Water of Life. This special moonshine from the First World tastes strong and fruity, recalling memories of every fruit the drinker ever tasted, and many he never tasted at all.
12. 3 kegs of Darkwater Mead. Just to spill it down. If only one competitor is left before the last round, he may continue nonetheless to win the special price. If the winner of the competition drinks all the offered drinks he wins a Decanter of Endless Water, Beer, or Wine, which is a Decanter of Endless Water that can also produce a stream or fountain of beer or wine when alternate command words are used. Beer and wine produced in this way turn into ordinary water when they haven’t been consumed after 1 hour. If more than one competitor is left after the last drink, they continue drinking 1 glass of Water of Life followed by 3 kegs of Darkwater Mead until a winner is found. For every additional round of drinking Water of Life, the save DC increases by 2. I haven't statted up any competitors yet, but that shouldn't be hard as there is only one strategy to win the competition, which is a good fortitude save...
I like the Irlgaunt very much. Can't wait to "complicate" a travel through the mountains with a swarm of them...
There are freely available software tools that can help you. SomePDF Image Extractor extracts all images from a PDF file, including the maps. GIMP helps you to cut, modify and scale maps. PosteRazor helps you to transfer very big images like correctly scaled maps into PDFs you can then print, cut and glue together to get a beautiful map. I did this with a map from this adventure, and the result was quite good; it took ~1 hour to complete.
Here are some more house rules concerning magic items: Crystal Ball: A Crystal Ball placed in a city allows its
Crystal Ball with Telepathy: With this Crystal Ball,
Decanter of Endless Water: This item supplies fresh
Ring Gates: If you link two cities with Ring Gates,
Vorpal weapon: If the kingdom has a Royal Assassin
These tables are GREAT!!! Really appreciated! Thank you Zen! When exactly do you roll on them? Each hour of travel through the Stolen Lands? You could roll on them every time you roll for random encounters, so you basically roll twice (5% chance when entering a hex, 15% chance per day spent exploring or camping in a hex).
STOLEN LANDS: AMBIENT ENCOUNTER TABLE – WINTER
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51 - 60 icicles: a small waterfall is crusted with beautiful icicles. 96 -100 fey mound: see spring ------------------------------------------------------------------------
51 - 55 vanishing track: see spring 56 - 60 appearing track: see spring -----------------------------------------------------------------------
90 - 100 avalanche: an avalanche threatens to bury the PCs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
51 - 75 treacherous ice: a seemingly frozen solid surface of ice turns out to be pretty weak.
STOLEN LANDS: AMBIENT ENCOUNTER TABLE – FALL
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51 - 60 mushroom circle: non-edible mushrooms grow in the shape of a big circle on a forest clearing. 61 - 80 edible mushrooms: in a shadowy spot grows a large cluster of mushrooms; roll a d4:
81 - 95 poisonous mushrooms: in a shadowy spot grows a large cluster of mushrooms. They are poisonous, and if eaten they have the same effect as poison; roll a d4:
96 -100 fey mound: see spring ------------------------------------------------------------------------
51 - 55 vanishing track: see spring 56 - 60 appearing track: see spring ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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51 - 70 quicksand: the rain has made this part of the swamp even muddier, turning it effectively into quicksand.
STOLEN LANDS: AMBIENT ENCOUNTER TABLE – SUMMER
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51 - 70 fireflies: at dusk, myriad of fireflies start a luminous dance that lasts all night. 71 - 85 dancing fey: in the evening, colorful lampions light up some distance from the PCs, and song and laughter float through the trees. If the PCs try to reach the lights, they never come any closer, no matter how far they walk, because the dancing fey are half in this world and half in the First World. The PCs will always lose sight of the lights, only to detect them somewhere else, but equally far away from them. 86 - 95 forest fire: a forest fire starts. 96 -100 fey mound: see spring ------------------------------------------------------------------------
51 - 55 vanishing track: see spring 56 - 60 appearing track: see spring 96 - 100 rainbow: a warm summer rain falls, and the sun paints a beautiful rainbow into the sky. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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51 - 60 strange bubbles: strange bubbles of gas come to the surface and spread a virulent stink, but the cause cannot be determined.
I Made up tables of "ambient" encounters for the Stolen Lands. These encounters typically don't have a CR; they are meant to create a certain mood and to immerse the players deeper into the wild wolrd of the Stolen Lands. They are meant to be used in addition to random encounters.
STOLEN LANDS: AMBIENT ENCOUNTER TABLE – SPRING
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51 - 70 singing birds: at dawn, the songs of different species of birds fill the warming air. 71 - 85 fey laughter: the laughter of happy fairies floats through the trees. Maybe the fairies enjoy the first rays of spring sun that shines through the canopy, or a particularly beautiful spring flower. The fairies are elusive; if the PCs insist to follow the laughter, the next random encounter should be with fairies. 86 - 95 field of spring flowers: on a small clearing some early, colorful flowers blossom. 96 -100 fey mound: Fey mounds are the burial grounds of fey, where the border to the First World grows thin. Fey mounds are considered hallowed ground, as per the hallow spell. They also produce other strange effects in the areas where they exist. The effects shown in the table below affect everyone who approaches the mound and fails the saving throw (as per the spells). All spells are at caster level 20. Fey are immune to these effects.
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51 - 55 vanishing track: a quite obvious track from wild animals which ran parallel to the PC’s route vanishes without a trace. The cause is that the animals moved into an area where the border between this world and the First World was very thin at the time, and wandered over into the other world. 56 - 60 appearing track: a quite obvious track from wild animals starts suddenly out of nowhere. The cause is that the animals moved into an area where the border between this world and the First World was very thin at the time, and wandered over into the other world. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
81 - 90 falling rock: the beginning thaw has caused a sizable rock to come lose and fall down on the PCs.
91 - 100 landslide: the beginning thaw causes a muddy landslide. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
I made up some optional rules (house rules) for factoring spells into kingdom building, as some spells are powerful enough to have an influence on the kingdom. Continual Flame: In the night, criminals and monsters
Teleportation Circle and Permanency: If you link two
Wall of Fire and Permanency: A City Wall can be
Wall of Force and Permanency: In theory, a City Wall
Poor King Vacant of Nohexland, his rule was short and unsuccessful.
Suggestion: for the >1 square stuff, you could explain the difference in that Brevoy sends teams of engineers/builders to assist; once the territory is cleared/secured, in a world where stone shape spells exist, imagination is the limiting factor... One point diverging significantly from reality in the building rules is that you have to pay the BP cost for a building up front. That means if you start to build a cathedral (58 BP), you already have all the material (stone, wood, iron, workforce, ...) available.In reality, the construction of cathedrals often stopped for several years while they were trying to raise new funds. You could house-rule that it is possible to start construction of a building without having the full BP amount, and continuing as you have BPs to spare. This way, you could construct a cathedral in 58 months by spending 1 BP each month. Of course this would introduce a lot of error-prone bookkeeping.
I have a few question concerning "The Founding of Tatzlford" on page 13. 1. Does the rule apply that all kingdom hexes have to be adjacent to at least one other kingdom hex? 2. When the players tell the Rezbins to found their village in the Temple of the Elk hex instead, will this conflict with the events in "Blood for Blood"?
I wrote down a homebrew set of rules to replace the "Big Six" magic items with innate abilities of a character. In addition to the Big Six (1. Magic Weapon or Amulet of Mighty Fists, 2. Magic Armor or Bracers of Armor, 3. Cloak of Resistance, 4. Ring of Protection, 5. Amulet of Natural Armor and 6. stat boosters in the form of various Girdles and Headbands) I also included the Mantle of Spell Resistance and the various skill boosters to be replaced by these homebrew rules. These rules are based on reducing the wealth progression by a certain factor (DM's choice between ¼, ½ or ¾) by reducing the value of all treasure found (including magic items) accordingly. In parallel, there is a point-buy-system for new Heroic Qualities. The cost of each Heroic Quality is determined according to the Magic Item Creation rules, divided by 1,000 and rounded. The Heroism Points used to buy the Heroic Qualities are equivalent to 1,000 GP each. The intention behind these homebrew rules is to stay as near to the core rules as possible, so that no rebalancing of monsters etc. is necessary. Please tell me how you like this approach, or if you see any problems / exploits. (I hope the tables are somewhat readable, these boards are really limited concerning tables. You can copy the tables and paste them into a simple text editor like notepad, the columns should align better that way)
• A DM can use a wealth progression of ¼, ½ or ¾. All treasure values are multiplied with this factor(reduced). • When a character reaches a new level, he gains an amount of Heroism Points as shown in Table 1. He may then immediately purchase Heroic Qualities shown on Table 2. The DM decides which Heroic Qualities are available in his game. • The following Heroic Qualities may be available:
• In Table 2, Heroic Qualities for which no equivalent magic item exists in the core rules are marked with "*". If a DM wants to stay as close to the core rules as possible, he should rule that those Heroic Qualities are not available. • Rules for stacking bonuses apply normally to bonuses granted by Heroic Qualities. • Heroism Points do not have to be spent when a new level is reached. Heroism Points may be saved to be spent upon reaching a higher level. • A character can pay the difference between Heroic Qualities of the same kind to gain the better Heroic Quality. For example, if a character has Giant Strength to give him a +1 enhancement bonus to strength, he can spend 6 upgrade points to make that a +2 bonus. • If the Though Bones Heroic Quality is available, its bonus up to +5 does stack with the bonus of armor worn. This is an exception to the normal stacking rules. Also, armor may be enchanted with special properties without having at least a +1 bonus, and may not have a plain bonus itself. It still has to be masterwork. • A DM may remove the magic items which are equivalent to the available Heroic Qualities from the game. • Because Heroic Qualities do not take up spaces on a character’s body, they cost double compared to an equivalent magic item. This also takes into account that Heroic Qualities cannot be stolen, sundered, dispelled, disjuncted, or suppressed by antimagic effects like magic items can. If a DM wants to remove non-consumable, non-weapon magic items entirely from his game, he should consider halving the Heroic Quality prices given in Table 2, as there are no magic items competing for the spaces on the body then. • There is no Heroic Quality equivalent to magic weapons. If a DM wants to remove magic weapons with plain bonuses from his game, he should consider applying the bonuses of the Mighty Fists Heroic Quality to all weapon attacks and renaming it to Powerful Attacks. In this case, he should also rule that a weapon can be enchanted with special properties without having at least a +1 bonus, and may not have a plain bonus itself. It still has to be masterwork.
________¼ WEALTH________________½ WEALTH________________¾ WEALTH_______________ ________HEROISM_HEROISM_________HEROISM_HEROSIM_________HEROSIM_HEROISM____ ____
________ENHAN-__RESIS-__DEFLEC-_NATURAL_ARMOR___COMPE-__SPELL___ENHANCEMENT ____
+1______2*______2_______4_______4_______2+______-_______-_______10_________ ____
* this bonus is not available via core magic items
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