aech's page

alright, thank you

had a question come up in a game and couldn't find anything in the forums.

if an arcane archer uses manyshot and rapid shot for a full round action can you also use the ability to imbue an arrow with a spell? or does the fact that it takes up the casting time make this impossible?

also just to clarify, only one arrow per round can be imbued, but all 3 would have the elemental enhancement, right?

Well since he's too small to wear it on his hands where else would he put it? it's not like he was using it as a way to wear more rings than normally allowed...

as above, rule 0 it and tell them to have fun with it

i love the idea of hair as a weapon. dotting for perusal later

two traits granting the same bonus don't stack, and yes you can't fail skill checks, you just roll a 1. (you also can't critically succeed)

it's the internet, see : haters gonna hate

With that in mind I created psion (using psionics unleashed) who had been alive for 2000 years and used mind swap when the current body he was in became to old, as you can imagine, he was not a nice guy.

The back story went that he had recently taken the body of and elvin boy, and I spend the first six months of the campaign pretending to play this whole other innocent little boy. Frankly, I figured the players would catch on sooner...

I did something similar to this in a 4e campaign with a changeling, it took them over half the campaign to figure it out, although I was evil and working behind their backs the entire time everyone had an awsome laugh about it OOC after the game. Love those unexpected character development/ RP moments.

Seems like a good plan just to talk to everybody. If it's a problem with anyone it'll also give them a chance to clean the air and you can try to remind them to separate in character RP and OOC friendships.

well just a question I have, are you planning on having this turn into a longer running campaign, or just stringing a bunch of modules together?

good to see new people getting into the game though, hope you guys continue to have fun :)

Going soft is necessary sometimes, but don't be afraid to kill them. you always want them to feel like they're going to die without ever letting a TPK happen.

I wouldn't try to stat him out, make him a dungeon. in order to defeat him the adventurers have to destroy his heart, etc. instead.

also he doesn't have to even be aware of the gnomes, what if he just destroys because he's a beast and the gnomes just live on his shell picking up the scraps of what he leaves behind. being that large he probably wouldn't even feel gnomes and like scurrying across his shell.

just some ideas that I thought of. hope they help

as above, play a bard. always fun to whip up a rousing song while everyone is being all serious battle mode.

also ask your GM if you can use other sourcebooks, it's usually a simplification factor and if you explain how you feel he might be willing to reconsider. at least for something like archetypes or the above mentioned bloodlines.

I'd go with the lightning bolt/call lightning, but talk to your GM first to make sure that your game will follow the laws of physics. Electricity should let you get all of the monsters in the orb in one hit, and I wouldn't think that electricity would break the orb spell either = nicely sustained damage combo

ok I checked, the only real limiter here is the feat prereqs as you can't take certain creation feats without a certain caster level. my mistake

isn't there just a penalty if you don't have the correct caster level yet?

if you feel like screwing with your character begin a string a mauling murders that happen every few nights. The dogs are blamed but thier pen is undamaged and no blood is found on them in the morning.

The town starts demanding the animals are put down the PC's no doubt will want to prevent that and thus must solve the murders which could either be some other wild critter or some bbeg who is teleporting the animals out of their pens whipping them into a frenzy against some poor villager and then returning them before morning. Perhaps even leaving illusions in their place to fool the PC who stay up to watch the pens.

no such thing as a free lunch in Pathfinder ;)

also this, this is also good

firstly, a natural 20 doesn't equal a critical success on skill checks (they can't crit fail or succeed) so unless 20 plus his handle skill equaled your DC modifier they aren't 'handled'

secondly, do you want them to keep the dogs? If you want to include them in the story or see your players use them advise them that they're dangerous wild animals that need to be properly caged, maybe see an animal trainer in town etc to find out specifics.

if, however, you don't want to keep the dogs then just have them escape, eat the stable hand and whoever gets in their way on the way out of town. wild animals kill things, that's why adventurers go out and kill them

like, dotting for reference

What you might want to think about is doing a many worlds kind of game. Think of it in terms of a sci-fi space opera where just about anything can fit in though rather than spaceships (a touchy subjects here) you have gates to other worlds/planes that appear naturally and are stble paths.

This type of setting would allow for people to use whatever they want from any publisher by creating another world. Even if someone writes in a Mary Sue character somewhere, they are still tiny in comparison to the scope. You could even throw a cataclysm that wreaks havoc on the world and not threaten the entire setting.

The hard part would be cohesion, which would be a big strike against this style. It's possible to add elements to bind everything together though. For instance one pantheon of gods for the entire place, with the ability to alter them a bit based on cultural variance. A central starting place might be good, like a City of Adventurers that is run by Adventurers who have mostly settled down. But that's just my ideas.

I actually really like this idea. It made me think of .//hack and their many worlds based off of one hub thing.

it would also allow cohesion as long as there's some kind of reasoning behind it as well as allowing much more variety and freedom with the stories and locales

so me and my friends are about to finish up a campaign that i wrote and they're already talking about what we're gonna do after it...

I don't feel like trying to write anything else so soon, and they're fine with a module of some kind.

so my question is, what are some fun midlevel modules for a party of 3-5 PCs. (midlevel = 9-14 or so)

Kolokotroni wrote:

But what exactly would the wife playing have to do with 'compromising the game'?

If the adventure path is designed for 4 people, then having a 5 PC party would be too easy (without changes). In theory.

In practice, I don't think the difficulty level is that finely tuned.

To answer the original question, I suspect either she or the rest of the party might get bored if she's playing a cat and everyone else is playing a regular PC race (for instance). An eidolon might be okay, though.

that goes back to the problem of who controls her actions? her summoner, aka controller/master, or her own free will?

Thanks.

I don't think it's worth a 4th level spell slot -- and Nondetection is one hour per level -- not 2 hours per level like my suggestion (based on Water Breathing as a reference).

the spell says it works as in Nondetection, meaning that they acknowledged the absence of what you're requesting. the only stipulation is it can only be broken into 1 hour increments.

the designers obviously didn't want it to split among recipients as water breathing or they would have worded it as such.

the only problem I immediately see with this is that the player whose companion/eidolon it is is that they are supposed to have control over said creature in battle meaning that she wouldn't be doing anything except what that person tells her 'character' to do. However I have had situations like this rise before, it makes more sense from an RP standpoint, imo.

example: the party I was dming for requested to turn a skull into a skull that could house an elemental or fey spirit of some kind. (a la dresden files) they came up with appropriate spells, components, and prices so I let them and the skull became the character of one of the guy's friends who wanted to hang out without getting overly involved in the game since he didn't know how often he would be able to join.

another time we had someone capture & befriend a goblin who he made a follower. let someone take over the character instead of rolling up one and he became a goblin with character levels.

overall it's up to you as GM and your players, if the other people are willing to try it out there's no reason not to, unless you have some reason not to.

remember, the game is only limited to how you, as the GM, want to run it.

it's so close to being funded too. just need a little more guys

Be sure to ask your players where they stand on the sliding scale of RolePlaying vs RollPlaying.

also a good thing to do.

What I usually do with a campaign that I'm creating all by myself I'll write out a prologue to their story and act like they're the characters in a book. there's always a big over arcing plot to follow and usually some recurring villains, but I leave decision making and what role they actually want to play in the story completely up to them. I'll also usually have some generic dungeon maps with lists of monsters depending on what kind of dungeon or area of the world they find themselves in. Then it's just following the story as you go. I like this because most of the time your players will surprise you with the decisions they make and it ends up being more fun for everyone involved. There is never a specific way to solve the issues they're facing but there are a lot of options for them.

wand with re-loadable cartridges of magic missiles or similar.

Hand mirrors that can become transparent on command with a "detect magic" HUD, or allow you to communicate with other mirrors of its kind if you know the individual you'd like to speak with.

I love these two ideas. good ideas for some fun items, might put these in my game sometime

to clarify the player is a cleric and as such I've tried to explain why he should change his alignment/deity or change his actions. And yes I've explained that it wouldn't require him to act differently, only find a new deity perhaps. The only problem I'm having is his reluctance to 'change' his alignment. After reading the posts here I think I'm going to talk to him about it before the next game and try to explain it more clearly so that we can continue on. I don't want to lose the party healer, but he can always be replaced with a wand.

also Haladir, thank you for explaining it all so clearly, I'm gonna let him read your post when we talk to try to clarify

as a GM do you feel like you should change your PC's alignments based on their roleplaying actions and choices made?

I have a player who enjoys killing, raping, pillaging, and thieving wherever he can. I don't have a problem with this because it fits his character and he has the skills to back it up.

however I'm not liking that he has a true neutral deity and he claims that "he's chaotic neutral so he gets to do whatever he wants"

I told him that he either needs to change his alignment or cut the crap and he told me that if I tried to force him to play an alignment he didn't want to he would just leave the game.

How do you guys handle problems like this and do you have those CN players that just rain destruction on everything? I've been friends with the guy for a while and don't want something stupid to ruin our gaming group either

as Johnnie said, don't get bogged down in the rules, the most important part is to have fun.

1) I agree with johnnie, use them as a guidelines to what makes sense based on how you want the encounter to play out.

2)I would say it's a knowledge check (possibly arcana) or perception to notice that the symbol is repeated and if they are curious enough to ask for a history check then you can give them the additional information. if, on the other hand, you really want to give them the info just ask everyone to make a history check.

3)I would say a skill check is necessary.

4)I agree with only one DC check, but it's up to you. I usually let everyone roll one check and take the highest score for the party, this way they can also avoid the bad luck that is inherent in rolling dice.

I love this idea, dotting for further perusing when I get home

I personally don't feel like rping requires funny voices or acting out everything that happens.

if you wanna try bringing more rp into the game then try every time they encounter an npc such as at the inn, the local shop, etc. have them talk to you as if you're the npc in question. if they want information, make them work for it.

but really, you can't force them to get into character, and if they're unused to the idea it can take a while to get them used to it. Encourage them to make decisions based on their character's ideals when you can, have them discuss things in character such as battle plans or how their loot gets split up.

as long as you as the DM keep encouraging them then soon they should get into the habit of acting as their character would and interacting with the game world through you.

I usually play a wizard or sorcerer of some kind, but when there's a boss or fight where our fighter/barbarian isn't being useful I'll usually have him hold the potions and/or wands and then stand in as my meat shield while trying to poke at the bad guys with a bow.

sure it might not be fun for him, but our GM usually makes sure to involve everybody in the battle, i.e. a flying bad guy with some minions on the ground trying to overwhelm our ranged attackers.

Even the basic story sounds awesome, dotting to watch progress and to maybe 'steal' this at a later date

it looks good, the only thing I'm confused by is the lemon grass. you describe it as something that people smoke all the time, but it does at minimum 6 damage every time you smoke it as well as adding 1 hp for the duration? I don't see this as a good thing so I'm just wondering why someone would want to smoke this stuff?

You're the DM, make up some reasonable numbers and go with it.

the ever present problem of who the hell is actually gonna show up to a session. In my opinion the dungeon looks balanced for a party of 3-4, if you end up with more than that you might want to throw in a few more enemies. for the final boss instead of adding more enemies since it's such an epic fight you can increase his hit dice to make him last a little longer or give him some AoE attacks instead so that it'll spread around the damage and everyone can share the 'fun'

It honestly looks very well put together though and looks like you guys will have a lot of fun :)

snapshot pretty much summed it up

also, if he's acting out his part act out yours. if your two characters are at odds rp call him out on it. if he refuses it sounds like you'd have party support on your side and you can show him what's what

I know it was bad dming on my part.
but thank you for the suggestion, seems reasonable

in my opinion the arctic and antarctic areas both lend themselves well to horror, something about unsettled lands separated from the mainland by oceans always seemed really hopeless and disparaging to me.

so in the campaign I'm currently running I had an npc that gave my PC's advice every now and then to help them on their journey. The problem is that I ended up liking him so much that I basically made him omnipotent. Now my players, for some reason, feel like he's a suspicious character and the next time he shows up they need to try and catch/kill him so they can get more info out of him. (he seems to know a lot about their quest but he won't share all of it)

Should I A)never have him show up again
B)have him show up and put a light smack down on the players to keep them in line
C)let them try and fight him, getting their asses kicked in the process
D)some other option

Side note: The characters know little to nothing about him, although they have brought up the fact that he almost seems like a Deity that took interest in their quest and decided to offer some words of advice every now and then.

Well, it's nice that you guys don't want epic content, but I didn't want firearms or a gunslinger and yet we have them.

I also don't really want as much Lovecraftian Mythos in Golarion.

I agree (except the lovecraftian mythos, I enjoyed the look on my parties face the first time I said the word Cthulhu)

All the content that Paizo produces is yours to choose to use or not use. If you don't wanna use it, don't. obviously people do want it, so they're making it. It's like saying, "well, some people didn't want a 4th edition bestiary since we already have enough monsters so we decided not to make one."

the whole point is that the game is constantly expanding and giving the players and GM's more options to work with to create new stories. There's only so many times you can fight an owlbear before you just wanna fight a few bearowl's, you know?

if it fits story wise then go ahead. as stated the monster in question would need invisibility and good stealth, passing him a note should work, it'll let the other pc's know something is up though (may ruin a little bit of the dramatic tension)

just make sure that he isn't taken out of the game for too long otherwise it'll just get frustrating and he'll lose interest quickly. I'd suggest having a separate area in the dungeon that he's taken and then he's forced to try and find his party again, following the noises of battle or what not. it's doable, just hard to pull off.

love it, would love to see the other mages made too :)

although the rules don't allow a critical failure/success on a skill check, I usually house rule it to the contrary, regardless of how good you are at something you're bound to fail every once in a while, this also makes it a little more fun since there's always a chance for the awesome rogue to have a trap blow up in his face or trip over himself while trying to jump a pit. just as it's fun for even the clumsy paladin to be able to pull some ridiculous acrobatic stunt with a nat 20.

The casting into empty areas thing is intriguing... I think it would be like a summoning spell, really; it's not doing harm, it's just sitting there until some idiot walks into it (or an unfortunate is tossed into it).

I agree with this in terms of it's equivalence to summons, which are specifically allowed.

I feel like most of the spells would fall to the GM's discretion, i would probably look at how much they're trying to use sanctuary for it's intended purpose as a rest to rebuff/summon things and how much they're just trying to abuse the immunity it offers.

but if it specifically affects an opponent with damage or hampering effects it should be a no-go

BigNorseWolf already gave good explanations for the listed ones.

as a GM i would say that he should pay 3/4 of the full market price, meaning that if the other party members wanted to buy their own they would all end up paying 3/4 of the total price for their own. nice way to make it fair imo.

or you could say that he gets this item now, and next time an item comes up someone who hasn't gotten an item yet gets it until everyone has received one, rinse and repeat.

for the most part splitting up loot should be up to the party though, so ask them how they feel about splitting it up giving them options or letting them rp through it. for the most part this works better than 'telling' them how they should split it up.

Wrexham3 wrote:

A cloud you can stand on and fly? There was an old programme on British TV called 'Monkey' which had one of these. I think the programme was Japanese originally.

I was actually thinking of more of a pet cloud, but one you can ride would be cool too. I think the idea of cloud riding, along with the extending pole, came from some old Chinese story that had a Monkey King that could do this or something like that.

see Sun Wukong in "journey to the west"

I also like the idea of the macguffin being a 'halfway point' that would require them to chase down the abyssal master as this would let me continue the story and put in some high level inter-planar travel if they're interested in continuing the story.

Right now I have it written out as:
the 'everflaming brazier' requires the 'breeze in a bottle' (originally a tornado that they have to trap in a magic vessel) to stoke the flames, after which the 'magic dirt' is added and heated into a molten liquid which requires the 'flask of magic water' to cool it into an urn that can trap the succubus.

(I sort of took a lot of the ideas listed here and mixed together my favorite parts)

and then as stated before, I'll talk to them about whether they want to continue the story or not and if they do it wouldn't be that hard to have her master show up at the final showdown.

edit: does this sound alright, or is there anything that should be edited?

Haha, loved that book so much thanks for recognizing the reference. and I was actually planning something along the lines of what richard said, something that would both reveal the succubus' true nature and weaken her enough to kill. the bag of 'dirt' hasn't been opened so I can always just say it's sand and i told them incorrectly the first time.

ooh, also like that one richard, definitely given me some stuff to think about. I have until the weekend to think about the story, so I should be able to work one of these in. And the bottle of air actually makes sense with the dungeon design I had in mind for wind.

Awesome suggestions, really like the idea of incense or a horn as well as an everburning fire for the last item.

appreciate the help and quick responses from everyone, thanks guys :)

So I'm in the midst of dming for the second time and, as per my players request, came up with a completely original story since they've gone through too many modules lately and wanted something original they could sink their teeth into. Since I didn't have quite as much time as I wanted to prepare, I ended up writing my story as we go, and I've hit writer's block with what the mcguffin is turning out to be.

Basic summary of the story so far:
On a quest from a goddess the party is traveling around the country as they ramp up for war trying to find four magic items that when put together will be able to stop a succubus that has seduced the king and is controlling everything from behind the scenes. Brainstorming came up with a bit of an elemental story with there being four temples in far off locations that would give them an appropriately elemental item that would work together to 'grow' the actual item. So far they have a flask of water and a bag of dirt. Now they're heading towards the wind temple and I realized that I have no idea what the item might be for it.

also, this is my first post on the forums so if it's in the wrong section just let me know, advice seemed appropriate to me.