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I'm working on a way to map out the families of Golarion's languages. So far, what I have is this: If you want to save a copy of the original drawing to edit yourself, here it is.
In a recent thread we discovered from F. Wesley Schneider that Paizo is working on an upcoming line of Prawnfinder books, starting with the Prawnfinder Adventure Path. I'm excited by this turn, and thought a thread for speculation on upcoming books might benefit the community (and I wouldn't be further derailing the thread about excellent artwork). Let me get the ball rolling: Prawniary 1 From Prawn to Wereprawn to Prawnmen to Half-Prawn to Prawnfolk, a bestiary full of all things prawn! Shell & Tail: Ultimate Exoquipment The last word in every adventurer's carapace-related needs! Player Companion: Blood of Prawns With parentage hailing from the Celestial realm of the 7 Prawny Seas, these adventurers have a bit of a tail to tell... Prawnfinder Campaign Setting: The Obari Ocean You won't be able to tell your home campaign from a clam bake when it comes from the rich spawning grounds of the Obari Ocean! The first Campaign Setting book to devote an entire chapter to the tides and currents of Golarion!
To quote from a song, "there's something happening here... what it is, ain't exactly clear." I just did a search on Kickstarter for "pathfinder". Results: Red Dragon Inn - 117% funded, 4 days to go
Other projects of note that didn't come up on the first page: Rappan Athuk megadungeon - almost 1000% funded at nearly $250k
All told, there's well over a million dollars worth of money that gamers have pledged to Pathfinder-related Kickstarters. Edit: it strikes me that the joke was too distracting from the topic. Removed. But I'd love to hear speculation (humorous and not) on what Kickstarter will mean to Pathfinder in the future...
Looks like Paizo is helping out (or at least lending their name) with a sequel to The Gamers: Dorkness Rising called The Gamers: Hands of Fate. This is great news! I loved Dorkness Rising! It was definitely exactly what a gamer movie should be like. The kickstarter is here (75% funded, 10 days to go): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zombieorpheus/the-gamers-hands-of-fate To quote: "For years, fans asked us if we would consider using the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game in the next Gamers film. We heard you! Paizo has not only cleared us to use their awesome gaming system, but will be co-sponsoring The Gamers Live at Gen Con Indy, assisting us with distribution, and letting us steal Sean Reynolds for the following tie-in project." ... I'm just pleased as punch, and can't wait for my copy!
I'm starting a side project that's part of my Golarion-based campaign, "On Golarion's Roads" called "Nano-Gazetteers". These are short documents which chronicle small locations like a specific street or hill, and try to give as in-depth an account as possible of what goes on there. My focus is on maintaining continuity with existing source materials, while fleshing out as much detail as possible. The first such document is still a work in progress, but I thought I'd share it as I get started and see what people think. Would you use a reference like this in your campaign? Work in Progress: Nano-Gazetteer: North Stair to Misery Row, Absalom
Now that you-know-who is preparing for a marketing blitz around 5th edition, I think it's time for Pathfinder 2nd ed. Mostly, I think this would be a good way to capitalize on a larger marketing budget, but I could see some real value coming out of it. Some things I think would be required: 1) Everything is backward compatible: Pathfinder has too much source material to just invalidate it all. 2) Focus on extracting common elements. For example, unify all the Wis casters into a single class with existing variations like Oracle being specific builds of the generic base. 3) Generic treasure rules are key. Make magic items a sort of character that you can build from a set of basic attributes modified by additional features. 4) Create a richer system of specialization for skills 5) Bring psionics and firearms into the core (maybe coordinate with an Adventure Path that does the same for Golarion?) 6) Demote what doesn't work well from the core, out into a new APG and move what works best from the existing APG into core. 7) Make a "as Characters" book as part of the basic set of rules books which collects all of the playable races.
I just submitted feedback to Amazon.com, and I suggest that others do the same. Here's where you can submit: and here's what I said:
Side note: Congrats to Paizo for Pathfinder being so astoundingly popular on Amazon. Wizards and White Wolf products don't even appear in the side-bars for gift ideas and most wished for, and on the first page of 20 best sellers, 6 of them are Paizo products (#1 is a mis-categorized electronic game, so really Paizo occupies slots #s 1 and 2). Nice work, everybody!
I'm having a hard time in my game with inn names. My party is currently in Korvosa, and I'm using the source book on Korvosa, which has a number of inn names. Every one of which results in 2-4 minutes of pause in my game while everyone laughs. Names like "Sticky Mermaid" come across as kind of silly to my gamers, who are all adults, mind you. So, I'm thinking of working out my own inn names for future cities that they travel to (the campaign is a sort of Wizard of Oz riff with the party traveling across most of the northern inner sea). Anyone have any thoughts for useful names or systems for coming up with them? Some ideas I've had: Traveler's Inn (they won't all have a clever name, after all)
Any of those that you would think wouldn't work? Any that you'd use instead? Let me know.
I'm trying something experimental, and we'll see if my players bite. I'm putting adventure session summaries up after each game on Google Docs and then inviting all of the players to comment using the new "discussion" feature, giving their in-character perspective. I'll publish the results at some point on www.ajs.com/pathfinder once we get a feel for how it does.
(I did some searching before posting this, but I can't find this already stated... feel free to give me a link to an existing thread if there is one) I'm running some numbers, here, and I'm just not seeing how Powerful / Deadly Sneak (rogue talents from APG) are ever worth taking. The down-side of the talents is that you get -2 on your attack roll. The upside is that you get to treat 1s as 2s (Powerful) or 1s and 2s as 3s (Deadly). OK, so that leads us to a fairly simple bit of simulation. Roll 10,000 attacks at a spread of +0 to +20 attack vs. AC 10. If the roll comes up as a success by 0 or 1 point, you add a full sneak-attack plus base damage to the penalty you're taking for the talent (you missed when you would have hit). If the roll comes up a success by 2 or more you roll your d6s and add any bonus you get to your running tally. For even low-damage weapons and no damage bonuses, my simulations for 1 through 5 sneak-attack dice show that you take an overall penalty even when you're at +9 attack vs AC 10! Even at +10 attack vs AC 10, you need to have 3 SA dice before even Deadly Sneak will give you the equivalent of +1 to damage per roll. So this isn't a talent, it's a handicap. I haven't tried adding in critical hits, but as SA damage isn't multiplied on crits, this would actually make the talents worse, rather than better! Even more disturbingly, you want higher SA dice pools to get any benefit, but if you use SA against a target that has a higher AC than you thought (and remember, you have to have nearly no chance of missing to make this a benefit), then the increased number of dice work against you, multiplying to penalty that you take. Am I mis-reading? Below I'm only considering the case of deadly sneak with a 1d6 weapon with no damage bonus. "Attack delta" is equal to the attack bonus of the rogue minus the AC of the target (so +8, +9 and +10 vs. AC 10).
On the other hand, if you use -1 as the attack penalty, the numbers are all still fairly small, but at least positive for Deadly Sneak and +9 or +10 vs. AC 10 will actually work out as a benefit with Powerful Sneak. I'm still not sure if the talent would be worth taking over anything else, but at least if you buff it in this way as a house rule, it would give you a reason to want to use it, ever.
I'm reading through the Factions book, and I'm loving it, but one thing I'm not clear on: can a character be a free agent and gain PA with a faction, or will a faction only provide missions to those who have gone through the process of becoming a full member? The implication seems to wander in both directions, and I'm not sure if it makes sense to have a high standing in a faction without officially joining one.
My campaign is going to take the characters on a trip from Magnimar to Korvosa in a combination of land and water transport. They'll pass through Wartle, Whistledown, Melfesh and Palin's Cove. I'd love to have folks pick apart my descriptions of these towns and tell me if I'm off-base in any of the established lore or if anything that I'm inventing whole-cloth just doesn't fit. Wartle:
Read aloud: As you pass through a clot of swamp trees, akin to mangrove, but darker and with a red fungus that seems pervasive in the swampier regions through which you’ve passed, you see a few, small buildings. Paradoxically, as the land turns to bog and swamp, the buildings grow denser. The town before you is actually built on the swamp, most of the structures are raised up on stilts, and the road rises up out of the muck on a wood-plank boardwalk. Just at the edge of the boardwalk is a stone statue of a turtle. The statue is covered in green moss, but appears to be immune to the otherwise pervasive red fungus. Water streams out of its shell in sheets, a mesmerizing and pleasant effect. OOC: The town of Wartle is relatively safe for a night’s stay. Room rates are cheap and the drink is served communally: a brew known as Bog Grog which is an herbal moonshine somewhere between absinthe and a wheat beer. Disgusting though that may sound, Bog Grog actually works its way into the hearts of many travellers, and some in Magnimar have actually started to import the stuff, though straining out the chunks is usually required for such export efforts. Whistledown:
Read Aloud: The flat-bottomed boat you have taken up-stream rounds its final bend of its journey. Ahead, lies a town of quaint, whitewashed houses, trimmed scrub and gilded leaves on trees with marbled white and black bark. At first, a handful seem to be strangely over-sized, but as you near it becomes clear that it is the bulk of the buildings which are, in fact, quite small. In the air, a faint ringing sounds in a warbling, sometimes whistling, but seemingly random tune. The crimson-and-green-haired, 3 and a half foot-tall boatmaster approaches your group as his first-mate makes for the dock and offers, “if this is your first time, I don’t recommend trying to stay in one of the smaller inns. The Azure Cup is intended for folk of your stature, and it’s a right pleasant place to pause.” OOC: If the PCs stay at the Azure Cup, they will find the prices nominal and the food palatable, but the entertainment is exquisite. They currently host a travelling elven bard who quietly chants out the stories of his travels for most of the night, launching into an epic poem to an upbeat lute tune at the end of the evening. His playing is, as far as any lesser trained ear can tell, perfect. The stories of his travels illuminate much of the nature of the nations to the east including the constant war in Nirmathas, the watchful king of Lastwall, the undead atrocities of Ustalav, and hearty barbarians of Numeria. The poem he sings is about the creation of the Worldwound and the valiant ranks of Mendevian paladins that wage perpetual battles against the unholy wretches that it belches forth. Palin's Cove:
Read Aloud: Having passed south overland from Melfesh, through the small town of Baslwief and then continued to the south, you now find yourself cresting a grass-covered hill in the noon heat of what feels like a summer day. Over the rise, you see a town of slate roofs and red brick buildings. The streets are mostly hard-packed earth, but a cobblestone-paved street or two can be glimpsed in the industrial center of the town. That industrial center is also choked with a thick, dark-grey cloud of what appears to be smoke and ash pouring from the chimneys of large mill-like buildings, through whose few windows you occasionally glimpse an orange glow that could be the inside of a furnace or some glass or metal in a molten state. Near these buildings, giant machines of war: catapults, balistae and siege engines are turned on their sides and laid on barges in narrow canals that file past the mill-like buildings in orderly fashion. As you get closer the smell of sulphur and other pungent odors waft your way from the smoky town. OOC: This is the factory-town of Palin’s Cove which produces most of the war machines for Varisia and even a goodly chunk of those exported to nearby nations. The PCs may choose not to stay here because of the atmospheric conditions which are compounded by a series of hills to the east which trap much of Palin’s Cove’s pollution over itself. However, if they do stay, they’ll find the city boisterous, warm and overflowing with some of the most varied alcoholic imports in Varisia. In fact, Palin’s Cove has a proud tradition of being able to get their hands on anything from Wartle’s Bog Grog to sweet berry liqueurs from the dark depths of Garund! The three prominent inns of the small city vie for this distinction and each spend a sizable portion of their magins on such exotic imports.
I signed up for the subscription service for the Adventure Paths, Setting and Companion. This sounded reasonable at the time, but I was just informed through my subscription page that I'm going to be shelling out $71 in Feb. for 5 books. From today, my average over the next 4 months is $44.88 with Dec. being a very light month at $9.34. It's not that I can't afford this, but it's hard to budget for these big swings between "cheap dinner" and "new cell phone plan," so I'd like to know: what's the expectation? I know the APs are expected to be 1/mo. What about the other subscriptions? Should I expect there to be about 1/mo. as well? Is Feb. just a crazy month with two APs landing and two Setting books? If so, how many crazy months are typical per year? PS: One small improvement to the site which would really make it more usable is if the books listed under subscriptions were links to the pages for those books. When something new shows up, there, my first impulse is to check out the description page... but I have to search for it to do that.
I'm developing a campaign for a group of regular gaming friends. I've had problems in the past with introducing large, well-developed worlds to the players, who feel a bit lost in the details. What I'm planning this time around is certainly not original, but I hope to make it unique enough to be fun: the characters will come from our world, and will discover Golarion at the same time as the players. I've been working up some back-story for this, and was wondering if I could get others to comment on how well this fits in with the setting and/or any nice hooks that already exist for me to latch on to. Basic premise: Earthfall's impact on the magic of Golarion caused a semi-permanent series of random portals that open and close between that world and ours, occasionally moving items or even people between them. A society of "Portal Born," as they call those who come from Earth, was founded by an ancient Egyptian who arrived in what is now Andoran during the period just after the founding of Absalom. This society calls itself The Brothers of the Portal, and continues to seek new Portal Born and help them to acclimate. They have been trying to find a way to return them to their home, thus far, unsuccessfully. That's the background on the Bothers, though I have quite a bit of plot related to what they believe can be done and how the players will be whisked up into their plans in a story very loosely based on the model of The Wizard of Oz. The Portal Born all get a trait that has some heavy bonuses to skill use that their advanced tech-level background can assist with (medicine, political theory, etc.), plus a minus for just about everything else (which goes away for any class skills the characters pick up later). Any thoughts?
I'd rather see people buy Pathfinder from your Web site, of course, but you might want to check in with the folks at Amazon and make sure they have cover art for #1, just to improve sales there too. I really would like to see this magazine do well. I found it for pre-order on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Pathfinder-Rise-Runelords-Offerings-Ruinlords/dp/1601 250355 Can't wait for my first issue....
What were they thinking? This "we're yanking the rights," thing is just too heavy-handed. Wizards should have made an effort to ease the customers into the idea that Dragon would end. As it is, folks like me are left frustrated and confused. In a fit of pique I just went to my Amazon account and canceled $100 worth of pre-orders for Wizards products. Was that the goal? If so... mission accomplished! To Paizo: I'm skeptical of the future, but willing to be (and hopeful that I will be) proved wrong. Show me that a new campaign word can compare to your efforts to keep Greyhawk alive and relevant. If you can do that, then I'll be a loyal subscriber, but please don't predicate it on any new D&D books because frankly I'm never going by another one.
I thought this might do some good: My "So you'd like to... run a Dungeon Adventure Path" list on Amazon It's my contribution to trying to make the Adventure Paths all the more popular so we can keep seeing more of this wonderful trend! Thanks Dungeon! PS: Can't wait for the collected and revised Age of Worms. I'm wondering what the steel ball trap will be like in the revised version....
In Dragon 340's Bazaar of the Bizarre ("Items of the Zodiac"), there's an item called "Ettin's Club". It says, "when making an attack, the club's user may attack a random creature within his reach insteat of choosing..." this makes it sound like a trade-off: attack randomly and get the advantage, or attack a target and just get the normal features of the +2 greatclub. However, then it goes on to say, "This ability activates automatically before each attack. The wielder cannot suppress this effect." So, which is it? Can the user choose to attack randomly, or does the user ALWAYS attack randomly? Thanks.
So, who else has done models for the SCAP? I did one for chapter 4's first encounter on the streets of Cauldron. For that, I did a mockup of the street from the map, with a ramp going down to the next street. I'm thinking of doing the shrine (area 5) as well, since it's such a nice space with multiple levels, and really lends itself to 3D thinking. Sadly, my street model wasn't done for the adventure, and there were still some buildings with styrofoam roofs, but that's not so bad, since I'll be re-using this map in chapters 5 and 7. I'll have it fully finished by then, but of course then it won't be exactly what the book had laid out, so I'll have to customize some of the encounter to it.
The first session was great (I started at chapter 4 for those who don't recall). I warned the players that this was hard stuff, and so they really optimized well... a bit too well, perhaps, but we'll see. They walked through the Umber Hulk in 2 rounds (my bad on forgetting the SR, but that was only 6 points of damage... the big guy went down on massive fighter damage). I then flew the dragon too close to the party (not the recommended 30' up), did a very nice 6d10 to 4 party members, took half his remaining HP in a round from the melee types, withdrew to 30' and got roasted by the psion prior to his third action, then died from the falling damage. Then they hit me with an interesting twist: the cleric plans to "speak with dead" to locate its horde... "horde?!" says I ... "oh yeah, sure the horde... of course. Well look at that clock!" So next time, we're going to deal with that. I've used my treasure generator to whip up a suitable horde for the appropriate CR dragon, but I could use some input on where it would be and what the dragon's corpse would say in response to the magic question. Clearly, it would answer in draconic, but there's someone who speaks that language there. It would tell them only in general terms... perhaps directions that are only meaningful to someone who is flying (e.g. "the tallest tree in the jungle canopy a few miles to the east has a cave near its base")? Or does jr. still live in papa's lair? If so, then the players could be in for a very bad time....
It seems that my copy of Dragon #345 has been dropped into the 345th layer of the Abyss. It's really my fault, I know, I didn't notice that each subscription had its own change of address setup, so I only changed Dungeon and it seems the USPS didn't handle the change of address that I filed with them too well. Now it's mid-June and I just figured it out. Questions: 1) can I beg, grovel and scrape enough to have another issue sent out? 2) Again, my fault, but you might want to consider some kind of interstitial page warning users when they have different shipping addresses for two subscriptions, just so that they're aware. Thanks either way, and I look forward to reading my next action-packed issues!
How do the citizens of Cauldron interact with the Underdark in your games. Is there commerce? Is it a sort of black market thing? Do some people treat the Underdark as just another part of the region? Does everyone know about the tunnels below the city, or is that something that's keept semi-secret? I'm trying to work out just how much my players should find out, given that I'm running starting with chapter 6, and thus their first interaction with the Underdark will be days away from Caudron.
One of the things I love about Dungeon is the fact that it gives me a sense of what might be going on "down the road a piece" in my campaign world. One of the fun results of that is being able to yank one of the newly introduced creatures with a sense of where it came from and what others of its kind are doing. However, keeping track of what issues of Dungeon creatures were introduced in, and what setting they were described in can be a bear. To fix that, I've written up an index of all of the "new monster" sections from all of the issues of Dungeon that I have (basically, the AoW issues, a few from the teens and 103). As I borrow or buy more issues, I'll try to complete the table, but I thought that others would be able to make some use of it, so here it is: http://www.ajs.com/ajswiki/Dungeon_creature_index This isn't a replacement for getting the issues, since there are no details or stats other than CR for each of the creature names, but if anyone officially associated with Dungeon feels that my use of the names for an index is a problem, please feel free to let me know here, on my wiki or via email (you have all of my contact info), and I'll modify it as required. The only thing I've done that's a bit questionable is calling the "setting" for some of the adventures "Greyhawk" when it was listed as "Any" in the magazine. I do this when specific Greyhawk settings or NPCs are used in the adventure, and not because I'm trying to assert anything about the (in)correctness of the labeling in the magazine.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm starting my players off in this AP at 6th level, and they won't be from Cauldron. In order to pull that off, I'm looking for some good RP hooks that will get them interested in the fate of the city. Simple interactions with folks like the Striders will help, but I'm trying to avoid the reaction that my players often have to danger, which is to say that it's not worth it, and go back to town. In other words, I need stronger motivation in chapter 4 than celest's request, but more generally I need some stong incentives for the whole plot (once things start rolling in chapters 8 and on, I don't think it will be a problem). Thoughts?
I am thinking of starting off my SCAP campaign at chapter 4. There are a few reasons for this: 1. My players have just gotten to level 6 in my previous campaign, so even with new characters, this provides power-level continuity 2. No one is thrilled about starting over with first level characters. 3. We only game once a month, so this would give us a shot of finishing the campaign... ever. 4. Chapter 4 presents a nice entry point (new group of adventurers catches a certain someone's eye, so he decides to test them out...) So on to my question: Are there any important items, clues, NPCs or anything else that I need to fold up from earlier chapters? I'm thinking of having the Striders meet up with the party before they go to the Cusp, so that one's no biggie. Anything/one else? Also, how would others suggest handling the adventures that the players missed in terms of how they were resolved? I'm thinking that it would have been a combination of the Striders and Stormblades did most of it (with a bit of a rivaly developing between them, which will spill over onto the party). Does that not make sense for anything? I've so far only skimmed most of the chapters after 4, focusing instead on what I need to know to run that, so please feel free to warn me if I'm doing something incompatible with the larger plot. Thanks.
Hi there. First time poster, long-time gamer, here. I've been running D&D since my teens in the 80s, but just recently I've gotten into the world of Greyhawk as opposed to writing up my own worlds. Players seem to prefer having a handle on the world, and since Greyhawk was the core world for 3.5 (not for long, from what I hear), I chose it. A few sources have gotten me in trouble, recently though. I'm running an adventure in the Pomarj, and I've just come across the map at the Ulek triad site: http://www.thepou.net/images/map_PoU_smallhex.jpg It has more detail than the map that Dungeon put out, and both have more detail than the one that came with the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. Point is that there is this town of Fenrill and an unnamed river that I had not figured on before I located my town of Danube and a river not far east of it. I've worked out the whole region and some plot elements have already been given to players that lead them to expect its location, but it bothers me that the town that I came up with is so close to this other town for which I have no detail. So, what is known of Fenrill and what has happened to it in the last 10 years or so? Is there a decent reference for the town outside of out-of-print materials? Thanks! |
