Maybe this will be a good game after Owlcat fixes their bugs and horrible design decisions, but for right now, I highly recommend you avoid. Spoilers!: - The built-in companions are terribly built when you consider how difficult the game is. That's true before you hit the difficulty spike that is the Abyss. - Bugs everywhere. I picked up a mythic ability that makes me immune to energy drain, and promptly got 4 negative levels in the next encounter. I've had crashes to desktop, graphic glitches, a quest event dialog randomly repeat itself every 1-2 minutes while on a map, and more. - The Abyss is a nightmare of unfun game design. Rotating the camera to move the landscape is a neat gimmick, but the game engine does not handle it well, and when you have to run back and forth ad nauseam, it gets real old real fast. - The difficulty in the Abyss takes an absurd spike. One enemy starts the fight with 68 AC, a bunch of spells already cast, around 40 spell resistance, and a caster level of 29 (so DC 40 to dispel). Literally the only way I beat this enemy was to spam Stormbolts with my sorcerer who happened to get lucky with the SR roll AND the enemy rolled a nat 1 on the save. - Another example of difficulty spike - lilitus. 14 attacks in one round at +43 to hit with each one. If you don't win initiative and kill/control her before she acts, one of your characters WILL die. - Carnivorous Crystals. Quite possibly the worst enemy in any video game I've ever seen. An aura (that you can't out-range) that forces all characters to roll a DC 38 Fortitude save every round to avoid being stunned for 1 round. The description of the ability says a successful save makes you immune, but it doesn't work that way. Just about every encounter with these is with 2-4 of them, so if you want any characters to act, they have to succeed at multiple DC 38 Fortitude saves to get one turn.
James Jacobs wrote:
Just want to say that I absolutely love this concept for how an elf "dies" of old age. Beautiful concept with a nice touch of whimsy. Let's see, I need to ask a question here...what video games have you been playing recently?
Thank you for your prompt response. It's absurd that I waited 2 months for a response to an email and instead got a response on the same day on the forums. However, I have to say that the response is wholly unacceptable. This adventure is not "favoring specific player characters." It flat out says that humans are not allowed. That's a severe restriction on the use of this product. Having a restriction on a product's use not clearly labeled, then refusing to refund people who cannot use it because of that restriction, is incredibly unfair. I've been bilked by Paizo, and will buy nothing further from your company because of this.
This is a duplicate of an email I sent in over 2 months ago. I would like a refund for The Slithering PDF, bought in order #22320564. Nowhere in the description of the adventure does it mention that it's for non-humans only, which makes it all but useless for my group. This is certainly something that should be included in the product description.
Here's an updated link for the zip: Link Fair warning that it's been many years since I looked at this, and Hero Lab has gone through a whole lot of changes that might cause some problems with the files. I don't expect to have time to look into any issues that might come up.
Going to copy and paste this from a post of mine from ~5 years ago: My party had to flee from Kazmojen their first encounter, as he defeated them very easily. As they were fleeing, Lord Orbius made his appearance and took Terem, but I had Kazmojen go ahead and sell the other children to Pyllrak. The party was quite distraught when they finally defeated Kazmojen and found a receipt on him indicating that "Pyllrak of the Darklands" had purchased them. They found a discarded journal in Pyllrak's room that indicated his plans for reselling the children in the Darklands, and so the second chapter of Shackled City turned into a chase through the Darklands as the party tried their best to catch up to Pyllrak. It turned into one of the best parts of the entire campaign.
I'm toying around with a Windows application that digitizes PF2E monsters/NPCs for an all-in-one place I can view their statblocks when I GM. If I ever release it as something beyond my own personal tool, I'd like to be able to include the action icons used in PF2E. Looking over the CUP and (newly added) PF2E logos and icons, I can't find any reference to them. Is there a way to use them in accordance with the CUP? It'd be a real bummer to not be able to duplicate the look of the PF2E statblocks because the icons are unavailable.
Neutral Good. To me it's the alignment that most embodies the classic fantasy hero that rises above and wins the day. It's the kind of character I grew up reading about and loving, and it just feels right. Lawful Evil is probably my favorite villain to fight against, and to GM as. They can be so downright reasonable with their evil that it can make for tough moral choices, which allows the heroes to, again, rise above. Plus, more than the other two evils, I feel like LE villains have a real shot at being redeemed.
PF1 CRB: $49.99, 576 pages ($9.99 for PDF)
Total cost: $94.98 (or $19.98 for PDF)
DND 5E PHB: $49.95, 320 pages (no PDF)
Total cost: $149.85
Purely from a value perspective, I'll take Paizo's business model in a heartbeat.
The thing that bothers me the most is that Lone Wolf has proven they're incapable of meeting timelines and completing features for a product besides HLC - Realm Works is still not complete nearly 5 years after the Kickstarter. They've been promising that the Content Market was coming "soon" and is "nearly done" for almost two years now - the "complete Pathfinder library" was promised to be released in early 2016. Their reasoning always seems to be that the Hero Lab and Realm Works teams are separate. Well how about before launching an entirely new product, you first lend some people from that project to Realm Works and get it completed? Their HLO FAQ has a lot of commentary about features that are not going to be in the initial release, but are "planned" for the future - kind of like how the Content Market was planned. Like custom content (a hugely important feature)...sure, they may say it will be released soon after HLO is released, but can we trust Lone Wolf to make that deadline? I could easily see it slipping to 2018, then 2019, then who knows if it will ever be released? Lone Wolf has squandered every bit of goodwill I had for them, and HLO is not what I want. I want Realm Works to be completed, and Starfinder to be supported in HLC. I have no need whatsoever to run it on a multitude of platforms (I use PCs/laptops), no need for online access (I use Dropbox to store my portfolios), and no desire to pay a subscription to access content I've already bought.
Dot for now, with rolls. Rolls:
4d6 ⇒ (4, 2, 4, 4) = 14 4d6 ⇒ (1, 3, 3, 4) = 11 4d6 ⇒ (2, 6, 3, 6) = 17 4d6 ⇒ (6, 1, 5, 6) = 18 4d6 ⇒ (6, 4, 4, 2) = 16 4d6 ⇒ (2, 5, 1, 2) = 10 First set of rerolls
(1, 3, 3, 4)
(2, 6, 3, 6)
(6, 1, 5, 6)
(6, 4, 4, 2)
(2, 5, 1, 2)
Reroll the rerolls
(3, 3, 3, 4)
(1, 6, 3, 6)
(6, 1, 5, 6)
(6, 4, 4, 4)
(1, 5, 1, 6)
Even more rerolls
(3, 3, 3, 4)
(2, 6, 3, 6)
(6, 1, 5, 6)
(6, 4, 4, 4)
(4, 5, 4, 6)
Hopefully last reroll (4, 4, 4, 4)
(3, 3, 3, 4)
(3, 6, 3, 6)
(6, 2, 5, 6)
(6, 4, 4, 4)
(4, 5, 4, 6)
Final stats (4, 4, 4, 4) = 12
Dot. Looking at creating a slayer/warpriest of Asmodeus. More details coming in the next day or two. Full disclosure: I have GM'd this campaign from start to finish. If you'd rather not have a player like that, I understand and will not create the submission (apologies if this has already been answered in the thread, haven't had a chance to read everything yet).
It sounds like the GM is making the NPCs particularly difficult to work with, for some reason. However: Spoilers for Shackled city. You have been warned:
There's a lot of corruption in Cauldron's government. There's even a time late in the adventure path that there's an ideal moment for a PC or friendly NPC to become mayor. It's possible the GM is trying to make you hate "the establishment" to set things up for your group to be the linchpin for revolution.
This doesn't mean, however, that all NPCs should be jerks. If the players don't care about Cauldron, the whole adventure kind of falls apart.
Non-spoiler version: It's possible the GM is trying to set things up for later. However, even if that's the case, there should still be some friendly NPCs, as your party should care about Cauldron.
Since I wasn't sure what I wanted to submit, I gathered the current submissions/proposed ideas: Archpaladin Zousha - paladin progressing to Aldori Swordlord
After getting that together, I'm thinking of a dwarven wizard. Don't have much yet, will try to get something submitted tomorrow. Full disclosure: I was a player for the first book of this AP IRL - we TPK'd in the final battle.
I'm interested in playing a halfling witch that focuses on the halfling jinx racial trait and combining it with hexes. Kind of the ultimate debuffer. What I think would be really interesting is for the character to have gained her powers during The Gap, and she doesn't know who her patron is. Haven't had a chance to build her yet, or think too much of her background...just throwing the concept out there and to get a dot in the thread.
DM-Salsa wrote: Eh, I'd say that's too dark for what I was going for. It sounds like it'd be interesting, but I was kinda hoping for more of a heroic tone. In this case, I think I'll withdraw my submission of Voidson - he's not really the heroic type. I'll see about coming up with a different character instead.
I'd be interested in this, and have what I think is a pretty good concept for a character I've yet to be able to play. He's an inquisitor of Groetus that's quite insane (in a functional way), and he's looking for an artifact that he's convinced Groteus showed him in a vision that will bring about the end of the world. He's interested in searching out the lost nooks and crannies of the world, looking for this artifact. I'd be interested in Spheres of Power, and could even start off sans magic. Edit: Thinking about it, it'd be a cinch to convert him from worshiping Groetus to a Daedric prince instead - perhaps Mehrunes Dagon.
For my current Reign of Winter campaign, I'm going to be replacing large pieces of book 3, as I'm not a fan of much of the book. My plan is for the party to meet up with the Rashalka centaurs. The Rashalka are going to be bound to Baba Yaga's service through an ancient pact their ancestors made with her. Essentially, they were once human, and their tribe was decimated by raids from other tribes that rode horses. Desperate to survive, the Rashalka bargained with Baba Yaga to make them greater than horse riders. Baba Yaga struck the bargain, turning them into centaurs and binding them to her service until <something>. I don't know what the <something> is. I want this to reinforce the fairy tale themes RoW has going through it, so something abstract yet still tangible. The players are going to be entering the Thrice Tenth Kingdom, and while there, I'd like for them to be able to assist the Rashalka in freeing themselves from Baba Yaga's service by finding the trigger for <something>. The best I've come up with so far is they'll be bound to her service until they "find that which you gave up." Then in the Thrice Tenth Kingdom, the party finds an enormous pile of bones - all human legs. It's workable, but a little too literal for my taste. Anybody have any ideas that would work for this?
First thing I'd try to fix those errors is going to Portfolio -> Strip Missing Sources. I did it on mine and it looked to work correctly after that. As for the first encounter, it's not really a CR 4. There's 3 CR 1/2 street thugs which works out to a CR 2 encounter, and then Jil (a CR 6) is included in there, but she's not really part of the encounter. It really should be labeled as a CR 2 encounter. Also, I'm not sure where you're seeing 24 hp for the thugs - they have 15 hp as far as I can tell.
You might want to mix things up a little bit, as having multiple encounters of <humanoid with a weapon> in a row can get repetitive. One really important note about your cleric - unless you want to kill the party, do not channel negative energy to harm. Against a low level party, 2d6 area damage is a lot, Will save or no. 2 failed saves in a row can be death and a lot of hard feelings.
Numerian wrote: anyone know who is Trell (not Mappo but the power mentioned in Mistborn)? Trell is only mentioned a few times in Mistborn (Trelagism is one of the religions Sazed offers to Vin, focusing on the night sky and stars). Miles mentions Trell briefly in Alloy of Law, and Marasi even more briefly in Shadows of Self. My hunch is that Trell has something to do with the Shards...perhaps a holder of a Shard we know nothing about yet?
My players were scared of the T-rex skeleton, and were sure it was going to be a TPK, until they noticed a quirk in how I drew the map and darted into a small niche in the wall of the cavern. The T-rex was too big to fit through, and as a skeleton, too stupid to get away, so they just chipped away at it with ranged attacks. Glad the portfolios are helping out.
|