blinovitch's page

The rake is on my mind this afternoon. I'm finding aspects of the class problematic to either bring into Pathfinder or replace with existing features of other classes.

Fencing or Guns
Fencing's a thing I haven't figured out yet either, as it's one feat that unlocks a lot of what would probably be combat maneuvers in Pathfinder. I don't yet know the maneuvers well enough to know what there is duplicated, or needs modification. Guns, on the other hand, is basically Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Firearms).

Fortune My Mistress
This probably ought to be a scaling bonus based on half of the character's rake levels.

Just a Scratch
The frequency has to change to fall in with Pathfinder classes. Maybe like 3 plus DEX mod? Or WIS or CHA or...

Craven Attack
No changes.

Sworn Enemy
It's a flat +1 to hit, +2 damage against a chosen humanoid. Maybe it becomes bane-like instead: +2 to hit, +2d6.

Dirty Trick
It's a menu of underhanded tricks to choose from, for a total of six by level 20. Two of them inflict conditions -- blinded and sickened -- kind of like the dirty trick maneuver in the APG. The rest do things like give a to-hit bonus by sacrificing DEX's AC bonus (rakish stance), increasing movement briefly (judicious retreat) and make an attack of opportunity when an ally deals melee damage to an enemy (opportunist).

The easy thing would be to swap in the cad archetype's dirty maneuvers feature and call it good. However, the rake might suffer in later levels, as it's not getting the features that synergize with those maneuvers like the cad's do.

Also, I really like those rake abilities like opportunist. I'd like to keep them. Maybe the rake's dirty tricks would work like a monk's ki pool -- style points? -- or hunter's tricks. The list would need to be expanded for an interesting range of choices.

Another thought is the rake's tricks should key off style and flamboyance. Maybe rakes can inflict conditions through Bluff or Intimidate, say. What about a version of the paladin's smite, adding the CHA modifier to CMBs involving dirty tricks?

Advanced Sworn Enemy
Continuing the bane route, make it +4d against the sworn enemy. Or maybe it gives another benefit: bestowing sworn enemy bonuses to an ally?

Scarring Attack
Kinda dull for 17th level. Maybe 1 point of CHA damage in addition to normal damage. Or marking the enemy in some way for other benefits?

And then the rake needs a capstone. Maybe an ultimate dirty trick, depending on how those pan out.

I also welcome you to use my Swedish culture. Doug gave it his approval back when I posted it on the Atlas forums.

Nice! I'll include the Swedes and update the Albions.

Off the cultures, I've been scanning the race creation guidelines, trying to see if they can be used to nudge the Corona cultures more in line with each other, but I'm not seeing it yet. There's a very small section of race creation that touches on the customs and learned kind of stuff that cultures bestow.

As far as the classes, I'm very much disinclined to use the Raider, Soldier, and Scout as full classes; I think they translate much better as Class Archetypes for the Barbarian, Fighter, and Ranger. I do think the Agent, Natural Philospher, and Rake work well enough on their own to be updated as new base classes.

I can totally see that. For simplicity, I decided to stick with Doug's conception of the new classes replacing their analogues completely in the game world. The option's still there for GMs to re-replace them, or switch up abilities archetype-style, but I wanted to get those classes as written into Pathfinder as closely as possible for completism's sake.

The raider particularly seems to suffer, as rage powers seem flat-out better than wardances, but that's a call for GMs to make.

I'm not sure how I feel about the Witch; I like the Pathfinder Witch much more than NC's Witch, and think much of the flavor Doug was going for can be achieved with a class archetype. Also, as far as classes, I think that the Gunslinger ought to be included as standard.

The Corona witch in particular, I agree, works well as a Pathfinder archetype. Keep everything about the Pathfinder witch, but replace the familiar with an imp.

I flirted with the idea of "Agencies" as an optional class feature for Agents, giving them some bonuses based on what organization or group they worked with—the Culper Ring (Fredonian), the Inquisition (Espaniard), Her Majesty's Intelligencers (Albian) and probably several of the existing organizations and secret societies in NC. Not sure how much potential the idea has, though.

I get where the idea's coming from, giving agents something like arcane schools or sorcerer bloodlines -- golly, those need some pruning for Corona, don't they? -- but it feels like a social/character component mingled with a mechanical class feature. On the other hand, clerical domains depend on the deity worshiped, so there's precedent.

A glance at my own half-arsed site reveals I did more work on the Natural Philosopher than I thought:

Nice work! Do you have a particular method for picking out what spells you think are appropriate for phenomena? I want to expand them, too, but I don't have a sense yet of how much is too much, or what really doesn't fit phenomena (unseen servants, probably).

I love wonder seed. That's a great addition. And I'm pretty much sold on a botany degree, too.

I posted drafts of the agent, raider and soldier last night.

I drafted the Scout this afternoon: http://sites.google.com/site/projectboreas/core-classes/scout

Not that I'm aware of. I'm plugging away on my own version: http://sites.google.com/site/projectboreas/

I finally came back to this project after taking a break from populating the SRD with non-mechanical content. My first task was updating the natural philosopher. I dithered back and forth about what to add or change. In the end, she got the usual hit die upgrade, dropped turn undead, gained field notes and the final dissertation capstone.

I'd appreciate any comments to tune things up. This is my first try at creating class features at all, so I have a lot to learn about making abilities useful and fair. For instance, I thought about going with the usual half class level bonus for the field notes feature, but it seemed a bit much for some of the skills that fit with the sciences.

Next step: fleshing out the phenomena lists with post 3.5 spells. I'm also still thinking about ayellowbirds' idea of degree powers for the natural philosopher.

Enjoy this podcast supplemental to our playthrough of Broken Moon.

Fellow players Dan and Toby plus our GM Hunter joined me on Carnagecast recently to talk about playing through Trial of the Beast.

Ooh, great idea! I'll definitely have a go at seeing how the cultures work out in relation to the ARG rules... I also want to work on possibilities for an option to use nonhuman races (especially the more human-seeming ones like changelings, vishkanya, half-elves and half-orcs, and planetouched. I have a definite role in mind for fetchlings in the far north, as spawn of the tarriaksuit shadow people of Inuit lore).

I was just thinking yesterday it really made sense for half-fey or changeling to be an option, beyond what the Albians receive.

I'd been planning to let the culture bonuses go as is, but I like the idea of holding them up against the Advanced Race Guide, even if it's not a strict one-to-one comparison.

Off of a comment elsewhere in the forum that oracles were intended to fill the role of clerics who don't worship a specific deity, it occurred to me they could fit very well in First Ones cultures, maybe even as a deist Uropan.

My opinion is that the only classes that really need to be kept and tinkered with much are the Agent and Rake; the Natural Philosopher works as an alternate class of the Wizard (but needs some beefing up).

I like your idea of giving the philosopher degree powers that kick in like bloodline or school powers.

For the rake, I've wondered about replacing its dirty tricks with the cad's dirty maneuvers. Some of the tricks translate very easily to Pathfinder's maneuvers and I like the cad's scaling CMB/CMD bonus, but I'm less sure about tricks like rakish stance or twist the blade. Maybe those become abilities separate from dirty tricks that translate to maneuvers.

As a little extra, here's a list i've compiled of all of the existing Pathfinder RPG monsters (including third party sources) that are based in the lore of the Americas: http://ayellowbirds.tumblr.com/post/42077714186/pathfinder-rpg-monsters-fro m-the-americas

How about lake monsters, a la Champ and Ogopogo?

I've started adjusting the culture and class elements that refer to feats and skills that don't exist in Pathfinder. One thing that keeps coming up are the feats that give +2 to two related skills. Often one or both of those skills aren't in Pathfinder. The simplest solution seems to be replacing them with Skill Focus pointing at the new skill, or closest substitute.

Sounds fair?

That's generally the tactic i've been trying to use, where i can figure something out.

The nice bit is so relatively little of Northern Crown's proper nouns were declared product identity. I blanched at the block of text at first, then cheered up when I realized most of it was from Nyambe and didn't actually show up in the Northern Crown books.

When I ran my game, I used the old "Defense Bonus" option from 3.x, found here:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm

That helped get across the feel of the 17th century better, the time when heavy armor was being phased out and becoming less and less common. Characters still get a good AC, but don't...

I'm looking at doing a Northern Crown campaign sometime soon and armor has been on my mind. In fact, I think it was a post of yours over at the Atlas forums that first brought defense bonus to my attention.

In the game you ran, the players used defense bonus in conjunction with Uropan and First One armor, right, not the typical d20 armor choices?

As rested and recuperated as they'll ever be, our heroes strike out On the Road to Caliphas to follow their slim lead on the dark rider of the Whispering Way and make contact with the Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye.

Can our heroes overcome the Mother of a Thousand Young?

Deep beneath the waves in skum-infested caverns, our heroes are made sick to their stomachs -- and lose some marbles -- by the Depredations of the Mi-Go.

Catch up with the story so far of the wayward conscripts. They've come a long ways from the mutiny aboard Man's Promise -- and none of it was easy.

I'm very pleased that I found the gumption this weekend to sum up the broad strokes of Carrion Crown since my last recap in The Story So Far, in which our heroes shame a count, treat with werewolves and do their level best to irritate everyone in Illmarsh.

I've been on a recapping hiatus for longer than I realized! We're still chugging along, midway through book three, Broken Moon.

In the meantime, enjoy this podcast episode I and some of the other participants recorded looking back on The Haunting of Harrowstone.

The adventurers trike out for Schloss Caromarc on the strength of an invitation from their former defense client, the Beast of Lepidstadt, and concern about the mob on the poor golem's heels. Is anyone surprised they don't get the warm reception they expected?

Dan's excellent at giving his characters verisimilitude with that kind of attention to detail. Thanks for reading!

It's all hands to battle stations when a mast appears on the horizon, with it comes the task of Capturing Man's Promise.

It had to happen. The odds were against them from the start. But knowing that never takes away the cold ache when A Hero Falls!

This week, your intrepid pirates Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles as they get off the damn boat for a while not once, but twice!

As ready as they'll ever be, the adventurers take the low road into The Acid Factory of Messrs Vorkstag and Grine.

This week, a brief Interlude with the Judge before the adventurers penetrate to the very heart of Vorkstag and Grine's compound.

This week in Carrion Crown, what you do with a mob of Drunken Pickle Farmers once you figure out your wand of hold person doesn't have the oomph to keep 'em down?

I recently began playing the Skull & Shackles adventure path with a group of friends. Like Carrion Crown, I recap the sessions on my blog.

So far, the first session begged the question, "We're On a Boat?!" and in the second, the (mostly) pressganged sailors had to contend with Bilge Rats & Brawlers, as well as the consequences of the stiff-necked chivalry of one of their own.

My role-playing group started playing the Carrion Crown adventure path back in January. Since then, I've recapped each session on my gaming blog.

I maintain an actual play index where you can find links to all entries to date of my actual play reports. Or you can subscribe to the blog via RSS.

Right now, we're halfway through the trial of the Beast, having just uncovered The Seven Victims of Brother Swarm.

Carnage the 13th, a tabletop gaming convention in Fairlee, Vermont, seeks Pathfinder Society GMs for this year's event, November 5th to 7th at the Lake Morey Resort.

Living campaigns have been part of the Carnage experience since the very beginning, mostly notably the RPGA and TC Realms. We'd like to host the Pathfinder Society as well.

If you're a Pathfinder GM interested in running some games, or even spearheading the Pathfinder Society presence at Carnage, check out our website for more information about the convention and get in touch with us at info@carnagecon.com