blood_kite's page

Not voluntarily.

The same character has also had the distinction of having been shot in the face...with a hammer.

That Colonel is the one that should be yelling, "Halt!"

An empty pedestal with the plaque:

"Look upon my works and- COME ON! I HAVEN'T EVEN FINISHED WRITING THE INSCRIPTION YET!"

Getting tired of adventurers shattering and looting the giant gold statues I keep erecting to show my greatness.

I am also of the opinion that spellcrafting Silent Image gives you a +4 and automatic save attempt against it, if you can see it when cast or readily identify it once you see it (i.e., this room is narrower and missing several doors).

The spellcraft issue is why I like wands of Silent Image.

Make it look like you cast a spell that blocks line of sight, like Fog Cloud. They can't spellcraft it to see if it is a fake, so they can't see through it without interacting with it.

Sure the DC is 11 and they can get a +4 depending on how they interact with it; but I'm not expecting this illusion to be useful for more than a round or two anyway.

Is there a hurry to spend all the wishes right away? They would make some pretty great emergency options.

They must be used in a number of minutes equal to the number of wishes received. DM should grab a stopwatch and popcorn and watch the fun.

"LSD is not an appropriate chemical to put in your splash grenade, even for your friend's rave."

...putting the toilet paper on the roll so it comes from the bottom instead of the top?

You. Monster.

So Baba Yaga is an ancient immortal who wears many faces, travels around the universe wreaking havoc for personal power, and has a sentient house that's much bigger on the inside and can travel between worlds in an instant?

We've found Missy's next regeneration.

Michael Hallet wrote:

"No, you can't. You have absolutely no idea what the creature is and thus what resistances it has."

"Well, they look the same so I'll conclude they have similar resistances, that at least sounds logical."

"That would be meta-gaming."

This bit really isn't true. If I describe a creature as a walking skeleton it isn't metagaming to consider that using a club might be more effective than a spear. It may be an undead skeleton, it may be an animated object, either way players are permitted to react to observable features without being accused of metagaming.

Likewise, if I find myself facing a column of mobile flame 15' high I am unlikely to throw a fireball at it and may consider something like Snowball to be a better idea. I don't need the requisite Knowledge Planes check to identify it as a fire elemental to see that a thing made of fire might be resistant or immune to fire.

This makes sense. It is also why Brown Mold is so annoying.

"Hmm, it does cold damage when we're near it. Kill it with fire!"

It will come down to what kind of game the GM wants to run.

I've used riding dogs for my druid companion because he was a Halfling and dogs never seem to get stopped at gates.

I've also played in Dark Sun, where 7 foot tall mantis men are allowed into cities and the guards have a specific introduction for them that helps translate their racial hierarchy structure into the city's structure.

Then their is my Venture Captain Deinonychus. His human companion has to remind him that town guards are not for eating, even though they move and it smells fear on them.

The party was trying to determine why one of their members was invisible to scrying and divinations, a very rare ability that usually comes from having...unusual parentage. So they went to her mother, the high priestess of her goddess.

Single Mother Cleric to her PC daughter: "Your dad? Well, um, you see. When a priestess loves her goddess very, very much...she'll, uh, agree to be polymorphed into a man so that she can get her goddess pregnant to fulfill and ancient prophesy."

Now all the PFS Chosen One's just need to coordinate their levels, sign up for the same scenario at Paizocon, and show up as the Disney Princess Pathfinder Party!

For a level 9 party, a group of level 2 bandits is a good role-playing opportunity.

Ah, level 2.

In my limited personal experience with high level play, teleporting past all the travel hasn't been a problem. In some cases we purposefully didn't use teleport to see some of the stuff in between; then we got attacked by an Ancient Blue Dragon. Good times.

Must be a King.

You're a young, independent wizard who doesn't need no help from no clichéd path to immortality; go the Baba Yaga route. She charted a path to immortality without resorting to the limitations of gods or the shortcuts of undeath and devil bargaining. It's not a well documented path, so you would definitely need to work with your GM to figure out details for your character.

I'm sure some of the costs, like casting several county-sized areas into eternal winter and rendering hundreds of your descendants down as magical battery juice, will not particularly bother a proper evil wizard like your character.

Player: I suppose we'll need new and appropriate clothes for this party. It would be nice if Mortaine went with something beyond 'concealing black robe and hood' or 'black laminated full plate.

Warmage Mortaine: I don't have to be wearing all black, just as long as I have something black.

Me: Like his heart.

Wizard: I cast detect magic and scan the room.

GM: After a few rounds of scanning you narrow down that the irregular plinth at the center of the fountain radiates overwhelming magic.

Wizard: Really! What school?

GM: Universal.

Wizard: (Gasp) There's only one spell that could be! I HUG THE STONE AND WISH FOR A PONY!!

Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades, and if you use enough grenades one will get close enough.

So our encounter with a pair of frost worms definitely worked out in our favor. Not realizing that they exploded when they died, our wizard baleful polymorphed them into a hare and a turtle to add to his menagerie of polymorphed monsters. Only later when we researched the monsters did we realize how close to death we had come since we were all within the blast radii of the death throes.

Our wizard, always on the lookout for maximizing resources, later considered weaponizing them. Break neck, throw body, break enchantment, good times.

Land Mine Proposal.

I'm not a big fan of interparty conflict. So limited GMing included the stipulation that the party get along with each other. I then made no real effort to stop interparty conflict when certain players got bored. So a bit of fail there.

We took a third way. Anticipating the player's betrayal became a running joke. If a game ran long enough, he might end up switching sides two or three times.

Nobby: We-ell, no point going to war unless you’re on the winning side.

14a. Players: Nodwick?! What is the henchman from our last TPK party still doing here?
GM: You guys had over 3 months of provisions along with everything else in that chest of holding you left him guarding. He's been sitting here and eating them.
Players: Sit tight Nodwick. We're going to kill the evil priest and be right back.
Nodwick: Right. I've heard that before.

Our Monk: "I carefully kick in the door."

This is something a character in Fate Accelerated Edition might say. Whether the GM allows the use of that Approach is another matter.

Cleric of Shelyn: "I deliver a gentle, loving, bludgeon to the head."

... Back when I was just a kid playing 3.5...

Why must you make us grognards feel old? Do you hate your elders that much?

On topic. 3rd edition and PF were built and balanced around getting (lots of) magic items as you leveled. Lots of people like getting shiny toys to play with.

Nothing wrong with not wanting this in your game, but it usually requires GM intervention to ensure balance.

The Frog brothers didn't even care if they were interrupting a church event to fill their canteens with holy water.

If We Did in Real Life What We Do In Pathfinder.

Eating nothing but highly preserved foods like MRE's for months without complaint and with no health consequences.
Mentioned before, never going to the restroom (the MRE's help with that.)
Inquiring with the local sheriff and/or mayor about mercenary work.

Enough bards on each side and everyone loses. In one round. Hehe.

Not if they hide behind the mound of dead bards. .

Sir Raptor would definitely get an invitation to join the Mwangi Pathfinder Lodge under the tutelage of Venture-Captain Bird Brain.

The invitation would be hand delivered by his faithful companion Brian, THE BLESSED OF GOZREH!

48a. Have the note read. You are not a doppelganger.

48c. Have the note read. You don't THINK you're a doppelganger.

117. Ask the players, "Is anyone a follower of [insert deity]?" Regardless of response go, "Mmhmmmm."

Not a laughing one-liner, but it properly summed up our feelings on the issue.

2nd edition game, group of 3rd level adventurers. We found a ring that detected as magical. DM rolled randomly to see what it was.

Me: *jokingly* Maybe it will be a ring of wishes.
GM: *roll* Oh F!~%. It is a ring of wishes.
Me: How many wishes are in it?
GM: *roll 1d4-1* 3.

Other Player: We are so screwed.

Everyone at the table was scared of this thing because of the potential campaign altering effects we could ask for and get screwed asking for.

TanithT wrote:

If you think killing bunnies is evil, either you're a hardcore PETA vegan or you've never taken the time to think about where your food comes from. It does not grow magically in white styrofoam packages at WalMart.

If you truly want to horrify a PETA vegan show them the study that proves plants can feel when they are being eaten and cry out in pain. Apparently the "cry out in pain" is done chemically since they can't vocalize.

Popcorn can feel pain

Interjection Games wrote:

Artemis Moonstar wrote:

I... Don't really run in Golarion outside of published APs. Even when I run pre-published stuff (which is rare in any case), I wind up with a bit of my own home-brew world (designed for writing purposes) bleeding through.

Some of the bigger changes wind up with Orcs, and Dwarves.

Orcs: These guys I do like most and remove the ALWAYS CHAOTIC EVIL right off the bat. However, I've generally made them a nation of their own, heavily influenced by feudal Japan and Han Dynasty China. It's the general "Asian" culture, as it were. A focus on fine arts, fine foods, and warfare. There are a lot of subtle nuances along with this, but that's the general idea. A very heavy caste system, with little wiggle room for advancement, but some tracks lead up.

Dwarves: Viking miners. Whilst I like the whole 'Men of the Earth' aspect of Dwarves, I wanted to pull a bit closer to the Norse origins. Of course, I must have been half-asleep when I came up with this, but rather than go fully with their mythological origins, I decided to go a bit more for the Scandinavian origins... Thus, they're miners in their homeland, and elsewhere, they're the terrors of the high seas.

Naval raiding dwarves - now there's a visual!

O'er we sweep while buzzed with grog!
Our only goal is the next big slog!

Yes, very much. That's the route I went, primarily to do something new with them, and partially because I wanted Kobolds as a primary race and thus needed to move one or the other out of the "mining and forging-focused, subterranean-dwelling race" niche.

Join the Dwarven Navy!

One that I remember from a homebrew campaign I was in involved the elves and drow. Elves once had a kingdom that spanned the continent, and gradually shrank to its modern size as interests waned and population growth stagnated. The drow were still generally evil, but less violent and more scheming. Over the course of several campaigns it was revealed that Araushnee (pre-fall Lolth) didn't so much fall as get pushed. The PCs eventually restored her and set up the possibility of redemption of all drow. This didn't make most elves happy.

Because the elven kingdom was actually democratic, with the kings and queens being elected and multiple political parties pushing agendas. The drow had never had the kingdom contraction and population stagnation that the elves had, and currently outnumbered surface elves by almost 10 to 1. Pretty much none of the elven political leaders wanted reconciliation with the drow because they would immediately be relegated to a single digit percentage of the voting population.

Another was that the primary campaign city was very cosmopolitan and allowed the worship and temples of evil deities such as Gruumsh. Gruumsh thought this was awesome; official recognition in civilized lands, political involvement through the Divine Council, orcs and half-orcs not getting harassed as much for being in the city. But then his worshippers started wearing foppish clothes, writing (bad and violent) poetry, and trying to fit in with high society. Then Gruumsh came to the sad conclusion that the free market was not good for his church.

I know of one PC VC, Birdbrain, who is a Deinonychus. He is assisted in his duties by his druid companion, Brian THE BLESSED OF GOZREH!

We didn't have Let it Go, we had this song in our heads during book 5.

Rasputin

The comments on abusing backstory characters reminded my of a big pet peeve I developed.

Players who act like they can't control how their character re/acts.
I get that your character has a personality and a certain mentality on how to act. But when your character's intransigence forces me to spend 20 minutes of real time arguing with you to follow a course of action that is the only reasonable one we've found, you are an asshat. You have complete control over your character's actions and thoughts, and you the player need to find a reason for your character to go along with the group.

The number of times I had to do this with the same player made the whole campaign a painful affair.

ThacO isn't a what, he's a who. He is an old goblin with monk levels in the Goblins! webcomic.

Not so much laugh as groan over the one a DM provided.

DM: This subrace of gnomes you have met are specialized at living in the subterranean mushroom groves that dot this cave system. They can <i>tree stride</i> through the mushrooms between groves and can turn into stone statues to hide and protect themselves from predators.
Group: Nice to meet them. Does their subrace have a name?
DM: They are Deep Garden Gnomes.

One of the funnest in game things I can think of happened at the end our groups Reign of Winter campaign. Through research of Irisen's history and careful exploration of Baba Yaga's hut, we had seen much of the First Witch's character and demeanor. After rescuing her, and saving Irrisen and Golarion from the eternal winter her daughter Elvanna was trying to create, she offered each of us a boon.

Our Winter Witch (and descendant of Baba Yaga) became the new ruler of Irrisen.

We had a couple of other requests that I don't recall.

Then Baba Yaga looked over at my soft-hearted Winter Oracle of Shelyn.

Me: Do you realize that all of this is your own fault? Everything you and we have been through is a direct result of your cruel and selfish actions. Your Irrisen daughters have hated you and tried to kill you more than once because they know nothing good will happen to them when you come and take them away. You preseved them in a living death to fuel your worthless life. You tortured and experimented on your sons and turned them into monsters, then abandoned them in here. Did you think the powerful spellcasters you begat wouldn't figure this out and rebel against the roles you planned for them? Rasputin and Elvanna only did this to try and deny the fate you planned for them. You created the very frost giant god that seeks your destruction on Golarion and plagues our frozen north. Everything we've seen in your hut and your history proves that you are a truly horrible person.

Baba Yaga: (deadpan) Yes. And?

Me: Stop being such a horrible person!

Baba Yaga: No. But I will promise to never return to Golarion again after I take Elvanna's children and grand-children.

Me: Fine! (Pleased to have gotten something good and moderately useful out of her)

Baba Yaga: (looking over to the party wizard) And what do you want?

Wizard: Do you have a book that can show me how to become a lich?

Baba Yaga: Sure. Here you go, kid. Have fun.

The whole table broke up over that exchange. I had been wondering how our wizard was going to ruin the rant I had come up with for her. He mentioned that the lich request had been something he had been planning for a while OOC.

Given Thog's lack of stealth skills, I think this is more likely Bozzok from the Greysky City Thieves' Guild. He does have quite a beef with Haley and 'Uncle' Geoff did tell Bozzok that she was headed towards the North Pole. He might have made a reasonable guess as to likely stopping ports along the way to stake out.

I had a swordsman with the shadow template and a penchant for telling tall tales. Went by the call sign Blade Shade.

Brian, the Blessed of Gozreh. A large man with a large voice.

A raven familiar with the name Peck, he was only in it for the eyeballs.

A taser wielding, underground radio announcer for the Resistance named DJ Sparks.

Warmage Keith Richardson, son of that famous bard.

The amazing riding dog Kujo and his halfling druid companion.

Gnome reporter for the New Phlan Tattler, Ally T. Rations.

Saw this somewhere, the halfling Elemenoh P. Quares (his mother was learning to write and used the birth certificate for practice).

I made a gnome journalist name Ally T. Rations. Ally's articles tended towards wicked wordplay and alliteration.

What's a Keter? I don't get this reference :) For that matter, what the heck is a creepypasta?

Keter is a classification from the SCP page. It is given to entries that can have apocolyptic effects if not contained.

A sword that glows blue...because it's radioactive. Make a Fort save.

Wee men? Here's something that will definitely mess with players.

Nac Mac Feegles aka Pictsies, the Wee Free Men, the Little Men, and 'Person or Persons Unknown, Believed to be Armed'

Your lawn gnomes remind me of some NPCs my party ran into in the dungeon lair that might be good for messing with players.

They were an offshoot of svirfneblin that had the ability to teleport between the fungus gardens scattered in the dungeon. They could also turn themselves into stone statues as a defensive measure.

Their subrace was called garden gnomes.

While playing Forgotten Realm characters that get dumped into an Oriental Adventures realm of Ravenloft.

NPC(Samurai): I pray the Kami's will protect us.
PC1: What are Kami's?
Me(Cleric): Oh, aren't those the little gods that inhabit everything?
NPC: Not exactly, Kami's are not gods.

Player of PC1 bursts into laughter and we have to wait until she finally takes a breath.

PC1: Godless Kami's!

We had a term for wandering damage in a Shadowrun game I was in. Character Missile, the GM would give you a warning that one was headed towards you.

For me it's the Mass Effect series. A huge number of big and small choices you can make during each game with hundreds of decisions flags carried over between games to make it a bit personalized for each person who played it. BioWare made statements that the huge and varied decisions that each player made over the three games could never boil down to a final A, B, C decision. What did we get at the end of the third game? Make a Red, Blue, Green decision with the choices made over all three games having only minimal impact on which of the three choices were available.

Extended endings and DLC did little to improve upon the end of an epic trilogy.

@Orthos I have done that as well. The part that probably annoys GMs is that I will do that and not do a good job of informing them of this.

I was in a sci-fi game playing an aristocratic pilot. Near the end of the series the GM has come up with a story line of my king needing to step down and wants my character to replace him by marrying his daughter. Two problems, first my character is female. The look he gave me was priceless before going back through his notes and realizing that this was an established fact from character generation. I blame myself for not playing her as having much sexuality during the campaign, which was becuase of the second problem. The second problem was that my character was married and had two children, which I didn't get to see or interact with much because of interstellar travel. I'm pretty sure he thought I was just screwing with him at that point, but I at least remember saying I was going home to visit family every time we returned to our homeworld.

Plot derailed NPCs the GM didn't know about.

I have to admit to something like this when I joined a LONG running campaign as it switched over to 3.0. Most of the players were converting character they had been playing for years and I made a character without coming up with any backstory for him. 3.x Elf Fighter/Wizard/Shadowdancer/Bladesinger with the Shadow Template, a shortbus special snowflake. Randomly Plane Shifts into a party they were having to celebrate a party member's ascension to godhood. I then kind of end up living in this party member's mansion like Klipspringer from the Great Gatsby, freeloading and no one knew why.

Things quickly improved as my character would bite on any shiny plot hook placed in his vision.

I've made quite a number of characters that were defined not by their backstory, but by their story.

A human monk who had his background rolled from the Central Casting book.

He was 2'2", wild talent psionic, son of the head of the Chinese pantheon, 3rd in line of succession of an entire continent.

Oh, wait. That's the most awesome PC I can remember.

I am reminded of a PFS session at a convention. It spawned a guideline about not letting new players run level 7 pregens at conventions.

We played a 7-11 scenario and somehow got a player on his second session of playing anything Pathfinder-related. Don't know how he didn't get shepherded to a low level table. Picked the gunslinger pregen and we played.

Near the end of the scenario we have infiltrated a group, are completely surrounded by said group, in the middle of their territory, and are being asked to swear allegiance and do something that looks potentially lethal. We know there is a trick to the lethal part and we are experienced adventurers and spellcasters.

The gunslinger's response to the declaration of allegiance? Shoot the cultist in the face and run out the door. We argued with the player for a few minutes about how he was being an idiot and potentially getting a group of 7-11's killed on his second game. Still shot the cultist and ran out.

Fortunately, the cultists weren't in their right mind and the GM just had another cultist step in and continue the ceremony.

The Venture leadership decided to work harder to make sure that such table groupings didn't happen again, even at the last minute.