burtschoder's page

have: Vishkanya

want: Dhampir

So I am starting to write a new home brew campaign. It is CG/NG based with a heavy Sheyln influence. I am looking at it being in three acts with Act 1 having the PC's play retrieval experts for missing and stolen pieces of art. Act 2 I see them being swept up in helping defend an extra planar "Library of Alexandria" type structure that holds not only knowledge but also priceless works of art from all across the cosmos. Act 3 has them trying to find a way to break the hold Zon-Kuthon has over his herald and attempt to restore it. I plan on having the PC's level about 4-5 levels per act.

What do others think of this? I am trying to breathe some fresh life into my campaigns so I thought I would see if anyone had any ideas or hooks or thoughts that they would be willing to share. If not no big deal. If you have a thought or two I would be very interested to hear it though. Thanks

if they are experienced then they know they will face melt it ..... tell them before hand " I have to run this X,Y,Z and I know you will all steamroll and it might not be fun. If someone wants to GM we can split the tables and have it be more interesting. Other wise let's all meet up at the bar afterward with the hour or two we saved. " I have had this exact discussion a couple times at our game. We usually end up at the local taproom :)

thanks for your hard work Mike and here's hoping life treats you well going forward.

hrmm that is how i have been running it so there won't be much change ... it is just annoying that nothing can get close to him without him power attacking and knocking it down to half health .... but i guess that is why it is mythic eh?

Hopefully I can explain this. In my WotR campaign I have a PC who has Retributive reach. He says he always gets the AoO extended range and has to spend a mythic power to get the bonus to hit and damage. I say he has to spend the power to get the AoO reach AND the bonus. What do you guys think?

here is the wording:

Retributive Reach (Ex): Treat your reach as 5 feet greater than normal for the purpose of determining whether or not you can make an attack of opportunity. If a creature provokes an attack of opportunity within this area of increased reach, you can expend one use of mythic power to gain a bonus equal to your tier on the attack roll and damage roll of the attack of opportunity.

i only have one character that is CN. it is my illusionist who had a mental break at watching his parents get destroyed by an summoned creature. he has a 20 INT but cannot always tell the difference between his illusions and reality. i play him like murdoch from the old tv series the a-team .... (showing my age there).. my point is i always thought CN was a great way to role play functional insanity. As for the LE point of view, being LE let's you do some pretty heinous things and i think keeping that element out of PFS is a good thing.

burt schoder wrote:

i am looking at trying a sorc/monk ..... even if the char is gimped i have some cool roleplay ideas

I encountered a Grappling Necromancer once.

When I told him he couldn't cast his touch spells as part of maintaining the Grapple you'd think I'd slowly crushed a kitten or something.

i remember when i realized that .... it SEEMED to be so smart .... you were already grappled .... why cant you just shocking grasp him? lol that takes me back a few years

Would that be a Schmornck? Even if not, I think it should be.

i may have found my char surname Schmornk lol ..... taking the dragon bloodline ..... personally i would prefer to flurry with my claws from the bloodline even at lower damage just for effect, but i don't think it works that way :)

i am looking at trying a sorc/monk ..... even if the char is gimped i have some cool roleplay ideas

I feel that the disconnect between people under NDA who have been discussion this issue for quite some time (and as professionals now present a unified front) and everybody else.

A campagin with a very limited rules set seems like a good idea to draw in more people (I personally don't agree, but I understand, that it is a popular idea) but I suspect, that they quickly learned, that such a campaign needs GMs and players. Since a lot of players would not willingly give up all the choices they have grown accustomed to, they added the incentive to replay.

I could be dead wrong, but this feels right.

So those who are happy about this seem to fall in two camps:

- A chance to replay and/or to play more PFS since even if your have not played a normal scenario, this might result in more PFS events.
- A chance to play/GM PFS without class/spell/race/item XYZ and being tired of players roflstomping their scenarios. And are willing to lose a number of welcome options.

Obviously there is some overlap, but I suspect, that the "we want to replay " group, is far bigger.

I think if everyone saw the behind the scenes discussions and debates about this they would feel more comfortable. But NDA so moving on.

I feel i can say that replay is not the sole purpose of this. neither is helping new people. Nor is it trying to lure GM's. It is not even primarily directed at perceived power creep. The Core campaign is about ADDING something new to PFS that HELPS address all these issues. We know they are not going to release another version of PF anytime soon. And a hard reboot would be just dumb. More scenarios = more time and money. So without bringing a hammer down the thought is to introduce something else and let it settle in. If it brings people great, if it hasn't ..... those who enjoy extreme optimization of their characters can still play them. I truly do see this as another path for people to have fun with PFS

burtschoder wrote:

BigDTBone wrote:

burtschoder wrote:

Maybe i missed something here .... i didn't read all the replies. my two cents.

Player: Ah ha i want to cast a fireball
ME (as dm) : ok spend your surge ..... you cast a 0d6 fireball

Player: i want to summon a balor
Me: ok you summon a balor, it pops in for 0 rounds

Player i want a wish! make it mimic resurrection!
ME: you have no knowledge of the minutiae of resurrection or the material components for it .... make a spell craft dc45 or you get a zombie

as for the traits that add to your spell caster level .... since you have nothing to add to i would say they are irrelevant

as for having spell like abilities .... those don't meet the qualification to be an actual caster. it just means you got a couple tricks up your sleeve

So what am i missing?

All the other uses of wish, time stop, power words, basically all the spells with no save and no CL scaling component.

so why couldn't you rule that they don't know the verbal components? i guess i would rule that they have the power to shape magic at their fingertips.... but they have to be able to correctly form the right words in the language of magic which they would not know.

i am reasoning that i have a great knowledge of 20th century literature and could give a rousing discourse on it ..... but if i had to give it in Latin i would be useless

As an (su) ability there are no verbal components. If you were going to force a check (which has no basis) then spellcraft of DC 15+spell level is the worst you could push.

i see your point .... i really do .... i guess if someone really wanted to do this at my table i would just not let them. for instance i am running a wrath of the righteous campaign and last night everyone got their 1st mythic tier. i would talk to the player privately and explain that i won't be able to run a campaign where this was an option. hopefully they would adjust and we could move on. if not i could go play poker on Tuesdays :)

burtschoder wrote:

Maybe i missed something here .... i didn't read all the replies. my two cents.

Player: Ah ha i want to cast a fireball
ME (as dm) : ok spend your surge ..... you cast a 0d6 fireball

Player: i want to summon a balor
Me: ok you summon a balor, it pops in for 0 rounds

Player i want a wish! make it mimic resurrection!
ME: you have no knowledge of the minutiae of resurrection or the material components for it .... make a spell craft dc45 or you get a zombie

as for the traits that add to your spell caster level .... since you have nothing to add to i would say they are irrelevant

as for having spell like abilities .... those don't meet the qualification to be an actual caster. it just means you got a couple tricks up your sleeve

So what am i missing?

All the other uses of wish, time stop, power words, basically all the spells with no save and no CL scaling component.

so why couldn't you rule that they don't know the verbal components? i guess i would rule that they have the power to shape magic at their fingertips.... but they have to be able to correctly form the right words in the language of magic which they would not know.

i am reasoning that i have a great knowledge of 20th century literature and could give a rousing discourse on it ..... but if i had to give it in Latin i would be useless

Maybe i missed something here .... i didn't read all the replies. my two cents.

Player: Ah ha i want to cast a fireball
ME (as dm) : ok spend your surge ..... you cast a 0d6 fireball

Player: i want to summon a balor
Me: ok you summon a balor, it pops in for 0 rounds

Player i want a wish! make it mimic resurrection!
ME: you have no knowledge of the minutiae of resurrection or the material components for it .... make a spell craft dc45 or you get a zombie

as for the traits that add to your spell caster level .... since you have nothing to add to i would say they are irrelevant

as for having spell like abilities .... those don't meet the qualification to be an actual caster. it just means you got a couple tricks up your sleeve

So what am i missing?

i am thinking and typing here so please bear with me. The main concern i see brought up is the fact that some places have few players and if those players split into wanting core and not wanting core then there is an impasse. Personally i think that 90% of the time this happens there will be people gracious enough to go along with whatever and play a pregen or make a char.

Here is how i plan on handling this in my region.

background: I drive 35 minutes to gm a group of 4-9 players. Sometimes we have two tables sometimes only one. our game nights are Thursday 5:30-9:30+

I have announced that every third Thursday of the month is CORE thursday. For the new guys and the old timers i am going to run season 0 - 1 and start from the very beginning. This will also be the night that i spring for a couple of hot and ready pizzas and a couple two liters of soda. My group is (so far) excited about this and asking what i want them to bring for treat night or if they can toss in a couple bucks for the pizza. I am excited to see how it goes. i will let ya know

EDIT: for the new guy that drops in on CORE Thursday, grab a pregen grab a slice and i will talk to you after game about the Regular PFS nights :)

EDIT 2: don't feel like playing CORE? then we will catch ya on the other three nights! :)

a raven that followed the party for two adventures just watching..... every time anyone tried to interact with it it would fly off then return ......it always appeared during or just before a battle ...... my party got so paranoid lol

So if I Core group decides to play an older 7-11 that utilized 5+ non core books what happens? It sounds like the GM still needs to have access to those books to run but the players are SOL.

I don't know about SOL but it will be a challenge. :)

GM Hills wrote:

The classes that have such things list the options, I do believe.

They do, but the stats arent included in the Core, IIRC.

i actually think they do ..... i am looking a the PRD and they are listed there. but i don't have my core rulebook open as i am at work

ninja'd :)

i track weight until i get my muleback cords. then i get my haversack. then i will spot check from time to time to make sure that i am still good

I thought that the idea for the pathfinders came from people hanging out at the Wisp. However the first actual pathfinder group left from the Paunch.

as pathfinder goes on, do you see any beings passing the test of the Starstone and ascending to godhood? this made me think of another question. Do non humans try the test?

James Jacobs wrote:

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Korvosa, bright and ostentatious? We have VERY different views of that city then. It looked to me, at least in the illustrations from CotCT that it was always gloomy and rainy there, sort of like a medievalized London out of a Dickens novel, choked with squalor and misery. I'm confused.

That's because I misspoke. Blame it on having just driven 16 hours in a day with a carsick cat yesterday...

Awww, poor kitty! :(

i would think poor James lol

How much celestial booze would be involved for Cayden Cailean and Iomedae to hook up?

running a skald pally fighter warpriest party right now .... pally smite with the rage bonus get sick. it is a lot of fun

keen and improved crit stack

tonight i played horn of aroden using a brand new terrakineticist .... i didn't hit crap. literally i missed everything. now it was one session and i know dice go cold. but i felt pretty ineffective. for those who know it, that scenario has a good blend of diplomacy and fighting and i felt left out of both. i am honestly not looking for an easy button. it would have been nice to hit something though. i could go into what mechanics i think would change it, but i am going to wait until i get to level 2 or three before i weigh in on those

as a secondary gm for our group i have prepped probably 12-14 scenarios that i haven't run due to table size consideration. On the few times i have gone to play the scenario i have let gm know i prepped it and really tried to act in char. not sure if this is what the op is talking about but there are legit reasons that someone has read a scenario before running

just ran part one tonight .... party of six with two dwarfs two humans a half orc and a assimir. all dps and tank. not a skill monkey, caster or healer among them ..... they made it and had fun .... we will see how second level treats them next week

glad to hear you are giving it another go. I was in a similar situation and PFS helped get me back into a hobby i love. i hope that your next session will blow you away and you will be hooked like i was :)

congratz friend!

As I understand it, each chapter will have a sanctioned part that can give you a chronicle sheet. With Rise of the Runelords it is Thistletop in chapter one, Foxglove manor in chapter two etc. When you run THOSE parts you can print out a chronicle that you can apply to a new PFS char. You will get a lot of gold and access to gear plus I think 3 xp wich should level you up If I am wrong I am sure someone will set it straight :)

This sheet can be applied to any PFS char you want ... even your first one. just show up to a PFS event with the printed out choronicle sheet and tell them what you want to do. The GM should be able to help you out from there.

burtschoder wrote:

oh you can do it with point buy .... i just like the randomness with rolls. get some numbers, put em how you want them, figure out how to make the char interesting.

Yeah, that's the opposite of my approach to character creation. I decide what and who I want to play first, then build the character to match that concept.

i did that for the wrath of the righteous campaign we are running right now. i am really loving the pally love :)

oh you can do it with point buy .... i just like the randomness with rolls. get some numbers, put em how you want them, figure out how to make the char interesting. that is fun for me. i am probably nostalgic because the most fun i had was where the party rolled 3d6 in order and played the chars we got .... i had a decent cleric 16 WIS but i couldn't get anyone to listen to my sermons because i had a 5 CHA. they just kept looking at the warts on my face. our fighter had a high of 14 and a low of 12 .... he seemed epic lol

and i see your point about being someones sidekick. if you wouldn't have fun playing something like that then there is no reason to do it. i see how i could run with it but just because it is fun for me it isn't gonna be fun for others :)

EDIT: changed some syntax to be less unintentionally offensive :)

Huh i guess my gaming experience is totally different. I ENJOY the randomness of possibly having a bad ability score. In my head it makes the character more interesting. I have played a fighter with a 17 strength and a 6 intelligence. Basically the party pointed him at something and told him to kill it. We had a blast. I had an illusionist with a 18 int and a 5 wisdom. He would always make the most grandiose illusions he could because he thought they were impressive. The point buy system seems generic now that the groups i have run with all use it. But that is just my opinon. <shrug>

Edit: to the op's point i would encourage the players with less stats to role play the difference between the chars. "you have the most strength and the biggest sword .... you go first" type thing