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This is a more serious post about Thed's defficulties in major combat encounters.

In an urban setting, it's generally less acceptable to be as heavily armed and armoured as a party in the wilderness, or in a dungeon raid (though that does depend who you are). That means characters who don't rely on heavy equipment have a distinct advantage - I've found that with Crow. As a monk, no matter where we are she's always as ready to fight as she'll ever be. There are some ways that fighter-like characters can equip themselves though.

Firstly, Thed's coat. If it's really heavy, it could count as cloth armour (only +1 AC, I know). Alternatively, since Thed's a big guy and the coat's bulky, he can probably hide a chain shirt under the coat - handy for a henchman to have a little extra protection.

Exalted uses the concept of a buff jacket - a long, heavy coat of hide of strong leather. With a hefty hide or reinfoced leather coat, Thed could claim leather or hide armour, and with some metal inserts (Exalt's reinforced buff jacket), he could claim something similar to a chain shirt.

There are probably several weapons Thed could get away with using. Paul's character dresses in fancy clothing and carries a raper, which society is perfectly happy with. Having a really big coat, Thed might be able to conceal something fairly long, or even wear a sword on his hip openly (like Paul's PC does) - a cutlass? ;o) What's acceptable in Korvosa? The city has some funny laws, so you might find it's perfectly legal to carry something big and intimidating. Or perhaps there are some loopholes we can exploit (after a swift offering at the temple of Asmodeus) - perhaps claiming to be a devotee of a certain god allows you to carry their weapon as a sign of your devotion.

(It'd be especially good to get something big and two-handed, since then when Thud rages, that big strength bonus gets multiplied up on damage!)

I thought Vimida was just attracted by Thed's natural studliness ;o)

And Crow *got* a good fight - pinning Vreeg into the ground so he couldn't cast spells (or do anything else - heh) was most satisfying! Not as satisfying as throttling Lamm, but you'd have to go some to top that. I quite liked the fight with the necrophidiuses too - Crow's good saves meant that she could ignore their mind-tricks and laugh off their poisons (despite being badly nibbled), while she laid down the majority of the slap on them; despite, after moving into a position to assist another PC, having said PC run off to fight another, more injured, monster. Cue much cussing from Crow.

I *thought* it seemed a little odd that Elspeth took out the King of Spiders, and extracted his secrets, so easily. That explains it.

Crow's aware that someone has special interest in her, too, so maybe Thed's right, and it's time we started digging.

Single runner feat in Pathfinder:

Crow used to be a shingle runner when she was younger, and it would be nice to reflect that with the Shingle Runner feat. It's written for v3.5, and while the main body of the feat can be easily converted, the prerequisites are a bit more subtle.

The feat as it stands has the prereq of Acrobatic. Under v3.5, this gave a bonus to Jump and Tumble - essential skills for a shingle runner. In Pathfinder, there is also a feat called Acrobatic, but it's different, giving a bonus to Acrobatics and Fly. Fly isn't really central to being a shingle runner (except for the *really* good ones ;o), so the new Acrobatics feat makes less sense as a prereq. The feat that most closely matches the meaning of v3.5 Acrobatic in Pathfinder is Skill Focus: Acrobatics (both cover the old Tumble and Jump skills).

Personally, I'm all for options, so I'd say either feat would qualify (since Acrobatic also gives a good bonus to Acrobatics). The important thing is recogniseing that Skill Focus: Acrobatics is at least as relevant as Acrobatic, as a prereq for Shingle Runner.

I thought I'd bring this up here, as I'd like to buy Shingle Runner for Crow (eventually).

Elspeth's place is very comfy - if you don't mind getting roped into helping make poisons. She says the stains will come out eventually. And Crow's eyebrows should re-grow...

[player of Crow]

> 6) Why have the church of Iori taken such an interest in Crow?

Uh oh... Crow thought the priest who asked her into the training ground was just an acquaintance of her master.

After being knocked to the floor bleeding (zero HP) when fighting the deserting guardsmen, Crow was in a bad "I wasn't strong enough" mood, so getting a chance to throw herself into sparring with some temple warriors was most welcome... though really, she wanted to see what happened when paladins of good and evil gods turned up to spar at the same time :o)

As far as the setting goes, I love it! The lawful structure of the city supports some unpleasant things, like the hellknights, and abhorrent gods being legally worshipped. It feels like it has a real context, with racial tensions between Chels and Varizians, and society both at the noble level, and the level of scoundrels and shingle-runners, and the ambiguity between them. Paizo have turned half-elves on their heads, with almost every one being due to liaisons with a small number of male elven ambassadors (one of which Thud thumped). There are plenty of other examples where, on hearing about something in the setting, I though, "that's great!"

I'm sure Paul will come up with something interesting - personally, I thought the half-orc druid hobo was great.

A little bit about Crow, the human monk, who I play:
She's not a monk by profession (the closest she has to a profession (former) is Shingle Runner), rather she's someone who was taken in and trained by a wandering monk, then sent back to Krovosa to deal with the shackles it still had on her soul.
I describe her as Lawful Troubled, though the closest interpretation of that is Lawful Evil. She was treated badly by Lamm, then tortured and thrown out on the garbage, left for dead (she didn't run away, as one of the previous posts mentioned). That's left her with a lot of bad emotions. It was exceptionally satisfying that, in the first session, she throttled Lamm with her bare hands (while Thed wrestled the croc), then hurled his broken corpse across the room.

She'll follow the adventure and save the city because she's here to be significant, to face adversity and overcome it, to be seen as someone of power, not some cowering wretch. And if she gets to beat up some city guards in the meantime, that's just a bonus. Heck, they're even paying us for this!