coffeedog14's page

Heyo, I hope this is the right thread to put this in, and I apologize if it isn't. The main question is, what to do about a player being more powerful then the rest of the players?

The background is that we've recently started running the "crimson throne" campaign path. Most of the players took kind of wacky ideas, so when the most experienced of the group wanted to be a dragon with the following class:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/rite-publishing/draconic- exemplar

I perhaps foolishly allowed it, assuming it would all be in the name of the fun of the game.

Well, now two sessions in, the problem is starting to emerge. The player playing the dragon is a good player, a decent roleplayer, and an expert character builder. the others are not expert character builders. We currently have a sylph rogue, a half-orc grapple brawler, a kobold ice oracle, and a disguised kobold skald.

the dragon is strong enough to have reasonably taken on most of the combat by themselves so far, and looking over the class this seems like it's only going to be more and more the case as time goes on. while I might normally just buff up the enemies, that might hit the other players harder then it would the dragon. One of them has already expressed concern about how powerful the dragon is.

I don't want to punish the dragon player, since really he isn't really overpowered in comparison to what he could do with any other class anyway. But at the same time, I don't want the other players to feel left out or overshadowed. Peoples thoughts?

So, the part is in book 1, and right at the beginning. Hence many of the players are still feeling out what they want to do. One, a skald who worships Cayden Cailean, was toying with taking the liberator feat and was curious as to the state of slavery in Korvosa.

I decided to check, assuming that Korvosa would follow the example of Cheliax and have a fair bit of slavery (if less wide spread and racist in tone). However, the players guide seems split on the issue. the slave trade is mentioned in two ways: one is that the king formerly had a small slave harem he disposed of in favor of his new wife. the other that the church of Asmodeus may or may not work with the cerulean society to help "black market slave trade."

What I assume is that Korvosa has slavery, but it's regulated. something like having to go through the church of abadar for every trade, and it being filled with fee's to make sure only the rich can manage. The church of asmodeus and cerulean society then work underground, either by selling without supervision or perhaps going so far as to kidnap and enslave folks that shouldn't be.

If anybody has a clear answer that I'm missing, I'd be grateful for it!

Hey folks! my group and I petered out on serpents skull on book 3, due to the sheer mass of combat that the thing had. While I as the DM tried my best to insert diplomatic options into things, I didn't correct it quite enough, and now the players kind of want a more social experience. Which AP's might serve that best?

From what I understand of them, the following seem promising:

council of theives: Urban stuff means probably diplomatic stuff?
kingmaker: because I can only hope that while running your own kingdom, diplomacy is an option
carrion crown: What with the low wealth and horror theme, I'd think it'd be not constant combat
hell's rebels: seems like there will be plenty of combat, but plenty of rebellion running as well. this one I'm even less sure about then the others.

Thoughts?

coffeedog14 wrote:

To go somewhat back to topic: assuming that most gods have an "Average" (an average that pharasma will be excluded from, since apparently she'll throw it way off), what might that average be? Seeing as how one of the more impressive and well known efforts of a god was throwing a moon in the way of an incoming planetkiller during earthfall, should we consider that a "standard" god? Because if so, that would certainly explain why one can't stat gods. Moving moons is preeetty far out of the realm of pathfinder stats to reasonably express.

And not being interested in assigning power levels to the deities includes not being interested in setting out what powers an "average" deity might have.

Such is fair. I suppose I'll ask that to the fine forum folks, then: what do YOU guys use as the "Baseline", if you have one? I think I'll keep "moving moons" as my line of average.

Oh, also, in case anybody had read the details that I've missed: do worshipers matter a great deal to the gods? Like, are they in any way powered by belief, or do they like it primarily as a means to get people to do stuff for them? Pathfinder seems to lean towards the latter, but I could be wrong.

Alric Rahl wrote:

Or you could just do it now, so that we as your community can understand your world and the miniscule interactions everything has better. In fact you could probably create whole AP's around the info provided. little by little adding more and more up to a point where you feel you have taken this game as far as it can go in which you reveal how the universe ends.

I dont see how giving us this info would hurt the game at all. in fact it would probably draw more people as well due to the full richness of the Lore of this universe. You can still create ripple effects it will just be more clear to your players why these things are happening.

Do people still excitedly talk about "Lost" now that they know the answers? Nope.

I'd rather keep people engaged and excited than given them a few moments of ah HA and then watch as they wander off to look for new mysteries to vex and entice.

So one day, when the earth is blackened husk from the suns slow expansion and pathfinder comes to an official end due to the printing presses melting, we may see an answer XD?

anyways, on the tainting topic: yeah, pretty brutal. You play religion for keeps in golarion! I guess gods get less forgiving about such things when you can't deny that the god exists, and what they want you to do.

To go somewhat back to topic: assuming that most gods have an "Average" (an average that pharasma will be excluded from, since apparently she'll throw it way off), what might that average be? Seeing as how one of the more impressive and well known efforts of a god was throwing a moon in the way of an incoming planetkiller during earthfall, should we consider that a "standard" god? Because if so, that would certainly explain why one can't stat gods. Moving moons is preeetty far out of the realm of pathfinder stats to reasonably express.

Well, that was informative, thank you! Also neat to see all the little side cases I hadn't heard about brought forward. Pharasma certainly is one of the most fascinating gods, just due to her sheer power combined with her general quietness about...well...everything.

Also intriguing to know that groteus is not as powerful as pharasma. Since I had heard that she fed souls to the moon-thing in order to keep it at bay, I had always assumed they where of equal footing. The fact that she's more keeping him in check out of choice casts her behavior in a whole new light.

Thanks for all the help!

Having read up a bit on how people deal with the powers of various gods (ranging from using the 3.5 stuff to "insta-gib"), I had to start wondering: what about for stuff between gods?

In Golarion, the gods are generally considered to be leagues above demi-gods, let alone humans. Even at the bare minimum, if you assume the stats that are proposed for gods in 3.5, pathfinder gods are easily 10 to 20 cr over even the highest level demigods, and easily able to crush them.

But what about between them? are all gods of roughly the same power level, or are some significantly more powerful then others? are there greater gods that are to the lesser ones as the lesser ones are to mortals? I mean, in at least one case, that of Rovagug, we can assume that he's far more powerful then all of his peers, but as an extra-dimensional reality destroyer I figure he is more likely to be an exception.

So, basically, if some spunky youngster like Besmara or Cayden brew up a fight with grumpy old Asmodeus, What would happen?

Oki doki, thanks! Yeah multiplication stuff for pathfinder is weird. I'll copy-paste all this to use. One can only hope the players hide behind trees.

Heyo, guys, a quick question: I'm sending a mounted paladin against a party with a few evil folks in it, and I wanna make sure that I got damage all right.

so, I'm imagining a perfect situation for the paladin: he is able to spell up, and do a perfect ride-by charge attack on his opponents with his lance. he is level 9. He has bless (+1 to attack rolls), divine favor (+1 to attack adn damage), sun metal (+1d4 burning), a strength bonus of +3, power attack and that feat that lets you ignore the penalty for the first power attack (+4 damage, no to hit negative).

I THINK this adds up to a +11 attack, with damage as 1d8+3 strength+1 divine favor +1 1d4 burning+4 power attack, for a total of +11 (1d8+1d4+8)

HOWEVER, where I get messed up is the multiplications. the lance itself does *2 while mounted, and I took spirited charge to make it *3. I will, hopefully, also be able to pop off Litany of righteousness, which doubles damage again against evil folks.I am guessing that these do not, in fact, multiply each other, leading to the following:

Lance +11, (1d8+1d4+8)*5 (as long as against evil).

Is this right? the average for this is 75 damage, which is quite along, and even if I only get the litany off it's still a considerable amount! Also, if I get a critical hit, how would that deal with the already present multipliers? Thanks!

I want to say that I do not plan to actually go through with this. It is way too much time and money for my present situation. This is pretty much a thought experiment.

So, with that in mind, here is the proposition: All the adventure paths run in chronological order, with the events of previous paths interacting with the latter, in essence creating a new Pathfinder universe based around the choices of the characters in each previous installment.

My first question: Has anybody actually managed it? Or even half, or close? It sounds like a nigh-insane undertaking that would easily take a decade if not more of time. Anyone who could get even close to halfway would deserve all the respect, especially as the consequences from the former become increasingly large.

my second: If you where to hypothetically undertake it, how would you do it? My thoughts below:

we'd start with rise of the runelords on 1 abadius, 4707. I would not play kind, allowing PC's to die just as often as they get into deadly situations (after all, they'll have more chances). Once done with this, I would ask each PC what they wish to do post-campaign, and keep note.

The second campaign would start either 6 months (1 sarenith 4707) after the start of the first, or about a month after it's end, whichever is later. Each player would get 1 "Interrupt" for this second campaign, to be spent either immediately or later. IE, they could choose one point in the campaign to insert a character, concept, etc. from the previous one, with all other crossovers of my choosing.

I would allow the players to fail whole adventure paths if they get a TPK or just get flatout beat. This would not only throw the world into a new way, but may give a reason to assemble some old favorite PC's to go deal with the issue (assuming it's world ending)

another thing I was thinking of would be to only allow certain books as they came out. IE during rise of the runelords, only allowing core rulebook (kind of cheating but oh well) and then drip-feeding other sourcebooks as they come, perhaps adding a few extra's to the first few paths since they didn't have much support.

Step two of this plan (one that would only work assuming an excess of time and money) would be to also link in pathfinder society scenarios and modules into the mix. While these wouldn't be played by players necessarily (they could be on request), I'd be either running them (unlikely) with an NPC party, Or else creating an NPC party and then narratively determining how they do against the threat, if it works out, ETC. This would provide a war for the world outside of the players to evolve even further, and for NPC's to spawn naturally (Want to meet a pathfinder? Why not one with a history of adventures in (insert region here)!?)

As you can see, this is pretty clearly a pipe-dream with probably far too many moving parts and bookkeeping for it's own good. So a question to you fair forum: Assuming you had limitless resources and this particular project, how would YOU handle it? Less emphasis on interconnectedness? More emphasis? More or less mercy on PC's? Starting with heavy modification of the adventure paths? Some other neat idea I havne't thought of? Would love to hear!