drennier's page

As a DM, I just started the 4th book, Blood for Blood. I'm running into a few problems already.

First, the PC's got a small taste of mass combat with the attack on Tatzlford. While we were there they got somewhat frustrated with their inability to interact on an individual level with the combat.

First, they are very particular players and we all know the ins and outs and details of the system quite well. And when I say particular, I mean very numbers oriented. They want to know exactly what the population is of their Kingdom. I'm hesitant to give them this number because, as the module has been very clear, the population numbers are very arbitrary. The book says 250 people per square (or something like that) but obviously, Varnhold is far from this number. Anyway, their particularity has lead to them wondering why they cannot take an individual hand in the Mass Combat. "Why can't I shoot four arrows a round and whittle their numbers away?" or "My fireball, should have killed all of those people on average dice rolls." Some will start to do the math and realize by the numbers they should have killed some 80% of the invading force and say "So how is this still a fight?" Short version, what does everyone do to deal with PCs who want to micromanage mass combat?

Secondly, and somewhat oppositely, how do you deal with PCs who ONLY want to use Mass Combat. With one taste of mass combat under their belt the PCs want to quash any problem they face with a mass of troops. And honestly, I don't necessarily blame them. After the attack and talking with Kisandra, the PCs said "Well, why don't we put together a force and storm the keep." Obviously, Drelev doesn't have rules for Mass Combat and the PCs don't even have their rules for building armies yet. Does anyone else have this problem? How do they deal with it?

Thanks for the impending advice

Bless my players, but they all have a certain tendency to build fairly powerful characters. They make good characters and roleplay well, but they tend to have a different standard for "playable". We've made it through the first three books and for most of the hex encounters they've come to realize they can just blow all their abilities, rest, repeat. But, as the books get further, I've found its less about those encounters so thats not as much as a bother for me. However, for Kingmaker to stay interesting, at the very least I have to make them feel threatened during the big story encounters. Thus far, I've been able to do that. The Stag Lord did it all on his own at that low a level. The Owlbear (with a slight boost to AC and some more HP) made an exciting encounter where the last standing PC KO'ed him. Vordakai kept them on their toes after a long trip through his tomb.

However, looking to Book 4 and 5 I have some concerns. Both Armag and Irovetti have 200ish HP and it seems like my players will steam roll them.

My players currently consist of:

An animal domain Cleric - She heals like crazy, keeping the team standing. Never attacks, sometimes supplements damage with spiritual weapons. Her animal companion, an ape, gets loaded down with gear and beats face with all his primary attacks.

A switch hitting ranger - Depending on what the situation requires he either carves up opponents with an eleven curved blade (and improved critical) or lets loose a flurry of arrows through rapid shot and many shot. Soon, instant enemy will give him a flat +6 to attack and damage.

A lance wielding dragoon paladin - His damage is a flat dice +20. Sometimes, when he gets a charge off on his mount this of course turns into a rather substantial dice +60. If he crits, its rather messy.

My fourth player is making a new guy before the 4th book.

Granted, I haven't looked too deeply into things, but seeing Armag with a 24 AC and 200ish HP I just imagine the ranger taking his turn being instant enemy and letting loose 4-5 arrows (the lowest of which will hit him 50% of the time, the others are rather likely to hit) doing dice +25 on each hit.

Anyway, does anyone have any advice in general or even specifically to the Kingmaker scenario? Not against them being powerful, just want to make sure the second half of the game stays as interesting as the first.

I'm DMing Kingmaker and during our last game my players encountered the Cult to Gyronna and sought to investigate. The sent the one female PC and Lily (who I've fancied up as a duelist and is currently involved with a PC) to infiltrate and the other PCs to follow close behind. My players are all level 6 and are a Heal Bot Cleric, a Switch Hitting Ranger, a Charge Machine Dragoon and a Comical Frog-like Gunslinger. All in all, they are very optimized and blow through a lot of encounters. As such, I like to mix things up with them some and add a few things here and there. Sometimes I slap advanced on a monster, sometimes I add a couple more mooks, whatever. Even then, the players seem to massacre most encounters and the generic hex encounters are mostly quick and sometimes, honestly, just a bit tedious as its simple a matter of how quickly they gun them down. However, the joy my players get from gluing a new hex onto their explored maps, their willingness to get involved when the story presents itself, their interactions with, great ideas and combats when they meet bosses/big encounters makes it all worth it.

Anyway, back to the story. The Cult encounter looks like one thats WAY easy for where the players should (especially since they were using Lily to help) so I decided to spice it up just a bit, and it turned out to be a very memorable encounter. When the fight started Niska wound up confusing both the infiltrating good guys (Lily and the Cleric) who started duking it out with each other. To make matters even more entertaining, before the went in, the Cleric cast Shield Other on Lily to make sure she was out of danger. The Cleric started beating herself to death. The cult members and Niska go down in the blink of an eye to the Ranger's (Lily's boyfriend) many shot. So after 2 rounds of PC v. Cult combat, the battle went for at least another 10 as the Ranger tried to grapple his girlfriend Lily to keep her from doing any more harm, to which Lily crited her boyfriend. This ensued, with Lily dropping her beloved ranger to -7 and on the last turn of her confusion. While this is going on the slightly klepto Gunslinger went to investigate/steal the bloodshot eye gem stone. This was where I spiced things up. I put an identical madness effect on the stone for anyone who touched it. So while the party is trying to end a cat fight the gunslinger turns around and starts blast teammates.

All in all, an encounter that my party normally would have just mowed down in 2 rounds turned into an extra memorable 15ish round fight against each other that saw 3 of the 4 party members hit negative HP.

Anyone else have fun tales of spicing up encounters out there? Any other suggestions for spicing them up besides the standard advanced template/extra mooks?

I'm prepping my notes to run my group through RRR very shortly. NPCs make games for me. Having personality and quirks on notable townsfolk has always been something I remember about games long after I can recall what I rolled to hit the BBEG in the epic fight. So, I have been looking to really bring the Kingmaker NPCs to life. Looking through the book it seems that Lily was intended to be fairly important as she is listed in the potential Kingdom Roles chart at the beginning of the chapter. Surprisingly, she seems incredibly unsubscribed (outside of the mention that shes a flirt).

So, like I'm sure most GMs have done, I've been fleshing her out as a character for the upcoming games. My goal was to make her memorable and, as I'm trying to build up the long term Kingdom ruling part of the game, make her a potential love interest/possible spouse for a PC. As such, I asked myself "what would make her more attractive to my players"? Knowing my players as quite the power gamers I knew exactly what would make her more appealing, Hit Dice. So I restated her up, gave her class levels that helped preserve the small description in the book, but also build her up a little more. Her levels are in Free Hand Fighter, looking to go into Duelist. I plan on running her a lot like Isabella for those of you who have played Dragon Age 2.

So my question to the masses is, what have you done to flesh out some of the more descriptiveless NPCs? What quirks and personality have you given them? What NPCs have you just straight made up? How have they gone over with your players? Just in general, talk about the notable citizens of your Kingdom.

I've been GM a Kingmaker game. We played the first two sessions, everyone got really busy with things (myself included) and it seemed it was going to die. However, a few weeks ago, my players really got the itch to get back into, it inspired me, and we cracked out several quality sessions. Last night was the final game.

Anyway, everyone is really excited about RRR and I've been prepping my notes to hopefully get started on it this weekend. However, I had a few questions about moving forward and wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions/had run into this problem before.

1. I'm having a little difficult sorting out the countries, factions and possible loyalties of the region. The players haven't asked too much, knowing the Swordlords to be their quest givers and handsomely rewarding them for their work. But with the building of the city and a little more social/political feel about things, they want to know more about the government and countries around the place. Granted, I know very little of the setting, and like I said, this far they've been in the woods and it didn't matter all that much. If I wanted to know a little bit more about the Swordlords and their political agenda, etc, where would I look? I know the KM module books have some information on them. Is it worth reading to understand this?

Also, only have read through RRR module, to what extent are the PCs "under the thumb" of the Swordlords? The charter seems to grant a lot of independence, but are they technically agents of the Swordlords? Do the PCs have to listen to them? Do the PCs at any point break away from their affiliation with the Swordlords (perhaps in an occurrence in a future book)?

2. One of my PCs decided to be from one of the royal families, the Surtova. He more than any other player, seems especially intrigued by the possibility of political going on's in the formation of a new Kingdom. Do any of the later books present possibilities for this?

3. I've recently found I'm going to be dealing with quite the cluster of a PC party. It is only a 4 PC group, but each seems to be bringing more to the table. The Ranger just hit level 4 and has an animal companion. The Cleric has the domain power granting an animal companion and just hit level 4. The Barbarian/Oracle is debating a level of Cavalier and would obtain a mount. The wizard plans on taking an improved familiar to get in the mix, binding outsiders when he can, and wants to craft his own golem when he has the opportunity. Not only can this be daunting to worth through during combat, but I'm afraid this many combatants could make the party a little better than it should and possibly walk through some encounters that should be harder.

4. My wizard PC took Craft Wondrous Item at 3rd, wants Craft Arms & Armory and is salivating over the idea of a personal golem at some point. With the way Kingmaker is laid out, it seems he will essentially have infinite time to craft, therefore making magic items half the listed price. I'm afraid this is going to severally change the dynamic/difficulty of the game. My group is normally very power gamey already (this is the first game any of them have every played with a less than 20 point buy). I've tried to stress to them this shouldn't be an arms race or a min/max-a-thon but its so far out of their nature to make any character build choice that is even nearing "subpar" as they call it (not optimized) they I can easily see this game getting out of hand. While I could increase the difficulty of encounters to compensate, it seems it would be ALOT of work, on top of what is already a lot of work, to adjust every encounter to up the difficulty a bit.

Thanks for bearing with the long post. Hope you guys have some great suggestions and tips. Can't wait to hear 'em.

I am gearing up to play in a new campaign that a friend of mine is running. He's using the PFRPG rules with a few changes. Since we're playing the game in Eberron, he's adding a few races (Warforged, Changling, Shifter, etc) along with racial feats to accompany them.

In introducing these races he has had to tweak their stat bonus. I'm playing a Warforged and the stat bonuses he has assigned are +4 Con, -2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha. We're using a 20 point buy and I've manged to balance the points and get a 10+ in Int and Wis, but my Cha must suffer and will be an 8. I'm okay with this, it seems like a fun character to play. The concept that I have thought up is a rather smart Warforged (11 or 12) which House Cannith is interested in. They want to know why he is the way he is when the didn't build him to be particularly smart but just a smashbot.

So, I have an above average Int (especially for a Warforged), an average Wis and a low Cha. I don't want the character to be an ass, he's generally very curious about human nature now that he is out of the war, but obviously just doesn't get people. As a warforged, appearance really has nothing to do with his Cha.

So, I'm just looking for ideas on how to play his low Charisma. Ideas?

Some friends and I are just getting into PFS. We have all been playing D&D and such for sometime and have even played PF for several months now. Obviously, PFS takes a little getting used to. For our first PFS game I bought #2-01 Before the Dawn: Part I, Bloodcove Disguise and ran the group through. All in all, everyone had a lot of fun and we're looking forward to more PFS. However, I did have a few questions and my players brought up a few that I wanted to try and clear up. Any help would be appreciated.

1. Before the Dawn is a two part game. Our group fully intends to play part two, but we may wind up playing other games in the mean time (scheduling and such). How do you reconcile this in a time line? Is it just assumed that our non-Before the Dawn game happened before or after? That is what I would imagine and told the players as PFS seems to be willing to sacrifice a little realism to keep things running smooth.

2. In a two part game like this where there is no time between the events in game time, are the players still allowed their Day Job roll? Again, I would assume yes, to keep the rules consistent at the sacrifice of a little realism.

2b. Does the money the players make from the Day Job roll count towards the maximum gold for a session or is that outside of the session?

3. Can an item that the players are capable of purchasing at the end of a session be affected during the session they are playing?
Ex. a If the Witch uses the wand during the encounter, are the charges on it lower for the PCs when they buy it?
b If the Summoner drinks her potion of invisibility (or any consumable for that matter), is it still available for the PCs to purchase?
c If the PCs get the potion of invisibility (or any consumable for that matter) from the summoner and use it during the game, is it still available to purchase at the end of the session?

4. The Summoner had a potion of CLW on her but it is not on the Chronicle sheet for the players at the end. Is this a type-o or is there a reason this is not available to purchase?

5. What is considered "mundane" equipment for the purposes of the House Carthege bonus? I know that backpack would count but would a masterwork backpack count or is a masterwork item not mundane? What about buying a horse?

6. I know the PFS guide mentions that PCs cant buy, sell or trade between themselves but can on PC outright make a purchase for another PC? This came up because one PC1 was having difficulty with his faction missions and asked PC2 for some help, somewhat bribing his character by offering to purchase a barrel ale for the road. PC3 insisted they couldn't do this as it was breaking the no buy,sell,trade rule. I told him I would inquire as to what other people thought.

I hope for some answers. Thanks.

I am starting to make a PFS character and my first inclination was to play a Taldor Detective Bard. I'm not particularly fond of the actual rules on the detective so I'm just playing a detective themed bard. I eventually wanted to mix in a few levels of Investigator Rogue (the actual rules).

In looking where I wanted to take this character I stumbled upon the Lion Blade PrC. The flavor of it was great. Its something I really love and it fits the feel of the character I am aiming to achieve. However, after looking at the class, it just looks terrible.

I understand that LB is from a past edition and needs a little updating but I just wanted to see what the general consensus was on the class as a whole. Thoughts?