I'm so sorry my friend! I would be devastated too.
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How do favored class bonuses work? Do custom races get access to FCBs for another race that they are based on somehow, or can they only take skill points or hit points? Does only one "part" of a -stalt character get a FCB each level, or does each "part" get one?
A heavy RP campaign with relatively-high level tristalt characters sounds like heaps of fun!
Jacques narrows his eyes at Fipps. "Get out of my way," he says menacingly. "You will not like what happens to you if you do not," he adds.
That makes sense to me. And we get points from some of our Backgrounds. Thanks for clarifying!
Do we get Background skills (two extra skill points that may only be spent on certain skills)? I wasn’t sure looking at the rules and other characters. I didn’t take them on Jacques, but if we get them, putting them in Profession (cook) and Sleight of Hand seems like it would be appropriate.
No worries! I'm glad to hear that you're being kept on your feet enjoyably. I was always a behind-the-scenes sort of girl, but I rather miss the days when I would dabble and do stagehand-y things. I'm no longer in a place with as accessible a theatre scene for the sorts of things I was interested in, though. You'd probably have a lot of fun doing Evil Dead. It's an incredibly technical show, since every time someone is injured or killed on stage we spray the audience with fake blood. Sometimes it's blood-filled condoms that look like intestines; often it's strategically-placed squirt guns fired from cover; we have cups and buckets hidden offstage that we draw out and hurl into the audience-- and of course there's the blood sprinklers. Lots of companies do Evil Dead all across the United States and Canada during October, but here in Folsom, CA they've been doing the show for 12 years now, and there's quite a following of people who come from all over to see it. We've been completely sold out since September.
So sorry for my absence!! I've been starring in a show that has a grueling performance schedule (I'm Ash in Evil Dead the Musical, and I basically never leave the stage), including five performances this last weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday). I'm also rehearsing for another show between those, and I also met someone who is charmingly stealing away a lot of my little remaining free time. I am still at work, and I hope to do more posting tomorrow and Friday during the day. But at nights when I usually post, I've been either out or coming home utterly exhausted. I don't want to hold up the game, and I'm certainly enjoying what I read! I hope to catch up tonight and tomorrow.
I’ve never been the cook’s assistant before. This should be interesting!
I have a halfling oracle (Heavens) that I will write up for you this weekend. She's a devout follower of Desna.
If you'd like, you can swap martial weapon proficiency for a [discipline] talent. Thank you kindly sir!
Hmm, any chance I can swap my martial weapon and armor proficiencies for two (discipline) talents? :) I’m Pacific time, btw. I generally do all my posting during the day, and occasionally do follow-up posts at night when I get home from shows/rehearsals. (I do a lot of community theater.)
That sounds cool, Kazmanaught. Undead shock troops probably isn't as optimal as summoned creatures when we have a bard in the party (can't be buffed with mind-affecting abilities), but I think it's still very genre-appropriate, and they will likely make excellent grunt crew members too.
I put my first pass at Jacques on this profile: Jacques Lacrimoisi.
Jacques is pretty morbid, as he's investing heavily in the Death sphere. By the way, he will be able to heal undead as easily as the living, if you'd prefer a curse like Lich or Vampirism. GM, am I reading this right: Fighter gets all martial proficiencies and heavy armor proficiency, AND a martial tradition?
No complaints here! Since there aren’t cannons I’m revising my plans for Jacques and I won’t have him do anything ranged after all, so dropping rocks like cannonballs from the sky sounds freaking awesome!
It also might be interesting combining a High-caster spherecaster with a class like Wizard or Cleric that has old-school spells. Talk about versatile!
Getting as many talents as you possibly can is a good reason, but yes, you’ll be sturdier with a 3/4 class mixed in!
As much as I’d like to start when we are actual pirates, I’m really intrigued by our GM’s description of getting to know the crew and becoming a rebellious force against the people who press-ganged us. In other games I’ve played, it was pretty grueling— you spend a lot of time feeling like first-level shlubs who are abused by slavers with whips and you keep failing skill checks that make you look very un-piratey. But I trust YBD to make it a memorable experience, and I’m willing to give it another try. :)
I’m constructing away, but I have two humble requests, if our GM would be so kind: 1. Since Soul Weaver (Dual Channeler) trades away the bound nexus class feature, could I please take the “gain 1/6 of a magical talent” favored class bonus instead of the one that improves nexus powers? 2. One of the Fighter (Tactician) abilities is keyed off of Intelligence. Would it be reasonable to modify this to instead use the fighter’s Practitioner Ability Modifier?
Something like Vicarion Greyjoy, but not as dour, "I dont fear drowning, I have a swim speed". Hopefully without an evil hand made of shadow and flame... ("I understood that reference!")
I've got a few ideas, what were you thinking of running eriktd? I like to fill in gaps. Well, I had been planning on doing him as an Int- and Dex-focused Fighter//Incanter, but that's not viable in Johnsonfinder so it looks like he'll have to be a Cha- and Dex-based Fighter//Soul Weaver. With Mightypion also doing a Cha-based build, I suspect we'll be hurting for Int skills, though bard can pick up quite a lot of slack with repertoires that duplicate bardic lore. A Wisdom-based character also might be good to consider, though I'm not sure what that is. I plan for Jacques to be able to dual channel, so he can heal hit points well, but he won't be very good at status effect healing. Even though Jacques is more a frontline skirmisher like a swashbuckler, I'm building him to be able to use and direct siege weapons (cannons), so he can work from the back. But especially if Mightypion is a raging bard a ranged attacker might be good too. I don't know what that looks like though. A weather druid, maybe? Something to think about is the roles we will occupy on the ship. It helps if everyone has a clear idea of who is going to be the captain, because one of the games that I was in that fell apart, fell apart because two players both really wanted their character to be the captain and they kept sniping at each other. I don't want Jacques to be the captain-- Jacques is the enforcer, who keeps the crew in line with fear and magic. It sounds like Mightypion might want to be a "leader" character, with the bard's ability to draw attention and speak inspirationally. Is that right? And is that cool with you, Kazmanaught? Does whatever you have developing have a clear role as one of the officers on the ship? The navigator, or maybe someone that bonds with the ship itself to keep it whole, things like that? Just throwing out stuff to see what helps.
Bloodrager, huh? How cool! What’s your second class, do you think?
I think there's a Sentinel archetype (Paragon) that is basically a paladin.
I hope so (gestalt), since there's only three of us. Are we going to use the campaign traits? If we're playing traditional, I'll probably convert the character I used the last few times I've played the beginning (yes, like three times!). I think under the Johnsonfinder system he would probably be best as a Fighter (Tactician) // Incanter (Death specialization). The character's background and general tone can be found here: Jacques Lacrimoisi. He's a Bonuwat human who desires to follow in his infamous granddam's footsteps and become a dread pirate on the dead sea. He's not evil, but he's not very "good" either. The times I've played him he bullied the other sailors to make them do what he wanted, and then they built uneasy friendships once he knew he had them cowed. He also fought dexterously with a rapier while casting necromantic spells from his granddam's grimoire. GM, did you make any adjustments to the Incanter class for Torsten in your Curse of the Crimson Throne game?
Marshal, meanwhile, has a lot of options that are just sort of statically useful support abilities and a couple of options that synergize quite well with what I have laid out for the build (Tactical Genius and Mythic Bond will both combo well with the Ranger's Animal Companion). A more support-y shell from Marshal will help my character, to continue eriktd's use of roles from The Forge of Combat, double as both a Hammer (rendering the enemies into a fine paste of loot) and an Arm (helping any Hammers in the group succeed in the aforementioned paste-rendering through buffs). Those are really good points, SPCR! I don't usually think of an alchemist as a strong support class-- especially a Vivisectionist, creepy! :) -- but as long as you've got Infusion, why not? You can hand out salves and stuff before and after a fight, too.
Cool! I’m fine with that if Kazmanaught doesn’t object.
At least as written, the traits have a minor role in the story in that the characters get a chance to resolve unresolved questions about their trait in one of the later books-- it's why I basically flavored Evelynda's backstory so that either the story associated with Riftwarden Orphan or Stolen Fury applies, to give our esteemed GM more options should it come to that. :)
Also, since we're all gestalt, a lot of us are planning to Dual Path, so the trait doesn't define quite as much about our characters. :) It makes sense, since gestalt kind of gives everyone two standard characters in one body. Heck, in a silly rules game like this, it might even make sense for the GM to give all the characters Dual Path by default!
I'm really happy with how Evelynda turned out, and I think she has her own special niche: the Anvil. That is, her job in combat is to lock down enemies so that the other characters (the Hammers) can do stuff to them before they can do stuff to us. She's a dedicated grappler with all the awesome debuffing spells on the witch list (frostbite, ill omen, touch of blindness, bestow curse, confusion, enervation and more)-- many of them deliverable with her hair, triggering a grab. She's less focused on dealing damage-- though like a monk she will get pretty good at punching over time-- and she does have some support spells that will help the party (things like keep watch, haste, and see invisibility). And she's basically Tentacle Head! How cool is that? :)
Well, with the understanding that I love all of these ideas... it seems to me that the opportunity to play an adventure path as goblins or kobolds is pretty unique and sounds like a lot of fun. So I guess I'd rank them like so: 1. Kingmaker (Kobolds/Goblins)
Elementalist looks fun, two weapon fighting with it seems fairly effective. More so if you are an ifrit, hmm, do I outright play Lina Inverse? I had a tongue-in-cheek funny character once for a short-lived campaign who was an Elemontalist (which I reflavored as an Elemintalist, focused on cold and Nature (plant)). Good times, good times. :)
Would you like us to vote more formally to help you decide? Maybe some kind of ranked choice system to help us focus? :) Also, I don't want you to have to do a lot of extra preparation for us since you basically just volunteered to run for us spontaneously. Unless that would be fun for you!
Oooo, can I also suggest Hell's Rebels, Hell's Vengeance, or War for the Crown? All games I've wanted to play, but they have never seemed to get very far each time I've been cast in them. Not that I'm opposed to the other options, but if you have everything and you don't have a strong preference...?
Kobold Kingmaker sounds like it would be a blast! I've played through the video game a couple of times, but I'm sure I can keep player knowledge and character knowledge separate. I was sad our all-goblin Rise of the Runelords ended, so I wouldn't mind reincarnating Chambawamba with a new group. And I've played through the grueling first part of Skull & Shackles THREE times, and it's always fallen apart right when things start getting interesting. But I'd love to give it another go if everyone else is on board. Maybe Skull & Shackles & Goblins? ;) I also wouldn't mind a full game of Curse of the Crimson Throne-- another one that I've played the first part of multiple times and never reached the second chapter. I'm currently in games of both Reign of Winter and Strange Aeons, which isn't to say that they might not fail, but they aren't as high on my wishlist.
Oh, eriktd is a really fun player to play with, we are both in a number of games and it has been a blast :). Aw, thanks Mightypion! I love your characters. We haven't gotten to play together as much as I should like to!
Hi again, YBD! I'm a longtime member of the boards, and I was lucky enough to play with you in your all-goblin Rise of the Runelords campaign for as long as it lasted. I'm a computer programmer by day and a
Menhir Savant is actually pretty cool for an undead-fighting druid, because they get detect undead at will. :) 
Oh no, the smurfs have been invoked! Silliness is unavoidable now!
I could have sworn I posted my character already, but it looks like I didn't. Here she is: Evelynda. She's an unarmed magus/witch, but she kind of feels like a spellcasting brawler. I wrote her background to be a combination of Riftwarden Orphan and Stolen Fury, so that she can follow the story associated with either trait depending on what our GM wants to do. She'll definitely be a Champion, but she will probably also Dual Path to an Archmage. Oh, and I'm in the Pacific time zone, though I've never found that it matters much. :)
Trying to come up with some interesting ideas for a natural attack-based striker. The best build I've been able to come up with thus far is an Alchemist/Ranger for a combo of Feral Mutagen + Mutagen bonuses and the Natural Attack Combat Style. If I had to guess, Favored Enemy (Outsider (evil)) would be a pretty big boost for WotR. There's always the Mutation Warrior fighter if you really don't want to invest in Int. You'd lose a lot of cool alchemist stuff, but you'd gain a ton of feats and weapon training in exchange, as long as you don't mind waiting until level 7.
I've finished the background and description for Faro al-Wati, and I've revised him to be a thug instead of a trapfinder, since so many others here seem to be taking their characters in that direction. :)
In case it matters, I can easily alter Faro’s rogue abilities to not include trapfinding, if that’s something someone else wants to focus on.
@Geometer Are you open to having our characters learn they were both part of the same ritual? (If mine is chosen, of course!) I was also looking at the Tainted Spirit drawback, which seems like it meshes really well with Stolen Fury. My tentative idea is that my character was born to well-known mages (maybe even Riftwardens?) but kidnapped by cultists as a baby who wanted to sacrifice her as part of a demonic ritual. Fortunately her parents managed to stop the cultists, but they died in the process. She was found by crusaders and brought back to Kenabres, where she was raised by her foster father. But recently she has begun to demonstrate magical powers, and also having terrifying dreams of an insect-like demon biting her and drinking her blood. It occurs to me that what I am describing is basically a combination of the fluff of the Riftwarden Orphan trait and the Stolen Fury trait. I wonder, perhaps our esteemed GM would let me modify the flavor of one campaign trait to match a different one instead? I suppose there’s no reason the mechanics necessarily have to match the different traits?
Hey DM, how likely are you to select multiple characters with the same campaign Trait? Should I think about changing Stolen Fury to something else, or work with Geometer and others to make sure we were all part of the same ritual? I’m kind of surprised that an Oracle//Sorcerer would want a trait that boosts CMB and leads to the Champion mythic path. I would think Riftwarden Orphan would be more mechanically appropriate, but maybe that’s just me? :)
I've cobbled together an idea for this: Meet Faro al-Wati, an old soul sent back to life from the Boneyard to avert a terrible disaster. It's all a bit above his pay grade, as a former bandit and graverobber who was betrayed by his cohorts. He's a human Mortal Usher, fleshed out on (unchained) rogue and slayer bones.
I'm interested! How silly are we talking here? I'm looking at a human Esoteric magus // White-haired Witch with the Stolen Fury campaign trait (flailing Muppet spaghetti arms).
Sorry Tazo! Everyone but Wes got a 20 on our first attack. I imagine we're all going to be paying for that with the dice gods for the rest of the campaign!
More difficult even than choosing eye color? Because, I have been back and forth. Agonizing about saying he has blue eyes, but really meant to say Grey. "DO I SEE THAT HAPPENING?!?!"
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