I'm DMing the last leg of Reign of Winter. My PCs are in section A6 of the Witch Queen's Revenge and just killed the summoned bone devils. The ice devils that summoned them, who work for Elvanna, watched the fight and decided they did not want any part of fighting the PCs. The party's Chelaxian wizard had tried to make a deal with the summoned minions, so the ice devils knew she would be amenable to it. And what ice devil can resist such machinations with a high-level party when they come calling?
The ice devils wanted a trade for services rather than material possessions. The other party members were like, whatever, I just like killing your kind, and the ice devils were like, cool, that could be arranged. They offered the name of a devil and a gate and said they would allow the PCs to pass unhindered if they brought proof of killing him. The PCs said, yeah, why not? This was all spur of the moment, and I had nothing prepared.
Soooo.... I need an adventure.
My first thought is to teleport them into a modified extraplanar Witchwar Legacy. Does anybody know any good 16th-level one-shots? I'm also looking for a place to insert the "antiparty" trope in these last few game sessions.
What are the ability scores and feats for the Adhukait Asura? They aren't listed on the SRD, except they seem to have Nimble Moves. I can place Dodge, and maybe Two-Weapon Fighting or something like that. Much appreciated.
The Reincarnated Druid always seemed like a great idea for a recurring villain to me, between their class ability that prevents people from knowing about them and their innate, well, recursion. Ideally, this villain would be completely self-reliant, and the Druid class lends itself well to this. Between buff spells, wild shape, summons, a personal bodyguard companion, and the assistance of nature, they will always be capable of posing a threat.
I was considering using this in my campaign, sometime far in the future in the range of levels 10-17. Any necessary circumstances can be arranged, and the party makeup at that point is hard to predict.
The main hurdle is trying to create a high-level NPC foe essentially without gear. The first time the PCs defeat him, they'll take all of his good stuff, and then he'll suck. Buff spells and wild shape ameliorate this to some extent, but it's hard to threaten PCs with a guy without stuff. The other question is how to get him to pose a threat. Summons and the full druid spell list might help here.
Some thoughts I've had in this brainstorm follow.
Samsaran as his (original) race (he's probably died a few times already), to get the alternate race feature that lets him add more spells to his druid list. That would likely include Restoration, to remove the negative levels from respawning. The feat Shade of the Woodlands might also help, thought that specifically makes him reliant on a material focus.
Full spell list could be one form of attack. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of multiclassing. Some thoughts I've had on that front are taking a few levels in monk for Wisdom to AC and bonus feats, or forgoing a druid spell onslaught for taking levels in Assassin or the like.
I had to post about this awesome session. The party consists of Jamion, (NG) Cleric of Nethys, Jexx, (N) Sorcerer, Valgard, a fighter, and his grandmother, Bergdis, a bard. Oh, and Emma, the lawful evil Zen Archer Monk.
This last one is an odd duck indeed. She was raised as a single-minded assassin of the Chelaxian Empire, and has all the personality of a broken record. Winding up on this quest by accident while on assignment, and now obeying the voice that commanded her to find Bab Yaga, she has accepted the Sorcerer as the legal authority of the party. She has all sorts of cleanliness quirks, and suffice to say that she is a little difficult to work with.
As the session begins, the party steps through the winter portal, and saves Nadya and her party from the Mantis. They recognize her from the ice blocks, and eventually break the bad news to her as gently as possible. (Mierul was there, to my pleasure.)
They get to town, sell stuff, and stop by the tavern. You know, adventurer things. Katrina convinces them to have a drink, and Bergdis, Valgard, and Emma order the tea. I decided it was brewed as a batch, so Valgard and Bergdis were receptive to her suggestion and decided to up and leave town immediately - pretty much right that second.
Emma merely commented that the tea tasted a little weird. Jamion, who had ordered the ale with Jexx, shot back with "You're a little weird! There, I said it!", which earned him several minutes of laughter. Jexx threatened Katrina, so Emil pulled his bow on Jexx, and Emma pulled her bow on Emil. Initiative ensued, Katrina went down to Color Spray, Jexx went down to Emil's Human Bane Bolt, and Emil went down to a crit from Emma, in quick succession. Jamion, unsuccessful at bringing Bergdis and Valgard back, responded to the screams and healed Jexx, while Emma went to finish off Emil.
The three of them ran around like headless chickens for a few rounds, trying to figure out how to cover up a murder, until Katrina recovered from being stunned. At that point, she screamed as loudly as possible. Emma rounded on Katrina, taking her from full hit points to dead over one or two shots. I tell you, they were even worse at figuring out how to handle a double-murder.
The shopkeeper and the dwarf (Varana and Rusilka, maybe), from the establishments nearest the tavern, stopped in to see what was going on, and both backed out in terror of the scene with which they were presented. With Valgard and Bergdis heading for the hills, I ended the session with Jamion, Jexx, and Emma returning to Nadya to find her house full of Pale Tower Guards... and me working out what to do next!
I'm helping create a character for a player who isn't that interested in the combat side of things. We've brainstormed up an old human bard (Savage Skald) who fits the campaign wonderfully, and is the grandmother to one of the other PCs. I think this will be very rewarding.
I'm looking for more ideas for what this character could do in combat. Scouring the guides, I have plenty already. Of course, there are spells and bardic performance, and she'll have an outstanding charisma. She'll likely use a net and thrown alchemical items, which don't require too much dexterity to use well. Intimidate checks, perhaps through Dazzling Display, could also be good.
All that should take up plenty of combat time. I just want to know if there are any fun things I haven't thought of yet. Any additions I can make to her bag of tricks?
The party is a human viking (grandson), a human zen archer, a half-elf cleric of Nethys, and a (probably) human sorcerer.
My Reign of Winter campaign will be starting in a few weeks, and I'm very excited for it. My PCs look like they are as follows:
An Ulfen Fighter (Viking)
A LE Chelaxian Monk (Zen Archer)
A Half-Elf Cleric of Nethys
A human sorcerer (unknown nationality)
And another character, race/class unknown.
Now, I've been a DM before, but I've never brought a disparate group of first-level adventurers with vastly different backgrounds together. How have other people been accomplishing this for this campaign? I've looked at some of the PBFs here for some ideas, but I'm just looking for some general advice. I'm not particularly averse to them just meeting in a tavern, but I want to hear what else has worked for people.
The Viking has been sent to Heldren to meet and be added to Lady Argentea's escort as a mercenary. Of course, they never showed up. He'll have to go retrieve her. Simple enough.
The cleric, I imagine, has been studying under the elder in Heldren as a part of his nomadic, troublemaking wanderings. The elder suggests he go on this adventure, in part to satisfy his wanderlust, and in part to get him out of his temple.
I don't have anything to work with for the sorcerer yet, but the monk's association is proving tricky. So, the character is lawful evil, which I don't have a problem with. She was raised as an assassin of the empire, and has presumably been sent to Taldor on assignment. The easy assignment would be to assassinate Lady Argentea, but I don't want to cause inter-party conflict at 1st level by prompting her to kill the first quest objective. Any thoughts?
I've become enchanted with this adventure path, and hope to run it once my current game concludes. I have a question for all the current and future DMs of this one.
How do you plan to deal with the inevitable character who want to play a pyromaniac firespout? Or even just a regular sorcerer who happens to learn Scorching Ray and Fireball? Those staple spells seem to become disproportionately powerful in this adventure path, at least during the first and second adventures.
Spoilers ahoy.
Spoiler:
It's hit and miss throughout the first adventure. Pretty much everything in chapter two is fire-vulnerable, but it's tempered by the fact that your average level one and two options for fire attacks kinda suck. Alchemist's Fire could be an issue. At least Hommelstaub thought to pick up Resist Fire. The later foes are mostly of the normal variety.
The second book, it seems to become more of an issue, when you can start using Scorching Ray and Fireball to fight waves of Winter Wolves and Ice Trolls. I'm especially concerned for Logrivich. I think of myself as a veteran DM of dragons, and as written, I think he will easily be eaten alive by any 6th-level fire-wielding caster.
Any thoughts on how to minimize this hazard, or is it not as bad as it looks? Any word from the designers about whether this will be a big problem in the remainder of the path?
I'm playing a "Battlefield Control" wizard. On the whole, it hasn't worked out like that, due to general ignorance about how to use the spells, or overzealous or efficient party members, or what have you. Mostly, I make sure the party is hasted, fling party members about the board, and once or twice I've stepped in with a clutch Save-or-Die.
I just reached level thirteen, and busted out Reverse Gravity the other day. Our honorable GM was aghast at what the spell actually did. In practice, it flung all the mooks out of the way, let the two melee beasts have their way with the boss, and (theoretically) allowed the ranged characters to blow the hell out of the mooks at their leisure, though he called the combat long before that became necessary.
He's curious (to put it mildly) as to what he could possibly do to not let this spell walk all over him in the future. Obviously, flying foes are good, but he doesn't want the only thing that can challenge us to be flyers.
One thing about the spell - is the area assumed to be consecutive? I could not find any rules about it, so the pockets of reversed gravity pretty well wrecked the mooks, who were fairly well spread out and interspersed among allies. I could see ruling either way here, and might suggest this to him as a way to at least temper what happened.
So, any advice from the seasoned high-level GMs? Or canny players?
I don't mean to be an idiot, but I thought I'd come for clarification on a topic that has been really bothering me. I am a ten-year veteran of D&D and Pathfinder, starting from the release of third edition. I know the rules of the game cold, I make effective characters, and I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how to use battlefield control. I fully accept that I'm an idiot, sure, but my group doesn't know how to use them either. I don't think I've ever played with anybody who used these spells in a decisive way.
There's this whole class of spells and effects that are supposed to be godly. Indeed, I'm currently playing a conjurer, using the idea of a God wizard, as set down in Treantmonk's wonderful guides. I see this bunch of spells that are light blue, and that means the best. So, if you take them... what do you do with them?
Let's take Black Tentacles. People say this spell ends an encounter. Now, I've never seen it cast, but I can certainly see how that would drag an encounter to a halt. Here's my question. How does Black Tentacles end the encounter in a way that is interesting? You don't want to trap your allies in the spell. Do your fighters just use bows while the tentacles have their way with the enemies that stay trapped? Does everyone wait out the duration and hope the tentacles make the enemy much softer?
Grease. Apparently so good, for a first level spell. Where do you put it so that it's relevant? Once both PC and NPC are next to each other, they don't tend to move, so the Acrobatics check and the flat-footed thing don't really come up.
Web. Where do you put this so that it doesn't just apply the same penalties to everybody?
Walls. Separate the enemies, that I can see. That's useful. What else do these things do that makes them so good?
Sleet Storm. Okay. You've made the area where the enemies are dark, and you make them slower. What do you do when they emerge from the spell effect 5-10 rounds later?
Please help me and my group understand how to use these spells.
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As a penalty for awesome summoning abilities, a Master Summoner's eidolon has only half the advancement of that of a regular Summoner. Does that eidolon still have access to evolutions that require a certain level at the normal time?
As an example, the flight evolution takes a 5th level Summoner. At fifth level, your eidolon will be treated as that of a Summoner 2. Can you spend 2 of his 4 evolution points to let your eidolon fly?
How do you deal with the class features of a PC that has been dominated?
Specifically, I am referring to animal companions, eidolons, and paladin mounts.
It looks like there was a thread about this some time ago that focused mostly on animal companions. I feel like eidolons change the nature of the question in some way. Allow me to explain.
If a druid is dominated, I would consider it pretty straightforward that he could also command his animal companion to attack whomever he would like. The animal companion pretty much answers to the druid.
If a paladin with a mount is dominated, I feel like the mount could be vaguely aware that something is up, but the paladin would probably be able to guide the mount to go wherever he needs to be. The mount, with his six intelligence, may be entitled to the Sense Motive check to recognize a dominated individual, but wouldn't necessarily be in a position to do anything about it. Generally speaking, I think the paladin could feasibly unleash his full mounted fury on the party. I feel like this wouldn't come up, but for the existence of the eidolon.
An eidolon is a distinct sentient outsider who manifests as an extension of a summoner's will. It is only a little smarter than a paladin mount (base INT 7). The difference I see is that it seems like an eidolon is far more capable of acting under his own power. It seems like there is the possibility that the eidolon is capable of recognizing that the summoner has turned against the party, and can make informed decisions from that.
The counter to this argument would be in the first line of my description of their relationship. There are no rules for how the summoner controls the eidolon - because the eidolon is a manifestation of the summoner's will. Perhaps there is no question. He does what the summoner wants. Or wait, is that corrupted by the meaning of dominate? What does the summoner, in fact, want?
Complicating this whole mess is the role-playing interaction. Whenever I play a character with a pet, I make sure that pet has a distinct personality. I encourage party members to interact with the dog or the serpent, and they each have their own relationships. That companion is almost as much of a PC as the PC is. So to me, it seems natural that a dominate cast on the PC is not automatically equivalent to a dominate on the pet.
But then, these things are class features. You wouldn't tell the rogue, "Well, you are dominated, but they don't get your sneak attack."
There's a lot more I can say about this, because I find it an interesting question. But I want to hear what you have to say first. I'll tell you more about the particular situation tomorrow.
I'm considering starting up a Play-by-Post Pathfinder game, over in the gaming section on this site. I'm fond of high-level play, and it doesn't look like high-level offers come around all that often here. So that should be a treat to those interested. (If I get it off the ground, that is.)
So my question. What ways do people on here use to illustrate the playing field? Tactical movement, terrain, and area spells can be integral to strong high-level play. (Can be. We can fall back on Save-or-Dies and trading full attacks, if we prefer.)
I'm not especially experienced with any methods of illustrating terrain and moving characters around. Can anybody point me to a good, easy-to-use program?
