halfling witch with the malicious eye feat? Take bolster jinx and just tank enemies saving throws into the dirt before yourself or the wizard just decimates with spells. Sluggish jinx also helps your allies against enemy martials and with various spells and summons etc you can just debuff your enemies until they are dead.
To others, Shichiro's voice might be described as soothing to the ears. But to Takeya, it was as if metal was being scraped against metal. The young Samurai brought Takeya's blood to a boil, but he remains calm. The impudence of this young man. One task, we gave him a ONE task and he has deviated from it this quickly? This is not the challenge of the Red Crane dojo, it was simple. And I got him out of my sight for a little while. His eyes dart to the young Scorpion before softening. "Shichiro, I thought you were speaking with the Unicorn or have they not arrived yet? Please, bring them over when you get a chance. It would be absolutely delightful to be able to meet them." He waves his hand and motions for Shichiro to continue his task. "My apologies for the interruption Suana-san and Sachiko-kun. Although I h ave never been in this town before, I guess I am looking for a friendly face to speak with and share stories with. Miyuki-san and I go way back, and she's off mingling with the others. I always look towards tomorrow while remembering the teachings of my ancestors, is that how you feel Sachiko-kun? I hope your ancestors do watch over you in the coming days."
Kordin tries to adjust her controls a bit, and since nobody told her there would be lightning involved she was ill prepared for it. She'd never been to Dromund Kaas, so to her it wasn't her fault. "Ven, can we buy one of those astromech droids with the money we spend? I'd say it's worth it if we can teach it to help me pilot this thing. Now, who's bright idea was it to not warn me about the lightning?!? I've never been to this planet, and I never planned on going to this planet anytime soon." Upon landing the woman tries to help Ven make sure nothing was damaged. After a systems check she stands near the exit to see if the sith had any dealings of their own mysterious nature. She was also waiting instructions that would allow her to leave the ship and not be riddled with blaster fire. She knew there was one person outside, but had no idea how many could be hiding in the shadows nearby.
A couple of years ago I had an itch for some old school gaming so I ran a short 3 adventure module for my group of 2e set in the Forgotten Realms. The group: Female Human Fighter/Barbarian, male Dwarven fighter thief with an int of 6, Male elf fighter with a couple of kits, making him the hoitiest toitiest gold elf ever, but he had the charisma to pull it off, and a cleric of helm. Any time the dwarf said anything the elf would rip on him with a short joke, stumpy joke, you name it. Smug fighter is smug. Group is going through an area, finds a secret door, checks for traps, finds the traps, thinks he disarms it. They open the door and a cloud of sleep gas gets to them, the elf and cleric make their saving throws, the dwarf and human fighter pass out. When the party wakes up they find the elf smoking a cigar... Dwarf"So what, you fondled and did things to the lady?"[/b] Elf (with french accent because it fit at the time)"Who said it was the girl?" Whole table busts a gut laughing, the dwarf player has a look on his face that is like a silent scream/oh what did you do to me. To this day the elf player still has his character sheet. It was fantastic.
I think Paizo should work on another beautiful setting and not go the way of Rifts. I think the cleric should have been in Pathfinder Unchained. I like throwing my players under the bus for rp reasons and let them struggle on their way out, when they do get out I like it to be into another pile of garbage. (My players like it because it let's them explore where their characters would go when they have their backs to the wall) I like the paladin code(s). I do not like the magus. There's a few more, but those are my biggies.
Kind of on the side of good, but still on the cruel side. Party captured a lich's last phylactory and killed the lich (held onto the phylactory). Said party struck a deal with some angels and handed the phylactory over to them in the plane of positive energy while he revived... now in the plane of positive energy, for the rest of eternity.
If we cook for our usual game I have a player who holds her knife like a dagger. That is my biggest pet peeve in the world and I had to teach her how to eat a steak like a civilized person.
I'm not a fan of the bean counter player. The one who stacks up all their bonuses and doesn't add them ahead of time preferring to do the math every single time and slowing down play. We get it, you dealt a good amount of damage, just add everything up ahead of time and we won't be frustrated. One of the other things I do not like is pc killers. Not people who like pvp, although I dislike that as well. The ones who play new characters or try and force the gm to let them build new characters every session because they don't like their old one. Most recent example of this is that I'm running a Necessary Evil game because the group wanted to try something new and our usual gm is kind of burnt out. The players didn't know the system very well so to avoid confusion and miscalculation I built the characters ahead of time. My problem is a player I called the shadow boxer. Used powers of shadow, super speed, and dual wielding brass knuckles to land solid blows and super speeds. It does everything he likes, be just about wherever he needs to be whenever he needs to be, hits hard, hits fast, and does a good job at not getting hit or hit too hard. But he has a problem, he likes building something new. I spent a good few hours on this character and you want to change one session in? The answer is no, I don't care if you don't like it, I can alter the character, I gave you an incredibly vague back story (serves the shadowking, for reasons, kind of like certain pfs scenarios I give him one task the shadowking wants performed that the party doesn't need to know about) and you think it's okay to just kill the character? Come on man. I'm trying to build a story here, and you are trying to muscle mechanics over a really cool story that is unraveling around you and you can't even see it.
Recently I started up a Necessary Evil game for my players. Think supervillains that are trying to save the planet because all the heroes are gone. The scene, an old run down bank that is the home of a cult. I have 3 players. One designed all her powers off being a vampire, the second is a super hacker, and the third is a speedster. In order to take out the cult the party came up with a relatively simple plan. The speedster would sneak in and hide in the meeting room, bust out when all the fighting began, the vampire would mist in through the broken drive-thru window and mind control 2 guards to do the fighting for her, while the computer hacker took out the two guards on the roof and shot anybody who tried to escape. Fairly simple plan, and it worked. They got the goods from the safe that they needed, took out the cult, and had fun doing it. Now for the funny part. The computer hacker, who was the only one who knew how to drive a car, asked if the villain had any car keys on his person. Looking through the book and a percentile roll later I figured he would. The party was now the proud owners of a 1998 Ford Taurus (Game is set in 2004 so it's not so bad). A few small adventures later they have kept their beat up Taurus and have paid to have bullet resistant armor on it, and continue to steal random license plates and give it different paint jobs. Nobody expects 3 super villains to be cruising around the city in a Taurus, nobody. They "sneak" into areas of the city controlled by aliens by driving their taurus. So far it's worked and I'm giving them some time before they have to steal a different car.
A trophy case in a wizard's tower. Even if the wizard is long gone it remains spotless. The wizard was tired of cleaning his bowling trophy so he animated the little figure on top to be a golem that can dust itself off every now and then.
I did something evil to my party once playing deadlands, then again how can you not. party was exploring a section of woods that was going to be cut down for farmland. They were getting paid some cash and a percentage of the next 10 years profit as they owned the land. As they were walking I had them make cog checks (perception) and one person realized that there were no animals around. Not even small animals like rabbits. Well until the party came across a squirrel in a tree. Nobody suspected a thing yet until the posse decided to split up. I had come up with an amalgam creature called the grizzly squirrel (mix of a few different systems creatures and made it for this system). It picked one of the party members, burrowed into his rib cage, and sat there. There was some dark magic involved and the player failed his perception checks to notice the blood, or the fact that he was being eaten. Posse gets back together and I texted each of the party members except the bloody one. I didn't want to use notecards for this, and the look of horror on their faces as they had to pry a squirrel out of a man's ribcage as he jumped around trying to get his armored coat off... btw it could chew through steel. Oh, that was a glorious day. The player lived, although not without some consequences, and they learned never to trust me again after that.
GM Says: Any trick or loophole you use can and will be used against you. GM Means: I don't know all the tricks, but if you show me one and I like it you can expect me to use it against you in the future.
To add to this, if it was a wordcasting wizard take a look at what words he had prepared for the day and combination words and put them in a crossword puzzle for the pc's to figure out. Just hand it to them and then go out to grab food while they fill in the blanks.
A trapdoor that leads to a prison that is the equivalent of a human sized hamster cage. A running wheel, giant water bottle, etc.
I've only had 1 paranormal experience and it was odd. I was at the movie theater with my gf at the time and we were watching the first Kick-Ass. We were the only ones in the theater as it had been out for about a month at the time. What happened? After the credits I was still looking at the screen, glancing forward so I would know where I was going. I looked back at the screen and saw the silhouette of a young girl in front of the screen. It could have easily been something wrong with the projector or whatnot but it didn't feel like that. I don't know it's hard to explain. Do I want to believe? Sure, but was it paranormal? The thing is I'm not sure. One second it was there, the next it was gone.
When the players roll perception and one of them rolls a natural 1 and states "I found a rock." Why yes, yes you did. It is in fact an enchanted rock that only shows itself to those who have failed to notice something at a possibly crucial moment. The rock is a one time use wandering artifact that is found when you roll a natural 1 on a perception check. It permits you to reroll any natural 1 aside from the one used to find the rock before disappearing awaiting the next adventurer or enemy perhaps to find it. If you want to crush their souls you can add in "Nah just kidding with you, it's just a rock."
A full kitchen with poison dart traps in all the food cabinets.
It was Eberron, we were good and it was being less than willing to help. I was a neutral good cleric of The Becoming God that had been banished from the Mournlands for calling the Lord of Blades an evil schmuck (Calling a divine being an evil schmuck is frowned upon even if he is one).
A room filled with mist. The archway above the entrance has one word engraved upon it. Barovia
If I remember correctly Hackmaster had a pretty good system for fleshing out dungeons with random stuff. But then again that system also had an ENTIRE random dungeon generator you could use. I think one of the things you could find was just a random pool of colored water, was it acidic or not? Let your party be the judge. Man I freaked out a party one time with rooms filled with just pools of various colored water and colored (not shiny but colored) stones. Looking through my notes the water was fine but the stones were alchemical crayons that would light up in the dark (the crayon part was my own twist on it). It wasn't even in hackmaster, I just used their tables in Labyrinth Lords and it worked beautifully. I'm sure most of their tables you could bring to pathfinder and any mechanics you could work out rather easily.
I blame Cosmo for having a skunk spray my dogs today. I'm not even sure it was a skunk, it might have been Cosmo.
I remember a party I was a part of, very very low magic setting. The party found a rock with the image of an eagle on it. We had no casters so we took the rock with us, sweet maybe we found a magic rock right? We got into a fight with a lot of skeletons so the minotaur pulls out the rock and hurls it like a bowling ball killing 3 skeletons before the rock stopped. We thought this was awesome, we loved our magic rock. It was our signature weapon for 2 sessions. We get to a town with some low level casters because we had to know what the rock did, turns out it was just a rock, something you would place outside of your home with a small family crest from a no name family. It made us sad, but we didn't mind because eventually we made the rock into a magic rock. TL;DR A rock with some runes or a fancy image on it, about the size of your head with three holes drilled into it like a bowling ball.
A 2e game, I was new to the system and was handed a pregenerated half-orc thief. Looking over the skills and through the book the stats I was generated with made me think I was the guy who sets up traps/ambushes and gets the first hit before the fighting began. I asked if I could buy some fish hooks which were cheap and a net. I began using fishing line to tie fish hooks to the net to make a cheap one man trap. Basically something I could fling at a guy and get him entangled and stuck as the barbs wouldn't let go. First time I tried to use it I rolled a 1... no more fish hook nets for me.
It's kind of like a game system called Deadlands. When you become an evil party killing type your sheet becomes an NPC villain to annoy the pc's until the end of the campaign or until they kill him. Sit down your players, ask if they agree to it and start over from scratch. You can always have your buddy say "look I'm sorry and we got off on the wrong foot. I'd like to continue to play and for my previous actions I'm sorry, will you have me?" But it only works if your friend wants to keep playing with that particular group, if he doesn't he might want to find another game.
Witch//Investigator, who doesn't want to play CoC: Golarion?
Looking through her pack she notices Linpul sighs at the sight of wet torches. They should dry out soon enough, in the meantime however the gnome reaches out to the head of her hammer and speaks. "Phos." The lucerne hammer begins to emit a soft warm light. "Alright, this'll work for a bit. Once your torches dry out light one so we can dry of... Tetsuda, no! Bad beetle!" The beetle has opened it's shell and is drying off it's wings by buzzing them and spraying anyone nearby with the filthy water. It makes a few clicking sounds in response to the gnome speaking to it.
3.5 Ravenloft game, where generally Ravenloft is part of a demi-plane the DM popped it somewhere into his homebrew setting, great setting with no clerics. There were still paladins, druids, and favored souls, but no clerics. I'm playing a counterpunch wizard, party full of martials and and a favored soul they always turned to me whenever a caster popped up, that was my schtick that was my job. I was good at it, and I was good at tactics so I was the party leader. I made the hard decisions when we needed it. Now for worst pc I've ever seen. Our archer/mounted combatant/scout/wannabe leader. Guy built a good archer and pleaded with the DM for the 3.0 prc windrider, and because it was out we used the pathfinder fighter so he was a fighter/windrider, all around it was a good build except for how he played it. He wanted to be the leader, said so in the beginning we gave him a shot, he screwed it up and I got the job. He was always scouting ahead or trying to fly 100ft above combat and still trying to be the leader. Trying to get an edge that he couldn't get before, trying to find a weird mechanic that he could abuse. He was a power gamer that felt out of place when the party got to rp. Needless to say that doesn't work very well. Here's how we fixed the problem, I was doing my job, observing combat, casting a buff here and there and after combat he tried to shoot me. He hits me for about a quarter of my hp with the quip "And I wasn't even trying, maybe such a weak person shouldn't be the leader." He was met with a dispel magic on his endless quiver, no more arrows for you, followed by a quickened wingbind to his flying mount and the words from the paladin "If you ever try something like that again I won't stop the wizard from disintegrating you. If you try something like that and I get to you first I will end your miserable life." He quickly stopped griping about how he wasn't the leader.
Nodding in thanks to the tiefling Linpul walks back to the Dr. Seeing the look of concern on his face the little gnome has an idea. Staring up at the Dr she knows he can at least fix some things, he'll find a better use for the ion tape and zipstick. She grabs his hand and thrusts the ion tape and zip stick into it. "Here, you take these. They are used for putting things together, and I'm only good at taking things apart. I can even show you how they work if you'd like. Rather simple really." Pointing to the zipstick she instructs. "This is called a zipstick, it can deliver a small electrical charge to get some things started or activate some items. It doesn't leave any lasting damage, a bruise at most but still be careful with it. All you have to do is press this button here and it will work. It can hold about 10 charges or so before you need to fill it up again with these" Linpul holds up her spare batteries and then moves on to the ion tape. "This is called ion tape, at best right now it can hold some paper together but if you wrap something up and give it a little zip the tape will bond together and form a nearly unbreakable bond that can support well over two hundred pounds! It's AMAZING! In the past I've pushed it over, I think it broke at around three hundred pounds of pressure. General rule, if it moves and it shouldn't move tape it."
The hilt of a weapon can be seen over the heads of many of the people int he crowd. Pushing her way forward to the front a little girl appears through the crowd. At a second glance while small, she is no human child. The eyebrows give it away, and shortly after she gently tugs on the leash in her hand and a beetle the size of her appears. Seemingly incredibly well armed with several weapons on her or tucked under her coat the gnome steps forward. "Come on Tetsuda, we are finding Mr. Baine. Oh and you can keep your signing bonus but I will kindly take my fair share of the four thousand when we succeed." Moving forward she jumps up onto a chair, leans down and scratches the beetles horn.
1. Distant worlds; When the planets align Rovagug will be released upon the world. Work with astronomers and either teleport to Akiton or fly there in a space ship of some kind to blow up whatever device is there that could set the destroyer free. Quite literally a free reign to hit a worm hole and send the party to another planet or even into the Diaspora. 2. Dragon Empires; With the Jade Regent in place the real movers and shakers begin to move and begin the process of reawakening several ancient oni. Oni that could bring the world down should the (insert multiple or singular artifacts of ancient power here) be restored. 3. The Great Beyond; I want planescape... that's really about it for that idea. 4. Kyonin and the First World; Work with Queen Telandia Edasseril and do some fey stuff. I feel like the elves don't have much flavor in Golarion and their queen could use a rewrite.
My last true murderhobo was a 4th edition (not my favorite system but it was what was being played at the game store that night) character. I wasn't allowed back for organized play after this incident either. I built a dwarven knight who used an axe, and I knew how organized play worked so I decided to speed run/treat it like a 2nd edition dungeon. We start going through the dungeon and the dm noticed that I was moving quickly through, grabbing anything not nailed down and utilizing it if I could. First big no no was that we found a large garbage pit, I threw in a torch and sifted through the ashes to find any magical items. We found several bottles of dwarven ale which I used as alchemists fire, we found coins, I tied them in sacks and handed them to the others to use as weapons. Ripped off the sword from a statue because I wanted it, and broke doors down while having the others throw my dwarven alcohol bombs into the room. No looking into the room just throw the bottles. That night I earned the nickname "Loot n' Burn." We ended the session a full hour and a half earlier than the next group.
Not my story, but an old gm I used to have. The setting Gencon in the early 90's. The system AD&D, a dm was setting up his table and knew he was going to have a few openings so my old dm and his buddy ask if they can get into the game. Sure thing, here are the character creation rules, go nuts. Fairly high level and high powered. Old dm: A dwarven fighter with a ring of vampirism and the axe that gives an extra attack every round. His buddy: A wizard/cleric that's sole purpose was to buff the fighter. The Most Annoying Gamer in the World: Atticus Evil, some kind of wizard who was some flavor of evil without it written on his sheet. Throughout the game he kept trying to get the party killed, speaking in third person, and proclaiming the greatness of Atticus Evil saying things like he's changed his name to Atticus Evil in RL or his License Plate # was something like Atcs Evl. After the third time this guy tried to kill the party old dm asked the person running if he could kill this clearly evil a**clown. The person running said no. Okay go a little further and the guy does it again pushing the wizard/cleric into a pit with a spell he "misplaced." Old dm looks at the man running who says "go for it." Two rounds later Atticus Evil lay dead on the floor, and the player stormed from the gaming hall yelling things like "You can't kill the great Atticus Evil! Atticus Evil shall have his revenge!" Never heard from or of the guy since.
Female teleportation subschool wizard who stole the iconic inquisitors red hat and cloak. Also minmax for knowledge geography/history/local. Make a habit of stealing things, and not small things either. You never know where Carmen Sandiego will turn up.
I always enjoy seeing some of the stuff from Tacticslion, you were the first person to ever favorite any of my posts so I say thank you.
Ah, I remember a great battlecry I had once. Got a lot of funny looks from people. We had an Inquisitor who would use "By Angradd's Axe I will smite you!" the paladin who would shout "For (insert god here can't remember)." We hit level 5 and my wizard wanted a battlecry because everybody else had one. Step 1 - Cast fireball Step 2 - "Burn in Asmodeus' fire!" Note to self, warn the other party members who are lawful good that you worship the lord of devils or there will be questions.
I remember playing a 3.5/pathfinder mix set in Ravenloft that my gm had cooked up this really nice homebrew setting. We've taken care of Strahd, we are dealing with all the stuff of rebuilding the kingdom, and the one thing we needed desperately was money. So we hit the books, start digging through the paperwork that Strahd had lying around and find that he had enslaved a dragon, a now vampiric red dragon. So we grab our gear and start heading out. A little background the rest of the party were martials with a favored soul, and I was the party wizard. Specifically an abjurer because I was the parties main source of protection, not buffing but protection, a pound of prevention was worth a pound of cure. So we get to the dragons lair, we disable a lot of the traps, sneak in, realize the dragon is probably below us and go in, the favored soul forgot to buff the party and I'm catching the blame because I usually had 1-2 buff spells I'd use on myself when I polymorph. The room has the dragon, 2 arrow demons, 1 dwarf who was bonded to the dragon, and some thing else can't remember what. We get to fighting the dragons, I start throwing out all sorts of abjuration spells I've found in various sourcebooks to prevent anybody else from casting. We were doing pretty poorly until our own archer took out the archer demons and then we weren't doing as badly. Until the dragon decided to eat our undead slaying ranger/knight of the raven. With his gauntlet he power attacks with a smite the inside of the dragons mouth and we just see his head fly off as the ranger crits. The dwarf bonded to the dragon failed his saving throw and died on the spot, and all we were left with was some mage who I had effectively locked down. We were all low on hp but we came out on top, and the gm says he had to tone down the fight.
Player Says: Can I change characters, I've been playing this one for a bit and I dunno, I'm just not into it. Player Means: I didn't bother building a personality for my character and I'm bored. Let me try X because I want to. Gimme.
As listed in Inner Sea Gods, no. However two deities mention shields quite a bit. Arqueros the Golden Bulwark and Gorum. In Inner Sea Gods there is a religion trait for Gorum called Shield-Trained, this is a Gorumite only trait and it reads: You were trained to use shields as weapons. Heavy and light shields are considered simple weapons rather than martial weapons for you. Heavy shields are considered light weapons for you.
I blame Cosmo for the lack of information on the Dragon Empires deities. Curse you for making me invent stuff for my own game *shakes fist in anger*
Try this for a majority of your AD&D needs (setting books not included).
I remember being in an old group and one guy loved to play monks or unarmed characters. We were somewhat high level and were fighting some kind of aberration with tentacles and a lot of other things. Monk: "I'm gonna kick its a**!" Wizard: "I can't see an a** underneath all the tentacles and claws." Monk: "Then polymorph it into something that does."
Ad&d the Forgotten Realms books had stats for an arquebus and a pistol. In that setting black powder was invented by one of the gnome deities to give a big middle finger to mages. It was later reprinted in the arms & equipment guide. Now then rule of thumb, if you don't like the idea of firearms... don't use them! Sounds bad but it's not. I've run TWO pirate games, Skull & Shackles a published adventure, and we only had one gunslinger for a brief period of time. It's not like they are necessary, firearms are very optional and personally I prefer my swords and sorcery without guns. But hey, why not have them. They don't turn the tables upside down until you bring out double barrel firearms because those are just all kinds of wrong.
An alchemist could probably work pretty well. The grenadier class gets you a martial weapon prof for free, if you are a dwarf that means dwarven war axe. With throw anything you can hurl that sucker pretty nicely, and when you need a little more boom you have bombs or can strap alchemical substances (like alchemists fire) to your axe whether you throw it or melee swing with it.
Michael Winslow. Make sound effects to distract your enemies.
The easiest route I can see would be a dragon blooded bloodrager. Bloodrage to emulate the increasing in strength, you get some spells (although none to really rip off armor but lets say you just sunder things) and instead of a gauntlet you grow claws, close enough.
See the players companion to skull & shackles, pirates of the inner sea, and ultimate combat for all rules relating to seafaring siege engines.
When you hear "I wrote the module but I'd like to see what it's like from a player's standpoint."
For a while my group liked to invent words to describe how they were killing people. The most common, and still used to this day, is murderficate. verb - murderficate - the act of killing something with pizzazz, ensuring the most blood loss. Also see noun - murderfication - much like execution, but performed while the prisoner is armed and "dangerous"
On paper yes, with a good player and a solid build not entirely.
If there can be dex to damage I want an option for str to AC. Naked barbarians should be a thing that don't suck. |
