Where did bull rush have that caveat in Pathfinder? You can't push them into an obstacle or solid object was all. Punishing Assault had that caveat but not bull rush from what I can remember.
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You would do double your strength bonus for overhand chop, then add the Power attack damage to it. In your specific case you would do 2d6+13 damage with a power attack.
Happy Birthday! Thanks for everything you do to support the awesome company that is Kobold Press.
I did a kickstarter once for a Rite Publishing product and part of the reward included a few products I already had. All I did was speak with the company and they gave a couple of my players the PDFs instead, which was really cool of them. I would say ask the company directly and see what they think. Worst case they say no and you're no worse off than you are now.
Some of the old module conversions posted the entire module with just the new stats mixed in, down to the introduction, artwork, and cover. I don't know if that happened to this conversion, I also would love a good Pathfinder conversion to the slave lords series, I've been using 3.5e conversions and just winging it on the changes to Pathfinder.
Poisons and diseases are on the d20pfsrd site, here, I haven't looked for any of the others yet but I imagine they are there.
If the Utopia is created by these five ultra powerful magic users, what happens if their magic fails, or fades, or becomes unreliable in some way? Or maybe it is discovered (or "discovered" if it's false) that the overwhelming power these beings have gathered has a cost that is unacceptable to the populace, or is unsustainable in the long term. Maybe the high standard of living can only be maintained for a finite number of people, and the excess are kicked out of the Utopia, either literally or figuratively sacrificed for the Utopia to continue for those inside of it. For someone with the foresight and knowledge of a near godly being certain solutions might make perfect sense to them, but be unacceptable to shorter sighted people. Finally, you can always do the "invaders from outside" angle. Maybe there are jealous outside states that band together, or an extra planar invasion. Maybe the Magic to power the Utopia is unknowingly attracting powerful horrors from beyond, horrible beings here to feed or destroy. Or maybe it's accidentally disrupting the fabric of the planes, causing powerful outsiders to come stop it.
Yes, in one of the Kingmaker games I ran the campaign went completely off script in the middle of book 2 and it turned out excellent. I had put together my own random encounters, and seeded the region with additional encounter sites, and the group got entwined with politics and adventures having nothing to do with the actual plot. I ran the game off of what they were doing and how the world would react, until it was basically a homebrew sandbox inspired by Kingmaker. The game was a blast and I ran it for almost two years before wrapping it up.
Excellent stuff, just commenting that people do read and enjoy this stuff. Haven't used any of it in a campaign yet but there's a lot to like.
Awesome thread, dotting for further reading! I also had a question for anyone who has the entire AP, or who has run it before. How much work would it take to have some or all of the PCs be aliens, so that the "let's go home..." ending is possible? I've considered that idea, or the idea of running it using near-future real earth characters who end up in Golarion because Science! or because Magic!
I never paid attention to the grid size with the check box beside it. Even after reading what you wrote I was lost, but I have it now. Thanks. This make everything better since I don't have to lose map quality anymore. :) Awesome, glad it worked out!
In roll 20 what I did was reduce the size of the squares and increase the size of the units. So my map of Branderscar prison is 55x72 units, each unit is 10ft, and each square is .5 units. I don't remember if I stretched the map or not before using it, it's one I have been using for a play by post game that's been very slow. You can see the result here at the roll 20 map. I have dynamic lighting up for fog of war/line of sight do you might not be able to see the entire map. The end result is that the 10ft grid remains on the map, but the ruler function and character tokens snap to a 5ft grid I've set up.
Looks like 17th is correct, the last book should run from 15-17 according to my pdf copy of book 1.
I ban face-to-face and real-time interaction. Play-by-post is the one true play-style! Bah, you kids* and your interwebs. Everyone knows the only true play-style is play by mail! Handwritten** too, no fancy typewriters. *says the 26 year old
To keep from gushing endlessly about the various possible 3rd party publishers I'll just try to answer with recommendations for awesome and balanced classes which are worth looking into, in my opinion. They are in no particular order, I heartily recommend all of these products, no reservations. First recommendation, hands down, is the talented classes line of products from Rogue Genius Games. The line "Genius Guide to the Talented [class]" includes the talented Barbarian, Cavalier, Monk, Fighter, Rogue, and Ranger at the moment and is excellent for letting a player customize these classes more than the base Pathfinder class allows. I've had a talented Barbarian in my games and used a talented Fighter and Rogue NPC and found them well worth the price. Second recommendation is the New Paths Compendium from Kobold Press, which I would recommend simply for the Spell-less Ranger alone, even without the other awesome classes. A long running play by post game of mine recently had a player change over to a spell-less Ranger to better fit the character concept. My player is loving the class and I find it excellent as well. The other options in the book read very well but I don't have direct play experience with them. Third recommendation is just me echoing nearly everybody else when I say that Ultimate Psionics is a must have book from Dreamscarred Press. This is a balanced system with loads of excellent classes, races, and abilities. I have built dozens of NPC "sorcerers" and "wizards" as well as "bladesingers" and other spell/melee types as psionic NPCs and found the system balanced and easy to use, especially for NPCs who might only last one single encounter. I hear good things mostly about the Path of War classes too but haven't used them myself and know that the Tome of Battle-like system can be very polarizing. My final recommendation, from the GM side of things, is the War Master class from Rogue Genius Games, found in the book Genius Guide to the War Master. Putting one of these at the head of a group of generic NPC monsters or warriors allows them to use interesting tactics and really feels like the class allows you to do the things a leader sort should do. This is by no means the extent of the good options out there, there are many companies producing excellent material, and you don't need to take my word for these products. Check out their reviews, or go to d20pfsrd.com and read over them yourself, many third party options can be found there freely available. If you like what you see, you can buy the book and use it, if not then you don't.
I have, or had as of a few months ago, somewhere around half to three quarters of all products published by Rite Publishing and will recommend most anything published by them. Rogue Genius Games is excellent as well, particularly their talented class line, and Dreamscarred Press' psionic rules I consider as essential as the core PF rules for running a game. If you want a campaign setting Midgard by Kobold Press iPad many great offerings, and if you want something different the Cerulean Seas stuff by Alluria Publishing I've found very enjoyable to read even if I haven't used it much. For reviews I recommend Endzeitgeist, who has hundreds and hundreds of comprhensive reviews. I've bought a number of products based on a review and recommendation, and I think End's reviews are responsible for ever Midgard purchase I've made. As far as specific products go, it really depends on what you are looking for but there are some excellent products I would always recommend. The 101 series by Rite Publishing is full of excellent offerings like 101 Mythical Site properties, 101 Not So Simple Monster Templates, and 101 Hazards and Disasters. Their Book of Monster Templates is also excellent, and if you like monster templates you need the fantastic Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin. On the subject of monsters, if you can't get enough of monsters Frog God Games has the fantastic Tome of Horrors Complete. If classes are more your thing the "Genius Guide to the Talented (class name)" line of products from Rogue Genius Games have excellent takes on the Pathfinder classes, while Kobold Press has the very nice New Paths Compendium with 7 new classes plus archetypes and more. Deep Magic, also a Kobold Press offering, has an enormous amount of excellent magical options, spells, and other magic related excellence. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are dozens and dozens of publishers and products I don't have the time to name, some I've tried and some I haven't. Hope this helped you uncover some potentially fun products to try out and you have more luck checking out reviews and other opinions.
I'm pretty much fully stocked up with APs yet to be run, but after seeing the players guide I think I'll have to pick up this path anyways. Looks excellent, very well made guide.
Well, next week the regular gaming starts again. This week I was at an important job interview, which took all day... let's see if something comes of it. Good luck with the job interview results! Also, thanks to you and all the other GMs in here who have played through Mythic rules and found all sorts of traps and pitfalls. It's definitely made me feel happy that my implementation of the Mythic rules (in a homebrew adaption of the Baldur's Gate Shadows of Amn game) is cherry-picked abilities for my PCs with a couple of choices rather than implementing the entire system. They've definitely gotten stronger after getting even a couple Mythic abilities, but I can avoid letting any PC get a full suite of abilities that destroys the fun.
As some of you might know, the Player Companion: Alchemy Manual book released earlier this year had an alternate alchemy crafting system in it called Spontaneous Alchemy. In this system alchemical items have "recipes" consisting of using various reagents (salt, gold, spirit of win, gunpowder as examples of these), an alchemical process (such as distillation, exposure, fermentation, and others), a craft DC, and a time frame (10 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, or 1 week). This is a very cool and flavorful system for alchemists who want to craft stuff faster and who like collecting recipes, finding reagents as treasure, and so on, and I really want to use it in an upcoming game for one of my characters. The problem is that this character is going to be crafting poisons and the recipes in the book include very little in the way of poison recipes. So I ask the community for help with this one. If you are familiar with these rules and have poison recipes of your own, or know of someone else who has done this, I would really appreciate seeing your ideas or links to other ideas. Thanks!
And bought, though not here, already like it and I've just looked at it. Couple of minor typos are all I've noticed so far in the first part of this work. Haven't scoured the text or gone through the mechanics for typos though, too busy reading through and imagining the NPCs and PCs who will be a part of this fun class! Bottom of page 1
Left side of page 2 has a long space between the words "downtrodden" and "I" on the 5th line down. Left side of page 2, last line starts "Do to this..."
Right side of page 2 has the sentence:
There are also some awkward sentences but nothing that stuck out as being too hard to understand.
I come from a place of very old school D&D, the vast range of modifiers never sat very well with me in the first place. So, to ask why does Advantage/Disadvange "add" to the frustration, my answer is simply, because it "adds" to the frustration Fair enough, emotional responses are emotional responses and I'm certainly not going to try and change yours. Just wanted to see your reasoning in case there was something to it I could take away and think about while fully developing my own opinion. Thanks for your reply!
Why do you feel that using advantage/disadvantage shifts the feel of the game away from having fun and towards winning more than using a half-dozen or more simultaneous minor buffs and debuffs instead? For me, I like the idea of advantage/disadvantage in 5e as a much simpler way of modeling all the small minor benefits and penalties characters in other versions of D&D and Pathfinder face. Especially at high levels, the sheer number of buffs, debuffs, situational modifiers, environmental factors, and special feats and abilities makes a pretty big pile of modifiers that constantly changes. Since 5e has the goal of bounded accuracy I think their use of advantage/disadvantage is a pretty good way of avoiding number creep with a host of situational modifiers.
Great stuff, Deadmanwalking, thanks for taking the to go through this for we GMs who aren't so good at deep reading rules material.
You had me at Braavosi water dancer, very interested in this class!
Very cool, thanks for posting these. I am extremely interested in Hell's Rebels, moderately interested in the Occult Adventures, and not really at all interested in Inner Sea Races. Looks like another great year coming up in 2015!
Yep, still has the Gigantean template Sauce.
Ah ok, I'd forgotten Paizo had remade that one, it's a constant +1 CR template rather than the varied one in the old Advanced Bestiary. Thanks for the reply, still plenty of awesome templates in this new one!
At first skim it's looking fantastic. Good artwork, loads of great templates, and no errors that are leaping out to me after a fast skim through of the material. I can't seem to find the Devil-Bound template, however, is it renamed and I just missed it or not included? It was one of he templates I most wanted to see (along with demon possessed, both templates whose 3.5e versions I got lots of mileage out of), and all the other outsider related temates are looking excellent. Edit: I am also a big fan of the linked table of contents!
I think calling it a generational issue is oversimplifying, but that could certainly play a part. I don't think it tells the whole story only because both of my grandmothers are in the same rough age range (about a decade older each) and they're two of the more sarcastic people I know. I've learned peoples perceptions are shaped by their values, experiences, and beliefs, and where and when you lived certainly plays a part, as does a persons attitudes and beliefs regarding the person or object being perceived. Have more I could add but it really isn't relevant to the original topic. Probably should have just left it alone to begin with but it's something I've been heavily studying recently so it perked my interest. I'm not trying to imply anyone's perceptions (yours or mine) are more valid in this case either, or trying to change anyone's perceptions, just making an observation (which makes my post pretty much both off topic and valueless, but I've already written it so here it is). I tend to ramble a bit when I've just worked a night shift too so perhaps this post will manage to be nonsensical as well as off topic. To swing in the general direction of the topic: somewhat looking forward to this book but as I am undergoing a bit of rules burn out I'm in no real hurry to dig into it. Still, hopefully when it hits the prd (or d20pfsrd.com which my players and I use more) my players will be wowed enough to buy the book or PDF, it's happened recently with kobold press' class guide and some rogue genius games talented class books. It's been new and different to not be the only one who buys all the stuff we use and hopefully it'll continue.
And as for Papa's reaction to your earlier post, mine was pretty much the same as his, but I chose not to post. A problem which could have been avoided by an emoticon. It's interesting how different people reading the same thing read completely different motives and tones into the exact same material. I read the statement as an obviously facetious statement, clearly not something actually meant as a serious suggestion. I honestly can't see how anyone could possibly interpret it as serious, and wold have been perplexed had the poster felt the need to further point out the obvious sarcasm with an emoticon or "j/k" (and to be honest probably a little annoyed by the use of those). Seems like people do actually experience completely different worlds, even in something as straightforward as the printed word. Sorry about the slight detail, this is one of those things I've been studying recently (perceptions being shaped by an individual's own values and experiences, as part of the fundamentals of instruction) and it's fascinating to see how much reality is fitting the textbook examples.
The OGL cat is out of the bag, but at this point it's ugly and malnourished and very few people are willing to put up with its crap. I'm confused, aren't we on the website for the most popular RPG system, one supported by literally dozens of 3rd party publishers, all if which is made possible because of the OGL? And isn't this game just one of many others that exist because of that same OGL? I have a very hard time reconciling those facts with your opinion that the OGL is something very few people are willing to put up with.
With just "outstanding" to go on, and no idea what your group in particular finds outstanding, I am going to suggest a number of different potential adventures. First to mind, with the Iron Gods AP looming, is the excellent Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Deadly, slightly (ok, more than slightly) crazy, and lots of fun, this adventure blends sci-fi elements in so if that's a turn off for your group you probably want to steer clear. Originally designed for AD&D. Next are a pair of classic linked modules that make for pretty decent adventure paths when run together, Scourge of the Slavelords (A1-A4) and the massive Queen of the Spiders (GDQ 1-7). In the first your party works to stop the predation of slavers, and features a very challenging but fun (for some) 4th adventure. If your players get twitchy when you do things like sunder, use rust monsters, or otherwise separate their characters from their belongings, they might be less than pleased with the path of the modules towards the end (in which case I'd say run it and wrap up early, you'll know when). In the second the characters fight raiding giants before finding out that a worse evil is behind it all, potentially culminating in an epic showdown with a powerful demonic being. Originally designed for AD&D. The Temple of Elemental Evil (T1-4) is another obvious seeming choice. A fun and deadly location that isn't just a dungeon crawl, lots of room in this for solutions other than killing everything if the Party and GM want something aside from hack and slash. Originally for AD&D. Keep on the Borderlands (B2) is still a fantastic adventure starting point for 1st level parties. With a keep for a home base the wild Borderlands are open for exploration, dungeon crawling, diplomacy, and monster slaying as the keep just so happens to be close to a monster infested area. Perfect for starting parties with loads of room for a DM to branch them out into a wider sandbox from this more limited start. By adding a few hooks for their own adventures (or other published adventures) and building on any hooks players put into their backstory, by the time the players have completed this module they might have a multitude of other leads for further play. Originally for Basic D&D. Also notable for already having an excellent Pathfinder conversion done by another member who has a thread on this forum Here There are loads of other excellent adventures out there, and it is certainly easier to convert a module designed for 3e or 3.5e like some of the other suggested modules have been, but you did mention any system so hope pointing out a few of the classics of older D&D editions works.
Cyric also slew Bhaal using another god as a weapon, during a time when the gods were specifically made mortal and vulnerable. He didn't kill the god when he had his divinity intact. /tangent
Ooooh, I still want a Magus more but a Summoner without an eidolon is very interesting.
If we are voting again put me down for Magus after Ranger
I bought it direct from Frog God Games and while I'm by no means an old school DM, having only been running games (Pathfinder mostly once Pathfinder came out, 2e and 3.5e D&D mostly prior to that) about 8 years now, I do enjoy the older editions and have a decent amount of DMing experience. I found a lot of very useful and fun tricks I had never considered or heard of before, along with some tricks that I did know about but which were presented in a better way than I had considered it. I can't imagine anyone knowing every single trick in here well. I don't want to go into details on anything included, since as the book mentions thatif these tricks are known by all the players in a given game some of them lose their effectiveness. In general though the book has some house rules used by Bill Webb in his game, tricks that make encounters more interesting using all kinds of situational dangers, various misdirections, fun and adventure spurring ways to separate adventurers from their money, and other fun tricks. The tricks, paraphrasing from the author's own words, are intended to create great players and a great campaign where even the mundane can't be taken for granted and boredom is rare. I don't know your gaming history, so I don't know how much of this book you may know already, but I'm confident that you'll find at least a few thing in here you haven't seen before, and others presented in a way you haven't considered. The pdf is 82 pages, including the front and back cover, 2 pages for the table of contents and title page, and 2 pages for the legal appendix, so 76 pages of actual content. There is a 5 page introduction and book overview section, with some good information on the intent of the book and a short bit about each of the book's other sections. There are 8 of these sections, and I think I'll hold off on naming each section for now to make sure these guys want it known. One section is devoted to Bill's Lost Lands house rules, all the other sections include a number of tricks based around a certain theme. In the end, I think this book was a steal at the pdf price. As a DM I immediately saw a handful of tricks I plan to use in my current games to give my players an interesting and fun time, and others I plan to hold onto in case we get into a rut and the game needs a shot in the arm. I can see myself recommending this book to everyone I know who DMs (except my current players perhaps).
Awesome, thank you and bought.
I might be missing something obvious, but how do I go about ordering this now? I'm highly interested in this product but searching psionic bestiary gets me many results, none of which seem to be the $10 pdf mentioned. Thanks for the help.
I ran the first adventure of Carrion Crown as a stand alone and it can be pretty difficult, especially the final encounter if the GM decides not to really look at and apply the tactics the boss is supposed to use. I had an overly large party (7 sometimes 6 usually) so they managed without any deaths even with my screw up of the final fight's suggested tactics. If I had run it as written it would have been a cakewalk so probably appropriately hard for 4 PCs. Other than that one of the two times I ran kingmaker I did it for a party that included a bard, cavalier/ranger multi class, rogue/monk multi class, oracle, and someone else, and other than a will o' wisp random encounter at level 2 or 3 and 2 trolls at level 1 they had no trouble in the first two modules before their actions and my modifications so removed the game from its base that I can't really say I was still running the AP as written.
Speaking as a consumer, if it were not for the OGL and particularly d20pfsrd.com I doubt I would have ever bought a 3rd party product, and while my wallet would probably be happier I would have missed out on the excellent work of Dreamscarred Press, Rite Publishing, Frog God Games, and so many others. I am an exclusively internet based GM, every game I run is play by post or chat based, so having something be OGL or not is huge for me. I can't buy a book and show it off to the players, who live all around and who I've never met in person, unless it is open content somewhere and I can link them there. If it weren't for d20pfsrd there would be dozens of 3rd party options (and even more Paizo non-core options) my players would be unable to use. And while yes, for some of them this has been an opportunity for them to use the rules and never buy the book, for others they have jumped on the chance to buy the book to go along with the mechanics. And even if they don't have the book, if a player uses an option from a 3rd party source I try to pick it up myself even if the source is open and freely available online. Obviously it is the publisher's right to decide not to make their content open, and I have bought and greatly enjoyed Kobold Press excellent materials before and will again I'm sure. On the other hand, if I can't show the options to my players they become rather less useful to me as a GM. Learning that symbol magic and undead creation are not OGL are the only real disappointments I have with this product, though it would be cool to have the stat blocks of the example casters available in an SRD format for gaming and to show people the awesome reincarnated Druid. I love having rune based/symbol based magic options for PCs to learn but know none of my players are going to shell out for this book just to be able to read about the awesome in that section, and I'm not going to post copy written stuff for all to see on a play by post forum. So unlike the spell less ranger, which a player of mine bought immediately after seeing on the SRD, the symbols and undead creation will be for my eyes only.
Link didn't work for me either, this should link to it: Inner Sea Combat
The Midgard Campaign Setting page includes a preview PDF, found here: Midgard Campaign Setting. The setting is pretty awesome, well worth a look.
"Your time has come! Face judgment almighty!" Has a good ring to it.
*looks at the mountain of awesome coming this fall* For Sale: One kidney. Great Condition! Low Miles! Fully Loaded, must see to believe!! Serious offers only.
I'm potentially very interested in this, always great to have fully stat blocked and detailed monsters, especially with lairs and minions! From the examples given so far though I am wondering what the rough CR range of the enemies will be? If it is mostly a book with high level (cr 13 and up) threats it won't be much use for me in particular, while a lot of midrange enemies (cr 5-12) would be very useful!
This is really shaping up to be a "must subscribe" AP for me, it seems like every new thing I hear or see about it is just more awesome than what came before it.
Maybe so, though I recently checked out a couple BBC audiodramas from my library and feel like I prefer audiobooks even at the same price, let alone when I can have 7 or 8 times the amount of content for the price. I think the audio samples of the characters sound fine, but as much as I really wanted to have awesome Pathfinder audio this isn't for me. For the same price I'd much, much rather have 6 audiobooks through my Audible subscription, or a bunch of awesome 3rd party pdfs, or 4 parts of the Iron Gods adventure path when it comes out. Best of luck with the sales, if another path gets made with at least double the run time (12 hours for the path rather than 6) down the line I think I'd be more likely to consider it.
Yeah, when I look at other 2e monsters the Eidolon seems to hit appropriately hard for it's hit dice, but it has nothing else. Other monsters have nasty special abilities like poison, paralysis, gaze attacks, spells, and so on, or at least movement like flight. The Eidolon is only ever going to be a melee combatant (unless you decide to radically change things up and allow the eidolon to be customized or gain special abilities, which could be interesting but very complicated) so being harder to hit makes them better at their only job. I'm not sure exactly what AC progression I'd use, maybe start at AC 7 like you have it and drop the AC by 1 each 4 levels, so it ends at AC 2 (plate and shield) at level 20? It won't ever outpace the other PCs in attack and AC, which is a good thing since it's only part of the Summoner's power, but it'll be a little harder to hit.
Cool concept, though it seems to me the Eidolon's AC decreases rather slowly as it levels. I think it's damage and THAC0 seem fine at a glance. It looks like the Eidolon will be pretty easily hit by enemies at all levels, though it'll pack a decent punch of its own.
Picked up the rest of the "Talented X" series of books in this sale, really looking forward to trying out NPCs of the various talented classes and one of my players is quite interested in possibly playing a talented barbarian. Awesome pdfs, and a great sale.
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