mege's page

Thanks for the responses. I will probably give most NPCs the +4 for working diligently and just no bonus if they help a PC. I figure helping a PC is about as much as influencing an NPC, so they both come with no modifier. I also will limit influencing and helping to in the same area. So if the cook's mate is on deck fishing, she can get help. If she is in the galley, then it may be shirking to help her.

Another question. Sandara told Grok her things were cursed to get them back. Rosie is still trying to get her fiddle. Cog has stolen or found enough stuff to probably trade Grok for his stuff. Why/how does Conchobar still have his stuff?

How do you all run the climbing tasks for riggers. A lot of them start with "Climb x feet, and then..." Do you let them make an infinite number of climb checks? Do you allow them to make enough to reach that height without failing? Some number in between? It just seems most of the tasks are one or two rolls that represent a days worth of work, but climbing is a little more specific.

Rob, thanks for the response. I will make sure to keep Kipper around and describe the explosion nice and loud.

For climb checks, I am having the player roll several climb checks to reach the desired height. To succeed, the player must make the height in successful climb checks before meeting one of the fail conditions below.

The player 'fails' if either of the following is true:
1) They (hard) fail any single check by >=5.
2) The have more 'soft failures' (fail by 1-4) than successful checks. Ignore this on the first roll.

The first fail case really means that the player took a bad spill from the rigging. Calculate fall damage from whatever height they were when they fell. I considered adding a 'man overboard' chance (eg: d100 1-60: Character lands on the main deck and just hurt themselves, 61-75: The Character falls at the feet of Capt. Harrigan and Mister Plugg having a conversation at the helm... extra embarassing, 76-100: MAN OVERBOARD! (see the storm scenario for recovery)), but likely will leave that to the scripted components to not over-do water recovery encounters.
The second case is more of the character was just slow and clumsy during the entire process. Probably a verbal whipping and/or a possibility of loss of attitude with whatever NPC they were working with. If the NPC had to help them that much and carry their slack... why would they respect/help them?

Example:

Tamara the rigger has randomly gotten rigging repair: so she must 'climb 30 feet' as part of the assignment. She is not working with any of the NPCs, and has a Climb skill of +6. She chooses to shop today, and is taking a -2 on all checks (giving her a +4 net). Since she is a human, she climbs 15' per check (another simplification - I'm not making a check per action, just per round-equivalent of movement). She must make 2 successful climb checks before meeting one of the conditions I listed above.

The climb check is a DC10;
Her first roll is a 5+4=9. Soft fail.
Her second roll is a 20+4=24. Success! She has climbed 15'.
Her third roll is a 13+4=17. Success! She has climbed 30' and is successful at this part of the task.

If she had rolled a 1+4=5 on the third roll, she would have failed and fallen 15' (use normal fall rules). If her third roll had 'soft' failed, she would have failed the task but not fallen.

Hope this helps and gives some idea on what you can do to make it a little more interactive and consequential. The skill-test allows formore 'detail' in what actually happened so you can tell the story appropriately.

Simple exercise. Go play racket ball. Half way through put on shoulder pads, shin guards, knee pads, elbow pads and those wrist thingys that keep you from "s" curving your forearms while rollerblading. As you and your friends laugh your butts off at how much slower and imbobile you are think wow all this gear is lightwieght plastic and foam and only covers a few points on the body. Then please come back and tells about your experience preferably with pictures.

This is one of the best examples I can think of, or different yet: think about a football player or hockey player (goalie in particular). Even modern, form fitting, flexable 'armor' (ie: padding) is still restrictive. Folks that are used to it can do amazing things, yes, but that same athlete with out the padding on will do even more amazing things.

I do not have my book in front of me to confirm if this is in there or not, but the table that lists mount/barding costs in the PRD has a foot note after the 4x cost for large barding: "(2) Relative to similar armor made for a Medium humanoid."

If medium mithral chain armor costs 1100, then large mithril chain barding should be 4400.

(http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/equipment.html)

Where is it described that material modifiers are counted AFTER cost multipliers? The only mention of anything like this is in the magic item section where it says that magic costs are applied after multipliers for size ('special' sizes/shapes section in both the armor and weapon magic creation guides). This makes a bit more sense. The difference is that material isn't really an 'extra' it's more of a 'type' modifier.

I'd think of something like this:

(B + M)xS + E = T

B = Basic Medium Humanoid Cost for the 'type' of item
M = Material Cost
S = Size/special multiplier
E = Magical Enchantments and Mundane Extras (spikes)
T = Total Cost

Ayrphish wrote:

NPC sheet

Is a work in progress. It has some rolled loot for their lockers and their starting attitude towards the PCs. The second page has some info on the ship.

Suggestions to make it a little better and more usable will be considered :)

Edit: Some things are changed/renamed to match our game, and I took some liberties with their motivations, and other special things. It's not perfect, but it works ok for me.

Nice work. The only thing I would add is rolling for work that NPC are doing on a given day. That way PC's could possibly work along side NPC's if they both get the same job roll, but this can be roleplayed out as well. I just thought it would be easier during the day for th pc's to interact with the npcs.

One Step ahead of you! (note the formulas on the second sheet for randomizing roles across the NPCs)

So, in an attempt to pre-plan much of the going-ons with the ship, I have created the following spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B65KLWeEK60Iam9hWnNZMVBtMWM (Once you've opened the version @ google docs, click File -> Download to download an xls version of this... the random function didn't convert right as a Googledocs spreadsheet, so it is available as an xls only)

In the first sheet of the spreadsheet I have listed each of the attitude-changeable NPCs, their starting disposition (given in a 0-5 scale, 0 being unchangeably hostile, 1 being changeably hostile, 5 being helpful), and their role. Further more, I have given a day-to-day breakdown of where each PC will be on the ship each day, and a place to input the party's influence change with them (below their job-for-the-day).

Since I am running a game with 7 players, I needed a way to limit the interactions each day a little bit. Each of the players (4 Swabs, 2 Riggers, 1 Cooks-mate) will only be able to influence whomever they're working with that day. The same goes for when an NPC becomes influenced enough, I now have a reference for where they are working to know if they are 'helping' the PC do their task (especially early on when a player is working with Sandra, etc). This will also allow me to track the status of the NPCs, if they've failed, etc so I can 'populate' the bloody hour with some more beatings (and maybe eventually blame the PCs if they were working with the person that failed).

I have also 'pre-rolled' the random elements associated with Grok and Fishguts. (50/50 drunk Fishguts and 25/75 locked/unlocked Grok's Quartermaster room)

Row 28 also has a line for the PCs to indicate what jobs they can/can't do that day and some other notes. I didn't replicate the entire AP's day-to-day in this line, so you'll still need to reference the day-log still.

Some mechanics about the spreadsheet:

1) The cell beneath the daily task is a place to insert an attitude adjustment (using + or - accordingly). This will tally, modify the initial attitude and change their current attitude. There is no 'error correction' built in, so it's up to you to make sure the value is in range.
2) I have already randomized the tasks and filled in the cells, this is because the random function will always reevaluate itself. I have included the formulas on the second sheet (as well as their reference tables) if you wish to re-calculate. Just copy and paste the cell next to the 'CODE' beneath the associated table. Then, once calculated, you can Copy the cell and Paste Special taking 'Values only' to 'lock in' your randomized value.
3) The tables on the second sheet are reference only for the randomized function and the number->name for attitudes.
4) I didn't really make it overly-pretty and it can be a bit rough. But it should do it's job as an attitude tracker nicely.
5) Any questions, please reply to the thread here!

To reiterate: the only cell that you should need to edit, to use the attitude tracker, is the row with the attitude associated with the character (beneath their daily tasks).

I am looking for some music for a few of the exploration areas and encounters. Does anyone have some good ideas?

Our last campaign (non-Golarion) made use of a lot of typical adventure music: soundtracks from Pirates of the Caribbean, Conan, Braveheart, etc.

Part 1 ideas below:

1. I play with adults

2. If you pay attention to what people do, you determine if they are using some kind of broken combo.
3. Again, it's called trust. But hey, I guess that makes me stupid. O.o

I don't think trust has anything to do with it for many people. I trust my players to do what they feel is right within the rules, but with Pathfinder - sometimes old habits die hard. We, as a group (of adults, all over 30), are all learning a new-but-the-same game system where some nuances come out during character creation. Mistakes and misinterpretation of rules is only natural. Now, if you mistrust your players and believe some are cheating - that's a whole different story. One that I thankfully have little experience with in an RPG setting. (other tabletop games, on the other hand...)

Double checking character-sheets is NOT about trust to me, but it's about learning and growing as a group - together. I'm not out for a 'gotcha' moment, but a learning experience. Maybe *I* (as the GM and character-sheet reviewer) thought something worked differently and was able to learn from my player's experience. Even if the player made a mistake - correcting it can only be healthy for everyone involved. Everyone makes mistakes, correcting them is the adult thing to do. Ignoring them or presuming that noone makes mistakes is very un-adult like IMO.

Also, another big advantage of 'double checking' character sheets in the knowledge gained about a character's abilities. There are a lot of little-used feats, domain powers, archtypes, etc across several books. If you know what your players are using which may be a little out of the norm - then the entire game session can go smoother. As a GM, I dislike having to ask constantly "what does that do again?"