Goblin Snake

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The sorcerer is secretly a vampire. Go all Ravenloft on their asses -- have him avoid damage by turning into gaseous form, harass PCs with level draining effects, and try to isolate the injured PCs so he can take them out one at a time.

Start the fight off with a really great chase scene. However, don't play it off like the sorcerer is trying to escape. Maybe one of his minions is running to go get reinforcements, or perhaps the sorcerer is racing to a "place of power" where his spells become much more deadly. Maybe he has a demon bound in his basement, I don't know. Ratchet up the tension by making it clear that if they fail, the upcoming fight will be much more difficult.


Have the fight take place on moving platforms. Perhaps the platforms move to a pattern, but only the sorcerer knows it at the beginning of the fight. This would keep the positions of all the combatants constantly changing and give the sorcerer a slight advantage. I'm imagining the platforms sliding right past each other so that characters can get some melee in, then slipping away so the characters are constantly on their toes. Meanwhile, the sorcerer is playing keep-away and his minions are jumping from platform to platform and trying to bull rush PCs into the pit of snakes/spikes/fire below.

Make one of the sorcerer's minions a shambling mold. It's healed by lightning damage, so have the sorcerer throw down lots of area-of-effect lightning spells.

Give some of the party members something to do during the combat that ISN'T fighting. For instance, you can have the rogue trying to disable a deadly machine. Or have the room slowly flood with water so they have to take time away from the fight to figure out the puzzle. Or have the fighter struggle to hold a door shut so whatever's on the other side doesn't break through. Or have the wizard try to disrupt a ritual. You get the idea.


Have the enemy sorcerer cast wall of fire or even wall of stone to split up the party. This can get dicy when the wizard has nobody to protect him or the rogue has nobody to flank with.

If your party wizard has a tendency to cast fireball, then have the enemy sorcerer prepare an action to create the wall (or even just a summoned creature) in the path of the projectile, thereby having it explode in their faces.

Have a bunch of the sorcerer's mooks all grapple the same target (probably the fighter), dragging him down and tying him up -- or if it feels appropriate, make it clear that they intend to coup de grace him so the others must rush to save him. Imagine the classic zombie horror scene where one guy gets surrounded by a swarm of zombies; he takes a few down, but eventually they swarm him and eat him alive.

Make the encounter more interesting by including some interesting terrain. Maybe the fight takes place in some crumbling ruins, and the sorcerer sends his minions after the players while he collapses passages behind him in his escape and tries to bring the roof down on their heads.


A sawmill in a haunted forest. Animated trees attack anyone who tries to escape. Giant mechanical saws grind through lumber and flesh alike. Lumber axes and saw blades can be used as weapons. Lumber racks can be damaged, sending piles of logs rolling over enemies. Poltergeists interfere with the combat at inappropriate times.

A fight on a rope bridge overlooking a deep crevasse. Water and jagged rocks lie below. The bridge can be cut. Flying monsters might harass the PCs.

A damp, moldy dungeon. A slippery, rusty stairwell threatens to collapse at any moment. The floor of the room has a large grating, below which a dangerous monster is caged (think tentacle monster or rancor). A large pile of bones rests in the corner, which a necromancer continually uses to summon skeletal minions (one of those bones could even be a magic wand).


A gallant ballroom or dining hall, inhabited with many enemies. A chandelier overhead is attached to a rope on the wall (which can be cut, dropping the chandelier on enemies). A stairwell ascends one of the walls, near some long curtains on an adjacent wall (which can be used to slide down quickly or even sneak behind). Tables can be overturned to be used as cover. Bottles, tankards, and chairs can be used as improvised weapons. Decorative suits of armor might line the walls.

A fight amidst a crumbling, burning building. Charred timbers occasionally fall from overhead. A clever enemy might try to bull rush a PC through a damaged wall (perhaps even revealing a secret room). Spreading patches of fire present a constant threat. Any burning object can be used as an improvised weapon. Knowledge Architecture can be used to tactically collapse parts of the structure atop your opponents.

The classic gladiator pit, but turned up to full volume. Sand can be thrown into an opponent's eyes. Wild animals or monsters might be tethered with chains. Spikes line the walls. Discarded weapons from fallen warriors litter the ground. Pillars and pits dot the arena. Spectators throw roses, rotten food, or even weapons into the ring.


An ancient, desecrated cemetary with crumbling statues (for toppling onto enemies), overturned tombstones (which can be used as improvised greatclubs), and empty graves (which act like pit traps to bull rush enemies into). Now imagine zombies pulling themselves out of the earth. If you're particularly mischievous, make the unearthed graves water-filled and have a submerged zombie try to pull someone under and drown him.

The remote hovel of a crazy old trapper. In his paranoia, he has surrounded his home with booby traps: leg-breaking bear traps, leaf-covered net traps, and spiked logs that swing down from the canopy. The PCs come to him seeking information or perhaps blood, but he flees and the players must navigate past his deadly traps in their chase to find him through dense forest and narrow mountain passes. If you're feeling evil, have the trapper harass them with arrows whenever they fall prey to his devices.

A dangerous snowed-in mountain pass. Marauding giants begin throwing boulders down on the PCs, but they are perched above and below a treacherous snow slope (which Knowledge Nature determines can be damaged to trigger a small avalanche). Jagged rocks nearby provide partial cover from attacks, and a small cave on the far end of the pass forces the giants to fight crouched over in single file. One of the giants might get the idea to rip a tree from the earth and use it as a club. If you want to be cruel and unusual, have the giants seal the entrance of the cave with debris once the players have taken shelter in it -- although this presents no immediate danger, the cave might harbor other dangerous inhabitants or lead into a dungeon.


Sean K Reynolds wrote:


* prequels or parallel adventures relating to an AP, so your players (who may or may not be playing the same PCs you have active in that AP) get additional information or another perspective on the events of that AP

I like this, just as long as we're still talking about modules here and not part of the AP itself.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:


* one-off adventures, such as "here are pregenerated PCs specifically built with a backstory tied to this adventure, and you'd play them instead of your current PCs" (such as a murder mystery adventure where some PCs actually dislike each other and have motives to frame or discredit another PC, or an adventure on a ship in a storm where all the PCs are sailors trying to get the ship back home)

If the pregens came with new "iconics" art, I would love this SO much.

M. Balmer wrote:


I would be interested in seeing the occasional adventure along the lines of "The Prince of Redhand" or the expanded "Demonskar Ball" Delvesdeep and several others have posted in the Shackled City AP messageboard here at paizo.com. Adventures featuring opportunities for characters to use social skills to advance the plot, rather than the usual format.

I find adventures like these to be some of the most fun and memorable I've ever played. As with Demonskar Ball, I feel they have the greatest impact if they are side adventures to an existing AP.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:


What other suggestions do you have for the line that you think would be cool to play

More Richard Pett adventures.


Mikaze wrote:
Remember when Devil May Cry 3's cover got copied in Hunter: The Vigil?

Wait, what?


I'd be interested in contributing art to this thread. Is there a running list of things that haven't been drawn yet?


I feel so loved!


I'm so confused!


Here are a few ideas.

Advancing Blows: When you score a critical hit on an unarmed attack, you can immediately make an additional unarmed attack against the same opponent (using the same modifiers as the original).

Mixed Style: When you wield a weapon in your main-hand and nothing in your off-hand, you may treat that weapon as if it were an unarmed strike if doing so would be advantageous.

See You In Hell: When an opponent tries to force you into a hazard by any means (such as bull rush you off a ledge) and you are adjacent to that opponent, you may attempt to initiate a grapple as an immediate action to drag your opponent along with you.

Flying Kick: When you charge unarmed, you deal an extra 1d12 damage.


Fax Celestis wrote:
I was further surprised to notice that no one created a new race or creature (or even class!) for their villain. Sure, you don't get to explain what that new being is in your villain description fully, but surely you could spare a line ("Stricta are the Aasimar of lawful outsiders.") to explain in short, and then expand in the next section. I mean, the qualifying round was all...

I could be wrong, but a villain submission is not the time to bust out new rules on the judges.


Oooh, this sounds fun. It's been a while since I got excited about drawing something.

I'm so in.


You should definitely take a look at Arcana Evolved. There's all sorts of racial magic, and it's really well done.


Malephant wrote:
Paizo could make an excellent DS game that could have the look and feel of the old Infinity Engine games(Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Etc.) but have a Pathfinder setting and story.

Bioware did an excellent job producing these games, and Baldur's Gate II remains my favorite game of all time. In fact, it's the reason I started playing D&D many years ago.

Since some of the biggest strengths of those games were story, setting, and dialogue, I have no doubt that if Paizo worked in-house to help develop such a game, it would be a huge hit. I hope that this ends up happening, as it would be a great way for Paizo to showcase its new campaign setting and draw new gamers into the Pathfinder brand.


Psapp. I love this band.


All that blurring and touching up just to get rid of the room numbers sounds like a lot of work. There has to be a way to get an image from the pdf without the room numbers on it...


Lord oKOyA wrote:

Another house rule we use is in regards to criticals. We use the RAW except you automatically get max damage on the 1st die and then roll and add any other damage above that.

When we roll crit damage, we count 1s and 2s as 3s. Bad rolls are still bad rolls, but they're not nearly as underwhelming.


Happy Birthday James!

Stay original.


1. Low Access. Whenever I DM, I create two exhaustive lists of items that the players can obtain -- one is a list of keyed items (from specific monsters, chests, and secrets) and the other is a list of random drops (from random encounters). Whatever is left on the random drop list after the adventure is then up for grabs in various shops. I often represent this as a bazaar of traveling merchants, although sometimes I stash the list away and save it for a dragon's hoard or other large prize.

I keep a very tight lid on what can or cannot be bought. However, players who are willing to invest in item creation feats are free to make whatever items they desire.

2. Because there is a smaller, more tightly controlled pool of magic items, players need to be stronger in other ways -- working as a team is critical, so gameplay tends to revolve around tactics, not magic. I sometimes give out feats as player rewards for completing a scenario or good roleplaying.

3. The best part about this system is that I get complete control of what tools the players possess, and the players get a constantly refreshing pool of shiny bits to pick from. It works out well for both sides, just as long as the players have access to items that are appropriate to their character. One might think that players would feel restricted by such a system, but in my experience I have not seen this reaction.

The drawback, obviously, is that it requires more work on my part, but it's worth it to keep the party balance in check. It also saves me the headache of the occasional disruptive item.

Your mileage may vary, but I enjoy the whole process of creating items the same way many GMs have a love for new monsters.


I concur.

Chain lightning has a lot of style going for it as a spell, but it's a little lacking in power.

But would making this change make it strictly better than Cone of Cold?


There's also a fantastic Discworld MUD (discworld.atuin.net/lpc/) based on the books of Terry Pratchett. As to be expected, it's quite clever and humorous, but it's also well designed and has a massive world to explore.


I too used to play MUDs pretty heavily around the turn of the century. I tried many, but my favorite will always be Shattered Kingdoms (shatteredkingdoms.org). I liked it mainly because it was well-written and encouraged people to go out and explore. There were lots of cool little hidden things all over the place.

Although I don't really play any more, I'm currently writing one of those "choose your own adventure" books that I'll be making into a text-based game once I've finished... maybe even a MUD.


Demon Lord of Tribbles wrote:
hands the kid a basket of tribbles

Hurray!

*grabs tribble and runs away*


IamSpartacus wrote:
I'm confused.

Welcome to the club.


I find it's pretty good advice all around. I think I'll use this list the next time I get a new gaming group together.

Thanks for the post.


NICE!

Can't wait for the finished thing.


I'm not sure how I feel about this. It does make some sense, but it also destroys the elegance of the entire armor system.


Yeah, it's nothing like the Baldurs Gate games for the PC.

When I first played it I thought it was meh, but for some reason I never get tired of playing it. If you do get it, play with a friend. It's a lot more fun that way.

I also think it's a lot more fun on hard mode, but that might just be me.


woot!

I'm not gonna lie, that was pretty awesome.


WotC's Nightmare wrote:
"Let's nuke it from orbit!"

This just made my day.


Nothing could make me happier.


yellowdingo wrote:


Suggestion THREE: d20 Gobe with Galorian Worldmap etched in surface (10 cm Diameter/Brass)

You mean globe? That actually sounds pretty awesome!

...just, not in brass.

"I am the dungeon master! I control worlds, universes!"

*rolls megalomaniacal globe die*

Muahahaha!


Charming.


Hear, hear!

Long live the king!


Concerning new areas appearing, I imagine the world would remain rather static over the course of a campaign. Over the course of hundreds of years (and a few too many mage-wars), however, the setting would be populated by countries/dungeons/planes from many different campaign settings.

Amethal makes a good point about the augmented magic. I still stand by the concept because it can create some very interesting locales, but the effect should be kept minimal on game mechanics.


Ha! Duly noted and fixed.

Thankee kindly.


I've been thinking of a fun way to combine campaign worlds together, and came up with something I think works well. The concept is to justify having a patchwork campaign setting, wherein you could drop a location from any campaign world without upsetting balance in the world or throwing the suspension of disbelief.

Three important rules govern how this setting exists:

The first rule is that the material plane is a result of other planes overlapping. Ice and fire, light and darkness, order and chaos -- all of these things and more have their own respective planes of existence, and where they converge on the cosmic wheel, the world is formed.

But the world does not fold neatly into itself. In some places, one plane of existence dominates over the others. This phenomenon creates places like Sharn, the City of Towers, where impossibly tall buildings exist solely because they are constructed in an area that is predominantly elemental air. Other examples might include Ravenloft, a horrifying realm of darkness, or the Tablelands, a broken wasteland of baked earth.

In these areas, spells act differently according to whichever element dominates. Similarly-aligned spells will be augmented, while opposite-aligned spells will be dampened.

The second rule is borrowed from Ravenloft, which introduced the concept of "the mist," an ethereal void that surrounds the campaign world. People and places sometimes appear from the mist without warning or explanation, perhaps displaced from some other world or created by the strange nature of that place.

This is the central concept of the game world. Because of this phenomenon, areas of the prime material plane frequently become displaced by fragments of other worlds; however, these areas are almost always surrounded by the mist. Crossing this barrier is dangerous and survival is never guaranteed, but with some luck or the help of clairvoyants known as mistwalkers, it is possible to ferry groups between the worlds safely.

The third rule is that the world is a fabric, and magic is the loose string. The very act of using magic is, in fact, the process of unmaking reality. The more you pull on the loose string, the more you tear the world apart.

Although the displacement effect has led to the discovery of new civilizations, and thereby new technologies and magics, such areas tend only to appear wherever overuse of magic (such as that used in mass warfare) has caused the fabric of reality to tear open, creating converging dimensions (and perhaps even timelines).

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Does this work? What implications would go along with such a campaign world? Do you have any ideas that can make it better?


What? Really? It was supposed to be the central hub of their online community.

Can we get some linkage to the announcement?


Those new trolls look NICE. I always thought the long-and-lanky troll look was kind of goofy. The new ones seem much more feral and tough.


*throws chair across room*

YES YES YES

Y-E-S

YES


Kruelaid wrote:
If I wanted this I'd just go back to Rolemaster.

Yeah, I guess, but I don't want a game that has a character sheet with seven pages of skills. I just want to add a little robustness to the system I'm using now.


Sebastrd wrote:
Mosaic wrote:
Stuff

I learned to RP on a homebrew system an aquaintance developed.

His attribute system consisted of 11 primary stats ranging from 2-20:

I'm intrigued... Please, go on.

I'm currently wrestling with a system with a similar model, where skills and attacks are often affected by two modifiers. I've got some ideas, but they're not fully formulated yet:

Spoiler:

The aspect of physical speed is pulled from Dexterity and replaced by Agility, which affects your movement speed, initiative, and ability to make multiple attacks; Dexterity still represents hand-eye coordination.

The aspects of Willpower and Perception are pulled from Wisdom and replaced by abilities of the same names. Wisdom represents insight and judgement; Willpower represents determination and mental endurance; Perception represents physical senses (specifically eyesight)

Skills and combat modifiers look like this:

Spoiler:

SKILLS
Appraise = Wisdom + Intelligence
Balance = Dexterity
Bluff = Charisma
Climb = Strength + Dexterity
Concentration = Constitution + Willpower
Craft = Intelligence
Decipher Script = Intelligence + Wisdom
Diplomacy = Charisma + Reputation (if applicable)
Disable Device = Dexterity + Intelligence
Disguise = Charisma
Escape Artist = Dexterity
Forgery = Intelligence + Wisdom
Gather Information = Charisma + Wisdom
Handle Animal = Charisma
Heal = Intelligence + Wisdom
Hide = Dexterity
Intimidate = Charisma + Strength (if applicable)
Jump = Strength + Agility (if applicable)
Knowledge = Intelligence
Listen = Perception
Move Silently = Dexterity
Open Lock = Dexterity
Perform = Charisma
Search = Perception + Intelligence
Sense Motive = Perception + Wisdom
Sleight of Hand = Dexterity + Charisma (if applicable)
Spot = Perception
Survival = Wisdom
Swim = Strength + Dexterity or Agility (if applicable)
Tumble = Dexterity + Agility
Use Magic Device = Intelligence
Use Rope = Dexterity

COMBAT
Chase = Agility
AC = Agility
Melee Attack = Dexterity + Strength
Ranged Attack = Dexterity + Perception
Initiative = Agility

Will saves = Willpower
Fort saves = Constitution
Ref saves = Agility

I like where this is going. Especially with perception, a system like this would fix a few of the nagging issues, like "Why is Spot modified by Wisdom? Why is Search modified by Intelligence?" Such oddities can be explained away, but I'd much rather fix them, if for no other reason than just to tinker around. Plus, stuff like that bugs my players to no end.


I like where this is going.

Would it work like feat trees, or would it be more like the way Champions work from Arcana Evolved, where you pick a path at 1st level and gain benefits at certain levels as you progress?


It make make more sense to make a slightly simpler catch-all multiclassing system, but then include at the end of each class description a short writeup about what benefits a multiclassing character would receive from the class.

I think this is the simplest way to approach things like spellcasting, weapon proficiencies, and sneak attack progression that might otherwise create undue complexity.


...and there was much rejoicing.


I've heard of no such thing. Is this just wild speculation, or is there more to this?


Dualwolf wrote:

Oh THATS sweet!!!!!

...Then they could face her again as an enemy but wearing the clothes of his deceased wife...

What if she were wearing a wedding dress? That can go in some pretty creepy directions.

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