Monsters sure, could have some creatures come exploring, or burrowing into it. In this location I think smugglers are not likely, and what would they be doing? its a small town, and a small tunnel, with some small chambers for storage and such.
So far, I just sent them on another adventure, with a were badger and his dire badger friend, and a small family of reg badgers. If they help the were badger they will have a ally who will build the structure for them, if they kill him, they will probably tame his badgers. though will lose the dire badger to its rage over death of his friend tarn.
Honestly I hope they save the guy, I can hand them graph paper. have them design their lair, then just hand wave the npc building it a bit more each day. presumably with skill, and with miner kobold assistance. should be no sweat.
And I have enough of an idea now of timing to make it work, which ever way they go.
Thank you, all for your thoughts. My players are going to "dig having a secret lair"
It's all good, appreciate hearing thoughts from multiple angles anyway. not like this is not adaptable as I go. Thank you both for helping me work this out.
party is level 3, just finished doing crown of the kobold king. I even added kobolds, and beefed up the king. The party used a total of 2 heals through the whole module. and was knocking over kobolds left and right like no resistance.
as for point buy, I let them roll their stats and this resulted in some high base stats. I do believe the barbarian is +3 to all stats O.O (my mistake didn't know about point buy at the time).
How do you add up the CR of multiple monsters to decide the overall CR for the encounter? If I can figure how to count it up, Like above was suggested lvl 1-4 bandits. (how would I add that group up to get a CR number).
I am a new GM running a home brew pathfinder game. I have a module from an old magazine I want to run in our world, but I need to scale up the difficulty. I also need to add a bandit encounter within the next day or two if I can. So far I have run only modules within their level range.
currently the party is a party of 4 all lvl 3, and have been stomping over everything the modules have thrown at them with ease.
I want a bandit party of 6 bandits to encounter them soon if possible. I want the fight to be as hard as I can make it, with out hitting PC deaths. and with out wonky reasons, just good ol fashioned melee superiority.
Can anyone help me figure out what lvls I should make the bandits to fit a 4 man party of lvl 3?. from there hopefully I will have a better understanding to try to tackle the module upscale.
I have no idea what I am talking about. I leave it to someone else to GM this up, or tear it down.
Could you set up a crystal ball in one room, and use scrying. Along with the earring or ring concept from above. so that 1 person monitors the base station and gets a visual (in the crystal ball) of one person at a time, either by his choice, or a default repeating pattern.
The ball will turn red, and focus on a person, when the enchanted item senses that person is hurt.
The ball glows green and focus on who ever speaks into their enchanted earring/ring/whatever
Kinda a ma bell meets wicked witch, and pulls duty as a security guard type thing.
These gloves are most often made of supple, black leather. The fingertips are made from a hardened material and have the appearance of tiny claws. Although the gloves seem to have claws, they are not usable as a weapon.
When donned, the gloves bestow upon the wearer a burrowing speed of 10 feet per round. The wearer is then able to tunnel through any kind of earth such as sand, dirt or clay but not rock or stone. The act of burrowing does not create a tunnel, and the wearer cannot charge or run while within the earth. Both hands must be free to in order to burrow, and both gloves must be worn in order to benefit from the effect.
Well, its low magic as in magic items are often added to the world as needed. since we are all newbies, rather than say walk into town and order from the "player book"..but yes I really don't want to just hand them a magic bag..however, if at some point the story or the world does call for one, its something I could add in small doses, like they just earned the right to shop in the noble district, perhaps a shop keeper could be hawking 1 small bag, and be explaining its merits, if they buy or not is up to them. I wont just give it as loot.
I plan for both cave in, and a flooding as part of the experience, perhaps they shore it up better after a cave in, perhaps the make an underground pond to access water. or whatever they come up with, but yes the dirt will cave in on some areas (d6 roll to decide which lol) and I expect if they dig anywhere in direction of the river, they will get some flooding. or perhaps the whole thing falls in on them, alerting the powers that be, that something is not legit at their house.
So I am removing the bag as an option (30+ trips a day is not an option) would mean I either hand wave the npcs did all the work, or I have to have 30+ chances a day they get "spotted". and instead I will let the animal taming druid, that tames every single animal he sees, put some badgers to work digging it out the back side. I will give them a plot hook with the weird necro guy from the graveyard who already is in their favor even though they haven't met him yet. He could help disperse the dirt, be a plot hook for future things, or spoil the operation depending how he is approached.
The sid meiers in me loves the idea of selling the dirt to road crews, but my players need small gold sinks at this point. not more income.
Given the size of a badger, it should be able to dig up a 10x10x10 cube of dirt in a day, but that is 1000 cubic feet of dirt, so it will take them 34 trips just using the bag of holding to remove the dirt.
As a more real example, I, an out of shape and overweight guy, working not real diligently dug and moved about 12 cubic feet of dirt in about 6 hours. (Wish I had had a trained badger.)
Can you imagine how depressing it would be to shovel dirt into a bag of holding?
10x10x10 sounds much more realistic, for badger movement (I was watching some you tube vids of badgers digging, wow they move a lot of dirt fast and easy.
Yes they need to keep it secret, can't even have it known they are building a basement. They are renting the house :) should have some decent plot hooks spin off the tunnel system, as they find a existing tunnel from the local baron, and I had thought perhaps exit their tunnel near a graveyard that is currently the stalking grounds of a local necromancer.
I think this will give them an edge with dirt disposal too, as there are often fresh mounds of dirt around the graveyard. along with scattering it and taking a few bags with them when they leave town..perhaps they will have incentive to acquire a wagon (would help in 3-4 adventures from now when they raid a lair, for that matter so would the bag of holding.)
When confronted with what will you do with all this dirt, My party didn't even blink....We start from the other end, way out there in the woods, and scatter the dirt out the back end.
That option seems viable, and would allow the badgers to do more dirt removal, (10x10x10 a day +1day to push that dirt out, so 2 days for every 2 squares of the map) and remove the need for a "bag at a time"...though could speed up construction more than I would like, if they get a lot of badgers...
I do not want "poof your lair is built". I would like to see 1 "room" added between each adventure, but don't want to "nerf reality" just to suit my time scale..not a habit a GM should get into easily imo.
I appreciate everyone helpin me to work through this mental excavation.
So bag of holding wins for dirt removal. was hesitant to introduce them, as I have seen some serious meta gamey use from them...but what the hey. nothing anymore ridiculous than using kobolds and badgers to build a underground lair.
will still take many trips, and should slow the build time down considerably. Right now I am thinking 1 type I bag can hold 30 cubic feet of "items" so that's 30 cu feet of dirt, each trip.
A badger should be able to burrow 10feet per round, I assume that's not cubic feet, and not under druid influence. (as was said above) that will take longer to bag the lose dirt than for them to dig it, but I am trying to focus on dig times, rather than combine those times.
How many cubic feet can a badger move in one day?
I am letting the players draw a map of what they want to build, each square on the map is 5x5 and 10 feet high, seems each 5x5x10 "square" on the map should be 250 cubic feet of dirt.
So whatever final math I end up with on, how much dirt they can move in a full day, every 250ft will equal another square on the map they draw.
at 1 bag a day, that would mean it would take 8 days per square. For a 6 square by 6 square room, would take 288 days to dig out, with 1 badger.
This math sound wrong to anyone? may be totally off on the cubic feet a day a badger can move, I think 2 npcs, should be able to load 1 bag a day easy. I do wonder though, how many they could fill in a day.
Also looking into the spells Expeditious excavation, and Move Earth. as possible tools.
but still all that dirt to deal with...with out the town guards seeing.
best I can come up with is a bag at a time, to a wagon then out side of town to dump.
Gelatinous cubes don't "eat" dirt do they? nah if they did how would they move around with out dissolving the ground. Party does have one trapped in a room a few days away, why? "in case we need it latter"
So ill have to figure out how to transport it, maybe a stone shaped box.
but I digress. Any dirt eating critters exist? (from the material plane only).
No elemental guy is more into taming pets, and capturing things. kinda a low magic world. Dealing with the dirt will be an issue, as they do not want to alert the neighbors. I would like this to be a time consuming process for them, a add a room as we go sort of thing.
So far I have in mind, they are going to need to get some badgers..or other burrowing creatures. While the kobold pair are exceptional representatives of their species, and are perfectly capable of smashing a hole in the floor, and even designing really good tunnels and traps.
They are going to get tired of digging fast..
But should be able to (with the druids help) supervise a few burrowing critters.
Looking at dire badgers, they can burrow at a speed of 10, but again as u say, the dirt has to go somewhere..I am hesitant to just throw a bag of holding at them..low magic world and all.
Knowing my group, they will find a creative solution to moving the dirt out, and I have a plot hook that I can spin off from a "go to this area to find badgers" involving a were badger.
By the end of that I would expect the players to have at least a couple of badgers, and maybe even a were badger npc ally.
So I guess I just need at this point, to figure out what kind of time scale a couple of trained badgers, could dig out a 10x10 room.
One of the party has the stone shape spell ability as well.
Knowing 30 humans, took many months helps keep it in perspective, however they did not have kobolds and badgers :)
My players have 2 kobold NPC's that are friendly to helping. The party owns a house, and wants the kobold's to build a basement, and then a warren like escape tunnel under the house.
The Kobold's said warrens are usually built by the whole tribe, so it will take some time, but they are willing. One even mention perhaps they should capture some badgers.
So anyway as a new GM I wanna roll with this, and allow them to start slowly building out their design, but am slow to just hand wave all the build times.
Is this even a reasonable task? and assuming burrowing animals could be harnessed via the party's pack master druid, how can that affect the build times.
I invite your thoughts on this situation, and what you would see as "realistic" times to work with. and any other thoughts.
Thanks! u guys make being a new gm a LOT less stressful.
I am a new GM running a home game, and I am sure its not RAW but what my house rule is doing with leadership.
I allow players with leadership to recruit cohorts (each cohort has its own back story and their own requirements to keep them happy and in service.)
cohorts generally are gained via in game actions with people met along the way. NPC that were rescued, or assisted or such. and have reason to favor the PC.
The PC is limited by his ranks in leadership, as to how many active cohorts (with him in the party), and inactive cohorts (back at camp/house/castle etc) generally 1 cohort active at a time.
When the PC has surplus XP that could be used to lvl up, any portion of that XP can be given to the cohorts to lvl them up according to what the PC desires.
Then the PC can choose, to leave his character safe in the castle and send his cohorts to battle in his place, or on "missions" according to the PC needs in the campaign world.
This allows me to play other modules, with disposable characters, where nobody gets to upset when character dies.
For instance my party was charged with recovering an ancient relic from a magical land they have never been to or heard much of before.
My players response.
I send my spy to gather recon for me.
I will send my barbarian comrade, for the glory of my clan.
I will go myself because I have no followers guess that makes me team leader :)
I am going to go ask that adventurer bard, I have been trying to recruit if he is interested in exploring a wild new land.
When (IF) the cohorts make it back alive, with loot, information, and or XP. The PC can spend that XP however he likes, across his followers or his own advancement.
This also allows me to do 1 on 1 adventures with my players, when we have time between game sessions. With out disrupting the main group's adventure. Adds a level of immersion to the campaign world, since most cohort adventures are related to PC goals. Some cohorts might have a special quest line as a requirement for keeping them happy. Such as an assassin that has to go perform wet work occasionally for his guild.
And last but not least, its not impossible for a chort to either turn on the PC if not cared for right, or to even be a spy from a rival (NPC) faction, or have other nefarious reasons for being with the PC. Sense motive, diplomacy, leadership, detect lies, etc etc all help when building that relation ship with possible cohorts.
This works well for my campaign world, where the players have aspirations of kingdom building.
So say you have a PC who was bitten, and contracted lycanthropy, failed DC rolls on save, did not get a remove disease, in shot PC is now a were(whatever). Latter n another adventure, the PC gets some sort of disease that requires a cure disease spell..
What happens to his were form? does he get cured of that as well, or have the chance of getting cured...can he decide he wants to cure the "flu" but keep his were form?
I could easily see a valiant knight slaying a dragon, then eating its heart. (native Americans used to do practices such as this to get the "spirit mojo of the buffalo, or wolf etc" in our RL history.
Back on topic, these items, + the items from TC haunted forest,(I tweeked those items a bit) seem to be the perfect starter set for dragon hunters...
While they are "real places" most have never been heard of and have "fantasy names" or if you take 1 word from one and 1 from another..well you get the idea
I debated a long time which place to post advice or rules, die roll chose advice, my bad blame the dice :)
So if I understand it right a fighter(or other non caster) could use a wand, even though he is not a caster, don't have the spell on his spell list (has no list), but does have a bit of UMD. at a DC of 20 - his UMD...
EDIT: holy ninjas batman, I get it now...Thanks guys!
A bit off topic, I am adjusting this for a home game. NPC dark druids will send my players (party 4, lvl 2) to go fetch some firebloom seeds or perhaps a starter plant to grow this field.
My question is, before I pick a random spot on a random map to send my players....Is there any lore about this plant? or was it something created just for this module. If there is lore, I would like to follow it.
When I played years ago, it was before miniatures were all the rage, now many decades later I am learning to GM for my family to have a game together, and so far its been a lot of fun for everyone! mostly because of this community here, answering my noob questions. So thanks again guys!
Table Talk:
So we have payed a few sessions, all by verbal drama, then I printed maps, then we started using the pile of d6's for markers to show some crude tactics, and I see my boys would just love to get into the minis.
I went and got a 30x50 "train table" for Thomas the train used on Craigslist for like 30 bucks (has two big pull out drawers too!) this thing is great for miniatures I think and I haven't even started yet.
This will be our gaming table for now, it sits low enough for little kids which makes it great for in front of the couch :) with out having to invade moms kitchen space with castles and toys "dad said we could leave out :)
So I have a 30x50 area, I can use to game on. My plan is to print paper minis first, and play that awhile, then buy real minis as we get around to it and better know what we want.
But I am kinda lost where to start, and before I just start printing things random, I thought I would touch base with you wizards first.
I thought maybe I would start with griding off the whole table, but then what sized squares would best fit the minis and such, I see a LOT of trial and error here id rather not be arsed with, if someone else has it down to a science...
I know this was long winded, thanks in advance for you assistance.
A Medium +1 human-bane battleaxe is +1 to hit and will do 1d8+1 to most opponents, or 3d8+3 on a crit. Against a human it's +3 to hit and will do 1d8+2d6+3, or 3d8+2d6+9 on a crit.
Great! thanks, will use those stats for the looted sword, and book stats when its with kobold. thanks much!
Long as nothing in the RAW to specifically say this scenario cant work i am happy, I just don't want to get deep into and have to change things because "random module #4 How I met your dragon mother" completely crapped on the idea :) thanks for all the feedback.
Well the player is my wife, (and kids), so that changes the game some :)
She also doesn't want to ever have to die, or restart character, so while I wont play with kid gloves, I will let her get overpowered, make quests for the other players to get her resurrected, (while she joins in ghost form), and make TPK deaths(everyone wakes up at camp and it was just her dream of the day(s) to come)..not RAW, but heck I didn't know about pathfinder 2 months ago :) I think I can live twisting rules for fun.
She wanted to be a Half Orc barbarian..but wanted to look all human, she didn't want to be ugly lol. So I thought well, genetics being what it is there is no reason a rare baby couldn't be human looking. Though one would think these would be killed at birth? Thus spawned the idea
TLDR:
Her Orc father, captured a dragon, and forcefully spurned offspring, trying to sire a half orc, half dragon as his legacy.
Many attempts were made, resulting in twisted abnormal disasters, many were lost at birth, the others were crushed under his boot, before his tribe as part of his shamans ritual.
When PC was born, as 1 of a set of twins, her sister looked Orc and had some minor dragon traits already showing. The PC was a tiny pink skin human looking baby. King Daddy Orc, was all set to smash her at the feet of the great stone dragon statue, but that night mother managed to free herself enough to place the baby in a basket, in the river with a note and send her out Moses style.
A Professional soldier found the baby, and raised it as his own, her earliest memory is dragging his sword to him as he sat on his horse.
When she hit "a certain age" she started having a hard time with her emotions and rage issues, her hair turned pink (yeah I know lol). and her eyes turned purple, she flys into fits of rage and things die.
Her "father" remembering the note, says I kept this from you because I hoped it would never be an issue but you should read this. was in your basket, when I found you. on top of that since your now showing Orc traits (or is it all orc?? oh well its not human!)I can not have you stay here with me, because of caste and king and duty and rot, you have to go adventure in the world and make your own way now..
So I figure if she has to be Overpowered and long lived, why not be dragon born, ill let her advance all the way up to dragon form, and will be one bad as NPC for us to do quests for/against and such with other characters.
Will be able to build a Orc campaign to go against her sister in the high levels. Maybe she finds herself the dragon princess of an orc tribe..whatever she digs it :)
I am curious, if there is any way a BBEG could trap a dragon into a human form? If so how?
If the above is possible, would that female dragon who is now in a human form.
1. Be able to procreate, and thus pass some "dragon blood along" to a PC.
2. Would that human form dragon, be aging like a human? or continue to have the dragons natural long life?
Thanks I am trying to develop a plot line for PC half orc, barbarian, eventual sorceress, with dragon blood. sorceress line supports all I need for her but want the back story to match "rules" if at all possible.
I am DMing a home game with plenty of hand waving if needed :)
Thanks for your thoughts and knowledge.
wow I thought I was slightly confused, but now I realize I was really messed up lol
Thanks all for setting me straight, I have read the getting started and other areas so much, I think my mind is a jumble of stats and rules :)
and I think I to early made the decision "screw it we will learn as we go lets play!" :) but its working out good I think
So this means I have been doing combat wrong. I have been rolling d20 adding str bonus & BAB to die roll, and comparing that to monster AC. roll is higher than AC, its a hit. Then I have been rolling the damage stat block for the weapon. Such as the barbarian using a "Great Axe, 1d10"
So guess im off track? maybe BAB goes to damage not hit?
Why do I keep getting confused over the little details? oh well day 3 of DMing first time one foot in front of the other....
I am looking at the potion, Bulls Strength. Trying to learn how to apply it for my characters. The stat block reads:
Bull's Strength
"The subject becomes stronger. The spell grants a +4 enhancement bonus to Strength, adding the usual benefits to melee attack rolls, melee damage rolls, and other uses of the Strength modifier."
Which stats change with addition of str? I thought it would be 2 points to hit, but I seem to be missing the "damage rolls, and other uses?"
Thanks in advance for clearing this up, my players appreciate it!
In my first GM attempt at a game with my family. I have a GM controlled monk, who has taken a vow of peace. (to the point he will do no violent action, at all). But fully acknowledges your right to do so! to uh maybe that one over there?
At first they thought he was dead weight, one wanted to kill him and take his things :)
Then one almost drowned and the monk saved him, then when they failed to set guard or traps, the monk was the one who awakened them...
Add a few heals along the way, and Now he is their best friend, they always leave him slightly behind the party in some place not likely to compromise his morals lol
but we are all noobs, them at playing me at DM (or even playing in many years). so our play is all wrong :) but all good...
prepping to run this module, know the half-orc barbarian is going to love this axe! so I want to make sure I get the stats right, when she loots it, but as a noob gm im having trouble.
I'm not 100% I'm figuring the 2d6/x3 part right. But I am very confused on the base stats of the item because it lists damage as...
Melee +1 human bane battleaxe +9 (1d8+14/x3)(against humans: +11, 1d8+16 plus 2d6/x3)
but then has this text as well...
"The kobold king casts bull's strength, mage armor and enlarge person on himself" and " He wields his human bane battleaxe two handed in melee and uses Power Attack (already figured in)"
and then latter reads...
Without enlarge person, make the following adjustments:
+1 human bane battleaxe +9 (1d8+13/x3)(against humans: +11, 1d8+15 plus 2d6/x3)
So I see, power attack is a +1 mod, but then it reads...
Without bull's strength, enlarge person, and mage armor, make the following adjustments:
+1 human bane battleaxe +7 (1d8+10/x3)(against humans: +9, 1d8+12 plus 2d6/x3)
and I think, ok is that ^^ the base stats on this weapon, or do I need to remove +str mod or any other stats I am missing to get the weapon base?
So close, yet still so confused lol
Thanks in advance, for help sorting this out.
Has been a fun adventure, DO looking forward to running the others in this set...on a side note: anyone know a good module/campaign to move to from falcons hollow, would like to stay in same section of the world if possible? maybe better in another thread. :) rambling thanks again!
Have been adding monsters for random encounters, and for a sub quest plot
Have been unsure of how to read/appy this AC stat. Specifically the +4 +2 +4 part)
When doing the hit roll, and looking at AC, do I add the +4, +2, +4, on top the 20 bringing the to hit up to AC 30? or are these +'s already accounted for in the 20?
About to GM my second session :), setting up some encounters, have this centipede thing with this stat block for his special poison attack. Would anyone be so kinda as to help me understand it for play, I think I do but want to double check.
As I understand it, player would roll a DC(11) (adding fort bonus?)
if poisoned because of failed roll, then would be poisoned for 4 rounds. taking 1d2+ creatures dex bonus?, and then im lost (heck im probably lost from the start :)
Special Attacks
Poison DC(11) frequency 1/rnd for 4 rnds 1d2 Dex cure 1 save
thanks in advance, someone always answers my noob questions you guys rock!
That said, you bring up a great thought. If I had a conversion formula for us dollars, into PP or GP, that would make hand waving costs for creative things the players come up with a lot easier. Yes there are tables for some things, but how much do you charge when the player wants to "get their horse dyed pink" as my daughter did :)
Ahh thanks, would have been nice to know that last night :)
party was down, only rouge left and he couldn't hit the skeleton at all because its AC was 1 point to high, would have inspired him to know a 20 would hit regardless.
first TPK :) feels good to be GM lol
I have to seriously learn about healing though..party needs more than 1 heal a day from their druid cure light wounds spell. or they need to accept they can RUN :)
