osopolare's page

I'm gearing up to play The Way of the Wicked AP. Looks really fun.

I really like the idea of the feat paths for Vampires and Liches. A great way to solve that challenge.

I have a question about the True Vampirism Feat (Book Five: The Devil My Only Master p84). I'm hoping that someone from FMG can chime in an answer on the rules as intended since the rules as written are a little ambiguous.

The feat says this: "Benefits: You gain the full benefit and weaknesses of the vampire template."

Does that include the ability score modifications? The prereq feats includes a +2 to Dex, so I would assume it wouldn't stack with that. But all of the other stat bonuses?

Why do I ask? Because clearly including the stat bonuses would be very very powerful and that's something to be sure about.

On the plus: It does say "gain the full benefits...of the vampire template" Included in "full benefits" would be those stat bonuses. Also the description: "true vampire in every sense."

On the minus: I do think it would be called out specifically (though space might have been a factor). The Lich Feat is much more succinct and doesn't leave much room to question:
'Benefits: You gain the template “lich”' Hard to argue with that. Though on the other hand the lich template includes: "Int +2, Wis +2, Cha +2"

Also in the minus column is the fact that the person who did the HeroLab input for the WotW data files decided the stat bonuses weren't in there.

Any one from FMG care to comment?

(If you didn't help write or publish this AP please resist the temptation to chime in with your interpretation or "Ask your DM", it's clearly open to interpretation and yes clearly I can ask my DM, that's not the question at hand. I'm hoping to learn if there was an original intent that can be divined.)

I've been reading through the available Osirion source material in preparation for the release of Mummy's Mask.

I'm excited about the idea of making the desert environment a key focus of the adventure. I love it when the setting creates a tone for everything else.

As it stands though I don't see why a character would give a damn about the deserts.

One Cleric in the party with Create Water and poof water's no issue. In fact why not fill up a whole caravan of waterskins and hand them out. It's 0-level.

Endure Elements is 1st level for everyone. So don't worry about the heat, just buy a wand.

So it's pretty much not an issue even at 1st level. By 2nd? Why waste anyone's time talking about it.

Seems like a GM would have to get into some pretty heavy rule bending for any PCs to care.

Please forgive me if this has been asked and answered already.

I've been struggling to fit map grids from The Cult of the Ebon Destroyers and other maps onto grids to match a Virtual Table Top (VTT).

To make a long story short that's just about impossible to get it "right" for some of these maps. Short of taking up fantasy cartography myself the will always be pretty far off.

(Squares vary in size pretty significantly in size within an individual map, and for now I have a decent work-around, but let's not detain ourselves with that here.)

I have found that for the APs this is not a problem. The lovely interactive maps in the newer APs deal with this problem nicely. You can turn off the grid! Then simply use the grid in the VTT and Bob's your uncle.

So... is there any known source for Interactive Maps for the modules?

Has there been official word on this question from Paizo?

Thanks.

I'd love to see a recently added section that included, say, newly purchased and new subscription items from the last month.

It does seem a little strange that all of your new stuff is mixed with your back-catalog of purchases.

Thank you!

From the AP1 blub:

"Far to the south, an unseasonable winter cloaks the forest near the village of Heldren with summer snows. When the heroes venture into the wood in search of a missing noblewoman, they discover a magical portal to the frozen land of Irrisen,"

I was hoping that this module would be a good vehicle for lots of cold climate oriented archetypes. Also a chance to play the various northern human races. There's even a source book coming out on this topic.

... but if the adventure starts in the South will it make any sense to allow these characters?

Seems like a funny choice to me. Like having a desert-themed adventure but starting everyone in Brevoy.

My group is running through the very very nasty Rappan Athuk dungeon produced by Necromancer/Frog God Games (http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/rappan.html).

It's a super deadly mega-dungeon. We're suspending some of the continuity and story ideas that we would normally apply to an AP. This is just about enjoying a brilliantly written dungeon-crawl. We're keeping it very sandboxy as well, the DM's not railroading.

We're seeing a few issues with doing this.

1) It's hard to match up right right part of the dungeon with the right level characters. We did some of the harder stuff when it was a bit above our CR and now going back for some of the "easier" stuff we've above CR and it's not as much fun.

2) We all have like 10 different character ideas we'd like to try.

3) Our party composition has been a bit wacky. No arcane caster for example, just an Oracle with a fire-oriented mystery filling in.

4) If we played this straight characters would be dying all over the place.

Here's my idea for solving this problem: Use the old Dark Sun Character Tree system! We can swap out multiple characters as we go.

Problem is, it's been a long time and two (three maybe) systems ago since we did this.

Has anyone tried a character tree recently? What rules did you use?

In a recent game we ran into an interesting situation and I'm hoping for some help resolving the question. Thank you for your patience in answering another grapple question.

My party was fighting a large creature with 10' reach and the Grab special ability in a 10' wide hallway. We had two PCs in the front line, adjacent to the monster.

The monster successfully attacked and grabbed a PC in the second row. Since that grappled PC was not adjacent to the we had to next determine if there was an open adjacent square. This is where we found disagreement.

One side said that since the squares in between the grappled and the monster were occupied the grapple should fail.

The other side (which contained the DM, so you know how it went) contended that since the monster had open adjacent squares on it's OTHER SIDE the grappled PC was moved there.

It was a bad situation with a squishy PC now on the other side of a big monster. Hilarity ensued.

So this brings the question of what exactly is meant by "adjacent square."

I was on the side that said that the grapple should have failed, that it was unreasonable to suggest that by succeeding in a grapple you could move a character to a square all the way on your other side.

On the other hand a big and dangerous critter with long tentacles could just lift you and move you... but if that's the case why does it only get that power when there's someone occupying a square in front of you...

Input would be appreciated. I couldn't find this addressed anywhere else.

I've hoped for a while that we would get a Pathfinder computer RPG.

I'm very disappointed to hear that it will be an MMO.

MMO's by their very nature eat lots and lots of time. It's the business model to get people hooked and make sure they keep paying the monthly fee.

These days I just don't have that much time to spend on games. When I do have time I'd like to be able to take full advantage of what the game has to offer.

Paizo has done so much to make gaming fun and doable without tons of prep. An MMO goes the opposite direction.

With a conventional RPG you can spend a few hours a week playing and slowly find your way to the end of the game. With an MMO you'll never get very far that way.

I would love it if Goblinworks went in the direction of Dragon Age, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights (2002 Bioware) or Fallout (any version).

An MMO I will never play.

I know that Paizo/Goblinworks will only have so much capital (financial or creative) to invest. My hope is that it doesn't go towards an MMO.

So much for "The Fabled City of Xin-Shalast"

I'm really dumbfounded by the decision to print the location of Xin-Shalast on all of these maps. It's such a spoiler.

My party is in the process of searching for Xin-Shalast in the last of the ROTRL series. Having it printed on the map kills some of the suspense.

I've asked my players not to look but that's kinda silly.

So much for there being any suspense to that module. Or the Lost Cities supplement for that matter. Not very lost any more.

<shakes head>

My players and I have been absolutely loving Rise of the Runelords. The writing is great, it's very diverse and challenging.

The one problem is that it's a royal pain to convert everything to Pathfinder RPG.

I've been taking advantage of the great conversions that are up on d20pfsrd.org but those are not complete for the later books and there's a lot of other stuff (like XP and CR) which needs a bit of a re-write to work.

I would love to see the adventure converted and fleshed out with new information that's available since publication (like references to Lost Cities of Golarion for Xin Shalast) and the other material from the adventure path (like the guides to Desna, Lamashtu, Stone Giants and Dragons) converted and published in a separate volume.

I, for one, would be willing to shell out a second time for the convenience of not having to convert everything. (I'm in the middle of converting all the Wizards in the Runeforge. What a pain, it takes me about 2 hours each.)

Same goes of all the other paths that were released with 3.5 rules.

Thanks for the great game and great material.