pinkycatcher's page

Um, yes, and the BOMPA and the LOMPA gadgets are outrageously priced.

While I can't say that it's as solid as I would have liked it, I feel like it's less weird than PF (where even 1st level PCs are filthy rich by NPC standards).

I don't know where this idea that NPCs are dirt poor came from, if you do the math a basic farmer and most NPCs end up making something like 150+ Gp/year. More if they have more specialized fields. Also for their speciality it makes sense to rule that they don't have to sell their stuff for half cost like PCs do, so they can often have much more.

I wish they would have made the class skills based off the theme and not the class. If everyone got skills based off their theme it would make the theme so much useful, and get out of the classes that have a billion skill points, especially when you have so few skills in this game.

right. it's a star trek comm unit. a comm unit's got voice. that's about it.

No, a comm unit is a tier-0 computer that has audio and text based messaging, it also has a calculator, flashlight, and games and access to any local infospheres.

It's not just voice.

They wanted a comm unit to be a satellite cell phone basically, but they didn't include a camera. Though they is explicitly said to be purchased with 5 credits, I'd say it's an upgrade to the comm unit and costs 10 credits to miniaturize it.

Rations in Pathfinder are super cheap and contain food and water. 1 credit and 1 bulk for a week of rations of food and water. You can easily have a month of rations for each player without too much stress (really the main thing is carrying it, but that can easily be solved if anyone is a mechanic with a drone, you can outfit a whole party's food on one).

Depends, is the lock mechanical? Or is it electric? There could be two ways to disable it, also one could be easier or harder depending on the situation. One might be impossible without extra tools, one might be easy.

As a DM I allow it, but generally they're not going to have the cohort in combat, simply because it'll take up too much action economy for one player, and it will unduly affect other people by having one person bogart the table in damage, time, skills, and abilities.

As a player I have it, my cohort basically acts as well trusted companion, second in command, messenger, scout, and out of combat do most things.

Leadership is a role play feat, not a mechanical one, if you allow it to be mechanical then you've automatically made a single feat better than at least two levels in any class. If you make it RP it gives characters who have high feats and low skills much needed RP power (those fighters become a lot more interesting when they don't have to rely on two skill points a level).

Just to add to this, there are non-evil undead. Dragon's Demand

1. Iblydos
2. Five Kings Mountains (Dwarven Cities are always the coolest maps)
3. Aucturn (because so many of the modules hint at the Aucturn engima, it would be a great capstone on a module campaign).

This will be included in the Inner Sea Bestiary Box.

How do you know and which modules?

UnArcaneElection wrote:

Maybe the PCs weren't planning to be colonists on the ruins of Azlant . . . Shipwrecks happen.

It's not unworkable. That sounds like a survival scenario, though, not a colonization one. And while it could transition from survival to colonization, it'd be one of the more awkward plot transitions - up there with Second Darkness (and its whiplash-inducing switch from scoundrels to saviors).

Given how conservative Paizo is being with Starfinder's release, they're not going to risk their major cash cow for it. The most you should realistically expect, in terms of tie-in products, is another Distant Worlds book. And even that isn't likely.

I had an adventure set up EXTREMELY similar to that as a home brew. Unfortunately it didn't get off the ground (that group isn't too much for building things). But the idea was really cool. Basically it was going to be Azlanti colonists set out to colonize an island, weird time stuff happens through some contrived thing in a volcano and then they pop back into modern Golarion.

Okay so it's not extremely similar, but pretty similar.

I've been running my group through a bunch of different modules and I've noticed how cool some of the unique monsters are.

I think it would be a great idea to offer a set of Pawns that are made up of the artwork from the modules. Also maybe some of the monsters in the modules that didn't make it into the bestiary sets.

I use combat manager. Put all the monsters in (just quick add them, initiative and hp if it's not in there, but a ton are) and then roll. I let the players roll for themselves and put those in then sort.

I'm really not a fan of every monster on the same initiative, it's not fun and it's too easy to make the encounter super one sided.

I basically went in and upgraded the encounters to be roughly a CR 9-11 or so. Luckily the community repository had all of them in Hero Lab.

I am going to add something before hand, I also did not find a good way to add the competing party in there, I mean they exist, but the party doesn't see them as a threat (and why should they? The party knows they have the real mask and the other group stole the fake mask). But it's not like they can summon the pyramid with the fake one so why does it matter?

Also they didn't see a reason to go over the dunes, so they went around, added a couple of days to the journey, but who cares?

I also upped the auction values (not nearly enough though) and they auctioned off the coin they picked up in the pact stone pyramid.

But I won't try to overdo it (other than maybe adding another combat before, I've got some good ideas), and keep with building the atmosphere.

I agree with visiting different countries. Some of the highly thematic settings that translate to the real world are awesome!

Irrisen/Eastern Europe, Osirion/Egypt, etc. Just stuff people can latch onto and find interesting. It makes it relatable.

I disagree, just because the players use the profession check rules does not mean NPCs do (otherwise everyone would have equal wealth).

To me this is like any other quality service, you get what you pay for. A 50 gp hooker is way better than a 5 gp one, or at least will seem that way. Also it depends on what they want out of it.

In other words, make it up, put it at a level they're willing to spend and go with it.

I just had my party run through the Pact Stone Pyramid, and we loved it. It was so thematic and the encounters were pretty good (the dig turned out to be annoying, I would love to play another DM's version to see how they run it).

So I'm wanting to convert Entombed with the Pharoahs from level 6 to level 9 or so (it's a big party so I'm going to favor more combatants).

Is there anyone who's run the module that has any tips?

Luckily I've got the community repository hero lab files of the module and I've upgraded those by increasing the CR by roughly 3 for each one (though some of them look tough! like the dragon, whoof!) any other tips?

James, I agree, you publish mostly through your APs now, but there's a couple of problems I, as a DM, have with that.

1. The storylines aren't cut and dried from beginning to end of the module, there's also a lot of assumptions on loot, ability, and knowledge of the encounters and stuff the APs have. That's not a big deal really.

2. The APs are really good, I don't want to spoil an AP for another game, if I use an AP then it no longer has it's uniqueness if we ever want to play the AP.

The other thing with making modules at this level is there is so much prep work involved, so the modules start saving more and more time for the DMs. It's pretty easy to pull straight from the bestiary and have a rough storyline on low level adventures, but later on it gets more and more difficult.

Also I think none of the modules in that range have been published in the last 4 years, the one level 12 module was in 2012, everything else is 2009-2011. So it's been a while before someone's given us something new in that range.

Must haves aren't really must haves.

The players will just have to deal with what they get. In between modules (the way I'm running it) they'll have time to buy things, and pretty much once you make it to Absalom you can get anything short of artifacts.

Also dragon's demand is flush with gear, the players WILL NOT need to leave the town to be more than wealthy. The module assumes you have just bookoos of gear and you will.

And all the XP and rewards are group rewards. So divide as needed.

I think there are a good amount of lower level modules, and I do agree they get played the most.

Does anyone else wish for more say 12-17th level modules? There's only 1 each of those modules without running into 3rd party stuff.

but you'd be likely to not be able to use some of your cool abilities to their fullest (or sometimes at all), which will probably give some people an unsatisfying feeling of "missing out" regardless of how good the performance with the remaining abilities was.

That's what I meant, some things don't translate well into a module by module type of game. But I've already got some really big plans for this class. Super exciting!

Got ya. That's what I thought, but some of it seemed mildly ambiguous and I didn't want to pressure my GM (or when I GM have someone pressure me) into giving the vigilante a free base of operations to expand on a whim.

Otherwise, super cool class, I can see how it might be a bit weak in a PFS adventure, but in some APs and homebrew it's pretty awesome.

My main question is not about the space requirements (I'd agree if you had a demiplane you could do it there, or if you had a portion of a building etc.)

My question is mostly does it create the building itself or does it require an existing building?

For example, let's say I have a small building (10'x10') on a large plot in my renown area, I want to make a safe house, does the ability allow me to create the underground secret area or do I have to build it and then apply it to this area?

The fact that it says "can be arranged any way he likes" makes me feel like I can make it as part of an ability.

Is it basically a magical place where you can build rooms however you like? Or do you have to have a place (like a building or cave) and designate it a safe house?

Are you going to release a pawns set with this too? I absolutely love the pawns.

Oh and our group is putting off a CotCT game specifically for this, we're super excited.

Scythia wrote:

It's a reductio ad absurdum about the pitfalls of dogmatic adherence to the rules as written.

But, like most such arguments, there is an important grain of truth in them.

A more realistic example would be a lighthouse. Lighthouses are supposed to be visible for miles away -- in fact, a typical (30-45m) lighthouse is designed to be visible at a distance of roughly 13 miles (20 km).

Thirteen miles is roughly 13,000 5' squares, or a -6500 penalty to seeing it. As a Colossal object, there would be a corresponding +16 bonus to find such a thing, but that's dwarfed by the distance penalties.

Shipwrecks must be much more common in Golarion than on Earth, because by RAW, you can't see a lighthouse further away than about the length of a football pitch.

Following the PRD's terrain rules, I couldn't see Godzilla stomping across a plain if he/she/it were further than about 1500' away. (Maximum sight range is 6d6 times 40 ft.)

Sure, but you could also argue that it has a +6500 DC to spot it because it has a giant shining light poking out of it.

Yah as a player who's played this. It sucks. You really have to add multiple places to buy magic items.

Between 4+ players zilvazaraat's limit of 50,000 doesn't go far once you're like level 13 or 14. The items you get in the module aren't too useful either, everything is cold based and so has immunity to cold so a lot of times you can't do much with much of the bonuses.

It's incredibly frustrating on this end. You can't use the hut to travel because you use up the keys and you have no idea where to go.

So as a player, please just add in random trips to a major city or something. Basically at level 15 I had about 20k gold worth over wealth by level but I was actually only using about 30k of it (one of which was a ring of x-ray which only helps for somethings). I couldn't hit anything (monk) or do anything useful in combat except run around and take attacks of opportunity and provide flank.

Luckily the GM (after many of us being upset about all the useless crap we got) allowed us to spend months crafting stuff, and allowed me to use magic device and plane shift scrolls to actually spend money on stuff. So I picked up 200k+ worth of gear to bring me up to a real wealth by level. It was very nice being able to deal damage and feel useful.

Decent adventure, but this was one of the biggest issues.

Something I did not want clarified: Failing a Will Save and being forced to perform an action that breaks your code/goes against your deities' wishes does in fact make you lose your powers.

I dont believe the Absolution spell should have been printed. Even further it has limited usefulness in combat(It also breaks enchantments) because of the casting time of a round.

How does that first bit make any sense?

Yah, I'm going to get this book now. I don't like a lot of the splat books because they tend to just add more powerful options and glut. But rules clarification is something I wholeheartedly support.

I would kill for a pathfinder Rules compendium with a clarification of as many rules as possible in one area.

CWheezy wrote:

Rhedyn wrote:

83 constitution

I think this number could be lower. when you run out of rounds you don't drown, its con checks until you fail 2, I think.

Since ability checks don't fail on a 1, how long would it take then? assume magic items and stuff

That number assumes he can take 10 on those con checks.

I would say if you're trained in it and there's nothing else going on you could take 10 (maybe all free divers and breath holders have a feat that lets them take 10 on that check against drowning if they're not doing anything that requires movement)

@ElSilverWind: I think having an HP benchmark is an okay idea, but I don't really know where I'd draw the lines on those benchmarks. I'm open to suggestions.

I think if you did 3 rounds of survivability with being hit with a full attack.

So <1 would be red, 2 would be yellow, 3 green, 4 or 5 blue.

There should be rules in the book for it. I think you take damage and then get thrown back out.

1. No
2. If the GM want's a plot point for it to happen than it can. Probably not thought
3. I don't see why not, if the person was already on the correct plane (astral or ethereal) and knew of the demiplane or had been there before then it would be reasonable for teleport to work.

If 1/3 of all your fights get use from an extra 5ft of movement, you must be really kicking yourself for not being an archer or even just investing in UMD for longstrider.

Fleet obviously has some use, so do other really bad feats like Weapon Focus or Critical Focus... but static bonus feats are a waste of resources in terms of how much of your character's potential is tied up in that feat. Fleet is no exception. It's a tiny, tiny bonus to speed that can easily be more than overcome by basic magic.

16% increase in speed is tiny? Especially when it's on all the time, I don't have to burn a round and resources casting a spell. Also don't your enemies tend to place themselves at a really good distance (like 35 ft away) where you have to advance and not do anything? And 40' rooms are super common in how I play, 20' and 40' rooms are like my standard dungeon rooms because they're good sizes for lots of things. 35' of movement means I can go from one wall to the other and attack a medium creature on that wall.

Also I don't play out of the player's companion books or the adventure path books, many of the choices in there are objectively the best which makes them a bit OP in my book.

If a character get's mind controlled (or something of the sort) I pass them a note saying what happened and how to play it, if they play it well and to the best of their abilities they'll get extra roleplaying experience for that, if they do something out of the situation (like if they drop their great sword and use fists if the order was to kill) then they don't.

But all of my players have done an excellent job in the cases it has happened (I don't want it to happen too often it's not always fun).

Again "harder than it should be" does not mean you can't get there using a high level monk or by committing to useless feats. The top athletes in Pathfinder are slower with better strength and conditioning than on Earth, and it's just a minor example of the many many ways Pathfinder doesn't even come close to reflecting the real world.

A high level monk can run a 5.5s 100m without fleet, which is faster than a cheetah while a cheetah runs a 3.96s (with several attacks available) 100m which is about 1.5x faster than real life. An awakened monk/barbarian cheetah with as much cheese as possible can get to about 100m in ~0.9s with a cursory glace.

Useless feats? Fleet is far from it, battlefield positioning can be incredibly important. I've grabbed fleet on a number of my characters and it's been very useful. I'd like to say about 1/3 of fights involve some use of it, whether it allow me to avoid an attack of opportunity or take more diagonal or allow me to get an extra attack in because they were 35 feet away or 40 with reach. Also being able to chase down people who are at 30 is always useful.

413394 wrote:

...choose to allow people making an overrun attempt to pass through.

This.

My character is standing in a 5 foot wide hallway and an orc rushes toward me, attempting an Overrun maneuver, to get at the squishy wizard 10 feet behind me. I can choose to allow him to pass by me if I don't really like the wizard much.

My invisible character is standing in a 5 foot wide hallway and an orc is rushing forward to attack the squishy wizard 10 feet behind me. He didn't perceive me so he didn't attempt an Overrun maneuver. Because he isn't actively trying to knock me down on his way through my square I somehow cannot manage to get out of the way in time and have to "let" him just bump into me?

Really?

I think you can clearly allow someone to walk by you without harm. You allow your allies to all the time in fact and you could allow a enemy to as well. But the main question is on if they end their turn in your square. They mechanically can't because it's an illegal move, but meta-game they know that someone is there. So it's kind of a weird place in the rules

Eh, after reading more I'm not too sure. It makes sense that you could 5' adjust, but I am starting to come around to the face it's likely hampered movement.

Okay, so the consensus is that I could have attacked the square and just faced the 50% miss chance.

And 5ft adjust legality or not, it didn't really matter because I could have taken a 5ft move action for the same result (low enough level for just one attack).

Oh but count me in on the fact you can 5ft adjust in Obscuring Mist etc. Because you can still clearly see the ground 5ft away, it's not fully obscured like darkness would make it, and it's not difficult terrain.

We had this come up in my last session and I wanted some other people's opinions on it as we're all fairly experienced but we reached a disagreement (well I disagreed with everyone else at the table).

Scenario:

Obscuring mist is cast on an area. There are two combatants (Chuck and Greg) right next to each other, they can see each other and can attack each other with a 20% miss chance.

Now let's say Chuck has a reach weapon, he 5ft adjust back to be 10 ft away from Greg, Greg is fully obscured (50% miss chance and the attacker cannot use sight to locate target). Can Chuck now attack Greg?

I said of course he can, he knows Greg didn't move and so Chuck would just receive the 50% miss chance. Everyone else at the table said you couldn't, you had to act like he was invisible and probe the square to locate, then attack the next round.

The scenario is simplified from what actually happened (the spell was stinking cloud, there was more than two combatants) but the fact pattern is the same.

Thoughts?

I was mean and had the local Cleric of Abadar come in with the Mayor and execute a binding contract with the party that they wouldn't take anything from the house. At the end of it I told them they would be subject to Truthtelling and anyone caught lieing would be arrested.

As far as the 4 to 5 player adjustment - just give the critters more HP or add 1-2 if they are really weak (like Grioths tend to be later on).

I had my guys sign a contract, but going through it, a whole bunch of the stuff in the Manor just flat out isn't that useful or cool to players. Though the wizard did keep one of the weird books, and I let him use his stealth skill to try to copy spells from the spellbooks during the following month (I did like 30+Stealth check number of hours he could copy spells).

I ran through it with 5 players. I had them start the adventure 3/4 of the way to level 2 (I threw in two encounters beforehand). Then I also added about 3 encounters in the middle as well as increasing the kobold numbers by about 15-20% in the kobold sections. But they still didn't make it to level 7 at the end.

But it didn't matter, they pretty much breezed through the final encounter (even though the three NPCs that were there didn't help too much, one popped a mirror image, the other cast airwalk on the paladin). They did have the wizard die, but the Paladin burnt through the final guy very quickly with a holy smite.

I was expecting a couple more deaths so I thought it would have been a bit harder especially since my guys aren't super optimized (the wizard and the paladin are the ones that can burn through things like cake, though the wizard doesn't make it seem that way).

What I would have done if I were to do it over again is increase some more of the minions, especially in the monastary to pump up more experience and make the fights more deadly (though they got stomped by the mummy, absolutely wrecked, they couldn't hit it for the life of them). I also would cut down the treasure a bit more (or lend more of it instead of giving it to them) that would help with my followup campaign.

But the module is excellent, I highly recommend it, absolutely fun.

It would be tougher with 6, I did like the NPCs as pressure release valves, they could do good if I needed it, and could not help if they didn't, so I would keep Maffei. But at bare minimum max out pretty much every creatures health to make fights more than 2 rounds.

My players have had Maffei since they encountered her. (I'm pretty fond of her, ha, it gives me a good valve on controlling damage in the group). They also picked up the druid.

In the final fight I really don't know if maffei will help that much though.

Wow. I never noticed that. Thanks!

Why does that work? Just because?

Because your putting level 6/7 players against a CR11 encounter. So all the additional stuff you can do (the name, recruit the druid, recruit maffei, loot the crypt of tula) is to make the combat possible.

Hi, Mike. Awesome module and I -will- write a review when I'm done GMing it (not long now). Thanks for this and for many of my other favorites, such as Valley of the Brain Collectors, Curse of the Lady's Light and most especially for the Mud Sorcerer's Tomb.

** spoiler omitted **

It's not an item. Look in the quests at the front for a description. It's more about what the players do during the monastery.

I'm playing dragon's demand and I highly recommend it. It's pretty long and there's just an absolute ton of map making to do but it's really good.

That's Lodo. Just for that, Lodo... ** spoiler omitted **.

Glad Dragon's Demand is still beating up your party. WRITE A REVIEW!

Crud! But that wand was surprising for everyone.

And don't worry I'll write a good long review once we finish up. I have already recommended the module to at least 3 other groups.

Note that one reviewer gave the module a mediocre review because it was a "cakewalk" for his party of 6. Remember that due to action economy, bigger parties quickly overwhelm the CR. It's pretty tricky to get it right. Throwing in one or two mooks to compensate may not be enough to ramp up the challenge.

Remember to post a review!

Oh wow, you wrote this? The module is awesome.

I don't think my players are breezing through it even with me adding encounters to make up for experience (and because I have other story stuff I want to do as our game will continue on past the module).

My players are a mixed bag, one experienced DM who is playing, a couple of guys who grew up and playing D&D and haven't played in a while (first time in Pathfinder) and a new guy who hasn't played anything.

There have been about 5 fights where someone has dropped unconscious, and at least twice as many where they have gotten really darn close. I generally don't pull punches, so I actually feel for a group with just 4 if the GM is playing it right.

I really think if the GM is playing smart a party of 6 would have a rough time in many places still and I'm only up to the auction place. As a GM some of the more deadly encounters caught me off guard (Ludo especially, he wrecked the party).

Well as a wrapup, I gave the Wizard a peek at the spellbooks for a number of hours (he had 47+ stealth check # of hours based on the fact he had to sneak in while they were inventorying the manor)then we just sat and rolled to see what all he could successfully write down.

As far as experience I've added a few encounters to pump their XP up, I'm happy with what I've added so far (a CR 5, 6, and CR7 right before the auction). Also I generally add a couple of mooks depending on how they're doing. Maffei also wrecks shop against a bunch of these monsters if they're struggling.

We played through with 6 I think. We don't use XP; free yourself and stop using XP. ;)

We also pretty much left everything alone, and as for the spell books I can't remember but may have copied some stuff out of them with permission.

If you are worried about it you can give them something else to do or only give them limited permission to copy from the book - like 2 hrs / day of access.

Meh, I like experience better than leveling at the random whim of the GM. Plus as a GM it gives me a nice tool to increase the strength and number of encounters.

They've got a bunch of stuff to do (they wanted to own the tower so now they have to rebuild it, I've also got some side quests that will end them up with some awesome stuff.

Eh, despite the Wizard player being smart I don't know if he'll actually try to read any of the books.

Treat it as if the paper in their hand was replaced with a whip straight from the rulebooks. No difference. So reach, threat, AoOs, etc. are the same as if they are a whip.

If they don't have the feats listed then they don't get them.

That would be my interpretation.