sozinsky's page

Hi, I have a question about my digital copy of this book.

The "Olfden" (typo in pdf) map on page 32 is missing the labels of the different locations in the town: O1 Five Falcon Fountain, O2 Hall of Sarenrae, ... O6 Thrumming Birch.

Does anyone know where these labels are on the map? Or was a new version of the map published, with labels?

Cheers

Hey everyone! I'm not sure if the forum rules prohibit me from this sort of post (my apologies if they do), but wanted to let folks know that I just put up for auction of a first printing copy of the Core Rulebook, with signatures from

-Jason Bulmahn (lead designer)
-James Jacobs
-Wayne Reynolds
-Sean K Reynolds
- And many others

Here's a link to the auction. Regards!

Would appreciate any thoughts on a character concept I'm investigating for a Skull and Shackles campaign - a cutlass and pistol wielding tengu pirate! The below is for the first 10 levels. By 10th level the cutlass is +4/-1, and the Pistol is +8. (Which is my primary issue with the build ... while colorful, the offense isn't so great.) Side note, keeping the tengu as a race is a fluff requirement for me.

Race: Tengu Stats (20 pt buy): Str 10, Dex 17, Con 10, Int 16, Wis 16, Cha 7
Traits: Buccaneer's Blood (+1 intimidate, Profession (Sailor)), Pirate Duelist (+1 on attacks of opp with light weapons)

Level 1: Rogue 1, with the Pirate archetype

• Feat: Weapon Finesse
  
• Abilities: Sea Legs, Sneak Attack +1d6

• Abilities: Grit, Gunsmith, Up Close and Deadly +1d6, Deeds

• Feat: Two-Weapon Fighting (Cutlass is now -1 in the primary hand, Pistol is +3)
  
• Abilities: Evasion, Swinging Reposition, Sneak Attack +2d6

• Abilities: Nimble (+1 AC in light armor)

• Abilities: Unflenching

• Abilities: Deeds - Gunslinger Initiative, Pistol-whip, utility shot

• Feat: Snap Shot
  
• Abilities: Uncanny Dodge

• Bonus Feat: Precise Shot
  
• Feat: Rapid Shot

• Feat: Sword and Pistol (this is what we've been building for -- requires Point Blank, Rapid, Snap Shot, and Two Weapon Fighting)
  
• Abilities: Sneak Attack +3d6

• Abilities: Gun Training (Pistol), Pistol Training 1, Up Close and Deadly 2d6

Thank you!!

Anyone interested in playing some MageKnight: The Board Game ( ranked #10 in strategy games at boardgamegeek.com ) at Paizocon? We could do a long 3 day game so it doesn't consume a huge amount of time any particular evening, leaving the game set up in a hotel room. (I'm always up for playing it straight through as well.)

I created one. This sheet contains a listing of day, time, event, system, GM, number of participants, and your preference (0-4). There is a summary table above the event that shows you, for each day, how many 0's, 1's, 2's, 3's, and 4's you've selected. there are optional columns for more than one Paizocon participant.

I'm coming to Paizocon with a group of 3 or 4 other Chicago-ons, so I'll be creating a copy of these sheet and sharing it out to them so we can all see what events we are interested in, and whether or not we should be using buddy requests.

I think this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it, so: pmg, is there any good rule of thumb for the number of 4s, 3s, 2s, and 1s a person should submit to the auction? My feeling is only 1 four, 1-3 3s, 3-10 2s, 10-20 1s, and as many 0s as you like.

Hope this is useful to ya!

now up on kickstarter

After being out of print for over a year and subject to redonkulous resale markup by unscrupulous internet goblins.

• the game
  
• buy the game
  
• the expansion
  
• the research lab
  

BTW, I'm bringing this to paizocon, if anyone wants to play a party game in the evening!

I created one, riffing of some other guy's Excel design.

You can find it here.

Instructions on how to use it are embedded in the sheet. Would love any feedback/criticism/bugs/etc. Please note that, in order you use it, you'll need to have a google account and create a local copy of it (instructions explain how to do that).

Cheers

I recently modded up the great Pathfinder tents using Ashton Sperry's excellent (free!) art on deviantArt.

Here's an example.

If you want one - post below or send me a message. You can find all of Ashton's great drawings here. All I need is:

- Character name
- Player name
- Image url
- Faction (if you want the faction image on the tent)

In the last couple of weeks some of the chat denizens and I were kicking around ideas of ways of continuing the Council of Thieves Adventure Path past the final module.

This discussion got me thinking about a nice community driven project. Elevator pitch: the community assembles the collective wisdom found in the GM Reference AP threads into a "missing manual"/ "AP #7" pdf.

Taking the Council of Thieves AP as an example, this AP #7 might contain:

• Ideas on how to continue the adventure past #6; for example: mechanics for managing the party-PC-wants-to-run-for-mayor-of-Westcrown; plot line for "the Queen sails down from Egorian with her army and the PCs enlist the help of the disenfranchised nobles, Order of the Scourge, and Andoran revolutionaries to wage an actual revolution against the Thrunists!
  
• Collected (usually James Jacob provided) errata
  
• Community created handouts - for example, my Liebdaga's Infernal Contract, or my build your own Chelish Crux
  
• Tools drawing together the AP metaplot together. When running an AP I frequently have to go through the entire thing and draw together how everything fits together; for example, Treppa's heirarchy of noble houses, or, more extreme, a visual timeline of the AP a la XKCD's movie narrative charts
  
• Hooks for folding one-shot modules into the AP; for example, I ran my party through Masks of the Living God, swapping out the Razmirian cultists for Mammonites
  
• Analysis of how to improve specific combat scenarios; for example, removing the staggered condition from Liebdaga to make the Big Boss Fight more fun for the players.
  

#1: Any interest in this? I'd probably start with CoT.
#2: What would Paizo's position on a AP Missing Manual community published content be? "That's awesome?", or "That's copyrighted material, piss off!"

Cheers!

I have a question about this Alchemist spell:

This extract causes a pale aura to emanate from your mouth.

If you consume a potion or elixir on the round following the consumption of this extract, you can spit it back into its container as a free action. You gain all the benefits of the potion or elixir, but it is not consumed. You can only gain the benefits of one potion or elixir in this way per use of this extract.

Last night I ran a Pathfinder module as a PFS session (Realm of the Feynight Queen). One of my players leveled up his Feral Mutagen level 7 Alchemist and, with the additional gold he received as part of the level up, purchased some potions; namely: potion of barkskin (CL 12; 1200 gps), potion of greater magic fang (CL 12; 1800 gps), and a potion of stoneskin (CL 12; 1800 gps). He devoted all 5 of his second level spells to Alchemical Allocation.

He then proceed to superman up using these potions during combat. The magic fang gave him +3 attack, +3 damage; the stoneskin DR 10/adamantine and 120 points of damage soak, and the barkskin added 5 to his AC (which, it seems, stacks with his feral mutagen +2 feral mutagen natural AC). Combine in a Shield extract and he's sitting on a AC of 31.

He then proceeded to annihilate the poor CR 4-6 monsters with a combination of bombs, claws, very high AC, and, when I did manage to get him, stoneskin unassailability. He got to do the same trick two more times that day (never really fully consuming the potions - that's the awesomeness of Alchemical Allocation), and, after rest that night, woke up and did it all over again.

My conclusion: nearly permanent +3 weapon, DR 10 adamantine, and a +5 amulet of natural armor all for the low, low price of 1800+1800+1200 == 4800 GPS. A steal?

So: broken, or not? I can find no other real discussions about this spell other than this Paizo thread, where a poster says "Yeah, should be up for errata", but without any official conclusion.

thank you!

I created one.

You can read more about it here, including project home page, download details, maptools version requirements, etc.

Hope this is useful to all you VTT players.

If you're anything like me, you dislike having to manually remove all the duplicate image files that get created when you do an image export from a paizo pdf.

I got tired enough of doing it that I wrote a little Python program do it for me.

Things you'll need to use it:

1) Install Python (any version)
2) Right mouse click on this link and do a save as. This downloads the python script. Save it to a folder that you'll remember! (Here's the file in github for you nerds out there.)
3) Open up a cmd prompt (Start->Run->"cmd").
4) Change directories to where you downloaded the script. For example, if I downloaded it to my Windows7 downloads folder, I'd type in "cd C:\Users\lhayhurst\Downloads".
5) Run the script by typing the following into your cmd prompt:

python imageDupeDetect.py --dir $FULL_PATH_TO_FOLDER

where $FULL_PATH_TO_FOLDER is the fully qualified path of the folder you'd like to clean up. For example,

python imageDupeDetect.py --dir "C:\Users\lhayhurst\Documents\Paizo\Modules\3.5\J1_EntombedWithThePharaohs" --verbose

6) The script will then find all of the duplicate files in that directory and print them out. If you'd like to have the script delete them for you, then enter the following:

python imageDupeDetect.py --dir "C:\Users\lhayhurst\Documents\Paizo\Modules\3.5\J1_EntombedWithThePharaohs" --delete --verbose

A few notes:

- If you pass it a top level folder, it will process all the folders underneath and including that folder; for example:

python imageDupeDetect.py --dir "C:\Users\lhayhurst\Documents\Paizo\Modules\3.5" --verbose

would process all of the 3.5 modules.

- You can ask the program for help by typing in:

python imageDupeDetect.py --help

Which prints out

usage: imageDupeDetect.py [-h] --dir directory path [--delete] [--verbose]

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--dir directory path directory to recursively process
--delete if set, will delete duplicate images.
--verbose turn verbose mode on

- For you nerds out there, the script is a simple brute force solution, running a md5 check on all the files with the same bytes size.

Enjoy!

This year at Paizocon I ran I3: Pharaoh, the classic second edition module from Tracy and Laura Hickman.

Leading up to Paizocon I spent several months porting the entire module over to the Pathfinder ruleset from second edition. Today I got around to uploading the results; the master pdf can be found here.

Everything else, including a MS Word version, battlemaps, pogs, stat blocks, a maptools .cmpgn file, and a complete herolabs .por file, can be found packaged up in a zip file (warning ... 200 plus megabytes).

Like most labors of love, this project took a lot of time and energy, and so any feedback, bugs, issues, commentary, etc on the port would be appreciated! If you end up GMing it, I'd love to hear how it went for you, and would be happy to answer questions about how to make the experience better for yourself and your players.

The Black Rock, the Sodden Lands—home to the most savage gladiatorial event in Golarion, the legendary Green Blood on Black Rock. For the last few weeks eight Free Captain ships had been arriving in the harbor, edging around the huge spire of ashen rock that serves as the arena for the event. Anxiously spilling out of the ships were harried sailors, to be met by armor covered men bearing enormous chains. Gamblers, pirates, blood-bards and criminals rushed to the ships to catch the first glimpse of their monstrous contents, and the Free Captains who had captured them.

Arriving first was the tengu pirate Chirag, renown throughout the Shackles for his sharp tongue and sharper rapier. Chirag proudly paraded his monsters out from him ship, The Dirty Eel. The first, a monstrous bulette, captured while young in its burrow in the Mana Wastes, its burrowing claws clipped to a nub to prevent it from digging into the arena rock. The second, a proud dire lion, purchased in an Osirion slave market and fed a special diet of troll meat and auroch blood. Finally, the legendary Ol’ Marrow the Crooked Back, a long time competitor whom Chirag purchased and brought out of retirement, toughened up on a hardy diet of raw cannibal tribesmen captured near Smuggler's Shiv, in hopes that the old merrow's former reputation as a vicious killer would win him wagers and prestige since his years-long absence.

Arriving next was the Free Captain Frisbee. First from his ship was a came a deadly and quick opponent, from the sand dune seas of Osirion—an emperor cobra. Second came a ferocious garillon, its four arms bound in chains, the three time reigning champion of the Tymon's annual gladiatorial arena and the pride of the River Kingdoms 'Best of the Beasts' contest. Finally, no Black Rock tournament is complete without a troll entry, and each year the Free Captains leave a slot open for their beloved regenerators. The captains love little more than seeing creature tear futilely at the flesh of the beast only to see the flesh mend and repair. Captain Frisbee was met with a roar of approval as his troll was pulled screaming from his ship’s hull.

Free Captain Roberts was next to pull into harbor, arriving at midnight amidst a ferocious storm, his ship covered with scorch marks and burns. The Captain made straight away to a tavern, and a barmaid there later recounted in hushed tones the epic capture of a flame drake, resulting in two ships sunk and dozens of dead sailors. The next day the Captain cursed bitterly as Black Rock organizers clipped the fiery creature’s wings, and many felt his luck was doubly worsened when he revealed his next monster: a giant mantis, trapped by natives in the wild jungles of Mediogalti, and smuggled from the port of Ilizmagorti away from the prying eyes of Red Mantis assassins, who would not forget Captain Robert’s enslavement of their sacred bug. His final choice of monster – a minotaur from Absalom – raised no eyebrows, although few felt it would survive the Black Rock.

The next Free Captain to arrive to Captain Kitsune, a fox-man from the distant lands of Tian Xia. The Kitsune brought with him a fearsome beast - a huge allosaurus, captured from the Tusk lowlands of the Realm of the Mammoth Lords. The ancient lizard nearly destroyed the Free Captain’s ship upon exit, and crowds gathered, slack-jawed, to observe its passage to the holding pens surrounding the Black Rock. The Captain’s second and third choices were equally impressive – a clipped-wing manticore from the Sirmium Plane, and monstrous Yeti from the rocky crags of the wastelands past Icestair.

Free Captain Raziel’s ship made port next, and from it lumbered an enormous, tusked elephant, which Raziel slyly purchased from a Sargavan circus after it became too enormous to be properly contained. His second choice brought much laughter to the crowd of onlookers, as he wheeled out, in a large glass jug, a glistening, green ochre jelly (no doubt a respectful nod to the previous year’s surprise success, “Inky” the black pudding!). “Dinner will serve itself!” Raziel wryly noted, before unveiling his final competitor, a giant frilled lizard from Sargava.
Gregarious Captain McBride maneuvered into port shortly after Captain Raziel, and made shore riding the back of the River Kingdom’s mythical hodag. “Fear the wrath of the hodag!”, he bellowed to the crowd, many of whom were first seeing this beast – a sort of boar crossed with reptile, covered with spikes and sporting an enormous spiked tail. The presentation was so memorable that few could recount his second and third choices—the first, a dire polar bear captured in a deep pit trap by Ulfen raiders along the icy coast north of the Steaming Sea, and the second, a grostesque shambling mound, seeded in Geb and nurtured in the hold of (as McBride explained) “the hold of a cursed pirate ship.”

Next to arrive was the famous pirate captain #185, a sentient pirate ship, constructed by a long-dead sea wizard after one hundred and eighty four failed attempts. Now the master of its own destiny, #185 demonstrated superb skill navigating the stormy port waters, and from its hold disgorged three awesome beasts. First, a giant glyptodon, captured from the great ice shelf of the Crown of the World, fed a steady diet of assassin vines and shambling mounds. Then, an albino owlbear, described by #185’s first mate as “The luckiest owlbear alive! It has survived three forest fires and immersion in acid on two occasions. An enterprising adventuring party used it for six months to set off traps in dungeon corridors. It has been fed broken glass and lived to tell the tale! This owlbear has been hunted by hellhounds, evaded hungry dragons and, worst of all, survived a sordid relationship with a gelatinous cube”. Finally a grotesque flesh golem, constructed from the discarded limbs of amputee sailors (and probably the less fortunate victims of the Free Captain #185). The construct ship made a well-reasoned case for the monster, and, after some debate, the Black Rock organizers declared that, for the first time, a construct would participate in the event.

The last Free Captain finally arrived – Captain Soren, drunk, who stumbled off the gangplank before being reminded that he needed to present his beasts. He presented a many-headed hydra, dredged up from the swamps along the Jagged Saw coast; a fearsome (smelling) otyugh caught lurking in the sewers below a popular Absalom whorehouse, and finally, as if an afterthought, “fished out of the waters by happenstance near Drenchport just twelve hours ago!”, a massive shark-eating crab.

Last year Eric Tilleman ran Tracy and Laura Hickman's classic 2nd Edition module Pharaoh, from the mega-adventure Desert of Desolation. This year I'm going to keep the tradition alive! The game starts on Sunday at 2 pm and will run till approximately midnight, with a 5 player table.

Unlike last year, where Eric started everyone at level 5, I'm going to juice the starting level to level 7; players will level up about halfway through the session. It's a 20 point buy, 23,500 to spend on equipment (with a max of 10k to spend on any one single item). You can use any content that Paizo has published for the Pathfinder rule set. I'd like to have the character sheet at least two weeks prior to paizocon.

Sign-up is not first-come-first-serve - the gang over at paizo chat get first dibbs! One seat is already taken.

My RoRL party (while travelling from Magnimar to Turtleback Ferry in the opening sequence of Hook Mountain Massacre) randomly encountered a roc. They're all 6th level and a pretty impressive combination of fly, wild empathy, handle animal, ride, speak with animals, and charm animal, and after some inspired rolling they managed to befriend and tame the beast.

So, here's an array of questions about this:

1) Can they, legally, even have this creature as a potential mount? The PFSRD roc entry states "[U]nfortunately for druids seeking animal companions of legendary size, an animal companion roc is limited to Large size—still large enough for a Medium druid or ranger to use the flying beast as a mount."

2) Assuming they can, how many PCs should be able to ride the thing? It is "is 30 feet long from beak to tail", and has "an 80-foot wingspan and weight of up to 8,000 pounds", and is strong enough to "carry off elephants and other big animals" (with a STR of 28).

3) In the spirit of the moment I let them have a master craftsman in Ilsurian make them a masterwork saddle for the roc, priced at 2500 gold pieces. One of the party has Craft Wondrous Item, and they were debating various interesting spells to imbue on the saddle. Cast your vote! (I found myself wishing for a Mass Feather Fall, but it looks like it isn't in the spellbook.)

4) For RoRL DMs/players who've finished the AP:

Thank you!

My party just finished What Lies in Dust and, before launching them into the Infernal Syndome, and thought I'd pause the campaign to do some plot sprinkling/setup.

My core issue with IS is that it introduces the Council so quickly; in the first 3 AP entries, we see very little of the Council; in issue 4, suddenly it is raining Council Loyalists and Usurpers. In issue 5 that party learns, mostly randomly and through a dead pesh dealer, who the real power behind the Council usurpers is. It is pretty clear that the party never really has to work to figure out what is going on with the Drovenge's plot - it all just falls into their lap nicely. Thus, it seems like between AP 3 and AP 4 is the perfect time to start injecting some fun plot events that make the party feel like they've earned the Council reveals that occur in APs 4 and 5.

So here are some of my ideas on how to do this. I'd appreciate any others!

Start by having Eirtein Oberigo send the party a private note, to the tune of: "You are about to get raided by Thrune agents for your somewhat less-than-secret delve into Delvehaven. Hide any contraband you took from the Pathfinder Lodge and be cooperative with them. Once they've finished shaking you down come visit me, I have a few small jobs for you." If the PCs decide to fight the Hellknight Thrune agents, that makes them fugatives for the rest of the AP (which would be fun). Recall at this point in the AP Oberigo has been tasked by Papa Drovenge to insert double agents into the various Council groups to flush out information on who the Usurpers are; thus, when they visit Oberigo, he reveals some key information to them: The Council of Thieves is alive and well—rumors that it long ago disbanded are false, and he believes that there a coup is going to be attempted soon inside the Council and wants the party's help in getting to the bottom of it. (Why should the party help? Oberigo can appeal to their Wisecrani patriotism ["We bring stability to the city, and a revolt will bring chaos and the House Thrune upon us"], or their love of money if they have a mercenary bent.) As such, he asks the party to do some favors for him:

1) Insider info: become a regular member of Abertin "the Dealer" Bittershins weekly high stakes card game, and try to learn where the halfling's loyalties lie.

2) Tailing work: spend an evening tailing Zol-the-Cleaner around town to see who he is talking to. This results in the party being stuck in the streets after dark and being attacked by a few heavy waves of shadow critters.

3) Noble recon: have dinner with the Mhartis family and see if they can figure out why they have been acting so strange recently. (Answer: they are being hunted by a vampire, which preps AP 4's "Vampire Panic!" side quest.)

4) prove that Durotas Scasi Bolvona, commander of the condottari, has been taking bribes from someone in the Council to allow them night-time access to the waterways around the Folly. This (somehow) results in a conflict between the Hellknights and the Dotari, which foreshadows the eventual conflict between the two groups in AP 4.

5) Loyalty test: pretend to be a outside purchaser of Pesh and try to entrap "Goren One Ear" into violating his Council regulations (this will make Goren's eventual reveal less lame).

http://mongoliad.com/faq

The future of the novel? From the FAQ:

The Mongoliad is a serial novel, the kind of thing that Charles Dickens wrote. It's also an experiment in fiction and technology... Fast Company said that we may be "the future of the novel." The Mongoliad is set in the thirteenth century of a universe very much like ours, a world we call "Foreworld." We publish chapters every so often (about weekly), and every chapter has associated discussions and other ways for readers to interact with each other and with us. Sometimes we'll also have graphics to share as well, or movies, or music. There is a user-editable 'Pedia with information about Foreworld-related topics, general-purpose user forums, and soon we hope to have easy ways for people to contribute their own stories, art, and music to our shared Foreworld experience.

Neil Stephenson, Greg Baer, with a Open Design style patronage-contribution model.

Looks awesome.

Hey Paiozians!

I'm thinking about doing the Patherfinder Fiction contest. The premise of my story is a an evil high level male human necromancer wizard hunting and a goodish high level female elf druid. From what I've gathered, a 20th level wizard should be able to kick the crap out of the druid.

But, because its a fun short story, what I'd generally like to do is:

- establish that creeping, awful feeling of what happens when you are being mercilessly hunted and played with (for the druid)
- have her continually manage to not die in creative ways
- have her eventually take him out due to a slip up on his part

So what I'd like is some help from you guys on magical mechanics like:

- what sort of magic would he use to hunt/toy with her?
- and when he finally moves in for the kill, how does she manage to survive his god-like onslaught?
- what sort of slip ups would it take to finally kill him? I'm thinking the end would be her grapple/pinning him into submission.

Spells should all be PF Core/APG; neither class has to be super-optimized - I'm ultimately looking for color/flavor here, with enough crunch to make it interesting.

And generally speaking, any ideas I can steal (I'm not proud!) to make the story better, would love to hear 'em!

Thanks in advance!

brilliant TED presentation by incandescent speaker on how gaming will save the world

* urgent optimism: extreme self motiviation. the desire to act immediately to tackle and obstacles, combined with the belief that we have a chance for success.
* social fabric: we like people better after play a game with them. gaming builds bond, trust, and cooperation.
* blissful productivity: when we're playing a game, we're happier working hard, then we are relaxing. We are optimized as humans being doing productive work.
* epic meaning : gamers love being attached to epic missions with planetary scale.

one of the players in my campaign took craft wondrous item as his last feat. he proceeded to create a set of gloves that have the shield spell applied to them, continuous use.

According to the magic item construction rules:

Use-activated or continuous: Spell level x caster level x 2,000 gp

If a continuous item has an effect based on a spell with a duration measured in rounds, multiply the cost by 4. If the duration of the spell is 1 minute/level, multiply the cost by 2, and if the duration is 10 minutes/level, multiply the cost by 1.5. If the spell has a 24-hour duration or greater, divide the cost in half.

So the cost should be 1 x 1 x 2000 x 2 = 4000 gold pieces. Since he's making it himself, it is half cost, or 2000.

For me, this cost seems WAY cheap. A set of bracers of armor +4 costs 16,000 gps, and don't even get you protection against magic missiles (which shield gives you).

Am I reading this wrong? The "right" price feels to be about 20k for this item, and the fact that this is a order of magnitude price difference has me scratching my head.

thanks much.

EDIT: Unofficial paizo chat gurus pointed out the following from the rules:

The easiest way to come up with a price is to compare the new item to an item that is already priced, using that price as a guide. Otherwise, use the guidelines summarized on Table: Estimating Magic Item Gold Piece Value.

Does that clinch it? Just compare to bracers of armor and be done with it?

hilarious color commentary on first edition D&D art

Hey all,

I'm thinking of folding MOTLG into my CoT campaign, to be nestled in between the party taking out the Bastards and prior to the Sixfold Trial, and was looking for some creative ideas on how to adopt it in.

1) First question: How open is Westcrown to allowing cultists into their city? In MOTLG the Razmir cultists have been in Tamran for about a year, where they've been progressively taking over the local crime scene. Would the government of Westcrown/Cheliax even -allow- these religious nuts into the city, or would they have to operate more stealthily?

2) Make Iramine be an agent of the Council of Thieves.

3) I was thinking of having one of the "honorable" durotas (Arik Tuornos, or Saria Roccin) be the person that contacts the party (rather than Reginar, as in the MOTLG storyline). Kind of a "loved the work you guys did in busting up those bastards, my hands are tied because of corruption in the government, I'd really love it if you could infiltrate these cultists and bust them up, and the people would love you for it as well.")

What do you guys think? My biggest concern is that Westcrown would never let a group like this operate in public (do they even let Iomedian worshippers practice their faith in public)?

Cheers!

Hey all, about to do CoT, and wanted to make sure that I understand the governmental structure correctly in Westcrown / Cheliax, and how these groups can play into CoT AP.

As I see it, there are five main sources of power in Westcrown.

The Mayor's office: responsible for fostering order via the dottari, maintenance of city infrastructure, and taxation. The Mayor is appointed by the Chelish Queen.

The Order of the Rack: The House Thrune's private, out of band enforcer group, separate from both mundane police force/local law enforcement and imperial law enforcement. Reports directly into House Thrune. Are given complete leeway by the Queen to to whatever the @#$^$ they want within the borders of Cheliax, provided that they obey the Measure, the Chain, and the Disciplines.

The Church of Asmodeus : the legal system of the country, responsible for the laws of Cheliax (the Asmodean Disciplines). Broken out into two main branches: the Inquisitors, the secret police of Cheliax, who create and development informants throughout the country, and the Prelates, or judges, usually clerics of Asmodeus, responsible for making judgements on criminal and civil cases.

The Nobility: Although they have no formal place in the government system, their members do "populate the bureaucracy and fill out vacancies in the Church" (Cheliax, 7).

The Council of Thieves: Shadowy, mythical bunch of rogues, pulling the purse strings and coffers behind the scenes.

And now, some questions.

1) Are any of my statements above incorrect?

2) Is Cheliax a theocracy, defined as (Wikipedia) "[a] form of government in which a god or deity is recognized as the state's supreme civil ruler, or in a higher sense, a form of government in which a state is governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided." While Asmodeus isn't the supreme ruler of Cheliax -- Queen Abrogial the Second is -- she certainly can be seen to be "divinely guided." Or is it instead an absolute monarchy, "[W]here the monarch exercises ultimate governing authority as head of state and head of government, thus wielding political power over the sovereign state and its subject peoples"?

3) Are the dottari part of local municipal government, or are they part of the Church of Asmodeus? In the CoT AP 1 it clearly states that the Mayor "controls the Dottari" (pg 50), but in Cheliax : Empire of Devils it lumps the dottari between the Inquisitors and the Prelates (pg 5).

4) Speaking of the prelates, what is the formal name of this branch of the Church? They are not formally named in the Cheliax : Empire of Devils book, so I've taken to calling them the Prelates, after Alaster Wolfstongue, Senior Prelate of Kintargo, and scourge of the Devil's Perch (pg 5).

5) Does the Church have an official place of power (courthouse) in Westcrown? In AP 1, I cannot find one listed. If not, where do criminal and civil trials take place in Westcrown, and who administers them (i.e., does the Mayor's Office appointment judges in Westcrown)? It would appear natural for Thrune to make sure that the Church had plenty of influence -- both Inquisitors in secret, and Prelates in public -- in the city. "The Church controls access to the Queen ... its clergy staff various portions of government bureaucracy, control the courts, and help to create the laws that come before the queen for her approval" (Cheliax, 7).

6) Speaking of Inquisitors, it appears that the Inquisitors have zero AP presence in the CoT AP. Did I miss a reference somewhere? I'm guessing there are some really interesting places where an agent could be inserted (as a sleeper agent in the Council rooting out the true nature of crime in the city, or someone investigating the Children of Westcrown, or someone keeping tabs on the Mayor, etc).

7) Does anyone else see a heavily Italian influence in this AP? Westcrown itself is a city of canals, and feels quite Venecian or Roman; a lawful evil/theocratic/noble government running things -- almost as if the Catholic Church (a potentially LE organization in real life -- flamebait, sorry); a shadowy, mafia-like criminal group in the background pulling strings; the names of things themselves sounds Italian -- the "Condottari", the "Regidottari", names like "Parego", "Vira", etc. Designers, was this intentional?

Thanks in advance!

took my 10% holiday discount and applied it to a big campaign coin purchase!

so, I'm not sure how useful or gimmicky these coins are going to be. I've been using paper money for a while now, and my players originally thought it was cool, and eventually got bored of using the money and asked me if they could just keep track of things "old school" (pen and paper) style.

these coins won't be able to replace paper money as a comprehensive money source, because it would be too expensive to purchase enough coins to keep up with actual in-game currency. (Although I'm sure that paizo would love it if I were to put in a 10k purchase for coins :-)

So here are some ways I'm thinking about using these coins:

- for tasty role playing bits. want to give a copper to that beggar? you have one. need to bribe the town guard with a gp? no problem. think a little platinum bling will encourage that hot barmaid to warm your bed at the inn? go for it.

- for tracking total wealth. this will basically mean potentially investing in a lot of 100 pp platinum pieces. and this could be expensive too: $11.99 for 640 platinum pieces ~= $12 USD for 6,400 gold pieces =~ 1 USD to 533.33 gold piece conversion rate. for a 4 player party, when they hit 10th level (62,000 gps per person -- PG 399), I'll have to spend 116 dollars per person, or $465 USD, to track total wealth using platinum pieces. not exactly cost prohibitive. thus, either 1) paizo issues a 1000 platinum piece coin, or 2) paizo makes available the separate purchase of 100 platinum piece coins, or 3) I abandon the entire idea and only use the coins for RP fluff.

- to make a tiny bed of coins for one of my miniature dragons :-)

how are others planning on using these coins?

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone (either paizo or enthusiast) have created any text editor (MS Word, Adobe...) templates for building modules? I'm thinking of elements like:

- NPC/monster stat blocks
- DC checks (ie knowledge)
- Encounters
- locations (what the DM reads to the group, what isn't read)
- adventure overview (background, summary, primary NPCs)
- module sections
- trap blocks
- "callouts" (bordered sections that denote either designer notes or adventure information, for example, in Howl of the Carrion King, "Dashki's Story")

Cheers!

Hello all,

I have a question about lich regeneration.

My party is in a spot where, for various reasons, they can't destroy the lich's phylactery (which they have in their possession). so it is inevitable that the lich reform on them.

The d20 srd is kind of vague about what happens next. "Unless its phylactery is located and destroyed, a lich reappears 1d10 days after its apparent death."

So here are my questions:

1) This is a cleric lich. Will it come back with all of its spells? Will they be the spells it had when it was "killed", or will it get a fresh shot at a new set of spells?
2) Will it be able to cast them (given that it doesn't have its holy symbol?)
3) What happens during the reformation? Does it slowly appear, skeletal-like, until its whole body forms? Does it zing into existence fully formed? Does it just take over, say, a nearby animal skeleton?

I read the goodman games complete lich book, and it seemed to say basically "this is all up to the DM."

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Hey all.

I've been DMing a conversation of the classic 2nd Edition Weiss and Hickman "Desert of Desolation" series.

There is an NPC in this module named Munafik that I'm trying to convert over to 3.5 rules, and I was looking for some input from you guys on how to do it.

Because he has hidden his heart elsewhere, Munafik cannot be damaged or killed by spells or blows. Cutting hits will slice through him with no effect and thrusts will impale him but do no damage for his "heart isn't in it"; he has trapped his soul elsewhere. Spells will effect him as they would any 10th level MU, except that damaging attacks have no effect. For example, a hold person will hold him, but a magic will cause no damage.

Munafik: AC 7; MV 12''; MU 10; hp N/A; #AT 1; D 1d6; AL LE

Here's a description of how he got this way:

Munafik read old and wicked books to prolong his life, but the books turned him undead. Finally he magically placed his heart into a special jar so that we would be protected from all harm.

I don't know of mechanisms in 3.5 ruleset that support this sort of thing. I was thinking of just changing him to be a cleric lich (is such a thing possible? I saw a druid lich recently in the kobold quarterly).

Thanks in advance!