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I'd be more worried about the lack of a 4th party member than lack of a cleric. The witch could pick up some of the healing slack. Maybe the fighter or rogue could switch to a ranger or the witch could switch to druid to supply an animal companion later on. Otherwise, I'd definitly lower the EL of the encounters.
From the sound of how miserable a time he was having, I agree that maybe its best that he cut his losses and leave the game. Otherwise, I was just going to say to ditch the wizard and roll up a new character that buffs or just doesn't cast spells. Then of course, you run the risk of not being able to roll above their AC to hit.
Using this train of thought, maybe using a variable xp system might help balance the classes a bit. The non-casters use the fast track, the partial casters (paladin, ranger, etc) us the medium XP track and the full casters use the slow track. Multiclassing is where things might start to get messy.
Thank you advice forum! Plenty of good stuff here and I've been convinced. Giving up all spellcasting is just too much of a penalty, especially now that it has been pointed out that you can still use scrolls and wands at first level. Maybe if the ability to trigger magic items wasn't stripped away, then the skirmisher wouldn't look so crippling now. It's a shame, since it was such a cool concept. And since it's agreed that the trapper needs a lot of work (it doesn't even look like it'd be fun to play), I'll stick with spellcasting and maybe go with the spirit ranger. The animal companion seems like it would be incredibly nice to have, but I've read that it becomes more of a liablilty at later levels.
Go for the spells the other options are really weak. Once you get past the core book there are a lot of good rangers spells. Yeah, but it just seemed like you get too few of them to cast per day. At 6th level with 14 wisdom, you get to do 5 hunters trick, or 2 first level spells per day. I don't really see raising my wisdom much higher than that unless I'm taking the cleric's hand-me-down headband. And tangling attack just seems so good.
That sounds about right. It also took some interesting factors into account like competition and stuff. My party was sick of getting the standard half gold for their magic loot, so they hoarded it for a while and opended up their own magic shop to compete with Skye in Cauldron. I let them take 100% of the value of the items as the investment to fill up their "stock" and ran an item shop selling, buying, and trading magic items.
Hello advice board. I'm in the process of creating a ranger for a new Carrion Crown campaign, but am undecided with the type of "casting" system to use with him. Note that I'm taking the Urban Ranger variant to fill in the role of the "expert" in the party. I'm currently leaning towards the skrimisher since it seems to be pretty versatile, can be used used more frequently and I like the idea of ranger "tricks" but I fear that I'll be missing out on some cool encounter changing spells and the option to use wands and scrolls. The trapper just seems, well, weak on paper to me, but I haven't seen it in action. Would I be gimping myself by taking the skrimisher? Is the trapper even worth a second look?
The first session went fairly well even though I made a few mistakes. They ended up deciding to go the the false crypt the first night, and they had no problem with the giant centipedes, even though I sent a second wave of 3 in during the second round. Glad to see it went well. I'm a little late to the advice giving party and most of what I would say has already been noted above, but I would also recommend you have a list of names readily available. My group tends to do the weirdest things, so you sometimes need a name for the dishwasher at the tavern that someone decides to befriend for whatever reason.
The link only takes you to the Paizo homepage. Anyhow, I have to vouch for Herolab on this one. It will calcuate the bonuses and penalties for a rageing, power-attacking, enlarged, bull strengthed, cleaving barbarian with a few simple clicks. Plus it doubles as a gp value calculator for magic items.
Just a quick clarification on Mathias' post. Lone Wolf doesn't have the resources available to add support for Psionics Unleashed right now. However, if Dreamscarred Press elected to spearhead the development project themselves and coordinate a formal release with us, we'd be happy to assist in making that happen. Like I mentioned before, I'd pay $10 for an updated psionics pack, so there could be a financial incentive if there are others in the same boat.
...what would they be? I ask this because in my current gaming group, we are running a collaborative campaign where we are taking turns running an adventure. So I'm trying to figure out how I can run a condensed Age of Worms path while still keeping the main theme. I've heard that Three Faces of Evil is a bit more like a side trek, so I was thinking of skipping it and letting someone else handle the level 3/4 adventure. But I want to make sure I don't miss anything reeeeally important, so for you veteran AoW DM's, which ones do I need to run?
Hello all, I ran the Shackled City AP a couple of years back and RPGenius.com was invaluable in providing stat blocks, handouts, and most importantly, side quests for the campaign. I think our favorite event ever was probably the Demonskar ball thanks to delvesdeep's fleshing out of the event. So now, I'm about to run some of Age of Worms and come to find out none of the links don't work there anymore. Is there an alternative to RPGenius where I can get homebrewed supplemental material for this adventure path?
Re: The Alchemist We did a low level playtest last week of which I have yet to write a report on, but we did notice that the flavor of this class seems to be more of a skill monkey, with bombs instead of sneak attack. With 4+ int skills and INT being the primary stat, there were a lot of skill points to go around. We do agree with other posters though, that trapfinding should be a class ability in order to complete the "expert" role that this class seems to want to take. So we kind of see why the alchemist isn't meant to buff other characters straight out of the box. It's more of an alternate to the rogue.
I think the reason all we talk about fighting right now, is because we are still looking at a rough draft of the rules, which are essencially tools for RPG's. Roleplaying is something that individual playing groups just kind of work out. Some players like hack and slash dungeon crawls with little NPC interaction, some like getting dressed up for their games and using props. But both these styles are going to need some structure for figuring out stuff like combat and skill checks, and that's what we're looking at right now. Once the rules are done, then people can work on the settings books, which is all about the background and roleplaying.
While I would like to see rules that make your character race choice continue to have effect past first level, I feel that recial feats might make races too complicated. I believe that your class should define your character role more and that your race just kind of add a bit more flavor. I would like to see something simple, such as additional bonuses that kind of get added as you level up. For example, I could see a dwarf and half-orc getting regular hit point bonuses as they level up, while a halfling would get AC and saving throw bonus. This would make a higher level dwarven wizard still be a tough block of a character, taking a searing light or two in the chest and still kicking, while a halfling wizard would be a spy little bugger thats a pain in the butt to hit. Elves could get AC and to hit bonuses to represent their advanced training and humans could continue getting their extra skill points every level to show off their versatility. It might seem a bit boring, but it would be much easier to show newer players.
My party made it to the cryohydra encounter in SCAP yesterday. They consist of 3 lvl 7's, 1 lvl 6, and 1 lvl 5, all gestalt. Since I lowered the number of heads on the monster to 6, I thought they would mop up the floor with it. So I started with the standard cold-breath attack. After rolling good damage for three of the heads and the party making poor save rolls, I realzed if I had continued, I would have a TPK on my hands. So I choked, and had the hydra stop at three heads. I even fudged the die roll for the recharge so it wouldn't breath again right away (I rolled a 1 on the d4). Anyway, my question is, how do you guys handle TPK's in a campaign like SCAP, or any other for that matter? Do you allow a do over of the encounter? Do you have everyone roll up new characters and take up where the old party died? Or do you scrap the campaign and use the opporunity to start another?
I'm also running SCAP with 4 gestalt characters (fighter/warlock, fighter/ranger, cleric/rogue, wizard/duskblade). To help compensate for the low number of players, I also did a 32 point buy for stats and fixed hit points. The party is still challenged by the dungeon but doesn't have too much trouble kicking the skulks' butts. Are you reducing the challenge ratings by one for the purpose of figuring out xp? I've found that if you don't, with a smaller party, they will start to level up too fast for the campaign. Even doing this, I have 3 players almost at level 4, and they haven't hit the Malachite Fortress yet.
I'm about to start running SCAP and the consensus I seem to get from the message boards is that it is very tough. I currently have 5 players, and since the campaign is designed for 6, they're playing gestalt classes with 32 points for stat-buy. You guys think this is a good equalizer or should I add action points? |
