thomrenault's page

I don't have anything to say here right now, but this is the discussion thread for general discussions.

You each have received a message at your lodgings. The message was sealed with the Glyph of the Open Road, the sigil of the Pathfinder Society.

Greetings, fellow seeker of adventure!

I am Sheila Heidmarch, Venture Captain of the newest Pathfinder Society lodge—and the only such lodge in Varisia at this time. You have come to my attention as someone who possesses a certain amount of skills and interests that make you an excellent addition to a highly specialized team I’m putting together for a matter of grave import, not only to the Society, but to Varisia
as a whole. Please report an hour before noon to Heidmarch Manor—you will be compensated for your visit, but that reward will pale in light of the riches that await you should we come to an agreement on my proposition to you. I look forward to meeting you soon!

-Sheila Heidmarch

When you arrive at Heidmarch Manor you're escorted to the foyer, and told that Sheila Heidmarch will be with you presently.

Hey everyone this is my first time running a PbP. I'm looking for 4-5 PC's for Shattered Star.

Calculate attributes using a 25 point buy.

Any Class or Archetype (except for summoner) from one of the Core Pathfinder books is fine.

I prefer the core races, but a good backstory can definitely get the go ahead for one of the 'rarer' races.

Your characters can select 3 traits, 1 campaign and 2 other.

Feel free to look at the Varisia: Birthplace of legends and the Shattered Star Player's Guide for options while stating up characters.

For equipment use the average starting gold listed in the starting gold table. If I've missed anything let me know.

One of the best threads on this forum for preparing the Jade Regent is Gluttony's 'Things you've changed and things you should have'. I thought it would be a good idea to see what people have changed or what advice they might give about how they are running the many NPC's in Jade Regent. I know that in my first attempt at running the Jade Regent, the NPCs were the albatross around my neck, and they brought the whole thing crashing down. I think this was because I mistakenly thought that there were going to overshadow the PCs (I think that the Player's Guide was where I got this impression, because the modules have the fault of not mentioning the NPC's enough).

I'll start. This time around, I was upfront with my players about the fact that there were a lot of NPCs in this AP. When I started, I only had two PCs, so I told them that they could pick 1 or 2 of the NPCs in the Caravan to go out on adventures with them. I was consciously borrowing from the JRPG tradition of party formation. To go along with this, I added the idea of recruitment to this campaign. I emphasized this element of the game, and so far the PC's have pursued NPC's to recruit (even ones that I didn't expect, like Skitterfoot). My campaign hasn't finished the 1st module yet, and so far they've recruited Chief Scribbleface and the Licktoad tribe, Walt Proudstump, Shalelu (who took quite a bit of roleplaying and convincing), Koya, Sandru, and Skitterfoot. Ameiko didn't take any convincing after seeing the letter from Rokuro Kajitsu, and she even helped out with the recruiting for Sandru. They're currently travelling with Lute Haggersly (I stole the Haggersly storyline that someone else suggested where he's trading in Southern Varisia), but he's planning to leave them at Riddleport. The PC's have really liked this recruiting aspect, and in instances where it took a lot of convincing, I've awarded them XP by the NPC's CR. For example, Shalelu was adament against travelling with the Goblin Tribe. The PC's first coaxed out the family story of her parent's death, and then convinced her that her parents wouldn't have wanted her to hold such blind hatred for the race of their killers. I didn't plan any of this out, and it ended up being one of the highlights of the campaign so far. The mix of NPC's has led to a real dynamic feel to the travelling.

I'd love to hear what others have done with the NPC's in this campaign.

I have to admit, I wasn't too worried about Pathfinder from way back in January when WotC announced the new edition. I got a bit more worried (mostly for my wallet's sake) as time went on, that this was going to be D&D for everyone in the future. But after reading the playtest (which seemed like a very stripped down version of 3.0), I'm not really worried about Paizo and Pathfinder's future. Don't get me wrong, Next looks like it could be a fun roleplaying game, but I'm not going to make it _my_ fun roleplaying game, especially in the likely absence of an OGL'd SRD (if it does have an OGL SRD, well that would probably be sad for my wallet) and also given that it's essentially a simpler version of the game I already play, and I like stuff like skill and feats. I was wondering what other people think about the effect of Next on Paizo and Pathfinder.

I was honestly thinking it might be good for both companies, because it looks like I would be able to convert content between the systems on the fly, making me less hesitant about buying WotC campaign settings/modules.

So last session, my players encountered Skitterfoot at Old Megus' shack. He sent the Dire Rats after the party, summoned up a swarm of rats, and hid under the floorboards as the PC's killed off his minions. Then he surrendered, and told the PC's his sob story about being Megus' familiar. He told them that he had sabotaged her attempt to transform into a dragon, which killed her. They didn't have the heart to kill him, so now he's a familiar for the Sorceress. I'm not sure how to deal with this long-term. What do you guys think, will he be a faithful familiar as long as he's treated well, or will he plot something against his new mistress? Also does saving an evil creature have an alignment effect, because the PC who adopted Skitterfoot also convinced everyone not to kill off the Licktoads, but to help them move away from Sandpoint.

So in my campaign, the addition of Scribbleface as a friendly NPC ended up with the PC's saving some of the Licktoad goblins (those who agreed that Scribbleface's writing heresy was not as bad as Chief Gutwad's horrible mismanagement of the tribe). Now it looks like they're going to have to take the tribe away from Sandpoint, to keep their commitments to Mayor Deverin. So essentially, once they finish the swamp, they will be bringing along a wagon of Goblins. They already calmed Shaelelu, which was really well roleplayed, but obviously other NPC's will have problems with this situation. The players convinced Shaelelu that peace with those Goblins who would accept it was the only way to a long term solution.

So what did my party get themselves into when they get back to Sandpoint? Will the town accept their solution of taking the remainder of the tribe far away? Will the tribe settle down in the Churlwood (or elsewhere) or keep with the Caravan. How does the Caravan react?

I'm a law student working as a research assistant on international law and war. There's a practice in the international legal papers on war to talk about fictitious countries at war. For example, Yoram Dinstein talks about Arcadia and Utopia at war. I have just decided whenever I have to talk about two fictitious countries at war, I'm going to call them "Cheliax" and "Andoran"

I ran "We Be Goblins!" as the prelude to a JR campaign. Unfortunately, Vorka got the best of my goblin PC's, with a frog, a dog and herself all taking shots. I'm trying to figure out how to handle this since my players have said that they didn't want to play a second goblins sent to retrieve the fireworks. Also, I had Scribbleface survive at the beginning of the module, so he's potentially also in play (I want to get him allied up with the PC's). Any thoughts/suggestions?