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I have an established game that is a little light on members right now (3 players).

If interested message me or ask questions here.

Here is the link to my latest Meetup:

https://www.meetup.com/Sci-Fi-Fantasy-Roleplaying-Games-Meetup/events/23787 7196/

I run a game with 3 players and would would like to pick up 2 more players. Message me if interested

I agree with Shifty for the most part.

In my opinion, the unspoken requirement of being a paladin is an fairly good innate sense of right and wrong coupled with a desire to right.

A real paladin would realize that even though the book does not specifically state that killing babies is evil, he would realize it is evil and not want to do it.

HOWEVER a delusional cleric/fighter who thinks he is a paladin would buy that line of reasoning. Additionally the God in question would actually strickly speaking be LN, however his only definition of "good" considers himself and those that follow him to be good.

Personally if I was your god I would let you play this out as though your alignment was floating between LG and LN and make your a cleric/fighter. I would make it very clear to the players to difference between "class" and "title". Class is a slightly OOC terminology with IC parallels. Title is a an IC terminology. In this specific case, your title is indeed "paladin".

I think two easy pitfalls for you to fall into is:

1) If you make this character too simple, the play may feel unengaged in the game. Giving him a fighter and telling him to smash will more likely bore than engage.

2) If you give him lots of powers that need to be used at just the right time (like power attack, disarm, etc.) to be fully effective then you are likely to confuse him and bog him down in details.

This the build I would go with:

Human Sorcerer 1 (Celestial Bloodline):
Make sure his Charisma is 20 and a good Con
Feats: Toughness, Expanded Acrana
1st Level Spells: Magic Missile, Charm Person, Grease

Basically the beauty of this design is the the player has 4 clearly defined things he can do to help solve problems:

1) That monster is dangerous, I need to kill it: Magic Missile
2) We need to get some information or help from an NPC: Charm Person
3) The that uber-powerful monster is going to cause us problems unless we can buy some time or control the battlefield: Grease
4) My (good) party member needs healing: Celestial Fire
5) That (evil) monster needs to be hurt: Celestial Fire.

This is NOT an optimal build (though definately a descent one). The point is to give the player some easily understood options that don't require a lot of weighing the alternatives.

The point of the good Con and Toughness is give him enough hit points to survive his early mistakes.

The really high Charisma is to make sure his spells succeed more often than not.

My players don't explore during the winter, this in part due to a bad experience with some late winter snows while exploring a swamp early on. The players nearly starved.

I also encourage my players just "skip" over winter. Kingmaker is a game that plays well to multi IC year style. Winter is also a GREAT time for players to work on things that give their character's depth, like interacting with their families, and other pet projects.

My DM pulls out a deck of many things at some point during every campaign ... and I mean every campaign.

Oh God! I had a DM who did that EVERY game. Though to shake things up it was not a deck every time. A wheel, a contraption, etc.

Kesten is not critical to the story in the future chapters. Also making him more important will not necessarily ruin the future chapters.

3) Sounds like you may have done this by paper or had players that were very apothetic. For me it takes only 15 minutes to get through a month, and usually that is because the players are debating what they want to build and such. When they know that they are not building or claiming, I get can through a turn in 5 minutes.

Also I STRONGLY agree with Maddigan. Kingmaker is an AWESOME framework for your own campaign and it can be VERY easily moved to nearly any campaign with only slight tweaking.

Hey guys i need some more advice. My PCs in kingmaker have got a standing army of 700 soliders and what to take them to an encounter in the third book. They got a bloody nose from it and now they want to bring with them either the entire army or just 200 men to take out that encounter.

Any advice on dealing with this???

They know the price of marching the troops and can afford it and still want to do it.

need some help.

Which encounter is it? The advice will depend on the encounter.

My simple advice? Find an reason to add some will-o-wisps to the encounter (their random wickness should make it possible), and make sure the wisps target the army and avoid the PCs. Wisps are MURDER on level 1 beings and can devastate whole armies. The PCs will hopefully realize that in some cases it is best or the small fries to stay out of the fight.

I would make her a doppleganger myself.

Here is a solid economics / financed based way of determining how much to charge for the house.

1) Determine how much of a discount to lifestyle you wish to grant to the PC.
-- The house will grant a 50 gp discount per month on the highest lifestyle

2) Determine a reasonable discount rate. For non-financial people go with 10%. 10% is a nice middle of the road discount rate for this situation. (For people who have enough knowledge of finance to argue with me but not enough to understand where I got my 10% discount rate from, go research this sh*t and quit arguing with me :-) )

3) Annualize the discount and divide that by the discount rate. The result is your cost of the house.
-- The house is worth 6000 gp (=50 x 12 / 0.1)
-- If the house is meant to provide this to 5 PCs then make the house worth 30,000 gp

4) Let the PCs design the house with the value in mind. You basically vet their work based on your expectations for that kind of lifestyle. The house should primarily focus on "flavor", comforts, and granting small social bonuses. The house should contain no magic items, labs, libraries, traps, locks, siege weapons, or smilar things. Those are "extras" and cost more. It is reasonable for the house to have limited defenses, small armories, and empty space dedicated for libaries & labs, or installations for siege weapons, but if you find the PCs have designed a fortress filled with traps and the PCs are living in piles of hay in their uber-library, then they have missed the point and you the GM have given them not only a discount on living expenses, but a bunch of free adventuring gear.

Slow and Steady: Protoss have a base speed of 20 feet, but their speed is never modified by armor or encumbrance.

While I don't tsee this as unbalanced necessarily, slow and steady denotes to me a race with short legs but very thick and dense body. If you see the Protoss as looking closer to dwarves than humans, then this is fine. If you are envisioning a more human shape, I would probably go with dwarven resistance to poisons instead.

I personally think 3rd Edition did an EXCELLENT job of making Charisma less of a dump stat and that Pathfinder improved slightly on that.

However I a strongly of the opinion that when it comes to the "Making Charisma Matter" designers have reached the point of excessive diminishing returns. Pretty much ANYTHING you can add is going to come across to players as rules tinkering for the sake of the GM's aesthetics. Players are more likely to resent you for complicating the rules than think you added a much needed correction. Resist the urge!

Now there is probably still some ground out there to "Make Charisma Matter" more, but you are not likely to find in the well explored areas of combat, class features, equipment, and skills. But for instance Kingmaker did a lot for making Charisma more important.

Also in my opinion Charisma has lost a lot of its status as the "Dump Stat". If anything I have started to see Wisdom turn into the "Dump Stat" especially for classes with high Will Saves.

It seems to me you have basically started an evil Kingmaker game set in space that also an utter sandbox. :-) The key thing will be that you need to be open about the nature of sandbox play.

Here is my advice:
1) You need to be honest with your PCs about how hard it is to design sandbox games. Tell your PCs that they need to give you at least a weeks notice about any major new directions they want to take the story. Make it clear to them that they can NOT just show up to game and decide to kill senators or blow up the Jedi academy. Make clear that it takes TIME to design quality adventures.
2) If it takes you longer than a week to design an adventure tell the PCs as soon as possible.
3) Make it clear that big institutions get where they are by being GOOD at what they do. Tell them for instance that they try to go immediately to Corsucant and blow up the Jedi Academy tell them it is doomed to failure.
4) Look to Kingmaker for inspiration for streamlined kingdom building rules.
5) Make it clear that some threats are beyond the abilities of minions.

I have not walked out on a game for reasons other than being too busy in a very, very long time. However, one episode does stand out. I was new in an area, and was very happy I had found some other kids who enjoyed the same things I did - roleplaying games. I talked to the resident DM, and he said I could join them. I have been starved for this for a few years, so it's heaven for me. Now, I bring my own character to the game, and he approves it. The others make new characters, they are just starting a campaign.

Once we start playing, I find that the other characters hang back. My character gets to do almost all of it. When we finally get to the treasure chamber, I get inside, at which point the door slams shut. The other players and the DM start laughing, and he tells me that my character dies due to starvation since everyone leaves and the door can't be opened from the inside.

In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. Yes, I was inexperienced and naive, but it still irked me for a long time. They saw me as some kind of impostor, and this was their little chance to define me as out-group. For some reason, then, I never played with those guys again.

I had a similar thing happen to me (My PC was a prisoner with no equipment and the PCs killed him for being 'suspecious' within 1 round of meeting him). Admittedly I kind pushed myself into the game, but it was still very jerkish of the other players. I think I would have preffered to be told "no". But regardless, if I had been one of the "in players" I would either have felt like a dick for being a part of that.

To play devil's advocate on behalf of type three, D&D is not a game that does not lend it itself to sudden shift by players. For example:

Example 1: In 7th Sea, the players decide to rob a corrupt noble on out of the blue. I can determine stats for servants, bodyguards, and the noble on the fly. Every roll depends on 1 or 2 stats combined together. And everything is very compartmentalized and there is lots of room for fudging. I don't need to make the whole character, just assign a 1 to 5 value to each stat as it comes up.

Example 2: In D&D (pathfinder), all the stats are tied up with level and everything is trade-off.s EVERYTHING is hopelessly interconnected. Like if I give one bodyguard skill points in something or a feat I know I can not use them for something else later (even if it makes a great deal of sense). On top of that if I underestimate the numbers then the encounters are too easy and if I overestimate the players call foul and complain.

While I personally don't like railroading players. When it comes to D&D I find I need a MUCH bigger buffer of time to change directions.

And stats beside. The players are NOT the only ones playing. If the players radically shift story direction to where it is a different story, then I may not want to run the game anyway.

I would probably go with:
--Cleric 4, Wizard 6, Mystic Theurge 10
--Fighter 18/Barbarian 2
--2x Rogue 18/Bararian 2

The mystic theurge basically buffs up the party (if allowed he creates magic items on the cheap for the party) and they attack Treerazor. Because he is huge, on fighter can act as flank buddy for both rogue.
Meanwhile at safe distance the mystic theurge helps his friends and picks off the support demons.

One thing I definately would try is is using a Wish from a scroll to put a specialized antimagic fiend around my friends that does not effect their gear or active magic effects. Some STs would allow this and others would not. That would force him to stay in the fight and take away his nasty spell powers. I would also make sure my engagers had combat reflexes. That way if he tried to run mundanely he would get a whole bunch of attacks.

I find it works out just fine. My PCs are in Book 3, with about size 30 kingdom, and produce about 10 BP a month. They are right on track as far as I can tell.

My opnion on the mater is that if you plan to go through the books at a slow place (more than a year a book), then throwing out the magic item rules works fine.

but only because dwarves have a hard enough time having children on their own due to their biology.

*Chuckle*

I wonder who started the tradition in fantasy that long-lived races have fewer children. From a logic point of view I ALWAYS thought this was a stupid way to run their world. For example, in many game worlds elves have like 1 or 2 children it seems over hundreds of years. Seriously how does a species like this even survive let along compete with races that pump out like 5 every 20 years. Now if every elf was a powerful as a dragon, I could see it making sense. But as far as I can tell a young adult elf is just as fragile as a young adult human.

One thing I have always done in my worlds is that long-lived races may take a long time to mature, but they tend to have very large families. A typically dwarven couple over their life span will raise like 10 children to maturity, while an elven couple may have like 20+. Since they have time they typically put a great deal of space between these children, so they typically don't have the next until the current child has reached adolescence and can help raise the next (which prepares them for childrearing). The end result is a growth rate that is a little slower than humans, but no so skewed into ridiculousness (elf woman has 1 child about every 30 years, dwarf woman has 2, human woman has 5 with humans having the highest child mortality rate). Dwarves and elves still look down on humans as breeding like rats, because while a dwarf or elf female may have more over her lifetime, human women crowd them together in what amounts to a litter and then haphazardly race through their upbringing.

Just as the subject says. I wasn't sure if this was covered in any of the material, but given how intertwined humans and halflings have been throughout the course of Golarion's history, I'm sure it's come up.

I have a player whose PC is currently stuck in a love triangle with his recent halfling lover and his returned childhood love. Due to some of his family history, the notion of having children is important to him and will influence his decision.

Thanks.

Regardless of what James says, this is something for your GM to answer. He ultimately determines what can happen in his world.

In my own world I allow most everything to breed with everything (mostly because in my setting humans are the root race for everyone, the gods or wizards just altered humans into other races). However to keep all the half-races from getting out of hand I have two things I do.
1) Half races look like a blend of both races, but mechanically they use one race's template and are treated as both races for the basis of effects.
2) Really extreme half races (like a tengu & human) result in a sterile specimen.

I am looking for a premade castle adventure I could tweak for my campaign. I am looking for suggestions. Here is what I am looking for:

- Must be a large or very large castle
- Lots of creatures that can stay in place for centuries (golems, undead, extraplanary, etc.).
- A good number of empty rooms since the castle is suppose to be an unoccupied ruin that once housed a signficant population
- A good sized basement

If you know of a Pathfinder (or 3rd Edition) adventure that fits the bill, please help.

Six items? Five of which must be very plain and of simple make and one of which that can be of some value?

Well, my bracers of armor +8 are rather rustic I must say. My amulet of mighty fists +5 is practically made of tin. My monk's robe and cloak of resistance +5 are but tatters. I got my plastic ring of protection +5 out of a Cracker Jack box.

But this here masterwork sai of "some value?" That was given to me by my master before I began this here quest to find his killer.

The only item that is limited by value, according to the rules, is the sixth item. The rest just have to be plain.

I. HAVE. NOT. BROKEN. A. SINGLE. RULE.

In any case, I'm surprised that no one has even considered that maybe it wasn't ever meant to limit your wealth of items, but rather the number of items you carry. Only being able to carry six items, rather than the 14 that magic item slots normally allowed IS a fairly big limiting factor and would be about on par with what you get in return, as well as with the other vows and optional rules.

You get to keep the BIG SIX while giving up everything else.

You get six items. You need the BIG SIX to stay afloat in the game. Nobody noticed this correlation? Really?

If your first five items are of cheap make (wood, bone, tin, whatever), then you have indeed followed the rules of the Vow. You still can't carry anything not your own worth more than 50gp and you still can't carry more than enough money needed to support yourself (modestly).

Considering all this, and the fact that it's now about in line with all the other vows, I'm astounded I'm the first to think of this particular interpretation.

Everyone agrees: the current "common interpretation" not only sucks, it doesn't even make much sense as written.

Mine, however, neither sucks nor is senseless. For all we know, it was the developer's intent all along.

FAQ this post if you agree, or even if you simply "want" to believe it's true. Maybe we can get a developer...

I am not sure what you are talking about. Is this "Vow of Poverty" some sort vow that grants a mechanical effect if adherred to or what?

That asside, it strikes me that your character is breaking his vow of poverty, regardless of the appearance of his items. The total wealth of your items could feed and care for thousands of destitute, orphans, and cripples for years. His equipment makes him in the top 1% wealthiest individuals in world. Where is the poverty?

What she said.

I like NPC classes because they can be used to beef up a creature/encounter without making it overly complicated. If I add 5 barbarian levels to an ogre now I suddenly have to start thinking about Rage Powers and archetypes. I can add 10 warrior levels for the same CR adjustment, get more HP to work with, and not have to worry about anything beyond feats.

This the best thought out reason to even bother with NPC classes. They are a lot easier to work with. For the most part I think the concept is stupid.

In my own game there are no Commoner 2, Warrior 2, or Adept 2 or higher. These two classes are gate ways to other classes. Also their is no Aristocrat class. Nobles either have levels in Expert or PC class levels.

In my world the summoners have little red white balls and they have scream "I choose you Eidolon". And their buffing spells are basically in the form of encouraging cheering. :-)

Just kidding.

So the party is a group of like-minded nasty allies who stick together in order to not be overcome by those pesky goody goody two-shoes who would otherwise destroy them?

This does sound like it might be interesting, in a machiavellian sort of way :)

How can I get in touch with you to talk more about it?

You can reach me through my junk email account:

tlc_web@hotmail.com

I hate to send you through that account, but the last thing I want is a jerk or bot getting ahold of my real account. Make sure you put in the subject in all caps "INTERESTED IN EVIL PATHFINDER GAME" so I can find it among all the junk mail I get there. Also make sure you include message that sounds like it would come from a real person.

From there I will direct you to my real email acount or give you my phone number.

The system allows you to remove BP from the Kingdom and gain GP. That is how you get paid. A 3 year old kingdom could probably suffer 1 BP conversion a month. If you have 4 people in your party that is 500 GP for a month's work.

If the PCs choose not take their share, that is your business. But don't complain about lack of "pay".

Maybe a CG cleric of Groetus believes in the rapture?

+1

I can tell that you are not from a very fundementalist Christian background. When I was a kid I would go to the Southern Baptist Church for the free cookies and punch and play with other kids, plus it was a very rural area and there was not much else to do.

I remember multiple Sunday School teachers trying to inform me that we should pray and do things to hasten the return of Jesus and the end of the world. Like we should support Isreal since the return of Jews to Jerusalem or the Restoration of the Temple was a sign of end times according to them.

These people were basically good people, but because they were so certain that they were saved (and they very well could have but that is another discussion) and that end of the world heralded the coming the Kingdom of Heaven, they saw the end of the world as a VERY positive thing.

I could see a CG cleric of Greotus very much approaching the end of times that way. This actually sounds like an interesting character. You run around asking if everyone is saved yet. And while your intentions are good, because you feel so pressed for time (after all the end of the world is just a few days away) you often come off a d*ck.

@tlc: Is it a PbP? If so, I would like to present a character.

No it is not

I'm curious about the idea of an evil campaign, but I guess I'm kind of skeptical about how well it would work in practice. Can you tell me more about it?

Well basically this game is a sister game for my regular Kingmaker game. I basically decided to develop it so my the evil kingdom I was going to introduce post-modules would have more depth to it then anything I would make. So basically it will be Evil Kingmaker.

To keep down PvP I will be stressing that there are plenty of ambitious evil citizenry waiting in the wings to take advantage. If the party does present a united front, then these individuals will swoop in an take advantage. For example if one PC TPKs the rest, it will be then that the ninja/shadow dancer/wizard will pop out of invisiblity combined with hide in plain sight to stab you with a poisoned dagger and lots of sneak attack. As you die he will then adjust his hat of disguise to look just like you and take all your gear and your throne.

There will actually be a descent amount of "saving" others. But that is more because you see them as your property.

Most likely the evil portion will arise from being able to use evil solutions.

The deck is amusing for new players or for campaigns or groups where getting past level 10 is a lost cause. Also good for groups who love living moment to moment and having great stories to tell. For people who put a lot of effort into characters and like to watch them grow, the deck can muck up their investments and derail the game.

+1

I played in a game in which the GM had a "Deck of Many Things" in EVERY game. It was not a literal deck everytime. Sometimes it was an aparatus, sometimes is was roulette table, etc. But every night I was just waiting in fustration for it to show up. (Admittedly I think I only played 5 sessions)

The biggest advice I would give you is that make sure you use it infrequently or only in comic games.

The second biggest advice I would give is make sure you have the right of players. I personally detested it, because I could not see my character throwing away his life on a gamble, meanwhile the players with throw away characters would pull and pull. The end result was they would end up with powers that allowed them to suck up more attention or just roll up new characters if they died or got something nasty. Make sure that you have a group of players who either like wackiness or do not care that some of them may abuse the cherry picking that can result or won't cherry pick.

My final advice is make sure the usage of the deck is heroic if your game is going to be serious. The game I played in the deck was used to for gambling and wackiness, not heroics. My suggestion is that the Deck of Many Things has two modes. When the players want to just gamble it works like it does in the book. But if the players want to do something heroic or save themselves from an approaching TPK, positive result will grant a custom result saves or helps them. I personally think that would make it a LOT more heroic. For instance suppose my enemies have killed all the rest of my party and are closing in on me, I pull from the deck. The result is positive, and a teleportation spell transports me and my friends bodies to a friendly temple.

I'm in Silver Spring and would be interested in joining a PF game in the area. What is the status of games near here? :)

This campaign is doing well (37 some sessions) but very full (I am turning away people)

I am starting a sporadic "evil" campaign that is the sister of this game.

If you are interested in that game I have one more opening.

I might be interested in this experement. Can you flesh out some more details. Character Build rules, the over arching plot that will "keep" the party "together".

Are you talking to the PbP game or mine?

Wow, that much activity and no one is interested in playing my game. I feel epically unloved.

As for evil campaign's imploding. It takes a pretty responsible player to balance playing evil with making sure everyone has fun and not just themselves.

In my campaign the being evil portion is more about being able to use evil solutions and being able to indulge in things you normally would steer clear of (such as making deals with fiends) in a good campaign. Like for instance the players know they going up against a puzzle/combat (combat were you need a strategy to win) early in campaign and one of my players planning to dupe some goody two shoes into being cannon fodder (the suckers think they are going to be heroes) and then animating them as undead to fight again.

My thoughts on the Savage Barbarian is that it serves two purposes:

1) Flavor for players who want to play scantly clad barbarians.

2) Way to combine barbarian with an arcane class with spell failure.

Was playing an AD&D 2nd Edition game and had a Psionicist who had the Telepathy discipline and the Telepathic Science of Mindlink:

Mindlink wrote:

Mindlink allows the user to communicate wordlessly with any intelligent creature he can contact (Intelligence 5 or greater on a human scale). This is two-way communication. It is not the same as mind-reading because the psionicist only receives thoughts which the other party wants to send. Language is not a barrier. Distance affects the telepath's ability to make contact, but it has no other effect (see "contact").

So, the party comes upon a magic sword with signs of being an intelligent magic sword. The sword itself cannot communicate. My psionicist picks up the sword and the DM cackles with glee ... time to compute it's Ego Rating and my Personality Score to determine if the sword can extert control over my character. (DMG 2nd, p.188)

To the DM's chagrin, my psionicist has a higher Personality Score by one point, and so the sword is unable to dominate me. To find out what the sword was after, I activated my Mindlink ability to talk to the sword.

The DM tells me the sword has taken over my character. I ask how that happened; he said when my character used his Mindlink to contact the sword, the sword "gained" Telepathic Ability from the Ego table, raising it's Ego by 2 points .. 1 above my character .. so it now controlled me. (No, the sword did not suddenly become telepathic, it got to take credit for my character's now-active telepathic ability; in a contest of wills against my character.)

I argued that since the sword got 2 points from my character's telepathic ability, then as the possessor of the power, my character should get at least 2 points of his own for being telepathic. DM said nope, not part of the personality score formula for a character, no bonus for me for my own ability.

I told the DM that I would shut off my Mindlink, and so return the balance of power back to my favor. The DM informed me that the sword wouldn't allow me to...

Boy, seems like you just could not get off the "GM wants to kill a PC" Express.

Bump

This is why I like point buy all the time. Roleplaying games are about having that "moment of cool". If one player is hogging all the moments of cool, then players are going to get unhappy or uninterested in the game.

In order to keep my player's kingdom from becoming an excuse for game breaking wealth or armies, and to save on all the accounting rules, I am considering having a Empire / Fuedal Rule. Basically it goes like this.

A kingdom that grows beyond X city districts or Y hexes has grown too cumbersome for one group of officials to run. All additional hexes and city districts must be distributed to kingdoms/fiefs to be managed by them. These kingdoms/fiefs will be managed by the GM, BUT the PCs can serve on their group of officials.

Here are my questions:

1) Do you like this rule or not?

2) What should the value of "X" and "Y" be? (I am leaning towards Y being between 100 and 200).

You forgot expanisionistic Razmiran. :-)

I utterly understand where you are coming from Captain Marsh. After reading about Ustalav and its neighbors, I was confused as to why such a messed up country was able to survive such a hostile area. A lot of of people have already covered some of my thoughts.

1) Ustalav is a mess. For that reason Razmiran would rather move into the River Kingdoms.

2) Too many undead. Orcs are probably prone to supersition so they stay away. Also orcs that try to settle lands from humans may find that they have replaced the humans at the bottom of the food chain.

3) Racist Vampires? If I was human vampire I would probably want my spawn, minions, and prey to be humans for purely logical reasons (orcs are more likely to fight back, orcs need expensive meat and humans will make due with turnips, etc.) alone. So vampires are likely to come out at night and kill invading orcs.

4) Harder for Lycanthropes to blend in. Lycanthropes are likely to kill orcs for the same reason as vampires. It would be a pain to have their territory occupied by orcs. So that is two major sources of guerilla resistance.

5) Whispering Tyrant used "Magical Persuasion". My guess is that the orcs were persuaded to serve using magical means. And the minute he was sealed orcs never returned. They probably don't want to return to the land of their bondage.

6) The worst of the World Wound is still a healthy distance away.

7) The rulers of Numeria are focused on exploiting their devices, not with expansion. By the way Numeria reads, most of the hinterlands of Numeria are utterly ignored by the capital. If they don't care about managing their own country, why would they care about ruling Ustalav?

I am putting together an Evil Campaign (No Good Alignments allowed). I want one more player. The game would be the Baltimore/Washington metro. If interested, just respond to this post.

A warforged artificer bent on curing prostitutes with his own homemade warforged component, a suggestively placed wand of remove disease.

Sounds like a creative way to get freebies from hookers. :-)

Totally disagree with Deidre. Follow your instinct and limit the number of them. Your players may gripe, but they will gripe more when the adventure is rolling them all. Then they will complain about you recommending Dhampires to them.

I have started playing a Harrowstone and I have a Dhampire in our game.

*Spoilers Ahead*

Our Dhampire is playing a cleric who channels positive energy. As a consquence she can not benefit from her own healing. And all the magic items we are finding at the start of the adventure are healing items that she can not use. As a consqunce she is the first one to have to stop for the evening.

You might argue that she could channel negative energy, but the thing about that is Harrowstone is THICK with haunts. Some are near impossible to undo and the only way to get past them is temporarily nuetralize them. That means we need positive energy channeling. Plus if she could channel negative that means the only benefit would be that she can heal herself, not the party.

Finally at our last game we found that mundane healing on our cleric was far from ideal. This module is on a SERIOUS timetable, pausing to let someone who was seriously hurt heal themselves mundanely is probably a recipe for disaster.

Because of all the Haunts, a Dhampire party is going to find itself seriously struggling with all the Haunts.

The good news is that I think a Dhampire will have a much easier time in the future modules. But ironically being dhampires have an harder time again "undead places" than the typical PC.

Evil Lincoln wrote:

So yes, I share this crazy rule with your GM, although I suspect I might have more benevolent motives (I think it engenders sympathy the way I do it). Do you suspect your GM's ruling was similarly inspired, or is it bigotry?

Judging by the way he portrayed both racial minorities and homosexual characters (in horibly offensive negative stereotypes) and heavy religious (if misguided) influence I don't suspect any positive intent behind his ruling. Female characters (both PC and NPC) were highly sexualized as well- he asked for percentile rolls to determine breast size upon character creation.

Being both homosexual and of mixed black/white heritage (which I don't show at all; I have a feeling he would've toned down some racial jokes if he knew) I was highly offended at not only his portrayal of black characters (always sounding like gangster rappers or the old "black face" cartoons), but his views on homosexuality as well, which he expressed his personal belief as being an iredeemable and disgusting evil and any gay NPC was either a "hot lesbian" or a lisping, flaming, drag queen.

I think to this day he was mystified why I walked out shortly after the second session of his game started, which is when I found out that his little rule about homosexuality. I was playing a cleric of a goddess of love and community and lost my spellcasting after only acting interested in a male NPC in game.

If there was a sound reasoning being the rule, like what you mentioned above, I would've been fine with it, in fact I would enjoy playing the concept of a paladin trying to come to terms with and reconcile the differences in the tenets of his faith and his personal leanings and trying to be accepted by his church while subtly trying to expand the faith to be inclusive to other like him. But as it was I was given nothing past:

"You lose you divine powers until you find someone to give you an attonement spell."

"Why?"

"Homosexuality is sinful. Gays can't be good aligned. I don't know...

I agree with Evil Lincoln. When I treat homosexuality as a 'sin', I make sure it is context of a IC religion or culture. So while homosexuality might be considered evil by a culture or religion, it is NEVER an absolute determiner of good.

But it was very clear to me Ringtail that your ST was dragging in his view of homosexuality into the game (and VERY sexist view) as that. I can definately see why a goddess of love and community may define homosexuality as wrong, but if I had been in that STs place I would treated that situation as a break down in communication between player and GM. In your case, your GM failed to communicate that this goddess was anti-homosexual and you failed to communicate that this PC was gay. I would allow you to retroactively pick a new god that fit better.

However to declare that your character can not be good aligned and gay shows he was a sexist d*ck. To make you have to get an antonement spell over a miscommunication is an insensitive GM move.

I once had a GM running a module rule that the party could not locate any item in a given area unless that item was explicitly mentioned in the description of that area. This led to a ruling that a gravedigger's tool shed did not contain any shovels.

That is pretty stupid. What about when the module included Search DCs to find items?

Hey Jason,

I am big lover of Civilization myself, and I find the idea of borrowing from Civilization appealing. But my players do not. Before you add complexity to your system, make sure your players are on board with it. Otherwise you could get a mutiny.

Fort: This seems reasonable.

Mine: I would change this to a +1 Economy / +2 Economy only. These bonuses build up fast.

Camp: One thing I have done in my campaign is that I treat Forest Hexes as resource hexes.

Terraforming: I think terraforming is best handled on case-by-case basis. These are major changes. Plus it adds character to your PCs kingdom that there are still 'wildernesses'. If the PCs systematically change the world you end up with this kingdom that feels too perfect and manicured. It also begs the question. Why are the PCs so desperate to drain swamps when there is still plenty of better land to claim.

Any ideas about how could you simply build a house with weird geometry (a la Heinlein's), you could take some aboleth slime, pour it into framework, and throw its third eye into it. Then take a medusa's head out and voila, perfectly styled Azlanti house with an eye motif. Tough cast it from the outside cause the residents would get the weird feeling they are being watched. It would sell in Absalom, tough in Geb people would want the Black Blood from Orv instead of the slime for their haunted mansions.

I'm looking for more components to expand the company, other components, maybe ectoplasm, or some fluid from Numeria (warforged houses), slave blood (house gets an iron plating, fey-proof), living wall protoozes, then fomorian or cyclops eyes for that megalithic effect, or hag's if you want to use the evil eye curse on your neighbors?

I don't know about weird geometry, but you might have hit upon a cheap building material for a fantasy world. Using reusuable molds you pour your live slime in, then the medusa engineer stares at and instant house. If you could raise the slimes on sewage, you might get paid at both ends. I might use this in an Evil Kingmaker game I am considering.

When a character dies while I am GM, I usually do two things.

The player can come back but they are one or two levels lower depending on the lowest level in the group. If the lowest level person died I may let them come back the same level. The reduction in levels is so that the player feels the ramifications of character death.

The other thing I do is that I let it be known that the moral and legal thing for PCs to do is ensure that the dead PCs gear gets to the rightful heirs (and usually that is not them). I will bust someone down the alignment scale for this. In my game I do not allow NE and CE so that could result in them having to retire the PC. If a PC honestly wrote up a will and gave it to me before death I may allow them give property to PCs. The reason I am harsh on not letting PCs keep fallen PCs treasure is two fold. One is that a huge shift of wealth from one PC to another PC can be very unbalancing. Two is that I do not want PCs to start seeing one another as potential sources of treasure.

Depending on your DM, I would consider taking a level in Barbarian for the fast movement. The reason is that you will be doing a LOT of exploration. The random encounters are based on time (you get one check basically ever 12 hours) and distance traveled (everytime you enter a hex there is a check). So if you are moving really slow then you may find yourself getting hammered by random encounters. Given that your character is wilderess man it would not be hard to slip in a level of barbarian.

Ultimately the value of this advice will depend on the GM's style. If your GM feels that exploring a hex can't be done from horseback, then this a very good idea. And if your GM likes to pull hijinks on horses to the point you don't want to ultize them, then it is a good idea. If your GM declares that certain hexes can't be explored from horseback (in my game I don't allow mountains and swamps to be explored from horseback, and could see some STs expanding this forests), then it might be a good idea. But if your GM is not going to do any of these, then I think you can do without the level.

I think that it would be possible to allow sorcerers in Dragonlance in ALL eras, but make them a semi-prestige class with the requirement being that they must have at least one level in wizard. Perhaps allow only the Arcane & Destined bloodlines for good measure. The IC explanation is that "Sorcerers" are wizards that choose to develop their intuitive spellcasting power instead of following a more studied approach.

The other sorcerer bloodlines exist and do not require a level in Wizard, but they are one of the very things the Robed Wizards were created to keep in check.

If you want to be extra kind, you could allow Mystic Theurge to treat the sorcerer portion to subsitute for the divine portion.