uselessmaggot's page

My top 5 for the concept only.

1.Bard - Mute Musician
2.Cleric - Roaming Exorcist
3.Druid - Feral Shifter
4.Sorcerer - Umbral Scion
5.Wizard - Primalist

Woah, so many answers :)

This is a great community indeed. Don't know where to begin.

First: AP's are great for new GM's to learn the system before creating homebrews.

I decided to buy one AP, Rise of the Runelords since is one of the only two available in my language, sadly they already completed it but will help me get lots of examples.

Thanks for the tips, let's see.

Knowing the characters before anything will be difficult but I'll try that when the time comes.
Improvising though will be even worse, I think that I need to begin with everything prepared or I will get a blank in the middle of the game, I wish I would be able to improvise but I doubt it.
If I manage to grow accostumed to be a GM I would reduce the plan and make the game more free, but for now I really think I need something more like a railroad.
I know it's not good but I see it as the lesser of two evils, better to railroad than to have a blank in the middle of the game not knowing what to do for several minutes or more.

Steal, Steal, Steal! Modules...

About this, looking at a encounter from a module I saw something different, the PCs where inside some building and it gets attacked by a lot of undead, but instead of making it a combat encounter its played like a chase or something like that.

It seemed very cool but left me with several questions, I just imagined my friend's blaster asking how many and where are they, make some calculations and say I fireball here and here... and done. haha
How to transition from the rules of combat and those special rules?, maybe it was in the module but didn't have enough time(I looked at it while waiting for the others to arrive at the GM's house).

Not every encounter is with a creature! Not every encounter is combat!

Hmm, you are right, I'll need to have a open mind and introduce more social and environment challenges.

This is getting more complicated as I learn, the GM I played with made it seem like it was easy buuut it's nothing but easy heh.

The three encounters as presented are CR6, CR5 and CR6...

Great that explains a lot thanks so normal environment no, damaging hazard yes for CR.

Looking at the way the CR table is built though:

I knew of this (a little), read the guide linked below before.

In truth I think it was the reason of posting.
I'm quite sure it would be useful for the character I played but the others destroy the opposition too easily and without spending that many resources, then again the other players way of play, by their words, "for fun", and "I don't want my character to die, so it won't die" created this dissonance.
In the end I never felt fear of defeat, success seemed assured, and I just an spectator (I'm a terrible roleplayer too so I didn't immerse in the game) for the actions of the other players.
The only time where I felt my character would die is when I got separated, I ended up getting paranoid and try to find refuge, it was fun though.

I wouldn't get overwhelmed by all the "super uber builds" out on the web.

Too late for that. haha

Not only for the builds, just the rules for characters are already quite daunting, add all the things needed to know for being a GM, etc trying to get it all just in my head I'm getting overwhelmed.

I'll leave some links here:

I knew of the first link found it while lurking the forums but not the others so thanks a lot for them. :)

Next have a session 0...

Session 0, seems like its really useful, several of you made the same point, I'll take heed.

About the idea, that's the easy part, but then making a game out of that its really hard, I know that it shouldn't be just a GM story but knowing the players can change the outcome at any given notice is difficult to envision.

To everyone thanks for your help and time its been very useful.

Try playtesting.(...)Run several of the combats from some modules and see what the effect is. Try a few custom combats and see how things work out.

Thanks a lot, your advice is sound, I'll try to playtest some monsters against some characters though since I lack the system mastery it won't be easy.

Seeing you put forth some encounters in so little time, with different tactics to boot, makes me think I have a long road ahead if I want to become a good GM, long way indeed.

I have several questions about them.

1. What level would you put the party to fight those 3 encounters?
2. Would you consider the encounters in unfavorable terrain increasing the CR by 1?

And one repeated question if you happen to know, would you use the way the adventure paths seem to make the encounters or the Society?

I might be wrong but it seems that APs make many encounters that the PCs might do in one day but lower power and the modules seem like they last for a full day but the encounters are higher CR.

Is this for a specific group of characters or module that can be used with any characters?

I only played a few times with this group, I'm not the GM but I would like to GM in the future, if not with this group at least learning the how to's.

But most often than not the encounters ended fast, one caster charming the enemy, the other caster blasting everything to ashes and when they couldn't the melee would end up doing some insane crits, they worked quite well together.
So I fear that things would end up even worse being me as the gm since I don't know much.

Another problem is that my improvisation skills are inexistent sadly. So if I go and tell them I have this story I could GM but I won't know the monsters until they create the characters I doubt they would want to play. I would need a week or more to prepare it I guess.
Besides I think for now its just something in my mind, I don't think I'm prepared to GM.

Hi, I'm trying to make a module for a group, but I don't know how to balance the encounters, I want it to be a challenge but I don't know if it is even possible.
I've been looking at the encounters from one adventure path and seem too weak, even more so when I started reading the forums, seeing casters blaster with damage of 4d4+8 at lvl 1 or 10d6+20 at lvl 6 or worse conjurer casters, and many many others like summoners, ooze polymorphed druids, unstoppable barbarians, etc.
I looked at one module from pfs and the encounters seem more tough, is this true?
So here I am trying to understand the kind of enemies that those powerful characters face that are not just cannon fodder.
Is this even worth pursuing? Or should I just accept that the PCs end the combats in the first round. Or maybe with enough combats every day so that after many they face one with a bit of danger?

Great, thanks for the quick answer.
I'm just a noob and its a bit hard getting all the rules right. I'll be sure to grab a discovery to do other than fire damage the next level I guess, I will need it.
Happy holidays.

What kind of damage is the bonus damage from bombs?

"The damage of an alchemist's bomb increases by 1d6 points at every odd-numbered alchemist level (this bonus damage is not multiplied on a critical hit or by using feats such as Vital Strike)."

Is the bonus damage precision damage? Would an elemental ignore that portion of the damage? I guess no but I wanted to be sure and ask those who will know.