venkelos2015's page

I'm sort of being roped into GMing a game, and before I decide that one or two of the players are going to make me want to quit that, I thought I'd ask for some advice. I hate lvl 1 games, and am scheduling to run a lvl 9 game, which I significantly prefer, minus one point; I need some ideas of good 9th level challenges. Bandits? They are bringing a loan to the party. Pack of wild animals? Hey guys, they brought us hats. I have 2 magi, a rogue, a ranger, a wizard, and a monk, with a few cheese-options among them, and am not sure what general challenges to throw at them, as I figure out what Elf vs Human world they are going to be in. Any good encounter ideas would be appreciated; otherwise, I might just let someone else run their lvl 1 3.5 game, and dodge the responsibility. Thank you ahead of time.

So, I will be running a little game soon, and have an interesting bunch of players/characters. One of them, a monk, wants to spend their starting money on getting a spell permaneced on him, where everyone else is buying weapons, armor, and whatnot. I think it'll be Magic Fang, but I'm not sure. Whether letting the monk become a walking flurry of Holy Avenger is a great idea, or not, is not the big issue; what I'm looking for is how much should my NPC wizard charge to perform the service? I'm not in front of my book, at present, but Permanency is a rather up there spell, and a special one, too. What might be a good going rate for it? Thanks all, and please have a good one?

So, I am thinking of a character type I'd like to build, sort of another for the list of "need something quick" ideas I keep around, and I Want a "tactician" feeling character; someone who makes use of knowledges, and tries to control, or at least limit the enemy, by the battlefield. In the Dragonlance Campaign Setting book, they had the Legendary Tactician PrC, sort of a hyped up Officer, and I really liked using what of it I could pull in, in my last game of D&D. I was also playing Suikoden V recently, and think it would be really cool to get to play a character similar to Lucretia Merces, the very gifted strategist for your force, even though you never really get to "use" her. I frequently play wizards, and I know how they can manipulate the battlefield, but from a more militant, less arcane angl, I'm sort of stuck.

Here's what I know:
* Fighter has a nice Archetype in Ultimate Combat (p.47), that I'd strongly consider.
* Bard has good skills, and group buffing, if only for so much of a day.
* Cavalier, from APG (p.32) has a leader feel.
* Battle Herald (APG p.260) seems like my PrC of choice, if I got that far.

Here's my perceived dilemmas:
* The first chunks of Tactician Archetype are cool, but the good stuff is sort of late.
* Bard works, but it's a bit short-duration.
* I was preferring Fighter over Cavalier, even though Cavalier had more of the stuff just built into it.
* Battle Herald is a PrC, which is a bit later/higher level than I often see, and while this PrC is not as bad as some, it requires Cavalier and Bard, which further hedges out Fighter.

My biggest issue is probably something I'll be hard-pressed to do anything about; the level. As much as I like playing high-level games, when I play in them, lower level is often more the norm, and they flop before we get too close to the double digits.

So, if I want to play a character who will feel like they have a tactical knowledge of the area, remembering details from prior battles there that others wouldn't, and enhancing a decent group of people's ability (it doesn't have to be a whole army; most games still focus most on the player group), what direction should I go? If it's just a "you can't get what you want before level 12" scenario, some ideas of what parts to focus on, and I can pick up the other bits later, would be cool, too. If I missed anything obvious, or in a book I don't have (have Core, APG, UM, UC, ACG, and some monster/NPC stuff), I'd also like to know of it. Sometimes, I go looking for something like "tactician", and if I don't see it, but there's something that one could interpret as that, say you took some of the flair out of Bard, but got the same results, I might've missed/overlooked it.

Thanks much for any assistance, and please have a good one.

As long as I've been doing this, this will sound like a noob question, but it rarely comes up in my D&D/PF games, so I haven't really had to deal with it, though it figures into a story I'm working on, so now I must tackle it.

There are good deities, and there are evil deities, and both must have people, for one reason or another, worship them, and have clerics who preach their words, and grow their power further. How important to said evil deity are their better clerics? Many works show them being short with even their most potent, devout worshipers, and for the smallest infractions. I get that arrogance and jerkiness are actually sort of a facet of their being; it is how they MUST act, in some ways, and they don't want to appear as if they are anything less than immensely above all others, but still.

Lets say, for example, that you are a drow, and that means, barring copyright, you serve a particular spider-themed deity. Now, she is, in some respects, a cruel, capricious deity, and she will gladly play her followers against one another, with potentially lethal results, just for the fun of watching it. I get what she gets out of it; a combination of entertainment (she is a total b***h, sometimes, and also a culling of her "weaker" servants, so only the best serve her, and it is how drow live, but what does the cleric in question get out of being a goddess's unwilling plaything? I'm a powerful priestess, and used to lording my power over the many slaves in my underground city, toying with the mind flayers, duergar, and other dark denizens of that fungus-filled place; I am NOT fond of anyone jerking me around, in turn.

The good deities have an advantage, in that they may let you live your own life, grant you power, and when you occasionally ask them to, they will come to your aid; it's a beneficial system, in both directions, but what about the evil deities? Am I just to let this goddess, whose power is in some way dependent on my faith, in addition to the many others who worship her, mess with me, like I'm no more important than dirt, even after I have devoted my life to her service, or what? How do I feel valued when I can be so flippantly discarded? Perhaps said goddess WOULDN'T play these games, but I can see this particular one doing so; she tests her faithful eventually, and those who fail become driders. Why would I tolerate this behavior, or am I imagining behavior where it wouldn't be?

Thoughts and ideas would be appreciated. Thanks much.