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I've never been a fan of heavy meta-plot, especially cataclysm plotlines when the setting still has a lot of stuff that could be fleshed out. I guess Galactic Magic will be my last book.

People pulling phones out at the table, or other devices.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, there is some good material here.

As an interesting aside, after reading these comments and doing some googling, it seems that most fantasy underwater environments, such as Gungan city (cited above), have breathable air spaces. Since this festival is happening in the deep sea, I've gone with an entirely water-breather environment, but I'm struck by how many of the standard adventuring activities, such as visiting an inn, stop working as you'd expect in an underwater community.

Thanks again!

I'm writing a heavily water-based campaign set in Golarion, and I'm hoping that I can get some help with ideas for a particular scene.

The players are visiting a friendly Gillman villiage in the Inner Sea, towards the bottom of the twilight zone (3000 ft. below sea level), and they are invited to a festival of Gozreh.

Now what does an underwater festival look like?

What I've got so far:

* Music is provided with a band playing bass instruments like horns and drums. The locals dancing looks a lot like synchronised swimming.

* Food is provided by several vendors preparing fresh seafood, in most cases raw, but in some cases seared with a magical blade enchanted to produce fire (or steam underwater)

* There are games in the form of tests of skill and strength. The tests of skill involve harpooning a bluefin tuna released from a bag (they swim at 44 mph / 70 kmph). The tests of strength involve placing one's arm into a giant clam, then wrenching it back open when it closes.

And after that I'm stuck.

I want to create a reasonably believable event, even if it is underwater with magical fish-people, so I'd like to avoid extravagant displays of magic or anything else that would be out of the reach of a small village.

Ideas?

I'd also like to get this with the subscription.

Are there any rules for bringing Illithids into Starfinder? I've only read a few things on the game so far and haven't seen anything on them. If there aren't I'm thinking of creating my own./snip/

What are your thoughts?

Sounds like they would make a great enemy race. We won't see anything done officially, since Mindflayers are WOTC property, but you can get good stats to base them off from 3.5. For general background, there is a fantastic 2nd Ed book, The Ilithiad, with lots of detail that you could use, such as their intolerance for divine magic, elder brains, etc.

I'm going to play a campaign my friend wrote in which the entire world has been covered in a toxic gas that transforms any living creature to a mindless mutant.

I'd counter-optimize play a kobold fighter, and work out an interesting backstory that you can bring out in game. Settings like this are an arms race to see who can create the most extreme, non-standard characters possible, and it loses its impact very quickly. If you have characters that aren't in that arms race, it forces the GM to do something other than parading out all the biggest and baddest creatures in the bestiary.

Thanks everyone for all the ideas, this has been great!

I especially like the concept of fish from underground streams, as it seems highly plausible, as well as plant life that flourishes in darkness.

Some posters asked for a little more detail about the scenario: the PCs are a party that visited a stand-alone dwarven outpost (Varisia/Crystalheart), and while they were there, a dragon caved in the mountain, and set up a lair on the top. The PCs now have to visit each of the warring dwarven clans under the mountain, find the axe of the dwarven lords that their last king carried, reunite them and take back the only exit to the sky.

In this scenario, the dwarves could have used stockpiled food from the surface, but I can't see any dwarven city making itself solely dependent on food from the surface, otherwise they'd be easily sieged. It's something that could have easily been hand-waved with magic or similar, but a little plausible detail goes a long way towards selling a story.

Thanks again for all the suggestions!

So, I'm running a campaign which takes place mostly underground, and the PCs are spending a lot of time with Dwarves who have never traded with the surface.

So what do Dwarves eat without access to the surface? Clearly they survived on Golarion for some time without access. An obvious one is mushroom dishes, and the occasional game meat like displacer beast, but for any large settlement, there would likely have to be some kind of semi-farmed animal.

My current fix is the invention of the 'deep goat', a variant underground goat with a black hide and darkvision. My argument to the players is that deep goats are clearly only omitted from the bestiaries due to space restrictions.

I could use some other suggestions as to what other foods underground races might eat, otherwise I'll have to go with displacer chickens, dark pigs, etc.

I get that canonically, there's none left. But as the Inner Sea World Guide said, Golarion is if nothing a magical place: extremely well hidden enclaves of pureblooded survivors, those who are revived from thousands of years of stasis, or somehow resurrected using ancient magic could all definitely be possible.

I'm not so much asking for canonical justification of pureblooded Azlanti appearing (okay maybe I kind of did with the moon question); I'm pretty flexible when it comes to what's canon and what's not when it comes to Golarion. I'm more curious if they've actually been used at all in campaigns, whether as players or NPCs.

I've done so once as an NPC, but the character's nature never came up in the story. My excuse was that the NPC had been petrified by a medusa, then the PCs came along many hundreds of years later, and turned her back.

Hi guys,
I've lost count of the amount of times I've needed models for the town guard, generic mercenaries, or some other uniform fighting force that isn't decked out in full plate from head to toe. Most of the paizo models I've seen have been very distinctive, and not ideal for representing a cohesive group, despite being excellent quality. I'm looking for recommendations of where I can get some appropriate models. Ideally they would be:

* Metal
* 5+ figures, with minor differences on each
* A slotted bottom, for fitting into a square or round base.
* Lightly/moderately armoured; not full plate, not leathers.

Thanks!

Introduce the new PC, then have the BBEG's minion turn up, threaten the whole party, then eat the new PC - no one will see that coming!

In seriousness though, I rarely cinematic anything for purposes other than saving time. As the person running the game, you can weight the odds so preposterously against the PC intended to die that it's all but certain to happen. And if the PCs do manage to turn the situation around somehow - they'll feel great about having had an effect on the storyline, and where is the harm in having an extra PC for a session or so?

Thanks guys, that's really useful. I'm pretty sure I know how I'm going to handle it now.

Hi all - I have writers block tonight, so I figured I'd crowdsource some of my game preparation :).

I have a party of 7th level characters, on the way to the front of an orcish invasion. Currently the characters have a short stopover in Ardis, Ustalav, before they make their way to where the armies are encamped. One of the characters is a magus with the bladebound archetype, who is essentially playing a bloodthirsty viking who wants to end up slaying dragons, drinking, wenching, going berserk, and all that good stuff. His intelligent sword pretty much echoes that sentiment, and has been passed to him by his dragon-slaying ancestors. It's a fun character, but there isn't much chance for his sword to actually be intelligent, since it just agrees with everything he wants to do.

Enter an NPC, Sir Edwin, a cautious, knightly, magus who follows the tenants of politeness, decorum, and patient strategy in order to win his conflicts - he is also someone following the bladebound archetype, and his sword similarly echoes his virtues. Sir Edwin is going to guide them to the front, and during that time, I need some event which will swap the personalities of the two swords, preferably in such a fashion that there is a chance of undoing it at some point in the future, so that I can backtrack if the player doesn't have any fun with his new sword personality.

Any ideas?

Thanks guys, there are some really good ideas here. I might start our summoner on a steady diet of nerf spells, and then implement some of the plot ideas to see if it brings them into line.

Hi all,
I have a party that is currently going through a game set in Ustalav, which is a mix of a Fighter, a Rogue, a Summoner and a Magus. The Fighter and Rogue aren't really a problem, but I am having problems with the summoner's eidolon. The Eidolon and Magus get enlarged in almost every combat, and the Eidolon already has extended reach and a knockback ability that essentially means that he threatens most squares in each of the combats I run. They are otherwise reasonably well optimized, though not ludicrously so.

I've been able to counter this by buffing up the strength of the NPCs they face, but really, it's getting to the point where if I don't make their AC astronomically high and give them huge quantities of hit points, it becomes an utter route. This isn't all that fun for the players either, because they are always looking for extremely high rolls to actually achieve anything.

I'm not naturally a number crunching GM - I like roleplaying, and I'm getting tired of writing NPCs with names, motivation and history only to have them plowed into the dirt the moment they are physically in the same location as the PCs.

My players aren't problem players... it's just easier for them to try and kill everything than deal with it another way. There are plot based ways around that, but it feels like railroading if I do it too often.

So, I'm after suggestions for:

Rail-roady or not, suggestions for plots that make killing some main antagonists undesirable, difficult, or at least make them think a bit before they do it.

And

Rules-based strategies for giving the players tougher fights without making the NPCs AC & HP sky high.

I’ve always loved psionics in fantasy, but I’ve found that they are presented in a fashion that is more akin to Sci-fi settings than fantasy, and I really think that’s more about how it is presented than anything else. The concept of a seer with mental abilities, or a gypsy with the second sight is pretty common in fantasy literature.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking that with some simple name substitutions you could change the feel a little:

Instead of... / Use...
Psionics / Second Sight
Psionic Focus / Mystic Focus
Psionic Feat / Mystic Feat
Psi-like Ability / Mystic Ability
Power Resistance / Mystic Resistance
etc / etc.

Classes
Psion / Seer (Implying studied learning)
Wilder / Mystic (Implying intuitive learning)
Psychic Warrior / Adept
Soulknife / Mmm… can't really sell that as anything other than what it is. I wouldn't use it in campaigns where I was trying to avoid the sci-fi feel. You just know they meant 'Jedi' when they were first writing it.

Skills / Powers
Autohypnosis / Mental Discipline
Know.(Psionics) / Knowledge(Mysticism / The Second Sight)
Psychometabolism / Body Control
Psychokinesis / Energy Control
Psychoportation / Mental Travel
Clairsentience / Mental Sight
Telepathy / Mental Communication / or just leave it as Telepathy
Metacreativity / Mental Creation

Instead of Psi-Crystals, refashion them as Orbs, like scrying balls, with similar effects. Perhaps minor levitation instead of growing arms and legs to get around though.

Can anyone suggest any other changes you could make to psionics to make them a little less starwars-y?

I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but it costs 11 GP (10 for Black Powder, 1 for the bullet) each time you make an attack roll. Gunslingers will be be burning party gold disproportionately. It seems like the equivalent of charging the Alchemists for their extracts.

I'd strongly recommend allowing gunslingers to craft their own ammunition, and potentially replacement weapons, otherwise, if a mishap occurs at 1st-2nd level, they're a well-armoured peasant with esoteric weapons lore.

You could limit the use of the ammunition they create by having it only work for their custom weapons - calibrated amounts of powder, specific bore for the bullets, etc.

I'd love it if they produced a set of Gamemastery Cards with traps on them - it'd take all the work out of randomising them for me.