Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Campaign (OGL)

But can the background generation kill you?

But can the background generation kill you?

Actually, yes it can. It brings you back to life, however.

When do Paizo normally put their pdfs on sale? Do they go up at midnight PDT or do they wait until they opening hours start (10am?).

Midnight usually.

Does anyone think story feats will get used? I'm a GM so I can't see using them much unless it was an NPC with the party.

I'm not sure player will go for them. They use precious feat that players probably won't want to use on these. Some of the benefits are nice but not in place of a feat the player needs. Maybe at higher levels they might be taken once you have the feats you want. Personally I'd like to see story feats at 1st level in the games I run. I think I might just allow players to take one, if they want a second (after the first is complete) they use feat.

So it should be out when I get back from classes at noon around here? And thursday is a holliday. Sweet.

Does anyone think story feats will get used? I'm a GM so I can't see using them much unless it was an NPC with the party.

I'm not sure player will go for them. They use precious feat that players probably won't want to use on these. Some of the benefits are nice but not in place of a feat the player needs. Maybe at higher levels they might be taken once you have the feats you want. Personally I'd like to see story feats at 1st level in the games I run. I think I might just allow players to take one, if they want a second (after the first is complete) they use feat.

Good point. I might let players take a story feat instead of the 2 traits at PC creation.

But can the background generation kill you?

Great, now I'm having Traveler flashbacks...

voska66 wrote:

Does anyone think story feats will get used? I'm a GM so I can't see using them much unless it was an NPC with the party.

I'm not sure player will go for them. They use precious feat that players probably won't want to use on these. Some of the benefits are nice but not in place of a feat the player needs. Maybe at higher levels they might be taken once you have the feats you want. Personally I'd like to see story feats at 1st level in the games I run. I think I might just allow players to take one, if they want a second (after the first is complete) they use feat.

Good point. I might let players take a story feat instead of the 2 traits at PC creation.

That is precisely what I am thinking of doing myself in the next game I run. I'm thinking they can take a story feat or take two traits. Some of my players will find the story feats more interesting than the traits and so will take them without fail.

Does anyone think story feats will get used? I'm a GM so I can't see using them much unless it was an NPC with the party.

I'm not sure player will go for them. They use precious feat that players probably won't want to use on these. Some of the benefits are nice but not in place of a feat the player needs. Maybe at higher levels they might be taken once you have the feats you want. Personally I'd like to see story feats at 1st level in the games I run. I think I might just allow players to take one, if they want a second (after the first is complete) they use feat.

Many of those feats are extremely good. If your player wants to take one, then it is the GM's responsibility to make sure they get used. Example: Stronghold.

voska66 wrote:

Does anyone think story feats will get used? I'm a GM so I can't see using them much unless it was an NPC with the party.

I'm not sure player will go for them. They use precious feat that players probably won't want to use on these. Some of the benefits are nice but not in place of a feat the player needs. Maybe at higher levels they might be taken once you have the feats you want. Personally I'd like to see story feats at 1st level in the games I run. I think I might just allow players to take one, if they want a second (after the first is complete) they use feat.

Many of those feats are extremely good. If your player wants to take one, then it is the GM's responsibility to make sure they get used. Example: Stronghold.

What does it do?

Alexander Augunas wrote:

voska66 wrote:

Does anyone think story feats will get used? I'm a GM so I can't see using them much unless it was an NPC with the party.

I'm not sure player will go for them. They use precious feat that players probably won't want to use on these. Some of the benefits are nice but not in place of a feat the player needs. Maybe at higher levels they might be taken once you have the feats you want. Personally I'd like to see story feats at 1st level in the games I run. I think I might just allow players to take one, if they want a second (after the first is complete) they use feat.

Many of those feats are extremely good. If your player wants to take one, then it is the GM's responsibility to make sure they get used. Example: Stronghold.

What does it do?

Stronghold (Story)

Prerequisites: You must have the Leadership feat and must lead at least 10 combat-capable followers (such as fighters or rangers).

Benefit: You can spend a move action to give battle orders to your troops, granting creatures under your command within 60 feet your choice of a +1 morale bonus on attack rolls, a +1 dodge bonus to AC, or a +1 bonus on a single type of saving throw. All creatures must receive the same benefit. You can’t use this benefit on allies not under your command. This is a language-dependent, mind-affecting effect.

Goal: Build or capture a stronghold capable of housing a force of at least 200 troops, and staff it with at least 100 combat-capable soldiers (or the equivalent) under your command. You must also provide food and water sufficient to survive at least a 6-month siege and a gold
reserve sufficient for at least 6 months of wages if your troops require pay.

Completion Benefit: Your battle order bonuses improve to +2, and the range of your orders increases to 120 feet. In addition, you can give two different orders to your troops. For example, you could grant your archers +2 on attack rolls while your front line gains a +2 bonus to AC.

Indeed, this sounds like the sort of bonus feat I'd give to players. I do not think they would choose those by themselves, at least at lower levels.

This sort of great feat is why I'd like parallel feat slots. Some slots for combat, slots for this sort of feat or Craft specialization.

Indeed, this sounds like the sort of bonus feat I'd give to players. I do not think they would choose those by themselves, at least at lower levels.

This sort of great feat is why I'd like parallel feat slots. Some slots for combat, slots for this sort of feat or Craft specialization.

Good thing you can't take this feat at lower levels; you need to be 9th level because it requires Leadership. ^_~

Papa Chango wrote:

Alexander Augunas wrote:

voska66 wrote:

Does anyone think story feats will get used? I'm a GM so I can't see using them much unless it was an NPC with the party.

I'm not sure player will go for them. They use precious feat that players probably won't want to use on these. Some of the benefits are nice but not in place of a feat the player needs. Maybe at higher levels they might be taken once you have the feats you want. Personally I'd like to see story feats at 1st level in the games I run. I think I might just allow players to take one, if they want a second (after the first is complete) they use feat.

Many of those feats are extremely good. If your player wants to take one, then it is the GM's responsibility to make sure they get used. Example: Stronghold.

What does it do?

Stronghold (Story)

You seek to build a bastion against which your enemies shall break like water against the rocks.

Prerequisites: You must have the Leadership feat and must lead at least 10 combat-capable followers (such as fighters or rangers).

Benefit: You can spend a move action to give battle orders to your troops, granting creatures under your command within 60 feet your choice of a +1 morale bonus on attack rolls, a +1 dodge bonus to AC, or a +1 bonus on a single type of saving throw. All creatures must receive the same benefit. You can’t use this benefit on allies not under your command. This is a language-dependent, mind-affecting effect.

Goal: Build or capture a stronghold capable of housing a force of at least 200 troops, and staff it with at least 100 combat-capable soldiers (or the equivalent) under your command. You must also provide food and water sufficient to survive at least a 6-month siege and a gold
reserve sufficient for at least 6 months of wages if your troops require pay.

Completion Benefit: Your battle order bonuses improve to +2, and the range of your orders increases to 120 feet. In addition,...

Suddenly I want to work on my Suikod20 rules again... ;)

Suddenly I want to work on my Suikod20 rules again... ;)

There are all those building and individual room rules :D

Good thing you can't take this feat at lower levels; you need to be 9th level because it requires Leadership. ^_~

7th level in Pathfinder, =)

Alexander Augunas wrote:

Good thing you can't take this feat at lower levels; you need to be 9th level because it requires Leadership. ^_~

7th level in Pathfinder, =)

At 7th level you're taking Leadership as your feat making 9th level the earliest one could take the Stronghold (Story) feat (assuming you also met the "10 combat-capable followers" requirement as well).

Alexander Augunas wrote:

Good thing you can't take this feat at lower levels; you need to be 9th level because it requires Leadership. ^_~

7th level in Pathfinder, =)

Reread my quote. I said you need to be 9th level to select Stronghold (aka "this feat"). The reason you have to be 9th level is that you've got to wait until 7th level to select Leadership.

Indeed, this sounds like the sort of bonus feat I'd give to players. I do not think they would choose those by themselves, at least at lower levels.

This sort of great feat is why I'd like parallel feat slots. Some slots for combat, slots for this sort of feat or Craft specialization.

Not having my book yet (Damm! you Amazon),I always figured that story feats world be used as rewards feats to players kind of like NWN1 and 2.

Papa Chango wrote:

Indeed, this sounds like the sort of bonus feat I'd give to players. I do not think they would choose those by themselves, at least at lower levels.

This sort of great feat is why I'd like parallel feat slots. Some slots for combat, slots for this sort of feat or Craft specialization.

Not having my book yet (Damm! you Amazon),I always figured that story feats world be used as rewards feats to players kind of like NWN1 and 2.

Damn amazon, they say this books sales ´till June 11th!!

Mead Gregorisson wrote:

But can the background generation kill you?

Great, now I'm having Traveler flashbacks...

That was one of the fun things about Traveller. Character generation was a game in itself, complete with risks.

Speaking of which, I'm waiting on my Traveller 5 core book (shipped) and Ultimate Campaign (shipped)... and classes end Thursday. It should be a good week :)

Reread my quote. I said you need to be 9th level to select Stronghold (aka "this feat"). The reason you have to be 9th level is that you've got to wait until 7th level to select Leadership.

I am planning on getting this at 7th via Noble Scion, whom gets Leadership for free at 2nd level (which is a 7th level character level) so frees up his 7th level Feat for Stronghold (Story). Sorry for the confusion but you can indeed get both at 7th level if you have the followers already lined up through previous roleplaying.

Papa Chango wrote:

Indeed, this sounds like the sort of bonus feat I'd give to players. I do not think they would choose those by themselves, at least at lower levels.

This sort of great feat is why I'd like parallel feat slots. Some slots for combat, slots for this sort of feat or Craft specialization.

Good thing you can't take this feat at lower levels; you need to be 9th level because it requires Leadership. ^_~

Are there no story feat that can be taken at level 1?

There are many story feats that can be taken at level 1.

Irrelevant to the argument, whether the customer knows whats best for the product line. That wasn't the other gentleman's argument- it was what the customer WANTED. And in this case wanting more modules was what was wanted.....just like gamers wanting AP's and they got it and so on.

Specific to the context of this discussion, more modules is what _you_ wanted. It is not, in fact, what sales tell us they wanted, what retailers told us they wanted, or really much of a groundswell among the fans in general.

More PFS scenarios? Definitely. But more modules? The way you talk about it here suggests there's some king of massive groundswell for this, when in fact this is not now, and never really has been, the case.

Instead we got something not really wanted- longer modules that are less likely to be dropped into a game, and released on a longer schedule that's not helpful. Generic is what some folks wanted- which was why Dungeon magazine was very popular(ell besides 3-5 adventures at a great price).

I suggest waiting until the first one comes out before worrying too much about the format change. The modules are longer, sure, but a lot of the page content is taken up with stuff that will enhance the adventure without necessarily making it a lot longer to play.

Likewise on the "genericness" of the new adventures. Check them out as they come out, and I think you'll be surprised by the ease with which you'll be able to use them in a variety of campaigns.

should I be worried that the book hasn't made to my house yet when it was shipped on the 20th and there is no tracking data?

I've been waiting anxiously for this, knowing it releases tomorrow.

Then I checked my downloads on a whim and saw it there, not realizing as a subscriber I got it last week. I could have been reading it for a week!

Ah, timezones. How frustrating you are.

It's 1:43 am here, and it just say "PDF available today". I just realized that it'll be midnight Paizo time before it's available. Oops.

should I be worried that the book hasn't made to my house yet when it was shipped on the 20th and there is no tracking data?

Probably not. You can check the order and see the estimated delivery times. Packages are usually within those times, but they are quite often at the upper end in my experience (it probably doesnt help that it's a 'business day' estimate so weekends make it seem much longer).

Paizo Customer Service generally wait a week or so outside the expected delivery times before they send out a replacement copy, just in case the delivery estimate is off for some reason.

Ah, timezones. How frustrating you are.

It's 1:43 am here, and it just say "PDF available today". I just realized that it'll be midnight Paizo time before it's available. Oops.

So what is "Paizo Time" anyway, what's their timezone?

So I agree that the non-2 letter system is the way to go.
Though I think these ones are the best options, but yours do fit as well.
Ultimate Combat = UCmb < - Drop the U and it somewhat abbreviates to Cmb which is Combat Manuver Bonus, which well known.
Ultimate Campaign = UCmp or UCpg

Back to the thrilling topic of abbreviations, I personally think UCo and UCa is the way to go.

It's the shortest way to distinguish the two, and the easiest to remember. Shortness + Ease of use = It's a winner!

I believe it's PDT. So with DST in effect, it's GMT -7.

UCamp has more humorous misunderstanding potential.

so in theory that means only minutes till the PDF releases, I'm almost tempted to buy a PDF copy just to get my hands on it a day/hours before my physical copy arrives at my local store. (hopefully arrives)

So much good press this book is getting, absolutely maddening to wait for it, I wanna read as much as possible before tomorrow evening's session. :D

Flipping through this a little bit before crashing for the night, and I'm definitely liking it so far. I suspect my current character is going to try to found an X-Men style adventuring school, if the GM allows the downtime rules.

The next campaign I'm GM'ing is a refluffed Kingmaker, so the Kingdom Building and Mass Combat are definitely going to be useful as well. Well worth the price.

Yay, got my copy. Skimming through it now.

I wonder how long it will take someone to create a website or app for generating random backgrounds...

Azure_Zero wrote:

So I agree that the non-2 letter system is the way to go.
Though I think these ones are the best options, but yours do fit as well.
Ultimate Combat = UCmb < - Drop the U and it somewhat abbreviates to Cmb which is Combat Manuver Bonus, which well known.
Ultimate Campaign = UCmp or UCpg

Back to the thrilling topic of abbreviations, I personally think UCo and UCa is the way to go.

It's the shortest way to distinguish the two, and the easiest to remember. Shortness + Ease of use = It's a winner!

But then you have to edit all the posts on the boards written before UCamp and that used UC to mean Ultimate Combat ;-)

should I be worried that the book hasn't made to my house yet when it was shipped on the 20th and there is no tracking data?

Are you sure it shipped on the 20th? I got a NOTICE on the 20th that it would ship on or around Friday the 24th.... and remember Monday was a national holiday so nothing moved that day. I wouldn't worry yet.

For all o'y'all complaining about Amazon: if you want it as soon as possible, you pretty much have to subscribe. You may not get as much of a discount, but IMO the free pdf, early access to the .pdf, and guaranteed shipment on the release make up for it. Amazon typically and repeatedly doesn't get it shipped out till later--there are exceptions, but this happens a lot. Part of it, IIRC, is that Paizo ships it to the Amazon distribution warehouses, and THEN from there it gets shipped to you, so Amazon just puts their release date forward giving time for it to get to the distributor first.

If you prefer Amazon by all means, more power to you. But your choice is between having cheaper book with cheaper/no shipping (Amazon), OR having the book as immediately as possible and with a free, early release pdf (Paizo sub), but you cannot have both.

Stronghold (Story)
You seek to build a bastion against which your enemies shall break like water against the rocks.

Wow, that's really cool! Now I'm even more excited about this book!

Of course, I pre-ordered my copy from Barnes and Noble.com and they say the book ships in July ...

I glanced through the PDF this morning. Something caught my eye about the new downtime rules. If I remember them correctly (don't have it in front of me), one of the prebuilt buildings available is a "bureau." And among the "teams" you can hire to staff your bureau is ... "bureaucrats."

So ... in between adventures, your fearsome slayer of dragons can run a branch office of the Golarion DMV.

Amazon E-mailed me this morning and upped my shipping date from June 13th to June 4th. Oh happy days.

It's silly but the thing I'm most excited about after reading through the PDF is the Reckless trait. Finally a simple way to get Acrobatics as a class skill :D

1) What are the rules for Corruption/Crime/Law/Lore/Productivity and Society values on the Kingdom Sheet? I'm unable to find any rule on "Kingdoms and War" chapter.

2) On the Mass Combat Chapter: How are armies trained? How long do they take to create? Is there a limitation on amount/type/size of armies a kingdom can have regarding its size and/or buildings on a settlement? (I.E, Can a starting kingdom have 3 gargantuan armies roaming the land, provided it can afford the BP maintenance?)

3) Is there a mechanic-related reason i would like to create a settlement in Terrains like Caverns, Jungle, Marsh or Mountain? They seem awfull expensive in Preparation Cost/Time compared to Plains/Forest etc.

Corruption, Crime, and Law are from the settlement rules which I think are in the Gamemaster Guide.
And also here.

As far as I understand it, the only limitation for your armies is the maintainance cost in BP. The size and level of an army doesn't seem to make any real difference, it all comes down to the CR. A small elite troop is just the same as a massive horde of low level warriors.

Have this as my first subscription purchase, but it's still showing as pending on my account.... sent a e-mail to customer service..but no response yet.

Anyone from Paizo able to assist?

So far I'm loving the book, but I have a quick question:

In the Terrain Improvements section it states that any improvement that has an (*) next to it can be built with other improvements. Does this mean that you can only have one improvement without an (*) and all the rest can have them or does that mean that if I build a mine I would not be able to build anything else there?

I think it means that you can only have a single non-starred improvement in any hex, but as many starred ones as you wish.

Also can you have improvements in the same hex as a settlement?

I'm struggling to see how the Buildings and organisations rules in downtime and the Reputation and Fame rules in Campaign systems work with previously published rules from The Factions Guide and Innersea Magic? Is anyone planning to use this with those books?

I am kind of disappointed about the explanations for how crafting feats should affect WBL. We are given some clearer guidelines (a crafter should get about a 25% benefit over normal WBL in comparison to a non-crafter, crafting for your party members should come out of your own WBL oO ), but again no context at all as to why this should be so, neither in terms of lore nor rules.

Seriously, by RAW rules text, there is no limitation at all (aside from available time and money) as to how much a magic item crafter can do for himself and his party members, so this limitation seem completely arbitrary. If there is to be such a limitation (something I personally think would actually balance the crafting feats very well), then there needs to be actual rules text and lore justification as to the reasons. I guess that is the problem if you as a developer can't actually change the rules in the CRB anymore.

As it is, it kinda feels for me like a child being talked down to by his parent, in the way of "It is so because I say so!".