That question is over! KTFish, and you e-mail me? Same address as above. You won the #30 Haunts for Objects. Which judging from reviews of other like books, you might have. So, just e-mail me which book you'd like if you have it already.
So that's Cheapy@ or your actual name? wasn't sure which you meant by this aliase's name, figured I'd ask. If it's easier I'm this username at yahoo.
And thank you, getting free stuff's always cool, and #30 Haunts for Objects is actually one of the last three I need to complete my #30 set (still need Badges of Faith and Fleshgrafts as well...just hinting towards possible excellent question material, lol)
Next item is #30 Not So Mundane Items!
Today's question: What's your favorite non-Big 6 wondrous item, and why? This could be a homebrew item that a GM made, or one of the ones listed. No spells-in-a-can though! Something interesting, like the Pipes of the Sewers, or the Apparatus of the Crab.
Ok, I'll try and keep this one clean, since we're on a public forum lol. Same group of players, same constant odd humor. My spellchucker of the group had achieved that point where crafting items had become his means of supplementing the groups arsenal and finances, and from time to time he liked to sneak in the oddball item.
After a rather stern tongue lashing from the head of the local temple of dogooders (for simply trying to entertain themselves), my spellchucker took it upon himself to craft The Pillow of Lustful Thoughts. I'll let you figure out what it's effect was, lol. He bought new linens and bed dressing for the entire temple after an odd infection of rather aggressive Dire Moths (don't ask, to this day I still wonder how they talked me into allowing that one), and made sure that one particular pillow made it to the head priest's bedchamber.
That group had a habit of converting or perverting my NPC's, lol.
Got me a shiny new PDF today, thank you very much, always like to open my mail and find new things to read and review. Will have a review up shortly.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012
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That question is over! KTFish, and you e-mail me? Same address as above. You won the #30 Haunts for Objects. Which judging from reviews of other like books, you might have. So, just e-mail me which book you'd like if you have it already.So that's Cheapy@ or your actual name? wasn't sure which you meant by this aliase's name, figured I'd ask. If it's easier I'm this username at yahoo.
And thank you, getting free stuff's always cool, and #30 Haunts for Objects is actually one of the last three I need to complete my #30 set (still need Badges of Faith and Fleshgrafts as well...just hinting towards possible excellent question material, lol)
I'd love to hear what you think of Badges of Faith, if and when you get it.
Next item is #30 Not So Mundane Items!
Today's question: What's your favorite non-Big 6 wondrous item, and why? This could be a homebrew item that a GM made, or one of the ones listed. No spells-in-a-can though! Something interesting, like the Pipes of the Sewers, or the Apparatus of the Crab.
Since I am often in lower level campaigns, I like relatively low cost items that can be used creatively. I like the tree feather token. Place it at the feet of a BBEG indoors and he gets smashed into the ceiling (as long as he fails his reflex save). Hilarious! Although, subsequent cave-in's can make life difficult...
Today's winner is Matthew Winn! Can you e-mail me at this alias @gmail.com?
Today's prize is 101 NPC Boons.
What's your favorite non-material reward a character of yours has gained?
For the GMs, which is the favorite non-material reward you gave out?
Not sure if this counts or not.
In the last PF game I was in, I played a human Warlock/Rogue. I think I overwhelmed my GM, she hadn't run in awhile and didn't quite know what to do with me at first.
I'm one of those players that analyzes everything that's described at every situation. And I loot EVERYTHING that I can.
So, we went into this way-station that had gotten warped in from another dimension. It was sort of a semi-modern type thing, metal walls, metal furniture, lots of paper and cardboard boxes in the closets. Everything you'd expect at an airport or bus station.
We took the macguffin there, tossed it through a portal, and the GM assumed we'd be done.
We went back to town, got two wagons. We went back out. We stripped all the metal off the walls. We stripped the metal furniture. We took every scrap of paper. We took every cardboard box. We took all the medical supplies. We took the cabinets that weren't bolted down. We unbolted the bolted down cabinets. We made 3 trips, and stripped it clean.
I fed coppers to the gargoyle that was watching the place, made friends with him, and convinced him to come back to our base and guard our forge, with promises of all the scrap he could eat (this gargoyle lived off metal).
We opened a store and started selling paper, pens, metal furniture. We hired a half-giant blacksmith, built a forge, and had him start forging all that metal we stripped down into pots, pans, forks, spoons, and sold those in the store in town. We hired a clerk to mind the store.
Every time she sent us out, my character would find someone who had something new to sell, cut a deal for them to open trade with our store. Or get them to move back to the city we were based out of. I convinced the city to sell me 10 square blocks of under city (abandoned section of the original city built 2000 years ago, kind of like buying the abandoned railway lines under manhattan). I convinced a clan of dwarves to move into the city and rebuild the under city for 25% of it.
By the time the campaign ended, my character had been made the head of a guild, put on three different appointed boards by the Duchess (who ruled the city), had opened 4 different businesses in town with the other PCs as partners, had hired pretty much the entire population of street urchins in the city as messengers, and basically started an industrial revolution.
So.. I guess that's the best reward I've had, going from a stranger in a strange land (we all got warped into the place by magic gone wrong, so we had no money, no friends, no contacts, no family, no nothing) to one of the 10 most powerful people in the Duchy.
Oh, and we diplomacy'd our way out of more fights than we fought in. In fact, we gained a reputation for taking enemies and making them allies and then making them rich. :)
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I totally don't deserve to win two days in a row, so please don't pick me, but I could NOT resist replying to this one.
My favorite reward?
In 2E I was allowed the joy of playing an Avariel Paladin by a DM who doesn't let people play paladins or non-core races. He gave me a 5% chance of each and I beat the odds twice.
So naturally, you'd think I wouldn't want to endanger my precious victory in obtaining this character by doing anything stupid, right?
Well, the party ended up captured by the evil cultists of a dead god less than three sessions later. Surrounded by 100 members of the cult, the leader addressed us in his snide tone about the inevitability of his victory and we would be the sacrifices that brought his god back from the dead, yaddah yaddah yaddah.
Knowing full well the repurcussions, but not being able to resist, I looked the high priest right in the eyes, and in my best paladin voice I said "My god beat your god to death. Get over it."
I was then smacked in the face with 100 maces, leaving nothing but feathers and grey matter.
Ok, so it's a sour apple reward, but still… it was totally worth it for the story alone.
.....
And thank you, getting free stuff's always cool, and #30 Haunts for Objects is actually one of the last three I need to complete my #30 set (still need Badges of Faith and Fleshgrafts as well...just hinting towards possible excellent question material, lol)
I'd love to hear what you think of Badges of Faith, if and when you get it.
Planning on picking it up in a few days with a few other things, will probably have a review up within a few days after that hopefully.
not sure I can even begin to touch mdt, that was a great playout for a non material reward..would of been an interesting game to sit in on.
I had a few nobles in one of my campaigns who had a penchant for "slumming" and had in fact created for themselves dual identities as both a son and nephew to the king, and the upstart leaders of a new guild of thieves within the same city. Their crimes were usually only against the truly wealthy, and those they new could handle, or deserved, the loss of wealth. Well, fate being what it was, my play group stumbled into a crime in progress, and ended up protecting the thieves working for the "rich kids in hiding" as I had come to know them by this point. Fleeing from the scene from the town guards escorted by the thieves, they were brought back to the guild house and introduced around. They spent a considerable amount of time working for the guild, and the noble cousins took a liking to them, so they made sure that the right deals were made on both sides of the law to make life easier for the playgroup. By day they lived as honored guests, never questioning why the royal family had taken such an interest in them, only counting their luck as they used their new found status to case and plan heists in locations they normally never would of gained access to. By night they were the muscle for a group of thieves who had become legend amongst the poor, as they were known for "dropping" loot as they ran through the poorer neighborhoods.
All in all I do believe they lasted for just under a month living very well within the city, protected from the wrath of the town guards, and free to pilfer (as long as they stayed on target with where they were sent, the cousins would never take from the honorable or poor).
When the campaign ended they still had good connections to the kingdom, as the eldest cousin was now on the throne, and the younger had assumed the full reigns of the guilds, having done away with those that preyed upon the weak. Their last interaction with the cousins was to cash in all favors, and call upon an army of thieves to besiege a kingdom in a single night of cat and mouse, thereby tying up the local militia and guard, as the play group set about the task of executing the tyrant who sat upon the throne, thereby freeing the lands from a dictator. I think an army of thieves at your disposal counts as a nonmaterial boon, no?
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My gaming groups often do a lot with non-material rewards, so it's hard to pick just a few.
I had a player go simply ga-ga when she discovered that, by accepting a role as a fairy Doctor (a druid with no extra powers, but whom the fey knew they could go to for help), she gained the random ability to make the world's best cheese-toast. Not just "good," but literally the best cheese-toast it was possible to make.
That even teared up some players, because an ongoing NPC, "Uncle Jop" had been renowned in the campaign for making really good cheese-toast. And he often seemed "in the know" about mystic goings-on. Only when he died (of old age) was the PC offered the role of Fairy Doctor, so the players realized Uncle Jop hadn't just been a silly old man with a broad-brimmed hat and a few sheep he watched over. He had been the previous Fairy Doctor. And suddenly a quick with no game mechanical effects (making perfect cheese-toast) became a badge of honor.
As a player most recently I was really tickled when the GM running the game I have a lore seer oracle with automatic writing decided to use my character's ability to deliver prophecies to drive the plot. The GM had always planned for the characters to be motivated, in part, by mysterious and troubling prophecies they become aware of. rather than make those something brought in from outside, the GM used my character to have the automatic writing deliver those prophecies while my character is asleep. I have no power over them (though I can still use the power normally when awake), but it elevates my character's status as a "seer" within the context of the game, which is really cool.
One more hour left!
...and damn, this is going to be a hard choice.
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I think the most fun non-material reward I've ever gotten was in a game where I played a paladin, and my ally played a knight. We went into a dungeon with a bunch of knights under our command. Since they were supposed to be our responsibility I did everything in my power to keep them alive. I ordered them into formations that allowed them to step back when injured and rotate out. I used my lay on hands to heal them. I even came to the brink of death myself in order to keep them alive.
The player of the knight treated them like nameless NPCs. He broke formation almost immediately, stayed apart from the group, and refused to share any of his many hoarded healing potions. As a result we lost more of them than necessary. and after the combat I tried to ark him for just one of his potions in character in front of the remaining soldiers so that we could heal the one spellcaster that was still needing healing, and in front of them, in character, the player said "no I don't care about them, I don't give a crap whether they live or die, these are my potions."
Long story short there was already building tension between our characters because the character was played like that the whole time and this was the final straw, I told his character that I would see him courtmarshalled, and after we got out, thanks to witness testimony and my characters he was stripped of rank thrown out of the order and I was given all of his previous titles and honors in the order.
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Question over! The winner is Owen, by a hair. If he wishes to defer (or already has it), the winner will be mdt!
Yesterday, the Secrets of the Oracle came out. So between that, and Owen's post reminding me of oracles, let's have that as the prize!
Next question:
From any source, what is your favorite Oracle mystery, fluff-wise? Your favorite one mechanics-wise? If they are different, why is that?
Good question! I love Heavens & Lore for fluff, and Battle & Life for mechanics. But pretty every mystery is fascinating in its own way. I love the class in general.^^
Because the first two are very "inspiring", but not very "utilitarian", while the latter two are the most useful in game terms.
Armor Mastery : Mechanics wise, it's pretty much the only way to not be a fighter and still move around in medium armor unimpeded. It's so good it's almost worth taking a dip into Oracle just for that mystery, especially if you plan on wearing heavy mithral armor eventually.
Fluff Wise : Interstellar Void. I just like the idea of someone calling down a bit of interstellar space and wrapping it around someone like a wormhole sucking up all the heat out of them. :)
EDIT : Why are they different? Because Armor Mastery is a huge tactical and combat benefit, but, there's not really a lot of flavor to it. It's pure combat boost with just enough fluff to make it pass muster.
Honestly IV would probably be my second most favorite mechanics wise as well, I mean a scaling 1d6 that goes up by level? Granted, only usable once or twice per day, but still... it does a bucket of damage and it's auto-hit, no spell resistance, and it's a fort save to take half. Which makes it a GREAT caster killer.
I had meant mysteries, not revelations. But revelations work too!
Question over! The winner is Owen, by a hair. If he wishes to defer (or already has it), the winner will be mdt!
Congrats Owen and/or MDT.
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Question over! The winner is Owen, by a hair. If he wishes to defer (or already has it), the winner will be mdt!
I'm honored to be selected, and I loved reading everyone's entry. That said, as a pro with other resources for getting PDFs [like, Steve already gave me a copy of this one ;) ] I happily defer to mdt, who also gave a great answer!
I had meant mysteries, not revelations. But revelations work too!
DOH! :)
I'll have to look through them again. :) Sorry about that, lack of sleep. :)
Question over! The winner is Owen, by a hair. If he wishes to defer (or already has it), the winner will be mdt!I'm honored to be selected, and I loved reading everyone's entry. That said, as a pro with other resources for getting PDFs [like, Steve already gave me a copy of this one ;) ] I happily defer to mdt, who also gave a great answer!
Well, thank you very much! :)
My e-mail is my handle (MDT) plus the name of my preferred D20 system (Pathfinder), all one word, at the Yahoo dot com. :)
It should be sent!
The oracle question will go until tuesday, due to holidays.
Hey one I can answer (relatively new, so still don't have a whole lot of stories yet)
I can't say I've actually read all of the mysteries fully, but my favourite would have to be the one I ended up playing in our Serpent Skull campaign. Continued below for spoilerness.
After he finished performing the necessary rights upon my previous character's body (the party had already allied with the tribe), the group approached Ragongi as they were in need of a healer to accompany them... and Ragongi was fairly well known for wandering off into the ruins of the city, and managing to come back safely. After consulting the spirits (Natural Divination Revelation, wonderful flavour and good utility) he agreed to accompany them, and proceeded to curse, blind or charm a variety of beasties (including a Gibbering Mouther at one point :p). I had alot of fun with him.
Never played another character like him before or since. Getting to do all those fun things that usually fall into the darker realms, and getting away with it because he was a crazy voodoo shaman. My best accomplishment was when he zombified the Green God (Froghemoth which the group had managed to kill at about level 10 thanks to some luck and a suicidal rogue). That didn't go down to well with the Bardbarian follower of Sarenrae :p
I heartily encourage you all to check out the Juju mystery if you can get your hands on it. A lot of cool stuff there.
On the fanmade side, I wouldn't forget Zelgadas Graveyard's Passion mystery and of course, my own Peace mystery!
Two more hours!
Peanuts is our winner today! Please e-mail me at this alias @ gmail.com.
I'm far too giddy from having the #4 best selling 3rd party product at paizo.com right now to not have this book as the prize. The prize? The Secrets of Forgotten Magic Items
Today's questions (answer any of them):
Have you ever received an "out-of-level" scroll? For example, a scroll of raise dead at level 1. Or a scroll of Wish at level 3. If so, how did you end up using it?
For GMs: how often do you send players out to explores ruins for lost information? Any interesting stories from such expeditions?
For players: Same question as GMs, but from the player's perspective.
No scroll, but our rogue once grabbed a Talisman granting 1 wish. Our GM gave it because we would soon face a powerful enemy and at least 1 death was probable.
There were 2. The rogue used his wish to resurrect the priestess, but then she failed to resurrect the fighter/rogue. Too bad the wish was only one.
On the other and, on my very first DMing I gave the wizard a wand of fireballs at 1st level. I didn't tell her what it was, only that a command word was necessary to activate its power. She guessed the word at first try. Inside a closed room. To try opening a door. All party DEAD. And all of them blaming it on me.^^
Woot, I actually won one of these! Had a lot of fun with Ragongi, and the Oracle is a really flavourful class, so be glad to read through my prize :)
No scroll, but our rogue once grabbed a Talisman granting 1 wish. Our GM gave it because we would soon face a powerful enemy and at least 1 death was probable.
There were 2. The rogue used his wish to resurrect the priestess, but then she failed to resurrect the fighter/rogue. Too bad the wish was only one.
On the other and, on my very first DMing I gave the wizard a wand of fireballs at 1st level. I didn't tell her what it was, only that a command word was necessary to activate its power. She guessed the word at first try. Inside a closed room. To try opening a door. All party DEAD. And all of them blaming it on me.^^
Ouch... Well that was a short campaign I spose... What was the command word I wonder?
Peanuts, check your spam folder, it should be sent! Also, do you want a free gmail invite?
In attempting to help my friends 15 year old son and his friends get into the hobby, I found myself GMing for a group of barely contained teenage boys, who were only interested in the killshot, and power-mongering. Nothing I attempted in story was working to catch their interest, they simply wanted to pull out there weapons, and set about killing. As you can imagine, it quickly became a contest amongst them as to who had the cooler, more powerful item/weapon. It was their constant one upping that led me to give to the wizard, at a whopping level three, a fully charged staff of the (yeah I know it's copyrighted, can't really reference it anymore)...but I'm willing to bet you all know which staff I'm referring to. I got my desired results out of it, he blew everyone to kingdom come, several times. They learned to respect the "weak pathetic" wizard, and that perhaps some levels of power are out of their reach, for now.
I know it's not a scroll, but I felt like sharing, lol.
Question over! The winner is Owen, by a hair. If he wishes to defer (or already has it), the winner will be mdt!I'm honored to be selected, and I loved reading everyone's entry. That said, as a pro with other resources for getting PDFs [like, Steve already gave me a copy of this one ;) ] I happily defer to mdt, who also gave a great answer!
Like Steve being an OKCS fan :)
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Ouch... Well that was a short campaign I spose... What was the command word I wonder?
"Fire On", what else?^^
Ouch... Well that was a short campaign I spose... What was the command word I wonder?"Fire On", what else?^^
I was thinking 'peanut butter".
Recently a 4th level group I'm playing in got a magic book we couldn't Identify. We had killed an evil wizard renowned for his magic scrolls and tomes, and received a heavy book bound in supple leather, with an illustration of a man "without his skin, showing the musculature beneath." We all freaked out that the book was showing a man without skin, and was bound in extra-soft skin. So, we didn't want to have anything to do with it until we knew what it was.
That's a Spellcraft check with a DC of 15+ item level. That means when you MISS a Spellcraft check, you know the item's level is above your check -15. So the best Spellcraft in our group was our witch, who had a +9, with Identify a +19. She took a try, and got a 30... and failed. Our oracle (Spellcraft +6) tried and rolled a natural 20... which didn't do it. You can only attempt a Spellcraft check to identify an item once per day, so you can't take 20. So our witch tried day after day, and never got higher than a 31.
We were in a froth. We thought is might be a cursed book, or a necromancer's tome, or something with rituals that, when read aloud, summoned the Elder Gods. We focused on getting the thing identified. We took it to a friendly sage, who we discovered always took 10 on skill checks for hire (so as to never miss anything obvious), and thus only got a 25. For weeks, we designed our adventuring lives around making sure the witch could spare an Identify every day.
In the end, it turned out to be a manual of bodily health +1, which WAS off-level for us, but wasn't nearly as powerful or dangerous as we had assumed. But all the manuals have a caster level of 17th, so it's a DC 32 Spellcraft to Identify one. With the +9 Spellcraft and the +10 from Identify that meant a die roll of 13 or better was all we needed. But since you can only try it once per day, the witch's average rolls weren't cutting it, and the oracle's natural 20 (without Identify) was only hitting a 26, which was still short of the mark.
The GM had given it to us because he figured we'd never sell it (he was right), and the main melee character in the group (a 21 Con dwarven barbarian) hadn't taken loot yet, and was built to be hp maximized. The GM thought the dwarf would be thrilled by the book, and read it.
Instead the dwarf never did trust it, and the group decided the witch (as the lowest hp character) should take it, which the witch argued against because she had a 10 Con, and wouldn't get anything from it. But since the characters didn't talk in game-stats, the group overruled her. So the most major magic item we'd gotten to date, which had freaked us out for weeks, ended up having no effect on the party's power level.
When our patron then told us he had two available jobs – raiding a tomb of disease-ridden sex offender mummy spellcasters cursed to never sully the afterlife, or check out a new library opening in a rival capital city – we went for the tomb.
I'm honored to be selected, and I loved reading everyone's entry. That said, as a pro with other resources for getting PDFsLike Steve being an OKCS fan :)
That's so cool!
Oh yea, I need to come up with another question. I think I'll give another day instead, to try to get some new people.
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For GMs: how often do you send players out to explores ruins for lost information? Any interesting stories from such expeditions?
PC party level was at about 3, If I remember right
about a year ago in a homebrew game I was running. I had a town that was near some ruins named Giant's Maze given that the passages were 10ft wide and 18 tall.(I still have the map and a partial list of it's contents)
These ruins were no where near to the rank of Lost Sacred Ruins (contains powerful secrets and stuff) in my game, but it still had some good stuff in the hidden rooms.
To get in the ruins you had stairs descending northward so the PCs had natural sunlight going a good piece into the start of the ruin. At the base of the stairs was a wall (so you could go east or west). When the PCs first entered the ruin. The ruin was made of granite and the walls were bare (except for a few large torch holders) and the floor well done.
The PC's later returned to town and later that night heard yelling coming from the quiet woods in the direction of the ruins "Oh Holy s***, that isn't human" and a few screams. They returned in the morning and the first thing in the ruins they see is 3 diced up soldiers of a a**-**** diety and that bare granite wall now had a 3 inch deep, pulsing red glowing triple scar. It spooked them good.
In the same ruins they found one of my secret treasure rooms with had a a few +2 weapons, some +2 armours, gold, wands of spell level 2 or 3 and a covered object (16ft high, 8ft wide, 6inches deep) against the wall, they uncover it, and it's a big mirror, by it also happens to be one of my custom cursed artifacts, and almost all the PCs got a boost from it's chaotic nature, one didn't get effected and it was the fighter as he passed his will save
What caused the scar?
That is a spoiler.
as I am currently running that same area and homebrew in a PBP game and if they know what caused it, it would "ruin" the surprise.
Actually I can let go some details of what caused the scar.
It was a person who is infected with a special strain of Living Corruption (a custom disease template)
Peanuts, check your spam folder, it should be sent! Also, do you want a free gmail invite?
Yeah I got the email. Just hadn't gotten around to downloading it yet due to working nightshift and such. Downloaded now :) Thanks, but I think I still have a gmail address somewhere. Haven't used it for years.
About an hour left for this question!
So Cheapy
like what I can give about what caused the scar
(Living Corruption is a nasty supernatural disease)
I meant the question to win the book! But sudden scars can be quite unsettling.
The winner is dungeon grrrl! Please send me an e-mail (mentioned above!).
Still figuring out today's prize.
The winner is dungeon grrrl! Please send me an e-mail (mentioned above!).
Still figuring out today's prize.
Sent!
I look forward to the next question. This is fun!