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It likely means nothing other than Michael is updating his site, but his business profile site has three new art pieces, and all of them have 2016 date stamped on them.Got a link perchance?
Sure. I'm on my phone so it'll be interesting to see how well I pull this off.
Back in the day (can't believe I actually have to say that about this project), Gary had a FMG page on Facebook where he first linked Mike's main page. That's how I learned about it.
Nice artwork link. When I see Mike's work I get so excited, then so angry. Lol.
Drow could always use the skin of dead slaves, particularly goblinoids, I imagine that to be similar to calve skin. I don't think there would be a lot of waste in the underdark. You can imagine drow tradesmen whose job it is to process the skins.
Drow would probably view goblinoids like cattle anyway.
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Nice artwork link. When I see Mike's work I get so excited, then so angry. Lol.
Drow could always use the skin of dead slaves, particularly goblinoids, I imagine that to be similar to calve skin. I don't think there would be a lot of waste in the underdark. You can imagine drow tradesmen whose job it is to process the skins.
Drow would probably view goblinoids like cattle anyway.
I agree that there wouldn't be a lot of waste in the underdark, but I always thought drow looked at goblins the same way humans looked at rats. Just really big rodents that need to be dealt with.
Quite true probably. There ARE human cultures that use rars for eating and while certainly no drow worth the name would eat goblins I guess they'd kill a lot of em so the idea they'd use their skin for vellum has its merits.
I actually didn't know about vellum. Or rather, I didn't know the name. I recall that besides ancient cave paintings there were skins treated like a paint canvass. Drow would likely have access to some of that, but there aren't that many animals underground. Most of the creatures listed for the underdark are mainly vermin or monstrous humanoids. I guess there's some fudging that could be done though. Afterall, there are blind "cattle" that drow farmed, so it's quite possible that all of that animal would be used during its harvest.Being underground, and not being surrounded by trees, I have to wonder how rare paper is. Especially spell book and scroll paper. I guess you could argue that the plant life in the mushroom forest has a consistency not unlike the papyrus plant, and make the kind of paper that ancient Egyptians had,Quite true. Also remember that there was "vellum" long before there was paper. Vellum being a specially treated very thin animal skin (the word stems from the latin "vitulinum" means "made from calves"). Drow should have access to animals easily, so they could use vellum.
Er, not to get creepy, here, but I somehow doubt drow would have any problems using svirfneblin skin as canvas.
Well, I never said they wouldn't use goblin skin. My point is, they aren't going to restrict themselves to cows and sheep. These are people who have literal fleshwarping factories.
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Well, I never said they wouldn't use goblin skin. My point is, they aren't going to restrict themselves to cows and sheep. These are people who have literal fleshwarping factories.
Okay, I'll give you that. Might give the goblin skin to their slaves. They might be too good for it, but slaves aren't. Much like they would likely eat the prime meats, and give rat meat to their slaves.
In Dark Suns (old D&D setting) where wood was rare (desert setting with little vegetation), spell books and scrolls were made from knot-work. A series of strings/ropes with intricate knots tied in them.
This method could also be effective underground if you rule that darkvision can't read ink from a page.
The strings/ropes in that setting were often made from woven Giant's hair, but for the underground setting could even be made of roots, preserved entrails, etc.
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This method could also be effective underground if you rule that darkvision can't read ink from a page.Wut?
Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat here. I never got to experience Dark Sun back in the day. My DM was all for Ravenloft back in the days of 2e so I'm a bit lost on darkvision not being able to see ink.
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The difference between the color of the ink and the color of the page may be indistinguishable considering darkvision "is black-and-white only (colors cannot be discerned)."
I don't rule that way, but some might.
Wow, never thought of that, but it jus says colors so I'm pretty sure shades are still discernible.
As long as it's not black ink on black paper you should be good :3
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Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat here. I never got to experience Dark Sun back in the day. My DM was all for Ravenloft back in the days of 2e so I'm a bit lost on darkvision not being able to see ink.This method could also be effective underground if you rule that darkvision can't read ink from a page.Wut?
I guess this was more of a 2E thing cause if you remember back in the olden days "darkvison" was more like you did "see" heat signatures and thus then it was ruled that in the underdark one could not "read" normal ink as the heat signature of the ink and the book would not be any different from each other.
With modern darkvision there should not be any problem at all regarding this. You can read just fine.
I guess this was more of a 2E thing cause if you remember back in the olden days "darkvison" was more like you did "see" heat signatures and thus then it was ruled that in the underdark one could not "read" normal ink as the heat signature of the ink and the book would not be any different from each other.With modern darkvision there should not be any problem at all regarding this. You can read just fine.
Correct: it used to be called "infravision", seeing into the inferred spectrum, or heat signatures. A 1e-2e (or OSR) thing. My bad.
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Correct: it used to be called "infravision", seeing into the inferred spectrum, or heat signatures. A 1e-2e (or OSR) thing. My bad.
I guess this was more of a 2E thing cause if you remember back in the olden days "darkvison" was more like you did "see" heat signatures and thus then it was ruled that in the underdark one could not "read" normal ink as the heat signature of the ink and the book would not be any different from each other.With modern darkvision there should not be any problem at all regarding this. You can read just fine.
There was also "ultra vision" which let you see ultraviolet light and was much better overall, though as I recall it generally didn't work underground "because the ultraviolet rays didn't penetrate there."
That said I think I recall that the big open vault in the drow homeland in D3 was described as having ultraviolet constellations and even a "moon" from mineral deposits in the ceiling that emitted ultraviolet rays from radioactivity.
My prediction: We'll see 2 or 3 books together, but not until June. Late June. June 24 is the date I keep telling myself.
This sucks.
I give up. I've lost faith that we'll ever see another book. Was looking forward to that underground ocean too.
Still, there are parts I want to keep, especially the fungal forest and svirf lands.
Speaking of which, I think I've found a good candidate for Kladdenvalt. Necromancer Games' Shades of Grey has a svirfneblin city with map, laid out similarly to Faustervalt. It's the right size, and even the right distance if you attach the underdark map to the western side of the ToN map. It would make the Svirfneblin a little more sinister, but that's not neccessarily a bad thing :)
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Still, there are parts I want to keep, especially the fungal forest and svirf lands.
Speaking of which, I think I've found a good candidate for Kladdenvalt. Necromancer Games' Shades of Grey has a svirfneblin city with map, laid out similarly to Faustervalt. It's the right size, and even the right distance if you attach the underdark map to the western side of the ToN map. It would make the Svirfneblin a little more sinister, but that's not neccessarily a bad thing :)
Until you brought it up, I didn't know that NG had done a 1-12. Researching it, there turns out to be a lot of scenarios from Necromancer Games that I never heard of before. I don't know how easy they'll be to access nowadays, but DaveMage was kind enough to list two posts worth of NG books on the forum.
Recently I came across a book from the now defunct Solace Games company, called Inhabitants of the Dark. It's a drow book, of course, and it has a few new items and armor, as well as variant drow, subdomains, and vermin animal companions. I think the coolest was seeing a druid drow could get a cave fisher companion and wear a set of worm (medium) armor.
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Not very hard.
lol Okay, I have to admit that, that's way easier than I was expecting. And FGG of all companies too. Never would have guessed.
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Was bored so I made an underground encounter with an ichor shark and the wounding creature template from 101 Not So Simple Templates. It'd be a decent Book 3 encounter. Adding the suggested Advanced template would be even more so.
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Was bored so I made an underground encounter with an ichor shark and the wounding creature template from 101 Not So Simple Templates. It'd be a decent Book 3 encounter. Adding the suggested Advanced template would be even more so.
That is a pretty nasty creature. One of those against a group of 8-12th level characters that don't have a caster to target that creature's Will save(if they could get past the SR) could very well end in a tpk or the party being viciously scarred if the GM wanted to go that route. Are you planning on unleashing that on your players and if you do could you let us know how it goes?
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Was bored so I made an underground encounter with an ichor shark and the wounding creature template from 101 Not So Simple Templates. It'd be a decent Book 3 encounter. Adding the suggested Advanced template would be even more so.That is a pretty nasty creature. One of those against a group of 8-12th level characters that don't have a caster to target that creature's Will save(if they could get past the SR) could very well end in a tpk or the party being viciously scarred if the GM wanted to go that route. Are you planning on unleashing that on your players and if you do could you let us know how it goes?
Not this creature, but I have sent a regular wounding bulette after my players before. Way back when the gunslinger was first being playtested and I wanted to up the ante on the difficulty. There was a mini adventure (literally a single paragraph) that I read about a doppelganger who takes on the form of a child, and cries near a bulette hole he discovered, about the same time he notices adventures. He then tricks them into going down to "rescue his father". He then tries to slay any survivors that come back up. The aasimar gunslinger had no issue with dispatching both targets quite easily.
The sick thing is, even without a gunslinger, a Core archer paladin could take this out in a single round. I've seen it done in PFS. The one downside to an evil alignment vs. Smite Evil.
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I was thinking of groups without a Paladin because even in Pathfinder Society they are rare(at least in the areas I have played in). Regular Melee characters are going to have a rough time with this. A dedicated archer class and casters seem like they would fair best against this, besides the Paladin.
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I was thinking of groups without a Paladin because even in Pathfinder Society they are rare(at least in the areas I have played in). Regular Melee characters are going to have a rough time with this. A dedicated archer class and casters seem like they would fair best against this, besides the Paladin.
Yeah, I'll give you that. The brawlers and monks would have the worst of trouble because of their unarmed strikes. But it's creatures like this that make it a very valuable reason for you to a back up ranged weapon.
As the weeks wain on, I'll probably continue to make random encounters like this. 1) To stave off boredom, and 2) to add some new content to the game.
Well, I stalled as much as I could, but the time has come for my group to start this campaign.
I am running it, and I warned them that at the end of book 2, we may put it on indefinate hold. Now that I have a paizo AP I want to run (Strange Aeons) in the near future, I can at least switch to that while waiting for more installments of ToN.
Just having book 3 would be a blessing. That would be an acceptable place to end if I was forced to. My players have had character concepts for years now, and they just wanna see their ideas brought to life. I feel obligted to make that happen.
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Irony:
Just got an email from Firemountain regarding a 20% off sale.
Last line reads: "So act fast and learn how fun it is to be the bad guy"
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Irony:
Just got an email from Firemountain regarding a 20% off sale.
Last line reads: "So act fast and learn how fun it is to be the bad guy"
Yeah, got mine too. I'm asking around to people who I know were mildly interested in the AP, but haven't bought any or all of them. The coupon does me no good.
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I was bored so I did a thing.
Throne of Night - Arena Battle
No idea how they end up in there, but we just know that they do. The picture says so.
As always, enjoy my efforts.
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Those guys get booty bounced by any magic person. +4 will? that loses to a dc 15 colour spray half the time lol.
omg you are supposed to face this at level 14??? This is free man. imo you should have cheating from the crowd, like some dudes cast a couple webs or something.
They do have SR, which colour spray would have to get past. It's not like they have a negative modifier to their Will. They're fighter types.
Don't forget that NPCs don't get nearly as much wealth as PCs do. Besides, check out NPCs like the hellknight and bandit lord. They too only have +3 or +4 to their Wills, and they're written by professionals who are paid for their time. You're welcome to do better.|
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Yeah I could make better np. That hell knight also has 14 str at level 11. Do you think that is good?
I know in depth npc creation. I did so for the entire way of the wicked book (if you want to see what I did I can share it). Its important imo to look at what a level 14 character can do, and think about how your cavaliers will face them.
For example, a dwarven cleric could open the fight with holy word and basically win immediately. Or waves of ecstasy for the stun + stagger on a large amount of them. Even repulsion makes them useless.
While I'm strong mechanically, my writing skills are weak. I am good at working within a theme though. The main thing the paizo devs are hired for is NOT mechanics
You are more than welcome to share as much as you want. I encourage it, in fact. Everyone shares on the forums, especially Way of the Wicked. It's not like we get much from the creator. Pitch in. Writing ability means very little at this point.
As for good or not, that's not the point. Just saying that other NPCs out there don't necessarily have the best mechanics either.
"Journey Through the Center of the Underdark"
This is a series of 10 different encounters while traveling in the underdark.
This is D&D 5e (not Pathfinder) but conversion would be easy.
(Available at the Dungeon Masters Guild website, which has a preview and several reviews of the product). For $1 you get some very unique/cool ideas for underdark encounters.
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"Journey Through the Center of the Underdark"
This is a series of 10 different encounters while traveling in the underdark.
This is D&D 5e (not Pathfinder) but conversion would be easy.(Available at the Dungeon Masters Guild website, which has a preview and several reviews of the product). For $1 you get some very unique/cool ideas for underdark encounters.
Nice find. Just went to check it out for myself and saw that there's a direct sequel out already. It's got three mini encounters that can fit into any underdark setting, an island fortress dungeon with a dragon guardian, and full color maps.
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While probably not exactly what you guys might be interested in, both of the Pathfinder Tales Forge of Ashes (excellent book) and Called to Darkness (meh) deal with the Darklands/Underdark and are very descriptive of the many areas they show while also having a host of creatures.
There's also the Down the Blighted Path module.
