Hello, all! A few months ago I obtained a good number of the Savage Tide AP magazines, and I am rather eager to run it. For those unfamiliar, Savage Tide is an old 3.5 AP that begins essentially running errands in a city, leads into some sailing across dangerous waters, engaging in the defense of a town/village/colony against an invading force, and ultimately ends with a rather large scale war on one of the non-Material Planes. And loads of other exciting events that I don't want to get into because of spoilers.
I would be running the game with Pathfinder rules, and am fairly confident I could scale the game up appropriately. However, for such an epic AP (Planar Warfare), I feel that a power boost would be enjoyable. So, before I start up a recruitment thread and hash out all my rules and regulations, I was wondering: would people be interested? If so, would you prefer to use Mythic rules, or Gestalt?
I'd say gestalt or both!
I would love to play this AP. I'm also kind of curious to try the mythic rules. Gestalt also sounds like fun.
I guess what I'm saying is I'm in no matter how you slice it.
I always enjoy Gestalt, and Mythic can be rather fun as well (if a little silly at higher levels/tiers).
I'm game for both, but I am an unrepentant power gamer at times.
Though I do suspect you are going to have to make some truly ridiculous threats at high levels if you include both.
Hmmm...I certainly wasn't planning on doing Gestalt/Mythic, as that could get a bit too complicated. While I definitely want to do one or the other, doing both might be a bit heavy. There's also a high chance that at least one person will drop in the twenty years it will take to finish this campaign, and I don't want to place the barrier to entry too high if we need a replacement. ie, Construct an 11th level gestalt/mythic player with X amount of gold from scratch. I suppose I could be persuaded into it if it's something that a lot of people want to get behind, but I'm leaning away from using both at this point.
I should also mention that I may alter several aspects of the AP. I plan to shift some of the gods and such over to the Golarion pantheon (St. Cuthbert will become Irori and the like), and I plan to cut out some of the unnecessary combat. Y'know, the 18 goblins spread across 5 rooms might just become 4 goblins in one room or somesuch. I may also alter some of the larger aspects of the AP to include some staples such as a bank heist or detective/trial whodunnit. Still in the ether of planning on the latter aspect.
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Here's my thoughts on the two:
Gestalt
- The bonuses stay the same scale throughout the campaign. It's a more linear growth than mythic.
- Gives you the best of a character of that level, but you never get more than a character could get. No matter how many options you have, you can still only do the same number of actions a round.
- Because of the above, it's a little easier to run. Encounters are usually not using more powerful foes, just more of them or more encounters. If you make foes too much more powerful, you can overpower a party.
- Gestalt is good for long adventuring days as people have more resources available to them. Spellcasters are either double casters and have more spells per day, or they're mixed with a class that gives them something else to do than cast spells.
- It can help you cover all the bases in a small party.
- In a large party, there's going to be some role overlap. You'll generally have at least two people covering each of the major party roles. Make that clear to people to avoid Diva drama.
- Gestalt characters come in two main types. Specialists, where the classes tend to do similar things - like Rogue/Bards or Arcanist/Wizards. And Generalists, like Sorcerer/Paladins. Some GM's will accept both types, others want one or the other.
- Gestalt characters generally need a good point buy, as they'll often need multiple good stats.
Mythic:
- Mythic power is an exponential growth. Eventually, you simply cannot expect non-mythic creatures to challenge them at all. You'll be completely rebuilding the encounters for half of the AP.
- Mythic characters can do more than a normal character of that level. They can face tougher monsters than a gestalt character.
- Mythic characters often don't have much more endurance than a normal character. When they are facing challenging encounters, they don't do much more a day.
- Mythic characters are generally specialists. Their mythic power reinforces their primary role.
- Some character types are better supported by mythic than others. There's a third party book coming out that may help with this, though like all third party books it may break the game.
- Mythic power lets you do things that gestalt characters simply can't do at that level.
- Mythic is less kind to people with companions/cohorts/eidolons/etc. There are some things that help the companions, but often the companion doesn't gain as much as the main character loses.
I generally prefer gestalt, but it sounds like mythic might be a better touch for this campaign.
If you want one or the other, Gestalt is far less game breaking. Mythic really does blow past 11 as it were.
Mythic is much harder to come by than gestalt on these boards, and I'm dying to try Mythic.
My vote goes Mythic 1st.
Of course, if you wanna get REAL crazy, do both!
I would imagine scaling challenging encounters gets difficult with both mythic AND gestalt characters. I would love the opportunity to play any of the options.
Doing both mythic and gestalt zooms up the power curve so fast that it would be pointless to use a standard AP. By 5th level you'd need to rewrite everything. Or you'd need to slow down advancement to run the AP over much fewer levels.
I think Gestalt is more common because it gives you more to start with and doesn't require as much work on the GM. Higher level mythic games get pretty hard to run.
I have been waiting for ages for this AP to come around and will definitely be submitting a build for consideration.
As for Gestalt vs Mythic, I would say Gestalt every time. Mythic just becomes such a crazy game of rocket tag and creates a lot more work for the GM.
Honestly though, since the game was written for 3.5, just the pathfinder ruleset and the addition of new classes would give it a more epic feel and I don't think you would be losing anything by running a 'vanilla' version.
I eagerly await character build rules!
My vote is Gestalt, and if you feel like the characters need more, throw Mythic in.
I am currently in a M6 game and at 5th level, Tier 1 Mythic, we can already do pretty hefty damage especially when the Mythic Powers and Points start to be used. M6 (or Mythic 6) is based on E6 or P6 and the highest class level you can obtain is 6th level, but the player can earn all 10 Mythic Tiers.
I'm torn, because mythic has some problems with power balance at later levels, but because the mythic power enhance your chosen abilities instead of necessarily making you a more rounded character, they require more teamwork, and proper party building.
Either way, I am excited, and i will wait patently for submission rules.
Sounds fun either way to me, i'd love to try it out.
personally I do find mythic can be a bit much, but it can also be great fun.
This AP has always sounded good to me, and I'd be interested in putting up a character regardless. Honestly, though, I'd rank "vanilla" rules over either gestalt or mythic.
Danke, Señor 0430.
It's based a little on personal experience and a little on seeing what others have done with gestalt and mythic.
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Oh great and Mighty Red Ruin,
Are you considering Psionics?
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And now I have character ideas running through my head even with no guidelines to put them in. Having just finished Skull & Shackles, my first two nautical characters have been played.
The concepts running through my head right now are Rock Star, the Librarian, Battle Dragon, Monster Priest
Adding Psionics opens up
Jedi, Energy Knight, Rook (perhaps even Crystal Castle), Abomination
I've never ran the Savage tide but I'd be interested in trying it out, as far as mythic or gestalt goes I don't have much experience with them but from what I've read mythic is much more powerful in one area while gestalt allows lower power with more utility.
I prefer Gestalt personally but I'd still be interested if you decide to do mythic or none instead but if you do pick both I'd rather step out as I'm already in a mythic/gestalt game and it's a lot to juggle/clutters character sheet
dotting for interest. I don't have a preference for either gestalt or mythic. I do have a neat idea for a rogue/hunter gestalt, but can go either way on anything)
I'm interested.
I'd happily take gestalt and mythic together, and am questionably sane enough to be considering GMing such a game myself, but that is a horrible burden to ask of someone else. :) Of the two, I'm more interested in gestalt.
One hanging chad for Gestalt!
Looks like the current lean is towards gestalt. I'll likely post up a recruitment thread this weekend (although it may be earlier) with rules, regulations, and general guidelines. I'm hoping to make a set of campaign traits as well; the AP starts off with an NPC recruiting the party for a job. She wishes to hire them, in particular, because each of them is quietly famous for an event of some sort. Whether the PC is an arena champion, a successful mercenary, a priest who is known to help those in need, or something else entirely will be somewhat determined by the trait.
It may be that I wind up opening this up to players and letting them pick the flavor/fluff of the trait, while I give a variety of set options for the crunch/mechanics.
When the recruitment thread is up, I'll post a link in this thread.
Oh great and Mighty Red Ruin,
Are you considering Psionics?
Hate to say it, but I am not. I am almost completely unfamiliar with Psionics, and while they look quite interesting, I do not currently feel comfortable enough to make judgements about them.
I do not plan to utilize 3rd party material.
If anyone has any further suggestions for things they want to see in this game, I am all ears!
What level does it start at? Just curious. If we're supposed to be famous to some extent that implies >1st to me.
First level. And by "quietly famous," I mean something closer to "his/her name is known in certain circles." When I say a PC could be an arena champion, I mean that the PC has won a few matches, perhaps a very minor tournament or two, but is generally recognized as a strong rookie up-and-comer.
The long and short of it is, a young noble has heard of your character, and believes that your character is well-suited to the minor task of retrieval of an item currently caught up in some bureaucratic nonsense (with complications, of course). Your character should be famous enough to attract this amount of attention, but not famous enough to be recognized unilaterally in the city. "Successful, but affordable" would be a good way to look at it.
Obviously, no one one should be famous for saving a city from a dragon single-handedly. Saving a small caravan from a bandit or two would be more in line.
What kind of point buy did you have in mind? Also would you allow a swashbuckler to use dueling mastery to make dueling swords piercing like it does for duelist?
Color me quite interested, still! I'd prefer straight gestalt to mythic or mixing the two, so I'm happy that's the way things seem to be going. Now to think of ideas...
EDIT: Pathfinder Zoey, if you're looking to make it a viable weapon to work with Swashbuckler abilities, you might want to use Slashing Grace, since it's a little less feat-intensive and also nets Dex to damage.
What kind of point buy did you have in mind? Also would you allow a swashbuckler to use dueling mastery to make dueling swords piercing like it does for duelist?
Point Buy: I'm looking into this, but it'll be on the higher end. Gestalt can leave some characters quite MAD, and I'd like to let players have more freedom in character creation.
Dueling Mastery: Yep, that should be fine. As a general rule, I don't have a problem with probably-Rules-as-Intended vs. Rules-as-Written. That feat came out long before swashbucklers existed, and I don't see anything game-breaking coming out of it.
hmmm maybe a sort of gladiator build could be cool.. (no performance feats), but the idea of a guy who lives for the thrill of the arena and the cheers of the crowd. maybe a guy who specializes in close combat?
I REALLY liked the concept for this system on a different recruitment:
Ability Scores: You will have a pool of 20d6, reroll 1s and 2s; assign 3 dice to each ability score and total them up. Use the remaining 2 to increase any of the following (only 1 dice per option): HP, Fort, Ref, Will, BAB, Skill Ranks, or gain spell slots per day of levels totaling up to your die result. (except 0-level)
Classes: Any Paizo, 3rd-party case-by-case. We will be using Gestalt rules as well.
Race: Any Paizo (If you choose a race above 15 RP only roll 18d6 for ability scores and knock off 1 gestalt level, and also run it by me first, I may change the penalty depending.)
Alignment: Any. NOTE: I will not tolerate Chaotic Stupid, if you want to play CE that is fine, but you will refrain from randomly killing/raping/pillaging or there will be major in-game consequences. Also I will not tolerate PvP (this includes harmful-yet-not-violent acts such as stealing or indirectly sabotaging.) You must be able to get along with the party and be a team player, if you cannot do this I will remove you from the game, I am dead serious on this issue. If you are gonna be a virus, I will be the vaccine.
Traits: Choose 2, drawback for third.
Hit Dice: Max first, roll after (reroll 1s and 2s)
just an idea for you
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Philo Pharynx did a very good analysis.
I am interested and would prefer gestalt. There are character concept that I would really like to try, like magus/wizard or magus/arcanist.
I fear that mythic will become rapidly: "A is the first in order of initiative, he kill everything on sight."
Even gestalt and normal play will reach that point if the GM isn't carefult, but mythic will reach it faster. In any instance, interested.
Savage Tide was the first game i played in back when i started with 3.5 but never finished it sadly. It got me seriously hooked and now here i am playing pathfinder online :P So i'm extremely interested in this can hardly remember anything about it, but would love it play again.
I feel Mythic it just to much as it get very out of hand, so as most have said id go with Gestalt or even vanila if it comes down to it.
I can't wait to start building up a character.
I'm interested. I have played mythic to level twenty (table top, homebrew) and enjoyed it (mythic level 20 antipaladin death knight is a real hard fight, even for a mythic party.) So i vote for gesalt, as i haven't tried that.
As for character building, an extra trait or feat is always good for gestalt characters at 1st level.
I've also heard that there are campaign traits or feats for Savage Tide. If they are required, they should be bonus feats. In many cases they are flavorful but nobody takes them. If they're forced to take them in place of normal feats it leads to resentment.
@gossamar4, I really hate random rolls for PBP. I hate them for tabletop, but online it's even more annoying. It's a real pain when you are working with different concepts and trying to figure out what you want to do. Point buy is so much better.
I agree, point buy is better.
Thinking of a magus/fighter combo, an elf. Reminds me of the old fighter/magic users back in the day.
Thinking swashbuckler/paladin could be amusing. I'll have to try out some builds.
I'm intrigued, for either type.
Whatever the DM decides to go with is cool, just offering some suggestions that players seem to like.
@gossamar4, I really hate random rolls for PBP. I hate them for tabletop, but online it's even more annoying. It's a real pain when you are working with different concepts and trying to figure out what you want to do. Point buy is so much better.
not sure what you mean here, most DM's allow you to roll scores, then assign scores to abilities... allowing the same prioritization as a point buy.
that system combines rolls with point buy.
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Here's another suggestion from a different recruitment:
Ability Scores: 24 point build, on a 1-1 scale, from a base of 10. To give an example of this, if you are playing a Sorceror and want an 18 CHA, you take the base of 10, spend 8 ability score points, and you're at 18. You may reduce a score by up to 3 points in order to gain a commensurate amount of points that is added to your 'point pool'. This is a fancy way of saying if you want more points, just cut them from your scores. To give an example, if you need 3 more ability score points for a M.A.D. build, you can cut one ability score by 3 points down to a 7, one ability score by 2 and another by 1, or 3 scores by a single point each. Make sense? While I am giving you a LOT of ability score points to work with, please do not go all munchkin and completely powergame. If your character is an Orc Barbarian with 24/18/18/08/08/08, you may wish to think up another character. I do not mind optimization, but blatant powergaming is something I have an issue with unless the campaign is set in Rappan Athuk or something.
Skills: You get +1 skill point per level.
Feats: You get a bonus feat at first level.
Both these come from gestalt recruitments. Simply ideas for GM to consider when it comes to recruitment time.
I'll wait to post my concepts until we know whether this is mythic or gestalt. Got a couple of options rolling around though.
I honestly think that just a 25 point buy would be sufficient to create a powerful, but well-rounded and interesting character even if you go classes that are slightly MAD
Dotting for interest. Reason says go Gestalt, curiosity screams Mythic... Either way, I'll look forward to the guidelines for character creation.
You know how it is when it's two in the morning and you wake up to a muse that's very annoyed because you think sleep is more important than working on characters? If you don't, I'm envious of your sleep, but I wouldn't trade my muse for all the sleep in the world.
I have an idea for a shaman/hunter that my muse is obsessing on, but this character requires me to weave a few threads into the fabric of the city.
The Hawkers are an extended halfling clan whose business is delivering letters and small items (a few ounces). Heavier items and people who can't pay for seahawk delivery will go by halfling-foot. House members that don't have hawks and younger members deliver things by running. They have many coracles (marked scarlet and tan) to navigate the waterways quickly. The youngsters use their small size to navigate the crowds quickly and they know all the back ways. They are about 100-150 of the roughly 800 halflings in Sasserine. They are easily the most prosperous group of halflings, though they are mid-sized when looking at all of the guilds and businesses in the area.
Though the main aviary is located centrally in the Merchant district, they have offices in each of the districts. If you look near the noble houses, you'll always find their scarlet banner, as the houses are among their most important clients. Since some of the messages come from the noble houses, the city watch treats attacks on the hawks like attacks on people. The kind of people that matter, that is. This doesn't happen often, because it's become common knowledge that harming a seahawk brings bad luck. In some cases, extremely bad luck.
Though delivery is their primary business, they do have a few sidelines known to select customers. Their affinity for birds is not merely skill - many members have a talent for spirit magic and bond with their birds as familiars. This means that the birds seen overhead have eyes and minds to report what they've seen. Combine that with halfling children (and sometimes adults disguised as human children) running about and you have a good information network. Their spellcasting ability is also for hire. They don't advertise these services to avoid conflicting with the local churches, but if somebody needs discreet healing, the Family can provide.
Even though he's made a name for himself in the family, Aldo is looking for something more than flying over the same city again and again. While he's still a novice, he seems to have a lot of magic for one so young. Between that and his hawks, people are predicting great things from him.
@ GM .. The "district" feats from the player's guide might work nicely, maybe as an option instead of traits? Or they could be scaled down to be more suitable as traits. Just thoughts.
this sounds interesting, I personally like both gestalt and mythic. actually my idea works pretty well with mythic.
if you could use both that would be great.
would this be in Greyhawk? also what pantheon would you be using?
He mentioned converting to the Golarion pantheon. I generally think it's easier to use the pantheon that there is rules support for and convert the module references to Gods.
The module was originally set in Greyhawk, and before that was the Isle of dread, set in the d&d known world setting: showing geek cred :). and the gods are well detailed online. I have seen them with lists of domains.
Yes, but then you need to adapt feats and traits and prestige classes. It's more work. Many current players don't know much about the ancient history of D&D and they'll need to be educated. And all it will do is please some of the old grognards. While annoying other old grognards who don't like the patchwork nature of Greyhawk.
And all it will do is please some of the old grognards. While annoying other old grognards who don't like the patchwork nature of Greyhawk.
Hey, when grognards fight grognards, everybody wins. Especially the grognards.
Adapting is not hard, really. You have to adapt the ap anyway. But the golarion gods are fine.
@gossamar4: I'm probably going to add in extra skill points per level (2 extra, one must be spent on a social skill, I think), and I am definitely going to use point buy. I'll probably go the 25-point route over a 1-to-1 route, but I will consider it before I finalize my decisions.
@ GM .. The "district" feats from the player's guide might work nicely, maybe as an option instead of traits? Or they could be scaled down to be more suitable as traits. Just thoughts.
I was actually thinking this as well. The feats look like they are a step above most traits, but a step below most feats.
would this be in Greyhawk? also what pantheon would you be using?
Set in Golarion, baby! So, Golarion pantheon for the most part.
I will note, however, that I do have several parts of the AP that I plan to edit heavily, and some that will stay almost exactly the same. There may be some adapted 3.5 monsters mixed in, while for other parts I'll just axe the 3.5 aspects and completely substitute in PF bits. I plan to incorporate some of Golarion's history into the setting, but will likely make some minor geographical alterations to "fit" everything together. This will help the game feel more familiar to Pathfinder.
If you haven't read the Player's Guide, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm planning to take the skeleton of Sasserine that is provided and add my own flesh (ewwww) to it. The concept of seven districts and seven noble families will stay the same, as will the "feel" of each district; one for the harbor/sailors, one for the arena/gladiators, etc. This will all be included in the recruitment post that will probably show up this weekend.
dotting. definitely interested.