My friends and I are all newbs, and we've been playing Pathfinder for a few weeks now (everyone is new to pathfinder and has never played D&D before), and everyone has reached level 2. My GM wants to play too, so I'll be GMing my own side quests to run on the odd nights.
I've been looking around and I found the Time Thief page, and I read the "The Time Thief in Your Campaign" where it said
"They might be associated with a god of time and history, taking the role paladins occupy for gods of good and justice. On the other hand, their role could be more clandestine—a cabal of hidden time-manipulators who battle behind the scenes to ensure time is undisturbed by fate-eating demons or chronal necromancers who wish to resurrect dead timelines. Such an organization could easily become patron to a group of adventures, guiding player characters to face threats that time guardians have defeated over and over in replayed histories."
1) Are there any Pathfinder classes/races that would be good as a part of a nefarious group of time altering villains?
I like the idea of having a Time Thief Quest Giver that will send the party on quests to stop this group. It'll let me do cool things like having the party reface an already defeated Boss from the Main GM's quests (but now brought back from another timeline and has reinforcements to make the battle different). I've already found the Swiftblade and Time Oracle from other threads, but I'm looking for more classes and interesting races to use so I can make the group somewhat varied. I'm thinking my Time Thief NPC will be level 5 so she can have "Personal Time" so she can guide the players (or manipulate them when necessary), and I'd have her often run ahead of the group to weaken higher level bosses so they are effectively at a CR that the party can handle (I'd cut the XP down since the boss was pre-weakened, but this would let me show the party more advanced things in the game). She'll be a Half-Drow with Drow Nobility, so she can use levitate and feather-fall to take shortcuts that the party can't yet follow.
2) Does this plan sound reasonable? With the party at level 2, would their enemies even have enough abilities to make this an interesting enough series of quests? Or should I hold off on this until everyone is higher level?
A lot of what I've found on the boards have mentioned things from D&D, but I'm not familiar enough with the games to try to bring them over as I'm not sure of what changes I'd need to make for balancing, nor do I want to make my own classes for the same reason (at least not yet).
Well, I would give this artifact a look for your campaign.
There is a time patron for witch you could look at. The shattered psyche oracle curse could represent alternate timelines affecting someone's mind, Granny Weatherwax-style.
Other than that, you're already familiar with a certain amount of what I would suggest. ^_^
Thanks, those sound cool.
I should also mention that I consider Time and Space to be one of the same, so ideas of space classes are welcomed as well. I'm already planning on having a reoccurring enemy that can teleport away, usually when a resurrected boss is killed or when the enemy is too wounded (hopefully the party won't kill him the first time they meet).
Well, dont forget you also have the Oracle time mystery, tho some of the more fun revelations dont get online before 7th level.
A Samsaran time thief that visits their previous lives could be quite good.
Monk of the Four Winds, at level 11 they stop time for themselves, if you need a frontlinet.
Cool, thanks guys.
Is there anything that can permanently poison a weapon? I was thinking it'd be cool to have the NPC have 6 Returning Starknives, each one would have a permanent poison on it for a different base stat (would allow her to debuff enemies that are too strong for the party to normally face). I know as the GM I could always make my own, but I'd prefer to not add things that the players couldn't craft. She can always carry a lot of poison around for the same affect, but it'd be cool.
A Dagger of Venom is basically permanently poisoned, but the dagger only has enough poison for one use a day.
A rage prophet with the Time domain is both mechanically powerful and pretty interesting npc - a good long term enemy actually. Rage prophet is typically a multiclassed barbarian / oracle. Really fun prestige class but can be a lot of systems to master (rage powers, oracles curse, oracle revelations, spells, rage etc. )
If you can manage all of those the combination is mechanically pretty solid. A better melee force than a typical oracle but you do get a bunch of nice stuff and tricks. Just make sure that your rage powers and oracle revelations will benefit as you advance rage prophet levels. If it exists I would suggest looking for a npc rage prophet from a published source to help you build your NPCs.
Another thing to consider at least in Golarion there are a number of really long living races. Gnomes can technically live forever - as long as they don't get bored. Elves as well (in Golarion) and even humans if they are a wizard or an alchemist can become immortal and there are other classes that offer means of living a very long life. (Reincarnated Druids for one example)
There's a lot of good time magic on the arcane spell caster lists, so you can't really go wrong with that approach. An Impossible bloodline sorcerer could be fun, for instance. You can reflavor a lot bloodline powers to cause confusion / disorientation due to a temporarily distorted timeline. You could start your villain off lower in power, who increasingly gains control over time unless the PCs stop him (e.g. Anticipate Peril and Expeditious Retreat help initially, local to the NPC. By level 2 spells, he's distorting those around him but without control. At level 3 spells, he's controlling the effects offensively). Roll in some more general purpose magic to flesh out the list of spells known.
These same ideas work for a Wizard (probably Transmutation or Divination specialist. Arcanist (or Exploiter Wizard) would also be a good option because you could combine elements of the Divination (Foresight) school from Wizard with the Impossible bloodline of the sorcerer or take thematic exploits like Dimensional Shift.
Thematic Spells:
Anticipate Peril
Expeditious Retreat
Time Shudder
Haste
Sands of Time
Slow
If your GM allows 3rd party classes the Time Warden and Time Thief from Rogue Genius Games are awesome. The "evil" Time Warden, the Time Reaver, is no different from the Time Warden mechanically, only thematically. Rather than preserving the time line, it seeks to disrupt it.
Time Thief
Time Warden
I was looking at the Dagger of Venom, but it only had one type of poison, and it didn't leave room for character flavor. Applying a poison to a weapon before the day's adventure would have the same affect (as far as I can tell, that's perfectly fine), so I'll go with that, i.e. each Starknife would be affective once per day, but I can have multiple poisoned weapons that way.
I'm really liking the multiclass ideas. I know my party hasn't thought about their character's advancement enough, and this can help give them ideas, or at least start them thinking of it.
Yeah, I'm hoping to have at least one reoccurring villain. It really depends on if the party kills them too quickly or not, I can always make a new villain if one dies, just as the party can always make a new PC if one just happens to die (muahahahaha).
I found the Time Thief on d20pfsrd, which started all of this, and I've seen mention of the Time Warden in a few threads, but I haven't found it online yet, so I wanted to wait a bit before buying the book (I can only buy so many books, so I want to see my options before jumping in).
I believe I have plenty now to get started now, though more ideas are always welcome.
look at the Daggermark Poisoner prestige class perhaps? (eventually can apply poison as a swift action that does not provoke as long as one hand is free). Not a great prestige class for PC's but a fantastic (and somewhat unusual) class for NPC enemies - lots of ways to play it and with a good selection of poisons really strong (though the costs of poisons can add up quite quickly)
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