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Hey all, I am starting with Pathfinder and will be DMing my first game this weekend out of the Beginner Box. I have several gamer-types lined up and also am trying to get my fiancee on board ... She was attracted to the wizard type and, moreover, is really interested in enchantment-type spells. That is, she was really interested in "charm person" and "sleep" and things like that. If my crew really enjoys the beginner box adventure, I hope to move on to the Core Rulebook so that the players can expand their characters. I told my fiancee, roughly, that based on what she wants to do and is interested in with her character, it may make sense to dabble in Bard a bit. However, now that I look more carefully at all the mechanics, it looks like Wizard leans pretty heavily on Dex as a secondary stat and tends to be quite weak with Charisma. Does this mean that Wizard/Bard is fundamentally impossible? Or is it worth going forward? Her character concept is all about enchantment, beguiling, etc. rather than blasting or burning. I'm new to Pathfinder and so is the whole group, so hyper-Munchkin min/maxing is not really a priority, I just want to check whether she'll find the character concept frustrating. I want to walk a balance between "true to the character concept" and "frustratingly useless" without needing to stray into "mim/max."
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Jun 29, 2012 13:30
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internetstuff posted:Hey all, If she wants to be a wizard, especially an Enchanter, she needs to be just a wizard. The only stat she should ever care about is Intelligence, as it increases the DCs for monsters to resist her charm spells. Because almost every enchantment spell allows a save, it would be frustrating to her if she didn't bump Intelligence up as high as possible at every opportunity in favor of something like Dex that she will never use. If she branches out to bard or any other class (besides prestige classes), it takes her longer to get to her next level of spells, which are exponentially more powerful than the level before. She should pretty much just be an Elf wizard always.
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Jun 29, 2012 14:28
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Given how powerful wizards are already, would it really hurt things that much to multiclass like that? It seems like that's just the difference between "very high tier" and "extremely high tier".
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Jun 29, 2012 15:02
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After digging into the SRD online (wow! how awesome! Pathfinder is so freakin cool) it looks like maybe Maestro Sorcerer would be right up her alley. Maybe dip into bard for 1 level or 2 levels but stick mostly with Maestro Sorcerer. That's a pretty big departure from the beginner box but it looks like that would be more what she would like. It seems that the Enchanter Wizard is more about being a "puppetmaster" whereas the Sorc is more about using personality to compel the monsters. It seems like these two builds would have a similar ends and a lot of overlapping spells but with a different "driver." I will have to run both by her and see which is more appealing to her. (Because she is not really a gamer by nature I find it's best if I lay options out and let her pick, rather than being like "Here is the SRD, have at it" )
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Jun 29, 2012 15:07
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internetstuff posted:Hey all, I would stick with one class. There are a couple things you could do here. 1. Make a wizard and specialize in Enchantment. Your highest stat should be intelligence, but there is no reason that you can't put some points into charisma over dexterity. A wizard's spells are strong enough that they don't need to min-max every stat to be effective. 2. Make a sorcerer. Charisma is their main stat, so you don't need to make any trade-offs. In general, though, the sorcerer is a little bit weaker than the wizard because they are one level behind on spell progression. 3. Make a bard. They get a lot of the same enchantment spells as a wizard, it just takes a little longer because they have slower spell progression. This is probably the weakest of the three classes, though.
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Jun 29, 2012 15:13
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Inverse Icarus posted:Got any math on that? I'm curious where the insane gets multiplied in +1 Barb: Power attack 1 +1 Ninja: Heavy armour proficiency 3 +2 Ninja: Weapon Training (trick) 3 +4 Barb Dazzling Display (5) +6 Shatter Defenses 7 +6 Cornugon Smash (trick) 7 Drunken Brute, Roaring Drunk. Roaring drunk stacks for a +1 to intimidate (and saves vs. fear effects) for each drink consumed during the rage. Drunken brute expands the rage by 1 round for each drink consumed but leaves you sickened for double that time. quote:Flask of Endless Sake Put him on a horse, wake up, start raging, have another party member lead him around as he drinks constantly throughout the day. On the one hand, the party has to slow down since he's always taking a move action to drink. If combat starts around 8 hours later, then that's a +2880 to intimidate and will saves vs. fear effects. Not to mention he can burn ki for an extra attack (which for that reason his first feats after the ones above will either be Extra Ki [for murdering] or Step Up [for combat movement without needing to stop drinking]. Generally 5-foot stepping everywhere has kept me in the middle of combat, and if it doesn't I have enough rounds of rage to burn to move until he can resume drinking. Of course, if he's disarmed of his bottle or something for more than one round, he's sickened for like 16 hours. He starts every adventure by handing the cleric his wand of cure sickness.
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Jun 29, 2012 16:25
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Why sake, when clearly you need wine to go with that much cheese?
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Jun 29, 2012 16:41
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Porkness posted:Why sake, when clearly you need wine to go with that much cheese?  Funny enough, this entire thing just started as me saying "I like barbarians and I like sneak attack so I'm taking both" But I ended up spending every adventure blackout drunk with my raging carrying capacity full of expensive whisky (for the alcohol/weight ratio) for purely roleplaying reasons, I just happened to notice that it roaring drunk stacked with itself. This character also may not survive that long, he has a habit of telling people he's able to disarm traps then setting them off intentionally and going "They're disarmed!"
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Jun 29, 2012 16:54
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teddust posted:I would stick with one class. There are a couple things you could do here. Agreed, though I'd suggest just outright using the bard or sorceror. The wizard is stronger, but not in the direct sense, it is more optimizeable, but also easier to screw up on a day to day basis, especially with managing spells selection and availability. Sorcerors tend to have all the difficulty in the chargen, so you can guide them through the hard parts. Additionally they have a number of early perks available in the form of the Serpentine Bloodline(mind affecting and language spells always work on animals, magical beasts and monstrous humanoids as if they were humanoids) and the Fey Bloodline(+2 DC to all compulsion spells). Bards are more rounded, as they quite automatically make pretty good support characters with their music, come with a huge stack of skills they're great at, though they lose out on the nastier mind control spells the Wizard/Sorceror gets to play with, their basic mind control array isn't that different.
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Jun 29, 2012 17:03
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Thank you so much for the advice, everyone! I think I am going to just let her stick with a wizard but help her build her own rather than going with the pregen from the beginner box. Let her pick Elf for the racial bonuses and show her how she can focus on enchanting spells. I noticed that, indeed, the Wizard gets a lot more spells per level than the enchanter plus (if you stick with the core rulebook/beginner box only) the Wizard just seems overall more straightforward than the sorc. I have one more dumb newbie question. I was looking at Burnt Offerings but they didn't provide the AC for the goblins. Are they assuming that you will look up goblins in the SRD/Bestiary for the full stat block?
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Jun 29, 2012 18:30
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veekie posted:Agreed, though I'd suggest just outright using the bard or sorceror. The wizard is stronger, but not in the direct sense, it is more optimizeable, but also easier to screw up on a day to day basis, especially with managing spells selection and availability.
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Jun 29, 2012 19:08
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internetstuff posted:Thank you so much for the advice, everyone! I think I am going to just let her stick with a wizard but help her build her own rather than going with the pregen from the beginner box. Let her pick Elf for the racial bonuses and show her how she can focus on enchanting spells. I noticed that, indeed, the Wizard gets a lot more spells per level than the enchanter plus (if you stick with the core rulebook/beginner box only) the Wizard just seems overall more straightforward than the sorc. You're looking at a copy of Burnt Offerings, volume 1 of the Rise of the Runelords adventure path? That series was still printed under the Dungeons and Dragons v3.5 rules so not everything will match up 1:1. It's playable, but there may be some things that could trip yup new players and a new GM. They're just about to release a hardbound compilation of the entire AP updated to Pathfinder RPG mechanics at the end of July so you might think about that as a long-term goal if they really get into the first session or two of Burnt Offerings.
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Jun 29, 2012 19:15
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Hmmm ... Interesting. Is there a different AP that uses pure PF rules that you would recommend for a new DM/New group?
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Jun 29, 2012 19:25
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I might look at the Crypt of the Everflame/Masks of the Living God/City of Golden Death module series. Takes PCs from 1st to 7th level or so, and they're written with a new GM/new player in mind, especially Crypt of the Everflame.
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Jun 29, 2012 19:32
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internetstuff posted:Thank you so much for the advice, everyone! I think I am going to just let her stick with a wizard but help her build her own rather than going with the pregen from the beginner box. Let her pick Elf for the racial bonuses and show her how she can focus on enchanting spells. I noticed that, indeed, the Wizard gets a lot more spells per level than the enchanter plus (if you stick with the core rulebook/beginner box only) the Wizard just seems overall more straightforward than the sorc. She may be better off going with a sorcerer. Sorcerers have a limited number of spells that they know, but they have a larger allotment that they can cast per day and they do not have to prepare spells in advance. They also cast off of their Charisma score, so if she wanted to be diplomatic or level bard, her stats would be lined up better for that. A wizard gets less spells per day but they can potentially know every wizard spell in the game. But instead of choosing one from their known spells to cast as they wish, they have to pick the ones they can use at the start of the day. Because you have to anticipate what you'll need, sorcerer is a bit more straightforward and may be better for a beginner.
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Jun 29, 2012 19:35
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GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:A wizard gets less spells per day but they can potentially know every wizard spell in the game. But instead of choosing one from their known spells to cast as they wish, they have to pick the ones they can use at the start of the day. Because you have to anticipate what you'll need, sorcerer is a bit more straightforward and may be better for a beginner.
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Jun 29, 2012 19:44
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Kobold posted:That's usually my recommendation as well. Wizards get locked in to their spells when they prep them at the beginning of the day, or they can leave slots open and "powerstudy" a spell out of their spellbook. However, that does take some time. Sorcerer can just fling out whatever spell they need without prep as long as they haven't exceeded their spells per day. Much more new player friendly, I think.
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Jun 29, 2012 20:12
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internetstuff posted:I noticed that, indeed, the Wizard gets a lot more spells per level than the enchanter Wait, what? No, the enchanter gets more spells than a universalist wizard. That's the point of being an enchanter, or really any sort of specialist.
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Jun 29, 2012 20:39
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Thanks for the advice, all. I really wish the beginner box had sorcerer and maybe barbarian. I really love the step-by-step way they go through character creation. I know you guys will all tell me it's really very easy but it is still a little bit daunting, the absolute for-dummies step by step process in the box set is nice.
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Jun 29, 2012 21:27
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The Arcane bloodline has an ACF "Sage" that let's you use your Int bonus in place of Charisma for all things Sorceror.
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Jun 29, 2012 22:06
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MadScientistWorking posted:Wow the Alchemist really outclasses the Wizard in terms of spell preparation. I thought it was the same for both of those classes. Sorcerers, on the other hand, are spontaneous casters, which is nice for newcomers playing casters because they don't have to worry about prepping their spells ahead of time (they probably won't know which spells are good "standbys"). Plus, they probably won't know about the "read the spellbook" option and leave slots open. Heck, I didn't even know about that aspect until... last year? And I've gamed for quite some time. EDIT:vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv Oh, really? Huh. Well, the guy who revealed this fact to me about the Wizard played 3.5, so that could mean it was changed in the "update" to Pathfinder... or he was just off on how long it takes. Either's possible, really. Kobold fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jun 29, 2012 |
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Jun 29, 2012 22:29
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Kobold posted:Mmm. They're about the same, really. Both Alchemist and Wizard have to prepare their spells/extracts before they can use them. However, both are not required to pick their spells at the beginning of the day like a Cleric would. Using their spell/formula book, they can pick a couple spells they know are going to be useful, and then leave a couple slots open for special situations. Then, they just have to pop out their book and spend... 15? minutes memorizing the spell/making the extract they need. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jun 29, 2012 |
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Jun 29, 2012 22:29
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The Alchemical Prodigy trait is awesome as well. I took Divine Favor as the potion I could make and now I get +2 attack/damage every fight for cheap. Add to that Explosive Bomb coupled with Explosive Missile on a Heavy repeating Crossbow and Deadly Aim gets you a Gnome with a bazooka at level 4. The primary gets d8+4+2d6+7(8). The splash is 10 ft and 9-10 damage. Great for making my own fantasy SWAT team. edit: Oh yeah. He can then Hulk out with Enlarge Person and his Mutagen. Its great.
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Jun 29, 2012 22:53
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MadScientistWorking posted:Its one minute per extract while its an hour for the Wizard if I'm reading the rules correctly. The time to prepare Mutagens on the other hand is actually comparable. The relevant text in Pathfinder is an exact transcription of the 3.5 text. You can see the relevant passage half way down the page here, under "preparing wizard spells." It takes a wizard an hour to prepare all his spells at once, and proportionally smaller amount of time if he doesn't, down to a minimum of 15 minutes. Half his spells takes half an hour. One spell would take a quarter hour. Divine casters presumably can do this too, but there's nothing in their passage about taking less time for fewer spells. For them, it's always an hour. Otherwise the only difference between the two is that prayer casters have a particularly holy time of day when their day resets and they get all their slots back, where book casters can reset it any time by resting eight hours. This poo poo is, on its own, a relatively obscure dint of the 3.5 ruleset, but my favorite article of minutia is some seriously dark voodoo, which, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever actually tried exploiting to its fullest: quote:If a wizard already has spells prepared (from the previous day) that she has not cast, she can abandon some or all of them to make room for new spells. In other words, if you prepare a full suite of spells for a day, don't use any of them, and then sleep for another eight hours, then those spells don't just evaporate. They're still in your memory, but now they're also "from the previous day," which means you can sit down at any time to switch them out à la Carte. Theoretically, with an extra day of preparation, you don't need any spell-slots empty at all to prepare new ones on the fly, but if someone actually got their DM to let them do this I'd be amazed. Eikre fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jun 29, 2012 |
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Jun 29, 2012 23:17
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Inverse Icarus posted:These are a lot of interesting words. Juju Oracle is pretty high on the list for my next character. Getting to this one a little late, but since all the support for a real, honest to god marshal-of-the-damned Lich King is like four spells and three feats, there is not a hell of a lot to discuss. Okay, so you want to pick up the Undead Master feat, obviously, 'cause that adds four caster-levels to Animate Dead. Apparently it also boost your Command Undead feat for the purposes of animating dead, but the Command Undead feat is not responsible for animation in any capacity. Ever. One of the prerequisites for the feat is the capacity to cast the Command Undead spell, though, so maybe the writer was confused. Whose idea was it to have both a Command Undead feat for divine casters and a Command Undead spell for arcane casters? Why does the Command Undead feat actually emulate a totally different spell called Control Undead? Are the guys who wrote Pathfinder total loving hacks? I don't know. I just don't know. The answers to 66% of these questions are totally loving inscrutable. ...But, if your DM is amiable to the idea that maybe having the Command Undead feat would count for fulfilling the prerequisite, and if he thinks that the Undead Master feat would allow you to add four to your effective cleric level for using the Command Undead feat instead of boosting your irrelevant caster level, then you are going to get this feat at level 1, because 5 potential undead HD at first level will do you loving solid. Actually getting your hands on one through a "mentor" might not jive, though. Getting an NPC to do spellcasting for you has an associated GP cost, the book makes that pretty explicit. Not to mention the price of onyx. I might pick up Mounted Combat if you have designs on riding one of these things. If you take the Lame curse, that's probably a good idea. Spell you want: Desecrate. This thing is just going to sit on your spell list most of the time and do nothing, and honestly if it wasn't for just this one Juju Mystery we would obviously be playing a Cleric so that our spell list wouldn't be cluttered with such worthless downtime spells while we're out actually getting poo poo done. Oh well. You can just buy scrolls of this if you want, though, because having it at CL 3 is pretty much exactly as effective as having it at CL 20. Other spell you should know about : Lesser Animate Dead. 2nd level spell that only animates Small and Medium creatures. That is still perfectly adequate for getting some undead bears and wolves. Trade it away when you get the normal version, obviously. The spell that turns skeletons into fleshy corpses is only any use if you're going to go grave-robbing. Anything you kill personally probably isn't going to spontaneously skeletonize. If you can go shopping in 3.5 D&D manuals, your feat options open up enormously. You wanna get a book called Libris Mortis and take a feat called Corpsecrafter, which jacks up the physical stats of every undead creature you make with a spell. There's a couple other spells in the feat tree which follows it; only one that I think is particularly good is the one that makes your guys explode into 1d6-per-HD splashes of negative energy. There's another one that gives your dudes extra cold damage, but it only applies to natural attacks and all your best undead are probably outsiders and giants who can use weapons. Other then that, you just go around being an otherwise perfectly typical oracle who eventually accumulates a retinue of enormous dead guys.
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Jun 30, 2012 03:24
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Kvantum posted:I might look at the Crypt of the Everflame/Masks of the Living God/City of Golden Death module series. Takes PCs from 1st to 7th level or so, and they're written with a new GM/new player in mind, especially Crypt of the Everflame. I am in the middle of Masks of the Living God with my group now. I would punch up some of the hooks they give you for why you are chasing after this amulet a little bit the reasoning is a little bland in the modules.
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Jun 30, 2012 09:09
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Eikre posted:In other words, if you prepare a full suite of spells for a day, don't use any of them, and then sleep for another eight hours, then those spells don't just evaporate. They're still in your memory, but now they're also "from the previous day," which means you can sit down at any time to switch them out à la Carte. Theoretically, with an extra day of preparation, you don't need any spell-slots empty at all to prepare new ones on the fly, but if someone actually got their DM to let them do this I'd be amazed. Having the rule mean that you can actually switch out your entire spell selection at any time once per day as long as it had been memorized the day before seems broken even for a wizard. Not to mention having to keep track of what day a spell was memorized. It never even occurred to me to interpret it that way until you mentioned it and I can't imagine any DM who's going to think that wizards need to have the selection of spells they can have available to cast in a given day doubled.
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Jun 30, 2012 10:38
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Question: So if the spell is on your list, you can use wands/scrolls of it? Basically, a guy in my group wants to play a fighter with one level of Oracle, and a 10 Charisma, for access to every cleric spell. Is that right?
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Jun 30, 2012 17:41
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Swags posted:Question: So if the spell is on your list, you can use wands/scrolls of it? Basically, a guy in my group wants to play a fighter with one level of Oracle, and a 10 Charisma, for access to every cleric spell. Is that right? Yes. edit: the tradeoff is that the player has to chose an oracle's curse, and by taking only a single level he's not getting all the cool benefits later on. All You Can Eat fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Jun 30, 2012 |
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Jun 30, 2012 18:13
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Question of my own: Haggling I can't find any rules on haggling, particularly as they relate to selling treasure. If a particularly charismatic character wants to get a little more gold out of selling a magic item than the customary 50%, how would he do it? Are there any rules I may have missed or, if not, what houserules do your groups have on this? Would it be reasonable to have the player make a diplomacy check and award an extra 1% for every 5 their check resulted in?
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Jun 30, 2012 18:18
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Swags posted:Question: So if the spell is on your list, you can use wands/scrolls of it? Basically, a guy in my group wants to play a fighter with one level of Oracle, and a 10 Charisma, for access to every cleric spell. Is that right?
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Jun 30, 2012 18:18
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Swags posted:Question: So if the spell is on your list, you can use wands/scrolls of it? Basically, a guy in my group wants to play a fighter with one level of Oracle, and a 10 Charisma, for access to every cleric spell. Is that right? It's right for wands, he can use them automatically. Scrolls have a somewhat more complicated activation process. Activating a scroll works like this. First you have to decipher the thing. If you have Read Magic as an Orison, this step is more or less automatic. Cast Read Magic, read magic, congrats, you have deciphered a scroll. Anytime thereafter you may attempt to activate it. Now, there are two routes you can go for this. There is the Use Magic Device route, which I'll leave aside for now, and there is the "being a caster" route. If you are a caster and wish to automatically activate a scroll you must meet the following conditions:
So as an Oracle he'd be a divine caster, and share the Cleric list. With Caster Level 1, and Charisma 10, he could automatically activate any Cleric 0-level spell. If his Charisma was 11, he could do so with any level 1 spell as well. For higher level spells, in order to meet the third condition he would have to either raise his Charisma (with say, a spell, or an item) or emulate a higher Charisma score with Use Magic Device. Your Emulated Ability Score is equal to your UMD check minus 15. So, if he wished to cast a 5th level scroll, he'd first need to score a 30 on a UMD check to fake his Charisma high enough to make the attempt. If you meet the first 3 requirements, or have UMD'd your way into meeting the third, you can still attempt to activate a higher level scroll than you are typically able to cast. You roll a straight Caster Level Check (so it would be 1d20 + 1 for your friend in this case), and the target DC is the scroll's spell's caster level plus one. So, assuming he handled getting Charisma 19 one way or another, in order to cast a 9th level spell from a scroll, he would be trying to hit an 18 (CL17 + 1) DC on a caster level check, and could do this with natural 17 on his die roll. If he fails this roll, he must immediately make a Wisdom check at DC 5. Failure here causes a scroll mishap, which is loads of fun. So tl;dr: Your friend can use Cleric wands at will. Cleric scrolls are trickier but he has it much easier than a total non-caster trying to do it all with Use Magic Device. Additionally, that one level of Oracle means that his Fighter levels will still advance his Oracle's Curse class feature, counting as 1/2 their total. I.e. at a Fighter 8 Oracle 1 he will gain the 5th level benefit of his Curse. He would also gain the 10th level benefit at Fighter 18 Oracle 1 if it reached that point.
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Jun 30, 2012 18:20
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Swags posted:Question: So if the spell is on your list, you can use wands/scrolls of it? Basically, a guy in my group wants to play a fighter with one level of Oracle, and a 10 Charisma, for access to every cleric spell. Is that right? Yes, but spells above the level you can cast require a caster level check or use magic device check to make work. EDIT: grahninja
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Jun 30, 2012 18:25
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So I'm thinking about my upcoming campaign, and I'm anticipating that most of my players will probably regard tracking inventory weight to be pretty tedious. I know I would. However, at least a couple of my players are notoriously unhinged scavengers, so I need a way to discourage taking everything that isn't nailed down. I believe encumbrance limits force the players to make decisions about what items they will take to sell or use, which means they won't become the richest scrap sellers in the world. But tracking weight just isn't fun. Do you guys use any alternate systems for item management? Do you just ignore it?
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Jun 30, 2012 19:03
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Make them draw a picture of how they're carrying everything.
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Jun 30, 2012 19:06
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Kvantum posted:I might look at the Crypt of the Everflame/Masks of the Living God/City of Golden Death module series. Takes PCs from 1st to 7th level or so, and they're written with a new GM/new player in mind, especially Crypt of the Everflame. I'm running a game of Masks and it's been really fun. I messed up (lack of planning) and I ran The Godsmouth Heresy module first. I didn't notice that Everflame/Masks/Death were "linked" and just picked the module that looked the most fun. That said, I did some writing and I basically transplanted Masks of the Living God from Nirmathas to Kaer Maga and gave all the players a connection to a major faction in the city who asked them to be part of a team that infiltrates the cult. The explanations for some characters were tenuous at best but I explained the situation and everyone agrees that it's at the very least plausible. The Paladin in the game worships Gozreh (I know, he's a LN god, we don't care) and is essentially an anti-Viking. It's ben funny having the player explain why he's so far in land, but eventually he came up with a nice backstory. I'm looking forward to the next module, City of Golden Death, because they get to go on a boat and sail to an island. The island is SUPPOSED to be in the middle of some lake near the River Kingdoms, but I'm moving that to somewhere in "The Steaming Sea", which will require the players to leave Kear Maga and sail out from Magnimar, headed north. Give the Paladin a chance to use some of those Profession (Sailor) skill points. Getting back to Masks, it was a FANTASTIC adventure. I'm going to spoiler the rest, in case someone really wants to avoid information about the module. In a lot of the games I've played, it all boils down to kicking down a door and killing the people inside. Doing that out of the gate in this adventure would be suicide, there are so many cultists and you start at third level, a frontal assault would simply not work. The PCs join the cult, and play along for a few days (which is really hard for a Paladin). I ran the "normal" day for three days, with standard, boring events. Wake. Breakfast. Simple labor in the yard. Prayer and Tutelage. Lunch. Cleaning the chapel. Etc. I wanted it to resonate in the player's heads that "yes, this is what's going to happen until you do something." Soon the players were talking to random cultists, and trying to explore areas they were forbidden to enter. Eventually, they walked their way up tot he ramparts, where the controls for the portcullis are, and the guards up there immediately told them to stand down and remove their masks, and that's when the fighting started. They managed to kill all but one, which they knocked unconscious, and they took their gray robes (the "tiers" of cultists are White, Gray, Black, and Blue, in increasing order of importance/power). The Wizard used Prestidigitation to clean them of the blood from battle, and soon they were walking around as higher-ranking cultists. Then they used that to get groups of other low-ranking cultists into isolated areas, held a sword at their neck, and offered to let them surrender. The temple is on high alert, but they managed to bluff or intimidate their way through several possible encounters, and have captured most of the cultists. They killed several, including a "Herald" (black robe), so now they're walking around as a Black/Gray/White combination and abusing even more powers! The gray-robes pretty much do whatever a black-robe says, so they did the same old trick and got even more gray-robes captured. We play again tomorrow, and we should finish off the module. The PCs just leveled to 4th, and the only NPCs left are: - Egarthis (Sor/Wiz black-robe) - Krant (Barbarian/Warrior gray-robe) - 2 normal black robes (Rogue 3, I think?) - 4 normal gray-robes (Rogue 2) - 4 normal white-robes (Rogue 1) - 1 "Mask Golem" I could always add more of remove some, it's no big deal. I'm trying to plan out how I want these last few encounters to go down. The "Mask Golem" is basically a trap, he only animates when they walk into a room and don't say a password, which they have not gotten yet. Theoretically they could ask about it, but only a black-robe would know, and they've killed the only one they've fought. Krant is less of a challenge than Egarthis, but Krant is the one that had more of an impact on the PCs. Egarthis is refined, Krant is a brute. Right off the bat, when they joined the cult the Cleric forgot to hide his holy symbol, so Krant beat him senseless until he shouted that he repented and abandoned Sarenrae. An NPC Paladin of Abadar was in the same room, refused to repent, and was beaten to death. Throughout the story Krant has done many horrible things to the PCs and also to random NPC cultists, such as branding them, or beating them unconscious, or cutting the pointy ears off of a half-elf. As written, when the PCs fight the golem, a black-robe shows up several rounds later. After that, they do some investigation in a bedroom and find items they need to end the module, and Egarthis bursts in after a while and attacks them, with some low-level cultists in tow. Krant is supposed to be "Wherever the PCs try to escape the temple from", as sort of a last fight, which I guess is fitting considering how relevant he was to the PCs. I'm also thinking about maybe making Krant start murdering other cultists, since there's no real "proof" that the PCs are the ones doing everything. Included in those murdered could be that innocent, non-evil half-elf boy, which should piss off the Paladin. We play tomorrow and I haven't locked down exactly which NPCs I'll commit where. Which BBEG gets some extra help? Maybe have a group of cultists simply trying to escape the temple, and see how the PCs react to that, I don't know. I'm pretty sure I want Krant to be the "peak" of the module, even if I'm pretty sure the PCs are going to wreck him. He's been built up as this massive badass, and based on the sort of rolls he's been making and the damage he's dealt, the PCs firmly believe he's a Barbarian 6, even though he's a Barb 2/Warrior 4. He swing a greatclub twice a round for 1d10+8 or something, and has 72 hp, but his AC of 12 means even the Cleric should be able to hit him if need be.
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Jun 30, 2012 20:22
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Evil Sagan posted:So I'm thinking about my upcoming campaign, and I'm anticipating that most of my players will probably regard tracking inventory weight to be pretty tedious. I know I would. However, at least a couple of my players are notoriously unhinged scavengers, so I need a way to discourage taking everything that isn't nailed down. We just ignore it in all my groups, with an implied "don't be a dick" rule. If you start carrying an excessive amount of poo poo, or if the halfling with 8 STR says "Sure I'll just throw the colossal greatclub in my pack" the DM has to stand up and just say it's not possible. I don't think anyone's ever been called out on carrying too much in my groups, and we have one guy who has a hilarious amount of weapons. Not daggers, either, he has several types of Glaives and Earthbreakers.
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Jun 30, 2012 20:25
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Evil Sagan posted:So I'm thinking about my upcoming campaign, and I'm anticipating that most of my players will probably regard tracking inventory weight to be pretty tedious. I know I would. However, at least a couple of my players are notoriously unhinged scavengers, so I need a way to discourage taking everything that isn't nailed down. Stop giving them resale money for things that cost below X gp. In exchange, don't charge for that kind of stuff either unless they do something silly ("time to hold a barbeque and give all the guests swords!" or "well, I guess I have every item in the PHB and no bag of holding"). So don't track for normal food, drink, ammo, lodging, mundane equipment or anything else that's completely trivial. Assume that the funds needed to buy mundane gear come from selling mundane gear or from making Craft (basket-weaving) checks or whatever. You can still track supplies if you're doing some sort of desert survival or whatever, but it's probably not a bad idea to abstract that as well to "X days worth of supplies per person" or whatever else you want. It's almost inevitable that they will wind up with extra-dimensional storage sooner or later and then it will cease to be a problem unless they start keeping hirelings in there. I instituted a similar strategy after players were trying to figure out if they really wanted to build a sled just to haul back a pile of weapons worth maybe 50 gp. I did a similar thing for myself when I was seriously contemplating dragging back a few hundred pounds of mundane equipment in Temple of Elemental Evil for the PC.
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Jun 30, 2012 20:32
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Swarms don't need to take an action to attack, right? If a creature has the ability to "turn into a swarm as a standard action", can they do that, move on top of a player, and deal swarm damage?
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Jul 1, 2012 01:56
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Also I'm going to do some writing tonight. Like I said, the group is likely to finish the module tomorrow, and I'd like to have some tidbits about the next module (City of Golden Death) when we wrap up, instead of saying "Good job, I'll send you an email with the epilogue!" I have found a gap in my knowledge, and I'm not sure what to Google for to get the information I need, so I figure I'd just ask here. I apparently know nothing about ships. Specifically the sort of ships that would be in D&D.   (those are separate images, but the scale is the same) The party is currently in Kaer Maga, and will be sailing to one of those random islands in the Steaming Sea. They will take a Riverboat ferry from a small town south of Kaer Maga to Magnimar (or alternatively pay for a teleport spell to Magnimar or Riddleport), and then from there they will get a proper seagoing vessel and sail to one of those islands. I'm re-writing this section of the module, it's supposed to take place in an entirely different area of the map, and instead of small river/lake boats, now we have to deal with larger boats, and I'm not sure exactly what everything should be called, how long it takes to travel, etc. So here are some questions/details: - How long would a riverboat take to get from Kaer Maga to Magnimar (ignoring the thousand-foot drop from the storval rise)? - An evil NPC is supposed to be a few days ahead of them when it comes to landing at the island. Like, the NPC's group gets there three days before the PCs land, and have already made their way wherever they are going. - The NPC's ship should be larger than the ones the PCs take. I do not know what "class" of ship this would be. Maybe it could have guns too? I could just call it a Frigate. - The PC's ship should be much smaller, but still large enough to be an ocean-going vessel. There are three PCs. The boat should also be faster than the other one, so I'm looking for a small, fast, ocean-going boat. I don't know how small a boat can reasonably be and still survive in open ocean like that. Schooner? Caravel? - How long would the trip from Magnimar to, say, the southernmost island take? It's ~500 miles. Keep in mind I'm thinking that I'd need a "fast" time and a "slow" time. I'd like to say something in setup of the next module like, "The NPC's [large boat type] left almost two weeks ago, and the trip should take them [slow speed time]. Roedarc estimates that a more nimble ship, such as a [small boat type], would be able to make the trip in [fast time]. If the party leaves within a day, they would likely only be a few days behind them." I know this is not really PF-related and we have a lot of number crunchers here, but I'd love to hear from the writers and roleplayers on this one. Educate me about early naval transportation.
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Jul 1, 2012 02:25
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