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Inverse Icarus
Dec 4, 2003

I run SyncRPG, and produce original, digital content for the Pathfinder RPG, designed from the ground up to be played online.

CaptainPsyko posted:

As for other recommendations [...]

All this discussion about Paizo APs has me curious.

I am currently working with some partners to produce PFRPG adventure modules in a new campaign setting we've developed. We already have two with completed manuscripts undergoing editing and have begun hiring freelance artists and cartographers. We have general outlines for the third and fourth modules, but nothing's set in stone yet. We're not planning to do an adventure path just yet, just a series of AP-chapter length modules that could be chained together if desired.



I figured since people were talking about adventure paths they liked I'd ask what you liked about them specifically. Was it a particular part of the story? A notable NPC? A well-balanced, fun encounter? A unique mechanic?

I've played through two of them and read through all but one (my GM friend asked me to save it for when he runs it later this year), so don't worry about spoiling anything. Throw the spoiler tags on it if it's story-related, but I'm really curious about what people loved and hated. I'm not fishing for ideas to rip off wholesale, I'm just curious what people liked about the APs/Modules they've run.

For example, I really enjoy fun "encounters" where the players use skill checks or other rolls to achieve non-combat goals. Some good examples of this are in Legacy of Fire, where the party has to put out a fire and help various NPCs in the aftermath. There's a STR check to move a wagon, a Handle Animal (or lol Druids) check to round up some goats, and various other small tasks where the PCs can help the people around them. Another instance is in the module The Feast of Ravenmoor, where the party can participate in local carnival/fair games, including trying to catch a greased pig. Fun little "encounters" that aren't fights and generally aren't life threatening really break up the kicking down of doors.

I thing I really disliked about Rise of the Runelords, which I played through as a Monk and otherwise enjoyed a lot, was The Skinsaw chapter, especially the murder investigation. I played a "dumb" character through the module, so maybe my experience is biased a little, but I really found most of the chapter boring. Maybe it's just me, but I felt like despite supposed to be feeling like we were invesigating and finding clues, we were really just following the railroad and making Perception checks when told. Did other people like this chapter? Do other people like doing investigations in general?

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zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.
I'm super biased as someone who only plays games online, but I'd much rather have, like, three really novel and interesting encounters over ten "pretty good" ones.
Also, fat lists of names, plot hooks/rumors, locations, and random one-off scenes are better than extensive story details. If a GM is using an AP, they probably don't have time to prepare and might not be inclined to find outside lists for that stuff, but they're probably also more improv-y and would rather pick up cues and extend from there instead of directly read off from the book.

The investigation thing is hard to answer since I think D&D's skill system is fundamentally hostile to that kind of play/situation. I'd steal liberally from the GUMSHOE system here; players shouldn't even be making perception checks.

Eox
Jun 20, 2010

by Fluffdaddy
Wrath of the Righteous also opens right off the bat with a trans lesbian character and has two gay characters down the line one of whom is struggling with a drug addiction, shadow demon blood specifically, which is really nice.

It also solves the "setting to rampage around in" issue by sending the PCs off-plane in the 4th and 5th book to stop the world wounds forces from siphoning the power from a dead God (Getting Nocticulas help in the process) and to save Iomedaes herald from Baphomet (Who is technically an optional boss but your PCs will be powerful enough at that point to hold him down and feed him his own legs)

In book 5 you also get to save a previous Runelord of Wrath from Baphomets prison, and if you try to redeem him he'll make an honest effort. He's non mythic but hey, free 20th level wizard.

I really liked WotR in case you can't tell

kingcom
Jun 23, 2012

Investigation is super dumb in D&D. Its either the players bomb their one or two checks or dont have the skills to use anyway and your handing them the clues they cant mechanically find. May aswell cut the middle man out and just have the information they are trying to get with an attached list of 'these are a bunch of ideas which could lead them here, if the players try anything on this list or something that lets them start investigation outside the list, lead them to the end result'. Just have it be an RP thing and dont attach mechanics to it.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

zachol posted:

Any reasonable D&D campaign at levels 15+ would absolutely require careful and extensive thought and pacing by the GM, varying house rules or bonus stuff to even out the party, and hooks dealing with PC histories and subplots, none of which properly fits in the AP format.
The whole "lasts from 1-20" aspect of the APs is the weakest part, they should cut it down to three books, end at level 12, and then double the total number of paths from working at the same pace.

None of the APs except for Wrath last until level 20. Paizo is aware of the problems with high-level play and tries to avoid it in the APs; James Jacobs talked a lot about how it affects AP design in the Wrath forum.

kingcom
Jun 23, 2012

Arivia posted:

None of the APs except for Wrath last until level 20. Paizo is aware of the problems with high-level play and tries to avoid it in the APs; James Jacobs talked a lot about how it affects AP design in the Wrath forum.

Don't suppose you have a link to that? It sounds like an interesting read.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

kingcom posted:

Don't suppose you have a link to that? It sounds like an interesting read.

Not really, it's spread across a bunch of different threads.

Free Triangle
Jan 2, 2008

"This is no ordinary poster boy!
No ordinary poster!"
Just run Way of the Wicked or War of the Burning Sky instead.

zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.
That's a fair point, although I still think cutting the APs in half and ending them by level 12 would be better for everyone.
I feel like the only AP whose endgame I've felt super jazzed about was Kingmaker, and even that suffers from slowly diverting from the initial premise of an open-ended hexcrawl.

Inverse Icarus
Dec 4, 2003

I run SyncRPG, and produce original, digital content for the Pathfinder RPG, designed from the ground up to be played online.

kingcom posted:

Investigation is super dumb in D&D. Its either the players bomb their one or two checks or dont have the skills to use anyway and your handing them the clues they cant mechanically find.

zachol posted:

The investigation thing is hard to answer since I think D&D's skill system is fundamentally hostile to that kind of play/situation. I'd steal liberally from the GUMSHOE system here; players shouldn't even be making perception checks.

This was how I experienced it. I'm sure some people like it, but it really seemed clunky and railroaded to me in the module. Can anyone point to a time it was done really well?


zachol posted:

I'm super biased as someone who only plays games online,

As an aside, our adventure modules are designed from the ground up to be played online in a MapTool-based VTT.

What do you guys use to play?

Chevy Slyme
May 2, 2004

We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.
I didn't care for the first chunk of the Skinsaw Murders investigation, but the whole haunted house segment I actually thought was really nicely done. Yeah, there's a lot of dumb perception check nonsense in there, but the specific mechanics with the different themed haunts targeting players can actually communicate a great deal, especially if the DM is willing to really make it clear that there are distinct malevolent forces homing in on each PC and how their agendas align, etc.

Inverse Icarus
Dec 4, 2003

I run SyncRPG, and produce original, digital content for the Pathfinder RPG, designed from the ground up to be played online.
The haunts were pretty fun, and I really like them as an alternative to traps. Paizo's done a lot of work with them. In Rise, my Monk was convinced a stuffed manticore was alive, and shooting cones of fire from its mouth. He cowered behind the Elf Cleric who just shook her head as she aced her Will saves. Separating the player experiences was a pretty cool experience, and they did it well.

kingcom
Jun 23, 2012

Inverse Icarus posted:

The haunts were pretty fun, and I really like them as an alternative to traps. Paizo's done a lot of work with them. In Rise, my Monk was convinced a stuffed manticore was alive, and shooting cones of fire from its mouth. He cowered behind the Elf Cleric who just shook her head as she aced her Will saves. Separating the player experiences was a pretty cool experience, and they did it well.

I went through the haunt as a cleric and the whole thing was a giant snoozefest for me. The mechanics for it seem pretty interesting to use and your hoping your players bomb their rolls to do anything interesting.

zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.

Inverse Icarus posted:

As an aside, our adventure modules are designed from the ground up to be played online in a MapTool-based VTT.

What do you guys use to play?

I meant in the sense of pbps, where an encounter takes months. A game that lasts two to three years will have maybe five or six encounters, tops, so each one needs to be loving amazing.
Even in general, face to face or with a VTT, I feel shorter campaigns are better, so reducing "filler" encounters is preferable. I'd rather have a focused campaign that takes four or five sessions rather than some long running epic storyline, and I'm more tolerant of APs or even just adventures that ask for characters to be purpose-built, instead of trying to make sure they can be adapted into an already ongoing campaign.

Digital modules that come with blank (unnumbered) hi-res maps are a godsend for online play, pbp or VTT. Major selling point I'd think.

Transient People
Dec 22, 2011

"When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently."
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

zachol posted:

I meant in the sense of pbps, where an encounter takes months. A game that lasts two to three years will have maybe five or six encounters, tops, so each one needs to be loving amazing.

...In what world does an encounter take months? I HAVE played in a game that lasted three years (and is still ongoing) and we've had many more encounters than that. None of them lasted more than two weeks.

zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.
That miiiiight be an exaggeration now that I really think it over, but still weeks, and at least months in between encounters.

Axiem
Oct 19, 2005

I want to leave my mind blank, but I'm terrified of what will happen if I do
I recently was in a campaign that ended at 20th level, that was going through the Savage Tide adventure. By 15th level, we were basically hopping around the planes dealing with angels and demons and that sort of thing. This all culminated in going around to various gods and goddesses, and convincing them to help us launch an invasion against the Abyss to kill one of the demon lords, which felt very appropriately epic to our character powers. But that was also explicitly Greyhawk, and I don't know if Paizo has really delved into Golarion's planar cosmology...

Ambi
Dec 30, 2011

Leave it to me
I run over Roll20, and hi-res maps separate from the AP pdf itself are worth their filesize in gold. Other than that, yeah, the sheer amount of filler encounters in APs tends to be a bit offputting. I've played a few games in person, and combat runs a lot faster there, but for IM and VTT RPing combat takes one million years (haven't played any PbP so I can't speak to that).
Generally I cut out 2/3rds of the combat encounters, or condense them together to make it a little more challenging.

Inverse Icarus
Dec 4, 2003

I run SyncRPG, and produce original, digital content for the Pathfinder RPG, designed from the ground up to be played online.
All of this input has been awesome, thanks to everyone who chimed in.

Ambi posted:

I run over Roll20, and hi-res maps separate from the AP pdf itself are worth their filesize in gold.

We are specifically designing our adventures to be shared/sold on our website, with interactive JS widgets for the GM, character tracking for the players, and a full compliment of high-res, VTT-ready assets (maps, custom tokens) for each encounter. We have no intention to publish physical books or PDFs at all.

Combat goes pretty quickly for the groups I play in. Here's a three hour session we played in December using a readily available map for Rappan Athuk level 3, and we got through four CR 9+ encounters with five players, including a complicated one versus an illusionist where the part failed a lot of Will saves. Not greased lightning fast, but we think the VTT definitely speeds things up.

https://vimeo.com/114327786

If you don't care to watch the whole thing, check out the last few minutes here, where a series of rolls ended up with the Barbarian killing a full-health Rakshasa with class levels in a single crit due to massive damage. It starts with a greaxe hit, bypasses various defensive spells, and ends with a failed fortitude save against massive damage. We ran the numbers and it was a 1/2,400 chance.

Watch some nerds screaming about dice! (and having to look up the massive damage rules!)

https://vimeo.com/114396149

Roadie
Jun 30, 2013
Thanks for the videos, watching people play is always pretty neat.

If you're associated with whoever runs the SyncRPG site, let them know they should really get an actual web design person give the site a once-over so it works at mobile/tablet sizes and has stuff minified instead of pulling in eight thousand extra scripts on every page.

Inverse Icarus
Dec 4, 2003

I run SyncRPG, and produce original, digital content for the Pathfinder RPG, designed from the ground up to be played online.

Roadie posted:

Thanks for the videos, watching people play is always pretty neat.

If you're associated with whoever runs the SyncRPG site, let them know they should really get an actual web design person give the site a once-over so it works at mobile/tablet sizes and has stuff minified instead of pulling in eight thousand extra scripts on every page.

I am that human who does that thing, and I am an amazingly bad frontend web designer. I've learned a lot over the year or so I've been working on it seriously, but it's very obvious that I was learning as I went along. "Pay an actual webdeisgner to fix things" is very much on my list of things to do, but this is just the beta launch.

If you're curious about anything, PM me. I don't want to hijack the thread anymore than I already have :)


Getting back to PFRPG talk, the party in a game I'm running just got access to a Mirror of Mental Prowess. I've limited the portal effect to once a week to cut down on cheese a bit, but I'm wondering what sort of zany things that people could come up with to abuse the item. As of right now they've only used it to move between the dungeon entrance and town, but they're a clever bunch and I'm sure they'll do something crazy with it soon.

I have a map ready if they're ever dumb enough to open a portal to town directly from the dungeon, some Clerics of Orcus are ready to raid the small town.

Ambi
Dec 30, 2011

Leave it to me
Writing up stats for Warforged in Pathfinder, for use in Planescape or as a general settings-agnostic guide. My GM wrote the article, which I love, I'm mostly wondering if anyone could advise me on the balance of the stats?

The article is here, and mainly I'm looking for advice on how I've written the Composite Plating to work.

Composite Plating posted:

A warforged may choose their type of Armor Plating at first level. This plating is not natural armor, and gives an armor bonus to AC, occupying the same space on the body as a suit of armor or a robe, and thus preventing them from being worn at the same time. This armor can be enchanted as normal, though the warforged must of course be present for the entire time necessary. This armor is not treated as being made out of metal for purposes of spells or class features, though this is only true for the standard ceramic-like composite armor, and alternate materials (see Advanced Construction feat below) can give differing benefits and penalties. For warforged without any armor plating, see the Unarmoured Body alternate racial trait below. Any class abilities or feats that allow you to ignore or reduce arcane spell failure chance from regular armor work as normal.

Light armor provides a +2 armor bonus, no armor check penalty (ACP), +7 max dexterity bonus to AC, and 10% arcane spell failure chance.
Medium armor provides a +5 armor bonus, -3 ACP, +4 max dex bonus, and 20% arcane spell failure chance, as well as reducing base movement speed to 20ft.
Heavy armor provides a +8 armor bonus, -5 ACP, +1 max dex bonus, and 30% arcane spell failure chance, as well as reducing base movement speed to 20ft.
Splitting the trait into effectively a free set of Masterwork armor seemed a little better than the standard setup of a +2 armor bonus that can be upgraded with feats, and taking a page from the website linked in the sources, I condensed the Ironwood/Adamantine/Mithral body feats into a single Advanced Construction feat which grants Special Material-like properties. Also added Cold Iron in there as they did, and Bone because why not. Additionally, instead of the original Mithral Reflexes, added in a Master Construction feat which upgraded the benefits or added new ones in theme.

Adamantine: Advanced = DR as if your armor was made of adamantine. Master = +2 increase to your DR, and natural/unarmed attacks deal damage as if a size larger.
Bone: Advanced = +2 to intimidate, +10 to disguise yourself as undead, and swaps your positive/negative energy affinity, though you still take half. Master = take full negative/positive energy, still swapped, and gain a bite/claw/claw set of natural attacks, or increase the damage dice of existing bite or claw attacks by one step.
Cold Iron: Advanced = gain SR 6+level. Master = SR 9+level, and 1/day roll twice against a magical effect.
Ironwood: Advanced = full effect of positive/negative energy, no longer counted as metal or stone for spell effects. Master = gain fast healing 1, and thorns that act as a weaker version of Hamatula spikes.
Mithral: Advanced = treat your armor plating as one degree lighter, light going to unarmoured. Master = +2 to initiative, and act as hasted for 1/2 character level rounds per day.

Are these effects balanced for a feat effect, or for a two feat investiture? Are any of them super unappealing? I was also considering moving Psiforged into the Advanced Construction feat, as it seems a bit too strong and involved as a racial trait, and that way I can have cool Psionic Amplifier/Dampener effects in Master Construction for it.

NachtSieger
Apr 10, 2013


Ambi posted:

Adamantine: Advanced = DR as if your armor was made of adamantine. Master = +2 increase to your DR, and natural/unarmed attacks deal damage as if a size larger.
Bone: Advanced = +2 to intimidate, +10 to disguise yourself as undead, and swaps your positive/negative energy affinity, though you still take half. Master = take full negative/positive energy, still swapped, and gain a bite/claw/claw set of natural attacks, or increase the damage dice of existing bite or claw attacks by one step.
Cold Iron: Advanced = gain SR 6+level. Master = SR 9+level, and 1/day roll twice against a magical effect.
Ironwood: Advanced = full effect of positive/negative energy, no longer counted as metal or stone for spell effects. Master = gain fast healing 1, and thorns that act as a weaker version of Hamatula spikes.
Mithral: Advanced = treat your armor plating as one degree lighter, light going to unarmoured. Master = +2 to initiative, and act as hasted for 1/2 character level rounds per day.

Just looking at this: adamantine is weak, bone until master seems pointless, cold iron is super weak and triple useless because the SR hassles buffs and anything casting spells on you that is worth its mental stats will ignore the SR either by having a huge enough caster level, or using one of the hundreds of SR:No spells. Ironwood is great because of the fast healing, but two feats hurts. Mithral is decent, but the master feat's haste needs to stats the action required, because right now it's a standard action. Suggestion: Make it a free action that you can take to activate/deactivate only at the beginning of your turn.

P.S: The feat to give DR 1 is so weak it's actually an insult. You can start at hell I don't know, DR 3 or DR 5, because that at least has an actual effect on low level combat.

Ambi
Dec 30, 2011

Leave it to me
Setting Adamantine to just give straight-up DR3/adamantine, allowing Cold Iron SR to be lowered as a free action for 1 round, and adding Free action usage and non-consecutive rounds to master Mithril should bring those up to par? Anything you could suggest adding to Cold Iron to make it more interesting or useful?

What would you recommend for the Bone abilities? Shuffling them around, so that the Advanced gives a natural attack and intimidate bonus, and the Master feat gives full Negative affinity and undead disguise option?

sugar free jazz
Mar 5, 2008

GMing question, in the context of PFS. FWIW I'm fairly new to GMing and am open to any/all advice.


This has happened with two of four scenarios I've GMed, but I've run significantly over time and we've needed to wrap up either during the final boss or right before the final boss. Just ran The Stranger Within, and 45 minutes over time was just getting near the end of the boss fight. We took one break that was like five minutes long. There was probably a 25% chance of the boss killing everyone, but had to end and just gave everyone 1 prestige as a compromise. Thing is, everything feels like it's going smoothly. Nothing seems like it's taking longer than it should. No one's wasting time and the party's playing the scenario roughly as it should be. All of the RPing elements happen as they should and seem to be taking a reasonable amount of time. The fights maybe took a little long, but nothing like adding an hour on. I even skipped the end of another combat with a "Well they were gonna die in a couple rounds so lets just say you smack them around and tie them up" and boom out of initiative.


So when a scenario is taking too long, what sorts of things should I do to hurry things along? Just take parts out? Shove the party on the train and then railroad them? I realize it could be a problem with the scenario too.

zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.
Well if we were talking about like a charm n or home game I'd say "cut a middle encounter" but maybe PFS frowns on that?
Like it frowns on pretty much everything else, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a rule about it.

But normally yeah, cut a middle encounter or convert it into a much shorter RP one. Encourage and allow players to "defeat" encounters in nonstandard (short) ways. Stuff like that.

NachtSieger
Apr 10, 2013


Ambi posted:

Setting Adamantine to just give straight-up DR3/adamantine, allowing Cold Iron SR to be lowered as a free action for 1 round, and adding Free action usage and non-consecutive rounds to master Mithril should bring those up to par? Anything you could suggest adding to Cold Iron to make it more interesting or useful?

What would you recommend for the Bone abilities? Shuffling them around, so that the Advanced gives a natural attack and intimidate bonus, and the Master feat gives full Negative affinity and undead disguise option?

Whoops, completely forgot this post happened.

DR 3/Adamantine is alright, but that rapidly goes out of style past like, the first three/four levels.
You should have the cold iron SR be much higher and make it completely, unconditionally ally-friendly so it'll actually be useful. Right off the top of my head, right now, I don't know how to make it more interesting, besides really running with the "gently caress spells" theme.
Why make Mithral's haste non-consecutive rounds? You can already replicate the Master effect cheaply (relatively) with boots of haste for ten rounds a day, which blows the Master construction ability out of the water.

Shuffling around like that is good enough for Advanced, but that still renders the Master fear pretty sad-looking, because undead disguise is basically a non-ability in terms of just how niche and crappy it is.

I wish I could help further, but Pathfinder homebrew is a little hard for me.

Transient People
Dec 22, 2011

"When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently."
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
DR/Adamantine never goes out of style. It's arguably the most reliable form of pierceable DR. Just to put this in a bit of perspective, DR 10 makes you basically immune to damage before adding in Power Attack. DR 5 makes you immune to damage from levels 1 to 6ish.

Zurai
Feb 13, 2012


Wait -- I haven't even voted in this game yet!

Transient People posted:

DR/Adamantine never goes out of style. It's arguably the most reliable form of pierceable DR.

I used to prefer DR/<damage type> until I actually looked into what damage types natural attacks use. The most common natural attacks, claws and bites, both have multiple damage types. Claws are slashing and piercing, and bites are actually all three! Wing buffets, tail slaps, and slams are all pure bludgeoning.

DR/adamantine is generally as good as DR/- until pretty high levels. It's pretty rare for random enemies to have adamantine weapons, so it's generally only bosses with +4 or above weapons and things which have DR/adamantine themselves that can pierce it. I'd never scoff at DR 3/adamantine, even at higher levels. It's not going to completely prevent all damage you take, but it adds up quick over the course of a couple longer fights, and any kind of DR is generally quite effective against physical ranged attacks.

Ambi
Dec 30, 2011

Leave it to me
Adamantine I'm pretty happy with, it remains useful, though I might bump up the giving/improving DR feat to improve by 2 instead of 1. Ironwood likewise. Mithral the only thing I can really think of is to make it full character level rounds for the Master effect, so it's technically better than the Boots of Speed, and available easier?

Cold Iron, SR6+level applying only to harmful spells seems alright, it's a 30% chance to negate spells of an equal caster level, and most things cast spells with caster level equal or less than their CR. Bumping it up to 9+level is mostly to keep pace with Spell Penetration feats or such, though I guess 11+level might work better, and keep track with Noble Spell Resistance for Drow. The main issue there is that Advanced Cold Iron feels kinda empty, like even something token to throw in there could be nice?

For bone I have a few ideas, not sure how to arrange them. Generally Advanced construction should be a nice general bonus, with Master construction being a bit more niche.
Natural attacks, bite and claw mostly, stemming from having the bones or claws built into yourself.
Bonus versus death effects, similar to half-constructs, and building up to the full necromantic immunity of constructs?
Negative energy affinity, as something of a double-edged sword, perhaps to balance out the Necromantic immunity, though potentially a boon to Antipaladins or Negative channelers?

Say, advanced - Bite 1d8 or 2x Claw 1d6, and +2 on death & Necromancy effects.
Master - Bite or 2x Claw, or increase the damage dice of existing natural attack. Immunity to necromancy and death effects, full negative energy affinity?

Has a nice balance to it, though perhaps loading the Master feat too heavily? Thoughts? Also is there a Homebrew thread or such I should use, to avoid clogging up the chat, if it's annoying people? I did a quick search but couldn't find anything.

Scrimsax
Nov 29, 2014
Hey guys, I hope you''ll excuse the newbish question. I have a fair bit of knowledge with Pathfinder, but I'm homebrewing a campaign for the first time, and I was looking for help. I'm having my players (4 8th level characters of assorted levels of optimization and skill) face a villain from a couple months ago as an advanced undead, likely skeleton champion or zombie lord. But the villain is a bard who fights best with a bunch of minions, so this time I want him to have a big group of undead, but skeletons and zombies, even with the fast zombie or various skeleton subtypes, are pretty weak for characters of their level, and Herolab tells me zombies and skeletons aren't compatible with class levels. Any advice for making the encounter harder?

kingcom
Jun 23, 2012

Scrimsax posted:

Hey guys, I hope you''ll excuse the newbish question. I have a fair bit of knowledge with Pathfinder, but I'm homebrewing a campaign for the first time, and I was looking for help. I'm having my players (4 8th level characters of assorted levels of optimization and skill) face a villain from a couple months ago as an advanced undead, likely skeleton champion or zombie lord. But the villain is a bard who fights best with a bunch of minions, so this time I want him to have a big group of undead, but skeletons and zombies, even with the fast zombie or various skeleton subtypes, are pretty weak for characters of their level, and Herolab tells me zombies and skeletons aren't compatible with class levels. Any advice for making the encounter harder?


Just take the base stats for those things. Then increase the number of hp, BAB and add a couple of feats to let them do whatever you want them to do. Unless you have players who vehemently believe in the whole 'enemies are built the same way as the players' in which case just add levels of fighter to each of the regular undead.

grah
Jul 26, 2007
brainsss
Specifically http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/monster-advancement gives a few methods of makings monsters more powerful, choose whatever works best for your game.

zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.
Skeletal champions get class levels, works as an add-on template like vampire or whatever instead of the regular skeleton method.

Zurai
Feb 13, 2012


Wait -- I haven't even voted in this game yet!

zachol posted:

Skeletal champions get class levels, works as an add-on template like vampire or whatever instead of the regular skeleton method.

Just don't trust that template's CR calculation, it's totally FUBAR. Compare it to the monster statistics chart in the back of the Bestiary instead.

Transient People
Dec 22, 2011

"When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently."
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Zurai posted:

Just don't trust ... CR calculation, it's totally FUBAR.

Brevity is the soul of wit, they say. :v:

Enzer
Oct 17, 2008
Has anyone heard any news concerning the third book to Throne of Night? Thinking of running it as our group is almost done with Way of the Wicked, but I haven't heard an update about it since last September.

Enzer fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Jan 18, 2015

Libertad!
Oct 30, 2013

You can have the last word, but I'll have the last laugh!

Enzer posted:

Has anyone heard any news concerning the third book to Throne of Night? Thinking of running it as our group is almost done with Way of the Wicked, but I haven't heard an update about it since last September.

I haven't been keeping close track, but there's this huge drama around the Kickstarter (which reached its goal around mid-2012).

Basically being months behind schedule, not giving any updates, and when the first book releases on Drive-Thru RPG for sale doesn't give the promised copies to the Kickstarter folks. Same for the second one, which also releases on DTRPG under the same circumstances.

There's a big thread over on the Paizo forums, with people getting upset towards the latter ends.

All in all, a clusterfuck.

Libertad! fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jan 18, 2015

Father Wendigo
Sep 28, 2005
This is, sadly, more important to me than bettering myself.

Libertad! posted:

All in all, a clusterfuck.
Speaking of Clusterfucks, what's up with Pathfinder Online? I haven't heard anything about that in a while now.

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Andrast
Apr 21, 2010


Father Wendigo posted:

Speaking of Clusterfucks, what's up with Pathfinder Online? I haven't heard anything about that in a while now.

Vaporware.

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