Pathfinder

Yup nice backup. Also gives you two rolls for perception, since the Sword has it's own ability to look around and be aware, plus it gets it's own set of languages, with constant telepathic communication.

Came in handy in one thing a friend set up, got the door guard to trust us for this old ruin filled with Elder God cultists, as a 'measure of trust' let him take my weapons in with him while he went to talk to his bosses. Got a constant feed of what was going on and what it looked like, and then snap my fingers and brought the blade right back to me.

Alright.

Also, I've got this idea for a mythic game that starts at 3rd or 4th level but they ascend near the start.

Is this doable at all or should I just abandon it?

Well, I guess it would depend on how quickly they rise in the mythic tiers, but it sounds doable. How often do stories start with greenhorns that discover some variety of incredible destiny?

I can't believe my sorcerer player in the newbie game. She's actually trying to push me into certain spell selections. Mind you, I'm the bard; she's trying to pawn off on me the spells that she doesn't feel like taking. Which is a bit problematic, when I have to remind her about how many of her suggestions aren't on the bard spell list ("No; I don't get vampiric touch either."). I'm finding myself reminding her that I have my spell list mostly under control (my only debate is whether or not I should bother with shout when it becomes available); she's the one who needs to diversify and not take yet another direct damage spell.

It also doesn't help that she's obsessed over my character having the least HP (oh, elves and your wacky constitution penalty), when my character is able to heal himself and is a backline character. She also obsesses over his comparatively low AC, when we're at the "saves matter more than AC" stage of development. I suspect she needs a discussion of strategy for higher-level play.

Aw man, that sounds pretty bad.

-hides his Magus who has mostly direct damage spells-

I might take a page from Final Fantasy XIII and have the PCs be given a mission in the form of a vision, but I'll have to decide what that mission is.

Should it be in Golarion or an original setting?

edited 7th Jan '16 8:47:13 PM by Rosvo1

^Depends on what you want.

^^Huh, sounds bad. Has GM told her to calm down? I mean, if you can't come to agreement, isn't it GM's things to handle arguments?

In my game (Wrath of the Righteous), we're mocking the Paladin for being too fragile (objectively, the arcanist of the group probably has fewer HP). He is an archer, so backline, but it doesn't mean much against teleporting demons (given the campaign, the vast majority of enemies are demons) who will target him instantly (being the most charismatic, he is the designated leader, and he's a bloody Paladin, the only LG character in the group, except his cohort, probably). My character has the worst AC of the group (despite being very much frontline), but it doesn't matter much, since he also has the most HP (I'm playing a barbarian). Both of us tend to end up in negative HP quite often (I put him there myself once after failing a save against a mental effect; despite having to move first, it took me only 2 turns without using any mythic power - and he's lucky I didn't kill him outright with a critical hit).

But yeah, you (the other players and the GM) have to make her understand that she's not in charge of your character and explain to her what's important.

It's not bad per se... it's just showing a remarkable lack of awareness of what a bard can do well. In some respects, the idea of diversifying or providing backup for what other characters do is reasonable. She's just forgetting that means more for her than for me. I mean, sure, my character could take the crushing despair spell. But a few things. One, I basically can already do that with the bardic performance dirge of doom, with the bonus that dirge of doom doesn't give opponents a save (and I was allowed to take the Lingering Performance feat, so I can easily debuff and cast a spell in the same round). Two, at the moment, direct damage is 90% of what her character can do - she doesn't have any source of buffs/debuffs at the moment, and that's some place where she could diversify.

In short, the idea of diversifying what a character can do is a great idea... but she completely fails to see that her character, not mine, is the one in need of diversifying.

There is also the issue that she doesn't understand that we're hitting the point of diminishing returns when it comes to armor - lots of things will hit when they target. DR and improved saves are much more important now than another +1 to the armor class, but she still frets that my hit points and AC are a bit flimsy. I mean, I'm the one with the bevy of save-or-suck spells and an expertise in self-buffing and ranged attack; I'm also the one with the huge bank of skills that can allow me to solve an encounter without combat. I'm the one who can solve an encounter solo in multiple ways; worry about yourself, blaster mage.

She's not being too pushy; she just has no concept of where her own flaws are and an overinflated concept of what mine are.

The need for explanation still stands. In our group, I'm pretty much the least experienced, since I didn't have opportunity to play for a long time (and I had never played Pathfinder before, only 3.5). But I know it and listen to the more experienced players, especially the arcanist (who is the optimizer of the group). The issue with the Paladin is just glaringly obvious: I didn't expect to drop him to negative HP in only 4 non-critical hits (with a total of 4x my STR bonus - 1,5 + 1 + 1 + 0,5), using power attack, but absolutely no mythic power (which could have given me 2 extra attacks with 1,5 STR). Luckily, the effect was just "attack your leader [his character] until he drops", I didn't have to attack any other party members.

So, I ran the mythic game I was talking about last Saturday which went alright.

And for the next session, I have an idea for a thing featuring the local Alchemist aristocrat.

And I was thinking of giving him the vampire template.

Is that a good idea at all or should I just stick with his class?

That looks like quite an encounter, since the vampire template applies to creatures with at least 5 HD, so that's at least CR6 (a creature with 5 levels in a PC class like Alchemist is CR4, and the vampire template adds 2). Of course, it depends on the party's level and tier (you said they started at 3rd or 4th level, but I assume they went up in the first session). And a mythic vampire (CR10) is probably beyond them.

Of course, that's if they're supposed to defeat it without help. The ascension in Wrath of the Righteous is a fight against a bunch of Babaus (6, I think, which would make it a CR11 encounter) at level 5. However, the PCs get fast healing and damage reduction high enough that only sneak attacks can hurt them and light is flat-out guaranteed, so they don't get slaughtered out of hand.

edited 13th Jan '16 8:47:59 AM by Khudzlin

I've decided to go with a regular human Alchemist due to the fact that if he's a living mortal, he has a reason for his unethical experiments other than For the Evulz.

Whatever works for you and your players (note that I'm not a GM and don't plan to be one any time soon, it's so much work). Hope you all have fun.

You can always start him as mortal and have him discover an alchemical version of undeath. You could create an alchemical lich, of course, but vampire also works - like an evil version of Morbius, the Living Vampire.

Hmm.

There's still the problem of him being CR 6 while their APL is 4.

edited 14th Jan '16 8:16:45 AM by Rosvo1

Depends on how hard it's supposed to be. APL+2 is still in the encounter difficulty table (hard - the table goes up to epic for APL+3). Of course, you can also give help to your PCs, which is how the creators of Wrath of the Righteous transformed a guaranteed slaughter (APL+6) into a survivable encounter.

edited 14th Jan '16 9:06:59 AM by Khudzlin

Hmm.

I think I'll go with the vampire, if he's too tough for them I'll give him penalties to rolls.

Also, should I have his second-in-command use an Aldori Dueling Sword or a falcata and a buckler?

I remember the first alchemist I ever sent after adventurers. He wasn't that big of a deal. What was a big deal was that his slave-force had all had bombs implanted in them. He was attacking from a raised position with alchemist bombs. They were defending from among the ranks of the slaves. It was a good day.

Eh, you could make it an in-story thing that newly created vampires are weaker and don't have their full array of stats/powers yet. Not only would this explain why your mastermind vampire is weak at first, it also gives you an easy setup for mooks later on (throw some freshly created vampires at your players as mooks at higher level).

That would work.

So, less DR, fewer bonuses to ability scores, less natural armor?

Something else I should reduce?

There should be a table somewhere in the GMing section of the rulebook with monster stats (HP, damage, saves, etc.) by CR. It should help you adjust the vampire to the desired power level.

edited 19th Jan '16 11:21:39 PM by Khudzlin

Oh yeah, I remember that.

I'll have a look there.

It seems kind of odd, but some variety of the "young" template may be appropriate. After all, they're still "young" in terms of being a vampire.

Side thing that came up in my Pathfinder for Parents game last night, curious as to what others think of this.

The party gets to the BBEG of the module, and he has two dire wolves with him. The module is pretty blatant about the fact that the dire wolves are a bit cowed into serving this guy (an alchemist), and they're meant to make the encounter rather difficult.

The party druid specifically has the wolf shaman archetype, and completely tops the initiative order. He declares that he wants to use animal empathy to calm one of the dire wolves.

Here's where I need thoughts from folks.

First, I had to decide what the dire wolf's starting attitude was. I ultimately decided on the wild animal default of "unfriendly," for a couple of reasons. One, no hostile actions had actually happened yet (it's good to win initiative). Two, while the druid was a stranger, the dire wolf's erstwhile "master" had not treated it well. Do folks think this was the correct call? This was extremely important because the druid succeeded if the starting attitude was "unfriendly" but not "hostile" - the way I adjudicated it, the wolf effectively did a "stand down" and was removed as a hostile from the fight.

Second, the druid tried to then use Animal Handling to get the dire wolf to attack its old master. This was much more difficult to get a handle on for DC purposes - "attack" is a pretty basic command, and the dire wolf certainly had cause to attack the guy who mistreated him instead of the druid who was acting really nice towards him. That said, the dire wolf was a feral beast, the druid was speaking to him in a language he was unfamiliar with (the dire wolf was mostly familiar with orc; the druid spoke common), and no amount of training was ever put on the dire wolf. Also, it was a chaotic situation in general. I ultimately decided on a DC of 20, which was failed, so I decided the wolf misunderstood and it ran off (granted, it was completely removed from the fight, so at least it wasn't a threat). That said, if I had pegged the DC as 15, it would have succeeded. Similar to the above, was that the correct call?

Kind of important, because the BBEG was really close to killing three party members (and an animal companion) as things shook out. There may have been party member death had the wolf not been turned... or people would have won handily had the wolf understood the druid's order and carried it out. Not sure I made the right call in either case.

For the first situation, it doesn't seem to specify in Pathfinder, but I remember from 3.5 that "hostile" meant "is actively invested in doing you harm," so I think unfriendly was most appropriate there.

For the second, was the dire wolf trained in attacking? Because the standard DC for making an animal do a trick it doesn't know is 25, so your ruling was pretty generous.

Yeah both seem pretty spot on for how I'd call them.