Pathfinder

I have to note that there is nothing wrong with trying out how rule as written works in practice first

Nope. Though sometimes, it's not necessary to spot problems.

Essentially, Imps have damage reduction 5/good or silver. A pseudodragon has two attacks, which are 1d4-1 and 1d3-1 plus a poison that's very easy to save against. So essentially the pseudodragon can't overcome the dr, and even if they could, the imp can simply turn invisible.

House Drakes, however, are tougher, have some spell-like abilities (notably See Invisibility and CLW), and their attacks are treated as silver for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction.

Also, some neat books are coming out this month. Horror Realms, Blood of the Beasts, and part 3 of Strange Aeons.

edited 3rd Nov '16 10:55:13 AM by Pannic

Speaking of Strange Aeons part 3, "Mad Poet"(known in earth by another title :D) is level 20 npc :D Also, Bokrug makes a cameo in dreamlands, in his CR 27 glory. Encounter is basically "GET OUT OF HERE WHILE YOU STILL CAN"

Also it has amusing finale

Also yay finally got Curse of the Crimson Throne hardcover

edited 3rd Nov '16 1:08:05 PM by SpookyMask

Oh. Almost forgot: the Villain Codex!

Preparing for my next session as DM.

Before hand, I gave my players a list of possible missions and they chose to aid a dark elf sheriff retake her town from a bunch of outlaws.

My plan thus far:

The story is that the collection of assholes occupying this local corner of the Underground have agreed to a sort of truce. They mean to turn the town into the "capital" of their loose criminal empire, running the sheriff out as a result.

Each "gang" has their own "cave" they're holed up in around a wide area, with the agreement of the truce being that only one gang will occupy the town in shifts, both to guard it and to enjoy the town's bounty at their leisure. (Supposedly, they'd get together if they needed to but that's details.)

The players are charged to accompany the sheriff down there, execute the garrison and liberate her town and then hunt down the rest of every last one of those miserable bastards.

My group are all level one, a Kineticist, a Psychic, a Swashbuckler and an NPC Cleric heal-bot. The NPC for this mission is a level 2 Paladin.

The groups of enemies, separated by encounter:

• A half-orc bloodrager 3. This one guy by himself is the spear head of this alliance and the toughest asshole on his own.
• A dark elf cleric 1, worships fiends and has allied herself with three fiends that have taken mortal form, an elf magus 1, a half-orc summoner 1 and a halfling investigator 1. They are all level 1. Besides the cleric, they simply return to the Outside if they die.
• A dwarf alchemist 1. He has the bullshit ability to mind control goblins and has up to a dozen under his thrall. He's holed up in some tower carved out of a natural formed pillar in some giant cavern.
• Two jerks that happen to hang out: an elf brawler 2 and human war priest 1. The later is a fiend in human form connected to the other three.
• A more straight-up bandit gang with a bunch of warrior NP Cs, 6-12, lead by one big boss, a human barbarian 1.
• They've also roused some of the local wild-life into a frenzy, creating random encounters throughout the cave systems.

Thoughts?

That seems like an awful lot for players to tackle at once. Are they going to do hit-and-run tactics? What are their resources?

They'll take on each group separately, if I'm not mistaken.

Yes, that.

That's good, though it does still raise the question of resources.

I'm not following, but I want to. I want to make sure I'm prepared for this session.

What, specifically, are the resources that the players have at their disposal? Whether it be material (healing potions, various items, stuff like that), personnel (are there NPCs beyond those mentioned that can help out in any way), or intelligence (if they know a time and/or place where the enemy will have a disadvantage), more resources at the players' disposal means more likelihood that they'll succeed.

Speaking of D Ming, I'm starting a campaign tomorrow in Galt.

The baddie, Korran Goss, is a level 13 Vox Mesmerist. I'm sort of presenting him as a cross between Kilgrave and President Snow.

I'm also having the Empyreal Lord Korada appearing incognito as a Tian hobo.

The first adventure will have the Red Raven (iconic vigilante) crashing an execution and the city of Isger going into lockdown. So the party is going to have to navigate it and find a way out of the city, likely cozying up to one of the local nobles in the process, while avoiding the Gray Gardeners. One of them is an Inquisitor of Gyronna.

I'm also using a number of items from Lost Treasures as plot hooks.

edited 8th Nov '16 4:39:21 PM by Pannic

Interesting campaign set-up. I'm guessing the overall goal of the campaign is to remove the government and try to get Galt out of its Reign of Terror expy status?

Side question: For the conversion-minded, I'm trying to think of which class best emulates a Warhammer 40,000 Psyker: I'm narrowed it down between Arcanist (born with the skill, need to train it to be better at it) or Psychic (well, "magic" in 40k IS psionics). Anyone feel like giving me their opinions on this matter?

edited 10th Nov '16 10:14:13 AM by BlackSunNocturne

Yeah, the overarching goal of the campaign is going to involve trying to change Galt for the better. At the moment, one character is looking for his sister. He went to the Shelynite church for information and found she's in the city of Edme (and hilariously misconstrued the friendliness of the paladin)... but now Isarn is in lockdown because of things that happened early on (the Red Raven crashed an execution).

So today I'm going to introduce a quirky miniboss squad as well as a selection of nobles. One of them is actually going to be a shapechanging outsider.

Okay, so I need to think of that. I had the village elder, an adept, but nothing else.

Mind, they have money, so they can buy stuff.

Well long time no post for me (This is what happens when you have to reformat your PC and forget your account password for 3 weeks XD)

But more to my question for you all. I am currently running a pathfinder game for a group of first timers and I am currently stumped with what to do with one of the characters the party has acquired. They did not have a fighter class in their group so I gave them one to make their time learning the game a bit easier, but the problem I am running into with her is trying to give her a story of her own. I have hinted at her being of some kind of notable family but I am unsure of where to go with that.

To give a little background on the setting they are in. They are in a kingdom currently dealing with an internal struggle, the last king went mad and gathered all the treasures of the kingdom up and hid them along with the crown of selection, stating that the next king shall be chosen by those that find his treasure and the crown of selection. There are 3 major noble houses currently working to find it, each based out of one of the larger towns around the capital city.

edited 11th Nov '16 9:59:31 AM by Devarian

Humble Bundle has another book bundle with Pathfinder stuff, this time with third-party materials from Frog God Games, Kobold Press, and Green Ronin. Notable entries include the Advanced Bestiary, Advanced Race Compendium, Halls of the Mountain King, and Rappan Athuk (an apparently relatively famous megadungeon that clocks in at 676 pages...)

edited 16th Nov '16 3:54:44 PM by Pannic

Rappan Athuk is in the "there are 16 pages reserved for obituaries in this book" type of dungeon just to warn readers xD

Apparently it's deliberately trying to be like Tomb of Horrors on steroids.

That sounds awful. Like, Tomb of Horrors is already in the realm of "if you run this, I will kick you in the nuts".

On the other hand, as a GM, I like having it on hand as a threat. "Stop acting like such assholes, or I swear to Gygax that the next thing I run is Tomb of Horrors." That said, I did, in my youth, create a megadungeon (but one that was way more fair to players than Tomb of Horrors) to give my players an epic adventure to play through. I found that video game-style epic final dungeons tend to drag a bit at the table, though. Particularly without regular chances to actually role-play, they typically become a real huge grind. As a GM, I respect that Tomb of Horrors managed to pack in that much deadliness into such a tight package.

Also, I really out to get off my ass and do the Pathfinder conversion of it that I've threatened to do over the years. Yeah, I know others have, but I want to do my own and then see how it compares to others' takes on it.

I don't know what you guys are talking about, but as a player I loved my one session going through the Tomb. Hell, I even called what the trap that finally got us was going to be before we ended up triggering it. Though it was probably one of the least lethal traps even if it did get the whole party. Sadly, despite having a way to get out of the pit with our casters, we called it quits for the night and never continued it. It was to my understanding a fan made pathfinder module, so maybe it wasn't quite as lethal as the actual tomb. But it was certainly enjoyable.

Anyways, point is Tomb of Horrors on Steroids sounds fun to me.

edited 17th Nov '16 10:56:28 AM by Kosjurake

Thing about Rappan Athuk is that its apparently supposed to be fair but hard, so actually good version of tomb of horrors.

Though it does a lot of trash talk when talking about the final level of the dungeon. Including out right stating its basically GM only section due to being impossible.

The "nobody has ever actually beaten this or even reached this during playtesting or before we updated this to pathfinder from 3.0 over course of 25 years" level is pretty much "So players for some reason think they can take on Orcus? Okay then, have fun and painful death" and reaching to that floor pretty much requires them to do something that obviously doesn't seem like good idea "so wait I need to coat myself with my own blood and pass through this ominous portal thingy?(spoilers inside spoilers: if pc doesn't cover themselves with their own blood, the portal works as sphere of annihilation) Okay". I'd assume at that point players would just assume its an obvious trap and ignore it. Its apparently in theory possible though if players search whole place and do specific things to weaken the final boss, but evidently nobody has ever done it and the final encounter is insanely unfair (its written to the text that it shouldn't be "beatable", it should be epic fight of legendary proportions that will probably end in tpk) and challenge rating is "(CR Seriously? 35-plus)".

If players actually win the encounter(the trash talk continues in after statblock section), it notes it to result in basically world changing event and treasure section is like "If you feel like you didn't go easy on players, here is insane amount of rewards they get" and experience section is "up to gm depending on factors, but definitely give players a level if they somehow manage to escape the encounter alive".(note: yeah its in theory possible to escape it alive, its almost as insanely hard as actually defeating the encounter though)

From what I understood, its basically an optional encounter to remind players who manage to beat rest of the dungeon and are insane enough to do the encounter that a demon lord would never play fair and shouldn't be underestimated, pretty much clearing rest of the dungeon(which is already difficult task from what I understand) is enough really to "win" the adventure.

That being said, writer of it also did the "Dirty Tricks" book so I assume it does have a lot of player trolling. Including wilderness encounters when returning from mega dungeon and literally unkillable "Dung Monster"(that is more of a puzzle/nuisance than encounter). Basically a lot of the dungeon seems to be built around old school player habits/expectations and into building players to be "skilled players".

edited 17th Nov '16 12:06:18 PM by SpookyMask

Just to note, if you guys are interested in hearing about more "Tomb of Horrors of steroids" material, there is also Slumbering Tsar that features same BBEG and has plot connections to Rappan Athuk AND the same "insanely difficult" thing going on, I actually played that for a few sessions before gm quit due to being bored with pathfinder's complexness.