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Post by Munroe on Oct 4, 2011 21:32:42 GMT -5
Rolled a Pathfinder character at level 3 for the campaign one of my former players is running.
He's a dhampir inquisitor of Sarenrae (NG goddess of the sun, healing, and honesty) with fire domain. His feats are Weapon Finesse and Dervish Dance (use DEX instead of STR for both attack and damage with a scimitar, and scimitar counts for some feats/classes as if it were a piercing weapon). He also has the Reactionary trait (+2 Initiative) and the Flame of the Dawnflower trait (+2 fire damage on a critical hit with a scimitar).
He's equipped with a mithral shirt, a silversheen scimitar (a silversheen weapon is masterwork, and the weapon is immune to rust effects plus counts as silver), and a masterwork shortbow, twenty arrows, as well as smoked goggles, smelling salts, a single use of dust of tracelessness, and four potions of Inflict Light Wounds.
Inquisitors of level 3 and above get to use a Teamwork feat even when their allies don't have the feat (Teamwork feats usually require a partner that also has the feat), so I'm trying to decide what teamwork feat to use. The Inquisitor class allows them to change their Teamwork feat regularly until they pick the second one (at higher level), at which point the first one becomes permanent.
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Post by Munroe on Nov 22, 2011 19:42:10 GMT -5
For Halloween our Pathfinder GM wanted to run a one-shot so he asked us to create level 4 characters for the one-shot with some cleric levels. New characters because it was to be a one-shot horror scenario set in Ustalav and he didn't want to kill-off our regular characters. I rolled a level 4 cleric of Pharasma (Neutral goddess of birth, death, and prophecy in Golarion) who was native to Ustalav. A week before Halloween he also asked me to get some monsters together for him to use in a horror scenario, since he knows I love that sort of thing. So a week before Halloween I started compiling a three-ring binder full of various "horror" monsters from my books, mostly going with undead and lycanthropes, but tossing in a few other monsters as well, because fighting just undead and werewolves would be too predictable. I put in some animals (wolves, worgs, raven swarms, dire rats, rat swarms, dire bats, bat swarms), vermin (giant spiders, spider swarms, giant flies, giant maggots), magical beasts (ratling, mobat), aberrations (vampiric mist), and so on. We have been playing at a local game store, so I didn't know all the other players beforehand. Halloween came and the party arrived in Sen's Pass in Ustalav: A NG male dhampir cleric of Pharasma (my guy), a (presumably evil) male human "blight" druid, a male dwarven cleric of Asmodeus that used to worship Pharasma, a female halfling rogue, and a male human barbarian from Irrisen. The party was just getting acquainted when the town's mayor showed up at the inn and invited us to undertake the job. (The notices had been posted prior, which is what drove some of the characters to the town to begin with.) The mayor took us from the inn and we were going somewhere more private to talk when a ghostly headless horseman on a skeletal horse showed up and delivered an ominous ultimatum to the mayor before disappearing. (I had my guy attempt to channel positive energy on the headless horseman before it spoke, but the GM indicated no effect.) The mayor told us people had been disappearing and he wanted us to act as guards for the harvest festival that was happening the next day. He told us about how lights had recently appeared in Castle Galdyce again, and there was fear that the nosferatu Viscount Oilic Galdyce or one of his vampire brides, all believed destroyed in 4685 (26 years ago), may have returned. Then the GM got a call that his sister had been arrested for a DUI so he said he'd have to cut it short, but he wanted to have a bit more actually happen, so we kept playing for awhile longer. Our characters returned to the inn and set-up a watch. The Asmodean cleric went off on his own and patrolled the town at night. In the middle of the night, while my character was on watch, there were some sounds so my cleric (Felix) woke the barbarian. The druid woke on his own and engaged a werewolf near the inn. I banged on the side of the building to rouse the halfling, but she needed to don her armor so took awhile to join us as we fought werewolves in the street. The Asmodean wanted to kill them all but Felix managed to convince the group to incapacitate one for questioning. In the fight, only the Asmodean was bitten. The adventure basically ended there. We haven't actually had a session of our regular game since Halloween though, so I got permission from the GM to take over that story, originally intended as a one-shot, and work it up to run on days when he's unavailable or doesn't have anything prepared. I've statted Galdyce in accordance with his listed levels in Rule of Fear (the Ustalav guidebook), using a pre-generated character as a base. I've also done the same with a couple vampire brides for him. Their levels weren't listed anywhere, so I've made them a level 6 expert and a level 5 ranger. Though I plan to have him have more brides than that, the ranger stat will be for more than one bride. The level 6 expert vampire bride is more unique though (unless I decide otherwise). Her expertise is Profession: Librarian, and she serves as Galdyce's chief researcher, along with a couple ratling (CE sentient tiny magical beasts) assistants. Since the party is mostly evil anyway, I'm going to take a page from my DMing in FRC and have the vampire attempt to become their benefactor. Sure, he's a murderer and a monster, but he's still a nobleman of Ustalav and cares about the well-being of his people like he cares about any piece of his property. Given that he's CR 13, and the party is level 4, making it an adversarial relationship just wouldn't work for them. Fighting just one of his wives (they're CR 6) would be a difficult fight for the party. So, when I get a chance to run it, Galdyce is going to show up and offer the party employment. He wants them to deal with the werewolf problem. I've got a plot outline for that with a CR 7 boss. Hopefully they'll be at least level 5 before they get to the boss. I have a side-quest planned for the party to undertake before they actually get to deal with the werewolf boss though. The vampiric librarian bride of Galdyce will approach the party for help with another issue. One of her ratling associates was tampering with necromancy (ratlings can use scrolls as if they were on their spell list) and inadvertently unleashed a zombie plague. Being a tiny creature, he was able to successfully escape the hungry plague zombie, but it lost track of him somewhere in the Vale of Red Breath. The ratling reported the incident to the vampire librarian and the vampire has observed that the plague is spreading. It's gone too far for her to stop it by herself. She'll assist the party how she can, but that mainly consists of providing them with her own vampire spawn that have been instructed to help them fight the zombies. (She doesn't want to endanger herself by going with the party.) She would prefer that this incident didn't get reported back to her husband, of course. For the side-quest, I'm using Apocalypse zombies, which are Relentless (+10 movement speed, gain scent ability, gain climb speed, +4 DEX, +2 HD) brain-eating (gain bite attack, crack open skulls and eat brains so head isn't intact for Raise Dead) plague (spread disease, create spawn, diseased-gas release on death) zombies. In addition to the default human Apocalypse zombie I've also statted up an ogre Apocalypse zombie and a wolf Apocalypse zombie. I need to stat some more werewolves. So far I've only made one new CR 3 werewolf, and the default werewolves are only CR 2. Generating werewolf stats is annoying. Pathfinder werewolves are weaker than 3.5e werewolves though, because they don't get claw attacks in hybrid form and they don't gain bonus hitdice while in hybrid and animal form. Pathfinder lycanthropes only gain the natural attacks of their animal form while in hybrid form, which is why they don't gain claw attacks--wolves only have a bite attack. In 3.5e, all lycanthropes gain two claw attacks regardless of base animal. I think it makes more sense for them to grapple though, personally, so I don't have a problem with the lack of claw attacks. Anyway, werewolves are a pain to stat-up. I should probably make at least one CR 4 werewolf version though. Now the regular GM wants us to make level 1 characters so he can run us through a level 1 module in a week. I'm getting sick of making new PCs, I'd rather be playing an existing PC, or GMing some of these plot hooks.
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Post by Munroe on Dec 3, 2011 18:30:47 GMT -5
No idea what's going on with the Pathfinder game right now.
Let a message on the game's forum asking if there was a game tonight. Even if there is, not sure I want to play if he wants us to make level 1 characters again.
Still need to make some more higher level werewolf NPCs for my monster binder.
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Post by Munroe on Mar 15, 2012 18:30:15 GMT -5
I have a side-quest planned for the party to undertake before they actually get to deal with the werewolf boss though. The vampiric librarian bride of Galdyce will approach the party for help with another issue. One of her ratling associates was tampering with necromancy (ratlings can use scrolls as if they were on their spell list) and inadvertently unleashed a zombie plague. Being a tiny creature, he was able to successfully escape the hungry plague zombie, but it lost track of him somewhere in the Vale of Red Breath. The ratling reported the incident to the vampire librarian and the vampire has observed that the plague is spreading. It's gone too far for her to stop it by herself. She'll assist the party how she can, but that mainly consists of providing them with her own vampire spawn that have been instructed to help them fight the zombies. (She doesn't want to endanger herself by going with the party.) She would prefer that this incident didn't get reported back to her husband, of course. For the side-quest, I'm using Apocalypse zombies, which are Relentless (+10 movement speed, gain scent ability, gain climb speed, +4 DEX, +2 HD) brain-eating (gain bite attack, crack open skulls and eat brains so head isn't intact for Raise Dead) plague (spread disease, create spawn, diseased-gas release on death) zombies. In addition to the default human Apocalypse zombie I've also statted up an ogre Apocalypse zombie and a wolf Apocalypse zombie. I created an advanced ratling oracle 4 now. His name is Loremaster Gray and he's the elder ratling that is a companion to Emera, the vampire bride librarian. I gave him the Experimental Spellcaster feat from Ultimate Magic (twice, the first lets him use some words of power, taking the feat a second time lets him learn more words of power) so even though he's only level 4 oracle he can create skeletons and zombies with the Undeath word of power I gave him. (For those unfamiliar with oracles, they're a spontaneous divine spellcasting class that uses the cleric spell list. For those unfamiliar with words of power, they're a variant build-your-own-spell system in Ultimate Magic that still use spell slots.) I can tie him in perfectly with the plot hook above. He has the Haunted oracle curse, which could be how the zombie(s) got out of his control in the first place, possibly. (His haunting interfered with his necromantic experiments.) He has the Dark Tapestry oracle mystery and one of its granted "revelations" (bonus powers) is the ability to assume a small or medium humanoid form, so he can actually take a human form and go into town if he likes. The power does say it works like the spell alter self though, so I need to make sure he can actually take humanoid form with it since he's a tiny magical beast. I also need to check to make sure that the undeath word of power can be used to make variant skeletons and zombies like animate dead. If it can't then I have no use for it.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 5, 2012 22:09:21 GMT -5
A few days ago I posted a new thread called My Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance Campaign" and asked for input on the campaign assumptions. It's received 0 replies so far, so either 1.) Nobody cares because it's for my home game and doesn't affect them. 2.) Those who disagree disagree so much that posting isn't worth their effort. 3.) Some other reason.
I'm posting about it here rather than in that thread because I don't want to clutter that thread with my own comments, and this thread has pretty much been nothing but my own comments for this whole page of posts. But anyway, I'd still like some feedback on the campaign assumptions even if you think they're all stupid. If people think they're really stupid then it's a good chance that prospective players IRL will think so too, and I'd like to know what to expect before I start trying to recruit players.
I told my father that the Pathfinder campaign I have in development is called "Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance" and he said it sounded like a historical romance and was a terrible name for a horror story. So I suggested "Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance: Revenants of the Damned" to give it more of a horror feel. He said that was a little better.
I've been working on low-level plot ideas for the party to deal with before they have to deal with hags, vampires, or werewolves. My low-level plots involve mostly giant vermin, though I have some ideas that involve ratlings and zombies.
One of my ideas is to send the party after a (medium) giant spider, but then after they kill it there is a surge in the giant maggots and giant flies in the area, which is bad for farmers. I've also been trying to figure out if I want to work a spider-eater into the story, but it may be a bit high CR for that plot. I might go dire bat instead, that makes a better transition into the vampire stuff later.
I've also plan to have exploding skeleton archers (CR 1/3) patrolling the area of overgrown farmland around the "abandoned" castle. Three of them is supposedly an appropriate challenge for a level 1 party. I having figured out how I'll be integrating the cooler variant skeletons yet. Obviously I can't have burning skeletons patrolling overgrown farmland, that's just a huge wildfire in the making.
I definitely want to do something with rat swarms too, so I've been trying to think of a pied-piper-like tie-in. I think Pathfinder may already have a pied-piper-like figure though so I'll need to research that.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 7, 2012 7:55:13 GMT -5
One of my ideas is to send the party after a (medium) giant spider, but then after they kill it there is a surge in the giant maggots and giant flies in the area, which is bad for farmers. I've also been trying to figure out if I want to work a spider-eater into the story, but it may be a bit high CR for that plot. I might go dire bat instead, that makes a better transition into the vampire stuff later. I've also plan to have exploding skeleton archers (CR 1/3) patrolling the area of overgrown farmland around the "abandoned" castle. Three of them is supposedly an appropriate challenge for a level 1 party. I having figured out how I'll be integrating the cooler variant skeletons yet. Obviously I can't have burning skeletons patrolling overgrown farmland, that's just a huge wildfire in the making. I definitely want to do something with rat swarms too, so I've been trying to think of a pied-piper-like tie-in. I think Pathfinder may already have a pied-piper-like figure though so I'll need to research that. OK, I ran a test of 4 level 1 commoners versus a medium jumping spider (medium spider has 13 AC, 16 hp, jumping spiders have no Web attack, have +8 racial bonus to acrobatics instead). I used the Village Idiot stats from the GameMastery Guide. He's a level 1 commoner with 6 hp, 10 AC and +1 STR mod. I equipped them with actual clubs instead of improvised clubs though. I had them fight in a house map I have from a map set, with the spider coming out of the kitchen chimney in a room 10 feet (2 squares) wide, and had the village idiots deal with not all being able to reach the spider at once for melee. Final result? Village idiots had one of their number become poisoned (STR damage) and dropped to -1 hp, but the party got to that member before she died. The spider was rendered unconscious in three or four rounds. Bam, 400 XP for the commoners. I don't think actual player using the wider range of NPC classes (except adept) will have any trouble reaching 1000 xp for the beginning of their player classes.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 8, 2012 4:45:42 GMT -5
OK, I ran a test of 4 level 1 commoners versus a medium jumping spider (medium spider has 13 AC, 16 hp, jumping spiders have no Web attack, have +8 racial bonus to acrobatics instead). I used the Village Idiot stats from the GameMastery Guide. He's a level 1 commoner with 6 hp, 10 AC and +1 STR mod. I equipped them with actual clubs instead of improvised clubs though. I had them fight in a house map I have from a map set, with the spider coming out of the kitchen chimney in a room 10 feet (2 squares) wide, and had the village idiots deal with not all being able to reach the spider at once for melee. Final result? Village idiots had one of their number become poisoned (STR damage) and dropped to -1 hp, but the party got to that member before she died. The spider was rendered unconscious in three or four rounds. Bam, 400 XP for the commoners. I don't think actual player using the wider range of NPC classes (except adept) will have any trouble reaching 1000 xp for the beginning of their player classes. I tried this again with a web-spinning medium spider, because I think it's cooler if the house is full of webbing. The web does make it a little more challenging for the party but I think a group of four level 1 commoners can still handle it. On the upside, the commoner NPCs I'm testing with have 6 hp (3 +3 from CON) while the players with NPC levels are likely to have more hp than that since they'll get max HP at level 1 and commoners in Pathfinder are a d6 class. So I'm still trying to think about what else to do with the party at level 1. I like the giant maggots and giant fly ideas, but I don't have any good miniatures to represent either, and I'd rather pick something I can represent visually. As far as vermin go, in addition to medium spiders (I have a lot of medium spiders), I have a couple medium centipedes, a medium wasp, and a medium beetle. I'll have to check CRs though, I don't know if any of those would be appropriate for the party. I've also been studying up on my Pharasma lore since Pharasma is likely to be the primary faith in the campaign. It's the only one with a church in town. According to my materials, Pharasma temples and churches either have three head priests, or, in smaller communities, have one priest, or sometimes a husband-wife pair, that fulfill all three roles of the three head priests. The three roles are priest of birth, priest of prophecy, and priest of death. The materials go on to say that the priest of prophecy usually has a lesser role than the priests of birth and death, even though they're all supposedly equals. (This has to do with prophecy becoming unreliable in the campaign setting since the death of Aroden, a former god of humanity, and a lot of prophets going crazy.) Pharasma's faithful often make her holy symbol over their hearts. It's a spiral and in Ustalav they make the symbol with a closed fist. (In some other lands they make it with one or two fingers pointing to the heart.) Pregnant women often carry symbols of Pharasma in her aspect as "the midwife" to bring favor to their birth and unborn child. Rank or station in a particular temple or church is usually determined by age, with the older priests being senior-ranked as well. However, temples and churches from larger communities have more say in the faith than churches from smaller communities. The clergy of Pharasma are about 70% female. Prophecy is common in the faith and it isn't uncommon for a newly arrived member of the clergy to find the clerics of a local temple/church have already prepared a room prior to the cleric's arrival. I can use this in my campaign two ways: 1.) The resident priest of Sen's Pass, Sergei, may receive portents of his own death so he can foreshadow it before he's killed. He doesn't know why or how, but he has a sense of forboding, even to the point of preparing the temple for Felix's arrival as his replacement. 2.) The new replacement cleric, Felix, may have been dispatched weeks prior to Sergei's death by the cathedral in Kavapesta because of vague prophecy that a cleric would be needed in Sen's Pass. I'm trying to decide if Felix is Sergei's son. Felix is a dhampir and Sergei is human, but that doesn't mean anything. I'm thinking it's possible Sergei and his wife were a husband-and-wife clergy pair, but she was bitten by a vampire while pregnant. When the boy was ten, the family took the boy to Kavapesta and he was raised by members of the faith there because the duo thought he was in danger (from ignorant locals and possibly vampires) in Sen's Pass. The wife passed away years later. The locals have almost completely forgotten that Sergei even had a son. If the two are father and son, I may have Felix arrive shortly before his father's "disappearance" so they can have a moment. Now sure though. It might be too contrived. I need to think some more about the other town NPCs. So far I have: Humanoid: Priest Sergei (human cleric of Pharasma) Priest Felix (dhampir cleric of Pharasma 4) Burgomaster Barovan Sweetwater Aelic "Galdyce" (dhampir fighter 3/rogue 6) Milora (vishkanya "prostitute") Glistasia (vishkanya "prostitute") Emile (changeling, deceased, sister of Sister Faye) Galena (changeling, deceased (presumed alive), sister of Sister Faye) "Umbra" (changeling witch 1, daughter of Sister Faye) "Seelie" (changeling witch 1, daughter of Sister Faye) unnamed hedge witch (middle-aged human adept 4) Monstrous: Sister Faye (advanced green hag) Viscount Oilic Galdyce (nosferatu aristocrat 3/rogue 9) Iron Alice (annis hag) Lorekeeper Gray (advanced ratling oracle of the Dark Tapestry 4) Emera (mastermind vampire expert [librarian] 6) Babette (swarmshifter vampire ranger 5) Suzette (swarmshifter vampire ranger 5) Emera has up to 24 HD of unnamed vampire thralls. Babette and Suzette can have 10 HD each of vampire thralls. (One vampire spawn is 4 HD.) unnamed vilkacis (werewolf possession-spirit) Midnight Terror (giant advanced worg CR 4) Rime Ghost (giant advanced winter wolf CR 7)
Milora and Glistasia are going to use the default vishkanya entry from Bestiary 3, so they're statted as level one ninjas (CR 1/2 each), but I'll be using them more as basic rogues. Basically they pose as prostitutes and target "upstanding" married men, then they seduce them and rob them. Vishkanya body fluids (including blood, saliva and "other"), are a dexterity poison to non-vishkanya, so even a kiss risks dexterity damage with a vishkanya. They use this to weaken their target's defenses prior to the robbery, and hope that their marks don't report them for fear of scandal at soliciting prostitution. Vishkanya have white pupils and forked tongues though, and one of their marks mistook them for succubi and reported them to the village priest to "save his soul," which is how the party gets tipped off about them.
I'm not sure yet whether Babette and Suzette are thralls of Emera. They could be, but I'd rather have all three be free-willed vampires "wed" to Galdyce. (As a Pathfinder nosferatu, Galdyce himself cannot create vampires or vampire spawn.)
I'm not sure if having both Midnight Terror and Rime Ghost is a good idea though, because after I use one, it may be a case of "this again?" when they face an enormous sentient canine a second time. I've been trying to come up with a way to tie them both together into one plot. I may introduce rumors about both terrorizing the mountain passes around the same time, so the stories don't seem like a "this again" plot.
One idea I have for a plot is that Seelie is growing concerned because she knows Sister Faye, the hag revealed to her to be her true mother, devoured her aunt Galena when she transformed into a hag. She has concerns that Umbra, her sister, might devour her as well when she transforms into a hag, and she might approach the party about it, revealing the whole coven, or at least enough to cause the PCs to discover the coven over time.
Not sure what I'm going to do with the hedge witch yet. She's not associated with the hag coven. Might just be another town-based resource for the party. If so, I may name her Maleva, after the old gypsy-woman in the original Wolfman.
So really I need more mundane NPCs. I need several merchants, a handful of guards, and some farmers and shepherds at the least. Oh, and of course some of their families, this town isn't populated by just them.
I'm thinking of having a guard named after one of the guards in Greatgaunt, probably Merton. Kentin and Carl are actually my favorite Greatgaunt guards, but Merton has the best name.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 10, 2012 0:46:46 GMT -5
I'm thinking the spider's lair (old abandoned farm house) may also have a haunt in it, possibly the Orbs haunt (CR 2) but I need to look at the Scare spell to see if it's too much for the party at that point. It might be that they go to the house once and the spider is out hunting, at which point they encounter the spirit orbs lingering in the house. They may even be spirits of victims of the spider, but I'd rather have the spider initially attacking livestock than people. They could just be spirits of the people that lived in the house before the spider took up residence, the ones that died under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps the house has remained empty precisely because they're haunting the place. As vermin, the spider is immune to the effect of the spirit orbs. (All haunts attack with mind-affecting fear effects and vermin are immune to mind-affecting effects.)
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Post by Munroe on Apr 12, 2012 4:56:05 GMT -5
Oh, a couple things have in my campaign encounter lists are "rabid wolf" and "rabid worg."
I was just thinking this evening that Midnight Terror (CR 4 large worg), who is leader of the local worg pack, might approach the party to deal with the rabid animals because he doesn't want to get rabies by dealing with them directly.
It's an idea anyway. I don't want too many evil creatures handing out quests though, they're supposed to be the villains, after all.
Of course even if Midnight Terror becomes a temporary ally, there's still Rime Ghost (CR 7 huge winter wolf) lurking in the mountains.
Of course it could be that both creatures are in the same pack and it's Rime Ghost that approaches the party about the rabies.
Midnight Terror isn't as tough as an average winter wolf (large, CR 6) though, so if he's in a pack with more than one winter wolf, he's not that scary.
Of course it's possible that one or the other is female, and they're mates, and Rime Ghost is the only winter wolf in the pack. If I take that angle, I'll probably make Rime Ghost male. Pathfinder rules classify winter wolves as variants of worgs anyway, so it's not that much of a stretch to have a winter wolf leading a worg pack. Hmm... would a worg + winter wolf pairing produce worg or winter wolf offpsring?
In one 3.5e GameMastery module I have, the lone old male worg, who has several levels in barbarian too, has regular wolves as mates. I guess he's not too concerned about making conversation. (GameMastery Modules product line, later renamed Pathfinder Modules, is set in the Pathfinder campaign setting, so it's canon for the setting.)
I could bump Midnight Terror up in power some by giving class levels but that puts the worg even further from an encounter with the party.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 13, 2012 1:01:25 GMT -5
This is a variant beheaded I made using the burning and screaming variants, and adding them to the flaming skull beheaded. (Beheaded appear in the bestiary for Pathfinder Adventure Path #43, the first book of the Carrion Crown adventure path.) According to their creature entry, beheaded can be created with the animate dead spell. Each variant added counts as an additional hit die for purposes of creating the creature with animate dead, but only counts as its actual HD for purposes of tracking the total number of controlled undead created with the spell. So to create it, it counts as 3 HD, but to continue controling it, it counts as 1 HD.
Screaming is a +0 CR variant, burning is a +1 CR variant. Flaming skull is normally CR 1/2. I left the creature at CR 1/2 because there was no significant difference between adding these two variants to the flaming skull and adding them to the default CR 1/3 Severed Head beheaded. The Flaming Skull does have slightly higher CHA, which raises the save DCs by one point, and gives it 1 additional hitpoint.
None of the listed beheaded variants have vulnerability to cold, I added that just because my burning skeletons (also CR 1/2) have vulnerability to cold and I wanted to have it for consistency. Honestly, short of a magic spell or class ability, the party won't have the means to do cold damage until these things are little more than a nuisance.
I split the burning (ex) ability into two distinct listings, one for burn (ex) and one for burning sheath (ex). The features of "burning sheath" are actually just part of the Burn ability, but by splitting it, I can list it in the aura field with a range of touch, and it makes it easier for me to track. In the damage where it says "plus fire and burn," I could have just said "plus burn" since the fire is part of the burn effect, but the initial fire damage happens regardless of the save for burn, so I've listed it separately.
And... I just now noticed the slam has no attack modifier listed. That's a flaw of the original entry I worked off of for the flaming skull. I've looked at the severed head but its attack bonus listed doesn't seem right either. I think it should be BAB+STR+size mod. It may instead by BAB+DEX+size mod though, I think tiny creatures get to finesse their natural attacks. I'll have to check on that though. Will update this post once I have that ironed out.
Update: I've added the attack bonus of BAB (0) +STR (-1) +size mod (+2) = +1. I also adjusted the CMB from -3 to -1 because the original entry had it calculated wrong. Tiny creatures get to use DEX instead of STR for CMB, but not for attack bonus. The CMB didn't use DEX and was using STR.
*mumbles* Reprinting my personal copy.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 13, 2012 10:00:12 GMT -5
I realized something today on the Pathfinder forums, reading a thread from a new player asking mechanics questions. What I realized was this:
I never learned Pathfinder by playing it.
I also never learned D&D 3.5e by playing it.
While they are different, they're similar enough that I learned them both by playing Neverwinter Nights. I learned D&D 3.5e by learning how it was different from NWN. I learned Pathfinder by learning how it was different from D&D 3.5e.
And NWN I learned by playing, of course, but the learning curve in NWN was so gradual that I only learned something when I needed to know it at my own pace. So I didn't have that experience of being a complete neophyte when I sat down at the table to play D&D for the first time.
In other words, my D&D experience has been vastly different from that of a large number of players. Of course I was still intimidated by filling out my first character sheet, but I can't even imagine how overwhelmed someone would feel if they sat down to do so without knowing where the numbers come from, without already being very familiar with the Player's Handbook.
I don't know, just thought I'd share.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 15, 2012 17:25:17 GMT -5
Since my Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance campaign is going to be more of a sandbox game with the players free to roam around some, I want to give them incentives to stick around in the same area, besides plot hooks.
One incentive I thought of for them to stay in the same sandbox is to give them property. Right now I'm thinking that around level 3, the village might reward them for their service by giving them a piece of property. In particular, I think the village will give them the long-abandoned Silver Dagger Inn and adjoining lands on the outskirts of town. They'd be co-owners.
I already have plans for the inn in the plot because it's one of the haunted locations I'm establishing in the vale, so of course the party will have to purge the inn's haunting before they can make practical use of it. I think, in addition to its haunts, it may be "haunted" by a lar as well. A lar is a lawful good incorporeal native outsider that guards a location, and is usually tied to a statue or figure at the site. (In Roman mythology, Lares are basically house gods.) Of course the other reason the place is significant is because the silver dagger for which it was named is the one that was used to kill the werewolf that would eventually become the vilkacis (a kind of werewolf ghost in Pathfinder) that is spreading the lycanthropy in the region. Of course that dagger went missing years ago when the inn was abandoned, but its recovery may be significant to the defeat of the vilkacis. (Vilkacis destruction is usually tied to the weapon that killed it or its mortal body.)
If I award the inn to the party, and they clear it of haunts and other undead, they may have a nice little base of operations for themselves, guarded by a lar too, if the lar gets along with them. They can have their own rooms and store their loot there.
Hopefully they'll want to stay in the region because it's where their base is. But I'm also looking into options for when they do decide to leave the region, like plots to run when they venture from the Vale of Red Breath sandbox. Right now options I see include possibly having them cross through some of the adventures in Carrion Crown (which occurs elsewhere in Ustalav) or the module Carrion Hill (which is yet elsewhere in Ustalav). I assume they'll want to go to other towns as they get higher in level because Sen's Pass isn't going to be equipped to supply higher level adventurers. The nearest "major" city is Kavapesta, the capital of Amaans (the county they're in) and it doesn't seem like much goes on there, but they can probably go there for shopping if they want. I might actually run it as being relatively uneventful when they do go there. Of course residents of Kavapesta, much like residents elsewhere in the country, are pretty insular and distrustful of strangers, so maybe there's more going on there than they're telling.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 21, 2012 19:22:12 GMT -5
One of the monsters I have statted-up in my three-ring binder of monsters is a "basic" burning skeleton. It's a skeleton on fire that does fire damage and has a fiery aura that deals damage to adjacent squares. I've been trying to figure out how I wanted to incorporate that particular skeleton into my campaign. I mean I understand the vampires using acid blood skeletons, and I've got two different plot hooks worked out that produce apocalypse zombies (the ratling oracle created one accidentally and I have a variant undead ooze that makes them), but how do I get burning skeletons and burning beheaded into my campaign?
So I had the idea that the burning skeletons would all be under the leadership of one monster that was creating them, possibly a burning skeletal champion. A skeletal champion is basically a sentient skeleton that can take class levels, so I looked to see what level he'd need to be to create burning skeletons and he'd have to be at least level 5 cleric or level 7 wizard to cast Animate Dead. Well, I didn't really want him to be a cleric or wizard, it doesn't really fit my image of him as a martial "warlord" character, so I've been looking at other options.
Today I looked through my Green Ronin Advanced Bestiary (for 3.5e, but Paizo themselves often use it in their Pathfinder materials so I figure I can too), but didn't see anything that fit the bill. So I looked through my Tome of Horrors Complete and finally found almost exactly what I wanted.
I found The Undead Lord template (Tome of Horrors Complete page 748). It can be applied to any undead. It increases the undead to 5 HD (if it were less than 5 HD), grants the undead a natural armor bonus (unless the base undead is incorporeal), enhanced damage reduction, channel resistance, darkness and fear 1/day as a spell-like ability (wording reads as though they're both cast simultaneously), 1/day summon undead of the same type as itself, Command Undead as a bonus feat even if it doesn't meet the requirements (namely the Channel Energy class feature) but it can only command undead of its same type, undead telepathy allowing it to communicate telepathically with any undead within 100 feet (regardless of undead type, even communicating telepathically to mindless undead) and grants the undead the Create Spawn (Su) ability to create more undead of its type from creatures it slays. It also gives some ability score bonuses: STR +4 (unless the base undead is incorporeal), Dex +2 (+4 if the creature is incorporeal), Int +2, Wis +2, Cha +4. It goes on to day that undead lords always have an intelligence of at least 10, so any base undead that is normally mindless gains an ability score of 10 as an undead lord.
I say it's almost exactly what I wanted. I can make it much closer to what I wanted by giving it a level or two in warrior or fighter.
Of course it still presents the problem that it can't make the burning screaming skull beheaded that I want to accompany the burning skeletons. I'm probably just going to handwave it and say it can make both. (My variant undead ooze makes apocalypse zombies because I said so, it normally just makes regular zombies.) One is a mindless flaming skeleton, the other is a mindless flying screaming flaming skull, close enough, right? I'm toying with the idea that they're actually both the same monster and the flaming skull detaches from the flaming skeleton body when the body is defeated (awarding CR for each creature separately).
I don't know, I kind of like them both as separate things so I'll probably just give him the ability to make both.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 22, 2012 1:57:44 GMT -5
And hours later, I finally have my undead lord stats completed.
Here they are:
As you can see, I did give him the ability to create both burning skeletons and fireskulls. The determining factor of which is created is the condition of the corpse. He can also summon and command both.
I applied both the skeletal champion and undead lord templates to him because the undead lord template increases him to 5 undead HD if he has less HD than 5, and I knew I wanted to give him class levels too, whereas the skeletal champion has 2 undead HD and retains existing class levels, so going skeletal champion first actually allowed his HD to stay lower while at the same time giving him more class levels.
Actually, I think his CR may be a little high, but that's calculated following the listings. A skeletal champion has a CR equal to a skeleton of the same number of hit dice +1. A skeleton with 6 HD has a CR of 3, so a skeletal champion antipaladin 4 has a CR of 4. Then add the burning skeleton variant (CR +1) to reach a CR of 5. Then undead lord template adds another +2 on top of that for a total CR of 7.
I don't think he's worth CR 7 though, when compared to the vampire template, which has a CR adjustment of +2. I could probably be safe treating him as a CR 6 encounter, in my opinion.
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Post by Munroe on Apr 27, 2012 16:36:35 GMT -5
After having a dream about "blood hounds" that were dogs made of actual blood, I tried to create the creature using the blood knight template from Green Ronin Advanced Bestiary, ignoring the template requirements of proficiency with heavy armor and that the creature wear heavy armor. (It is instead wearing a chain shirt.)
The creature came out with very low hp and save DCs so its Charisma has arbitrarily been bumped from CHA 6 to CHA 14 in addition to the template benefits. (Advanced Bestiary was written for 3.5e so doesn't take into account Pathfinder undead's reliance on the Charisma stat.) This increase was made after I asked on the Paizo forum what I could do to help its hp better match its CR and got back a couple suggestions to just increase its CHA score to 14. (This brings its hp back in line with the hp of its living counterpart.)
I'm not sure how I'm going to use the creature yet but I dreamed about it so wanted to stat it up. I do have an AD&D Ravenloft adventure (Howls in the Night) that involves dogs that are actually mud monsters so I may try to adapt it so they're blood monsters instead. (Or I could change the creature flavor into "mud hounds" and keep them mechanically the same but without the blood theme.)
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Post by Munroe on Apr 29, 2012 15:09:28 GMT -5
Well, so far I have 4 players that are interested in the campaign. I'm a little concerned because I'm not sure any of them have actual Pathfinder experience. But... we can work on that.
So far only two of them have told me an idea of what they want to play. Those two declared: "a gnome summoner" "a human or half-elf fighter or ranger" (He initially said "elven ranger" but changed his mind.)
I've asked that each player select two character traits (they're sort of like starting half-feats), one of which must be a campaign trait. To that end, I've adapted some campaign traits from published Pathfinder material (all adapted from the Kingmaker Player's Guide, actually) to suit my campaign better.
The campaign traits I have available for players right now are:
I still need to make campaign traits for twins of Sen's Pass (I've declared that Sen's Pass has a high occurrence of twins), and for characters who come from elsewhere than Ustalav.
I'm not sure what trait bonus I could give to twins or foreigners though. Perhaps being "worldly" could benefit foreigners, like they get +1 trait bonus to any one knowledge skill and begin play with one additional bonus language?
Character traits offer "trait bonuses" that don't stack, so it's not possible for a character to take two traits that grant the same bonus.
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Post by Munroe on Aug 31, 2012 4:16:58 GMT -5
I was at the game store this evening and one of the other customers there was a cigar aficionado. He mentioned that one of the benefits of his membership in the cigar club at a local cigar shop is that he occasionally gets empty wooden cigar boxes for free that would be thrown out otherwise. There was a small box there that he had brought over.
The wheels in my head started turning and I thought about how those felt-lined wooden boxes cost a fortune, but if I could get a wooden cigar box for free, I could just line it with felt myself. I asked if maybe some time he could bring me a box. One of the store regulars went in the back and came back with a stack of three cigar boxes for various brands of cigars. (These were boxes the other customer had brought in previously.) I looked through them, talked about them some, as well as some other stuff, and picked out one I liked.
Long story short, I have a new project of converting this cigar box into a felt-lined box for rolling dice.
I've sanded the cigar brand off the sides already, which also stripped the finish. I haven't sanded the top or front yet, but will do so soon. I'll sand the whole thing down and re-finish it, then get some felt from a hobby store to line it with.
Oh! There's a place I walk by every time I go to the game store that makes custom billiard tables and playground equipment (Weird combination, I know). I could check there for some high-grade felt, or at least a recommendation of what kind to get.
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Post by Munroe on Aug 31, 2012 4:46:44 GMT -5
Just felt like pointing out these two posts, as they're related. WotC has asked online retellers to cease selling D&D books in PDF format so Paizo had to take down all their old AD&D PDFs. I had been considering getting the AD&D Transylvania PDF but I guess I'll just get the book itself off of Ebay eventually. |
I just ordered all the Van Richten's guides they put up for sale (Ancient Dead, Created, Fiends, Ghosts, Vistani, Werebeasts), as well as the Ravenloft: A Guide to Transylvania (A Masque of the Red Death Accessory) and Ravenloft: Howls in the Night, an adventure that I believe is a mystery adventure involving hounds on the moors, likely inspired by the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles. (Cover artwork on Howls in the Night suggests to me that the monster may actually be a Howler.)
Eagerly awaiting my shipment now. |
I had some time to do some reading in July and actually finished Ravenloft: A Guide to Transylvania (A Masque of the Red Death Accessory). I read it cover to cover. The last page of the book was an AD&D Monstrous Compendium entry for the dhampir. Interesting note on AD&D dhampirs: Their eyes are red in the dark. Sidenote: The cover artwork for Howls in the Night suggests that the monster is a Howler, but in fact it isn't.
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Post by Munroe on Oct 13, 2012 6:55:36 GMT -5
Actually had a session of the campaign 2 weeks ago. Gearing up for session 2 this evening.
Party for the first session was: a human commoner who will become a human alchemist a half-elf commoner who will become a half-elf rogue an aasimar warrior who will become an aasimar paladin a tiefling commoner who will become a tiefling sorcerer
The session didn't actually involve any combat. The party witnessed the public execution of a werewolf that was captured in human form. The future rogue fleeced the crowd that was there for the execution and made 9 gp total (I rolled 2d10 to see how much gold he got). The tiefling placed an order for a silver-tipped shortspear (and paid half the gold for its construction) once he realized there were werewolves around, and also gathered some of the ashes after the werewolf's body was burned at the stake.
The party was recruited to join Count Galdana's militia and they were given accomodations for the night. The paladin went to bed early, while the other three stayed up late in the tavern. The tiefling got the half-elf drunk and stole twenty gold off of him.
The session was short because only one of my expected players showed up and the other three players were people from the store who said they'd play after the expected player and I had waited an hour. The expected player is the one playing the human alchemist. Today I'll take my copy of Ultimate Equipment along with me so we can get a look at some of the cool alchemical stuff he will be able to make.
One of the store regulars also already had a character generated in HeroLab software just in case he was in the campaign, so he's playing a Rakshasa-spawn tiefling. I need to go over his character with him again because he made it in HeroLab and he doesn't know what half of it means, and I didn't either until I looked it up. (The store's copy of HeroLab is a complimentary copy that has a whole bunch of supplement add-ons and he had no idea where he was drawing resources from.) I especially need to go over the fact that he's a Beastblood tiefling (aka rakshasa-spawn) so I'll need to make sure he doesn't take one of the other fiendish bloodlines when he become a sorcerer. Tieflings normally get a -2 racial penalty to CHA as tieflings but a tiefling that is a sorc with the Abyssal or Infernal sorcerer bloodline gets a +2 effective CHA score for class abilities (that negates the CHA penalty of being a tiefling). A Beastblood tiefling (from Blood of Fiends), however, gets a +2 CHA bonus instead of a -2 CHA penalty. (They have non-standard racial ability modifers.) The Rakshasa bloodline for sorcerers (from Ultimate Magic) doesn't have any +2 effective CHA bonuses for tieflings. So I just need to make sure he's not trying to min-max his tiefling ancestry to get way more CHA than he should. I -think- he told me he's taking the arcane bloodline for sorcs though. I also need to go over with him that rakshasa are native outsiders. He was talking about the Blood War during the first session, which doesn't make sense on two counts. 1.) Rakshasa are native outsiders so they're native to the Material Plane. 2.) The Blood War doesn't actually exist in the Golarion continuity. Sure demons and devils don't get along, but they're not actually in a planes-spanning war.
The guy playing the half-elf rogue isn't a tabletop RPG player at all, he's actually a Magic: The Gathering gamer. But he was there, and nobody was playing Magic with him, so he said he could roll the dice. He picked his race and future class basically from the table of contents of the Core Rulebook and we assisted him with generating a level 1 commoner. Who knows, maybe he will become a regular player? He seemed to have some trouble getting his head around the idea that it's a cooperative game though, so I won't hold my breath on that count.
The guy playing the aasimar warrior (who will be a paladin) showed up while we were making the half-elf character. He said he was interested and he asked what role the party needed. Since nobody was a primary melee character, he declared he would be a paladin. When he heard the one guy was a tiefling, he wanted to be a tiefling too. I told the paladin's player it would be fine if he was a tiefling paladin. The guy already playing the tiefling insisted that tieflings couldn't be good-aligned but he stopped insisting after we looked it up. So I assured the guy he could be a tiefling if he wanted, but I also mentioned the tiefling penalty to Charisma. He changed his mind when he heard they have a CHA penalty (paladins use CHA as their primary ability for spellcasting in Pathfinder), so I suggested he could be an aasimar instead. They get a racial CHA bonus. He was fine with that idea and went with it. I'll suggest this session some of the variant tieflings that have CHA bonuses instead and see if he wants to change his race to one of the variant tieflings. I'm taking both Blood of Fiends and Blood of Angels along so I'll make both of them available for him to look through. They're Pathfinder Player Companion books (32 pages each) that provide options and variants for playing tieflings and aasimars.
You know, all of this dependent on any players actually showing up. I'm pretty confident the alchemist's player will. He's shown up for two sessions already, even though we didn't play for the first session he showed for at all. The tiefling's player will probably be there. He's there a lot. Sometimes he even minds the shop when the shop's owner isn't there. Whether he'll play or not is a different story. I've only met the aasimar's player twice, including last session. He told me he's at the shop every Saturday though, so hopefully he'll be there. He left his character's sheet with me so I'll have it if he's there to play. And if the half-elf rogue's player is there, he's welcome to play. Not sure how strong his interest is, but if he doesn't want to play and the other three are there, three is enough.
I'll have enough resources with me to scale for a party of three or four. I could scale lower than that, probably, but it gets harder to predict. They'd end-up fighting CR 1/2 screeching fireskulls, they're about the weakest monster I have. Mainly because they're 1 HD and their size is tiny. As tiny creatures they have to move into a creature's square to attack, which gives the creature an AoO against them. They do have a chance of setting PCs on fire, but I still think they could probably do with having their CR reduced to 1/3. In my own testing, one of them didn't survive a round against four level 1 commoners with no armor and basic clubs. I suppose it's possible the PCs could fail saves against the screeching effect, but if they save once, it can't affect them for 24 hours.
==================================================== My Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance campaign is set in the village of Sen's Pass in the county of Amaans, in the country of Ustalav.
F. Wesley Schneider, the Editor-in-Chief at Paizo, posted a background story for the iconic inquisitor on their Paizo company blog this week. He mentioned in it a book (Hunter's Moon) by Ailson Kindler, who, in the setting, also wrote a book that takes place in the same region as my campaign (Galdyce's Guest). Ailson Kindler is an Ustalav NPC. Ustalav is F. Wesley Schneider's own little slice of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting. Since Sen's Pass doesn't actually appear on the map of Ustalav, I took the opportunity to ask where it is on the map and say where I am currently putting it for my campaign. I also suggested he actually write those two books.
He responded to at least part of my request:
I replied with a minor correction to my initial post, but it was an error on my part he had ignored anyway.
I really want them to publish an updated map of Ustalav now, so I can see where he puts Sen's Pass on the map. If he puts it on the High Senir river, that will be awesome.
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Post by Munroe on Oct 15, 2012 0:06:31 GMT -5
I know nobody else cares about this stuff, but I'm excited about it nonetheless.
F. Wesley Schneider, Paizo's Editor-in-Chief, responded to my reply to his reply.
I'm surprised he hadn't noted that before, but imagine if he expands on it and writes a historical figure into Ustalav's history to explain who Sen was and why he has a village (Sen's Pass) and a couple rivers (High Senir River and Senir River) named after him, or something like that. It would be totally sweet. Now I want to know how they're related too.
It would be so sweet if the stuff I made up for my tabletop campaign actually became roughly canon. I'm realistic enough to know it won't be an exact match, but if he puts Sen's Pass anywhere near the High Senir and writes the background to tie Sen's Pass to the Senir rivers, that would be so sweet.
And if canon still doesn't match my campaign, I'll fix my campaign. My players only have the vaguest idea of Sen's Pass being in the mountains of Amaans anyway because they're not canon junkies.
People IRL always tell me "I usually play in custom worlds." Really? No love for the published campaign settings? The only person I know IRL that mentioned a favorite campaign setting that he likes to run his campaign in is the shop owner. He likes Dragonlance.
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Had a second session of my campaign last night with everyone from the first session actually present, AND a new player joined.
He's playing CG/CN (he couldn't make-up his mind) kitsune. A commoner right now, but he's planning to go rogue or ninja (which will be flavored as a rogue for the setting). As far as anyone is concerned in the campaign, he's some kind of werefox.
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Post by Munroe on Oct 16, 2012 23:18:42 GMT -5
There's a feat in Dragon Empires Primer that would let the new player's kitsune turn into a full fox form too. I'll have to point that out to him. I'm sure he'll want it.
He told me the reason he asked to play a kitsune is because he normally likes to play a were-creature but he figured that would be shot-down and kitsune is scaled as a player race. As soon as we started playing and he found out that last session a werewolf had been killed and burned at the stake, he realized just how unlikely it would have been that he'd get to play a werewolf. As it is, he's going to be pretty close with a kitsune anyway, since it'll be treated as a kind of foxwere.
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Post by Munroe on Oct 17, 2012 7:37:12 GMT -5
I'm brainstorming what to do for Halloween in my campaign. When it's a werewolf/witch/hag/undead-themed campaign it's hard to do something "special" for Halloween. I suppose I could have them celebrate Jestercap, the actual equivalent holiday to Halloween in Avistan. (Avistan is the continent in Golarion.)
Here's what was posted on the Paizo blog about Jestercap last year:
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Post by Munroe on Oct 29, 2012 5:29:49 GMT -5
In the second session, on Saturday 13 Oct 2012, we went over feats and I made sure the players had all selected campaign traits. A fifth player was interested in joining, so I allowed him to create a kitsune character, but told him he should expect people to treat him as if he were a werefox or foxwere--and a werewolf had just been executed in town the day before. The aasimar's player decided that he would stick with playing an aasimar, and selected the Emberkin aasimar bloodline (peri-blooded aasimar). Then we started play.
The beastbrood (rakshasa-blooded tiefling) snuck out of the tavern that night (which was immediately following the day from the previous session). He explored the town on his own. While he was creeping around town, he ran into the fox-man, who was in the form of a normal man at the time (kitsune have the ability to assume a single human form).
The two furry party members went to talk to the guard on duty. They told him they were going to relieve him of duty for lunch, and convinced him they had been authorized to do so. Just as they were talking to him about it, the kitsune used his dancing lights racial ability to make it look as through a spectral figure was passing through the village square. The guard got freaked out and almost raised the alarm, but then the figure winked out of existence. The guard decided to take that offered lunch break.
At this point I was expecting the CE tiefling and CN kitsune to get up to some more mischief while the guard was gone, but they didn't. They actually stood watch for an hour while the guard took his lunch, then they went back to the tavern. (I think the players may have realized they were making the rest of the party wait while they did their nocturnal explorations.)
After the party got up in the morning, the half-elf accused the tiefling of stealing from her. The tiefling denied it and since the half-elf's player is new to the game and might not think of talking to NPCs on his own, I had him roll a Wisdom check for her. She succeeded the check and I suggested she might think to talk to the tavern workers about what happened. They did not corroborate the tiefling's story about who robbed the half-elf of 20 gold, and the half-elf barmaid suggested she thought it was the tiefling that robbed the half-elf character, but since she didn't actually see who knocked out the half-elf, she couldn't be sure.
The guard captain came by the tavern to talk to the militia recruits but they were already gone, and only the half-elf and the trickster-fox (in human form) were there. They told the captain where to find the others, and the trickster also mentioned he was interested in joining the militia, so the captain put him on the enlistment forms tentatively.
The beastbrood picked up his alchemical silver shortspear from the weaponsmith first thing. The guard bailiff caught up with the party outside of the weapons shop and also got all their names for the paperwork to go through to get them on payroll.
The guard bailiff gave them suggestions of what work they could do around town, because the miscellaneous duties of town guards had been disrupted by the deaths of so many of the guards by the werewolf, and the subsequent hunt for it. They had their choice of investigating a report of a giant spider living in an abandoned farm house, investigating graverobbing in the local cemetary, investigating something in the river that was scaring the fishermen, or investigating fires burning in the night. They elected to investigate the giant spider issue.
They went to the farmhouse on the cliff road and saw that it was full of spider webs. Rather than even going in the house, they began throwing torches in through the windows and breaking windows and opening shutters to make sure the house had plenty of air flow. The spider crawled out of the kitchen chimney and came out one of the windows. They ended up fighting it as it stood on the roof of the burning one-story building and they stood below. The beastbrood, meanwhile, made sure he burned anything that might resemble and egg sac.
After the spider was dead, the human (currently still commoner 1, but going to be an alchemist) indicated he would cut-out the spider's poison glands, which I allowed him to do after making a Heal check to locate them.
They then loaded the spider's remains on the back of the tiefling's horse. (The tiefling and the kitsune own horses.)
I stopped the session there.
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Post by Munroe on Oct 29, 2012 7:50:54 GMT -5
Had the third session of my Pathfinder game this weekend, on Saturday 27 Oct 2012.
It was supposed to start at 6 PM and run until 10 PM.
It ended up starting at 7:15 PM and running until 5:30 AM on Sunday.
Characters: male human amateur alchemist (commoner 1) male beastbrood tiefling aspiring sorcerer (commoner 1) male kitsune aspiring rogue (ninja) (commoner 1) male emberkin aasimar aspiring paladin (warrior 1) female half-elf aspiring rogue (commoner 1) Joined late: female sylph aspiring cleric of Pharasma (commoner 1)
It started off still at the burning abandoned farmhouse where the party had just defeated the spider. They got the spider up on the horse and started to head back toward town. While on their way back to town, the guard bailiff Everett Racivado (which I may sometimes refer to as the guard captain, same guy), came up the road because he saw the smoke from the fire.
He ordered them back to the house to make sure it wasn't at a risk of catching the forest on fire. After they were sure that the house wasn't going to ignite the forest behind it, they headed for town again.
On their way to town, the guard bailiff Everett Racivado told them about how the village's coffers couldn't really afford to put them up in the tavern every night, and the rooms there were basically just for drunks too drunk to go home at night anyway, so they were interfering with village safety by taking up all the rooms. He told them about his family's abandoned inn, The Silver Dagger Inn, that was a mile or two outside of town. He did tell them that the inn was inhabited by a "watchsoul" though, that would need to be appeased with an offering when they went to stay there. They were like "wait, you're going to put us in an abandoned haunted building?" He told them that the watchsoul was not a haunting, but that they should be careful because like all inns, it had its share of problems and he had heard about it being haunted before, but had never actually seen any ghosts there. He gave them some background on the building and why his family wasn't operating the inn anymore (not enough traffic in the mountains to be profitable), and talked about how it used to be pretty successful in his grandparents' day, even to the point of having its own on-staff blacksmith.
The guard bailiff recommended that they go toward the inn before dark. They said "but what about the other jobs you need done?" Finally he told them they weren't welcome in town after dark so they needed to get situated at the inn as soon as possible, and not just because they were strangers, or because they mostly weren't quite human, but because this evening was the evening of Jestercap. Locals got wind of the tradition a few years ago and it terrified them. It was basically an evening of pranks they heard was popular in Druma and Taldor, but it seemed like a ripe excuse for fey to cause problems, so they didn't want anything to do with it, and they didn't want strangers in town for it. (Jestercap is on the 27th of Lamashan in the Pathfinder setting, which coincides with 27 October, the actual day of my session.)
Well, anyway, they spoke to him for awhile about the ritual to appease the inn's guardian watchsoul, a being named The Argent Chamberlain. It involved starting a fire in one of the hearths in the inn, burning some incense, pouring some wine in the fire, and making an offering of a couple daggers.
After they reached the village, they asked if there was a village apothecary. I indicated the nearest match to that description was the village's hedge witch. They went to see Katla Maleva, the hedge witch, and asked her if she would by any parts of the spider off of them, but the kitsune spoke up and indicated he wanted to keep the spider's shell. The hedge witch offered to buy the poison so she could use it to make anti-venom. The human amateur alchemist agreed to sell her one of the two poison glands, for which she paid 300 gp. Only three of the party went into the hedge witch's shop, so they split that three hundred three ways and didn't tell the rest of the party about it. After she paid them for the poison gland, they gave her the spider "meat" for no charge, if she would be willing to clean it out of the carapace. She agreed to do so. They also talked for awhile about what she had for sale and ended up buying some laxatives. (I used pricing for alchemical grease with the rationale that it was "stomach grease.") The hedge witch spoke like an old crone and referred to her formula book as her "cook book." The amateur alchemist also asked her if she could show him the recipe for something, anti-venom I believe. She did so.
After the trio left the hedge witch's shop, they met up with the emberkin aasimar and the half-elf, and decided to ignore the guard bailiff's suggestion to go to The Silver Dagger Inn, and instead go investigate the grave robbing in the cemetery. They got there and shortly after they got there, the half-elf decided to go back to town. (The player was feeling sick and said he was going to head home.)
While they were just looking around the cemetery, another regular customer of the shop came up and indicated he would like to play. He said not to stop and he'd just make his character while we were playing, so I kept going and he began work on his female sylph future-cleric of Pharasma (commoner 1).
While they were in the graveyard I decided they would encounter a vampire-festrog (CR 2), which is not actually a vampire, but a festrog that has been fed vampire blood to grant it the advanced template and some vampire-like traits. The vampire-festrog took a swing at the aasimar warrior and hit for 7 damage. At that point, I decided maybe they only encountered a regular festrog (CR 1), not a vampire-festrog, so I played it off as I had misread the sheet and the thing only hit for 5 damage. The normal festrog was defeated in one hit. The beastbrood tiefling collected the festrog's head. Another festrog and a ghoul (CR 1) showed up to attack just as the tiefling was collecting his trophy. Around this time the female sylph joined the battle as an ally of the party. The second festrog fell pretty easily. The ghoul paralyzed the warrior and switched targets, but its health was pretty low so it fled. The party gave chase, but none made any ranged attacks and the ghoul escaped into the night, relying on its superior endurance. The aasimar's player had to leave to catch his bus at this point, but he said it was fine if the character stuck with the party.
After the ghoul escaped their clutches, the party spoke to the newly arrived female sylph. She had no idea what she was doing in the graveyard or who she was or where she came from. The group decided to keep her with them and they would head for The Silver Dagger Inn at that point. They reached the inn with no problems and began exploring the facility. The gate to the inn's yard was unlocked, as was the inn's main door. The chairs and benches were up on the tables as though the place was waiting to be mopped. They looked around a bit and determined the most likely direction for the family wing of the inn.
When the party tried to go through the doorway to the residence attached to the inn, the door slammed in their faces and wouldn't budge. They tried breaking it but it was a no-go. The beastbrood went outside and crawled through one of the windows to get in, but by the time he got to the door it had opened again on its own. They moved a bench from one of the tables and stuck it in the doorway so the door wouldn't slam closed again. After a minute or so, the door began banging incessantly against the bench blocking the doorway.
They started a fire in the hearth at the end of the hallway and found some incense still on the mantlepiece to light. The beastbrood provided some wine and two daggers for offering. After the offering had been made to The Argent Chamberlain, one of the daggers rose up and flew across the room to stab into the incessantly banging door. It stopped banging.
(The incessantly banging door is a slamming door haunt. Each haunt is based on a spell effect. In this case, Seal Portal. It resets every minute, and can hold a door shut for a minute. All it does is hold a door shut. The Argent Chamberlain is a lar, an invisible incorporeal LG native outsider house guardian based on Roman mythology of house deities. The lar has a lot of spell-like abilities and the ability to possess inanimate objects so they become animated objects.)
The party went to explore the rest of the inn and stumbled into a cold spot in the inn's lounge, where they took a blast of negative energy. It almost killed some of them. In addition to the damage to hp, the beastbrood also suffered 1 point of ability damage. (CON or STR, I forget which.)
They retreated back to the inn's common room/tavern, and found that all the furniture was down off of the tables, the bench was out of the doorway and back where it belonged, and cups of water were poured at all the seats. Oh, and a doorjam had been stuck under the door to the residence wing so it wouldn't be able to slam. The dagger was gone from the door as well. The amateur alchemist was a little freaked out. The beastbrood explored the kitchen and found some rice. The kitsune decided to cook it, using some of the water from one of the mugs. The human guy declared that he wasn't going to drink any dead person's water. (They don't know the lar is an outsider, they think it's a ghost.)
The sylph went out to the stables and workshop and smelled the stench of burning flesh. She quickly backed out of the room and ran to get the others. When she came back with them, there was nobody there, and no smell of burning. The only things of note were an anvil and kiln, and workbench, and seven branding irons strewn around the floor of the workshop. The kitsune collected the branding irons for their raw materials and led his horse into the stable for the night.
The group went back to the inn and picked rooms for the night. The beastbrood decided to stay in the deluxe room in the guest wing, even though he encountered another slamming door that he had to wait to let him in the room. The sylph and the kitsune decided to check out some of the other guest rooms, scurrying past the lounge area rather than risk stumbling into the cold spot again.
The kitsune and the sylph walked into the double room and the kitsune decided to mess with the sylph by using his dancing lights ability to make it look like there were motes of light in the room, but even as he used the dancing lights, he was struck by the fact that there were way more lights in the room than he anticipated. The sylph saw the -dozens- of spectral lights in the room, and fled all the way back to the inn's closed-in central yard. The kitsune was shocked and took a step back out of the room, but didn't flee in terror.
The sylph and the kitsune headed to the residential wing and took separate bedrooms, as did the human and the aasimar. In the residential wing they found that the dagger had moved back into the hearth and was close enough to the fire to be hot but wasn't actually quite in the flames. (The other dagger they had offered was also still in the hearth.)
I handed out XP at that point and everyone but the aasimar (whose player wasn't there anyway) reached the 1000 xp milestone, so they leveled into their level 1 player character classes.
Then they took a night of rest.
In the morning, the kitsune checked on his horse to find that it had been branded in the night, and all seven of the brands he had collected had been returned to the workroom floor. The horse was branded with a stylized 'R'. The kitsune was joined by the beastbrood and the breastbrood sorcerer used detect magic to determine that the brand on the horse's backside had an aura of necromancy.
The human, aasimar (who was being handled by the kitsune's player), and sylph explored the rest of the inn, including the four single bedrooms. In the last single bedroom, they encountered a lesser shadow (from Tome of Horrors Complete) that had been lurking in the room. The lesser shadow attacked them and the fight lasted just long enough for the beastbrood and the kitsune to join the fight, but the lesser shadow didn't manage to drain strength from anyone.
On the way back out of the guest wing, I had the group make checks and the sorcerer heard a noise in the attic. While the others went back outside, he went looking for a way up into the attic. He went into the residential wing and was prevented from walking down the hallway by a strong gust of wind that also slammed the door shut behind him. He was delayed long enough that some of the other party members joined him. When they figured out he was looking for something on the ceiling, they helped him look. The attic door was in the room the aasimar had spent the night in, and it was weirdly alternating shades of wood, between a dark finish and a light finish, almost as if it were blinking.
(This effect was The Argent Chamberlain's work. In addition to moving the furniture around the night before, the lar had used the gust of wind to stop the tiefling's advance, and used prestidigitation to change the colors of the wood repeatedly to make it appear as though it were almost flashing in highlight. It used the gust of wind against the tiefling because it has Detect Evil at-will and it can tell the tiefling is CE and doesn't want him snooping around alone.)
The group went into the attic and the cleric (the sylph), who had cast deathwatch while fighting the shadow, looked around with deathwatch while the sorcerer (the beastbrood) used his Detect Magic (cantrips are unlimited daily use in Pathfinder). Eventually the group found a woman hiding in the attic. They spoke to her and her responses were suspicious so they told her they'd detain her and let the guards sort it out. She cast invisibility and tried to flee, but she was tackled to the ground. They threw some ash over her to see her invisible form (actually ash from when the werewolf was burned), and bound her. They went through her things and took some of them.
They took her back into town and turned her over to the guard bailiff. She swore her hate at him, and mentioned if she had "that dagger" she'd gut him right down the middle. He, on the other hand, indicated he had no idea who she was. She knew him by name.
The party believed she might be a werewolf so requested that she be detained and secured until after the full moon. The guard bailiff agreed to that, so she was left in his care.
Several members of the party at this point went to speak with the hedge witch, who so far seems to be their favorite NPC.
They checked on the condition of the spider chitin, declined taking any stew, and did some more shopping, buying mostly laxatives, alchemical solvent (a weaker, cheaper glue release agent that only works on non-magical glues), and casting plaster, as well as a number of empty vials. Then they left the hedge witch and went to the tavern, where they purchased a bowl and some lemon juice. The inn's proprietor overcharged for the lemon juice because he felt they should have gone to the general store for that kind of purchase, and he doesn't like the party anyway. (He thinks they're a bunch of freaks.)
The beastbrood mixed the laxative and the alchemical solvent in an empty vial, and the plaster and lemon juice in the bowl, and went back to see the prisoner. When they came back, the guard bailiff left to find that cage his brother the werewolf had been locked up in prior to his execution. (This town is small and lacks a proper dungeon or jail.)
The party, except for the cleric and paladin, took the prisoner into the guard station and told her the liquid in the vial was a caustic solution that would kill her painfully, and threatened to make her drink it if she didn't talk. She refused to talk so the tiefling attempted to force-feed her. She talked at that point, told them about how she is a demon worshiper that worships the demon patron of werewolves, and how she's after the Racivado Dagger, the silver dagger that was used to execute the werewolf a few days ago prior to its burning. It's owned by the guard bailiff's family, she said, and she wants to destroy it as it is an item opposed to her faith, because it's used to kill werewolves and has been for more than just this execution.
After they got all they thought they could get out of her, the beastbrood downed the concoction he had been trying to force her to drink to show her it had all been a ruse. Since it was a combination of laxative and glue thinner in a 1 ounce vial, I had him make a fortitude save. He failed it and got sick to his stomach (nauseated). He walked out of the guard station to where she couldn't see him and vomited up the concoction.
After the party had regrouped, and the guard bailiff had returned, along with Alexandru Merton, one of his guards, the party questioned the bailiff about the dagger that shared his name. It was a family heirloom, he told them, a magical silver dagger, and he had returned it to its traditional resting place after the execution--that is he returned it to the mantlepiece above the residence hearth at The Silver Dagger Inn. They informed him that it was not there when they were there. He told them that it's not just a family heirloom, it's also the most valuable thing he owns, and it would need to be located. They told him about how the woman was looking for it and if he found it he should keep it hidden and let them know.
(Of course he has no idea where it is, but I do.)
Then they decided to go back to the village cemetery and look around some more (presumably now that they have class levels). They went to the cemetery and started a stake-out, watching for that ghoul that got away, or more ghouls, or whatever, I guess.
Shortly after nightfall a pair of ghouls (CR 1 each) and a ghoul wolf (Tome of Horrors Complete, CR 2) came into the cemetery. The party managed to take down the ghoul wolf but the ghouls would paralyze one party member then move on to another target, until the only one who wasn't paralyzed was the alchemist. They chased him around for a bit and the alchemist managed to hit one of the ghouls. It was hurt badly enough that it fled into the night. The other ghoul, realizing that the paralysis on the others would be ending soon, ran away from the group and grabbed the paralyzed paladin, attempting to pull him off into the darkness. The paladin was heavy and the ghoul didn't get far before he got hit again. He decided to flee and took off at 4x run into the night in a straight line. The sorcerer hit him in the back with a magic missile as he was right at the edge of the spell's range, and took him down.
The group, still not welcome in the village of Sen's Pass at night, headed back to The Silver Dagger Inn instead.
That this point it was about 5:30 AM so we called it a night. The tiefling's player had previously indicated we needed to be out of there by 6 AM so he could get some sleep before work, so that gave me time to pick up my stuff before we left.
While there were some glitches in the game, notably I let them do way too much initially with Detect Magic and Deathwatch, and I dropped that vampire-festrog on them that I had to swap out for a regular festrog or almost guarantee a TPK, I think this was one of my best tabletop experiences to date. It was certainly my longest. I've never had an all-nighter in tabletop gaming before. (The closest comparison I can make is one of my 24 hour sieges of Greatgaunt on FRC.)
The GM I was playing with last year wanted to have a Halloween all-nighter one-shot but had to cut-off early because of events outside the game. I didn't even plan for a special Halloween all-nighter and got to have one.
It was very pleasing.
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dakari
Proven Member
Posts: 119
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Post by dakari on Oct 29, 2012 21:02:38 GMT -5
I have to say one most enjoyable posts i have read in long long time. Almost like reading a story very very cool! Looking forward to more game updates gotta say. try to remember as much detail as possible want to know what happens next!
thanks Dakari
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Post by Munroe on Nov 3, 2012 22:43:51 GMT -5
If any of my players in my tabletop campaign are reading this, stop now! ===================================================== (They could be, you'd be amazed at the power of Google.) One of my players posted this on the forum at the gamestore where we play. We're supposed to be finding the dagger? Killing ghouls in the graveyard or locating where the ghouls come from? We still have yet to go to the river. And in two days time there will be a full moon... We shall learn if the warewolf has been taken care of or not. I'm guessing the full moon will actually set our campaign into motion. i'm still wautung for some homely looking teenage girl to come tromping into town from the big city and start babbling about how she is madly in love with the warewolf but is indecisive if she wants to practice bestiality or necrophilia. Wait. Maybe i'm thinking of some recent teen angst movies that have come out in the last 4 years.
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Little does he know, I'm just going to take the next session to introduce more campaign hooks. Actually, I'll probably give them enough information that they can deal with the ghoul issues in the short-term. Maybe even a ghoul-themed dungeon. I have a lot of pre-fabricated dungeons and I picked one out that would be a pretty good ghoul lair. The dagger is long gone. (I know where it is, but it's not likely to be found.) It's a MacGuffin for a plot that hasn't even appeared in the campaign yet, and won't for at least a month in-game--I want to make sure we get through the upcoming in-game full moon first. I think they'll likely need to meet with the castle librarian at some point in the campaign before they even know why they need the dagger. Since they haven't heard of the librarian or had reason to go to the castle yet, that's a good way off. In the meantime, the guard bailiff is just going to have to be upset that his family heirloom is missing. What an heirloom it is: The Racivado Dagger is a +1 glamered holy silver dagger. (Did you know that the glamered property makes an item undetectable to Detect Magic?) I'm trying to figure out how to introduce some elements, like the vampires. I think it's going to come to light that the werewolf wasn't actually the one who killed all eight of those town guards. Some of them died under more mysterious circumstances. (Or, well, vampires are the presumed culprits.) I also need to give the player characters a chance to speak to Brother Sergei Quinnell, the town's cleric of Pharasma. One of their theories right now is that he's involved in a cover-up regarding the werewolf that was executed. I think I'll introduce the vampires and ratlings in a non-hostile way, or maybe just the ratlings at first, then let them stew in the background while I run the worg plot. The worgs have their own problems and may need the PCs to deal with them. I've already given them a basic hook for the fire skeleton plot but they haven't bit on that plotline yet. Count Galdana's man Ari Russov may have to steer them back onto that plotline once he arrives in town. As for the issue down by the river? That's more of a one-off scenario than anything plot related. (I have a few river scenarios but I decided not to do the one with the ghoul since they're already dealing with ghouls.)
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Post by Munroe on Nov 3, 2012 22:52:43 GMT -5
I'm thinking the ghoul boss for the ghoul plot will either be a ghast (CR 2) or a dread ghoul (CR varies) from Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary. (It's an OGL 3.5e book of templates that Pathfinder products still regularly make use of.)
I also have another idea for a possibility of what the ghoul boss may be, but I can't remember the name of the creature right now. It's not technically a ghoul but it fits in thematically as a ghoulish undead. It would be too high CR for them to deal with at level 1 but it has an astral projection ability so they might only be dealing with the astral projection of it, which has less hitpoints, then it could survive to harry them another day.
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Post by Munroe on Nov 11, 2012 9:52:23 GMT -5
Had the fourth session of my Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance campaign yesterday (11 Nov 2012) evening.
Here's basic run-down.
The session picked up right where the last one ended, with the party heading back to the Silver Dagger Inn from the graveyard. (While its name hasn't been brought up, I figure it's Sen's Pass Cemetary.)
The group decided they would take a ghoul's corpse back from the graveyard to the inn to perform an autopsy. They were trying to determine whether the ghoul was made by magic (such as Create Undead) or by being infected by another ghoul.
The beastbrood tiefling sorcerer (Shelbie) had the emberkin aasimar paladin (Ragana) chop down a small tree on the way back to the inn and just outside of the inn he planted the spike outside of the inn's main gate (it has minor fortification aspects) and he posted the festrog skull he collected on top of the spike, presumably to ward off undead but I think it's more likely to attract carrion birds, perhaps even a carrionstorm (swarm of undead ravens).
The tiefling was sure he had picked up the seven branding irons in the stable's workroom, but there they were again when the group returned. The human alchemist (Carl Delbrück) put the ghoul corpse up on the workbench and proceeded to dissect it. He determined it had been eating mostly long dead remains, but by the judgment of its stomach contents, it had probably been dead for less than a year. (Basically there were still trace elements of rotten foodstuffs.)
While the alchemist dissected the ghoul, the rest of the party went back to the inn and searched the attached living quarters for any sign of The Racivado Dagger. They didn't see any sign of it, but the fire was still lit in the main hearth and the two daggers they had offered to The Argent Chamberlain were still present.
After failing to find any sign of the heirloom dagger in the family wing, the group went up into the attic to look around again. They hadn't performed a thorough search when they captured the human woman Tarabitha Czelnai, the cultist of Jezelda (demon patron of werewolves), so they returned and did their search at this time. They didn't find much. It looked as though the woman had been staying in the attic for a couple weeks, sleeping on a makeshift pallet bed she had pieced together from materials in the attic. Other materials in the attic included a couple old chairs that were covered, and a coat rack with a ratty old fur coat left to rot on it. They didn't find anything of interest to them so they returned downstairs and determined to experiment with the cold spot.
While the rest of the group had been traipsing around the house, Carl Delbrück the alchemist had finished his autopsy/dissection of the ghoul, lit the workroom fire, and burned the ghoul. On his way back to the house, he collected some clumps of living grass, still in the dirt, from the yard of the inn.
The alchemist met-up with the rest of the group with intentions of tossing some living grass into the cold spot to observe the effect on the grass, but just as he arrived, Shiva, the sylph cleric of Pharasma (N goddess of birth, death, fate, and prophecy), shoved Shelbie the tiefling sorcerer into the known region of the cold spot. As Shelbie noticed the sudden drop in temperature and scrambled to get clear of the increasing cold before it struck him, Carl Delbrück managed to toss the clump of grass into the same area. The paladin Ragana of Sarenrae (NG goddess of the Sun, redemption, honesty, and healing), finally having come into his paladinhood recently (he started as a warrior for the first 1000 xp), attempted to Detect Evil for the first time on the area of the cold spot. Shelbie got clear of the cold spot and avoided further injury, but the clump of grass wasn't so lucky. Ragana was able to detect evil in the area, so he continued to concentrate into subsequent rounds and, while it didn't help him with the cold spot any, he did determine that Shelbie had a faint evil aura to him. (As an evil-aligned outsider he detects with a faint aura at 1 HD.)
As the cold spot didn't seem to manifest again, the group went to inspect the orbs that had been observed in one of the rental bedrooms the previous night. The orbs manifested again and Shelbie cast magic missile at one of them. The missile hit the orb but appeared to have no effect. Everyone fled in overwhelming fright except Shelbie who managed to watch the orbs fade out.
The group decided to rest for the night. Carl Delbrück, Shiva, and the kitsune sneak Rei Kyu went back to family wing to rest in beds there, while Shelbie the beastbrood stayed in the luxury room in the inn wing he had used the previous night, and Ragana the emberkin paladin insisted on staying in the room with him to keep an eye on him.
In the morning the quintet made the 3 mile trek back to town. Shiva rode the kitsune's horse to town, while the rest walked. Because he was carrying a light load, Shelbie walked slower than the rest, who went off and left him.
Once back in town, the group spoke to Guard Bailiff Everett Racivado about the condition of the prisoner and asked if she had said anything in the night. The bailiff indicated she hadn't said anything of worth. He also informed them that the count's liaison may have suffered some delay in his arrival.
Most of the group then went to see Katla Maleva, the hedge witch. Shiva didn't visit with the hedge witch because she was late arriving to town. (She left the inn after the others.) Rei Kyu picked up his medium spider carapace, now cleaned of spider guts care of the hedge witch. He took the carapace to Marcus Ogden, the town weapon dealer and weapon smith (and general blacksmith), to see about having it made into spider shell armor. After reviewing the options available to him, Rei elected to have the spider shell used in the studs of a studded leather armor, mostly because he lacked proficiency with anything heavier. Shelbie also visited the weapons dealer and picked up a kukri to replace the daggers he had given to The Argent Chamberlain two days prior. (Shelbie is not proficient with the kukri, but he purchased it as a utility blade.)
Shelbie got his horse from the stables in town and the group went to investigate the trouble that had previously been reported near the river. They went and investigated near the bridge across the High Senir River.
I'll continue from here next time.
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Post by Munroe on Nov 18, 2012 5:00:05 GMT -5
I said I'd continue there next time and ever since I wrote that, I've been putting off continuing.
Long story short, they went to the river and fought a mated pair of tatzlwyrms, medium-sized dragonic creatures that are serpentine with a pair of forearms. They're considered mythological even in the setting, so very uncommon creatures. The first tatzlwyrm they attacked while it was sleeping under the bridge. It fled into the river but was killed before it could escape downstream. Its corpse sank into the river and was washed away. The second tatzlwyrm emerged from the woodland nearby while they were attacking the first. It came onto the bridge and coiled around Rei (grappling, yay!) and breathed noxious gas in his face.
The group attacked the second tatzlwyrm and Carl shoved the grappling pair off the bridge into the river, and followed them over. The tatzlwyrm, kitsune, and human at that point all began swimming in the water, and being washed away by the current.
Shelbie through his regular shortspear at the swimming tatzlwyrm but missed and the shortspear poked up out of the shallows. The tatzylwyrm was killed by a combination of an icicle attack (domain ability granted by the Water domain) employed by the sylph Shiva and magic missiles courtesy of Shelbie.
Since the tatzlwyrms are considered cryptids in the setting, basically, I encouraged the players that the dead tatzlwyrm might have value. Carl the alchemist cut out the tatzlwyrm's poison glands for use in his experiments, and Shelbie claimed the creature's intestines. He then spread the intestines high in the branches of a nearby tree, and chanted. The party didn't no what he was doing, but as a cultist of Pazuzu one of the obediences is to put guts high in the trees for carrion birds to feed upon, so he was making an offering of the creature's intestines.
After the trip to fight the tatzlwyrms, the emberkin aasimar Ragana left the party. (The player of the aasimar left the shop mid-battle with the tatzlwyrms to catch his bus home, and he's moving to Texas for his vocational training so this was his last session in the campaign.)
Since the tatzlwyrm is a cryptid, the party took the remains back to Katla Maleva and she told them she'd have an estimate of its value for them in two days, but it would need to be intact to be the best value. Carl decided dealing with its gaseous poison might not be worth it, so he turned over the poison glands for Katla Maleva to put with the creature's other remains. Katla Maleva cleared out her icebox of various meats and cheeses and other things best kept cold, and packed the scaly beast inside.
Since the hedge witch was clearing out her fridge, Carl took the opportunity to buy some venison off of her. She also offered him some spider-meat stew, but he declined. He did buy a few other things though, notably a litterbox and a bag of sand for use as kitty-litter. He went to the general store afterward and bought some material to wrap the litterbox.
The group decided to head to the graveyard again, but Shelbie said he was going to take a nap at the tavern first. He went to the Taproot Tavern and rented one of the drunk rooms there, with the understanding that he'd be out of the room by nightfall.
While Shelbie was napping, Carl paid a messenger to deliver the wrapped "gift" to the tavern. When Shelbie got up, the tavernmaster gave him the package. He unwrapped the litterbox and read the note, which was a forged note from the guard bailiff Everett Racivado, that said something along the lines of "If you have to, use this and stop pissing all over town." Shelbie tucked the litterbox and bag of sand under his arm with a grin, and trotted off toward the cemetary. Once he got there, he filled the litterbox with the sand, put it on the ground, and made use of it in plain view of the rest of the party.
While Shelbie had been napping, the others had been setting up make-shift traps in the graveyard. They set-up four makeshift over-sized bear traps. Once Shelbie was in his position at the base of the statue, he spread caltrops below the statue to discourage anything coming up behind him.
The group waited an hour or so before two ghouls wandered into their part of the cemetary. One of the ghouls walked right into one of the traps and I treated the trap as a regular bear trap for damage purposes, so it reduced that ghoul to 2 hp and held him in the trap. The other ghoul was engaged and they managed to destroy it before it could get away.
When they were bearing down on the ghoul in the trap, it started trying to negotiate to survive. It told them it would give them whatever they wanted if they didn't destroy it, so they questioned it and it told them it served "the berbalang" and it could take them to its lair. After some negotiations, they released it from the trap to take them to its lair.
The ghoul led them to a different part of the cemetery that had crypts and directed them into one. Rei stabbed it in the back before the party went into the crypt. The crypt was small above ground, but it had a pair of stairs that led into a dungeon complex beneath. Rei used his dancing lights ability to make four orbs of light to send ahead of the group so those without darkvision could actually see. They found a smashed statue of Pharasma and the alchemist collected a few chunks of stone from the statue.
There was a narrow tunnel that was dug into the crypt, and a ghoul emerged from it. The combat is a little fuzzy in my memory but I believe Shelbie used disrupt undead, Carl threw a chunk of statuary at it (for 1 damage), and Shiva channeled positive energy to destroy it. I don't remember exactly who did what damage in that fight, but I know that 1 damage from the thrown stone was necessary as without that the channeled energy would have left it with 1 hp.
The group progressed forward and a festrog charged out of the darkness at Shiva, who was in the lead. It bit into her and pulled her feet out from under her with its bite. The rest of the party attacked it while she took the total defense action, so it turned its attacks on them. It attacked Shelbie, who had been behind Shiva and rendered the tiefling sorcerer unconscious. Carl threw holy water at it, dealing damage to both the festrog and splash damage to Shelbie, who, as a demon-worshipping beastbrood, is an evil native outsider. After throwing the holy water, Carl retreated toward Rei. The festrog couldn't charge because the unconscious Shelbie was in its way, so it moved up to Carl and attacked. Its attack reduced Carl to disabled (0 hp). Shiva rolled 5 feet on her turn to be 5 feet closer to the fight, and channeled positive energy to heal the living. She restored Carl and Shelbie to functioning levels of hp. Rei moved into a flanking position with Carl and finished off the festrog with his sword. When he sliced into the beast, it spewed diseased pus on him from its necrotic boils, but he was able to shrug-off the disease.
Once the party were back on their feet, I decided to call it a night.
We left the party standing in the crypt there.
In that description it seems like the festrog got a lot more actions than the rest of the party, but that's just because I remember what it did better than I remember what all they did, since I was running the festrog. I was happy to see that festrog was far more scary than the first festrog they fought, that died in the first round of combat.
I haven't figured out exactly how they'll deal with the berbalang yet. I'm thinking it probably isn't in the dungeon, since it's CR 6 and would annihilate them. They're getting very close to level 2 though, and if I put in a ghast or two (Pathfinder ghasts are CR 2, while basic ghouls and festrogs are CR 1), they should be level 2 pretty soon.
I think their next encounter is probably going to be an RP encounter though, rather than a combat encounter, to keep things interesting. I haven't decided if it's going to be an RP+combat encounter yet though. Since the party alchemist speaks Necril, I'd like to give him an opportunity to use it. (Necril is the language of the ghoul nation in the Darklands, and more generally is considered a language of the undead.) The ghouls they've met so far have just been locals that became ghouls though, so they don't even speak Necril, they speak the local languages.
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Post by Munroe on Dec 13, 2012 7:03:32 GMT -5
I decided a few days ago that I'm tired of using generic ghouls with the party, and they're probably tired of them too. They've actually managed to take down a couple ghasts too (though not at once). So I made a couple dread ghouls from Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary. (It's a third-party 3.5e OGL book of templates, but Paizo makes use of it occasionally, including using some variant dread ghouls in their Carrion Crown adventure path. I used Carrion Crown's ghouls for comparison of changes, though mine aren't identical.) The main differences between dread ghouls and normal ghouls are that, unlike regular ghouls and ghasts, dread ghouls can control other ghouls (but not ghasts), and dread ghoul is a template without racial hitdice. Oh, and they gain the scent ability. There is a dread ghast template in the Advanced Bestiary that can control ghouls AND ghasts (but not dread ghouls). Pathfinder's campaign flavor is that ghasts are stronger but less civilized than ghouls, and I want to fit the campaign. Also, Paizo hasn't used the dread ghast template in their products but they've used the dread ghoul template. I started with a couple pre-fabricated NPCs, a level 3 warrior and a level 2 rogue. After I applied the dread ghoul template to the rogue, I swapped some of his skills and feats around so they make a bit more sense for a ghoul (he was a smuggler rogue, didn't even have points into stealth), and I leveled him up to level 3. I like where he's going. I want to see if I can harry the party with him and have him escape, mainly because he won't be awesome until level 5, when he'll have both Bleeding Attack rogue talent and the Civilized Ghoulishness feat (+10 to disguise to appear human and an additional +2 channel resistance). He doesn't qualify for the feat yet because it requires 18 CHA and his CHA is only 17. Of course I haven't even named him yet, so if he fails to escape, the one they meet later could be a different dread ghoul entirely. I never did get to use Rukalla the Quiet again in my 3.5e campaign, so this dread ghoul could turn into Rukalla the Quiet version 2.0. The main difference between my dread ghoul and the 3.5e OGL template in the Advanced Bestiary, besides the changes he shares with the Pathfinderized dread ghouls in Carrion Crown, is that I gave his bite ghoul fever like a regular ghoul, transmitted by his bite attack. (The variant dread ghouls in Carrion Crown do transmit ghoul fever, but only when they explode on death. I left that out.) Dread ghouls have a create spawn ability to make dread ghouls from those they kill without actually infecting them with ghoul fever, but I gave him the ghoul fever on a bite too since it doesn't feel like a ghoul without the risk of ghoul fever after the battle. It takes a day for ghoul fever to show symptoms. Well here he is so far.... Dread Ghoul Rogue 3 CR 3 XP 800 Variant human dread ghoul rogue 3 (Advanced Bestiary 76) CE Medium undead (augmented humanoid) Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., scent; Perception +7 ====================================================== Defense ====================================================== AC 17, touch 13, flat-footed 14 (+2 armor, +3 Dex, +2 natural) hp 25 (3d8+12) Fort +4, Ref +6, Will +3 Defensive Abilities channel resistance +2, evasion, trap sense +1; Immune undead traits ====================================================== Offense ====================================================== Speed 30 ft., climb 30 ft. Melee rapier +5 (1d6+1/18–20) or bite +5 (1d6+1 plus disease and paralysis) and 2 claws +5 (1d6+1 plus paralysis) Ranged mwk shortbow +6 (1d6/x3) Special Attacks command ghouls, create spawn, paralysis (1d4+1 rounds, DC 14, elves are immune to this effect), sneak attack +2d6 ====================================================== Statistics ====================================================== Str 12, Dex 16, Con —, Int 16, Wis 14, Cha 17 Base Atk +2; CMB +3; CMD 16 Feats Combat Reflexes, Deceitful, Toughness, Weapon FinesseB Skills Acrobatics +9, Appraise +8, Bluff +10, Climb +9, Craft (traps) +9, Diplomacy +8, Disable Device +9, Disguise +9, Escape Artist +9, Handle Animal +5, Intimidate +8, Knowledge (local) +8, Knowledge (religion) +4, Linguistics +8, Perception +7, Perform (Dance) +8, Sense Motive +7, Sleight of Hand +8, Stealth +9, Survival +10; Racial modifiers +8 Climb, +8 Survival Languages Aklo, Common (Taldane), Goblin, Necril, Varisian SQ rogue talents (finesse rogue), trapfinding +1 Combat Gear potion of inflict moderate wounds, potions of invisibility (2); Other Gear masterwork leather armor, masterwork shortbow with 20 arrows, rapier, forger’s kit ====================================================== Special Abilities ====================================================== Command Ghouls (Su) A dread ghoul can automatically command all normal ghouls within 30 feet as a free action. Normal ghouls never attack a dread ghoul unless compelled. Create Spawn (Su) Any creature killed by a dread ghoul that lies undisturbed and uneaten until the next midnight rises as a dread ghoul at that time. The new dread ghoul is not under the control of its creator. A protection from evil or gentle repose spell cast on the corpse prevents this. Disease (Su) Ghoul Fever: Bite—injury; save Fort DC 14; onset 1 day; frequency 1/day; effect 1d3 Con and 1d3 Dex damage; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Charisma-based. A humanoid who dies of ghoul fever rises as a ghoul at the next midnight. A humanoid who becomes a ghoul in this way retains none of the abilities it possessed in life. It is not under the control of any other ghouls, but it hungers for the flesh of the living and behaves like a normal ghoul in all respects. A humanoid of 4 Hit Dice or more rises as a ghast. |
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