Forum: Public Forum

Adam,

Yes, this is the problem with the Pathfinder RPG system... at times it allows for players to do clever and unexpected things!

As I had pictured the fight, I expected one more round with the Wraith and Kazaven lifting the lid of the sarcophagus ever so slightly every other round. The cunning plan was to cast mislead as I had mentioned then have him doing the lid lifting on the side and make you all believe he was still standing in front. I definitely wanted to give Marcus (or Telas if he had wanted to spend an action looking at it) a +4 circumstance bonus to realise the sarcophagus was a trap and the room not merely zapping negative energy every other round, which it could have been. Marcus of course has the 10 ft aura of trap auto-detect active thanks to one of his talents.

As for the gold-fish issue, having worked with academics all my life, I can assure you that some of them have indeed the attention span of a gold-fish when it comes to focus in research. So what is wrong about the possibility of one being physically transformed into a gold-fish? I find this perfectly believable! Therefore it can help the suspension of disbelief.

Laurent,

Dear Players,

Session in general.

A fun game to run tonight, despite the dice roll for the only combat not being really in my favour. Oh well, having two PCs with adamantine weapons reduced what could have been a decent fight to another walk in the park.
This is the problem with slightly high level adventures, mid-level BBEGs can go down quickly given the right combination of spells, abilities or tactics. Ordikan could have been nails with his stoneskin and sky-high resist energy couple with his mirror image and shield (to nix magic missiles)!

The Iron Cages of Lust.

Needless to say that this is my favourite mini-dungeon. The Alu-Demons have relatively easy saves DC, so I got lucky to get Telas under suggestion. Too bad the "little-girl" story did not catch-up due to an abysmal bluff roll on my part.
More disturbing things to come with the mother of the Alu Demons.
As mentioned, there is still a possibility of the encounter being only about role-playing. Lust is opposed to Greed, so if you play your cards right and some of your PCs agree to some debauchery (I will work out a random table on the fly), it is indeed possible to nail all the XP without risking level drain and potentially empty husks.

Paizo signature adventure.

The name is Hollow's Last Hope. I thoroughly recommend this adventure, it has a bit of everything at low-level (LV1 to LV2), a bit of wilderness, a bit of undead, a decent dungeon and the possibility to link seamlessly with Crown of the Kobold King (LV1-LV4) which is another classic. True these adventures are 3.5 but extremely easy to adapt on the fly.

See you next week for LoF and in two weeks time for the rest of the Rise of the Runelords adventure in the Iron Cages of Lust. There should be a cameo appearance of someone who has been in the news lately.

Laurent,

Dear Players,

There was no Rise of the Runelords last week, due to only three players in physical shape to roll a die.

We ended up playing Red Dragon Inn at my place. So, in a fortnight, we are still in the Iron Cages of Lust in Runeforge.

The game page has at long last been updated.

Laurent,

Dear players,

The game is on tonight. I should be home earlier to prepare it properly.

Those of you who are thinking about starting a fight will be given another round to think clearly about it. Charm and compulsion effect encounters are very dicey to handle. If the rolls favour the players for their saves, they become a walk in the park. As soon as one or more players thinks of the opposition as their best friends ever, this is the beginning of the end. Charmed people are merely out of the combat, and dominated ones play with the opposition. While not technically a TPK, half the party can be written off pretty quickly, with the other half lost within a couple of game days after the Succubi get bored or negative levels finish the PCs off.

Laurent,

Dear Players,

Lazy GM.

Give facing mirrors of opposition anytime, I did not even have to roll a die!
Poor James, as Tellas, always rolling high to hit himself and always rolling crap to hit his doubles.
The party should indeed have pushed the Mystic Theurge in front, eight of him or twenty of him would not have made much of a difference anyway.
Marcus outdid himself on the rolls and on strategy yeah!
Next interesting matches, Dagar vs Dagar I and Valakan vs the other two Valakans. Knowing the luck of Valakan's owner, he will likely Baleful Polymorph himself into a fish!

The bank robbery.

It was not the Lloyds close to the Victoria Centre, i.e. not Lower Parliament Street, but the one on Low Pavement which is still a pretty busy street. This street is close to the Broadmarsh shopping centre and crosses with Lister Gate/Albert Street.

See you on Wednesday for LoF.

Laurent,

Dear Players,

Game rule clarification.

While reading the chapter on spell design in Ultimate Magic I realised that we have been misinterpreting true strike since the beginning.
The target of true strike is "you" with "Range personal" and not "Target creature touched" with "Range touch". This makes a lot of difference to our game. This means "No free automatic hit from martial classes" anymore.

Sure, Marcus can still activate his wand for himself and ensure some precision damage on a flank. As pointed out in Ultimate Magic this spell would just be too good if cast on the front-line Fighter every round. However, it is balanced for Wizards or Sorcerers who want their next ranged touch attack to hit. Basically it costs the caster a spell and an action, and as we know from playing at high-level, an action gets more valuable as the game gets more complex.
Marcus being a Thief thus a class that has use magic device as a class skill makes it also balanced by design. His BAB is worse than that of a martial class and he needs to spend some skill points to ensure a decent rate of success with UMD.

Limitations to power-gaming.

By game design, it is not possible to have a potion of true strike, due to the target not being "creature touched". Oddly enough it is now possible to cast mage armour on other PCs in Pathfinder RPG, or even make potions of it because it has a target of "creature touched", while in the old days of D&D 3.5 the range was "you", thus forbidding the manufacture of related potions.
The spell shield is another spell that has a range of "you" so as to not have only a two-handed weapon martial class PC built.

See you next week as a GM, and tonight for the Legacy of Fire game as a player.

Laurent,

Gents....

What do we all think about playing tonight, given the recent stupidity? I have a feeling that the momentum is dropping, and that we might have seen the last of the trouble in Nottingham, but I wonder whether it wouldn't be better to be safe than sorry tonight. Some of us have to walk across the city centre to get home, and I'll have to wait for a bus. I'm happy to play if everyone else is, though, as I think it will almost certainly be fine tonight.

Thoughts?

Adam,

I was thinking the same thing last night when following the Twitter feed of Nottinghamshire Police and learning about the torching of Canning Circus police station. While not exactly my immediate-as-in-across-the-street neighbourhood, or that of Vague Connections, this is tentatively close enough to be taken seriously.

Basically, I am with you on this one, unless another member of the gaming group calls chicken, I would say let's pull the game too.

Otherwise, there is a 40% chance of a random encounter per trip. If an encounter is rolled, check on the following table:

0-29 3D8 chavs with Burberry caps
30-59 2D6 thugs (Warrior 4 with "lowlife scum" template)
60-69 2D6 English Defence League vigilantes
70-84 1D4+1 friendly police officers
85-90 1D2 BBC journalists reporting on "protesters" (*)
91-100 No encounter

(*) No, they are not "thugs" or "rioters" that would be in breach of their human rights.

Laurent,

Hi guys,

I was just logging in to say although chances are that it's all died out I don't want to take the risk of having to cross the city centre after 10 if anything does happen. I don't think my dice rolls could get me through based on my recent rolling.

I concur with pulling the game for tonight.

Re-next week are we going back to Legacy of Fire or are we going to run Rune Lords?

Don't forget to cast mage armour, endure fire, and protection from evil before going to bed

guys i will be walking down to vague later and will take my gaming stuff with me. a decision needs to be made one way or the other so people can be informed. i know james does not log on to the forums too often but i beleive ginga may have contact details for him. not sure where he lives but i beleive that it is out of town so he has to let the person who gives him a lift on whether or not he needs it. Laurent the decision is ultamatly yours as with out a GM the game can not be played.
ding it will be legacy next week.

Dear Players,

As Ian points out, I need to make the decision, so: "The game is off."

Because RotRL and LoF have slightly different group compositions, and Matt can only be free every other week, Ian and I have decided not to shift the alternating pattern unless long term absence for either of us.

This means that Rise of the Runelords will not be played until September.

Sorry I have been busy with work at work and could not reply sooner.

Laurent,

I think that's the right decision, and I'm glad that I wasn't the only one thinking along those lines

I don't like the idea of being forced into cancelling our session of imaginary violence and looting by a small chance of real violence and looting, and I do think there's a lot to be said for keeping calm and carrying on. But even if we think there's only a small chance of getting caught up in trouble, it's better to be safe than sorry. There's always next time.

I grew up in Croydon, and it was very weird seeing pictures of it burning...

i don't have james number. so will have to try and find a way to contact before he gets here

Dear all,

As half-expected, nothing happened last night, but better safe than sorry. Apologies to James if you turned-up, Andrew had tried to contact you.

I mentioned that after passing by Canning Circus police station yesterday morning, the damage was pretty insignificant. However, this clip on YouTube shows some actual petrol bombing of the place. It is indeed strange that the damage was reduced to a broken window and a blackened door.

Chavs and scums comment happily on YouTube of course, in what passes for English or some phonetically approaching underclass language anyway.

Laurent,

Dear players,

The game is on tomorrow, after a VERY long hiatus...

Laurent,

Dear Players,

It has been some time since I posted a long one, so here we go!

Game.

I enjoyed running the game last night, after so long since the last session. The game page has been updated by the way.
As we are now slowly realising, we are down to roughly one encounter per session, as there are no "simple" encounter at this level of play. Sins of the Saviours is an adventure I like a lot because it has a lot of non-conventional encounters. The five simulacrums (not simulacra if I want to use the game term!) of Vraxeris are all LV9 Illusionnists and pack a lot of punch when they play together!
I especially like the combination of invisibility, mirror image and greater invisibility. If a party is not prepared for things like that, things can get pretty messy even with an opponent whose AC is laughably low (for this level of play of course). I agree that the empowered fireball spells were mean, but hey, it is not often that a CR9 opponent punches above his weight.
Note that they keep in a line as a tactic, this way they can safely throw fireballs (they still have some conventional, non-empowered, versions of it memorised) even when there colleagues are invisible.
There are a couple of feeblemind and confusion to throw at you, and as I said, some people will roll a 1 on their save at some point, I know it!
I shall also look into their spell list for a dispell magic in order to suppress that invisibilty purge from Valakan.

This encounter should at most take us another ten minutes to finish, then we can move into the more serious business of advancing the plot by having the PCs discover a few things in the Shimmering Veils of Pride. After that, we all go back to The Iron Cages of Lust for "part deux" of the social encounter with mistress Delvahine.

I may have to retcon a few things there:

• Delvahine should not be asking for a Plane shift. She, and all the others, have been in Runeforge for too long and their essence is part of the demi-plane. She will ask for something else though.
• Delvahine serves a Demon Lord, this will be my addition to the adventure. Of course, I have found a perfect fit for her character. She will be in a position to offer additional temptations and "services".

So basically, forget about the drama related to plane shifting her to the material plane.

Always hitting the same players.

I would like to apologise again to James and Adam.
James seems to attract bad luck when I, or anybody else apparently, roll randomly for designing a target. I promise you James, I do not do it on purpose!

Adam is the one who always ends up seeing his PC face a "save or die" or "save or be severely screwed" situation. The suicide haunt back in "The Skinswaw Murders", numerous fear effects "Fortress of the Stone Giants" (the battle in Sandpoint) and yesterday the feeblemind effect. Again, I am not focusing on your PC.

RotRL compilation.

Ian was right, I had forgotten about the
special anniversary compilation for Rise of the Runelords.

We should, hopefully, have finished with the whole story by the time this is out. As can be gathered in the comments related to that page, they will update the adventure to the Pathfinder RPG but they will drop a few things that were in the original books.

The world beyond Karzoug.

While we have NOT finished the campaign yet, it is indeed possible to think about the next campaign.

Personal views.

I would like to carry on running a game as a regular fixture, so I will most likely propose something after Rise of the Runelords. As mentioned I would dearly like to run Carrion Crown but some of you are already either running it or playing in it. Another option is to run some of the many adventures I have been collecting over the years, the PCs would last only for a level or two, but we could modulate the level of play from low to high (carefully crafted high-level PCs would be required to avoid the issues we had with The Witchwar Legacy). Finally I could propose a true free-form campaign where the party decides what to "look into" and I, as the GM, would prepare something for the next session. I would very likely strip some interesting encounters or situations from the material I have read through over the years. The setting would be a big city, Magnimar or Absalom if we keep with the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting from Paizo. The "feel" would be a mix of "Thief: The Dark Project" and "The Lies of Locke Lamora". I have that idea of having PCs starting as LV1 commoners with crap statistics (9, 10, 10, 10, 10, 11), filthy NE or CE bastards type trying not to starve to death between two meals. The gameplay would be hard and a +1 dagger would be a real treasure.

Sharing games on Wednesday evenings.

We have a pretty good gaming group going on at the moment, we have yet to have a bad argument, so it is important that we do things so that we do not end up splitting the gaming group.
Currently we are alternating two games, it could be possible to alternate three. This however would severely slow the progression through a typical Adventure Path. Then again, I do not see the need to "go through" a campaign as if the goal is merely to go through it.

We could try to revisit the option of having another regular gaming night for our group, or part of our group, during the week so as so allow more people to have a go at GMing. Last time we discussed this, the schedule of Vague Connections (room availability) was against it, but that was ages ago, some campaigns may have finished, some card games may have moved to other days, etc. I will talk to Andrew about this at some point.

Shall we discuss this subject here in this thread or create a new thread, possibly in the Member Only Forum, as it is a sort of private matter to our gaming group?

Laurent,

And yet Marcus is the only character who has been around since (almost) the very beginning, so there must be something in his favour.

Regarding the games. I think rotating three games on a Wednesday might be a bit much, I'm happy to do it, but I think two is more manageable regarding the length between games.

I was/am looking into putting together another game running every other week possible on Thursdays, as I have a friend who is interested in playing, but just the two of us isn't enough (there was a third but she's planning to move in the next few months, so she might be a temp player). My preference is on the player side rather than the GM but since he's willing to spend his pennies on the rule book I can't leave him without a game. If I did end up running rather than playing I could definitly use the help of some experienced players for some rule guidence. The little bits we have played have been tricky with only me being aware of any of the rules.

David,

I could do with playing in another game. We need to check with Andrew about availability.

He is out Larping at the moment.

Laurent,

RotRL

Marcus doesn't really do will saves - I think the fear, feeblemind, and crack suicide squad were all will saves. The magic using contingent have decent will saves, the Paladin has good all round saves... Marcus... doesn't. Wisdom isn't a particularly important stat for rogues, and even a cloak of resistance only boosts it so far. From memory I had a 50-50 chance of making it. He's got excellent reflex saves, but has stacked even that on a regular basis. Though he walked unscathed through at least three fireballs, so he's doing something right. However, will saves are particularly bad saves to fail, I think. Reflex save fail = lots of damage. Will save fail = slit own throat. Or run away like a girl. Or dribble in a corner. I think Marcus is still alive because he's minister for plot, and because he's no real threat and so tends to get left alone. Rogues... underpowered... moan... complain....

The future

I was thinking about offering a 7th Sea game, but the more I think about it, the less confident I am that it would work. This is a Pathfinder group, I think. 7th Sea is a different kind of game, especially the way I tend to run it - more like interactive storytelling. Not sure there is enough combat, tactics, magic, or loot for the majority taste. Paranoia is a nice idea, but that's better suited for a Big Meet or other one off.

I agree that three games is too much to keep track of. I find fortnightly to be difficult enough at times to keep track of what's going on, but that's tougher with Kingmaker when it's less predictably fortnightly and we've had a higher rate of character turnover. Plus I've missed more sessions.

For preference I'd rather play another campaign than a series of one-offs. One-offs are fine, but I prefer to have a consistent character who develops over time. A bit of anti-hero stuff sounds appealing, after the heroics of Runelords and Kingmaker, and the likely heroics of LoF. I'm not sure about playing actively evil, though - neutral selfish might be a better way to go with that, but we'd need a reason for party cohesion. Adventuring (even urban adventuring) tends to take people out of poverty (or out of life) fairly quickly, but it would be nice to play something a bit more open ended where the end goal was personal wealth and glory, or some other player goal. We needn't have crap stats, though!

As for another game... dunno... maybe. Thursday, or the other alternate Friday would be a possibility, though I'd have to think about it.