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Pathfinder: Take Me Down to the Ossuary, Where the Mold is Green and the Bones are Gritty
Ok, there’s one week left until the first Chesapeake Pathfinder game. I’ve been going over the rules, getting nickel and dimed on miniatures, and starting to formulate flavor text. Everything’s going pretty good but I have some house rule clarifications. Nothing major though, I actually think these will make things easier.
Please make your sheet on DNDsheets so I can look it over and make challenges for you.
Players:
– Bob: Valeria, Aasimar Cleric
– Jack: Gunnar Halftroll, Half-Orc Hunter
– Steven: Elorin Hawklight, Human Rogue
– Eric: Grifflebore Stuzen, Human Paladin
– Enoch: Shania Casa , Changeling Witch
House Rules:
– Identifying scrolls and potions – I’m going to use what I call ‘Nethack rules’ on these. You’ll find a potion with a different color/taste/smell or a scroll with an inscription of <RANDOM NONSENSE WORD OR PHRASE>, and once you identify it (using the normal methods) as a scroll of, say, cure light wounds, then any further scrolls of cure light wounds (even ones with +X enchantments) will be automatically identified.
It won’t tell you whether something’s cursed though, so watch out. This isn’t much of an issue in this dungeon though.
– Divine vs. Arcane scrolls – There’s a rule in the book that in order to read a scroll without a check, you need to fulfill these criteria:
1. You have to be the correct type of caster (Arcane or Divine) corresponding to the scroll.
2. You have to have the spell on your class list.
3. You have to have the minimum ability score.
4. You have to be at the minimum caster level for the spell (or else you make some easy check like DC = caster level needed + 1)/
I’m going to discard rule 1. There’s really one room in this dungeon where they specify one scroll as being divine and one as arcane, but none of the other scrolls in the entire dungeon are identified as such. Rather than label some scrolls as arcane, some as divine, and some as both, all scrolls are going to be arcane/divine.
– Announcing Checks/Looting a Room – Pretty much I’ll give you most of the checks except for Perception in most cases. If you want to search the room for treasure, you’ll have to say you want to search it and I’ll probably have you roll a Perception check.
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Pathfinder: Rolling Bones for Pharasma
Alright dorklords, here comes the first ever Chesapeake Team Butts Pathfinder game! It’s planned for 1/28/12 at 5:30ish. We’re pretty much well-versed in how Pathfinder goes down already (say we’ll start at 1 PM, start at 5 PM, turn into a scene from 12 Angry Men when it comes time to decide where to eat, etc.), but this game’s going to be a bit different. In an effort to be less work
for the DMfor the players, we’re going to have slightly different rules. First off though:The Module:
Here is the module I’ll be running. It’s a well-regarded 1st-level module. Here’s the description:
“The priests of Pharasma in the strange city of Kaer Maga have long sold plots in their ossuary to those rich enough to afford them – a place of honor and stature for one’s bones to lie after death. Yet now, this mausoleum has become full, and it is time to break into a new and unexplored wing of the dungeons under Kaer Maga to create more room. To a band of fledgling heroes, eager to make names for themselves, this represents a singular opportunity – a chance to explore a heretofore sealed section of the Godsmouth Ossuary and perhaps make a fair amount of gold on the side. The only catch is that they’ll need to survive what strange and ancient mysteries lie within! An urban and dungeon adventure for 1st-level characters.”
So polish up on your boner puns dammit.
The Players:
These are the people I have signed up as definite so far:
Bob – Asaarnian cleric
Enoch – Changeling summoner
Steven – Leaning towards magus
Eric – Some sort of tank
Jack – Half-orc ranger
Rules: (more may be forthcoming)
1. Regarding Class/Race/Archetype – You can be any race/class/archetype from any of the Paizo-published books. No third party stuff. Now you can be that Tengu Druid you always wanted to be but if you pick Kitsune I swear to all the Gods in the Heavens that I will bring all my anime Ore wa baka neko yamate yo onii-chan Japanese down upon your head and play the Revolutionary Girl Utena soundtrack whenever you move. Nobody wants that.
2. Regarding Alignment – Your alignment has to be above chaotic neutral. This is a conscious effort to promote
less waffling on the DM’s part if you decide your character’s just going to start icing quest-givers and orphansbetter synergy and roleplaying amongst the group.
3. Regarding stats – You get 75 points divvied up through the 6 stats. Minimum stat must be 8, no more than 2 stats at 18. This is before racials. This puts us at the ‘Standard Fantasy’ level. When we’ve played at 85 points pre-racial we’ve noticed that our Kroxes cause monsters to burst like they’ve been hit with a cannon, our spellcasters are basically Arks of the Covenant in robes, and watching our gunslingers fight is like watching the Zapruder film: Lord of the Rings edition. Our bards remained comically inept.
4. Regarding the first level – You get 1 extra skill rank or 1 max HP at first level.
5. Regarding backstories – A backstory would be appreciated, no matter how short. At the very minimum, you have to have a reason why you’re in Kaer Maga and agreeing to do a job like this in the first place.
6. Regarding traits – To compensate for the lower stats, I’ll be allowing two traits at start. Try to work them into your backstory (it’s generally pretty easy).
7. Regarding cards/skill spreadsheets – Not required but they are very useful and they help speed things along. At least bookmark or keep track of your skills in your books or smartphones.
8. Regarding buying stuff – Kaer Maga’s a pretty anarchic city and close to Korvosa, so you can buy what you want for starting gear with your starting wealth.
9. Regarding carrying capacity – Adding up weight and shit and calculating encumbrance detriments is a lot of work. I get that. So to make things smoother I’ll say this: For our purposes our rule is going to be (within reason) use the speed given by your armor stats, but as long as all your junk doesn’t take you over the max med. load, assume no encumbrance detriments. That sounds like a weird rule, but again, since we’re playing with lower stats than normal I’ll allow it.
10. Regarding character sheets – Make one on DNDsheets and send the link to me beforehand if you would. I might tinker with and add bonus checks/spot checks/rooms etc. if there are some checks that people have that the module doesn’t use. (I probably won’t subtract checks.)Also, if you have a snack/drink/liquor/beer preference, send a shout out and I can get some.
