In reply to Tom_Clancy's_Ghost_Recon (msg # 17):

There's a certain expectation that develops from playing games like D&D.  That everyone stands out in the open and wacks away at each other.  This particular phenomena is reinforced by videos games where everyone (PCs and not) do pretty much the same thing.

I was reading the suggestion about archers using terrain and weather to their advantage, and I"m reminded about when I was reading about the Battle of Agincourt.   The French ultimate lost because their horses were shot out from under them and they ended up drowning in the mud because they couldn't get uphill to where the archers were without said mounts.

Accounting for such factors is much more difficult to do in a PBP setting.   You're either constantly making and remaking map to upload, or you're coming up with a mechanic to account for it.

@vibetrippin  You should look into Scaling Magic Items, if you haven't already.

That is the key part of getting them to buy into it. Is it a family heirloom that disappeared centuries ago? Is the heirloom proof of noble ancestry? Is it a failed magical experiment that was discarded before the final spell was completed for whatever reason? Does it even exist? If so, where is it?  Maybe start them off on the trail at low level and then have a clue pop up every few levels.

Another thought is that a long lost spirit contacted then to recover the stolen item in order to put their spirit to rest.

I found a way to relieve players of their gold is to give them something bright and shiny but uneconomical in terms of min/max game mechanics.

"You now own a tavern or a castle or a knightly order..." kind of stuff just as the original D&D did.

Ya know what is an absolute money pit? Property :D

Not when you use that property to make money. :D

That trick never works.  If you're lucky, the bandits that robbed you blind have left enough clues that it becomes an adventure hook and you can exact revenge.

I mean, if you let mere bandits rob you blind, then of course not. You get what you deserve. It costs money to make money though. So by default you ought to have good security. Like, you know, the kind that bandits can't do anything with. You also don't make the mistake of leaving anything particularly valuable to your character there to be plundered in the event the GM decides to give you the shaft by having a great red wyrm come and loot the place.

That falls back on being a poor DM though. "You handed me this place that I didn't want or care about, then had me invest a whole bunch into it so it was finally cool, and before I can do anything boss with it even once, the first thing you do is wreck it. You obviously did not think this through. I'm also thinking you were just wanting a way to get rid of all that gold and other stuff I had." It is a very valid concern and complaint from a player.

Not only are you now railroading them, you may also be actively cheating them by having some unplausible explanation as to how or why their new investment gets trashed. Bandits, especially goofy ones like goblins, should be stopped and trounced by the defenders of said investment (base) without suffering so much as a scratch. The juice has to be worth the squeeze. The foes robbing the place have to actually be boss enough to overcome the defenses. If not, the player again (and again rightfully) has a reason to be pissed at you (the DM). Not only did you take away their agency and force them to lose, you forced them to lose to lesser foes.

You're also still punishing them for your mistake by finding ways to remove the loot you gave them.

D&D and Pathfinder require a mind-boggling amount of gold to do just about anything.  Personally, I find it laughable that your average wandering monster can carry more wealth than a small city.

Even the most basic of items can easily cost a pound of gold (50 gps) or more.   Not to mention that for the higher end magic items, the cost is measured in TONS.   The Kingdom building rules also reflect this imbalance.

If you've already got the gold into the system (i.e. loot), then I'd suggest coming up with something (or several somethings) consumable that the party would find useful.   For example, I have (among other things) a one-use greater teleport item.    There's also people like myself who've come up with alternative magic item creation rules that don't require such amounts of gold.

Property should be either a time sink (if you're running it yourself), or a money sink (if you're paying someone else to do said running).   And a final tidbit of advice: talk with your players OOC about it first; there's a lot less hard feelings that way.

I pulled that on my players in a game. Gave them 10,000 gp worth of loot...in copper coins.

Good luck with your 3 burlap sacks carrying out ~ 3 tons worth of copper :P

But before you think I'm a right jerk they also got some pretty sweet magical items, including  a Dragon Slayer sword that gets +1d6 elemental damage when used to slay a new type of dragon.


e.g. the first black dragon gives it acid, the first red dragon gives it fire etc.

Any Australians here?
I’m finally giving 2E a real go, and I’m playing with three new players. One of them is an Australian, so I decided to make the kinda primal elves around my Sodden Lands swamp village into Australians. Through chance or whatever, the Aussie decided to make her character an elf. So it will be an excellent fit. Now the elves are gonna sell brown, gooey yeast paste and barbecued prawns in the market, and they’re gonna tell tales of the Bunyip (heard those are Australian monsters?) to build up some monster hunting adventure. Any more ideas how to bring Australia to my swamp?

Crocodiles, make a stat block for drop bears… and someone said something I’ll have the elves say I think: “in other parts of the world, the animals have developed in different ways to run away from threats - not here. Here they’ve evolved to be deadly.” Or some such. Possibly big kind spiders and tiny murderous ones.

Also, we’re playing in Swedish so no accent… although among Swedish role players, it’s commonly known that English is Elven when roleplaying so that might’ve worked out too.

In reply to Ventrikel (msg # 28):

Common is the language spoken at the table.

In reply to Hunter (msg # 29):

Indeed, and as a huge gnome fan I’ve gotta learn French or something to have gnomish in the game…

Okay so how to make the Sodden Lands more Australian:

1) Venomous animals. Everything should be venomous.

2) Maybe the elves can ride on giant monitor lizards

3) The local elves could borrow mythology like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dreaming. Perhaps have that be represented by an attachment to the ethereal plane.

4) Have the local swamp be heavily populated with mangroves

5) Boomerangs are already in the game: https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx?ID=332

6) Terror Birds as stand-ins for Emus https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1334

7) Thylacine's are marsupials and good for low level fights: https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=2203

8) Big big focus on the ocean. Perhaps there is a giant reef that serves as an aquatic barrier to this area making it hard to access and full of adventures under the sea...

Oh yeah, excellent additions to my list!

So was playing Diablo earlier today and reflecting on the differences and similarities of computer gaming and tabletop roleplaying. I tend to believe that I can bring more things from video games to tabletop roleplaying, than what is really appropriate. But they people who make video games really do figure some things out quite expertly. So for sure there are things to take from there. This time my thoughts centered on what I’ll call the Unique Monster Feel, or the UMF [pronounced oomph!].

To me, a good example of managing to give enemies some real UMF is (I consider this so minor spoilers that they’re not actually spoilers) goblins in rise of the runelords. Singing, chaotic, erratic behavior. Recurrent goblin encounters really give a feel for things. And in my experience, player groups adapt. We scare the goblins off with their superstitions, we manipulate them and appeal to their greed or lust for power or superstitions. Etc. We also get impressed when we meet a goblin who has his/her shit together, because that clearly separates them while they still may carry a bit of the same UMF.

An opposite example would be another iconic enemy, Gray Maidens. Elite, tough soldiers. What separates them from common thugs is possibly that they don’t ambush you, they don’t act erratically, and they don’t run away. Not much UMF there? Might be cool enough still, but:

In my opinion, fewer and fewer enemies actually have any real UMF as a campaign goes on, because the standard strategy of keeping AC high while killing enemies will win, while save-or-suck spells are rare enough (and succeed rarely enough) that you don’t have to adapt to them. It’s just damage out vs damage in, fights get quicker and more lethal the higher level which means it’s even more about damage out vs damage in.

Furthermore, just in general, pathfinder (which is in this regard a very, very old game) does not offer the tools to give monsters any real UMF. A dragon will do elemental damage and attack many, many times. Half of all high level encounters are with an outsider-style creature which has some attacks, some defenses, and will cast a spell or two if given the opportunity. It’s nothing you can or should adapt much to, apart from maybe breaking through DR and resistances.

Diablo, on the other hand, has me going OH WHY AM I ENCOUNTERING ONLY THIS MOB TYPE!!! And then I have to adapt my whole game plan to the projectiles which will easily kill me. I have cultists summoning huge monsters, and monsters stunning me to death unless I dodge well. Diablo is of course a perfect example of “just kill the thousand mobs before they kill you” but read with these glasses: in the most exciting and inspiring times in a game such as Diablo, it gives you a good feel for the different kinds of mobs you face, they are quite different from each other, they pose very different threats and demand different positioning and damage output from you.

- Now, do you as a player often experience that pathfinder enemies have UMF?
- What are your best tricks as a DM to give monsters and npcs UMF? And while story and performance is interesting, I’m interested most in how you get this into a feel in combat situations.
- Is my view of pathfinder too pessimistic? Do we have good tools for the UMF?

In reply to Ventrikel (msg # 33):

While hit dice doesn't quite reflect a level of experience, it does reflect the ability to .... let's call it "stand and fight".  The average kobold knows any villager with a spear is a threat; for a dragon, that's not the case.

In some cases, race memory plays a part in the scary part...for millennium human ancestors were as much prey as predator; I remember hearing somewhere that something like 7% of early humans were preyed upon by big cats (for example).

Many of the "Big Scary Monsters" have real life (and/or Cryptid) counterparts.   When in doubt, there's usually one of these lurking somewhere.

Yeah that’s something to work with for sure :)

General question: Your best music to listen to when you want to get into the zone and write some fantasy rpg?

The soundtracks to Conan: The Barbarian and Conan: The Destroyer are good.
Most anything John Williams has ever gifted us is gold for heroism. The themes to Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, and his Olympics themes.

Is the Conan stuff mighty like the other suggestions? Thanks, that’s great! Currently exploring dark wave to see if I can get sounds to match and inspire thoughts of underground darkness and cavernous adventure but I’m not sure if it’ll hit the right note :) I’ll need that big stuff too for sure…

If you want darkness, I think the score to Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula might be what you're looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eigSgVRzpV0

I was looking through the SRD the other day, and (as usual) my google-foo fails to find what I'd like to know.   What class/archetype exactly is Gray Maiden Plate worn?

Grey Maiden plate is worn with the Sanguine Angel Prestige class (Page 80 of the Adventurers Guide). The armor is the same as full plate but the Prestige class gives the armor training class feature of a fighter when worn and they are a certain level (Stacks if they already have the feature).