THE GRINDING GEAR (Pathfinder Edition): OOC Thread

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Oct 07, 2012 5:06 pm

The Grinding Gear (Pathfinder edition)

PCs:
Yellow, Human Gunslinger

Reve Thaw, Elf Wizard

original post:

LOTFP Module

There's been some 1E D&D talk on the Den lately, and it's filled me with false nostalgia for the editions I never played outside of computer games. I feel like running one of a pair of adventure modules by Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Here are the 2 flavors:
- Dickish Traps (Tome of Horrors for hobos)
- Grimderp (authentic Finnish atmosphere)

I'm willing to use the following RPG systems:
- MTP
- LotFP
- Basic Fantasy RPG ( http://basicfantasy.org/ )
- 3.x D&D
- Tome D&D
- Pathfinder

Anyone interested?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Oct 07, 2012 5:40 pm

I'm interested, provided it's for a system I can access. Also, definitely not MTP.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Sun Oct 07, 2012 10:29 pm

IRC or PbP?

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Oct 08, 2012 2:47 am

Kaelik wrote:I'm interested, provided it's for a system I can access. Also, definitely not MTP.

MTP is now off the table. LotFP is accessible, but I wouldn't recommend buying it for one semi-serious game. BFRPG is a retro option available for free, so it should be viable.

Korgan0 wrote:IRC or PbP?

Play by post, here In The The Trenches. My work for the EBRPD involves varying hours, so a regular IRC time might not work for me.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Module Descriptions:

Death Frost Doom

Up on a mountain sits a house by a cemetery, haunted by the memories of atrocities past. People remember that horrible things happened up on that mountain, but not exactly what those things were. Still, they stay well away, and live long and prosperous lives for their wisdom.
But rumors of abandoned treasure and magic always bring those wishing to recover it. Brave, skilled men need not fear that which terrifies the common folk.
The cult on the mountain is long gone, yet the music of weirdling death carries on the wind.
The mountain is cold. So very cold.
And the greedy and the foolish will march bravely up the mountain for gold and glory.
Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Their Souls?

The Grinding Gear

If this adventure does not drain every drop of your blood, then it will disintegrate you. If it does not disintegrate you, it will electrocute you. If it does not electrocute you, it will starve you. If it does not starve you, it still will defeat you in a battle of wits.
You very well may survive.
But only the best will win the treasure!
If you think you're ready, if you've got the guts, tell your group's referee that you want to test yourself against THE GRINDING GEAR. Then you can answer the question:
Are You Good Enough?

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Mon Oct 08, 2012 11:57 am

I'm interested too, in that case.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Tue Oct 09, 2012 5:09 am

Now that I've had some more time to think about it, I would like to run The Grinding Gear converted to Pathfinder (the first because it feels more purely like classic D&D, and the second because it puts all of the rpg rules in a single easily accessible website).

Characters come in at level 2. You may choose between 20 point buy and whatever ability scores you want to claim to have rolled (in true retro spirit).

You start with 300 GP worth of stuff. You may spend 50 gp of this to have a level 1 Fighter (ability score array 14, 12, 12, 10, 10, 8) henchman that you equip using your remaining wealth.

You may use anything from http://www.d20pfsrd.com/
I might be willing to allow other stuff on a case-by-case basis.

Sound good?

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Oct 10, 2012 2:19 am

Here's some scenario background:

You are adventurers in the nation of Brevoy, which is notable for the fact that there are multiple influential noble houses struggling over power. This means lots of soldiers, lots of skirmishes between factions, and by extension numerous cases of refugees and deserters. Some call it civil war, but nobody has made any formal declarations of such.

You've been working in and around the city of Brunderton for the last couple years at least, and it's been a decent living, more profitable and slightly less dangerous than soldiering. Finding alchemical reagents, bounty hunting, perhaps a bit of deniable-asset troubleshooting now and then. But in the last few months, the situation has changed. A couple nearby towns were sacked in the aftermath of a particularly brutal battle between House Lebeda and House Medvyed. Brunderton has been swamped with refugees and ex-soldiers looking for work.

There's way too much competition to make working near the city profitable right now unless you have something that sets you apart and lets you take on the really dangerous jobs. And that generally means magical treasure. You know a diviner who owes you a few favors, and she mentioned sensing powerful magic in one of the hills near a pillaged town while scrying a battle's aftermath. She marked the location on a map and promised to pay 75% market value minimum for any magic you find and don't want to keep.

The area might be dangerous in that there's no longer a military presence keeping monsters and brigands under control, but at the same time there isn't enough going on for a large group of bandits to make a practical living. The ruined town may have some people in it, but that's around 2 day's march away.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Oct 10, 2012 5:46 am

A look at local topography:

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Wed Oct 10, 2012 11:20 am

I'd be interested, I think. My basic understanding of PF is "3.5 with lots of small changes" so I'd probably be a little bit behind on that (or is it mostly changes to characters, not gameplay?).

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Oct 10, 2012 3:19 pm

Yeah, PF is 3.x with lots of fiddly changes. Casters benefit more from many of them.

Humans get +2 to a stat of their choice.

The maneuver system has been changed to make things like dedicated trippers less good.

The skill system is better in that you don't have to worry about crossclass versus class rates. Everything costs 1 point to advance, and class skills with ranks in them get a +3 bonus or something.

In some games, PCs start with two "traits", which are supposed be half as powerful as feats. These range from situational +1s you'll forget about to improvements to base saves to -1 to the total metamagic cost of one spell you know.

Monks, Barbarians, and so on often have a pool of points they spend out of to power their class features. i.e., stunning costs 1 ki point, death costs 7.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Wed Oct 10, 2012 9:09 pm

If you use PF, I think you'll miss the old school feel unless you restrict players to the archetypal classes and muliclasses (fighter/magic-user etc).

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Oct 10, 2012 9:54 pm

You might have a point, but I think the feeling I am going for has much more to do with the opposition people will face and the objectives (or lack thereof) presented to the PCs.

I'm also inclined not to bother tracking individual XP, and just set 1 or 2 points where the whole party levels up.

Swashbuckler · Post by **Swashbuckler** » Thu Oct 11, 2012 6:19 am

I'm down for this if you're still recruiting. The civil situation with warring houses and such seems interesting; how much are you planning on on really interacting with that?

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Thu Oct 11, 2012 2:42 pm

Not much during the course of this module. You may encounter NPCs affiliated with one house or another, but it's kind of hard to interact with realm politics while you are scavenging for phat lewts in some ruins. If you detour to the ruined town you will probably run into people with strong opinions on what's going on.

However if some people want me to keep running in this setting once PCs grab their asymmetric power and leave, I suppose I could do that.

I think I'm going to cap the players at 4-5 people. That gives us a list of:
- Kaelik
- Korgan0
- Whatever
- Swashbuckler

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 12:28 am

So I'm thinking of playing a rogue of some kind- do we need to be worried about filling roles?

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 2:41 am

I was thinking of an Elven MU/Thief, but I'm not sure how you do that in Pathfinder. I can just take rogue skills, but not have trapfinding, I guess?

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 2:58 am

Korgan0 wrote:So I'm thinking of playing a rogue of some kind- do we need to be worried about filling roles?

This is a trap-heavy module, so the more perceptive characters the better.

Whatever wrote:I was thinking of an Elven MU/Thief, but I'm not sure how you do that in Pathfinder. I can just take rogue skills, but not have trapfinding, I guess?

I'll let you trade Arcane Bond for Trapfinding and 4 skill ranks per level if you want.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 12:40 pm

Avoraciopoctules wrote:
Whatever wrote:I was thinking of an Elven MU/Thief, but I'm not sure how you do that in Pathfinder. I can just take rogue skills, but not have trapfinding, I guess?
I'll let you trade Arcane Bond for Trapfinding and 4 skill ranks per level if you want.

I don't know what Arcane Bond does, but that seems like a fair trade.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 3:35 pm

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-cl ... -Ex-or-Sp-

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 3:46 pm

That's good, but not very old school. I'll stick with the trapfinding and skills.

Also, wow, there are fiddly little replacements for everything. Crazy. There's an option to do an old school style specialization, with fixed prohibited schools and everything, so I'll do that. Do I also get the standard bonuses for that specialization, or jet the bonus spell?

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 4:40 pm

It looks like all Thassilonian Specialist gives is 2 bonus spells per spell level. Were you talking about something else?

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:34 pm

I should really just wait until I'm at my computer to post questions like that. Okay, Thessalonian Specialist chooses a school, gets two specialist spells instead of one, and has two fixed, prohibited schools. But if you choose, say, Conjuration, do you get the random Conjuration specialist abilities too, or just the extra bonus spell? It's not super clear, because the Wizard class entry says:
"Each arcane school gives the wizard a number of school powers. In addition, specialist wizards receive an additional spell slot of each spell level he can cast, from 1st on up."
And then each school lists only the special powers, except the Thessalonian entry, which lists no powers, just the prohibited schools.

Obviously not a huge deal either way, since those minor powers are pretty minor. I was just trying to figure out how the Thessalonian option worked.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 10:15 pm

As I read it, Thassilonian Specialist doesn't give standard specialist perks.

Swashbuckler · Post by **Swashbuckler** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 8:30 am

I'm looking at playing a cleric. If there's a lot of traps and such and an old-school feel then an old-school healing battery will probably be very useful. Any restrictions on deities and flavor? Personally I'm probably going to go at least neutral for the positive energy burst.

Also, is there a preferred place to post character sheets, and if we feel like trying our luck with the dice, do you have a preferred rolling site? Moreover, are we doing 3d6 for true retro spirit?

I'll be honest, I am not an elite optimizer. Then again, when you're playing a cleric it's not exactly easy to let the team down.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 12:54 pm

I rolled a few sets of 3d6 to see what kinds of numbers you get. Anyone who tells you they rolled good stats on 3d6 is a liar. 20 point buy is enough for a starting 18, that's probably worth it for a caster unless you want to melee a lot.

edit:

Avoraciopoctules wrote:As I read it, Thassilonian Specialist doesn't give standard specialist perks.

Cool, one less thing to worry about.