Mistfinder: Pathfinder in Ravenloft

[hidajiremi]

I was thinking the other day that the sorcerer's blood lineage should be remade à al RL, since Pathfinder includes many fantastic creatures not really found in RL.

Second question, should it be creature-based or domain-based (à la domain powers for fiends) ?

I think that domain-based powers make it a little too specific. The creature-descent method works very well, especially if you take it very loosely so that the "descent" in question might just be some sort of spiritual affinity. After all, one of the example ones is "destined" which doesn't really imply kinship with any sort of creature, only a method to the magic, as it were.

I think that the bloodlines that work best in Ravenloft are:
Aberrant
Abyssal
Arcane
Destined
Elemental
Fey
Infernal
Undead

And a few that I've come up with for my own game:
Bestial (lycanthropic heritage)
Psychic (what it sounds like)
Vistani (gypsy magic)


Jeremy Puckett

[brass]

The Mist Bloodline?

[brass]

Here's something I drew up. Any ideas / opinions?

The Mist Bloodline

Class Skill: Survival

Bonus Spells: Obscuring Mist (3rd), see invisibility (5th), tongues (7th), Solid Fog (9th), Cloudkill (11th), Shadow Walk (13th), Insanity (15th), Screen (17th), Etherealness (19th).

Bonus Feats: Silent Spell, Dead Man Walking (RLHB), Ghostsight (RLHB), Ethereal Empathy (RLHB), Mist Sense (VR Guide to the Mists), Spacial Fugue (VR Guide to the Mists), Misted Magic (VR Guide to the Mists).


Bloodline Arcana: Whenever you cast a spell of the Illusion school, you gain a 20% miss chance for 1 round/level.

Bloodline Powers: You can call upon the fickle powers of the mists and the creatures that dwell within them.

Unnerving or Restive Touch (Sp): Starting at 1st level, you can make a melee touch attack as a standard action that causes a living creature to take a -2 morale penalty or +2 morale bonus to fear and madness saves for a number of rounds equal to 1/2 your sorcerer level (minimum 1). You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier.

At Home in the Mist (Ex): At 3rd level, you gain resist cold 5 and +2 morale bonus on survival checks. At 9th level, your resistance to cold increases to 10 and your morale bonus to survival increases to +5.

Part of the Mist(Sp): At 9th level, you can assume gaseous form for 1 round per sorcerer level every day. It is a standard action, which does not provoke an attack of opportunity, to assume this form. This duration does not need to be consecutive, but it must be used in 1 round increments.

Greater Part to Play (Su): At 15th level, the dark powers recognise you have a part to play within the dread realms. Once per day, when an attack or spell that causes damage would result in your death, you may attempt a DC 20 Will save. If successful, you are instead reduced to –1 hit points and are automatically stabilized. The mists envelope you and you are transported to another domain with realms (DM’s choice).

Mistborn (Ex): At 20th level, you truly are a creature of the mists. You gain the Mist Subtype.

[Beckett]

I'm just looking at this, so it might have been mentioned already, doing a the Fear, Horror, and Madness checks based around CMB/CMD might be cool rather than as Saves.

Also, channel Energy, well specifically, channel Positive energy for healing just doesn't seem very Ravenloft, at all. Any thoughts on converting back to Turn Undead as standard?

[Jester of the FoS]

I've been frequently tempted to do an update of Ravenloft for Pathfinder ala my 4e update. It's really ironic that I haven't as I like Pathfinder and don't like 4e.

What's stopped me?
I spent soooo much time working on the 4e update I really burnt myself out from game design. Especially since I was doing it at work and between classes. Even now I write less than I used to.

[Beckett]

I had another idea also, if anyone is interested. You may not have noticed this, but in PF, normal magic weapons count as other things for overcoming DR. So a +1 sword overcoms Silver D.R., and a +5 weapon overcomes Good/Evil D.R. In pathfinder, Greater Magical Weapon does not do this. For Ravenloft, it might be cool if this was reversed, but limited. Maybe a Clerics Greater Magical Weapon grants Cold Iron and later an alignment, while Arcane Greater Magical Weapon grants Silver, but a +# weapon does not, (keeping D.R. still relevant).

I'm also really not all that happy with PF's treatment of undead, and in Ravenloft, undead are suppossed to be a threat, so what if you can only crit Undead on a Nat 20 (regardeless of your normal Crit mod, and all Undead have something like Moderate Fortification vs Sneak Attack).Thoughts? I like PF, but it honestly overly favors Fighters, Rogues, and Paladins to much.

[hidajiremi]

I'm also really not all that happy with PF's treatment of undead, and in Ravenloft, undead are suppossed to be a threat, so what if you can only crit Undead on a Nat 20 (regardeless of your normal Crit mod, and all Undead have something like Moderate Fortification vs Sneak Attack).Thoughts? I like PF, but it honestly overly favors Fighters, Rogues, and Paladins to much.

I like the fact that undead are now vulnerable to critical hits and sneak attacks, to be honest. How many pieces of fiction involve a vampire being felled by a quick decapitation or a skeleton being shattered by a single mighty blow? Lots. This is simply a better emulation of that idea.

And as far as "overly favoring" the martial classes... Quite frankly, with the power disparity between casters and non-casters, non-casters need something to make them even vaguely competitive.


Jeremy Puckett

[Jester of the FoS]

Having played a rogue, it really hurt them as a class not being able to use their dominant class ability. Skeletons have spines, as do zombies. Hit them precise enough and you should do damage. And a critical sneak with a spear is probably as close as you'll get to an in-combat staking.

[Beckett]

And as far as "overly favoring" the martial classes... Quite frankly, with the power disparity between casters and non-casters, non-casters need something to make them even vaguely competitive.


Jeremy Puckett

That might have been true in 3.0, 3.5 changed that (except in the organized play sense) fairly significantly, and PF has honestly chenged it completely. But I'm not argueing that here, as much as I am saying that it does not fit in Ravenloft. I argue it on Paizo enough and it's not really the topic.

Ravenloft is a place where evil is supreme, and Undead are a serioius threat because they are not living creatures. They are evil things that are very resistant to mundane attacks. Clerics running around throwing heal bombs just isn't very Ravenloft. Not only does it weaken the idea of the Cleric (in Ravenloft), but it also sort of ruins the threat and despair, the mood of Ravenloft.

Also, Ravenloft is not a heroic setting, (in the D&D sense) where the players are super cool guys way beyond the common folk. Maybe your view of ravenloft is different than mine, and that is fine, but to me, Ravenloft is much more about surviving in a dark and evil world, keeping the candle from going out forever, and giving the next set of heroes a chance than it is about beating down gothic monsters in gothic dungeons with gothic magic items.

I can see 4th ed going that route, and I am not saying anything bad about 4E (this time ), but it is both a diservice to Ravenloft and Pathfinder if PF went there, too. Again, just my opinion, and your's is just as good, and your games might be different.

[brass]

I've most of my work on this to the Paizo boards, if anyone wants to have a look.

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pa ... nRavenloft

Also I've decided to do up a short pdf for the conversion guide. A sample of the Layout and the Scholar class can be found here,

http://rapidshare.com/files/334774163/R ... t.pdf.html

If anyone has any art they wish to contribute please contact me.

[Paladyn]

Sorry if I'm not talking fully on topic, but I wanted to share some thoughts...

As you may see via link in my signature, I run campaign based on Pathfinder rules. It is basicly set in Forgotten Realms setting, but is composed mostly of mu own ideas. It's been a year since we converted game mechanics to Pathfinder. At the beginning all of us was happy and enthusiastic about new rules, all character classes options, order and logical progress of rules. But... but after few sessions, year of real world time and advancing characters up to levels 8-10 I find Pathfinder too hard for me. Not only me, but my players alike. Okay, maybe we aren't too smart or we are too old to remember rules, but every now and then we forgot some of them, we discover that some rule works differently than we thought or even checked. Combat with not so big group monsters took us three hours to conduct and I must admit, it was boring for me and for my players. This particular campaign was comeback to RPG for me and try-out of then "new" Dungeons&Dragons. Editions 3.0 and 3.5 failed to suit our needs, Pathfinder (or edition 3.75, as we call it) too.
So...
I think it's time blow dust of my trusty second edition stuff, and roll characters along to AD&D SE ways. Of course, I'll finish my campaign, but I'll better start fixing with time machine and travel to happy days of edition long forgotten

[EvilBeard]

That might have been true in 3.0, 3.5 changed that (except in the organized play sense) fairly significantly, and PF has honestly chenged it completely. But I'm not argueing that here, as much as I am saying that it does not fit in Ravenloft. I argue it on Paizo enough and it's not really the topic.

Ravenloft is a place where evil is supreme, and Undead are a serioius threat because they are not living creatures. They are evil things that are very resistant to mundane attacks. Clerics running around throwing heal bombs just isn't very Ravenloft. Not only does it weaken the idea of the Cleric (in Ravenloft), but it also sort of ruins the threat and despair, the mood of Ravenloft.

Also, Ravenloft is not a heroic setting, (in the D&D sense) where the players are super cool guys way beyond the common folk. Maybe your view of ravenloft is different than mine, and that is fine, but to me, Ravenloft is much more about surviving in a dark and evil world, keeping the candle from going out forever, and giving the next set of heroes a chance than it is about beating down gothic monsters in gothic dungeons with gothic magic items.

I can see 4th ed going that route, and I am not saying anything bad about 4E (this time ), but it is both a diservice to Ravenloft and Pathfinder if PF went there, too. Again, just my opinion, and your's is just as good, and your games might be different.

While Ravenloft is not a heroic setting, this still is Dungeons and Dragons (Pathfinder). There is an expectation that you as a player can fight back with your brawn and not just your brains, and win (to an extent). And while I agree that undead should be terrifying, that does not give them the license to be nigh-undefeatable without a spellcaster.

In short, Ravenloft is not, and should not be a d20 version of Call of Cthulu.

( I apologize if I sound overly antagonistic, but I did feel strongly about your last post, and wanted to put my 2 cents in.)

[brass]

I've got to say I quite like the new treatment of undead in Pathfinder. Sneak attack and critical hits not effecting undead bothered me as it seemed that a lot of undead could only be killed by critical hits. The common example is the humble zombie "Remove the head or destroy the brain".

On the hit point side of things d8's with Charisma mod makes sense. You can wade through hordes of zombies, but your the force of personality of intelligent undead (Your vampire lord or the like) makes them a tougher proposition. They seems to be held together with their ego.

Just my opinion on the mechanical side of things.

[brass]

The mistfinder thread on Paizo has a fair number of conversions of prestige classes posted now.

Including

Anchorite, Avenger, Detective, Night Lord and Scholar.

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pa ... oft&page=1

Please comment here or on paizo as I'd love some feedback.

Ugly Child

[cure]

The mistfinder thread on Paizo has a fair number of conversions of prestige classes posted now.

Including

Anchorite, Avenger, Detective, Night Lord and Scholar.

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pa ... oft&page=1

Please comment here or on paizo as I'd love some feedback.

Ugly Child

I have done a bit of work on the scholar myself, to the end of cleaning it up a bit, within 3.5ed: http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/foru ... 301&#88301

And my efforts followed up on this conversion from 3.0 to 3.5:

http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/Maus ... ersion.pdf

I am not sure how languages work in Pathfinder, but I have always thought that the scholar was weak on this point, so that is probably a change for the better.

I am not a fan of the feat requirements, as opposed to prior and more demanding skill requirements, especially as they may reduce the value of Improved Skill Focus, having already been obliged to presumably take Skill Focus in one's most appropriate areas of interest.

I have argued in the past that the skill list was non-sensical so any rationalisation of that is a good thing. But it does raise a fundamental issue. Is a scholar a page pusher or a researcher? You have opted for a restrictive list that almost makes of him a sort of librarian. What I have tried to do is to make him a researcher with a wide yet limited list of possible skills. That was done by limiting not the number of skills to choose from but the number of skills that could be chosen. That way a scholar working in history and a scholar working in sociology are both possible and would have a handful of skills which are quite different.

I think the identify magic item ability is a mistake. There is nothing about the class that lends itself to such. And it would make no sense at all for a Lamordian scholar for example. I suppose it is also connected to the question of whether scholars are researchers. If yes, the area of research may often have no connection to magic whatsoever.

The librarian and head librarian ideas are probably a perfectly credible focusing of the possible talent that should be expected from a given scholar and more particular from the given type of books that he collects.


Currently, I use the scholar class as a follow up to the expert class when building top shelf academics and their like, anthropologists, biologists, historians, laywers, and so forth. Does Pathfinder offer different options to this end?