Do ye have th' guts? (Dwarven Pathfinder Game)

[Muse]

Here's what I'm working on so far, but I'm getting pretty dubious about dwarves who can't craft... 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KjhmbgVqEOesZBJeEkMo7ySl62S176TAZUC3ijUmiTQ/edit

[Blinkin]

Ok, lots to cover, and I will apologize to anyone who I have led astray on an issue brought up today.

The puzzle... what is the one question? You have to give me an answer before I award the points. ;)

The Boar. I would say, although I can certainly be corrected on this, that it wouldn't be much more than a good battle trained warhorse.... Probably less since it can't do as much as a horse in other areas such as movement... So.. 75% of the horse? Give me a counter offer and we can work something out on it.

Crafting

I've tried to address this concern in the first post in as simple of a way as I could. If you still have questions or concerns, I will be happy to address them more fully. In essence, I intend to give anyone who wants it the opportunity in game to craft and create items for profit during play, as part of the role-playing aspect. It's detailed above. This DOES mean that the loot in combat will be adjusted.

Muse, Thank you for trying to recruit for this game. It's suppose to be challenging, which is the whole point of playing dwarves. If players are giving you grief over my terms and conditions, please direct them to me and tell them that it's not your fault that it's my game. I WANT you to get to play sometime, no GM likes to run all of the tme. So, thank you for your efforts and I'm sorry if those efforts have caused you anguish.

[Muse]

^_^;;  My initial reaction was based on the idea that I was being punished for trying to craft alchemy and potions,things I often use for the benefit of the party, when it seems that nobody else is crafting anything that could benefit me in return.  ^_^;; 


Does anyone have a feat besides brew potion? Or crafts besides Alchemy and Boyer?  If so please talk to me, I generally like the idea of our forging back-stories together and crafting items for each other. 

[Muse]

Oh!  They have come out with an official pricing for a dire boar mount.  370gp. 

I can leave frenzy as a basic dire boar, but it would be really nice if I could pay some more to put the advanced template on her.  (It's not like I have any way to increase her as we level.)

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/goods-and-services/animals-animal-gear
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/boar/dire-boar

[Ghostwheel]

Hey, that's the bonus of being a paladin/ranger :P

That said, right now it's as strong as a cohort would be... Making it even stronger...? *hesitant*

[frost rose]

I'm looking at quite a few crafting feats (y'know, provisional on a lot of stuff, naturally), as I kinda have this image of taking the excuse of dwarfiness to do a lot of things I might otherwise wouldn't. I'm currently thinking a lot of knowledge and crafting skills (I am going to have awful scores — stupid 2 point wizards. T.T ) in service of a notion of a sage-scholar sort of wizard, with social role heavily inspired by Jewish and Islamic jurists, with some active adventuring as fantasy always has lots of unearth and rediscover.

And out of that collection and rediscovery, picking up a lot of means of producing and repairing old dwarven artefacts, represented mostly so far by taking at least craft wondrous item (and of course scroll), and then arms and armour and maybe wand, and in theory more as things leveled into the range where the others were accessible.

Which, come to think, I think this has been already answered but I wanted to confirm, if I have craft arms and armour, can we coordinate so I can help out with their costs? Or at any rate can we if we then coordinate backstories to explain why?

Basically, I have this really strong image of aging dwarven Indiana Jones runesmith historian and legal scholar. Who is probably too old for your shit, but getting to be on the ground for a successful expedition here is just too tempting to pass up.

[Blinkin]

Muse: We'll have to talk about the boar a bit, but I'm a little wary at the moment. If you want to haggle over it, I might be willing to replace, or make available the animal companion feat if you can give me a good reason for it.

The idea is, again, for the characters to help each other out with arms, armor and equipment. If you're making things for 1/3-1/2 the cost, pass that on to friends and they get to save gold. THAT is why there is a penalty for the effort. Most will get more than the 2,400 gp loss in equipment savings. My own character will have the armorer craft skill, and so can craft the MW version of the armor. So, he'll trade MW work for the 10% fee of enchanting. Background story is the purpose behind all of this.

I have taken Master Crafter, and when he has the levels, I'll go for Craft magical Weapons/Armor. That doesn't do any good at this point, but it's planning ahead. There WILL be opportunities for doing crafting/creation work in game.

[Ghostwheel]

I have taken Master Crafter, and when he has the levels, I'll go for Craft magical Weapons/Armor. That doesn't do any good at this point, but it's planning ahead. There WILL be opportunities for doing crafting/creation work in game.

What are you playing?

[frost rose]

Sort of a random aside/follow up. I've been looking at skills, and I have as expected stretched myself crazy thin, putting points in, amongst other things, perform. In particular, I was wondering if I could have a particular kind of perform that unfortunately is not perfectly easy to categorise in English. Elements of oratory, chanting, singing, playing the harp... basically is it permissible to have Perform (Be This Guy). Because being a performer of dwarven epic poetry would be awesome. Relatedly, is there a skill appropriate for composing such poetry? Seems important for a historian to be able to do.

[Ghostwheel]

I think there's a class feature that does precisely that.

EDIT: Was thinking of the Versatile Performer feat from 3.5; maybe there's something similar in Pathfinder, or the DM will let you take that feat?

[Blinkin]

I'm going to be playing a straight up fighter... Someone has to be able to take the punishment. ;)

Perform is one of those hard things to deal with. On one hand, I don't think that you nessessarily need normal situations. If you're trying to sway an audiance, make a statement or something unusual, the skill makes sense. If you're just doing  kareoke, who needs a performance skill? I mean, have you ever seen some of the people doing it? lol

Back to the serious side of things here, I honestly am not sure. Muse? Ghostwheel? Anon? Thoughts on this one?

My initial thought is that if you are limiting it to something fairly specific, like "Dwarven Chant" then it's covered. Instruments involved in chanting really don't take a lot of skill and you can probably get by without having to have a skill for it. I would also think that composing would fall under that as well. You're composing and performing dwarven chants, which can be anything from history lessons and retelling great events to conveying the latest news in an entertaining way. You may want to look at Bards to see how they deal with it. Lets see what the other experts have to say first though.

[Anon315]

I think Ghost's idea of porting the "Versatile Performer" feat over would be a good idea, it's an innocuous enough feat. Otherwise we could trait it off as "Perform X is always a class skill for you, gain a second Perform Y at -Z skill points", where Z is 1 or 2. Not a huge penalty, but it's like people who sing and play guitar or something. They're usually a little better at one or the other. And Traits are easier to write off than feats.

Given that there are only 9 categories of Perform, you could go "Sing" (which includes ballad / chant), and "String Instrument", to get most of what you want. Or if we just want it flavor-wise, just turn versatile performer into a trait, with like a -2 penalty to all non-primary perform arts (intelligence mod additional types).

[Blinkin]

Ok, since feats appear to be at a premium, how about creating a talent for this..

"Dwarven Chanting: You are skilled at performing chants in the dwarven tradition. Performance is always a class skill." That gives you a minimum of 3 in the skill, plus the ability score modifier as a base.  That should save you some skill points without sacrificing a feat or unbalancing things.

What do you think Anon?

[Muse]

  I believe there's a dwarven religious trait that does something similar.  To use the trait formula, I would give a +1 trait bonus to two perform skillso on top of that. 

  *bows*  nice to meet you, Frost Rose.  Are you familiar with the Lorematter Prestige class?  I need to review how it looks in pathfinder. 

   If you need more skills, don't forget your favored class bonus.  Also, there's a feat from Psionics Unleashed if Blinkin will allow it.  It is not a psionic feat.  It's called Open Minded, and gives an extra skill per level.

[Blinkin]

Make it so Number 1.

There is a feat as well, although I think that it's a racial feat. It's called "Fast Learner" that allows you to take both 1 skill point and 1 HP for your favored class (Or the favored class bonus and one of the others). I'm fond of it when I play humans.

[Ghostwheel]

So we currently have a backline alchemist, archer, frontline alchemist, fighter, and wizard... Should we cap it at that many players, or wait for more people to join too?

Also, Blinkin, have you thought about playing a frontline cleric instead so we have a decent source of healing?

[Muse]

*smiles*  I like Fast Learner too.  (It's human specific.)

Okay, redoing Tarkana's equipment list with the idea that we've been making things for each other in back story: 

Frost Rose gets 375   
Blinkin gets 81   
Ghostwheel gets 27

Let me know if you want any alchemy or potions at 10% above creation price.  :)

[Muse]

200 more for Miss Frost.  Tarkana is playable now. :)  I'd like to write more about her backstory.  Preferably including some shared history.

[Blinkin]

Muse: 81 what?

GW: I'm playing a fighter mainly because the story requires the type to work. Remember the guy who's looking for dwarves? It would be hard to create a cleric who wants to hire the party to clean out a city so he could make himself king and everyone else nobles.

We'll wait a couple of more days; there's no huge rush to begin and I would like to see if we might actually get a cleric type.

Muse's alchemist can produce healing potions at quite a rate and that might be as good as a cleric.

[Blinkin]

I need to know if anyone is going to pick up the create magical feat or not.  If not, I'll arrange for an NPC to make a deal with Rogar for cheap magical weapons/armor if anyone wants to take advantage of it. Otherwise, all of the magical items will be the regular price and no one suffers the starting gold reduction.

I believe that the Loremaster has to have a certain number of divine spells to qualify for the prestige class, so we do have some potential for healing spells. At least 1 plus wisdom bonus... Better than nothing and the potion brewer can fill in the lack at relatively little cost. I think Potion of Cure Lights are about 25 GP each to make. 27.5 GP if Mr. Muse wants to make a modest profit on it.

As an alternative to the magical weapon/armor issue, after reaching level 7... and that may be a long time down the road, Rogar will start enchanting them in exchange for the cost to do the work at that time.

[frost rose]

The Loremaster actually has a requirement for divination spells, so I'll be strictly arcane and no healing from me unfortunately. Save for whatever wands or potions or whatnot I tote around.

And it looks like I'll have craft arms and armour. And pretty much everything but brew potions within level range, really. Crafting is neat, and very dwarfy and all. And two different perform skills, since the actual backstory is requiring it, but worth it, I think, given how much I'm liking how it's turning out.

[Blinkin]

Damn, I need to watch things more closely. lol Devine, devination... I'm really tired.

So, are you willing to do the enchanting for party weapons/armor? Rogar has both craft armor (primary) and Weaponsmith. He's much, much better at armor, but master work weapons shouldn't be a problem. If someone else is doing weaponsmithng, I'll free up those points for something else... all 2 of them. lol

[Muse]

Frost Rose gets 375   
Blinkin gets 81   
Ghostwheel gets 27

  Oh, I was referring to your crafting rules, where we pay 10% of what we save tot he person who crafts for us. 

Rose:  575 gold. 
Blinkin:  81 gold. 
Ghost:  27 gold. 

[Blinkin]

Ok gang, time for a little house cleaning.

as of this time, this is the party that we have. If one more shows interest, that'll give a full party. We can, however proceed with what we have.

There are a few items to work out individually, but we'll deal with that either in PM or in the OOC thread, which you'll find below. There is also a character thread and a IC post for side threads and general IC chatter. Use it to establish backstories via RP, doing the trading for items and so on.

I would ask, because I have some trouble with Googledocs and Mythweavers, that character sheets be posted as text so I won't get confused trying to see them. Anon and I will look over them and approve them. If there are questions about the character, I'll contact via PM to clarify.

Ready to go?

Group OOC
Character sheets
Party RP

[Marie Reynolds]

Would there happen to be room for another in this game?