Pathfinders of Pelligrew's Pinnace [OOC 01]

Nice to meet you Malcolm, and a skilled fighter sounds like a fun build (thanks for the ideal- maybe for some other game I get in).

Been playing a PF cleric in CotCT And having channel energy is a life saver, so probably take cleric over druid. Never played Gestalt, but I am up for anything fun.

Hey Mike I am having trouble at OP I hit the Swag down in your sig. and then it asks me to log in. Which I do and then it says to me "Sorry, you are not authorized to view this page, (403)"

Little help please. Thanks.

Jake

I'm open to running four Gestalt characters, if that's what you guys want to do. Should be fairly straightforward to adjust the encounter difficulty upward if y'all aren't being challenged enough.

Jake (and Mike and Matthew), I've currently got the campaign set to private so it's viewable only by the GM, the players, and friends of the GM. You'll have to accept my invitation to join the campaign over on OP before you can look at it.

While you're at it, go ahead and accept the OP friend invites I sent as well.

OK, as none of my games seem to be active at the moment, time to head on over to OP and lay down a couple of PC thoughts to get the ball rolling. I'll make a post on the forum over there - if that's the wrong place can you move it/point me to a better spot?

You can do it here or over there. In the first game I hosted there (Legacy of Fire) I tried using the forums with varying levels of success - my original thought was to have everything over there except the IC.

We ended up finding it easier to use OP as an information repository and carry on actual business here in the IC.

Just so we don't have discussions scattered hither and yon, we probably need to decide on one place or the other. Why don't we use this thread for party formation discussions? Belay that - Malcolm's already started a forum thread on OP, so we'll do it there! OK, have it your way - we'll do it here!

You can put character sheets here if you want, but the official versions will need to go over there on the templates I've got set up under the links to your name in the Wiki side bar.

Ha ha, just done lots of typing...over there

OK, you can read it on the OP forum, but to keep it all in one place, here's it is c/ped


So far my idea is something along these lines:


- race: halfling (Mike, I think if MD’s Ravenloft game goes ahead I’m going to change that PC to gnome as it fits with the clockmaker/craftsman idea better)


- class: rogue, or if gestalt rogue/paladin (bear with me…)


- ‘role’: warrior, but with good skill selection


- character sketch: taking the ‘nimble and happy-go-lucky’ halfling archetype to the max, so getting the best advantage out of his racial bonuses in DEX and CHA. STR as good as I can get without crippling him for stat points, likewise CON. INT if possible, although skills won’t be a problem, see below, but not the wisest though…


- background idea: my (as yet unnamed PC) is a hero, yes sir. He left his sleepy little halfling village at the first opportunity so he could head to the big city and enlist in paladin school or wherever they train them shiny knights. Ever since he was little (ha ha) he had imagined himself in gleaming armour, fighting dragons and rescuing maidens when he grew up, and he’s done nothing but badger his friends and relatives about it ever since. His mother worries about him (naturally) but most of the rest of the village are, actually, quite glad to see the back of him, at least for a while. ‘He’ll be back’ they say. After all, how can a simple halfling be a mighty hero?


And there was a bit of truth in that, because when he rolled up at warrior school in Absalom they took one look at him and laughed. In his face.


Disappointed, but not deterred he decided he didn’t need training anyway; he was going to do it his way. Cue wandering around town looking for trouble – which duly found him, and he was lucky to escape with his life after an encounter with (insert gang/organisation/individual for plot purposes).


It is at this point he meets (insert suitable NPC mentor) who takes him under his wing, and shows him how to handle a sword properly, as well as giving him a few words of wisdom about looking before you leap etc


And at this point, it depends on whether we are single classing or going gestalt.


If single, I’ll go rogue. He’s not going to be the best fighter in the world with a medium attack bonus and less than stellar strength. Oh, and lack of fighter feats. Or ability with anything other than a couple of weapons. But he means well, and dag nabbit, he’s going to be a hero even if it, er, kills him…



I’m abstracting slightly by considering his sneak attack as a sort of ‘little guy happens to stab people on the right place’ idea (much helped by Pathfinder’s lifting of some of the restrictions on what can/can’t be ‘sneaked’ – I can’t see this working in 3.5!). This hopefully will help him take a useful part in combat.



Further down the line, I can use rogue talents to pick up a couple of fighter feats to help with this side of things, although he’s never going to be very good at standing in front of BBEG for long.


And on the upside, he’ll have a load of skills for out of combat activities!


So you can probably guess where I’m going if we gestalt Yep, add Paladin to Rogue. Not only was his mentor rather successful in teaching him weapon skills, his goodness of heart means he became, what I have termed in the past, a ‘passive’ paladin ie he gets all the mechanical benefits of being a paladin, but it’s not really a conscious decision on the part of the character, if that makes sense? He has been touched by a higher power, so while he thinks he’s being a hero, because he’s living up to the ideals of a paladin, some entity somewhere has looked down from on high and actually bestowed those powers on him.


For the purposes of this idea, the 2 classes actually synergise rather well. He’ll get a good attack bonus from paladin, 2 good saves from paladin, plus good in the other from rogue, divine grace at the appropriate level and his halfling save bonus. HP will be decent, and he should be able to keep out of the worst of trouble even if he stays relatively lightly armoured. Overall, I don’t see it as one of the more powerful gestalt combos as he won’t really be the best fighter in the world, but I think he can contribute in that role, and as mentioned will have significantly more skills than an equivalent fighter.


Feel free to dissect that, and make any comments. Until I’ve statted him up I don’t have a complete picture of how it might play out. It might turn out if we don’t gestalt I have to dip a couple of levels to keep up with the curve, or possibly even rethink it completely. Time will tell!


Hey, stop editing while I'm editing!

Malcolm, you do not disappoint! Very imaginative, and should be a ton of fun!

I like that you didn't go for a 'super killer' Gestalt combo - just the sort of use I was envisioning for those rules.

Why thank you, good sir. I've been kicking round an idea like that for a couple of years but never found the right place to try it. Having never done gestalt before I don't know how different combos might shape up - I'm pleased that you think I managed to make a reasonable pitch with that one.

Edit: woe betide the first person to make a Scrappy Do reference!

Am I missing your chargen info, or are you keeping it up your sleeve until we've discussed party compostion a bit more and are ready to put some numbers down?

". . . insert gang/organisation/individual for plot purposes" -
The Muddied Center Reserve Civilian Corps (The Muckruckers): Volunteer guard corps in the Puddles, now turned extortion racket/Thieves Guild

". . . insert suitable NPC mentor" -
Parnham Pelligrew, Venture Captain in the Docks District and owner/operator of Pelligrew's Pinnace


Keeping stat gen info up my sleeve for now . . . After everyone has their classes chosen we'll move on to the stat generation and other crunch stuff.

There is some information regarding character generation in the House Rules page of the wiki.

OK, figuring on playing Gestalt characters, so far we've got:

Malcolm (grufflehead): Halfling Rogue/Paladin (Tentative)
Jake (HolyMan): Cleric/Ranger (Tentative)
Matthew (Rhun): ??/??
Mike (lucky): ??/??

Is everyone making their way 'round the OP site OK? Anyone have questions about house rules, preferences, etc?

As far as campaign 'hooks,' feel free to build some in to your characters.

You'll start the game (or quickly become) members of the Pathfinder Society - sort of a sprawling, mostly organized group of Indiana Jones types. Well, to be fair they've got their share of René Belloq types as well. There are actually four Prestige Classes within the Pathfinders but none of these are required for membership. The other way around, actually; membership is one of the prerequisites for the prestige classes.

Speaking of Prestige Classes . . . once we get to high enough level to start qualifying for some, I think I'm going to rule that on levels where you take a prestige class, that will be the only class you level in (in other words, no combining a Prestige Class with another class for a Gestalt level). I'm not 100% certain about this, and we've got a while before it becomes an issue, but for those looking at Prestige Classes already it's something to keep in mind.

In fact, I think it would avoid a LOT of confusion if in general we avoided folding 'multiclassing' into gestalt play - but if anyone thinks differently please speak up!

Like I said never played with the gestsalt rules so I will have them gone over and probably a hundred questions for you come tomorrow/WED.

But for the record if I have two classes in one they will be Cleric/Ranger if thats allowed remember I don't know the rules but a cleric/ranger would be druid like right?

HM