The Adventures of The Humble GM

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This is a page devoted to stories of my experiences with the game pathfinder, and being GM thereof.

The Beginning

I'll begin at the beginning. When I first got the game pathfinder, the man in the gaming store told me that the beginner's box was the easiest way to begin, so I bought that. I was only getting started as a GM, so the only adventure I ever really played was Black Fang's Dungeon, a bad attempt at an easy adventure, involving a mayor who is willing to give a bunch of 1st level noobs 1,000 gp in addition to the treasure they found in the dungeon (HINT: completely unbalanced scroll of resurrection only usable by the character with the least combat ability, multiple magic items such as a +1 Dragonbane sword to combat the big dragon foozle, and whiny goblin mooks whose greatest treasure is a wooden dragon toy, but the only goblin who happens to own this gets herself killed)

The beginners box gave me no alternative to this madness, so in order to instruct my friends on the inner workings of the game, I was forced to play this same adventure over and over and over.

In one instance, two of my friends were playing as Kyra (the pregenerated cleric) and Merisiel (the pregenerated rogue). Both of them had the worst stats imaginable. For example, Kyra had a dexterity of 8. All in all, not a bad score. However, to make this worse, she had a strength of 13, making her easily the worst combat character. So she should make an ideal healer, right? It was not so. The only spells she was capable of casting were bless and protection from evil. The friend playing Kyra made the wise decision and decided not to use these spells, as the buffs were negligible, considering that the main foe was goblin mooks. There was one encounter (and only one) with undead skeletons where channel energy may have come in handy, due to its annoying quality of affecting ALL living creatures. This can be modified with feats, but Kyra didn't have the insight to get the required Selective Channeling. Instead, she got Extra Channel and Improved Initiative. Pathetic.

The game began in its most standard form, with a goblin attack, negligible treasure, and a locked chest. My friends were getting bored, so they decided to attempt to kill each other. In spite of my warnings not to, they went ahead and made attack rolls. Both of them missed, due to their unnaturally low scores. I had Sarenrae (Kyra's deity) pop in for a visit to try to convince her to stop the violence. No such luck. Kyra rolled again to cleave Merisiel in half with her scimitar, but missed once again.

The adventure culminated with Merisiel trying to climb a cliff to the skeleton encounter. Upon seeing that there were two horrendous choices: Kyra below or the skeletons in front, Merisiel leaped to her death off of the cliff. She was reduced to -3 hp (rendered unconscious), and was killed when Kyra ran forward and mindlessly hacked away at her unconscious form below. However, because of her low attack bonus, Kyra had to roll 8 times, missing and dealing low damage before finally killing Merisiel. Kyra insisted that it was a mercy killing, putting Merisiel out of her misery. It was the first time a player had ever died in one of my games, and I rewarded them with a colorful description of the afterlife. It involved a Valhalla-esque setting where millions of rogues and bandits were training for the battle to end all days. I then wrapped up the setting, concluding what had been a unique evening of gameplay.

The Guild of the Serpent

One of my next adventures was considerably after I had gotten the Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's guide, and the Bestiary, thoroughly expanding my rule choices (and adding the coup de gras action, making it so Kyra could have dealt an automatic x4 critical to Merisiel). Kyra and Merisiel were replaced by (respectivley) Harley (a half-elf ranger) and Glenn (an elf sorceror). A character that had been added to the party was Freak's Evil Twin, a Tengu Summoner who was supposedly the twin of a half elf Druid.

The adventure was one of my own design, where the PC's happen upon a massive underground lair filled with bandits and ruled by Nierdim. Nierdim was a Sorceror/Assassin/Rogue, having powers that involved death attacks, sneak attacks, and serpent fangs (due to his snakey bloodline. Thank you, APG!).

When they did eventually find the entrance (guarded by two combat encounters and a ridiculously simple puzzle, they fought their way down into a sewer, confronting several kobolds and an assassin.

Now, at this point, pizza and Sprite had abounded and we all were quietly munching on said snacks. Glenn made a funny remark as to their current dungeon position and Harley began laughing. I heard a noise as if a cork had flown out of champagne, and green chunks flew across the table, hitting character sheets and landing on Harley's shirt. The only way I can at all describe what had just happened would be to say that he had projectile-vomited out of his nose, or, as the incident later came to be known, Harley had "Blown Chunks". His shirt was covered in pizza fragments and so was his character sheet.

We copied what we could from his character sheet onto a new one, and I was able to lend him one of my shirts. Afterward, he would claim that his sinuses were clear for a week, a statement I don't doubt in the slightest.

The other most notable experience I had with the Guild of the Serpent was with a character named Deadly Rage.

Deadly Rage was actually the very first character that was made using the Core Rulebook. Since I was totally unfamiliar with the rules system (and that the player playing Deadly Rage happened to be a powergamer), he found a way to qualify for a prestige class (Specifically, Dragon Disciple, one of the most overpowered classes in the game). Not knowing what to do, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided to let him have the class abilities of BOTH a 1st level Sorceror and a 1st level Dragon Disciple, essentially making him a 2nd level character AT 1ST LEVEL. I admit, most of this nerfing was due to my own inexperience.

After all of this madness, there was a slight confusion with spellcasting ability, and Deadly Rage ended up being able to cast 5th level spells at 10th level (normally completely impossible, but not for a powergamer). In addition, I decided to try out my new Mythic Adventures book and bestowed Mythicness (Mythicality?) on him (A very grave error, but a grave error on the part of myself). This made him 12th level, MR 1.

How this happened is that he was investigating tunnels that supposedly led to the Guild of the Serpent, and there was a branch in tunnels. He decided to go left. I came up with a fantastical idea of a whole bunch of magic rocks he had to find that were scattered all over the world. I had one of the rocks be in the side passage, across a big void with some treasure on this pillar. He had to get across without using magic (An evil predicament, considering that he had recently gained the Wings ability). When he made it, a hallucinated elf lady gave him the whole speech of ""YOU HAVE TO SAVE THE WORLD!!! DON YOUR ROBE AND WIZARD HAT!!!"". He refused to help her until I gave him a hefty sum of 200,000 gold pieces, and millions once he had completed the entire quest. She made him mythic, and he flew back across the void.

He flew back down the passage and to the left, where he encountered 10 guards (simply pathetic little mooks). Using Mythic Fireball (10d10 damage, if they fail their save they catch on fire, 40 ft. burst). Needless to say, the guards were reduced to small cinders rather quickly. He proceeded to the next room, where I hatched a reckless plan for a monster that had a slight chance of killing him: a Colossal Animated Object, in this case, a huge statue of a snake. The room was a massive cavern (under a good-sized town, because that totally makes sense) with a smaller town in the middle. The snake stood guarding the city, where a bunch of Guild of the Serpent people were.

He used two more Mythic Fireballs to destroy the snake, then proceeded to launch a normal one at the cavern roof in hopes to collapse it onto the town, setting in motion a series of events which are about to be described. This drew the attention of the town guard, and all of the people in the town who decide (quite wisely) to evacuate.

I surrounded him with a small army of mooks, and made their leader a 5th level Wizard with the capacity to cast Dispel Magic. I had him ready an action to attempt to Dispel the Mythic Fireball that I knew was about to be cast, in hopes that the deaths of the mooks could be halted or at least slowed.

I had no such luck. Mythic Fireball was cast (this time from an aerial position, using his Wings ability. The wizard rolled to dispel it, but rolled a 6. The fireball hit, instantly slaying every single mook in the vicinity.

By this time, most of the people in the city had begun to flee through the tunnels, and Deadly Rage followed. There were 5 tunnels, so he changed into a dragon using Form of the Dragon II and breath weaponed two of the long tunnels, killing each and every escaping bandit.

At this point, I was struggling for something that could halt this destruction, but came up with only sending in yet more mooks. What happened next was pure slaughter.

The mooks advanced, and so did Deadly Rage. He waited until they had surrounded him, then lashed out with Bite, 2 Claws, and I believe a Tail Slap. He managed to kill most of the mooks, but they got some good hits on him as well. To finish them off, he used Burrow and dug a sloping-down tunnel right under them, then collapsed it and killed the surviving mooks.