Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

Hmmmm. After seeing the Forsaken Curse, I think that if we self-impose the rule of not putting points into diplomacy ever, I can see the appeal. It benefits a solo play, as we are not so heavily penalized for dying.
 
Yeah, I would rather stay in the Darklands for a while, at least. It will be very difficult to get by on the surface as a low level Dark Folk Caligni who doesn't speak any languages used in the surface.

Actually, I wouldn't mind spending most of the quest in the Darklands, if DP can make it work, but that probably wouldn't be practical.
there's nothing really wrong with that being honest the darklands generally suck though and any real positive change sounds like the stuff of high level adventurers. Even 20+ level characters can't exactly fix the darklands other than some regions though.
 
Hmmmm. After seeing the Forsaken Curse, I think that if we self-impose the rule of not putting points into diplomacy ever, I can see the appeal. It benefits a solo play, as we are not so heavily penalized for dying.
Don't put too much weight in the self-resurrection power. Raise Dead requires an intact corpse, after all, and the power doesn't kick in for 1d6 hours. Even if whatever kills you doesn't maim you beyond the effect's ability to save you, a lot can happen in 1 to 6 hours.

EDIT: It's not a bad effect at all, though. I guess I would say it's nice to have, if nothing else. I just prefer something that is more actively helpful
 
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Hmmmm. After seeing the Forsaken Curse, I think that if we self-impose the rule of not putting points into diplomacy ever, I can see the appeal. It benefits a solo play, as we are not so heavily penalized for dying.
That is a pretty big thing for us. Death insurance is hard to get running solo, especially since we've got a low power starting zone.

It frees us to be more picky about our social choices and take slightly greater risks when moving around alone once we get there. The auto stabilization shouldn't be underestimated either, since it means that as long as we don't die immediately we can eventually recover. If we're totally alone it isn't as helpful, but it does plug one more hole for us in terms of what our limited future party will need to do.

In the immediate term, it makes survival checks easier for everything, and Kori lives at the bottom of a hole in the ground within an even larger hole in the ground where most people dislike him. That +4 will probably be really useful for the early game.

Don't put too much weight in the self-resurrection power. Raise Dead requires an intact corpse, after all, and the power doesn't kick in for 1d6 hours. Even if whatever kills you doesn't maim you beyond the effect's ability to save you, a lot can happen in 1 to 6 hours.
Better to have it than not if we're taking a heavily solo run. Things that would kill and destroy our body beyond recall would also wipe us without it anyway, so it does cover a useful case. We just need to manage our risk when dealing with stuff that could really kill us.

It's possible that conditions could totally change while we're out and leave us at the game over screen, but from a meta perspective it's kind of poor game design to completely invalidate a key character power like that without some way for the players to notice in advance.
 
Yeah of all the Pathfinder gods I think he is the most interesting. I mean he is the stereotypical adventurer but at the same time he is interesting because he is not made a god at the end of some great quest, he is just in it to have fun and do good. In a way I guess you could call him the best god for the players not just the PCs. If I ever fall through a dimensional rift into Goldarion that is who I would pray to first. :V

Seriously early Pathfinder was so unique and fun and then is seemed like they sanded off all the interesting stuff in the name of balance and more play styles, they just kept tossing zombie robot pirates in there until you could not find anything original in that mess. I have read earely 1E Pathfinder Adventures of fun but I could barely bring myself to mine the later ones for monsters and magic. I ask you how the hell do you make diving for the ruins of not!Atlantis boring?

*sigh*

Eh... maybe I'm just getting on in years and talking about the good old days of D&D.
Reading some of aswah and feeling sadness and entertainment while doing it. Found this which could someday be relevant here.
 
Well you guys are going to have plenty of time to work this out, maybe more than you need. I have a cold and the fever pill just ran out, next one's not for two hours.
 
Adhoc vote count started by Goldfish on Feb 20, 2023 at 11:15 AM, finished with 113 posts and 24 votes.
 
Viserys in DP's ASWAH quest and Roland from his AOIAB quest were both heavily focused on Diplomacy, nearly every social interaction turned into excuses to use the skill. They don't have to be like that, but that's what happens when you have the skill and people are scared of conflict.
It worked just fine, why should we alter it?

For me running a character in computer RPG without diplomacy... well, it could be practical during the second playtrought, when you intendenly doing it wrong.
 
Don't put too much weight in the self-resurrection power. Raise Dead requires an intact corpse, after all, and the power doesn't kick in for 1d6 hours. Even if whatever kills you doesn't maim you beyond the effect's ability to save you, a lot can happen in 1 to 6 hours.

EDIT: It's not a bad effect at all, though. I guess I would say it's nice to have, if nothing else. I just prefer something that is more actively helpful

I see. it is not perfect, but at least it is a failsafe.
 
I mean the only difference in having no means to resolve social situations without either turning toward other people to do it for you, or making an enemy, is that you end every social interaction with either a worse reputation or another person gunning for you. Even those who's nature is not to seek revenge will inform on your behavior.
 
Can't get this quest out of my head, said head being mostly clear now. Vote closed, looks like we are going full on non-diplomatic.
Adhoc vote count started by Goldfish on Feb 20, 2023 at 11:15 AM, finished with 113 posts and 24 votes.
 
Can't get this quest out of my head, said head being mostly clear now. Vote closed, looks like we are going full on non-diplomatic.
Adhoc vote count started by Goldfish on Feb 20, 2023 at 11:15 AM, finished with 113 posts and 24 votes.
Just to be clear will you a qm have it possible for someone to eventually approach us based on character decisions that befriends us like a standard party? Or is this gonna be a real hard uphill climb for the barest of relations?
 
Arc 0 Post 4: Trade and Treachery
Trade and Treachery

The Season of Still Stone

"I don't belong here..." What first puts the thought in your head you do not know, like a pebble falling in the dark, but you know it is different than all the sad wanderings of your childhood. No longer do you imagine going up the north gully and getting yourself killed to show them how much they would miss you.

Partly you know it is because some would miss you, but not for any love of you.

Where else would foolish hunters who do not even give you a second look in public find healing? Where would the poor tanner find magic to undo their error?

A cruel smile, you think, curves over your features. But if that alone had driven you, you still might have balked at the dangers of the wild of which you know little, but there is another gust behind you, as though from some preciously sealed chamber now torn open. You want, you need to know what this is and the answers do not lie in being Vex's wrist-lizard, no matter how much he had learned to dip the sharp edges of his contempt in scarab jelly.

Without meaning to your steps lead you to the mushroom fields. The largest and in some way most important chamber of the tribe, green-caps grow in profusion and the fungus woods grow to twice the height of the People. You had heard from traders before that some find the shape of your tribe's fungus woods eerie and unpleasant, the way some of their branches look like hands stretched upwards only for them to explode into a profusion of delicate filaments, the way each of them has depressions for eyes and a round hole big enough you could shove inside a small bucket but you do not see it. Perhaps it is your memories of the sap harvest, when there is even enough for such as you to get a taste of sweetness.

The traders come as always atop their great striding steeds, the delicate legs seeming much too small to carry the weight of the rider, much less all the sundries, blankets and baubles, and stout baskets lashed to it.


Those deep sunken back eyes do not seem to even notice there is anything strange about the fungus woods, much less is he troubled. 'Grey as ash and twice as grim are the duergar' the saying goes, about the height of the average Whisper Foot you would have a foot on the tallest of them, though what they lack in height they make up for in girth. Even the least the guards are dressed in undyed blood-weed cloth, the dark red an implicit threat, though not as much as the master merchant.

  • Perception: 10 + 5 = 15 (Success)
  • Knowledge (Dungeoneering): 19 + 5 = 24 (Success)

No... not the master, you realize as you fail to see a chain in his beard. A duergar would sooner cut off his right hand that appear before outsiders without his mark of rank. You had ever heard that the father of their race would torment any who show up so stripped before them for eternity, though that seems to you a thing their god would not need cause to do, knowing what you do of him. Crossing your index and middle finger you ward away back luck or the gaze of the stranger gods. Magic burns at the tip of your fingers like an unseen spark, but you do not conjure it, not yet.

Still hiding in the shadows you follow the sound of clinking chains and find the slaves the Still Stone caravan always brings, but never sells, even when the people are flush with the silver-faced lead of duergar coin. They are for whatever or whoever is on the other end of their route. Three goblins somehow find the energy to squabble in their cage, even under the calming potions, or perhaps the merchant did not bother with them. The orc on the other hand is marked with three ritual scars on his cheek and is well and truly lost to the draught dreams, barely able to shuffle forward. There's a woman, tall but oddly proportioned wearing an eyeless hood, a spellcaster you would guess, and another in silks that might have once been finer than the merchant, but now are only rags. She seems oddly pale in the harsh green light of the worm-oil lanterns hung about the great beetle. Six slaves and only... you count again, five duergar. The only way that could have happened is that they had been attacked and lost many guards and likely their leader as well.

Your rag lichen pouch suddenly seems heavy as a boulder in your hands. You are going to need supplies and weapons if you aim to set out... a knife. To touch a foreign knife before it is Gifted is anathema. And yet your feet are light as shadow.

Let them keep their familiar blades, their paths well trod.

You gain 120 gp (starting funds)

What do you do?

[] Trade with the duergar, they are sure to have much that you need for all their are tight fisted

[] Talk to Vex and Ixil one last time, an idea comes to you. A raid of all the young blades against this few dwarfs and this many slaves you'd be able to finish what their mysterious enemies had started. You would start your journey wealthier and do one final favor to the People (2d6 Dark Creepers and one Dark Stalker will join you in the ambush)

[] Write in


OOC: And we are off to the races! Or, as the case may, be organizing a caravan ambush. No roll for the attempt since Kori is burning the leverage he gained on his peers throughout so far, and he knows where their buttons are.
 
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Just to be clear will you a qm have it possible for someone to eventually approach us based on character decisions that befriends us like a standard party? Or is this gonna be a real hard uphill climb for the barest of relations?

if people have reasons to like you they can do so, you are not locked into being unfriendly or worse with everyone on the planet.

Edit: good night guys.
 
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[X] Talk to Vex and Ixil one last time, an idea comes to you, a raid of all the young blades with this few dwarfs and this many slaves you'd be able to finish what their mysterious enemies had started. You would start your journey wealthier and do one final favor to the People (2d6 Dark Creepers and one Dark Stalker will join you in the ambush )
 
Yeah! Raiding time!

[X] Talk to Vex and Ixil one last time, an idea comes to you, a raid of all the young blades with this few dwarfs and this many slaves you'd be able to finish what their mysterious enemies had started. You would start your journey wealthier and do one final favor to the People (2d6 Dark Creepers and one Dark Stalker will join you in the ambush )

A kinda final 'f you' to tribe by showing them what they are missing.
 
[X] Talk to Vex and Ixil one last time, an idea comes to you, a raid of all the young blades with this few dwarfs and this many slaves you'd be able to finish what their mysterious enemies had started. You would start your journey wealthier and do one final favor to the People (2d6 Dark Creepers and one Dark Stalker will join you in the ambush )
 

[X] Talk to Vex and Ixil one last time, an idea comes to you, a raid of all the young blades with this few dwarfs and this many slaves you'd be able to finish what their mysterious enemies had started. You would start your journey wealthier and do one final favor to the People (2d6 Dark Creepers and one Dark Stalker will join you in the ambush )

free XP

party members?
 
[X] Talk to Vex and Ixil one last time, an idea comes to you, a raid of all the young blades with this few dwarfs and this many slaves you'd be able to finish what their mysterious enemies had started. You would start your journey wealthier and do one final favor to the People (2d6 Dark Creepers and one Dark Stalker will join you in the ambush )
 
[X] Talk to Vex and Ixil one last time, an idea comes to you, a raid of all the young blades with this few dwarfs and this many slaves you'd be able to finish what their mysterious enemies had started. You would start your journey wealthier and do one final favor to the People (2d6 Dark Creepers and one Dark Stalker will join you in the ambush )
 
[X] Talk to Vex and Ixil one last time, an idea comes to you, a raid of all the young blades with this few dwarfs and this many slaves you'd be able to finish what their mysterious enemies had started. You would start your journey wealthier and do one final favor to the People (2d6 Dark Creepers and one Dark Stalker will join you in the ambush )
 
[X] Talk to Vex and Ixil one last time, an idea comes to you, a raid of all the young blades with this few dwarfs and this many slaves you'd be able to finish what their mysterious enemies had started. You would start your journey wealthier and do one final favor to the People (2d6 Dark Creepers and one Dark Stalker will join you in the ambush )

Hmm

Trade with the greedy asshole dwarves with a literal curse that makes people like us less.
Or
Use meatshields friends to help us get stuff for free!

easy choice :V
 
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