Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Revisions Uploaded

I've posted revised versions of both the Burnt Offerings compiled conversion and The Skinsaw Murders compiled conversion.

You'll notice that I also removed the Player's Guide elements from the Burnt Offerings conversion. These are now located in the Pathfinder Adventures Character Elements document, along with other options from the Curse of the Crimson Throne Player's Guide. This new document will serve as a collection of options that should be made available to players at the beginning of a 4th Edition Pathfinder campaign. I am considering moving all player options to this document, including options presented in the adventure path itself (things like the lyrakien familiar, for instance). Let me know what you think about that idea.

As far as other changes go, I've added new rules elements from the Desna article in The Skinsaw Murders. You can now play a Spherewalker in 4th Edition. I've largely divorced the paragon path from the starknife, though its encounter power does require a weapon with the light thrown or heavy thrown property. It retains its dream-associated abilities, and its connection to Desna, and is intended for multiclass (either martial/arcane or martial/divine) characters. I'm anxious for feedback on the paragon path, as its my deepest foray into player elements design yet. You'll also find new rituals for the two spells presented in the Desna article. I think they translated to the new edition very nicely; both spells fit the ritual mold solidly to begin with.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

I think that moving ALL PC options to that unifying document is the right choice.
I try to do it for my campaigns so my players can access a compiled version of all house-rules or options they have out of the core rulebooks.

Thanks for your great job, btw!

self_evident said...

Love your conversion, but the latest version of (at least Skinsaw) is not letting me cut and paste words from haunts into rptools tokens, whereas the last one did. Is this intentional? I am doing something wrong?

Scott said...

Hmmm, that's an interesting problem.

I'm able to copy and paste text from haunt stat blocks into Notepad just fine. I'm not really familiar with RPTools, but I'm not aware of any reason why the ability to copy would have been lost here.

Have you tried copying and pasting into a word processor, and then copying from the word processor to paste into RPTools?

self_evident said...

Hmm, no, it doesn't even paste properly into Word 2008 (which tells you I'm using a mac [intel]). I've tried copying from two versions of Acrobat Reader and Preview.

Scott said...

How odd. I'm unable to replicate this on my end.

Are you unable to copy and paste anything, or is it just stat blocks that are proving troublesome?

Have you found any programs that you can paste the text into?

Do you have a PC handy that you could try this on, to see if it might be an issue with the Mac OS?

self_evident said...

Sorry for the delay. I boot into Windows so seldom (and then forget to check things while I'm there). Seems to work on Windows Acrobat Reader.

Did you make changes to your PDF generator in between versions?

Scott said...

Hmm, I don't believe so. I've been using the CutePDF driver to create the PDFs since the beginning.

Either way, I'm glad to hear it works now!

GIBraag said...

Hey Scott,

My players and I are great fans of your work and are currently halfway through the Skinsaw Murderers. Your last entry is two months old; we hope you haven't abandoned the project..

Keep up the great work!

Scott said...

Fear not! While the last update here was some time ago, I've updated my CotCT conversion more recently. The lack of updates was primarily the result of finals, followed by winter break, both of which have prevented my gaming group from meeting recently. I do have a significant amount of conversion material "in the pipeline", so to speak, that I will hopefully get a chance to post before school resumes in January. Everything but the very end of Fortress of the Stone Giants is just waiting for me to finalize and post.

I'm glad you're enjoying the conversion, though! Happy holidays!

Mysteria said...

I was going to ask the same thing as GIBraag, as I finally get around to finishing the first book. My players are fighting Nualia at the moment (play-by-post) and I've now downloaded the next conversion document. Again, a big: thank you! for your work, and a merry christmas. :)

BenTheFerg said...

Hi Scott.

Thanks for all the great work.

I am miles behind you (my campaign happens in fits and starts, and we got sidetracked by about 15 weeks of the Great Pendragon Campaign).... but we had another blast with the Skinsaw Man story: Foxglove's Townhouse and then the Saw Mill.

I am using the 'gring guide' to help me as well (on ENWorld: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/254630-stalker0s-guide-anti-grind.html )

one issue I think one has to bear in mind is that the maps for the 3.5 arc are too tiny half the time.

4e is really into big combats too, with 4 or so different types of critter versus the pcs.

I tried to push the envelope some more by making the combat zones in the Townhouse, and Sawmill bigger, and the battles more epic (Level 11 encounters versus 5 pcs of level 7 - 3000xps encounters)

We had a blast - but I failed to down any of the pcs.

My advice for anyone else coming after me, running skinsaw etc, is to make sure that in the Sawmill,
a) have 2 major enoucnters (one in the watermill/ gears room (make this the first room folks have to walk through; one in the upper room with the log splitters in the floor)
b) make sure you have created a bigger map for each room
c) give your critters cover
d) have more critters with push-pull effects to take advantage of the terrain. Thus give Ironbriar a push/pull controller type at will; put an elite brute into the Iron Briar encounter; put 2 brutes with push-pull powers in the waterwheel room.

I wasn't able to make the most of the terrain and force pcs into their doom!!

with the tower and Xanesha coming up, I am going to go for it some more.

I will make sure I work on the encounter with Scarecrow, and have the assassins use missile weapons from above - peppering the pcs as they ascend. I am gonna have about 8 minion stalker-archers, as well as some artillery stalkers using the ddi builder. I am going to change Xanesha so she can fly at will (otherwise she is dead - the fighter will shield bash her, Tide of iron her off the roof and that is that!); and also have some minions to accompany her as well!

Its gonna be a blast though!

Thanks Scott for all the work - your ideas have been very useful - and the terrain in the sawmill fab! Keep it up.

Soon - Hook Mt! Woot! But first - can't wait for the Tower encounters! :)

Ben
c)

Unknown said...

Just hoping we can read more of your conversion. Great job! :)