That feeling of scaring the players

[kenki]

Well lol, My round three is going well so far at this d20 thing.

My party still think's I'm trying to kill them.
My party's tank is fearful of doors.
I joke about a bunny rabbit and they think I'm whipping out a tonberry.
Oh and anytime theres puzzles their more then likely gonna try to blow up a wall.

>.> How is one supposed to feel on this.

=(^-^)= Do i feel good a party of 3 can slog through my campaign or throw the towel lol.

Seriously , the whole blowing up a wall thing.. while vild why lol damn moogles critical-ling on walls and spamming bombs.

:3 Anyway , Surprized I haven't ran into to much difficulty.

Just >.> I don't know why I get yelled at when I don't want the pcs to haggle with the merchants due to well.. I'm not Recette lol.

They seem to like to talk to vermin this time, which isn't too bad. Gives them a bit more flexable roleplay there I suppose. Still, its hard trying to come up with artistic flare concepts.

Gotta figure out how to separate the party of three so they get terrified a little but unsure how.

Basically their a bit uberly terrified on things thats normal, and yelling at me for lack of rp when I try to create rp moments, and yell at me because I want to kinda save redundancy shopping for basic adventuring gear that is in teh list.

Well I am probably wrong for denial of their haggles, but I just find appraisal and item identification, as well as micromanaging shops cuts things.

Just what do you guys think about this.

I mean besides the frozen moogle since, I know he hates when I haz the big rule of "NO KABOOM WALLS, and haggling merchants" but, still gives me a hassle on the "oh but we're not allowed to shop" when that wasn't the intent. *face palm*

[dairius_chi]

Well... you can't critical a wall so not sure what to do there.

As far as blowing up a wall goes, I mean if it's inside a house possible but doing so in a dungeon with puzzle rooms is likely close to impossible.

A stone wall has 8 Hardness and 15 HP per inch of thickness, so 180 HP for a foot. Bombs deal elemental damage so right off the bat that's halved as all energy damage is against objects in PF, so a bomb dealing say... 40 damage only deals 20, and then Hardness applies making it 12. You'd need 15 bombs to go through a single section of wall, and that's if you can reliably do 40 damage on a bomb which is unlikely for the majority of a game.

As far as PCs just bashing the wall down... could always throw some realism in. Each strike on a solid stone wall deals some damage to their weapon, sure with Hardness and Enhancement bonuses they'd be sturdy but plowing through a 5ft section of wall would destroy any real blade's edge. It's just nonsensical to think a blade or even club can be used on solid stone without any repercussions.

For Haggling my GM just had us roll Diplomacy, the amount needed to gain favor seemed random but I've thought on it and come up with my own idea for a formula. DC 10 + trader's appraise modifier + 5 for every step below Helpful they are(so +5 for Friendly, +10 for Indifferent, +15 for Unfriendly, and +20 for Hostile- but chances are low they'd do business at all for that). Success means you get stuff for 5% cheaper and sell stuff for 5% more. Beating it by 5 increases each increment by 5%, to a max of 15% (so buying at 85%, selling at 65%).

Wanting to split a group of three.... I dunno, it sounds like it's you against the players when you say that and that's really not a healthy way to run things- but it isn't difficult. Just have them get attacked in the middle of the night, I'm sure not everyone has maxed Perception ranks so a group sneaking up on them, knocking them out, and binding them wouldn't be all that difficult. Another option is magical teleportation scatter traps. When they go over an area they're ported off somewhere randomly, determined by a 1d6 die roll or something... then each deal with their own mini-dungeon before they can meet back up or something.

I don't support splitting the party arbitrarily myself, I'd always try to keep them in groups of two but with a party of 3 that isn't really an option. Maybe you should stop focusing on how to terrify the players and more on how to keep them happy with the story...?

[kenki]

All that is fine and good but, moogles can critical a construct. A wall is a construct :p therefore they can critical a wall. Also I tried that method >.> With the chemist's acid bombs and treasure (pre-nerf) again not winning any favors with my group lol.

>.> Lol, Anyway its not like I wanna kill the party *halo above my head* <.<. It's just I want to cause a bit more terror :p and chaos because more chaos.

We usually give rests as "end of session" and their adventuring is at the point well there isn't much enough there to ambush them in their sleep.

It's chemist isn't broken just aoe slinging in caves or in buildings stink.

I would do world map stuff but, creating all sorts of finely detailed small instance maps at 1/2 scale of my world map is a nightmare.

Oh and I tried the hardness thing with a grey ooze.
That didn't win much either since there wasn't info given on the ffd20 site about weapon endurance, and a bit harder to track for them.

I feel kinda stumped a bit though. I guess I shouldn't bother since they have gil now, but meh. I just feel ups and downs.

The Redmage in the party seems to be doing a bit of everything but, saves the party with his 16 damage (which increases as it goes) and his status effects, Which tack that on with the chemist and aoes, with a bit of shortbow attacks. The party kinda acts like a mobile hedgehog.

Good and bad is the problem. Good cause its teamwork, bad cause its a pain to give them their level in CR because they can one hit ko it quite easily or at least kill it within the next turn.

Not due to the party themselfs just, creatures are that weak.

FFd20 mobs seem to have the same issues, they scare but die kinda quick while indoors so the party doesn't have that maintained pressure.

Their too low level for any deadly traps (for now), their gear actually isn't that overpowered either, and neither is their class stuff. It just feels like I'm hitting the party with wet noodles.

I even went so far as to introduce blink bunnies lol, and they seemed to get mad when I >.> gave them 5 encounters of their cr of them. (Blink bunny only has max 11 hp and does 1d4-2 damage).

So it becomes a little bit of a fun killer when mobs die on the second turn. Again, feels like I'm doing stuff wrong, but it seems boring too having things die so quick. Not the party's fault, here or the systems fault. Just seems I'm missing something.

[dairius_chi]

You are missing a few things, it's just not that easy to explain it all as far as GMing goes...

First off: Walls are objects, not constructs, constructs are a creature type- unless the wall moves around and is alive through magic or something, it is merely an object and cannot be critical'd.

My common GM has ruled that anything beyond normal mooks (random goblins you find at level 1) gets max HP per HD, with how strong your party is it really won't hold them back. Another GM I know adjusts the XP we get per encounter. If we trounce it way too easily we didn't learn much, so XP is lowered- if luck was against us and what was supposed to be a simple encounter almost kills us with a couple lucky crossbow bolts to the temples, we get more XP.

You just have to incrementally increase the difficulty until you find something that fits the party- also Oozes do damage weapons when they're used on them, it's Xd6 Acid damage, but most steel weapons have Hardness of 10 so typically they can be used without much worry. Weapon hardness/HP exists in Pathfinder so you can find the rules there.

As far as dealing damage to weapons used to break through a wall, just give them the broken condition- weapons are still usable but take a -2 to attack and damage until they're repaired/maintained. Swords and Axes were not built to go through stuff like that, you'd need like a Mining Pick or something.

Personally I just get the group Barbarian to beef up and plow through the wall, but that's me >.>

[Gizmo]

The DM's job is not to kill the party. Nor is he out to destroy them. His role is to provide a story line, control the monsters, have the world react to their decisions, and provide them a challenge. All of this is done inside the rules of the system you choose to run, in this case FFd20. While terror can be caused multiple ways in a game, and a fear intended game is all great, it should be out of the environment and things going on that cause that, not the DM trying to kill them.

Take caution in why you are enjoying bringing terror to their characters.