Hellscarred and War-torn (Inactive)

Game Master Zedth

@Others

Don't need to worry about answering Catcher's question. I'm just trying to hint at some very conflicted thoughts on the character. Since she is neither good nor evil, and she mostly cares about the 'order' of things, the mage has been in all of this adventure thinking things were out of 'order' because of the devil/demon army.

The thing is, after going into underdark, it hints a completely different culture which has the opposite rules from the surface dwellings.

Is the ‘Rule of the Strongest’ the right answer? Should they force their way against everything because they think and others say that what they are doing is right? Will she sacrifice others to save everyone? The hero have the right to judge and execute just because they think that's the right answer?

@Gromff

I think the short sword is a good one for Goldie.
It offers the effect of Keen and life steal at the same time, and gives you the opportunity to take a different weapon shape while using the talking weapon.

But man, are you sure this is just a weapon? Goldie seems more like an minor artifact than just an intelligent weapon.

Mjolvandr is certainly an artifact power item. Furthermore, one of its limitations is that it can never take the form of any weapon that isn't bludgeoning. If this illithid blade were put inside of the hammer's chest, it only mimicks/borrows the magical qualities, not the weapon type or damage type.

Gromff, are you keeping track of the treasure?

I also think the short sword would be awesome in Mjolvandr, although Keen is applied to the idea of slashing and piercing weapons, so if that can mimic the effect that's awesome!

I'm kinda curious about that dragon claw!

Hey, Gromff, in the future, I tend to have a lot of healing left. We can use that instead of some of the wand charges.

Hey, there’s no way Catcher has a ‘shriek’ voice!! Moreover, she is not tiny! Just small!
Also, just for fun, I’ll add some more to the spellbook:

MINDFLAYER'S LEGACY
This pair of lexicons is covered in excellently preserved human skin, with an intricate lace of fingerbones forming the locks on the cover. A family seal has been embossed on the lower center of the cover, but flecks of gold leaf have begun to peel away, revealing that the embossed pattern in fact follows a faded tattoo on the skin itself.
Protection None
Opposition Schools –

_________
SPELLS
_________

4th— Locate Creature, Scrying,Shadown Conjuration
3rd— Dispel Magic, Magic Circle Against Evil, Nondetection, Deep Slumber, Major Image, Vision of Hell, Gentle Repose
2nd— Suppress Charms and Compulsions, Fog Cloud, Web, See Invisibility, Daze Monster, Disguise Other, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Ghoul Touch, Scare,
1st— Protection from Good, Protection from Evil, Corrosive Touch, Infernal Healing, Obscuring Mist, Comprehend Languages, Charm Person, Disguise Self, Cause Fear, Ray of Enfeeblement, Interrogation

I apologize for the lack of posting yesterday. It was a long busy weekend.

Evil mind-flayer, clearly a monster - an ancient one at that. One that has lived long enough to commit many heinous acts. But in the absence of knowledge of those past acts, and without any particular current acts to hold against him, is it the right thing to do, to let him go?

What if he commits further evils? Will we be responsible for those?

Adding to the muddle is the fact that he helped defeat the moon beast by dimensionally anchoring it.

I'm enjoying the moral conflict! It can be one of my favorite aspects of roleplaying. When characters are rolled up, spells are carefully chosen, combat feats are selected, we are not usually thinking about what moral quandaries we may be faced with.

That was Gromff's justification. He committed no evil act upon them during the fight. The only ones he attacked were the dark folk but that was after their barrage so that could be self defense. We can't prove any previous transgressions since he was stuck in a statue for over 100 years. And though he says he is evil that is not enough to justify attacking.

Is this what you meant by Life Stealing?

Is this what you meant by Life Stealing?

Yes sir.

I feel like I'm going mad now because I would've sworn that I found a generic +2 equivalent weapon enchantment called "life stealing" but I can't find one now. But yes, the verbiage of that weapon is what I intended.

@Gromff

If this turn into combat, don't forget that it takes one hour for Goldie to sync with the new weapon, and since it appears the conversation with the drows and darkfolk didn't take long, Goldie will have only its original qualities, at least that's what I think.

Catcher, I can't tell from your character sheet if you're wearing devil-skin armor from Darnoq. I seem to think you are wearing it, and if so, as a reminder I believe it allows the wearer to use gaseous form once per day. (I don't see the details on your character sheet anywhere, but I'm fairly certain I threw that in as a special ability of the armor)

That would allow you to "fly" up the shaft, if you wanted to.

I know, but I haven't finished reworking that armor yet. So, no 'fly' for now.

It's something that I'll get done once we (eventually) find another city.

And I seriously need to up the up to date information on the character profile, instead of the excel file and some other particular notes

Guys, I'm exhausted right now, so please bot me for the moment. I'll go after some restoration tomorrow, I promise.

Bought a house. Without enough money. Life's going nuts!

Congrats on the new house! When can we come visit?

I'm assuming it is a beach-front villa with its own dock, yacht, sailboat, 4 Sea-dos, and its own lighthouse, nestled in a picturesque cove surrounded by palm trees gently swaying in the salty ocean breeze, where your gorgeous white bikini-clad servant girls attend to our every need.... am I close?

@Zedth That house description for some reason reminded me of panel two in this comic.

Also, congrats Roland! I just bought my place a couple of years ago and it is kind of an intense time, even when you already have (you believe) everything ready to go!

Feel free to disregard the below math. But thinking about this totally nerd snipped me while I was bored at work.

I love this.

If I'm understanding the terminology, "packing efficiency" means how much surface area of a plane could be covered by objects of a certain shape? So if you had a square box and you had square items of the same size (or equal fraction-portions of) you would have a 100% packing rate/efficiency?

Just for funzies -- help me understand the conclusion behind this line "...if Gromff is affecting the entire cone, he can affect an area with about 25% packing efficiency."
I'm not sure where that calculation came from.

and this one "This means if Gromff leaves 6" for a step, he could affect twice as many cones (a 50% packing rate)."
If his magic only affected the sharp end (anything greater than 6") of the cones, how/why would that affect the packing efficiency?

Hmm.

*opens mouth*

The Credible Hulk approves.

Question for everyone:

I see that most/all of you guys have a number of different aliases, most of which were made for different PbP games. I'm just curious so I hope you will indulge me; I wanted to know that with all of your Pathfinder experience here on Paizo.com and on tabletop game sessions, what are your favorite characters to play?

Class/Archetype?
Race?
Any preference for one type on PbP vs tabletop?

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I can start with a pseudo answer of my own. It will have to start with some background.

So I worked in a game store called The Game Keeper at our local shopping mall back in '99-'02. That is when D&D 3.0 was released. I had played some AD&D 2e in the early-mid 90s but I had never had a long term campaign (nothing longer than about 10 sessions, and most games were 1-2 sessions only). I loved the idea of the hobby but had admittedly little experience with it.

When 3.0 came out it was a big deal and was very polarizing, just like 4e was when it was released. I met a new group of gaming buddies from my time at that store, and we embraced 3rd edition as our new game of choice. Fast forward about 14 years and by then we were playing 3.5. After a time I started hearing more about this "pathfinder" thing and how it was so much better.

It took awhile but I eventually converted all of my buddies from 3.5 (yech... it is so bad in hindsight) to Pathfinder, though most of my gaming circle are older guys who are set in their ways are fear change. Thus they are very reluctant to even LOOK AT any books beyond the CRB.

I personally love the APG, ACG, UM, UC, Occult, etc... and I've been dying to use them in our home games. I actually ended up leaving my main group to join another where I was now the GM and could set any ground rules I want. In my games players can now use nearly any Paizo class, archetype, race (though on races I am a bit oldschool and prefer the classics), feats, etc... as long as you clear it with me first.

So long story made short - I have really come to love Pathfinder and am very excited to try out the array of wonderful classes they have to offer, but I've had very little opportunity to actually try out any of them because of my commitment to my previous core gaming group.

I badly want to try out a Bloodrager, Warpriest, Hunter, Druid, Oracle, Inquisitor, Skald, Alchemist, Witch, most of the Occult classes... but I'll never have enough time to try them all.

Anyways, I know that was long-winded but I wanted you to understand why I'm curious for your input on what classes you've played and enjoyed, and why.

Let me live vicariously through you!!

Yep, packing efficiency is what percentage of an area/volume can be taken up by a collection of objects based on their dimensions. And yes, your square example is correct.

Here's the wiki article on circle packing.

Sphere packing is pretty interesting too.

Just for funzies -- help me understand the conclusion behind this line "...if Gromff is affecting the entire cone, he can affect an area with about 25% packing efficiency."

I'm not sure where that calculation came from.

Lets examine the small cones for more accurate numbers. As shown above, Gromff could remove/reshape 110 small cones with a single casting of 18 cubic feat.

At 90% packing efficiency, there can be at most 412 small cones. 110 is more than 25% of 412, which is 90% of full efficiency.

If we do the full math, we find that 100% packing efficiency is ~457.7777 small cones. So Gromff's precise efficiency is about 24.03%.

and this one "This means if Gromff leaves 6" for a step, he could affect twice as many cones (a 50% packing rate)."

If his magic only affected the sharp end (anything greater than 6") of the cones, how/why would that affect the packing efficiency?

I was trying to keep consistent terminology, though that may not have actually been helpful here. When I speak about Gromff affecting 25%, 50%, 75%, and 90% packing efficiency, what I'm really saying is: Gromff could completely clear a wall that had at most that much packing efficiency with its spikes.

So if I said Gromff had "25% packing efficiency", that really means he could clear a 3' x 30' if up to 25% of that walls surface area contained spikes. (110 small spikes, or 6 large ones)

When I mention about only removing a portion of the cone and leaving the base, what is happening is we're assuming that the number of spikes on the wall stays the same, but Gromff is affecting less volume per spike, so he can affect more spikes.

In the quoted case, leaving 6" of cone on the wall means he can affect the entire wall if 50% or less of the wall's surface area contains spikes. He went from being able to affect 110 small spikes fully, to affect 220 small spikes from the tip to 6" from the wall.

Addressing the change in volume part, because of the shape of a cone, any reduction in height from the bottom (the thick part) has a much greater effect than cutting off the top. Because we're calculating volume, the change happens three times, one in each dimension (the cone is less tall, less wide, and less deep).

Lets assume we have a cone of height 1 and radius 1. That cones volume would be:
V_1 = pi * r^2 * (H/3) = 3.1415 * 1^2 * (1/3) ~= 1.04712

If we reduce the height and radius to 80% (.8) of normal, they become .8 and .8.
V_.8 = pi * r^2 * (H/3) = 3.1415 * .8^2 * (.8/3) ~= .53615

So V_.8 is about 51.2% the volume of V_1. Un-coincidentally, this is the same as .8^3.

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I've got to run to a meeting, but I'll answer your meta-rpg question later.

I love playing magic users, arcane or divine. The multitude of options available is like solving a puzzle, and I love finding unusual or unexpected uses for spells (and items). My old GM used to just give me random magic crap just to see how I could use it to solve party problems.

I love making up intricate fluff for spells and abilities. If you look at my witch on here, Nahia, I'm constantly writing out long, detailed rituals even for creating simple items like a handy haversack or a headband of int +2.

Nahia is a witch that gets her spells and powers by bartering with and calling out to dark nature spirits, often with offerings of secrets or pain. Andros is my viper familiar, a guiding spirit from the Dark Prince Asmodeus.

Here is my handy haversack ritual.

And here is enchanting my clothes with a +2 to bluff and a +1 resistance bonus.

Here is creating and using a Lyre of Building, refluffed to a songbook

I've played pure warriors in the past, but the lack of creative options tends to bore me unless there is good RP involved.

I love the idea of playing a rogue. But I've been disappointed any time I actually play one. Except for picking locks and the occasional trap, the skills are barely ever useful. Because of the nature of opposed rolls plus needing to roll multiple times, stealth is practically useless without magic to enhance it. And the party based nature of the game discourages the GM from creating situations where stealth would be useful. The wealth by level system also means that stealing is often a lot of risk with no real reward. The classic rogue weapons, daggers and short swords, will never match damage or utility compared to a heavy, two-handed weapon.

There is pretty much no situation in this game where a bard won't be 10 times more useful and effective than a rogue. And that makes me sad.

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As for races, I almost always play humans, half-elves, or elves. Maybe a dwarf or a halfing or something exotic every once in a while. Blame my love of Tolkien if you need a reason. :p

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I like both tabletop and PbP, for very different reasons.

It is really hard to beat the energy and flow of a good group of tabletop players. That switch from making terrible jokes one minute to having some real drama the next, being able to play off of one another on the spur of the moment, and the little accidents that happen, are all just kind of magical. I also find it a lot easier to try weird, off-the-cuff ideas in person than over the internet.

That said, I find it really hard to find a good tabletop group. Most of the times I have tried recently I just find myself annoyed. I run into too many "I'm chaotic neutral, so it totally makes sense for me to cuss out the king and try to steal his silverware after he was so nice to us" kinds of players. Or the kind that really just play characters as a pile a numbers, trying to find every possible way to get another +1 or to cheese an enemy. I'm far more narrativist in my preferences, even if I do enjoy system mastery as a thought experiment.

PbP, however, I find to be much better for in depth creativity. When I write out a ritual, or a description, I have much more time to play with the wording and the flow of the ideas. I can really play with my use of similes and metaphors, really let my imagination get cranking, and to try and craft some deep imagery that just doesn't really work in person.

As you can tell by looking at my character backstories and some of my rituals and prayers, I can really get into my writing with some of this stuff. I love to write, but if I try to just write a story, I often get bored part way through. The back and forth of a PbP game adds quite a bit of unexpected spark to play off of.

That said, the frequent player churn can be really annoying. Again, being narrativist, I really can get annoyed when I spend hours developing stories, histories, and interactions with a player, and then for them to just disappear. I mean, I know it happens, and probably most of it is on me for putting that much effort into what should probably be considered an ephemeral experience, but still...

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I like Pathfinder a lot. I played a good bit of 2nd Edition first, and the way it handled magic and player interactivity is still one of my favorites, even if the character creation possibilities were more limited from a crunch aspect.

Then I got a new group and we moved the 3rd and 3.5. I was almost exclusively DMing at this point, and I had a lot of house rules and I tended to play a little fast and loose, letting cool and interesting RP ideas trump hard and strict RAW, as long as it was reasonable, of course. I first started looking at Pathfinder when the free Beta PDFs came out, and I was very excited to see that a LOT of my house rules were actually already present.

When the first real Pathfinder stuff came out, I liked it a lot. I switched to it almost immediately, much preferring it over the base 3.5 rules. It also helped that I could use it as an excuse to throw out a lot of the old 3.0 and 3.5 splat books. Though I still do love some of the ideas from the end of the line 3.5 stuff, like the new types of items in the Magic Items Compendium and the Book of Nine Swords (despite it really being the book of Weaboo Fightan' Magic).

I've stopped keeping up with the new books in recent years, with ultimate Campaign being the last time I really read a Pathfinder book end to end. I've glanced at Unchained and Occult, and I do like what I see, but I don't have the time to join another campaign, online or in real life.

Some character ideas that I would love to play out given the right story and circumstances:
1) A Brood Master summoner with a specialization in insects. I know that it would suck hard when it comes to any kind of in combat usefulness, and suffers a lot of the same issues as I described in the Rogue above, but the idea is just so cool to me.

2) A false paladin. I mean a truly good person, who only wants to help, but who just can't keep up the Paladin code. However, due to familial and societal pressures, they still must keep up the guise of a true paladin, fooling even the church they serve. I've got a backstory and everything written up for this, and a few crunch ideas on how to pull it off, but it would need a LOT of GM assistance to pull of correctly.

3) A split personality Mystic Theurge that switches between a Lawful Transmutation specialist and a Chaotic follower of an ancient force Protean or Aberration descent. The dual ideas of creation and destruction in a single person, with each personality having no idea of the other. But as much as I love the idea of this, it just wouldn't work in a party, and only really being able to access half a character at a time would kill any in game effectiveness.

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As for other games, I've always loved Traveller and Shadowrun. Sci-fi and Cyberpunk are my other great literary loves, so I'm naturally drawn to how these work. From a crunch perspective, Travellers characters creation system is just amazing. And I've always loved D6 systems. But I've only gotten to play a little bit of either.

I played a decent bit of Mutants and Masterminds, 2nd edition, and I still say it has the best point buy system I have ever seen in a game. You can really build anything, and as long as the GM keeps an eye on what they approve, it all tends to be very well balanced. Its combat system is a little wonky though, mostly how it handles health. Still, it is an amazingly cool game.

I've played some Warhammer 40k. I love the overly dark and gritty setting, though I tend to like it just a little bit romanticized when I play. The simulationist heavy system is pretty cool, where even a low level enemy with a full auto weapon can take down a higher leveled character of a similar power tier. It really encourage tactics and working together.

Finally, I like the old world of darkness systems, primarily Vampire and Mage. Both had some really cool RP ideas built into them, the setting is pretty cool, and if you aren't powergaming it it can really encourage some creativity. That said, the combat system (especially in Mage) can get really wonky really fast, and it isn't at all balanced (I'm looking at you Celerity and Thaumatergy: Blood Magic).

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HA! And you thought you were being long winded...

Well

I started playing RPG about 12 years ago, using a not so good system (3D&T, which translated would stand for: Defenders of Tokyo, 3rd Edition), which was a simple system using d6’s to about everything. The system was designed to be create parody of animes, movies, cartoons and so on.
Needless to say, I found it terrible at the time, but since every one of my friends was playing it, I wouldn’t complain either. The DM at the time was terrible. He would, every single game day, put overly strong NPC’s he have no hope of defeating at all, and all the game would turn into a slaughter, with the DM mocking us because we couldn’t survive….

I got tired of that, and so did some other friends and we decide to create a new group for ourselves, and since that was my idea, I volunteered as DM. but we didn’t play much. We played just a few months, and I created an adventure where the players had to deliver a sealed box for a mysterious wizard, and that wizard sent his pet pixie with the group to keep them in check. Long history short: They opened the box, which in turn cursed them to become undead during night, especially under moonlight (pirates of Caribbean, anyone?), but before we could end things, another player suggested we switch systems, abandoning 3dt and moving to Dungeon and Dragons 3.5e.

At the time, we printed all available books (I still have them!), and we kept printing once more books were released. We purchased a laser printer and everyone would contribute with some money to recharge the damn thing, so we have very good quality color books for reference.

The DM was running a published adventure, and my first character was an Aasimar Sorcerer called Bruce (much creativity, such originality, wow!), I played some months, and due to some inner struggles, I ended up leaving the group for a while, so I have no idea what happened to that game or character.

Sometime later, about a year, they invited me to play again and the DM as running the Return of the Spider Queen adventure. Man, that was a blast! I made a golden elf, true necromancer, completely arrogant and I never had so much fun! I would team up with the dragon shaman and just hide behind him, and once the enemy was dead, I would claim that as my accomplishment!

There’s this particular event that I can’t really forget:

We decided to split the party; The cleric and the Spellsword went to one side, to check things. Me and the Dragon Shaman went to the other, following a track.
Due to our bad luck, we arrived at a underground drow city and the DM just looked at us with that sad face saying: “Okay guys, you just walked out of the tunnel, towards a city and there’s a turve of drow waiting for you… I won’t even roll this combat, there’s no way you guys will survive…”

The table was dead still, all players looking at each other and we were thinking “We are screwed!”, but then I asked the GM: “Before our imminent death, can I say something in game?” The GM looked at me puzzled and asked: “There’s nothing you can say that will appease these drows, you are a gold elf, their most hated enemy but say your piece”.

Then, I got up from my chair, picked up my campaign diary, searched some pages from the beginning of the campaign and in my best spokesman voice I said: “Hold your blade! We are not your enemy, but mercenaries hired by {insert here the npc name}. We met her at {X} place and once she learned how skilled hunters we are, she hired us to hunt and kill the beast that troubles this village, from the lake!”

The thing is: We had met that NPC before, but we killed her. Being a necromancer, I used several spells to talk with her cadaver, learning several secrets of her town, and learning that she was someone important there was well. Along those pile of information, there was something the GM added just scenario building, which was the following: “The drow city is constantly being attacked by a creature that lives in the lake nearby, and they can never beat the monster.”

So using this piece of information, I sprouted that and immediately the GM was like: “No way! You can’t do that!!”

The problem now was: Me and the DragonShaman would have to kill the monster (just the two of us) that a whole city wasn’t able to kill.

We got to the lake, I used freedom of movement on me and walked to the side of the lake to look there. Got bombarded by several attacks (I think it was eight at the same time), which dropped me into negatives, but due to freedom of movement, the enemy wasn’t able to drag me underwater, allowing the dragon shaman to drag me back and heal me before I got killed.

What should we do now? How do we kill such monster? Our solution was the following:
Since I didn’t had any more freedom of movement spell, we placed a huge wood spike on the ground near the lake and tied several ropes to the dragon shaman and he would walk forward to draw the monster, and I would for the first time in the game, use everything I had to fry the monster.

And that is what we did: He moved forward, as soon the monster popped up, I used Quickened empowered combustion (at caster level 11), follow by a maximized empowered combustion!
If I’m not mistaken, that was about 200ish damage in a single instant. We didn’t kill the monster, but that was more than enough to drive it away, and the DM said it would be ‘years’ before it would torment the city again. Not that I really cared about the city, I just wanted to escape there alive.

So, we returned, heroes of the city, clothed in jewels and granted safe passage (which was something we would need, eventually) and counting tales of how I was a gold elf, a respected benefactor of the drow city. And of course, let’s not forget my aide, which I have to carry thru this endeavor, the dragon shaman!

The game ended when I managed to piss of the GM, which I didn’t meant to do, really.
The villain, contacted us using a spell, and I asked the GM if I could answer her using the same spell and he said: “Sure, go ahead.”

So, my answer for the High priest of Loth was something like this: “Hey, hello! Good of you for contacting us! But don’t you worry, I’ll not kill you. I have no interest in killing you. I’ll however make you my pet and slave, I’ll drain you of your life force and magical power, and I’ll lent you as prize to my followers, so they can have a taste of once great cleric of this pathetic goddness. I’ll let them abuse and beat you, you’ll wish you were dead, but death will escape you. I’ll make sure you’ll suffer for a millennia, and you are free try to stop me if you think you are competent enough.”

We laughed, the GM laughed, the session ended.
The next game day, we tpk’ed.

We decided to start another game and they asked if I could be the DM. I agreed and we played for years. I ran the ‘Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil’ campaign, adding my own personal history after the published content ended. We went from level 1 to level 19, and the players failed to save the day, allowing the villain to go unpunished after sacrificing half of the world of Faerum to become a god…

But since I like good endings, the god’s intervened, and offered a second chance to the players: They would be sent back in time, to before their own time, to stop the villain there. But if they succeed, their own accomplishments would be forgotten by everyone except the gods.

The players agreed, they went back, defeated the villain:

Some of them were claimed by their god, preserving their essence. Others simply ceased to exist. The elf on the party had a different fate, his god decided to reincarnate him again, but with nothing of his previous power, although he retained some of his knowledge.

---

After of years playing this game, we were a little bored, and partially it was my fault. By the end of the campaign, I was working at a very bad place and somewhat depressed and with some serious problems, so I didn’t have mind to dedicate to the games, and then we stopped playing again.

Not so long after, we went out celebrate the birthday of one of our friends and sitting and drinking, we noticed how much we missed playing RPG, so we decided to play again! I would still be the DM. But somehow the game didn’t really worked that well. It was hard to arrange days to play, and sometimes we would spend months without playing.

Another time without playing, we decided to play again with another of the players as DM, and some different players, since of our original group, one had gone missing (got married and just vanished), and the other moved to another part of the country due to work.

It was fun, I played a Bard, which I named Catcher as well. Several things happened, I commented some of those earlier so I’ll not do so again.
But there was huge problem with this game. The DM was fascinated with dragons (he was the same guy playing the dragon shaman earlier), and every game we would face dragons, and the game would resolve around dragons and everything was dragons.

Dragons and Gods. Haha

So the game ended and I moved to pathfinder, which I later found the forums, and here I am, enjoying a lot of PBP. :D

==

Also, sorry, ended writing up way more than I wanted.

Geez, where to begin. I have always loved video games but DnD seemed a step higher in nerdom. A step I didn't want to take. Then I met a guy who played, got introduced to the DM and here I am. My first system was 4e. Great place to start, terrible system. Not much in the way of customization and battles took for ever. The dailies didn't do enough and they were dailies. We got a little creative thanks to the DM but the system didn't support our shenanigans. I quickly became disinterested with it and slowly edged towards 3.5. It was intimidating at first but soon I was asking to switch the whole campaign to 3.5.

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I kept playing 4e for 2 years until the campaign finally ended. During that time, the DM encouraged people to write little side stories about the characters. This lead to me writing snippets for all kinds of characters. Never backstories, just little snippets of their lives. By now I have attempted to build all of them in Pathfinder.

My favorite is a half-elf mercenary I have dubbed Owl that was inspired by one of my favorite fictional characters, Jarlaxle from the Drizzt series. He is so complex a character I have never pinned him down mechanically. 3.5 bard with Bardic Knack and Jack of all Trades is the best class I have come across so far but rogue is the best in Pathfinder I think. He's a little good at everything and really good at a few key skills. Intelligent, which is hard to make useful in combat without being a caster, versatile, cunning, and really hard to predict. He'll take any job if it pays. Every game I have managed to get him into has died unfortunately.

I usually build the backstory before the character. And when I do this I prefer martial characters over casters for one reason. It might just be a bias or a lack of creativity but I have always felt arcane casters were hard to develop a backstory on. They all end up being a little to cut and past, usually all involving an arcane school or some drastic accident from awakening powers. Or it might just be I don't have a lot inspiration to go on. Only recently have I moved in the direction of the divine and I really enjoy it. But I have always felt the potential for good development was greater for martial characters, even if they are limited in combat.

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Some characters I have wanted to play:

1) Owl obviously

2) Mute bard. Yes I know, mechanically it is impossible since all the spells have semantic components. But he was supposed to be a blaster using riffs amplified by magic to blow away his enemies. So when Keneticist came out I saw an opportunity. Aero keneticist is the best fit now but no games yet.

3) Dagger Thrower rogue. A song inspired this character-Slinger's Theme from Bastion. Great game. Good and powerful character in 3.5. Dark backstory. Not a lot of options in Pathfinder. Invisible Blade and Master Thrower Prestige classes from 3.5 made for a really powerful build that I can't copy in Pathfinder. Something like 12 blades, 8d6 sneak on all at 20ft. Wall of Blades can kiss my ass. He is in a game now but I am pretty sure it is dying.

4) Rebnesk the Rok Rider: Halfling archer riding a Roc. Nuff said.

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Races? Humans mostly. More versatility with backstory again. I like some of the uncommon races and even made one of my own once. A human/Dryad hybrid. Forest defender type of dude. The only races I have never built a character for is elves and gnomes. No idea why. Never found the inspiration for it. If I want a small character I lean towards halfling.

That reminds me, in 3.5 I once made a halfling Barbarian that maxed strength at a theoretical limit of around 65-70. I think it was barbar/frenzied barbar/kensai plus a whole lot of other cheese. The max I have built towards strength was a goliath the hit 89 I think. same build but through in that super gimmicky prestige class that added +2 strength per level. F$$&ing War Hulk.

And just to add to my response:

I’ve been really enjoying pbp, way more than tabletop games. Sure, it’s frustrating sometime when I can’t post, or when I can post but there’s nothing I can do to move the game because we are waiting for something else. But I’ve come to love the interactivity and much like Veronica. I love to read and write, but I can never write a history by myself alone.

So, right now, I’m not playing anything other than this game here and another one with Roland.

--

About the system, I don’t know. I like pathfinder, but I has become too complicated for me. There are thousands of things you need to keep in mind, a thousand more details in each simple action. When playing, I try to keep things as simple as possible, and usually I don’t assume or try using some shady rule interpretation before consulting the GM.

But on my games here on the forums, there were cases, really bad ones, which made me lose my appreciation of the system. It is still good, I still love it. But I would not start a new game using pathfinder, unless I know the players and have absolute certain they would not be hung in every single small detail of rules and bonus counting.

===

About races, I tend to like basic ones. I love humans, just because I think it’s hard for me imagining myself being anything other than human….
All those exotic races really don’t attract me that much, there’s so much I want to create, so much characters that fit human templates that I haven’t really thought about creating non-human characters, except for an Orc Scholar named “Krusnk”. :)

Thank you guys for sharing all of that. It is easy in this day and age to take the internet for granted, but when I step back and think on it, it truly is a marvel that all of us from thousands of miles away can meet together in this virtual space to share adventure. We all come from different backgrounds but we all ended up here. It's fascinating.

RE: systems -

My favorite game I played in AD&D 2e was a Dark Sun campaign that was run at my highschool in '95, in the 'Gamer's Club'. My family had just moved to Las Vegas and I had almost no friends yet, so when I heard about a Gamer's Club I got excited. Most of the kids there were playing Magic the Gathering, which I was a big fan of at the time (I still have a zillion old Magic cards, some valuable), but I saw a D&D group forming so I joined them instead of playing cards. The DM was a really charismatic fun guy who made the game come to life in ways that I had never seen before. We played a pretty awesome Dark Sun game and then a Call of Cthulu game that was a one-shot adventure, leaving my character alive and no one else's by the end! That game is a trip.

I love Dark Sun still. I saw a GM here on these boards running a Pathfinder Dark Sun game and I borrowed some of his houserules to fit the setting, then tweaked them to my taste. I'm considering running a Dark Sun game after our HS-WT campaign wraps up.

I played 'Champions' for about 2 sessions with some friends. I never really understood wtf was going on because they all knew the rules but the system was brand new to me. They just basically told me what to roll and when to roll, which is not fun. Seems like an interesting game, but I have little more to say on it.

I've been wanting to play '13th Age' really badly (it just looks damn fun) after reading about it on RPG.net. There were a number of players raving about it, so I bought the CRB but haven't had anyone willing to try it out with me.

I just bought a CRB for 'Barbarians of Lemuria' which I also heard about on RPG.net. It is a much simpler system of play, based on a 2d6 resolution. Basically you always have a target number of 9. You roll 2d6 and add your ability (Str, Agility, Mind, Appeal, from -1 up to 5) and either your combat skill (Brawl, Melee, Ranged, Defence, from -1 up to 5) or your career (this careers are basically backgrounds that take the place of skills. You can justify your rope use skill if you have a sailor background, for example. You put points in these backgrounds just like your ability scores and combat abilities). The dice system is simple, meant for quick pulp action scenes, but requiring a group with a lot of imagination and roleplaying energy. It sounds like fun!!

Lastly, I am waiting for my Core Rulebook for a brand new Conan RPG from a kickstarter campaign earlier this year. It is a 2d20 system, which I am intrigued by and am really looking forward to playing.
The system is (boiled down) as follows: (copy/pasted from a Conan forum)

All characters in Conan have seven attributes: Agility, Awareness, Brawn, Coordination, Intelligence, Personality, and Willpower. The average human has values of 8 in each of these. They also have a number of skills, each of which is rated with two values - Expertise and Focus, both of which are rated 1-5 (values above 3 are exceptional for skills).

When attempting a skill test, a character rolls two or more d20s, considering each die individually. Each d20 that rolls equal to or less than the relevant Attribute plus the skill's Expertise scores a single Success. Each d20 that rolls equal to or less than the skill's Focus scores an additional Success, for a total of two Successes.

A task has a difficulty, which is the number of successes required to succeed. This is typically 1, for an average task, but situations may make a task more difficult. Scoring a number of successes equal to or more than the difficulty means you pass the test and achieve what you wanted to do.

More importantly, scoring more successes than the difficulty produces Momentum - each success beyond the minimum required becomes a point of Momentum, which can be spent on performing a task better, helping your allies, doing extra things, and so forth. Momentum can be spent immediately to benefit the test they came from (such as doing more damage with an attack), or saved into a group pool that you or any of your allies can draw from, as the group benefits from the successes of its members.

Characters typically roll two d20s (hence the system's name), but there are ways to increase this. One of the uses of Momentum is to buy additional d20s for a task, up to a maximum of three bonus dice. Extra dice make it easier to hit higher difficulties, and more importantly, make it easier to generate more Momentum. If a character wants to get extra dice, but doesn't have available Momentum, there are other ways, but the most important of these is Doom. You can do some things that normally use Momentum without Momentum by giving the GM points of Doom. The GM can use Doom in a similar way to the way players use Momentum, as well as to trigger various NPC special abilities, alter the scene, present new perils and hazards, and create complications for players.

In a way, Momentum lets you achieve success through cooperation, skill, and planning - it takes effort to achieve. Threat lets you do the same through acting recklessly, which doesn't deplete a resource, but which may cause you problems later.

----

I think it sounds awesome. It gives players and the GM the ability to surge their rolls for narrative and effective power, while contributing to an ebb and flow of Momentum/Doom points that feed right back into the same system.

A new combat map will be up later this evening. I apologize again for the delay. My work has been keeping me busier than usual and my wife and I have been extra busy at home as well.

For now please assume that you're all on a "ladder" of hand holds with Veronica at the top. The Glass Golems are 30' deep into the chamber, and the Spectator is 10' behind them.

Basically:

Heroes--------30'--------Glass Golems---10'----Specator

I've sent a message to Roland.

He said he is somewhat busy and I'll only be able to catch up very late today, and thus, someone should bring down the hammer for him, I mean, he asked me to act for him, but I'm not that familiar with barbarians.

So, someone please, bot Roland for me.

xD

Boss, I put the information on my profile. You need only to search the corresponding line you want and copy/paste into gameplay;

the spoiler has all the 'lines' copy pasted, so you can see the expected result.

I took Catcher's approach, and my profile now has a 'Combat Roll Templates' section that you can just copy and paste from.

Been bit sick last couple of days. Sorry for being away.

I do have a number breakdown section in my profile, although it's not as pretty as the one you used. I'll fix it later.

For the record, I'm still drowning in things I need to finish.

@Gromff

I thought about that as well, but I tend to pick up extravagant reasons instead the common ones, and while she is curious about the golems, to me it occurred that once the spectator leaves it’ll resume its attack, but catcher is somewhat distracted to think of such situation. ;D

Something is very fishy about all of dis....

Well, the Hold Person itself allows us to reroll every round to move again, unless there's something I do not know, right?

Wow, I didn't realize that breaking free from the spell constituted a full-round action. I just thought you get a new save each round. That's good to know for future reference.

Now that the combat is over, I went looking for the golem stats….

Holy molly! I'm so glad I failed to cast that spell some rounds back. My scorching ray would be turned against me and that certainly was several steps closer to game over.

Teeheehee!

Talking about Roland...

Sometimes I really want to punch his barbarian face...

As a warning to everyone, Tropical Storm Hermine will be rolling through my neck of the woods tomorrow, so if I'm away for a bit, that is why.

Anyone watched "Stranger Things" on Netflix? It is a new Netflix original show based in the early 80s, about some kids in a small town who get mixed up in some crazy supernatural crap... it is awesome! It is 8 episodes with a 2nd season already announced. The very first episode has the main characters sitting around playing D&D in the basement, which was a great nod to us gamer folk.

I recommend it!

Watched.

It's da bomb!

The boyz playing D&D at the beginning won me over.

Yes!

My wife and I almost died laughing when in one of the later episodes one of the kids mentioned the "bloodstone pass" and separating the party!

Side note regarding lootz and wealth -

As you all can probably tell I am not a stickler for the Pathfinder accepted "wealth by level" guidelines. I'm happy to look at it as something to be considered but I don't feel any need to adhere to it. That said, if any of you would turn down a flashy weapon (such as a valuable mithril sword) because you fear it might eat into your allotted WBL, rest assured that it will not. For example if someone had a +2 steel greatsword and traded it in for a +2 mithril greatsword, this wouldn't affect much (if anything) of how much WBL I consider you to have, as mithril weapons don't provide much of an improvement over their steel counterparts (a little hardness?) I will only look at things that actually affect your ability to fight and/or be a hero.

-A jeweled necklace I would not count against you.
-A bag of holding I would not count against any individual since they are typically utilized for the party's greater good.
-Mithril armor I would probably count, as it has direct utility (higher Dex allowed, lower armor threshold)
-Adamantine armor/weapons I would probably count, as it has direct utility (DR and exceptional hardness)

I want you guys to have nice shiny things! If it is simply a RP decision to not opt for one weapon over another, then great. If you guys just want to liquidate the stuff so that you upgrade your existing gear, that is of course great too. My hope is to throw out some treasure that is more than "a big pile of gold" that will likely get sold/trade, but that might actually get used if someone is up for it.

Well

I had considered keeping the set of weapons,
However, there's that +2keen scythe waiting to be transformed on a greatsword!

How do you feel about transferring weapon enchantment?

I am no expert on the magic creation rules and as such I'm not aware of any existing rules for such a thing, but I'm always for fun over rules.

It passes my smell test:
-Is it imbalanced or gamebreaking? no
-Is it unfair to anyone? no
-Is it within the bounds of reason? yes

---------

Since Catcher has the craft arms/armor feat it doesn't seem that like that much of a stretch to use the knowledge to swap an enchantment from one weapon to another.

Are there existing Pathfinder rules for this? If not, what do you guys think is a fair cost? A third of the enchantment cost? A half?

I had the following idea in mind:

Due to the experimental nature of all of this, not all the power can be transferred. The actual enchantment would be reduced from +2 to +1, effectively turning the weapon into a +1 keen.

Other than that, half price is a bit too much, since it’s easier just to sell the current weapon for half price and use that same money to enchant the new weapon. As player I would love paying ¼ of the craft value to transfer from one to the other, but as GM I would probably go with 1/3 of the craft cost.

Not to butt into a rules discussion, but let me point something out:
Catcher can craft a new item with the same enchantments, for the same price that you can sell the old item for.

While you could go through the standard process (sell the old item to the magic market -> get gold -> buy fluffy materials for enchanting -> spend gold -> enchant the new item to be the same as the old), there is little to no WBL mechanical reason not to just allow the enchants to transfer at no cost other than the standard enchantment time (during which the old item is considered un-enchanted).

Of course, this doesn't take into account an RP reasons, such as rarity of the fluffy materials, access to a seller that could buy the old weapon, etc.