AaronOfBarbaria's page

Example 3. A Paladar roams a town of common folk killing the statistical 1/3rd of the population that is evil.

That issue has been solved - normal people (meaning not of a divine class and not undead) that happen to be evil don't have an aura at all unless they are at least 5th level, which "common folk" certainly aren't.

There really isn't a lot of mysticism in the core monk.

Basically every one of the monk's class features is explained in-setting as physical discipline brought into the realm of the supernatural through spiritualism, despite most of them being Extraordinary rather than Supernatural abilities (thanks, most likely, to the stupid choice of having supernatural abilities subject to anti-magic).

While some things might make sense from a purely "I trained very hard for very long," angle, there are class features like Still Mind, Slow Fall, High Jump, Purity of Body, Wholeness of Body, Diamond Body, Abundant Step, Diamond Soul, Quivering Palm, Timeless Body, Tongue of the Sun and Moon, Empty Body, and Perfect Self that require further explanation.

Over 50% of the class features of a core Monk require "mysticism". I don't see how you can say that isn't a lot.

Detection spells are only blocked by what they say they are blocked by - which is 1 inch of metal, 1 foot of stone, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.

Also, the paladin can use the standard detect evil spell, not just the move action single-target quick study - and saying that he could detect the presence of evil while using the normal version (while not focusing on the illusion) but would "loose the signal" by focusing on the illusion-veiled glabrezu is pretty much the jankiest idea I have heard lately.

"Back in the day" there was no reason to celebrate finding magical stuff - Gary Gygax put loads and loads of magic gear into all of his adventures... and often the items were of significant power, not just "little +1s"

...and I have no idea what weapon materials and "golf bag" game-play has to do with the topic.

Haladir, it took me a while to read past your post because you said "Elvira" and "barred necromancy" in the same sentence and my brain couldn't process that... then I realized that Elvira might just be a name that came to mind, not a reference to the Mistress of the Dark.

Aranna, mixed levels of optimization within a party is not actually all that big of a problem in my experience so long as you don't attempt to balance fights - you build the encounters to be challenging for the characters that aren't highly optimized and let the highly optimized character do what he does.

I say that because then you are either letting Mr. Optimal get a little bored because he isn't challenged, realizing that the difference between 20 damage and 30 damage is that 30 damage hindered his other areas because 20 damage kills the monsters in one shot just like 30 does, but didn't cost so many resources to get, or to finally get what he has always wanted from optimizing the character by finally getting to lay waste to his enemies without effort rather than always being pushed to his limits.

I say that with complete confidence - 6 years ago I joined a gaming group of 14 high-optimizers and 2 "I just built what sounded cool" players and quickly took over as main GM, and today I am still main GM, have the same number of players (though 3 were kicked out over being terrible people that might end up getting you arrested if you hang around them, and replaced with 3 people that aren't), and not one of them is still a high-optimizer because it they were only doing it "to survive the challenges of the campaign" in the first place.

Lizardmen?

Where?! Readies spear and shield.

Is that really the "more mechanically sound thing" or is it "Oh right, I really don't want to hit the other PC", which is more of an in character thing.

That depends on whether they are playing a character with all the archery prowess of Legolas, or playing a character who is much more of a novice with a bow.

I'm talking about Legolas-level archers deciding not to fire upon the lizard most offensive to their sensibilities, but instead the one furthest from their companions... and that makes me sad.

Some idea of what to expect when you try something is good.

I agree with that to a point - It is fine to know that you generally have better chances in melee than at range (or vice versa), which is why a player can record their attack roll modifiers on their character sheet. Beyond that simple level of knowledge, I think that the information is too tempting to be used to make choices for the wrong reason.

Wormys, you have a good point in that we should not hold "how it has always been" up as some measure of how it should be now.

The topic of sci-fi in fantasy usually comes down to the detractors not saying "I don't like it," or "I prefer my fantasy without science elements," which are statements of subject nature - but saying "Has no place in fantasy," which is an objective statement... an objective statement that is objective proven false with the evidence that fantasy and sci-fi used to be one and the same, and that not only does the originally quoted inspirational material include things classified as sci-fi, but the original designers of the game saw fit to actually include those elements in the game itself.

Basically, one side can be seen saying the equivalent of "thieves have no place in heroic fantasy" and the other side is saying "um... Grey Mouser?" rather than "you must use them and like it because they are in one of the little brown books from the 70s!"

I am with you for the most part though... I started with AD&D 2nd edition, and even then at age 12 there were parts of the GM advice section that just struck me as crap advice of an amazing degree.

Science Fiction and Fantasy are the same thing - or at least, they were until someone decided to start sub-dividing the perfectly fine genre of "fantasy" into smaller, more restrictive things like "science fantasy" and "historical fantasy" and so on...

and then some crazy person decided to change that to "science fiction", which then confused a lot of people into thinking that the following two things aren't perfectly identical:

1) a story detailing a man, his travels on Mars, and the alien races and strange devices he encounters there.

and

2) a story detailing a man, his travels through an unknown wasteland, and the inhuman races and magical artifacts he encounters there.

All it takes to change a story from "science fiction" to "fantasy" is to change the proper nouns - which is not really a change at all.

My favorite type of player in a nutshell: An imaginative person who understands the process of playing a table-top RPG (you have a character you portray, you choose what the character does, dice are rolled to decide success in some situations) but has never even cracked the rule book

I'd rather have to remind a player every session what die they roll to do things than have a player that knows the actual rules of the game and how they apply to the action they want to take.

I find that the more a player knows (and especially the more they care) about their chance of succeeding on a particular die roll, the more they choose their actions based only on their mechanical strengths rather than just doing what seems cool to them.

...and I hate rules that jump out and "gotcha" that type of player (like the combat maneuver feats - nothing stops a player from just doing what seems cool faster than "ooh, I try to take his sword away! What do you mean he attacks me, I thought it was my turn?" other than just telling them "no, you don't.")

To that end, I mostly run games that my players are less familiar with (like Pathfinder, which most of them aren't sure what is different and what isn't from D&D 3.5, but especially Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadowrun 3rd edition which none of them have ever actually read), look up anything they need to know for them rather than hand them the book, and handle all penalties to their actions on my end (raising the AC rather than telling them to subtract from their attack roll, for example) so that they aren't able to get "scared off" an action they just declared by the rules.

It's always a bummer for me to see a player go through this:

Player 1: "I fire an arrow at that stupid lizard-man that hit me with a rock!"
GM: "Cool. Your attack is at -1 because he is in melee with Player 2, and you'll have a 50/50 chance of hitting Player 2 if you miss."
Player 1: "Oh, right... then I am going to shoot at one of those other lizard-men instead."

Just that moment when the player decides to do the more mechanically sound thing and throws all the character-driven plans they had out the window without a second thought... it makes my heart sink.

Digitalelf, I don't think the cause for the person's odor really plays into the matter at all - the fact is that they have an odor, whether it is from a lack of hygiene, a medical condition, or from a choice of over-doing the deodorant/cologne/perfume, or any other reason, and that the odor which they do have is making someone else uncomfortable.

Everyone is entitled to an equal shot at comfort, which unfortunately means that someone is going to have to give up some of their comfort to take the odoriferous individual to the side and - politely so as to minimize that person's loss of comfort - reveal that their odor is causing discomfort.

The point, in my opinion, is to take the action that risks the least amount of opportunities for jokes to be made at someone's expense and for blunt and rude comments to be levied - which is why I am so opposed to Aranna's idea that a scented cloth held to the face is more polite than taking the person aside and saying "I am sorry to call you out like this, but you have a strong odor about you that is bothering me."

Now for an example that involves my real life sensibilities: Were I to sit down to play at a table with Aranna, who I will assume regularly wears a perfume of any sort for purposes of this example, I would be forced to say as politely as possible that I can't handle most perfume scents because my nose is extremely sensitive to most smells, and then recommend/request that either no perfume at all be worn (oddly, even an obviously unwashed natural scent bothers me less than a perfume) or that a scent of vanilla, watermelon, or citrus be worn if at all possible.

To me, that seems much more polite and effective to reach my goal (not having to smell perfume that gives me intense headache and nausea) than say... holding a burrito up to my nose to block the smell I don't like with one that I do, which I imagine would cause a line of questioning that would lead to a pretty thoroughly rude and embarrassing situation.

Aranna, your suggested action is passive by using the cloth instead of being active and speaking to the person.

Your action is aggressive, at least as much as speaking to the smelly person would be, because it invites inquiry about why you are holding a cloth to your face in the first place which naturally leads to the topic of the smelly guy... and in fact it is your hope that the smelly fellow is made self aware by your inaction.

Basically the 2nd definition of passive-agressive found on urban dictionary - you are doing something that is going to make someone upset with a defense that they shouldn't be upset because you didn't say anything.

Also, addressing someone verbally is not inherently aggressive. One person can ask another person aside to have a bit of privacy and then very politely explain any issue they have with that person and never be the slightest bit aggressive.

...and your definition of "fairly straight forward" is severely flawed - the man that smells has not been frankly told without circuitous behavior or pretense that he smells, he has instead been allowed to wonder "What's that cloth for? Is Aranna having a nose bleed? Maybe its just allergies... I dunno, that cloth has been there a while and it doesn't look like its moving anytime soon. Wait... what's that smell? Is that me?! Oh great, why didn't anyone say anything?" and then finally put together that the cloth over your nose is there because he stinks, you noticed, and you didn't feel like being direct with him.

Thanks, Laithoron, for seeing what I was getting at.

Aranna, I do agree with you that it is the smelly guy creating the uncomfortable situaton... but no, he doesn't need to see you hiding behind a cloth from his foulness in order to realize there is a problem.

I have a lot of friends that have behaviors similar to the one you describe, actually - they will do anything that they can think of that is avoiding them having to confront someone, and they say that they are "non-confrontational" and do not like being in confrontations.

What I have been working to get them to realize is that stepping up to someone and politely informing them of the issue you are having is avoiding a confrontation, while behaving in some passive-aggressive way near unfailingly causes a confrontation when the person you have an issue with gets wind of the issue in some way other than being told directly and politely, such as by seeing your scented cloth held to your face, and gets mad that you didn't just tell them yo had a problem.

The real question becomes whether you are more comfortable starting a confrontation, or prompting a confrontational person to the start it as a response to your polite expression of the problem you are having. My advice to everyone ever: If there is a chance someone is going to end up looking like a jerk, always allow it to be someone other than you.

Pure fiat. Next you can't ask them to eat red meat because it is bad for them.

Is there any other kind of fiat?

Also, it may be important to note that basically everything about what charm person does, other than cause the target to have a friendly attitude, is fiat by its very nature - even the definition of what "friendly" means in fiat.

Lastly, there is a difference between eating red meat (that falls in the realm of "could be very dangerous" rather than "suicidal" unless they are aware of a severe food allergy that will result in a bite of red meat causing anaphylaxis) and intentionally double-crossing a being you know to be prone to violent outbursts and have specifically heard say directly to you "I will kill anyone that betrays me."

please don't try and act like there is some slippery slope between "make that pyschopath with a penchant for murder directly upset at you" and "why not put more salt on your food."

My thoughts on charm person interrogation:

without
Interrogator: "Tell me who you work for!"
Captive: "bite me! I'm not talking."

With
Interrogator: "Who you working for these days?"
Captive: "Sorry man, I can't discuss work details. My boss would kill me."

Nothing evil about getting to the same result with less shouting.

Perhaps I am the only one, but when did the scenario being discussed become a bandit leaping out of ambush to kill you, rather than just the bandit, you know... bandit-ing?

If someone leaps out of the bushes and commits armed robbery with the threat of violence should you not comply, that is a bandit.

If someone leaps out of the bushes and tries to end your life, that is a poorly trained and undiscerning assassin.

In the case of the samurai and his being Lawful Good, wouldn't there be an "arrest" attempt based on the crime of robbery at some point before the samurai forces the bandit to decide to either flee or commit a great offense by attacking a samurai?

I think the assumption is neutral acts don't affect your alignment. This seems obvious because even the best or worst of us do far more neutral acts than anything else. Walking for example. Or breathing.

...then how does someone stay Neutral?

If no "Neutral act" affects alignment, then that leaves Neutral characters forced to do equal amounts of "Good acts" and "Evil acts" to keep themselves from shifting out of their alignment.

...this whole idea that an act itself - rather than the motivation for and attitude towards the act - has an alignment is really hard to get a real grip on.

Rynjin, unfortunately despite being listed as "Ability damage or drain" in the monster rules, they are listed as separate immunities in the construct traits description - which gives one all the info they need to say that a tarrasque is not immune to ability drain.

Yes. I like to call them 'Neutral Acts' myself. And killing an Evil creature would fall under that header.

Doesn't that lead to the same conundrum where everything has its alignment gravitate towards Neutral?

I mean, if an act is always neutral no matter what, but everyone has reason to perform that act on at least a few occasions no matter their alignment... does that not make people that have to do that thing often basically guaranteed to be Neutral?

The whole "murder hobo" thing is an oversimplification of the standard PF (and D&D) style of adventure - the characters have no home but where they lay their head, and no "job" other than the nebulous concept of "adventuring", which make them fit the description of "hobo." The characters also rack up kill-counts that put to shame the real world's greatest spree-killers, and most answer the majority of threats - even those that are encounter only because the characters have infiltrated the home (dungeon) and are being attacked by the residents (monsters) within because of that "invasion" - which makes them fit the description of "murderer."

I happen to find it interesting in both its accuracy (technically it is 100% true0, and its inherent level of non-compatibility with the structure of the alignment system and make-up of the planes.

Back on dnd, killing evil is a good act, and has been since the start.

I don't believe that to be true.

I believe that there is a difference between "good act" and "evil act for a good enough reason not to risk alignment change."

I believe that I have to be correct, or villainous sods using death as a penalty for their minions' failures would end up with Good alignments.

It is not the act, but the motivation and attitude towards the act, that determines the alignment.

Cheating is abhorrent.

I agree, glad to see someone else share that stout of an opinion on the issue

I've told players to reroll low numbers if it ruins the story

...wait, what?

These two statements are at odds. Or rather, it would seem that you abhor your own behavior.

As for your Hobbit example - there was a wizard and something like 14 dwarves involved in that story. To make a true analogue to a table-top RPG we do not make Bilbo the main character and re-roll anything that would take him out of the action, we take the whole party along through the game and see how it pans out.

In this case, we have a campaign where the guy playing the wizard was too busy to come to most sessions and the 14 or so guys playing the dwarves that the entire adventure was about happened to not end up being quite as interesting in the long run, making the lone hobbit seem like the main character after the fact of the campaign.

Had Bilbo died, the story would have just been more focused on another character - Thorin Oakenshield, for example (you know, the guy with the quest actually tied to his backstory).

All that aside, novels are not RPG campaigns - at least not until the campaign is over and then the notes are published - so saying it would have been a crappy book if Bilbo had died is basically the same as saying that any story in which a character dies is a crappy book. Bilbo is the main character because he survived, but he did not survive because he is the main character.

Ahem, I only cheated once, and also had the balls to admit I did.

Please take the below statement in jest, as I mean no offence:

Good that you had the balls to admit your misdeed. Too bad you didn't have the balls to take bad luck like a champ.

Back to the topic at hand: a state and a couple of groups ago I was basically in a position where I had to tolerate players that would fudge rolls because I was having trouble finding other people to game with.

When I saw them declaring a 2 a 12, or whatever else, I would "counter-fudge" and raise the DC or AC they were looking to hit by the amount they changed the roll by, basically negating the effect their fudging had on the game.

...it actually ended up being what got those players to stop fudging all together because they finally noticed what I was doing and demanded an explanation, which I gave "Oh that, yeah, I lie about AC every time you lie about an attack roll - have the whole time we've been gaming together, actually - the good news is that means you'd have gotten this far in the campaign and done this well even without trying to cheat."

lol.

You going to take my sweaty socks too?

How else am I gonna make the soup to feed the prisoners?

I'm all for sundering. I just refuse to do it on a item that cannot be replaced or repaired.

There is no such thing as an "item that cannot be replaced or repaired," in regards to sunder.

Also, your prior posts in this thread have included you stating that you feel that an item made important to a character through the player's written backstory should not be sundered by the GM...

So which is it: are you all for sundering, or do you believe a backstory should be all it takes to make a weapon immune to loss? It can't be both.

It also doesn't specifically say you can't.

That is the absolute worst way in which to decide what is allowed, because every rule in the book has 1 thing it does specifically say, and an infinite amount of things it doesn't.

Example: Magic Missile doesn't specifically say you can't return to full hit points every time you roll the same number 2 or more times on the damage dice.

It is impossible for the rules to specifically say everything you can't do, it would take too many words.

"Humans are a varied race, much like in the real world. They have great versatility in the way of [list of racial traits] but cannot: burst into flames and fly off like the Human Torch, project force fields like Sue Storm, stretch out their limbs like Reed Richard, Kinetically charge objects like Gambit, Eat glass and crap expensive looking vases, sharpen steel on their skin like a barber sharpens his razor with leather, or lift castles with their minds."

Jumping in a moment as a GM who loves it when players write a (brief) background for their character that I can mold into the campaign:

If you have some ancestral weapon or family heirloom, I am probably going to make it have some use as a plot device during the campaign - and that means your ancestral macguffin blade is likely to be stolen, broken, or some other "nefarious" means of removing it from your comfortable possession...

Then you will be expected to recover or repair it because your background says you care about it.

Alternatively, if your sword is just "my sword" - I probably won't bother with the effort to find a way to break or steal it because your response would likely be simply buying another sword.

An item being actually important to your character does not make taking that item from you into some kind of jerk DM behavior - it makes that item a tool to keep you and your character involved and integrated in the story unfolding in the campaign.

The only thing that comes to mind right now happened in a 3.5 game:

One player was bored of playing a bard and quietly decided that he would commit suicide via brazen dungeon-crashing and make a new character - so he declares his character sprints off down the hallways ahead.

He found a door, kicked it open, a pair of storm elements surged forth and he dove into the room rapier in hand and began to battle them - the party caught up and he lived, so he ran off to the next danger.

There were 4 or 5 encounters he dove headlong into, the party struggling to keep up with him, and he survived them all and felt a new-found enjoyment for his character and decided to keep playing the bard, but to do so in this "crazy brave" manner.

Then, the party came to a broken stair case over a pit, and he decided "I'll just jump it," instead of waiting for the safe way to cross - failed the check, fell, and died.

The whole table, that player included, laughed so hard we nearly cried.

On a side note: Did the OP ever say how old the player was?

The reason I ask is the reaction would seem to make more sense if we were talking about an 8 year old vs a 30 year old acting that way.

Except in the case where the youngster is the age where saying "no," about anything causes them to burst into tantrum or tears - I've never seen one young player do anything but take a sudden down-swing in their PCs luck as anything other than motivation to re-double their effort.

Rather than bawling and not wanting to play anymore, the kids I've taught to game (even when I was only about 12 myself) would say something like "He broke my sword?! That jerk, I'll show him!" and formulate a plan to take their revenge - typically in a very brutal and immediate fashion, much like how a youngster hit by another youngster is very likely to immediately hit back with the heftiest object within arm's reach.

Perhaps I am just used to dealing with youths that are trying to act older, rather than maintain toddler behaviors for as long as the world will let them.

Sundering is listed in the core rule book - so when the DM says "I'm running Pathfinder," he has laid out a warning that sundering is possible (and also that wizards might occur). His only further responsibility regarding the rules is to cover anything he is doing differently from the way the book states the rules.

...such as if he doesn't use sunder.

[quote"Icyshadow"]Then allow me to make a small edit to my earlier post. Most people don't like breakable weapons.

Even that statement is inaccurate. There is not a large enough sample size to evaluate whether a true majority don't like breakable weapons.

You can speak to your experience (i.e. most people I know), or you can speak to the opinion being expressed frequently (i.e. many people), but nothing that sounds like authoritative statistics.

Also, nobody likes breakable weapons.

Hello, my name is Nobody... I could have sworn it was Aaron, but how could that be if I like breakable weapons (in both table-top and video games).

You shouldn't be able to sunder a vorpal greatsword +5 with a spoon. :/

Let's break that down, mr. hyberbolic example:

Spoon - tiny improvised weapon. I will be generous and give it 1d4 damage and a x2 critical.

+5 greatsword - 20 hardness, 60 hit points.

So a creature would need a +13 strength modifier in order to even scratch the greatsword with a spoon on a maximum damage critical.

Just stay away from spoon-wielding bad-guys with 36+ strength and your +5 vorpal greatsword is spoon proof!

Consumable items make up roughly 40% of the items that become available to the players in my games, and make up roughly 95% of the items that the players create for them self.

In the very rare chances I get to play at all, I play a fighter unless all the rest of the players contain 0 people that want to play a wizard.

"guy with sword" is basically the first thing I think of when I think "fantasy".

If the GM's main job is to ensure that the players are having fun playing... to whom does the task of ensuring the GM has fun playing fall?

Unspoken table agreement.

That is like saying that my table has an unspoken agreement that I will not have their characters encounter a Behir because I have not used one thus far, or that there is an unspoken agreement that their characters will not get sent to Nessia because I've never decided to run a campaign involving Hell.

To simplify: that doesn't make any kind of sense. It's almost an implication that if your GM doesn't do something every session then you can expect he won't do it in any session ever... at least, it follows the same line of reasoning.

Maybe the player tried using it and another player reprimanded them for 'starting an arms race'.

That would fall outside of the realm of what I am talking about - never being told you wouldn't see or that you shouldn't do it, yet still drawing the conclusion that such was the case.

Beyond that, I firmly believe that it is impossible for a player to start an "arms race." Only the GM can initiate that fruitless endeavor, which makes it all the more disappointing to see since a GM cannot loose an "arms race," unless he chooses to do so.

Nope, never feel like that... never get a chance to since I am a GM an average of 4 times a week and a player an average of 1 time per 3 years.

In those very, very rare instances that someone else gets a game together and wants to run it I tend to either not have enough time to start missing the other side of the screen because the game falls apart... or the game is so terrible that the other players ask me to take back the screen.

Sleep makes you have the helpless condition, so all the details are found in the definition of that condition.

There are no auto-fails to saves, but reflex is greatly affected by the character's dex being treated as 0 (-5 modifier).

Charm or compulsion spells would affect the sleeping character upon waking, so long as the target didn't sleep through the duration of the spell.

What I've seen much more often is players and DMs using game rules without really considering how it affects the campaign and other players.

I can believe that. At the same time, I have also seen a lot of people (on both sides of the screen) decide on house rules without really thinking - the only example I have is people that went from 2nd edition D&D to 3rd edition, and ramped up the power level of their characters by keeping the same ability score generation method... being "blind" to the fact that ability scores themselves had been made more powerful (12 being a +1 when most scores used to have to get to 15+ to be a +1 to anything).

Gamers have an unfortunate habit of assuming that the designers are all-knowing and all-wise, and if they wrote a rule, well by golly it's there to be used whenever I want!

Gamers also have the unfortunate habits of assuming the designers didn't even think about what their rules do when used, and of interpreting everything relating to gaming in terms of black & white extremes rather than the full spectrum of possibilities between.

For example, sundering a PC's weapon is neither always a dick move nor always completely cool.

It depends on how frequently the tactic is used, and whether the group feels that carrying a back-up weapon is smart and part of immersion, so annoying to track that all of the good qualities of doing so should be tossed out and the downsides made irrelevant by changes in use of the rules, or something somewhere between.

The last thing I say is always, "So, that's where you are now... What do you do?"

This reminds me that I forgot to mention the end of ritual and true start of gaming at my table... the moment when I am sitting in complete silence, looking from player to player giving each a facial cue to say something until one of them says "What?" to which I can only respond "What do you mean what, I'm waiting for you guys to do something!" in a flabbergasted tone because it never fails that everyone misses the moment when my silence signals both the end of a sentence and their turn to speak.

Tels wrote:

My Dice speak louder than my players; I really don't pull punches. I let everyone know when they join my table I play dangerous games and there is always the chance you will die.

That's nice. I do the same.

I always love it when someone posts something like this statement.

I know what you both mean, but I get a good chuckle out of how you have both said you warn players that they might die rather than that their characters might.

I am a GM, and I approve of sunder - even though I have almost never used it because I refuse to take the time to make custom NPCs and haven't seen many critters I felt like using that were written with sunder... and most of the critters I do use are too stupid to attack weapons rather than throats or too smart to allow an AoO from anyone that would be severely impacted by loss of their weapons.

That said, I would seriously crack up and laugh if a player at my table got genuinely upset about a sundered weapon (or a picked pocket, or any other event that mildly inconveniences their character) because of how incredibly absurd I find it.

Broken swords are replaceable, much like lost HP or ability damage, so what is the big deal about sunder? Nothing, that's what.

In any order you want as long as you declare it.

This is not quite true.

You must make your attacks gained from base attack bonus in order from highest to lowest.

You may, however, choose which of your two weapons to attack with first.

Example using numbers from above:
1st attacks - katana at +23 and sickle at +22 in your preferred order.
2nd attacks - katana at +18 and sickle at +17 in your preferred order.
3rd attacks - katana at +13 and sickle at +12 in your preferred order.
4th attack - katana at +8.

I would like to point out that I also think that pure roleplayers can be almost as much of a pain at pure rollplayers. They usually going off on some tangent that has nothing to do with the campaign. When it comes down to the nitty gritty of combat or any other stressful situation, they usually have to be walked through the mechanics.

In my mind there is a venn diagram of RPG gamers. In one circle there are Roleplayers. In another there are Rollplayers. Somewhere in the middle those two circles overlap and those are the people I like to play with.

I believe that venn diagram is a lot more like to circles so nearly overlapped entirely that you can only just see the sliver on each side where the role-players that don't also get the rules and the roll-players that get nothing but the rules live.

My favorites are a couple of players in my own group: One wants nothing but the "best" character around and to decimate, accumulate, and repeat... and knows next to nothing about how to play any of the games we play, including having to have help building a character.

And the guy that knows the rules the best besides me (the always GM and rule-master extraordinaire) is also the one most concerned with getting into his character's mindset and making all decisions from that view point, including how to improve the character.