I saw something about needing to stop the incursion before Drizzt gives in to his darker impulses. Would be cool to see him become an über villain, or at least a force of destruction instead of happy shiny goodness (and angst). Then again, when I was playing AD&D, I turned him from a CG Ranger to a CE Assassin, so maybe I'm not the most impartial guy to ask. Either way, if it gives us another (free!) Player's Companion, I'll be a happy panda.
Oh....hidey hidey hidey hidey, hidey hidey hi! Our Gorbacz just got married.
But now we never see him,
I think you need to keep in mind that the poison will not remain viable indefinitely if you simply milk it from your pet snake. That's why they have a Craft (Poisonmaking) skill - it involves more than just squeezing a snake head or crushing up some apple seeds. You need stabilizing agents, air-tight containers, and so forth. I would say that a character with ranks in Craft (Poisonmaking) would know how to milk a snake as a part of the process, and part of the gp cost would be provided by the viper, with the rest going towards other necessary physical and chemical materials.
Yes, all the time. In fact, the "underpowered" classes are generally my favorites. The characters I've most enjoyed playing have invariably been Fighter/Rogues. Yes, I've played with much more "optimized" players. Yes, they tend to dominate in DPR and other factors I generally don't care about. So I find my niche, and enjoy it--maybe I'm the guy that takes out the henchman while the BBEG flings spells around. That's my job--to find opportunities to make myself relevant. And I play with a GM who creates opportunities for me to find ways to make myself relevant. That's his job. And in fact, my happy little unoptimized martial generally earns the XP award for best RP'ing our group votes on, based on his quick wit, his non-tactical gutsy charges into throngs of waiting enemies, and his open disdain for the cowardly (optimized) casters who hide behind spells. To be fair, that disdain developed after one of said casters dropped a fireball on my PC and the monster I was engaging in hand-to-hand combat because, as he told me later, "I assumed you had fire resistance." My fighter-rogue looked him dead in the eye and said, "I'm amazed that someone as intelligent as you must be can still say the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And I've traveled with goblins." So, yeah. I play the character I want to play. I couldn't care less about "optimizing." I trust myself to find a role for myself, and trust my GM to ensure that they exist.
Unlike the others I will assume you are talking about a just-hatched dragon that is still covered in egg goo and hasn't figured out how to open its eyes yet. Accordingly, cast Enlarge on yourself and step on its head. No one should ever be able to solo-kill a serious dragon. Ever. Because dragon. Even as a thought exercise, my mind rebels against it most fiercely.
FanaticRat wrote:
Actually, about half of mine were tongue in cheek. Pretty much everything after 4, or maybe 5. However, since it was asked... My group of gamer friends uses slapping as a tool for social order. Perhaps "slapped" was the wrong phrasing. Think "NCIS Gibbs back-of-the-head-smack" as opposed to a drawn-back full-body ninja slap to the face. Though "slapped" was easier to type than all of that. Anyway, no, he did not slap me back, because he knew he deserved it. However, he has smacked me numerous times, and I did not retaliate, because I knew I deserved it. Regarding playing the game wrong--that was fully tongue in cheek. Sort of an inside joke between me and a handful of other people. I failed to consider that people could take offense at it. Having said that, if you took offense, you are probably playing the game wrong. And yes, that was still tongue in cheek.
1) I believe fighters are fine, just as they are. 2) I believe rogues are fine, just as they are. This includes the stealth rules. And the trapfinding rules. 3) I believe monks (while not my particular cup of tea) are fine, just as they are. 4) I believe the obsession with "character optimization" is one of the worst things to happen to the game since accusations of Satanism in the eighties. 5) I am not a fan of the PFS concept, even though I have bought each and every scenario released for it (and converted most of them to 7th Sea). 6a) I believe most of you are playing the game wrong. (If you read that and feel inclined to start a thread defending your position, then yes, I am almost certainly talking about you.) 6b) There is virtually no set of circumstances or arguments where you will ever convince me you are not playing the game wrong. 7) I have literally slapped someone who asked if he could buy a magic item for his character. And my extra-special, bonus confession guaranteed to pile on the hate (because it is still permissible to hate people like me): 8) I am a straight, conservative, Christian gamer.
To belatedly respond to the attempt to bash on my comment a couple pages ago... I am not saying it's "wrong" to optimize your character. Or it's "wrong" to look for characters that measure success in DPR. Or it's "wrong" to do anything. What I *am* saying is that it's wrong for someone to say you HAVE to do that to be a meaningful part of a game, or that it's BADWRONGFUN to just play the character you want to play without regard for anything but the numbers. If you want to play a monk, play a monk. If you want to play a bare-handed specialist fighter, play one of those. They are two entirely different characters, but whatever. If yo0u feel bad that the fighter is going to out-damage you, then don't fight the same targets as the fighter. Let him chop-punch-whatever one of the bad guys, while you stand in the back, lure the other one over with a "bring it" hand gesture, and kick his head off. If you don't want to play a rogue, because you think the class is no good, then don't play one. But if someone else does want to play one, shut the hell up. It doesn't make him/her a "noob" to play the character he/she wants to play. So no--you're not wrong. But neither am I, nor is anyone else who wants to play X character with Y power for Z reasons. Even if classes A, B, and C can do it "better." If that person wanted to play A, B, or C, that person would have. I say again--it's a game. It's supposed to be fun, not a source of tension between factions of gamers.
I have seen it in con games more than at the table. Scratch that--I have known and gamed with people who LIVED to break games. Also with people who carried personal grudges from one game to the next. ("You backstabbed my Halfling fighter back in 1992. Now I finally have my revenge!") Sometimes they were the same people. My life got much easier when I turfed them out of my games. Anyway, at cons... Some people seem to view cons as their personal playground, and their goal is to break the games they sign up for. I know one guy who described--with sick glee--the time he signed up to play in a con game where the GM was running a module the player had memorized, and he made a point of calling out the traps, ambushes, and whatnot. Another guy said his goal was to make GM's cry. Some people. Bleh.
With respect, a better player is the ONLY fix. Not an optimized player. Not a number-crunching player. Not a player who has calculated a way to do triple-digit "DPR" at first level. A player who has created a compelling character, enjoys playing him or her, contributes to the game in the way intended, and helps bring enjoyment to himself or herself, the GM, and the other players. There's so much attention (too much attention, I think--your mileage may vary) played to the disparity between this class and another class, the flaws of this class vs. that class, the problems with this class vs. that class. Play the character you want to play. Have fun. It's a game, not a calculus problem.
There was a reason given for the thread lock in the post that announced the lock. It was that people continued to get hostile after two previous warnings not to be hostile. If it appears that there is no hostility, it's probably because they mods delete the hostile posts prior to posting warnings or locking threads. As evidenced by statements along the lines of "Removed several posts that were hostile." If someone attacks you and you feel the need to shoot back, see above in re: not engaging people who post inflammatory statements and threads remaining open as a result. The mods patrol the forums and lock threads because they HAVE TO, not because they want to. This is probably the worst part of their jobs because they have to clean up the messes everyone else makes. And I say "have to" not because of a legal responsibility (though maybe it is that; I'm not an expert) but because they don't want THEIR forum, discussing THEIR product, on THEIR website to have mud-slinging, rudeness, or other negativity attached. If people want the mods to stop locking threads, issuing bans, or otherwise enforcing the rules (that, again, WE ALL AGREED TO WHEN WE SIGNED UP), people need to stop giving them reasons to do so. Including me...who has already said too much. Sorry, folks.
Skeld wrote:
A thousand times, this. Paizo isn't obligated to host a forum at all--that they do provides many of us a fantastic opportunity to interact, share ideas, expand our knowledge base, draw on areas of expertise we don't have ourselves, and so on. Yes, a few people can ruin it for everyone. Maybe, if someone posted an inflammatory thread and NO ONE acknowledged it, responded to it, or otherwise engaged the poster, it would be fine. But how often is that the case? The least we can do, as posters, is to behave in a civil manner, keep to the topic of posts, and--above all--follow the guidelines WE ALL AGREED TO when we created our accounts. I've said it before--the mods have to maintain that delicate balance between open communication (NOT free speech) and control over what sort of language/behavior appears on a site branded with their name and interwoven with their product line. They do a commendable job, and I'd rather see them err on the side of caution and shut down a potentially heated thread so they can get back to their real job and stop babysitting the petulant lot of us. Complaining about the job they are forced to do because a few of us can't restrain ourselves, and getting snarky about how they respond to criticism, isn't going to help. If it were my forum, I'd be banning people--and IP addresses--instead of locking threads. Give them a break.
The mechanics really aren't the defining thing for any RPG for me. Some of my favorite games, we've gone entire sessions without rolling a die. You can have a great GM draw a great experience out of a bad game, or you can have a poor GM draw a lousy experience out of a great game. MMORPG's have a certain core behavior at the heart. You are in place A. Travel to place B. Kill X number of Y creatures until you gather Z of something. Return to place A. Receive XP, Money, and possibly an item. It doesn't matter what mechanics you use; that's what the game is going to be, because there is no GM. MMORPG's also have the inherent challenge of having a large number of people tasked with killing the same individual villain at the same time. If you miss your chance to kill that villain, get in the queue and wait for him to respawn, then take your turn killing him. Finally, in an MMORPG, a group of four Level 5 characters will never be able to kill, say, a Level 14 Elite monster. The math just doesn't work. Tabletop RPG's have a living, breathing GM. He is capable of assigning non-quantifiable goals. He is capable of judging success or failure without relying on numbers of X killed, or numbers of Z gathered. Because of a GM, no tabletop RPG is the same as any MMORPG. The "race" to kill a target is part of the drama of a tabletop RPG. If you get to the villain's lair to assassinate (because let's call it what it is) the leader AFTER another group, that's it. You don't get the bounty. And in a tabletop RPG, a team of four inexperienced characters CAN take out a much more powerful opponent, if they can come up with a clever strategy. Or maybe they will decide to talk to it, which is only an option in an MMORPG if the programmers make it one. There is no mechanic in any MMORPG for picking up a rock and bashing someone with it if you lose your sword. It is impossible to bluff a monster/character in an MMORPG into thinking you are stronger than you actually are. If you go into a bank in a tabletop RPG, kill all the guards and the tellers, you can steal the piles of gold you see sitting on the table in the back. You can also steal stuff from other characters' "safe deposit boxes." That said... The mechanics of 4th Edition D&D do strike me as being more similar to (NOT "the same as") an MMORPG than other editions, or certain other games. This is not a good thing or a bad thing, it is just a thing. And it is an understandable thing, because MMORPG's exist; therefore, they influence game design as (a) designers try to take the best ideas from many sources to make a good game, (b) designers try to increase market share by appealing to a broader group of people, (c) designers are influenced, perhaps unconsciously, by what they do in their spare time. Anyway, that's just my impression, and your mileage may vary. But permit me the luxury of assuming it is true for a moment. In that case: A) People who are fans of the click-and-kill action of an MMORPG are more likely (but not necessarily guaranteed) to enjoy the game, depending largely on the GM. B) People who favor intense role-playing and/or problem solving may or may not enjoy the game, depending largely on the GM. C) If a group of problem solvers/roleplayers invite an MMORPG player to join them, telling them "it's basically WoW on paper," someone is probably going to wind up disappointed. This is probably the case for ANY RPG. Any game (not necessarily 4E D&D) with mechanics more similar to an MMORPG may be more accessible to the MMORPG crowd. It may be unpopular with the anti-MMORPG crowd. In the end, we all have our own preferences. I enjoy playing 7th Sea. How many of you folks can say that? It doesn't make me right and you wrong. If you tell me 7th Sea is a poorly-executed version of Fantasy Europe with mechanics that are more like playing Farkle than a traditional RPG, I probably won't argue with you. But I also won't invite you to game with me.
I'd like to take another approach, here. And this applies to all message boards, honestly. Not just this one. You know, being a Moderator is a thankless job. If we, as guests, find a post offensive, or objectionable, or if it makes our blood boil, we can just click "close" and move past it. We can choose to stay out of threads that make us roll our eyes and wish we didn't share a hobby with certain people. Moderators don't have that luxury. They have to go in to each and every pit of drek and deal with the garbage they find there. They have to enforce rules that most posters never even bothered reading when they signed up. They have to try to make everyone happy, which we know results in making no one happy. Poster A says they are too strict. Poster B says they are too lenient. How do they negotiate the middle ground? Surprise! There is no middle ground. No matter what they do, someone is going to criticize them. And at the end of the day, whether this is their "job" or just something they do out of love of the subject, it's not like they are sitting at home in mansions, petting their pet minks and eating peeled grapes as they delete a post here, ban a user there. It's a job. And it sucks. And I am as guilty as everyone else for questioning their decisions sometimes. But you know what? Without them, this would be a much uglier place, and at the end of the day, I know I would enjoy it less if there wasn't someone willing to bite the bullet and take the abuse and just do what they do. So, to the mods: thank you for what you do. Even if I don't always agree with you, you have an ugly job, and I know for a fact I wouldn't want to do it. Do what you do. And honestly...thanks.
A) Are you having fun? B) Is the rest of the group having fun? C) Is the GM having fun? If the answer to all of the above is yes (and it seems from what you've said, the only question is "A"), then do nothing. You've essentially created a wacky Warcraft-esque game where the party kills and kills and gets better and better powers and gear. (This is NOT a criticism...not at all. It's a legitimate style of gaming.) If -you- are not having fun, then--as has been suggested already--seek out a wizard to shrink you down permanently, and make the conscious choice (in character) not to make the switch. Perhaps you've seen a paladin or something, and her nobility caused you to second guess your life. Maybe you saw a princess and fell in instant love, and you will have enough problems wooing her, being a half orc, so you have resolved to make yourself as "normal" as possible, and earn your reputation by merits of "who" you are, and "who" you have become, instead of "what" you are (and were). Or maybe you're just having increasingly bad nightmares about the bloody carnage you have inflicted, or about inquisitors coming for you...or maybe they really are coming for you, and your best bet is to NOT transform and give them a trail to follow. And, if there ever comes a time when you are on the verge of a TPK, or your princess is about to be killed by the evil mind flayer cultist and you need to stop it RIGHT FREAKING NOW, then the beast is there. "In case of emergency, break vows." Maybe you forego your raging nature to take a few levels in... I don't know. Alchemist (trying to be a scholar), or priest. If you need to shift your ability scores, perhaps you can ask your GM to work up an epic quest, where you have to sacrifice the beast you were (i.e., lose the lycanthropy) to become a new creature. Don't let the other PC's control you, because that is a recipe for not having fun. Then -they- get to determine when to unleash the beast, even if you don't want to. But it all goes back to, are you all having fun? If so, then don't let anyone tell you you are doing anything wrong. My style of game isn't their style of game isn't your style of game.
The biggest reason is that poisons do not necessarily "keep" well outside a living animal. Remember, they are biological compounds--essentially complex chains of proteins--and are as prone to decay as any other biological matter once it is no longer being refreshed and/or tended by the appropriate physical systems. The craft (poison) check to make a poison incorporates, among other things, the use of stabilizing agents to keep venoms from breaking down when they are removed from a creature. So, there's the first problem: cutting the poison glands out of a centipede is only the first step. They are highly unlikely to "keep" indefinitely. Here's a second problem: if he literally meant he wanted to squeeze the poison onto a spear tip now, and stab someone later (as in, not in the next minute or two), the odds that the poison would not have gotten wiped off, evaporated, or otherwise been rendered useless are virtually nil.
Yanno, I'm not (by any stretch) a rules genius, but I think I have the solution. Catapults. The fighter can use the catapult to project missiles at a flying enemy, or--to address the OP's concerns, he can catapult HIMSELF at the flying enemy. Just keep the catapult fully wound at all times, and push it before you. Take a 5-step move to get into the launchy part and kick out the lever. FWOOM! Instant, flying fighter. Also, this thread makes me miss the Ultimate Equipment Monk threads. Weird.
Things that suck. Preparing to enter a second career by enrolling in a theological program at a Canadian university, surrounded by people all day, every day telling you how much they want to support you and just about figuring out how to pay for it all... ...then going to GenCon for a week to forget all about it and realizing just how much of who you are you've given up on for the past...I don't know. Ever. And wishing you culd just pack up your stuff and run away to stay with friends in Indiana, but you'd sure miss your cats... ...then coming home to a wife you shouldn't have married and realizing you still miss the girl you haven't seen in 24 years, and feeling better about the theology thing, but still missing the gaming thing... ...and finally, realizing that you're 42 years old and have no retirement plan, no real options for changing your situation, and--when you get right down to it, no idea what you would want to change, anyway... ...all culminating with having to post about it to an anonymous bunch of strangers because there's no one you can discuss all of it with in real life. Yeah. That sucks. Hypothetically speaking, I mean.
LazarX wrote:
Almost everything LazarX just said, I believe to be true. But I'd like to make a couple observations, as a multi-year employee of the local licensee of a national health insurance company. (Which does not mean I know any more than anyone else; I probably know less, but this is the context of my comments.) Mandatory treatment for the uninsured (not the "government insured," but the "uninsured") is, indeed, passed on to others, including taxpayers, but not as a "tax." Rather, it's passed on in the form of increased prices for health care, which is a limited, consumable good. The error in the plan (and, for the record, I support the idea of nationally-mandated insurance, but am vehemently opposed to this particular iteration of it) is that it addresses the pseudo-crisis of availability. I say pseudo-crisis because, as LazarX pointed out, no one in need of urgent care can be denied that care (though it can be made challenging for them to receive it). It does not address the actual crisis of cost. Let's say you make jellybeans. You make very, very tasty jellybeans, but you live in a small town where very few people know about your jellybeans. You produce a fixed amount, based on your capacity, and you sell them at a reasonable profit. Then a national distributor finds out about your jellybeans, and suddenly, you have people from all over the country clamoring for them, and willing to pay you more than the local consumers for first crack at each new batch. This is the first (well, one of the first) things I learned in my Economics classes. When you increase demand without increasing supply, prices increase. As a jellybean manufacturer, you can technically buy a bigger factory, or more equipment, and expand your capacity, so that supply keeps up with demand. But increasing health care capacity is a bit more complicated--you can only instantly acquire new doctors (or nurses, or phlebotomists, or whatever) equal to the number of currently-unemployed doctors (or whatever). After that, it takes time and resources to train each new additional doctor. So, there's one problem. Here's another: people who don't have insurance tend to avoid going to the doctor. In some cases, this is a bad thing--people could spare themselves long-term, debilitating illness with proper early detection and treatment. But there are people who, once they have the opportunity and the means to do so for little or no cost, will run to the doctor (or worse, the ER) for every little thing--even things that don't require treatment. The net result at our company was negative to us (we paid out more to providers), and naturally, we passed this on to our customers (yes, we are big and evil). Our underwriters determined that, for example, removing the copays for preventitive care led to an average premium increase of 0.9 percent from last year to this year. Raising the age for dependent coverage led to an average premium increase of 0.6 percent. Factoring in all the currently-applicable pieces of the law, the total increase was about 2.5 percent, just from those items. So, if you were "supposed" to get a 10 percent increase from last year to this year, instead, you got a 12.5 percent increase. This is the difference in going from $400 per month to $450 per month instead of $440. Maybe $10 a month isn't a big deal--it certainly isn't to CEO's or VP's. But to the line worker making $12 an hour? Maybe that's a little harder to manage. I'd also like to discuss Massachussets a bit, because we did some specific research in this area. In the first year of what we will call Romneycare, the average price increase was consistent with what we observed in New York. However, at the very same time, spending by insurance companies SKYROCKETED. Almost every insurance company participating in the exchange lost profitability; two of them lost so much money that they were put into receivership. Tracking the long-term performance of these plans: they have begun to rebound, but the biggest increases in profitability (still below their pre-Romneycare levels) were enjoyed by insurers with the smallest share of Romneycare-eligible insurees. I don't remember the exact correlation number, but it was statistically significant to a p-value of about 0.03 (two-sided). I guess my concern is that the current plan will not balance out costs, unless any of you believe that the providers will voluntarily lower their costs to reflect the fact that the government will now pay for what was previously "bad debt" attributable to the uninsured. Show of hands: who believes that will happen? There has been some talk of shifting provider payments to a percentage-above-medicare reimbursement, but it has not gone far enough. Our own underwriting experience shows us that. In essence, unless the government figures out a way to address cost as well as access, this thing is doomed to implode. The problem: the people who need to make those decisions (i.e., Members of Congress) get paid an awful lot of money by organizations dedicated to protecting providers' interests (e.g., the AMA), so it's not really in their best interest to do so. So, we have my sole point of respectful disagreement with LazarX--some people will not feel any change, and largely it will be people already making large amounts of money. Some people WILL feel a change--and it will be the people making the least amount of money, and therefore least able to adjust to it.
I'm probably way off base here, but I think hit point limits (silly or otherwise) are what I miss most from the older iterations of the game, and may be one of the reasons everything accelerated along the particular poer curve it has followed. "Back in the day," if I played a fighter, I had a maximum of 90 hit points at 10th level. If I had a superstar constitution, maybe I had 108 or 117. That ws my practical limit. More likely, I would have about 60 hp, plus my constitution bonus (though, yes, the different bonuses for fighters vs. other classes seemed odd, and we disregarded them). What did that mean? It meant an ancient red dragon could roast me to a cinder with its fiery breath. It meant I couldn't fall off a 100-foot cliff, catch myself on the first bounce, and charge right into battle. It meant a bunch of kobolds (kobolds, for crying out loud!) that had poisoned daggers doing an extra 1d4 damage gave pause. (Not a lot of pause, as I may well have been able to attack nine of them evey round, but more than they do currently.) At 20th level, I went skyrocketing from a maximum of, say, 108 hit points to...141 hit points. Which meant an ancient red dragon or a hundred foot fall could still seriously mess me up, and at an "average" total of about 100 hit points, a few doses of "Type B" poison still made me nervous (especially with my lousy luck rolling saving throws). Spells amd traps and poisons did not need to scale with us, because once you reached "name" level, the scaling tapered off and what was lethal then was still nearly as lethal at level 20. Maybe my friends and I played the game wrong, but we were never, ever going to do a hundred points of damage per round. Fighting that dragon? We rolled a d12 for damage with our longsword. We got +4 for our percentile strength, a +3 for our magic longsword (which we had to find, dang it...no shopping for items or makng them in our downtime for us!), and...not much else. We were lucky enough to have a DM who house-ruled that a natural 20 was a critical hit, so we could roll 2d12 + 7 instead of 1d12 + 7. Sure, we were probably going hit the dragon with one of our whopping TWO attacks every round, and that meant that between our two fighters, we could have probaby bashed the thing to pieces in four rounds. Except that one of us got singed with fiery breath to open the combat, and was one good chomp away from death, so he'd fallen back to bow range and was hitting for 1d6 + 2 instead of 1d12 + 7. The DM had read those pesky Dragon Magazine articles on making dragons more lethal, so the other fighter was getting tail-slapped, wing-buffeted, and head-butted to perdition. Our wizard and rouge were occupied with the three hatchlings that we hadn't counted on circling back behind us, and our cleric...well, he got killed by the two fire giants guarding the lair. Sure, we had plenty of extra-healing potions, but drinking one of those meant foregoing an attack or two to fish it out and drink it. I get the different arguments about which system was simpler. I think each had its merits in that regard. But 3.x and beyond (including Pathfinder) is a completely different game. I'm not saying it's a worse game (or a better game), but it is definitely different. "Back in the day" you could play a 20th level party and still have the "edgy" feel of not knowing you were going to survive the combat with the same red dragon that used to tool you at 10th level. We didn't have to say "we're going to stop at Level X because after that, there's no challenge" because the power curve rose, maybe quickly, then drastically leveled off, for a long, long time. So...yeah. When I want to play gritty campaigns, even at high level with lots of magic and spells and fantastic elements, I go back to (admittedly house-ruled) 2E. When I play Pathfinder or 3.X (or if I played 4E), I anticipate a tabletop video game of power-ups and power curves that increase parabolically. Which isn't a bad thing. It's just a different thing. |