Ask a Shoanti's page

Dear Paizonians,

There is a company that donates a dollar to a charity each time someone hits the “like” button on its charitable facebook page . < ---- that’s the link!

Currently, the featured charity is one that is very near and dear to me: Bond Child and Family Development.

Could you please take a half second and hit that “like” button?

Bond Child and Family Development (AKA Bond Street by us old timers) is a charity that targets two very poor neighbourhoods in Toronto, Canada by focussing on the youngest of children. The crown jewels of the charity is an award winning day care program which is teamed by specialists trained to work with kids with special needs, particularly autism. They also have a park with actual grass in the middle of the concrete jungle and something called a Snoezelin room. The kids are adorably cute and totally worth an electronic click.

Like everywhere these days, money is tight. In fact Bond almost had to close shop recently and so every fundraising drive matters. Over the years I’ve learned that gamers are unusually charitable and typically above the curve on tech savvy. Please prove me right and hit that button. But I’d love it if you could do more – if everyone just alerts one other person to this, we could really set that like button on fire. (DC 22 Will save against chain letter - no need to go crazy!)

Lastly, for the sake of disclosure, I should mention I am well familiar with both Bond as well as the company doing the donating, but those are both good things.

Now in order to satisfy the traditions of a truly off topic posting and to add some Paizo-inspired content, here’s a collection some of my favourite old Paizo threads that I got to play around in over the years (sniff, sniff). This one pertains to one of my favourite gaming sessions during the 3.5 Paizo Dungeon era arising from an old Paizo contest, from a time long before rpg Superstar. This one is about what happens if the Were Cabbages foolishly attempt to conquer True Dungeon. This one is the chronicle of the first Green Blood on a Black Rock tournament, an event which thanks to Adam Daigle and Brandon Hodge has since become a really awesome event. I hope it will continue to rock houses at PaizoCon to come. And of course, as long as I am reminiscing, here is the thread where Ask a Shoanti finally got his start as an advice columnist (thanks Liz!). Where has the time gone?

I just saw the photos for the 'arena' that Adam Daigle and Brandon Hodge have been building for this particular Paizo Con event.

And I just wanted to post that it looks awesome.

I can only conclude that it would be an honor to be maimed on the Black Rock for the mere sporting amusement of the Free Captains.

(Apologies if you guys were trying to keep this under wraps)

I post to herald the winning beastie of this year’s competition!

This year at PaizoCon one of the events was a monster pit-fighting tournament. The players drafted monsters from a pool and pit them against one another in single combat, battling towards an elimination final. In the meantime, their Free Captain (pirate) owners placed wagers, either doubling up the gold in their holds or loosing it all in a mad fit of gambling.

For me the favourite part of the contest was the draft itself. The players struggled hard to predict a permutation that might lead to victory. At one point I could swear I could see the steam rising from their heads. Interestingly enough, the beast that actually took the title was actually drafted not first, second or even third, but in eleventh place – 11th! That tells me the match-ups made for some pretty tough calls.

Anyways, here we go! Stay with me gentle reader, but only if you can stand the sight of green blood.

Raise your hand in this thread if you too share the elite honour of having died in the Slumbering Tsar play test at Paizo Con.

My fellow players were a pretty high-end bunch, but the dice turned against us in the final encounter. A memorable squashing.

Hey Torontonians and those close enough to drop by!

More details to follow soon, I hope, but there’s a D&D mini-con taking place on January 16-18, tentatively set at one of the downtown colleges or university campuses (tentatively U of T or possibly Ryerson, I suspect).

It’s really a 4E org play event, but I was invited to run a table or two of PFS. Those 4E guys are quite cool. But I’d still like to demonstrate that we can still kick it 3.X with an awesome of setting.

If you can make the date and are interested, please post up here and I’ll see if there’s a table to be formed. I am happy to prep and run any module, so feel free to let me know your PC level and what mod you’d like to play in and I’ll see how I can accommodate the group. If you’d like to GM a table instead, just let me know; I bet we could arrange that too. Players new to PFS are welcome – as are players new to the game entirely.

All I ask is that the game exude an intensity level worthy of the PFS island it will be surrounded by those 4E tables! ! !

So! Anyone out there?

Scribling Rambler – can you make it?!

Rambling Scribe? Steph says you should come!

If I am right, the feat Deflect Arrows hasn’t gotten a significant treatment yet. Has this been discussed anywhere already? If so, link love appreciated. (If so, apologies for duplication guys.)

Deflect Arrows in its current incarnation remains a good feat, but for me, it’s not yet entirely satisfying.

1. I still have trouble that it’s an auto success. For example, a 1st level monk automatically blocks the first shot of a 20th level ranger as long, as the monk is not flat-footed.

2. The one arrow per round limit is well balanced, but it excludes the flavorful opportunity for the classic scene of the monk who blocks a whole bunch of arrows. I’d prefer it if it were hard to do, but not impossible.

It isn’t lost on me that this suggests the rejected Reflex save mechanic from 3.0. . .

Anybody got an idea for a better way? Here’s my thoughts:

What if you could deflect a number of missiles up to your dexterity bonus? Similar to the number of attacks of opportunity granted by Combat Reflexes.

But to actually succeed, you have to make an opposed attack roll. (Yeah, I know we’re not supposed to like those anymore. I’m just brainstorming here.)

Alternatively, we could go with another CMB roll and leverage that mechanic some more. The blocker rolls a d20 and adds their CMB to see if they can beat a 15 + the shooter’s CMB. This has the added bonus that the monk’s maneuver training ability which is gained at 3rd level can factor into the blocker’s roll. If we went this route, perhaps add that the Deflect Arrows feat provides a +2 bonus to the blocking roll so that it mirrors the bonuses found in the other feats that deal with CMB rolls such as Improved Trip.

(A potential weakness here is that CMB is based off of Strength whereas Dexterity might be more appropriate, particularly in the case of the shooter.)

Optional consideration: although using the feat is properly characterized as an immediate action, in my view, we might consider whether it ought to cost the PC their next available move action. Shooting a hail of arrows at our hero should at least slow her down. In the movies, the monks have to at least make a dramatic production out of it. If the PC doesn’t want to waste the move, don’t block – take your chances with your AC.

Allow monks who have selected Deflect Arrows as a bonus feat to spend a Ki point as the usual swift action to add a significant bonus such as +10 to a single attack (or CMB) roll to Deflect Arrows. That way monks of 4th level or higher who are serious about their deflection should be able to do it at least once very reliably. But this way it costs them something.

I’d be interested to see alternate suggestions. And of course, I can live with the feat staying as is. It never sat right with me, but it certainly hasn’t been a game breaker either.

OK, this is just a minor tweak to simplify a favorite feat of mine. Augment Summoning has two issues that, while I can’t go so far as call them problems, never sat quite right with me:

1. +4 to Str and Con is pretty potent;

2. While the pre-requisite of Spell Focus (conjuration) does a nice job of balancing out the first problem, it’s just really annoying. Especially if the PC you have designed will never find a use for it as anything but a pre-requisite.

It’s almost like gaining a powerful ability you need to pay two feats for. Which is satisfactory but my suggestion is this:

Just dump the prerequisite and reduce the bonus to +2 Str and +2 Con.

It becomes a simpler more accessible feat and it might even make room for a Greater Augmented Summoning feat at some point.

It sounds like this faction could be a home for both Braveheart and James Bond. Go Andoran!

"For the People!!!"

I am enjoying Pathfinder Alpha – thanks for making it publicly available and including us in the process.

Here is a small suggested design change. The change is respecting the second use of the Acrobatics skill: moving past opponents without drawing attacks of opportunity (p.22).

Currently the skill is resolved through the use of rolling over a static DC of 15. It’s easy to remember and easy to resolve.

But this has three collateral effects which I think might be avoided:

At higher levels success becomes a near certainty. At level 10 rogue (13 ranks) with a 14 Dex (+2 modifier) only ever fails on a 1. There is minimal risk and excitement.

Conversely at lower levels PCs would be relatively unwise to try it. The chance of success is low to average and the consequences are quite serious with a PC’s relatively low hit points.

There is no difference in the risk of tumbling past a level 1 commoner and a level 20 fighter.

Suggestion:

Change the Acrobatics DC to 10 + the BAB of the opponent whom is getting tumbled past. Hence tumbling by an orc at level 1 the DC is 11. Moving past a 5th level fighter is DC 15, and moving past a 20th level fighter is DC 30.

Similarly the DC for moving through an opponent’s square could be DC 20 + BAB.

P.S. Apologies to anyone who has already posted this idea somewhere already but I missed it. I am sure this is a house rule already somewhere.

[The following floats upwards upon your movie screen in bold type-setting, while catchy-yet-overly-repetitive, theme music plays in the background.]

This is a staggeringly true story. The names have not been changed in order to better expose the guilty, some of whom you will know from these boards, but since this tale is based on my memory, perhaps there’s been just a slight alteration of a few of the actual facts.

For the uninitiated, True Dungeon is “live” dungeon experience which is played out at Gen Con with increadible stage setting and props. After True Dungeon was featured in both Dungeon magazine editorial #128 and Dragon #349, once I finally decided to embark on the trip to Indianapolis, I knew True Dungeon was something I wanted to try. (Those were fun editorials incidentally, talk about your free advertising.) What I didn't know until much later, however, is that I would also be chronicling this famed expedition.

Disclaimer:

Before I get any further, be warned: this recap includes several scenes of gratuitous sex, horrific violence and Tim Hitchock.