Aubrey the Malformed's page

Cool!

To extemporise on the theme of things turning ugly, I may have to tone down and reduce my posting at work. The powers that be seem to be turning on the Internal Audit department somewhat - the head of Asia has been sacked and the overall head seems to be hanging by a thread (though he may well have a new job to go to). Either way, scrutiny is increasing and I don't really want to take a chance in the current environment. The fairly free and easy attitude we had in the department was a measure of the tone at the top, and if he goes (which he will) then that will probably change. My head is probably below the parapet but I think a bit of precautionary action is advisable.

Yeah, she's my friend too for some reason (and her girlfriend). But then I'm friends with a few people I've never heard of, but then again with aliases and stuff I don't really know who anyone much is.

The bender was to celebrate his 5 years at the Pru. Although it was also to drown our sorrow since things seem to be turning a bit ugly for our department in the organisation.

Sorry for being a bit quiet myself - went on an all-night bender with my boss yesterday and recovering today.

sn1ggered, though this caused his mask to block

Sorry to hear it, Mothy.

Actually, virtually all the ancounters you have had since leaving Sharn have been with enemies succeptible to mental attack.

Can't promise going forward...

Actually, I don't think that is right - it works off your base move, not your actual move. So your base move would be 60 under Haste, so everyone gets +12 to the Acrobatics check. There - I'm nice to you.

It doubles your speed, up to a maximum of +30. For those in heavy or medium armour, their speed is now 40', so they will get +4. For those in light armour and a rate of 60', they get a +12. However, they need to make a Reflex save first, though the Haste will give them +1 to that too.

through the options. "No point in a Muff

Cool - where is Dragonmeet (though on reflection, I suspect I shall be in Spain on the 28th)?

I'm not playing 4th, but I saw this on Facebook and I was pleased. My Queen finally dealt with an annoying nat of a God. I hope it's canon and it stays that way.

While in the scheme of things my suckage is fairly minor, I'm sitting here on a Saturday writing an audit report for work when I should be preparing for the game tomorrow and updating my PbPs.

That can certainly be arranged.

We kind of avoided playtesting stuff when the Beta was out. I'm not actually that keen to participate in a playtest as rules and stuff aren't really that big a deal for me. If, after the rules come out in final, you still want to be a cavalier, we can talk about it then.

I stuck the conversion notes for what we agreed moving from 3.5 to PFRPG in the Demented/Malformed avatar page.

"But you have a Moff!" cried Tarkin. "Isn't

topless uruk-hai dancing girls maybe not seem

Manically busy today.

What they said.

Oh, wait....

Internet at work
Boredom shreds my sanity
Thank God for Paizo!

About a month ago, I spent about an hour and a half building a troll chieftain, Oohlgrist, for a PF version of the Temple of Elemental Evil. My guys aren't great at tactics, or dithering, they jump in with both feet usually but this time they planned a concerted attack.

The troll was blinded, greased and hit with a ray of enfeeblement before his first initiative came round. So that was the end of the fight.

I think the other big point with 4e is the implicit balance between the classes. They get the same number of powers each - so you don't have a fighter who just gets his attack roll and a wizard with dozens of spells that can warp reality at a whim. I think this is what has impacted most in terms of the difference between 3e and 4e, and what has caused the furore (as in "Has balance killed D&D?" and similar threads). But, again, it makes life much easier for a DM since he can much more easily callibrate encounters.

I am like God, and God like me. I am as large as God, He is as small as I. He cannot above me, nor I beneath Him be. Selatius, 17th Century.

In my experience, I would say that my players are not the best organised and one in particular takes his time deciding what to do. The relatively restricted attack power options means that there aren't literally dozens of spells and whatnot to go through, so they can decide much quicker. WotC have also make things quite user-friendly - I subscribe to DDI and a lot of the tools, especially character-builder, make this much easier - for example, you can print out your character sheet with all of your character's powers fully described on it, so you don't have search through the books to work out what will happen. Also, they have restricted the number of conditions (e.g. dazed, stunned, and so on) and their impact, while increasing the number of times they might happen to provide tactical options. And the dreaded iterative attack doesn't happen anymore - one attack roll and it is someone else's turn.

But I think restricting powers and the power hierarchy (daily, encounter, at-will) makes it much easier for the players to decide what to do. The system is probably a significant improvement in terms of options for non-casters (a fighter basically doesn't have powers in previous editions, and only sort-of in 3e based on feat choice) but a restriction for caster types. That said, we have one caster in the party (a cleric) and he hasn't complained. He still heals, fights and buffs.

I was surprised by the "takes ages to take down the monsters" comments, but I think it might be if you are using "soldier" monsters (high AC, indifferent attacks) then you don't hit much and they don't do much to you. The PCs in my party seem to do a ruck of damage so it hasn't been a problem for me.

Quite.

There are virtually no Wishes on-screen - in fact, having read the AP, I can't think of any. So you could easily turn it into a ritual. I see no problem with it at all. What changes would you need to make?

Gah! You know not of what you speak. I'll just get the book when it is finished.

I think it's up to the DM. I see where you are coming from, and having "dragon" as a terrible top-predator/warlord/terror is cool. But different types of dragon are sort of in the D&D tradition and one I personally am pretty relaxed about. And it's a big multiverse.

obviously had quite a different meaning at that

Yes, agreed - a dragon template's just a bit.... dull. The fun about dragons is how they are all a bit different.

For me, the biggest benefit is the ease of preparation. My players seem very happy with the rules set - they don't seem to hanker after 3.5 or feel that they have lost out. The big thing about 3.5 (both a benefit and a curse) was its immense flexibility and the option available, both in terms of multiclassing, spell selection, feat selection and so on. With 4e, a PC is defined by the powers it has, and the feats and so on have a bearing but only around the margins (feats more or less only give numerical bonuses to existing abilities, they don't grant powers like Cleave). Most feats which provided added abilities have now been folded into class powers instead (again, like Cleave, which is a Fighter power). They have also simplified skills in a similar way to PFRPG (or rather, PFRPG has done it in a similar way to 4e - PFRPG very much comes across as stealing a lot of ideas from 4e, which possibly some of the anti-4e types don't immediately realise).

Sorry to come on like such a fanboy but 4e has really transformed by ability to prepare for sessions, which used to take a massive amount of time (a weekend for a single session), and that for me is the big gain. I haven't really been on the other side of screen much at all, except for a PbP here which hasn't really got into it's stride yet (just beginning the first combat encounter now). But as a rule of thumb, we tend to get through three to four encounters per session (about five hours) as opposed to two in 3.5.

I think, if the GSL had been reasonable and the PHB and PHB2 had been out together, there would have been absolutely no problem at all for Paizo to do its APs in 4e. With just the PHB, maybe it would have been harder as all of the classes and races in 3.5 (with the exception of the monk - that'll be in the PHB3) took until then to come out - it might have felt wrong, although all character races were available as monsters already. I haven't noticed any problems in plotting stuff - in fact, in terms of magical stuff the fact that most powerful magic has been turned into a ritual (i.e. a non-combat process) it may have made things easier (powerful spells are all set out in detail in 3e, in 4e you can more or less make up stuff and it has little game balance implications since it won't happen in combat).

Paizo may have had contractual worries about 4e but in terms of actual adventure design I really don't see where the problems would be. 4e is predicated more around being attacked by lots of assailants at once, whereas the CR system worked off single monsters. This might necessitate some changes to boss fights (or maybe not - you can create Elite and Solo monsters) and may have meant more mass combat. (For example, a fight with a single goblin in RotRL was transformed by Scott Betts into three goblins in his conversion, otherwise there simply would not have been much of a fight to have.) However, it is also pretty easy to bespoke monsters in 4e, as the rules for their creation are pretty transparent. Apart from that, I'm racking my brains as to how 4e changes the narrative of a story and I can't really think of any.

Very wise.

From my (doubtless hazy) memory, the GSL hadn't even been finalised - WotC were doing the "It'll be out really really soon" routine and basically made it very difficult to make a nuanced decision. And, yeah, a lot of the races and classes weren't out in the open at the outset. That said, it doesn't actually cramp your style as a designer in 4e since NPCs are designed like monsters. I think it was a desire for certainty that drove a lot of the decision is my take, but then I don't really know what they meant either.

I suspect that there will be mainly flavour changes (a homicidal, cannibalistic halfling ranger is probably mechanically the same as one who lives in Waterdeep or Sharn) for the races and (as stated) if there are no new classes, that reduces the page count on a Player's Guide quite dramatically. A lot of the Player's Guide geographical information can be covered in the Campaign Guide. And as Athas is small, there won't be so much of that anyway. I was personally wondering how they were going to do all the weird monsters in the previous two book format so this seems more sensible to me.

Probably not - the stuff they have done 4e conversions of to date all have 3e versions. That might change when 4e Dark Sun comes out as there is very little official 3e stuff for it (though I understand there is fan stuff at athas.org). So far a lot of what they have been producing is very crunchy, and so really aimed at the 4e mechanics. However, they are bringing out short softback "Races of" -type books in the relatively near future, but have only heard rumours (there is, funnily enough, an argument about them on the 4e board here - sheesh).

ask the little fella how he got so

same laxative effect as drinking fifteen pints of

Yeah, that's pretty much my view - plus, the stuff people like to argue about (with the possible exception of 4e) I tend not to be interested in.

We went to a nice firework disply tonight (Warwick Racecourse, for those that might care) and we set off a box of fireworks on the 5th itself at home. My wife loves fireworks so I really had no choice. The school in Rugby (the posh public school) has its own firework display and it looks pretty fantastic, but they don't invite any of the common folk in the town.

Yeah, I know. Paizo is, of course, a different sort of company to what it used to be when we were nippers. Ultimately, it seems to be pretty successful and that is probably a good thing. But some of the guys who are now here, compared with some of the people who have lost heart, meh... It's just a shame that Paizo inadvertently became a beacon for the edition wars and all those who want to argue to toss about obscure rules, or even argue about arguing about obscure rules.

Yeah, I agree. But I think it was more of a business decision than really being about the system as such. The whole GSL fiasco was going on at the time and Paizo had to make a decision. That's fair enough. What I don't really agree with is the suggestion that 4e makes it impossible to do a Paizo-style AP.

It was still the same game. The rules changed, but you could still tell the same stories with it.

You are so full of fail.

I just find it a bit sad that there are so many bits of the website I need to close for my sanity. On the plus side, I guess those bits didn't actually exist back in the day.

I'd like to try and bring it back on track. In the OP, I address the issue (raised by Scott a few posts above), the notion that just because it can be "fixed" by a GM doesn't mean it isn't broken. I agree in principle, but I feel that some people use that as a crutch to attack the existing system at every opportunity.

All RPG systems are asked to perform under circumstances that are mathematically unsolvable. Even the notion that any sort of math could "balance" encounters is relatively new, by my reckoning. I think it may be fundamentally misguided, because any logical subset of the infinite possible scenarios we play is STILL too large to analyze meaningfully.

Basically, that bit about "Just because the GM can fix it doesn't mean the system isn't broken" is true, but it raises some essential questions about what is broken, and what can be "fixed" on a permanent basis. If a system is working without any GM intervention for me and my group, but it is not working for you and your group, what then?

Here's an interesting example, and I expect the mechanics-enthusiasts to meet this with some resistance, but I ask for you to consider it with an open mind:

I recognize that in game theory terms, a (perfectly) "rational" player will necessarily choose a certain class (let's say wizard) because it maximizes their play options. So why doesn't everyone in my group play a wizard? Partly this is a "flavor" choice, but there are other factors less often discussed. In my group, not everyone has the time or patience to play a wizard, because that class requires considerably more research and thought to play optimally. The wizard player is being rewarded for his investment — which is something I really enjoy from a game-design perspective, because playing a wizard calls for some very wizardly behavior, poring over tomes and whatnot.

Those who are already hyper-familiar with the rules likely don't account for this investment when they sit at the table and play. But from my vantage point, for...

As an example, the Denizens (Frank and co) designed a complex treasure system involving parallel currencies to deal with a problem they perceived - how can you get rich but low level people (princlings with inherited wealth, merchants and so on) in a world where treasure seems to be derived from killing things and taking their stuff, and also in a world where you can wish into being whatever you want (including really powerful magic items). It was quite clever and more or less (if you actually ignored real economics) worked. But for me it was a non-problem - my players never cared, and rarely got to levels where Wish mattered, and in any case weren't interested in exploiting rules loopholes like that. So a key problem to which great intellectual effort was expended was simply a waste of time for me, and something I could conveniently ignore in my own game. Plus the solution was as artificial as the system (gold per level) it was intended to replace.

Which is why we endlessly argue (well, actually I don't care that much, I'm more depressed than enlivened by most of this thread) because our experience of what the rules need to cover is subjective. There will be commonalities, but what we experience will differ in the detail. Which is why we have DMs, part of the job of which is resolve these issues as painlessly as possible and just move on. Most of which will probably involve hand-waving. Some people may wish to have complex rules to cover relative trivia, but many won't - that is probably more about personal preference than anything to do with the integrity of the rules.

Merry and Pippin, meanwhile, were busily engaged exposing

though Grand Moff (what is a Moff?) Tarkin

In defense of Christmas, last year my daughter was singing;
"dassing foo da fnow,
inna wahoss oppisyay,
o-da hiz we go,
yaffing aw da way..."
I used to be all jaded about it and whatnot, but she melted my cold cold heart.

They have "spring festival" in February--the Chinese New Year. Big, just like Christmas.

Actually, isn't the argument (and the OP's intention), "Why the hell are we arguing about this crap anyway?" Given that threads about the amount of fluff in Bestiary get so heated they get closed down, aren't we all getting a little over-excited about nothing in particular?