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DrDeth wrote:

2. I despise the 4th ED "defense" system.

Just curious, why? I've never played 4e, so I haven't seen defenses in practice, but it seems fine in concept, though it's a pretty minor issue either way for me.

I can think of 3 reasons why I prefer saving throws.

1) Rolling to hit a defense introduces the idea of a critical hit - something I don't think should be possible for lots of spells (like area effect spells).

2) I like the Action Point system from Eberron and 3e's Unearthed Arcana. You can spend a point to roll a number of d6 and add the best one to your d20 roll - be it a skill check, and attack, or a save. You can't really use it to pump up a static defense like your AC or 4e-style Non-AC Defense (NAD). I noticed this in SWSE with Force points. You can use them offensively, but you can't really use them very well defensively and that's backwards.

3) Saving throws were, as introduced, a last ditch attempt for a PC to survive certain death - hence the name saving throw. Turning them into a constant defense, I think, makes them too mundane and simply doesn't fit in with the rest of the game's tradition or feel.

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I have it on good authority (The Onion) that R'lyeh is sunken in Lake Mendota and Cthulhu has been known to wander the University of Wisconsin steam tunnels. And The Onion wouldn't lie to me.

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I didn't ask you to reference your post... I asked for a reference to the rule that states that every creature in existence has All Around Vision(Ex).

Edit: They don't by the way, or it would be listed in their stat block as All-Around Vision(Ex)

In fairness, being able to make a perception check due to activities going on in any direction regardless of which direction the creature is currently looking isn't the same as All-Around Vision. For one thing, All-Around Vision precludes the possibility of being flanked - 360 degree perception doesn't include that. And for a second, 360 degree perception also includes hearing and smelling, not just seeing.

An awful lot about these debates on stealth and perception tend to focus on the stealth target's sight. One one hand, that's fair since most of us (and most PCs/NPCs) are going to be sight focused. Foiling sight is the single most important way to achieve a successfully stealthy action, but we shouldn't forget the target's hearing (or other senses). This is why he still gets a perception check to hear the sneak even though there are reasons he absolutely can't see him. And conversely, getting eyes on a sneak is the single best way to foil his ability to be stealthy - hence the need for some kind of visual obscurement be it cover or concealment or attention drawn elsewhere for a moment.

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I didn't feel there was a dearth of Iron Man in Iron Man 3 at all. Part of what sets good superhero fare apart from pedestrian is how well it handles the story without a constant fight going on. If all a comic (or movie) can do is throw more and more fights at you, it doesn't really have much to say about the characters other than what can be said via CGI action. And that's pretty shallow, ultimately.

By the way, I loved the closing credit montage and music.

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As I explained in my previous post, the guard is trying to watch everywhere at once, that's how 360 degree perception works. The Rogue behind the pillar picks the right moment to move between cover while the guard is not looking where he specifically is.

That's easily enough simulated with the opposed roll. If the sneaker succeeds, obviously he picked the right moment to dash from pillar to pillar. If he fails, the implication there is clear as well.

I think what may be a reasonable remedy, aside from including moving through some open terrain as being within stealth's purview (though perhaps with a penalty to the sneaker), is to relegate all issues about facing to combat positioning only. Most people don't really want to deal with some directions not adding Dex bonus to AC, some not being covered by shields, like we did in 1e and 2e. So most don't really want to deal with facing in combat. What we need to do is divorce the idea of facing-less combat from a character making a stealthy approach.

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Cybergeneration is Cyberpunk. There is a archetype called the wizard. It is in genre and in theme.

That presumes I have Cybergeneration, know Cybergeneration, or am willing to buy Cybergeneration so that special-snowflake player 1 can play his wizard rather than play something else for a change.

Ultimately, no GM should ever be made to run a game he doesn't want to run. Not even for a player who always wants to play a caster or he won't play. Far better for the player to actually be creative and play some other class that has genre appropriate wizardry, like a netrunner or, if blasty wizards are your bag, someone with a grenade launcher and other weird tech.

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Yeah, but when the topic is 'what Sean intended when he wrote that rule', saying 'that's not what you intended' is kinda...you know...

This is assuming we have any idea which rules SKR wrote. For example, in the ballyhooed guidelines vs rules nature of the WBL debate brought up above, the rules derive initially from the OGL which come from the DMG 3.0 which was attributed to Cook, Tweet, and Williams... not SKR. The corporate nature of the design team, both at WotC and Paizo, makes it pretty hard for us, as observers, to tell who wrote what rules nor what the author of those rules intended.

But for my money, they're guidelines. Rules aren't written with qualifiers like should, may, or might. Guidelines are. In fact, the 3.5 DMG, in a Behind the Curtain sidebar, describes them exactly as that: guidelines.

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So far, it's just a rumor. I wouldn't have a problem with bringing the character back to fill in some setting details in flashback. Nor would I have a problem if they started off with the remnants of the Empire creating a new Darth Vader in an attempt to hide the first one's death/redemption. But actually resurrecting the original? No.

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This why it's so dangerous to understanding - putting too much focus on the minutiae of individual passages in the text. A broader view can synthesize a better model of the rules.

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"If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations." - C.S. Lewis

Just throwing this out there.

Sadly, political ideologies often take the place of religion in that regard. Even secular ones take on a salvationism from Marxism to Randism, patriotism, nationalism and all points in between.

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The Lite PDFs are a great help on my iPad 2. They load much faster than the beefier PDFs and are a great example of how well Paizo responds to their customers' needs.

I don't care how much of a kiss-ass it makes me sound. Paizo has been one of the most responsive companies I've ever dealt with and I appreciate them for it.

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Pat is just a cooky old man who's pretty much lost any real credibility.

I wish, but it's more accurate to say that he retains credibility with a segment of the population that has never put much store in evidence-based credibility in the first place. And the sad part is that while that population is not as large as it was at Robertson's heyday, it's still disturbingly large. And there are plenty of other groupings within American Christianity that are, intellectually, barely a hop, skip, or jump from cooky Pat.

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Well, if we actually KNEW what was going on in other countries, we might not say things like that anymore.

Oh, I think we would because, currently, we do. There are a lot of people who say that these things will lead to social collapse who know darn well other countries seem to muddle through somehow. I think it's part of a doctrine of American Exceptionalism. Usually people who bring that up are talking about how America is different in positive ways, but it really cuts the other direction too. Solutions that are suitable for those people (meaning citizens of other countries) aren't suitable for us, which is really a testament that our Exceptionalism has made us more dysfunctional.

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Also, because you "caught" an enemy doing something weird, might also mean that you've found a clue. A GM might intentionally "violate" some "well-known rule" as a hint that an enemy is more than he seems. Like some undead using advanced tactics as a hint that they're not ordinary undead, or that there's a necromancer lurking nearby. Or a monk moving super-fast to hint that these aren't normal commoners but in fact highly-trained martial artists.

Yes, I push at that direction as well. If someone were to point out the NPC moved 40 feet and still made an attack (and clearly wasn't charging), I'd return "Yes, he did. Now why might that be?"

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I think he's also trying to show the "gloriousness" of 4E's healing surges by nerfing his cleric's healing capacity.

He'll have a fun time doing that while he's dying, I suppose.

I really don't care one way or another what system to use, but the group voted and Pathfinder beat out 4E (and we've played both). I just want all of the players to be positive about it or stay home.

If he's disruptive in play, you may need to remind him of this - that the vote went against him this time and he should be gracious about that... or stay home.

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Negative levels are kind of a lame premise as far as i am concerned. as are abilities that directly attack attributes themselves rather than die rolls that utilize the attributes.

both are just a cheap way to bypass hit points that are nearly exclusively the domain of casters, and monsters.

I agree that ways to bypass hit points are too often concentrated on spellcasters rather than martial characters, but the idea of getting around the all-important hit point ablation? Sign me the hell up!

Ability damage and negative levels were, I thought, brilliant methods of getting around hit point ablation and keeping some dangers relatively dangerous to nearly any level of adventurer.

it's not just ghost sorcerers, but most of these reasons have to deal with the incorporeal features. in fact, incorporeal creatures shouldn't exist in Pathfinder, because they are just a big "Screw You!" to the players whom invested countless months into their characters.

Why don't we give all the monsters whiffle swords too? Seriously, a fantasy game without ghosts and other spirit creatures? Not a game I want to really play.

Here's a thought: If you don't like incorporeal creatures, then don't use them in your campaigns. That's the power of a toolkit style game with hundreds of creatures in its Bestiaries. If a creature or even a type of creature doesn't float your boat, you have literally hundreds of others to choose from.

attribute loss, and negative levels, both of which are commonly associated with incorporeal foes, and undead in general, are so costly to recover from, in a combination of spell slots from the cleric, in the opportunity cost to prepare them, the shipload of money spent on diamonds, that cuts into your magical equipment budget,...

It's like they managed to keep undead really scary. Which is just how I like them.

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The GM is fully entitled to use player-established backstory as part of the plot. The GM is also fully entitled to treat NPCs as NPCs (simply being related to a PC doesn't suddenly make them any less of an NPC)

Yup. And a player is entitled to pitch any idea in his back story he wants, though he is not entitled to get all of it approved. He is also entitled to include criminal or other questionable behavior in his back story, but he's not entitled to be immunized from any repercussions that may follow.

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According to most of what I'm reading, these two items put you and I firmly on the "player entitlement" side of the argument. Supposedly, the sign of a "good" DM is to never negotiate or compromise. Instead, in the above scenarios I take it you're supposed to accuse the player of trying to take away all your fun, and tell him/her to find another game somewhere else.

Gotta love the hyperbole. Can't do without the hyperbole.

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So if its about stressors having an effect on accuracy, then to argue that 3.0 or pathfinder made things 'easier' is refuted as follows:

Is far more often nowadays that someone at my table says 'oh crap, i've been forgetting to add my blah blah blah bonus all this time!!!!' so the math is still wrong, but instead of being able to blame 'complicated 2nd grade numberline math' the people who are messing it up are now messing it up because theres too many plusses to remember.

Oh yeah. Much easier than 2e. Both mistakes are 'silly mistakes' but to say the subtracting negatives number line math stressor kind is more relevant than the 'too many modifiers' kind seems pedantic/semantic and they both produce errors of approximately the same magnitude over arguably the same frequency. I don't call that an 'improvement'. But if it does add complexity to a system that scares people off who had trouble with 2nd grade math, then I clearly prefer that more complicated system, apparently because I did not personally find it more complicated.

As thejeff pointed out, these are two different issues. Proliferation of bonuses vs actually performing the operation. You're also arguing as if nobody in 1e or 2e ever forgot their bonuses - something utterly untrue. How many always remembered their bless, chant, or prayer bonuses... or that they all stacked together? Higher ground/mounted? Attacking from shield side, shieldless side, rear bonuses? Strength spell bonus? Blur or displacement bonuses? Saving throw bonuses from armor? Saving throw bonuses from high wisdom or being a dwarf/gnome/halfling? These bonuses and more were all there and pretty easy to forget to add back in 1e/2e days as well.

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I don't get how the negative AC thing throws people off if they graduated 4th grade.

Thac0 of 17 vs AC of 4 = 17-4= 13 to hit
Thac0 of 11 vs. AC of -2 = 11- -2 = 13 to hit.
Thaco of 15 vs AC of -6 = 21 to hit...meaning you need a 20 to get auto success

Positive and negative rules should not be complicated to ANYONE.

The fact things are "streamlined" now to only go up instead of some things like Thaco going down is probably an improvement, but I think the Thac0 hate is kind of silly. I'd be more concerned with the fact you rolled for HP at 1st level or the spell capabilities of early magic users.

Adding positive numbers is easier than subtraction or doing any operations with negative numbers. Why put unnecessary difficulties in people's way? That's why BAB and increasing ACs is, from a usability standpoint, a win over THAC0.

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I know this is gonna get flack, but it's kind of a video game mentality to want to be the uber-character at everything. Traditional roleplaying assumes the character is like a person: someone who has strengths and weaknesses and is imperfect.

Video games have nothing to do with it. The attitude has been around since the first time role-playing games offered benefits for having high stats.

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But I think liking THACO firmly puts me in the grognard category.

THAC0 had its moment in the sun. It freed us from having to lookup our attack results on a table. All you had to do was subtract your die roll from your THAC0 and that was the AC you hit.

That said, BAB is much easier. If I ever went back to 2e, I'm turning the ACs around for usability. Period.

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Waiting for a class that gave you full BaB/Full Hit points and no loss of spells.

Those are pretty much the least powerful aspects of the prestige class. An extra +3 to hit at 15th level? Small potatoes. And hit points are cheap in 3e. Once he qualifies for the class, he's up against opponents that will munch through those in no time flat.

I might buy the argument that his swift actions tip the scales into overpowered, but they would apply even if the PC abjurant champion had 2-3 levels of fighter. But overall, I find it difficult to really see a lot of overpowered arguments when the powers deal mostly with defenses. Is this really significantly better than the Archmage or Heirophant (for divine casters) prestige classes?

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THE ONLY TRUE D&D SOUNDTRACK IS

the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic OST

I really don't understand the appeal of My Little Pony. I'm going to be attending a con this weekend where the media room will be showing a few hours' worth of My Little Pony and the room will be full of adult men. I don't get it.

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Also, why do people actively try to perceive everything said to them in the most offensive way? Why do they seek to get offended? I don't understand.

Almost everything nowadays is offensive. And I'm getting pretty sick and tired of political correctness enforcers, who go and get offended for other people. What the hell?

I doubt the tendency to be offended is any different. What's different is probably the willingness to confront that which offends rather than meekly accepting it. I don't see that as a necessarily negative development.

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Also, if a moderator says, "Start a new thread" or "look to discuss this in an existing on topic thread" and your (essential) response is "But I want to keep derailing this one!" Then frankly? Get over yourself. How hard is it to do as the mod asked?

Considering that conversations tend to ebb, flow, and shift in normal life, I think the moderation has been a bit more strident about staying on topic and starting tangent threads than it needs to be. That said, it is Paizo's board to moderate as they see fit. I just think the hand has been a bit heavier lately and often without necessity.

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Depends on the attacker. If they want to keep the horse as spoils later, they should be attacking the cavalier in order to preserve the horse. If they want the prestige of having gone mano-a-mano with the cavalier, they'll attack the cavalier. If they're hungry or a creature that preys on horses, they'll probably attack the horse. If they're getting their asses kicked by the mounted knight because he's mounted, they'll attack the horse. If they want to reduce the knight's mobility, they'll attack the horse.

For the most part, there's no single right answer to attacking the horse or the man. There's just differing motivations and circumstances. One thing to keep in mind - that horse is going to be a weak point for the cavalier fairly soon (if not already). Once he has advanced mounted combat feats, being unhorsed neutralizes them until he can get a horse under him again. And that horse will be squishier than the cavalier by AC and hit points. That cavalier is well advised to have back-up mounts.

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If I were turned into a hippo, I'd spend my days lounging in the river, eating plants, and biting the occasional crocodile in half for fun. And spending time with the lady hippos, of course.

Sounds like a pretty nice life to me!

Hey, don't forget spinning your tail while you spray out liquid poop to mark your territory and attract the aforementioned lady hippos, you suave, debonair fellow of a hippo, you.

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A character dies because the bad guy got a critical and one-shotted them? Because the dice rolled a completely random number and the GM chooses to interpret this as "you're instantly dead even though you did nothing wrong"? Because the adventuring party is too low level to cast/purchase a Raise Dead spell?

No.

Just... no.

But why not? If you're OK with players learning from the consequences of events in the game, why not learn that "combat is deadly" so they learn other ways of resolving conflicts? Or learn that combat is war, something to resort to, not sport?

Ultimately, these are just play style preferences and not a single one is better for the game overall or the gaming industry than any other. There are times that people forget this in online debates, but that's the underlying truth. Hardass consequences or softball story, neither ruins the game save when that's the style you prefer.

I empathize with your point about not wanting to forbid fudging. I will do it from time to time because, like anything else I'm bringing to the game as GM, whether adventure or dice rolls, are subject to final editing by me. The dice are just another input and I will knock damage down a bit if I think it's just too unseemly. But that's my preferred style of play. And, in about 30 years of GMing, I think it has been pretty successful for me.

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rolling attributes, even when done in order, does nothing to stop stat dumping.

in fact, any campaign where you have to roll, it is smarter to wait on the character until after you roll. because your attribute rolls will determine what character you are allowed to play.

In many cases, that's part of the point. You get to discover your PC as part of the process.

• it rewards cheating and discourages honesty, because some rolls are so statisitcally improbable that you might as well be cheating. in fact, using your 'lucky dice' can be considered cheating

• it encourages players to choose classes whom are less dependant on their attributes, or classes who only require a single decent attribute to be effective, such as wizards, witches, or caster druids

• it makes challenge ratings harder to judge, and forces you to choose whether you make it too easy for the guy with nothing below 14 or too hard for the guy with nothing above 13.

• players are still dumping stats either way, so you did nothing to stop it, except allow lower potential penalty numbers and higher potential attribute values

Your list is, I believe, poorly thought out.

Any impulse to cheat is easily deflected by holding a character generation session in which everyone rolls and builds their PCs together. This also serves to enable the players to coordinate builds and backgrounds. A nice bonus.

It has been my experience that point buy systems encourage SAD classes because they are easier to optimize to higher degrees under point buy. Players can sell down stats or elect not to invest in them to buy up their singularly important stat. Rolling methods more reliably produce good candidates for MAD classes.

Challenge ratings are actually easier to handle with rolled stats. Most high values are roughly balanced by the mix of lower ones across the same PC and across multiple PCs in a more predictable way. By contrast, a mix of min-maxers and non-min-maxers leads to wider skews in power between PCs that can't easily be handled by the CR system.

And as I've said before, the idea of dumping stats is somewhat different from putting the stats you have randomly generated into slots that minimize penalties. On the surface, they may look the same, but point buy dumping includes the extra incentive to choose the lower stats to pump the power stats. And that's a big difference.

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2. I've never said the party should chip in on the cohort when it exists in a vaccuum. I've said that they SHOULD do so when they are getting "free" DIRECT services from the cohort. That's the opposite of martyrdom. That's asking to be paid for work done.

Isn't that a question for the players to decide rather than the GM?

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I don't think that all classes need a skill point boost but I would agree fighters do need 4 per level. A couple of thoughts:

A. The US army has over 200+ field manuals. Soldiers need to know a lot to survive, more so in a world where magic and monsters abound.

While I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea that fighters could really use 4 skill points/level instead of 2, I'm not sure this argument is telling me that. It might just be telling me that the fighter isn't too analogous to the modern soldier.

C. I really think Fighters should get a bonus to knowledge checks to identify creatures. Their entire purpose is to stab things... don't you think they'd focus on how, where and with what they should do it with? I would like to see them have a class ability called tactics that gives them a scaling bonus to identify monsters. Think of a bunch of grizzled old veterans sitting around the fire swapping war stories;

That is kind of an inquisitor niche now, isn't it? Does the fighter need it too? I'm unconvinced.

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Yes, they really were saying that their players should either like it, or find a new GM.

The choice of negatively tinged metaphor is yours. That behavior is perfectly reasonable. Nobody should be pressed into GMing something they don't want to GM. If any player or group of players wants to play something different, they need to find or be the GM that will run it.

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No, of course not. Not literally. You don't have enough power to actually be a tyrant. But the attitude of, "This is my house, these are my rules, and this is what I'm giving you, and you'll like it or you'll be stuck out in the cold," simply isn't the sort of thing I'd expect one friend to present to another over a game.

And yet.

That's because, no matter what anyone else here is saying, you're pretty much spinning it in negative terms. We're not all shallowsoul with his abrasive phraseology. Dragonamedrake didn't say that any prospective player had to like it or be out in the cold. They can choose to accept and participate or they can choose to do something else. Isn't that the case with all voluntary activities like going to the movies, out to dinner, or playing any other game?

If my friends, as part of our regular gaming group, decide they want to play Vampire or any other Worlds of Darkness RPG, they're not leaving me out in the cold if I decline to participate (which I will do and have done because I am not a fan of WoD). We're still friends and we still play other games together. I'm not offended by them getting together and playing something I don't like.

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Duskrunner1 wrote:

No, you are making an assumption. The restrictions I "impose" are discussed prior with PCs. I run a very heavy Gaelic/fey style campaign, and as such a gunslinger/ninja/samurai doesn't fit or make sense.

In your head.

And yet I can throw countless, compelling fish-out-of-water stories where an outsider with no real place in the setting makes for a very interesting story thread.

I just don't think you're trying hard enough.

And who are you to judge him or his judgment over the game he GMs?

This is one reason players get hit with the entitlement label - continually arguing and never taking that GM no for answer. Duskrunner1 has giving you his rationale yet you utterly refuse to accept it.

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This was the post that has a definite shutdown feel to it. This:

"RAW says I'm 100% just allowed to say no."

"Yeah, but I'd just like to know why."

"As a player, you can exercise your right to not play."

is what I interpreted as fairly "screw you"ish.

You are not alone in that interpretation.

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But you don't always have to ask why either. Always asking why can be just as rude as sayingno all the time. If a DM has made his decision then aasking why is pointless but I know why you are asking because you want the DM to you an answer that you can argue and hopefully get him to change is mind.

This doesn't work in my games because my reasons, no matter what they are, are always justified in my eyes, seeing as I'm the one building the world anyway.

Now you are always more than welcome to politely decline my game and play another.

I'm on board with the GM setting the ground rules, but as far as I'm concerned it is never rude for a player to ask why. And the GM should always provide an answer. That answer could be "There are secrets involved in the campaign that address that and I don't want to spoil them now" (which would have been my answer for a player wanting to play a psionic in my Greyhawk campaign) but there should always be an answer. Anything less and that's disrespecting your players.

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Bill Dunn wrote:

DrDeth wrote:

So then let me ask you this, - if the players then walk by the critical hidden macguffin, do you just declare the campaign over?

Why would the critical macguffin be hidden without additional clues or backup ways to find it, rendering the campaign vulnerable to the players missing it?!?

So, if they will always find it, why hide it at all?

A good question. Why would you hide something that they need or it's campaign over?

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The information you need is in the text for Sneak Attack:

The rogue’s attack deals extra damage anytime her target would be denied a Dexterity bonus to AC (whether the target actually has a Dexterity bonus or not), or when the rogue flanks her target. This extra damage is 1d6 at 1st level, and increases by 1d6 every two rogue levels thereafter. Should the rogue score a critical hit with a sneak attack, this extra damage is not multiplied. Ranged attacks can count as sneak attacks only if the target is within 30 feet. [emphasis mine]

That bolded term is anytime. Not once a round, but every time the conditions are met for the rogue's attack to fall when the target is denied his Dex bonus or is flanked. If the rogue gets more than one attack a round, sneak attack can apply to each of them.

Barrage attacks like manyshot are the specified exceptions to this but those exceptions are called out in the specific feats/spells/whatever that generate them. The general rule is covered in sneak attack and that is "anytime".

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Because Rules as Written suggest

PHB P.9 wrote:

"The rules in this book are here to help you breathe life into your characters and the world they explore. While they are designed to make your game easy and exciting, you might find that some of them do not suit the style of play that your gaming group enjoys. Remember that these rules are yours. You can change them to fit your needs. Most Game Masters have a number of "house rules" that they use in their games. The Game Master and players should always discuss any rules changes to make sure that everyone understands how the game will be played. Although the Game Master is the final arbiter of the rules, the Pathfinder RPG is a shared experience, and all of the players should contribute their thoughts when the rules are in doubt."

To reiterate the point - one of the fairly standard tools in a GM's toolkit when faced with a situation the rules are unclear about or don't handle to satisfaction... is the power to change the rules.

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Is it weird that a lot of these actually sound playable if not fun to me?

I'm usually the perpetrator of the house rule horror stories, so I'm not sure which of mine would be candidates.

I'm amused that some of these house rules are just rules from older editions cropping up. No AC modifier based on size? Those didn't exist in 1e/2e. Getting a new method of performance per rank in the performance skill? Right out of 3.0.

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Again, we DO level up faster now then we did in ADnD. But it has nothing to do with the rules as they were written. It has to do with a very common (often accidental) houserule about xp, AND the way we played the game now as opposed to then. Its not about the XP rules.

I have to disagree on that point. Having dug into some comparisons of levels gained in 1e AD&D and 3.5 (I haven't specifically gone into the PF XP tables), on a superficial level they are pretty similar. At the end of an adventure like Keep on the Borderlands, PCs could be about the same level... if you looked just at XPs gained (via monsters and GP value in 1e, monsters in 3.5). But in 3.5, PCs jumped from 1st to 3rd faster if you assumed they didn't go for cave K (with a lot of GP loot value) until the end (when they were able to successfully take it on without dying in droves). And if you factor in training time and costs, there are a number of times in which PCs can't gain more XPs until they manage to rack up enough cash to level up - leading to XP waste in 1e that doesn't occur in 3.5. For example, when a thief is eligible to train to 2nd level, he is probably unable to pay for it for some time. His minimum training cost is 1500 gp and has gained only 1251 xps. And that's if his playing was exemplary rather than just good, which would require 2 weeks of training for 3000 gp.

So the rules could definitely lead to different rates of advancement... if you used them all. It's not just a case of how we play. Now, exactly how that translates to PF's medium and slower rates, I don't know yet.

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Fast forward to the end of the dungeon. It's cleared and it's time to split the shares. Money was not discussed when the brothers were taken on. How would they split it? All 4 decided to split the money evenly. Everyone had done an equal share.

Which is good. The player later told me if the other 2 had taken essentially double the share (from the perspective of the brothers) and tried to make them take half of 1/3, they would have attacked the party for trying to "rip off the new guys". And the brothers were so well crafted they might have been able to beat the other characters even with one being 2 levels back. This speaks to so called "cohort power".

So, who was the cohort? It was the Summoner. But guess what. The brothers weren't really brothers. The cohort was a prince in hiding, and the player character was his bodyguard. That's right, the PLAYER CHARACTER...took ORDERS...from the COHORT.

Why use the cohort rules at all, in this case, when what you really seemed to want to include were 2 PCs for 1 player? To cut one of the characters down a couple of levels?

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Assuming the rest of the party is level 12 fighters, what is the difference between a level 10 wizard cohort, whom crafts blasts and buffs enemies/ the ENTIRE party as needed, and a player who is new to the group and two levels lower (10) who does the exact same thing?

If one party member is the one who finds this new PC while they're at a pub and invite them into the group is that player character "hired by that 1 guy"? Technically, yes. Bet he'll get a full cut though.

The difference is the guy they invite to join them at the club is a peer, the cohort is a follower. You have to keep in mind that the cohort isn't there as a peer, he's there as one of the peer's entourage.

Think of it this way. Most movies starring a big expensive star will assign him an assistant who gets paid as part of the movie's production and helps make sure his time working on the movie is unencumbered by distractions. Chances are, he has members of an entourage who also help with those duties as well. But the members of the entourage don't get paid by the movie production - they're there because they're the big expensive star's people. They ultimately report to him, not the movie's producers. He's the one who sees to their financial remuneration, not the movie's producers. Well, that's the cohort's place in an adventuring party - the leadership PC's entourage.

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Players can get pretty thick-headed about the running thing. I don't think you can expect them to run, rather I think you can hope that they will but expect that they will fight to the bitter TPK and then complain to their GM about it.

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By the core rules, a Sorcerer who wants to be skillful, or a cleric/wizard who want to be persuasive are pretty much SoL.

No one is SoL if they can't move their casting stat around. What's to prevent a sorcerer from putting his second best stat in Intelligence and picking up more skill points? Or a wizard investing in his Charisma? Nothing except too much emphasis put on combat min-maxing.

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I'm not the only one to interpret the text that way... I get your point, I'm just not a fan of this particular deity, too much of a "goog ole boys" vibe for me.

Erastil reminds me mostly of a lot of the grandfathers (heck, any of the farmers, really) in the area I grew up. Hard workers, helpful, friendly, but expected their wives to do certain kinds of work while they did others, and made the final important decisions of what to plant, when to get new equipment, and how to pay the bills. They weren't hostile to women as far as any of us could tell - each sex simply had its place.

Maybe this is why my hackles rise whenever people interpret Erastil in the worst possible terms. If it weren't for a certain amount of religious lunacy in Middle America (Kansas, I'm looking at you in particular), Erastil would fit in pretty well all over the rural United States, at least from the upper midwest through the Great Plains. When it comes to community, these are generally good people who would cook a meal for you if you turned up at the door hungry and were willing to do a little work around the farm for it (or at least they did during the Great Depression and a few decades after).

I dunno. Sometimes I just feel like it's another case of "flyover country" being given short shrift, ignored, or belittled by viewpoints others would consider more enlightened or cosmopolitan. I know they're not trying to either appeal to or discourage those of us living closer to rural roots, but I can't help but feel a bit let down, especially since so much of what Paizo has done really resonates with me as a gamer.

I don't want any one to get the impression I'm some kind of conservative, male chauvinist. That's not the way I behave nor vote (my new senator is both a woman and openly gay and I support her work to diversify the US Senate on both fronts - she's also not rich, so I guess that's a third front). But from a world-building perspective, having a grumpy, patriarchal old-timer a bit set in his ways as a god of rural communities? That just plain works for me on an immersion level because I've seen that experience.

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You really don't have to do much - Erastil's focus around cooperation, shared work for the benefit of all in the community, and community protection are pretty much enough to display how good he is.

In most cases, aside from pushing marriage off on everybody, the male chauvinism of any Erastilite priest will probably neither be overt nor evangelized. He'll minister to men and women alike with his protection, healing, and helping hand. It's just his attitude about authority will vary - he'll probably expect the PC party leader to be male and will approach one if looking for help or sending them out on a mission. I don't think he would necessarily advocate for it nor do it out of malice, but he would expect that's the natural way of things and behave accordingly.

It doesn't have to be much different from earlier in the 20th century. If calling at a home and a kid came to the door, he'd ask if the man of the house was in. He probably introduces married couples as "man and wife". He would expect any body of village elders to be men or mostly men. He would expect a barn raising event to involve the men making the barn while the women cook food and make quilts with the men planning out, scheduling, and directing the affair in their authority as heads of the households. It's all very Amish or traditional farmstead family values kinds of stuff.

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OM goodness, sorry about that... I saw the stats and went into freak mode... My bad, please forgive me. In light of more recent discoveries: I am an ass, and master_marshmallow has a very reasonable compromise.

I wouldn't be too hard on yourself here. If this other thread is any indicator, he tried to get a pretty powerful build vetted here on the boards: So...yet another OP character thread...

The PC is using a lower point value for point buy (10 rather than 25), but his stat mods are still sky-high right off the standard serpent folk. If he did use the race builder to tone things down, I'm not seeing it. My guess is that was his first attempt at doing the character. And I'd have blocked it too if I were GMing a game.

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Conform? Effort? Pulling your weight? Umm sounds like a job to me...so why the heck am I sitting at your table? I play to have fun...not work. Sounds like you should be paying your players for doing a job there....

And if you're going to not put in the same effort as the other players and not conform to our expectations, why would we want you at the table? You're only going to bring the energy down.