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Vic Wertz wrote:
It really is a book, not a magazine. (And yes, it's softcover.) And just printing it in magazine form wouldn't be that much cheaper—the reasons that magazines can be so inexpensive is a combination of huge volume and paid advertising, and that opportunity isn't open to Pathfinder. I've written about it at length in other threads, including this one.

Alright, it makes a lot more sense now. After all the advertising, mail, and cartoon pages are factored out, it is probably actually roughly the same amount of actual content as one issue of Dragon plus one issue of Dungeon. That makes the price easier to swallow. :)


I like Paizo, and I think you guys have been doing a better job with D&D in the last two years than Wizards has. They've really dropped the ball and have been printing a lot of gimped, boring, uninspired, underpowered junk, with rare diamonds in the rough like Book of Nine Swords. Most of the stuff I actually import or adapt into my campaign in some way comes from Dragon and Dungeon. So I am supporting you guys by converting to Pathfinder. That said, I have some comments and questions.

1) Your website does not work properly in Firefox; perhaps not in any browser except IE, although I haven't tried any others. It is impossible to set up a month to month subscription through Firefox; it just takes you to a Pathfinder page. I was confused as to why I was not listed as a charter subscriber when I had clearly chosen to roll my Dragon and Dungeon subscriptions over into the new magazine. A look at the forums determined that charter is only conferred on those who picked month-to-month... but wait, I picked that, didn't I? Nope. Nothing I did would "keep" and proceed through to the rest of the billing process until I opened up your site in IE. This should definitely be fixed, especially since IE is a buggy, useless, security-hole-ridden plague.

2) Why is Pathfinder so incredibly expensive? $14 a month AFTER the subscriber discount? It's a mere 96 pages per issue, unless you dropped a 1 somewhere and it's actually 196. This is equal to or less than the page count of a standard Dragon or Dungeon issue, yet it costs 3 times as much as one issue of either magazine. After the last issues of Dragon and Dungeon ship, my subscriptions will have 47 issues left between the two of them; these are rolling over into only 15 issues of Pathfinder. Are you printing each issue as a hardcover book? If so, please don't. Even if for some reason you will not deign to stoop to printing Pathfinder as an actual magazine (despite this honestly being what it is), at least print in softcover like the 3E splatbooks such as Tome And Blood, et cetera.

3) $4 shipping per issue - does the USPS no longer offer book rate?

4) And one lighter question so you don't think I'm all hostile (I'm just frustrated)... is there any opportunity for us players and readers to contribute to this new campaign setting you're developing? :)


The best alternative to hit points I've seen is the damage saves used in Mutants and Masterminds. Even that's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than HP, especially at equalizing fighters and wizards.


Orcs are teh suXX0rs. Kobolds über alles! All will bow down at the feet of the kobold empire!

Speaking of which, since this is a rant thread... what the hell is up with changing them from their cool original appearance (the pinnacle of which is DiTerlizzi's drawing in the 2E Monstrous Manual) to the "little lizardmen" of 3E? :P


I've been actively aiming to make sure my campaign includes a wide range of activities. Not only dungeon crawls, but also wilderness adventures, social/intrigue adventures, event flowchart adventures, and so on. I generally make a point of not running the same type of adventure two adventures in a row, and even within a given adventure try to mix it up.

Another way I keep things interesting is by playing with the rules. I use action points in my game, but instead of a large pool of finite points per level, my players get about half that many points, per session. Points from one session do not carry over to the next. Whenever a player attempts something particularly daring or heroic, I award their character an action point - not afterwards for a success, but as they do it for making the attempt, which encourages the players to attempt said daring actions and sometimes helps them come to pass. I do the same for especially good roleplaying. If I spend an action point "against" the PCs (for example, on behalf of an opponent), I award an extra action point to the PCs. Since my adventures are harder than usual and I only have three players, this doesn't result in the game being too easy, but rather gives it a cinematic quality I like.

I also don't give out a lot of treasure. Instead, items that are important to the PCs and that they focus on evolve over time, becoming part of their legacy. So far this is staving off the "yet another +1 sword" problem.

Another point is that I don't railroad things too much or try to strictly define everything about an adventure or the environment it takes place in. I prefer to sketch out most of the basics (and certainly important stat blocks, etc) as an adventure framework, but not everything - I use the framework and just improv within it. ("Recite this prepackaged text block" is anathema to me.) I also try to have two or three such frameworks ready for different adventure types, so I can respond to the cues of the players and provide an adventure closer to what they're looking for. Since I don't fully detail everything beforehand, I don't feel so invested that I have to railroad my players into a particular quest just so I don't feel all my work went to waste. If they don't take the bait on something, I can usually just make some small changes and reuse it later.

Something's working right because this campaign is the most fun I've had in a long time. One of my players just told me after the last session that this is the first time in years he's had that same sense of wonder he had when he was first introduced to D&D - and with his favorite class (paladin) no less, which he's had beaten in the ground by a succession of cynical DMs.


Kyr wrote:
kahoolin wrote:

I hate Orcs. They come from Tolkien, they don't belong!

I can't stand it that they are considered a staple of fantasy just like elves, dragons, etc when they don't even come from myth. Some guy made them up for HIS fantasy setting, THEY DON'T BELONG ANYWHERE OUTSIDE MIDDLE EARTH.

Well if its just a rant fine.

But if you actually believe Tolkien "invented" orcs, well you can search on google and find out that orcs were around well before Tolkien reintroduced them to the lexicon. Granted he is the one who made them famous and gave them there current look. But he didn't event them. If you don't believe me you can check wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc

If they are good enough for Beowulf they are good enough for me.

Considering that the "orcs" of Beowulf were walking dead, if even that (there's like one reference), it's really hardly the same argument. It's more like one word with the same spelling in two different languages being used to describe two different things.


As Planescape explained it, in the official D&D cosmology, it happens as follows. The souls of evil mortals who don't have a strong enough tie to a deity or philosophy to become a petitioner or undead, wind up on the Gray Waste as larvae. These are then taken by baatezu and tanar'ri to be turned into lemures and manes. The lemures and manes with promising qualities are turned into actually sentient lesser devils and demons, and from there they have a chance to work up the heirarchy. The night hags that roam the gray waste tend the most choice, prize herds of larvae, the ones most likely to produce exceptional fiends with a hope of advancement.

The various demons and other outsiders frequently mate with mortals, producing half-fiends, half-celestials, etc, but they don't generally seem capable of mating with each other. An exception would seem to be yugoloths, who as far as I can tell don't draw from souls to fill their ranks, unless I missed something.

Obviously in your own campaign world, if you don't use the official cosmology, you can come up with whatever explanation you feel like. But bear in mind that just because a plane is infinite doesn't mean that its inhabitants are infinite. Heck, 99.999% of any given plane is probably mostly uninhabitable - look at outer space ("wildspace"), the dominant location in the Prime Material Plane.


Just remove the type restriction and even the creatureness restriction entirely. In 1E and 2E, Enlarge and Reduce could be used to great effect on inanimate nonmagical objects; I don't see a reason why that shouldn't be the case in 3E.


Keep in mind that you don't have to run the adventures exactly as printed. Just as you would add more enemies or increase the power of individual foes if you had a party of 5 or 6 players, you should subtract enemies or decrease the power of individual foes for a party of 3 players.

I also second the suggestion about Leadership and the like. As a GM, though, I hate the dozens of followers you get from it; I suggest instead that you limit it to granting a cohort and have the cohort be +1 level higher than the feat would otherwise grant.


I agree with Tiger Lily. Round-robin GMing works best if each GM runs their own world with a separate set of PCs. That way there's no conflicts and far less chance of an out-of-character knowledge problem. Each GM gets the chance to be a player and although the characters will advance more slowly, everyone ends up happier.


Spelljamming helms.


See Complete Arcane, especially page 71-73. A warlock's eldritch blast is a ray, and Precise Shot, Point Blank Shot, Weapon Focus (ray), Improved Critical (ray), etc all apply.

You can't use Far Shot because rays have a maximum range and no range increments. You can't use Multishot because ray spells don't produce ammunition, they produce a single effect. Just use logic.


Dungeon Master's Guide, page 268 wrote:
Intelligent items can actually be considered creatures because they have Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. Treat them as constructs (see page 307 of the Monster Manual).

'Nuff said.

A bigger problem is all this "person" crap. Enlarge Person and Reduce Person should just be Enlarge and Reduce, like in older versions of the game. Charm Person and Dominate Person should be Charm and Dominate, and the same as the "monster" versions (which would just be Greater Charm and Greater Dominate), except with the shorter (1 hour/level) durations. What's so special about humanoids?

I'd just change the spells to affect all creatures except Animals and Vermin. By the same token, any of the "animal" spells (Animal Growth, Animal Messenger, Dominate Animal, etc) should work on Vermin too.


I would like this much better. Now, obviously, Paizo should feel free to provide references and linking information that can tie these adventure paths together for GMs that wanted to do so. But this shouldn't be as strict or as linear as in the two APs that have already been published. Separate low, mid, and high level adventure paths would be much more useful to a lot more GMs.

Even if the people at Paizo are just totally wedded to the idea of super-campaigns that run for an entire year, at the very least they could space these out - do the three separate paths this year, the next super-campaign in 2007, three more separate paths in 2008, etc.


The new format is much better. The old format was atrocious.


Zogonia and Mt Zogon are far, far and away the best of the current crop.

The best that ever appeared in the magazine's pages, of course, were Snarfquest and The Twilight Empire. There is simply no comparison. Yamara was also good, but not as good as the first two; I'd say it and the Zogon comics are of comparable quality.

Nodwick seems too self-consciously "nerd-hip" to me, and OotS likewise; they rarely do it for me. Downer is well drawn and has a Planescape feel I like a lot but it has MASSIVE continuity problems; go from one issue to the next and you feel like you've missed 20-30 pages of comic.


edit-b wrote:
Are they acting in an Evil/Out of Alignment way and looking at Alignment change?

Yes.

edit-b wrote:
Am I letting personal bias get in the way of my DM judgment?

No.


Jonathan Drain wrote:

That Sage Advice sounds like it's beating about the bush, or perhaps its just stating the obvious for less experienced players. Of course a coup-de-grace is evil if it would be evil to attack the same target; that's obvious. Here's my thought on the topic.

  • A coup-de-grace against a wholly evil creature such as a demon, or when it is necessary to kill the creature outright to protect innocent beings, is a good act.
  • A coup-de-grace in self-defence, in other words if the letting the creature live would be to risk your life, is a neutral act.
  • A coup-de-grace performed primarily out of unjustified hate for the creature or to exact unfair revenge for their attacking you, can be considered an evil act. A good aligned creature would not make a habit of this without good justification.

    Remind the player that it's a full-round action to coup-de-grace, and so it's not always the best combat option. It also helps if they have some idea of the likelihood of their opponents seeking revenge if not coup-de-graced. In my games, an opponent beaten by the PCs would typically be afraid to attack them a second time, and would need to be exceptionally motiviated to make a second attack later, as well as being either brave or stupid.

  • Full agreement. Of course, I don't use alignment when I can avoid it, but in the context of the alignment system, this is definitely how I interpret it.


    I run my games online so they're basically irrelevant to me, unless I felt like scanning them. But having to buy them in randomized packets like ccg cards is a huge, enormous, gigantic disincentive. If you could just buy a whole set right out for $15-$20 it'd be much less of a waste of money.


    So what if you go to the same school? Hell, so what if you even share classes and have to see him for an hour or more every day? It doesn't mean you have to play with him. Just because some of your players have friends who might also be into gaming doesn't mean all of their friends have to be invited into your game. Even if this guy is "a friend" (unlikely, unless you have battered-wife syndrome) and is in one or more of your classes, better to lose the jerk; it's hardly going to affect you, since honestly, do you have strong personal interactions with everyone you share classes with? Moreover, it's perfectly possible to run games with just 3 players; I do it regularly. I honestly don't see the problem.

    If you're still reluctant, then just take this to heart.

    * The paladin needs to be punished for tolerating this behavior. The next time he looks the other way while this guy does something, he should lose his powers until he atones.

    * The legal authorities in-game, or the relatives of the people he kills, should be mounting a manhunt or hiring adventurers to track down this serial killer and his accomplices (the party) and bring them to justice.

    * Take the guy aside after a game (or even, preferably, before the next game) and tell him you don't appreciate his behavior.

    * Finally, and most importantly, the next time he lays hands on you like you described, kick him out of the game right then and there. No ifs, ands, or buts. End the session for the day if you have to. If the other players complain and can't see that's inappropriate then quite frankly they are so immature, or so messed up in the head themselves, then it's not worth playing with them. There are plenty of people in the average school, and even failing that, there are quite a few more people than that online.


    I'll third the call for increased legibility. I'll also repeat my desire to, in place of a frivolous "advanced" example of the species in question, instead see a reprint of the monster's entry. This:

    * Makes the article infinitely more useful to people who don't have the book in question.

    * Would allow for Ecology coverage of monsters that appear in more obscure books which aren't entirely, 100% about monsters, such as the Miniatures Handbook.

    * Serves as advertising for the book in question - "Hey, look at the cool stuff you can find in the book."

    Just a thought.


    It is indeed the case. It's like the example of the boots of teleportation vs the helm of teleportation. They are identical even down to their uses per day, except that the helm costs +50% more, and is largely left in the DMG both as a point of nostalgia and also to illustrate the whole item slot thing.

    I agree with the statement that most people just look up what's presented in the DMG as an example and don't think of it any further than that. For example, a surprisingly large number of people don't seem to realize that any given ioun stone is twice as expensive as it "should" be, because it doesn't take up an item slot at all and thus has a +100% price modifier.


    Easy! I'm an inch tall. I interact with the world by using speech recognition technology on this colossal thing called a computer. ;)


    I'd be more willing to accept that the motives behind the new blocks were good if it wasn't for the other stuff I mentioned that also happened in DMG II, like the larger font size. If it was something that Paizo came up with I wouldn't be thinking of this ulterior motive, because I concede that in Paizo's case at least, authors aren't salaried but rather are paid per-word, so they don't save any money by moving to the new format.

    I still think that the lore section can be shortened and consolidated into the opening concept statement under the item name, and that the activation section can be done away with any relevant details noted in the Effect section, and most of the stuff at the bottom consolidated back into one paragraph.

    If they return to consolidating all equipment together, and all special attacks together, and all special qualities together, then I'll think the new NPC / monster statblock is actually wonderful and awesome. Until then, I hate and loathe it for how everything is scattered all over the place.


    I agree that the monster's entry should be reprinted as an appendix to each ecology article, in place of the sample advanced creature. Not only would this help people like the OP who don't have the book, if it's a cool monster (and it should be, if it inspired an ecology) it would serve as advertising for the book. Moreover, it would allow ecology authors to stretch a little farther afield, writing about creatures from more obscure sources like the miniatures book, the psionics books, or even an adventure (whether published by WotC or in the pages of Dungeon).


    The nit about the repeated sentence between the description and activation sections of the robe of the inferno should say "the four (fiery orbs) that give the robe its name"; my initial post ate my brackets.

    The concept can be more than one line if you want to put some lore or history there, but I don't see the need for a full-fledged lore section complete with DCs unless the item is either an artifact, and/or is a unique item appearing in an adventure and is critical to that adventure or provides valuable background to the adventure or major characters within it.


    All the relevant information on a magic item and its history can already appear in an item's description in the old-style format if the creator is doing his or her job. There's no real reason to break it into a bunch of separate paragraphs and headings and spam it down the length of the page. This is especially true with the mechanical details of an item's price, caster level, creation prerequisites, cost of creation, etc; all of those were easily contained in the one small paragraph we already had and no one I know has ever had a problem reading it.

    My opinion on the new item and stat blocks? They were created with no intention of making things more flavorful. The new blocks were created as a naked attempt to waste page space so they could fill up pages with less content and still slap the same price on the cover. The only other possibility is that someone was seriously misguided. You can see this philosophy in the large margins (larger in some books than others), and in the "font size creep" that we see in the Dungeon Master's Guide II in particular. It's like the old juvenile trick for padding a school paper you are having trouble with - just make small adjustments to the font, line spacing, margins, etc. Except that the item blocks are far less subtle than that kind of trickery.

    At least an argument can be made for the new npc / monster statblocks that they could make things more readable, because creatures in this game have a LOT of information. But for this to happen the format would have to be done right, which hasn't happened. The new npc / monster statblock is, paradoxically, almost unreadable, even though with all that space it should be otherwise. The main problem is that with equipment and special qualities and special attacks no longer grouped together with like kind but instead scattered all over the place, I miss them ALL THE FREAKING TIME. A thousand curses on whoever decided this, may they be miserably unlucky and unhappy for all time - or until they fix things by grouping again, at which point I would be appeased and would actually like the new format better than the old one. So I'll retract some of my venom towards the statblock - just fix it, please.

    But then we come to the item block. Here the motives were clearly less pure.

    * You start with a "concept description" under the item name, like feats already have. I could potentially go for this if it was kept to one line, but as actually handled it's frequently redundant with the effect section and often runs too long - take a look at the robe of the inferno on page 270 of the DMGII for one of the worst offenders.

    * The lore section should be fine but still makes me somehow uncomfortable. I don't want an extensive history of when and where an item was made and who first made it, unless it's an artifact or some other important, unique or near-unique item. Do I care about the frankly silly history of Killaith Marcaun and why she made the first robe of the inferno? No, and I'm one of those players who was always upset that Wizards for so long snubbed and beat into the ground the awesome flavor we had in 2E products like Planescape. Is it relevant that she's an elf, even? Also, the DCs are too low. Putting too much information here actually makes the section less useful in a number of cases, because it ties the item more strongly to the default setting of Greyhawk (or whatever setting the book the item appears in is talking about), and then the DM has to go to the trouble of changing it.

    * The description section is inherently good; items should have descriptions and not just be "a pair of boots" or "a ring." However, as with the concept description, I notice quite a bit of unnecessary repetition between this section and the actual effect section. Looking at the robe of the inferno again, the item everyone loves to hate, we even see that it's so blatant as to actually reuse a phrase between both sections - "the four [fiery orbs] that give the robe its name."

    * The prerequisite section, yawn, put any such requirements in the final statistics paragraph and cut this section.

    * The activation section can be safely cut. People assume that worn items, like boots, are always active unless stated otherwise; players aren't getting dumber and don't need that to be repeatedly stated in every item's description. If a command word is required, or boots have to have their heels clicked together, that is easily stated with a few words of text in the actual effect section; you don't need a whole paragraph talking about it. Specific command words are only relevant if an item is unique or an artifact, because otherwise there's nothing stopping a character from making more of the item, and I can guarantee you that someone duplicating a robe of the inferno isn't going to use the same command words as the first creator - especially if they don't speak Ignan! Moreover, this section again sees an insulting amount of redundancy; look at how the much-hated robe states in both the activation section and the effect section that actually using an orb is a standard action.

    * The effect section is obviously the single most relevant aspect of the item and is inherently worthwhile. Anything that would overlap or be redundant between the effect section and any other section should be limited to only appear in the effect section.

    * The aura/caster level, construction, weight, and price paragraphs just spam the page and can be easily combined into a single paragraph, like 3.0 and 3.5 already do.

    Even sections I noted as being worthwhile, such as the description, can be seen as wasting space when they just keep going on and on or when they are redundant. The ideal item listing, if it's going to use subheadings, should be as follows: a one-line concept, a short Description section, an Effect section, and then a Statistics section with all the information that the bottom line in the old description already has.

    To Mr. Bulmahn and his statement about authors forgetting some of this information that should be there... well, I feel your pain, but if it's a regular issue maybe you should go into more detail about what you expect in the Dragon Writer's Guidelines. If a submission comes in without the information you need, but it's still a cool submission and you still want to print it, the appropriate response would be to contact the author, tell him or her about the problem, and get them to submit a fixed version. I don't see why the magazine's overworked staff should have to be the ones to come up with that information.


    The "correct" item slot for the mighty fists ability is the bracers or gauntlet slot. The amulet of mighty fists, as printed, includes a +50% price modifier for being in the wrong item slot.


    I created equivalent items a long time ago, even pricing them the same. However, what I did was to make them rings and require an attunement time of 1 day before you could use the spell. This not only limits the number of extra spells a character gets but the attunement means you can't just carry around a panoply of dozens of extra-spell items to be immediately useful in any given situation.


    If you're going to go to the trouble of modifying sighting distance, instead of doing caps, go in and modify the actual range increment at which creatures take Spot penalties. I think that's probably too much realism and trouble to bother with though in a game.

    Mining canaries, of course, are testing for poison, not disease. (And I already accounted for poison.) If anything, most humans I know are far more sickly and disease-ridden than most small household animals I know, becoming ill far more often than their pets.

    I am not sure where the reference to environmental dangers comes from. Creatures both tiny and huge have thrived in every environment from the desert to the arctic. Though tiny creatures do a little better in warmer climes than large creatures, and large creatures do a little better in cold climes than tiny creatures, the difference is small enough that it is not something that needs to be taken account of in game mechanics. After all, small mammals survived the nuclear winter produced by the iridium meteor that ended the reign of the dinosaurs.

    Tangentially... on your base attack as a skill, if you're intent on attacking as a skill you might want to make the various weapon groups skills instead of base attack itself. Base Attack as a skill would by default be better than every other skill in the game put together and anyone who didn't have it at maximum ranks, even a wizard, would be a fool.


    Be very, very strict about the exact text of the spells. Scrying only lets you see within 10 ft of the target, not any farther, and if they succeed at a Will save or have some other means of detecting scrying they'll know something's up. Find the Path finds only very specific destinations. Discern Location is sympathetic magic and requires you to have something of the target's or to have encountered them once before. Commune gives only yes/no answers and has an XP cost. Contact Other Plane gives only one-word answers and has drawbacks. Detect Evil is not a license to kill in most law-abiding societies. Etc.


    Kobolds, the greatest


    Got Ooze? wrote:

    3. These size differentials are already incorporated into the use and description of the Hide and Spot skills.

    PHB 3.5, Chapter 4: Skills, Hide states: "A creature larger or smaller than Medium takes a size bonus or penalty on Hide checks depending on its size category: Fine +16, Diminutive +12, Tiny +8, Small +4, Large -4, Huge -8, Gargantuan -12, Colossal -16."

    What this means, if I can use your statement, is that Spot shouldn't be '+2 for a human (Medium) spotting an ogre (Large)' because the Ogre is already getting a -4 penalty to his opposed check, which is Hide.

    A) Size modifiers are supposed to cancel. But as is, a halfling with a +4 size bonus to Hide is just as good at hiding from other halflings as he is at hiding from humans, ants, or great wyrms. To cancel it out you would have to give him a +4 size bonus to Spot checks... which, since it would improve all Spot checks (including to see things at a distance despite his smaller eyes, etc), just doesn't make sense and is also too powerful. (It also paradoxically means that larger creatures somehow see less far.)

    B) The modifier to Hide (which should include Move Silently also) is way too large. I am a fairly unobservant person but I still regularly notice ants crawling on the pavement without actively searching for them. Hell, I can see the tiny particles moving in the air if I focus. I work with mice and I can hear them move, if I'm not running windows media player through my phone / earbuds.

    Tequila Sunrise wrote:
    3. Ideally, it would be great to have all size mods reflect relative size: i.e. +2 for a human spoting an ogre but +4 while spoting a hill giant. However, I myself would not want to modify these rolls during every encounter with every monster. Especially in this circumstance, as the DM would need to apply the spotter's bonus as the hider's penalty seeing as how the player doesn't know what the size difference is until the spot check is actually successful.

    C) It's too much trouble to work out relative sizes within each size category and apply different size modifiers to them. Both ogres and hill giants are size Large. Therefore, the same size modifiers should apply to each. (In my system, a Medium creature therefore gets +2 to Spot and Listen against both ogres and hill giants.)

    Got Ooze wrote:
    4. Larger creatures already get a bonus to poison: it's the fact that they have more Constitution (and thus more Fort). A monster that advances larger than Medium gets +4 Constitution per size increase, which (in turn) grants it a +2 bonus to its Fortitude save per increase. See the MM, Increasing Hit Dice, Size Increases, Table 4-2: Changes to Statistics By Size for a reference table.

    D) There's no reason for ability scores to change with size. If you take a Medium size human and hit him with a shrink ray, he doesn't become physiologically weaker and more frail. He is simply not able to apply his Strength as effectively or over as large of an area (represented in lower carry capacity and damage dice). He shouldn't suddenly become sickly and susceptible to every disease and death spell out there. Hit him with a growth ray, and he doesn't bulge with more muscles than the proportionate increase of those he already has; he is just able to apply them more effectively. He shouldn't suddenly become as healthy as a horse and able to shrug off polymorph spells and flesh to stone beams just because he's taller.

    I understand the reason why they chose to modify Constitution - because they didn't want to deal with characters having any kind of "soak" rating, or with the consequences of "negative" damage reduction (for shrinking). But it's really the most elegant way to deal with the situation, if you don't want to deal with all the other logic holes.

    I didn't delve into this with the prior post because this veers off more into modifying other rules systems (armor, etc) and not just size. But instead of increasing damage dice, Strength, Constitution, etc, you just use more simple, constant modifiers per size category. I'll stay away from discussing armor etc here and just talk about size.

    D.1) Damage die sizes are constant. A weapon that deals 1d8 damage for a Medium creature deals 1d8 damage for a Fine or Colossal creature.

    Reason: Reduces the math you have to do. Stabilizes things for the following rules.

    D.2) +2 bonus to physical damage for every size category above Medium. -2 penalty to physical damage for every size category below Medium.

    Reason: Represent the different damage capabilities of the various size categories, in a simple form that is easy to apply (no changing of base dice). Likewise represents that except when you go to multiple dice, even under the current system the difference between sizes is 2 points of damage.

    Logic / Special Pleading: Represents that a Fine creature should be capable of dealing non-0 damage to other Fine, Diminutive, sub-Fine, etc creatures. A Fine fey gal going at another Fine fey gay with a Fine dagger should be dealing damage each hit, not 0 for the reduced die size.

    Science: Increased mass is offset by increased surface area. Being hit by X amount of force hurts less if it's spread over the area of a beach ball (a giant's fist) than if that exact same level of force is applied over the area of a pill bottle (a halfling monk's fist). Thus, the size modifier is just 2 per size category.

    D.3) +2 increase to damage reduction per size category over Medium. -2 penalty per size category under Medium. A creature with negative damage reduction takes more damage from every attack.

    Reason: Cancels out the size modifier from D.2. Our Fine fey catfight proceeds with no effective size modifiers since at this point everything is cancelling out.

    Logic / Special Pleading: If a human stomps on one of our fey gals, he does more damage to her, as you'd expect (+8 in this case). If an elephant tramples over a halfling and a human, the halfling takes more damage, which makes sense.

    D.4) If you change the size modifier in D.2, the same change needs to be made to D.3 to keep things canceled out.


    1) Find yourself some vintage Planescape material.
    2) Read it.
    3) Happily enjoy the planes for a long time.
    4) Come up with your own world and your own multiverse and your own planes. Take the good points from settings and stories you've enjoyed. Focus more on the fluff, like Planescape, than on the cold, sterile rules, like 3.0 and 3.5.
    5) Even more happily enjoy the planes (and gaming in general) for an even longer time.


    As to falling damage, if it really bothers you that much, do something like... -25% falling damage for every size below Medium, +25% falling damage for every size above Medium.

    So a creature of each size category falls 80 feet and suffers 8d6 falling damage. The DM rolls his fixed dice and comes up with 48 damage. This breaks out to 0 damage to the Fine creature, 12 to the Diminutive, 24 to the Tiny, 36 to the Small, 48 to the Medium, 60 to the Large, 72 to the Huge, 84 to the Gargantuan, and 96 to the Colossal. It's small but it makes a difference.


    How size modifiers are implemented is not a good thing.

    Part of it is the doubling attack / defense modifiers. It's only a +1/-1 difference for a Medium creature to attack a Large or Small creature, but a +2/-4 difference for a Diminutive creature to attack a Tiny or Fine creature? It doesn't cancel or scale the way it's supposed to.

    Another part of it is the Hide modifier. As written, this does not cancel out. A Tiny creature has as little luck finding another Tiny creature as a Huge creature does! Moreover, smaller creatures are quieter too, yet they really aren't THAT drastically harder to see or hear... honestly, how hard is it to spot a fly holding still? If it really had +16 to Hide you'd never see it even on a clean white wall.

    Let's not forget poison either. A larger creature's bite or sting pumps a much larger volume of venom into its victim. Even more alarmingly, that volume can be much more overwhelming compared to a smaller creature's body size. Putting 1 oz (1/16 lb) or 1/4 cup of venom into a Tiny creature is effectively the same as putting 4 lb or 1 gallon of venom into a Medium creature!

    Finally, there's the carry capacities for smaller-than-Medium creatures. I get that the whole 3/4 carry for Small creatures thing was put in so as not to feel like halflings and gnomes were being dumped on, but this is suspect reasoning. Their equipment already weighs half as much or less. (If we were really being realistic, it should weigh 1/4 to 1/8 as much.) Muscle strength changes with the cross-sectional area, which varies with the square of height; the linear variation of the rules is a good approximation since the amount of your own body you have to carry around varies with the cube of height, but it should start at half Medium for small creatures and keep halving each size below that.

    But I don't just complain. I'm here to offer solutions!

    * Fine: A Fine creature has a +8 size modifier to attack rolls and AC. It has a -16 size modifier to grapple checks. It has -8 to poison saves and save DCs. It has a carry capacity 1/16 that of a Medium creature of equal Strength. It gets +0 to Spot and Listen vs a Fine foe, +2 vs Diminutive, +4 vs Tiny, +6 vs Small, +8 vs Medium, +10 vs Large, +12 vs Huge, +14 vs Gargantuan, and +16 vs Colossal.

    * Diminutive: A Diminutive creature has a +6 size modifier to attack rolls and AC. It has a -12 size modifier to grapple checks. It has -6 to poison saves and save DCs. It has a carry capacity 1/8 that of a Medium creature of equal Strength. It gets -2 to Spot and Listen vs a Fine foe, +0 vs Diminutive, +2 vs Tiny, +4 vs Small, +6 vs Medium, +8 vs Large, +10 vs Huge, +12 vs Gargantuan, and +14 vs Colossal.

    * Tiny: A Tiny creature has a +4 size modifier to attack rolls and AC. It has a -8 size modifier to grapple checks. It has -4 to poison saves and save DCs. It has a carry capacity 1/4 that of a Medium creature of equal Strength. It gets -4 to Spot and Listen vs a Fine foe, -2 vs Diminutive, +0 vs Tiny, +2 vs Small, +4 vs Medium, +6 vs Large, +8 vs Huge, +10 vs Gargantuan, and +12 vs Colossal.

    * Small: A Small creature has a +2 size modifier to attack rolls and AC. It has a -4 size modifier to grapple checks. It has -2 to poison saves and save DCs. It has a carry capacity 1/2 that of a Medium creature of equal Strength. It gets -6 to Spot and Listen vs a Fine foe, -4 vs Diminutive, -2 vs Tiny, +0 vs Small, +2 vs Medium, +4 vs Large, +6 vs Huge, +8 vs Gargantuan, and +10 vs Colossal.

    * Medium: A Medium creature has a +0 size modifier to attack rolls and AC. It has a +0 size modifier to grapple checks. It has +0 to poison saves and save DCs. It has a normal carry capacity. It gets -8 to Spot and Listen vs a Fine foe, -6 vs Diminutive, -4 vs Tiny, -2 vs Small, +0 vs Medium, +2 vs Large, +4 vs Huge, +6 vs Gargantuan, and +8 vs Colossal.

    * Large: A Large creature has a -2 size modifier to attack rolls and AC. It has a +4 size modifier to grapple checks. It has +2 to poison saves and save DCs. It has a carry capacity 2x that of a Medium creature of equal Strength. It gets -10 to Spot and Listen vs a Fine foe, -8 vs Diminutive, -6 vs Tiny, -4 vs Small, -2 vs Medium, +0 vs Large, +2 vs Huge, +4 vs Gargantuan, and +6 vs Colossal.

    * Huge: A Huge creature has a -4 size modifier to attack rolls and AC. It has a +8 size modifier to grapple checks. It has +4 to poison saves and save DCs. It has a carry capacity 4x that of a Medium creature of equal Strength. It gets -12 to Spot and Listen vs a Fine foe, -10 vs Diminutive, -8 vs Tiny, -6 vs Small, -4 vs Medium, -2 vs Large, +0 vs Huge, +2 vs Gargantuan, and +4 vs Colossal.

    * Gargantuan: A Gargantuan creature has a -6 size modifier to attack rolls and AC. It has a +12 size modifier to grapple checks. It has +6 to poison saves and save DCs. It has a carry capacity 8x that of a Medium creature of equal Strength. It gets -14 to Spot and Listen vs a Fine foe, -12 vs Diminutive, -10 vs Tiny, -8 vs Small, -6 vs Medium, -4 vs Large, -2 vs Huge, +0 vs Gargantuan, and +2 vs Colossal.

    * Colossal: A Colossal creature has a -8 size modifier to attack rolls and AC. It has a +16 size modifier to grapple checks. It has +8 to poison saves and save DCs. It has a carry capacity 16x that of a Medium creature of equal Strength. It gets -16 to Spot and Listen vs a Fine foe, -14 vs Diminutive, -12 vs Tiny, -10 vs Small, -8 vs Medium, -6 vs Large, -4 vs Huge, -2 vs Gargantuan, and +0 vs Colossal.

    Note 1: When a creature doubles in size, it doubles in size, in all dimensions, not just height. The spaces for creatures should be 10 ft large, 20 ft huge, 40 ft gargantuan, 80 ft colossal. Likewise, a truly Small creature's space would be 2.5 ft - enough to fit 4 creatures in the same space as a Medium creature. Of course, I realize this doesn't mesh with the D&D Minis already produced for 3.5E. But there's always hope for the designers to take basic arithmetic again before 4E comes out. And besides, I play online, so I don't use minis. ;)

    Note 2: Size-related feats and abilities shouldn't say "only usable by Small or smaller creatures," "only usable by Large or larger creatures," or anything of the sort. Size is entirely relative. It is perfectly reasonable for a creature of any size - yes, even a Huge giant - to use Clever Wrestling against foes of larger size for a +2 bonus per size category of difference. After all, on that giant's scale, a gargantuan dragon is effectively "the size of an ogre."


    Keep in mind that you can't get both a ring of resistance and a cloak of resistance and make them both work. Named bonuses don't stack. The issue of having 10 different items of the same type rarely comes up. Even if you have multiple items all providing different kinds of bonuses to AC (armor, deflection, natural armor, luck, etc), for instance, that's not only taking up item slots you could be using for other things but some of those items are likely suffering the effects of being more expensive than normal because their effect is out of tune with the spirit of their slot.


    There are a number of other protective rings, so this seems perfectly fine as a ring. The problem is not with the ring, it's with open-ended "add your unlimited nonstandard bonus no matter how big it is" abilities existing in the first place. Especially at low levels, like the monk's wisdom AC bonus or the paladin's charisma save bonus.

    The real problem with item slots is, why isn't there a pantaloons / leggings slot and a legbands / anklets slot? ;) And those would be separate slots too, if you can have a separate shirt slot and bracers slot!