Carnivorous_Bean's page

Carnivorous_Bean wrote:

I'm wondering if SR shouldn't be reworked as a miss chance for spells, like concealment is a miss chance for mundane attacks.

Then we'll express it as a percentage, and call it... let me think for a second... hmmm... Magic Resistance!

I get this feeling of deja-vu... :-)

Good point. ;)

I'm wondering if SR shouldn't be reworked as a miss chance for spells, like concealment is a miss chance for mundane attacks. I realize that it's an additional subsystem, but on the other hand, it's fairly straightforward, and it might provide a more useful ability without making it overwhelming.

Just a bit of Bean brainstorming.

Looking at the magical armor and shields section in Pathfinder, I have to wonder what use spell resistance could conceivably be to anyone, the way it's presented.

The highest SR for armor is 19, equivalent to a +5 bonus. This is going to be worn by high-level characters exclusively -- exactly where it will be absolutely ineffective.

Consider a character wearing SR 19 armor at 18th level confronting an 18th level caster NPC. The roll to overcome SR is caster level + 1d20. Therefore, the minimum roll of a level-equivalent character is 19, enough to AUTOMATICALLY overcome the best armor SR in the game.

Does anyone else agree that SR is abysmally weak for the bonus equivalent that has to be sunk into it?

Considering that a lot of role-playing in 4th Edition (and a lot of other non-combat activity) is designed to be handled with the skill challenge system (one that is very much not diceless), I have difficulty accepting your description of the system. Would you care to explain where you're coming from?

A system which, unfortunately, doesn't work. By the admission of the people who designed it, too. The skill challenge system is so messed up that you basically have to toss it anyway.

And the classes have no out-of-combat powers to speak of. It's all, "I hit X, I get effect Y." 99% of the Player's Handbook is a combat guide.

In other words, if you want to do anything but kill, kill, kill, you've got to basically wing it. Even the fans of the system have tacitly admitted as much, by saying you don't need skills like Forgery because you can just free-form roleplay it if you really want to go into that much depth out of combat.

(Nevermind that in my experience, it's exactly those 'useless' skills like Forgery that can save the PC's bacon in games where combat isn't the be-all and end-all, and in such cases, it makes things more exciting if they've got a concrete measure of their skill, and are sweating a potential failure, rather than just saying, "oh, yeah, I just remembered, I'm a forger, too, so I just forge something.")

That's my take, anyway. Perhaps the gent you quoted has a different one.

Not a heretic .... just someone whose tastes diverge from mine at the moment.

And someone who has a LOT more time for gaming, and a LOT more disposable income to buy books for multiple systems, you lucky dog! =D

I'd have to say that my main problem with the Crusader is that it has no out-of-combat abilities. In other words, the Crusader can't heal someone even minorly out of combat -- there's no role-playing hook of the Crusader "laying on hands" on a dying peasant, say, and getting the gratitude of the village, which leads to get a crucial piece of information. This is just a random scenario, but it's something a paladin could do, and a Crusader couldn't.

The Crusader could only pull it off by dragging in an orc and whacking him on the head with sword. ;)

Although I suppose, if you wanted a slightly more versatile character, you could multiclass into cleric briefly in order to get a few low-level spells for out-of-combat situations.

Wow -- I sure hope it doesn't work like that. However, the wording of the rule, now that I look it, sure seems to support that viewpoint. I, too, am eagerly awaiting an official ruling or even an official comment on this.

Maybe we know now why Beowulf grappled Grendel ;) ....

This thread, and the other one with the inflating bonuses thing that I started about high-level play, makes me realize how gigantic an overhaul the 3.5 system needs in order to make it truly functional.

By the way, where does the paladin fit into the Tier system? Personally, I'd say that the 3.5 paladin is a Tier 4, and the Pathfinder paladin is Tier 5, since they really nerfed the paladin healing in PF without giving them much to compensate, especially during the 'sweet spot' levels. However, I may well be in error.

I'm not in favor of nerfing the casting classes too much, other than zapping a couple of the more abusable spells back to the stone age. However, I think the melee classes could use a serious buff -- and some kind of maneuver system to match the spell system seems like a logical way to go (a la Bo9S without the silly names).

Off topic, C_B, didn't you leave these boards, never to return?

Sure, I'm a convert. I tried out 4th edition and it palled, so now I'm a partial Paizoan, or whatever the term is. Hope you don't mind if I admit I was wrong and return to the fold? ;)

(Although the high level play still gets my goat.)

I can't quote Blade MacRonan's post because it just quotes his quote of me, for some reason, but here's my answer ....

I'm not sure what 'phishing' is, so I can't really tell you whether I am! =)

As for what I'm trying to say, it's that the high level swinginess might be partly because the fixed modifiers are so high.

At low level, let's say you have a +5 to attack. When you roll a d20, the results can vary a LOT. Your +5 changes the d20 roll, but it's not changing it drastically. You have a better chance to hit/succeed, but not a certainty.

At high levels, let's say you stack bonuses until you get a +40 bonus to attack. Relative to that, an added roll of 1-20 has become a small modifier. You're pretty much sure to automatically hit, or automatically miss.

That's the problem with the high-level saving throws, for example. The 'good saves' are almost certain to succeed against certain save DCs, while 'bad saves' are almost certain to fail against the same save DCs. Thus, you end up with a party where certain effects are nearly certain to automatically fail against some PCs, while nearly automatically succeeding against others.

Similarly, main attacks at +20 and iterative attacks at +5, mean that the +20 may well never miss against a certain target, while the +5 can never hit the same target.

In other words, the huge fixed modifiers of high levels are reducing randomness a lot at the moment. Which is bad for the system's functioning at high levels.

My idea was to lower high-level bonuses so that there will be more randomness. It wasn't highly detailed at this point -- I was more just throwing it out as a starting point for further thought.

That would be the choice of Paizo to release a monster manual. Yes, it would be the most beneficial to do so, but it would require a lot of work. I'm not really sure they'd be allowed to do that, anyhow.

Paizo is just fixing fluff. If they actually fix the game in it's core, than it's not as backwards compatible as they want it to be. 4e got a lot right, but they lost all character creation in the process. given the right nudge 3.5, or 3p, could have the best mix of both systems.

I agree. I also think that my solution was too extreme, but I threw it out in an effort to shake things up and get people thinking outside the box a bit when they go to fix high level play. Recognizing that high fixed bonuses + small die roll vs. either excessively low fixed DCs or excessively high fixed DCs

Still -- in the case of attacks -- wouldn't adding level to AC and cutting BAB have the same effect -- except that cutting BAB would make iterative attacks more viable?

As for 'a lot of work' and 'backwards compatibility' issues -- well, at some point, a choice is going to have to be made. Either high level play is left as it is -- broken and, in the opinion of many, close to unusable -- or it's going to have to get a MAJOR overhaul. There's no avoiding this choice -- Paizo's going to have to decide: fix it, or don't.

And I'm all for buckling down and wading in with both fists on an overhaul, or the game is going to continue to be viable only to level 10-12, meaning that it's really only half a game, and a good portion of the material never actually gets used. IMO, of course.

I was thinking idly about the problems of high level play last night, and it occured to me that one of the problems might be the size of bonuses (BAB, etc.) relative to the possible range of rolls on a d20.

In other words, the possible results on a d20 range from 1-20, which means that each 1 point in a roll represents 5% of the possible range. When you have a +20 bonus, that represents 100% of a possible d20 roll. Even a +15 bonus represents 75% -- a huge reduction of random variance, and thus a corresponding reduction in 'hit chance' on difficult rolls, and 'miss chance' on easy ones.

These are colossal fixed modifiers to a random roll. At 20th level, that means a BAB of 20 represents a +100% bonus to any die roll, for example -- and that's without strength modifiers, magic item bonuses, etc. etc.

Is part of the 'swinginess' of high level play -- the tendency of those who win initiative to win, for example -- due to the excessive size of the fixed modifiers making the random roll pretty much trivial? The exploding fixed modifiers seem to help create a binary situation in which some rolls are simply impossible, while others are inevitable. And this problem seems to me to be traceable, at least in large part, to the huge size of fixed modifiers relative to the random part of the roll.

Another way to look at it is that the d20 roll becomes a far lesser part of the total roll, percentage-wise. For example, when there is +5 fixed modifier, the d20 roll accounts for 80% of the possible range of numbers. Up it to a +40 fixed modifier, and the d20 roll is only 33% of the possible range of numbers.

What if the progression for stuff like BAB didn't go from +1 to +20, but stopped at +5 and then added iterative attacks? For example, a progression like +1, +2, +3, +4, +5, +5/+1, +5/+2, +5/+3, +5/+4, +5/+5, +5/+5/+1, etc., up to a maximum of +5/+5/+5+/+5 at 20th level? And the game was recalibrated so that the d20 roll itself remained at least 50% of any total roll?

Just please lay off of WAR for once... pretty please? I know he's, like, the official artist of all Paizo products, but I'm really sick of his stuff. REALLY sick of it. Been a Paizo fan for too long, I guess.

I'll second this. Or at least persuade him to depict human feet differently -- he always shows them 4" long, 4" high, and basically triangular. I've never seen a foot that actually looks like that, and it's jarring.

I'm going to have to side with the "art covers are better" crowd on this one.

Those tome covers are a reverse of the 'trompe le oeil' (spelling) technique -- instead of looking like three-dimensional when they're actually 2-D, they end up looking a photo of a 3-D object clumsily put onto a 2-D surface. In short, I think they're fugly.

IMO, of course, but if you're collecting votes here, then add one more to the "art" ballot for me, please. ;)

I'm not trying to be disrespectful or anything, but this seems like a non-issue to me -- largely because the rules are necessarily finite, you can always find something to theoretically 'break.'

Because this is a game trying to simulate certain aspects of a fantastic world, rather than the actual world, there simply can never be rules for everything. It's impossible. The rules can only cover part of what happens or exists in the story. To expect them to do otherwise is unrealistic.

The rules do not state that there is a dungeon at a certain point for your characters to loot. They do not state that there is a town to sell your loot in. They do not provide the world at all -- they give you a mechanical framework for deciding conflict, the place where argument is most likely to occur over what happens in the story.

The DM provides the dungeon. The DM states that a town is nearby where you can sell your loot. THIS CONCEPT IS A BASIC PART OF THE RULES. Therefore, the DM can make you figure out a way to sell all that iron WITHOUT violating the RAW.

In other words, if you take the RAW as being the be-all and end-all, there will be no dungeon, no town, no world. The game will consist entirely of character generation, and the characters will then exist in a limbo.

The DM is the most crucial part of the equation, required for the game world to even exist -- and if he or she puts obstacles in the way of the players exploiting infinite wealth loopholes, then this is part of his/her expected function of world-builder and NPC-puppeteer, NOT a contradiction of RAW.

Since the NPCs who will die from this are window dressing anyway, I can't see it as being particularly overpowered.

Beside which, it sure the heck is a great story power -- something similar (on a colossal scale, with an extremely powerful sorcerer) showed up in a Gemmell novel once, and it was one of the most memorable scenes.

Just imagine the high priest of an evil god walking into the throne room of a king and the courtiers wilting around him as he stands there praying to his dread divinity. Superb for DMs! ;)

Dang, looking it over, the Pathfinder paladin is pretty lackluster. In fact, it's about as inspiring as a limp dishrag. Too bad, since I was hoping to be able to run a one-book game. *Sigh*

I have read indeed read the part that explained that to be one of their design goals. However, they are losing customers over this - I know several people who refuse to upgrade to Pathfinder precisely due to the power creep. Besides, many play core 3.5E only and if they were to upgrade to Pathfinder, their 3.5E adventures, based on challenges to 3.5E core power level would be out of sync.

If they're playing 3.5 core only, and they upgrade to Pathfinder, then they're no longer playing 3.5 core, but Pathfinder. This argument doesn't compute to me .... am I missing something?

I'm trying to find item slot affinities or any rules regarding them or creation of custom items. Or confirmation that 3.P beta does not include such rules (and therefore the appropriate reference is the SRD). Thanks for the help.

I searched the Beta PDF for "item creation" and found rules only for creating by-the-book items. I also searched for "item slot," "affinities," "affinity," etc., and found nothing. So I'm guessing that both of these are per the SRD. I could be wrong, however.

Although I'm not familiar with the original myths, I can confirm that Tolkein's elves don't sleep in the same way as humans or other creatures. In fact, Legolas was able to continue walking while in his dream state, and usually only remained in one place while 'sleeping' because his companions needed to rest.

It sure looks like an arrow shot through the back of her head to me. I mean its right next to the heading "Consequences of Delaying" :D

That would explain the slack-looking arms, too .... she's about 1/10 second from toppling bonelessly onto the ground. ;)

It's funny how most people don't think they're particularly evil, but quite a few think they're really, really good. Alignment is relative to the observer - how many bad guys really think they're evil?

From my experience of creeps in real life, probably quite a few. They may not feel that they're evil, but they sure do despise the "weakness" or "stupid sentimentality" of good people. At best, they're relativists, and quite often, they revel in what magnificent bastards they think their unscrupulousness or brutality makes them.

Perhaps the really vicious people you've known have been different from the ones I've experienced, but I don't think I've ever come across one who thought they were a good person. And if you think they don't know right from wrong -- wrong them, and see what they do to you ;).

No.

1. If you get rid of alignments, you'll have rewrite the system completely -- MORE than 4th edition did.

2. Alignments are useful in a dramatic and aesthetic sense. Endless shades of grey mush beating on each other for grubby, mercenary reasons just don't have the same resonance as a good old-fashioned good vs. evil struggle.

3. Some of us, including myself, think that there IS objective good and evil in the real world. I tend to think that curing someone's cancer and giving them a strawberry milkshake to boot would fall on the 'good' side, while kidnapping, torturing, and killing them would probably fall on the 'evil' side. So good and evil are as much a part of our world-view as say, light, air, or the ability to speak. Take 'em out of the game, and something BIG will be missing. Or rather, they'll be there, but everyone will be pretending they aren't.

So, again, the short form -- no.

As for your mission to not use any Chinese made products... good luck there also. Your 'American Made' automobile and many many other products which you consider made in the USA are often made 100% in foreign countries, many with human rights histories as bad as or worse than China.

Yep, I'm all too aware of that. Hence my addition of the caveat that I purchase American when possible, which is all too infrequently, considering how this country has had its productive capacity exported. But in this case, I referred to China because, well, Paizo's book is printed in China, and it therefore isn't supporting American families.

Your best bet for printing the beta is to have it printed and bound at Kinkos in B&W. They have a service where you submit the print job over the internet and pick it up at the office. This won't be an option with the final version though since I doubt the final will include the rights to reprint the rules.

Hm -- is that legal? I mean, Kinkos will be getting the payment -- while it's Paizo's product that they're printing for me. I don't approve, actually, of their printing it in China, but that doesn't mean that I want to steal something from them, either.

Maybe it would be best to just let the whole matter drop.

I recently downloaded a copy of Beta, and I like many of the features therein, after seeing the system as modified so far.

However, what's holding me back from buying a print copy (which is, technically, what I need to try to run an actual game with these rules) is the fact that the book is printed in China. I have an intense dislike for buying books made by People's Liberation Army sweatshops/slave factories, or anything else made in such a manner, for that matter. In fact, I've sworn to never buy something made in China again unless it's crucial to the health and wellbeing of someone in my family, and there's no American-made alternative.

So, is there any remote chance that Beta might appear on Lulu.com so that those of us who have qualms about such matters can purchase a print version through them?

Since this apparently didn't post the first time, I would like to request the cancellation of order #504956 and a refund of the payment for said order. Thank you very much!

I would like to cancel order #504956 for the Pathfinder RPG.

I received an e-mail months ago notifying me that this order had been cancelled. However, it was apparently not, and I was just charged for it, although the charges are still pending.

Thanks very much for your assistance!

Problem is, the straight fighter becomes less and less attractive the further on you go in levels. You go from "lethal damage dealer" at low levels to "meat shield" at mid levels and "pointless hanger-on of people who do everything else, including killing, far better than you do" at high levels.

Can anyone here guess that I'm a fan of the Book of Nine Swords? ;)

Just something interesting to think about ....

http://www.gamegrene.com/node/20?fro...ts_per_page=70

Odd how the 3rd edition, which is now hailed as a worthy successor to 1st and 2nd, was originally loathed in exactly the same terms. How's this for a bit of deja vu? --

Odd, as a side note, that the word "ethnic" seemingly only applies to non-whites nowadays.

Methought that "Caucasian" was an ethnicity.

Well, I wavered back and forth for a while, and there are still things that I'm going to heavily houserule for 4th (specifically, non-combat skills -- I want more of them, not less). But some things have finally gotten to me and I'm off.

1. Upper levels still look hellish in Pathfinder. Since I usually DM, the idea of suffering through all those modifiers and cross-references for a monster that's going to die anyway is just too much.

2. The mess of iterative attacks is still there. Ugh.

3. Spellcasters are still going to reduce the melee classes to sidekicks. And worse, the fighter is still as boring to play as a brick. "I miss, I hit, I miss, I hit." Yech.

4. Vancian casting is still haunting the scene. Enough said on that point.

5. Exception-based design is a lot better than the 'rules depict everything' design, IMO. I like the idea that there might be non-human magical traditions which can cast spells that humans can't -- and that can't cast spells which humans can -- for example. And it's damn fast to whip up an opponent, too.

6. And this is the real kicker that finally pushed me over the edge -- 4th edition, it turns out, is being printed in the U.S., while Pathfinder is being printed in China. If given a choice, I will support a company which supports American families rather than the People's Liberation Army slave-labor sweatshop factories.

Have fun with Pathfinder.

Probably because the current GSL grants WotC essentially unlimited power over your IP, including the ability to declare you in violation at any moment simply by sending you letter saying that you are, change the terms of the contract at will without needing to notify you or give you any kind of 'out,' and/or sue you with the proviso that regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit, you have to pay their legal costs.

I'd say that's a fairly good reason right there.

Adding Robert Brambley's ideas from this thread --

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/feedback/alpha3/racesClasses/tHINKTANKFighters

-- as the Fighter mechanics for Pathfinder.

This might be a crazy idea, but bear with me for a second. :)

What if monsters currently with DR were to have their hit points doubled, and then given a specific vulnerability. The weapon they were vulnerable to would deal double damage on a successful hit.

In this way, they would be precisely as tough to kill for someone with the appropriate weapon (that is, doing 5 damage per blow to a 50-hp monster is the same as doing 10 damage per blow to a 100-hp monster). That way, they wouldn't be weakened.

However, this way the golf bag wouldn't be necessary. It would become twice as hard to kill a monster with a specific vulnerability like this without using the proper weapons, but it would be possible. The optimal choice would still be the appropriate weapon, but it would no longer be the ONLY choice.

Thus, you would have monsters which 1) still had a unique vulnerability to certain rare weapons, without making them any weaker, and 2) you would remove the pressing need for the golf bag of different weaponry, since they can still be killed by ordinary weapons, just that they're a lot more dangerous if you don't have the proper weapon.

Thoughts?

I really like the way you've set that up, Robert. I hope that Paizo does indeed take note. Even if they don't, I will probably incorporate these rules into my game as a house rule.

Is there any chance that we might get a Paizo person in this thread to comment on whether there's any chance of something like this being included in the rules?

KO-shay is, indeed, authoritative.

Sounds like things are going well for you already, and you probably don't need my leguminous advice ... however, if anyone keeps up the wisecracking and etc., you might want to rule that anything that isn't just general description of what the character does is something that the character says. If what the character says is totally out of context for the game, then NPCs will start to think that the character is insane, or speaking in riddles/cant, and treat them accordingly. That's what I do when things start getting out of control. "The Troll King hears you joking about something called a 'helicopter' and begins to wonder if this is some strange magical item whose location he can torture out of you ...." ;-)