Charlie Brooks's page

I think I'd prefer a spell points system, but it's not something I'm desperately looking for in Pathfinder.

Overall, I think it's probably best for Pathfinder not to deviate too far from what's gotten them so much success in future versions of the game. There's a reason why the game is so popular, and the mechanics, clunky as they can be sometimes, are a part of that reason.

The point I made in my post was that when that couple was introduced it hardly raised an eyebrow for me at all... its when the second gay couple was introduced as main NPC's (and those are the only two prominent relationships thus far, no?), THAT'S when it started to feel both forced and little excessive.

I guess I'm still not quite in agreement. Maybe my mind will change as the adventure path unfolds, but it doesn't necessarily strike me as a bad thing to turn social norms on their head once in a while. And having a second gay couple in there once in a while helps to avoid the perception that there's a token couple just tossed in there to meet some arbitrary quota.

My long and rambling thoughts on the subject

I really don't think it's a big deal. If you don't like it, just change Anevia's backstory slightly.

I don't like that people are considering it to be Paizo ramming some sort of agenda down people's throats. There are transgender gamers out there - should they never have an NPC who has a similar identity without it being considered part of some agenda?

About 1 in 10 people in the real world is gay, transgender, questioning, or has a similar nonconventional sexual identity. I doubt that Paizo's products even approach that number thus far. As far as I know, Anevia is the first transgender NPC introduced in the line. I don't think that's excessive at all.

@Mark Hoover

That's the first time I see someone use the Pathfinder pantheon outside Golarion.

I am honestly surprised about such, but I'm glad it works out for you and the group.

I know a couple of people who use the Golarion pantheon for their settings because they don't want to bother writing up their own pantheon.

Honestly, if I didn't play in a setting that predated the Core Rulebook, I might well have snagged the default pantheon for my campaign world, too.

I'm in no hurry for a revision, but if we're just talking about what we'd like Pathfinder to look like, my thoughts would be something like this:

-Cut down on the number of situational bonuses (i.e., "+2 to save versus poisons," "+1 to Perception checks based on hearing," "+2 to Spellcraft checks made to identify magic items"). Don't eliminate them - just ask whether something really needs to be situational or not. (i.e., Could "+2 to save versus poison" be replaced by "+1 to Fortitude saves"?)

-Toss the Fly skill and find another way to handle flight in combat.

-Merge Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft.

-Get rid of encumbrance or find a simpler way to track it. Saves me the trouble of having to handwave it away.

-Smooth out attacks of opportunity a bit more.

-Decrease the need for items that just give a magical plus to something. Maybe magic weapons only get a +1 or +2 and then any more powerful weapons would be represented through special properties. Lower save DCs so cloaks of resistance aren't a necessity. Maybe add a defense bonus that rises with level so rings of protection don't need to be a thing. Reduce the need for these items so they're nice to have but aren't needed by those who would rather use their item slots for something more interesting.

-Move prestige classes to an Advanced Player's Guide revision or something. They're cool, but not necessarily needed in the core anymore.

-Change the presentation somewhat, taking a cue from the Beginner's Box where possible.

That is, of course, just stuff that would fit my gaming preferences. I'm not in a hurry for a new edition, but when there is one I hope it will be more tweaks and changes rather than rebuilding the game from the ground up.

To each their own, but I've run my home setting in Pathfinder for years now with no issues. Running a Pathfinder game with a homebrew setting is no harder than running a D&D game with a homebrew setting.

At the request of the rest of the group, one of the PCs in my campaign recently bought a horse for overland travel. She initially didn't want to buy it, but now she's become very attached to the steed. However, we're at 13th level, so area attacks tend to be a huge danger to the poor thing.

Because the player is so attached to her horse and the damage is only going to get higher, I'm thinking of revealing that the horse is actually an intelligent creature with class levels. I'm thinking maybe it was awakened by a druid or is a polymorphed pegasus or unicorn. However, that still leaves me with the need to explain how such a creature wound up on the market for only 75 gold pieces. Obviously it was hiding its true nature, and has now grown close enough to the PC to reveal itself.

Any suggestions for a cool backstory that I can give to this horse for my next session? I'm sure the player will get a kick from the revelation.

Charlie Brooks wrote:

While you could argue that you an artist can interpret the panels in many different ways, it's also worth noting that DC editorial has been extremely narrow-minded in their interpretation of how things should be as of late.

For example, editorial mandate has stated that Batman never sits down. When Paul Jenkins wrote a scene where Batman was sitting down, he was told he didn't understand the character.

Source? I'm curious to know where this came from.

Link from Bleeding Cool

Associated quote from Paul Jenkins:

I would like to relay an editorial comment that I received near the end of my time writing the Dark Knight New 52 series. In one scene, I had written that Batman is sitting on a rooftop during an intense conversation, close to a person who has been injured. The editorial comment: “We’re not sure you are “getting” the character because it’s common knowledge that Batman never sits down.” This, mind you, after I had made it clear I was not going to rewrite material for the umpteenth time after it had already been approved.

Perhaps Jenkins is being disingenuous with his retelling of the situation, but it's also worth noting that he is but one of many creators who have left DC citing such editorial interference.

While you could argue that you an artist can interpret the panels in many different ways, it's also worth noting that DC editorial has been extremely narrow-minded in their interpretation of how things should be as of late.

For example, editorial mandate has stated that Batman never sits down. When Paul Jenkins wrote a scene where Batman was sitting down, he was told he didn't understand the character.

With that in mind, I think there's probably a narrow subset of what DC is looking for in this contest.

Whedon's got a point. However, I think that one thing Empire shows is that if you are a good enough film, you can get away with committing that kind of sin.

Whedon's made his own share of mistakes, but I don't see anywhere in the article where he claims to blameless as a filmmaker. He can recognize his own mistakes while pointing out his issues with other franchises at the same time.

Were the different experience level progressions supposed to be in the interest of balance?

I thought they were just how the early designers thought the different classes 'should' progress, not an attempt to make the weaker classes level faster than the stronger. (If it was a balance attempt they seem to have had a peculiar view of which classes were 'weak').

I honestly don't know what the thought process behind the XP charts was.

Magic-users progressed incredibly slowly at first, when they were at their weakest and least useful to the group. Then, when they reached high levels and became dominating in battles, they progressed faster than fighters. At around 9th level a fighter would be a full two levels behind a magic-user with the same amount of XP.

There was also the situation where the XP needed to advance at high levels flattened out but monster XP kept increasing for higher-level challenges. The result was that you actually advanced much faster through the levels as you got higher level, especially if you used the 1 gp = 1 XP rule.

I don't see how there's any real race to "win" GenCon. I'm sure that Paizo will do plenty of business next year even with 5th edition taking most of the press.

And I'll agree with everybody else who wants WotC to succeed with this edition of the game. It will be especially nice if they follow through with their goal of general compatibility, since that will mean that I can yank anything nice I see in 5th edition and port it over to my Pathfinder game.

Off the top of my head, some of the race/class dependent things are:

All of those are independent of what kit you choose, which makes mechanical different but doesn't affect play beyond that.

That's all in Baldur's Gate II. The story doesn't really split in the first game, except that you need a thief in your party for a certain set of quests in Baldur's Gate and good/evil-aligned NPCs will leave your party if your actions stray too far toward the other alignment spectrum.

There is some equipment that translates from a saved Baldur's Gate game to Baldur's Gate II...

At the time it came out, I personally didn't care for Baldur's Gate I and made a new character for II. Then, when I got about halfway through II and realized how awesome the whole saga was, I went back and started up the first game with the intention of playing one character from the beginning on.

Unfortunately, the Enhanced Edition has hit a pretty big roadblock due to some issue between Overhaul Games and Atari. Overhaul has been forced to stop working on it due either to Atari's bankruptcy problems or a royalties issue, which means that the latest patch and the sequel itself is in jeopardy.

Although I guess it is worth noting that you can apparently import your Enhanced Edition character into vanilla Baldur's Gate II as long as you aren't using one of the new kits like the shadowdancer or dragon disciple.

I might be of a minority opinion, but I actually felt that Nick Fury (as he exists in the mainstream Marvel Universe) was one of the few white characters whose race was integral to the character. This was only due to historical precedent, since Fury began as Sergeant Fury of the Howling Commandos in World War II and I'm pretty sure that due to the time period a black character wouldn't have been able to be in that position.

Then again, it is worth noting that the Howling Commandos did have a black character on board when the comic came out, and this was an intentionally historically inaccurate move by Lee and Kirby.

Regardless, I guess it's a moot point, since the Sam Jackson Fury isn't the Nick Fury from mainstream comics*. Even ignoring the World War II backstory, he doesn't have the same attitude or demeanor as classic Fury. He does, however, work pretty well within the movies he's in. Thankfully, he's not really the Ultimate Nick Fury either, since he has yet to be that morally repugnant. He's his own incarnation of the character, and I think he's done a pretty good job with that incarnation so far.

*(Well, he technically is now, since old Nick Fury has been replaced by Nick Fury, Jr., who is modeled after the movie version of the character.)

Not htat familiar with BP myself, but which of the two wrote the bit about Wakanda having the cure to cancer, and Black Panther basically tells the world "No, you can't have it."

That was Hudlin.

Hudlin also wrote an alternate universe tale called "Black to the Future" (no, I am not kidding, and yes, Family Guy did come up with that title first) in which the Avengers try to take over the world because they're all racist and the Black Panther saves the world by forcing America to make him President.

If there is anything to be learned from Hudlin's time on the title, it is that racism goes both ways and it is always terrible.

On topic, I don't know the actor, but to me, there'd have to be a heck of a good actor for a 'race lift' (Yes, MCD was a heck of a good actor in Daredevil.)

I think the crux of the argument is right here. The problem isn't so much that people dismissed the idea of Glover as Spider-Man based on his acting strengths, but that a lot of folks didn't even want to see him considered based on his race.

(And yeah, Michael Clarke Duncan ruled as the Kingpin. It's a shame his talents were wasted in that movie.)

Uh, no, I did not say that, so your entire rant is based on your own wrong impression of what I said. I just hated that they killed Peter Parker over there, because he was a better character than his 616 version.

I agree with this. When they announced the death of Ultimate Peter Parker, my reaction was, "They're killing the wrong one." The Ultimate Universe had a Parker who was heroic, while the mainstream Marvel Universe has a self-centered manchild who I think has been pretty unlikeable and unheroic for almost a decade now.

Also, I personally did support Priest's Black Panther. It's a damned shame that he was replaced by Hudlin and I wish Priest would write for Marvel again, he was excellent.

Priest's Black Panther was awesome. Hudlin's, on the other hand is perfect to bring up in a conversation about nerds and racism, because it's one of the most racist things that mainstream comics has seen since the Silver Age.

I think he's got a point. There were a lot of ignorant comments on the matter. Given the outrage that already existed when they made the Kingpin black in the Daredevil movie (and that later came about when they made Perry White black in the Superman movie), the notion that nerds are some super-enlightened group that doesn't discriminate is laughable.

That the people who get enraged at turning a white character black didn't bat an eye when Bane was played by a white guy in the Batman movie is even more telling.

Honestly, there are some characters whose race is so integral that it should not be changed. For example, I wouldn't want to see Luke Cage played by a Chinese guy. However, those characters are fewer and farther between than some people think.

The thing with most of the white male superheroes is that they were white and male mostly because that was the assumed default in the 1960s (and, honestly, is still the assumed default in the industry today). For most characters, their race can be changed without affecting the rest of the character. If you ask people who Peter Parker is as a character, you'll get a lot of answers, but almost nobody will say, "Caucasian." Peter is an everyman, and that everyman can be just about any race out there, especially in a setting as diverse as New York.

With all that said, I do think that it's worth noting that the reaction to Glover was not necessarily indicative of the majority of nerds. The Internet is not the place to gauge majority reactions, and a vocal minority should not be assumed to be indicative of nerd culture in general.

But yeah, racism is still totally a problem in our society, and there are plenty of racist nerds out there.

I guess it's worth mentioning that the United States and several other first world countries have the capability of solving a lot of the problems in our real world, and yet those problems continue to exist.

If you're going to attempt to apply realism to a fantasy setting in this regard, it's probably good to look into why our real world is not some sparkling utopia. Presumably, many of those same hurdles would exist for this hypothetical high-magic setting.

Here's the thing that I think would prevent most resurrection spells from becoming common in Pathfinder:

"The subject's soul must be free and willing to return."

I imagine that about 99% of people who die wouldn't meet that qualification.

If you've lived a good life, you go to heaven, which is a damned sight better than living in a world where the things that will try to kill you or make your life miserable sometimes literally include the floors, ceiling, and air.

If you've lived a bad life, I'm doubting that folks like Asmodeus are going to let your soul walk out of Hell just because some 9th level priest waved a diamond over your corpse.

Played by the book, I think resurrection spells would be a waste of money for most people.

Is there anything wrong with just letting D&D have its day? I'm betting that Pathfinder is successful enough that Paizo probably doesn't need to worry about what D&D is doing.

Moreover, the next edition of D&D looks like it's shaping up in a way that will make it easy to convert adventures to Pathfinder and vice-versa. If that's the case, I hope the game succeeds, and I imagine a strong D&D brand could mean good things for Pathfinder, since the adventures and world material Paizo produces could then be used by both Pathfinder and D&D players.

Overall, Paizo is probably best sticking to their own (very successful) business plan, and I for one hope that the next edition of D&D does very well. I couldn't care less whether I'm playing the world's best-selling RPG or the 2nd best-selling RPG. Hopefully, both will be fun.

I give XP after each encounter.

I don't think I'm going to run a game anytime soon that does away with XP, since my players like the accumulation, seeing how far till the next level, et cetera.

Haven't seen the film yet (and probably won't for a while), but...

Charlie Brooks wrote:

Yep, put me in the boat of folks who were a fan of Coulson before he died. His appearances in Iron Man 2, Thor, and especially the short films made him very endearing.

Short films?

There were a couple little segments on some Blu Ray releases that served as extra features. They're now on YouTube somewhere, I would imagine. The two I know of that had Coulson in it were "The Consultant" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the way to Thor's Hammer." The latter gives him a pretty badass moment.

Yep, put me in the boat of folks who were a fan of Coulson before he died. His appearances in Iron Man 2, Thor, and especially the short films made him very endearing.

I think Hasbro has screwed D&D pretty hard over the years thanks in large part to unrealistic sales expectations for the core game, but I'd still rather the film rights be in their hands than with the guys responsible for the last three films.

I'm not sure I see how a rules set is integral to the success of WotC's novel lines. WotC already has a pretty successful Magic: the Gathering line that doesn't use a lot of the card game's rules beyond a name and description. Other companies, most notable the comics industry, have kept continuing lines with multiple authors going for years with a good level of success. And a D&D novel line would be easier to manage than a comics line in terms of consistency since there would be fewer titles and a smaller creative team involved.

If anything, I think constantly having to alter the fundamentals of the novel line to synch up with new editions is a flaw. If 5e accomplishes what it wants to, it should be much easier for authors to do what they want without having to worry about the constraints of the D&D rules and setting.

This, pretty much. If you are not goint to update the timeline, why are you even going to release a new campaign setting book? To update few spells, magic items and feats we got in there?

While it's still probably a while before a new campaign setting guide is released, I would be surprised if there weren't at least some updates in a hypothetical new version.

For example, Shattered Star has already effectively added some things to canon, and I'd expect those to make it in.

A cool possibility, which could even be a fan project, would be to have a web document available that marks what canon changes are reflective of which adventures. That way, it could be easy to isolate and edit things that don't mesh with individual campaigns.

The big thing that Golarion has in its favor regarding any future updates is that there hasn't been a world-breaking event that changes the very nature of the setting. By comparison to other settings, the Realms had the Time of Troubles and the Spellplague (and a million other things), Greyhawk had the Greyhawk Wars, Dark Sun had the Prism Pentad, and so on. If Golarion gets a future update, people can replace names of rulers or certain settlements easily enough, but they thankfully won't have to redraft an entire pantheon of gods or change the very nature of the setting itself.

I guess the question is how deep the canonical changes you want are.

Do they have to be centered around the adventure paths? For example, if the novels were made canon but not the adventure paths, would that satisfy folks?

There's also the fact that Shattered Star, and to a lesser extent Jade Regent, do have an advance in continuity, with some adventure path outcomes assumed (admittedly, with ways to get around those assumptions if you didn't play that way). If that's what folks are looking for, it might be a good idea to voice your support for Shatter Star if you haven't already done so.

While it's all well and good to say that a GM can ignore canon here and there, I think it really depends on how Paizo implements future canon. If newly printed products assume certain things and then build off those assumptions, those products become less useful as purchases.

Example: The Forgotten Realms Time of Troubles. Big event, lots of people didn't like it. There's the whole line of, "You can just say that in your Realms it didn't happen." Except throughout the life of the 2nd edition Realms, the Time of Troubles was not only assumed to have happened, but major parts of adventures, supplements, and novels were build around that assumption. If you didn't want the Realms to have suffered through the Time of Troubles, then you had no reason to buy a large number of products in the 2nd edition era.

Anybody can say, "Events X and Y did/didn't happen in my setting." Paizo's challenge if they were to advance the canon based on possible endings to the Adventure Paths is that future products based on those assumptions become less useful to certain groups. If they ever did advance the timeline, they would have to be careful to do so in a way that doesn't invalidate future products for those who aren't following or which makes an advance that is so popular that the number of new people coming on board outweighs those who might jump ship.

Is it any worse than having to be a Wizard to cast spells from a spellbook?

Just a guess, but I'm going to bet that A LOT more players find casting spells cooler than picking locks.

For games that have a heavy lock-picking/trap-finding/problem-solving element to them, the traditional thief class doesn't need to be made more interesting. The question is how many people actually find those elements interesting. I'm betting the shift from the thief to the rogue in the last couple of editions has a lot to do with the average style of play more than an orchestrated attempt to make every class combat-oriented.

Remember that the thief class wasn't even in the original game until the first supplement got released. Originally anybody could try to pick a lock, find a trap, or move silently. The thief emerged because the game was very focused on dungeon-crawling and avoiding hazards. Old modules were maybe about 50% or more checking for traps and searching for secret doors. While that's still a popular style of play, the game has changed to become more action-oriented and less hazard-focused.

Unless the next edition is going to go back to the slower-paced exploration style of dungeoneering, it's probably best to give the rogue something else to do that is going to mesh with what most players will want.

I'd love to see a Paizo version of the Deck of Encounters from 2nd edition AD&D. The problem with the deck was that a lot of the encounters were rubbish, but the general idea was awesome (which is true of most 2nd edition products, it seems). With Paizo's level of quality, such a deck would be an awesome thing to enhance a game.

Bad news is that they're anticipating a delay to Spring 2015. Good news is that this is down to the sheer amount of extra work they can put into the game thanks to exceeding their planned appeal by almost 400% :)

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that they can take all the time they need. I've seen a lot of potentially awesome computer RPGs come out half-baked because of overly restrictive deadlines (Neverwinter Nights 2 or heck, any of the Obsidian RPGs, I'm looking at you). I'd rather have to wait longer for something that is awesome than get it sooner but have it be less than it could be.

I would love a closer adaptation of the first Oz novel. However, that would probably be a financial flop since parents would be shocked by some of the stuff that makes it on the screen and would compare it unfavorably to the 1939 classic.

In terms of the Class Challenge books, though, you might want to try the one on one adventures by Expeditious Retreat Press. They're designed with one player of a particular class in mind and have been converted over to Pathfinder.

I've been running the Night Below boxed set for a while. In terms of cost, consider the contents of this set:

-3 adventure booklets of 64 pages each.
-6 large poster maps, double-sided and in full color.
-An 8-page monster booklet
-8 double-sided DM reference cards in full cover and with glossy fronts.
-16 pages of player handouts

The price of the boxed set, I believe, was $30. That's $10 more than what the Player's Handbook sold for. Page count is pretty similar, but the maps and extras, not to mention the cost to assemble the box and put everything in place, probably put the cost higher than the Player's Handbook to create. And Night Below sold much less than the Player's Handbook, so it couldn't be ordered in as high a number.

That's not even mentioning that Paizo's standards of quality are much higher than mid-90s TSR's. While the Night Below set seemed great in the 1990s, if Paizo were to put out something of similar quality it would be a disappointment.

While I am still buying back issue compilations from Marvel and DC, I have largely stopped buying recent releases from the big two for a few reasons.

First, the stories don't feel organic to me anymore. While retcons and reboots are certainly nothing new, there was a point in time where a new writer would build from what came before at least to an extent. Now whenever a book gets a creative team, it feels like almost everything that came before gets tossed by the wayside so we can have yet another "bold new direction."

Example of that:

Second, there are not many heroes who are heroic to me anymore. Marvel and DC have realized that heroes fighting heroes sells better than heroes fighting villains, and the end result is garbage like Civil War, Avengers versus X-Men, and so on where the heroes all act like dicks instead of guys I can admire.

Third, mainstream comics have gotten really dreary lately. I realize this is likely a fad that will pass just like the 90s did, but I'm getting less of a feeling of fun in stories lately. (Yes, this is purely personal and not an attempt to say that comics such now.)

For example,

I think that dark stuff has its place in comics, but it's a situation where the big companies have realized what sells and only want to do that stuff now. When Captain Marvel is no longer a goody-good but rather a guy who charges people money for saving them, I realize that it's time for me to take a break from comics for a bit.

Paizo included - from inbreeding ogres, to anti-halfling racism, to vengeful sex goddesses, Golarion, as published, has plenty of examples of adult materials and themes. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Each game table can edit and tweak as necessary to match the table's sensibilities.

The last line is pretty key. For example, my wife has told me in no uncertain terms that any game she is in that has a child killed in-game will result in her walking away from the table. (This came up when I mentioned that I had planned a goblin encounter where such a thing happened, but wisely chose to nix it.)

In terms of bad and sexist things happening to PCs, I usually take the prerogative that it should be limited to backstory if it is included at all. If a player wants to have their PC be a victim of sexual assault for whatever reason, that's one thing. Having it portrayed in game, whether the PC is male or female, is something I hope never to do. (I did have one PC once who tried to rape an NPC. It's the only time I've killed a character outright via GM fiat and ended the game. Others might have handled it more gracefully than that.)

For those saying they hope the horror stories are relics of an earlier, less enlightened time, I'm not sure if you're talking about my horror stories or the other women's here, but if it's mine, to be clear: I've been in the game industry for five years. All the stuff I talked about happened in the last five years. Which is part of the reason I did the interview.

That's quite a shame.

Some of these stories are really mind-boggling. I hope they are not that widespread.

Hopefully, as the gaming population has grown up some, we have applied more common sense to these situations. Women have to deal with sexism and objectification every day in real life - unless they specifically ask for that challenge in the game, why would they want those problems to follow them into fantasy escapism?

Is there any word on whether there will be guidelines for using this adventure path without the Mythic rules?

I assume that there will be Mythic stuff incorporated into the books and am not worried about doing some modification. But I'm also finishing up a campaign arc that could potentially lead into something like this adventure path but would be for higher-level characters. Are there any guidelines out there for how high-level PCs can be balanced against Mythic encounters?

Honestly, while there are a lot of niggling things here and there, most of the reason I never got on board with 4th edition was because of the focus on tactical combat. That's not the way I like to play, and nothing in 4th edition ever indicated to me that the game was going to be something where I was the target audience.

4e: good game, not for me.

LazarX wrote:

There isn't a thing about this game that isn't optional. Everything is optional, depending on your GM.

Of course, but certain parts of the game are still assumed to be part of the core experience, such as skills, feats, spells, armor class, hit points, etc. A GM always has the option of removing or tweaking those rules but they're still considered to be part of the core game by the gaming community as a whole. Labeling something as optional removes any confusion that inclusion of the optional subsystem might result in.

I always sort of assumed that anything not in the Core Rulebook was considered optional.

Beyond that, if a player isn't going to accept the "It's your game" rule at the very beginning of the Core Rulebook or the "Consult with your GM before picking one of these options" advice put into the Advanced Player's Guide, I don't know that specifically labeling something as optional is really going to sway their opinions.

In almost every form of fiction, the quest for immortality is almost always seen as a bad thing. Even if good guys are momentarily tempted, the act of cheating death is usually seen as a bad thing that is against the natural order.

That said, immortality can be offered by a divine being or pushed onto a character in some way so that individual can continue being a force against evil. The Forgotten Realms has the Chosen of Mystra, which fits into that mold to an extent (although originally Elminster was just a dude who drank a bunch of potions of longevity).

I see retraining rules as less of a min/maxing thing and more of a way to get your character to fit the way you imagine him and/or to make up for choices that turn out to be wasted later on.

Example of the former: "I took Perform (act) early on because I thought it would fit my character, but it turns out that he has never used it and now plays like a guy who would be uncomfortable on stage. Can I switch it out for something he does use, like Diplomacy?"

Example of the latter: "I took a martial weapon proficiency for my wizard because I wanted him to have a sword. Eight levels later I decide that I want to pursue becoming an eldritch knight. Since taking a level of fighter gives me martial weapon proficiencies, can I use the feat I spent on Martial Weapon Profiency (longsword) for something else now?"

Another advantage to a retraining system is that novice players aren't punished for making bad choices overall. "I took the Acrobatic feat for my paladin because I thought it sounded cool, but it is an utter waste of a feat for me. Can I change that out for something that is remotely useful?"

For a parenting blog contest, I put together a video discussing being a nerdy parent and what that means in trying to raise a child. So far my year and a half old son can identify the Incredible Hulk in a comic book and is getting a good grasp of some of my other nerdiness. I'm going to hold off on introducing Pathfinder until he can at least talk.

In a bit of shameless self-promotion, my video is right here (Charlie Brooks, of course). It's currently in the midst of a contest, so vote for it if you like.

Anyone else have some nerdy parent stories? As I'm still a bit new to this whole parenting thing, I'd love to hear what I might have in store.

Maybe I've been lucky, but I've been voting on and off throughout the day and have seen mostly items that have merit. Many of them need improvement here and there, but I haven't seen too many that are total duds.

The explanation for The Hobbit has already been given. As for the Fellowship, there are two reasons given.

First is that Sauron would have seen them coming. The only reason the eagles were able to get into Mordor at the very end was because Sauron's forces were scattered.

Second is that nobody on Middle-Earth would have had the willpower to actually toss the ring into Mount Doom. Sauron's will at that point got so strong that even Frodo couldn't do it - Gollum wound up inadvertently forcing him to. So if you have an eagle get there, you'd ultimately wind up with an eagle corrupted by the ring.

Somewhere in his notes, Tolkien wrote a bunch of what-if scenarios involving others holding the ring at Mount Doom, including Frodo if Gollum hadn't been there and Gandalf himself. None of them ended happily for the heroes.

Between Batgirl and Firestorm, I'm starting to worry that perhaps Gail has lost some of her old magic.

Given the current state of DC, I'd give Simone the benefit of the doubt here. It seems that there is a lot of editorial interference everywhere, and I wouldn't doubt that said interference might have hampered her writing. I find that theory to be more realistic than the notion that she went from the heights we saw in Secret Six to the lows of Batgirl practically overnight.

Really, the easiest way to write a strong female character is to focus on just writing a strong character in general that happens to be female. There's no specific reason that many of the strong male characters in fiction couldn't have been women instead.

A more challenging approach would be what I call the Wonder Woman approach. When the character of Wonder Woman was created, it was an attempt by William Moulton Marston to show women that the feminine qualities that were looked down upon in that time period could be positives. Whether Wonder Woman succeeded in that goal is up to debate, but I've always been kind of interested in female characters that take traditionally feminine traits, such as compassion and a maternal instinct, and turn them into the key to success in a story.

(Note: the doesn't include a woman just using sex appeal to get by, since that turns her less into a strong female character and more into an object of desire for male audiences.)