Chief Cook and Bottlewasher's page

1) I'm not sure how depth perception would work with vertically aligned eyes.

Exactly the same: you need two view points to make a triangle with the object in order to estimate the depth. there's nothing special about them being horizontal.

Else, for starters, you'd get confused lying on your side :)

For brilliant observational skills and zero tact, try BBC Sherlock :

Sherlock and Molly

He's trying to be helpful here (He's just said her new boyfriend is gay)

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

Referring to vampires, have you seen any of the BBC series 'Being Human'? Or the American version (which I haven't seen)? If so. what did you think?

I haven't. Mostly because it set off my "WARNING—NOT YOUR KIND OF VAMPIRES!" alert.

True Blood would have done the same, but since it's HBO, I knew that would have been a false alarm. (AKA: Vampires need to be super violent and/or super sexy. HBO knows how to do that.)

Oh, the BBC vampires, when the blood addiction won out, were definitely super violent. They're trying to fight it, not necessarily succeeding

And based on the reactions of some women in my proximity, the actor who plays the vampire part of the leading trio definitely fits the super sexy criteria.

Yes, Aidan Turner, also the dwarf Kili in the Hobbit

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

Referring to vampires, have you seen any of the BBC series 'Being Human'? Or the American version (which I haven't seen)? If so. what did you think?

I haven't. Mostly because it set off my "WARNING—NOT YOUR KIND OF VAMPIRES!" alert.

True Blood would have done the same, but since it's HBO, I knew that would have been a false alarm. (AKA: Vampires need to be super violent and/or super sexy. HBO knows how to do that.)

Oh, the BBC vampires, when the blood addiction won out, were definitely super violent. They're trying to fight it, not necessarily succeeding

Voyd211 wrote:

Is it possible for liches, raveners, graveknights, etc. to be good?

Mainly because in the campaign I'm writing, the mission-giver for good characters is an LG kobold lich... granted, you would never know he's a lich by looking at him, he's kept his body in very good shape. He's also the final boss for evil players, as a Lv30 wizard. (reason for missions: He's out of the country for various reasons)

Meanwhile, one of the evil players' bosses is an LN strix graveknight rogue. He's the kingdom's chief of law enforcement, and is Lv19.

It's possible, but it's very rare, to the point that if one were to say, "No, it's not possible," they'd mostly be right.

If it were to happen, I'd probably veto it unless the author doing so REALLY impressed me with their writing chops and skill at presenting such a unique character.

That goes out the window, of course, for home campaigns; you can do whatever you want to do in your games.

But for Golarion... my opinion is that undead are bad guys, and each one we publish that's not evil slowly erodes their status of bad guys. I'm not a fan of stories where undead are presented as anything but evil, with the rare exception (and 75% of the time, those exceptions are ghosts, the remaining 24.5% of the time they're vampires like the non-evil vampires from Near Dark or True Blood... NOT Twilight, which I would hold up as an example of what I'm trying to avoid.)

Referring to vampires, have you seen any of the BBC series 'Being Human'? Or the American version (which I haven't seen)? If so. what did you think?

Brandon Hodge wrote:

Given that Paizo is trying to market these APs to a HUGE audience and please everyone at once, the GM has to shoulder some of that responsibility of tying it all together. And given the random acts of violence that are the tendency of the murderous hobos known as PCs, relying on a recurring villain or even helpful NPC can be a tough call when a later writer assumes they'll survive another writer's work, but your main BBEG eats a dagger to the face in Book Two during real play at the game table.

Please don't perpetuate that horrible "murderous hobos" meme, Brandon. It needs to die quickly ( preferably not via murderous hobo ).

I think the concern here should rather be "if the main villain is attacked by a PC in book two, why doesn't he break that PC in half like a twig?". ^^ The obvious solution is to put the BBEG behind virtual walls, always surround him with people, be they multitudes of guards or vulnerable innocent bystanders. Or have the BBEG not be totally obviously be the bad guy.

And if everything still manages to go pear-shaped, then the GM can always say "But there still is his boss" and use the stats from the last book for somebody with another name. Thanos/Darkseid, y'know.

Another solution is to for the main villain to level up through the AP as well.

Are you talking about NPCs carrying over between adventures and playing strong roles?

Foreshadowing?

Recurring villains?

Monster themes?

A recurring philosophy or organization or religion?

Something else entirely?

In the campaign I recall most clearly from when I used to play (nearly 30 years ago), we met the BBEG fairly early on, when she seemed a fairly minor boss. I guess the DM levelled her up through the campaign, because we mostly never felt that she was too powerful for us. But she kept escaping. A lot of the rest of the campaign was either us interfering with her plans or her interfering with ours. She was a nasty piece of work anyway (for example, wiping out an entire village to replace the residents with her own people, and a nasty pleasure in torture for the sake of it). Add in being captured and having to crew a ship for her, and thinking we'd caught her and having her escape with contingencies at least twice, by the end, we really, really hated her. I imagine my PC returning to her grave annually and dancing on it. If, as a GM, I could inspire that amount of hatred for the BBEG in my players, I'd be proud of myself. But it relied on actually meeting her. It wouldn't have worked with a shadowy background figure.

Of course, while there was probably only a very small risk of us killing her early on, with the number of APs sold there will be parties that get very lucky, so the NPC would need a believable failsafe means of escape every time.

The advantage for the DM was an irresistable hook - by the end, any news of her meant we dropped everything else we were doing and went after her.

It sounds comparable to being caught in an entangle spell, in which case you could look up the entangled condition, saving throws and penalties.

So we have:

Particular individual that keeps grabing young beautiful women for his own purpose each night.
Such individual is probably male and works alone. He doesn't seem to be a creature or person which prefer's gory death to much and I would say that Major's wife death is either unrelated or killed from specific reason.
He probably has some power to wield around with, which he uses to paralyze his targets but I wouldn't say he is physically powerful being.

I would say my answer is: Fey creature.

I would go with Story/behind a Story/behind a Story approach on this :X (crazed animal lord spirit?)

Major's wife may have been protecting her daughter

Somebody or something has disturbed the kobolds.

Not necessarily male - Count Elizabeth Bathory allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth.

Jessica Price wrote:

Junior editor? Since when does having language skills make you "weaker-minded" than having math skills?

Yet another lie mathies use to prop up the myth of their superiority.

One person saying this does not mean all mathies agree with it. I'm a mathy, and definitely don't. I don't think I'm superior either.

Are the missing people local, visiting friends or family, or strangers who were passing through?

Have there been any recent events such as forest or house fires, floods, earth tremors, or people disturbing old ruins or burial mounds?

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In Ultimate Equipment, Table 7.5 (Art objects) says they can generally be traded for full value, same as gemstones. Jewelry is included in the gemstones table

I'm running the Serpent's Skull APG, and have a sorcerer in the party who can use this power to Charm Person on nearly every creature the party comes across. (In a primarily jungle setting this ability is proving quite powerful--perhaps too much so). When used on an animal, should I require him to make a Handle Animal check when trying to "convince" the animal to act a certain way, or does the opposed charisma check take precedence? If the animal or magical beast has an intelligence of 2, should it naturally be more difficult to get the creature to behave in a certain way, because it lacks the ability to reason?

Charm Person only affects humanoids.

link.

You need charm animal or charm monster otherwise. Unless the sorcerer's using charm from some other source?

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

danielc wrote:

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

I suppose I disguise calibrating to the party under offering several choices. For example, a noticeboard might offer (among other options) a reward for clearing undead out of a crypt. Which I'm almost certain they'll ignore, as they haven't got a cleric.

I am curious, if they went for it anyway, would you try and work with them or would you just let the dice fall where they fall?

I really don't know. I think the reward giver might express doubts, make them convince him they can do it, perhaps temporarily offer them a tag-a-long lower-level cleric NPC, offer or at least sell them appropriate equipment. Maybe start with low-CR undead at the entrance, see what they can handle and go from there.

Who needs a Cleric to take out undead in a Crypt? A standard Party should have at least 2 Bludgeoning and 2 Slashing weapons to be used against the undead. The only thing they might need to go out of the way for might be some different Arrow Types.

Heck a club costs nothing to Craft and can be found anywhere. Heck let them use a broken table leg as a club.

P.S.: The roles I usually look at are:

-Front Liner
-Skill
-Support
-Magic
-Healing

These five can easily overlap and should overlap. And every class has something to offer inside them.

I'm a bit more concerned with the shadows and stuff that hurt strength etc, or haunts. I've not used much undead so I'm not familiar with them, and yes, I might find, if I started looking at them intending to build an encounter, that there isn't actually anything the party can't handle.

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

I suppose I disguise calibrating to the party under offering several choices. For example, a noticeboard might offer (among other options) a reward for clearing undead out of a crypt. Which I'm almost certain they'll ignore, as they haven't got a cleric.

I am curious, if they went for it anyway, would you try and work with them or would you just let the dice fall where they fall?

I really don't know. I think the reward giver might express doubts, make them convince him they can do it, perhaps temporarily offer them a tag-a-long lower-level cleric NPC, offer or at least sell them appropriate equipment. Maybe start with low-CR undead at the entrance, see what they can handle and go from there.

I suppose I disguise calibrating to the party under offering several choices. For example, a noticeboard might offer (among other options) a reward for clearing undead out of a crypt. Which I'm almost certain they'll ignore, as they haven't got a cleric.

Index cards here

The geis (geas? the spelling's not consistant) of celtic mythology might be worth a look at:

For example (from wiki)

Cú Chulainn's geasa included a ban against eating dog meat, but in early Ireland there was a powerful general taboo against refusing hospitality, so when an old crone offers him a meal of dog meat, he has no choice to break his geis. In this way he is spiritually weakened for the fight ahead of him.

Of course, as far as I know, all the stories involving geasa have the hero breaking them for one reason or another.

Find out what sort of adventures your players want to play before pouring time and effort into developing something that they have no interest in and that you'll then be tempted to railroad them into.

Don't waste effort anticipating what your players will do - they'll frequently do something entirely different. Think about how your NPCs will react in general to a band of adventurers.

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There is a definitely different feeling when someone is attacking you with the intent to kill you. Pulling punches against them would seem ludicrous unless you obviously outclass them and have some reason to do that.

Having been involved in real life combat, I can't think of a way to deliberately choose to deal non lethal damage to someone trying to kill you.

We expect the police to do their best to bring people in alive, though, when they resist arrest.

In some cases some potions don't do the trick.

We recently had some fight vs some trolls and the like. There was a short corridor with larger rooms at both ends.
The front like was in the corridor with two trolls fighting two enlarged PCs, when the troll leader started tossing the things from his neclace of fireballs or how it is called at us. So fireball after fireball detonated among us.
Our life oracle could channel enough to negate the damage for those who did their saves.

We had already used up our own area spells in earlier fight with more trolls.

I really don't know how we would have managed that situation without a healer capable of channeling.

Without the channeler, he may have built the encounter differently

My players don't have a healer with channeling, so I don't build encounters that depend on channeling. I'm not going to effectively force someone to play a character they're not interested in, or have grown bored with, by building encounters that are unwinnable otherwise.

I think it very much depends on your playstyle if you need a dedicated healer.

All those stating that they don't need a healer can't be wrong. And I don't think their battles are all so much less difficult.

But in our games we always have some kind of healer and we really need it.

You have a healer and the GM can plan (or not worry about healing) accordingly. The real question is to what extent the GM would change things if you didn't have a healer (which could be as simple as dropping in extra potions, or wands if there are people to use them).

How many GMs include magic aura in their traps?

If so, do you increase the perception DC?

Fact #3: Enchantment bonuses do stack.

Armour enchantment bonuses don't stack. If, for instance, you were to wear enchanted padded armour under an enchanted breastplate, you would only get the best enchantment, not the sum of both.

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

Amsheagar wrote:

it is reverse logic. a druid shifts in-between forms, and when he does that the things he is holding/wearing meld into him. (IE, this is why he can't access any items that he has in a bag.)

I don't think it's the intent. In fact, if this worked, it would be a lot cheaper to enchant the appropriate barding than to have the 'wild' property, which is +3.

That is true, unless the druid changes inbetween more than one other form. My druid changes into an air form, a land for and a water form.

Even so, adding 'wild' to +1 armour costs 15,000 gp. That's nearly 15 sets of +1 armour. You can easily afford 3 sets of barding.

(I'm feeling a bit peeved this morning that my correct English spelling's being auto-corrected. It was our language first, dammit) :(

it is reverse logic. a druid shifts in-between forms, and when he does that the things he is holding/wearing meld into him. (IE, this is why he can't access any items that he has in a bag.)

I don't think it's the intent. In fact, if this worked, it would be a lot cheaper to enchant the appropriate barding than to have the 'wild' property, which is +3.

While in Animal form, if a druid is given an item, that item would also meld into the druid when he shifts back into Human form, losing any benefit from said item.

Out of interest, where is this from?

Would you be tempted to make Hannibal Lector redeemable?

Or Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General (brilliantly acted by Vincent Price)?

(Although I don't know that I'd want to get into their heads to play them properly as villains.)

Add hazards - rotten floorboards (treat as trapdoors) or a slippery or tilted floor, or give the enemy an advantage. like being up on a balcony.

Landon Winkler wrote:

the history of fantasy and RPGs isn't overburdened with heterosexual characters. It's overburdened with asexual characters.

This was my issue with Wormwood Mutiny. You've got a group of people of diverse sexualities cooped up together in a small space with little privacy for long periods of time. People ought to be getting busy somewhere, and yet it's never mentioned. There ought to be an open-secret place behind a bulkhead, or Grok makes extra money and/or favors renting out space in the storeroom ten minutes at a time while she takes care of something on the other side of the ship, or something. Instead, sex is never once acknowledged in the course of the adventure, which made it utterly unbelievable and oversanitized to me. My issue isn't 'Female PCs should be raped because that's realism'; it's 'PCs of all races and genders have sex drives that should be acknowledged, particularly when there's no closed doors at an inn that sort of thing could conceivably be taking place behind off-screen.'

Yes, but you're quickly going to run into problems with keeping it PG13, and edging into dealing with unwanted pregnancies, diseases etc. It's a lot easier to gloss over it and leave it to the GM to add if wanted.

On the harassing female PCs, I'd point out that there are powerful female officers, and I think them ignoring such behaviour would seriously undermine their authority. Plus there are lots of goddesses, including Besmara, and their clerics. I think the idea of a goddess ill-wishing you would give you major second thoughts about harassing anyone.

I think it's unavoidable that going from a verbal description of activities to looking where everyone is on the map is a give away that some sort of encounter is happening, but, as you said, this is a choke point. So it's a likely ambush point and if they're reasonably experienced, they should be keeping an eye out. What shouldn't obvious is that this is a trapped bridge rather than concealed guards at the far end, or a flying predator about to attack, or some other encounter.

Hopefully, if this is essentially your first pathfinder character, your GM will be generous with rebuild options if you do find your build has gone in the wrong direction. Because its no fun for anyone to have you unhappy with your PC.

I was never taught by anyone as such (though it was 1st edition, and maybe easier to just pick up). I watched a group of friends (which didn't include my boyfriend) play, and after a while I asked to join in.

I don't think you can hope to learn just by reading the rules, I think you have to see people playing and how it fits together in context. The difference in skills and feats may become more obvious in play, And perhaps a group with other patient experienced players, not a solo adventure.

Actually, summer before last, I ran my kids and their grandma (who hadn't played any rpgs before) through 'We be Goblins' which is a free download. I pretty much just gave Grandma a goblin fighter and we sat down and got on with it, and she managed fine. Most importantly, It was a lot of fun.

4d6, reroll 1's, drop the lowest.

Wash, rinse, repeat six times.
No dumping necessary.

But oh god the odd numbers.
This TClifford person makes sense. I like his style. I like his moves.

Did that for my two children, each running to PCs. They each have a character with 2 '8's, and that was after ditching some sets of rolls for being completely hopeless.

Although there seems to be disagreement over how low a dump stat is, and a lot of disagreement over what the numbers should mean in practice.

The 'village idiot' from the GMG has an int of 4, not 6 or 7. An int of 7 isn't the 'village idiot'.

Having thought hard about about my son's two halfling sisters, one a monk having an int of 8 and the other a rogue/sorcerer with an int of 14, my thoughts are that the monk lacks knowledge because she dislikes and actively avoids reading (perhaps she's long sighted or dyslexic) so she lacks even a basic education. I think a high intelligence should not just be the PC's innate ability but also how widely read they are and how well they remember the details. You can't link facts together if you don't know the facts.

PC's are assumed to be literate. So the int 8 character could be someone who skipped schooling or never worked and consequently has a poor basic education.

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

yellowdingo wrote:

Where do you stand on some descent inequality? As a Peasant you could be impaled for picking up a butter knife and waving it at some nasty Aristocrat from the Wealthy+ category. Why do you as a Peasant think you have the right to pick up a sword let alone own one? Frankly unless you are some sort of Bandit on the run from the State, you can look forward to slavery at the hands of the wealthy. How do you cope with a Peasant Adventurer who should be Arrested for carrying a Sword, not commended for saving the Village from Undead?

Which is why peasants were more likely to have pitchforks, and scythes, and axes (for felling trees of course) and big knives for butchering livestock, etc.

Agricultural implements include some very nasty weaponry.

Then where did you get the armor and the Sword?

You wouldn't need the sword to be lethally armed. I didn't see any mention of armour.

I suspect I've missed the question. Why is the peasant assumed to have armour and a sword?

The bluff skill includes feinting in combat as a standard action to get an advantage on your next action. The feat improved feint makes it a move action. Is that what you were looking for?

Where do you stand on some descent inequality? As a Peasant you could be impaled for picking up a butter knife and waving it at some nasty Aristocrat from the Wealthy+ category. Why do you as a Peasant think you have the right to pick up a sword let alone own one? Frankly unless you are some sort of Bandit on the run from the State, you can look forward to slavery at the hands of the wealthy. How do you cope with a Peasant Adventurer who should be Arrested for carrying a Sword, not commended for saving the Village from Undead?

Which is why peasants were more likely to have pitchforks, and scythes, and axes (for felling trees of course) and big knives for butchering livestock, etc.

Agricultural implements include some very nasty weaponry.

Yeah, I just had the same thing happen. I tried to unhide a thread, and instead it hid the thread above it; tried to unhide that one, and it hid the one above that. It was in the PbP forum, so I think people kept bumping new threads to the top while I was clicking.

I've got this too.

The first thread I hide turns grey and is marked 'hidden'

The next one, the first thread hides and the wrong thread becomes hidden.

Having the hidden threads shown doesn't seem to help. And unhiding threads keep missing and hiding other threads.

I think it's confusion due to newly hidden threads higher up though

There's also an issue with overcoming DR/silver and DR/cold iron.

The trouble I have with Golarian and Pathfinder Adventure Paths isn't so much the tech level, as the modern sensibilities. When things like teenage runaways, single moms studying to go to college, asylums, modern attitudes towards colonialisms, etc. get mixed up in my fantasy games, I lose pretty much all sense of immersion. I'm not transported to another time. It's basically early 21st-century North America with fancy clothes and lots of spells.

Nothing new about teenage runaways or single moms (don't know about about the studying). I suppose single moms might have more often been, or pretended to be widows.

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

Same here. As the GM, I'm the one who describes how the attack hit or missed completely or deflected off armour or shield or whatever, because I'm the one that knows the AC, touch AC and what makes up the Armour class.

You're approaching it backwards.

The players should describe what they trying to do.

"I roll to attack"

Becomes:

"I try to take the dirty goblins head off"

Thanks, I might try this.

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Sometimes, in the right circumstances, it just happens.

I'll always treasure the look of fury on my daughter's face when her wizard walked into a long-abandoned wizard's library and saw the phase wasp nest made out of chewed-up books and scrolls...

They were destroyed with extreme prejudice

Same here. As the GM, I'm the one who describes how the attack hit or missed completely or deflected off armour or shield or whatever, because I'm the one that knows the AC, touch AC and what makes up the Armour class.

Owls also have specially designed feathers so that they're silent fliers. I have no idea how noisy an air elemental would be though.

During game play we were victems of the dance of death from those skeletal snake construct monsters I can't recall their name ... necromancy something.

Necrophidius

I'm gonna go ahead and say that, at their roots, riots are about power. They're a stifled cry of frustration at a system in which the rioters have very little. If you look hard enough, everything is about power and wealth.

Everyone has a stake in society, not everyone has a stake in perpetuating the status quo of the power structure.

That may have been true about the first rioters, but with the way it spread and jumped from city to city it seemed as though a lot of people were thinking 'Hey! a riot! sounds fun, let's join in', or taking the opportunity to loot and smash things, or realising the police were overstretched, and struggling to impose order. And I don't think all or even most of the rioters were from poor backgrounds.

You might be right about the mobs wanting to test the powers of the police, though, and see what they could get away with.

I remember my old PHB well ;) the monk was listed last of all the classes with a note that this was because it fell outside the norm. Back then it was a 5th wheel, possibly the first one if you discount the bard which was a really weird amalgam.

Also, there was no point buy for stats - you always rolled the dice. And some classes were only playable if you rolled better than average (I seem to recall that paladins and druids had to have high charisma). I can't remember the minimum requirements for monks, but I'm guessing they needed better than average too.

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This wouldn't be a problem in Ancient China, of course, because the existing rulers could 'lose the Mandate of Heaven' and then overthrowing them was the right thing to do.

I suppose it depends on where (the paladin believes) the authority to rule derives from and the conditions of holding it. If a ruler has a duty to rule fairly and isn't, then the paladin is justified in removing them.

I think, though, something that's missing from a lot of paladin threads is the idea of the paladin acting for the church, and seeking advice or suggestions from it. The more ambiguous the scenario, the more important it is to come to an agreement with the relevant temple or clerics and have a united view.

Harrison wrote:

Lochmonster wrote:

Maybe "Killing for pleasure/profit will not be tolerated" or a "use the whole animal/eat what you kill" type creed?

That's what I originally took from it. If you hunt to survive and thus give reverence to whatever your hunting for it's sacrifice, you're fine. If you're hunting just to kill something or to capture it and put it on display, you're not so fine.

That's basically what I meant by poaching, it's just the term I came up with to mean exactly what you guys are talking about. Trophy hunting, that sort of thing.

I would be fine with a trapper, who makes his living off of collecting furs, provided he used the whole animal, to eat and what not, I think.

Except a lot of the most valuable furs come from animals that aren't normally eaten, like mink, ermine, leopard, arctic fox etc.

X new is still not updating in the campaign threads although it seems ok elsewhere. It does update if I go to the start of the thread and then to the end.

I'm using Firefox 16.0.1