Chris Mortika's page

Why the d10 and not -con?

The result of failing the Massive Damage roll is to be unconscious and dying, at anywhere from -1 to -10 hit points. (In that order, so barbarians first fall unconscious and drop out of rage, and then end up at -1 to -10 hit points, so they're tuckered out as well.)

Rather than revise the damage itself, have you considered revising the rules for Death from Massive Damage?

I've implemented a Constitution+2-per-HD threshold, sliding-scale DC Massive Damage system, with a "dying at -1d10" mechanic, and it does an outstanding job of simulating what I want.

A 50' drop might still only do 5d6 damage, but it has a chance to knock even a powerful character unconscious.

For what it's worth.

Disallowing debate is bad. It's the height of tyranny to refuse your players the chance to explain themselves. And it's saying, "I am right. I am always right. If you disagree with me, you are wrong, no exceptions." That's just not something the DM should be saying, particularly since it's entirely possible for the DM to be flat wrong, and interpret a rule incorrectly and in such a way that ruins the game that the player agreed to come and play, rendering their perfectly valid and legal and fair character pretty much unplayable.

But I think James is talking about debating the rules at the table, during a session. And I don't know anybody who wants to stop play and argue about how Pathfinder's Cleave and Vital Strike interface, in the midst of a Hill Giant Barbarian's attack on the party. The GM makes a ruling and goes on.

I would wager you'd agree with that.

On another note: you, I, and most every other person who runs a home game has house rules. Given that, a Game Master can announce ill-considered house rules, can erroneously claim to be playing rules-as-written, or can rule inconsistently from one week to the next. But in a home game, the GM can't be wrong. It's only in organized play environments, playtests, or other similar circumstances where GMs "interpret rules" correctly or incorrectly. In home games, GMs make rulings.

In my campaigns, if I announced that some phenomenon happened, I'd be vexed if a player announced I was "flat wrong". The player would get a great deal more milage out of asking whether I'd intended the phenomenon as a rules change.

--+--+--

All of which is tangential to the two main issues here:

1) For the GM to send an attack against the PC because its player is irritating is churlish. If the group wants the player to remain, there should be out-of-character talking. If they want him to just leave, there should be an out-of-character dismissal. But an overwhelming assault on the PC sends the player the absolute worst message: we want you to play, but to be competitive, you need to twink out your next character more.

2) It is very difficult to dispose of a player's body, particularly in a large metropolitan area. Burial in a very large body of water and being fed to pigs are two pretty common solutions, but pigs hate the taste of D&Ders (they say we taste "gamey") and arcane casters float.

P.H., I'm no lawyer, but from the way I had read the agreement --I'm also a Mac user, and decided to decline the DDI offer-- I think that a bunch of people downloading multiple copies of the subscription package off a single paid subscription is illegal.

All right, then, Jason, I have a suggestion. It's not a big honking change, but it's not a little tweak, either.

I am <b>not</b> recommending that oracles get some better divination or prophetic powers. That would work if you had an "oracle of time" or "oracle of fate", but the way you're describing the class, I don't think that an "oracle of battle" or an "oracle of water" necessarily needs to tie in with divinations.

But the oracle <b>should</b> have some growing authority over the way his field manifests on the material plane. The oracle of strength, for an example, is a living exemplar of the power of strength, the ideal of strength. As he grows into his role, he should be able to sense the physical strength of those around him and modify it.

GM: A man strides out of the snowstorm, wrapped in furs. Behind him is an 11-foot-tall humanoid in heavy light-brown fur, with grotesquely long arms, and features hidden by a crop of hair.

Oracle of Strength: What can I sense about them?

GM: The man has slightly above-average strength for a human. The brute behind him os as strong as the hill giants you ran across last month. Suddenly, the large figure bellows a cry of rage, revealing a maw with three sets of fangs, and comes charging at you.

Oracle of Strength: I invoke Ray of Enfeeblement as a supernatural ability.

Oracles of Death ought to be able to sense when someone dies, and eventually be able to hold back death or invoke it.

"I am Hanay Markastir, priest of Zon-Kuthon, most depraved father of Darkness."

"And I be Dietrei, chosen champion of Darkness itself. Go back to your god, little priest, and tell him that his influence is unwelcome here."

Anyway, we're working on it, and hopefully we'll discover a way to make most folks happy! I'm sure we won't be able to make EVERYONE happy, alas...

You'll need the following:
1. Hacksaw
2. Plastic Gloves
3. Lots of tarp
4. A nearby body of water (deep)
5. Bleach

(The raccoon is to throw off folks using bloodhounds. The glass is to discourage the really persistent bloodhounds.)

It's rare that Viletta and I see eye-to-eye on matters such as this, but this is one such time. From my perspective, she's given you rock-solid advice.

Good luck making this work. There are indeed times when it works to tell someone he's being a rascal.

--Chris
who has been a rascal at times in his life, and has had to deal with rascals, too

neil indicated on another thread that he'd broken his leg on a trip to Paris. He's just started posting again a couple days ago. I'm hoping he checks in again, soon.

James, I'm something of a luddite when it comes to mapping software and image-hosting sites. There are some really fantastic maps that I've seen in some of the PBPs I've played in, but I don't know much about what I'd need to draw them or make them available for you guys to view. If anybody has a suggestion, I'm up for it.

So everybody's notable object is a weapon. (Save for Tin, who has neither a weapon nor a notable object!)

Artimus, who forged your sword? Was it a singular smith, or a workshop? Some magical weapons glow; others do not. Does yours?

(Llaelian, good luck with the child. How old's your firstborn?)

Does anybody know if there's any way to buy just the new stuff?

There will be.

Hey, folks. I'm running a campaign in something that resembles D&D 3.5. If you're familiar with EN Publishing's War of the Burning Sky adventure path, we're starting in on the second module. If not, the relevant information from the APis that the party is about 3rd Level, and is on a quest through the "Fire Forest", an eternally burning woodlands.

One of the players decided to set his character up as a native of the Fire Forest, with enough innate fire resistance to stay alive in there, and former companion to a band of gypsies. He's a psion, and the gypsies are all human-seeming elans, but when they offered "full initiation" to our PC, he passed. But it was important to both the player and myself that this was an exercise of free choice on his part. The gypsies had not wanted to convert anyone who wasn't willing, so they departed on good terms.

The elans are interfering with the psionic bad guys of the AP, but I've left a lot of wiggle-room as to who they actually work for, and why.

So, the party is now tromping through the Fire Forest. Obviously, I need some side adventure for this PC and his long-lost gypsy friends. Does anybody have any suggestions?

(And if somebody just points me to some "psionic gypsy" adventure that's already on the market, I'll just be astonished.)

I am going to be honest here. The class name is not going to change at this point.... I am open to discussion, but not on the name.

Let me ask a question, because I think the answer is an important facet to the Oracle class. The gods use their churches among the mortal races as their agents, furthering their will and advancing their causes. They empower clerics with supernatural powers to guide the churches in the gods' ways and to assist them in their missions.

To what purpose do the gods empower Oracles?

I'm not looking for any responses like "Nobody knows; it's a great enigma." I'm not asking what the residents of Golarion understand about the gods' purposes. I'm asking the Lead Designer as a member of his playtesting team: what do the gods want with these guys?

It may be complicated: "There's a trickster spirit that steals the power of the gods and hides it within mortal shells. Neither the gods nor these 'oracles' have much say in the matter. The gods don't know how this being is stealing their power, and many of them would likely resist him if they could."

It may be straightforward: "By claiming a Domain, a goddess acts as a channel herself, bridging the endless gulf between the superlunary ideals of creation and the mortal realm. But once breached, the gulf is uncontrollable even by the gods, and oracles are the result of direct transmissions from a realm beyond even the gods; their bodies or minds are shattered by the sheer alien forces they contact. The gods might find these oracles regrettable, but they're "the cost of doing business" with the mortal realms.

It might be a plot point: "Rovagug found his plight paradoxical. To escape, his plan called for a marshaling of divine powers, but the gods themselves would all resist and bar their servants from working on his behalf. So he reached own and twisted the skein of reality just enough, so that divine power fell on those who did not ask for it, who did not abase themselves before any deity, who owed no allegiance to the powers celestial nor abyssal. These 'oracles' would be his keys to freedom."

However you answer that question will give us a lead as to how to tweak the class, to make it more consonant with your vision.

One other note: in Golarion, what's the history of these people? Does every race have oracles? Were there oracles before Aroden died? Were they more plentiful back then?

Dr. Dark! Good to see you back. We miss you over in Slumbering Tsar, too...

You also typically lose spell casting benefits when you violate your Gods wishes,...

and worshiping another god is the easiest way to do so.

My Human Fighter 1 x20 is going to have 31 feats and rock your puny Fighter 20's butt.

Trellian, sounds like an excellent job!

Regarding what to do next, I think it depends on the motivation of the prison leader. What does he want, and how does he see the party as a means to get it? (Alternatively, the same could be asked of the wizard lackey.)

So, yeah, let him find the party, identify them as being off the books, strip them of their gear, and throw them back in the prison. For maybe a week. Let them plot and stew and try to escape. Then, once they see that you're not going to make it easy for them, have the warden return and offer them a deal: freedom, and, if they perform this simple errand for him, their gear back as well.

Eric, those are great items. And you should remind people that, with WotC yanking the pdf rights to these, it's sales like this which are the only legal way for new people to discover what all the hub-bub about Greyhawk was about.

1) I'm pretty sure it's not allowed by the rules.

2) It wouldn't be a game breaker, particularly after 3rd Level. You'd get domain abilities, and a passel of 1st Level spells, and maybe, if you're clever and neutral on the good/evil axis, some variations on Channel Energy, but you'd lose a caster level.

3) If I were the Pathfinder GM, I'd allow it, but you'd have to specify which clergy is your favored class, and I'd make sure you were using the correct holy symbol.

The feats aren't the issue. Its the skill.

Allowing players to begin play at 6th Level with self-crafted masterwork items, but not self-crafted magic items, would seem to be another reasonable compromise. Or, allowing each of the beginning characters one game month to craft, train, research, earn money through professions, etc, as he or she pleases.

But I suspect that we are not on a thread where anyone's willing to compromise.

Just stop talking about the oracle's name. It's been argued to death. The name is fine and it's not changing. Change the name to whatever you want in your games, but PLEASE stop talking about it. You're beating a dead horse when he's down.

When people were complaining about the name Oracle last month, the word from Paizo was something like, "Look, you're reacting based on a single blog entry. We, who've seen the rough draft of the class, like the name a lot. Once you see the full write-up, we bet you'll like it, too. Right now, though, just throw some trust our way."

So, now that we've seen the rough draft of the class, it's exactly the right time to talk about the name of the class.

(And, of course anybody can change the names of anything in his or her home campaign. If that were a good argument against commentary, we might as well shut down the whole playtest thing.)

Pax, how do Weapon Speed Factors and casting times play into that?

Viletta, it's always a pleasure to read your posts.

One of the reasons I struggle against your position is that it's retroactive to a character's origins.

For example, we're starting a campaign at 6th Level. My elf wizard takes the feat Craft Magic Arms and Armor. By your reasoning, he could begin play with a +1 longsword that he'd made, and which would take up less of his "starting wealth" than the weapon would have cost to purchase on the open market. (And if I'm reading your position correctly, everyone should assume that the party has been adventuring together their entire careers, so he could have manufactured discounted weapons for everyone else in the party; do I follow your claim correctly?)

But, if we're trying to account for how much gold was actually spent on the characters' possessions, shouldn't they also have to pay for the weapon that they'd been using up until the izard could obtain the feat when he reached 5th Level? Or should we assume they were unarmed and unarmored until then? Or were they able to sell their original gear to someone else for full price?

The wealth-per-level guidelines is a necessary simplification. We assume that the PCs gained a lot of loot, and lost a lot of loot, in their careers: potions were quaffed, scrolls were read, mounts were eaten, perhaps great fortunes in gems were wrested from the deep ocean gnomes and then paid as ransom to recover an ungrateful duke. All of that's water under the bridge. When the campaign opens: this "starting wealth" is the value of the equipment they have.

You're right: a character with the crafting feats could insist on taking a month at that instant to turn liquid assets into magical equipment. If it were my campaign, and there were some time-sensitive reason the party gathered, I wouldn't mind at all inviting that player to run an NPC during that game month as the rest of the party deals with whatever threats are present. When everybody returns after a month of adventuring, the crafter PC should be ready to head out with them on the next leg of the journey.

Well, what had started out as a miserable day had brightened considerably, Par Obenka reflected. The weather 'droids had managed to clear the sleet out of the air, and the magni-rails were finally running on schedule, after all the endless issues with the Imperial troopers hassling the natives. He instructed the railcar to drop him off at his office, where he was scheduled to meet with his superiors about a lucrative off-planet report.

It was, all told, the best day in Par Obenka's life.

And then he looked up, puzzled. "Alderaan doesn't have a moon," he muttered.

I guess you and I are VERY different GM's Chris. When I GM a campaign that starts at high level I give my PC's free reign to choose whatever they want from any book allowed in the campaign up to the value given for that level.

I don't believe I ever said how I have players outfit their high-level new PCs....

...and the answer is: I've only done so once, starting a party at 4th level to head off into "Red Hand of Doom". And I asked them to tell me what kinds of adventures they'd had for their first three levels, found a pair of modules that fit their descriptions, and let them divide up the loot from those modules.

I don't see the magic item creation feats as being a money issue. I see them as a character-choice issue. As Charlie so cleanly illustrated, a Craft Magical Arms and Armor feat allows you to sell the lame-o magical stuff you found and use the selling price to obtain the magic item you really wanted, as long as you wanted arms or armor.

If the DM were to gear up the new 6th-Level characters himself, giving them the mundane and magic items he thought they should have, then I can picture a PC with the right feats being able to substitute her choice of goodies for an equal amount of DM-provided brick-a-brack.

If the DM were to, for whatever reason, allow the players to outfit all their characters with equipment of their own choosing, he is essentially allowing access to all of the item creation feats for all the party. Under those circumstances, taking one of the actual feats doesn't do much for a character until play begins.

What about space? Can you send it to space?

Pocket plane?

And, for the record, I require training in my current, thick-with-house-rules 3.5 campaign. Anywhere from a day to a week, depending on whether it's a class your character already has experience in, and whether or not it's a class that prepares magic.

After the events in "Earth", I am really getting to like Rush.

Telford's "plan" was thoroughly reckless. One concern that wasn't brought up: what if the Destiny doesn't decide to recharge after everybody expends her power on weapons? And why strand Eli --Math Boy-- on Earth during the delicate calculations?

You know, sending the crew's minds back to Earth for R&R is ridiculous. They have plenty of opportunities to relax on ship. They should be sending people back for training. Sit Eli's mind down with Carter or Jackson, and have McKay's mind port on board the Destiny and discuss things with Rush. (Now, be honest, isn't that a conversation you'd love to see?)

Everything is across the street from Starbucks.

Regarding old school (player instructions and DM evaluation) versus 3rd Edition (player rolls dice and DM sets difficulty number), I've found over the past years that giving a stirring speech or indicating a clever way to search, or contrariwise outlining a disastrous NPC interaction or a dangerous investigation, isn't best represented by a +2 or +4 die modifier.

Player: [stirring speech, just the right tone]

Dungeon Master: King Stefano is impressed with your rhetoric and moved by your passion. Roll a Diplomacy check.

Player: "1".

Dungeon Master: But not all that convinced. He rejects your plea, but offers you a place in the court as an orator.

Better, I think, is to reward a great piece of player cleverness or insight with a "better of two die rolls" or even "best of three die rolls". And pathetic, insulting speeches earn "worse of two die rolls."

This also solves the other extreme of the problem with simple +2 or +4 die modifiers. Let's say you're the DM and the party's rogue needs to pick a DC 35 lock. With all her modifications, she can't exceed a +13 modifier on her Disable Device, which is what you intended when you placed that lock there in the first place. Well, the lock is outside her skill set right now. So, her player goes into an elaborate description of what she tries to do. If you reward that with a +2 modifier, then she can suddenly pick a lock that's beyond her capabilities.

Think twice before you decide to allow that in your campaign.

What? No, no, no, Orthos. The Open Gaming License is irrevocable and permanent. Paizo published Pathfinder under the OGL. (Look at the back cover of the hardback book.)

As Lisa Stevens has written frequently, Paizo realized that for its products to thrive in the game stores, it needed to have a copy of the rules in print.

What is Belker reading?

T&L, did you play a mixed Charonti / Knorr party, or a group composed of people from a single faction?

Sorry, szarkel. It's not something I've ever heard of, and the Pathfinder wiki doesn't have any listing for it, either.

(The "Aesir" were, of course, the Norse pantheon. Since Golarion doesn't reference any real-world religions, I would be surprised if there were such an organization in a Pathfinder product.)

Lacking further evidence, I think your player is confused.

Will PFS GMs need to buy the APG, or is that something that players should expect to bring to the table if they want to use?

Trying to figure put the cryptic #2 on initiative (DMG pg 66). That's Gygax to me.

And yes, Gygax's prose was thick with rich vocabulary, misspellings (When I put "wands of lightening" and "minionions of Set" into WG7, I wasn't making anything up.) and words that didn't quite mean what he thought they meant. (There's nothing intermittent about "continual light". Did he mean, perhaps, "continuous light"?)

Quote:

You're claiming that the DMG commonly instructs the DM to "never ever ... work cooperatively with the PCs". (As a direct quote. Mind backing that up with two or three page citations? Remember, direct quote.)

Again, the DMG advises that DMs run henchmen, and not to let the PCs roll over them to the PCs' advantage. And that's still good advice.

A common philosophy in the DMG is that "NPCs never ever ever ever ever ever EVER work cooperatively with PCs", to ridiculous levels. Gygax wasn't suggesting that NPCs should be played with a life of their own and not merely as extensions of the PCs, but rather that NPCs are all part of Team NPC, and should not under any conditions ever think about working for anyone else, even if they are part of the PC party, even in gratitude to someone who saved their life.

I understand you don't like 1st Edition. Maybe you had an unpleasant experience under some DM who didn't know what he was doing. In other threads, you've suggested that PCs are the big heroes and they should win most of the time, and the 1st Edition philosophy is probably not your style. But you're applying your personal biases to the text, seeing things that aren't written there.

--+--+--

Regarding the particulars, party members save one another's lives every day. If you treat a henchman / cohort with abuse --saving the healing spells for the "real" members of the party, giving him less than his fair share of the rewards, not really caring about the cannon-fodder-- and then tell him you want to borrow his gear or copy spells from his magic book, don't be surprised if he's resentful and willing to use your desire to his advantage.

Again, this contrasts with all of the Leadership / cohort instances I've seen in the last decade, where the player uses the cohort as nothing more than an extension of her primary character, happy to do whatever's asked. I've even seen cohorts used as emergency resources: kill the current wizard cohort, and use Leadership to attract a new cleric NPC, because the party needs healing.

You caricature my post as saying: "This position isn't ridiculous, because the polar opposite position is ridiculous." That's not what I said. The advice in the DMG is reasonable. An NPC who hires on to go into terribly dangerous territory with a bunch of tomb robbers isn't going 'cause he's a nice guy who thinks the world of you, and who is eager to make your life easy. He's going because he thinks there's some profit to be had, and safety in working with a bunch of veteran explorers. He's not going to betray the PCs to the monsters, or rob them in their sleep. But he's not there to do them favors, either.

Nonetheless, the polar opposite position is indeed ridiculous.

--+--+--

"Sorry, Bob, but you guys can't find anyone willing to cast Stone to Flesh this week. Since your character's going to be a statue for a week or two, I suggest you bring a book to read next time."

Or play a secondary character. Or wait a few minutes while everybody else takes care of their own issues. (Remember, training to rise in levels also takes 1-4 weeks in 1st Edition.) Why? Because the world doesn't revolve around your PCs. You're not that special.

That's actually the keynote here. Llewelyn, the wizard in the tower, has his own experiments and his own objectives. The party's work may align to his goals, in which case he'll be more helpful. Or the party may actually be working against him, in which case, they're likely to wait a long time for him to get them back into the dungeons. Perhaps you've heard the aphorism: "I'm a neutral party. By definition, that means I'm not on your side."

A simple suggestion: there should be some game mechanic, an item or a spell, that resists the baneful effects of Channel Energy.

It could be an extension of the standard rules. Right now, the Pathfinder spell consecration provides living beings with a +3 sacred bonus to the saving throw against Channel Negative Energy. There might be a version that leaves the saving throw alone, but drops the damage by 1d6.

James, Zurai is right about his first two points. If I as a GM plan for my demon to use an expensive spell-like ability in a Pathfinder encounter, it would require the material components. If my players are good and clever and act with surprise, they might well take out that demon before it gets the chance to use the spell-like ability, and gain the components as treasure.

Which raises the question: if spell-like abilities are identical to spells in all ways under the Pathfinder rules, why not just call them spells?

--+--+--

On topic: the referee in Pathfinder is called the GM, not the DM.

Let me briefly present the case in opposition.
...
That's gratitude for you.

This, as opposed to the way I've seen cohorts played in many recent games, as mere extensions of the Leadership character, never disagreeing with their liege and willing to reveal their secrets to anyone in the party who asks.

Bear two things in mind, Man in Black:

• Original D&D and the first years of AD&D were much less about a band of heroes going out and saving the world, and much more about opportunistic grave robbers and adventurers. Mordenkainen isn't a nice guy. Neither is Robilar. Neither are your PCs, nor their henchmen. The Writer's Guide to the Pathfinder Society is something of a throwback to this style. (Things changed, adventures began assuming PCs would jump at the chance to save the world from evil, very shortly after the surge of negative publicity about D&D, suicide, demon-worshipping, etc. I'm pretty sure that was the cause.)
  
• Old-school AD&D is much more a game about resource management. Parties are expected to keep track of ablative things like arrows, rations, oil. And spells. There are no magic shops in town, and magic items are never simply for sale. Nor can you simply sit down and make them, without specific eldritch ingredients that require adventuring to obtain. So the best way to find spells for your magic-user's repertoire is to raid other, perhaps nastier, magic-users. Just getting a hard-to-find spell from a henchman is a cheap trick: particularly if she's not your henchman.

As I say, it's an easy attitude to parody. And I would bet that the DMG is leaning a little more strongly in its direction than necessary, to counteract the pressure from the players who'd like to just ask somebody else's henchman to do something and have his liege's player happily comply.

In the wake of Gary's influences, some players --perhaps not most-- have developed a greater sense of entitlement. They don't want to be screwed by dishonest merchants in the great marketplace. They don't want to have to keep track of arrows, or how long their mounts have gone without water. They think training for level advancement is a drag. If they long for a wand of fireballs, they expect to be able to just walk into a city and buy one without a lot of fuss. They don't want to have to plan for how to get some expensive, but ridiculously bulky, treasures back to someone who would pay for them. They don't want doors to ever be stuck closed, or magic treasure to ever be cursed and difficult to remove. They don't want to negotiate with grumpy NPCs who, despite a bag of gold jangled in their faces, simply don't care to cast stone to flesh this week.

Those aren't the "fun" parts, and current game design is to maximize the fun, without the "boring" parts putting a drag on things.

Gary was more about making PCs earn their victories.

Raises hand.

The henchman is likely to aspire to greater things too, and he or she will tend to look out for personal interests. Bullying, duping, cheating, and similar maltreatment will certainly be resented. The henchman will talk about it with others of his class and fellow henchmen and hirelings. Henchmen will never loan out money or valuables without security - particularly if one instance of failure to repay or loss has occurred previously. Loyalty will certainly drop in this case, and if such action is repeated, loyalty will be lost in most cases. If their liege is so bold as to suggest that the henchmen should make loans to other characters, there will be flat refusal in all likelihood. The key here is playing the henchman as if he or she were an actual person - better still if the character is somewhat greedy and avaricious. Interest should be paid on loans. Use of a henchman’s valuables, such as a magic item, should be based on the holding of some equal or better object of similar nature, certainly one usable by the henchman, and the promise of some payment in addition - such as a minor item of magic!
...
Each and every monster must be played as closely to its stated characteristics as is possible. Clever ones should be played with cleverness, stupid ones with stupidity, ferocious ones with ferocity, cowardly ones with cowardice, and so on. In all cases, the DM is absolutely obligated to play the monster in question to the best of his or her ability according to the characteristics of the monster and the circumstances of the encounter. A magic-using creature will intelligently select the best (or what the creature believes will be the best) spell or magic device for attack/defense. Intelligent monsters will make use of magic items in their treasure hoard! Thinking monsters will tend to flee from encounters which are going badly in order to live and fight another day. There is no reason why monsters can not learn from encounters, employ flaming oil, set up ambushes, and so forth according to their capabilities and resources.
--1st Edition DMG, excerpts from page 103

Gary Gygax had a distinctive style in everything he did: as a game designer, as a DM, as a writer. When he was at the top of his game, in full command of his powers, he could conjure ideas with the power to surge forth and change the world.

He also gave us Cyborg Commando. Sometimes audacity isn't enough.

The aspect of Gary-as-DM that people find easy to parody is his infamy as an "enemy of the players". From the body-count in "Tomb of Horrors" and "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" to Rot Grubs, Rust Monsters, and Trappers, to the repeated advice in the 1st Edition DMG to make life hard for the PCs. (see further along page 103, for example).

But I think there is a deeper theme running through Gygax's work than "kill the PCs; kill them all." Original D&D and --particularly-- 1st Edition AD&D seem to be about "make the PCs earn their victories."

It's been reported that Gary's response to 3rd Edition had been "It's not my kind of game." And if I were to point out a rule that goes against his style, I might pick "wealth by level", as some character-builders interpret it. The idea that your character has some kind of privilege to a pile of gold, which she could use to just go out and buy magic items, merely by dint of being a particular level, runs against his theme of making the player characters earn their victories.

So, the next time you're DMing, and the Wizard's player announces that his Cleric cohort is brewing some potions of cure light wounds, tell him that the Cleric has decided to raise her prices on the potions up to their fair market value. When the player sputters that you can't control his pet NPC, tell him you're feeling a Gygax Moment coming on.

Rob Kuntz sometimes travels these boards, and it would be wonderful to have him chime into this discussion.

Also, I think we're assuming you're talking Pathfinder adventures, since the Pathfinder Society games are designed to be "living" and require characters to be built and played at level 1 through an 11th level cap.

A grammatical note, for what it's worth.

Pathfinder fans are using the same sentence construction that 4th Edition fans made last year: "This feat now does this thing. That spell doesn't work like it used to, anymore." It bugged me then, and it bugs me now.

As somebody who's happy to continue running Paizo's adventures with his D&D ruleset*, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the 3rd Edition rules haven't changed at all. What you mean to say is "This feat works differently under the Pathfinder ruleset. The Pathfinder version of that spell isn't the same as the D&D version."

I'll admit, I used to make the same mistake when I was talking about AD&D, as if all the 1st and 2nd Edition campaigns were dead.

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The Leadership feat plays out a little differently under Pathfinder rules in a couple of ways. First, your PC needs to be higher level in order to take the feat. Secondly, the effects of temporary negative levels (which affect "all level-dependent variables") cause your character's Leadership score to drop, which in turn cause your cohort's experience levels to drop and reduce your number of followers.

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* (heavy on the house rules, and incorporating some of our favorite parts of Pathfinder, the same as with Arcana Unearthed.)

That is one valid interpretation for a temple. But not the only one. The priests could just as well say, "This man has done many great services for our church. This world still desperately needs his presence, therefore we shall bring him back, costs be damned, for it is worth it." Which is equally as valid.

What could happen is distinct from what must happen. That kindness and generosity on the part of others is a possibility that may be extremely useful does not mean that it's a requirement.

But if that's the temple's motivation --get this man healed up so he can do some more good deeds-- then (1) they should be doing that whether or not he's given them a ton of valuable loot, and (2) they might consider themselves in a position, then, to recommend such good deeds.

But if a temple:

• refuses to heal poor people who can't pay the enormous sums for spells such as cure disease or cure moderate wounds, which cost the temple nothing.
  
• happily succor the man who donates money, without asking him to do anything else for them in return
  
• don't happily succor the adventuring party that doesn't donate money

Then it certainly looks like he's making advance payments on temple services. Whether that's in violation of the Vow of Poverty is up to the DM.

Seems this encounter is a little tough for 7th level characters...Anyway let me know and I'll start a new character tonight if I'm still in the game.

Well, but Appraise can indeed tell you if the item is magical. You don't even have to examine it closely. Using Appraise as a standard action in combat, you can tell if your opponent's sword is magical. That's much more useful than the 3.5 analog ability.

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Attacks of Opportunity allow only a simple attack in Pathfinder. In D&D, they're more versatile. (For example, dropping an opponent on an Attack of Opportunity in 3.5 can trigger a Cleave, and AoO can be used to sunder, trip, etc.)

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The armor penalty for swimming is greatly reduced.

Wel, here's my question about this temple business: What do the healers do when sick, poor peasants come a-calling? Do they charge for their services then?

"Maria fell down the well and drowned. Oh no! Quickly: get her to the priests in the city!" Do the holy clerics of the goddess of mercy and healing then demand thousands of gold coins for their services?

If so, then I would imagine the would charge the same rate for our intrepid, stinking-rich adventurers who, on a separate occasion, followed a sacred vow and gave the church a share of their unorthodox loot.