Craig Shackleton's page

Pax: I'm not questioning the validity of your opinion, but I would like to pick one nit.

The DDI is being headed up by Chris Youngs (formerly Thomasson) who came up with the AP concept when he worked for Paizo. So he can't really be accused of copying it...

I do want to throw one other thing out there. While I agree that DDI content has not been as frequent as anyone would like, many of the adventures have been significantly longer than the ones that made the print magazines. Some of that was eaten up by the Delve format, which a lot of people don't like, but there is still a lot of material. And actually, at least in my case, the delve format did not lead to content being cut. Chris Youngs basically gave me free rein to expand my adventure (in fact, he gave me some top notch suggestions for expanding it), so I definitely wasn't constrained by word count! My original pitch was IIRC for 8000 words, and the final manuscript was closer to 30,000.

A number of other adventures I've looked at have been MASSIVE. Some of them are close to big enough to fill an entire issue of Dungeon on their own.

Don't get me wrong, They need to do better with regular updates etc. if they want me to pay for the DDI, but it isn't all doom and gloom.

Rambling Scribe wrote:

Shroomy wrote:

I too have a pending 3.5e adventure over at WoTC. I emailed Chris Youngs about it last week and he told me that right now all his attention is focused on the pending 4e conversion on 6-6. I was told that if he couldn't fit it in this week, it would be released after the launch as a 3.5e adventure, so it looks like there will be some cross-over for the first month.

Good to know! Thanks!

Sheesh, it's just about the money for you guys....

That'$ why we're in the lucrative field of RPG freelancing!

(There's a reason they call it FREElancing)

For me, it's all about the fame! ;-P

I too have a pending 3.5e adventure over at WoTC. I emailed Chris Youngs about it last week and he told me that right now all his attention is focused on the pending 4e conversion on 6-6. I was told that if he couldn't fit it in this week, it would be released after the launch as a 3.5e adventure, so it looks like there will be some cross-over for the first month.

Good to know! Thanks!

This is an interesting question, though: What will happen to all the 3E adventures waiting to be published? Will they ask the authors to convert them to 4E? Will they just be dropped? I guess we'll find out soon enough... when do 4E Dungeon and Dragon magazines begin, anyway?

Believe me, I want to know these answers more than you! ;-)

Also, that sounds like a very cool premise to an adventure!

Thanks! There's a bit more to it, but I can't really give more details (I don't think).

Rambling Scribe wrote:

There are also other 3E adventures that were supposed to be in the pipe that haven't seen the light of day yet. I'm very curious to see what happens with them.

Such as?

Well... the one I wrote.

It's mentioned in the #153 overview in and oblique way. It involves exploring an anthill, among other things.

Actually, parts 2 and 3 were supposed to be 4e adventures, hence the delay.

Really? I've never seen anything that said that. where is that from? My understanding was that the trilogy was supposed to help wrap up a 3E campaign.

There are also other 3E adventures that were supposed to be in the pipe that haven't seen the light of day yet. I'm very curious to see what happens with them.

Joshua J. Frost wrote:

brent norton wrote:

My friend hit me up to run Pathfinder Society at our local game store in Stillwater OK, since I got labelled an expert around here. So, what do I need to do?

Email me. I'll keep your email on file until we're ready to unveil how the in-store program will work.

Thanks!

Where can can said e-mail be had?

All the Paizo email contacts are on THIS PAGE

Pretty much same here. I think I might have once paid duty on a huge order I made, but certainly not for my subscriptions and not for the vast majority of my Paizo orders.

Why is this thread in the Pathfinder forum again?

I believe the initial intent was to ask if seeing 4E made anyone change their mind about Pathfinder.

It's interesting to me how often in 4E threads that even those who love the game have already decided that they are "houseruling" a bunch of stuff.

I found with 3.x that I could play the core rules completely as written.

I like that much better. :)

(Especially since 2E was a houserule-fest for my group.)

Actually, with 3E, I immediately wanted to houserule a whole bunch of stuff. After playing for a while, I ditched most of my houserules, and then after a few more years, created some new better ones. My initial houserules turned out to not improve the game.

For 4E, I plan to play the RAW for a while before houseruling, even though there are changes I'm "sure" I want to make (like bringing back confirm rolls on crits). I just want to be extra sure.

I'm willing to bet that a lot of people will make 4E houserules and then ditch them after a while.

Also, the number one appeal to me about 4E is the underlying math. I don't think it's possible to houserule that into 3E without rewriting the whole system anyways, but I do think it will be possible to add back in my favorite bits from 3E.

Mind you, I am FAR from committed to playing 4E in any kind of long term.

I think it will be easier for a DM to notice a player re-using their daily/encounter powers in 4E than too notice whether they are properly tracking spells, charges, 3/day abilities etc. under 3E.

But I don't worry about that stuff with my players anyways.

An example are ability modifiers -- they are now all bonuses, rather than bonuses countered by penalties. I think anything that might be perceived as a specific weakness has been removed from the game. I also think this is a central paradigm of 4e.

Ability modifiers in 4E are actually exactly the same as in 3E. Although you do add half your level to all ability checks, so eventually any negatives will become overall positive rolls.

Unless you are talking about something else...

Scribbling Rambler suggested that they should have given LG and CE new names, like Celestial and Diabolical, or something like that. I think that's really the point LG is more good then good, it's saintly. CE is not selfishly evil, it is pure evil for its own sake. These alignments are IMO meant for clerics, paladins and outsiders, and a few other exceptional cases.

The werecabbages site is down too, and it's on the same server AFAIK, so that's prolly the source of the problem.

I used to play SPACE 1889, which had awesome setting material and adventures, and terrible rules. I still think it is the best steampunk setting ever. For a while we played it updated to the 1920's using TORG mechanics, and that worked really well.

That's all I got.

Good review Rambler!

I think you summed things up nicely as far as our game went. I do think that having looked at the PHB a bit has allayed some of my concerns regarding character flexibility, but I haven't tried to make up a character yet.

I really liked the warlord class, which is no surprise since I've always wanted a decent class like that. not big on the name though, but I imagine eventually it will stop seeming so weird.

Well, they've said that they had a bigger initial print run than 3.5 and that 3.5 had a bigger initial print run than 3.0, and that 4E sold through faster than either.Unless they are outright lying (which I doubt) then it's pretty hard to deny that their sales are good.

And the book set is the overall #2 bestseller on Amazon. That's frankly amazing.

As to whether it was them that released the pdfs online... I'm dubious, but it's possible, and I personally believe it will increase their sales. But I've heard that they have hit a few places that had the pdfs with cease and desist orders, and that the pdfs became unavailable on those sites. Could be just a cover up of sorts, but WotC has always been very protective of their pdf products so it seems odd.

I have to say that I am personally shocked that sales are this high. I don't know what it means in the long haul, but it's certainly a better sign for WotC than if sales were low.

EDIT: Just went back to Amazon... make that #1 bestseller on Amazon.ca, and #3 on Amazon.com.

By page 24 of the 3.5 PHB, they've covered all of the mechanics for races and ability scores, and are starting into classes. With no role-playing advice.

And I'm not saying that 4E's RP advice is a course on improvisational theatre, or that it's the best stuff I've ever read. But it's a good place to start, and more than they gave us in 3E. And of course, there's a lot more than the small snippet I bothered to retype.

I'm just curious too (and this is not directed at anyone in particular), how many people who are upset that 4E has supposedly ditched role-playing, will actually find the kind of advice they can possibly give useful? What role-playing advice would be useful?

Because personally I read this stuff, some of it is what I do, and some isn't, but none of it is new to me. I'd be better served personally if they DID just ditch all that stuff, because I know how to role-play already. But novices do need that kind of advice to start, until they develop their own style. Honestly, if they went any further than they have into advanced acting or somesuch, I'd feel like they spent way too much time on it, especially since role-playing style is pretty subjective.

All just my 2 coppers.

So here's an excerpt from the PHB:

The easiest way to bring your character to life at the gaming table is to adopt distinctive mannerisms—particular patterns of speech or other behaviors that you can take on at the table to convey how your character looks, sounds, and acts. If you are naturally inclined to spin dice or shuffle cards while the game takes place, you might consider incorporating that behavior into your character. Perhaps your character carries a deck of cards that he shuffles when he’s bored or nervous, or maybe she crouches to the ground and creates little sculptures out of rubble while she’s waiting for her companions to decide where to go next. By contrast, another character might vociferously participate in those deliberations, frequently resorting to

exclamations such as “By Kord’s right arm!” to emphasize his opinion.

Speech patterns can be even more distinctive. A dwarf who never enters battle without shouting, “The dwarves are upon you!” injects a dose of fun roleplaying just as the die rolling is getting most intense.

A wizard who never speaks except in haiku might be carrying the idea of distinctive speech to an extreme, but if you can pull it off (try writing a page full of standbys to cover common situations before the game begins), everyone at the table will remember your character for years!

Someone explain to me how this is aimed at children or idiots who can't read. 'Haiku' is thrown in with the basic expectation that you know what it means. Words like 'incorporating,' 'distinctive,' 'inclined,' 'vociferously,' may not be difficult, but they aren't simple words aimed at a dumbed down audience.

And please tell me how they threw out all of the role-playing. This section is before any of the race and class information. In fact, by page 24 the only mechanics described is the basic mechanic of rolling a d20, how to generate abilities, and a brief outline of the character creation process, although to be honest there are no real mechanics there.

Sorry folks, I just don't see any substance to these complaints.

In most games I've mostly ignored alignment in general, and found the rigid definitions annoying. 3E was the first time that I really used it because it became so much more tied to the rules than it ever had before, with all of the alignment based spells and effects. Otherwise I just used it as a shorthand role-playing guideline for npcs.

I'm not exactly thrilled with the new system, but at least I can mostly ignore it again (because it has less mechanical impact on the game), and as far as I've seen, I don't have to worry about paladins walking around town detecting evil to get a short list of suspects in a mystery.

However, I would like to mention that for a long time now, I've viewed the alignment grid as a diamond rather than a square, with LG at the top and CE at the bottom, and LE-N-CG on a shorter almost horizontal axis. Why? Because even though I get the differences between LE, N and CG, I believe that they have more in common in many ways than other alignments. At the very least, I would call those the alignments with the most grey.

It looks to me like 4E took my version of the grid and flattened it into a line. Of course, that interpretation works for me, because I was already thinking in that direction anyways.

I haven't seen the new Indy movie yet.

The only thing I remember from Episode I is Palpatine's suppressed smirk at the end when he sees that everything has fallen into place for him to become the emperor. That facial expression made the movie worth all the Jar-Jar in the world.

I long ago realized that Lucas lost faith in his initial visions. He no longer believes in what he believed back when he made Star Wars. This is why we ended up with Greedo shooting first and medichlorians and no episodes 7-9.

:Bows to Cosmo's brilliant customer service skills:

Now I feel a sudden need to order more stuff.

Check out the "Bind" maneuver in "Art of the Duel" from Sinister Adventures. Very similar concept.

At first I thought KC was excited about his 3000th post, but now I see he was actually a little blue.

I believe you can do that by going to "My Account" and then "Messageboard Settings" and changing your name there.

Nick Logue makes us ALL more sexy to the ladies!

I have now seen a copy of the rules. I didn't have time to read them in detail, but given some of the comments I've heard, I was shocked at how much flavour and campaign advice and role-playing info are in those books.

Right now, the game looks better than I expected, although I will fully admit that it is not really much like 3e. I know that bugs a lot of people, but not me. I'll keep playing 3e/Pathfinder, but I'll play this too, and lots of other games, just like always.

Funny thing is, one of the things that has pushed me more towards liking 4e is all of the outrageously false criticisms people have made of the game. Because I tried to find out if those things were true, and guess what? A lot of them weren't, which made me say "Hey, this is actually good." So the game exceeded my expectations.

Incidentally, I play 3E with my 8 year old daughter. I think she would have a harder time with 4E than she does with 3E. Just throwing that out there for all the folks saying 4E is for kids. I'll give it a go some time and see. She's not afraid to try new rules out.

Don't think I don't have any complaints. There are a few things I don't like, but I'll try the game as written for a bit before house-ruling my favourite 3E rules back in. I am disappointed with the recycled art. I know they've always recycled art, but in the core books of a new edition? They should be bringing their A game here.

Pathfinders and Rangers are also both older versions of girl guides (at least in Canada).

Get rid of the two weapon swap feat. I know some people like the result, and I know it's a really small part of the game, but the concept breaks my verisimilitude so badly that it undermines my confidence in the entire project.

I'm completely serious.

I'm personally not using them either, but I have seen a few posters mention that there is still ongoing discussion of new rules that Jason is interested in on those threads. Basically stuff that may get added to the beta, but he didn't have time to do anything with it for alpha 3.

I imagine all of that could be migrated over, but AFAIK it hasn't been.

So you are!

I missed that before!

Same here, although actually, no TPKs for me yet (well, not in 3E anyways). My problem is that then they are hesitant to continue.

More than once I've had them decide to 'go back to town' when there was nothing left but a room full of treasure or prisoners that needed rescuing or clues that needed uncovering. I find it very frustrating.

I agree with everything Neithan said.

Furthermore, the only historical reference that I know of to a "short sword" is made by George Silver ~1600, and what he is describing is basically a basket hilted broadsword or backsword, neither a gladius nor a smallsword.

But I've always considered a D&D short sword to be most like a gladius, which was believed to be primarily used for thrusting, but is quite effective for cutting.

Whether that reality has any bearing on in-game weaponry is debatable at best, since there is really little correlation between D&D weapons and their real world counterparts.

Unfortunately, one of those issues has been out of stock for a long time.

Attrition.

I'll admit that attrition would be reduced, but as I said above, it would not be gone. And IMO I'd rather lose a little attrition than see the game come to a grinding halt so frequently because of attrition. I guess we just disagree on what makes a game fun.

What about having cure minor wounds be able to heal you to your maximum hit points less your HD? A 1st level PC with 10 max hp could be healed to 9 hp. An 18th level PC with 200 max hp could be healed up to 182 hp. It will never give you full hit points but it will keep you healed enough to keep fighting.

My only objection to this (and all of the other similar limited-unlimited CmW) is that it adds corner-case complexity that I don't see a need for. Actually, I also find it a weird case of the world being built to fit a rule. As in, I don't intuitively grasp from a game-world perspective why that particular limitation is there, assuming that CmW can be cast at will. What if you've only been hit for 1 hp? Is it useless? It just doesn't sit right for me.

2nd- I've been in a game with unlimited cure minor wounds, and it took more away from the game than it added.

I'd like to hear what it took away. This isn't facetious, if you've play-tested it and didn't like it, tell me why. Because right now, I don't see the problem. Regardless of whether it gets put in Pathfinder or not.

My players have never complained that I don't challenge them enough in a fight. Trust me.

What they do do is worry about pushing on when it will require them to tap out their wands/potions/cleric/whatever. Because then they have no reserve (and probably less clerical spell support, not just healing) in the next fight. I don't mind that happening eventually. I just don't like it happening as quickly as it seems to.

And my characters do use up other resources in fights too, and take other kinds of damage.

I played 3 combat encounters and some info gathering from H1 last night (as a player, not DM).

It was fun. There wasn't a whole lot of story yet, but enough to get us to the encounters. I'm okay with that for an intro adventure.

The encounters were interesting. I find the dynamic very different than 3E. Fun, but a very different feel. The combat does not run any faster at this level of play.

My overall impression of 4E so far (based on this playtest) is:

1) It is as different from 3E as 3E is from 1E.
2) It looks like a fun pick-up game or convention game, and will probably work well for organized play. Maybe better than 3E for those things.
3) I don't think it will be as good for my tastes for an ongoing home campaign.
4) It is very cinematic, which is good if that's what you want. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I want gritty. It doesn't look like it can do gritty very well.

I'll hold off on any more detail analysis until I have the chance to play more.

EDIT: One more thing; as many reviewers have said, the production quality is lacking. The quickplay rules got smudged really easily, and the battlemap was damaged by having dice rolled on it. I was really not impressed from that standpoint.

I'm just going to throw out another automatic limitation on 'unlimited' CmW. Other spells. Particularly buff spells.

There are a lot of good spells kicking around with 1 minute per level durations. In my experience, once these spells are cast, PCs go as far and fast as they can before the duration runs out. Sometimes they would need to choose between letting the duration run out to use their unlimited healing or to suck it up and either cast the big heal spells or stay wounded so they can keep moving while their other spells are still up.

Granted it won't come up all the time, but it will most often come up during the high tension series of combats.

I was speaking to the Wizard's tower people quite a bit at CanGames, and want to check out their store(s). It's a little off the path for me (especially since I am car free) but I got a really good vibe from those folks. I'll definitely check it out!

EDIT: Hmm, I was just checking transit, and the 95 can pretty much take me right there in half an hour, or I can go even faster on an express bus. I live pretty close to the transitway, so it's a much better option than I thought.

Here is another place a similar discussion occurred.

In another thread I posted a similar thought. I've reprinted it here because it has more justification for keeping CmW.

Okay, Crazy Talk Time.

I've been running using Spell Points for a long while now, and as part of that, I allow unlimited 0-level spells. For obvious reasons, I ditched CmW and created a stabilize spell just like Jason did (except mine brings you to 0 hp, unconscious and stable).

I've been doing this for a while and it works. It even works well.

BUT...

I've also been thinking about two related issues. The 15 minute adventuring day and encounter design.

People run out of healing magic and other resources and pack it in and call it a day. We all know this problem.

Or they decide to push on and do one more encounter, and suddenly, they are in TPK-land. The DM then writes a nasty letter to Paizo and Greg Vaughan because the encounter was too hard. Meanwhile, some other group rested and hit that same encounter fresh, and say it was a cakewalk.

So, I've started to believe that designing a balanced encounter would be a heck of a lot easier if you could make the default assumption that everyone was healed up at the beginning of most encounters.

Now don't get me wrong. I know that resource management is part of the game, and I LOVE that it is part of the game, but I think that hp are too important a resource (and frankly have too big an impact on your other resources; clerics still are mostly dedicated healbots, when they have so many cool utility spells) to screw around with too much.

So I am going to playtest Cure Minor Wounds as always available.

Now, before you eat me alive, consider the following. You can cast it once per round. That means 10 per minute, meaning that in 10 minutes you can heal a total of 100 hp. Divide that up among a party of 4 characters and that's an average of 25 hp each. After a big fight, it's going to take a little while to pump everyone back up. Long enough for reinforcements or a random encounter, if you want to put the pressure on. And really in combat CmW is pretty useless except to stabilize a dying character. That 1 hp will never be seen as making enough difference to be worth the effort.

PCs will still run out of spells and stuff, and have to camp sometimes. But mostly, you can keep the action going, and designers can rest a little easier knowing that the tough encounter isn't going to kill some party that would have beaten it if they camped for the night before opening the last door in the dungeon.

Or, add a collapsible function to the forums, where headings are listed and the handful of topics under them can be hidden. I've been wanting that for awhile now since the forums have become so busy, but I know you guys have other priorities!

These forums already have that function, have had it for a few months now. On the messageboard page there is a little triangle/arrow by each forum heading. If you click that arrow, that forum collapse to just the title bar, and the site remembers your personal settings. I have collapsed the alpha one and two lists so that I don't have to scroll through them to get to the other content.

I do live in Ottawa. Once PFS gets underway I want to set up some kind of regular program with one or more local stores to run organized play. I'm honestly not sure which stores have space available for use (or how good those spaces are). I'm also not 100% certain how I'll fit it into my schedule, but I'll make something work.

I'll definitely post more once I have an actual plan.

I will be at Origins again this year.

In 2007, is the event was exclusive to the USA?

I was never heard of the event in Montréal.

Yes. I heard about it last year, but it was only in the US at the time. I should check if any Ottawa retailers are participating this year.

I appologise if I seem snarky in my response, I just fail to see how people could get all caught up in the semantics of the term "enhancement", provided they read the rule.

Have you ever been on a messageboard or to a games convention? People can and will get worked up about any rule inconsistency! ;-)

Seriously, I can interpret and understand the rules, but not everyone can, and not everyone wants to. There are players that will intentionally use semantics to pervert the intention of a rule. And before you say "A good GM won't allow that" be aware that at cons you don't always have a choice about who you play with, and in organized play, there are sometimes non-intuitive by the RAW rulings made for the sake of consistency.

And sometimes even smart players can just misinterpret something that is worded ambiguously. I had a player tell me that summoned animals from summon spells under 3.0 don't follow orders on the round before they disappear because the text said that they 'act normally on the last turn.' which of course meant that they get an action before they disappear. He thought it meant they do whatever animals would normally do.

Personally I feel one of the biggest benefits of the long and public playtest of Pathfinder is that we can find small inconsistencies like this and patch them.

(And yes, I too have been playing D&D since the dawn of time and had to interpret far less clear rules than this.)

I vote for clarity and consistent use of specific game terminology.