DeathQuaker's page

As usual tmdq, you raise good points. I still think there is a weird gender difference here though. Feelings of male inadequacy tend to run deep and are so very rarely discussed and are so easily spurred by romantic failures.

You think women do not have feelings of inadequacy? You think women don't get broken hearts? Or, say, do incredibly stupid things to attract someone or to win someone back? (If you've never seen a woman do horrible, self-destroying things in the name of love, then you've never seen a woman, ever. You may know them, talk to them, but you've obviously never SEEN them for really real.) Maybe you're suggesting women have no pride to hurt?

No. I call rampant BS. There are lots of things where men and women on a general rule of brain chemistry operate differently but this is not a gender unique thing. Absolutely they may express their pain DIFFERENTLY, but that is a worlds-apart different thing from not feeling pain at all.

I am sorry you were treated poorly by someone, and I am sorry you took it so hard and had to suffer.

But you do not get to win the "My Heart Gets Broke Worse Than Yours" award just because you have a penis.

CommandoDude:

Sorry to hear that happened to you. Sounds frustrating and maybe a little embarrassing.

Now -- the hosts and players should have communicated their wants/needs from you more clearly, yes.

And it's clear you meant no harm, and are not by nature a mooch. But you did step on a lot of toes for things that often seem obvious to a lot of people, even if it didn't seem obvious to you. So I think their request was not unusual or uncalled for.

Since you're posting, I'm gonna run with an assumption that you're asking for advice -- and if you don't want advice, just ignore this, of course.

1. If you can bring yourself to, write a sincere note of apology to the hosts. Say you didn't realize you'd stepped on toes and that you appreciate their hospitality, and you apologize for taking advantage, however unintended it was. Say you hope you can associate with them some other time, but don't ask to be back in the group (probably best for all of you to get some space). But if you can do this it can end things feeling less awkward and difficult for all of you, and ends things on a note of closure. It also shows you understand why you were asked to leave and shows you are mature enough to own up to your mistakes--which helps people trust that you can learn from them and not make them again.

2. In the future: if you know you don't always have cash on hand, then eat your own lunch/dinner beforehand and don't expect to eat other people's food when you know folks chip in and you didn't. Eating on an IOU is fine once but 3 times is way too much, whether people remembered to ask or not.

3. In the future: always ASK when you're not sure. ASK ASK ASK. Ask if people pitch in snacks or one person provides; ask if you can have the milk, EVERY TIME; ask if you can have something if you brought nothing yourself; if in doubt about ANYTHING, ask ask ask ask ask. Usually people will make clear what's cool and what isn't. I have friends that expect people to bring stuff and only eat what they brought, I have other friends who are practically offended if you don't eat what they've provided and expect nothing in return--but the thing is, it takes time to make sure that's okay. Everyone's different, so just ASK.

4. When you join another group, go grocery shopping -- buy a bunch of non-perishable, cheap snacks and or cases of soda (or booze, if that's kosher with the group), and store them away somewhere. Then when you go to game, you can just grab from your stash and bring something with you, rather than realize you've forgotten to bring something to pitch in last minute and don't have time to get anything (this is advice I myself have trouble following, mind, but I'm getting better).

5. Pretend you're around 3 year olds a lot--or around your boss all the time. That helps cut down on the swearing. :) (But I can swear like a sailor myself--it is a hard habit to break but it is doable.)

How much does art really matter to you

Art is seldom a deal-maker or -breaker by itself, but I do judge art quality when evaluating an RPG book. It can influence my opinion at least of how well a book is put together, and whether I will keep an eye out for future products by the same company.

Now, if the game itself sucks, not gonna get it no matter how pretty it is, as SlimGauge notes.

And if I am already familiar with a system and I like it, I will buy the product absolutely regardless of art quality.

BUT if I am looking at a system for the first time and the art is distracting because it's bad or poorly placed, then it may influence my decision to put the book down and not give the system a chance--mostly just because I have trouble reading the system because of the poor design.

Furthermore, if a product contains artwork I personally find offensive -- women are only portrayed as sexualized victims and never as heroes (the infamous half-naked ritual sacrifice victim, for example); offensive racial stereotyping, etc. -- then I absolutely will not buy the product because I do not back with money things that encourage values I consider negative and hurtful. If I heard someone on the street call someone a derogatory name and then ask me to buy the wares they were selling, I wouldn't, so I wouldn't do any sort of equivalent.

Other considerations for artwork that may influence my purchase/support:

- Does it look like a non-artist scribbled a sketch and scanned it in?
I've seen a lot of 3rd party/low budget game books who feel the need to have artwork but obviously cannot afford a good pro artist. And so they publish clearly amateur (figures are disproportionate, etc.) or low res/low quality drawings or both, which dramatically brings down the quality of the publication.

I would honestly prefer simple, clean line drawings or even meticulously chosen clip art/stock art/stock photos than badly drawn artwork -- or even no art at all. If you lay out your book well, I may notice there's no artwork, but I will respect it more than if you insert a picture of ridiculously scaled adventurers that look like you paid your 9 year old sister 50 cents to draw it for you.

- Does it have anything to do with what's on the page?
Picture needs to be close to the text talking about what's depicted. I get annoyed by artwork in RPG books that doesn't actually illustrate anything to do with what's happening.

- Has it been shoved into the layout willy nilly or does it use the space wisely?
Good layout is one of my own separate but related aesthetic gripes, actually. If you can't layout the page that I can't easily follow the text, then I'm definitely not going to buy the book. Placement of artwork within the layout is part of this issue as well. If the artwork is placed such that it actually truncates a paragraph, making it harder to read, or otherwise distracts from the text, I'm not going to appreciate its presence, no matter how beautiful it is.
Likewise if artwork makes the page too "busy," that's no good. Usually artwork when used well is used to break up text to keep it from being monotonous, but if there's a picture and a table and a sidebar and barely any text between, that looks awful--and also goes back to, "does this addition of artwork make the text hard to read?" If yes, then bad.

- Are the artistic styles consistent with each other?
I am not too much of a stickler over style per se. Certainly there are styles of artwork I prefer more than others according to my personal aesthetic, but I won't refuse to buy a book just because the artwork isn't my favorite kind, especially if it's otherwise obviously high quality (high res, good use of color (or grayscale chiaroscuro), well placed in the layout, etc. etc.).

But it does bug me if a publisher has hired obviously several different artists who have very different, conflicting styles of artwork. If on the first page I see a gorgeous painted piece of pseudo-realistic fantasy artwork, and on the next page I see a cel-painted-style piece of Japanese-comic-style art, and then on the next page after that I see your 9 year old sister's disproportionate adventuring party in pencil sketch, then no. I'm okay with differing styles--every artist does things a little differently--as long as they are still complimentary. Think about how a museum curator might arrange paintings on a wall. He may put Matisse and another expressionist together, even though Matisse's picture has stronger colors and the other expressionist has sharper, darker, cleaner lines, but they still compliment each other in some way. But a curator will probably not put an Andy Warhol next to Da Vinci (unless they're specifically trying to make a point) -- both good artists, but their artwork will probably distract from each other and make each piece harder to appreciate.

FHDM, that is a really awful way of saying that. Not being attracted to someone sexually does not necessarily equal being a jerkass who views people as things to be used, in this case for friendship and lifting heavy objects.

This is most likely getting to me more than it should because it's stepping too close to a real-life argument I've been dealing with lately.

Yeah. I've felt the pain of unrequited love before (all too f@!%ing often, in facT), but the people I've felt that way about value me as a friend and I consider friendship as one of the most tremendously valuable things there are (after all, your friends stick with you long after the romance ends). I'd never consider the person who valued my friendship to be a horrible person for doing so. It hurts more than 1,000 burning needles under the skin to be rejected, to not have your feelings reciprocated, but "I'm not their type" does not equal "I am a horrible person with no identity worth valuing."

Now, I've been used too, and called a "good friend" when it just meant the person in question valued my willingness to drop everything to help them, and then put up with their unwillingness to do the same and general poor treatment of me because at the time I didn't have the self respect to recognize how unhealthy that was at the time. But eventually I figured it out. The people who used to do that to me -- well, I developed self respect. And I don't associate with those people any more.

There's a big matter of discerning whether someone truly values you--maybe even if it's not the way you want them to--and someone who just keeps you around because you're convenient.

So as I think of it, if you feel like you're worthless around someone--examine why. If it's coming from you--work on respecting yourself more. But if it's coming from the way the other person is treating you.... take care of yourself and get the heck away as best you can. Easier said than done of course. Best and sincere hopes to those with fragile and mending hearts.

linkified

Afterlife is available on Amazon.

I know I said "I really wish I could find a copy..." but I was not really speaking literally. Yes, I know there are copies out there on the marketplace and ebay, but it's an old enough game I don't trust it to run on my computer.

The Amazon marketplace vendor entry looks sketchy -- doesn't note it's a game from 1997 or so, posts no system reqs or whatever. And it's charging $31.99 for a game from 1997, when I can buy other awesome games from the same time for $10.00 or less easily. Yeah there are some other vendors that are offering it for $7.99 or so but still. Hard to know if the disc is in good condition, etc.

What I really meant was, "I wish GOG or a similar company would sell a reliable, patched for modern-PC use, version of Afterlife." Sorry, I forget I'm in a forum of eager problem solvers and get loose with my talk sometimes.

I liked all of the Age of Wonder seiries, as well as the Disciples and Warlords series. If you liked MOM, I should mention again SSI's Stronghold and the Warlods series mentioned above.

I'll check'em out!

DeathQuaker wrote:

For strategy/civilization building, I am a fan of the Civilization series, and I'm looking forward to the Civ V expansion coming out soon (Civ V itself is good now that it's been patched a few times).

Ooh, I've been wary of switching to Civ V from my heavily modded version of Civ IV. What's the expansion offering?

Check out the Website here.

In brief, it's bringing back espionage and religion, tying some of those mechanics into the city-states. There's more to it than that but the previews online can describe it better than I can.

I would say rather than "switch" from Civ IV to Civ V, keep Civ IV but check out Civ V when you have a chance. There are a lot of differences in gameplay, each with their own strengths, so I don't consider it a case of having to make one replace the other.

Going oldskool in the same note, I've got Master of Magic on my laptop (purchased at gog.com) and have fun with that, though I'm very bad at it. I really want to try Stardock's Elemental, which is supposed to be very much inspired by MOM, but I know their initial release went poorly. I think it is/was supposed to be much improved with patches and add-ons though.

As a long-time fan of Master of Magic myself as well (gogo Wind-Walking Fire-Breathing Vampire-Lycanthrope Arcane-Weaponized Missile-Warping pack of heroes travelling across the world in two turns and breaking havoc on everything in their path, while you're raising volcanoes all over the map and causing the dead everywhere to raise as zombies), I wouldn't advice Elemental as a good alternative. The game has some very interesting concepts indeed (such as the whole lineages thing), but it doesn't quite follow in the footsteps of MoM.

I recently got Paradox' Warlock, which on the surface looks pretty much like a mix between Civ V and MoM, but lacks a lot of depth (though it has some very nice things, such as being able to play worlds with multiple planes of existence).

So far, the best game that tries to live up to MoM's glory is, in my opinion, Age of Wonders III. It is mechanically very similar to MoM (the combat system is really good), and while some years old already, extremely pleasing to the senses (your eyes will explode with the amount of particle effects that game has).

Duly noted! Thanks for the advice.

I really wish I could find a copy of Afterlife. It was an awesome game by Lucasarts where you built and managed Heaven and Hell.

Oh God, they exist! You are...

I do exist! Yes, a friend of mine and I used to both love it very much. Yeah, the endgame could get boring but then you could always try the scenarios and other stuff as well, or just cheat in the Deathstar.

Depending on what you want out of it, a sorcerer might be a better choice. Some of the bloodlines give abilities that are useful for being in melee, and of course there's the classic sorcerer to dragon disciple PrCing. Sorcerers advance in spell level slower but they can be useful depending on what you envision.

EK is a fine way to go, and works better than they are often given credit for, at least in my personal experience.

Either way, make sure you've got some good battle buffs and spells that bypass SR or saves -- that way you don't have to worry as much about maxing caster level and/or saves where possible.

It also depends on what your vision of "effective" in terms of being a melee wizard is. I'd build a wizard who occasionally draws a weapon and fights when he has nothing else to do differently from a warrior who buffs himself a little with spells.

For strategy/civilization building, I am a fan of the Civilization series, and I'm looking forward to the Civ V expansion coming out soon (Civ V itself is good now that it's been patched a few times).

Going oldskool in the same note, I've got Master of Magic on my laptop (purchased at gog.com) and have fun with that, though I'm very bad at it. I really want to try Stardock's Elemental, which is supposed to be very much inspired by MOM, but I know their initial release went poorly. I think it is/was supposed to be much improved with patches and add-ons though.

I really wish I could find a copy of Afterlife. It was an awesome game by Lucasarts where you built and managed Heaven and Hell.

I was always bad at SimCity but appreciated the design.

For sandbox/dollhouses, I am/was a big fan of the Sims. I love the building and design aspects, and I love building social experiments (especially since the later games are better about your not having to babysit them and make sure they pee and stuff) -- but not the way EA has handled it lately. It's really a shame because I loved those games for a long time and still play the Sims 3 from time to time, but I stopped buying their products last year for several reasons:
- I purchased items on the Sims store which then failed to download and unpack properly. Reported the error to customer service, only response I got was "Known issue, sucks to be you, here, have a 20% off coupon for the store that you can't download anything from."
- Although the game gets patches released constantly, there are known issues that go back to the core game and early expansions which have never actually been fixed (particularly with the World Adventures expansion)
- Want to avoid Origin
- Not paying $40 for an expansion pack, no matter how good it appears
- Definitely not paying $40 for an expansion pack whose features are half a repeat of a previous expansion and half a bunch of "social" features I will never use (but I will miss out on unlocking things in game if I don't use them), including a bunch of Facebook crap which I definitely won't use given I don't have Facebook

And it's a damned shame because the early stuff was good and worth the money usually. I've got Sims 3+World Adventures (Dungeon crawling in the Sims!)+Ambitions+Late Night and the world builder as well, and I have fun with those--I've got archeologists who explore, outdoorswomen who garden and fish and spelunk, mad scientist inventors, music bands that rock, etc. etc. Even trying to build a post apocalyptic world in the world builder. But I'm not paying them more money for stuff I don't want and stuff that doesn't work, which is sadly what the franchise has turned into since. Not to mention the bad customer service.

I'd give an arm and a leg for an indie developer to come along with their own take on a slice-of-life story building game, or a machinima maker, for that matter. If it looked any good I'd snap it up and support them in a heartbeat.

While I like a lot about The products, I have a few questions:

1. Why in the world do player almost always require, dealing with very evil groups in adventures. I at first liked that some encounters had that as an option. Now my players find it as bad as being captured.

I imagine that's a stylistic thing--and I think that's common beyond Pathfinder. A lot of groups expect that. And if the group is very evil, it's always good to find a motivator to fight them -- from they're doing something wrong and you feel the right thing to do is stop you to they're invading your turf or have taken something you feel is rightly yours, etc.

They have to design an adventure that most groups can find a motivator to keep wanting to face the big bads, and "they're really bad people" is a pretty solid motivator.

You can always incorporate in your own twists. Besides, while I admit to not having read many APs, it is my understanding a lot of them do have gray morality twists.

And I am currently receiving Skull and Shackles which while sure, many of your enemies are evil, you are also playing pirates and expected to raid the innocent and loot and plunder and enslave. I never thought I'd read the clause, "If the party has slaves to sell..." in an RPG adventure--at least an RPG like Pathfinder--but there it is...

2. Some of the choices of the mini being produced.

Generally speaking I'd go into the forums and read some of the posts by both Paizo, Reaper, and WizKids reps. They've provided a lot of insights into that if you look around (but, with all due respect, I'm not going to do the work for you. If you're really curious, have a good poke around the forums).

1. Red dragon, other companies have done the red dragon to death. While some for these are rare and costly, many are very cheaplyand frankly look a lot better.

My guess is because it's based on recognizable and iconic artwork from the core rulebook cover. It's not a red dragon, it's the Pathfinder dragon. It may not be to your personal aesthetic and you may have hoped to see something else in its place, but it is what it is.

2. Rare villains that a singular. These would be much better product in special pack for various modules or series, like HeroClix.

I don't buy Pathfinder Battles minis but I know I just saw singles boxes at the FLGS the other day... I'd be surprised if they didn't have those. If not, maybe post the suggestion to the Pathfinder miniatures forum (not the general miniature's forum).

3. alternate painted figures in the same set.

Just a guess, but I imagine that would be too costly for a relatively young line. I suggest in the meantime finding a friend who likes to paint to make variants for you.

3. And Having content repeated in other products.

They do that? I've never seen it. But I do not buy every item in the Pathfinder line, mostly just the rulebooks and the occasional companion (and for once, the current Adventure Path). I can say if there is an IMPORTANT or extremely useful rule and it was originally published in a setting book not everyone might see, I can see how they might repeat the rule later to make sure everyone is sure to be able to access it. That's actually a practice I'd encourage, personally (as long as the repeated rule doesn't take up more than a page or so at most).

We gamers all have very individual tastes and needs, and were a publisher to try to cater to one, they'd likely alienate another vast group. I think Paizo does a pretty good job balancing the products to have a broad appeal without quality loss, for the most part.

Now, I certainly have my own gripes about the products I've purchased (I occasionally have to suppress the urge to mark up all the errors in some of the rulebooks with blue pencil--or red pen, for that matter, complete with "see me after class" tagged to the front--and ship it back to Paizo). And they publish a lot of stuff that I frankly have no interest in, or make a design decision I don't understand. But I know I'm not their only customer, nor a typical one at that.

I just found this post from our GM which notes his laptop's dead, which could be a big part of the issue.

Wulfson, I hope everything's okay.

I've seen people play the children or relatives of their other, retired PCs, sure. I haven't always seen the idea of avenging the wrongs of a failed parent but I'm sure it's happened... although one of my characters in a PBP has that as a concept (but I never actually played the parent, so it doesn't count).

I haven't had much of an opportunity to myself, although in an old WOD campaign, I did imagine out what one of my PC's daughters would be like and statted her up.

Even if the players hadn't played the failed adventurers, it makes for a great story hook as to why the party has gone together -- "let's fix what our parents broke" makes for a good group motivation. :)

I like the QUILTBAGPIPE concept, but I think Freehold DM may be treading around an important topic. When sexuality-based rights and support groups gather, from my experience, they tend to include a lot of the minority or "otherly" sexualities. I understand that those people who face the most consistent adversity are those who are different. I also wonder if this "misfits club" for lack of a better word, does not end up becoming less open and inclusive than it claims to be. Again, I like the concept, but I can say from personal experience that I have gone to pride centres and related events and experienced a lot of hostility for being an "outsider". Am I the only one who has had this experience?

I've noted earlier on that as a queer/bi woman, I've felt uncomfortable amongst certain groups of homosexuals because they tended to give me the cold shoulder. I definitely got the "outsider" vibe, if not the "yeah right, like you really exist" treatment. I find this to be more often amongst urban groups, where there are enough people of a given sexuality to that many of them get together and form their own subculture.

It definitely sucks to feel left out--not to mention downright hypocritical to say "I want the right to express my sexuality without being discriminated against! But you, 'bi girl', you don't get to ask for that same right."

But at the same time, from an external point of view, I understand where this comes from. If you belong to a minority--in the broadest sense of the term--that is often unfairly stereotyped, discriminated against, and even beaten because you're different, you (by which I mean a human being) tend to seek out people like yourself. You band together and put up your "group armor" to defend yourself. At the start, this is as a protective instinct, to fend off legitimate threats of the "norm" or "other" who are actively intending to be hurtful to you. But as you also come to celebrate your differences and be proud of them--there's a weird, human tendency to start denigrating those who are different from you. You've formed your group, you've found your place you belong and where you feel like what makes you different makes you special--and thus, the outsiders can't be let in or else you lose your specialness. When you often feel powerless in the outside world, you exert the power you have within your sphere of influence to make the "others" feel like you do in their world. It's part of human nature.

Hell, as a GAMER, I understand where this comes from. While gamers don't usually face the severity of discrimination that TLGBQ folk (it's possible, but we're much less likely to be fired or killed for playing D&D). But we are weirdos, people say crazy stuff about us, we band together, and we become proud of our gamer selves. And we also become elitist. That the others, the "normals," the "non-gamers"--I have frequently seen gamers treat them as stupid, as boring, as the people who "just don't get it," as non-valid to be their friends or associates. I've done it myself, sad to say, and more often than I'd like to admit.

And I've seen any other number of subcultures and factions and various ways human being subdivide themselves do the same thing. It is not a phenomenon unique to homesexuals or anyone else in the TLGBQ (QUILTBAGPIPE?) spectrum.

And at least in the urban queer community I live closest to now, I've seen a lot more openness than I used to. I feel like I could go to Pride this year with a "I'm BI!" t-shirt or whatever and not have stuff thrown at me (I have literally feared that very thing in the past). I've seen a lot of queer groups precisely with that identifier, and seen people in that group truly be welcomed, whether queer themselves or straights allied with the organization's purpose. So I think as that community continues to gets its bearings, it will get past the exclusivist defenses so many subcultures put up--and I think a lot of folks understand they have to do that, if they truly are fighting for diversity recognition and equal rights for everyone.

I'm still around, but then I didn't buy Diablo III.

Maybe in previous games, the casters didn't learn good resource management, and now you're the one teaching them?

Or maybe they've gotten hit so hard, so often, they are trying to turtle?

Or perhaps they're not translating well from video games to tabletop RPGs?

Or maybe no one wants to convert their 12th level wizard into an equivalent level commoner for however long it is before they get a proper night's rest?

Be fair now, a 12th level commoner has fewer weapon proficiencies, can't cast at-will cantrips, and doesn't have an arcane bond or school benefits (if I see a 12th level commoner teleport away with dimensional steps or have innate elemental resistance, I'd be concerned). :)

Also, it'd take AWHILE before a 12th level wizard ran out of spells and had nothing left--if a single fight took every spell a 12th level wizard had to resolve it, I'd say the PCs deserved a rest after that one! ;p

As to the OP's question:

Why do DMs allow a 15-minute Adventuring Day?

Dunno. Never seen it happen in real life.

And never seen players insist on it either, in a way that the GM has to resist it. Hell, I think I've recalled at least two instances of players really wanting to push on and me-as-GM trying to hint that they really could use some downtime about now...

that said, the main allure of the game is indeed the online play, and indeed if I was the one calling the shots on a Pathfinder game that would be where I would like it to go: make an interesting single-player campaign yes, but also give players the tools to make their own campaigns, persistent worlds, and the like. I loved that about NWN and it disappoints me that first no other game has tried it save NWN2, and second that NWN2's toolset was so shoddy in most places and ridiculously difficult to use in others.

I have never played NWN online personally and never planned to, and still got probably hundreds of hours of entertainment out of it, between the Bioware made content and fan content.

I know there's a whole other world of it with multiplayer, but it's not the "allure" for everyone. :)

Also, while I seem to be the vast minority in this opinion/experience, I had a much easier time designing stuff with the NWN2 toolset. Having a non-programming background, I still was able to get right into it and make stuff. I even won 3rd place in their module design contest in 2006. Mind, my module takes about 5-10 minutes to play through, but for a secretary with a degree in English, the fact I made a playable game even at only 10 minutes long I feel like is an accomplishment, and speaks to the fact that it can be used by anyone, because I definitely am anyone.

I don't know, maybe NWN's toolset was more friendly to actual people with game design/programming skills and thus that's why I couldn't get into it, or something.

Also, I really liked NWN2s freeform outdoor terrain sculpting and had a lot of fun with it; whereas I really struggled with NWN's tilesets.

OK, I just finished the part in Luskan and now I'm at the beginning of a new chapter where I have to find the "words of power". Is it near the end of the game? If it's almost the end of the game, I'll try to finish the OC, if not, I won't bother.

Honestly, I only played through the OC once and that was 10 years ago. I don't really remember. Luskan was middle or endpoint maybe? I'd suggest peeking at a walkthrough if you want to be sure.

DeathQuaker wrote:

Xzaral wrote:

DeathQuaker wrote:

But I will know not to ask you to look over the Slayers d20 revision/Pathfinderization I'm finishing up.

You just became my favorite person on these forums with that line.

because of the Slayersd20 revision or because I'm not asking Freehold to look at it? ;)

And if YOU have any interest in looking at many many many pages of rules, let me know. :)

I suppose I'd have to say "It's a secret".

LOL.

Slayers is most definitely my favorite series and I'd love to look over your conversion. I enjoyed the take that Guardians of Order did on the Slayers d20, especially how the casting system worked. I never actually had a chance to use it in play sadly (my normal group is not the type to try such games, usually ending in either 'kill the main characters' type runs, or far far worse). It looked like it might've ended up a tad clunky from the number of rolls for it (if I recall it's a control check, fatigue check, fatigue damage, then resolve spell right?). But it looked like numbers were more static as fewer buffs existed.

For the casting system:

Casting spells deals nonlethal damage. So first you make "drain check" which is a Fortitude save, then determine how much nonlethal damage you take based on how well you succeeded or failed, and roll that damage (for my revision I just made it a static number that you might halve or double depending on the result of the Fortitude save).

If you fail the Fortitude save (and only if you fail the Fortitude save), you have to make a control check, which is a concentration check to make sure you don't fail the casting due to the damage you take (I switched Concentration check to work like PF concentration checks more or less).

And then yes, resolve spell. So it can be 3 steps (make Fort save, take damage, resolve) or up to 4 (make Fort check, take damage, make concentration check, resolve if successful).

There were fewer buffs overall, but there are a lot of buffs and penalties to the Fortitude and Control saves for casting (for example, if you take more time to cast the spell, you get a +5 to your Fortitude save per round you extend your casting by) so there is a lot of math you have to do to cast spells. And while I've tweaked it a bit, there's still a lot to keep track of there. Which is one of the reasons why I'd like other people to take a look.

I still find it very interesting as a non-Vancian system though, which is why the whole project started. I was originally going to just rewrite up the magic system and then I started revising the classes and feats and skills to go with it (and streamline a la Pathfinder). I got rid of the nearly mandatory prestige classes and restreamlined the number of skills back to a manageable number.

Oh, and I revamped the psychological warfare system, writing up new conditions for being embarrassed or disoriented.

DeathQuaker wrote:

Stuff.

Ok, thank you for the information. I played NWN2 and all its expansions before playing NWN, and I did find MotB interesting story-wise, but the challenge was not there and epic-levels gameplay is mewh. SoZ had the challenge, but the story was not there. The OC had a good beginning, but became ridiculous from mid-game to the ending IMO.

I have bought NWN Diamond Edition, so maybe I'll try the expansions after finishing the OC, if you truly believe they are worth it, but for now I'm playing D3. :P

Never got around to SOZ for NWN2. I think the epic gameplay in MotB is very much to individuals' liking or no.

For NWN, I honestly wouldn't even bother with finishing the OC, if you're not enjoying it. Just skip straight to SotU and HotD.

Enjoy D3!

Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games capture the flavor of the Forgotten Realms. Neverwinter Nights games make the Forgotten Realms look silly. I bought the first NWN on GOG and I didn't finish it. The game is a cakewalk even with an unoptimised character (bad guys can't hit me), the Open Lock skill is utterly useless (you can just bash things without losing anything, unlike KotOR) and the story is laughable. NWN might be a good online game, but the official single player campaing is a joke.

Did you get the whole Diamond Edition of NWN? If so, I suggest loading up Hordes of the Underdark -- it is way, way, way, way better than the OC. It starts you in Waterdeep and takes you through Undermountain to the Underdark--and then to the Outer Planes. Story is way better, difficulty is higher, companions more interesting, etc.

There's also Shadows of Undrentide of course, which if you play you should play before Hordes of the Underdark as technically the hero of both stories is the same (the OC "Hero of Neverwinter" is NOT supposed to be the same character), which I think is also better in terms of build and difficulty, but I found generally more boring.

A lot of the premium content (what they used to call DLC back when it was a brand shiny new thing) is also quite good -- Wyvern Crown of Cormyr particularly stood out to me; Pirates of the Sword Coast was good but short. Kingmaker was buggy but an interesting premise.

And then of course part of the whole thing with NWN and NWN2 is you can download player-made content. I recall a remake of Pool of Radiance (the original Gold Box game) that a fan made in NWN which was phenomenal.

NWN2 is also I think a better treatment of the Forgotten Realms world, and the Mask of the Betrayer expansion is hands down one of the best single player RPG stories I've played through. I rank it close to Torment (and it's written by the same people). Mind, NWN2 has a crappy camera and some other engine clunkiness but personally I still found it worth overcoming its flaws to play MoTB in particular.

Now, the NWN2 OC... well, I think it's better than the NWN OC. But then, a lot of things are better than the NWN OC. But the NWN2 OC has about 10-15 hours worth of filler in the middle when you get to Neverwinter which is an utterly frustrating and boring slog. If you can make it, once you get to the part where you have your own stronghold it starts getting considerably better.

While I will forever hate dubs, Lina's dubbed voice as well as that for the main character in excel saga were truly, truly awful.

I did like Lisa Ortiz as Lina in the Slayers TV series (Cynthia Martinez in the OAVs was okay, but Lisa is better). NOW, I think generally the Slayers dub was rather mediocre and very inconsistent--the voice directors at Central Park Media were AWFUL about doing simple things like making sure actors pronounced names the same way or casting an appropriate voice for the part (looks at Jimmy Zoppi as Miki in Utena and glares. Who the hell decides to make a 12 year old sound 40?). But I was okay with Lisa Ortiz, and she's generally a good actress. And I was okay with Larissa Wolcott as Excel (she was the 2nd Excel dub actress). Sure she's no Kotono Mitsuishi, but who the hell is? Kotono Mitsuishi is amazing (as is Megumi Hayashibara) but I was fine with the dub folks too. I tend to switch back and forth between either depending on the mood I'm in.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Cowboy Bebop. Your argument is invalid.

Funimation did a really good job on Baccano! however.

Code Geass also was pretty good... Even the Japanese prefer Jonny Yong Bosch as Lelouch instead of Jun Fukuyama. Or so I've heard.

I'll add to this and reiterate my earlier assertion that R.O.D the TV is actually better to watch in dub, for a variety of reasons (not Read or Die OAV, though).

Basically, rather than make a blanket statement about sub or dub and join the animefanboiwarz I will be an audacious, horrible, traitorous person and say this:

For any given anime you decide watch, watch at least one episode in both original language and the dub in your native language, and then decide which one you're comfortable with/happy with/impressed the most with the acting/able to understand what's happening best for that individual anime.

No studios, translators, actors, directors, or even subtitle-styles are the same, so why tar all subs or all dubs with the same brush?

(I tend to watch both for series I like, once each way at least one time through. I know, I'm a horrible traitor to my race.)

TOZ: Ah, Mihoshi always makes me smile no matter what language she's speaking. :)

Continued OT discussion:

Just understand that Fallout - New Vegas is VERY buggy. If you can live with the bugs, then it is a fun game.

The patches have pretty much fixed it up by now. If you're new to the game and buy the Ultimate Edition, you should have very few problems. Even fully patched on the non-Ultimate Edition, the only bugs I hit were some crashes when fast traveling in Old World Blues, and there was 1 quest (out of the hundreds) I had to fix in the console because of something not triggering properly.

And yes, PC mods can make Bethesda games very interesting, although you have to sort through a lot of chaff to get to the wheat.

Both very good and thorough reviews.

My personal assessment of the DLC would be in order of what I felt was best:

1. Old World Blues -- generally agree with your assessment. Loved all the 50s sci fi references and the world was fun to explore.

2. Dead Money -- I didn't have as much of a problem with the earlier gameplay as you, and I loved the survival horror feel (even if it wasn't quite how they intended it to work). Its characters/companions are absolutely without a doubt, hands down my favorite characters that show up in any of the DLC, to the point I find it tragic--yes, tragic, I'm going to entitle myself to some gamer hyperbole--that you can't take the companions back to New Vegas with you (especially to orchestrate a certain reunion). I understand why you can't--they wouldn't be able to reprogram them to interact with the main game properly and vice versa, but it still makes me sad. My only complaints are that I think the vending machines make things way too easy the way they eventually come to function (and I actually hate that you can keep accessing one after the DLC is over because it can make playing the main game too easy), and the ending had a lot of railroad problems that I got very frustrated with--it has the one incidence of NPC immortality which stands out in particular since that kind of thing tends not to happen in the rest of the game. It's also a little frustrating you can't go back, but I understand why a bit. But the end was the only part I felt truly frustrated by, and I can live with the vending machines.

3. Honest Hearts -- It's generally solid, but doesn't have a lot stand out to me--I think it plays more evenly than Dead Money, but the events and characters I just could not get into the way I did with the events and characters in Dead Money. The world is gorgeous, and I love the story you uncover as you explore the area. I don't find it stellar, but it's a nice place to hang out for awhile, and I like that you can return to the world later (as you can with Lonesome Road and OWB).

4. Lonesome Road -- Boring, trudging dungeon crawl with a lot of items that would be useful when you're about 10th level, but not the massively high level you will be if you play everything through in order, with this DLC being the last. Idiotic boss I can say I enjoyed killing because he was such a d-bag, but not much else; I really fail to understand why a lot of people enjoy this character because I just thought he was a selfish idiot and not in a very interesting way; to each their own, not saying anyone's wrong for liking him, just saying I didn't feel that way personally. I liked the exploration aspects at first--I love to explore--and I especially liked a lot of the creative use of the terrain (toppled buildings you can walk across, etc.) but it got very samey very quick. I generally felt like it was a waste of time and was extremely disappointed after the huge hype it got as the last DLC--I'd be fine with the simple monty haul dungeon crawl it was if they'd advertised it as such and/or it wasn't the last DLC, but it was made out to be the be all, end all awesome finale to the whole thing, and I personally found it to be extremely lacking as such. If I bother to ever play through it again at all it'll be as a lower level character (the lowest I can get away with) to get some of the equipment, and that's about it (whereas if I get back to my FNV new playthroughs, the other 3 will all get replayed as much as I have time to able able to do).

All my personal opinion of course.

Yes, I admit that my first reaction to point buy was "Oh my god these are awful," Then I had a player point out to me that he could make a combat beast just by dumping his Cha. and his Int. (his reasoning was that he never used skills anyway, and the already mentioned tendency of GMs to not enforce a "play to your character's social skills, not your own," tendencies.

This, it seems, is a matter of misplaced blame: a GM is running a game where you can either roleplay your way out of your dump stats or just don't need noncombat skills at all, or both.

That's not the fault of point buy. That's the GM.

Yep. :)

I'll say in my games, someone who comes in with a character solely built for combat is going to get bored and frustrated. I call on the PCs to use skills a LOT--not just Perception and Stealth and Disable Device, but all the Knowledge skills, Craft, Appraise, Survival, and absolutely, definitely the social skills, etc. etc. etc.

For social skills in particular I have the PCs roleplay as much as they can but if either they're not sure what to say, or it's not clear how an NPC would react, THEN I have them make the role. If they did really well in their roleplaying, they get a circumstance bonus to the roll (i.e., if they said something the NPC definitely wanted to hear, they get a boost to the check).

Not to mention there's even useful mechanics for skills in combat -- demoralization with Intimidate, feinting with Bluff, and learning monster weakness with Knowledges. So overlooking them even in a combat driven game can be a mistake.

And I DO run with point buy as I said so if you minmaxed your character toward combat attributes and nothing else, you'd probably be in trouble.

OK, I can see that argument (and there is a reason one of these two no longer GMs), and I suppose that blaming the system was probably a knee-jerk reaction at the time, an holding on to the bias is just bull-headedness on my part I suppose.

You're a much better man than most of us to admit you overlooked something/reviewed your opinion and changed it. I mean that sincerely.

Systems like D&D 3.x and pathfinder are minmax systems. They are made for minmaxing and thus nobody wants to play a pc with low stats.

How, exactly were they any more made for min-maxing than BECMI or 1st Ed AD&D? The only Major differences in the attributes are the standardizing of the bonuses and the expansion of the chart down to a value of 0 / up to the infinite.

I've always wondered that myself, and while Umbranus wasn't expressing it per se, I've seen others argue that older versions of D&D had less of an emphasis on needing high stats. And I really have no idea where that comes from. My personal experience is that's it's quite the opposite, for these reasons:

- Prime Requisites. You HAD to have stats at a certain number to play a certain class; for some of the classes they were quite high. Didn't roll well enough? Can't play a ranger or paladin, end of story. These days the only "prime requisite" is that spellcasters need to have their casting modifier over 10 to cast at all and need to eventually have it up to 19 to cast at maximum spell level (for full casters) or 16 (for half casters). Which it's unlikely you're going to play a spellcaster with a low caster stat anyway (unless you're just dipping into a caster level for a low level spell).
- Many attributes had no/little value to them until they were 16 or higher. Stats between 9-14 or 15 generally felt like they could have been any number within that range. When playing the AD&D games I did, the many veterans teaching me insisted I needed at least a 17 in my main stat AND Constitution or I would be, and I quote, "useless." And I remember FEELING useless because, say, my half-elven fighter/mage had "only" a 16 Strength and the Paladin with 18/100 Strength out-performed her hugely (whereas a 16 and an 18 is a difference of a modifer of 1 in Pathfinder, and no percentile strengths). While that attitude could have been unique to the players I played with, the groups I played in comprised of different gamers from different parts of the country, so I somehow doubt that. I'm sure there were differing attitudes as well, but that was the one I consistently encountered whereever I went.

Sorry for the off topic rant and I know an AD&D fan will show up and tell me why I am wrong. To the AD&D ranter from the future: I am sure you are right, but I am also sure that the game you will describe will be a game I never played and never will have the opportunity to, even though I played several games of AD&D (1st and 2nd ed). And that will be what it will be.

Anyway, in Pathfinder, I feel I'm much more able to play a class with more varied stats, and for example, I'd be much more willing to do "crazy" things like play a fighter with a even as low as a 12 Strength, which I'd never even try in AD&D (at least in 3.x/Pathfinder, I'd get a +1 to attacks and damage, which I think I'd need something like a 15 or 16 for in AD&D, when THAC0/BAB is basically unchanged).

Quote:

If I could take Skyrim's sandbox and add Mass Effect's characterization and consequence

You appear to be describing FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS :-)

A cool thing about that game is that you can kill every single person on the map (and the DLC maps) if you really want to, even though it shuts down pretty much every quest in the game. I believe there's a single robot running a shop you can't kill, because the developers thought even if you were on a psychopathic mass-murdering spree you'd still want someone to sell stuff to.

It's also great to do a quest to bring someone down and you can do an elaborate game of bluff and playing along with them, or you can talk them into leaving, or you can simply kill them where they stand. I even did that with the game's 'big bad' about ten hours before the final mission and the game adapted to the situation without missing a beat.

Pretty much. Your actions really do have consequences in F:NV, and I love that you can end the game with 4 different major choices on how you want to see it in, and dozens of permutations within each one. You feel like you're not just moving through a world, you are affecting it. And it's not just being able to kill people--you can take a lot of different routes through various events--or utterly avoid them, at least to a point.

With the "kill anyone" thing, there's only one moment of NPC Immortality in a DLC that really got me frustrated (and it's a brief period that the NPC is immortal, but it's just annoying)--and I realized part of why it made me so consternated is that the rest of the game adapts so well to whatever you do, its existence was entirely incongruous to the rest of how the game works.

And all this just makes me think that Bethesda should hire Obsidian to do more of its development, or at least get some of its writers on board their next project. Yeah, it'll be buggy, but still.

Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion of Skyrim (which DQ still hasn't bought, because she's cheap, but she did play it for awhile on a friend's computer, and it is lovely and delicious).

I feel like I've said this an awful lot, but...

First, as a preface, I don't think anyone "swears by" point buy any more than they do by die rolling.

Different gamers have different preferences and play style. And that's the really real answer to the OP's question.

I will note however that as a GM I prefer point buy because I have struggled too often or seen other GMs and players struggle too often with too-disparate stat arrays produced by die rolling. Even with methods used to mitigate where you fall on the bell curve, there still is a bell curve, and everyone has to fall somewhere on it, and generally I've seen a lot of outliers. When you get a party member who has all 17s and another who has nothing over 10, it becomes hard to devise encounters that are fair, fun, and challenging to both.

Point buy eliminates this dilemma. Everyone falls on the same area of the bell curve more or less, and it becomes much easier to design challenges. This is also why point buy is used for statblocks and example builds--and thus why you see it on message boards a lot--because it uses a baseline rather than randomness. I'd say more gamers still roll dice than you think, but point buy gets used on message boards for the evenness of it.

I certainly see the benefits of die rolling from a roleplay perspective, and even enjoy the challenges of being handed a set of stats and seeing what I can do with them. And I certainly don't think anyone who uses die-rolling is "Doing it wrong"--play the game as you like, of course!

But as a GM I much prefer the certainty and fairness that comes with point buy. That's just my personal preference.

Well, one of the current campaigns I'm in skews the data because it's specifically an all-spellcaster game, but... dipping back to D&D for some rounding out, I'd say...

1. Cleric
2. Rogue
3. Wizard

Ranger would probably be next in popularity.

DeathQuaker wrote:

But I will know not to ask you to look over the Slayers d20 revision/Pathfinderization I'm finishing up.

You just became my favorite person on these forums with that line.

because of the Slayersd20 revision or because I'm not asking Freehold to look at it? ;)

And if YOU have any interest in looking at many many many pages of rules, let me know. :)

Maybe I'm a little unfair to slayers. I can watch the series, I just can't watch it with fans. The audience participation is annoying. What was the slayers in space series again?

Uh, I don't think there was a Slayers in space series. We talking about the same series?

Lina Inverse, self-acclaimed "beautiful sorcery genius" (and short-tempered, petite firecracker), travels the world with either a ridiculously buxom leather bikini clad sorceress (OAVS) or an idiot blonde swordsman, a justice obsessed priestess, and a half-golem gish warrior (TV series). The world is very D&D with the silly factor amped up to the nines. But I am pretty damn certain, even in the lackluster most recent TV season, that they never went to space (not withstanding places Lina might have kicked Naga or Gourry when they called her flatchested). I think the third season had some weird astral plane stuff, though, come to think of it.

Oddly I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine. He liked the idea of it being flammable, I thought that combined with the spark cantrip it might end up being too exploitable at low levels. We talked about a higher level spell (not by much) that is similar but is flammable; I'd also say since it's higher level it should cover more area.

Whether you'd determine it was flammable or not, I would say that if you allow it to be flammable, it ceases to be slippery when it starts burning. I can't imagine that if it's burning its friction reducing qualities would remain, although I'm open to other arguments.

Tmdq is in this thread? Be forewarned, it may collapse from sheer awesome. Her taste is impeccable, although we disagree on slayers.

You're too kind, Freehold DM. :) And it's okay to agree to disagree on Slayers, it is a flavor of silly that only some have patience for. But I will know not to ask you to look over the Slayers d20 revision/Pathfinderization I'm finishing up.

I do agree with you and Kryzbyn on Gunbuster, that is a truly awesome series. I liked the sequel too.

Also, I watched the utena movie with a fan. Big, big mistake unless you are up on your bhuddism.

Even if you are it is still heavily cracktastic--you just get more of the symbolism.

VM mercenario wrote:

This far and noone mentioned Samurai X/Rurouni Kenshin?

For shame!
Shaaaaaameee!!!

I own a reverse-blade sword.

So do I! My friends who bought it for me didn't even know I liked Kenshin, they just thought it was an appropriate weapon for a Death Quaker.

That said, I do like the Kenshin saga, but I think the TV series degenerates rather badly into filler toward the middle/end, unfortunately. Still even its filler is better than some other stuff.

Take care, Terra Nova, and best wishes for you and your wife. I really hope things will get better for you. We'll be here when you get back.

Looks great. Thanks for sharing!

Mikaze wrote:

DeathQuaker wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

If R.O.D. lacked anything it was ** spoiler omitted **

+1.

I will say however that i enjoyed the original 3 episode OVA run more then the TV series. Agent Paper and Nancy were the best.

Really for real spoilers follow:

Honestly, in my days as an active NWN2 player, I don't recall any bug like this popping up in the game discussion (despite many bugs popping up and being discussed). I am wondering if one of the fan-made patches you installed actually created the problem. It may not be the case. But you might contact Kaedrin via the Vault if he is still active on it and ask him (and as he is a modder and has some knowhow, he might also have advice for a fix otherwise, even if his patch isn't the issue).

Otherwise, if in doubt, reload from a save before the bug happened. I know this is not the answer you want to hear, and it is a pain in the rear end, but sometimes that's the only "fix" to game issues like this. And if you don't have an old enough save, that's a lesson in itself--NWN2 is definitely one of those games that is "save early, save often"--and keep a lot of old saves.

If you have any further questions, I'd bug people at the NWN2 discussion boards; they are far more likely to be able to offer useful assistance, I'm afraid. Good luck.

Generally speaking I agree with the unarmed fighter choice, but I also agree with Mark Hoover--if you're building Dick Grayson from ground up, advancing him as Dick Grayson advanced (very roughly speaking), then start him as a Rogue Acrobat.

But I'd go into unarmed fighter later on. (And either way, if you want to start with fighter levels, dip into rogue later on for the extra class skills and skill points--and even a dip into sneak attack doesn't hurt. I think it makes sense he'd do some precision damage as opposed to brute force.)

I don't see the need for monk here either, unless you want to dip into 1 level for 1d6 unarmed damage. I think acrobat/unarmed fighter gets everything you need.

Doesn't the sohei archetype address the hitting and enhancement problems with it's ki weapon and weapon training abilities?

What if you gave a regular monk those? (Taking away things where appropriate) What happens?

It would be cool to give the regular monk unarmed strike versions of these (rather than to weapon enhancements). And for weapon training (or "unarmed strike training") I wouldn't mind giving away the various immunity/resistance abilities (plus the useless tongue of the sun and moon(useless because it's too little too late)) for that.

Ki weapon replaces abundant step and slow fall though, which at least personally I'd be more loath to give up for my monk characters. I know they're not all that but I do like their particular flavor. OTOH, I think since it requires an expenditure of ki to activate it, I've no problem with just adding an unarmed strike version to the list of ki abilities without any tradeoff--I don't think the monk would be harmed by it. It's not a bad house rule/mini archetype, really.

DeathQuaker wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

If R.O.D. lacked anything it was ** spoiler omitted **

One of my very very very very very very favorite TV shows ever is R.O.D the TV (which is the sequel to the 3 episode Read or Die OAV series, which is also excellent).

Note I say it's one of my favorite TV shows. It isn't just my favorite anime, it's just period one of my absolute favorite things to watch, ever. As in, if I had to throw away all my DVDs except one thing, my R.O.D the TV box set might even beat out my Doctor Who collection (but only might, mind).

Here is a somewhat SPOILERY AMV summarizing the characters and some of the events in the series (mostly the action bits): R.O.D AMV Expect the Unexpected. (The song is a remix of the series theme song.)

Here is a bunch of information about R.O.D the TV no one is interested in except me, but I can't sleep, so:

And in summary, it is the best thing since chocolate.

Management would like to note that DQ is a tiny bit unhealthily obsessed with this obscure anime series, and asks that you kindly be patient with her

My other favorite animes (and no I haven't seen anything since about 2006):

Noir: Awesome seinen series about a pair of assassins tracking down/being tracked by a secret organization. Note it involves assassins and death, so violence warnings and all. Also there's lesbian subtext.

Revolutionary Girl Utena: I tend to love or hate shoujo, but I definitely love Utena, which is a dark fairytale meets everyday school life. It's about a teen girl who wants to be a "prince" and finds herself protecting a girl who is the target of mysterious sword duels held by the school's student council, who in turn are being manipulated to do so by a puppet master behind the scenes. It's also extremely difficult to capture in a nutshell.

Also warning: DO NOT WATCH THE UTENA MOVIE thinking it will be a nice neat summary of the TV series. Utena the Movie came out at the same time as the End of Evangelion film, and is often considered to be End of Eva's shoujo counterpart to its shounen. In other words, IT WILL MELT YOUR BRAIN AND YOUR BRAIN WILL PUDDLE INTO YOUR SHOES AND EVAPORATE IN THE SUN LEAVING BEHIND NOTHING BUT A FAINT SCENT OF CONFUSION AND INNOCENCE LOST.

But the tv series is just the right amount of late 90s brain f$&#ery while still actually having an enjoyable followable plot and NO segments whatsoever in which the line is uttered, "It's a big mistake to think you're the only one who can turn into a car!"

Trigger warnings: I should note that Revolutionary Girl Utena is not graphic but does have some themes of brother-sister incest (it does not depict it as a good thing. And I've seen enough anime to know I need to specify that).

Also not triggery but there is also lesbian subtext (and text in the movie). (You may notice a theme as to the kinds of anime DQ tends to watch)

The Slayers: Do you like fantasy RPGs? Do you like comedic stories inspired by fantasy RPG tropes? Do you like epic stories about tiny redheads with the power to destroy the universe with a single spell which are also a comedic series of tales inspired by fantasy RPG tropes? Then you should watch The Slayers!

And if you don't, Lina Inverse might get mad...

(Also, it is a series that DQ likes that doesn't actually have lesbian subtext but it has fantasy and funny things and explosions!)

Excel Saga: Look, I'd already seen Utena: The Movie when I saw Excel Saga, so there wasn't any brain left to damage.

Excel Saga is very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very silly.

Jiggy,

I will try to work with that. Thanks!

BBT,

A heavy shield wouldnt fit the style. Thanks for the response tho!

Are you averse to any shield? Buckler or light shield is still useful, and shield feats and magic still give them a good bonus (personally I always prefer a light shield with feat and magic buffs to a heavy shield to avoid high ACP etc.) .

If not, what pH unbalanced said. Playing a light armored fighter is good for any archetype really since most fighter archetypes replace armor training--but if you're sticking to light armor, you don't need armor training as much. (Although you don't necessarily get other ways to boost mobility or AC, but the other posts have plenty of suggestions for that.)

If you're not averse to dipping you could always take a level of a caster class that has a 1st level AC boost spell (with a no-shield fighter, taking 1 level of an arcane class to cast shield can work).

rashiakas wrote:

maybe the hedge witch is what your player want?

Actually, this seems to fit the mechanics as a 'white mage' far better than anything else. Though I think the player would prefer a divine caster.

Double check with the player. After all, a white mage is a MAGE, not a priest, usually (some characters may be exceptions, I haven't played FF extensively). Witch really does reflect the fluff you are looking for better than any of the divine classes. They are an unarmored, non combatant buffer/debuffer/healer. Which is exactly what you said you are looking for.

It sounds to me like you're getting frustrated because you're seeing divine casters and thinking these HAVE to be the equivalent of white mages because healing magic, and then are getting angry when you're trying to smash a square peg into a round hole. Divine casters AREN'T the only classes with healing magic, so don't limit your view of how you can build your concept just because the first or second class you looked at with healing magic didn't work.

(Bards and I think even some sorcerer bloodlines have healing magic as well. I wouldn't recommend them for white mage, but they are also classes with healing.)

I wouldn't use a divine caster like a cleric to play a white mage not because they have armor proficiency (which I can easily ignore if I want to) or because they have 3/4 BAB instead of 1/2 BAB (I can still participate in combat in different ways), but I wouldn't use it because otherwise a cleric STILL looks nothing like a white mage. The only thing they have in common are healing and buff spells. But the domains and the channel energy and the fact that their energy is granted by a divine power rather than something more arcane--the things that give the caster flavor to the cleric--also looks like NOTHING a white mage does, IMO. So I would just consider them just not right at all, and discard it and move on.

I think that maybe you're also stymiing yourself because you're narrowly categorizing what a class may look like. Just because a class has armor proficiency and d8 HD doesn't mean you have to make them a melee monster. I've seen ranged clerics and non combatant clerics -- and now that oracles are out, I see most of them played as a stand back and cast class, not a "melee monster" or an "armored mace guy" that you seem to have far too strongly lodged in your craw.

Relax, try not to let the Western fantasy tropes or your own conceptions of what might work best. Think about what you want from the character, and then read EVERY class, looking for class features to compare and contrast.

So when you think: non-combat, unarmored, healer/buffer, can use a staff, is considered a "magic-user" ... oh look, the witch is exactly that. (I think some FF white mages even came with a cute pet too so the familiar is already accounted for.)

So this character concept that you keep saying doesn't exist is in fact right under your nose all along. (And then you nix the nice shiny round cylinder because it doesn't match the square peg you've been hammering away at for the last few days. And without even double checking with the player you're trying to help to see if they'd be okay with it.)

I apologize if I sound unnecessarily testy--I'm not angry and I don't think you're "doing it wrong" but I think you are limiting your options unnecessarily, and in my early morning, rambling, pre-caffeine state I'm having trouble expressing that you have options without sounding a bit frustrated about the situation myself.

I get that you're frustrated because it hasn't been easy to find the character concept that fits, and I hear ya. I have come up with concepts (non healers) that have been tricky to build in Pathfinder or its predecessor. And I even agree with you that the cleric and oracle archetypes are sucky and much too limited compared to the scope of what they could be. But in the end, no one's saying the healer has to be an "armored mace guy" -- not even the rulebooks are saying that -- except you. So I suggest examining your own preconceptions first and start over.

And heck, for that matter, since it's someone else who plays the character--why aren't they researching their own possible character classes anyway? The PRD is free and available for anyone to use.

I am new to Pathfinder as a long time D&D 3.x player and I have mostly lurked on these boards. I noticed that rogues are being described as weak in PF. It seems like to me they lost nothing from 3.0, and gained many advantages, i.e. the new abilities they can pick from as they level, the condensed skill list, the bigger hit die, and the fact that sneak attack works on more monsters now. If rogues weren't regarded as terribly weak before, why would they be considered weak now?

I don't consider rogues weak. They are not overpowered, but they are a good skill-based, medium combat class. As long as your expectations are at that level, they perform very well--and a well-played rogue can manage to outshine party members more often than the theorycrafters expect and the antifanboys refuse to acknowledge. The thing is people like to compare a d8 medium BAB skillmonkey class to fully martial classes or fully caster classes and fabricate something that is "lacking" that is merely different, and requires a different style of play. I can also say that in practice, I have frequently seen rogues be the MVPs in the party, taken with the grain of salt that personal/anecodtal experience is.

Now, that said, I think rogues do have some problems/issues that would make them better were they resolved. The four I can think of:

1. Rogues are generally expected to be a Dexterity-based class. They don't have to be, but a lot of their class skills are Dex-based and since they are lightly armored, they need a high Dex to help round out their AC. And this makes them innately bad at combat maneuvers, because Strength is the stat for your CMB. And YET a lot of the Combat Maneuvers really make a LOT of sense for a rogue to have for a scoundrel's style of play--trip, disarm, dirty trick, and of course steal for the most obvious ones. While there is a feat that swaps your Dex for Strength in combat maneuvers (Agile Maneuvers) it feels like an unnecessary feat tax considering you also need to follow a long feat tree to excel at combat maneuvers to begin with. Not to mention the separate feat Weapon Finesse if you want Dex for your to-hit roll for weapon attacks---it can take longer than seems appropriate to build a combat maneuvering Rogue. Some rogue talents help with this, but not enough. A commonly proposed revision/house rule is to combine Agile Maneuvers and Weapon Finesse into a single feat. It's still a feat tax, but it's a little better than otherwise. Another possibility would be making more rogue talents that support fast/early rogue combat maneuver skill in appropriate areas (just being able to take more feats isn't enough).

2. Rogue talents are extremely inconsistently designed and many of them are too circumstantial to be truly useful. I love the idea of rogue talents, but they were something that needed a lot more playtesting than they seem to have gotten. While some rogue talents are pretty awesome -- fast stealth, some of the sneak attack talents, etc. -- a lot of them are disappointing ("Gain a +20 to Bluff on Thursdays when the Moon is full"--an exaggeration, but that's how a lot of them read). They either don't provide much of an advantage, only provide the advantage in circumstances that rarely arise, or both. I think if a lot of the rogue talents were improved a lot of the rogue's perceived issues would go away. (I find it interesting though that the rogue detractors often ignore rogue talents entirely when they discuss the rogue, when some of them really are truly unique and very useful.)

3. Too hard to apply sneak attack to ranged attacks. Rogues on one hand seem like they ought to be naturals at ranged combat -- usually high Dex, light armor. But sniping rules are dodgy and hard to set up, you can only sneak attack from 30 feat away (making it too easy for opponents to engage you in melee the next round). There are some ways you can do it, and some of the rogue archetypes and talents in the APG and other supplements help, but they're a few tiny, not very sticky bandaids on a core problem the rogue has.

4. Stealth and lighting rules are a confusing mess. This affects everyone, but especially hits the rogue because you can sneak attack if concealed, and determining concealment and how you enter/leave it can be a big old tangled mess if you really start paying attention to the rules and stick to their letter.

Those are the four things I think an issue, largely, from my POV. They do NOT make the rogue weak or unplayable, and the rogue still has a number of strengths despite these issues. Sure, these problems are frustrating sometimes--but even then, there are other classes that have far more frustrating and confusing issues at hand (*looks at monk*).

Things I DON'T think are a major problem with rogues but other people do:
1. "SO MANY other classes/archetypes have trapfinding."

"So many" is three, for the record:
- the trapper ranger gets trapfinding at first level. The reasons should be fairly obvious.
- the urban ranger gets trapfinding at 3rd level. The reasons for this is also fairly obvious, and there's a delay before it's received.
- The bard archetype archeologist gets "clever explorer" which works much the same way as trapfinding, but it doesn't add the ability to actually find or disable magic traps until 6th level, which means the archeologist cannot be the party magic trapfinder from the start of a campaign. It's also worth noting for the archeologist that as bards, they don't actually get Disable Device as a class skill (even though he gets bonuses to the skill).

Three more bard archetypes get a limited version--the archivist, detective, and sandman get an ability that allows them to find magical traps at 2nd level, but do not get the bonuses to Perception or Disable Device (which are pretty awesome bonuses)--and again, bards do not actually get Disable Device as a class skill.

Even there as a total of 6, including the guys who don't get the bonuses, I don't consider this "so many" given how many classes and archetypes there are. (Disclaimer: it IS possible I missed something in UC or UM, so if my numbers ARE off, I was not intending to misinform.)

So I don't think this is actually a huge deal that massively steps on the rogue's toes--the classes that get the ability make sense to get it, and only the rogue and trapper get the ability in total from 1st level on up, and only the rogue, trapper, and urban ranger get Disable Device as a class skill.

Not to mention I have also read an alternate argument that trapfinding isn't even all that important--anyone with Perception and/or detect magic can have a go--and isn't the main reason you'd play a rogue anyway.

And finally, I find the whole situation rather ironic given I remember masses of conversations amongst 3.5 players who complained that trapfinding SHOULDN'T be a unique class skill--why should being able to notice a weird magic glyph or pressure plate be limited to the rogue? And there were often discussions of house rules and feats that allowed other classes to take trapfinding (and eventual other classes that had it or similar abilities that came out in splats). I am not sure how in 3.5 we got from it being an incredible injustice that ONLY rogues got trapfinding to it being an incredible injustice that trapfinding is no longer unique to rogues, but I'd love someone to spell that transition out for me.

2. "It's too hard to set up a sneak attack."

If you're having trouble setting up a flank with your buddies, then your group's party tactics suck, I am very sorry. I think the biggest challenge I face as a GM is how to stop the PCs FROM flanking (without also keeping baddies from being vulnerable to AOEs). (But in fairness to the nameless faceless entities I just insulted, my GM tactics suck too.)

And even if you can't get a flank, there's still feinting, invisibility (potions of and the major magic talent to cast vanish), attacking from concealment, and the Shatter Defenses feat, amongst probably other things I'm forgetting. Yes, yes, the precious rings of blink don't apply anymore, but I can't even remember a game I've played in 15 years where one of those has even shown up anywhere, and there's plenty of other ways to get concealment or denying opponents their Dex penalty.

Yes, there is the problem of ranged sneak attack but I did cover that.

3. "Two weapon fighting is too feat taxy"
While the tree is enormous, a rogue can easily take the qualifying feat at level 1, and you CAN'T take Improved or Greater until later levels anyway. Just the 1 extra attack is great and easy enough to do, do that and take rogue finesse as your talent the next level if you need more to-hit. I won't say it's not a problem, but if you're building a TWF rogue you're probably going to really focus on melee anyway and you can work with it well enough.

4. "Fighters/Barbarians/Rangers do more damage!"
Yes. That's why we call them the martial classes, and they get the big hit dice.

5. "Bards are now better skillmonkeys."
Not really. Bards are really good skillmonkeys, yes. And Pathfinder bards are better skillmonkeys than 3.x bards. But the rogue still has more skill points and is more likely to have a higher Intelligence--and the rogue's pool of class skills is one of the best in the game. Many rogue talents also buff rogue skillmonkeyness in a way that a lot of rogue-haters overlook. Bards do get versatile performance but that's bit of a clunky ability (goes up over time, and sometimes at higher levels it's just easier to build the skill you want than the related Performance). After level 2, the subsequent ones seem less useful (especially since while folks houserule you can transfer your skill points to Perform afterward, otherwise if you built both a Perform and a skill you can later Versatilely Perform, you feel like you wasted skill points earlier).

And, let's say it one more time: bards don't get Disable Device as a class skill (Remember that's "open locks" now too, not just traps or random other device sabotage).

Now don't get me wrong. Bards are awesome. Bards are one of my favorite classes. But for skillmonkeyness I'd probably still take a rogue or ranger, unless the skills I am desiring in question--and sometimes I do--are social or knowledges.

6. "Using Acrobatics to tumble through squares is too hard."
You have to dedicate building it, but no--if that's how you want to build your rogue, then you take 1 of your gazillion skill points per level and pump Acrobatics, and you can beat most CMDs pretty easily (grab Skill Focus around 10th level if you're really not sure). I saw a halfling rogue in my high level game pretty much be able to bypass most but the toughest enemies with a low roll.
And when you can't beat the CMD, that's what Mobility is for. Or 5 foot steps for that matter. (Or Step Up or Stand Still to keep people from moving away from you to avoid being flanked).
Not to mention, certainly other classes use Acrobatics, I'm not sure why this complaint doesn't come up for Bards or Monks too.

TL;DR: Rogues are a decent class. They definitely do have some flaws but can be extremely valuable contribitors to the party in and out of combat and are a great class for teamwork and versatility, and it's a mistake to disregard them. Of course, if you do underestimate them, their plan is working....

Funny how one SKR's post gets more favorites than some of his "critics" have accumulated over their entire posting career.

Note that some people "favorite" any developer post so they can track it easily by referring to their favorites list later.

(There are certainly posts that I "like" but I do not favorite them because I don't want them showing up in my list later, because I use that for referring back to things later, and posts where I don't necessarily agree with someone, but will favorite for easy tracking. Yes there's listing as an option too but it's easier to get at favorites by a couple clicks.)

I'm not saying that other people should be favorited more, and I am not saying that people don't like Sean or favorite his posts for other reasons than he is a developer. I am saying that number of favorites--especially when looking at the number of favorites on a developer post--isn't really a reliable way of confirming the veracity or popularity of someone's statements.

After all, even MY posts get favorited sometimes.

Now back to your regularly scheduled monk discussion.

Define "powerful."

If you want spammy blasty power and arcane magic with a few nifty class abilities, but don't want to engage in weapon combat very often, play a sorcerer.

If you prefer buffing to blasting and want to be more capable of weapon combat, and you also are especially interested in being a skillmonkey, bard is the way to go.

It's basically about focus on spells versus versatility.

That old lady's just so crazy...must be bisexual.

Really hope you're joking there. I'm assuming you are but it's not clear in plain text.

Also nondetection, which is a more powerful version.

I love magic aura especially myself, as it's a 1st level spell even often powerful/high level PCs forget about, and they will abandon or disregard something because they don't think to try to second-guess their magic detection.

If I were your GM:

Yes, if, as Cheapy says, you attack the right square he is in. There is absolutely nothing in the Blind Fight description, nor in the description of the invisible condition or the Invisibility special ability, that says you must wait to be attacked before you can attempt an attack an invisible creature.

DEPENDING ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES, I might mediate the situation like this:
1. Since he is laughing, I would allow you a Perception check to pinpoint the sound of his laughter. I would not give the invisible character the full bonus to Stealth because of the laughing (he is not trying to be stealthy, and moreover it leaves room that if he's using ghost sound or ventriloquism, you pinpoint the sound, but it is in fact still the wrong square).

2. Whether you make a Perception check or not, you can pick randomly which square you attack, based on the information you (think you) have. If you pick the correct square, then you resolve the attack as normal (roll to hit, roll concealment chance, and use Blind Fight to reroll if the first concealment check fails). If you pick the wrong square then of course you wiff. (ETA: wraithstrike's point about the GM not necessarily revealing whether you genuinely missed the target or just didn't hit him is a good one though.)

You should also make sure the GM is following the rules that ARE in the Blind Fight feat, which is that you do not lose your Dex bonus to AC to him and he does not get a +2 bonus to attack you.

If and when he does attack you and he remains invisible, it should be much more apparent which square he is in regardless.

Sometimes I'm embarrassed to live where I do.

I'm trying to decide if I think she lost a bet and had to look ridiculous on TV or if she is a pro-gay activist trying to discredit her opposition by pretending to be one of them because nobody can be this ignorant.

Well, I know 3 people who live in Nebraska and I'm pretty sure they'd all be with you on this one Ringtail, so you're not alone at least by 3 people.

For the internet side of things "not being that hard to find these days" I've got to disagree once again. Everybody at home always seems to forget about the large amount of military out there that can't get the net if they're at sea or at station. When Half-Life 2 came out and required steam, with all the problems on launch day, I saw a lot of disappointed people in uniform that weren't able to play.

I know that it seems that the internet is available to most normal people, but there are still many out there for whom it's not.

This. I understand there are a lot of soldiers that often play video games with what downtime they have, and always online requirements hurt people like them the most. And as playing video games is for most of us welcome escape or opportunity to vent some steam, I would imagine it's all the moreso for the stressful lives of a soldier stationed overseas.

I remember the original Mass Effect originally was supposed to have an online activation requirement every session you played, and EA removed that largely because of pleas from soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And certainly there are also other reasons why folks can't easily get online. It's not as simple as "joining the rest of the world." For example, there are folks in rural areas still have dialup access only, which is NOT a connection you want to work with when playing a game that might take hours of gameplay time. What are they supposed to do, leave their homes and their families and jobs and move to a city so they can get better Internet service? You can't assume anyone's life is exactly like your own, and it particularly bothers me that game publishers take this exact stance and thus cut out possible customers who would otherwise earn them revenue--it makes no sense to me.

I was very interested for a while, but no longer thanks to the constant network requirement (for single player), the auction-house percentages taken, and the fact that Vivendi would get my money. Now I'm looking to Torchlight II to fill the arpg void.

Agreed with you on all points.

Those of you who do get Diablo III, let us know how it is, though.

I'm confused in the case of the Inner Sea World Guide... the version I downloaded when I bought it weighs in at 155mb. The new 'Lite' version is 249mb. The new non-lite version is 289mb.

I'm gonna pull a random postulation out of my posterior and presume this is because of the way the data is compressed and/or accessed? Like, the "lite" files are "larger" but they load all at once, so once you have the thing up, it works just fine. As opposed to say the "normal" files, which keep loading various layered assets over and over again, making them slow to use.