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A fortuitous bug, perhaps, but I think it is a bug...

For some reason I could edit my post in this thread well after the hour window (more like 3 and a half hours). Which was nice, because I noticed a typo and fixed it, but I don't think I was supposed to be able to do that -- my other posts from earlier today I cannot edit. Just FYI.

So, this came out of the suggestion thread for Ultimate Equipment. I wanted to pull it out so folks could see it and so it wouldn't clutter the conversation about suggestions for equipment.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

Actually, because the rules say a monk's flurry is as if he's using the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, he can't simply declare that he's using the same fist seven times. So there is something stopping him from hitting someone seven times with his left fist or a +2 flaming kama: the rules for how flurry works.

This is news to me. You might want to post this in the FAQ or maybe even make an errata to make this more clear if this is the way things are supposed to work, because I think almost everyone has been assuming you can do a flurry with a single weapon. This is part of the reason why people have been upset about the cost of the AoMF.

(((Direct link to Sean's post here)))

For reference, here is the relevant Flurry of Blows description:

Flurry of Blows (Ex): Starting at 1st level, a monk can make a flurry of blows as a full-attack action. When doing so he may make one additional attack using any combination of unarmed strikes or attacks with a special monk weapon (kama, nunchaku, quarterstaff, sai, shuriken, and siangham) as if using the Two-Weapon Fighting feat (even if the monk does not meet the prerequisites for the feat). For the purpose of these attacks, the monk's base attack bonus from his monk class levels. For all other purposes, such as qualifying for a feat or a prestige class, the monk uses his normal base attack bonus.

At least some players interpret the phrase "When doing so he may make one additional attack using any combination of unarmed strikes or attacks with a special monk weapon" to mean the monk can attack any number of times with any one kind of attack -- including, say, attacking with a single special monk weapon multiple times.

SKR points out that since it's "as Two Weapon Fighting" you can't actually do that--you can only attack with one weapon once (or only multiple times with an off-hand weapon per Improved and Greater TWF if you have the equivalent level of Flurry of Blows).

How do you interpret this rule?

How have you been playing it in your games?

How does this affect/how do you apply this with certain monk builds such as sohei, who seem to be intended to fight largely with weapons and not unarmed strikes?

And although this blurs between fluff descriptions and crunch, do we also extrapolate this to mean that all unarmed attacks in a flurry must come from different body parts? (I.e., if you have 5 flurry attacks, you can't say you are punching someone with the same fist 5 times--you must assume you are, for example, punching once with both fists, kicking with both feet, and headbutting. Which could be relevant in some circumstances--admittedly very specific ones--but if for some reason the GM has determined a limb to be not usable, for example.)

1st, I have no idea what forum this really belongs in so if it needs to be moved, admins, by all means please do so.

2nd, I've looked around other character sheet threads, but I can't always tell easily what a given sheet has been updated with what content. This creates a cycle of me downloading a sheet, discovering it's not what I am looking for, then having to start all over.

So I thought--couldn't hurt to ask, right?

For specific reasons I am not going to bore you with, I'm looking a character generator/sheet that is
1. Free
2. Preferably Excel based
3. Contains all/most options from the APG (especially need archetypes, spells, and feats). Ultimate Magic a bonus. No other sources required.

Suggestions that do not meet the above three criteria will be disregarded (frex, I already have PC Gen and Hero Lab, so suggestions for those are moot).

Thank you for your help.

A number of y'all on these boards alerted me to the Safari Toobs of animals. These are plastic tubes filled with roughly 8-10 creatures that are around 1-2 inches in size. They retail around $8-10. A lot of folks have been touting them as cheap sources for minis.

A.C. Moore craft store had a bunch of them for $7.99 -- plus they had a 20% off everything in store sale tonight, so I thought I'd buy some. I bought their horses toob, their mythical realms toob, and their lair of the dragon toob.

All the models are made of sturdy plastic and nicely painted, relatively speaking. I'd say some of the paint jobs are nicer than some D&D PPMs I've seen, and considering these come at roughly $1 a mini, that's pretty dang good.

The horses are awesome. They're just about the right size for 28 mm scale horses and fit on a large size base. They're different colors and breeds. They are all about the same size--they've got some variance but not enough for a "pony" for a small creature. (They have a "ponies" toob but the models aren't actually any smaller--more on that elsewhere.)

The Mythical Realms toob has a phoenix, a minotaur, a sea dragon thing, a chimera, a griffon, a unicorn, a triton, and the mermaid.

This is where the Safari scaling gets weird. The triton and the mermaid were HUGE, a totally different scale than the rest of the animals, so they tower over them--compared to a normal 28 mm mini, they're about the size of a hill giant or ogre, relatively speaking. I noticed that other toobs that held people figures, the issue was the same--massive humans with animals obviously not to scale with each other. I assume it's because these are toys first, and they can't make the people shapes too small for health risks. But it's something to be aware of. (OTOH, if you need cheap giants...)

But the creature minis fit Large bases (they're actually a little on the small side for comparing to fantasy figs, but they still work just fine). They're really nice looking for cheap plastic figurines; I love the phoenix.

The lair of the dragon has several different looking dragons, mostly painted in a metallic paint, and including some weird but cool variants like one with feathery wings and one with four wings. The blue dragon stands upright and could be used as a half dragon. They're small for dragons, mostly fitting on Medium to Large bases without looking weird. They'd be great for low level dragon encounters, draconic mounts, and probably even eidolons.

The store didn't have the insects one which I wanted for giant insects, and one of the wild animal ones I'd hoped for. I probably should have picked up the North American wildlife one, oh well (the wolves looked very big but they would have made good dire wolves). The store had a lot of the oceanic ones which looked REALLY good if you need some oceanic figures. They had the "baby animals" where the models were too big to be useful, one thing of all (giant, relatively speaking) domestic cats, and some stuff like chimpanzees and poisonous animals. They had some random stuff like ancient Egypt statues and Powhatan Indians and even a toob of babies. Yep, toob o' babies.

Going back to scaling -- ALL the minis are always going to be around 1-2 inches, no matter what the model is representing. So if the toob contains a frog and a snake and an alligator, they are ALL going to be around the same size, regardless of creature type--so you'll have a massive frog and a big-ish snake, and a small alligator. To a degree this can be useful for fantasy mini purposes, as that's how you can get giant frogs and frog demons and so on (it's why I want the insects toob--I know they're going to be the same size as the horse figurines but in this case that's what I'm looking for). And I guess you could also get really creative and have the party attacked by giant babies. Which come to think of it would be pretty terrifying.

All in all for what they cost it's a good buy. Considering buying the pewter equivalents would easily cost $8 apiece, $8 for a bunch of them is a good deal for something you want quick and fast. I've noticed they've recently put out a lot of fantasy figures like the dragons and the mythical realms toobs, so that's useful to us! But the normal animals are just as useful if not moreso.

Note the same company has a "Fantasy Figures" line NOT in Toobs that are on a much larger, roughly action figure scale. Most of those wouldn't be useful for gaming, although some of the dragons would make good gargantuan or colossal scale ones.

I realize this is probably silly and I'm overthinking this, but I've been reading over some combat rules and relevant feats, and I noticed this:

Combat Reflexes (Combat)
You can make additional attacks of opportunity.

Benefit: You may make a number of additional attacks of opportunity per round equal to your Dexterity bonus. With this feat, you may also make attacks of opportunity while flat-footed.

Normal: A character without this feat can make only one attack of opportunity per round and can't make attacks of opportunity while flat-footed.

Special: The Combat Reflexes feat does not allow a rogue to use her opportunist ability more than once per round.

The word "additional" caught me in a way it hadn't before.

Per the rules, sans Combat Reflexes, a character can only make 1 attack of opportunity a round.

I think in my groups, the way we've played Combat Reflexes is that the number of AOOs you get in a round is EQUAL to your Dexterity modifier. So, if my character has a +2 modifier to Dexterity, she can make up to 2 AOOs a round.

But the wording of the feat, with "additional," makes me wonder if you are supposed to add the number of attacks to the 1 everybody gets -- in other words, a character with Combat Reflexes and a +2 modifier to Dexterity gets to make up to 3 AOOs a round.

Have we been playing it wrong all this time?

I did search the boards and the FAQ before I posted this, so if I missed something, it was my oversight and I apologize.

These are thoughts that have been percolating ever since I ran a high level game (levels 14-19--started with 3.x then converted to Pathfinder halfway through) that ended this past summer. At least based on my personal experience, I find that some of the common complaints about high level play really don’t apply in practice (for example, I didn’t find combat that much slower than at other levels). But I did find some things I would have liked to have had some help with or get some support from.

This is of course something I'd like to see for Pathfinder RPG specifically. In no particular order....

1. Guidelines on skill use at high levels, and examples of “legendary” skill “challenges,” to borrow a phrase.

A lot of skill sample DCs don’t go higher than 20. Some do, but most of them are for very specific situations.

But a lot of my PCs had anywhere from a +20 to +30 to their rolls (and heck, most characters in their area of specialty can easily hit that standard DC 20 at fairly low levels). Most ordinary actions they could succeed on without rolling --- and I DON’T MIND THAT. I think a legendary level of hero shouldn’t have to roll to climb a ladder, necessarily. BUT I would like to find uses for skills where it is actually worthwhile for them to, you know, have spent all those ranks in those skills.

2. Pre-built multi-monster encounters
The Bestiaries are lovely, but of course for obvious reasons, monsters are statted out one block at a time. Yet we all know most effective fights are ones that are versus more than one monster—but we have to do the work ourselves on calculating the CR of a multi-monster fight (and determining whether that’s really accurate). We get a suggestion in the Bestiaries for how those monsters organize in force, but it’s a brief statline. What are the CRs for such forces, what kind of equipment do they have?

I’d love to have several pages of suggested monster force lists. The entry could look something like this (using a rather over the top example):

The Infernal Legion of Deceit (CR 19)
1 Belier (HP 212, AC 33, Fort +17, Ref +11, Will +20, DR 10/good and silver, SR 28)
2 Handmaiden Devils (HP 187, AC 31, Fort +16, Ref +16, Will +10, DR 10/good, SR 25)
16 Erinyes (HP 94, AC 23, Fort +11, Ref +12, Will +7, DR 5/good, SR 19)

You could also put the sourcebooks and page numbers where the monster statblocks come from.

3. “Mook” rules
I discovered it was VERY useful running high level combats to have large numbers of very weak opponentsL: creatures that can be killed in 1-3 hits or a single well-placed fireball or two (indeed, I began to count how many times the PCs hit them, then declared them dead after the appropriate number, without counting exact HP loss). They are useful for 2 reasons:
-- They help remind the PCs are powerful at high levels. High level play can be overwhelming—you have to stop the portal from hell from opening, fight a pit fiend or two, talk a corrupted god down from killing the mother goddess, stop wars, start wars, become kings, etc. etc. Yeah, that Qlippoth can make you feel weak and tiny. But 18th level characters shouldn’t feel like that – give them some minions to squash to remind them how badass they are.
-- Mooks act as very important speed bumps. High level characters have lots of ways of shredding through a boss fight very quickly, or circumventing things cleverly (my players also do that in general). Giving them weak but ever present obstacles helps pace a fight and makes sure, say, the big bad gets a chance to buff or carry out his evil plan before the PCs inevitably squash him. It really helps with pacing, and adds an easy challenge to combat without having to remember a lot of modifiers (such as using difficult terrain, etc.).

Having a codified, playtested way of designing mooks would help a great deal to make this device work even better.

4. Alternate, *OPTIONAL* systems to DR and SR
The one thing I grew to be truly frustrated by in running high level play was DR and SR—largely, because they really didn’t do what I think they are supposed to, and I found them to require a lot of bookkeeping with little payoff. Both mechanics you need to calculate per hit/per spell, which is the one thing that DID bog down combat (and actually does so from fairly early on, even at lower levels). You have to remember to apply it (half the time it's easy to forget, even by veteran players). And then there’s a matter of the fact that by very high levels, half the time they were useless to make a monster actually more challenging. I don’t EVER remember one of the party spellcasters actually failing a check to beat SR, and they were not crazily optimally built. Maybe the ranger/wizard/arcane archer did a few times, but he was well below caster level versus character level (we found some spells that were better suited to his build later). The primary casters (an Eldritch Knight and a cleric) never had any trouble, it just slowed the game down while you waited for them to not roll a 1, or whatever.

DR—by that level you either have the equipment you need to bypass it, or the PCs have a lot of resources at their disposal that they will try to find some way to get it. And really, I didn’t want to stop them, because I was damned tired of calculating it and stopping the fight to say, “wait, who has cold iron weapons?” Or whatever.

I would like to emphasize that I found, in my experience over a 2 and a half year campaign, that DR and SR did not really do much to make fights challenging. It increased bookkeeping and frustration and “oh I forgot to roll that” and that is all.

What I found made a monster challenging to harm was its straight up having more hit points, having high saves, and having certain basic, no-roll-required immunities. Other things like fast healing—which still requires some bookkeeping, but less than DR—are also genuinely useful.

I think I’d rather see high level monsters have more specialized immunities and defenses than broad DR and SR. For example, take away a monster’s SR but make it immune to enchantment spells. Or give it a save it can reroll. Or let it be able to make a saving throw even other creatures normally couldn’t.

5. Pre-gen spell lists
Have you ever tried to build a high level spellcaster NPC in a way that you can choose spells quickly and later reference them easily? It’s not fun. Character generator programs help, but that’s not always an option, and it still takes time to do, even if less than doing it from scratch. There’s sort of this kind of thing in Ultimate Magic, but just for spellbooks (IIRC).

6. Heck, pre-gen, high level NPCs
The GMG has NPCs only up to CR 13. And I get the idea that they are supposed to represent typical NPC encounters in the world, and obviously the majority of NPCs are going to be low level. But what if you really need the Uber High Priest of the Most Awesome Evilness, and FAST? Because honestly? I can probably roll up a barmaid in my head, I actually don't need published stats for her. But I can't say the same for a level 18 cleric designed to mastermind the minions of darkness against the NPCs.

I would say a ridiculously enormous amount of my prep time was writing up NPCs, and it was a major area where I started to burn out after awhile (even though I generally love building characters). Part of this is my own fault--I created a scenario where I needed a lot of leveled humanoids, and I wasn't always confident about when I could handwave their stats and when I needed them written down to reference (sometimes I could have handwaved them and not written anything down; sometimes I really did need a statblock to reference though).

I would also like to note I LOVED running this campaign, and had tremendous amounts of fun doing it. I see people post stuff like, "It's just not possible to run a 15+ level game" and I just kind of laugh. It's a lot of prep work, but it's fun to play--and really fun to see with the things players come up with when they have that much power at their disposal. I think there's some simple tools that could be written up that would make the prep work easier -- as well as advice (like when to wing it and not worry about stats--which is a good thing to learn to do!). Just some thoughts.

I am very sorry if this comes off as pedantic, but I've seen a lot of "find-me-a-mini" requests where not enough information is given. Help me--and presumably everyone else--help you!

For best results, remember to tell the following:
*

- Gender
- Race
- Type of armor they are wearing (or otherwise, what kind of clothes do they wear)
- Type of weapon or shield they are using
- Are they a spellcaster or not
- Any specific details (bearded, must have x accessory)
- ***Are you able/willing to do conversions (e.g., cut off one weapon and glue on another).

Note that class isn't always that helpful--sometimes a figure identified as a "rogue" may actually work well as a wizard or bard, depending on what you want out of the figure, so it's better to search for an appearance than a "Class." Now, obviously if the person's a wizard, I may want to run a search for wizard so I find all the cool figures that are holding fireballs, but hopefully you catch my general drift. A lot of times, someone says, for a totally hypothetical example, "I can't find a gnome paladin!" Because they searched for "halfling paladin." I run a search for "male halfling plate" and I find more options.

As an aside, you put similar information into the figure finder at Reaper, you'll probably also get better results. :)

Thanks!

On the main Paizo.com page, in the center of the screen below the blog there are three little blocks that advertise upcoming/ongoing things.

The RPG Superstar ad keeps showing up in the middle, reading "submit your wondrous items!" IIRC the open wondrous item submission ended almost 2 weeks ago so that should probably be removed when someone has time.

If you have time... if you're going to lock a thread because there is another on the same subject, could you please kindly put a link in the locked thread to the place where you think responders ought to post instead?

Sometimes, especially because a lot of us leave some forums open and others closed with the triangle thingies, the alternate/preferred thread isn't obvious to us.

For example, the various discussions of D&D5e.

Thanks very much. :)

Paizo store lists each pot of Citadel Wash as costing $19.98 (MSRP $22.20), for example as in this store entry for Leviathan Purple here.

The MSRP for a pot of wash is $3.70.

I am assuming the cost of the box set (which you don't list anywhere as a purchasable item that I can find) got entered in place of the cost of each pot individually. That or Games Workshop is making you pay a hell of a high wholesale price.

I've outlined a cleric archetype to turn a cleric into a spontaneous caster. The archetype also exchanges a domain and channel energy for various divine gifts, including a "martyr" ability to heal someone's HP at the cost of your own. The archetype is known as the Saint, a person who is given divine power by a god, and transforms or grows in power as they live out their divine mission--but sometimes are expected to give up much of themselves to assist others (at least those of their faith).

Yes, of course, there is the Oracle already for spontaneous divine caster, but the Oracle's flavor is very specific and doesn't suit all campaign ideas that I use. I find both oracles' curses and mysteries a little limiting; my hope with the saint is that it's got enough basic flavor while still giving a player to customize their character toward whatever specific feel they want for a divine champion. (And of course you could always use both.)

And yes, I cribbed a ton off Complete Divine's favored soul for inspiration.

The link on GoogleDocs is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MZJf5HvQl5R99Z7ZC-clChivabh7WHd8frWLMqB l9V0/edit

Let me know if you'd prefer me to paste this into the body of a thread post.

This is very much "alpha phase."

Some questions/notes:
1. Everything is currently based off Wisdom. There'd be a strong argument to base it off Charisma as well -- or make divine gifts at least based off Charisma (since they are a substitute for channel energy). Do you think it's good as is, switch everything to Cha, or make it 50/50 (which will make it a more MAD class). Or even let the player choose?

2. Is the 24 hour limitation on not magically healing Martyr's gift okay? Should it be less? More?

3. Yes, I know I need way more divine gifts than listed. Any suggestions? Do they feel relatively in line with each other?

Any and all feedback much appreciated.

So we don't have a PFS up where I am and I missed the stuff about the Beginner's Bash a couple weeks ago.

I don't have time to commit to starting a PFS group up here, but I do run Pathfinder demos at my local game store when I have the time and opportunity. It seems like running a Beginner's Box demo would be a really good idea and a great way to spread the word about Pathfinder. I talked to the game store owner and he seems to think it's a good idea, although it's something I think I'd have to organize myself.

I don't HAVE a Beginner's Box right now, but from the sounds of it, I could open it up, review the rules and characters, find a quick start adventure and go? Is there anything else I'd need? How much time should I allow for play? Any other thoughts/suggestions?

Hello! My friends and I have begun playing in a campaign based in the 3.x version of the Forgotten Realms (because of course, there are no versions of the Realms that came afterward). We are using Pathfinder rules (converting anything setting specific as we need to).

The "twist" of this game is that everyone must primarily be mages (either sorcerers or wizards). While multiclassing is allowed, our primary focus on our work must be magecraft. So obviously, any normal sense of "balance" for this game is going to be out the window (right now we are fragile little porcelain dollies, but if we survive, someday we will reshape the cosmos if we feel like it).

Our GM is KeefX. A veteran of D&D since at least AD&D 2nd (and possibly older), he likes to play it fast and loose and very outside-the-box.

The players:
ME as... Rylassa Kaelfara, CG Elf Sorcerer (Starsoul) 3. Rylassa is a sun elf from Evermeet, but statistically just a normal-flavored elf.

Lathiira as... Alavian Rothmantle, NG Human Sorcerer (Arcane-Wildblooded-Sage) 3. A farmboy turned would-be mage legionnaire from Cormyr.

Alleywraith as... Haukk, NG (?) Half-Orc Fighter 1, Wizard (Evoker) 2. An escaped slave turned mercenary.

Sweetie as... Rillka Coffinmaker, CG Halfling Rogue 1, Sorcerer (Dreamspun) 2. A magic-touched daughter of a halfling merchant caravan.

We used a generous 5d6-keep-best-3 die rolling method for stats (we all have very high stats, with the lowest of us around 35+ point buy equivalent). Books allowed are the Core Rulebook, the Advanced Player’s Guide, and Ultimate Magic, plus, at the GM’s discretion, converted material from any of the 3.5 Faerun sourcebooks. As a house rule, we were given two free skill points to spend on any Craft or Perform skill, to give our characters some "well roundedness."

We began at 2nd level and leveled to 3rd level at the end of the second session. (Yes, I am very late beginning the documentation.)

Questions/comments welcome, and corrections from fellow players should they show up are also welcome.

Hymenopterix, hopefully you'll see this, as I can't find another way of contacting you.

I'm having a problem right now where whenever I click on a thread to read it while logged in, I get an error message. So I can't post to existing threads, because they won't load. I don't even know if THIS will work, but I can click on "post new thread" so we'll see what happens.

Please bot Jack for the time being till I get this issue fixed. I did read the recent thread logged out, and a couple notes --

-- Please have him make the Knowledge: Nature check

-- Jack has the egg with him, he wrapped it up and took it with him; he didn't leave it by the fire (see his equipment list :) )

-- He will generally act to protect the party and otherwise get help them get away from the pterans.

Any questions concerns please contact me at deathquaker AT g mail.

I've seen bits and pieces of this discussed elsewhere but not all in one place. If this thread IS redundant (I did look, but I might have overlooked), please delete/merge.

So: we've got several abilities that grant spell-like abilities.

All of these abilities are Standard abilities, meaning even the weakest race can take up to 3 of these if they have the points available.

Note that nearly all of these abilities, except for Spell-like Ability and Change Shape, not ONLY grant the listed spell-like abilities, but ALSO grant some bonus to spellcasting--usually improving a circumstantial save DC or caster level. So for the points value listed you are getting the SLAs plus an additional bonus.

Concern #1
Should there be more limits on how many spell-like abilities you can get? While the "Spell-Like Ability" ability is limited 3 times, nothing stops you from creating some kind of super spell gnome with Svirfneblin Magic, Gnome Magic, and, say, invisibility as an SLA for the total cost of 5 rp (and more abilities than that if the race is advanced or monstrous). Is that a problem or is that desirable? A lot of these offer cantrips that in the end aren't going to be game breaking, especially when you can only use them once per day, usually. Most of these spells are utilitarian rather than combat oriented (although I have seen some insane uses of ghost sound recently...) But on the other hand, you could potentially have gnome commoners casting blur amongst an arsenal of several other very useful spells, and I'm not sure if that feels right.

Concern #2
This is one of the parts of the ARG where RP costs seem especially arbitrary and inconsistent. Some particular items of note:

-- There is no way Svirfneblin Magic should cost the same as Pyromaniac or one single 2nd level spell cast once per day--especially with continuous nondetection as one of the benefits (and no minimum Charisma required to uses the SLAs). The gnome prerequisite nowhere near justifies that--if Change Shape with its own racial prereqs costs 6 RP, Svirfneblin Magic should be about the same.

-- Gnome Magic costing only 1 RP is less head-scratch-worthy, but it still grants a bonus to a save DC and grants four spells for the same cost as one spell-like ability? It should be at LEAST 2 (with other similar abilities sans prereqs should go up to at least 3). Really, this is particularly one of those issues where obviously the points cost was determined to shoehorn gnomes into a 10 point build when obviously their abilities are worth more.

-- For the Spell-Like Ability ability, the cost of a cantrip should not be equal to the cost of a 1st level spell. The precedents established by the other pre-exisiting SLA granting abilities suggests that you should more or less get three cantrips equal to the price of one 1st level spell. Also, of course, there's the general discrepancy that this ability costs more or less as much as most of the other SLA granting abilities, when the other abilities both offer more spells and additional bonuses. Sure, there's a price for the freedom of choosing whatever spell you like rather than a predetermined list of mostly practical spells, but it still doesn't come out even.

Just some thoughts.

So. I want to run a seafaring campaign some day.

Since the game will largely take place on a boat, I would like to be able to map out the boat in detail. I'm having a heck of a time finding maps/deckplans. There are some ship maps for D&D out there (and I own the boats map pack, and the old Map-A-Week Archive has a few) but not exactly what I am looking for--and the problem is trying to Google this specific thing comes up with all kinds of random stuff that don't help particularly (I'm probably just not parsing it right).

ANYWAY--what I'd really love, ideally, is a map of a clipper -- or any kind of schooner will do. Other two-or-three mast sailing vessels that would make sense as privateer ships would also do. I need the deckplan for every level (part of why the boats map pack is only somewhat useful, because most of those are the top of the ship only. The ship flip mat is a little TOO big).

One problem I'm running into is as I look for deckplans, what I find are blueprints (usually low res) of deckplans for model ship builders which I can't even make sense of. And of course because of model ship building, there's a lot of stuff that isn't free, when I just want to get a good look at the general layout so I can make a grid-map for "dungeon" (ship) crawling.

I am sure there are nautical adventures and modules out there--can you please point me to some? Or obviously any other sources you know of. In addition to the party's ship I'd want other ships anyway, so whatever you know of. Thank you!

I'm one of those people who hems and haws over getting new game books, and tend not to buy them sight unseen. The UC previews have been helpful, but limited in what they describe, and a lot of the discussion threads about UC have been about how very specific things work, not how the book looks as a whole, and I'm having trouble getting a sense of what the book is like.

Further, consider this as background: I wasn't planning on getting Ultimate Magic based on previews and message board discussion, but then a GM mentioned he might use it for a campaign, so I threw it up on my Amazon wishlist shortly before my birthday and someone got it for me. Was pleasantly surprised by a lot of stuff that actually DIDN'T get previewed, advertised much (that I saw) or discussed on these boards. For example, I have zero interest in the magus and only nominal interest in Words of Power and that's mostly what folks were talking about. When I got UM, I was pleased to find things useful to both players and GMs, like the pregenerated spellbooks, the guidelines for negotiating with outsiders, guidelines for designing new spells, the new familiars, etc. I have mixed feelings about the new feats but saw a lot of good ideas in there--sources of inspiration at least (and LOTS of inspiration at that) if not items I will use as written. So I ended up liking the book a lot more than I thought I would (even if some things I still feel "meh" about).

I wonder if UC is the same way--the things that might actually attract my weird little brain just aren't being talked about. Again, I have zero interest in the new alternate classes and little interest in most of the Eastern-fantasy-flavor stuff (although some of it might be useful for a project I have on the backburner). I AM interested (in spite of what I just said) in some of the monk options and new fighter archetypes.

But beyond that--does it have stuff I can use not only as a player, but as a GM? Does it have any pregenerated item kits or pre-written mercenaries? Does it have guidelines for how to handle unusual combat situations? E.g., creative applications of combat maneuvers? Are there feats that seem absolutely necessary or other abilities or archetypes described that will add amazing fun and flexibility without power creep? What is in there that you didn't expect that is just plain cool?

Generally, what do YOU like about it (and what don't you like)--without griping or arguing, just noting what you see are pros and cons.

Thanks in advance for your thoughtful assessments.

http://www.dailytech.com/Google+Plays+Name+Police+Conducts+Baffling+Censors hip+Crusade/article22238.htm

Google's not only disallowing pseudonyms on Google+ but deleting people's Google accounts for making account names they don't like. Google's seriously getting creepy in its bid for joining in the social networking crazy (not to mention, I am sure there are people who are going to have problems who have odd-looking real names, as has happened on other networks. Wasn't there some issue on X-Box Live not long ago, where several folks got banned because their actual names unfortunately resembled euphemisms for male genitalia?).

I've been DeathQuaker on the 'Net since 1996 and want to be found on the Net by that name. I don't understand why that would be such a burden to any site, let alone a violation of a rule (and now I have to worry if they will extend the rule to Google accounts in general, and I will lose my email and my googledocs, etc. Not to mention the info on my Android phone). And people should have a right not to go by their real names on the Internet if they don't want to--I realize privacy on the Internet is largely an illusion, but let people try to preserve it as they'd like, at least.

The irony is I was just thinking about signing up for Google+ because Livejournal's been down. Glad I saw that article first.

As hopefully y'all know, June 18 is Free RPG Day, when (hopefully) your Friendly Local Game Store will be giving out free swag from various favorite game publishers.

My FLGS, Legends Comics and Games is hosting a gaming event in conjunction with the day, and I will be running "Master of the Fallen Fortress" (incidentally, LAST year's Free RPG day module from Paizo). As the module intended, I will be using the pre-gen APG iconic characters (as well as a couple core iconics) as the available characters to play. Legends is in the Towson/Parkville area on Joppa Road.

The event begins at noon; I don't know yet when my demo will be (if you are at all interested) but there will be lots of fun stuff to play and watch, so if you happen to be in the area, I hope you'll stop by and give the store a visit. Do note some of the past gaming events at the store have had a small "cover charge" (which includes food and soda as well as access to the game tables, and raffle tickets for prizes); I don't know if they are going to do that or not (but the free RPGs will still be free regardless).

My FLGS recently moved to a new location, and the owner is working on expanding/improving--within reason--game stock.

The owner is largely a comics and CCG expert; he had a games expert on staff but he had to leave a little while ago. I've known the owner for many years as a customer and he asked my advice on ideas for what to carry. I run some Pathfinder and other game demos in the store on occasion.

He says Pathfinder is one of his best sellers for RPGs. I think usually he has the core rulebooks and APG in stock (probably the Bestiary as well but I didn't check the last time I was there).

I suggested he keep some APs on hand, since I know those are Paizo's big sellers. OTOH, I don't usually buy APs myself since I run a homebrew world (although I might start buying a few if he starts carrying them if there is useful material in them... I just don't want to buy sight unseen). So I don't know stuff like -- should he just have the latest "issue" of the APs? The most recent completed AP? Have 1-2 copies or more? Is it worth carrying APs if most people subscribe to them online instead?

He is very sensitive to the need to balance between visibility--showing customers he has or will carry popular items--and not losing money on overstocking items that end up not selling as well as hoped (an eternal conundrum for most FLGSs). Other suggestions welcome as well.

The store is in a suburban shopping plaza area not far from several colleges and high schools.

Thanks.

I have written up two classes meant, essentially, to replace the monk class in a little homebrew project I was working on. I realized they would work well--if they worked at all--just about in any setting, and would love to hear any and all constructive feedback.

I basically took the monk idea, saw that it was a bit convoluted, and split it into two different classes:
1. Martial Artist: A d10, full BAB class with flurry of blows and minimal armor. The primary purpose of this class is to be able to pummel things to paste; its secondary purpose is to be somewhat skilled and agile. It should be able to function as a melee warrior first and foremost (compare fighter and ranger).

Link to Martial Artist on GoogleDocs

2. Mystic: A d8, 3/4 BAB class with mystic abilities based on ki and a basic unarmed combat style. Much more obviously built on the monk chassis, but swapped flurry of blows and other combat skills for more ki, ki abilities, and skills. This is meant to be a support character focused on defense and stealth, with enough combat skills to hold his own (compare bard and rogue).

Link to Mystic on GoogleDocs

Please note these two classes are quite alpha and have not been playtested in the slightest. I am not an experienced class builder so I would appreciate any and all guidance.

What I would like your feedback on:
1. Do I succeed in the above listed goals?
2. Do these classes look to be relatively on par with/balanced against
classes of similar HD/purposes?
3. Would these be usable in a "typical" fantasy adventure campaign?
4. Do the class features progress in a consistent way which makes sense?
5. Are there any class ability descriptions which need editing/further
explanation/clarification?
6. Anything else that would improve the usability and general balance
of the classes in most campaigns.

(A note on "balance" -- by balance I mean generally speaking would you have as much fun playing one of these classes as you would a similar class; would you feel regularly effective in and out of combat during a well rounded campaign that comprised of relatively equal parts of combat, exploration, and puzzle solving? Would you regularly feel less or more effective than most other classes (moreso than in extant classes)?)

Bonus points for extra credit:
Suggest better names for the two classes. I went for "generic" because I find if you pull class names from other cultures/languages/very specific historical positions, people start judging the class based on extremely specific criterion not necessarily aimed for for a fantasy adventure game. At the same time, generic is generic, and maybe they could use a little more oomph. Also, "martial artist" doesn't mesh with the Mona degree that base classes should have one word names, and although I don't really agree with that, the editor within wants me to be consistent with official material format, even if all this is is a fun homebrew project.

When I first tried to post this post, a crazy thing happened:

The Website decided I was that thread's OP, Darkholme. Seriously: at the bottom of the post screen, where it said "post as" it read Darkholme and his alias, and at the top navigation bar, it read, "Welcome "Name of Person on Darkholme's Paizo Account"!" with definitely not my own name.

I reloaded the page and everything righted itself, and I was me again--but that was a little freaky. I don't know what would have happened if I hit "submit" while it was still listing me as the other person but... best fix that bug before someone figures out how to exploit it. Thanks very much.

I am hoping some friendly, helpful folks here can help me make a good interpretive call on this, as I work on a project.

Here is the animate plants spell description, emphasis mine:

School transmutation; Level druid 7
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V
Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Targets one Large plant per three caster levels or all plants within range; see text
Duration 1 round/level or 1 hour/level; see text
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

You imbue inanimate plants with mobility and a semblance of life. Each animated plant then immediately attacks whomever or whatever you initially designate as though it were an animated object of the appropriate size category. You may animate one Large or smaller plant, or a number of larger plants as follows: a Huge plant counts as two Large or smaller plants, a Gargantuan plant as four, and a Colossal plant as eight. You can change the designated target or targets as a move action, as if directing an active spell.

Use the statistics for animated objects, except that plants smaller than Large don't have hardness.

Animate plants cannot affect plant creatures, nor does it affect nonliving vegetable material.

Entangle: Alternatively, you may imbue all plants within range with a degree of mobility, which allows them to entwine around creatures in the area. This usage of the spell duplicates the effect of an entangle spell. Spell resistance does not keep creatures from being entangled. This effect lasts 1 hour per caster level.

And here is the description of the entangle spell, emphasis mine:

School transmutation; Level druid 1, ranger 1
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, DF
Range long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area plants in a 40-ft.-radius spread
Duration 1 min./level (D)
Saving Throw: Reflex partial; see text; Spell Resistance: no

This spell causes tall grass, weeds, and other plants to wrap around foes in the area of effect or those that enter the area. Creatures that fail their save gain the entangled condition. Creatures that make their save can move as normal, but those that remain in the area must save again at the end of your turn. Creatures that move into the area must save immediately. Those that fail must end their movement and gain the entangled condition. Entangled creatures can attempt to break free as a move action, making a Strength or Escape Artist check. The DC for this check is equal to the DC of the spell. The entire area of effect is considered difficult terrain while the effect lasts.

If the plants in the area are covered in thorns, those in the area take 1 point of damage each time they fail a save against the entangle or fail a check made to break free. Other effects, depending on the local plants, might be possible at GM discretion.

My question: does animate plants, when "duplicating the effect of an entangle spell," allow a save to avoid being entangled?

You will note the description of animate plants, under the entangle option, specifies spell resistance does nothing, but it says nothing about a saving throw. Yes, the animate plants description says "saving throw none" but I am wondering if that is meant to apply to the first use of the spell, not the second, since the second use says "duplicates the effects" without otherwise stipulating anything.

I would say strictest reading of RAW would say it does NOT allow a save, since that's what's in the animate plants description, and higher level spell would override lower level spell, but my intuitive/interpretive/common sense response says creatures should still get a save to avoid being entangled (the advanced effects being that the save would be more difficult and the effect lasts for an hour).

For the record, the reason I am asking is I am compiling spell cards to share with my players (and anyone else interested), and I am trying to provide "complete" descriptions of spells where I can include them whenever possible (i.e., if a spell says, "As xyz spell, but..." I include the description of xyz spell so they only have to check one spell card, not two or several). I pasted the text of entangle into the animate plants and then noticed the issue--so I am trying to decide if I leave the clause about the saving throw intact or delete it. I'd like to have some other thoughts to weigh before finalizing the card. Thank you in advance for your help. (And yes, I am aware there are spell cards already made, but I would like to complete this project regardless.)

Now that I've got the Bestiary 2, I'm done for awhile. :)

Thanks for your as always excellent service.

In reviewing the rules and auto-reject advice, I note contestants are supposed to use formatting as used in the core rulebook--e.g., spells and magic items are italicized but not capitalized, etc.

Is there a style manual easily available that summarizes basic formatting requirements--what gets capitalized and what doesn't, etc.?

I realize if you read through the rules, much of this becomes easily apparent--at least to people used to noticing style and formatting. But formatting "typos" even exist in the core rulebook (if rarely) and it'd be helpful--though of course not necessary--to be able review a brief document that summarizes the most important formatting rules specific to the Pathfinder system. Thanks.

Okay, so I'm statting up a quasit, and I'm getting really confused.

Quasit has the Change Shape Ability:

SQ change shape (2 of the following forms: bat, Small centipede, toad, or wolf; polymorph)

There's two problems with this.

First, the forms don't match the Change Shape Description, particularly this line here:

A creature cannot change shape to a form more than one size category smaller or larger than its original form.

Quasits are Tiny. This means they can turn into Diminutive or Small creatures. Wolves are Medium creatures, therefore, Quasits should not be able to turn into wolves.

Second, the "as polymorph" part also causes a problem:

a) Polymorph does not allow shapechanging at all into vermin (the spell allows and describes changing into animals, elementals, and humanoids). So technically, a Quasit shouldn't be able to change into a centipede. And even if you handwaved that, there's no "as vermin shape XII" description to give you a guideline about what of the Small centipede's abilities the Quasit should be able to get.

b) For changing into animals, polymorph works "as beast shape II. Beast shape II allows you to turn into a tiny, small, medium, or large creature. However, two of the quasit's possible forms are Toad and Bat, both of which are diminutive creatures, which cannot be transformed into via polymorph/beast shape II.

Now, I realize for these last issues, you can handwave a bit since Change Shape does not allow the creature to alter its own stats--ergo the most important thing about the shapechange with relevance to size of the changed-into-creature isn't as a big a deal. You can still pick out the abilities you gain in the new shape as listed under the referenced spell.

It's still kind of annoying, however, when trying to make sure you're interpreting the monster ability correctly to realize you have to make up the rules as you go along because the rules as written aren't much help. Or am I really missing something here?

The best RAW fix would be to make the Change Shape ability "as beast shape III" and replace the small centipede and the wolf with a diminutive, tiny, or small animal or small magical beast.

TL;dr: The quasit's change shape ability offers a choice of 4 forms, all of which are actually, by RAW, impossible for the quasit to change into according to the ability descriptions.

Hey all I need a little help with PC Gen and I'm hoping someone out there can give me a hand. I know they have a Yahoo group, but long story short, I'd rather eat sand than sign up join a Yahoo group (bad past experiences and leave it at that).

Anyway, I'm futzing around with the LST editor, trying to make a few custom monsters.

I've gotten the general gist of it but I'm having a few problems:

- While I've got weapon proficiencies and their natural attacks set in the LST editors (in some cases, I've started creating a monster by "copying" and existing monster and making changes--i.e., copying an eagle to start with to make a vulture)--the attacks aren't showing up when I load the "race" (monster) into the character creator. The attacks show up in the monster's inventory but I can't equip them to the equipment set either.

- How do you edit in special monster abilities or take them away? For example giving someone a diseased bite attack. Or if you, again, are starting with a copied creature, making sure you eliminate default abilities they have (for example, again, I copied an aurochs to make a different herd animal, but didn't want the scent ability. I couldn't find anything to add or delete in the LST editor but the Scent ability magically appeared in the character output sheet in the character generator.

Understand I am not a programmer or software engineer (I'm a secretary FWIW). I'm not stupid with computers but not an expert either.

I know they are working on upgrading the editor system for future versions of PC Gen but if there's anything that can be done to help these issues now, that would be great.

I'm making up some M&M character sheets--largely for fun, mind. I'm trying to figure out the best way to do a power.

Short version: A Hero can turn a stack of paper into an animated, fully mobile and capable animal shaped minion. If the minion is attacked enough, it will wear down and eventually break into a papery mess.

Would it make more sense to do this as a Summon (Minion) power (with Limited: Needs lots of paper), or as a Animate Objects power (limited to animating paper only).

More info: I'm making up character sheets for the heroes from the anime Read or Die/R.O.D the TV. Many of the heroes have the ability to use paper the way roughly Green Lanterns use light--do their will, making it resilient, bullet proof, animate it, etc. Most of them will have a paper themed power array to reflect these abilities.

One of the characters, Maggie, specializes in these paper animals, and it's her character sheet I'm working on.

There's a video of her fighting with a more powerful, offensively specialized paper master here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vxtf6IzoFI

You don't see the animals right away but if you watch it you'll see bat, giant snake, wolf, and giant bat (amongst some of the other abilities she has). Sorry about the annoying soundtrack.

I know this has been brought up in the past, but since the new errata are out, I wanted to double check with this:

She cannot be caught flat-footed, nor does she lose her Dex bonus to AC if the attacker is invisible.

Now, this is the definition of flat-footed:

Flat-Footed: A character who has not yet acted during a combat is flat-footed, unable to react normally to the situation. A flat-footed character loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) and cannot make attacks of opportunity.

Compare this to the 3.5 version of Uncanny Dodge:

She retains her Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) even if she is caught flat-footed.

SOOOOO....

A 3.5 Barbarian or Rogue with Uncanny Dodge would not lose their Dex bonus to AC before they've acted in a fight, but they STILL COULD NOT MAKE ATTACKS OF OPPORTUNITY until they've had their first turn.

Contrariwise, a Pathfinder Barbarian or Rogue just simply is never flat-footed, meaning NOT ONLY do they not lose their Dex to AC before their first turn in combat, they ALSO ARE ABLE to make attacks of opportunity before acting on their first turn. (Tangentially, this also means the Combat Reflexes feat, which allows you to make AOOs while flat-footed, is only useful to them for the extra AOOs.)

Wow. That's pretty powerful for an ability a Barbarian gets at level 2.

Is this really what was intended? Thanks.

Note: This is about looking for unpainted metal minis.

There are a lot of "help me find a mini" posts out here, many of which start with, "I tried Reaper's figure finder, but I couldn't find anything!" And then someone else shows up (sometimes me) and says, "Look, Reaper has what you need right HERE."

Reaper has great selection and often it WILL have something close to what you want--but the figure finder is fiddly, and often cringes from difficult demands. If you're imagining your half-elf heroine with a curve blade and plate armor, and you run a search for "female half-elf sword plate armor" you'll get nothing. But it's quite possible the model you want has just slightly different tags than you're thinking of. Under "female elf plate" I find exactly what I want after all.

Frustrating, yes. But not impossible to work with. You will need to be willing to use a few tries.

As a basic rule of thumb, START with general and then go to specific as needed.

Let's Begin
1. Start with gender and race.

--a. With uncommon races like gnome, sometimes it's best just to enter in "female gnome" and leave it at that. In a case like this I'd rather glance through the 12 results presented rather than bother narrowing down further in the search which might bring me to an unexpected 0 results quickly.

--b. Half-breed races can be a bit of a challenge. If "half-orc" and "half-elf" aren't getting what you want, look under plain old "orc" or "elf." If you imagine your character looks more human, search for humans. (Also, sometimes half-breeds show up under these other race searches anyway.) There are a lot of sharp-featured or brute-featured humans that really would make great half-elves and half-orcs, but they're just labeled humans. Usually for best results, you will have to be patient enough to scan through a few faces to see if it will suit the image you have of your character.

--c. Sometimes small races overlap in appearance. A "gnome" figure might suit your halfling better than what the halfling search results in, etc.

2. Next go to armor. Keep it general. Best terms to use are "cloth" "leather" "breastplate" and "plate."
--a. If you want mail armor, search for chain (unfortunately this also results in figures with chainsaws and chain bikinis and spiked chains) or breastplate. This is a frustrating one to look for as sometimes figures will feature mail in part but it won't be mentioned in the search tag so this you have to be patient with.
--b. Robes and bikinis can also be searched for. There's some overlap with everything else.

3. If your character has any weird specifics that would be absolutely impossible to ad lib or easily convert, and it just wouldn't be your character without it, include that. This includes glasses and other unusual items, like maybe a telescope or something.(PS: The "glasses" guy I linked to is a Chronoscope, i.e., sci-fi/modern figure, but he'd make a great alchemist). Understand that if you're looking for something really odd, your results are going to be limited.

4. Generally speaking, use synonyms. If "bomb" doesn't work, maybe "dynamite" will (see linked dude above).

5. AVOID Character classes... usually. Frankly, most of their "barbarian" figures could make rangers and fighters and all the other way around. While sometimes searching for a character class helps, often it just eliminates perfectly viable options. Exceptions include classes like bards: if you want a character holding a musical instrument, running a search for "bard" is the way to go. But even then, if your character is a bard who doesn't play a musical instrument, DON'T search for bard. (Most figures I use for bards are labeled "thief" or "rogue" or "sorcerer".) Another exception would include "monk" since that gives you most unarmed or martial-arts weapons bearing people easily. I would only use a character class if you are looking for a very "typical" member of a class (looking for "male wizard beard" is a great way to find all your Elminster/Gandalf types quickly).

6. BUT WHAT ABOUT WEAPONS? You ask. Weapons are often signature to a character, what shows their style and nature so well. Absolutely, run a search that includes weapons. Again, if specifics are not working, stick to general ("sword" may give you better results than "scimitar," even if it means you have to look through more options).

BUT: Weapons, and to a lesser extent shields, are also the EASIEST thing to "convert"--which is a fancy phrase we miniature hobbyists use to mean, "Clip something off and glue on another thing in its place."

If you run a search for "female elf axe" and get frustrated because the results are rather limited, don't give up. Oh look, this lady looks perfect. Okay, her weapon is labeled a mace, but I could wing it and call it an axe, or get a weapons pack and carefully swap the mace for an axe from here.

Some things are really easy to do. Say, I want a female dwarf with a staff. But results are not acceptable. BUT I get clever! I do a search for "female dwarf SPEAR." I get this lovely lady. She's perfect! All I have to do is take some clippers to nip off the spear tip, file down the end, and look, a female dwarf with a staff. Lovely.

More on Conversion
Conversion can be time consuming and annoying. Depending on how much you get into it, it can also get expensive in terms of buying tools to make the job easier. Always, of course, if you find a model with exactly the right weapon as is, that's just great. But a lot of times, especially if you want a model with an unusual weapon (or other unusual feature), you will get frustrated trying to hold out for "the right one." And ESPECIALLY if you're looking at a model and are saying to yourself, "that model would be perfect EXCEPT..." you may be persnickety enough to want to give conversion a try.

Some conversion is really easy. If you're working with metal miniatures at all, you'll likely have on hand a hobby knife, clippers, and a needle file or two. Sometimes this is all you need, especially if you're doing something simple like the aforementioned spear-to-staff conversion. With patience, you can even do things like remove unwanted accessories or file down an elf's ears for a model you want to be human, etc.

Some conversion gets tricky. If you're interested in trying it, I highly recommend getting a pin vise (this is just an example, you don't have to get this one specifically). Pin vises are tiny hand drills that will allow you to drill holes in your mini.

Remember that weapons pack I linked to? Say you want to insert an axe in a hand that's holding a sword. Use your clippers to carefully clip off the sword, file to remove any excess. Then with a hobby knife, carefully poke a dot into the center of the hand, where the axe is going to go into. With your pin vise and a small drill bit, carefully, patiently drill a hole into the hand. Go all the way through if you can. Clean away excess shavings, put a drop of medium cure superglue in the hole, then poke the axe from the weapons pack through the hole. Done.

You can get even more fancy with sculpting putty and jeweler's saws and partidges in pear trees, but we'll keep it simple for now. But just bear in mind, if you do get interested in conversion, you can take one person's bounty hunter and turn it into your fire genasi sorceress (mind the horrible photography and lack of matte varnish, sorry). Of course, you never have to go this far--hopefully you'll find the mini you want without needing a lot of fiddling about to make it work.

Good luck!

Please cancel my GameMastery Maps Subscription.

I can no longer afford to pay the extra shipping (which pushes the price of the map over MSRP in spite of the discount) just for the convenience of immediacy. And I will be ordering less in the future to be able to package the maps in with other shipments.

Thank you.

Hi, I just saw a notice that you're prepping to ship my Game Mastery Map Pack--I have a the Game Mastery Map Pack subscription.

However, I also have

1) A subscription to Pathfinder RPG (i.e., I'm due the Gamemastery Guide this month)

and

2) Set my preferences (And I have checked on this several times to be sure) to 1 monthly shipment, to save on shipping.

Ergo, the Map Pack should be packaged in with the GMG when it ships.

It is NOT worth the money to have my subscriptions shipped separately (it otherwise costs less if I order through my FLGS in that case, even paying full retail). If it can't be done, I will have to cancel the GameMastery subscription (since there's no free .pdf benefit to offset the shipping cost).

Thank you!

This has come up before, but the last thread I found on this was over a year old, and I thought it would be better to start anew than perform necromancy (that's an evil act in some realms, and I'm trying to keep my alignment up ;) ).

Anyway: please, please, please implement an Ignore feature if at all possible. They have worked well at other boards I've been at.

I like this board for the useful rules discussions and sharing of ideas. Many people here are very nice and great to interact with. I also like being able to submit feedback for Paizo products here.

However, despite its many great features, too often a few worms spoil the barrel of rich, juicy apples. Some posts a couple weeks ago left me so angry I haven't been here until today ("Yay!" everyone says, "Let's keep it up and this b@$$% will go away!"). Too often recently I've hovered over a thread, thinking, "Do I want to read this, or will I just read a bunch of trollbait that'll piss me off?" Especially when the Usual Suspects derail an interesting topic into a complete, repetitive flamewar, and any valid or interesting points get lost in the sidelines. It would be lovely just to be able to block out the ugly so one could just read the... well, the nice posts. And the constructively critical posts and the helpful posts and the on-topic posts and the mature posts.

I know you can flag offensive replies--which I do when I see something truly abusive. But a lot of the posters here are smart enough to stay on the sly side of sarcastic that you know they're saying something negative and derailing the thread, but aren't actually insulting anyone directly, so you can't find an explicit reason for flagging them (and besides which, I don't want to be sitting here all day flagging posts that irritate me, as I'd just be playing tattletale and I'm sure the admins would get irritated with ME as a result).

Ignore features have often helped me from getting tempted into an argument better not gotten into, and it would make it easier to sort through threads to find the comments that actually make a contribution to the discussion, rather than detract from it. They're a useful tool to help posters from getting baited by trolls, where the trolls cannot be outright silenced.

And hey! It means you could ignore me too! That's GOTTA be a selling point. :)

I am sure this itself will doubtless invite flames and attacks--feel free. I will do my best to ignore the stuff intended personally (but I'd love to have some help!!). Of course I'm sure others disagree for intellectual reasons which I understand and I hope they speak up constructively. :)

So, the Fly spell says thus:

The subject can fly at a speed of 60 feet (or 40 feet if it wears medium or heavy armor, or if it carries a medium or heavy load).

And the Fighter's Armor Training says thus:

. . . a fighter can also move at his normal speed while wearing medium armor. At 7th level, a fighter can move at his normal speed while wearing heavy armor

Would it be fair to say that 7th+ level Fighters who get Fly cast on them (or drink a Potion of Fly) moves the full 60' of movement even if they are wearing heavy armor?

Or another way of asking this--is the gained fly speed from the spell part of "his normal speed"? Or is it something else?

I'm personally inclined myself at this point to say that the Fly speed is not part of the Fighter's "normal speed" and doesn't apply--but I would like to see other interpretations, based on both RAW and what you think is fair.

Thanks.

If I've read my flavor text right, Goblin Dogs live nearly exclusively with Goblins. This would suggest both creatures thrive in the same environment.

But Goblins have Darkvision... and Goblin Dogs have Low-Light Vision.

This suggests that creatures that typically live (or at least often dwell) in darkness have mounts that can't see where they're going in the same situation. This seems very counter-intuitive. Am I missing (or misunderstanding) something?

My FLGS, Legends Games and Comics in Towson, MD asked me to run a Pathfinder demo for a "mini-convention" on Saturday. This was to generally show off the Pathfinder ruleset. As far as I can tell, and despite complete moments of ditzery on my part, it went very well, and people went away having enjoyed the system. I ran one long demo game (I had meant to break up into multiple short demos but we quickly got caught up in it, though if someone had asked to join in I certainly would have grabbed them in). It took about 4-4.5 hours, which went lightning fast (everyone was surprised when they realized what time it was).

The 4E Demo-er made the ultimate sacrifice and told two people torn between 4th and Pathfinder to go join my game since I already had a few players waiting. :)

I had 2 3.5 vets, one person with working familiarity of 3.5, one person who had mostly played 2E with only a little 3.x experience, and one person who, if I understand it right, was completely new to tabletop roleplaying (he said, "I understand the basic idea of it because of World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings"). After getting used to the rules, he was one of the most proactive players, trying to test out skills and abilities to see what they do.

I used "Crypt of the Everflame" as a friend who bought it at GenCon lent it to me, so I could use it for free, and it has nice little side-bars detailing differences between 3.5 and Pathfinder that come up at appropriate locations. I bought the Dungeon flip-mat, because having a pre-made map for a demo is SWEET. The adventure itself was a little too long for a "demo" but I wasn't expecting to get through the whole thing; the parts we went through were more than adequate to show off various game mechanics and different kinds of combat. I wrote up pre-gen characters to use; the players in question chose a bard, cleric, monk, ranger, and rogue. (What they lacked in spells they made up for in versatility, though I think they were wishing they had someone with Magic Missile a few times around)

General gameplay/rules observations:
1. The at-will 0-level spells were helping the Cleric and Bard get a LOT more mileage out of what they could do at first level. The channel energy and multiple rounds of Bard performances were also seeing good use. The players of these two characters were the 3.5 vets, and they really felt like they were much more effective at 1st level than they could have been before.

2. Rogues being able to get sneak attack damage on Undead was very useful for the party. I'm also honestly not sure if Constructs are allowed to be sneak attacked; the statblock in the module wasn't clear and I didn't really have time to look it up, but I allowed it, and he was the most effective against the wood golem in the Crypt (he was one of the few people with a slashing weapon, just due to the particular characters chosen).

3. The monk was getting his flurry of blows off even at level 1, which was nice.

4. We didn't get a chance to really test combat maneuvers well, but the players grasped the core mechanic of it well; the vets liked the concept of it.

Crypt of the Everflame observations that can be extended to other general design observations:
1. Even DR5/damage type is brutal for 1st level characters. Between Skellies with DR/bludgeoning and the Construct with the DR/slashing, combat was slowed down a LOT for 1st level characters, with 1st level character equipment. (DR was also the hardest concept to explain to the newer players, but that may have been my being incoherent.) Mind, there were a lot of bludgeoning weapons in the party, but the skeleton fights still went slowly. 1st level characters just can't do enough damage fast enough. And though difficulty is part of my concern, a greater concern is pacing.

This isn't to say that DR/damage type shouldn't be used at all in a given adventure, but when 1st level adventurers come up against that a lot, it is going to get frustrating for all involved. I'm always sensitive of the difference between "challenging" and "frustrating."

2. That wood golem is waaaaaay too much for a 1st level party. Depending on what the party's done, they might have leveled by the time they get to it, but not necessarily. It was too hard to damage (though the party was doing VERY well working together, letting those with slashing weapons do their thing; another character focusing on setting the wood golem on fire, etc.--but you miss a lot at first level). And its attack and damage -- 2 bashes at 1d8+4, I think? The elf bard, who was perfectly healthy, got killed outright in one blow. (Fortunately, that was toward the end of the demo and it was almost dinnertime, so we just finished the combat and called the game. Now, the party could have retreated, or explored or done other things, and I can think of other tactics they could have used--but they were a group of players who had never met each other before, with varying understanding of the rules, and they don't have DM foresight/hindsight like I do, and frankly, with all these factors they were doing very well to work together and use group tactics like setting up flanks and keeping the healers in a place where they can help everyone, etc. I couldn't have expected more of them, especially under the circumstances. It was just too hard.

I come away from this noting that 1st level characters CAN do a lot more, and characters with special abilities are a LOT more useful and versatile as 1st level characters--but 1st level characters are still very crunchy, with some limited choices for tactics (a -4 to use an improvised weapon or fire into melee is a HUGE penalty for a 1st level character). Effective and non-frustrating design for them needs to be a big consideration.

Also, as an aside, if I ever run that module again, or give it back to my friend to run, I'll tell him to change the wood golem encounter around. My thought would be to make it a puzzle or riddle to take the shields off the statue (which itself would not attack), maybe based around the words inscribed on the shields it holds. But I'll hold other thoughts on that for a review of the module, maybe.

Anyway, back to the rules demo itself--everyone as far as I could tell seemed to have fun. The 3.5 vets were very enthusiastic about many of the changes made (they liked that sneak attacks were more effective, and liked most of the changes to races and classes), and are hopefully bringing their enthusiasm back to their college gaming group. The others seemed to enjoy themselves; I think the monk player was a little frustrated at not getting to use some of his special abilities more (he had the stunning fist feat, but didn't think to use it until they were fighting undead, where it wouldn't be much help). The player new to tabletop roleplaying said something along the lines of, "I like this. I get this. It's fun." Enough said!