Distant Scholar's page

Can you pronounce that for me?

It's pronounced "Heather".

Well, close enough.

In conclusion, the rules are clear - a buckler arm has a “free hand” that is “carrying nothing” and “holding nothing”.

Nothing is ever clear. :-)

What is the meaning of "free" in "free hand"?

• If it is identical to "holding nothing" (which I think is what is meant), then a buckler arm has a "free hand".
  
• If it means "completely unhindered", then a buckler arm does not have a free hand --- the buckler arm gets penalties in some situations.
  
• If it means "doesn't cost anything", then all characters have free hands (unless you're a construct or have grafts or something).
  
• If it means "unburdened by legal constraints", then all characters have free hands (as long as you don't name your hand "Golarion" or something).
  
• If it means "refusing to accept the armistice and continuing to fight", then you have some serious MPD issues.
  

Blog wrote:

WAR! What is it Good For?

...absolutely nothing!

“War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?” he said.

“Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?”

“Abso—well, okay.”

“Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?”

“All right, I’ll grant you that, but—”

“Saving civilization from a horde of—”

“It doesn’t do any good in the long run is what I’m saying, Nobby, if you’d listen for five seconds together,” said Fred Colon sharply.

“Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?”

The link to the web page works, but the link on the web page to the adventure itself doesn't. Unless you've had better results?

Risus.

The way people carry on about it, I thought there was some other issue besides lack of support.

Am I wrong?

I think another issue is that, if you try to make a copy of a published spell, it often ends up either weaker or at a higher level (or both).

This by itself doesn't upset me, as long as Words of Power have some other things that they do better than regular spells. I don't have enough play experience to know what those things might be, though.

I'm glad you explained that, because I was totally thinking, "Why would apes make iron, and why is it good for staves?"

Yes. Yes. And, yes.

I wish it weren't undead-specific, though. [How can spell words be undead? Are they for undead? Are they for making undead? Are the words themselves undead?]

Waiting for payday. 1.5 weeks from now...

Does IndieGoGo take the money immediately? Or do they wait 'til it's over, like Kickstarter?

I'd hope to see a brontosaurus.

When I read this, it sounds like one of those build-a-town iOS apps.

I must admit: I'm not much of a Cthulhu or H. P. Lovecraft fan. I've never read the stories, and don't really understand the appeal of dread and hopelessness.

But, for those of you who do, there's a Kickstarter project to put a bronze bust of H. P. Lovecraft in the Providence Athenaeum Library. You may want to check it out.

And "Providence Athenaeum Library" is a great name for a library.

I wish there were more exploration possibilities. I'd like to have my characters explore somewhere where no one else has been before.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 25, 2012

If this is for immediate release, why did you wait a year? *scratches head*

Words of Power is very much a prototype system.

There is no system to create your own wordspells inside the program; that capability is beyond the program at this point. If you create a specific wordspell, that spell can be added as a new, custom spell, but right now that has to be done manually.

If you compare the Arsinoitherium to the bestiary recommendations for designing new monsters, it looks like the base gore damage is in the wrong, and the powerful charge damage might be based off the correct gore damage.

As I said above, I disagree completely. The average damage is only 1 higher than the given range.

Yeah, the arsinoitherium's powerful charge damage really should be higher, shouldn't it?

[It's attack roll and average damage on its attack is only 1 outside the range listed for a CR 7 critter. Good Fort save, but low Will save. CR 7 seems about right. It doesn't have the hit points or saves for CR 8.]

That's already two votes for tagging - Guess I got some mind-numbing work ahead of me. ;)

I don't know how your web page is set up, but is there any way to have others (publishers, or just visitors to the site) do the tagging for you? You may have to edit incorrect tags, but I imagine that wouldn't be as much work as putting them all in yourself.

I've had to do things the old fashioned way, though, since neither Herolab, or PCGEN seem to have any information on the Linnorm bloodline.

PCGen definitely does have the Linnorm bloodline; I put it there.

Of course, if you didn't know what book it was in, and hadn't loaded the Ultimate Magic data, you wouldn't see it.

[My apologies if this is in the wrong place; I couldn't find a Conventions section.]

I'm considering going to the Origina Game Fair this year. What sort of presence will Paizo and/or Pathfinder have there?

In particular:
* If I wanted to try out Pathfinder Society play, would that be available?
* Would a tryout of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game be available? I know it isn't released until GenCon (I think), but I can still hope for a preview. :-)

I'm considering going to Origins this year, but I don't know much about it.

What's it like? Does it have a particular feel/flavor? In particular, I've gone to GenCon a couple of times; how do the two compare?

What sort of companies have a presence there, and what sort of offerings do they offer?

I've tried looking at their web page, but I couldn't find much useful information about 2013's show there.

I may be mistaken, but I don't believe Vermin can have lunge. Vermin are mindless (no INT score), and that means they never get any feats.

Certain vermin, like the giant mantis, have a special ability called "lunge" that is different from the feat "Lunge".

Are you using Dreamscarred Press psionics?

If so, that's probably pretty pricy. It gives more power points than any of the feats that do so. So, at least in the 3-4 range.

Dreamscarred Press' naturally psionic races give either the Wild Talent or the Psionic Talent feat, depending, and it has been generally agreed that their naturally psionic trait should cost 2 RP.

Distant Scholar wrote:

Kthulhu wrote:

Because sometimes, even the mook manages to get in a lucky shot.

Example?

Read the Iliad. Achilles had quite an annoying death, I'd say.

Paris was a mook?

(Someone else talked about Smaug, and the HBO series turned me off ASOIAF.)

Because sometimes, even the mook manages to get in a lucky shot.

Example?

An 8th level Pearl of Power costs 64000gp. A Rod of Absorbtion costs 50000gp and (with its 50 charges) can do what that pearl does SIX times. And a whole lot more.

Whatever that rod should cost, it's not 50k. More like 500k.

But the rod only works 6 times ever. The pearl of power works once a day.

North America doesn't really have any awesome creatures not found elsewhere, except giant bears and maybe rattlesnakes.

And Paizo doesn't like bears.

You do realize that Hero Lab only needs the core system and once you have that you can enter ALL the information yourself.

[...]

While PCGen and other free programs are decent.. none are as up to date as Hero Lab at the moment.

Aren't these two statements at cross-purposes?

Also, you can enter all the information yourself in PCGen as well.

I suppose I may be biased, but I feel that PCGen is quite good. And, it is free.

I've been trying out Feedly. I haven't figured out how to configure it the way I want, but it seems to be working fine.

Or one could carry chalk and a piece of slate.

I think the good alignment should allow more room for religious extremists. Why should two dogmatically opposed factions of Lawful Good angels not be allowed to go to war? It would add a bit more color to the upper planes where good is often taken to mean pleasantly nice, ever tolerant and quite boring.

I'd hope that in a world where someone can be objectively, measurably good, there'd be a lot more diplomacy and/or compromise, or at least tolerance, on such issues.

I think I would like this one better if the words weren't encroaching on Our Heroine's face so much. Not sure what you can do about that, though.

Godzilla was based on a Manga Monster.

[citation needed]

However, most characters won't be able to get the final feat until level 15 at the earliest.

Nitpick: 13th level. You can use an advanced rogue trick to grab a generic feat.

I just recently worked on an "I have all the SLAs" kitsune rogue; that's the only reason I know.

a rogue with a selection of rogue talents and extra talent feats spent on the number of minor, major magic and major, minor eldritch magic talents can gain the same spells faster then selecting this feat 8 times

I'm assuming you've house-ruled that rogues can take these rogue talents more than once, and that the eldritch magic talents aren't gillman-only. But how are you using them to get confusion and dominate person, which are 4th-level spells? Are you adding more talents to give access to higher-level spells?

It sounds like a re-skinned homunculus to me. You'd need the Improved Familiar feat and be 7th level. And make a homunculus. Since it sounds like you don't need the poison, or the ability to fly, your GM might lower the level requirement for the puppet, and/or make it cheaper to create.

So, for two feats, you've netted an average +4 damage per hit. That seems comparable to other two-feat combos. Enlarge person or expansion could alter that further...

Where do these two feats come from? I've never heard of them.

The Original D&D booklets had the spell slots being used once per adventure. I wonder what that would do to the 15 minute work day?

I go back to my "The Starstone is a radioactive spaceship engine" theory and that Aroden just finally bit it from space radiation poisoning. Iomedae, Cayden and Norgy are all due for their painful Madame Curie deaths soon as well.

Didn't Mystara already do that one?

I suppose not everyone appreciates a good (practical) joke.

Would a magical crinoline be considered a cursed item? :-)

The campaigns I've been in, or run, usually didn't have a finish. They were a string of various adventures, mostly unrelated.

Only recently have I been in campaigns which featured an overall story arc (one I ran, one I played), but those were both play-by-email, and they both fizzled.

Because wizards aren't powerful enough and need help?

Ultimate Campaign is supposed to have retraining rules in it which may help with this; see if you can convince your GM to use them when they're out.

Or you could give them Improved Unarmed Strike and Iron Will feats.

Why so many monk 3s?

I'd be a bit concerned about opening up every core or base class out there; some of them can be pretty tricky to correctly wrap your head around, especially if you don't have a lot of experience. But, if you're up to the challenge, and your players aren't trying to take advantage, it shouldn't be a real problem.

I'm in the middle of rewatching the series. Good times.

I've been thinking about how to model the witch Medusa in that series. Unfortunately, like a lot of sources, the characters tend of have a few powerful, specialized abilities, and Pathfinder/D&D gives a wide variety of less-powerful abilities instead. That makes it tricky.

Adeptus Technicanus wrote:

A brand new DM cannot use the beginner box to run a game, because it does not address everything that is in there, rules wise. The DM must have access to the Core rulebook, or already used to 3.5/3.75.

I strongly disagree with this statement.

Such confidence! It's as though you have evidence to the contrary, or something.

It seems to me that this "doubling clause" is the culprit. I haven't heard of it. 2d8->4d6 isn't a double, for example.

Maybe you could have one of those organized nations send the PCs (and colonists) off to explore a New World.