Dru Lee Parsec's page

And to all the atheists, uhm, have a nice day. ;-)

Thank you. I will :-)

Happy Holidays to everyone. And understand that by saying "Happy Holidays" I am not waging any sort of anti-religious war on Christmas. As we've just seen by looking at this thread we have folks who celebrate Christmas, Hanuka, Kwanzaa, The winter Solstice, and folks like me who just like to partake in a cultural celebration with family and friends but without any religious overtones at all.

Besides, even if I knew which one you celebrated we still have the New Year just one week later. So we still have "holidays" plural, and I hope you have a great New Year as well.

So in the best, happiest, most inclusive and not in any way a war on Christmas sense of the phrase may I once again wish everyone here:

Happy Holidays!

Greg,

I suspect that your downloads info might just be out of sync on our servers, and it will correct itself in a little while. We'll check into it when we get into the office, though.

OK, Found it.

I had logged in as greg@ (my domain name).com when I placed my order.

However, at some time in the past I made an order to the same address and same credit card on an email account registrations@ (my domain name).com

What happened is that when I entered my order under greg@xxxxxxxx.com the confirmation email and downloads appeared in the registrations@xxxxxxx.com account.

So I was looking in the account that I was logged in as when I placed the order and couldn't see it. The downloads actually appeared in the other account. Odd that it jumped to the other account rather than placing it in the account I ordered from.

But I have my downloads now so it's all good.

Greg

I was just reading another DM blog (which I've promptly lost the URL and now have no idea which one it was) and he had a couple of ideas that I'm going to start using.

Take some 3x5 cards and put the character's name, HP, and AC on it. As you roll initiative you just lay them out in order and insert a 3x5 card for each monster in the proper sequence. As monsters die just scratch out their stats and re-use for the next one. East to keep track of who moves when that way.

If a character is slowed, immobilized, needs to make a save at the start or end of his turn just take a 3x5 card and fold it in half making a tent. Write "Save", or "Immobile" or "Slowed" or whatever on the card and place it in front of the player. That way when it's their turn to act you won't forget that you have to handle this special situation.

Again, they're not PF specific, but I like the ideas.

Well, I know how they feel. I was laid off last year on Nov 30th. I'm a software engineer and I was working on a contract so I never expected to have permanent employment, but it sucks to be laid off right before Christmas.

Of course, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is that 4th edition has not been embraced by gamers. The very fact that Pathfinder exist and is being so well received stems form a couple of core reasons: First, the quality of the Pathfinder system and the modules is outstanding. I keep saying over and over that Pathfinder is vastly more readable than the 4e or 3.5e books.

The 4E game system is so overwhelmingly unpopular that WOTC's problems aren't all that surprising. But it's too bad to see the talent of Tweet and Noonan, who did such creative work on the 3.5 books, let go.

I really hope those who were let go can find work quickly in publishing, design, advertising and marketing firms. They're all very talented people.

[quote ]i agree Alleynbard in that Pathfinder is too big a book, i also usually provided what was needed on my gaming table, and sure not every player even gets the player's handbook

I would tend to disagree. As a game master I find it frustrating to have to jump back and forth between two books to find certain rules. Rarely have I had any player buy their own book, they usually use mine. When a player does buy his own books they tend to move towards wanting to DM their own game as well.

I'm sure each of our own experiences are different, but I'm quite happy to see the whole game system in one book and the monsters in another.

I would like to add that my first impression (and continuing impression) of Pathfinder is that it's vastly more readable than the 3.5 books. As I use the system I find very minor things that I would like changed, but overall it's a much easier system to use and it's much easier to understand (even though the beta doesn't have an index). I enjoyed it enough to download the free PDF and then buy the softcover.

As with everything in this game, the one book vs. two books thing is a balance. I'm happy with the single book concept and I'm very happy that we have a new and well supported 3.5 gaming system rather than having to move to the 4e system.

Thank you Sam:

The other thing that really cleared it up was when I went back to the 3.5 PHB to see what they said about FOB. FOB does not add attacks to the two weapon fighting. They gave an example that exactly answered my 8th level monk scenario where FOB gives the monk +5/+5/+0.

The monk at 8th level can do a hit with one end of the staff at +5, then another hit with the other end of the staff at +5 and then an unarmed strike at +0. Or, he can do staff +5, unarmed +5, staff +0. He can mix up the hits as he wishes.

FOB replaces two weapon fighting in that instance instead of stacking on top of two weapon fighting. So my original thought that it doubled the number of attacks was completly wrong.

Thank you for all the good discussion. And Sam, thank you for your in depth explanation. I appreciate the sense of community here.

By the way, it sounds like I want to keep Sam Weiss, monk-at-XXX-large on my good side. If we ever run into each other in a tavern I'm buying the beer. That is, unless the 20th level 4 armed dragon monk is a mean drunk. In that case RUN !

I don't believe that's right. I think that FOB is a full round action and TWF (either with two weapons or a double weapon) is it's own full round action. You can't stack the two because you can't do two full round actions in one round. You either FOB or fight in a TWF style.

Then we come back to the base question of "how does flurry of blows effect a double weapon like a quarterstaff (or two Sais)".

I think it must effect a double weapon because of the sentence on page 28 which says : "When using weapons as part of a flurry of blows, a monk applies his full Strength bonus to his damage rolls for all successful attacks, whether he wields a weapon in one or both hands."

It then goes on to say :" In the case of the quarterstaff, each end counts as a separate weapon for the purpose of using the flurry of blows ability." So what does that mean? Does it mean we apply FOB to each weapon to give me 4 attacks?

The real question keeps coming back to "How does FOB effect a double weapon attack?"

An example in the playtest beta would be really helpful.

I think the differnce is that flurry assumes that you are only using one end of the staff or if you have two say kamas that you are using the one in your primary hand. TWF assmues you are using both ends of the staff or a weapon in each hand. So at first level a flurry would be -2/-2 with the primary end of the staff or TWF -4/-4 with each end of the staff. I know the description for flurry talks about when unarmed using punching and kicks (at least I think it did) but game mechanics wise I don't think that anyone fighting unarmed with say flaming fists don't apply the fire damge to all attacks in a flurry. If the monk had a quarter staff that was say +1 frost/+1 flaming I would say that with flurry you are either going to do cold on all your flurry attacks or fire on them but not both where as with TWF you would do one fire and one cold.

OK, the part I missed was that the quarterstaff is counted as if it's 2 weapons. If I hit once with it it's a single weapon with no to-hit penalty and 1d6 of damage. As a Monk I can use it as if I have 2 weapons with the 2nd weapon being considered light. That would (according to table 9-7) give me two attacks at -4,-8 with 1d6 damage for each attack. Essentially a quarterstaff is like having a 1d6 club in my primary hand and a light 1d6 club in my secondary hand.

Now what happens if I apply flurry of blows to this? If I had a single weapon like a Sai I would (without FOB) have one attack for 1d4 of damage. With FOB I would get 2 attacks at -2 with each giving 1d4 of damage and I'd use a full round action to do so. So FOB applied to a single weapon gives me 2 attacks without the 2 weapon fighting penalty.

But what if I'm using two weapons or a double weapon? It sounds like I would get 4 attacks at -6,-10,-6,-10 (which is the original -4,-8 doubled and with -2 applied to each attack) However, I must use a full round action to do so.

Now, what happens when I hit 8th level and my FOB becomes +5/+5/+0 (3 attacks) and I'm using a double weapon? Using the logic above I would get 6 attacks at (primary hand) +1/+1/-4 and secondary hand at -3/-3/-8.

Does that sound like a reasonable interpretation?

Hey, first of all, thank you for the informative responses. I've been working 2 jobs this week and haven't had much time to come back and check the message boards.

OK, 1 point = 1 rank and the +3 bonus is a one time bonus. That makes a lot of sense.

Thanks again.

Hi folks:

I'm just getting back into D&D after not playing since First edition AD&D. Yeah, it's been a while. So I'm approaching Pathfinder from the point of view of an essentially new player with some background of the mechanics of play.

First thoughts: Pathfinder is vastly more readable than 3.5. Overall it's much easier to understand than the 3.5 rules. Far too often I found myself going to the DM guide to find half of an answer, and then having to reference the player's handbook to get the rest of the answer.

Excellent job Paizo.

OK, on to my question: In the chapter on skill points it references both skill points and skill ranks. But I don't see anything discussing the relationship between points and ranks. In the 3.5 rules it cost 1 points to buy one rank of a class skill and 2 points to buy a rank ina non-class skill. Because of that you get a LOT of skill points when starting a new character so you can buy several ranks. In 3.5 table 4-1 you get 4 times as many skill points as in pathfinder (See pathfinder table 5.1).

However, I see that in Pathfinder when you buy a class skill you get +3 in that skill. So maybe that's how it gets balanced out if in Pathfinder one rank cost one skill point.

So is it correct to say that in Pathfinder one skill point buys one rank? And if that rank is a class skill then the character gets an additional +3? If this is right then perhaps the sentence in the paragraph on page 53 under the heading "Acquiring Skill" should read :

These skill points can be spent to purchase ranks of any skill at a cost of one skill point per rank . . .

Otherwise, there's nothing relating points to ranks.

The only other part of Pathfinder that I've found a bit confusing is that there's no description at the beginning of each class section describing what that class is all about. It just jumps straight to what 3.5 calls the Game Rule Information. When we were creating our characters for our first adventure I had to go back to the 3.5 rules to read the descriptions of what a cleric is and how it differs from a paladin and so on. I have a feeling this is simply a side effect of Pathfinder being in the Beta stage. I see that while the Beta is just over 400 pages the hardcover will be in the mid 500 page range so I'm guessing that this is the kind of additional text that will go into the hardcover.

But overall, Pathfinder is very well organized and the rules are much easier to understand while still holding on to the flavor and feel of a real D&D game. Well done.