Emperor7's page

First, the WoTC previous editions boards pointed me to Pathfinder as an alternate to going to 4E. Not sure if the OP is still up there though.

Second, I saw an anti-Pathfinder post there that a moderator shot down. Asking the OP to refrain from flaming it. Pleasantly surprised by that, but wasn't sure if that was a corporate point of view.

Still the tone is if you're not switching to 4E don't let the door hit in the butt on the way out.

The previous editions threads at WoTC make you feel like you're relegated to the basement. But most gamers prefer the bsmt. lol.

Of course the flamers are out in force, attacking all detractors. That alone keeps me away from other boards.

Shisumo wrote:

Pangur Bàn wrote:

Emperor7 wrote:

Spotting a sparrow in forest full of trees acting a bit strangely should be tough.

Given that any real sparrow near a combat site is going to be making itself scarce on the double, maybe not so tough as you think. ;-) The only real issues are the critter's size and how well it blends in its surroundings, not the fact that it looks like an innocent animal.

Precisely. The rules already cover this situation. A druid in sparrow form is going to have a hefty bonus to its Steath check (+8 size, +2 minimum enhancement bonus), so seeing the sparrow is not necessarily going to be easy. Once you have done so, however, the Spellcraft check is the Spellcraft check, period. How the flavor plays out is up to individual interpretation, but the rules are not.

No they do not. Just like Spellcraft cannot identify Spell-like abilities (because they do not have any components in casting), I do not see how normal movements and sounds of the animal are considered spellcasting.

Or how to tell the difference between 'normal' movements and sounds versus 'unnatural'. Most people/critters don't have the knowledge of animals like a druid/ranger would. That's just the mating dance of the finch...or is it a spell? No! I can see it's little birdie fingers waggling and that worm is really a spell focus!

While spotting it might be tough but possible, recognizing what it's doing is another matter.

Hence the nastiness of natural spell.

All conditions come into play.

You know, you are right. I am shutting Paizo down forever right now and I am going to Bella Sara to play with the wittle horsies. If it is good enough for Sebastian, it is good enough for me!

-Lisa
ex-CEO
new Horse Groomer

I'm quitting spending money on my mortgage or my kids, so I can buy Paizo products.

Emperor7 wrote:

The Bite of the ... spells from the Spell Compendium quickly turn you into a wrecking machine, but the duration is limited.

I requested to use these spells with my Kobold Druid and his Boar Mount via Share Spell ability and my DM basically growled at me and said NO. LMAO! A boar would become very scary with "Bite of the *" spells buffing him.

- END OF LINE -

Definitely. I didn't even think of this angle, since my animal companions get killed anytime I try to use them in combat.

Not sure if the Bite spells need to be used on a humanoid form, but if you can go half-animal why not half-humanoid via sharing? mulling this over........

Don't tempt me further. My DM will call your DM and we'll both get punished. lol.

Actually there is something for casting while flying. Basically, you can cast a full-round action spell over multiple rounds (that is, keeping up your flight with a move action, beginning the spell one round 1, completing the spell one round 2 with your next standard action). I believe it explains in in the magic section of the 3.5 PHB.

'Course, it's not like the druid (at the level it CAN turn into a tiny sparrow for that mad-high hide bonus) is really impressing anyone. An improved invisible wizard or sorcerer could be just as bad.

*shrugs*

Certainly. Greater invisibility and such can be a royal pain.

Here's another scenario - A wizard castings spells thru small woodland creatures. Not sure how that is done in 3.5 but you could do it in earlier versions.

Our DM was sniping us with a squirrel a druid/sorcerer was controlling, then tried to act like I was evil when I blasted said critter.

Emperor7 wrote:

A common message from the Thought Police is that 4E is the most successful release in the history of gaming. We don't need no stinkin 3rd party support. I think the lie will be revealed in the long run. Us longtime gamers like diversity, and freedom.

It never ceases to amaze me that people never take into account population growth when they say "Best selling ever!" In 1980, there were 226 million people in the US. Now, there's over 300 million. If you didn't sell more widgits now than in 1980, you have a massive failure on your hands, as you have so many more people to sell to! An identical quality product in a static market should sell 30 percent more units based on that population factor alone. Heck, since 2000, your sales figures should go up 6 percent, even if your sales rate stays the same.

(Yes, yes, there's a time delay involved, as 6 year-olds today are slackers and don't work in factories any more here. But the principle remains valid.)

Best selling ever... and are they even accounting for the annual increase of cost of living and inflation? 1980s dollars are bought much more than today's dollars, even with its recent slide, due to those factors alone.

Very good point! Spin Doctors are Thought Police in a sense!

Krome wrote:

I am dismayed that any business would support 4E.

At any moment in time WOTC and tell you to stop selling a given product, leaving you with unsold stock product. At any moment WOTC can take your idea, make it their own and put it in the SRD preventing you from selling or supporting your own original idea and product.

At any time WOTC feels like, they can prevent you from publishing any 4E products.

Who runs a business, lies under the guillotine and hands the cord to another company?

Any company that is supporting 4E is showing very poor business sense.

I know we're all appreciative Erik Mona was able to figure this out early on. I am so glad we are no longer wotc's b!*##. PRPG seeks to improve the experience for the gamer, and so reciprocity suggests we should do our part by getting the word out locally about Pathfinder RPG. Later posts in this thread are suggesting that PRPG is not yet well known, and many gamers are uninformed. Let put the great minds of this community together and figure out how to communicate the good news about the continuation of 3.5, and the Kickoff of PRPG playtest next month.... any ideas!

Viral marketing. Since I'm becoming a DM again, I'm picking Paizo's products to start with. Since my group doesn't hang around the message boards I'll be able to tout the virtues of the company/products/systems. If I'm successful they'll tell their friends, who'll tell their friends, and so on, and so on...

My group knows the company but aren't up to speed on Pathfinder, etc. Time to fix that.

Emperor7 wrote:

Spotting a sparrow in forest full of trees acting a bit strangely should be tough.

Given that any real sparrow near a combat site is going to be making itself scarce on the double, maybe not so tough as you think. ;-) The only real issues are the critter's size and how well it blends in its surroundings, not the fact that it looks like an innocent animal.

Agreed, with caveats -

IF combat has started.
Blending is good, but also range. Love those medium/long-range spells. AND the concealment trees provide.

Still I like the idea of a paranoid caster thinking he's about to be ambushed, but them my DM loves to *surprise* us. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that sparrow isn't out to get you...

I don't actually feel a need to "protest" WotC or "hate on" 4E. I'm not actually "anti-4e" as much as I am .....

...meh...

Thus far, nobody has given me a pragmatic reason to start up 4E (and the "but you gotta buy new stuff!" mentality, while popular with younger crows, is completely lost on me), so I feel no need to learn yet another game system when I already have plenty. I had to get an extra room at my place just to house my gaming stuff for pete's sake. I thin I can run a game without 4E.

Like many others, I am also insulted as a consumer (and one who's spent a small fortune over 25-30 years in TSR/WotC/Hasbro's name) by the overtly business mind of a niche company (Hasbro my not believe it is, but gaming will always be so). Like many businesses in my area who have done similar things, I refuse to give them MORE money ... which is working out well for my wallet :-D.

I know other people will continue to spend money and my small boycott won't impact them, but there are always people who feel that the business end is unrelated to them personally. I'm too pragmatic and experienced to be blind to inconsiderate business practices.

You must be my twin brother, abducted by kobolds shortly after we were born!!! Well said!

Shisumo wrote:

-Archangel- wrote:

Well I am not sure if Spellcraft check should be awarded for this. At best I would give it but rule that the observer cannot either hear or see the caster (since caster is using normal animal movements and sounds for this) so the penalty would go up for this Spellcraft check.

Also I would not award this check unless the observer knew that he is facing a druid that can do this or has already been attacked and/or warned about this. Then I would also do the animals singing routine and see if the observer would ask for spellcraft checks then (so we can avoid him/her using metagaming knowledge when the actual druid is casting the spell).

The rules are pretty explicit about this - the only time the character(s) should not receive a Spellcraft check to ID the spell, and at no penalty to boot, is if they don't, in fact, notice the caster at all. Otherwise, the rules are clear that the animal's actions should be as identifiable as arcane or divine spell components as they would be if the druid were in human form.

At the same time, however, nothing in the rules suggests that a flying druid would have any particular difficulty casting a spell. I suppose that, if Jason wanted to arrange for something like that, the rules could call for a Fly check (at the same TN as casting defensively, say), but they don't at the moment.

And how is looking at the bird singing and waving its wings noticing the caster? How do you know that bird is the caster? Now, what you claim is that each person in the world with Spellcraft has metagame knowledge of everything around them.

I do not see this as clear rules, not even close.
And I am not house ruling but interpreting unclear rules.

Yes, it's a bit dicey. Is casting a marshalling of arcane/divine forces to be channeled into a spell, hence drawing the trained eye to it? Or is it more internal, and limited to a few outward signs?

While I would have preferred not to have been spotted casting spells in animal form I can see both sides of the argument. And the 2 opposing points of view. I think the circumstances hold more sway here. Spotting a sparrow in forest full of trees acting a bit strangely should be tough. Poor little birdy doing a mating dance gets fried by a spellcaster in a case of mistaken identity. lol.

There's actually quite a bit of clamoring for WotC to review their 4E licence policy. Maybe not so much here, but that's to be expected: paizo won't be supporting 4E and to the best of my knowledge nobody from WotC frequents these boards. There's rather a big ruckus on EnWorld and on the WotC forums though.

Unfortunately the strongest protest will come from WoTC losing business to more player friendly companies like Paizo. (That's why I've recently joined this site.) The shortfall of that is the time for them to feel any pain. Right now I believe they're surrounding themselves in self-congratulations. If you even suggest shortcomings in 4E or the restrictive game license you get flamed, and flamed some more. Those boards would have you believe that you're retarded for not paying homage at the 4E/WoTC shrine.

They won't believe that they need to loosen the license a bit until financials come in. A common message from the Thought Police is that 4E is the most successful release in the history of gaming. We don't need no stinkin 3rd party support. I think the lie will be revealed in the long run. Us longtime gamers like diversity, and freedom.

Sorry, no solution in the short term IMO.

Emperor7 wrote:

Having a gestalt Druid 15/Ranger 10/Warshaper 5 with Natural Spell I can tell you this is a very strong character. If I combined it with Fast Wild Shape or quicken (?) my 1 round spells it really becomes over-powered. (I haven't gone this route)

I believe there is a reason that PrC's are strongly discouraged with the gestalt variant. You've pointed it out quite nicely.

I never knew they were discouraged. Our DM kinda opened the candy box and things grew from there. I'm prepping to run as a temp DM and I'm definitely gonna avoid that trap. And a few others that have cropped up.

No to derail my own thread but it just occured to me that if Druid wildshaping maxes out at 12th level effectively does it not open itself up to some good multi classing ? assuming you dont plan on being a primary caster. Basically you've got 8 levels of other classes to play with to make the shifted forms more powerful ?

Monk springs to mind as does Barbarian , rogue ...hell most other classes

You combine a 12th level Druid with most anything and you have a good mix. The spell selection is great. The split of polymorph/wild shape in Pathfinder is a good idea to reign it in a bit. Still, there are feats that duplicate some of the wizard/sorcerer specialties, like Draconic Wild Shape. The Bite of the ... spells from the Spell Compendium quickly turn you into a wrecking machine, but the duration is limited.

A druid/monk with flurry of blows while in the form of a werebear scares me. Or the ability to infiltrate and backstab as a druid/rogue. Yes, the combos are awesome.

Donovan Vig wrote:

I would, however, strongly reccommend getting "un-rusty" using something you are already familiar with. With the focus on backward compatibility, it will be pretty easy to convert one way or the other.

Agreed

If looking at 3P Eberron, and you wnt a temp campaign, well look no further then Cyre (pre disaster).

Any new stuff from Beta could be just how "education" has developed post disaster.

Thx for the input. I've been playing 3.5 but haven't been DMing it. Now I have to worry about challenge ratings, XP awards, and keeping it fun and challenging.

I'll hunt down Cyre. I don't have that Eberron book. Mulling it over one of my base concerns with Eberron is that it's high magic. I'm looking to reign that in a bit.

As of now I'm going to start with a couple of the Paizo modules, some of the base rules for Pathfinder (like consolidated skills), and tread water til the Beta. Once we get thru the modules I should have a better sense on what the group likes/dislikes, and tailor to suit. Still gonna pursue Eberron info as a backdrop for a campaign, or a side campaign.

Thx again.

Just to muddy the waters a bit more -

The Warshaper PrC (Complete Warrior) provides a druid with multimorph at Warshaper 5, (flashmorph for sorcerers/wizards). This allows the druid to change forms every move action for the usual 1 hour per level. In addition earlier PrC feats allow the druid to manipulate the forms she's in, increasing the length of limbs or taking on a hybrid form. (Going by the illustration, but not specifically mentioned in the description.)

Having a gestalt Druid 15/Ranger 10/Warshaper 5 with Natural Spell I can tell you this is a very strong character. If I combined it with Fast Wild Shape or quicken (?) my 1 round spells it really becomes over-powered. (I haven't gone this route)

Though I try not to power game a few people in my group tend to be very laid back, and my impatience gets the better of me. In addition I don't usually use an Animal Companion. (My DM likes to kill them.)

The trade off is the loss of magic items not covered by a wilding clasp, but it's a small loss.

Since I'll be starting a 3.5 game myself I'm leaning to avoiding all PrCs for the time being.

The Alpha 3 is not meant as a stand-alone - you still need the PHB and SRD rules of 3.5; its just a fill-in of what is different.

That being said - its quite good.

However, the BETA is due out in August and will most likley revamp a lot of what is in the Alpha-3. So my thought would be - IF this is going to be a "regular" thing - you may want to wait till you can get ahold of the BETA.

To run the first one, you can start em off with Alpha-3 with the caveat that you intend to upgrade w/ the BETA; if you're wanting to use the Pathfinder rule-set. In which case, I would move away from starting off in Eberron because that would be harder to transfer over and be less compatible later.

Robert

Thx for the input. I should have been clearer in my OP. I have a good amount of 3.5 stuff and was going to use that as a basis. I'm looking at Alpha 3 as a way to cut thru a good amount of houserules.

Your point about converting an Eberron campaign is exactly what I was looking for. I'd rather build on a successful start than scrap and start over.

Looking forward to the Beta! Thx again!

Fairly new to these boards, and to Pathfinder, and need some advice.

I've been asked to guest DM in August for a weekly group. This might turn into a regular thing. The problem is I'm pretty rusty.

Is the Alpha 3 release solid enough to start with? Or should I stay safe with 3.5 Eberron, etc.?

I'll likely houserule some items that have complicated our usual 3.5 game.

Any and all advice welcome.

It's really encouraging to see the discussion on houseruling.

4.0 has driven me ove here to Paizo. More specifically the tone of the message boards. It's much more pleasant here in the light.

I've been asked to guest DM in August. I've been playing DnD since '81, off and on. Unfortunately I haven't DM'd in a LONG time.

I've been thinking of a 3.5 Eberron setting (with some house rules) or trying the Pathfinder Alpha. (since the Beta won't be out 'til sometime in August)

Anyone have any words of wisdom? I'm worried about too much rust on the old cranium. (And no rust monsters to be found nearby.) It might be too much for me and the group to try out the Alpha. At least until the beta is out.

Tarren Dei wrote:

Blackdragon wrote:

Come to the Dakside, we have cookies.

The darkside does not have cookies. No cookies. None.

The Darkside does have cookies. Girl Scout cookies. Made with real Girl Scouts.

Yummy!

One should remember that Natural Spell is /not/ still+silent spell for Druids.

Quote
"You can complete the verbal and somatic components of spells while in a wild shape. You substitute various noises and gestures for the normal verbal and somatic components of a spell. "

This means that when the birdie starts waving his wings around and chittering murderously at someone who can cast magic, they can try to get a spellcraft off to determine that the birdie is casting a spell at them.

It also means that the bird is unlikely to be able to fly and cast spells at the same time.

Natural Spell does not replace the need for the verbal and somatic component, they just teach the druid how to use the animal bits to perform them.

Given that some spells, like call lightning, take a full round action to cast (rather than a standard action), it does give foes some small amount of time to act. (such as to gut the tweety bird who's casting the spell).

-S

Right on the mark. I have a 15th level druid and this hasn't been a problem. Of course I'm not much of a powergamer. The 1 round spells slow me down quite a bit, and I got squished once casting spells in rat form. Thankfully I still had my original hp. Still I had to make a concentration roll. Love those timely 20s!

Most of my spellcasting in animal form tends to be in non-combat situations as well.

Joe Fisher wrote:

apologies if my eyes have failed me......

Reading thru the feat list I couldn't find it, but it is listed under a Divine Caster NPC list of feats.

Has it been nuked in Pathfinder?

It is not in Alpha release 3 because it has not been changed. It is in the Beta Playtest Edition due out next month.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

Cool. Thx!

apologies if my eyes have failed me......

Reading thru the feat list I couldn't find it, but it is listed under a Divine Caster NPC list of feats.

Has it been nuked in Pathfinder?