Evil Lincoln's page

I don't have mechanical advice for this, but I'd like to applaud the idea of playing a paladin who isn't a jerk. Just remember to put the needs of others first.

DM Wellard wrote:

Don't get me wrong I don't like the 15 minute day either..but slavishly sticking to pre rolled totally random encounters when you know you might wipe out the party with them is in my mind a case of no-fun.I rarely use random encounters now and If I do I make sure they are CR balanced.

I don't use CRs. In the years since 3E came out, I've learned that I'm a much better judge of what my PCs can handle than WotC's designers are.

There is great wisdom in this.

CR is a weird feature. It requires delicate care and attention to function optimally; but that effort requires the exact kind of expertise that obviates the need for CR.

I still think that the encounter balance metrics are a great tool for beginner GMs if you can keep them on track with all the other variables... and they're pretty good for ballpark assumptions. But like almost any discipline, there's nothing quite so amazing as a seasoned expert with the training wheels off.

What that woman does with her sex life (or not) is her own business.

Shame on those who made it out to be "reporting", further spinning this fad of invading women's privacy as part of a contrived "national dialog" which has nothing to do with anything but an election year and a female demographic.

Shame on Dingo for caring enough about this garbage to repost it.

Can we please stop pretending that our mostly-male, all-marginalized population here on the boards should be weighing in on such a thing?

Can we please consider getting some more maps added to the CUP for this kind of thing?

It's as good a recruitment tool for Golarion campaigns as the PRD is for the rules.

I personally think they could be a little cheaper, but Paizo will (and should) charge what it thinks the market will bear.

Of all sectors of the print media world, RPGs must be a really interesting one to have a commanding share. Users who favor books will really buy books, and users who favor electronic media access tend to be completists, so you you can be sure that they will want to fill out those collections. Still, I tend to think of a PDF as an advertisement for the physical book... and $42 is a pretty expensive ad.

I wouldn't mind the price lowering a bit, since I think it would lead to more impulse-driven PDF buys (from me anyway)... but I don't know if I speak for everyone or what. Either way, the fact that — as a VGT user primarily — I'm bloody grateful for a PDF sale option at all leads me to think they can price it as they please!

Evil Lincoln wrote:

On the flip side, TOZ, they can be a great way for GMs to include consistent...

Consistent. As in, not random.

Reading the rest, I think we agree.

Hoo boy, if you think consistency and randomness at odds, they might have a seat for you in congress...

I'm of two minds on the issue, honestly. Mechanics that keep even the GM guessing can be great, but there's a specific kind of campaign that needs such a rule...

But just because it's randomized doesn't mean it is a total non-sequitor! It just means that if you spend time in that particular place, neither you nor the the GM knows for certain what's going to come at you. Kinda cool. Should it be mandatory? Hell no. Does it solve the problem of resting-on-demand that we're discussing... maybe there's a narrow sliver of level/party-makeup combinations for which it does.

But if you are really having this problem, you need to get acquainted with the big three timers:

• soft timers (they have a hostage, so we can't tarry)
  
• hard timers (the ritual will be complete on the sunset of the third day! we can't be crafting items now!)
  
• reactive NPCs (the enemy wizard knows we attacked his fort — scry sensors spotted every day, he's gonna hit us at the worst possible time, let's hit him first.)
  

I try to use each of these some of the time to keep it from getting predictable. Sometimes use more than one. Very occasionally, use none, and let the players go nova, retreat, rest, repeat. Honestly, it can be fun to see just how hard they can hit one encounter.

You need to keep some kind of pressure on to get the rules functioning in line with the original (somewhat silly) design assumptions and CR. Optionally, you can pitch the CR assumptions out the window and eyeball everything... this is harder for new GMs to do, but the result is WAY more fun.

Random encounters tend to be non-sensical. For me, they break immersion, unless they are planned well enough to make sense with the locale. And if they're that planned out, they aren't really random, are they?

It doesn't make sense for a party to get ambushed by three different bands of orc in the night, only to move a mile down the road in the morning and find a human village.

On the flip side, TOZ, they can be a great way for GMs to include consistent flora and fauna in a setting. I think Kingmaker stands as a really good example of this.

I do rather wish that the random "encounters" in most products were something a bit more nuanced than random monsters only... but the GMG tables are the cure for that.

With all that said in defense of random encounters, I think they're probably the single weakest tool to use against the 15 minute adventuring day. At the point in a campaign where you seriously have to worry about maintaining pressure on the party, teleportation is the problem. That thwarts random and planned encounters alike.

In order for PF to include awesome images of mounted combat without being disingenuous, I think that mounted combat ought to be a little more awesome. </unsolicited opinion>

Greetings. I'm a 3.5 player, but after seeing a few of the changes in Pathfinder, I'm thinking about converting. My question is, how does Pathfinder compare to 3.5 in terms of Powergaming? I've seen that there's been some much-needed balancing of classes and races, but at the same time, it looks like the power-level of characters in general has risen. One thing I don't like about 3.5 are all the splatbooks which encourage min/maxing and optimizing at the expense of roleplaying. In your opinions, is the Pathfinder system less prone to 'overdoing it' than 3.5? Thanks for the replies.

As others mentioned above, power gaming is a mindset, not a quality of rules (with certain comical exceptions).

In general, you could describe Pathfinder's character options as more open — the archetypes, for instance, give a great deal more flexibility than do prestige classes. This means less fiddling to get the concept you want, which cuts down on some of the most egregious number-crunching offenses (in my opinion).

But... this is a small difference. In general, PF is still the most crunchy, deck-building system that I play. This system mechanically rewards players with the patience to consult every book, consider every option, follow every cross-reference, permutate every rules interaction. For many, that is what makes it a clear successor to 3.5 . If those are the qualities of the system you wish to escape, you should look elsewhere.

That said, good communication between players and GM can fix any problem. Choosing the right system makes it easier to get everyone on the same page, but you can power-game in FUDGE and you can characterize in Hackmaster.

Jerry Wright 307 wrote:

thejeff wrote:

That would be, the orc patrol comes along, spots the pcs, either sneaks away to come back with the full strength of the tribe or, if spotted, blows horns or other signals to summon help.

Welcome to my game.

Yeah, it's a random ENCOUNTER, not a random ATTACK. If a lone Kobold encounters a sleeping party of five adventurers, he's not going to attack them himself. He's gonna go get his buddies...or possibly even some of the more dangerous monsters in the dungeon.

Or merely get spotted by the players and flee, forever convincing them that a local tribe of kobolds has some effect on the plot.

Or perhaps he makes his stealth check, and only one player comes even close and so he "hears something in the bushes" but silence ever after.

After a few sessions of this behavior, players learn to take everything in stride and to act like the game is a living, breathing world instead of a single-player computer RPG.

...

Back on the issue of the 15 minute adventuring day, I should say that I really dislike when this is the presumed tactic of the PCs. It's okay once in a while, but by and large it is the GM's job to challenge the players, and letting them run out the clock every session is a failure of that mission.

In my experience, if you have multiple casters in the party, or even one caster played by a player who "knows casters", then the GM needs to know his timers every bit as well as he knows any other part of the story — the BBEG's name, the adventure hook, all that.

So the real answer to the OP's question may well be: Ignorance of timers, both their importance and means of execution.

Why not?

Sometimes the PCs have that advantage.

The GM has all sorts of tools for limiting the rest available to the party... soft timers, hard timers, reactive NPCs...

But if there's always such a constraint on everything the PCs do, then the players will start to feel that the world is contrived against them. So, like all aspects of GMing, the thing to do is include everything sometimes. Keep it dynamic and unpredictable.

Once in a while, throw the players up against a challenge that is best surmounted with patience and rest as part of the plan. Make it so hard they need a 15 minute adventuring day to beat it. Then laugh hysterically if they bite off more than they can chew because they imagined their own timers and limitations.

Don't always steal the spell book, but sometimes steal the spell book. Don't always use a hostage to imply a timer, but sometimes do it. Don't always allow mid-dungeon rest without consequence, but at least once is okay.

I have a liberal arts degree. Would you like fries with that?

I have a degree in something I really don't want to do.

Well, at least, I don't want to do the boiler-plate IT job smashing my face against windows boxes.

I have some notions, though. We'll see.

Nope, no job yet. Still working on getting my Receipt. Er. Diploma. Only a matter of days now.

Does it work with no magic?

The best answer will always be "try it and see." It may work for your group where it doesn't work for mine.

You have to throw out the vast majority of classes, since they rely on magic for some or all of their "spotlight balance"... and that means throwing out encounter balance metrics; which are the crown jewel of Pathfinder, in my opinion.

If all you're looking for is a skill/attack resolution mechanic and some simple level based advancement, and you don't care about measuring relative power or, you know, using monster abilities, it should work fine. Sub-optimally, in my opinion, but you can game with it.

On the other hand, what do you do when a player comes to you and says "I want to play a Bard this time!" Do you feel like scratch building a non-magic bard class? Do you run the same class without the "magic"? Is bardic performance magic?

You want to include a dragon? Now you're dealing with SLAs and in many cases actual spells ... and while it may be okay for NPC monsters to have magic in a no-magic world, the encounter balance metrics all assume that the PCs will have magical countermeasures, including "basics" like flight.

There's only one way to answer these questions: draft a campaign that does what you want it to do, see if 1d20+Key Ability+Ranks/Bonus is the mechanic you want, if leveling is the advancement you want, and play it.

Evil Lincoln wrote:

TheWhiteknife wrote:

I, for one, would like to see a return to actual conservatism.

***recursion limit reached***

(No kidding here, btw) I'm impressed, EL -- you found a word I actually had to look up, and used it in an agile, pithy manner with great precision. Very nicely done.

I'm not smart or funny, it's just programming humor.

I'll be the Postmonster and Ross got it on the first take.

Evil Lincoln wrote:

TheWhiteknife wrote:

I, for one, would like to see a return to actual conservatism.

***recursion limit reached***

Wassup, Evil Lincoln?!?

When did you get back?

I'm not back, I'm procrastinating.

Sorry can't hold this in. Finally playing my first shadowrun game. I'm running as an ex covert ops troll adept. I can't wait until next wednesday

If you find yourself wishing for Shadowrun's rules in a fantasy setting (with Soul-Calibur-esque combat) you could do worse than to pick up Burning Wheel.

But I should reiterate — I love playing Pathfinder for Pathfinder! Once you have a "modern" system to scratch the itch, sometimes you really still want to return to the old ways. To me, that's why PF exists!

What about clerics, then?

And all of the other prepared casters?

I mean this with no condescension whatsoever: if prepared spells are a deal-breaker for you, play another game. Pathfinder is largely about spell management, be it prepared or per-day stuff. Trying to strip that out creates so many problems that you may as well play something else that was built from the ground up without it. Don't even get me started with how this affects monsters, etc.

I often just go play Shadowrun or Burning Wheel when this stuff bothers me, then come back to Pathfinder/D&D when I'm ready to deal with the system's assumptions. When I am actually in the mood, and I feel like "Hey fire-and-forget spells that are like intangible objects that the caster assembles and then carries around like loaded weapons, that's cool and as realistic as any magic system amiright?"

... that's when you play Pathfinder.

EDIT: Incidentally, I find that just working on some metaphysics to explain the behavior of the mechanics (rather than changing the mechanics to fit your imagined behavior) can be a wonderful solution. Pathfinder magic is weirdly consistent, and if you give yourself over to the strange behavior of spells-as-objects-not-as-skills, then you actually have a really rich and interesting setting to draw upon.

This group runs PFS games, many of them using Maptools. If you want to learn a program, just play a game there. Or just sit in and watch a game:

link

This document has instructions on getting Maptools, starting with the iMarkus framework and how to set up a token:
link

I, for one, would like to see a return to actual conservatism.

***recursion limit reached***

On science and education, here is an editorial by the editor-in-chief of Science magazine, on the topic of education.

I want to learn how to use Maptools as my players have told me they want to game again. Probably just need to sit down one day or two and go over it and learn how to use it.

I highly recommend ignoring MapTool's scripting features at first. You can do a lot with them, but some of the best features don't require that stuff at all.

Other than that, yes, playing around with it is the way to learn. I usually spend about a half hour to an hour preparing for each session by finding maps and making tokens and the like. It used to be a lot longer. Sit down and try to set up the campaign — create maps on the background layer, make NPC and PC tokens, add some 'props' — and you'll get the hang of it soon enough.

Don't worry about automating all the game mechanics right away. If you want to eventually do that, you can use some of the frameworks available, but you can get a ton of utility out of the basic vision and light tools. Just start out using it as a fancy replacement for miniatures and a whiteboard; one that manages the light radius of torches and whether or not the PC has line of sight to that goblin!

Anyone interested in the state of public education in the United States would do well to read the works of John Taylor Gatto.

Intriguing.

Evil Lincoln wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

AKA: I'm glad Ridley Scott's doing this before he retires or whatever. If del Toro retires or whatever... someone else could do a big Lovecraft movie.

I'm still hoping in vain for Werner Herzog. James, are you as intrigued by the implications of his experience with The Cave of Forgotten Dreams and the fact that At the Mountains of Madness as-written relies heavily on 3D-sculpture for its exposition?

It will never happen, of course... but it would be so sweet.

Actually, I think that 3D gets in the way of the movie in almost every case. If there's one silver lining to this whole thing, it's that now AtMoM might be pushed back far enough that when it DOES come out, the current 3D fad will have passed.

Is the aforementioned Cave of Forgotten Dreams a case of 3D getting in the way?

I'm going to be running Rise of the Runelords soon, and I am planning on using this. the arty is sans-cleric for the moment, so I will be able to offer some insight on the effect on healing resources, I would think.

For what it's worth, we didn't have a Cleric in my Runelords party until around 8th level, and it worked fine (without recourse to Strain-Injury)...

You'll want to decide your policy on Temporary HP, since they come up a lot in those books.

You'll be especially grateful for the narrative qualities of Strain-Injury around Book 3 — appreciate the difference when describing HP loss from attacks by giant creatures.

An innovative new treasure generation system, designed to help GMs roll up exactly what they need, every time.

Victory!

Make with the blog preview, already. :)

After coming back from his famous journey, Columbus told someone on the ship about what he saw. The man drew maps for Columbus. The man's name was Amerigo, and the Americas were named after him.

Not quite...

Freehold DM wrote:

Gandal wrote:

Muteki Kojirn Daitarn III is 360 ft tall.

I believe Daitarn 3 is the largest Super Robot ever created.

Don't know if it qualifies for the term "super robot" or "giant mech" but the humanoid shape of the first SDF-1 (Choji Sora Yousai Macross) is more than 1 mile tall.

I thought the original configuration of the SDF-1 was only 3/4 mile long, and when "standing" it would probably only gain a few hundred feet... the "leg" sections extend, but the booms of the main gun actually slide down and back...

</nitpicking>

AKA: I'm glad Ridley Scott's doing this before he retires or whatever. If del Toro retires or whatever... someone else could do a big Lovecraft movie.

I'm still hoping in vain for Werner Herzog. James, are you as intrigued by the implications of his experience with The Cave of Forgotten Dreams and the fact that At the Mountains of Madness as-written relies heavily on 3D-sculpture for its exposition?

It will never happen, of course... but it would be so sweet.

You'll hear a lot of hyperbole in the responses to this kind of question; there's some truth in it, but "OMG casters will become so über!" doesn't mean much to me in a game where they already are. "Über-er", perhaps?

You may have players who don't work hard to realize the full potential of casters, and if that's so, this change may only make casters slightly more effective. It will increase the utility of all but the highest level of spells. Beware the emergence of a player who pushes that envelope, though.

Go ahead and do it, but understand the consequences first, and make sure you understand your perceived problem with the rules as written. As with 95% of house-rules, if the perceived problem is not a huge, campaign-breaking one, you're probably better off playing the rules-as-written; if for no other reason than it is one less change for everyone to remember at the table.

Your proudest moment is closing a long-running campaign?

Hundreds of thousands of campaigns start, and then peter out when folks lose interest.

Only the proud few make it to a predestined conclusion.

My proudest moment will be closing out a 4-year weekly Rise of the Runelords campaign. It is the longest consistently-played campaign of anyone I know. I never met a side-quest or tangent I didn't like.

I've played in several sessions of Serpent's Skull (sssseriously) but I've not GM'd. The rule is functioning very well there, especially with the clarifications on bleed and poison. I'm pleasantly surprised how an individual combat encounter is still very lethal, but the paperwork is much lighter. On the many occasions we have sustained wounds, they've had a lot more personality. Level is currently 2nd.

I know of another campaign where Strain-Injury is not being used, as it was determined to be "unnecessary" for 1st level. Makes sense to me. I wonder how they'll feel about it at 7th+.

James,

How did it come to be that the hex map of the stolen lands is set 15 degrees clockwise to true north?

You get what you pay for...d20Pro looks a lot more polished and projector/gaming table compatible.

It's not.

I use both, and although d20pro's interface is more colorful, it is also basically a CRPG from the 1990s in appearance.

A dedicated GM with a touch of HTML skills can make maptool look like anything at all.

It would be annoyingly intensive to make Maptool automate combat to the extent that d20pro does, but on every other level Maptool is superior, including projector play, because it has a full-screen mode that can be used on the projector client. D20pro's combat automation is really thorough and effective, but like any such automation it can chafe a little when you're trying to do things that don't fit very neatly into the combat system.

I have seriously considered using both in a single campaign, D20pro for rigid combats and maptool for everything else... but that's crazytalk, am I right?

Concealing a spell counts as spellcasting, not a performance. It's a feat effect fueled by performance rounds.

Yes, but you'd still have to spend an extra round of performance to cast the spell hidden, since casting a spell hidden is a feat effect, not a performance effect.

Terrific! That was my best guess for a ruling as well, thank you for your time.

Thanks for the response James! I actually find the two feats to be quite different an not overlapping at all, except for one really sweet (potential) interaction. That's exactly what feats should be doing, design-wise, in my opinion... so don't beat yourself up about the perceived miscommunication!

Unfortunately, I didn't quite get an answer to my two most important questions:

Does (concealing a spell with) Spellsong count as a performance (i.e. can you cast via Spellsong while maintaining inspire courage or any other performance ability)? Does it take a Standard/Move/Swift action to start, as other peformances do? Or is it just a feat effect fueled by performance rounds that takes no action to start and can be used at the same time as other performances?

If I have both feats, and I'm spending a performance round for a concealed casting via Spellsong, wouldn't that satisfy the conditions for casting during performance from Harmonic Spell? That's the combo I'm hoping to use, but as you can see, the intent of Spellsong isn't quite clear. On its own, it's a cool feat, though.

I know you love the bards, so I hope I'm not taxing your patience here.

Maptool for exploration and fancy effects.

D20Pro for combat automation.

Ultimate Magic. If I might blather on about it for a moment, it's a great feat. I gave it to

in my campaign to subvert the "counterspell-everything" abjurer PC. Good stuff.

Hi James! I have a couple of questions about bardic performance, Spellsong, and Harmonic Spell.

Is the use of Spellsong to conceal a spell being cast a type of bardic performance? Can you do this at the same time as inspire courage, for example?

How does that interact with Harmonic Spell, since you're always casting a spell when you use a Spellsong performance type? It would seem that you would never actually pay the performance rounds if you had both feats. Considering it costs two feats (and for a bard!) I don't know if it's "too powerful", but I just want to make sure I understand the intent of the rules.

Or, am I way off and Spellsong isn't a type of performance, it just costs performance rounds for whatever reason, and can be used while maintaining another performance... in which case, how does that interact with Harmonic Spell?

Thanks in advance!

Hmmm... some of this looks mighty familiar.

*thumbs up*

Sounds like a nice group. Do they only invite you to dinner if you pay for everyone?

Hah, I ran an encounter tonight too.

I had a three-encounter spillover, so they're pretty strained. One 41-point crit from a mummy's slam attack and 53 points from a failed save vs. a devourer's devour soul ability. Both are being treated as injury, although the cleric healed the former during combat.

They're holding up okay, but it's definitely not easier than the RAW if you don't give them time to rest and refit.

In the case of a injuries, I think the THP would shave off the damage incurred from the injury and just disappear. Anything more would just be over complicating this system which prospers from its simplicity. It also makes just as much sense as far as the descriptive properties of THP go.

With respect to Helaman's assumptions, I'm going to proceed in my own playtest with Ragnarok's formulation. I'd actually like to see how it pans out in your version, Helaman, so please feel free to drop a wand on false life on your party and tell us how that plays out. My campaign (Runelords) has its own source of tempHP which I'm sure those familiar with the AP recall.

I'm going to wait until we have more information before changing the rules doc. Suffice it to say, some of us should play with Temp HP soaking up injury, and some should try Temp HP bypassing injury. A playtest's the thing!

Well, temp HP are almost always magic, except what happens with barbarians which explicitly works differently. I'm comfortable with spell granted HP soaking up injury.

I'm not sure that's a solution.

Bonus HP should be type-less. They should protect equally against both types of damage, otherwise we are changing the combat balance (albeit only slightly).

The question ought to be: do temporary HP absorb injury damage and the disappear with it, or does the injury damage "sink" -- since these provide identical results in a single combat.

Let's talk about Temporary Hit Points.

Because they are hit points, they aren't "strain" or "injury", because that is the property of the wound, not the pool of HP (i.e. we don't have separate pools for strain and injury).

What happens when your temporary HP expire after sustaining Injury damage? I suppose it matters whether they are "lost first" like default temp HP, or "lost last" like Barbarians have to suffer beneath inexplicably.

Unfortunately, this runs the risk of getting very complicated.

Negative. That takes a bit more effort. I'll look into doing it tomorrow.

Excellent contributions by the way, two bugs squashed!

Did you rely on parrying in your description?

I'm especially happy to hear what people choose to do if there's no obvious parry/shield/armor to use in the description of Strain damage. At that point, I have to rely on "dodge" descriptions, which I usually reserve for misses...

But any data is good data!