Fletch's page

I was right on the cusp of subscribing to the PFRPG so I could net a print and pdf version of the rules, when a little math pixie snuck up on me an revealed that the subscription with shipping (and tax since I live in Washington) is *exactly* the same price as buying the $10 pdf online and then purchasing the print book through my local game store.

Pleased to be able to support my local game store without having to pay more for a product, that's exactly what I did.

I tell this story just in case it's not too late to influence plans on Bestiary pdf prices. If the pdf gets priced at $10 too, I can happily support my FLGS with a print purchase and still afford to buy the electric version.

Just in case.

With my vague understanding of how Paizo subscriptions work, I have until the release of the Pathfinder Bestiary to subscribe to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and get a free pdf with the print version of the main book.

Is that the ticking clock I'm under to scrape together the scratch to get my rulebook and pdf?

Fortunately, Wizards of the Coast is also in Washington, so I don't have to worry about not being taxed on any of my Dungeons & Dragons purchases.

Just out of curiosity, is this state tax based on the delivery address or the billing address? While I'm deployed, I'd obviously be receiving my shipments at places other than Washington state, but my billing address is still listed as Silverdale.

Thoughts?

The only context in which I was trying to imply that it was a problem is when the player and DM come to different conclusions about how something works

I have a real fondness for settings that base their fluff on the mechanics rather than in spite of them. 3rd ed's Scarred Lands, fer instance, based an entire campaign world around why clerics and druids were different classes. I loved that setting.

If I'd known Dragonlance was similarly modelled after 1st edition, I'd probably have paid more attention to it.

We're not writing a book - we're playing a game. And the setting should be set by what makes for the best game.

Like the new-ish Battlestar Galactica, I guess.

Now, I'm not sure what the main selling points of Dragonlance were (help me out, DL fans), but I'm thinking it's a world abandoned by the gods after a great catastrophe and rediscovering their divinity in the face of a war between two opposing gods on the face of Ansalon. That those two gods often wear dragon faces makes this a war of dragons. Oh, and they didn't like hobbits so they morphed them into Kender.

Now I know how the dedicated Dragonlancers are going to answer, but for the more casual player, would you be okay with a setting that re-envisions the original concepts into a 4e game world? How much of the developed world history would you need to keep to feel like you were in Dragonlance?

As an aside, my favorite 4e campaign setting so far has been the Middle World of the assumed PoL setting (even though it doesn't have a map, grrrr). That the history of the world plays to the 4e rules rather than just acknowledging them gives that setting a stronger basis to me. Considering the number of comments here about how the original Dragonlance worked so well with the 2nd Ed. rules is probably an indication that that's an important aspect of world-building.

While I sympathize with your frustration over having your style of play summarily dismissed, I don't think that makes it especially helpful for you, in turn, to dismiss styles not your own.

True. I recall really being excited when the setting expanded a bit to reveal the Mind Lords and their little corner of the world. It gave the game a greaters sense of isolation and discovery to realize that there was no telling what was just on the other side of the horizon.

Very well could BE a land of living constructs...

I dislike the idea that it's somehow the player's responsibility to justify them being allowed to do something to the DM that is already explicitly allowed in the rules.

Personally I applaud the DM who's willing to put common sense over the rules.

Player: "But the rules right here say it doesn't affect my move speed."

DM: "The dagger sticking in your calf says otherwise."

One of the big strengths of 4th edition is that it really opens the doors for PCs to do some amazing things. As a DM, I've said 'yes' to stuff I wouldn't have allowed in 3.5 simply because the rules are open enough to allow for some off-the-wall behavior.

What doesn't get a lot of press, though, is that the reverse needs to also be true. Just because the rules allow it doesn't mean a DM should toss aside common sense.

I have an open narrative-challenge to my players. If they can describe to me how something works when it otherwise shouldn't, I let if go. When a warlord tries to revive an unconscious teammate with a motivational speech I say no...until the players describe narratively how the words seem to cut through his fogged mind and draw him back to reality.

As always, the biggest hurdle to the success of a campaign world is WotC's marketing-heavy scheme of "everything is core". While this hasn't upset Forgotten Realms or Eberron too much, you're going to start noticing the breaking moments when players start introducing warforged to Ansalon or wilden to Athas.

Hopefully they realize distinct game settings have a purpose and be willing to say "you know what? There isn't a Far Realm for Ansalon" and let the setting stay the setting.

Having said that, I've already statted up a half-vampire warforged psionicist for when Ravenloft goes live.

Probably uses the same root word as 'Barbasol', the shaving cream.

I think the French word for beard is 'barb', so there's gotta be some latin origin.

Savage Tide, no doubt about it.

It's got so many different types of adventures that you can't get bored with it. There's dungeon crawl, urban, jungle, city-building, exploration, negotiation, at-sea...

Mix in a great dastardly, reoccuring villain who just keeps getting more evil as he battles the PCs, a good mix of rival NPCs to keep the non-combat portions from getting dull, and a capstone enemy as iconic as the 1st Edition Monster Manual and the campaign is tops to the very end.

For dessert there was a great set of Savage Tidings articles in Dragon Magazine to go along with it to help keep the players involved in the developing campaign.

"Hey, there's this article about upgrading our ship, should we be looking into that?"

"Why yes. Yes you should."

I agree with Hogarth too. A cavalier just seems like a fighter with a bunch of horse-related feats and possibly a bigger budget. If they've already done the work on a cavalier core class, though, I guess there are some options I'm not seeing.

I would, however, really like to see a marshal-type class. The auras seemed kind of wonky fluff-wise, but I'd otherwise like to see/play a buff/debuff type character. Kind of like the noble in Star Wars Saga whose apbilities include inspiring allies and demoralizing enemies.

And help me understand this gish idea a little more. Are we talking "I don't want to multiclass 'cause I want my character to be the most powerful fighter AND the most powerful wizard" or are we talking "my arcane abilities boost my weaponskills"?

I can go for an arcane paladin type, but leave off with the tank-mage.

Clearly the LG core paladin is more G then L, I say this because he shuns evil and can smite evil not choas.

The real pickle is how closely does a paladin need to emulate his chosen god? Is an evil-crushing LG paladin deviating from the tenants of his LN god? Golarion clearly doesn't think so since there are concrete declarations of paladins of LN gods. If a paladin of Abadar, fer instance, doesn't save a village because they can't afford to pay him, is he being good enough to stay a paladin?

I believe the classes that he mentioned, in a general way (nothing promised), were Cavalier, Noble, and Witch classes...

Personally, as much as I'd like to see more non-spellcasters added to the rules, I have a hard time seeing how scouts and ninjas and cavaliers and, I don't know, beggar-thieves couldn't be made using the existing class and some feats/skills. Maybe the first thing I'd like to see is spell-free versions of rangers and paladins.

If you're going to play a PFS Paladin, probably should avoid directly calling Cayden your Patron God...

Who knows, the final PFRPG rules might open up the option some. Or St. Frost will pop in on Monday and say "Paladin of Cayden? Sweet!"

well that and take a spare PC man just in case about half will see it my way and tell you no

So what you're saying, in summary, is that we disagree :)

A CG God would not give a damn if you broke your code for the greater god what do they care,

It's an interesting debate. I'd argue that the lawful aspect of the paladin stems from his own personal code and failure to live up to his own code is what causes the crisis of faith and the loss of paladin powers. That's how I'd play it, anyways. Like the rest of my arguments on this thread, it all depends on how the player roleplays it.

Unless the rules or setting specifically forbids an idea (I said no drow PCs!), I think it's in in the spirit of the game to allow an idea as long as the player puts in the work to explain how it comes to be. That's a core strength of a tabletop RPG.

So a LG paladin who did fallow Cyden would not stay LG or a paladin for long

Ironically, it was the Chevalier that inspired the idea of a Cayden paladin. I've recently been re-reading Second Darkness and I got a real kick out of the article on Cayden himself. As I was thinking about ideas for a cleric, I saw the chevalier and was inspired by ideas of what a paladin of an inebriated god of bravery would be like.

To be honest, I've seen enough cookie-cutter paladins over my years of gaming (and played several of them myself), that the thought of playing an against-type character like this really appeals to me. I'm still several months off from being able to play my first PFS game (the Philippines says 'hi'), so I'm willing to wait for any clarification from the PFRPG book coming out in August. In a pinch, though, I'll just play a god-free paladin who just happens to like a lot of what Cayden stands for (and wonders if maybe that rascal isn't empowering him from behind the scenes). Easy peasy.

As an aside, though, I just re-read the PF Companion to Second Darkness and was bummed to see that it specifically mentions that the church of Cayden in Riddleport has no paladins. If I really wanted to twist it, I could read that as implying that other churches of Cayden have paladins, but that seems kind of desperate. That same page, though, then goes on to list the common paladins like those mentioned above and ends with reference to "paladins of other faiths" allowing that maybe there are paladins of gods other than Iomedae, Abadar, Erastil, and such.

It's a puzzler.

--a bunch of great research--

I guess what I’m getting at is the old “absence of proof is not proof of absence.”

Actually, I'm in favor of Paladins of LE deities that only act on the Lawful aspects of that deity's domains.

Asmodeus, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to have any redeeming pro-paladin qualities until you factor in how he (more or less) brought peace to Cheliax. I could see a LG paladin supporting Asmodeus and promoting the lawfulness and stability he brought to the country.

The tricky slope, though, is that the crunch of the paladin class specifically says committing an evil act will cost your paladin his special powers. Paladins of LE gods will probably have some hard choices to make as they go about doing their god’s work. The rules as written are a bit more lenient towards chaotic acts, though, simply saying that you lose your abilities if you *become* non-lawful. There’s some room in there for a paladin of Desna to light out of town unexpectedly or for a paladin of Cayden to booze it up. Now, if the paladin of Desna abandoned his wife and kids to hit the road…yeah, chaotic.

Again, I’m going to reference the Three Musketeers. Above all, they’re loyal to each other and the king, even as the regime of France shifts and tries to take their loyalty. Even at the risk of being outcasts, they still fight for what they believe is right and ultimately good for the country. The fact that they get drunk, sleep around, duel amongst themselves, and are the most boastful SOBs since Sherlock Holmes* doesn’t change their alignment any. Not in my eyes, at least. Come to think of it, the Great Detective himself could easily be classified as Lawful Good despite a drug problem and insistence on working apart from the established law.

* Yeah I know the Musketeers were published before Holmes, but work with me here…

...but the listed setting books makes no allowances for a CG god

Mind you, I'm sans setting book. Does it actually say "choose a god from this list" or is it more "examples of paladin deities are..."? I'm all for supporting setting flavor, especially in Organized Play, but I think the idea of a Cayden paladin supports the flavor. I'm only policing for anything that forbids it.

Yep, I was asking about LG paladins. It's an idea I had for a Pathfinder Society character but wasn't sure it was rules-legal.

Roleplaying-wise, the lawful side of the alignment is most often described as a personal code of honor rather than a tyrannical obsession with ruling others. Modeling off of the Three Musketeers, fer instance, I can easily see how a person could be LG and still believe in what Cayden has to say.

In fact, his Second Darkness write-up describes how strongly he fights against injustice. That's a very paladin-friendly concept.

I guess I could wait the couple months until the Pathfinder book is released. If it doesn't specifically limit a paladin's alignment, then I'm golden.

If nothing else, I'm looking forward to using his lay on hands ability and describing how it burns like a good bourbon.

How close does a paladin's alignment have to be to his god's?

I was looking at ol' Cayden Cailean and thinking that his "brave adventurer" schtick would be a good hook for a paladin until you factor in that whole "chaotic" business.

Assuming I could come up with a way to roleplay a lawful character following a chaotic god, would this fly mechanically? Are paladins held by any sort of "one-step" rule for alignment?

Sold.

It might take some goading to get my players to go along with the idea of being total newbies, but the pillows alone are worth it.

I'll be underway myself come November, but I just wanted to chime in with a Go Navy!

Hey, Wiam. I'm about to make the move from the Olympic Penninsula to San Diego myself (go Navy!). I'll likely be deployed until March or so, but I'll be looking for a new gaming group then.

I'm keeping my eye on this board, though, just in case someone announces a 'Kingmaker' campaign in need of players in the area.

...I do have something in mind, and it's not part of a current Pathfinder line, really. Until we see how the RPG and the like do in a few months, I'm not going to be putting much more thought into this mystery project either, but I WOULD love to do a high-level something some day...

I always imagined it had something to do with one or more Runelords tracking down the remains of Kasavon to get sweet, sweet revenge on the aboleths.

::blink blink::

There's an official playtest thread?

Just out of curiosity, does the premise of youngins' going on their coming-of-age adventure require that all the PCs be native characters of the same age? Does this town support all the races the average group of gamers is going to want to play?

The set-up sounds kind of limiting so I was going to give this module a pass, but as the first part of a wicked cool sounding trilogy, I wanted to give it another look and see if there was more room for adaption than I'd thought.

Thanks.

Yes Yes YES!

I've really been wanting an empire-building campaign. Thanks for the willingness to explore new campaign options.

Subscribed for sure.

Or they could not publish an assassin class at all. If you don't want to subscribe to DDI, the end result for you is exactly the same: no assassin class in your game.

Why be a meany about it and declare that, if you can't have an assassin class, then nobody can? I mean, it's not as if your game changes in any way because some college kids 8 miles away from you have a game with an assassin PC in it.

It's like the exclusive power cards I heard were included in some miniatures package or other. I've never laid eyes on them and never felt my game became weak because my fighter player couldn't use "shield kick".

I remember reading about the onion model in a online chat or blog or something and had trouble getting my head around it.

Soggy soup crackers? That makes sense to me. It's like the Great Wheel...of Cheese.

"Imagine the univers as an endless bubble of curd. The planes are were the curd has solidified."

So what am I missing? Aside from not having the Great Beyond book, of course. What's kept me from really getting into the Golarion cosmology was its apparent lack of structure.

I guess I just never really understood what the concept was. Aside from taking planes out of the 'wheel' model, I can't tell you what kind of model they got put into. Without some sort of Great Wheel/Orrery/World Tree/whatever framework, the greater cosmology is lost on me.

So is there a framework for the Golarion planes or are they just "here's a list of planes you can travel to"?

My memory's vague, but aren't there a handful of kidnapped townsfolk what need escorting back to Sandpoint?

Did you get a chance to run the Carnival? If so, any pointers? I'm thinking along the same lines.

Still think it's a good idea, though.

Holy cats, halflings are tiny.

Personally, I don't even bother with monk weapons. It doesn't make sense to me that, if the premise is them learning to fight using farm implements, they have to go shopping at the East Asia Emporium for their weapons.

I just say "kama = sickle" and so on down the line. Instant simple weapon proficiencies. The ability to flury their blows is now a skill of the monk's and not, in effect, a special ability of the weapon.

I mean seriously, who aside from a monk even buys a kama?

Thanks for all the insights, gang. I’m not 100% new to painting minis, though. I have a pretty good collection of Dogs of War, of all things, but have since tossed all of my painting and modeling supplies during all my moves. To be honest, it’s only the extra pay that I’m getting for this deployment that has me looking at Games Workshop, but I love all those fiddly bits that come with the plastic models. Assembling is half the fun.

Having spent hours ogling the online catalog, I’ve made up my mind on Empire and Tau for Fantasy and 40k, but I’m not so convinced that the GW paints are the way to go. They just seem like they’re too expensive for the little bit of paint you get, especially compared to how much it costs to get for a big bottle of Ceramcoat (fer instance) from any online craft supplier. I have, however, heard that GW's metals and washes are superior. Should I pay the extra for those? Are they really top notch?

I’m actually assigned to a special ops unit in the Philippines right now (never thought I’d ever have to say that sentence) so space isn’t quite as restrictive as if I were on a ship. I’m sure one of those battalion sets won’t take up too much space even when assembled and I can’t imagine having enough free time to need any more than one of those while I’m here.

I'm a month into my overseas deployment and I'm going a bit stir-crazy. Even though I've never played a lick of Warhammer, I've always enjoyed the painting aspect and thought that'd be something I could do out here to keep me sane.

I've been looking at the available minis and trying to figure out which army for which system I like*, but am having a hard time figuring out how to get the actual painting supplies. It'd all have to be mail-order, so I've eyeballed a couple starter sets here at Paizo, but I don't have the experience to be able to say "I need this color and this brush and this file and..."

Any advice? Is there a good starter kit worth buying? Should I buy all the pieces and colors I need piecemeal?

* For Warhammer I'm leaning towards Empire (maybe Bretonnians). For 40K, as much as love the Daemonhunter and Witch Hunter miniatures, they're kind of pricey. I'd probably go with Tao for sheer variety.

My players never bought in to intricate character backstories or webs of interconnections. Probably because we've never had a campaign last past 4th level and there isn't much sense of investment any more.

So rather than try to create a web of character experiences at the start, I'll just let them pepper it in as the game goes along. I also try looking for adventure NPCs that could be replaced with either relations of the PCs or the actual PCs themselves. For example, I had one of my player's character be responsible for the crop blight that was killing the natives rather than having them happen across it and choose to fix it. In Savage Tide, I'd LOVE to have a PC take the place of Lavinia...

My in-the-pocket campaign starter, though, for when I need a good one and one isn't offered is the after-wedding celebration kick. The players all decide if their character is a friend of the bride or friend of the groom. When the campaign opens, they're all in jail after the wedding festival turned rowdy and one side got into a brawl with the other. A current prisoner will have the first clue to their first adventure and, Mad Mad Mad Mad World-style, the PCs who less than 12 hours ago were punching each other in the face will now have to team up to find the treasure.

If you order in the next few days (less than a week) you will be able to choose between #2 and #3... after that it will be #3 and #4.

If I subscribed to Pathfinder right now, what issue would I get? Am I too late to start with #1?

The store page has three of them listed for April. Is that right?

That's a pretty slim benefit for Arcane characters and a pretty enormous benefit for Martial characters (and also makes the Durable feat more or less required).

What it really succeeded at was making each of the power types feel different from the other. Our warlock and ranger, although both strikers, just felt a bit more unique. I think much of that flavor was lost with 4e's dedication to making sure each class was balanced against each other and we don't mind having a character or two shine at different moments in the game.

I didn't appreciate how martial characters forgot how to use their special attacks after using them once. I allowed my martial characters to expend healing surges to get reuses of encounter and daily powers (on a sliding scale) representing how exhausting those tricks were to perform.

For my arcane players, I didn't appreciate the way spells would auto-erase from spellbooks or whatever if the PC learned a different spell, so I just let them keep them all. They'd still only have the given number of spell uses per day/encounter, but they'd have more options to choose from when preparing their spells in the morning.

If I'd had any divine characters playing, I probably would've come up with something special for their power source too.

My group had a lot of fun with Splug. Or, rather,*I* had a lot of fun with Splug. My players didn't know what to make of a goblin who'd been jailed by his own people. The only thing they were sure of was that, whatever they decided to do with him, it would be the wrong choice.

I've heard really good things about the Witchfire and Freeport trilogies. I haven't played either of them myself, but they sound intriguing.

As for "light" dungeon presence, I'd say, on top of my head (in order from less dungeons to more dungeons):
Second Darkness
...etc.

The rest of the list, though, matches my estimates, though, so I'm willing to take your word for it. When adding social interactions to the recipe, though, I might say that Savage Tide edges out Crimson Throne. Even though CotCT is city-based, I never got the same feeling of being able to socially achieve your objectives like in Savage Tide.

In Tide, fer instance, there's an adventure involving politics in a small town and there are a handfull of NPCs included almost specifically as romantic interest characters (complete with jealous counter-suiters) and a rival band of adventurers the PCs spend a lot of time with.

In Throne, meanwhile, the NPCs seem to have little circles of their own and social encounters in that campaign tend towards the "this is your boss" type characters.

I never did any playtesting, but I'm curious to hear how much of an impact the alpha and beta testing was.

Any surprises from the feedback? Where did you see the most significant tweeks based on playtest results?

I've never heard of an open test like this for a pen and paper game, so I'm just a little fascinated by how it all panned out.