Fletch's page

I've a player who is interested in playing a beguiler from the Players Handbook II. Since I've never seen this class in action, I thought I'd ask here if anybody had any experience with the class.

Am I in for any surprises?

I remember one of the #paizo chats saw the birth of the Golarion cosmology as some overlapping pits or regional layers or some other unintelligible gobbledygook. I'm sure it made sense to them, but I couldn't make heads or tales of it based off of the conversational comments they made.

Still, it might be worth a trip to the chat transcript thread to see if that comment is still there.

Just out of curiosity, why is there a need for sidequests after Burnt Offerings? Is there a risk of players not meeting enough of the adventure to make a level appropriate to Skinsaw?

Everything to me seems linear enough to lead them from one encounter to the next and event the "optional" dungeon has a ready-made hook for players who miss it the first time as the 'spawn start bubbling up into the town.

What are your players missing that puts them behind the curve for Skinsaw?

I *hope* my players latch on to some of the stuff yours did. An expedition to find the Sandpoint Devil or an exploration of Choppers Isle would be perfect opportunities to show them nothing's there.

Yep. I pray for the opportunity to showcase that just because a PC goes someplace doesn't mean there's a level-appropriate challenge just standing by waiting for them. I suspect I could have a lot of fun seeing how long they'll invest in climbing up the island's cliff face, clearing out Stoot's basement and exlporing the otherwise empty ruins before they give up and go home.

Just keep in mind that you're not allowed to post non-open content from Paizo (such as maps) to a publicly accessible area.

Isn't that just like The Man?!?

Truth is, since I'm looking to create a site to develop our Rise of the Runelords campaign, I was actually planning on posting all sorts of copyrighted material. Now that you've pointed it out, though, there does seem to be a minor flaw in that plan.

I wonder if the wikispace has a password protection option...

I don't undertand about the cartoons. But I'd like to. :) Please explain. Why is it necessary to put cartoons in the core book?

I think we could all do with a reminder from time to time that we shouldn't take this too seriously.

Cartoons yes, but I vote for Mt. Zogon. No real reason for it other than it was my absolute favorite strip.

I'd actually probably vote for some Order of the Stick too (especially if used to illustrate why a rules change was made), but I don't know if dude could make his point in a strip that wouldn't take up an entire page.

Regardless of the usage (I prefer the "free re-roll" option that James dismissed), I really like connecting them to heroic actions rather than just a per day or per level basis.

In fact, they're my version of story awards. Instead of giving out extra XP when they accomplish the mission, the get a Fate Point.

Say, that does look pretty friendly, thanks.

So far, this is what I plan on posting:

• Campaign Maps (Sandpoint, the Hinterlands, Magnimar and Varisia at the least)
• Character Pages (for both stats and character journals)
• Campaign Calendar (showing when a particular event happened)
• Campaign Journal (a diary of sorts of campaign events NOT told from a character's point of view)

Is there anything else you have on your pages that you’d recommend I include?

I've heard of DMs managing their campaigns via something called "Wiki" to create a site where players can reference campaign data, images and what-not.

And that's all I know about it.

Can anybody offer some advice or links to tutorials that would help a techno-backwards fellow like me set up a site like that for my upcoming Runelords campaign?

I would totally agree with that if I weren’t opposed to the idea of druids getting domains at all.

There’s very little separating the druid from the cleric now. Giving them even a single, thematic domain ability narrows the distinction even more. At this point, you might as well just make them clerics who have chosen nature-oriented domains.

However, if you’re going to give them domain powers anyways, Weather is a very reasonable one to add to the list.

I love the idea that Nick will be haunted by all the PCs who have suffered at the hands of his imagination.

That's what helps me sleep at night.

Pick Axe would be an exotic weapon with an axe-head and a pick head.

What a great concept for a dwarven weapon. Makes buckets more sense than that dumb axe-spear thing.

This pick axe is yoinked.

From the Pathfinder Advantage description: "To qualify for the Pathfinder Advantage, the most recent volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path must have been shipped to you, or must be waiting to ship with your other subscription products."

Makes sense to me. Since the PF#7 was already out, I figured it'd automatically be slated for shipping but if I'd stopped long enough to look I would've noticed the pdf version wasn't available yet and taken that as a hint.

It's only two bucks though, right? Enough to get me off the fence and encourage me to subscribe, but not enough to warrant any harsh thoughts. I was mostly hoping for a "yeah, I did that too" post or two so I didn't feel so dumb.

If nothing else, at least my comment to Susan, with her avatar change, now makes absolutely no sense so I've got that going for me...

::sings badly:: G. I. Jooooooe...

Actually, Susan, it looks quite a bit like your avatar is singing the GI Joe theme...

I mulled it over a bit and finally decided to subscribe to Pathfinder for the Crimson Throne series. I’d been waffling a bit, but it was the Pathfinder Discount that finally pushed me off the fence.

So I subscribed, got my ‘Subscriber’ tag, and then went to order PF#4 with my shiny new discount.

In my enthusiasm, of course, I forgot to confirm that I was getting that discount and I just wanted to pass on my cautionary tale that it apparently takes a while for your subscription discount to ‘kick in’.

Don’t be rash like me. The two bucks you save may be your own.

Best thread idea ever.

Thanks, Avidreader.

As for the using the primary stat for the class I like that idea. I mean, who really cares if Conan the Barbarian is a great orator. He kicks butt and I would follow him into battle all day.

But isn't that a factor of including level in the calculations? A 10th level barbarian is a better warrior than a 6th level one, regardless of their comparitive strength levels.

Plus, as much as Conan's followers might admire his combat skills, I can see how he'd be able to attract even more followers by tossing in a motivating speech from time to time.

I'm totally okay with cohorts being based off of character level and charisma.

I am even planning on making a mask up with a picture of the player of the obsession's face on it. So what has everyone else done for this scene?

Yoink!

Don't worry, Nev, I'll email you a copy of my pdfs.

KIDDING!!

I actually just wanted to chime in here and remind you that, as a subscriber, you get a 15% discount on pretty near everything. So while you won't get earlier edition pdfs free, you can still think of it as subscribers at least getting a discount on the earlier edition pdfs.

Edit:

Actually, while I'm here, let me ask how much heartache would it be to retro-offer the pdfs for just the previous books in the series. Fer instance, if Nev bought Crimson Throne numbers 1 and 2 and then decided to subscribe with #3, would it be unreasonable to grandfather him into the pdfs for the two earlier books? He'd have no claim on the Rune Lord pdfs, but it might help someone who's waffling on whether or not to subscribe mid-stream.

While I accept that any new races (or any races, really) are allowed at the whim of the dungeon master, I’d still like to go on record with saying I prefer my D&D worlds to be very human-centric. The more extra playable races you add to the mix, the more diluted the human society becomes (please don’t let anyone take that sentence out of context).

So for me, at least, I’d be very unlikely to accept any non-core races unless I introduced them as replacements for another race. Fer instance, elves might not be appropriate for Osirion, but a cat-headed race might.

Having said that, though, I’d like to put out a request for racial levels. I love the idea that a dwarven fighter might have different abilities than a halfling fighter, fer instance, and racial levels really give a player the chance to take advantage of his racial flavor.

So when new races are added (or even for the ones we already have), I’d like to see something like this mechanic to make them distinct.

Extra 0-level spells don't really do anything. They certainly don't contribute to combat in any meaningful manner.

Sure they do. They keep that player engaged in the combat. Truth they don't do nearly as much damage as the fighter, but then that's the point of the fighter. Wizards contribute to the party in many ways besides slaying critters, but nobody seems to care that fighters can't dispel magic or detect invisible creatures.

The only problem with the limited spells per day is when the PC runs out and can't contribute to a fight. Unlimited freeze rays, fer instance, may not be the same as a two-handed sword, but they let the player stay involved and that's good enough for me.

I remember someone here a while back suggesting a "runeforged" character and I liked that name so much it stuck with me.

Anyhoo, off the top of my head, maybe your player's warforged could be one of Wrath, an ancient by-gone left innactive in the Catacombs of Wrath. When the Runewell came to life, he staggered out of the tunnels and found himself in the Glassworks.

For the past five years, he's been raised by the Kaijitsus as an assistant of sorts. The ties to major characters like that would be a big prize for me as a DM plus the moment when the PCs make it down into the Catacombs and learn this is where he came from would be priceless.

Like Aritz, I'm a fan of the VP/WP system. Not only does it feel more realistic to me, but it does provide a bigger boost to the lower levels where it's really needed while still providing a level of threat to upper level characters.

I'll likely continue using this system (or something quite like it) in spite of whatever rules are decided for Pathfinder.

I'm personally kind of fond of the fire-and-forget spell-per-day system. I've no real reason for that other than nostalgia.

One house rule I'm implementing is to remove the need for eight hours of sleep before relearning spells. It always seemed kind of a pain in the ass to me and mostly an excuse for wizards to not have to stand watches at night.

I was still going to set the limit of spells per day, but it wouldn't be too hard to get rid of that too if you wanted to and just require your wizard to whip out his spellbook and make the party wait the fifteen minutes it would take him to rememorize them.

I would imagine that would play a lot like 'per encounter', but it would keep the flavor of the Vancian magic and require some level of tactical consideration about where the party will hide out in the dungeon while they wait.

Clerics could likewise be freed from the requirement to pray at specific times during the day and, as long as the party was willing to wait for him to complete his prayers, could relearn his spells any time he wanted to.

I’m reminded of a scene I read a while back in one of John Norman’s Gor books. In it, the all-powerful Priest-Kings (I think they were called) were remotely observing a human as he experimented with gunpowder. Although the human wound up singed and covered in soot, the experiment was a success.

So the Priest-Kings vaporized him.

Let me preface this by saying that I actually know nothing about Curse of the Crimson Throne, but one idea I had for it when I first heard about it was to use it in Eberron, a setting that my players are rather fond of.

I was imagining using Stormreach instead of Korvosa. Again, I know nothing about the AP, but might having it take place in a popular setting (like Stormreach, Waterdeep, or Greyhawk) make it a town worth saving?

I can see there being a hard time caring about a brand new town that was made up exclusively to be put in danger...

Because they take so long to grow up, all of their playmates become adults faster and die of old age at about the time the poor elf hits puberty. That's GOT to mess with your social life.

I had an elven character once who grew up in human lands and his backstory involved him being the older kid that all the kids wanted to hang out with. Just as soon as one group of friends outgrew him, a new group came of age to start looking forward to hanging out with the "older boy".

He was actually pretty popular, although a bit of a scoundrel.

I was planning on using the journals in just this way. My intent was to have a PC get ahold of a copy of one of the books and then use that as an excuse to reveal campaign information.

Fer instance, when the PCs are planning their trip from Magnimar to Turtelback, I'd say something like "this reminds you of an entry from the Journal" and hand out the one from PF2 featuring Eando's trip up the river.

The assumption is that they have all these stories already, but specific circumstances would prompt them to "remember" the applicable ones.

I'm glad to hear there's a promise to keep these player-friendly so I don't have to suddenly start editing them.

Some good suggestions from Herbo. There has to be an advantage to adventuring smack dab in the middle of town and having the town guard show up when all seems lost sounds like a good one.

In any case, don't forget to include pages in Tsuto's journal, when they finally defeat him at Thistletop, showing doodles of the PCs' lifeless bodies. Hehee.

It seemed a bit crass to me to have the town mayor of Foxglove give the PCs small sacks of cash as rewards for saving the town. I was thinking a similarly valuable trinket would be more appropriate (and more fondly remembered by the players).

Perhaps having Aldern give the party silver daggers (with the Foxglove family crest) as tokens of thanks might have a more practical use here...

I’ve heard about some virtual tabletops for playing D&D online, but it sounds like some of those functions are usable even at a face-to-face table. For example, having a map that reveals itself based on light sources would be a great boon to being able to describe a space as the PCs explore it.

Anybody have any experience with this or suggestions as to what program would be the most user-friendly for a behind the DM Screen digital assistant like this?

(one of our warehouse monkeys has been sick for the past few days...I think he has the Pathfinder shipping flu).

Hmm...I think I've conned out the real reason they don't give more advanced shipping notices. I suspect it has less to do with boats from China and more to do with keeping the warehouse monkeys from knowing when to call in sick so they miss the heavy stuff.

"What's that? Guide to Korvosa AND Pathfinder 7 today? Umm...cough cough."

(And yes, they actually say "cough")

One of my tricks is to hold up the map of sandpoint as they move from one location to another and move my finger along the map, while describing the places and people they see.

Y'know, this seems like kind of a no-brainer, but until you mentioned doing it I hadn't even thought of that approach.

My group's game time is very valuable, so I don't know if I could spend the time to do every building, but it certainly sounds worthwhile to give a description of each street they walk along.

Yikes, this is awesome.

I'm planning on taking a slightly different tack with Tsuto's journal, but this work is enough to make me consider ditching those plans just so I can use such a great handout.

I guess this could apply to any D&D town, but I'm looking for some of the little tips and cheats y'all use to bring Sandpoint alive for your players.

I was thinking of having a list of social vignettes prepared that I could just drop into any other encounter as a way of adding depth. For example, if the PCs need to see the sheriff, I can have a paragraph describing how the deputy tells them he's over at the Pixie's Kitten. While the players are welcome to draw their own conclusions, he's actually visiting Kaye there.

I've also started working up a simple chart to keep posted on the back of my DM's screen listing all the NPCs by occupation with notes on what they think of each other.

Any other simple tricks you guys have used to add some dimension to your PCs' time in Sandpoint?

As a big OGL fan myself, I'm curious, if WotC's new, more restrictive GSL, severely limits what 3rd-party publishers can print cause you to view WotC the same way?

That's a good point. What I've heard has lead me to believe they're still encouraging 3rd party additions, but that may just be my own assumptions.

Some pro-4E subscribers will jump ship...they won't continue their subscriptions past Crimson Throne. I would probably be in this camp, assuming the 4E rules are as good as I hope.

You wouldn't stay on board with quality 4e material coming out in the GameMastery module line? When they said they wouldn't produce both systems, I'd thought that meant for the same modules (ie, no 3.5 and 4th for Second Darkness). Did that actually mean that they'd be exclusively one or the other even during the "transition" phase?

I'm no businessman, which is probably why I'm missing the stress here. To my simple mind, the solution is to go ahead and start Second Darkness as a 3.5 Adventure Path and take advantage of your GameMastery modules to produce 4th edition stuff if that's the way you want to go.

I'm not so sure that players just picking up a new game system for the first time is the target audience for an Adventure Path anyways. The six months after GenCon that 2nd Darkness is being pubished as 3.5 will be plenty of time for us to learn the new rules and be ready to jump into the NEXT AP as a 4th edition campaign.

Plus it has the advantage of keeping all the Varisia-based APs in the same edition and allowing the next one in the series to start brand new in a different region of Golarion, one that doesn't require as much shoe-horning to fit into the basic assumption of the 4th edition system.

How simple am I being?

Paradigm's announcement was a real eye opener for me, and not in a way that I would've predicted.

I love me some Arcanis. As I've been hobbling together a patchwork homegame of various pre-published content, the Arcanis setting has formed a large chunk of it.

However, the announcement from PCI that they were neither going 4th edition nor 3.5 brought home the idea that I will either have to commit fully to their product exclusively or not use it at all. It hadn't occured to me until now what a boon the OGL was in that I could pick and choose from multiple publishers and have an expectation that they'd all fit together mechanically.

Companies who choose to go off and do their own thing (like PCI or Kenzer using a new Hackmaster system) have pretty much taken themselves off my list of viable publishers.

I'm not close to running Hook Mountain, but my initial read-through suggested a certain teaking of the timeline too.

Mind you, I really have to stream-line these adventures for my group because we don't meet often enough to be able to play out every encounter (otherwise we'd NEVER get to the end). Firstly, I'm cutting out the Grauls entirely and simply replacing them with a single encounter with some ogres or ogrekin who've captured the Black Arrow patrol.

I'm also looking to have the PCs arrive on scene while the ogre's are laying siege to the fort. I couldn't find any ticking clock for the players if the fort had already been taken and, rather than have them decide that the ogres can wait while they report back to Magnimar for reinforcements, I thought that seeing the attack in full swing would motivate them to jump in and help fend off the ogres. The added bonus here is that any rangers the PCs save get to become their followers when they claim the keep.

Some time after that, I'll have a ranger patrol return with word that the ogres are up to something funny at the dam and encourage the PCs to go investigate. There, they get into a fight with the trolls and/or ogres and, in the process, stir up Magga, leading to her breaking the dam and the PCs seeing for themselves this 'uge aquatic beast riding a massive flood wave towards Turtleback. I predict a race to get to the town in time to save them.

Details are still vague, but that's my general idea.

Any thoughts?

Okay, yeah. That answered all my questions.

Thanks, everybody.

Will the Chronicles line (like the Guide to Korvosa) be available as a .pdf?

If so, what would the cost be? I estimated $12-$13, am I close?

...you can always get a pre-paid, rechargable credit card loaded with a certain amount, and just use that to pay. That way, you can load up however much you want when you can afford it, or on a set schedule, and not have to worry about being surprised when the actual charges hit.

Say, that is a pretty bright idea. What's really complicating a subscription plan for me is that my wife and I share an account and I don't have the 100% control over the spending that such a commitment (subscription, not marriage) would require.

But a seperate, pre-paid charge card...that's sharp.

I've been debating what DK-Victor's motivations would be...

Since his life was mostly as a troubleshooter for the Man, perhaps you could carry that over into his unlife. Your evil Khyber-being could be on the receiving end of the PCs' do-gooding antics one time too many and start looking for someone to deal with them. That's when he comes across the dretch-like remains of Vinnie St. D, a person with almost as much hate for the PCs as he has and a lifetime of experience in finding people and dealing with them for his boss.

In any case, the idea of a death knight with the word "Saint" in his name is too tasty to pass up. This is an inspired idea.

This is a topic that I brought up when Pathfinder started, but I wanted to check in to see if there was any information now that it's been running for a bit.

Unlike a magazine or MMO subscription, all the Pathfinder subscriptions seem vulnerable to varying and flexible publishing schedules. Last I heard, Paizo couldn't guarantee when in the month a subscription item would be filled. This is the biggest roadblock between me and subscribing because I can't afford to have a $20+ fee surprise me during the month.

Has that stabilized at all? Can anybody tell me how much per month (including shipping, I guess) you're paying for your subscriptions and if there's a standard day of the month it's taken out on?

Is there any time after Paizo saying they're shipping something that I can say "Wait! Don't!"?

EDIT: Actually, while I'm thinking of it, is there any possibility of a pre-paid subscription offer?

I voted that this sneak peak has convinced me to play 4th edition, but that's slightly stronger than how I intended it.

Up until now, the way they've described the game mechanics haven't excited or impressed me, but there was something about the way it was worded in this handout that showed them in a better light.

"Per day" abilities, fer instance, aren't mystically tied to some magic clock, they're just based on needing to rest between using them. "Per encounter" has a similar rest explanation. Even the "self-healing" comes across as more reasonable as described here than just the magical "ding: +16hp" I was interpreting it as.

So yes, based on this handout, I'm far more likely to be picking up 4th edition.

What is it about sorcerers having to gesticulate and speak in certain ways that is aesthetically displeasing to you?

Nope, I'm good now. I'm not sure I buy the professors analogy, but talking it out here has helped me see that I was looking at it from the wrong direction.

Warforged Goblin wrote:

You mean like a fighter with cross-class ranks in Spellcraft?

Or Knowledge (Arcana).

Hey, yeah. Sharp catch, you two.

That'd be great if the figher was all "hey, that looks like a sleep spell he's casting" and the sorcerer went all "what? [counterspell]"

Unlike the wizard's carefully formulated fireball, the sorcerer just sucks up a glowing ball of power from the world around him and throws it at you.

You’ve hit on exactly the reason that I’ve been pondering the difference. There’s this assumption that sorcerers just pull magic out of the air, but in practice they’re still using all the mumbo jumbo that wizards are. You can argue that the words or gestures aren’t the same, but they’re still using words and gestures.

I do, however, like your take on the spell trigger. I’ve seen it before and appreciate the concept that a wizard studying a spell is actually “pre-casting” it for later activation. Perhaps a good compromise here is to say that that “pre-casting” is actually the summoning of thaumaturgic energy (or something equally nerdy) that they can then apply to the spell when they cast it. While it can take up to 15 minutes for a wizard to summon this energy (the longest it will take for a wizard to memorize a spell according to the PHB), the sorcerer’s genes/blood/pact/whatever give him a ready supply of this thaumaturgia. PLUS, the sorcerer doesn’t have to ‘key’ the energy to a specific spell when he channels it like a wizard does.

So while both the wizard and the sorcerer can know a spell’s formula (ie gestures and components and what not), it’s how they gather the spell energy that separates them. Hell, by this rational, even the common fighter could understand a spell formula, but without the ability to gather the energy, it doesn’t do him any good.

A sorcerer's abilities, then, come not from inherent knowledge of a spell, just a ready pool of spell energy. He'd still have to learn the "formula" and use it to cast the spell.

To continue, then, the idea that wizards are just trying to emulate sorcerers, I can see an ancient wannabe saying “hey, I’ve done all the chanting and hand waving, how come my fur and amber rod aren’t shooting out lightning?” and the sorcerer would say “well, did you tap your inner well of thaumaturgic energy?”

And the wannabe wizard would go “The what, now?”

More than just not having to read a book, a sorcerers spells are permenantly ingrained into the brain. Thus they may cast them again and again and again.

So it’s not the spell ability that’s stapled to their genes, it’s the spell formula? It makes more sense when you look at it that way.

I was looking at sorcerers as being able to do what wizards can do but without the book. Seen from the other direction, you could say wizards need a book to do what sorcerers do. Almost as if, many many years back, non-magically inclined peoples saw what sorcerers were doing and did some research to find out how they could do it to.