Grimcleaver's page

I think a 200 year jump like you're talking about would make sense. Maybe even less. I mean a lot of the technology is around: Alkenstar's got guns, Numeria's got robots and plutonium, so it's just a matter of it becoming the new standard moreso than having to allow time for it to develop.

That said a steampunk version of Pathfinder sounds like a lot of fun. I'd be interested in hearing more about what you're planning on doing with it.

Taldor strikes me as having been influenced a lot by old Italy. If you're looking for a place to stock with Itallian memes I'd go with that.

Okay. I get it. It's all up to me how I use it. I don't think that's ever really been an issue. I'm more interested in how it's supposed to hook together. Then again I get the impression the answer to that is "however you want it to". But really I'm just wanting to figure things out.

So I guess here's my crack at trying to throw up a model to at least get some criticism of it, see whether or not it's going to cause some of my PC's heads to explode, and see whether it's anything like what Mr. Jacobs has in mind.

So okay, not everything exists together; but it can.

You've got a vast Material Plane that exists in a huge matrix of branching parallel worlds--infinite? Maybe, maybe not, but at least it consists of every decision that has been, could be or will be made. Some of these worlds contain superheroes, video game characters, intergalactic nazi empires from when they won the war, Lovecraft, pulp sword and planet, Star Wars, Star Trek...whatever. In some of these alternate dimensions the elements to make these organizations and events still exist, but uncombined and in different relationships to each other.

Golarion from my adventures shares a universe with an Earth--but not our Earth. Rather it's the 2012 Earth as projected by science fiction authors of the 1920's-30's, a world of tomorrow rich with cities of the future, oppressive authoritarian dystopia and Mega-nations carpet-bombing each other with war-zepplins. Mars and Venus are life sustaining worlds, in fact the very same worlds explored in the great sword and planet stories--and in a lot of ways the only worlds out there for those with a mind for freedom and adventurer spirit.

Elements of a larger universe exist as well. The planet Vulcan is out there, but like Golarion and Earth, it's system is full of life sustaining planets, and so the arcane, psionic and technological warfare between the Vulcan logicians and Romulan ardents spans an entire system and is in full swing, pulling in other races and cultures into the meatgrinder with them. Out there somewhere is a nacient Eldar, but because their reality isn't quite so close to the Warp/Maelstrom as it is in the 40K universe, the formation of the Eye of Terror, still dozens of millenia in the future is unlikely ever to take the same form here. Elsewhere, far far away, elves and dwarves and other alien races join humans in a continual battle between the ascetic "light side of the force" and the dictatorial "dark side" using walking tanks, dragons lightsabers and arcane firepower.

Meanwhile all that remains unchanged between universes is the Outer Sphere. All the gods of all the universes and all their various races go there to be judged and find their eternal reward. All their souls imprint and mold the maelstrom into demons or angels.

Meanwhile on Golarion proper things are mostly the way they are in the books (though I do like the idea that the "alternate realities" bent gives a reason as to why different signature characters in different lifetimes might have been the ones involved in various adventure paths). Things from other settings can show up, but no more blatantly than say a Morlock at the absolute extreme (cause that was...kinda' weird).

How's that look?

There aren't really any "Elder Gods" in Golarion. In Lovecraft's writings, the "Elder Gods" are really "those gods who AREN'T Great Old Ones or Outer Gods." In the context of Golarion, therefore, the category of "Elder Gods" would include all of the game's deities EXCEPT the Lovecraft ones—from Desna to Cyth-V'Sug to Zyphus to the empyrial lords and so on.

That's weird. Why would the Lovecraft Great Old Ones exist in Golarion, but not the Lovecraft Elder Gods? I mean expecially if they're all from the same physical place? How could some exist without the others?

So what about the Elder Gods? I mean if you're looking for an organization to hunt Great Old Ones--guys like Nodens go on great hunts specifically looking for them.

The way I tend to look at the Mythos creatures is that they fall into basically three groups:

Outer Gods: So far beyond mortal care or concern they pose us neither ill nor good. They're usually insensate and might kill you by accident but aren't particularly badguys, more forces of nature. Don't summon them, but otherwise you're fine.

Elder Gods: Gain some benefit from the status quo. Bast really likes cats. She'll fight Great Old Ones to protect them. Doesn't care about humans at all, but because cats benefit from humans we benefit from her. Nodens hunts the dreamlands--so the destruction of humans diminishes his resources, so he chases them around on his conch shell chariot driven by nightgaunts. In the mythos, really most of the gods in pathfinder would be concidered Elder Gods. Rovagug would be a Great Old One--at least that's how I play him.

Great Old Ones: Alien and insane in ways that are corruptive and hostile. They want to flood the world with slime and mutation or can't stand the color blue and so purge the universe to eliminate it. These things are weird and by their very nature cause insanity and death. Zon-Kuthon got a taste of this--as possibly did Lamashtu, or maybe she's just messed up. Rovagug is a Great Old One in my book, as ar Nyarlethotep, Cthuhlu, Dagon and the rest.

For people interested in more Numeria, there's also a nice write-up in the Absolom book about the folks from Numeria and their dealings in the city. Certainly helped me get a better bead on them...and as I recall there's some good reference art too.

Or perhaps each universe has a different timeline. That's my favorite explanation for parallel worlds—whenever some significant event causes something to happen, the various outcomes branch timelines and spawn parallel realities.

I've been mulling this over for a bit. So okay, every setting co-exists in the Material, right? But how do they co-exist? Let's take three different modern era settings:

Independence Day (Grey aliens carpet-bomb the earth)
World of Darkness (Werewolves, vampires, mages, fae, mummies, etc.)
X-Men (Public crisis of superheroes in modern society)

Does Pathfinder just mix them all--like Alien vs. Predator? Assume they all exist, that everything is true? That there's one world that has superheroes and vampires and is laid waste periodically (more in the 50's) by giant monsters and aliens.

Or Marvel Comics style is there an Independence Day Universe and a separate parallel universe for X-Men and World of Darkness each in a separate dimension from each other barring magical transportation or planar rifts?

If it's this second one then it winnows out a lot of settings--at least for the primary Pathfinder setting. You'd have to choose between Conan, Exalted, or Lord of the Rings for the prehistory. If you wanted to have Vulcans and Star Trek in the future, that'd mean Earth's in the thick of a war with Khan and his eugenic supersoldiers right now, which seems like it would rule out other futures like The Matrix or Star*Drive.

So I guess do all the settings co-exist like a big epic crossover quilt? If not, what things do you see existing in the Prime Pathfinder universe and what things exist elsewhere?

Presumably Cthuhlu exists, which also gives the nod to Conan and all the other Theosophy based sword and sorcery fiction that shared authors with it--like the Clark Ashton Smith stuff. But what about the sword and planet stuff? Are Golarion Mars and Jupiter covered in jungle and aliens?

Does the Force exist in Golarion--since it binds the universe together? Are there superheroes? Certainly the idea in most comic books is that superheroes exist on any planet with sentient life?

Sorry just getting a feel for all this--it's pretty mind blowing stuff. Reminds me a lot of those chatrooms back in the day that proposed a big multidimensional nexus world stocked with characters ranging from drow rangers to cyborg bounty hunters to vampiric bunny-people. Just trying to figure out what to make of it.

Yep. You should not hold classes to a realistic mindset, but a mythic one.

I'd maybe be okay with mythic depending on the myth. I'm just not comfortable with Paul Bunyan sized myths. Beowulf ripping the arms off giant troll monsters and fighting for several days underwater with a bog hag is a little more than I would prefer. Maybe I'd go for something along the lines of a good fantasy novel? A D&D novel maybe? So you know, there's magic and dragons and, y'know dragons--but insomuch as it's possible to iron out the ecologies, economies and power scale I wouldn'd mind that.

The problem is I don't want my D&D game to have to be Exalted. I get tired of over the top fantasy with all the yellow-haired super sayan-ness. I'd take a hero who could die from an arrow in the chest over an epic character who can track across water any day.

I play D&D that way and it works fine. I'm not whining here or anywhere really, guys. A dude had a question. A bunch of people jumped on him for his question being dumb. I figured I'd offer an alternative answer, y'know to help and stuff. Everything since has just been me talking with all the other folks on here to let them know where I stand.

That's it. How that baffles or infuriates everyone so much is, I think, people projecting stuff onto me that just ain't there.

Anyway this stopped being fun a while ago so take care guys.

The old, out-dated articles in early Dragon Magazine (#28) did in fact stat-up Satan. They explained that he had been deposed and was attempting to regain power from Asmodeus (who had himself replaced Satan's successor, Baalzebub).

That's interesting. I'll look that up. Thanks.

I suppose it's worth noting that the public playtests of the rules are pretty much NOT the place to go if you're interested in learning more about the world of Golarion, since the rulebooks are world-neutral.

Yeah, no I get that. Totally. What happened was much more of a matter of me coming in with hopes of helping to shape a game I love in a way that it was made fairly stingingly clear that nobody wanted or was at all interested in. That said, all that has been years under the bridge and I've been interested in taking on the game again. Some of the folks in my game group are dying to try it out again. That said, if you've got any input on what I'm working on here, I'd absolutely love to hear it. You're one of my favorite designers. I still remember the game you ran at the first Paizocon.

I guess the biggest challenge so far is packing as much real world stuff into the mythological figures here and divorcing it as much as possible from the typical D&D rigamarole as possible without changing the setting in a bad way. The Asmodeus stuff in particular has been giving me fits.

From what I've been able to dig up, Asmodeus means "demon of wrath" and was the cambion child of King David and a possessed lady. I sort of like to imagine that was the one Bathsheeba lady he had the big oops with and then offed her husband...because that's just awful. In "real world" mythology Lucifer is supposedly in charge of Hell and Asmodeus is just a powerful demon--but Cheliax worshiping *satan* satan is a little too big a change for me. I sort of fancy a political shakeup a la mideval japan where Lucifer has become the spiritual heart of Hell, the first fallen angel and all that--but that most of his real political power has been taken (or at least been allowed to be believed to have been taken) by this upstart cambion from the bloodline of David.

Then again, this sends things even further out--I mean if Asmodeus is real Asmodeus, then that alledges that somewhere out there, perhaps beyond the big golden fortress with the open gate in Heaven...well I think you get where I'm going. Not even sure where I want to take that.

Read some of the stuff on the Old Cults in Carrion Crown, they explicitly say Cthulhu is laying dead but dreaming in an undersea city on the far side of the Dark Tapestry, I'll give you one guess what planet they mean.

That sounds really cool. Truth be told I've been out of the game for a while (the whole playtest scene really kind of burned me). I might have to hunt that one down.

Likewise I'll probably be research crunching real life mythologies and folklore behind Pathfinder setting stuff and trying to pack the game full of them. It's really kind of gotten me enthused about the setting for the first time in a while.

Another thread like this. Yay. *yawn*

It's a freaking fantasy game about avatars of our imagination doing heroic things at a level reality cannot hope to emulate. It's why we play, to recreate the legends of our past and our literary favorites.

Insisting on reality in a fantasy game is absolutely ludicrous. Seriously, there are other systems that try to emulate the mundane, D&D and its derivatives have never been those games.

Meh.

When did this become the gold standard for everyone who plays D&D? Seriously, I happen to really like the game as I play it--with a fair amount of meaty realism to it. For me that makes the game more fun. Presumably the same for the OP. Please do not lame-bad-no-fun on my game style. There's lots of different ways to love our favorite hobby, man. Live and let live.

That said, if the target you're shooting for in your gaming is "literary favorites", I think maybe we agree more than it seems. I don't know many books that celebrate tree-chopping on monsters with too many hitpoints or weird game mechanics that derail the action of the story for balance or abstraction reasons. If what you're after is novel style two fisted fantasy action, then that's what I love and go after.

For me as a GM to say "Is that would your character would do?" is no different than one of my arch villains doing something(mechanically), and the player asking me the same question about the villain I created. I would not appreciate it, no matter what side of the board I was on.

Yeah, I'm totally on the other side here too. Really often in games I've had players call me on "Hey, waitaminute...why's he reacting this way. In our plan, we really figured he'd respond this other way, which seems to make more sense" or especially "Hey how's this guy even know we're doing what we're doing let alone be able to respond so quickly."

It's nice to have the players check on me so I remember to know what the NPCs know and do what they'd do, not do what I'd do as DM, knowing what I know. It's hard to keep perfect track of everything and the game always looks a lot different from my side of the screen. There's been a lot of times where that reaction has knocked me back a step, seeing how their plan is set to work, and has led to really some much more fun results where the PC's actually do get the drop on guys I figured would be much tougher nuts to crack and has led to quite a few really awesome glory stories. I try to get the player's side of what's going on and weave that into the story as often as I can.

Oh and thanks for the praise folks, I do my best.

Similarly, if I were playing an archer character and decided to pick up feats that allowed me to shoot a lot of arrows, I would be very off-put if the DM took me aside and asked "Is that really something your character would do?" It's my character. I'm the only person fit to decide what my character would do. A DM trying to question that sends up a red flag that the DM isn't happy having absolute control over the entire game world, and also needs to have a level of control over how the players interact with the game in order to feel...

Y'know, truth be told, if you were in my group and we did talk it over and you started feeling like it was a touchy subject, I'd drop it and play around it. Again, the big thing for me is trying to have a good experience as a group. The hope would be to work through things and fit things into a good story. My track record with my group is good enough that generally the characters we tinker with tend to feel pretty cool once they've come out of a tune-up. Really the only consequence of not wanting that (other than maybe some of the other players eye-rolling you when you do something really gonzo) is that your guy maybe ends up feeling out of synch with the rest of the setting, the lone Drizzt in a world full of grizzled normal folks.

Is that your place as DM to decide?

Or is it instead your player's place to decide how his character grows?

I think anytime a question about anything comes up, it's time to talk about it. Not me decide and him submit. Just really talk it through. But in my case I tend to prefer to talk it through as history rather than from the game balance, mechanical end. The end goal isn't for me to be right and him be wrong. The hope is to flesh things out in a cool way that gives us both a clearer and cooler idea about who this guy is and what he's been through. And honestly if that ends up with him being able to fire off bunches of arrows but with a freaking fantastic new backstory, I'll be a lot happier than with him mechanically weaker but bland.

But I guess to answer your questions...no and no. It's a fun opportunity to talk things over and work things out together--jam session style. Nobody just decides.

I guess I'm going to go in a different direction with all of this.

I don't see level progression as "reality" to "superhero" so much as from "wide-eyed farmkid" to "experienced super veteran with so much stuff on his plate (family, allegiences, followers and swag) that most people retire gracefully and become institutions unto themselves" because awesome as they are it's easier than to forge on with all the aching bones and greying hair. Life takes it's toll heaviest on the most successful folks. I mean Aroden became a god and what's the very next thing he did? Retire and set up Absolom. I like this arc of experience so much I even came up with a nifty rubric for how many xp per day will get an average adventurer from young novice to venerable veteran. I really dig it. A lot of people don't. They like the idea of "heroes" as substantially different from "regular folk" and that people whoosh through levels and hit epic level in months. I mean that's how the XP system runs for the APs. I dunno. Different strokes.

Generally if I run into weird results from the rules, which overall I find to be pretty slick and elegant--I just change them so they feel better. No big deal. If somebody superbuilt their 20th level character to be a super arrow machine gunner, we'd probably have a talk. It wouldn't be about mechanically what you can or can't do with what feats, or about what stacks or even what's game balanced. It'd be about this guy and how as he went through his thirty-odd year career adventuring, what feats he'd actually pick up, and how unlikely it would be that he'd even be thinking with the kind of premeditation that a build like this one requires. I just like things to make sense.

I'd say this: Story trumps everything. If what you get from the mechanics doesn't satisfy you, or makes your story feel somehow you don't want--change the heck out of it with a big freakin' hammer. In the end its about you and your friends having a story you can all sit back and enjoy retelling over the years. Do what you need to do to get there.

PS. As regards fighters not getting nice things, I dunno. I think people get what's reasonable for what they are. People who call upon gods get divine intervention. People who study magic get magic. People who jump off cliffs onto the backs of dragons and stab them with swords get heroic glory. Personally I think we tell more glory stories about cool stuff fighter guys do than about the guy who tossed that really cool spell that one time. That said, your milage may vary.

Y'know, as to the point that posts should be closed after a while, I dunno. I just stumbled onto this post and thought it was really interesting--and I think I might be a good case study for why posts like this stick around so long. I come up with all sorts of fun responses to the original post. Then I see that the post is nine pages long and get a little depressed. I try to read up on exactly where the conversation has gone to see if my suggestions are even relevant anymore--but usually end up skimming to the end, mostly just because I'm excited to give my two cents. Someone else does likewise, reads my post and says something that probably in the preceeding 9 pages someone else has said already. And I mean, true that--but at least I get to contribute, rather than feeling like the conversation has moved on without me. Y'know?

In my case, my suggestion to the OP is this: D20 has in every incarnation never given players enough skill points to really make their characters everything of who they really should be...partly because they's likely still not put the points where other people in the setting would and would just pump up the next most optimal skills, thus continuing the problem. My suggestion would be, if you think there's skills central to the way you see the game, give them out as a bonus at character creation and then let them enjoy those starting skill points as a way to distinguish their characters rather than having to do pad the bread and butter skills just to do okay.

Has that been said a lot already? Sorry if it has, but I feel good having had a chance to voice it.

So I was looking at some really old adventure path stuff, the first issue of the Second Darkness path, and I read something that totally blew me away. The default assumption is that the universe that Golarion exists in is the same universe our Earth exists in. All those stars they show in the Material Plane--we're in there somewhere! The consequences of that are huge, and I've been mulling them over for a couple of weeks and talking them over with our game group about it to see what we make of it. It's been really interesting.

My first thought was dismissive. That it couldn't be that way because that would mean the gods of our world would be Thor and Marduk and Zeus, not Eristil or Aroden--they'd be gods from real mythology, right? Then I thought...like Lamashtu, or Asmodeus, or after some research, Orcus (yeah, he was a roman god who punished oathbreakers). Then I thought about places like Osirion, how it feels so much like Egypt--or the Golarion versions of China, India, the old Norse, and so on. Maybe the whole reason that these cultures are so similar world to world is because our gods have some influence on Golarion--that before Nethys became such a big deal in Osirion, maybe there was a cult of Osirus? Or maybe there still could be? Could you maybe play the old chestnut cleric of Thor in Pathfinder with a straight face. It's really interesting. Maybe out in the Maelstrom there are gods we'd really recognize were we to see them, amid teeming masses of alien gods from the billions of other campaign settings out there? I guess the biggest thing is when I run Pathfinder, now that I know that the gods from our world aren't just name drops with completely different personas in the game--I want to really do them justice and respect the lore a lot more. I wonder if you couldn't have an Orcus who's less of a big red ram guy, and who's more of a big Rob Zombie looking guy who walks town to town sniffing out oathbreakers and tossing them off cliffs--or if Asmodeus in Golarion might more closely approximate the cambion offspring of King David and a possessed Bathsheeba that folklore makes him out to be. The real life lore really reframes a lot.

The other big thought I had was what does that say about the kind of Earth you get because it's attached to Pathfinder. I mean for one, Cthulhu is real. Baba Yaga probably is too. In fact most of the legends, urban and folkloric probably are true in Pathfinder Earth. I mean like the World of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu, they aren't probably obviously overtly true--in that most people continue blandly ignorant of their reality, but either Pathfinder Earth is Earth from the Cthulhu mythos--or what I prefer is that, like Hellboy, it contains Cthulhu, celtic myth, aztec myth, aliens, atlantis, loch ness, the Bermuda Triangle and just about every other scrap of lore arcane or literary that you can imagine. I mean, Morlocks are real. Seriously, and not 400,000,000 years in the future. So yeah, anything goes.

And another thing we really enjoy is the idea, that when we run Pathfinder next, that we run our games about 90 or so years in the past of the game's chronology--so that the Earth of that time period is the Earth of the great pulp writers, the 20s and 30s, because seriously that's where I'd most want some adventurer from Varisia to discover us--it just feels really right.

WotC is to blame for much of this as they seem to have really managed to play their nostalgia card hard and conned a bunch of hard core gamers into buying this...If you don't need any of this then the product is not really aimed at you.

I just got a look at Red Box the other day and while I see your point, I wonder at the same time once they realized what a spectacular nostalgia card they HAD in their hands, why they didn't put it to better use and go ahead with a product that did aim at us a little.

Particularly what urks me is that the rules only give you levels 1-2. I mean, don't get me wrong I think it's a really fun homage to the old box set that they don't give you all 30 levels. I would have been okay with the first 5--though it would have made more sense to break it up by tier and included up to 10th level in the box set. I really love the red box and would love to buy it, but I saw that it only includes levels one and two and just got mad. I just have no idea what made them think that was a good idea, regardless of who they're marketing it for.

Crunched the numbers for the other races. Elves retire at level 39, dwarves at 38th (though dwarves have shorter lives, the 120 year adolescence of elves makes their adventuring careers only about five years longer). Half-orcs retire at 18th level most other races end up in the mid to high 20's somewhere. Just for people who are interested.

As for Lord of the Rings, it's just weird. The badguys in the setting are goblins, orcs, uruks, ringwraiths, and cave trolls (unbarded and barded). --along with a big kraken monster and large spider (which looks huge to a halfling) as boss fights. In the first adventure they fight ringwraiths first, way over their CR and do fine. Then some goblins--loads too many for their CR plus a CAVE TROLL which is just crazy. Should be a TPK, but again, aside from Frodo (who hits 0 HP in both fights--must be rolling bad) everyone does fine. Then they fight Uru-kai, a whole army of 'em...and do fine (except for Boromir, but he was kind of the NPC redshirt who the GM kills cause he's tired of the fights all seeming too easy despite the redunkulous CR's he's throwing out).

In the last adventure in the AP, the PC's are up against--well pretty much just orcs, and then there's that large spider at the end (but they don't even kill it...the DM just basically decides it runs off--after it eats Frodo AGAIN. I figure Frodo's player just threw a fit that he keeps getting gakked and the GM decided to be nice and have Shelob take off).

Point being, the stuff the guys in Lord of the Rings fight aren't all that different from the beginning of the game to the end. They look tough, sure, but really they're all just kinda' like stormtroopers--they can't ever hit anybody and they die if they take an ewok rock to the head.

So what level is all of that? Well I'd argue it runs 4e.

The problem here is the system gets very awkward in the face of other races:

A human and an elf party together and the dynamic duo goes on to become a bit famous and a bit infamous as they lead their exploits through the land. After one year the human is 4th level and the elf is half-way through level 1.

Here's how I calibrate for other characters (granted there's a lot of stuff about how fantasy races work that's just weird, so YMMV).

Starting age: Take fantasy critter age as the starting point rather than 16. So for dwarves that's like 50, for elves that's like 200 I think. From there it's the same as humans: two and a half months later they reach level 2; after about 6 months they hit level 3; so on until they hit level 20 at 32 years of adventuring. What you want to do after this is kind of up to you.

Myself, I take the beginning of the old age bracket as retirement age for whatever race--it's their level "20". Take their retirement age (1st year of old bracket) and crunch the XP/year from 20th level to the right age and then look on the epic level charts (or just work out the progression yourself) to see what level they end up at. So while humans retire at 20th level (53ish), other races retire at whatever power level their lifespan allows.

Haven't run the numbers, but it seems like it should work fine.

Sorry if I miss anyone else in the following, just let me know if you have a specific question...

"But...it's FANTASY, leveling up shouldn't have to make sense! You're fighting orcs! Look there's a dragon!"

Like I said at the outset, there's different styles of play. Ours tends to be a little closer to the vest (which tends to be nicely in keeping with the less VWAKOOM! nature of the Pathfinder setting). I don't really see ANY Dragonball/Bleach type folks in my games at all. Most folks feel pretty baseline, like Valeros or Kyra. If you want a boingy anime game then you're probably not going to want any kind of rubric (see I spelled it right this time!) to get in the way of your fun. Whatever. My hope here was to address this to folks who are interested in grounding their settings in a bit of vorthos-school verisimilitude. If you don't then go do what you want. Ain't gonna' stop you.

Oh and if I misspelled VWAKOOM!...I most sincerely appologize.

The one problem I have is that in my vision of the game, most people never attain level 11. The culmination of a full career brings you to level 10, and many people may age and die without attaining even that!

No problem. Just halve the per session XP from 14 to 7 and you should end up about where you want them to be. Haven't actually crunched the numbers for that one, but as figured a PC hits level 20 at 53 years--so if you halve the amount of XP per day it should make 10th level close to the apex (granted the XP curve from one level to the next is exponential so you won't get a straight level 10 at 53...but it should be ballpark.)

However, I do rather like the idea of leveling with time. What would you recommend for that kind of system? Perhaps 1 XP per day? That seems quite logical, as you would never attain higher levels without doing some remarkable things... I suppose also that a very lazy character may get 0 XP for a day squandered...

The numbers break down to an average of 14 XP/day. Granted people aren't hard adventuring every day of their life--a lot of time is spent doing other things--so there's a ton of wiggle room. I'd figure something like 50 XP a session give or take for awesome or lame sessions should make sense. That said, at that point things become pretty arbitrary. I mean how much of a PC's life is downtime? Depending on how you answer that question should really determine the multiplier on XP when a PC is out on campaign.

Okay, first off, a lot of folks don't interpret level the same way as me, that's fine--but I crunched some numbers and found something really really fun and thought I'd share in the hopes that anyone who was curious would see how the numbers worked out.

Starting assumption: level is where a character is in their career, 1st level characters are fresh-faced 16 year old farmkids, 20th level characters are at the end of long careers and entering old age at 52 years old, hard and craggy with stories to tell from 32 years of adventuring.

So taking that assumption as true, and the number of XP needed to reach 20th level, then you can deduce that an average character gains (I believe--notes are home) 5025 XP a year, which breaks down to 14 a day. Now with the feast or famine nature of gaming it's probably more like weeks or months of 0-5 XP a day, between adventures and all, with something like two to three times that amount when they're actively involved in a campaign. By contrast, 200 XP a day (which is our group's usual per session reward) ends up leveling a character to 20 in about 2 years. The canon advancement as per 3.5 (300 x character level per session) results in a 20th level character in two and a half months!

But assuming a steady diet of 14 average XP a day, you can find the following. A PC will hit level 2 after about a month and a half of adventuring, level 4 in just under a year, level 10 in 8 years.

Using that rubrick, you can use the campaign timeline to figure out roughly when a given PC was born and what he's been up to until the start of the game.

This is obviously assuming human characters, the starting ages are obviously very different for other races.

Just some cool stuff I figured out that I'd always wanted some clear insight into, and that I just figured out how to get at. Hope it helps!

Umm...if I'm reading this correctly then you seem to be saying that you hated the 3.5 upgrade from 3.0 so much that you never upgraded. But now WotCs marketing for 4E Essentials has been so good that you have decided to forgive them for ever having put out 3.5 and now your going to go and find yourself the 3.5 books.

I mean I must be wrong in my understanding because the very concept strikes me as really deeply improbable...but that is what I seem to be getting when I try and parse these sentences.

Well yeah. I guess here's my thing. I was mad because 3.5 was completely overwriting 3.0, but you take some of the 3.5 stuff as alternative classes and I actually kind of like it--like say there's some paladins where they learn laying on of hands first thing (like Illmater clerics) where others (like say Kord or Tempus depending on setting) don't see that as a huge focus and save it for later. Some ranger schools have sword and bow specializations while others don't. Some druids have preternatural nature sense, others just get more training. I like that idea.

So yeah, maybe Red Box is getting me over being mad about the 3.5 transition too. 4e has been doing a lot of that for me over its run.

But yeah I agree it's deeply improbable, and a little weird. But whatcha' gonna' do, right? *shrug*

This one sounds overpowered to me. There are already some pretty good builds out there that stun or daze enemies and it strikes me that if you can get a build that dazes the enemies every single turn at will thats likely going to be simply too strong.

It probably is a little overpowered, but we haven't had any bad experiences with it--in fact being able to pound foes with a dizzying array of blazing attacks tends to make the game a lot of fun for us. I'm a lot more comfortable with some overbalancedness, especially as much as 4e portrays itself as a super swashbuckling action game--it's nice to give it some help so it plays that way.

But the biggest benefit for us is the greater ability to customize our characters. Anything we can do so one rogue isn't just like the next. Having some guys who are better at certain powers than others, who can make them go off more often, really adds to this feeling of diversity. Plus there's a great sense of character growth when say a character who's got a high Dungeoneering can pick up that skill power that lets them function for an encounter as if they have darkvision, and then as time goes on, pick up a feat to upgrade that encounter power to an at-will, so they always function like they have darkvision. It's got a really great feel to it.

As I've gotten to play the game more I've come up with some new house rules that I really dig. Now mind you these are big changes, and not for the faint of heart--but we really like them.

1. Bloodied really means DAMAGED: 4E sold me on the idea that hitpoints aren't damage anymore, more a reflection of fighting spirit--how much fight the character has in them. That said, I like that you actually CAN be damaged in the game. When you take damage and it drops you to bloodied, the attacker follows up with a Con attack. If it succeeds, the target suffers a condition appropriate to the attack that can only really be healed with medical attention and/or rituals (broken legs cause PCs to be slowed, broken ribs might daze, etc.) That said your bloodied hitpoints aren't half your total--they're the starting amount you get at first level and go up only insofar as their Con base goes up. So usually by the time you get bloodied, you're in pretty desperate straights.

2. You can take surges in damage for rerolls: So you really really need to hit the big badguy with that last big daily that will toss him through the portal to the Shadowfell, right as the Wizard is about to close it--aaand you roll a 3. Well you can sacrifice a certain amount of your fighting ability for a reroll, specifically one healing surges worth. You can do this until doing it further would bloody you. So PC's can throw everything into a good plan, and maybe they still fail and stand helpless before their cackling foe, but at least they get to try. Nothing sucks worse than wasting all your dailies in a flurry of misses.

3. You can upgrade a power one time using a feat: You can make a Daily into an Encounter or an Encounter into an At-Will. Really like this one, since often Feat choices are a little lame and it allows much more variety in character development, that sometimes you use a power enough that you can use it more often.

4. If you don't like any of the powers you get at a certain level, you can go back and pick any other power you haven't picked yet at no cost, regardless of type of power. REALLY like this one for most of the same reasons as the above.

5. When you Multiclass you get to pick powers off of either list and pick any Paragon Class from either class because Multiclassing as written is a great idea, but is way weak-sauce and becomes a fairly lame feat-sink in quick order. This makes it smooth and fast and a lot more fun.

So that's what we do. There's probably some other things I'm overlooking, but those are the big ones. Feel free to adopt them or ask questions about them--we're pretty darn happy with them (and if they're amazingly crappy or unbalanced or game-breaking we really don't care).

Where do drow come from in Golarion?

Y'know I remember where it mentions it...but I can't remember. Ack. It's in the Elves of Golarion booklet, as well as being a big part of Second Darkness. I think they might mention it in the entry in the Bestiary too.

As to your original point about Drow in the Shadowfell, that's a really fun idea. I mean I've always stocked the Underdark with plenty of Shadar-kai so the reverse seems really fun. Especially if you throw in loads of cobweb covered undead spiders and ghostly etherial drow cities. That could be cool like crazy.

Here's a fun idea: drow and death giants together in a Shadowfell flavored homage to Against the Giants.

Okay so I just read the article and...this is really weird...but not only does this relieve me tremendously (I love the idea that not every Wizard/Ranger/Whatever is not like every other one) such that I'm definitely going to add the new Red Box classes to my game, but they've actually inspired me to go out and finally buy 3.5!

Seriously, I hate 3.5 like acid in the face, but you sell it to me as variant classes that exist alongside the old ones and suddenly that really sounds like a fun way to boost the options in the game.

Don't really get the problem with variant classes by the way...I mean isn't that the whole point of the Power series? To create variant classes? If there was a Paladin in my group he'd be a Paladin. If someone asks what kind, I'd say "Red Box" or "Core" or "X Divine Power". No biggie. I just like the variety.

Does today's generation of GMs not comfortable in making such rulings? Or is it "standard" now to contact the publishing company for interpretation of the most minor of rules?

Here's what I've seen around here...and granted I've been away for a while (partly due to issues like these, and other reasons).

I think a lot of it went back to the beta testing of the Pathfinder rules. Back in the day the d20 system had limitations and everyone just kinda' knew it. Some folks went really RAW, some folks went really narrative, but everyone did the best they could adjudicating things however they wanted.

Once the beta testing started something weird happened. Folks got really uptight with the rules. There was more of a sense of ownership over them so when something wrankled or seemed "broken" to someone they began to come unglued and go off on tirades of hyperbole. There were simultaneously a lot more attempts to deconstruct and nitpick the rules, as well as a lot more hostility to folks from a much more casual, freeform, less gamist form of play. It got to be a lot.

So yeah, folks are a lot more involved with the rules since in some part they helped make them. The minutiae has become so much more interesting to people and the little differences seem to make worlds more difference.

That said, haven't been on for a while, so maybe a lot of this has passed and something different is going on--but that's my best diagnosis.

I got a chance to watch the Mike Mearles game demo where he opens up the box and lets you look at all the pieces. Geez I dunno'. I was really excited about this, but the minis are really so-so (some are really terrible--the rat swarms, ghouls, werewolf and spiders are particularly bad) and the maps just feel like pretty bland gray granite block hallways with a few statues and things. There's random treasure cards, trap cards, monster cards, and power cards for the pregen characters (which likewise are pretty cheap recasts of some not-great PC minis of the past). All of it just looks really bland and not worth getting. I'm not sure I couldn't just pick up most of the minis as singles (okay so not the dracolich...) and a pack of dungeon tiles and an old copy of the original Ravenloft adventure and get a much better game for half the cost.

Not too impressive, which is a real shame because I was SO pumped about this one. Ugh.

I only break out the maps and minis for Society play or for game days and the like. For our home games it's all narrative. More immersive that way, I've never been able to really "see" the fight when it's on a gridmap. Just doesn't work as well for me. Much more vivid if it's all in my head.

I don't think it takes away from the tactical edge in the games. Not at our table. Our games are plenty tactical--but it does move the tactics from the kinds of tactics that are more game based, to ones that are grounded more in the story, if that makes sense. And I really like that better anyway.

I guess to answer the original question, I'd totally concider running games all narriative. There's nothing in the game that makes it so you can't. Our group loves it.

Pathfinder RPG, like its predecessor, is a game wherein eventually minis come out, get placed on 5-foot squares...

Auugh...I'm melting!...What a world! What a world!

(Which is not to say map-n-minis is not good for your group--cause--you know, there's nothing wrong with that.)

I think there's two things to keep straight here.

First is that we're talking about Society restrictions--and like the "being able to buy four suits of armor from the one dead guy" rule they aren't there to be realistic. They are there so folks feel comfortable dropping off their 12 year old at a public game without fearing they'll be witness to (or a participant in) baby-eating monstrocities. It's not a real game rule--it's a public image rule--and should be enforced accordingly. It's like the (admittedly sorta' dumb) LARP rule that if you have a weapon at a game that it's supposed to be represented by a recipe card that says "gun" on it. It's so people don't freak out and call the cops, boycott the gamestore, or whatever.

In other words having PCs in a Pathfinder Society game that are evil is just fine--as long as they aren't "evil". In Pathfinder Society you might call this Neutral+. They don't hack people apart and eat them, they don't sacrifice goatskulls to el diablo, they don't listen to Marilyn Manson.

Or basically this: If Nick Logue would do it--it's probably too much for a public run game of Pathfinder. Save it for the home group. Otherwise, just wink and call it Neutral+.

Yup. Gonna' get this ordered into the local gamestore. No way I'm not buying this as soon as I can. This is what monster books should totally be like!

That's a little mean, man. But yeah, I could see a scale difference. That said, if all that awesome real-estate covers only a sixteenth of the whole world, it seems like Golarion would actually be pretty big--I mean if all of that: Mwangi, Cheliax, Varisia, Taldor, if that's all contained in the space of what would be (gosh...what's 1/16th of Earth look like) the equivalent of maybe Mexico?

That seems like a pretty BIG planet...like way big.

So we've got this guy in our game at the gamestore. Comes every week just about, almost always plays a dragonborn fighter. Solid guy, loyal to a fault and we've always worked hard to try and make him feel welcome.

Turns out he's headed out to the Navy, tonight was his last night in the store. He cleaned out his shoebox of Magic the Gathering cards and sold them all to the store owner--which netted him in the neighborhood of 200 bucks in store credit.

Well we've been talking this guy's ear off about how awesome Pathfinder is, so guess what he does with his huge amount of store credit? Wipes out pretty much the whole shelf of Pathfinder books, and tucks them under his arm.

When he gets where he's going he says he's going to hook up with the local gamestore and try to get a new group together. Guess what book set he's going to try and get them hooked on? Yep, you guessed it.

You know, sometimes you really feel like you're helping out the game you love--and this really made me feel pretty happy with myself.

For future reference I love this idea. I think those Gamemaster's sections are the best part of any of the Pathfinder products. I was so excited about the Osirion book, thinking I was going to get one of those city guides in it and just about cried when there wasn't one. Putting those in the guides to the countries is a great idea. A great idea. Seriously, like do this with more stuff.

On a related subject, how do people feel about modules where it is assumed you use the pregenerated characters. Something like a historical adventure with important NPCs, or an all-goblin adventure, or something?

Absolutely love it. I mean I love the iconics, don't get me wrong, but having modules where you explore other characters sounds really fun. Reminds me of the Entombed with the Pharaohs adventure with Her Majestrix's Expeditionary--we totally want to run that one AS them, they're just such a wonderful crew of antihero versions of the main characters. More like that would be terrific.

Oh and the idea of doing adventures set in other eras of play is fantastic too. One of the main reasons I love products like the Grand History of the Realms. You could totally sell me a module set in ancient Thassilon. Would buy it in a hot second.

Okay so it's official--well sort of. The Crypt of Everflame is slated for release some two weeks after our midnight event, so I'm back on track fleshing out my original campaign and pregens.

The biggest change so far has been the name of our half-orc ranger iconic, which is now Rukkior (Reklang was just...really Klingon sounding). Lots more flavor now for everyone:

Luastre--LN Human Monk from Cheliax
Originally part of a small but dedicated group of monks devoted to the worship of Azmodeus, he eventually had to part ways with them as his ethical divisions with his evil masters became intolerable. His worship of Azmodeus has become likewise strained, a source of continual conflict for him. He's taken up the life of a wandering fiend-hunter, dispatching demons where he finds them and setting errant devils back to their appointed tasks or killing them if they pose too great a risk to society and propriety. Currently he is on the trail of an Avespa known as Azzbruzaz, a horror bound to the will of a travelling thaumaturge swindler--the devil having been reported in the slaying of a young girl, daughter of a mercantile company in the region.

Maatush--NG Osiriani Cleric of Sarenrae
Rumors that Isarn has become an unfriendly place for clerics coalesce painfully for the Osirian dervish with the murder of Father Patorin. Patorin was a cleric of Erastil and Maatush's mentor and guide to the strange ways of the northern lands. He goes to give respects to the grave of his friend and to investigate the circumstances of his demise: that he had met his end standing up to underworld figures attempting to subvert his chapel into a safehouse for local crime--and that they had defiled his body, animated it and left it out on display.

Rukkior--CG Half-Orc Ranger from Tymon in the River Kingdoms
Long friends with old man Nightstar of the trade company of the same name. He used to run caravans for them from his home in the River Kingdoms, and now rumors have reached him of some family hardship that seems to have overcome the company. Out of concern he's made his way to Galt to see if he can be of some assistance, and has recently discovered that old man Nightstar has lost his only daughter, always a troubled girl, and it has plunged his life into fearful darkness.

Arashlon-CN Elven Druid and devotee of Desna from Kyonin
Arashlon left the home of the elves for a life of fleeting happiness with a human mate, knowing their time would be painfully short. But the assassin's dagger that took his love from him was far too sudden. The druid turned inward, cutting off ties and devoting himself to personal justice--the elimination of the cults of Norgober who took his dearest from him. Following the laments of those who have lost loved ones he has followed the secretive cult from town to town into the war-torn revolutionary landscape of Isarn, capital of Galt. He arrives seeking a band of killers and extortionists who have been plying their trade in devotion to the dark god Arashlon has vowed to oppose.

Jissete--CG Varisian Bard and follower of Cayden Calean
A wanderer by nature, Jissete has been drawn back to Galt by his concern for the latest family overthrown in the continual revolutions rife in the land. He had made good friends among their family during his time travelling through there, enjoyed their lavish hospitality and benefited from their kindness to him as little more than a ragged urchin with a few stories and a dash of folk mysticism to provide in return. Now he hopes to repay that kindness, to spirit them off someplace out of the hands of surly mobs, where they can rebuild a life for themselves.

So that's what I've got so far...

What form would you like these books to take? Would you be interested in subscribing to such a line, provided the books cost somewhere around $35 a pop?

I was never really into the Complete books, and the Environmental books just seemed really ridiculous to me (big book of boats? cold weather? sand? really?). Just not a great organizational focus. I'd like a book where the central theme is really exciting and interesting.

Probably not into subscribing, no. I'd probably just flip through them from the comfort of my local gamestore and grab the ones I like.

What titles/ideas would you like to see us explore?

Regional books would be great. The kind of book that breaks Golarion into 3-5 country chunks, the sort of area that defines where a campaign usually happens. Pack them full of plot hooks, organizations, politics, villains, and history. If you wanted to add races and classes too, this is where I would do it. That way you've got a race that's native to Tian Xia, or the Varisia/Linnorm King/Mammoth Lord frontier. Seems like a nice hook to introduce more specific stuff than you can in a core book about the whole world.

I'd love to see books of Golarion exclusive magic items--especially if they were also packed with legends and lore from the setting, famous archmages, lost treasures and places of power.

Another good one would be something that lets you explore Golarion's other era's of play. There's a lot of history to the setting and it'd be fun to jump in and explore it. Plus, that's another good hook for some more anachronistic classes that thrum with the power of a forgotten age--or some fun pulp "lost races" that existed in previous eras long since passed.

We're all worried about rules bloat. What is your opinion of new classes and races?

I think as long as you tie them into the world, and introduce them in the right books, they'd be wonderful. I always hated to have to buy a terrible 3.5 book just to get a single race or class they packed into it as an afterthought because it shared a theme or whatever. Hate that. I'd say wrap the classes and races you introduce around a fun enough premise though and I'd totally buy it.

Are you as tired of prestige classes as I am?

I'm tired of the execution. Having to slog through levels, taking skills or abilities that you don't want, or that don't fit your character in the hopes that you can someday qualify to be something cool--but never cool enough to justify all the time and levels and prerequisites. They always feel like a letdown.

The idea of Prestige Classes are still really exciting though. Making your character a real part of his homeland, or some secret society or important organization. I love the flavor of Prestige Classes. I just wish you could make it happen mechanically in some other way--a feat maybe, or perhaps a Variant Class like used to appear in Dragon Magazine periodically back in the day.

Prestige Classes are just too much headache for too little payoff.

Hoo-hoo! Today is awesome! I just got my copy of the Campaign Guide. All that supposition of mine about the relationship between the new planes and the old molecule?

Canon baby!

Okay so they put Mabar and Irian in the Sea of Siberys instead of the Chaos of Khyber--and they put Lamannia there too, where I probably would have made it the Feywild and Thelanis the name of the Faerie Court within it.

But other than that it's like spot on what I'd hoped.

And the rest of the book is AMAZING. This really might get me playing more Eberron. The more I read thorough it, the more I dig it. If every Campaign Guide is this good--WotC has me hooked but good!

Oh and the art...can I tell you! Wow.

P.S. My personal hope is that the Lord of Blade IS the godforged god. It really looks like it.

Scene 3: Getting to the ruins

Premise: Locals post a No Trespassing Sign
Themes: Diplomacy, new friends
Atmosphere: Going native
Components: Bedouin, More background revealed

While traveling through the desert, the PCs are set upon by the Bedouin. The Bedouin are merely protecting their territory. If the PCs come clean about what they are doing, the Bedouin will actually offer assistance. The Bedouin may even have more pieces of the puzzle to offer.

How the Bedouin react depends largely on how the PCs act.

*scratches head* Isn't this from The Mummy?

That would be sweet. I'd love to see another group take a crack at a more primal Earthdawn. It certainly seems like it has some gas in the tank. I like the idea of a big magical empire that's looming to subsume everyone. The idea is really fun. But in the same way that seeing them with automobiles and skyscrapers and jetfighters would make my brain go like Whuh!, I'd love it if it could be a much more advanced society in the right timeframe.

That could be both very cool and really fresh and interesting.

Yeah. No, I totally understand what a beast high level spells can be in people's games. I've been on the recieving end of things like that myself. Sorry if I sounded insensitive about it.

Y'know as much as it bothers me when game design starts skewing toward in game concerns at the expense of story--I don't know that I hate the idea of making magic into something that fits nicely into the world.

I'd classify windwalk up there with things like ressurrection spells, as things that once they exist in noticable numbers, start making such an effect on the world that I'm not sure you aren't better off without them. Return of the Kobold King is one thing. Return of the Kobold King exactly as he was, every week forever turns the D&D world into World of Warcraft. Why even DO anything. Why adventure if your every accomplishment can be undone with some guy waving his wand behind you to reset all your victories. Again, I don't know if it would be a bad thing as a corner case, if it happened once in a while--but as a reality in every setting, in every D&D game?

I wouldn't mind if D&D got weaned off of magic...just a little bit. That sometimes when something bad happened to a character--it just happened. It's like the old round-and-round about Cure Disease:

"You come into a town that's suffering under a debilitating plague. The mayor runs over to the adventurers and makes a tearful plea that they must journey to the lost ruins of..."

"I cure him."
"Me too."
"I go into town and start curing everyone until I run out of cures."

"Uhh...umm...this is a SPECIAL disease that no magic can cure! Totally unlike all the ones characters contract from fighting monsters that magic is fine for."

That stuff just gets dumb quick. I'd love to see the plot defusing magic of D&D get rescaled a bit to be totally honest--and if a PC actually DIES because of it, or heaven help them they actually get SICK and can't just wand wave it away...so much the better.

On the topic of dragons and unknown motivations, does anyone know why the dragons brought war to Aerenal? I've looked through several books in 3.5 and have not found an answer or an account of the war.

I'm with her. My interpretation of what I've heard (and maybe this is only a 4e thing) is that the dragons weren't horrified nearly as much by the presence of a half dragon, as they were by the immergence of the House of Death. Partly fueled by the prophecy, partly fueled by their own indignation of having their bloodlines combined with a great and malignant threat, partly out of fear at what the House of Death might become--they launched an assault to end the entire bloodline.

It almost takes us into 4e territory: Lawful Good, Good, Chaotic Evil & Unaligned.

Our group has been having a lot of fun with 4e alignment. We renamed the different alignments (interesting to note, the names we used were the names they came up with for them in the 3.0 PHB)

Unaligned
Same as always, unaligned people have yet to come to a hard spot in the road where they have to choose an alignment. They are usually good hearted regular folks who invite friends to dinner, but might cut in line at the general store.

Benefactor (Good)
These are people who have had to make a choice between closing off their lives to the suffering and hardship in the world, and have chosen instead to devote themselves to helping, nurturing, healing and counciling those who suffer at genuine hardship to themselves, forsaking their own benefit to a certain degree.

Crusader (L. Good)
These folks have had to make a choice between watching the sick and injured keep pouring in while they stay safe and warm trying to pick up the peices, but instead have chosen to take the fight to the enemies of the good people they've decided to help. They're a little extreme sometimes and their militant views can make people uncomfortable--but when the town starts to go to heck, they're the ones with swords drawn charging in the opposite direction of those who are running away.

Dominator (Evil)
These guys have made a choice too. They've decided that the only way to get anything they want is to push through and get it by any means necessary, even if that means hurting those in their path. Ruthless and ambitious, they seek to change the world to their way of thinking, removing enemies and obstacles with precision and malice. To them, everyone is fighting for the same handful of resources and those that bow their heads meekly will never deserve the prize--and are only going to get taken advantage of.

Destroyer (C. Evil)
At some point, these people have made a choice that the world as it is isn't worth having. People are sheep. Institutions are pathetic. Either there's something better that can be made from the world, or the delicious sound of silence coming from the end of everything is just too enticing to ignore. They desire carnage, chaos, and destruction. All of them are bitter and angry, some of them are hurt by the world, some of them are just too disapointed and disgusted with everything in their lives to want anything anymore.

It's a fun breakdown, especially when you start using it with the media to try and fit different famous characters to the different alignments (Sepharoth is the iconic Destroyer, for example).

No, I totally know that. I just mean they aren't doing cities that have gotten a ton of previous exposure. Not that they're making up new places, but that they're throwing the spotlight here into places I genuinely know very little about. It's a good thing. I love that I get to see some of the fog of war roll back and get some meaty depth to some other regions in Golarion. It's wonderful.

Two quick questions: Is Fallout also a movie?

Man, don't I wish. That would be AWESOME. Nah, just the games so far.

Also, is there a hardcopy of the EABA setting?

Man, don't I wish. That would be AWESOME. Unfortunately EABA games is the work of just one really creative, amazing guy. I don't think he can afford a full scale printing operation and just puts out his books in PDF. They really are good though. I own like four of them so far.