Grimcleaver's page

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.

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!

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.

So I've been grinding pregenerated characters for our upcoming midnight release Pathfinder game day party. The adventure? Easy, I reached into the bag of Game Mastery Compleat Adventures and grabbed Death Shrine of the Ninjas.

Pregens though...for a game that hasn't come out yet? That got tough. So what I did was I checked the Pathfinder Blog. I took the level 8 signature characters (plus Harsk, cause he's only level 10--easy to reverse engineer) and filed off their serial numbers, reflavoring them as totally different characters.

What I got was the following:

Luastre--LN Human Monk from Cheliax
Maatush--NG Osiriani Cleric of Sarenrae
Reklang--CG Half-Orc Ranger from Tymon in the River Kingdoms
Arashlon-CN Elven Druid and devotee of Desna from Kyonin
Jissete--CG Varisian Bard and follower of Cayden Calean

Mechanically they're going to be the exact same people, but it's amazing how different they feel with the new origins and flavor. I'm pretty impressed with the idea. Once I get their character sheets all written up, I'll start work on their backstories and how they all know each other. Then I'm going to put some love and detail into the Death Shrine--which I'm setting against a backdrop of death and revolution in Galt. If there's interest, I'll post all of that jazz as well.

The really fun thing as I look at this--is what we've got here is a whole new list of Pathfinder signature characters. That's really a fun idea. Anyway I just thought I'd share.

Just found out from our gamestore owner that he's not only getting in a big shipment of the new core Pathfinder books, but he's opening the store at midnight to have a huge release party.

Pretty awesome stuff. The plan is to do a D&D Day type thing with it--have a bunch of guys to run one-shot games with pregen characters. People come in, grab a book, plunk down at a table, and game till they die of sleep deprivation. Sounds awesome.

I'm thinking of suggesting some kind of deal with the owner to have a deal where you get some kind of discount buying the Gazetteer and main book at the same time. Just seems like it will get more people actually playing the game.

Anyway I'm super excited.

If any of you happen to be in the area, it's going to be held at the Dragon's Den in Pocatello, Idaho.

Dude, this is so cool.

The Dragon's Den
690 Yellowston Ave. Suite C

In the plaza right behind Subway sandwiches (between Wingers and KFC) just past Fred Meyer on Yellowstone. It's tucked away pretty much out of view until you pull in.

We have tons of games, and pretty much what we're hoping for is to have a new game open up whenever our groups get more than five players to keep lots of games going and have tables small enough that people get lots of chance to roleplay, rather than just hollering out over the crowd.

Tuesday--
Forgotten Realms Undermountain campaign, lots of dungeon-crawly goodness run by the manager of the gamestore named Jim.

Wednesday--
Fourth Edition D&D game set in the city of Flux, at a nexus leading into different regions of the Elemental Chaos--the wards of the city named for the different elements. Power is divided between the undead Infinite Council and various clans of titans who wish control over the city's riches. Run by one of the guys from our regular game group, named Bret.

Eberron game run by yours truly, set in Karrlakton on the border of Karrnath and the Mournland.

Saturday--
There's been a few games running on Saturday, though I'm never in the store so I couldn't really tell you. I think there's a Star Trek game in the works, based on the new movie.

So okay, I'm a huge fan of Paizo and a big time supporter of Pathfinder. I think someday it would be fun to make a game that ties into the Pathfinder RPGCL--but really I'd like it to be something that 1) is a good, valuable book that people enjoy buying, and 2) something that actually benefits you guys by my producing it.

Now usually in my experience that involves adding game value to the product--new races, new classes, new gear, new monsters, or whatever. I guess my fear is that on one side of the issue is making a game with so much new stuff that it risks running afoul of the "no original systems" clause. On the other hand, using the exact same races, classes, etc. but without developing any IP material (also WAY taboo) it seems like the best way to make the product worthwhile would be to come up with another fantasy setting using the same rules set.

But then wouldn't the new product, intended to help you guys and Pathfinder, actually end up competing with it? And that's totally the last thing I want.

I guess what's your vision for the Compatibility License? How do you see it helping you guys? What kind of stuff would you like to see third parties developing using your rules? How much flexibility is there to add stuff (like new classes) that could be used to expand the utility of the rules system--or to expand the rules to other genres (sci-fi, horror, pulp, etc.) without it crossing the line and becoming not Compatible?

Okay so I've sold the owners of my local game store to carry Pathfinder--loads of it! Heck at my gentle prodding they've even migrated it to the eye-level section of the shelf--displacing all that yucky New World of Darkness stuff to the bottom level, nicely out of sight, while the Pathfinder stuff seems to be moving pretty briskly. We're even planning to reconfigure the weekly Wednesday game slot to running a Pathfinder game--to coincide with the release of the new core book.

Pretty proud of myself.

When I heard the posters were getting sent out to game stores I figured we'd be getting one no sweat, but still nothing. Apparently the owners have tried to contact you guys to see about getting one--and described getting a "run around" (!)

So now they seem to be giving up a little bit, and seem a bit less enthused in their support of the setting. Here's hoping I can get them sent a copy of the poster so we have some time to hang it up where people can see it before the books arrive.

The Dragon's Den
690 Yellowstone Ave. Suite C
Pocatello ID 83201

(208) 716-3865

K.C. Finch (Owner) k.finch@thedragonsden.com

Thanks a ton you guys, and I'll keep fighting the good fight.

So I've been doing my best to prepare for the next game day in a month with very little to go on. Here's what we know so far:

5th-level adventure, called "Journey through the Silver Caves"

Focuses on the new monsters--especially an iconic new to the MM2.

So I figured it'd be worth it to try and find out what new monsters to expect in the new book. Guess what! I found a list...

New Monsters: Careful! Serious book spoilers ahead!

Not a lot of surprises on the list, interestingly.

No idea as far as what the plot entails, but I have to imagine we're looking at mostly subterranian stuff, maybe icy stuff, probably a new dragon as the big centerpiece fight (which will be interesting since we're looking at a silver most likely).

Unlike the last one, where I more or less plunked my junk on the table and had everyone scratch their heads wondering what I was up to and what kind of insane I am for even trying. This time I've got a project that last night in a fever dream brought on by bad tomatoes I think I figured out.

Here goes.

Challenge #2: Making Sense of Power Cooldowns

I've always been one of those DMs who hated the idea "you just can't." Way back in the days of 2nd edition I was frustrated by rules that said that nobody but rogues could try and hide, or open a lock. In 3rd edition I devoted myself to esoteric bits of goodness like why a wizard could only prepare so many spells each day--and what would happen if he tried to prepare too many. I've always liked the idea that the parameters aren't uncrossable barriers, but are the natural limits encouraged and propetuated by folks who do this sort of thing. That there's good reasons why you shouldn't cross the line, but since it's a roleplaying game and not a video game, that trying shouldn't cause a loud buzz from your controller. It should probably just not be a great idea.

So I'd been rolling around in my head why the daily and encounter powers are only usable once per whatever. I tinkered out a quick list of possible reasons why along with an effect that would come from trying again too soon. See what you think.

Exersion: Some abilities are just draining

Brute Strike is a good example of this. You really power up and ring the badguy's gong for three times the normal output of your weapon. This hurts to do. Afterwards you're a little screwed up from it. You really should rest up before you fight again after doing this kind of crazy stuff. You might need medical attention. The first time you use your encounter or daily ability of this type, it works fine. Use it again and you suffer the following.

Encounter-You're dazed from the exersion and take -2 on all subsequent attack and damage rolls. This is cumulative, in case you're crazy enough to do that again. A healing surge will recover the dazed effect, but to get rid of the penalty you need to end the encounter and take a short rest.

Daily-You're dazed from the exersion, lose a space of movement and take -5 to subsequent attack and damage rolls. Again this is cumulative. You need an extended rest. If you use the ability another time before you get some rest you will need healing in addition to rest in order to recover your abilities.

One Trick Ponies: Some tricks folks only fall for once

Warlord's Favor is a great example of this. You basically hit the guy hard in just the right spot to turn his guard away for a second, and an ally rushes in and takes advantage of the weak spot to hit him. Presumably if this guy recovers from this combo he's going to be looking out for you to do that to him again. He's going to wait for it, and if you try--he's gonna' get his on you for trying to make a fool of him. Again, the first time you use this kind of power, no problem. Try again before it cools down and you take this effect.

Encounter-The save against your power is increased by 2. This effect is cumulative. If you miss while under this effect, the target gets a free counterattack is granted combat advantage over you.

Daily-The save increased by 5 for each use.

Pushing Your Limits: Some abilities can burn out your powers

Curse of the Dark Dream works here. You suck the badguy into your darkest dream. He goes for fun-fun time in Silent Hill. Eeek. Suffice it to say that as a warlock or a wizard your abilities are contingient on some things. This kind of power is dangerous and unstable. Take it for granted or use it to excess and the results can be unfortunate. Other times it is simply your patrons, whether gods, fae courts, or the blasphemies beyond time wish to teach you a lesson to punish your hubris.

Encounter-All of your powers have their numerical values halved (whether healing, damage, protection or whatever)

Daily-Same as above, but in addition the character must roll against an ongoing effect. If he fails a number of rolls equal to his Con modifier, he erupts in a blast 5 of energy appropriate to his class doing his level in d6s of damage to everyone in the radius. He takes double.

Clube Selva - 7 pm.

The interior is tacky in the extreme, with walls so sticky and unwholesome it's best not to touch them. It's kept dark. Easier than cleaning. Tropical music plays on old cheap digital media. No avatar interface. The place is cut off completely from the rest of the world.

Alehandro Belafonte sidles up to the bar and orders a strong shot of tequila and takes a seat next to his tio, Luc Belafonte, the family namesake. He stares down into his drink and mumbles "A norte-americano tourist has been walking around, asking about you. Clueless tolo isn't even in the right part of town. What do you want me to do about him, Tio?"

In the far corner of the room Domingo and Rafe share a table, but otherwise seem to be in two different worlds. Domingo is crouched over his table, and in an unguarded moment his face looks like a mask of pure hate, glowing with red demon fire from the burning end of the big cigar clamped between his fat knuckles. Rafe looks trapped, and stoned. He sits, shifting periodically, trying to relax, but looks very much like a chicken handcuffed to a wolf. Dante and Gabriel, apparently had other plans. They aren't here.

There's some house rules that I want to hammer out, but while I know what I want and how I want them to feel--I don't know how to make them work exactly. So yeah, figured I'd toss out a invite to some folks to contribute ideas to the 4.Grimcleaver system.

A polite note: What I'm looking for is mechanical advice. Saying there isn't a problem with the problems I'm trying to fix isn't mechanical advice--and while fun to talk about, it will totally throw my thread off the tracks, I guarantee. Or worse it will cause the thread to implode into yet another war of "which edition is stupid". Either way it will make Grimcleaver sad.

Challenge One: Making Sense of Minions

I gotta' admit. Minions play great. They make for awesome fast paced battles with loads of combatants. That said, I hate the kind of double-standard rule that gives guys 1 hp just so you can kill them with no reason or in game explanation. Call it rampant simulationism, cause it is. If something's gonna' have one hit point in one 'a my games there gonna' be a good reason.

So here's what I've been noodling. You know how there's this guideline that monsters five levels higher or lower than the party make for inappropriate challenges? Well what if fighting something five levels higher or lower than you were to confer "minion" status on the weaker creature? While a first level character is having to circle around a field trading arrows with a kobold, almost skewering him but watching him scamper out from under his blows--the sixth level guy has no such problems. He just runs through the brush, taking off limbs and heads as he goes. Likewise while the level 13 character can get into it with a blue dragon, getting knocked around by big paw swipes and getting his teeth chattered by nearby electrical discharges; the first level guy is just doomed. The dragon would vaporize him down to a pair of smoking boots the first time he hits.

I like this idea. There's this feeling that no matter how cool you are, you're just a minion to something else in the world. It also explains minion status in a satisfying way.

The problem: the whole virtue of minions is that they're frail, but they can still put up a fight. They still do decent damage. They still have decent armor class. The whole reason you shouldn't fight something five levels different from you is that it takes away EXACTLY those advantages. The higher guy always hits the lower guy and in turn for the most part can't be hit. Giving a minion all of these penalties simultaneously just ruins them. They go from fun to worthless pretty quick.

It's a fun idea, but I guess how do I get it to work?

There's some house rules that I want to hammer out, but while I know what I want and how I want them to feel--I don't know how to make them work exactly. So yeah, figured I'd toss out a invite to some folks to contribute ideas to the 4.Grimcleaver system.

A polite note: What I'm looking for is mechanical advice. Saying there isn't a problem with the problems I'm trying to fix isn't mechanical advice--and while fun to talk about, it will totally throw my thread off the tracks, I guarantee. Or worse it will cause the thread to implode into yet another war of "which edition is stupid". Either way it will make Grimcleaver sad.

Challenge One: Making Sense of Minions

I gotta' admit. Minions play great. They make for awesome fast paced battles with loads of combatants. That said, I hate the kind of double-standard rule that gives guys 1 hp just so you can kill them with no reason or in game explanation. Call it rampant simulationism, cause it is. If something's gonna' have one hit point, there should be a reason.

So here's what I've been noodling. You know how there's this guideline that monsters five levels higher or lower than the party make for inappropriate challenges? Well what if fighting something five levels higher or lower than you were to confer "minion" status on the weaker creature? While a first level character is having to circle around a field trading arrows with a kobold, almost skewering him but watching him scamper out from under his blows--the sixth level guy has no such problems. He just runs through the brush, taking off limbs and heads as he goes. Likewise while the level 13 character can get into it with a blue dragon, getting knocked around by big paw swipes and getting his teeth chattered by nearby electrical discharges; the first level guy is just doomed. The dragon would vaporize him down to a pair of smoking boots the first time he hits.

I like this idea. There's this feeling that no matter how cool you are, you're just a minion to something else in the world. It also explains minion status in a satisfying way.

The problem: the whole virtue of minions is that they're frail, but they can still put up a fight. They still do decent damage. They still have decent armor class. The whole reason you shouldn't fight something five levels different from you is that it takes away EXACTLY those advantages. The higher guy always hits the lower guy and in turn for the most part can't be hit. Giving a minion all of these penalties simultaneously just ruins them. They go from fun to worthless pretty quick.

It's a fun idea, but I guess how do I get it to work?

Okay, first off I have to appologize. I said some pretty harsh things about the new Monster Manual when I first bought it, about how it's all statblocks and no flavor. As I've perused it more closely, it turns out that while there's some really nice flavor there--it's just a lot more tightly written and packed mostly into the lore section. But rather than gush in vague and general ways about "all the stuff" I like--I thought I'd start with one I was just rereading that I particularly like.

The yuan-ti.

They're their own thing now, an ancient prehistoric civilization that venerates the god Zehir, evil patron of poison and serpents. Their civilization collapsed when their rulers, the huge creatures that have come to be known as anathemas, went insane and began to devour their followers to great effect. Their world fell apart and made room for younger races to rise. The yuan-ti seek to retake the world a bit at a time, working with human cultists who revere Zehir and see the yuan-ti as favored manifestations of his will--a great first society that deserves a rebirth. The ruck and run of the yuan-ti are human-sized malisons, snake heads with either legs or snake tails. Abominations are bigger (large size), meaner versions of the malison, champions of their kind with the thickest armor and biggest weapons. The anathemas are kept in unaccessable pits, carved with holy snake motiffs with chutes for dropping sacrifices down to keep them sated and passified. While the yuan-ti see their anathemas as holy, they fear them and that were they released that they would become a scourge to the world--bent on devouring all life. So they're conflicted, driven to feed and serve them, while charting an independant course for their kind.

I like that yuan-ti are finally their own thing. They were always tied to humanity--an "ancient civilization" somewhere that decided to turn themselves into snake people because snakes are cool and powerful. It was always pretty vague, and it seemed weird that a historical event of that magnitude was copy-pasted into every D&D setting. Plus it was weird how they liked to mutate people, or turn people into mindslaves by making them drink magic poison. The old castes were a little odd too, with the snake-hands guys, and the naga looking guys, and the near human guys. The coolest of the bunch, the hybrids, were pretty much always relegated to the up front dungeon hacks--since they were pretty much the fighter caste.

The new story puts them right up front as the archtypal "yuan-ti". The new storyline takes the old idea about yuan-ti infested ruins where they sacrifice humans and makes it make a load more sense (they've presumably trapped an anathema there and are feeding it). Likewise the humans who work for these new yuan-ti aren't just dupes or brainwashees. They are folks who venerate a god and want to see the return of the golden age of their god's rule in the world, the renewal of an empire older than mankind--and far from treating their human cohorts as pawns, they seem to actually respect them. You wonder if a return of the yuan-ti empire wouldn't even be maybe kind of a cool thing--because they aren't always painted as a bunch of meglomaniacal jerks.

Warforged as a Player's Handbook Writeup

Okay if these guys aren't really careful they're going to end up really winning me over. Yeah some of this stuff was in the Monster Manual--a side mention of how some monsters could be used as PCs. Not terrible, but really something like this is what I really want!

Full pages on roleplay, getting under the skin of a warforged in the new setting--what's changed and what's the same. Best of all--a writeup of how warforged fit into the new setting: who made them, when, why and what the social and political ramifications are of all this. And you know what? I think I like this story even better than the one in Eberron. It's not a handwave. It feels like a real organic part of the setting, tied into the overarching metaplot of fallen kingdoms. They are to Nerath what the tieflings and dragonborn are to their own fallen empires. I really like that. Good stuff.

I can't tell you how mamby pamby the old writeups felt. Thri-kreen in 3rd edition: they come from "distant desert lands". Now it finally feels like D&D has a solid structure to its world, so if they decide to port something from a specific older setting into the main one they now have the ability to come right out and plug it in in a way that makes sense. I really hated that old "its your world--put it where you want!" of the past. It feels like they feel much more comfortable making bold plays and adding substance to their common world. Woo-freekin-hoo! It's really nice. They don't force it down your throat still, but everything's got a solid place.

My players HATED the new alignments. Mostly their arguments ran along the lines that they didn't create something new, they just chopped apart the old system and tossed half the parts--and switched around what was left into a new configuration.

Once I explained the ideas behind it and what the new system meant they were still surly...and wished if their idea was to do something new that the designers could have at least used different names to explain their ideas--lawful good was, after all lawful good, and saying that it meant something new now was pretty unsatisfying.

I agreed. So what we did was crack open the 3.0 PHB and convert the names of the alignments (more or less) back into the more colorful titles that book gives them. It really worked wonders.

Crusader
|
Benefactor
|
Unaligned
|
Dominator
|
Destroyer

Suddenly we weren't arguing definitions anymore. Now we were discussing the new alignment system on its own merits, with colorful names that really feel like what they mean (frankly I've always liked the more "in setting" feel of the titles rather than the more obviously metagamey sound of the axial names anyhow).

It was pretty great. The idea that a character holds an alignment until at some point they have to make a hard choice, they face a point of tension where they have to make the decision. Do I just do good to people that need it or do I actively take the fight to the enemy--even if that makes me a bit judgemental? Do I ultimately care enough about the world to still want worldly power and respect, or has my hate become so strong I just want to tear it all down? We took different characters from different games we've run, novels we've read, or shows we've watched and charted out the process of character development through these stages with each of them. It was a fun (and really long) talk.

I'm really starting to really like this new alignment model.

The Wikipedia Article

As interested as I am with the ancient Golarion mythology of the Peacock Spirit, it was totally by accident that I came across an article on Wikipedia that could serve as an awesome jumping off point in real world lore for folks wanting to flesh out the ancient religion in their campaigns.

Anyway I thought it was fun enough to bear sharing with all you fine folks. Enjoy.

So I was reading through the Monster Manual, trying to get a better handle on the new feel of the monsters in the setting. I started reading about these creatures called foulspawn--basically what's left of a human who has been mutated by the corruptive emminations of the Far Realm. The lowest of these are these small wretched creatures with spines down their backs, big white orbs for eyes and a hideous bloody smile full of small spikey teeth. They lair in small loose clans in old abandoned buildings. They're called grues.

As in...it's dark, if you continue onward it's likely you'll be eaten by a grue.

How cool is that? I love it. And it's totally buried in there. No advertisement of it at all. That's just a big chunk of nerdy goodness. I may have been wrong about the Monster Manual. There's some fun stuff in there after all.

Here's the big announcement!

It's that great dark Sci-fi adventure Nick Logue promised us way back when and now it's slated for release in a couple of months. It's getting exciting!

The basic premise is a prison ship carrying killers and rapists bound for an icy prison gulag runs into a derilict warship in orbit from hundreds of years ago. Haunted space derilicts, weird and horrific aliens, killers and rapists. Could this not be a Nick Logue product?

I for one can't wait.

I'm wondering how this guy would work as an Ogrekin? I mean if you did him up a little less like a Wyoming cowboy and bit more hillbilly. I mean he looks a fair bit mutant just from his picture--and oh yeah, the big version of the picture opened up. This guy is perfect!

I've got a half-ogre thieves' guild jailer/torturer in my Osirion campaign and this guy looks like he would do awesomely as a mini for that guy!

The Prison Colony of Saran

Outlaws, tyrants, brigands and worse are the dregs that for centuries have been cast through the gates of Celaria, exiles forever. If the worst torment of imprisonment is the enduring company of vile criminals, then the prison colony of Saran is worse still. A demiplane wrested from the control of a mad druid as a savage, violent microcosm of all nature, packed with monsters, topography and weather ripped from all over the world. None live here but the foulest sort of scum, and the handful of hardened wardens who keep the peace. Each person is stripped of all possessions, given one day's food and drink, and as the magistrates read the charges and sentence against them they are unchained and thrown bodily through the gate by a score of armored guards. May the heavens take mercy on their souls, if the hells not claim them first.

Welcome to the Fugitives of Saran. I hope to run a PBP of the game for a small cadre of interested souls. I'm looking for deep characters that reflect the bitter conditions of the prison demiplane and the souls abandoned there. I elected to post here rather than in Gamer Connection hoping not to glut the boards with too many posts about the same game, to help consolodate things.

Saran is a plane largely bereft of magic, so for the first section of the game characters whose powers are based on faith or magic will find themselves...disadvantaged. Of those whose powers have dwindled, Sorcerers have fared the best, though even they are but shadows of their former power.

Starting level characters. Heroic stats (2d6+6 six times and allocate). Starting equipment should be easy--a clean gray prison tunic, a loaf of stale bread, a wedge of tasteless cheese, a few sun-dried bony fish and a sealed tankard of lumpy beer-yogurt. While everyone is a prisoner, not everyone need be evil (certainly there's a fair share of political dissidents and state-created criminals who only steal to eat).

That should be a enough to get people started. I look forward to seeing what people come up with. Don't worry about space filling up overmuch. I'm looking for a few handpicked quality characters more so than necessarily taking folks in the order they post. This should be fun. I've been looking forward to running a good Superstar game since way back when the contest was running.

We've been knocking around an interesting idea for the last few days. Our group have always been big believers in the lethality of combat. People getting hit with swords tends to hurt--on the order of hacked off limbs and pierced organs.

In the old system we kept hit points pretty low (on the order of 8 hp + Con mod. for human characters). The problems were twofold. First, with such low pools of points, even a minor injury was a major injury. There were times when you wanted to do damage, but not goshawful damage, and there wasn't any easy mechanic for that. Second weapon damage was horribly swingy. Longswords would ineffectually scratch you exactly as often as they would horribly maim you. That didn't seem reasonable, but we just went with it as the unpredictability of combat--not every blow is a telling one.

Now with 4e and fatter base hitpoints we've been pondering perhaps upping the damage of all the weapons so that instead of doing even odds cruddy versus great damage, that you can put some more dice in there to turn the averages into a neat bell curve.

We're pondering maybe multiplying the dice for everything by 3. So now instead of 1d8 a longsword does 3d8. The lowest it would roll is 3 and the highest would be 24 plus the damage base for the character. Nice and lethal. But even better, there's a nice round curve to the numbers now (the same logic as why you roll 3d6 as opposed to a d20 for starting stats--with more dice the low and high rolls even each other out). Average performance should be about 16.

So this way with a weapon, although you can still have suprising results either way, the much more likely event is that the weapon will do more or less the damage you expect, with enough variation to still be fun.

It might even be interesting to have weapons that are more unpredictable have larger-gauge dice, but less of them (say 2d12); while very reliable weapons might have smaller dice, but more to roll. (maybe 4d6). That way some weapons do pretty much the same damage time and again, while others might nick somebody once or totally whack a chunk out of them--while still avoiding the pandemic swing of single dice.

I've got a game going set in Osirion and for the last few weeks have been desperately searching around for as much information on the setting as possible. Until December though (can...not...wait) all I've got to riff off of is the paragraph in the Gazeteer and the stuff at the beginning of Entombed with the Pharaohs. I'd love any other inspiration anyone's got out there. I run it again on Thursday and am anxious to do it justice. Anyhow I'm really loving Golarion, and it's a blast being able to expand our campaigns away from Varisia--even if that makes it a little scary sometimes!

Have you guys seen what the gnome looks like now? Argh. I was really looking forward to seeing something that was an extrapolation of that sort of feral looking riverfolk gnome from the D&D Presents Cartoon. When I finally busted it out, I was really pretty bummed. He's like Tom Bombadil mixed with Conan O'Brien. It's pretty bad. And he looks like he's trying to be so hardcore with a wand in one hand and misty mage energy boiling off the other with this intense look on his face. It's just sad.

I really was looking forward to good art for that too. Something more like feral gap-toothed hillbilly with big dark eyes hiding behind a woodshed.

I'm not sure I get how level is supposed to work for monsters. When the idea was first pitched I thought the idea was that a level 1 monster was supposed to be equivalent in power to a 1st level character. An idea that was pretty nice in contrast with the exausting hoops required to understand CR (an encounter where a group of four adventurers will be expected to succeed through expenditure of roughly half of their resources, with a number of creatures in addition the number of which is less than the total CR of the encounter, no single creature being of a higher CR than the creature in question...bleah.)

The idea that a level 1 troglodyte and a level 1 fighter, if put into a jar and shaken, would be a pretty fair fight seemed like a beautiful, simple idea (if horrendously hard to arrive at.)

That said, I've seen some 4e stuff now and am totally confused. Apparently encounter "level" is tied to a five member party and varies wildly from one encounter to the next. Monster levels seem hugely out of scale with what I'd imagine (a level 12 starting kuo toa?). So I have no idea whatsoever what is even meant to be a balanced encounter or not.

Somebody please help! How does this stuff work?

Well this was officially the least populated D&D Day ever so far. It was more or less us and one other group--and both were apparently whole player groups. We had one new guy who we don't play with regularly. I was really hoping for an opportunity to show 4e off to a bunch of people. Hopefully other places had better turnout. We were outnumbered by the Yu-Gi-Oh players. Ouch.

Anyway I'd flipped through the module, Into the Shadowhaunt with my wife and a friend at a restaurant. We started figuring out how to retool it for D&D Day. I wanted all the characters to have backstories, I wanted the fights to be engaging and to showcase 4e mechanics, and I wanted to showcase the two main story threads: the lonesome spirit of the Shadowhaunt, and the griefstricken silversmith and the children they'd lost. I also wanted to play up the history of the place and the NPCs mentioned in the pregame knowledge skill rolls and make them pertinent to the game.

I set the game in Fallcrest, gave the pregens story hooks to introduce them to the region and to involve them personaly in the adventure.

The adventure began on an old road headed up into the Gray Downs region where Staci's ritual had indicated his kids were. On the road they ran into Bybee, the local beggar a crossbow bolt in his thigh and another in his shoulder, assailed by kobolds (one leader with full hit points, and another five minions)--one of whom had a noose around his neck, . After they save him, he gives them the information normally given for the Streetwise skill check--while scavenging for berries and small game he'd seen the malifactors, two big brutes and a scary looking elf, head into a section of forbidding forest known as the Shadowhaunt by locals. I ran the encounter on

The PC's head to the entrance of the Mausoleum. The half-elf is able to mist step her way inside and remains unnoticed in the shadows. She sees all the sarcophagi are completely intact and hugely valuable, despite the general ruin of the surrounding structure. Next the cleric comes bursting in. The spirit manifests, and I give a physical description of it. The cleric, not wanting to take much time to let it do whatever it's going to do, attempts to turn it. Rolls a one, and staring into the creature's visage, stammers helplessly. The others make their way inside and the spirit tells them to leave, that they are unwelcome here, that these halls belong to the honored dead. The characters think back to the information given them about the Gray Downs about the Dragonslayer Vendar, and wisely attribute this spirit as one of that line of warlords. They appeal to the loss of his son, and tell him that they are looking for two young boys who disappeared. With that the spirit seems lost to inner musings and discorporates.

I decided to change the entry room a lot. I thought the puzzle was too obscure while prepping the game and did not want things to grind to a halt. Besides, hadn't the elf and his goons already been through here? Obviously. So I had the obelisk gimmied open. The locking mechanism broken and the heavy scrape marks even more notable. Instead of the deeds of the 20 (6?) guys interred here, there was simply a warning in ancient common, elven, and dwarven--to know what you seek for before you seek after it. The beautifully intact and valuable sarcophagi were illusions linking to a number of traps that thankfully none of the players messed with. After seeing the spirit and getting a little hospitality through clever talking they were anxious to head on in.

The passages below were the real crypt, where instead of trapped illusions, the real sarcophagi of the Kaius lords lay enscribed with their names and deeds (I printed up a custom color print of this section of the map and glued it on, with an additional six sarcophagi). This section was flooded in my version and stunk of huge amounts of lamp oil. People made their passive perception test, which revealed some of the hidden mercenaries. I hated the idea of having this battle boil down to just two hobgoblins. 4e is about big huge battles after all, right? So I gave them a third hobgoblin leader--a big one with some ogrish ancestory and a cool facial scar. I also packed four goblin minions into the encounter.

The hidden figures are atop the sarcophagi lids. The PC's suspect something awful in the water and are loathe to go in. When none of them take the bait and wade into the water, an infuriated goblin tosses in the lamp and lights up the oil slick over the floodwater across the entire chamber. PC's and goblinoids hop from sarcophagas to sarcophagas, having to make athletics checks to avoid tumbing into the fire. Likewise anyone damaged by an attack has to roll acrobatics to balance themselves on the slick masonry to avoid a spill. At the end of each round of initiative I roll to see if the oil fire begins to die out (first failed roll I drop the bonus of it's attack versus save, second round it goes out). Once the fires go out, the remaining hobgoblins who had bottlenecked the PC's get surrounded and die in several rounds of furious fighting.

The tunnels appear to be fresh excavation, with support scaffolding and digging tools all around. Bodies are there too, but when examined by the ranger, it appears that the dead workers are entirely skeletonized--seeming years older than the comparitively recent dig site. They get to the devil door and see the light and hear the kids beyond. Across the front of the double doors is a placard that reads in old phonetic runes "Tersinis".

Suddenly something drops from the cieling, wings unfolding. It's a shadowhunter bat. They roll initiative, but instead of rolling initiative, the bat folds its wings around itself and blends seamlessly into the darkness. A couple of folks roll natural 20s on initiative though, so I let them take a shot before it's totally gone. One hits. Then it's gone! They can feel it fluttering around, but it's totally invisible. People are freaked. It takes its suprise action, slashing the half-elf wizard with it's razor tail. With this, the dwarf who failed his first shot uses his big awesome attack and levels the thing with a giant flying leap and hammer blow. The ranger sneaks forward to spy into the next passage to see if the guys involved in whatever ritual have heard them. As he pokes his head out, all he sees clearly is an osyluth! He swallows his tongue and sneaks back to the group with big bug eyes. Some time passes and there's no pursuit, though, and the voices of the desparate kids inside are starting to get pretty insistant. They roll various knowledge skills and figure out that this was likely a private lab in some sunken Bael Turathi stronghold, and that the infernal cleverness of whoever warded it was likely designed to mock and detain them--like a modern system password. Finally they stumble onto rearranging the letters. "Sinister!" The doors unlock. The kids inside warn them that the wizard who bound them in the glyph warned them that releasing it would cause their deaths. Before they can much worry about that though, the heroes open BOTH doors. There's a distinct "click" from the right door. "Sinister means...left." And the passage begins to rumble. A giant crash of earth and stone blocks off the tunnel back. Uh-oh. More rumbling. Now it turns out several of the PC's have ritual skill. They study the circle that means certain death, presumably, and use their aptitude with ritual to attempt to reverse it. Everyone who rolls combined get a result higher than 40 so the two statues that would have animated instead crumble to dust. The PC's are elated. Then the first trap goes off again and lands a huge pile of rocky debris in the middle of the passage. They run. As they get to the tunnel they hear two things. One is a secret passage open and some sounds of people escaping. The other is a small army of skeletons rattling their way toward them. One of the players had already rigged a rope to trip anyone going down the tunnel, and the first skeleton totally falls for it. The wizard, cleric and ranger unleash a ton of their blast area effects and blast them all to bony shrapnel (minions! yay!).

They run in and apparently the elven wizards thugs have abandoned him through the still open secret passage. He meanwhile is stuck attempting to finish his ritual with the big devil in the center of the room. As the PC's burst into the room, with a look of vindictive hate--victory robbed from him, the elf begins the process of undoing the gylph around the devil, freeing it. They can't possibly fight a creature like that! They have to stop him! Roll Initiative! The cleric shoots off blast of super augmented lancing light. It misses. Now it's just the warlock left going before him, and he's got all his hit points left. She uses her power to suck an enemy into a waking nightmare. She blows through his Will save like it weren't even there, and uses the push effect of it to have him scramble back--into the ritual circle!!

The devil greedily munches him apart. Then, discovering it is still trapped within the circle, it attempts to talk to the party. They fill him full of arrows until, helplessly and desparately trapped, it dies--vowing revenge with it's last gurgly devil-breath.

So yeah. That's that. It went great. It ran longer than I expected (about four hours). I just wish more people could have been there...

[I was asked on the chat to reprint this--so this is for all you who wondered.]

This whole thing started as a random comment on a family car trip. My wife was asking whether because everything in D20 follows the same stats, if it was meant to be used together. I balked, and my counterexample--which was about as far out as I could imagine--was to take the Star Wars Alien Races Compendium and to substitute that for the normal player races in a Forgotten Realms game, I mean you could do it, though it seemed you obviously shouldn't.

Only my wife and I ended up just looking at each other for a long moment. The next few miles became cool concept after cool concept hybriding the two ideas. The Gamorrean cleric of Gruumsh. The Quarren Red Wizard of Thay. The Jawa ratcatcher. The Anauroch tribes of rothe riding Tusken Raiders. The more we talked about it, the more convinced we became that we'd inadvertantly stumbled upon gold. I dreaded talking it over with my player group, but after a long awkward silence they started chipping in ideas too. It was contagious. It had to happen.

So we decided to try a one shot of it to see if it was worth anything. What we got was really interesting. To keep chargen simple we made it a first level game, but to allow people the kind of options they'd get in a higher level game we made it gestalt and offered prestige classes as classes. So yeah.

The Characters:

A kubaz rogue/beguiler, basically a travelling con-artist and confidence man who has conned a cleric of Kelemvor into taking him on as an acolyte...mostly so he can convince people to forsake the material world, in the form of giving him their stuff.

A yuzzem massive hurler/savage grappler (or something to that effect). A big furry yuzzem who has devoted himself to the hardcore god Baghtru, walking around naked as the day he was born, ripping stuff out of the ground to throw at people--or failing that, grappling and throwing people.

A scheming, Raistlin-like half-chiss, half-miraluka mage-blade/sorcerer from Thay, the son and heir to a mighty Red Wizard, but due to politics was forced to fake his death and go out into hiding until his power is such that he can return and take over his father's holdings.

A krish spellthief/shadowdancer from Skullport, having made enemies of her powerful Hutt mentor they have become involved in a deadly game to destroy one another.

So there's the characters. A rundown of the first session to come as soon as I get a chance. As always I'd love to hear any comments from anyone.

I know there's an Osirion book in the works--and I'm totally going to buy it, but after reading through the Gazeteer I am still woefully without a clue as to the major cities and regions in the area. I'm planning a campaign there and so it's freaking me out a little. The information on Sothis in Entombed with the Pharaohs is great stuff and very helpful, but I'd love a taste of some of the other stuff in the region--like the city of Eto for example, or really any kind of overview of what's where. I've got a good handle on the history. What I need now is some sense of the region now. Now granted I know that the books are still under construction. I'm not hoping for an encyclopedia here--just a taste.

Likewise I've been assembling a list of references to get the feel right--things like Assassin's Creed, Rabanastre from Final Fantasy XII, Lut Gholein in Diablo II, Dark Sun, and stuff like that. Deserts are tough because they're usually so barren. Likewise it's hard to fit in urban legendy stuff like it is in Varisia. Anyway I just figure if I can talk it all over with you guys and get some ideas flowing, it'll make the area feel more vividly "Pathfinder" and less generic Egypt.

Thanks!

I hear Epic Destinies getting thrown around alot recently--how they got pared down to only three, how they should feel more like rituals. Apparently I'm in the dark here. What are Epic Destinies, exactly and how do they work? They sound interesting. Just curious. With all the release stuff coming out I think I missed it.

Starting at the Paizocon I did something fun. I decided to run my favorite of the Pathfinder stories, but to do it totally no maps or minis--a dungeon crawl but all in our heads. We used the signature characters and started at Thistletop with the hope of getting to finally tell the story of Nualia, perhaps my favorite character in the whole setting. Just a beautiful, sad, horrifying tale.

So we didn't get too far, basically to the Tentamort lair and we had to go and say goodbye to two of as fine roleplayers as I've ever met. The rest of the group were in my home group and have been pestering me to finish the game--pretty much since we got back.

So today we got the next session under our belts. They got their butts handed to them by the Yeth Hounds in the shrine (which as I understand is sort of a rite of passage in Burnt Offerings) and took off back to town as fast as they could.

There they ran into Aldern Foxglove--a character who reading the adventure I'd never much cared about. Then I played him off of them and the results were hilarious and gratifying like crazy. See he's this aggrivating obsessed fop aristocrat who has a thing for Seoni. Thing is he's also the guy who goes on to become the Skinsaw Man. So playing him there's this beautiful duality to him that's sort of sinister just under the surface. So he finds out that Seoni is trying to do research to help them plan their next assault on Thistletop and he presses her to go with him to the eccentric retired adventurer's place with all the rare curios in his basement, so they can go research together. It was really creepy and he eventually pressures her into going along. Eventually Merisiel ends up having to save her and the rest of the group rib her relentlessly about it. On one level it's like "ha-ha you were locked alone in the dark with the dorky aristocrat who's obsessed with you" but on a deeper level it was a lot creeper because of the truth behind it. Cool stuff. I'm really getting to like the character of Foxglove as a result. He's a lot more fun a badguy than I would have ever imagined. Just goes to show that sometimes in something as well written as Pathfinder, occasionally something just pops out and suprises the heck out of you. Kudos to the writers.

Well that time of year is coming sooner this year, to coincide with the big release of 4e, and once again I've roped myself into running--though this time at a brand new store I haven't been to before (well not to game anyway). Always a bit of a nerve-wracking process, partly because I don't normally do the minis-n-battlemap thing, this year is a bit MORE freaky because it'll be a whole new edition that I don't yet own, and like every year you don't even get to see the adventure until like a week before you're supposed to run it. Zoik!

So I've been trying to gleen what I can to try and help me out. For one thing, I saw the name of the adventure--Shadows of Something-or-Other or something like that, so I can imagine it's going to be a dark and spooky kind of adventure. Likewise there's some obvious help. There's only one set of minis out yet, and a single adventure. Previous experience holds that the games are written around maps and minis that are already out, so that narrows things down--that and I can't imagine they'll be tossing out the high level critters, so that narrows things.

I figure I'll probably pick up a smattering of cheap singles to beef out some of the encounters--which usually are on the thin side.

Still it's hard planning for a game with so much stuff totally unknown. Whew. This is gonna' be interesting I guess. Keep you posted. If any of the rest of you all are in the same boat (gotta' imagine some of you are gonna' be running on the big day) feel free to commiserate.

Just look at this!

Okay now this is smooth like crazy. I really never saw much to get excited about with the old Compleat Adventure minis--since most of them were no one of much particular significance and came from a product that was meant for a short one shot game. The repurposing of those figures has been a total reversal of that. The half-orc torturer guy never really did much for me. I was always scratching my head about what I'd use the half-orc weirdo butcher guy for. Now with him as a beastman of Lamashtu I could see myself buying a bunch and painting them all in crazy bright tribal mudpaint patterns. Some of the revisions are really clever too--like the dwarven prisoner guy as a Torag worshipper was just slick. Not to mention a lot of the new minis look really really sweet. The Hellknight is AMAZING. I am so getting one as soon as I can. You guys are great. Awesome inginutity here--I totally appreciate it. Nothing better than finding something you couldn't use before reinvisioned into something you really want.

Here's a cool idea I've been noodling over and thinking of using in our games. Mostly just wanted to share it and see what people thought.

Okay, here's the thing. Saves in third edition have always felt a little weak. The old second edition saves were really colorful: save versus staves and wands, save versus petrification and polymorph. Really colorful, not really useful. With third edition they kind of got relegated to quasi-skills. You roll a reflex save instead of a tumble check why? So you can haves saves on the character sheet, basically. It's a bit bland, and it overlaps skills too much I tend to think.

So I was noodling it over, and what I thought was--what if you worked saves like action dice? You get so many per game session, basically the add would equate to the number of dice (so a +3 base Reflex save would mean 3 dice of Reflex save). The die type would be determined by the relevant stat modifier (0 or lower = d4, +1-2 = d6, +3-4 = d8 +5-6 = d10).

That way if you're in dire straights and there's something you want to dodge out of from in front of, you make a Reflex save in addition to a tumble check. You only have a few, so best save them for emergencies, but they add a nice little kicker to your abilities. I thought it would be a fun way to mix things up. Anyway let me know what you think.

Every once in a great while I read a post on here that's a must read. This one was good enough I copied it to a little notepad file and have been reading it. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it again, but it is really excellent. Here's a reprint of it:

Great stuff! For months now I've been talking about how I'd like to see an overhaul of 3.5 that goes totally in the opposite direction of 4e, that focuses more on the rich world of D&D and less on the gaminess and other nonsense. This article is packed with that kind of stuff and honestly I'm about ready to sign up for the Frank Trollman fan club. I'd be curious to hear more of this kind of stuff, looking at the D&D setting through the eyes of people in the setting.

Now partly I'm doing this to give folks a chance to read and talk about a great article, but also secretly I'm looking to bait the Trollman into visiting so I can pick his brain about stuff. Good job man, that was a fun and interesting read--it's certainly going to change my D&D games. Thanks!

Okay, I bought this book when it first came out and the whole group was really excited about it. I just got to skim it and get a handle on the whole backstory--excellent stuff! It's not only what the new World of Darkness should have been more like, it's also what Urban Arcana and Shadowrun should have been more like. Really exciting ideas around a wonderful hook that brings post apocalyptic and Lovecraftian themes into a very dark, fresh, stylish setting.

So now I'm getting to run it, and the honeymoon is rapidly ending. The book is horrifically unorganized--almost unplayably unorganized. It's a catastrophe. You literally get no sense of what any breed of supernatural is capable of doing from any listing anywhere in the book. You have to look at the feat trees, all written in tiny font, and crossreference them against the three (four for mages) sections of the book talking about that specific critter. I've taken to writing down on notecards what each kind of supernatural can do, painstakingly copying all the material from each section in little bullet points. It's bad. Like Palladium bad.

That said, the flavor is still great.

It's a little aggrivating how "up to you" the whole setting is--very D&D of him. You want things to work like this? Okay here's how that would be. Very little solid commitment on anything. You never get a solid feel for what really is going on. It's all up to you to figure out. It's like he writes half of a really interesting book and then throws it at you. Which would be fine if enough of the loose ends were followed to at least some hypothetical conclusions--but they just aren't. You basically have to try and connect the all the dots for your own campaign--cause your players who are definitely going to ask things like "so my vampire remembers the afterlife--what was it like?" or "so as a demon, how much do I know about the real nature of the Inconnu?". You pretty much end up having to write a good chunk of the setting yourself. That alone has been pretty draining.

But again, its a really exciting setting and as much as the adaption is killing me, I'm really looking forward to playing in it.

So anyway I'm going to be running this starting this Saturday. I was curious how many other folks out there have been laboring with this beast of a game and if you've had any better luck than I am. It'd be nice to have a few other heads to put together to start making sense of the setting. I've also been noodling some house rules for the game (like people having real classes, for one thing--I'm bringing in the classes from Adventure! and the occupation rules from Call of Cthuhlu).

Anyway things are still pretty doughy in the center. The more feedback I can get the better my game will be. Thanks a lot in advance guys!

It's always stuck in my craw that elves can breed with anything and the result is pretty. Dwarves, by contrast can breed with...well dwarves. That's lame, particularly since of the two it seems much more likely that a human and a dwarf would hit it off. Elves just seem so aloof and unlikely to blend into human society enough. Dwarves like clanky whirry stuff, and big stone cities. They're big and burly and loads of fun when drunk. What's not to love, right?

So I was thinking, with places like Janderhoff exporting their citizens around for various reasons I was thinking what if unlike in typical D&D, you could have a half-dwarf? It gets me thinking how much I loved the muls from Dark Sun, and how mad I was that for as cool as they were, that they were pretty much locked into that setting.

Anyway I think it'd just be a neat, flavorful new option without having to introduce half-constructs or bunnyfolk or some other gonzo goshawful thing.

I heard an interesting thing. They're talking about listing some of the half-critters in the main book. So you'd have half-dragons and half-genies and whatnot presumably.

This brings up something I've always wanted to see in a game. Half-races as templates. The half-elf and half-orc have always been assumed to be human crosses, but that's just weird. Then again, trying to make them into anything else just gets really fuzzy rules wise. A simple fix would be to make a template for each one that you could then stick onto any character at chargen--just like all the other heritage templates.

For one, it simplifies things. Everything goes off the same mechanics. Now you don't have one kind of writeup for a PC whose parent is a troll or a minotaur and a whole different kind of writeup for a character whose parent is an orc.

It's also powerful. You get to qualify what can mate with what (for example if you want to axe the half-elven dwarf you can, or establish what strange effects that would have--like sterility for example, or as is the case with races like minotaurs and halflings you could put a size requirement in--characters of large size cannot be half-halfling.) You don't need a new race writeup for every race-race combination either. Once you have the half-elf you can apply that to anything that applies.

Anyway it's just a thought. It's nice because it wouldn't really change anything in setting. It's just a nice organizational tweak to get the rules working in a more seamless, less clunky way.

I was flipping through the Pathfinder rules booklet and in the box section discussing what to do with starting hitpoints there was a suggestion to allot extra hp by race--frail races get 4, average races get 6 and beefy races get 8.

I almost cried.

It's not really even the same rule exactly, and it's not like it's a huge part of the rules addendums--but I figure somewhere somebody read my old Grimcleaver System, laying around somewhere, and decided part of it would be cool in the new rules for the game. That kind of thing really touches me. Certainly it's why I'm an unflaggingly loyal customer. You guys are awesome.

Okay you guys nearly owed me for a new computer. I read that and did this monster backflip in my seat and nearly blew up my monitor. Good thing it's tough. And the yell of pure gaming satisfaction blew out my windows and lead to somebody calling the SWAT team. After getting flashbanged and pepper sprayed, and whacked around with an asp and cuffed with striptape, I was finally able to explain the mistake. But, y'know, not gamers they TOTALLY didn't understand. Heh. Figures.

So anyway now my life is ruined. But that's okay because so long as I don't use actual dice I can still game in prison! Woo-hoo!

...so can anybody tell me how to make my own spinner?

Somewhere hereabouts I read that the new spell list for 4e has come out. I've been digging around trying to find it but am coming up with near to nothing. I found a Design & Development article on the Spell Compendium--but that's a third edition thing. There's also an article on new spells in the Forgotten Realms, but that's for the 3rd edition FRCS book.

If there's new 4e material out I would love to look at it. If anybody's got a link or a quick blurb to get me up to date I would love to hear it. Thanks guys!

There's supposed to be a special subscriber gift associated with Curse of the Crimson Throne. When it was first announced, nobody would mention anything about what it was. Now that some folks are starting to get the first issues, I was wondering if anyone had gotten whatever it is yet. Anyone willing to come out with what they got? Just curious before I subscribe myself...

Okay so I've got the when and where, and a little bit of the what. I got an RSVP e-mail though mentioning a $25 entrance fee. A few questions. What exactly does that entail? Is this on top of the price of rooms for the night? If not, then is there something else going on that I wasn't aware of (as I was pitched it, we were basically gonna' all bring our dice and stuff and nerd out--and maybe see the Paizo offices). I guess I'm just wondering what my $25 buys.

Anyhow I'm thinking of warparting over there in a big rental van--basically taking our whole gaming group with us. It should be way fun. I'm really looking forward to it. Mostly the question comes from the number-crunchy budgeting perspective. Thanks.