Jason Grubiak's page

Dragonchess Player wrote:

It wasn't bad, but it was a pretty standard sci-fi special effects flick. I like my movies with more plot depth and character development, especially if the movie is based on a good book.

Don't want to sound like a smart-arse here, but the movie had far more depth of plot and character development than the original poem, which was more along the lines of: "Big guy pulls monster's arm off, kills it's mum, becomes king, and then years later for no apparent reason a dragon comes and he kills that too but dies in the battle."

Ah but Dragonchess Player was referring to Starship Troopers not Beowulf. :)

I loves Starship Troopers BTW. It made no sence of course. Why arm a soldier with a machine gun that requires the whole clip to kill just one bug when hundreds of them are running around? Its was mindless but great.

Didnt like the book at all. But then again it might be because it wasnt what I expected. Its all about being in the military and the battles arent really in the book. Its almost like between chapters the good stuff happens and you get "yesterday was a huge battle. Its over now so I'll spend the chapter going on and on about boring military stuff."

To each his own i guess.

Vic Wertz wrote:

And the clock is rapidly running out for switching Pathfinder in 2008.

No offense to anyone, but - YAY!

;)

Ditto

Its definitly a mock up cover. Like the OP said its recycled art.

This particular painting of Drizzt was on boxes of D&D Miniatures. The Archfiends set that came out in 2004 to be exact.

If he has Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil already then Red Hand of Doom is a great one to get him. I think for the money thats your 100% best choice.

Theres some great stuff that was not written by Wizards of the Coast and Paizo as well.

Necromancer games does some great stuff. Dungeon Crawl Classics are good to. Theres a Box set of 3 or 4 Dungeon Crawl Classics packed together. I think its called the Dragon cult. Good stuff.

Not a fan of 4th edition..But Having the core books and then an adventure every month or so is a heck of alot better than what WotC did to 3rd edition. A MINIMUM of 1 hardcover a month was rediculus and I feel the never endign flood of books was one of the reasons people think 3rd edition is to crouded with garbage.

DMcCoy1693 wrote:

Paizo, unless they wish to outright say something similar and come up with their own gnomes, half orcs, druids, bards, etc, don't really have that option.

I always thought this sort of thing was a given when it came such modifications. Some aspects will need to be created from scratch, others will end up being abandoned because the new system has something adequate to take its place; races and classes seem to be small details when it comes to updating a setting.

Races and classes seem like a huge detail to me.

Golarion curently has Gnome PCs, Half-Orc PCs, Druids, Bards, and Frost Giants as monsters. These are just some of the things that will supposedly not be in the 4th Edition Core Books, but probably will appear later in the future yearly installments of PHBs and MMs.

So what is Paizo to do? They can choose not use these things until the books come out, but that would compromise Golarion's feel. Or they can stat out their own versions of Frost Giants, Gnomes, and Druids.

Now the PHB2 comes out and Gnomes and Druids and such are in it. There is a pretty good chance that WotC's version of the 4th edition Bard will be very different from Paizo's version.

So NOW what is Paizo to do? Keep using their version of these races, classes and monsters? If so alot of new players signing on to Pathfinder will get mighty confused.
More than likely they will have to alter the new races and classes and monsters to match WotC's versions. Pathfinder will constantly have to change and adapt every time a new 4th Edition book comes out.

Thats not cool. At least I dont think thats cool.

Sheep is a good name for em I say.

And Grognard is a good thing to be isnt it? The wise and the experianced who have seen the game evolve first hand. Trying to use it as an insult just makes you look even more pathetic.

And I have always seen it on message boards but not actually pronounced in speech. Your sayign it DOESNT have a hard G?

I thought it was Grog (like what pirates drink)...and Nards (what you kick if you encounter a wolfman).

Grog-Nards

The first movie was excellent. This is definitly highly anticipated.

Wow...Dungeon Grrrl's post was really great. I wholehartedly agree with pretty much everything she said regarding fears about 4th Edition.

And thanks for the insight into the new SW game. Now I need to go buy that Saga Edition book I had my eye on. :)

I am in the (apparently rather large) camp that finds half-orcs unsatisfying, both mechanically and in regards to their roleplaying potential (and in their likelyhood as an actual race populous enough to be in the PHB).

A race needs to be populus to be in the PHB?

I'd agree with you Saern but WotC decided that the new PHB will have Warforged, Teiflings and Dragonborn!
Ok small rant is out of my system....Continue. :)

I dont have the books in front of me but here is my guess:

The catching fire rules state that in order to catch fire you need to take damage from the fire first. If you dont take any damage you dont have to worry about catching on fire.

Wood has a hardness. Fire doesnt cause enough damage to get past woods hardness.

If the fire isnt causing damage then the wood cant catch fire.

Once again thats my GUESS as to how it works out.

In reality of course any DM who really rolls fire damage and calculates the hardness of firewood when the party tries to set up camp needs a good slap. :)

I agree that Erik's posts as of late tell me that 4th edition will be comming to Pathfinder.

The best I can hope for now is that the 3rd Adventure Path and the Campaign Setting Hardcover are 3.5 before the big change comes and I stop buying.

One of the intangible rewards to playing a character who's reached a certain level in D&D is the "welcome to the big leagues" jolt of confronting things like manticores and minotaurs, that would have ground the PC into paste two levels earlier.

That goes away, I think, if the PC has been fighting mini-minotaurs and junior-grade beholders, and tarrasquelings since Level 1.

Could'nt have put it better myself.

Weaker versions of powerful monsters watered down so 1st level characters can handle them takes something away from them.

Also if the party is fighting whimpy versions of Chimeras at 1st level..once the meet a "real" Chimera they could get themselves killed thinking its just another push over monster they whooped up 5 levels ago.

Plus its nice to throw a twist into the game so a monster is something never encountered before or it has a weird varient.
But its good for monsters to remain consistant so players learn.
As a DM I get very proud of my players when they encounter Displacer Beasts for the 2nd time and know what they are up against and what poers they have and change their tactics accordingly.

Wizard's rewrite would make the originals by 3rd parties less desirable and undercut their sales, eventually people slow down with buying 3rd party stuff because "WotC will get to it eventually and I'd rather have official content".

Ugly.

I dont plan on switching..I will stay with 3.5

However this is exactly what I would do. If a third party makes a book with their own version of Gnome PC rules in it I would avoid that product because I know that in a future book there will be the stats for "real" gnome PCs.

Same with Frost Giants and such.

Ok so Im not reading it right. Sorry :(

So if you cast a Fireball with a staff its a ray of fire and if you cast it with an orb then you burn up enemies in a radious around you?

Weird. So the implements determine pretty much what shape the spell will take. Not what school its from. Im staring to feel spells will just be spells...Not really broken into schools of any form at all.

VERY different from what I'm used to.

It is funny to see how different the reactions can be, depending on which board you are ;o)

My lazy butt would LOVE you to post links to the threads on the other boards so I can easily see the different reactions. :)

The story is OK.

The CG however is ...weird.

There are moments where it makes you go "WOW!!" and other scenes where you say "Ugh. Looks like Playstation 2".

Its like more effort was put into certain scenes than others. Or maybe certain effects teams were assigened to certain scenes and some teams did a good job and other...well..not so good.

I would think that Paizo could carve out a niche for itself by catering to those who wish to stick with 3.X, especially if Paizo were able to team up with Goodman Games, Necromancer Games, Green Ronin and/or Mongoose.

This is my dream. No more WotC books to buy but still and oncomming stream of 3.5 edition Pathfinder, GameMastery, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Freeport and Necromancer Games Moduals.

It would be the perfect scenario in every way.

Alas..I dont see this happening (at least not with all the companies mentioned).

Green Ronin liquidatign all their 3rd editon material tells me they are done with 3.5

And to an even more upsetting degree, Goodman Games pretty much stopped productuion of new DDCs the instant the 4th edition announcement was made.

I salute Paizo for seeming to be the only company seriously considering remainign 3.5 and I pray you do.

I dont think d20 will be the death of D&D...I think Hasbro will be.

Its true that a large number of gamers do not wish to make the switch to 4th edition because of the HUGE collection fo 3rd edition books they have.
This cannot be denied.

But the d20 OGL I do not believe is to blame.

Even those who only buy official WotC D&D books and nothing third party can still feel they have to many 3.X books to switch.

WotC flooded the market with books all by themselves without third party help IMHO.

They released an average of 2 hardcover books a month. They were releasing HARDCOVER $30 books faster than the average magazine releases issues.

For years I would say WotC needs to slow down or the only book ideas left will be really weak. Once that happens they will probably turn to 4th edition and that will be the death of D&D.

So far my prediction is comming true.

However, this is my totally inaccurate and wildly off-base definition: a tabletop, high-fantasy roleplaying game of the imagination which allows people to play class-based characters who have hit points, saving throws and levels. Probably set in one of the following campaign worlds: Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Planescape, et al

There are no more saving throws............NOT D&D!!! :)

EileenProphetofIstus' post about 8 or so above mine is perfect. All of her examples of why I dont like 4th edition are spot on...especially the first two.

You say there will be no Warforged and that Eladrin will be outsiders and not a PC race and Succubi will still be demons and Gnomes and Druids and Bards will still exist and all of these 3rd editon concepts will live on.

If so...THEN WHY SWITCH?
If you want everything in Golarion to keep on having that 3rd edition flavor and feel, then why not just keep using 3rd edition?

There are SO MANY people who are saying they will stay 3.5..Theres also tons of people who are telling you they will stick with you no matter what. So if you stay 3.5 they will stick around.

Lets not forget monsters that are in the 3.5 edition SRD that will not be in the 4th editon SRD like Frost Giants. Are you allowed to use them anymore? Lets say you can. They arent in the 4th editon MM so you will have to stat them out yourself. Then the 4th edition MM2 comes along and your stats dont match. Do you ret-con the stats? This goes for Gnome PCs too.

The only people you are in danger of losing are 2 groups:
1 - Those who are saying they will convert to 4th edition as soon as the core books come out they will not buy any more 3rd edition stuff as of May 08. They seem to be a very small minority (based on these boards and the Poll at least).

2 - Those who are brand new to D&D and will begin their gaming experiance with 4th edition. I dont think you are going to be getting much of their money. They will look through your stuff and see they cannot play as warforged or Eladrin yet gnomes are being treated like a core race and other things that will be odd or strange and not what they are used to.
Not to mention that the anal compleatists among them will not want to jump onboard with issue 13 knowing that the first 12 issues have a lot of "worthless" material in them.

I hate to say it..It makes me very upset and I dont want to say it...But once Pathfinder goes 4th edition I will say goodby.

I pray that you at least make the 3rd adventure path 3.5 and wait it out.

I agree about the scale...i love that they do that...but if a monster is to big then it shouldnt be there.

Either have tiny silhouette standing next to it on a seperate picture or (even better) have a small peice of the monster's portrait in the lineup so its to scale.

I read it from cover to cover, front to back.

I guess Im booring. :)

Its odd how different companies are handling the news.

When 4e was announced I prayed that my 2 favorite companies (Goodman and Paizo) wouldnt switch. That way I may loose WotC but Id still get great 3rd edition D&D products from Pathfinder and Dungeon Crawl Classics.

I dont need to tell you all how Paizo is handeling thangs and I applaud them.

Goodman however pretty much announced before Gencon was even over that they will be making 4th edition Dungeon Crawl Classics and stopped writing 3rd edition DDC immediatly. :(

They certainly are. And I don't have a problem with that, since a lot of what World of Warcraft does is actually really cool. And also to be honest... there's a lot more in WoW that's been inspired by D&D. (Gnolls, anyone?) It's certainly a two-way street.

Thats cool with me...WoW is cool. And yes there is TONS fo stuff from D&D that WoW has lifted...Its only fitting that it goes the other way around sometimes.

I do think its interesting that you assumed I was being negative when I asked if they were inspired by WoW. Not that I'm surprised though.
I wonder why so many D&D players are so anti-WoW.

By the way I got PAthfinder #3 yesterday. Right after I posted above.

I always get my stuff its just slow...I dont mind :)

Oh! And staying on topic...

The race lineup I liked.
But with the very tall and buff elf with really long ears..and with the cute gnome with the unatural colored hair I cannot help but think they are inspired by WoW.

Be honest...they are arent they?

Im not sure...I guess its like "pwned!" meaning getting a butt whoopin or if something is cool its "roxxorz!".

As long as Ive been on message boards I've seen "w00t!" as an expression of excitement like Huzzah!
I usually dislike internet speak but I liked woot and use it even in verbal conversation. :)

I've never asked where it came from.

Jason Grubiak wrote:

Paizo is awesome but their shipping is just REALLY SLOW.

I would not say it's their shipping that's slow. There are quite a few things they can't control between their warehouse and your house. Post offices speed and customs (for international shipments) can really slow the process. And Paizo has absolutely no power over those two.

On top of that, you can still chose for a faster shipping method if you absolutely want it fast and are willing to pay a few extra gold pieces.

Agreed..Im sure its not their fault. And i dont mind the wait if it means saving some coin.

Its just that It seems to take forever when I order from them..Yet if I get D&D books from Amazon the stuff shows up so fast it doesnt seem possible.

Lets give it a few months from the release of the new core books.

Come September 2008, what do you think the split will be between those who are now playing 4th edition compared to those who are sticking with 3.X?

I'm one of those guys who doesnt want to change and the news of a new edition comming out was a horrible blow that still upsets me. So I of course would like to think that there will be many gamers who will stick with 3.5.
However, I do not want personal feelings to judge cold hard facts. What is your untainted prediction of the future?

50/50? (I wish)
70/30 in favor of 4th? (my hopeful prediction)
95/5 in favor of 4th and I will be a hopeless relic?

Just wondering how you see things shaping up.

Other than September 2008...Whats your prediction for September 2009?

99/1 in favor of 4th?
4th Edition fails and WotC stops making books?

Have not received my Pathfinder #3 either.

Paizo is awesome but their shipping is just REALLY SLOW. I bought a bunch of stuff when the Green Ronin sale was anounced but dont expect anything to after New Years.

Just give them time.....A LOT of time, and you will get your book eventually.

I wonder...in all of 3e., has there been a new monster that is cool enough to become a new "staple Dungeons and Dragons" monster, like the beholder or the githyanki or the drow?

Im sure there are more...But the Grey Render and Grick definitly seem like core staple D&D monsters to me now.

If there is a conversion pdf I would stick around..Though I doubt it will be that simple. I think Paizo will have to choose one format or the other once they get a look at the rules.

I am one of those people who said they would cancell their subscriptions if Pathfinder converted to 4th edition.

Its not a threat when I say it..Its the truth. Erik asked for our opinion and I gave it.

What gets me is there are some people who actually think that everyone (or almost everyone) who says they will stick with 3.5 and will not convert are bluffing or making threats.
They are of the opinion that we are liers and we actually will convert to 4th when it comes out. That our threats to not buy 4th edition product is just hot air and we are misleading Paizo.
This opinion is almost insulting.

Does anyone own these Bleeding Edge Adventures? How are they? Im not just referring to the 1st one. I'm curious about the whole series.

How do they compare to GameMastery, Dungeon Crawl Classics and Necromancer Games Moduals?

Are they 3.0 or 3.5?

I guess at two bucks a pop you cant really go wrong but I was just curious if anyone has read them.

PS3 isn't worth getting just yet but half way through next year they'll be Wipeout HD and Tekken 5! :D

Thats nothing...About halfway though next year they'll be Star Wars Force Unleashed and Resident Evil 5! :D

(although I think both will be for 360 as well)

Definitly a Wii first if you dont own one. The thing is inexpensive and its cool as heck.

It pretty much can play every single game ever made for Nintendo. The original NES, Super Nintendon and Nintendo 64 games can be downloaded if the Wii is hooked to the internet. Gamecube and Wii disks can be just be played on it of course.

Short of handheld games I own every Zelda game on the same console.

Also online you can purchase Sega Genisis, Turbo Graphix 16 and Neo-Geo games if any of them float your boat.

Every Monday they release 2 or 3 new titles so every week I eargly anticipate what will be available (I keep hoping for the Sega Castlevania game Bloodlines).

Now of course there are people who dont like Wii games and having to actually move around to play them..And other people are not interested in old dated video games.

Out of X-Box 360 and PS3 Id go with the PS3. Admitadly right now PS3 has no desirable games..Only Ratchet and Clank 4 and Guitar Hero 3. XBox 36 however has alot of good games right now (Bioshock rules).

But I feel PS3 has the staying power and over the course of 2008 will blow XBox 360 away.

This sounds awesome...If 3.5 I will be all over this!! :)

If 4th edition...Oh well I guess I will save myself some money. :(

Can someone clarify this for me?

I was discussing with a friend the new way Dragon is being presented to us.
I made a comment saying that they are giving us so many preview articles that when issue #360 is finally available to download we will have read it already.

My friend tells me that there is no PDF that will be available later. The articles that pop up ocasionally that I have been reading is it. This is what Dragon Magazine is now.

I told him that is not right. It cant be.

If you go the the Dragon section of the Wizards Website it still says "Check out what’s coming in Dragon — our first digital issue! Issue #360 hits this month"

So it still says its coming, not that it is here.

Also it brags that there is a cover for #350 done by Marc Sasso. They cant possible say that the little picture on the page is the magazine cover can they? Thats stupid. There has to be a downloadable magazine that has a real cover.

Another thing is that they are using the traditional numbering system saying that the next issue is #350 picking up right where Paizo magazines were canceled.
If you leak an article or two every week or so thats not a magazine. Why give something issue numbers and a cover if its just web articles that arent relaesed all at once?

Im still convinced that a complete magazine PDF will be released and what we are getting now are just preview articles.

Can someone clarify for me?

OK Im very confused so please help me out.

At first the WotC website said in October Dungeon 151 and Dragon #Whatever will be available in October.

October is almost over and we have one preview advneture in the Dungeon section of the website and a bunch of articles in the Dragon part.

Is this really the magazine? We have been getting only previews thus far right?

Arent they going to release PDFs of the complete magazine? Arent these just previews?

I thought the mags arent even available yet.

The new versions of the magazines arent just web articles that are spit out erratically over the cours eof th emonth are they? If so whats the point and having a "cover" and an issue #?

As I've stated elsewhere (but has not been responded to) I truly beleive the inherent -game play- of D&D itself will change with 4e, and using adventures won't just be as easy as replacing monster stats.

30 years of adventures have written challenges to the rules and made use of them in the adventure itself. Encounter dynamics are changing, character abilities are going through the roof, the entire game has a completly new level and spell structure and I feel to make a truly good adventure you should be targeting the system as a whole, not just monsters.

And, yes, for the record I DON'T like the ideals 4e is pushing on my adventures and the type of pokeplay the're going for, so that's why when push comes to shove with me and my group, it's 3.5 alive.

I think it's this that Paizo is partially referring to when it admits fears they might not be able to tell "the types of stories they want to tell".

-DM Jeff

Exactly!

If you read the articles on WotC's website they are talking about how encounters with 3 or 4 monsters are boring and how in 4th edition battles will be against hordes of monsters at the same time (a way to make players spend $$ on more miniatures maybe?)

There's also an article that adresses the sample dungeon map Monte Cook created that appears in the 3rd editon DMG. It goes on to say how the layout of it is not good for 4th edition. To many little rooms and tight corridors. In 4th edition the rooms need to be bigger and more open to accomodate the giant battles that will occur.

There's also articles that discuss how the character levels go from 1 to 30 instead of 1 to 20. They also say you cant compare a 3rd editon 5th level fighter to a 4th editon 5th level fighter. The level based progression is so different its to hard to convert. Is a 20th level 3rd editon character equivalent to a 30th level 4th editon character. Not really sorta-kinda. Its to different to compare.

There's also talk of critical hits with spells, and non-magical classes still geting power from some form of power source.

Bottom line...Its more like a new game than a new edition.

So any ideas of trying to write and adventure that appeals to both editions isnt feasable. There would be much more to it than converting monster and NPC stat blocks. So publishing the adventure as 3.5 and releasing a pdf 4th edition conversion (or vice-versa) really cant be done right.

I am just kind of wondering what Monsters are not in the OGL I have herd Beholders but what else?

Ooo good question.

Beholders, Displacer Beasts, Mind Flayers and Yaun-Ti are all I'm aware of.

Ahh...Got it.

Thanks Ken :)

The OGL, in its current form, cannot be yanked.

The d20 license, on the otherhand, can be.

Since the prevailing feeling is that the d20 logo hurts a product more than it helps it, that's not a disaster.

- Ashavan

Forgive my total ignorance...But what is the difference between the OGL and the d20 licence?

Ive noticed the GameMastery and Pathfinder stuff does not have the d20 logo on them and just found that very strange.

Brent's post above is way to long to quote...But it perfectly sums up my feelings. If you blew past it because of the overwhelming size of this thread go back and give it a read.

So in short I will stick with Pathfinder and Game Mastery Moduals for the long haul until I die if they remain 3.5.
If they convert to 4th then I will drop off and just use all the 3rd edition stuff I've accumulated.

This opens the option of producing an improved "3.75" somewhere down the road to address a few commonly acknowledged problems with the rules without throwing out the three decades of tradition that have kept D&D, fundamentally, the same game since the very beginnig. At that point, it seems, Paizo would be producing a "Pathfinder" RPG that would be wholly independent of Dungeons & Dragons and Hasbro's plans. Such a plan carries with it considerable risk, but it may be the only serious option available to us for 2008.

Why? If you do not convert to 4th then just use 3.5. If not converting to 4th is the choice you make why do you feel this 3.75 is necessary? If WotC didnt announce 4th edition would you be looking into "commonly acknoledged problems with the rules"?

What do you think? Assuming the third Pathfinder Adventure Path, Second Darkness, remains 3.5, will you stick around?

Its the only way I WILL stick around. I have no intention of going to 4th edition. If the Third Adventure Path ends up not being 3.5 I will be heartbroken. You are worried about everyone converting and leaving 3.5 behind. I think (among the Pathfinder fans) that there are probably more players who will not convert than those that will.

Even though Castle Whiterock is #51 and The Secret of Whiterock is #51.5 the Secret of Castle Whiterock happens first.

So the smaller adventure is a prequel.
(Smaller being a gross understatement)

Unfortunatly I dont think Pathfinder (or any published modual) can eisily do a conversion.

If you read the articles on how 4th Ed is shaping up they address how 4th edition will make it possible to fight hordes of monsters all at once.

I cant explain it to well..but a 3rd edition modual translated to 4th will have the PCs fight small groups of enemies that wont be balanced out to well without adding more monsters.

A 4th edition modual translated into 3rd will cause the PCs to fight a giant amount of weakings with no challenge involved or a giant amount of tough enemys that will cause a TPK.

Changing statblocks will not be good enough...Conversions will need to be re-writes.

I like it. Does that mean I'm not a person?

I STRONGLY urge you to consider your CAPABILITIES to speak on behalf of MANY PEOPLE even when you FEEL STRONGLY about a SUBJECT.

Strong feelings felt by you != similar feelings felt by everyone.

The word "people" should never automatically be assumed to include everyone on earth. I am not foolish enough to think everyone agrees with my opinion.

If I wanted to mean everyone I would have said "No one likes that".

You know what I meant Mr.Sensitive. No need to try to start an argument. ;)

Still if I mislead anyone into thinking Im a jerk who is including them as a person who must be in agreement with my point of view then I apologise.

Oh and one last thing...

I STRONGLY urge Erik to have the first THREE adventure paths be 3.5th edition....Even if you get the 4th edition rules from WotC in the mail TODAY.

Take the time to feel out the changes and the public's reaction just like you said in your hypotetical that you posted above.

Dont just assume this bird will fly..It may just crash in a few months. At least you will be able to puff out your chest and say you upheld the classic game and didnt help kill it.

But once again I must repeat...What do I know? :)