What's supposed to be the rationalization for forcing the crew to drink rum? They're short-handed, but they require everyone to drink a poison which should slowly be killing them all? I'd understand if the upside of the drug made the crew more efficient until they expired (pluses to Str or Dex or effect of rage or whatever), but how does the ship possibly benefit by everyone being more eloquent and witty when they're off-duty and then dying within weeks? Not to mention being worse fighters and workers due to daily Con damage? Is the captain actively trying to kill his own men and scuttle his own ship for the insurance money, or what?
The rationale is...
Spoiler:
... that if the crew is slightly drunk the whole time when they're not working, they're easier to control and less apt to cause problems. The fact that the rum does Con damage is, in my opinion, unfortunate... and a side effect of some rules in the GameMastery Guide, I believe. The intent of the rum is ABSOLUTELY NOT to kill off the crew, but to keep them off-kilter. My suggestion would be to replace the Con damage effect of the rum with a 1d4 point Wisdom penalty that lasts for 24 hours. Or perhaps limit the damage to a total of 4 points—any damage in excess of that is ignored.
Why do the rules need to be changed? Because every game designer that has published Monk Archetypes or Monks in PFS, PFS of which is played with a strict adherence to the rules, have published their Monk contributions or NPCs in PFS modules under the assumption of 1 weapon flurries.
So Paizo has published lots of material under the assumption the Monk can flurry with all attacks using one weapon, from official NPCs in PFS scenarios, to Archetypes that don't work unless that mechanic is assumed to be true. So while the original intention of how the Flurry was supposed to work, was as Two Weapon Fighting, the reality is almost no one has been playing it that way.
There are many cases where the RAI doesn't make it to print, and gets changed. This should, probably one that gets changed because of how it's being played.
Given the sucess of Dervish Dance as a feat, nearly every dex build uses a scimitar and this feat, is there any chance we will see a similar feat but for the rapier?
Since Dervish Dance exists mostly to enable a specific type of in-world build associated with a specific deity and type of fighting popularized by her followers... it's unlikely we'll do the same for rapiers or any other weapon.
In fact... if "Every Dex build" is indeed taking the feat, that argues to me that it's too good of a feat in the first place and should probably have tougher prerequisites.
Actually as both GM and player, I like actions to have meaningful consequences, both negative and positive- while i'm not sneering down over my glasses at your play-style, its certainly not one I enjoy.
Even in Kingmaker, a delay on my players part cost them a pretty brutal attack on their capital. An attack which I fully rolled out with their NPC's defending the castle walls and in which major allies died. If the NPC's hadn't been so successful in defending it for so long, the place would have been sacked by the time my PC's arrived back. I ran the mass combat out in the open for my players to read as they raced home, right up until the last mass combat round (to preserve a little suspense).
If your playstyle involves there never truly being an incentive to hurry or knowing OOC that you won't be 'too late' for anything, of course the advantage goes to wizards and their ilk...
Even in Paizo AP's, I have my villains be pro-active. They aren't simply sat in a dungeon room, waiting to be killed off, waiting to start their ritual just as the PC's burst in.
Now that is simply my preferred playstyle; but I can tell you that the gap between Wizards and the other classes does not seem nearly as vast as you imply it is in such a playstyle. I often do not even see a disparity until 10th level +, due to a variety of reasons I am sure. Here are a few i'm fairly sure about-
1. Reactive world/playstyle and a sense of player urgency. It becomes fairly clear in my games that if your going to try and clear a dungeon or enemy stronghold bit by bit, novaing every encounter, that bad things are going to happen. This isn't just limited to counterattacks or reinforcements.
2. Intelligent tactics. A wizard has a very mighty toolbox. But there are counters to their spells and encounters do not occur on their terms in my games nearly as much as seems to be implied. Illusion magic in particular can make a wizard blow a significant portion of his payload on a minor threat and readied actions to shoot the spellcaster as he casts remain significant as long as the damage remains reasonably competitive.
3. Perception checks. I mean, seriously. The DC is not particularly high to hear your allies being slaughtered through the next door, or hear the wizard insisting everyone waits while he casts an endless series of buffs on himself.
Adequately prepared and armed with foreknowledge, there is no denying the Wizard in my games is always a force to be reckoned with; the most potent force in fact- when he gets everything on his terms. Villains and adversaries allowing this to happen is, in my eyes, some pretty poor DMing and quite possibly metagaming, depending on their intelligence and the resources available to them.
And Black Widow? I mean really? Little miss SHIELD Agent doesn't strike me as anything more than eye-candy for the 'Sexy Ninja'-loving geeks. Loki would impregnate her with a look and dump her in his harem of ex-girl friends.
Think that says more about you than it does about the Avengers.
None of those cool encounters make use of the haunt mechanics. Literally none of them. Not once is there mentioned a single way in which those encounters are made more mechanically interesting by using the codified rules for haunts.
Sure, you could use narrowly-defined haunt stat blocks for those encounters, but there wasn't a single point at which I read one of your cool encounter ideas and said, "Good thing we have this complex, non-integrated haunt sub-system so I can finally pull something like that off."
The phantom shift mechanics from AD&D 2nd Edition were much more robust than the haunt mechanics. A phantom shift was an effect sometimes found near a poltergeist's lair that created an illusion of a past event. If the PCs attempt to attack the illusion or it attempts to attack them, the illusion ends. The PCs are otherwise free to interact with the past event as if they were actually there for as long as the phantom shift lasts. That's it. No additional rules. No stat blocks. Just something creepy cool that non-hack-and-slash PCs can interact with in an open-ended manner. Now that's a mechanic with some serious storytelling potential. Haunts, by comparison, not so much.
Say one haunt causes desecrate which doesn't really hurt anybody, but that haunt also triggers the second haunt, say one that does animate dead, now the dead bodies in the shallow graves around you rise up and attack.
Or the GM just declares that the graveyard is desecrated and the corpses are zombies. There's no need for pseudo-trap rules that allow a cleric with a good initiative modifier to negate the entire encounter before it happens.
I'm with Set on this one: ghostly hauntings are a great story-telling tool, but they aren't improved by the mechanics of the haunt sub-system.
Now, if Pathfinder had a single unified mechanic that handled all hazards (including haunts and traps) the same way, just as it has a single unified mechanic for afflictions, I might be of a different opinion. At least in that case, everything would be streamlined. As it is, haunts are a clunky sub-system that isn't integrated with anything else, and expanding the rules for haunts can only make the sub-system even clunkier and less integrated with the rest of the game.
For many characters the only choice is to run away because only a small number of classes can deal effectively with a haunt with positive energy.
I feel your pain. Three character deaths and taking 5 days to clear Haunting of Harrowstone because we had to stop the adventuring day as soon as your cleric ran out of channels. After all the PC deaths we had 3 characters that could channel just to keep the game going.
For many characters the only choice is to run away because only a small number of classes can deal effectively with a haunt with positive energy. Worse, even the few classes who can deal positive energy damage, often can't do enough to destroy the trap outright.
Having recently encountered some haunts as a druid playing sole healer in a party, made me think that, of all things that 3.X did *not* need, was another way for a party to *need* a cleric (and only a cleric) to deal with a situation.
It might annoy some people, but there's nothing wrong with using a scimitar and saying it looks like a Longsword. Same with kurki/shortswords and the like. Honestly, you could take a greataxe and call it a scythe, or a heavy warhammer and call it a tetsubo or something.
You do not have to be enslaved by mechanics for your flavor.
Why bother with calling them anything, then? If what matters is that it does 2d6 damage, call it a 2d6 damage dealer - that's at least being honest. For some people, flavour matters rather more than mechanics; for other people, not so much.
There are two people who would have to know that this "longsword" wasn't really a longsword; the GM, and the player. I'm not prepared to play those kinds of metagames - either it's a longsword or it isn't. If it really matters at some point I might complain that the longsword has been unfairly emasculated by the rules, but until then I'll work within the limitations of the system.
After the dragonboob debacle you would think fantasy artists would pay more attention to the boob count on anthropomorphic creatures. Anyone who has ever owned a cat knows that the correct boob count for felines is *eight* though sometimes they have as many as *ten*. This catfolk is clearly shy a few boobs.
When it comes to setting bloat, the big example is the Forgotten Realms, but I'm not so sure that it was a problem of too much lore so much as it was a problem of too many big events.
This is a spot-on diagnosis I hadn't considered before.
A corollary from my personal experience is Dark Sun. I loved the original Dark Sun and all the actual setting books, but the advancing timeline with world-spanning events rapidly destroyed any interest I had in the setting. Not because the events were bad, necessarily, just because it became a pain to keep up with them.
So, as long as Paizo continues doing what they're doing, leaving it to each campaign (be it adventure path or homebrew) to advance the timeline and insert worldchanging events, we're going to be just fine.
I think (unless I missed someone's post), that people are forgetting the biggest reason that longs words were used in 1st and 2nd edition games: almost all the magic weapons found were long swords. It's been a while but I believe the percentage was something like 75% in the old DMGs. Very few players created their own magic weapons for their group and so most groups relied upon taking a weapon prof. (remember the days when you had to pick a specific weapon to be proficient with?) that would result in a weapon found that would be magical.
Not currently. Someday we might make a widget or something that lets you customize how the messageboards are displayed. I think people who want to do this sort of thing right now are using things like Greasemonkey scripts or custom CSS.
What about uploading your own avatar?
Due to copyright implications, we do not allow users to upload their own at this time. However, we have a pretty large variety of avatars to choose from.
Removed some posts. Just because you can type stuff like rapey sexualized "metaphors" into the little box and hit "submit post" doesn't mean it's OK. I've also edited the thread title. Wishing violence on actual human beings is not cool here, ever.
I personally find it annoying when my clients try and tell me how to do my job better (they're nearly always wrong). If they began with an opening gambit of wishing me violence, I'd be even less inclined to engage with them.
The hell do I care? It's not like they're going to suddenly learn how to do math or care to produce a quality product.
Also, their forum interface is terrible.
Yeah, and their moderation policies are too lenient.
Except for Goblins. They'll probally go for the horse every time, although maybe at range. =)
Want to keep a couple of goblins busy? Spam them with summoned Riding Dogs...
As for 'going for the mount / the familiar / the coup-de-grace'... I prefer to play the players' opposition realistically, and in character.
The battle hardened veteran unit will employ radically different tactics than a horde of orcs does.
A random bandit will not pause for slitting a downed enemy's throat if someone else is still attacking him (even if I, as GM know that said bandit would survive the AoO), while a hired assassin might, and a raving madman who is on a personal vendetta agains said downed enemy will.
If you play the encounters realistically, taking into account knowledge, personality, goals and morale of the opponents, the chance of reasonably being accused of making a dick move should be reasonably slim.
Simply taking the mathematically optimum choice, on the other hand, will lead to 'dick move' accusations. This is not a computer game we are playing.
This is really no different then a GM going to of his way to coup-de-grace cohorts (and PCs) in the middle of the fight just to get rid of them.
Just to be clear, you're not entirely against bad guys finishing fallen good guys in battle, right? Because in a world where one turn later that fallen good guy could be right back on his feet at full offensive capability thanks to the party healer, that's a legitimate tactic for a smart foe who knows there's a healer in the mix.
And a bloody nuisance for the player whose character you straight up murdered.
As a GM I really don't want to deal with the hurt feelings and wasted time of a player trying to rebuild a character or familiar or cohort.
Let's cut to the chase. Each of these things requires an investment of time on part of the player. Investment in writing, investment in book keeping, and investment in reading.
This investment is what attaches players to their characters and to those aspects of that character.
This actually is a good thing to me since I tend to run character driven games where much of the plot is determined by the actions of the characters.
You see I understand the investment that players have with their characters and understand that it's an immense nuisance to have to make a new one up particularly with the demands I make in detailing characterization and history to bring said character to life.
This does not mean I softball my players. And I think my players would agree that any softballing on my part is an illusion leading to the acid filled pit. The thing is I find practical ways of negating advantages and resources without resorting to making the player waste an hour of his time writing a new character.
Let's take for example the mounted character. "Kill the horse" feels like the mantra of a GM who is lazy with his encounter design. Why aren't your archers using low cover such as a wall or a log? Why aren't they disrupting charge lanes or flying out of reach of the mounted character? Where's the hindering terrain?
You want to kill the horse. I think that's a great way to have an angry cavalier rip your head off and a disgruntled player consider rerolling a barbarian with a far more annoying characterization because you keep murdering his mounts. I'd rather disrupt it and make the cavalier waste actions trying to fish out that potion of remove paralysis to force down the horses throat.
And TOZ makes an excellent point about the failure of communication. Player's need to know what they're getting into before rolling the dice. If you love targeting familiars and killing animal companions because that's "smart" they need to be aware that's a favored tactic so they can choose to work with something else. Fair warning is often all a player asks or needs.
James have you seen these home brew rules for Pathfinder? xoth.net/blog/
I am considering using them to run a "grittier" Golarion campaign for Jade Regent. Your sort of style?
I had not seen those rules.
My style of gaming is pretty much what's implied by the Adventure Paths. High magic, but grim, dark, and mature, with strong and interesting NPCs and story lines, now and then interspersed with light points and comedy. All gritty all the time gets exhausting. The PCs need time to relax and laugh.
To get back to the original post, I was a die hard 3.5'er too, but I like Pathfinder a lot better. Pathfinder gives you options. You can't just say: I'm a Fighter anymore. You class actually tells very little about you. You'd have to say I'm a ranged fighter. If you just say "I'm an oracle" people wouldn't know if they should make a healer because you'll take the tank role, or if they should make a tank because you have the healing role. I love that about Pathfinder.
When Pathfinder RPG was made what are the changes to the rules you would have most liked to see in the final product, that didn't make it in?
And how do you think about them today? Have your changed your mind about any, that it was for the better that they weren't included?
I wish we'd handled Versatile Performance a bit better so that it interacts with the bard's skill ranks in a friendlier manner, and I wish we'd named breath of life cure deadly wounds instead, so clerics could swap things out...
... but as for actual 3.5 rules I wish we'd have changed (rather than additions like the two above) I wish we had changed the rule that you can't sneak attack foes in concealment, so that rogues could sneak attack people in shadowy alleys. I know there's a rogue talent that lets you do that in Advanced Player's Guide... but I wish that we didn't NEED that talent.
Hobby Store support is important. Game Stores are a labour of love, there's no money in it. Game Stores are where new Role Players are built.
With respect, this is a belief that those who have decent game stores have. While I mean no disrespect to game stores and I'm sure they "build" lots of new players, it's only one avenue.
I've been gaming for over 20 years. I've introduced somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 players to RPGs over the years (with the number growing as I recruit my kids' friends into the new generation), and have never had the luxury of a gamestore that was worth a damn be within an hour's drive of where I lived, let alone one that held game sessions.
Hobby Store support has a role, absolutely. Is it essential in the 21st century? That's very situational. If you've got a good store, support it, but GMs are what build gamers by introducing them & recruiting them to the game. Game stores are optional to that effort.
Sidenote: In much the same way, D&D no longer is necessary to be the "gateway game" anymore. The PF Beginner Box does a really good job of fulfilling that role, as evidenced by my kids thinking that it's "awesome".
With the popularity of the Guide To the Guides thread, do you think that this would warrant a new product?
There's plenty of source material already in all the community created guides to pull from...
No, for 2 reasons.
1) I'd never heard of the "Guide to the Guides" thread, so it might not be as popular as you suspect.
2) We build the rules for the game. We do not want to tell you which ones are the "best." The whole "guide to building the best class" meme is a cool subject for a messageboard, but it's a TERRIBLE idea for an official publication from Paizo for a LOT of reasons. The biggest two being...
a) I honestly don't believe there IS one best choice for any one build. That's the fun of the game, building a character that YOU like. I'm not interested in tricking people into thinking that Paizo thinks that's not the case.
b) I would be bored stiff working on a project like that, and in my experience, when a designer/developer is bored stiff, it shows in print.
The effort to show diversity in artwork is more than just to try to replicate a specific real-world spread of various races in a given location. It's to provide people who may not identify with a particular gender or race to have a better chance of seeing art with which they can identify with in a given product.
I'm a straight white male, so I can't relate to not seeing something I can relate to in, well, just about everything from movies to books to gaming materials. But for women, folks with a non-heterosexual identity, or people of color, seeing an aspect of one's self represented in a non-stereotypical or non-patronizing way in media can add a connection to that material. And that's what we want to do as a brand and as a community: be welcoming, accepting, and affirming of diversity so that everyone can see this as a game and a community that they can join and call their own.
Recently, my six year old daughter has gotten deeply into Godzilla and Mothra films. And so over the last few months I have had the opportunity to repeatedly screen most of the 30+ Godzilla and Mothra films. I have learned several things...
1) Space is bad. Anything that comes from Space hates us and is likely pure evil.
2) Nuclear Testing is worse. Nuclear testing offends the gods, nature and giant lizards. Don't do this.
3) When little fairy girls ask you to do something, you do it. Now! It may already be too late.
4) Giant Heat Rays mounted on trucks are the biggest waste of tax dollars in the history of pork barrel spending. They do nothing but anger Godzilla. When he's angry, he breathes fire, melting your giant heat rays into costly slag.
5) Your tax dollars are better spent on plucky young scientists nobody believes. Their ideas may sound like hockum, but they might just work. They'll never drive off the Big G forever, but at least he'll swim off into the sunset poignantly today.
6) Japan is made of monster candy. They could attack anywhere on Earth, or at least anywhere along the Pacific coastline. But has Portland, Oregon ever been thrashed by kaiju monstrosities? Hell no. Not when there is delicious wonderful Japan just sitting there!
7) Do not accept help from the US military. They're help is even more worthless than the giant heat rays and they are probably responsible for the nuclear testing (boo! hiss!).
8) That glowing green thing in the lab? Don't ignore that. It may be man portable today but within the week it will be godzilla-scale in size and angry. Likely it is either from Space or from Nuclear Testing and we know what that means.
9) Your plan to create a monster jail and cage up the monsters -- yeah, that isn't going to work. Just thought I'd let you know.
10) History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.
I ran Black Fang's dungeon from the Beginner Box for my 9-year-old daughter the other evening, and she played the rogue with the Merisiel mini (except she calls her Iris). When the party all introduced themselves and said what they could do, she said, "I'm Iris, and I can do everything. I'm the leader, and I get all the treasure." When she overheard King Fatmouth and his goblins arguing, she sneaked into the room so she could, in her words, "stab, stab! Stab! STAB!" When Fatmouth asked who she was, her reply was, "I'm Iris, and I'm here to kill you all! Mwahahahaha!"
Exactly how concerned should I be, both for her and for society?
HA! Seems to me that she's doing it right! Well done!
First off let me apologize for my long absence from the Internet. I don’t use it for anything beyond work email these days and I am about as far out of the electronic loop as is humanly possible – my own fault, and my undoing on many levels.
I deeply apologize for the debacle that was Sinister Adventures – I can honestly say there has been nothing in my life I regret more than attempting to run my own publishing company. I have done severe damage to my own finances over the past several years, ruined my reputation as a game designer, and transformed a hobby that used to be the most enjoyable part of my life into my own personal mire of misery and shame. But most importantly I have alienated a host of lovely people who love RPGS. I used to take great joy in communicating with my former fans, and felt a growing camaraderie with several of the people who enjoyed my work, or even hated my work, but just downright enjoyed this great hobby. I let those people down, betrayed them, and damaged their enthusiasm for the game, not to mention lost the hard-earned money they entrusted to me through pre-orders.
I dealt with the avalanche of problems Sinister experienced ineptly to say the least. The failure of this company combined with crushing stress from my 90 hour-a-week day job of the last three years shook the foundation of my sense of self. This led to a downward spiral of alcoholism and depression.
My recent move back to Hawaii has restored a great deal of the vitality and psychological well-being I lost over the last few years and I am finally in a place to take serious action against the start-up gaming company that has become my personal nemesis.
I have lost over $15,000 personally on this endeavor through my gross ineptitude as a publisher. I paid for a great deal of top quality art, web design and other start up costs and then as problems arose that siphoned off more funds, I found the company wallowing in destitution. As the problems piled up, I eventually lost any ability to deal with them and kept attempting to tell myself I would “get around to it soon” once I was able to save up more funds and free up more time. I grappled with the idea of bankruptcy, but didn’t want to end up not giving those who trusted me their money back.
Fortunately I have been able to shift some funds around recently and replenish Sinister’s coffers enough to get everyone their money back. To ensure this happens in a timely fashion I will not trust my own dire worthlessness with the task. Instead the heroic Lou is once again stepping up to bat.
Through the invaluable assistance of Louis Agresta – one of the truest friends a man could ask for – I am now in a position to refund all and sundry for their pre-orders to Sinister. Lou has very kindly offered to assist me yet again, this time pooling through my mangled attempts at record keeping to ensure all of you who have not yet been refunded get your money returned.
Lou has posted instructions and details above.
Now allow me to move off my own dire failures as a businessman and human being and move on to a more salient point.
Paizo Publishing is a true gem - A company full of caring individuals who are entirely the opposite of Sinister Adventures. They care deeply about their fans, their authors, and the hobby. From my close contact with them for years, first as a rabid fan and aspiring writer, then as a go-to freelancer, then as a brief employee I have a unique view of the fine people of Paizo inside and out. They are compassionate, professional, creative, enthusiastic, and possessed of a deep well of forgiveness and generosity. They don’t just uphold high standards of how companies should operate – they set the standards as far as I’m concerned.
It hurts me deeply that their remarkable feat of kindness and an attempt to rehabilitate the degenerate hobbyist and writer I have become over the last few years could result in any sort of backlash. These fine upstanding people pour their love, blood and sweat into their company daily.
To those of you hurt by the Sinister fiasco: I implore you to keep the sights of your (righteous) anger focused entirely on me. I will happily give ample opportunity for those of you slighted (or worse) by my mistakes and failures a chance to redress the wrongs you suffered at Sinister (and my) hands. I will gladly listen to your anger, apologize, and try to make amends as best I can at Paizocon. I will attempt to run games for those of you who suffered from Sinister’s flop, languishing in limbo while awaiting news or refunds from me.
I humbly apologize for the long and resounding silence and for thinking I could get things back on the rails.
Thank you for your time and patience. Please follow the instructions and details Lou posted above on how to FINALLY get your money back.
I can understand that, but i can´t help but feel like if i have a cool idea about a LG Iomeadan Ninja i would be being silly. I know we are all different around the internet, with many cultural backgrounds all meshed together. Paizo worked so hard to make classes more like concepts, even without existing archetypes i can see someone making two paladins barely recognizable as being from the same class. Or can´t exist mwangi paladins because there weren´t knights orders in africa ? Ok, class combos hurt a lot, but maybe what the player want isn´t really a paladin/ninja, but a paladin-like ninja. Even shadows need justice.
For a question, would you like that questions like that said whether the person wants that you comment about the character CONCEPT or the character COMBO ?
And since you specifically call this idea out as an "Iomedean" ninja... that to me sounds even more implausible than before.
When I run a campaign, I put a LOT of work into that campaign in the form of creating the storyline and adventure and world. As a result, one of the things I ask of my players is that they build characters that make sense for the world—to encourage that, I generally provide the players with player's guides to advise them on their choices. If a player wants to play something weird our outlandish (be it an Iomedan Ninja or a Vulcan telepath or an awakened giant chipmunk with two heads), I'll TRY to figure a way out to work that PC into the adventure but in most cases I'll ask the player to, essentially, respect all the work I've put into the campaign by creating a character that isn't built to stick out like a sore thumb. I've said before of world design—you can define a world as much as by what you put IN the world as well as you can by what is NOT in the world. And in games I run... there are no paladin/ninjas.
I'm not talking about games anyone else may set in Golarion. I'm talking about my own opinions and my own games. Which INFORM the baseline of Golarion, but don't necessarily represent the norm in your game or anyone else's game.
AKA: I'm not the one you need to convince to let paladin ninjas be viable... your GM is.
I've got a door that's stuck. It requires a strength check of, say 16, to open. Now, as I understand it, to open this door, one must roll a d20 and add one's strength modifier to it (let's say it's +3). If I understand correctly, then that means that 60% of the time the character will fail to open the door. But why? Do the character's muscles fluctuate between atrophy and hypertrophy regularly? How can I reasonably put myself under a 225lb bench press bar if I can fail half the time to make my strength check? How does this work with carrying capacity and pull capacity and all of that?
Think of it as a stuck jar lid. Sometimes the lid just doesn't turn the first time you attempt to twist. You are more than strong enough to do the task but sometimes you fail. You just didn't get a good enough grip, your hand slipped, so you regrip and try again.
Is it really that hard to rationalize that it takes 3 or 4 attempts to burst open a barred door? Or a door with a bunch a bunch of furniture pilled up behind it? Sometimes you hit it just right, the right piece slides or breaks, sometimes you don't.
Here is a compiled version of the previous thread. These are (for the most part) conversions of the Second Darkness Adventure Path creatures to Pathfinder Beta Rules.
The format is an attempt to make things easier for DM's without searching the book for changes between v3.5 and PFRPG/Beta.
Spoiler:
The format has changed somewhat over time; When I have a spare minute, I will go back and clean up for consistency; Post corrections where you see errors. Thanks;
Until I'm completely done, some links will contain "coming soon" pages.
Thanks to Dennis, Anguish and AlKir for their input;
Enjoy,
~D
SHADOW IN THE SKY
Riddleport Thief (Shadow in the Sky p.9) -> CLICK HERE
Riddleport Thug (Shadow in the Sky p.9) -> CLICK HERE
Angvar Thestlecrit (Shadow in the Sky p.17) -> CLICK HERE
Thuvalia Barabbio the One-Eyed (Shadow in the Sky p.18) -> CLICK HERE
Old Scratch (Shadow in the Sky p.18) -> CLICK HERE
Angvar's Goons (Riddleport Thief) (Shadow in the Sky p.18) -> CLICK HERE
Gold Goblin Bouncers (Riddleport Thugs) (Shadow in the Sky p.18) -> CLICK HERE
Lavendar Lil (Shadow in the Sky p.20) -> CLICK HERE
Saul Vancaskerkin (Shadow in the Sky p.21) -> CLICK HERE
Drunken Brawlers (Riddleport Thugs) (Shadow in the Sky p.25) -> CLICK HERE
Cindersnake (Medium viper) (Shadow in the Sky p.25) -> CLICK HERE
Samaritha Beldusk (Shadow in the Sky p.26) -> CLICK HERE
Lymas Smeed / Otsk (Shadow in the Sky p.28) -> CLICK HERE
Braddikar Faje (Shadow in the Sky p.30) -> CLICK HERE
Zincher Thug (Shadow in the Sky p.30) -> CLICK HERE
Jasker Gant and Croat Thugs (Shadow in the Sky p.32) -> CLICK HERE
Kwava and Ganmeed (Shadow in the Sky p.35) -> CLICK HERE
Wererats (Shadow in the Sky p.36) -> SEE MODULE
Swarm (Shadow in the Sky p.37) -> SEE MODULE
Bojask and Pigsaw (Shadow in the Sky p.39) -> CLICK HERE
Gold Goblin Bouncers (Riddleport Thugs) (Shadow in the Sky p.40) -> CLICK HERE
Swamp Barracuda (Shadow in the Sky p.42) -> SEE MODULE
"One-Legged Louie" (Shadow in the Sky p.42) -> CLICK HERE
Darkland Sentinels (Shadow in the Sky p.42) -> SEE MODULE
While clarifying that my statements are in no way official for the purpose of PFS or other RAW systems, I can certainly clarify the RAI when I wrote the spell for the Andoran book (I think I originally called it "Escape Clause" or something similarly painful).
It is written the way it is on purpose; it is intended as a means for you to bust OTHER people out. Thematically, it was written with the slaver-busters of Andoran in mind, freeing people from their shackles and so on. The presumption is that you are already free and you are freeing others.
Casting the spell does use your immediate action, so you can't double up on immediate actions. As to WHY you can't use it on yourself; well, it's a 1st level spell. It's not SUPPOSED TO do everything.
Still a handy spell, as a 1st level spell should be, but not one that allows you to chortle evilly and never need to worry about being grappled again.
If you want complete freedom of speech you can do it on your own website. When someone is behaving like a jerk we'll take whatever measures we need to to ensure that our messageboards remain a fun and friendly place. Agitating and campaigning across multiple threads rather than answering the questions posed is jerk behavior. The Pathfinder rules, as published by Paizo Publishing, LLC, are not the result of a democratic vote. They are OGL, so if you want to create your own version you can totally go for it.
Some quick info, gleaned from announcements, press reports, and Oster's Twitter feed:
The first game will be the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate I + Tales of the Sword Coast.
The second game will be the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate II + Throne of Bhaal.
The games are being updated in a variety of ways, including a rebuilt Infinity Engine - just speculation, but I'm expecting HD graphics options.
The games will retain their 2D-isometric perspective.
There will be some new content, but no details on the extent of the new content.
New characters (if included) will have new voice actors.
The design team is going to try to make the games approachable for mod developers.
The games will continue to use their original (2nd Edition-ish) rules sets.
The games will be available exclusively through BeamDog (a digital distribution platform like Steam).
Summer 2012 release - no idea if this is for both games or just for BG1EE.
The team wants to see a Baldur's Gate 3. According to Oster, the Enhanced Editions are part of the "master plan".
Exciting stuff.
It's also heartening to know that the announcement still got plenty of coverage (too much, judging by the smoking remains of their server) on the same day as the Diablo 3 release date announcement.
So I think I have come up with a suitable alternative to awful awful gnomes. When the Advanced Race guide comes out I will recreate kobolds as a core race and then in my game lore of Golarion gnomes did exist at one time but there seperation from the first world drove them mad and they all eventually transformed into spriggans. What do you think?
I'd like to address to hostility towards the 1-handed flurriers with a simple analogy: DOORS!
What? Doors? Yes, doors. Doors have different ways of opening them: handles, knobs, flat plates, horizontal bar, etc. Have you ever walked up to a door with a handle and tried to pull it, only to discover that you were actually supposed to push on it? What happened there? Well, next time you come across such a door in a crowded area, pull up a chair, sit somewhere you can see this door, and watch, as person after person comes up, tries to pull the door, gets flummoxed, and then pushes it open. What's going on? It's a design issue. People walk up to this door, see an object (the handle) and interpret that to mean "Pull on me to open". Thats what handles do, they say pull. Compare that to a door with a flat plate or a door with a bar, both of which "say" push. Now, who's fault is the misinterpretation? Do we say it's the people's fault? Some people probably figure out that the handle should actually be pushed on, so clearly all the others are just stupid, right? Does that seem fair? No, the problem is that the door was designed poorly by whoever decided to put a handle on that side of the door, rather than something that more obviously says "push".
Similarly, I'm really tired of hearing people say that those who misread the flurry MUST have been trying to powergame, and even if you weren't, YOU MISREAD therefore it's your own damn fault because you are stupid. This simply doesn't follow. The "door design" in this case, the wording on flurry, was unclear. How do you know that it was unclear? Well with the door example, you know because some large fraction of the population is using it incorrectly. This is the ONLY relevant measure of door interpretation accuracy. It doesn't matter if you cover the door with "push" signs, if people still come up and use it incorrectly, it is still the door designers fault. YOU CAN'T BLAME THE USER FOR MISINTERPRETING, YOU CAN ONLY BLAME THE BAD DESIGN! BLAMING THE USER IS NONSENSICAL! This obvious fact gets lost on these boards due to accusations of munchkining, which, ok, you can do when it's a couple people "cheating", you can't use this excuse when it's clearly a large fraction of the population.
All that said, I obviously hold no ill will towards the designers here :) any attacks on them are equally unjustified because mistakes are unavoidable. This is a particularly confusing mistake, but the overall quality of their stuff is obviously awesome, otherwise we wouldn't all be here
I remember seeing this example of bad door design in The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. He repeats the description in his blog post When Bugs Become a Feature. I try to keep informed about design because I work on a software design team. And I read through this entire thread because it is really a discussion about design and the emotional impact it has on people (and because I am passionate about Pathfinder).
Ironically, as Jason Bulmahn explains in comment #144, he was following a good design practice: "The intent of this particular rule was to marry the flurry of blows ability to the Two-Weapon Fighting feat tree, so that we could easily control and correct any problems that came up, and to have those corrections universally apply to everything that interacted with it." Consolidating design typically lets the new player learn the rules more quickly and correctly.
However, he was grafting the old D&D 3.5 Flurry of Blows ability onto the Two-Weapon Fighting tree, and the graft did not take well. The phrase, "as if using the Two-Weapon Fighting feat," means that the monk is not truly using the Two-Weapon Fighting feat and the reader should be alert for exceptions. Exceptions were made: exactly full Strength bonus for off-hand and two-handed hits, only monk weapons or unarmed strikes, and no natural weapons. The exception about shields and armor was mentioned off in the proficiency section. Thus, the phrase, "any combination of unarmed strikes or attacks with a special monk weapon," was easily interpreted as another exception.
In addition to the emotional impact on those who loved the 3.5 version of Flurry of Blows and belatedly discovered this week that it had been taken from them, those of us who wish to follow the Pathfinder rules are upset because we are not sure which exceptions are allowed. Obviously, the Zen Archer's Flurry of Blows should still allow the archer to shoot two arrows, but "obviously" is not the proper word to use when we learn that we have misinterpreted the rules. Some players view unarmed strike as a single weapon, which means that the corrected flurry would allow only a single unarmed strike during a flurry. Some players wonder whether a monk can flurry to get a single attack with a two-handed reach weapon--assumed the monk is using an archetype that allows such a weapon--and skip the second impossible attack, or whether the rules full-out forbid flurrying with a two-handed reach weapon.
Other players simply worry that the monk becomes a little more complicated to play, because it becomes necessary to track the detail of which limb has delivered which blow. Players proposing the counterintuitive-yet-legal idea that the monk can get two blows with one weapon by switching the weapon to the other hand with Quick Draw between the attacks are creating circumstances that make that tracking necessary.
I admire Aosaw's effort in comment #382 to write a more coherent version of the Flurry of Blows rule to clear up the confusion.
Lazurin Arborlon wrote:
1) Wouldn't Zen archer fall under ammuniton (ie: arrows)and still be flurry-able just like Shurikens. The bow is just in intermediary for your projectiles.
2) Can you then dual wield Temple swords? As in does their being a Monk weapon superscede the size requirements for two weapon fighting.
Also as a statement, this whole deal does suck for the Monk. Seems like they lost a lot of versatility in the name of clearing up some wording. Piggy backing on TWF may have been appealing for simplicity sake, but for a class that already didnt have enough feats and relied on expensive equipment this is just more gas on the fire.
Thank you, Lazurin Arborlon, for letting me respond to a recent comment. I visualize bows as two-handed weapons because one hand is needed to hold the bow, the other hand is needed to draw the ammunition, and both hands work together to aim the bow. Unfortunately for the Zen Archer, the rules state that bow itself is a two-handed weapon. Ammunition has an ability to be drawn as a free action even though both hands are occupied with the bow.
Equipment wrote:
Shortbow: A shortbow is made up of one piece of wood, about 3 feet in length. You need two hands to use a bow, regardless of its size....
Equipment wrote:
Ammunition: Projectile weapons use ammunition: arrows (for bows), bolts (for crossbows), darts (for blowguns), or sling bullets (for slings and halfling sling staves). When using a bow, a character can draw ammunition as a free action; crossbows and slings require an action for reloading (as noted in their descriptions). Generally speaking, ammunition that hits its target is destroyed or rendered useless, while ammunition that misses has a 50% chance of being destroyed or lost.
Although they are thrown weapons, shuriken are treated as ammunition for the purposes of drawing them, crafting masterwork or otherwise special versions of them, and what happens to them after they are thrown.
As Lazurin Arborlon illustrates, ammunition is another fuzzy area. We are accustomed to archers using Rapid Shot to gain two ranged bow attacks without iterative attacks (i.e., the +0, -5, -10 series of attacks that come with BAB of 6 or higher), so the Zen Archer using one bow never struck us as strange. That is how a projectile weapon shooting ammuniton behaves. I would prefer that the Zen Archer clarifcation to Flurry of Blows rules give an exception for ammunition rather than for bows, because I liked having my monk able to throw two shuriken with one hand while holding a monk weapon in the other.
Yes, under the corrected Flurry of Blow rules, a monk can dual-wield temple swords. However, the usual two-weapon-fighting penalties for having the Two-Weapon Fighting feat and not having a light weapon in the off hand are applied. These penalties are spelled out in the Two-Weapon Fighting section of the combat rules. Each temple sword will have a -4 to attack rather than the -2 usually applied to Flurry of Blows.
RD, you are going to think I am deliberately trying to criticize you, and I'm not. I generally think you contribute a great deal to these boards, more than I do for sure.
But you asked.
Moral dilemmas should be done very, very carefully. And only when the party is prepared to confront one. I know GMs who delight in putting their characters in situations like this where they have to choose between bad, worse, and pure evil, and if they choose wrong, the GM will nail their asses.
As a player when this sort of thing comes up, I admit it, I try to break the campaign. I want to do everything in my power to discourage the GM from turning what should be a fun afternoon into an agonizing dilemma with no "win" except to accept the path the GM clearly wants them to take so that they can avoid the GM's inevitable retribution.
Sometimes as a player you feel like you are in a no-win situation, even if the GM doesn't think so. If this is a recurring situation, players can grow very frustrated and do things that are completely out of character for their actual characters.
I have always considered this sort of moral dilemma to be something to approach with great care, serious contemplation and multiple opportunities to bail out if the party is not "getting it." And I do this sort of thing very, very rarely and only if my group is very mature and have shown a willingness to play their characters above all else.
You can edit your posts for one hour after posting.
In my opinion, I think that's generally enough time to edit for simple mistakes, and typically avoids too many replies to those mistakes. If edits were allowed for a longer period of time, discussions could easily be confused, since some would have replied to the original post while others reply to the edited post.
It lies in wait for the unsuspecting once again...
Soda Machine
XP 9,600
NE Large construct
Init –5; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +2
Aura fear aura (5 ft., DC 10), frightful presence (5 ft., DC 25),
Defense
AC 26, touch 6, flat-footed 26 (+20 armor, +2 deflection, –5 Dex, –1 size)
hp 130 (+30)
Fort +13, Ref +9, Will +12
; Immune acid, cold, electricity, fire, poison, sonic, construct traits
Offense
Speed 0 ft.
Melee fall 24 (3d20+4/18–20)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Special Attacks Dispense Soda, poison, rock throwing (0 ft.)
Tactics
Before Combat
Once filled, the Soda Machione lies in wait for unsuspecting Paizo employees
During Combat
Soda Machine uses its Dispense Soda attack whenever a Paizo employee puts a quarter in the slot and presses a button.
Morale
When bereft of all soda, Soda Machine will stop using its Dispense Soda attack.
Statistics
Str 16, Dex 1, Con 18, Int 1, Wis 14, Cha 1
Base Atk +0; CMB +4; CMD 11 (can't be tripped)
SQ compression, no breath
Special Abilities
Poison (Ex) Soda; save Fort DC 14; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect 1d4 Con; cure 2 consecutive saves.
Jason wrote:
I am done with my development pass....
Jason
Soda Machine CR 10
XP 9,600
NE Large construct
Init –5; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +2
Aura frightful presence (5 ft., DC 25),
DEFENSE AC 26, touch 6, flat-footed 26 (+20 armor, +2 deflection, –5 Dex, –1 size)
hp 101 (13d10+30)
Fort +4, Ref –1, Will +6
Immune acid, cold, electricity, poison, sonic, construct traits
OFFENSE Speed 0 ft. (can't move)
Melee fall +20 (3d10+12 plus poison/x3)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks Dispense Soda, poison, soda throwing (20 ft., as rock throwing, but only soda)
TACTICS Before Combat Once filled, the Soda Machione lies in wait for unsuspecting Paizo employees
During Combat Soda Machine uses its Dispense Soda attack whenever a Paizo employee puts a quarter in the slot and presses a button.
Morale When bereft of all soda, Soda Machine will stop using its Dispense Soda attack.
STATISTICS Str 26, Dex 1, Con —, Int —, Wis 14, Cha 1
Base Atk +13; CMB +22; CMD 27 (can't be tripped)
SQ compression, no breath
SPECIAL ABILITIES Poison (Ex) Soda; save Fort DC 14; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect 1d4 Con; cure 2 consecutive saves.
DEVELOPER NOTES
- This stat block was really sloppy with numerous math and formatting errors. I am not even sure I caught them all in my brief pass.
- Send not to author asking what the intent was of the dispense soda special attack. As a note, I am not sure the compression ability is doing what the author intends. I mean, it has a compressor and all.. but thats not really the same thing.
- I do not recommend that we use this author again...
Sometimes it's easy to avoid doing anything as a result of what you read. "Ok, there's a red dragon in the dungeon. Bah, I'm a fighter, I don't say anything and I march in there an hit it like I would if I knew nothing about it."
Sometimes it's hard to avoid and you can tie yourself into knots thinking about it: "I know the next section has a lot of fire-based monsters, I shouldn't learn Cone of Cold when I level up. Or would I have taken anyway if I didn't know? Maybe I should take a fire spell just to be sure I'm not metagaming?"
Sometimes it's flat out impossible: "Well, now I've read the riddle and know the answer. I guess I'll just shut up while everyone else tries to figure it out."
Or you just spoil your own enjoyment by knowing the big reveal or plot twist ahead of time.
It's worst for me when I know something out of character that I might be able to figure our in character. Or I have more pieces of the puzzle OOC. It's very hard to figure out what I'd be able to guess at.
There have always been rules-lawyers and the like, all the way back in 1st edition.
But most of the stuff the original poster is hearing complaints about (e.g. PCs should be magically protected while they rest, monsters in another room shouldn't be able to join in the battle, the GM shouldn't be able to adjust difficulty levels, etc.) has nothing to do with rules lawyering or things being "as written".
It's just whining about how the game is too hard.
Hundo wrote:
Is this what playing rpg's has come to ? Not so much as an rpg but just a fancy boardgame as it appears he thinks it should be ? What has happened to the creative license that I learned to run games with ?
Most of those complaints I've never heard before in any edition of the game, so I don't think it's a matter of things changing over time. I think you just have one player with a screwy idea of how tabletop RPGs work.
Having said that, I personally have been guilty of criticizing a GM for putting in an encounter that I thought was too hard compared to the "original" encounter from the module. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's true. However, I probably would have done the same 20-25 years ago, so it's not a matter of edition in my case.
- You're using a lot of passive voice, though. Try and avoid as many conventions of the verb "to be" as you can. So, go back and highlight just the places where you used "is"..."are"..."was"...and "were" etc. If the majority of your write-up is relying on those types of verbs, you need to work on replacing them with more active verbs to make your prose read better and come across as more evocative.
- Go back through and identify all the usages of the verb "to be" by highlighting "is"..."are"..."was"...and "were"...and you'll see you rely way too much on that to convey your ideas. Overall, your writing would be stronger if you can find ways to use more active verbs as you present your villain's backstory and the location's history. Sometimes, it's okay to rely on a "was" or "were" when talking about things in the past. But use them sparingly.
Pet peeve: Passive voice is not the same as using forms of the verb ”to be“.
It often feels like I'm a minority, but I'm not a fan of 3PP in general and definitely not in official pathfinder material. I'd personally prefer for it to remain strictly optional and not utilized in paizo products at all.
I also don't think several attempts at the same concept is necessarily bad.
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