KnightDisciple's page

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

Mikaze wrote:

That does it, I'm taking on a self-imposed challenge to write a female monk vs. succubus fight scene tonight while staying on the high ground and have the succubus entirely in character and make it classy.

Will there be snacks?

You might want to hold off for a bit longer on those. It uh...kind of turned into a full blown short story somewhere. Right now I'm trying to work out locations and specific religious rites.

All I can say is that the monk is based on the Qinggong monk art from Ultimate Magic and that the story is not porny, despite the elements involved.

*KD scoots his chair closer*

What kind of bear? Brown? Blonde? Brunette?

I would think Brown, they're more common. Maybe with some extra fur coloration? You know how some bears get with their fur.

KnightDisciple wrote:

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

Lamontius wrote:

no no no how are we taking something worthy of discussion like this succubus and lady druid all rolling around with each other and instead turning it into tentacles and grapple checks and vague RAW/RAI interpretations and oh man guys don't let me down now.

OK, so we need to know if this lady druid was all buff while she was bare.

Bears are usually pretty buff, right?

The buff bare druid buffed her bear form?

Not enough buff!

So:
The buff bare druid buffed her buff bear-in-the-buff form.

Lamontius wrote:

no no no how are we taking something worthy of discussion like this succubus and lady druid all rolling around with each other and instead turning it into tentacles and grapple checks and vague RAW/RAI interpretations and oh man guys don't let me down now.

OK, so we need to know if this lady druid was all buff while she was bare.

Bears are usually pretty buff, right?

no no no how are we taking something worthy of discussion like this succubus and lady druid all rolling around with each other and instead turning it into tentacles and grapple checks and vague RAW/RAI interpretations and oh man guys don't let me down now.

You're looking at this all wrong!

We're talking about both, man. We're, ah, satisfying everyone!

People who look in here for crunchy peanut butter find it!
People looking for creamy peanut butter: Find it!

Everyone goes away both happy and having eaten peanut butter.

Except for whoever gets drained by the succubus. They don't get peanut butter.

KnightDisciple wrote:

Also, AD, I'm bringing popcorn and cucumber sandwiches and little smokies.

Sigh, I am going to have to try to make my will save before commenting on the number of hands required for those snacks KnightD...

Oops... failed.

Well there's a table, obviously. I just want to provide options!

KnightDisciple wrote:

Also, AD, I'm bringing popcorn and cucumber sandwiches and little smokies.

Where is this thing going down? I'll bring beer, or soda.

I'm assuming Mikaze is doing a test reading for a target audience later? Wherever that is!

Right, I don't think the ability is anywhere outside of anything else you could accomplish during a grapple under any other set of conditions, and it seems unnecessary to limit this ability beyond what is explicitly stated in the description which is "An unwilling victim must be grappled..." and that the victim must be "lured into an act of passion, such as a kiss". As long as there's skin contact and the vitcim has the grappled condition, it seems groovy to me.

Exactly.

I think Ssalarn makes a valid point about slight vagueness with the ability.
As well, there was the bit from the rules regarding the abilities you can use when you're grappled; a succubus's drain ability seems rather reasonable.

Maybe make it a special grapple DC that you have to exceed the succubus's check by? So if you're a superhumanly good grappler, you can perhaps avoid the Drain, but otherwise, well, you should have known what you were getting into.

Also, AD, I'm bringing popcorn and cucumber sandwiches and little smokies.

Well, again, we don't *have* a crafter in our group.
Which, really, is part of the problem. The theme I'm getting is that you "have" to have someone in the party who's invested in crafting just to not get totally shafted by NPC craft times and prices.

And again, my main focus is on improvements to existing items, not creating new stuff whole cloth.
I mean, there's the "stopgap" of having crafters make a bunch of "x use per day" items for buff spells like Gravity Bow, Divine Favor, and so on.
But I'm the sort who loves the idea of his character's weapon growing *WITH* the character, that same bow being used to fight skeletons, then orcs, then minor devils, then vampires, then that necromancer dude, then...
Like lastblackknight said, at some point if you're going after stuff that's bigger and nastier you need bigger and nastier gear.

I don't foresee it really helping me one iota in our current campaign, not at this point. But I'm at least trying to see if anyone else has the same perspective for the sake of future campaigns.

I should note that we *do not have a crafter in the party*.

Has anyone else been frustrated with the quickly-absurd time it takes to make, or especially just upgraded, a magic item?

For my example, I'll point to weapons.

Just to get a weapon from a +2 to a +3 total is...over a week. If it's the numerical enhancement you're increasing by a whopping 1, that's especially grating. 10 days for +1.

Why is it frustrating? Well, 3 areas stand out.

From a purely meta point of view, if your module or campaign is on a constant time crunch (I'm in a group playing Council of Thieves, so that's pretty typical for that AP in the last 3 books), you're forced to spend extra money to ever achieve upgrades, specifically because you're constantly selling old weapons and buying the next grade up. While I'm sure some DM's will give an evil laugh at that, it's annoying as a player to have to think "ok, I need to set aside X amount since I'll have to sell my old sword for the next step up".
I mean, I've played WoW, and having to constantly buy or loot weapons that are *incrementally* better is very much a big part of *that* game. Being basically forced to do the same in an RPG system that people flocked to because it "wasn't video game-y" (a whole other argument that's got no place here at this time) kinda shakes things up, doesn't it?

From a semi-meta, semi-IC sense, it's jarring because it basically requires having a Magic Mart with a Trade-In Program constantly available to buy and sell incrementally better weapons for *everyone* in the party in this non-hypothetical time crunch. I mean, otherwise one character's going to quickly lag behind and have more and more trouble in fights.

"You don't *have* to get better gear", you say? You pretty much do.
Pointing to Council of Thieves again, my group just finished the 5th book (forgot the title). The final boss, Sivanshin (spelling?) had a rather high Armor Class; if my memory from last night serves, it was something like 32-33. For my very much optimized/focused Archer Fighter, who had several pieces of gear aiding him as well as basically every feat he owns and all his class features, he still had an at least decent chance of missing. "Boo hoo munchkin!" you say? My point there is that if someone doesn't tailer-build themselves for a higher attack bonus, and/or didn't have time to buy several items that enhance stats, attack, and so on, they would have been in deep trouble, because he would have been very hard to hit. Like, rolling 18-20 territory, which is a very slim margin.
The larger point is that as the enemies ramp up, if your only increase to attack ends up coming from BAB, you're going to start running into severe trouble.
One way or another, Pathfinder RPG is still a game where you need to get better loot/gear to realistically face higher level foes.

Finally, in a fully thematic sense, the constant trade-in when facing any reasonable time crunch (because needing to wait 10 days, or 24 days, or more, is a bit much if there's any urgency at all) means that you don't get to actually have a weapon *grow with you*. You don't get a "legendary" bow or sword or spear or anything. Maybe once you're max level and just dump cash on a wizard or something, and end up with a "legendary" weapon that's called that solely due to its relative power...
But there's no *history* between you and that weapon. There's no way to make it an Excalibur, an Anduril, a Gae Bulg, a Mjlonir, or anything similar. Not with the same impact, anyways. Unless your game gives you days upon days of downtime every time you level, you may well never be able to say "This is the same sword I once slew a goblin warleader with. Then I slew an angry dragon. Oh, and the demon prince I fought, I used this thing too.". You can have one of those, but not all of them.

If I'm missing something, if *upgrading* a weapon takes much less time than *making*, help me out here.

Otherwise, I'd like to at least think I'm not the only one frustrated by this.

Here's a thought. Part of the reason I dislike the current concept is due to the fact that it can be applied to any example of the deity's favored weapon; a paladin of Iomedae would be able to apply the ability to any longsword. But the paladin is, in essence, bonding a spirit with his or her weapon; being able to switch out weapons doesn't make sense.

How about this: At 5th level, a paladin can bond a celestial spirit into a masterwork example of his or her deity's chosen weapon. The weapon gains a +1 enhancement bonus, is good-aligned and lawful-aligned for the purposes of overcoming DR, and can shed light as a torch at will (let's face it, light is a dime a dozen ability, especially now that wizards, clerics, etc. can easily cast it at will). The enhancement bonus can be increased normally through traditional means.

In addition, the weapon gains a +1 bonus that can be used to apply weapon properties, as a standard action, for a specified duration (be it so many times per day, so many turns, or whatever else is decided). For every three levels beyond 5th, the weapon gains another +1 bonus, to a maximum of +6 at 20th level.

The result is a permanent symbol of the divine bond between a paladin and his or her deity, but with only some of its abilities available at all times; the weapon properties still have to invoked to be effective. Conceptually, it seems to fit better. Mechanically, not much has changed.

What does everyone think?

I would put in that, for reduction of abuse, there should be some kind of clause about how often the bonuses can be changed out. Maybe make it a beginning of the day mediation thing, and can be switched around with an hour of focus or some such? I.E., in the morning, you pick your, say, 2 abilities (we'll say keen and flaming). Every time that day you use the full power of the bond, the weapon has those enhancements. If you wish to change them, you have to meditate an hour (I would say all that would do would be change things around, not restore uses). What do you think?

Don't you understand?

In 4th edition THERE IS NO BLOOD WAR!

They took the entire cosmology and FLUSHED it.

I can't reconcile my 20+ year Forgotten Realms game with the crap they're doing. It's not possible. My game doesn't have a Feywild, or an Elemental Chaos.

So basically, Wizards is spitting in my face and throwing me out the door, regardless of how much money I spent on their hobby and would have continued to spend if the cosmology remained convertable.

Thanks, Hasbro!

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but there wasn't much on the Blood War, if any, in the 3.5 MM, right? Wasn't it described more in things like Manual of the Planes, Fiend Folio, etc.? Besides, can't you just re-inject the Great Wheel back in? Or, barring that, re-institute the Blood War? I mean, really. Please calm down. After all, doesn't every homebrew campaign tweak the cosmology anyways? *Shrugs*

Tal entertains the tavern-goers with an inspired rendition of The Lay of Tyr the Boweldigger, which elicited tons of applause and one frown. After some partying, the party called it a night.

"Frown" doesn't cover the degree of loathing I tried to transmit to that blasted pansy-boy elf bard. It's bad enough I keep taking shots for the "team", he has to go and pick my worst moments to put in some infernal song, just for his own amusement and profit! Why, it makes a man wonder whether he can trust anyone these days....*goes off mumbling curses*

Also, aren't dwarf women beardless in at least 3.0, if older additions? They may have added some "hotness", but non-bearded women isn't that new, is it?

I, for one enjoy the no-win moral conflicts which playing a paladin often entails. I'm not thrilled with the idea of assuming paladins to be psychologically healthy. My favorite literary paladins are Don Quixote and Milla Jovovich's Jean d'Arc. Paladins ought to be unreasonably committed to unreasonably high ethical and moral standards and should have to face the cognitive dissonance of the world they inhabit.

Am I the only one who wants these creatures to have a bonus to Escape Artist checks?