I've never really understood the mindset of assuming all longer lived races should be "higher level." One, it kind of assumes a uniformity of time = character level, rather than potential + challenge = character level. I'm not saying that I'm better at thinking these things out, just that it never really bothered me much.
Two, it assumes that everything that a character can possibly learn is quantifiable in game terms. Dwarven craftsmen could learn, for example, how to keep weapons from normal wear and rusting, which means that a non-magical dwarven weapon will last much longer than a human weapon, but it has no bearing on any game stats for the weapon, but might take years to teach someone.
Elves might learn tons of poems and songs that don't relate to anything directly, or at least they might have, say the same two ranks of Knowledge (History) that a human has, but the human literally just learned the facts, where the elf figures out the facts from the twenty songs and fifteen poems he learned as a child.
Hell, in real life I know that 9 out of 10 people can learn something one way, and that 10th person will take forever to figure out the same thing. They aren't dumb people, it just does not click with them until it the "right" way to learn occurs to them.
Again - legal gray area. And I can guarantee you that Sony Entertainment can out-lawyer Wizards of the Coast at least 10 to 1.
Well, if you want to get into legal brief waving at each other between companies, I'm pretty sure if Sony were go great guns on WOTC, Hasbro gets involved, which bumps things into different territory than just Sony versus WOTC.
Edit: And, actually, I've been remiss in noting that what WotC is essentially threatening isn't an actual Intellectual Property violation - but a licensing violation. Essentially, by identifying something as "product identity", then they're binding any and all third parties who want to use said product identity into playing by their licensing rules. (Although, as far as I remember, their rules are "you can't play", so *any* use of mind flayers/githyanki is likely to be seen, from Wizard's perspective, as a violation of their "license".)
Of course, the problem with that theory is that these licenses - the OGL, GSL, and Paizo's licensing - have never been tested/approved by the Courts. As such, they're kind of a legal dare, and exist...
Actually, if you look back over the history of the OGL, WOTC traditionally wasn't threatening anything . . . they were saying that, "hey, instead of going into legal pissing contests, how about we say you can use this stuff without any problems, and if you agree to this, you won't touch the stuff we don't want you to touch."
The point of the OGL was much more about WOTC agreeing certain things were fair game than WOTC trying to say things that weren't. It was a pretty cool idea, in all honesty, and I don't want to take anything away from WOTC for the original intent of the OGL.
Mind Flayers, Beholders, Gith, Umber Hulks, and a few others are closed content that Paizo almost certainly won't ever be able to use.
And also, members of the Paizo staff have elaborated that in no uncertain terms do they want to do "near misses" that skirt the intent of keeping these monster closed content.
I.e. no floating eyeball monsters or brain eating tentacled humanoid aberrations with different names, for example.
First off, I loved the APG, and I think it managed to do in one book what the Complete Series had to have multiple volumes for, and did many similar things in a much better, much simpler way.
That having been said, I can empathize with wanting to just blanket allow something. There have been many, many 3rd party products that have had some real gems in them, but if I can say "X is legal," I don't want to complicate things in the campaign by saying "Pages XX through XX are good, but not the sidebar on page XX, and pages XX through XX are right out."
I'm biased, but I think Cap has a lot of potential. I do like how they've touched on him being out of time, subtly w/o making him an idiot.
I have said this before on some other forums, but yeah, I think Hank in this show reminds me of Hank when he was the science advisor to the West Coast team, not really that interested in being a super hero, but wanting to make a difference with his talents. I think as he is now he makes a nice counterpoint to Tony.
I think, and I could be wrong, that they are playing up that Cap is out of time, so he's letting others take point and helping out where he can. Its nice that they can subtly show him a bit lost without going great guns on the "gee willikers, its not the fourties anymore!"
I am hoping, however, once he gets his bearings, he starts becoming a bit more assertive. I'll be interested to see if we start seeing some chairman changes down the road and how it affects the team.
And I really liked the quote from Gamma World, as well:
Spoiler:
When Tony somewhat jokingly was going to have Black Panther enter first, and Cap gets out of Tony's way and says, "leaders lead."
James, a couple of reality altering questions for you.
1. Is there something like Ningauble's Caves in Golarion, or something like D&D's World Serpent Inn? A place where someone can wander in and not realize they may have wandered out into an alternate reality?
2. What did you think of the old "reality ratings" ranking system on the old Manual of the Planes from 1st edition. While I realize it made for some swingy concepts, from an "internal consistency" standpoint, I liked that view of alternate realities and different D&D worlds much better than the "one universe, but using Spelljammer logic" planar set up of 2nd edition.
3. I always liked the concept in Hickman and Weis' Star of the Guardians books, where different sections of the universe had different physics and magical settings, so that magic and science that worked in one galaxy might not work as well the next galaxy over. Would a concept like this gel in Golarion's universe?
Yeah, the actual settlement rules are found in the GameMastery Guide, but the base gp buying limits for cities are already on page 461 of the Core Rulebook sets the normal limit at 16,000 gp, with the exception of some randomly rolled medium and major items.
Actually, I'm starting to wonder if I have some kind of misconception, because ever since the Core Rulebook came out, I still see discussions about wealth per level and what should be available, but the actual rules seem to indicate that if its past 16,000 gp, you are probably going to have to find it or make it yourself, according to the new settlement rules.
Lately I've been trying to work my way through all of the Song of Ice and Fire books, which I really, really enjoy. If you read through the 1st book quickly enough, you can start nit picking the HBO series when it comes out next year! ;)
Stomach it and on playing, which might mean that the frustration is bottled up until it explodes and "an incident" happens.
I'm not proud to admit it, but while we didn't have "an incident," in the game I mentioned above we all seemed to be going out of our way to do really unorthodox things the more these things happened, and at least two of us were intentionally trying to commit suicide upon our characters.
I just want to add that I am totally 100% fine with houserules, whatever they may be, even if it is something off the wall...as long as I get prior notice. It doesn't seem fair to get stuff sprung on you. If I design a character around certain strategies, then am told those strategies won't work, I feel cheated.
I didn't want to sound too unsympathetic. I just wanted to play GM's advocate. I had a GM once that frustrated the Hell out of me, because he was running a 3.5 campaign by converting (on the fly) 1st edition adventures, but was using a mix of 1st/2nd/3.0/3.5 rules, and often didn't explain under what conditions each set of rules would apply.
"The adventure calls for you to improvise using something specific for weapons, so your feats that let you improvise weapons don't work."--after we were already in the adventure, after I had already taken the feats.
"I don't like adamantine magic weapons hurting Golems. I like you to need +3 weapons to hurt them,"--in the middle of a fight with an Iron Golem.
"Fireballs automatically destroy magical treasure, you have to be careful using them,"--after our spellcaster used fireball on some bad guys and apparently destroyed a +1 longsword when no one in the party had any weapons (see above).
"Fireballs fill up their total volume once they go off, so you guys are all in the blast radius now,"--again, after our caster had used the spell in a relatively small space.
So I feel your pain, I do. I just wanted to get across that someone that actually has certain changes or a legitimate difference on how a rule should work shouldn't be told that he "can't" run his game the way he prefers.
See, I can understand how some of those rulings are annoying. However, I also think its important to make sure that the GM in any given situation isn't telling you how things work in his campaign.
I know I'd be pretty upset if someone came to my table and said "this has to work this way because X said so."
Now, that having been said, I tend to make any changes in a campaign from RAW as clear as possible before the campaign starts, which I think is important for a GM. Letting people know up front that X or Y is a pet peeve and its going to work differently avoids a lot of annoyance when it seems like a ruling was made on the fly, even if it wasn't
Also, regarding 2 . . . actually the fighter should have said he's holding his action until you had completed your spell, instead of waiting to act at the same time.
The "Conan the Barbarian" soundtrack wins that contest so completely that Mortal Combat would be crushed, driven before it, and you would be able to hear the lamentations of Sonya Blade and Kitana.
We have not cooled on the idea of firearms at all.
We've cooled on the concept that firearms have been a part of Golarion for more than 4,000 years. They're still in the world, and the Inner Sea World Guide will still have rules for them. I like to think they're better rules than the current book's, in fact. Because they're (hopefully) more balanced and more fun.
But we no longer have a 4,000+ year tradition of guns being time-stopped at the renisance-era of technology. THAT'S the part of Alkenstar that's always annoyed me.
Guns have been a part of Golarion from the start. They're going to remain a part of Golarion. And in 2011, they'll be more a part of Pathfinder than ever before.
Hooray for guns! I'm glad to hear there will still be rules for these.
You know for some reason, I've always wanted to try and make ghouls work as "failed" vampires. Given that they don't have the same degree of weaknesses, however, I've never been able to quite figure out how to do it.
On the other hand, that pretty much violates the feel of ghouls as a Lovecraftian sort of undead race. I'm liking that better now with an actual ghoul city as part of Golarion.
Wait, I need a question . . . why is it so hard to find the stupid CR 2032 battery on my motherboard?
Right. As an example in the other direction, until the APG, the only class that was not divine that got Cure Light Wounds was the bard. Bards did not have access to a divine spell, they had an arcane version of CLW.
Similarly, a cleric with the fire domain gets fireball. They aren't casting an arcane spell, they get a divine version of fireball.
Ah, artifacts. Whatever happened to an adventurer's morbid curiosity? I remember in 1st edition. My players found the Wand of Orcus. Actually, the gnome illusionist found the Wand of Orcus. And decided to use it in a fight.
"Hey, you might die, and you might go crazy and kill the party."
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
He went crazy and killed the party.
No one every forgot how much they hated the Wand of Orcus.
It's Perform: Oratory whether you're a real magician up on stage doing amazing feats of legerdemain via the Prestidigitation cantrip (which in Pathfinder you can autofire forever) or a charlatan doing everything via Slight of Hand and trick props.
What's interesting is that the actual wizards would likely be most entertained by the stage magicians because they'd be using Spellcraft and Detect Magic and not be getting anything but still seeing the guy conjure a rose, levitate it and so on. Watching someone do that with Prestidigitation? Boring.
Alternately, if someone is doing a very entertaining performance, it really doesn't matter whether it's being done with magic or wires.
That reminds me of Raistlin, and how he made a living in Flotsam. Plus his teachers being a bit upset with him resorting to "tricks" like flashpowder and the like.
I probably wouldn't even go with perform, and go with Profession (Stage Magician). The main problem with that is that it shifts your stat to Wisdom from Charisma.
I've always felt hinky about trying to qualify for a feat or a PrC by using an ability booster. Just doesn't feel right. I'm not saying it shouldn't be allowed, but you are kind of asking for something to screw with you.
Hey guys, I'll have some more specific things to say later. Keep brainstorming, just remember, you don't need to have an origin for your powers, and your powers before you wake up were much less than they are now.
Heh, as far as fitting tropes goes, "Cadmus genetic experiment" certainly fits in with one DCU trope.
Later on in his story, Steel apparently wasn't just good with technology, but had a metahuman ability to interact with it, so there is a precedence with that as well.
So, just to summarize, thus far we have these leanings:
1. Catperson with heightened senses, claws, etc. (Patrick McGrath)
2. Blind martial artist type with extended senses (Bill Miller)
3. Techno savant of some sort maybe (Jeremiziah)
4. TK or Mage or Super Weapon Trickster of some sort (AlanM)
5. Jesse Denos (?)
6. Aron Marczylo (?)
While I mentioned that Daxamites or Kryptonians might be a bit too powerful to be "amped up" to 8, there are indeed some DC species tropes lying around waiting to be used.
Atlanteans and Homo Magi are both native to the planet, and Homo Magi are interesting, in that they are humans that basically have a genetic predisposition to using magic (Zatanna's family is Homo Magi).
Also, not only are there the traditional Amazons (who don't usually leave Paradise Island), but there are also the Bana-Migdhall Amazons, who actually live among the common people, and just pass on the Amazon tenants generation to generation to their daughters (and normally are essentially "perfect humans," i.e. high end human maximum stats).
Anyway, just some thoughts, and for this campaign, its perfectly viable to have been Jim the busdriver before you woke up. Everyone had a "normal" life up until waking up from your "gap."
Obviously I wasn't there, but this does sound like it was a misunderstanding, a mistake that had an unfortunate consequence. While its sad, I think its worse to have hard feelings between people over a situation like this.
It may not be much of a consolation, but the system has been stated to not be designed for 100% faction point attainment.
I just hate to see something like this disrupt a game, and more than that, to see this get in the way of people being able to enjoy a game at the same table.
I just saw this thread. I recently picked up the book, so I'm pretty new to the M&M system, but at least I have the rules on hand. I'm a long-time veteran of the old Marvel Super Hero system (FASERIP forever!).
If you have someone drop out, I'd like to throw my name in. I'll grab the book and start digging into character creation just in case.
You'll be #1 alternate in case one of the other guys doesn't want to or cannot participate. Thanks for the interest.
I wouldn't mind posting in this one just in case anyone that showed early interest doesn't see the link and misses some posts about who is and and who is doing what.
I am shocked, absolutely flummoxed, that people that started playing in Season 0 haven't gotten the message that they should be sitting out of sessions if they aren't needed. I mean, the rules keep saying it should be rare . . . why aren't they making it rare? Its like they want to participate in PFS or something.
In fact, I'm not sure why we don't just tell everyone they don't get to advance, and they don't even get their own character. Pick a pre-gen and play that for a year or so, and then maybe we can designate someone to determine if they have done enough penance to be allowed to play their character again.
Sometimes I think people have more of an agenda than to just help Paizo get more customers. Once they are "on the hook" for Paizo, they need to subvert their own enjoyment to get more people hooked. I mean, they can always just sit back and read new products. What, they want to buy new stuff, and use it as well?
Greedy.
Spoiler:
Honestly, Paizo does good work. I enjoy their work, and I think they deserve to get more customers, and make tons of money. I'm just a bit amazed that people are suggesting that people should support Paizo without wanting to actually participate in the program, demanding that people "prove" that they really can't advance their characters, or berate them for not being focused enough on organizing.
Well, that's certainly attainable. Thanks, KEJ! This sounds fun, I'm excited. The last superhero-themed RP I did was back in the days of the Marvel game with the big, multicolored chart on the back cover.
** spoiler omitted **
Ah, I remember Marvel Super Heroes. I used to love creating random non-sensical characters with that system. You could talk to corn as well as She-Hulk could pick up heavy objects . . . that truly is impressive!
Megan Gale did get cast for the last (unfruitful) attempt at starting up a Justice League movie, although she's probably not still attached to any current project.
Ouch, sorry - I posted in the wrong thread. Maybe I can still delete it... Anyway, I'm still interested, and will get a character together within a day. If for some reason I can't, I'll let you know here to make room for someone else. That alright?
Not a problem. I was just trying to keep everything in one thread to make it less confusing, but its not a big deal.
In new, er, news, Beric Dondarrion has been cast with Australian actor David Michael Scott. This is surprising as there seemed to be an expectation that Beric and Thoros were going to be left until Season 3 to be cast (with Beric perhaps being pointed out on the tourney field with his helmet on and being sent on his mission by message rather than directly). Instead HBO seem to have gone for it in Season 1.
That does leave the question of will Thoros also be cast (he could just show up as one of the BwB in Season 3). It also still leaves Walder Frey as, by far, the biggest character not yet cast.
I'm really interested to see how some of the "early introduced" characters are going to be used, such as Arya's friends from the second and third books.
Of all the characters in the DC continuum, Wonder Woman is the worst choice to hve a kind of False Reality constructed around her, because she's the paragon of Truth. At one point, she was the friggin' goddess of Truth.
I wouldn't place any bets on JMS actually knowing that bit of information. I know, that probably sounds harsh, but I just didn't get the impression he was particularly "up" on the more recent years of the character's history, in part based on the things he complained had never been done with the character that oddly had been done by other writers, and fairly recently.
If you are using the Golarion setting, the four hour trance is part of elven heritage. It can be found on page four of the Pathfinder Companion/ Elves of Golarion. And to be fair, it says some elves prefer longer times in trance. If one worshipped Desna, I would encourage the activity of dreamtrances.
IIRC, Forgotten realms campaign setting also had the same listing. So it seems to be more of a campaign thing as opposed to a "core rule" thing.
I also seem to recall, that this feature had no effect for the recharge of eight hours rest for spell casting.
Greg
Edit: Sleep information can be found under the heading "Sleep" in the compainion. :P
I know they reference it in the actual information in the companion, but it doesn't appear in the rules section, and I believe James has said they probably won't reference that again in the future, as it was based on the mistaken assumption that the four hour trance was part of the SRD information on the elf.
I'm not saying you can't use it in a home game or that it doesn't provide a foundation, I'm just saying that if there is ever a future Pathfinder RPG version of Elves of Golarion or something similar, it might not show up again.
Per the rules, they do not have the ability. To some extent, its goes back to the fact that, oddly, if you look at the actual traits given to elves in the SRD, elven trance is never mentioned, so it technically isn't open content.
James Jacobs has said that its not assumed that elves in Golarion have this ability either.
Elves are immune to sleep because they are resistant to charm effects in general (and of course because its a legacy ability).
An indignant attitude drove a poster off of the forums. In future, we might want to consider starting a thread with "this is a common complaint, here's a link" instead of "here we go again".
This kind of thread is only as contentious as we make it. It makes me sad that we couldn't help him, since I think we could have done something constructive for his game. :(
-1.
Its good to keep in mind. Just because people may have seen a similar question over and over again, that doesn't mean that the poster has seen those discussions.
Its always a good thing to at least try and view where someone might be coming from and answer in that manner, rather than from frustration at the aggregate questions from other people over the months and years.
He left WW after only 4 issues. I've read that this is becoming a trend for him.
Phil Hester is taking on finishing the current story. I'm curious to see where it will go, because frankly, the last 4 issues have in fact bored me to tears.
I was pretty bored after two, since the crux of both seemed to be "she doesn't have all of her old powers, and she is going to fight lots of mysterious thugs with guns."
I'm sure it was going somewhere, it just didn't seem to be worried about how long it took to get there, which is the same problem that the "Grounded" storyline in Superman had.
Characters are going to wake up at the beginning of the campaign as PL 8 characters. Before their "year off," they might have been police, military, accountants, doctors, editors, factory workers, etc.
If they had powers before, they didn't have "super hero" level powers. Maybe low yield psychic abilities that they couldn't really count on, for example. They may have gone to some place like STAR Labs for study, but they don't remember anything coming of that visit except a few tests.
If you really want to be the alien on the team, you can, but your last memory will be something along the lines of just having arrived on Earth, and then loosing the last year. Also, its probably not going to make much sense unless the alien race could have been less powerful than PL 8 before hand (for example, probably no Daxamites or Kryptonians).
Also, I'd like most of the team to be "normal" American citizens, for reasons that will become more apparent after you all wake up with your new powers.
Can we generate characters that are failed / not quite sucessful lab experiments? Do the characters need to be established B level heroes?
Thanks
I'm actually looking more for characters that weren't quite working as superheroes before their "year off." So the failed lab experiment angle might work if the character only got really minor, unreliable powers, which now work much better, and they never really worked "in the hero biz" before.
. . . and now you can add to the title "oh yeah, and a new writer too," since JMS left his "groundbreaking" work on Superman and Wonder Woman to finish up Earth One projects. Obviously very important storylines . . .
Okay, here is the information on how I'd like to run this. If this doesn't interest you, now is the time to find out. Let me know what everyone thinks, and keep the interest post coming, as I've got four so far and I'm willing to take six total.
** spoiler omitted **...
I've got my copy of the handbook behind me. The above mentioned info sounds great. How did you want us to get this info to you? And by when? I'll likely try to do something tonight or Monday.
If you just want to have a character sheet with all of the information on the profile you make for the new character, that would work. You can also e-mail me a KnightErrantJR "at" gmail "dot" com.
Also, since I haven't filled all six slots yet, I'm not worried about setting a deadline until I make sure if I'll even have a "full crew."
Okay, here is the information on how I'd like to run this. If this doesn't interest you, now is the time to find out. Let me know what everyone thinks, and keep the interest post coming, as I've got four so far and I'm willing to take six total.
Spoiler:
Campaign Conceits, Rules, and Standards DC Adventures Campaign: Earth 52
The Earth 52 Campaign is set in a newly formed alternate reality within the DC multiverse. Of course the people that live there don't know its newly formed. Once it formed, it stretches back and forward billions of years, as if its always existed.
How this effects the campaign is summarized thusly: the general thrust of the DC Universe's history has happened, although there may be a few tweaks here or there. It is, after all, an alternate reality.
The DC heroes have gone missing, sometime around six months ago. No one has seen Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Justice League, or their peers for months now. Cities have been thrown into chaos without their heroes to protect them. The United States government puts into play a protocol to attempt to calm the public and quell the tide of villainy.
Our heroes wake up, having their last memories from a year ago, not even remembering the disappearance of the heroes, and with only a vague notion of why they might have awakened in a government facility.
Starting Characters: This campaign will start as a Power Level 8 campaign. Characters should be made with the guideline in place. Not only are characters PL 8 to begin with, but there are a few other starting concessions.
Characters do not remember anything from the last year. Characters have essentially had a “normal” life up until this point. They may or may not have shown powers before the gap in their memory, but if they did, those powers were much less pronounced then they are now.
While the starting concession is that the characters are normal people that are thrust into a position of becoming newly minted super heroes, if someone wishes to have a starting character that is an alien, this is a possibility, but they will have the same memory gap.
The “one year gap” can count towards one of your complications during character creation.
GM Approval: While you should feel free to build the character you want to play, all characters have to be sent to the GM for final approval before play. To highlight some potential red flags, thing like trade offs and complications are going to be very closely watched, as will quirks and limitations.
House Rules: The house rules for the campaign are relatively simple by intention. The rules are summarized below.
Impervious and attacks: To determine if an attack can harm a character with Impervious toughness, determine what that base damage of the attack is, and compare it with Impervious. Power attacks and critical hits do not cause an attack to harm an Impervious character if their base damage is not above the character's Impervious score (i.e. ½ of the defense in question, usually Toughness).
This works in both directions, as an accurate attack, one that lowers the damage potential of an attack, also does not drop an attack to being unable to harm an Impervious character.
The Superboy Prime, Black Adam, and Geoff Johns Memorial House Rule:
Any character that fails their Toughness save by five degrees of failure immediately drops into the dying category. Any character that fails their Toughness save by six degrees of failure immediately dies.
The character making the attack can, retro-actively, spend a Hero Point in order to pull their punch and not harm their opponent this drastically.
"Attendance": It will be assumed that players will be able to post at least three times a week. If you are gone from the thread for three weeks straight without any notification, I'll assume that you have dropped the campaign.
If your character must take an action, and you haven't made up to three posts that week, the GM will take your next turn.
"Table" Rules: We'll be using the Paizo hard coded dice roller for this game.
Posts that are purely mechanical should be made with the "ooc" coding, for example:
Superman throws a punch at Mongul.
Normal attack, no special modifiers
1d20 + 15 ⇒ (10) + 15 = 25
Initiative will go by "sides" to make it easier to get everyone in. In other words, if the heroes are fighting Kobra and a bunch of goons, Kobra will add his initiative to his goons and average it, and that's the modifier for his side, and the heroes initiative will be added together and averaged, and that will be their initiative.
The GM will roll all initiative rolls when the time comes.
Please create an alternate profile with your character's name and the information that would usually go on a character sheet so that I can reference it when we are playing, and so you can use that profile to post in the "in game" thread.
So far I've got Jesse Denos, Jeremiziah, DM Aron Marczylo, and bill miller 215 potentially interested. I'll give it a bit more time, but I'll go ahead and start explaining how I want to do this and letting you guys see how that looks soon.
Thanks all for the interest, and I'll post some more soon to help further define all of this.
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