I know it's been asked for by various other PbP GMS, but are there any plans in the works for helping us to show/hide which aliases appear in the Post-As box?
'Simple' Favorites: I think perhaps the simplest implementation would be to add a "Favorite" check box next to each alias on the My Account page. Any aliases flagged as favorites would appear in alphabetical order at the top of the Post As drop-down. Any remaining aliases would then be listed alphabetically after a dividing line in the drop-down.
Numbered Favorites: Expanding on the above idea, the check box would be replaced with a numbered field like we have when organizing a wish list. Favorites would then be sorted according to the numerical value placed next to them. Any remaining aliases would then be listed alphabetically after a dividing line in the drop-down.
Hi all, just finished work on a spreadsheet that allows you to create settlements quickly and easily by marking values in a spreadsheet. After you've finished, you can then select a city and export its stat block in one of 3 formats: plain text, bbcode (formatted for these messageboards), or wiki text (formatted for MediaWiki).
Further details, usage instructions, and the download link can be found on my wiki:
Hi all, just figured I would make the kingdom-building tool I created available to the community. Unlike many of the other spreadsheets I've seen which are ideal for presenting a summary of a kingdom at-a-glance and summing multiple cities, the purpose of this sheet is somewhat different.
Instead of presenting a snapshot for one moment in time, this tool is a log and a calculator. It handles all of the various costs and factors on a month-by-month basis over a 10-year span. You can set the starting year, number of months in a year, and even export data at the end of one decade and import it at the start of a new decade. This enable you to see the growth of your city-state over time.
Since the level of information tracked would make supporting multiple cities unfeasible, my recommendation would be to track each city in its own sheet as a sub-kingdom. I know that there have been more than a few discussions about localized governments and such so I won't bother rehashing them. This is simply the method that lended itself best to development.
If you would like to try it out, the download is available from the Tools Category of my wiki, and any updates to the file will be made there, but you can inform me of bugs either via private message, or in this thread.
Note: This tool was constructed using the expanded rule set featured in Book of the River Nations by Jon Brazer Enterprises.
Gary, is there any chance you could increase the length of a PbP Campaign's "Short Description" field from the current 250-character limit up to around 1 or 2K characters?
I would really like to be able to maintain a short menu bar linking to the campaign's table of contents, wiki, and the character of the current party members, but the shortness of this field prevents the inclusion of any URLs.
As a result of this limitation, I've simply be adding a more fluff-based header, but it really would be nice if I could add something with a bit more crunch.
While posting in the "Maybe OT: PBP Campaign Thread Help?" thread, I had a thought on something that might improve the utility of the messageboards as an information resource. Since Gary mentioned wanting to revisit the List functionality at some point soon, I thought it might be worth mentioning.
Lists are great for personal use, but have limited utility outside of those who know about a particular person list. Right now they function somewhat like file folders. While it's true that you can add a single post or thread to multiple lists, it's time-consuming and doesn't address the searchability issue.
What about adding the ability for board members to add GMail-style labels to threads or even individual posts?
On a site-wide scale, this would allow individuals to flag posts not merely for inclusion in a FAQ or for violations, but also to help categorize useful contributions. Forums that might be particularly well-served by the ability to tag posts/thread with multiple descriptive labels would be those concerning the various Adventure Paths, and the House-/Rules forums.
On a smaller scale, adding the ability for a GM and their players to label posts in their own campaign would make indexing the story, and noting posts with important information, new NPCs, and treasure vastly easier.
Naturally some support would need be be added to the search parameters, but with the ability to compose a tag/label-based search, it should help to filter results by categories and to know that these are posts other people have separated from the background noise.
In relevant forums, adding a tag-cloud for the currently viewed forum/thread would also help to give a high-level overview.
In terms of implementation, I'd say that a managed list of labels would be best. However, since it's impossible to think of everything up-front, the ability for people to suggest labels, and the ability to return an appropriate label when someone types a related keyword in their tag box would be ideal. Naturally in the PbP Campaigns, it might be desirable to allow the GM to control label creation and modification for their campaign threads only.
So what do you think? Too developer or CPU-intensive to implement? Would further elaboration or use cases be helpful?
After making rather extensive use of the list functionality on the site, there's a few things I wanted to suggest/request.
Mass Moves:(higher priority) This is the first and most important request I'd like to make. Right now I have a 512-entry "Table of Contents" (ToC) list for my PbP, but I would really like to split the entries into separate lists by-chapter. (By chapter of the story, not of the AP.) The problem is, currently you can only move items one-at-a-time.
Ideally, I would like to be able to specify a range of entries to move from the Edit list screen, and specify the first and last posts (using the List Order numbers) that I want to move.
A less optimal solution would at least being able to use the "Move to List" drop downs for multiple posts and then being able to click the "Update" or "Save Changes" buttons and actually have that process the moves.
List Entry Reordering:medium priority Remember back when people used to program in BASIC on Atari and Commodore and the best-practice was to number the lines in increments of 10 in case you needed to go back and add something later? Well, right now the list entries are listed consecutively with little to no space in-between entries. This makes it time-consuming to update the order of items in a list.
Usage Case: I make use of the ToC for my PbP players by listing posts that are either memorable, contain important information, or mark the start of a new day, etc. I then try to populate the description with mnemonic hints and keywords to make it easier to search the game from the ToC instead of using the site's search engine. However, if I miss a page of posts when I'm manually indexing and then need to go back and add those posts at a later date, it's difficult to do so because there are no gaps in the numbering.
List Reordering:lower priority Just like with editing list entries themselves, it would be handy to be able to reorder the lists themselves by number instead of clicking up/down.
Hi, I just subscribed to the Modules line and was hoping to start with Feast of Ravenmoor (which was listed as the option about 2 hours ago), but now it's beginning with the Ruby Phoenix Tournament instead.
I'm not concerned about paying for 2 or 3 modules all at once, but I really would like to receive Ravenmoor with the subscriber benefit.
Any chance you can make that happen?
EDIT: Oof! Is there also any way this can be combined with Order #1893085? I just got the email about those items getting ready to ship within the next week.
Is there any way to perform searches on specific phrases rather than merely on the words individually?
Example:
I wanted to do a search to see if there was any discussion on the Ultimate Combat spell "know the enemy" and its 1-minute casting time.
Search String wrote:
"know the enemy" "casting time"
That returns 9 results. Just looking at the top 3 results, I see instances of "casting time", but no instances of "know the enemy". Each result contains the words "know" and "enemy" only separately.
Performing the same search without quotes returns several 1000 results so obviously the quotes are having SOME effect, but they're not having the desired or expected results.
Other than trying to use Google to search a specific URL, is there a way to perform phrase-based searched on the boards? If not, is it on The List™?
Down in Gamer Life there's currently a topic entitled "Your favoured gaming fare?" However, the link you get when attempting to click on it or any replies are simply:
Is there a way to remove a thread from our list of hidden threads?
The reason I ask is, it looks like I must have experienced some lag a few minutes ago while doing some housekeeping on my Focus page. I clicked the hide button next to a thread I wished to hide, and when it didn't disappear, I thought perhaps my wireless mouse was acting up so I clicked again. When I noticed the loading icon for the page wasn't moving, I then thought that perhaps Chrome had frozen so I clicked yet again (ok, probably several more clicks actually).
A few moments later, I was chagrined when the thread I had intended to hide along with about half a dozen others that I wanted to keep tabs on. ^_^;
Is there some way to get those back off my hidden list, I really don't want to reveal all my hidden threads as that will junk things up too much.
Ain'tcha glad you have a whole stable of free software testers? ;)
Within the next month or so, I'm planning to spin-off a new side-quest from my main campaign.
I already have an existing thread from the last time this happened, and my preference (for organizational purposes) would be to recycle it. However, the current name of the thread would need to be changed. If someone could handle this for me, I'd be appreciative.
I just went to check the Paizo blog and discovered that it's currently displaying the Web Fiction instead (A Passage to Absalom, Chapter Two: Dry Sherry).
Alright, I understand the normal turning rules, but as first sentence of the optional rule for wide turns suggests, that abstraction sacrifices a bit too much verisimilitude for my liking.
Unfortunately, I've read the rules for wide turns about 5× now and even tried sketching this out on graph paper, but I'm still unable to visualize how this should look on a map grid:
UC page 174 wrote:
Have the driver make a driving check as usual. If she succeeds at the check, she can turn the vehicle. When a vehicle makes a turn, it has a chance to make a vehicular overrun or ramming maneuver on any creature within the turning area, which is a square with sides equal to the vehicle’s length, with one vertex touching the front facing of the vehicle on the side opposite to the direction of the turn. In other words, put the square with one side running along the vehicle’s front, perpendicular to its forward facing, and another running the direction of its current forward facing. Place the square so its far corner is within the desired destination of the vehicle. If the turn is successful, the vehicle ends this movement in that area, facing toward the direction of the turn.
Could someone who has more coffee in their system perhaps please create a diagram in Excel showing how this works? I'm embarrassed to admit it, but my reading comprehension and powers of visualization are completely failing me right now. :(
With all the recent improvements, I was wondering: have you guys given any further thought to the issue of alias management?
Even if it's just the ability to remove aliases from the 'Post As' drop-down (by unchecking aliases under 'My Account'), that would still be a tremendous help.
Also, now that our aliases are in alphabetical order at the top of our profile pages, is there any chance we could get them sorted in alphabetical order on the 'My Accounts' page too? Allowing that list to be sortable by Name OR Creation Date should satisfy just about everyone I'd imagine.
Not sure what happened, but it seems like non-breaking spaces are no longer working in character profiles or in posts. It appears that they are either getting converted into normal spaces or being removed.
I've confirmed this in Chrome, IE9, FF, and Safari.
.
.
.
Example:
t e s t
There should be...
4 nbsps between T and E
1 nbsp between E and S
1 normal space between S and T
Can you please roll-back whatever change is causing this? Using Alt+0160 is the only means we've got to attempt to indent and align text. The intro/title to my PbP game used to be nicely centered. Similarly, the skills in all of my character profiles used to be nice and tidy with the modifiers appearing to be right-aligned in a single column like in Excel. Now everything is left-aligned (because of the missing NBSPs) and it looks terrible. :(
I noticed this the other day after James deleted one of Shuriken's posts in the Meri thread...
When a post gets deleted, it seems like the forum starts having a problem where what is shown in posts on the reply screen is different than if you are just reading the thread.
This just cropped up in my PbP game starting yesterday after a new player (who was not aware that we never delete posts) removed one because he'd made an invalid action.
If it helps to trouble-shoot the issue, here are some links to the approximate locations of the deleted posts...
A post was made under Darvesch's alias and then deleted. I believe it was after Priyya's post and before this replacement post.
Priyya made multiple edits to this post which were not reflected the same in both the reply and reading views.
The results of this were that some edits did not show the same on the reply/edit and reading views. Originally, I thought I got ninja'd until I double-checked things. You can see the confusion this caused based upon what I said in this post.
This morning, Lureene made this post in which I observed they used the word "mother" instead of "offspring". They corrected it to offspring and it shows correctly in the reply view. However, it is still (at this time) showing "mother" in the reading view.
For troubleshooting purposes, I made and then deleted a post under my Laithoron alias just before this 'testing' post so that you have a definitive reference point.
If you need any further testing done, let me know. Otherwise, I'm not sure if this is a caching issue (like with the aliases of thread starters), but if you there's some kind of clean-up/repair that can be run, that would be great. (Just don't delete my game, ok? :P )
For the sake of backward compatability with URLs, the Captain Wardove acct wouldn't need to be deleted. Instead post-merge I'd simply replace the profile (which I've backed up) with a URL to the other alias. (Of course if you could add a redirect that would be phenomenal, but I'd understand if that's too much to ask.)
Is there any way to make this happen? It would really be nice to have all of her posts under the same name.
TEST: It looks like the boards are failing to process special characters in new posts for some reason. ?????Al?ta, Aernel?th, Tuonw?, ?, ?, ?, ?.
Here's what each of those question marks should be:
Alt+0160 - ????? a series of non-breaking spaces
Alt+0237 - "i" with acute
Alt+0243 - "o" with acute
Alt+0235 - "e" with diaeresis
Alt+0151 - EM dash
Alt+0150 - EN dash
Alt+0153 - Trademark
Alt+0176 - Degrees
These seem to be showing up properly in older posts (such as all the non-breaking spaces in the 1st post of that PbP), but they are failing in new posts. Furthermore, when you click reply or perform a preview, all of the special characters get replaced by question marks.
I've tried this in FF, Chrome, Safari, and IE8 on this computer, and they all show the same problem. It is also evident on my Droid which runs off Verizon rather than Time Warner.
So since it was giving me a bit of a headache trying to figure out how handle the exploration of Smuggler's Shiv in a PbP (while keeping track of time), I figured that others might encounter the same difficulties. Thankfully, this past weekend, inspiration struck.
Starting with Laurefindel's Overland Round rules as a base, I worked out an hour-by-hour mapping system based around a 1/2 mile hex scale.
For an example of how it works, I introduced it in this post in game. There's also a good bit of clarification that I made in our OOC thread which is also linked-to from there.
If this is something that you'd like to use, feel free to download the template from my website. The overlays and a link to the rules are available below and from my profile.
Hey guys, I was hoping that you could do me a favor.
I'm kind of chagrined that the game and discussion threads for my PbP are showing up on the topic listings as having been started by a character of mine from a completely different game rather than my DM alias. This in spite of the fact that both threads were started using my GM alias.
Could you please edit the author info for the two following threads to match the first posts? They should read "Laithoron", not Alexis Kirmoon. It just kinda bugs me to have such a prolific game (#15 in overall posts) and yet no one recognizes who the GM is. :(
I'm a little confused. I just looked at my subscriptions and it shows that I'm subscribed to the Campaign Setting line. The new Inner Sea Map Folio is stated as being part of the Campaign line yet the shipment I just received Friday included only Serpent's Skull #6, and the Village Square flip mat — the same being reflected in my last shipping notice from Feb 4.
When I view my subscriptions, it shows my current Campaign product as Lost Cities of Golarion, and the next product as the Inner Sea World Guide. Did I get skipped or something?
If so, I don't need the map mailed out on it's own. It can wait for my next regular shipment, it's just that I don't want to not receive this (and the corresponding PDFs of course) due to a glitch.
I just downloaded the PDF copy of the Map Folio and I noticed that the legend on it says 2000 feet. That seemed a bit off so I looked at the map in AP #37, and sure enough the legend (which is less than half as wide) is 2 miles.
Width/Size Comparison:
In AP #37, the 2-mile legend is as wide as the northern part of the south-eastern peninsula. By contrast, the legend in the map folio is over twice this width. In otherwords instead of that peninsula being ~10,000 feet across, it would now be about 900 feet across.
Personally I'm more fond of the larger map scale (i.e. where the island is ~15 miles from north to south) vs. this new 1.25 mile long island.
Since my group hasn't yet made it to the island, I'm wondering which scale to use. I'm also curious how other GMs have handled this. Alternately, if any devs could comment, it would be appreciated.
3 people marked this as FAQ candidate. Staff response: no reply required.
So in one of the games I'm in, the issue came up of how long the +2 AC bonus from fighting defensively is supposed to last.
PRD wrote:
Fighting Defensively as a Standard Action: You can choose to fight defensively when attacking. If you do so, you take a -4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 to AC for the same round.
Fighting Defensively as a Full-Round Action: You can choose to fight defensively when taking a full-attack action. If you do so, you take a -4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 dodge bonus to AC for the same round.
The thing I'm a bit confused about is "the same round." Typically, most of the modal actions a character can take last until their next turn. Same with recurring damage that they might have caused to others. Is this not the case with Fighting Defensively? Does the bonus really disappear at the end of the particular round?
If so, I'm curious as to the reasoning behind this. It would seemingly makes it a useless option/trap for anyone whose turn in the initiative order falls after enemies who have already acted. Such a character's only recourse would be to delay their initiative until the top of the next round — that just seems kind of hokey to me.
Well, the latest update of Lazarus for Chrome (3.0.1) has made it completely non-functional on these forums. Once again, I just had a fairly lengthy post for my PbP get eaten. Once again, I'm going to have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch.
It used to be that when this would happen, we could click the back button in our browser and there was a good chance that the textarea would still contain our post. However, since switching over to https for message composition, it seems like this is no longer the case.
Now when a post fails, we get a screen displaying an email address and any attempts to go back or use F5 to resubmit the post are in vain and we get sent to the main page for Paizo.com. Is this issue still being worked on? Do you have any recommendations on how to recover posts that are lost like this in the absence of Lazarus? Does anyone know of any alternate extensions similar to Lazarus that actually work?
Note: Being told to 'use FireFox' will not be helpful. I can't stand to look at a bright-white textarea for prolonged periods of time. The FF version of Stylish is seemingly incapable of reskinning textarea components like the Chrome version does.
Did the option to hold items for monthly shipments get removed? I can't even find the option to change shipping methods anymore.
I see that I'm being charged $10 for the shipping of a $10 map pack yet the next installment of Serpent's Skull is not listed. In fact, I just received SS #3 all by itself which confused me too. There's no way I want to pay $20 for a map pack when I only even subscribe to maps for the flip mats.
I tried to go into my account and reset shipping back to US Postal (I only want UPS used for hard-bound books or boxed sets), but I can't find the options. :(
Hey guys, I think there might be a problem with dots and the PbP Discussion forum. After repeated attempts, it seems that my players are unable to get their "dot" even when trying multiple different aliases. It's not even dotting for me and I created the thread.
Oddly enough, this problem has not surfaced in the actual gameplay thread in the PbP forum itself. Any ideas?
Setting
This campaign does not take place upon Golarion. Instead, it is set in my own campaign setting, Heroes of Worlds Unknown. The setting's home world is known as Elsemar, an Earth-like world located in the Andromeda galaxy.
Ease of Reference
Similarly to the top of this post, at the top of each character's profile, you will find the following menu:
Following the 'Party' link leads you to a list containing everyone's current hit points and the running XP total. You will also find a menu bar similar to the three-line block above listing useful links to game resources, party members, and setting information. Lastly, the list itself contains a chronological listing of posts that begin memorable moments in the game. The 'Personal' link is for me to keep track of Alis' spells, charged magic items, and other expendables.
Timekeeping
In an attempt to make it easier to search the game for a particular date and time, the start of each day contains the following header text:
This makes it easier for you to search for events occurring at a particular point in time. Simply use the search box at the top of the game thread and enter "LK Calendar" followed by the year and the name of the month. Since I don't expect anyone to memorize such things, you can view the wiki article describing Elsemar's calendar, the Lay of Kamína, by clicking on "LK Calendar".
Gameplay Conventions
Please see PbP Conventions on the wiki for a listing of the courtesies and 'best practices' observed in this game.
Setting
This campaign does not take place upon Golarion. Instead, it is set in my own campaign setting, Heroes of Worlds Unknown. The setting's home world is known as Elsemar, an Earth-like world located in the Andromeda galaxy.
Ease of Reference
Similarly to the top of this post, at the top of each character's profile, you will find the following menu:
Following the 'Party' link leads you to a list containing everyone's current hit points and the running XP total. You will also find a menu bar similar to the three-line block above listing useful links to game resources, party members, and setting information. Lastly, the list itself contains a chronological listing of posts that begin memorable moments in the game. The 'Personal' link is for me to keep track of Alis' spells, charged magic items, and other expendables.
Timekeeping
In an attempt to make it easier to search the game for a particular date and time, the start of each day contains the following header text:
This makes it easier for you to search for events occurring at a particular point in time. Simply use the search box at the top of the game thread and enter "LK Calendar" followed by the year and the name of the month. Since I don't expect anyone to memorize such things, you can view the wiki article describing Elsemar's calendar, the Lay of Kamína, by clicking on "LK Calendar".
Gameplay Conventions
Please see PbP Conventions on the wiki for a listing of the courtesies and 'best practices' observed in this game.
Basically, the list I had setup with tracking information for my PbP party somehow got over-written this morning by tracking info for a single character. As a result, I lost several hours worth of work.
If you can rollback the changes to the description field to undo any changes made this morning, that would be awesome. Otherwise, if this isn't possible then I'll cry for a bit and then move on with recreating it myself.
So I'm trying to come up with an alternate version of a bard that retains their special abilities but gains martial prowess. My thoughts on the matter are this:
Lose spellcasting and cantrips
Gain good BAB, d10 hit die, martial weapon proficiency, and medium armor proficiency
Lose good Will save
Gain good Fort save
This leaves levels 4, 13, and 16 empty, but I'm trying to determine if the above changes would be too powerful, or if those levels would need to be filled-in to maintain balance.
As I see it, the Ranger and Paladin are the main comparison classes. Being as their abilities are more situationally specific, they retain 4-levels of casting whereas Fighters and Barbarians (whose special abilities have broader applications) lack casting.
Desired Usage:
Part of the purpose of this experiment is so that the bard can remain a viable choice in a Gestalt game when multi-classed with either a full-caster or a rogue. Since the bard as-is is something of a mini-gestalt in its own right, it suffers greatly in such a scenario. Either their 6-level spellcasting becomes redundant (gestalt with full caster), or they fall behind all the other characters in melee (gestalt with rogue) since they already have a great deal of overlap with rogue. (Compare with a ranger/sorcerer gestalt to see where I'm coming from.)
As I was waiting on the forums to become available, I had a thought on something that might save at least horsepower on the back-end and also be a bit more useful to site visitors.
My suggestion would be to NOT include the Customer Service, PbP, PbP Discussion, and Forum Games threads in the list of most-recent posts for the whole site. People who are having a CS issue handled won't be looking there for it and it's really no one else's business.
Highly active PbP or FAWTLY, etc. will simply be constant fixtures on that list for long periods of time but it doesn't benefit anyone. The folks involved in such games already have RSS feeds, lists, or simply check the pages out of habit.
Is there any way to allow for <!-- HTML style comments --> in our profiles? They would be rather handy so that we can leave notes or 'bookmarks' for ourselves to make the editing of long profiles easier.
The ability to add/remove additional comment fields (i.e. directly jumping to editing a block for our spellbooks rather than scrolling thru a huge profile) would be even better, but I'm sure that would be a lot more work...
Normally when I have a package arrive from Paizo (this being my 51st order and the most expensive thus far), I'm quite excited. Unfortunately, the instant I approched by front door today, I could feel my stomach turn. The box was burst on two of the corners. So many peanuts were gone from one corner that I could actually see the corners of the books inside.
Pretty much everything in my order received some level of damage except for my map subscription. All 3 perfect bound books have crimped corners, the DragonAge Box has a dented corner, and all 3 of the hard-bound books have worse damage on them than any book in my collection save my old 2nd Ed PHB.
The worst damage by far however is to the APG. It looks like someone placed it on the bottom left corner and then struck the top right corner with a mallet. Following are some photos showing the damage.
Is there anything that can be done about this? I'm not so much worried about the boxed set, or the soft-covers, but the damage to the APG... Let's just put it this way, if I loaned a book to someone and it came back looking like that, I'd be asking them for a replacement copy.
The thing that confuses me is, when the PfRPG Core Rulebook shipped this time last year, it had special protectors on all four corners. However neither the GMG nor this order were similarly protected. If there a particular shipping option that I should choose to avoid such problems in the future?
Oh and if you're extra observant? Yes, those silver rune on the blue cloth are what will be the ribbons for Veronic's ribbons for her Seoni outfit...
While I realize that this might be asking a bit much, I also realize that some of the posters here have created scripts that are able to extend the functionality of the messageboards. Sooo...
What I'd like to know is if there is a way to apply a dark-colored theme/skin/style-sheet to the Paizo site. (i.e. a dark-grey background with light-grey text)
I work 3rd shift and generally prefer NOT to work in an environment with lots of bright lights. However, reading a bright-white screen in a more dimly lit room is very hard on the eyes due to the dramatic difference in contrast levels.
I'll understand if it's too much work for Vic and company, but are there any means by which an individual user could set the site to use a different style-sheet with a color palette on their own system?
If it matters, Chrome and the default browser on the Motorola Droid are the browsers on which I would be looking to implement such a change.
I posted a rule-related Q/A suggestion in the website feedback forum that I'd like to get some opinions on. Figured since this is the rules forum that it would be appropriate to ask for commentary in here too:
I was just thinking that I really miss the old "Ask the Sage" column from the 3.5-era magazine.
For a moment I was thinking this would be a welcome addition to one of the Pathfinder books, but then that would entail a letter/correspondence system and subtract 2 pages of valuable real-estate from either the AP or Companion books.
Since the Rules Question forum can tend to be a morass, I was thinking, what about adding an additional "blog tab" to the homepage for a running advice/rules-clarification blog?
Posts from such a blog could get stored in a new "Sage Advice" sub-forum of Rules Questions, and it would be far easier to find and paste the link-back URLs to Paizo Certified answers. Submitting questions for the sage to answer could be as simple as posing the question in a perma-stickied topic in the Rules Question forum.
The door's frame crackles at Alis' touch and the the plane of shadowy substance yawning inside it ripples like gelatin smacked with a spoon before stabilizing after a few moments. Grinning broadly, she skips thru and those who follow find themselves standing upon sun-lit cobblestone streets, a salty breeze drifting thru the air. "Welcome to Cassomir!" she says.
"At noon we'll be boarding a small Minkai dhow I chartered called The Jade Coi. A couple members of Captain Qoian's crew are on extended leave taking care of some family business, but when I told him we had enough sailors among us for at least a skeleton crew, he agreed to the job. If any of you need to do any shopping in the meantime then feel free. Otherwise we can can get an early start on things."
Feel free to handle any shopping, etc. out-of-character. If there's any questions, just ask. Otherwise, we can move on once everyone is ready.
For the DICE tag, could we get an optional label added like with the spoiler tags? The end result I'm hoping for would look something like this:
Typing:
[dice="atk"]1d20 + 5[ /dice]
Would replace typing:
[ooc]atk [dice]1d20 + 5[ /dice][ /ooc]
...and produce the same output. As an optional label, it should also not interfere with any existing uses, while saving many of us quite a bit of repetition.
Any chance we could get buttons added above the composition window for the various forum tags? The desired effect would be to insert the tags at the cursor. If text is selected, the opening/closing tags would be inserted at opposite ends.
As should be obvious from my posts and charactersheets, I'm no slouch when it comes to formatting the hell out of my posts (I have a list of macros in ShortKeys even). However, I know of more than a few people who could really benefit from the improved ease-of-use. It would also be helpful when editing a post that's already been submitted.
It seems to me that there isn't a particularly good way of modeling the fluff and crunch of a well-to-do noble in the current rules. "Rich Parents" doesn't sit well with some DMs as it can be considered by some to be out-of-line with other traits. More troubling is the fact that unlike other traits that remain pertinent (to some degree) throughout a character's career, much like many of 3.5's +1LA races, "rich parents" isn't worth the cost [of the trait] once a few levels have passed.
What I'd like is to develop a few traits that represent the benefits of nobility while remaining relevant throughout a character's career. As with any benefit, if a players wants one then they should be willing to pay for it and not expect a freebie from the DM. That is the design goal here.
Note that these traits were in part inspired by the reputation and wealth mechanics from d20 Modern.
HIGH BORN [social trait]
You were raised and educated amongst the aristocracy. You know how to conduct yourself amongst society's elite and how to direct others to attend to your commands. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Knowledge (nobility) checks and it is always considered a class skill for you. When dealing with people of station, you gain a +1 trait bonus on Diplomacy and Sense Motive checks. When dealing anyone else, your imperious bearing grants you a +1 trait bonus on Intimidate checks but you take a -1 penalty on Diplomacy and Sense Motive checks. You begin play with a courtier's outfit and appropriate jewelry. These items do not count against your character's wealth and yield no return if sold.
GENEROUS PER DIEM [equipment trait]
Whether you are a wealthy individual or work for such a patron, you are well off and the expenses other people fret over are of no worry to you. When you seek lodging, you stay only at the finest hotels. When you dine, you enjoy only the finest cuisine. You hire porters when you go shopping to carry your purchases. Each day, you may eschew the first 1gp of each food, drink, lodging, feed/stabling, and service expense up to a per diem of 2gp + 1gp per character level. Regardless of their actual cost, the quality and appearance of your clothes and belongings is always sufficient to never cause you to take penalties on Charisma-based checks made to influence courtiers and nobles (unless you specifically dress otherwise).
Special: It is possible to temporarily lose access to your per diem while in small towns or remote villages where a limited trade infrastructure prevents access to financial institutions. Similarly, if you are robbed, it take a few hours to several days before you can regain access to your funds.
One of my friends is currently teaching English in Korea. Her Korean counterparts are convinced that a particular sentence is correct and acceptable even though anyone who speaks English as their native tongue would think a foreigner was saying it.
"They gave me it."
MS Word, and other computerized grammar checkers don't flag anything as wrong, and with a word as short as "it", searching grammar websites hasn't been very productive either.
My advice was two-fold:
1)- Since the purpose of language is communication, you should be looking for the BEST way to convey your idea. When held up against other ways of saying the same thing (i.e. "They gave it to me."), that usage is not the "most correct".
2)- English is not their first language, and in an academic context such as theirs, they are largely looking at English as a matter of theory. However, there is an old saying that there is a difference between theory and practice. In theory there is no difference, in practice there is. For those who speak English as their first language, as a matter of daily practice, "They gave me it." just plain sounds wrong.
Unfortunately, the Korean English-teachers are getting pedantic over the issue as if they feel like they are defending their honor or some nonsense. As such, my friend would be appreciative if an English teacher in a primarily English-speaking country could dive in with an assist.
I've seen a number of threads recently related to totally new DMs or existing DMs who are new to Pathfinder. Even one of my own players recently decided to take the plunge into DM.
One of the biggest things that had been giving them trouble was figuring out how to balance encounters properly. After looking at the problem, I put together an Excel 2007-based "encounter calculator" that uses the "XP-Bucket" approach from the PfRPG Core Rulebook.
This past Saturday, the results of using it got put to the test for the first time, and I'm happy to say that the difficulty of all the encounters was spot-on for our party level (APL 2). Since Newbie DM™ found it to be helpful, I figured that others might as well. I've started using it to plan out encounters for our much higher-level regular campaign (APL 13) and it seems to work equally well there too.
I've included an example encounter to show how to fill things out. For your own purposes, I've found it easiest to input the party on the Encounter Template and then simply make multiple copies of that sheet for individual encounters. If there are any bugs or suggestions, please let me know either here, or on my site: http://home.worldsunknown.com/
One of my players has decided to try their hand at DMing for the next couple months while a member of our usual group is away on a 2-month business trip. To assist them, I've created a spreadsheet that functions as an encounter calculator. It uses the "XP Bucket" concept so that you can toss in enemies, NPCs, etc. and gauge how difficult an encounter will be based off the composition of the party. Similarly, it lists the appropriate treasure rewards for the various levels of difficulty.
Now while I don't expect their mini-campaign will get anywhere near 20th level anytime soon, there's a good chance that our main game will. My question then is:
What should the treasure values per encounter be for APLs above 20?
I know that PfRPG wasn't designed for epic play, there are still monsters presented in the Beastiary that would rate as challenging (APL+1), Hard (APL+2), or Epic (APL+3) even for a party of 20th-level characters. The completist in me abhors leaving such situations unaddressed. ;)
The addition of Cure/Inflict spells, and Medium Armor Proficiency are welcome changes and help to bring the Oracle further in-line power wise.
However, it is inconsistent with all other existing classes in PfRPG and the APG for a class to have Medium Armor proficiency without also having a Good Fortitude Save. This is particularly true for an Oracle of Battle.
Beyond that, the adjustments to the Oracle look pretty good. The only other changes I can see are personal opinions over bonus spell themes.
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