Mosaic's page

Used to be the Aspis Consortium, though I'm not sure if this is cannon anymore.

Nefreet wrote:

Your gold weight does not count towards your encumberance in PFS.

Ahh good to know, in Hero Lab is does add the weight in.

In Preferences, there's a way to turn off "coin weight."

Ninja Lair (inside and out)

This has a ninja shrine in the style of the smaller Map Packs. Just FYI.

FWIW, I'd grab these in a heartbeat. My preference though would be for them to be bigger (tarot sized) and to have escalating knowledge check results - I find it hard to judge what to say when a player attempts a knowledge check (plus keep forgetting which is the applicable skill).

Knowledge checks would be much more useful to me than stat blocks. Love the idea, BTW.

I've actually bought some of their Lego people accessories for my son, who's an avid Lego builder, things like little tribal warriors and space marines. Really high quality stuff.

Nice bases, perfect for the big monsters. Would you all ever consider producing bases without the slot? I rebase a lot of minis to different sizes but can't find a good, affordable huge base. I'd be happy to pay the same price as this for a Pathfinder huge non-slotted base. You'd save a smidge on each one as they would use just a little less plastic...

Jacob Saltband wrote:

If a character readied an action to catch a bomb with a bag of holding/haver sack, how would you as players/GM's handle it?

I would tell the player the same thing I would tell a player who wanted to catch the bomb with his hands: "There's a feat for that. It's called Snatch Arrows."

There already exist rules for exactly what you want to do; use them.

That seems a little harsh. A lot of people catch a lot of things w/o three feats. But if it's the vs. bomb thing, or even the vs. weapon thing that bothers you, how would you model just catching anything? Like a game of catch w/ a baseball? Hopefully you don't need three feats to do that!

I've run Kingmaker twice and started a thread a while back about things I might do differently if I were to start over. Might be useful for you, lots of good ideas from several people.

link

Reprinting my ideas for the beginning:

0) I'd fudge the map and make Restov farther away. Oleg's is only a couple of days away by the highway. I'd want it to be a week or two. I might even double the size of each hex, making them 24 miles across (about 500 sq miles.). I'd also sprinkle a couple of existing settlements, thorps really, around the Stolen Lands.

1) I think starting off, I wouldn't make the PCs the center of attention. They'd be hirelings for a more notable petty-noble who was setting off to conquer the Stolen Lands. I'd ramp up the expedition-member roles some of us have played around with, like cartographer, naturalist, medic, etc. More focus on just how hard exploring really is, effects of terrain and weather, more random encounters, etc. Then this leader guy would turn out to be a looser and might hide from combat or might just die early in the story, during or soon after the first couple of bandit encounters. Might be cool to make him die by the Stag Lord's hand. Give the PC's a moment of ... uh, what do we do now? Then they have to nut up and finish the job without the boss. Restov might be in a bind and might not want to recognize the PCs claims to the territory but not have any choice. facts on the ground.

2) Before the PCs leave Restov, I'd have a party or something where they'd meet Meager Varn, Drelev and the Iron Wraiths. They just knew too little about their neighbors until it was action time. I'd want them to know what's going on and have relationships (good or bad) with these folks from the beginning. It's would make later events more meaningful, and it seems strange that they barely learn about some of these folks in book 5 and 6. Foreshadowing = good.

Thoughts on alebrijes - The little psychedelic wooden Mexican statues are very cool. I have several from various trips to Oaxaca. The last time I went, however, they were trending less payote-inspired psychedelia and more technicolor cute. The big ones in Mexico City are paper mache. Different teams make big models and parade them around the city, kind of like Mardi Gras floats and crews. I could see either of these as being animated objects in an Acadian culture, and the idea of some fevered dream connection works especially well with the little wooden ones. Finally, the translation of "alebrije" is "jabberwocky," so you could also make a nice connection between either the little or the big ones and the First World tarn itself - maybe they were first built as homages to the real jabberwocky after a particularly destructive visit to Arcadia.

[Warning: I'm not a rules expert]

Let me see if I understand what you all are saying.

A wizard flies up into the air on an overcast day (normal light, but not bright), casts Deeper Darkness, and suddenly she is surrounded by a sphere of darkness (-2 light levels). I don't have darkvision, so I can't see her anymore. So far so good. But a bird flies behind her, maybe 70' back, outside the sphere of darkness. You all are saying that, as an observer on the ground, the sphere of darkness never blocks my line of sight with the bird, even when it passes behind the wizard and her sphere?

How can I both not see into the darkness yet see through it? What you're describing is more like a light sensitive invisibility. I know we're talking about magic, but to be able to clearly see an object behind the darkness doesn't seem internally consistent.

Like I said, I'm not a rules expert, so by the rules, it may be so. It just seems so illogical that it leads to more paradoxes than just saying it's a big opaque sphere.

Great news!

Hmm, a thought on "full reactions" that would cost you your next action. (Catching and throwing a grenade back) The catching of the grenade could be the reaction, and the tossing could be that creature's action during it's team's turn.

So it would still just be a "reaction", but because he caught it he gets the option to throw it back during his turn.

Now, do we want reactions to be defensive only, or will there be a mix of action types?

Love the idea of reaction, though I'm not ready for a whole new system. The idea in the post I quoted included AoOs as a kind of reaction. What about just using the existing AoO structure? Everyone gets one Reaction (instead of just an AoO) and if you've got Combat Reflexes, you get one Reaction per point of Dex bonus. Things that provoke AoOs now provoke Reactions. Could introduce a couple of new feats that allow specific Reactions when not normally allowed, like Parry to try to fend of an attack.

Just curious if the original preorders are going to get a survey? I received one for the pledge I made, but not one for my original sinister preorder.

Same question - I got access to the Player's Guide I qualify for from the Kickstarter (very nice, BTW), but don't seem to have access to the main book, which I have been waiting for anxiously for several years now.

Were there to be a FAQening, I would suggest something like this:

Which of the following are legal options for 15-foot cone placement?
http://i.imgur.com/7FnroF7.jpg

Great diagrams. I'm a big believer in B1 and D1 - the two cones that look like 90º triangles; the caster is firing a cone at a 45º angle from her body.

B2 and D2 are... odd. They are consistent with SKR's "from any corner" definition, but if the "hot spot" is in the middle of the caster's square, not so much. Note however, putting the "hot spot" in the middle of the caster's square would also preclude A1 and C1, which are perfectly fine to me.

My problem with B2 and D2 is that they don't exactly emanate directly away from the caster. In both cases, there's a curve, a square right in front of the caster that isn't part of the cone, then one further out that is. I guess you could say the same for B1 and D1, but I'm okay writing that off to the vaguarities of diagonals. With B2 and D2, it's just to blatant for my tastes.

I'm in!

The Trailblazer system caps you at two attacks per round (unless you're two weapon fighting), but keeps the overall odds of hitting and damage output per round pretty much the same.

• At BAB +6 = two attacks, both at -2 (so +4/+4 instead of +6/+1)
• At BAB +11 = two attacks, both at -1 (so +10/+10 instead of +11/+6/+1)
• At BAB +16 = two attacks, both at -0 (so +16/+16 instead of +16/+11/+6/+1)

Fewer attack but a better chance of hitting, plus, they're both at the same + so less math to slow the game down.

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment (or should I say, "GM's advocate").

It's a wide world out there. PCs are not supposed to understand every power and every enemy they face. Sometimes even heroes get hit with "WtF was that?!" No hero should be able to look at an opponent and list down all of his abilities and - in character - say, "Oh, he just used Dimensional Step." As an experienced player, you may have pretty good rule knowledge and recognize different spells and abilities, but in-character, your PC doesn't. It's a perfect example of meta-gaming. When I GM, I will occasionally swap out a monster's spells or powers, or reskin a monster so players don't get bored/lazy, and I hate it when one of them cries, "You can't do that!" If you don't understand the powers the bad guy just used, don't ask the GM what he's doing - that's lazy - have your PC go do some research. And hate the bad guy all the more, but don't get mad at the GM.

Now, as a GM, great flexibility comes with great responsibility. Mix things up and surprise your players once in a while, but don't screw them. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun. Surprises are fun and memorable. TPKs aren't. GM's can't abuse Rule 0 or players are going to leave. But keep in mind that GMing isn't an exact science - maybe he made an encounter that was meant to be really challenging and it turned out to be too challenging. Oops. Sound like he's got a back door for you all with easy Resurrection. Or maybe you wiped out his boss last week in the first round and he wanted some payback (Not a great motive, but hey, it happens - GMs put hours into prep and it's supposed to be fun for them too, and trust me, one-shoting bosses is not fun for GMs). Or maybe he needed to do what he did for narrative reasons to move the story forward so he stepped outside the rules for a minute. If you really don't like it, talk to him or take a break, or do both.

Finally, this jive about, "Well I'm going to become an evil cleric of Tiamat just so I can that too," comes from angle where players take classes and levels for purely power reason and nothing to do with who their character is. Down this road lies more and more player vs. GM conflict as everyone tries to "win." Fun? Not for long.

Great Con, lots of fun. Thanks always to those who step up and GM, especially for the midnight to 4am slot! And to Robyn for organizing!

Two requests for next time:
1) more Thornkeep - great first adventure so I want to keep playing my new character throught the whole module.
2) Eyes of the Ten - Fugencio needs to retire. What would it take to schedule an all-day, high-level extravaganza?

Would they get to add a Charge bonus?

Sincubus wrote:

Why nobody cares about no Ant-eaters here?

Not enough B.C. readers at Paizo, possibly?

Or UC Irvine alumni?

So who is this guy?

Texas and Mexico merging to become an energy producing 'New Texas'?

You could call it "Texaco."

(Does that have meaning to anyone outside the States?)

It's not important to me on the scale of, say, figuring how Stealth and Perception rules actually work, but sure, the thought, "That doesn't seem quite right" pops into my head once in a while. Expert 5 w/ Profession (brewer) = "I'm a master brewer and I can brew world-class beer!" Fighter 5 w/ Profession (brewer) = "I spend all day killing monsters, and I can still brew beer just as well as you can!" No, not a huge big deal, but, yeah, it doesn't seem quite right to me.

phlogiston

It had negative weight.

I have a soft spot for Experts. One other change I would make is give Experts "Profession" as a class skill... and no one else, including PC classes. PCs could still take the skill, but they wouldn't get the +3 class skill bonus. I've never liked that a dude out exploring dungeons all day can be just as good at being a baker as the guy who dedicates his life to baking.

Description still says "two levels"; was this issue ever resolved? Thanks.

What would be the point of introducing another NPC class? What role it would serve that it isn't fulfilled by one of existing classes?

To me, it isn't filling roles that aren't already there, it's filling them in a lesser way. I see the world as being populated by mundane people and PCs being the extraordinary heroes. But, if in order to build some muggers, I make them Rogues 2, and I have to start assigning them extraordinary talents that I don't want my run-of-the-mill street thug to have. PC start picking up heroic abilities pretty quickly, abilities that I don't want most people in a society to have.

So, for me, I'd like to see a non-heroic NPC class option for each niche that PCs can fill - fight, very minor arcane, very minor divine, sneak, professional.

In my mind, there would be 5-6 NPC classes:
• Warrior as basic NPC Fighter (or ideally, switch the names and have Warrior be PC and Fighter be NPC);
• Adept as basic NPC Arcane Caster
• Acolyte (new) as basic NPC Divine Caster
• Thief (new) as basic NPC Rogue
• Expert as the NPC professional/skill monkey

• I'm not totally decided on Aristocrat (see below)

I agree w/ Jadeite that levels in Commoner should just be racial levels, the assumption being that everything presented in the monster books are the commoner version of the creatures. A 2nd-level human Commoner could just be described as a Human 2.

Then "Noble" could be a template applied when needed, almost like Advanced. They'd pick up stat bonuses - reflecting better health, better education, etc. - some additional weapon and armor proficiencies, more skill choices and skill points, all reflecting their noble upbringing and training. I think this would probably replace the Aristocrat NPC class, and you could just have a Noble Human Expert 3 with a focus on Diplomacy, K (nobility), etc.

Lovely. And it captures the same sad beauty as much of Orthodox art. My favorite cover yet.

Sky had a great all-metal spear in "Hero" (Jet Li movie). I think it was supposed to be silver (although the prop was more likely aluminum).

My wife is in a similar situation. She's going with Archaeologist, but that still has spells. We're going to try an Archaeologist with "lectures" that buff companions (basically re-skinned performances) instead of spells. I'll try to post the actual write up when I get home.

I have a big paper cutter at school that I used to chop the pieces out. Worker well. I actually cut inside the outer lines of each vehicle so the outer squares are a little small - that way they'll fit inside the squares of any maps I lay them onto. Office supply stores like Staples usually have a paper cutter out for public use.

On the little bits, I like the big vehicles a lot - wagons, boats, even gliders. I'm not as thrilled with the creatures and mounts (too small, I tend to use minis for living things, etc.). I probably won't use them very often and agree that teams of animals with rigging would have been better. But in the end, I'm okay with the occasional experimental map pack. I actually pulled out Swallowed Whole recently for an encounter. Innovation is not a guarantee of success, but they've got to take risks and try new things once in a while.

One last thing - to me, the real catch with this set for me is the backgrounds on each card. What if my chariot is in the desert? Grass. If is want to sled through the forest like Radigast? Snow. I'd love to see a Traps pack or some larger dungeon dressings (fountains, labs, etc), but not unless they're on a clear background so I can lay them onto any background map without the ring of grass and snow.

I actually didn't like the first sewer pack because the rooms were too oddly shaped. I'm much happier with this set because it looks a little more generic (aka - reusable). Plus the new coating and transitions to other maps... I'm totally happy with a new sewer set!

Each building representing a neighborhood of 562,500 square feet (750'x750').

Each complete city district being one square mile where 9,000 people live.

You're absolutely correct, but then it gets screwy when you look at the map of Varnhold and there is a 1-to-1 correspondence between "buildings" in the stat block and buildings on the map. One "brewery" is exactly one brewery building and not a city block with a brewery and some houses. But this goes back to one of the other problems the OP pointed out - Varnhold, as mapped, is WAY too small.

All crossbows can be shot but not loaded, one-handed.

But, normally, one hand is to hold the crossbow and the other is to put the bolt it, right? So he'd still have one hand to load, and if the crossbow IS his hand, one could say he's technically "holding" it with his stump.

I'd go with a non-state, like drow or demons or other off-worlder, so you can have each nation dealing with it differently - some resist, some collaborate. New enemies cause strange friendships.

After Ultimate Campaigns, I'm guessing we're going to start running low on Ultimate topics, so what next?

One idea might be a line of 64-page "GM's Guides" with titles like "GM's Guide to High-Level Combat," or "GM's Guide to Traps and Environmental Hazards," or "GMs Guide to Stealth and Perception," etc. Find some topics that many GMs struggle with and would really help mid-experience GMs hone their skills. It could be part crunch and part essays from experienced GMs and developers, lots of little "this is how I do it" tips. Could even introduce us to some of the experts house-rules and short-cuts in these areas.

Okay, so this probably couldn't replace on of the hardbacks each year, but really would be interested in seeing Paizo put out some better-GMing essays. Maybe as part of the GameMastery line (if that isn't defunct at this point).

I've gotten a bunch of these from, ahm... another vendor. They're great. High quality and really nice looking. Glad to see them here at Paizo now.

I would rather it be the new Kingdom rules use the 6 attributes of the settlement rules.

You know, I'd be fine with that, too. I'd just really like to see the rules unified.

I really enjoy the kingdom building rules for Kingmaker, and my players in two campaigns have found them to be a fun "something different." One thing I would LOVE to see as a GM in any updates would be a way for the cities one builds using kingdom-building rules to generate a stat block like the one Paizo now uses to describe cities in adventures. Right now, the two are totally different. It's kind of like PCs and NPCs having different ability scores with different names, with PCs having "Dexterity" and NPCs having "Agility."

Kingdom-building cities (in Kingmaker) have three stats: Economy, Stability and Loyalty (okay, five: plus Unrest and Defenses).

Regular Paizo cities have six stats: Crime, Corruption, Economy, Society, Lore, and Law.

What I've been doing is:
• Econ = Econ
• Law => Stabilty
• keep Crime as a sub-score of Stability (crime = instability)
• add Loyalty
• keep Corruption as a sub-score of Loyalty (corruption = government disloyalty)
• add Unrest as a sub-score of Loyalty (unrest = public disloyalty)
• keep Lore
• add Defenses
• drop Society

So what's that, 8? Not perfect, but something like this would mean that kingdom-building cities and cities in adventures could use the same stat blocks.

Fantastic map!

I know it's not canon, but a couple of things I notice now that the world isn't confined to a rectangle:

• Galt ends in a funny place. The eastern border is right in the middle of a nice plain, and it's eastern neighbor (Iobaria) is a pretty depopulated and on the other side of the mountains. In the real world, I'd guess that Galt would go "off-the map" in the east and claim that plain up to the mountains.

• I can really see how Qadira (and maybe even Zalshabbar) were once Taldan territory... and why Taldan would want them back.

• I always had a pet theory (not supported by canon) that Iblydos was located under Jalmeray, basically that the Greek got overrun by a group of Indians. That's why Iblydos isn't a major location anymore and is "lost," and brins it closer to the Inner Sea so it could have influenced Osirian and Taldon "back in the day." Given your placement, Jalmeray should at least have been Sicily, a colony of Iblydos, before the Vundrans got there.

Also, no big deal, but having played Kingmaker, there is another small forest just west of the river north of Mivon in the River Kingdoms, and a small mountain/hill range right near the River Kingdom's eastern border. This also taps into the Galt issue above - why would anyone leave such a nice plain to the chaotic nation on the other side of the mountains?

Again, amazing maps and I hope Paizo absorbs some of your nomenclature!

Sounds like you guys are onto a good mathematical solution, but there would be a certain back-to-where-you-started closure/logic if you went with 12 shafts and a icosahedron with 20 facets... so your planet would be covered by a huge d20!

Could also make the terrain a little more interesting.

• A 20'-wide canal with sidewalks on the sides and footbridges, a la Venice, running through the city instead of a street.

• City on a slope - streets would be the same, but sidewalk would occasionally have steps and some cross streets would instead dead-end in a cul-de-sac 10' above or below the main street (great for leaping chases or entrances to underground areas). A crane or lifts for moving good up a steep hillside.

And I've got a Heroclix Gorilla Grod on my shelf that I will have no shame to use as the Gorilla King.

I re-based it and did the same thing!

Given the sad demise of Kobold Quarterly, I'd love to see some little nod/homage/easteregg in Kobolds of Golarion. A named NPC? A reference to a Koboldic scholarly journal? Not sure what. But something. It just seems fitting.

Mosaic wrote:

donato wrote:

I'm in. The largest building in the village is mine!

Any idea what you're going to do with it yet?

I'm thinking of making it the home of a retired adventurer who is hiding many relics from his journeys.

Cool. Now we just cross our fingers and hope this baby gets funded.

Kobold Annually?

I'm in. The largest building in the village is mine!

Any idea what you're going to do with it yet?

More random ideas-

What about focusing each city map on a different area of the city, themes like high class, middle class, and low class.

High class could be City Center with a plaza on the edge and municipal buildings like a city hall with offices and a council chamber, a court room maybe with a little jail, some bureaucratic offices, a bank, a high end shop or restaurant, etc.

Middle class could be like 3 townhouses in a row, similar but different, a small park, a grocery, a small temple, and a couple of workshops. Townhouses could look normal but one might hold a secret entrance to something else...

Low class could just be a tangle of tightly packed buildings, a gambling den, several seedy taverns, pawn shops, lots of alleys, a little ugly shrine, maybe even a thieves' guild tucked at the back of an alley. A burned out building.

On the KickStarter someone mentioned having one side of a map be above ground and the other side be the corresponding underground/sewers. I suggested maybe putting underground for Map A on the back of Map B, and the underground for Map B and the back of Map A because it's a pain to have to take all the minis of a map to flip it every time PCs go up or down.

Another idea would be to do some undergrounds, like for low class areas, but maybe to do a second-story map for other areas. Too many one-story buildings could get a little boring. Or at least do stairs up. Maybe someday you guys could do Map Cards like Paizo that add on to the upstairs of buildings in the original maps. Fun thing is you could have multiple upstairs (or downstairs) cards for each building so a particular building never has to be the same if you use the same map again in the future!

Verisimilitude is important to me. I'd go with the wormhole/subspace option as well. It keeps the horse unique and prevents the PCs from creating a ship that travels as fast as a space horse. It's not a question of "how fast" but "where" the horse travels.

One other thing - if you want just make it fast, nobody says speed or acceleration have to be linear. Maybe it spends the first week and a half accelerating and it doesn't cover much distance. Then, when it hits top speed and - ZOOM - it crosses interplanetary distances in seconds, and then it takes a few days to decelerate again. Or maybe its super speed only works outside the gravity of planets, again, keeping anyone for using it for short distances. Either of these would keep short distances within normal scale of travel time, but "infinite" distances would be crossable.

Air in space is fine if you want a boats-in-space Treasure Planet feel. But if you want vacuum, drop the part about the horse creating an air field and make the PCs cast spells or research a magic item to not explode in space.