NewtonPulsifer's page

Warning: Econ crunch ahead.

Medieval serfs in England who were wage laborers would have a cottage and 4 acres of arable land given to them. This is basically his "wage" for working for his landlord. He farms his 4 acres on his own time. The so called "cottager". In addition, rights to pasturage for animals would be available in the commons. Probably about 5x of that per cottager (20 acres or so). A cottager could aspire to purchase his cottage and 4 acres and thus free himself of his day job under his landlord. He would probably have hunting/trapping rights in the forest too, but they might be limited (rabbits etc., not deer or boars) or just unlimited rights but only in portions of the forest.

Typical rents for additional acreage would be about 6.25gp (2 shillings 6 pennies) per year for arable land, assuming a British pound from that era is worth about 50gp. If the cottager were energetic or ambitious, or found himself with extra cash and wanted to hire laborers of his own to turn a profit he could do it in this way. Not sure of the value of pasturage, as some pasture land was unsuitable for farming, and other pasturage was simply farm land that was temporarily fallow.

Eventually wool became so valuable the lords simply kicked all the cottagers off of their land to tend sheep and feudal peasantry disappeared in England.

A yeoman would probably need 20 acres of arable land and about 100 acres of pasture to get that rank (owned by him). Keep in mind at some times you had to have the actual title to the land to get the rank. So if you had to mortgage to a lienholder and they held the title until it was paid off, you literally actually "lost title" and were no longer a yeoman. In some areas/times the exact acreage to attain a rank of yeoman was actually spelled out, and often put a requirement on the yeoman to maintain a militia soldier with a certain standard of equipment that could be called up in time of need (often the yeoman himself if he was fit and able - the classic yeoman English longbowman).

P.S. Old style farming left a surprising (to modern eyes) amount of land fallow (most of it, actually). It was the only way they knew of to fertilize it - with cow patties. They couldn't just turn crude oil into ammonia by the kilotonne and make fertilizer like we do nowadays.

I agree with Raving Dork - a good character could do all this except the torture.

I'd say the torture is an evil act. However, it is not like he did it for fun. If I were one to give "points" to a character based on their actions, this would certainly merit fewer "evil" points and definitely not a sudden change of alignment if they weren't already evil.

Law vs. chaos - just because the rogue is causing major death and destruction doesn't make him chaotic. It just makes him effective.

Execution of nuisance prisoners who would be executed under the law anyway (brigands/pirates) isn't evil. It's self serving. I'd say it's neutral.

There aren't any rules on how quickly one switches alignment from certain acts.

As DM I'd rule this wouldn't push a character to evil no matter how many times they did it, but it would drift them towards neutral.

Is there a way to disguise your scent? Seems like there should be a mundane thing to cover your scent. But any thoughts mundane or magical?

Scent Cloak from Adventurer's Armory increases the track DC by 10 for tracking by scent;it basically acts like the "false, powerful odor" mentioned here in the PRD.

As to getting around the invisibility detection at 60/30/15 feet (depending on upwind/no wind/downwind), just that spell that I know of.

master arminas wrote:

Firing grape-shot (blast-shot, I suppose is the Pathfinder term) at formed ranks would decimate an attacking regiment: two or three hundred dead or wounded from a single salvo.

Decimate actually does not mean "destroy utterly." It means "removeal of a tenth"

Sorry to be pedantic, but this always bothers me...

Err...regiments are often two or three thousand men, so.....

This scenario doesn't wash with even historical medieval justice in one important way - capital crimes throughout even medieval history were able to be appealed to the highest lord of the country (generally the king) and invariably always were.

This is why barons and counts who abused their power always let people they targeted rot in jail. They'd corruptly convict people of lesser crimes (misdemeanors) that they couldn't appeal (if indeed they had the power to dispense criminal justice at all - criminal justice was usually handled by Royal Justices and Sheriffs). If they summarily executed someone they'd be in for a potentially huge fine from the king (not that the king would necessarily mind taxing one of his nobles 50,000gp -ooh, there's a plot - king's agent provocateur tries to get nobles to summarily execute defendants) because they lacked jurisdiction to do it.

You're only going to have summary executions in times of war or extensive lawlessness where individual nobles are the real power and the king/queen is useless or ineffectual.

Even in the middle ages you'd sit in jail for a while waiting to hear about your appeal. Certainly way too much time to create any sort of dramatic tension.

Racing against the clock to fend off a summary execution is going to seem hackneyed railroading (and rightly so) unless the legal system in place is capricious and/or unrestrained by higher legal review (that is, neither lawful nor good and the paladin can probably tell this), or where human life is exceedingly cheap (for example a serf or slave accused of murder, slavery and serfdom probably not being on the "good" side of laws/customs either).

And now the 3.5 Edition Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual are beating 4th Edition's sales ranks on Amazon. Player's Handbook 4th Edition still has a lead, although it isn't a big lead.

If it is that important to him, have the DM make a tiefling leader NPC. I'd say, if there's one rogue, two is even more fun.

Rogue is about the complete opposite of a leader-type, so I think it could be very cathartic for you.

Here's a link that lets you correlate Amazon sales rank numbers to actual Amazon sales.

I suppose this thread is a bit stale now but here's something to resurrect it a bit.

Anybody noticed a lot of 4E stuff for sale second hand already? There's like 55 'New and Used' 4E PHB for sale, and 158 of PHB3 and PHB3.5 combined (129 PHB3 - a high number I'd expect - and 29 PHB3.5) on Amazon. Plus the 4E PHB starts at $14.97 and 3.5E start at $41.55

There's more 4E PHBs on sale on ebay in my quick search than 3E (yes I clicked on 'Auction' button to screen out 'buy it now' listings from vendors).

I was about to put my 4E stuff up for sale (main 3 books) when I noticed this.

I don't think this bodes well for 4E staying power at all.