Paul Watson's page

Moff is correct. That is the common definition of atheism.

The root of the word is "no religion" as theism is technically a religion, but most people know atheist means "no god" (which would technically be adeism).

Agnosticism, by way of contrast, means "no knowing". Agnostics might care deeply, but they do not know for certain whether God exists (as religious people know He does) or he doesn't (as atheists do). Of course, quite a lot fall into Hulkism (i.e. believe whatever the hell you want, but leave me out of it).

Speaking personally, I am atheistic in the root sense, having a great deal of problems with religion such that I cannot believe they are divinely inspired, but am agnostic on the existence of God, although I lean towards not.

Roman wrote:

This is great news - until your post confirmed it, I wasn't sure whether it is a true rumor or not, but now that it is confirmed I am very happy.

When its a news item posted by the Director of Sales & Marketing, you can trust that it's not a rumor. :-)

Sorry, but I've worked in marketing and with sales. Rumours are often more reliable than the people who do either. ;-)

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Check out article 1, sec 4 of Pennsylvania. I also mentioned Arkansas above.

No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this Commonwealth.

A God so say I decide that I worship Spaghedeity I acknowledge the being of a God and as such I qualify to run for and hold office.

as such your opinion does not hold water.

So your solution is to commit perjury? That doesn't sound like a good plan to me. I don't believe in a God. If the only way to hold office is to lie, well, can y ou see why this might annoy atheists a tad? Even if it is unconstitutional, doesn't exactly say "Welcome non-believers", does it?

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Nationally, that's true; some states still hold on to those laws, however.

I'm sorry where are you getting this info from? It's not the 1950's

No, but it is true. At least in Texas.

Were there any gay smurfs?

Well, as Smurfette was the only female Smurf and she was created by Gargamel, it does lead to some rather interesting lines of thought, wouldn't you say?

Paul Watson wrote:

It does not matter if it is in the SRD. It has been declared Open Content (see the open content section on the credits page of Unearthed Arcana. Anything in UA that is not a proper noun, trademark, artwork, trade dress or related to Displacer Beasts, Slaads, Githyanki, Githzerai, Beholders, Gauth, Mind Flayrers and Yuan-Ti is Open Content) and is thus available to be used in its entirety by other publishers, as long as they identify the source, as per the OGL. The SRD is a short hand, summary product. It is not the entirety of WotC open content.

Never noticed that on the credits page because I don't usually read credit pages... my bad.

Well, my pdf copy was hanging and that was all I had to read. At least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it like Sovereign Glue.

Str: 10
Dex: 14
Con: 7
Int: 16
Wis: 10
Cha: 9

Say hello to Raistlin, folks. This sickly mage can barely survive a strong breeze, or say hello, but he's smarter than the average bear.

modus0 wrote:

It may not be in the "Official" SRD, but the majority of Unearthed Arcana is Open Game Content.

Now if the poster is just saying, no need for a rule just use the one in UA that's okay but I believe the basis of this thread is that people want to see it added to Paizo's final product:

The variant CL by class table does not come come from any of the books listed in the d20System System Reference so I am not sure how you think the variant CL Chart open content? The mechanism of assigning variant CL to differnt class levels I believe is OGL but using that chart is not. Similiar to say creating a feat which adds negative energy to a spell but you couldn't print in a book a copy of the Black Lore of Moil [Metamagic Feat] from Complete Arcane.

It does not matter if it is in the SRD. It has been declared Open Content (see the open content section on the credits page of Unearthed Arcana. Anything in UA that is not a proper noun, trademark, artwork, trade dress or related to Displacer Beasts, Slaads, Githyanki, Githzerai, Beholders, Gauth, Mind Flayrers and Yuan-Ti is Open Content) and is thus available to be used in its entirety by other publishers, as long as they identify the source, as per the OGL. The SRD is a short hand, summary product. It is not the entirety of WotC open content.

I like the idea of merging skills, though certain things will likely open balance issues with the rogue since he is having so many skills merged together.

The following make sense:

Perception: Spot + Listen (Wisdom)
Stealth: Hide + Move Silently (Dexterity)
Athletics: Climb + Jump (Strength)
Disable Device: Pick Locks + Disable Device (Dex or possibly even Int)
Agility: Balance + Jump (Dexterity)
Knowledge Religion: Religion + Spellcraft Divine (Int)
Knowledge Arcana: Arcana + Spellcraft Arcane (Int)
Handle Animal: Ride + Handle Animal (Wisdom)
Deception: Disguise + Forgery (Int)
Persuasion: Bluff + Intimidate (Charisma)
Diplomacy: Diplomacy + Gather Information (Charisma)

Italicised the ones I have problems with in that list.

I can see Balance and Tumble working together very well as they're both associated with dexterity. You can't really imagine an acrobatic character with a high tumble skill being unable to walk along a narrow ledge without fear of falling for example. I can see them having trouble making long jumps. Balance and Tumble are much more about flexibility while Jumping favours a bit of raw power and makes more sense with Climb if you're going to merge it with anything (although I'm not sure you need to).

I think the three forms of interaction need to be split out. Just as being able to lie well doesn't mean you can handle etiquette, being able to scare people doesn't mean you can lie well. The confidence trickster and 'Guido' are very different characters and adding these skills together is not a good idea, IMHO.

Not sure the Handle Animal and Diplomacy merges are needed, either. If you get too much consolidation, then you do disadvantage the skill monkey characters too much.

I could see Linguistics being Decipher Script and learn languages as it does seem silly to have one skill (Language) operate on entirely a different basis to all the others, but this leads to a problem of a character having too many languages too cheaply.

And I agree, that Concentration should be a skill on it's own.

Here endeth the opinion.

Another untested idea but maybe have the smite last for Charisma mod rounds or until it hits, whichever comes first? That would solve the major problem I have with smites: That they miss. Given it currently only lasts for one round, a smite is quite underpowered as at low levels one bad roll can screw you up completely. At the same time it wouldn't make smites more powered than they are now as it still only does its bonus damage for one attack sequence.

The damage as a die is also a nice idea, again especially at low levels. d4 holy damage for a smite does sound about right and would keep it roughly in the same damage range as now if it increases as tigerdave suggests.

Or you could allow the Fighter to stack his feats, i.e. two weapon focus feats to get +2 to hit with that weapon, or more improved criticals to increase the range, double TWF to reduce or reduce the penalty, etc, etc.

Also more Fighter only feats. I mean, at the moment the poor sod has Weapon Specilisation and that's his only unique trick.

Stay.

Because without them we lose dozens of iconic spells:
No sleep, no dominate, no flesh to stone, no polymorph, no ghouls, no medusae, etc..

Not worth it, IMHO.

R-type wrote:

Who here is from UK? Just curious. :)

And how did you come to play D&D as it's not exactly popular over here is it?

Londoner, now living in Essex (close enough to London to reap the advantages of the big smoke though).

Heh. I've gone the other way. Essex boy who's now living on the northern edge of London.

Started with DC Heroes and the Red book, and Fighting Fantasy, and played and GMed up through university, after which I manage to lose time or interest and have only just been getting back to playing.

We'll see if I can get to use all the Pathfinder goodies I've got on order when I get comfortable.

How about giving the fighter the ability to spend his feats on improving his existing feats? So you could spend two feats on Dodge to get a +2 bonus to AC. Obviously you'd have to have a limit on how often you could do this to prevent someone stacking all their feats into Dodge and being nigh unhittable, or having +30 on Sunder attempts.

Or Fighters could use multiple Combat feats in one round (say 1/iterative attack).

Or Fighters can move and still make full attacks but drop the lowest attack.

Or give Fighters 'open' feats every five levels that can be changed each day. So if a 6th level fighter wishes he had Improved Sunder because he is really getting sick of the bad guy's uber-weapon but it isn't something he'd normally do, he spends his open feat to get it. Next day, he uses it to get Two Weapon Fighting after his shield is lost.

Just some suggestions on keeping the Fighter broadly as he is, just more useful at higher levels.

Wasn't something very similar done in Unearthed Arcana?

They gave all full casters (including the Bard) a 1/1 Caster Level/Level, half casters and the Monk (?) were given 1/2 and non-casters were 1/4.

So a Fighter 4/Wizard 7 would have a Caster Level of 8 but the spell selection of a 7th level wizard.

This is a completely unthought through and certainly not tested in any way. In fact, it's still barely coherent, but that's never stopped me before, and it won't now

What do people think of the option of giving Fighters "Combat Points" similar to the Barbarians rage points. These could power things like enhanced feats (such as allow Dodge to work on two opponents), to get feats temporarily (spend combat points to gain improved disarm when you really need it) or to do impressive things or suppress the rules temporarily, such as allowing two combat feats to be used in one round.

Obviously this will need a colossal amount of work to be of actual use (how many points do you get per level, how much does each ability cost, just what can you do with these things any way, and I'm sure a dozen other complications), but it would allow Fighters to do cool things like the other classes without making them overpowered, although it would make them slightly more complicated to run.

Any thoughts on this vague idea?

Although I liked a lot of the rage points, I don´t like the way it works now.

2+Con every level is arbitrary. What if someone has con 18 and othe character has only 14?

And what happens when a character gets a Periapt oh Health +4 at lvl 8 and another one gets only at lvl 12??? The latter will be crippled because of that?

I believe these rage points should be a fixed amount, like spell points from Unearthed Arcana.

What are your thoughts?

That this is exactly the same as what happened in 3E where the length of rage was determined by your Con bonus. All rage points do is allow you to play more with your rages at higher levels, for example stopping a rage early if you win, continuing to rage if you've been unlucky with the rolls or trying out a cool rage manoeuvre.