Ramarren's page

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In one game I regularly said 'Wubba Wubba Paff!" when casting curative spells. It became shorthand when one of the other party members, badly injured in a fight, looked at me doe-eyed, with a trembling lower lip, saying "Wubba Wubba Paff? Wubba Wubba Paff?"

This is the key statement to me:
"If an invisible mark is made, a detect magic spell causes it to glow and be visible, though not necessarily understandable."

This is not the same as:
"If a mark is made invisible, a detect magic spell causes it to glow and be visible, though not necessarily understandable."

Arcane Mark/Detect Invisibility does not defeat invisibility. The intent is that a caster can deliberately create an invisible mark that shows up under Detect Magic (much like a hand-stamp that shows up under black light).

Invisibility (2nd level) trumps Arcane Mark (0 Level).

You might be able to play semantic games if you start off with an invisible Mark, and then cast detect magic, but I wouldn't allow it.

Same Effect with Differing Results wrote:

The same spell can sometimes produce varying effects if applied to the same recipient more than once.

(emphasis added)

Is it the same spell? Yes.
Is the chosen/desired effect different? Yes.
Is it being applied to the same recipient more than once? Yes.

I disagree.

It is not 'the same effect with differing results'
(this is good for two different spells that both provide differing levels of Fire Resistance, for example)

It is 'the same spell with differing effects'...that's perfectly valid to stack. (1 effect to Resist Fire, 1 to Resist Acid, etc)

If I get hit twice with Bestow Curse, once to give me -6 to an ability score, and once to give me -4 to hit, I'd expect to have to suffer both effects (and if I get hit with it again to give me -6 to a different ability score...I am a very unhappy camper indeed).

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If you are willing to change the name a bit, I give you:

Fargi Nicehole, Goblin Prostitute. Actual class is pretty irrelevant, you can even make him/her something really useful, and just crank up the squick factor to whatever level is desired...

To be fair, that's going to be very difficult to pull off for an alien race that isn't a 'throwaway'. If the race is truly alien in thought processes, then it will be close to impossible to generate the connection viewers need to keep them interested.

Babylon 5's Vorlons were a pretty good example of non-human psychology, and that while important, their participation in episodes was quite rare.

And here is a finalized Kern Therensgard for your consideration.

Set 2 seems the smart one to take :)

I currently have Kern Therensgard (Transmuter Wizard with a martial outlook) in consideration for another Kingmaker PBP, but should know by tomorrow whether he is in that game.

If he is not part of that game, I'd like to submit him with the following stat range:
Set 1
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (6, 3) + 6 = 15
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (3, 1) + 6 = 10
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (3, 6) + 6 = 15
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (6, 6) + 6 = 18
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (3, 3) + 6 = 12
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (1, 1) + 6 = 8
Set 2
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (2, 6) + 6 = 14
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (4, 6) + 6 = 16
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (5, 4) + 6 = 15
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (6, 5) + 6 = 17
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (4, 1) + 6 = 11
2d6 + 6 ⇒ (4, 2) + 6 = 12

It's via a GUI, but parts of that GUI will put you into coding windows. So you'll build 90% of a class using checkboxes and dropdowns, but it's likely you'll have to delve into Herolab's programming language to complete things.

For the most part, you can swipe copies of code for what you need from other classes/items/feats, as long as it is a mechanic that already exists somewhere. Otherwise you may have to get a bit more down and dirty.

Deanoth wrote:

You do realize that Hero Lab only needs the core system and once you have that you can enter ALL the information yourself. It is not to terribly difficult to do if that is what you want to do that is. Just takes time.

Just to clarify, cause I thinking about getting it, are you saying you can add any custom information, including, say, a home brew prestige class into Hero Lab? Thanks.

You can.

Be aware, however, that the learning curve is steep (though the people on the forums are very helpful in figuring out how to do something).

Does Roll20 offer dynamic reveal of Fog of War based on character sightlines? That's one of the big features of MapTool for me...I don't want to manually reveal FOW, as I use the Vision Blocking Layer tool extensively.

..which is directly counter to RAW. Those GMs are misapplying the rules.

I've used both PCGen and Herolab. PCGen is an excellent program, but you need to be willing to understand that new sources may not get updated as quickly as you'd like. If you are fairly savvy, you can make new source files of your own and create custom data.

Hero Lab is much faster on getting support for new sources, but you are going to pay for it. And while you are less likely to *need* to create custom items, doing so is much more difficult, in my experience.

I've got the money, so I've essentially moved over to Herolab, but if you are looking to avoid cost, PCGen is the way to go.

(Haven't tried sCoreForge, so I can't really discuss it)

Some things to note about illusions:
"Creatures encountering an illusion usually do not receive saving
throws to recognize it as illusory until they study it
carefully or interact with it in some fashion.
A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline." (emphasis mine)
"A character faced with proof that an illusion isn’t real needs no saving throw.
If any viewer successfully disbelieves an illusion and communicates this fact to others, each such viewer gains a saving throw with a +4 bonus."

So to use your initial scenario above:
1. Party encounters monsters.
2. Bard casts Silent Image to put a visual barrier between party and monsters, and gives the party the high-sign that he is using his 'illusion tactic'.
3. Party either needs no save, or at minimum saves at +4 (while creatures initially get no save until they interact).
4. Party uses a round or so to prep spells, reposition themselves, perhaps take a round firing missile weapons while monsters figure out what is going on.

Silent Image is much more powerful outside of combat, with some prep time. Hiding difficult terrain or traps from enemies, making a room 18' smalller in one dimension while your party hides behind the false wall, covering up doors, blocking the street with illusionary carts, or blocking an alley with illusionary boxes...these are all things that can be done if you have time to prepare (note that your Bard will be out of action until the illusion drops, but what s/he is doing is a support function.

Addmittedly, I generally use it for briefings...the 3d zoomable model of the city that can be used when planning assaults or other mission-style outings. (to be fair, that technically stretches the capacities of the spell, but I've seen no GM who has objected to it)

Note the following from Animal Growth & Enlarge Person:

"Multiple magical effects that increase size do not stack". (emphasis mine).

Synthesist as noted above is the only one of these options that pass that test, from what I can tell (as evolutions are not magical effects).

EDIT: The possession option is also valid, but I don't think it is what the OP was looking for.

Try this site. Generate the crest, and save the result.

If you are so inclined, you can get it printed onto various items.

Kingmaker. My group has had a ball with it.

Don't worry about the Summoning SLA. You can't use it while you are 'in the suit', and that's pretty much where you'll always be.

On those rare times you are without Eidolon, summon Lantern Archons and call them combat drones.

Interesting, I like the concept.

My suggestions depend on how much work you want to put into the site. Some thoughts:
-Allow dice rolling...skills are easy (d20 + modifier), as are weapon to hits. Weapon damage would require the ability to parse dice expressions.
-Add Temp HP and Non-Lethal Dmg to the 'saveable' areas, the way HP is.

If you're feeling ambitious:
-Import XML files...specifically Herolab XML files, (or create a Herolab output file that the site can import).

If you're feeling *really* ambitious, download PCGen and take a look at some of their very advanced and interactive html character sheet outputs. If your site can do something like that, you'll be a hero.

Buri wrote:

So it's the class you can roll up the quickest with little system mastery and still be relevant? I think this makes the class a nice introduction for newbies and, therefore, a distinctly good thing.

A lot of things the Summoner class is, a class for newbies is definitely not one of them. It's an extremely complicated class full of exceptions to standard rules. It's quite probably one of the WORST classes to give to a newbie player or for a newbie GM to master. It belongs in the Advanced Player Guide for good reason. I tell all newbies whether they are players or GM's... stick with the CRB only until you've got a good comfort level with it before you add more complexity to your game.

I agree, with one caveat. A summoner (particularly a synthesist) is not a difficult character to *run*, it is however extraordinarily difficult to *create*. Hand a pair of synthesist sheets (with/without eidolon) to any player at a convention, and they'll likely have no trouble. Ask them to build the synthesist and determine what should go on each of those sheets...that's a different story.

FWIW, the big disadvantage regarding sleep for a synthesist (or any summoner) is how long it takes to recover. Knock out and then heal a fighter, and he is ready to go next round at full capacity. Do the same for a summoner, and he is likely at reduced capacity for the rest of the fight, unless he wants to spend 10 rounds rebuilding.

When I was running a systhesist, I kept waiting for my GM to have an encounter while we were in camp and I wasn't on watch, a summoner's most vulnerable time. It never happened...

I can copy/paste/print basic monster info if I need it. What I'd really love is a set of cards that tell what information is gained for each monster with various "Knowledge:x" rolls.

(I've seen a similar product for 3.5, but it wasn't very well done)

In that, we pretty much are the same; Varn and Drelev were both given founding charters immediately, but I needed a reason that neither leader had a much larger kingdom than the PCs by the time they really interacted.

In Varn's case, it was that he absolutely refused to make peace with the Nomen. He was played as a nice guy, very personable, but monumentally stubborn on that point (part of his charter was to 'deal with the Nomen threat', and he saw only one way to do that).

For Drelev, it was partly that he was in more dangerous territory, but mostly because he was a @sshat, spending most of his resources on his citadel, and leaving exploration and taming of the lands around him to hired mercenaries and adventurers.

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I've never had a problem getting an unmarked Kingmaker map....

Click on the map, hit Ctrl-C, paste into paint. Every time I've done that, I get a map with most of the unacceptable bits removed, suitable for use in MapTool.

The only maps I didn't do that for were the overland maps, because river names and such still appeared on them. So I built a full Stolen Lands map in Campaign Cartographer, and then I export to MapTool as needed.

I don't necessarily think that a Synthesist Summoner is intrinsically more powerful that an optimized (insert class here), but I do think that a Synthesist Summoner is *much* easier to abuse, even accidentally.

I played a Synthesist Summoner from Levels 6-10 (replacement character), and while I made reasonably intelligent choices, I wasn't particularly trying to Min/Max. Nor was the rest of my party. However, throughout Level 7 I realized that I had more HP, Better AC, and did *far* more damage than the party fighters. At 8th Level, I intentionally changed my evolution choices and magic items to nerf myself, and had to be careful thereafter to not build too well...it was damaging the fun all around.

The rest of the party shouldn't have to optimize to keep up with a casually built Summoner.

(I've never played a non-Synthesist Summoner, so I have no real perspective as to how powerful it is in comparison).

IMC, Drelevshelm has been in bad shape since it started. In fact, Hannis Drelev has always been angry at the PCs since he feels they got the easy contract in a good area, while he was stuck trying to develop in a land surrounding by powerful enemies (Pitax, the Tiger Lords, multiple tribes of Boggards stopping trade).

He's spent most of his resources on his monster of a castle, and has generally remained small due to mismanagement and fear of growing too fast and attracting Pitax's attention...didn't help him much, since Pitax eventually placed his Barony under their 'Protection'.

In short, I felt it necessary to justify why Fort Drelev (and Varnhold too, for that matter) were positively tiny in comparison to the PCs realm, and a large Barony suddenly shrunk would have required far more rewrites that the assumption that it never got very large or prosperous in the first place.

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Take a step back from it and think of it as a metagame abstraction. The *PC*s aren't necessarily choosing to build any particular building, the *Players* are.

When the players choose to add a Tavern to a city, it's not likely that the King is saying, "I have a thirst. By Royal Decree, I command a Tavern be erected." It's more likely that the players simply want the bonuses for a Tavern, or perhaps have decided that a Tavern is the next logical stage for the city.

For a Black Market, I agree that the ruling council isn't going to say "Build a Black Market". However, it is not unreasonable that such a thing is created organically. In my mind, a Black Market is not so much a sudden gathering of criminal forces, but instead a way to tap into the underground economy *that already exists* in any large city.

Perhaps it represents some of the criminal element starting to 'go legit', and investing their profits into ventures that designed to make them part of local society, while still maintaining illegal and quasi-legal businesses.

I'm in the "MapTool is easy" camp. Where it gets complex is if you decide you want to automate everything. Stay away from the temptation to use a campaign framework, and you'll find it an amazingly simple and powerful.

Once you are used to it, you'll likely start to play around with macros and various other campaign settings, but if you are planning to use pen and paper for tracking, and just need a map/token/die roller, MapTool is free and easy.

My rule of thumb was 25pt buy with no dump stats (nothing below 10). It seemed to work out well.

If someone was to allow this, it only makes sense to still require the fast bombs discovery for it to be usable in full-round attacking.

Per Conductive: "This weapon property can only be used once per round". So Fast Bombs or not, you can only have one conductive shot per round (all the rest would be normal shots)

Ramarren wrote:

As shooting a bow is not a touch attack, you're likely to use up fewer bombs with Conductive Weapon (note that the Alchemist in my game is mostly concerned about the very limited range of bombs).

I don't understand your reasoning here...

- the fact that you need to use 2 bombs for 1 conductive attack (meaning you'd need to have quite poor accuracy for it to be worth the double-use penalty)

Or unless you are trying to attack a foe at over 100', which is flat impossible with bombs (20' increment). Any time bombs are remotely feasible, that's the way to go, but sometimes they aren't.

As far as 'sensible', Conductive is what it is. If it works for one class's ranged Supernatural ability, then I see no reason to restrict it for the alchemist.

I'd not only allow this, I *do* allow this in my current game, based on the player logic involved. Creating and throwing the bomb is a single action. You can't 'pre-create' bombs in order to get around the need for the Fast Bombs discovery, nor can you hand off bombs to others by default, so I don't see creating/throwing them as separated actions.

Note that the biggest advantage of Conductive over the Explosive Missile discovery is that Conductive only applies to a *successful* attack.

As shooting a bow is not a touch attack, you're likely to use up fewer bombs with Conductive Weapon (note that the Alchemist in my game is mostly concerned about the very limited range of bombs).

LeVash turns to Calsenica, "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be such a weight. I...have some history, and the gathering here makes me uncomfortable."

He shrugs, "Still, while it's something I'll need to contend with, I think that will have to be in the future. So, what do you thin of the party? It seems we are in a house full of secrets and oddities."

Even as a tongue-in-cheek treatment of the novel, I couldn't get past the fact that the Lost in Space remake (released at about the same time) had more powered armor than Starship Troopers.

There's just the RP side. My players listen when one of the Outer Council members says, "Olegrod is feeling a bit neglected, the town is stagnating", and they look to see what might be appropriate there.

(This is presuming they didn't notice themselves that a given town/city could use some attention)

"Asmodia, I believe you mentioned that you can enchant weapons. Do you have time to lay down a base enchantment on my new scimitar? If he has a Pit Fiend locked up somewhere, there's no telling what else he may have laying about."

Actually, I agree that BP does not represent all economic activity, only the portion that the rulers have the direct capability to influence. For that matter, I'd abstract it a level further.

Much of the 'BP Treasury' is IMO, not gold or valuables at all, but is instead political capital. The Duke does not (as a general rule) say, "Put a shop in the Northwest District of my capital", or "Build a Noble Villa and find someone to live in it." What he does is manipulate the tax laws, grant charters and perhaps redirect guard patrols so as to encourage a shopping district to spring up, or to lure one of the country gentry to build a manor in the city. In these cases, the BP 'spent' is his manipulation of the economy behind by his political power to make things happen.

Parks, Castles, Town Halls...these are likely direct spends from the treasury. But which is more likely, that the King emptied his treasury in order to build a Cathedral to Iomedae, or that he granted a land charter and called for a holiday festival during which volunteers can help with the construction of the Cathedral. Both the charter and the holiday have a short-term negative effect on the economy (hence BP spent), but little of it is 'writing a check'.

This is just how we've been playing it, and it's worked pretty well for us so far.

I look at the income from sales of magic items very differently. It's not a matter of the Kingdom simply swiping a percentage of sale price (either from building-generated or donated items), it's a measure of economic activity generated by the sale.

When a magic item hits the markets, it attracts potential buyers. Most of those buyers (all but one) don't end up buying the item, but they do stay in the city for a bit, spending money on lodgings and services, possibly buying other, smaller items, etc.

The actual buyer, if there is one, may well be a merchant or reseller, who is here to purchase the item, but is also buying and selling other trade goods, hiring guards, etc, etc. If you fail to sell the item, it simply did not have enough draw to affect your economy.

I think you get into trouble any time you try to directly relate BP to money. You can infuse your economy with cash, generating BP (i.e. economic activity), or you can skim off the top, getting money but damaging the economy, but it's never really 'adding' or 'taking' BP directly.

Dogstarrb, how much are you looking to automate? I've gotten pretty good mileage out of a set of macros that use only the basic MapTool configuration (no specialty framework).

You have to be willing to open them up and customize a bit for each creature, but it's not particularly difficult. (I've commented the Macros for my own reference).

I'd say no. A Control DC is more in line with a Save than a Check (for instance '1' is an auto-fail, which is not the case with a check. Further, it is not a 'Charisma-based Roll', Charisma is just one part of the components of the roll, and an increasingly small part as the Kingdom gets larger and it is overshadowed by modifiers from Buildings.

IMC, one of the PCs married Maegar's daughter (all of the PCs are married at this point, and all but one have children). The timing worked out so that she was giving birth to their first child on The Night of the Pale, and the PCs first indication of problems in Varnhold is when Alyanna Varn sees her father's shade on the balcony (yes it spoils some of the mystery...but the party is still holding out hope that he's not *really* dead).

To answer the original question, my group hit just about 50 hexes before starting Book 3.

We're an all (non-rooted) Nook household here.

I just don't see it, particularly as Channelling uses *two* Lay on Hands instances for a Paladin.

Except as a Feat Tax (or for the occasional negative channeller with a bunch of living friends), it doesn't seem worth a feat to me.

(edited...)

[1] Do you allow your players to use a copy of the kingdom building rules.Are you using some modification to the rules? If so briefly describe these modifications?
[2] Which of the following would you like to see in an expansion?
[3] How many players do you have in your group? How many actively take part in kingdom building/mass combat?
[4] How much of a threat is Unrest to the players?
[5] How important is magic items to your economy? Do you view it as a problem?

1 - My players have the full base kingdom-building rules, with the exception of events and a few buildings that I have designated as 'unlockables' (they won't become available until the kingdom meets certain criteria). I will give them rules on those buildings when they become available.

2 - More events and/or advice on reconfiguring events so they don't feel repetitive. More building options outside of cities, particularly ones that are different from those available, but not mechanically superior/inferior...I'd like my players to have to think about what to put outside of cities just as much as they think about the inside.
3 - Five players, all very engaged in Kingdom building.
4 - None. They've been reasonably careful, and so have no unrest (a little early on, but not any more)
5 - Once they started getting medium items, it was a game-changer. I don't know that I'd classify it as a 'problem' at this point, but it's definitely different.

It depends on your players. IMC, the Grand Diplomat and Spymaster were immediately interested in their neighbors, so I've been roughly been keeping track of the growth of both Varnhold and Drelev's Domain.

I think it has added a fair amount of immersion value to the campaign

I won't be throwing, it'd be a waste. As noted, Maelorn will simply hold in case a Troglodyte breaks through (and still miss)

If Varn has been waging war with the centaurs for a year+, and the PCs kno wabout it, are you planning on changing VV?

In my game, the PC's pretty much blame Varn for his poor relations with the Centaurs...even though they really like him. They expect to be shot at by the Nomen when they enter the plains, and have resolved to avoid killing any of them, hoping to get the opportunity to talk (they've got a couple of silver tongues in the party).

I ran into the same concerns myself, and had to make some justifications. Here's what I used...
- Varn was tasked with 'Dealing with the Nomen', and even though he immediately got a settlement charter, he hasn't yet dealt with the Nomen, so he never received the initial 50 BP subsidy that jumpstarted the PCs kingdom.
- Diplomacy never occurred to Varn ("negotiate with half-bestial barbarians? Nonsense."), and so he has spent a fair amount of capital intermittently raising and supporting military units to make strikes against the Nomen (but his economy isn't able to support long-term operations).
- His unfortunate fetish for claiming every contiguous hex (notably the mountains) regardless of whether it is productive has damaged his ecomony. My PC's still haven't claimed all of the Narlmarches, as they've been careful not to over-claim areas they can't farm.

I've had no real issues with b86 or B87, though I likely don't use the macroing to it's greatest extent. I seem to have missed both b85 and b88 entirely, so I guess i've been fortunate :)

I'll second the shelf-paper idea. Back when we were using a table, we took an old table, glued gridded paper to it, and then covered it with clear shelf paper. The surface lasted longer than the table did.

We only use one in our current game:

A.B.A.D.A.R. - Alignment BAsed Detection And Ranging...this is what our Paladin of Abadar uses to check for evil.

"Fire up the Abadar, Bertram, this guy looks bad to me."

As a general rule, I'd be reluctant to let an Orison neutralize a 1st level spell unless there was very direct rules reason to do so, or an otherwise bulletproof explanation...and 'soapless room temperature water removing grease' fails that for me.

I believe Priests of Cayden Calean can create alcoholic drinks instead of water....I'd be more inclined to allow that to have an effect.