Saurstalk's page

I am under the impression that most pre-orders have been filled already. This may be a false impression. In any event, I'm beginning to wonder whether my shirt got lost in transit.

I reiterate my question. Hello, Crystal Caste? Or any dice producer for that matter.

Too bad no one from Paizo has taken an interest in this inquiry.

Anyone here see the latest Hellboy flick? I'd love to see the Golden Army warriors statted out. Clockwork golems who self mend and contain fire elementals? Maybe?

Horus wrote:

It never seizes to amaze me how happy people are to admit to being thieves?!?!?!

And with a complete lack of repentence, even with glee.

It never "ceases" to amaze me how people can jack up basic grammar.

Also, I believe my $160 purchase of two sets of the core books warrants the right to use a tool to make my life easier. ESPECIALLY, considering WotC has promised such tools themselves and made them unavailable.

Okay, I may be mistaken here, but I'm pretty sure that at one point WotC mentioned selling .pdfs to core book purchasers at a nominal price, i.e., each book would have a code inside to get the massive discount.

So, if I'm not mistaken - what happened?

I suggest that it is possible certain collectors would be willing to pay more than face value. But for many laypersons - gold is gold.

I wonder whether this will be one of the changes we'll be seeing in Beta ... or whether it'll be a House Rule. I, for one, like the notion of it being a feat (and a free feat for Rogues).

Just downloaded it. I'll read it over later tonight and give first thoughts on it. First I gotta see Hellboy II.

Saw Hellboy II. IMO, a ton more entertaining than the dungeon crawl that is Rescue at Rivenroar.

If you are allowing players laptops, make sure to turn off the wireless. It's worse than letting them watch TV while playing.

Because I do a slew of online gaming, I am accustomed to keeping track of everything on my laptop. However, whenever I do table-top gaming, I print the character sheets and bring the books.

Love the laptop, but agree with the warning. You might find it to be quite a distraction. I'd at least let the player know that "this is a test."

Because the .pdf will be free, is there any way that Paizo can keep the document unprotected to allow us to play with the bookmarks. I really wanted to tweak and pretty up the Alphas' bookmarks, but couldn't.

Also, the Beta doesn't specify an index. Will it have one?

Like all of you, I am REALLY excited.

Except ultimately it ignores a critical factor:

Humans hating goblins is not racism.
It is speciesism.

Goblins are not just humans with a different color skin. They are a completely different species of creature. The comparison is not to humans of a particular skin color dehumanizing humans of a slightly different skin color in order to make themselves feel better for exterminating them. Rather it is to suggesing that tigers should get along with leopards because they are both great cats, ignoring the very real competition for survival.

Actually, I disagree with this analogy. Humans of different colors and ethnicities are all of the same race, the human race. We are also all of the same species, homo sapien.

Goblins are both a different species and race. Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the two are actually interchangeable. (Sorry, no dictionary in front of me.)

That said, there clearly promoted racial hatred in D&D. Dwarves v. Giants, Goblins, and Orcs. Elves and Orcs. Gnomes and Reptilians and Goblinoids. Gnolls and ... well everyone.

A point of interest in my campaigns - I work often to blur lines of who is good and who is bad. In one campaign, the paladin hangs with a shade. (Their drow companion got sucked into the Shadow Plane ... so, he's out.) At one point, the group also had a deva and two tieflings on board.

And yet in another campaign, two heroes were a male and female partnership of gnolls.

Did they all have conflict? You betcha. Was some of it racially-motivated? Naturally. Did it make for interesting games? Oh. Most definitely.

I would like to see iconics from well and truely unusual sources.

Lizardmen, Orcs and Gobbos need their time in the sun.

And Vampires too, but maybe moon as opposed to sun. (After all only white human fighter guy needs to die).

Actually, Paizo could always build a template called a Daywalker.

Actually, come to think of it, there is a Daywalker in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. So, nevermind.

Silly question - but why not just house rule that you can combine them? Seems a waste of a feat if you ask me.

You could be running a campaign where you have to start in an NPC class before taking PC class levels. This makes "character background" more than just fluff.

Maybe the class fits with the "character concept," like a dwarf cleric/expert who wants to improve craft skills as well as divine spellcasting. Not every player is focused on squeezing the maximum power out of the rules.

Basically, the NPC classes are usually taken by a PC for roleplaying reasons over "roll"-playing considerations.

I think the critical comment here is "roll"-playing considerations. It's not all just about game mechanics. It's about flavor and who your character is.

As an aside, if someone wants a little more opportunities for flavor, I would suggest considering borrowing from d20 Modern's Occupations concept. The book (and SRD) has a whole slew of starting occupations that could work for D&D, naturally with some tweaks.

You might consider finding a few of the trilogies from Dungeon at different levels and loop them together with linking modules. Dump some NPCs and put in others.

Recently, I was looking at the Dungeon Ezine 122 adventure, Essence of Evil. It's a level 20 adventure with an elder evil and the end of the world nigh. What a great final adventure. And there are plenty of lower level adventures of fighting various cultists of Tharizdun or other elder evils. Link 'em together - each step representing the heroes finger in the dam . . . but another leak cropping up elsewhere.

Throw in a couple of memorable villains and voila!

I wonder whether Paizo would be willing to post a pretty link to the Pathfinder Wiki somewhere on its website?

I think this is one of those issues that is relatively easy to house rule on. In my campaigns, I've done away with confirmation rolls for criticals (but not for instant kills, i.e., 2 crit rolls = instant kill). It works fine, but it also isn't necessary for Paizo to tackle.

I think that the best way to approach Linguistics would be to keep the one rank system, but take the approach that at character creation you only get your base languages, i.e., common for humans and common + race for the other races. This will make Lingusitics more sensical for everyone and also increase the value of taking on new languages.

Andrew Betts wrote:

I hope to add my pledges after I finally get paid on Thursday.

No more pledges for these babies. We got 'em in the warehouse! Just snag em!

Okay. I wasn't insane. 953902. That's my order number. How come it isn't showing up as a pre-order in my shopping cart? Previously, when I pre-ordered, the pre-order would be on display.

I guess I shouldn't worry ... but obviously I am.

I'm waiting for Vic to double check my status.

I was going with every other (1 = speak + 1 = read/write). But then I got to thinking of how few ranks exist for some characters. So, picking up a new language can become a significant sacrifice for others.

Where it becomes imbalanced is when the wizard, rogue, bard, or whoever pumps ranks into Linguistics to better decipher scripts and as an added bonus, gets a slew of ranks along the way.

This is a tough one.

Gary,

How about Paizo giving out polls a bit more regularly. I find them fun ... and on occasion, useful for you guys.

Is this d20 Modern stuff in the SRD and OGL-usable?

Yep. d20 Modern SRD.

Here's another handy little site: d20 System.

IMHO, the d20 Modern System rocks. I'll be bringing some ideas over to Pathfinder whether Paizo does or not ... some of the skills and the concept of class defenses for starters.

Mercenary?

Soldier?

Woman with a Maggot in her head

I hope it's like the new Star Wars saga edition screen.

Not only does it have a lot of good information on it, but it's on an awesome stock of paper.

Unfortunately, I've only seen these shrink-wrapped. I'd love to see one on display so that I may lend my vote.

But in the abstract - good stock. Easy reference. Yes.

Okay, I'm confused. Maybe my recollection is kaputt. I seem to recall that I received an e-mail at one point asking me to pre-order the shirt that I voted for. So I did. However, it doesn't come up on my pre-order lists. Am I messed up?

Well, Paizo's been doing a grand job of spoiling us thus far ... raising the bar on our expectations. I certainly don't want to discourage them from continuing to raise the bar.

Why is it that people see 400+ pages as daunting. I have and have read a slew of books greater than 400+ pages ... and many softcovers.

Heck, just walk through a college bookstore.

Thank you. I'd like to take the credit for it, but WotC's d20 Modern is the real inspiration.

At this point in time, I'm planning on just dragging and dropping Savage Species into my Pathfinder campaign. Same goes for Tome of Battle, which I just purchased.

I like the minions are mooks point.

Fact is, they are low-level ... uh ... minion. Kick arounds. But there are two ways to give 'em an edge:

1. Mob Template. Don't know how to do this in 4e, but 3rd edition had a real nice template for mobs that help with the mow-down atmosphere, but create a noteworthy threat.

2. Natural 20 = Hits. I think 4e already does this. You throw enough minion at a hero and he's bound to take a hit.

Alternatively, you could use minion like I did in one campaign. A mass of mook goblins surrounded the 15th level paladin - hindering his movement while squads of better positioned and better trained archers took turns plugging him with arrows. Heh. The paladin went down pretty darn fast. It was a surprise for all of us how useful those mooks turned out ... for the bad guys.

Because I'm a d20 Modern fan, and because there's a skill set that has not been tapped for D&D (and should), I'll say it again:

1. Perception = Spot and Listen. (Wisdom-based).

2. Investigate = Investigate (d20M), Research (d20M), and Search. (Intelligence-based).

I agree with David Fryer. The main thing for me is being able to drag and drop other classes, races, monsters, and NPCs from 3.5 into PRPG. The easier it is, the better.

This isn't d20 is it? (I'm thinking it's not.)

EDIT: Total post restructure...

Has anyone ever tried Iterative AC?

A FTR17 vs AC 25(30/35/40), for example. He rolls +17 for each of his four attacks, against the four ACs respectively. It's pretty easy for a GM to just make AC iterative, rather than coming up with a new number to crunch every attack.

Alternatively, he could roll ONCE and depending on the AC he hit, that determines his damage dice (4 dice for the fourth AC). That's a bit more of a departure, but either method is a relatively painless way to reduce arithmetic on iterative attacks.

Your last portion of your post is akin, albeit stronger, than Vital Strike and Improved Vital Strike.

To be honest, while I prefer the SWSE approach, I suspect many of you are correct regarding multiple attacks from beasts ... and similarly, how my suggestion would undermine the fighter's strengths.

That said, Vital Strike and Improved Vital Strike really seem to address, albeit in a backward manner, what I'm shooting for.

So, I'll strike this from my list of brainiac ideas for House Rules / Revisions for now.

(Hecks, I still have Base Defense Bonus, CL Damage Bonus, and Condition Tracks to tout!)

There's the Vital Strike feat in Alpha 3 now. Trade your lowest BAB attack to add your weapon damage dice (but only the dice, none of the other things added on) again to all the damage from your attacks. In other words, from +15/+10/+5 with a longsword, 1d8+3; to +15/+10, 2d8+3.

Then there's even Improved Vital Strike, to get rid of the 2 lowest attacks. +20/+15/+10/+5, 1d8+4 to +20/+15, 3d8+4.

Yes. These are very nice feats. So nice, in fact, that most of my melee combatants will be picking them up.

I don't have a problem with Save or Die. But I have also separated that out from Massive Damage in my campaign.

Spells and events causing save or die still apply, but the spin is with Massive Damage.

With Massive Damage, anytime damage exceeds your Massive Damage Threshold (MAS) (Con Score + Sz Modifier), you make a Fort Sv v. the Damage Taken. Failure results in moving 1 down the Condition Track (-1 to Attacks, Saves, and Checks.) This becomes cumulative and is rectified only in increments of healing (or major healing) that equally exceeds your MAS. Alternatively, resting and restoration magic can rectify.

I like the Condition Track approach, because damage should impact someone's ability to fight.

I saw this raised earlier but lost track of the post. It took some getting used to in Star Wars Saga Edition (SWSE), but over time I grew to like the SWSE rules better, i.e., 1 attack per turn, which can be augmented with feats that allow two to three attacks per turn.

Also - Mighty Swing and Rapid Shot that allow one extra dice damage at a -2 penalty for that one attack.

And then, of course, there are the two-weapon fighting feats.

It wouldn't be too hard to implement in the game - just scrap iterative attacks and plug in the occasional feat for a BBEG. I'm just interested to see what people's opinions are ... particularly those familiar with SWSE.

From what I understand, we won't be seeing monster templates in the Beta. This shouldn't stop you from grabbing the MM.

Aside from templates, what I really want Paizo to jump on is building variants to the core classes. Make it so you really won't ever need another class beyond the core classes. Just apply variant.

E.g.,

Fighter: Marshal

Ranger: Scout, Urban Ranger

Rogue: Spellthief, Wild Rogue

Wizard: Warmage

Etc.

Add 'could care less' to that list of shame. Not at Wes, specifically, but I see it a lot.

"So...you're saying it would be easy to care less than you do...so...you're saying you care a lot, right...? Right?"

I thought it was "couldn't care less."

I just have them make a save to cast a spell meta magiced. Say they want to maximize a fireball, I use the spell level as a DC modifier (3, in this case) then I use the feat description for the rest of the DC modifier (this feat takes up a slot "x" levels higher. SO in a case where it is 2 lots higher I add it to the base spell, 3 in this case, for a total of 5. So the save DC is 10 + 3 + 5 = DC 18 to successfully cast a spell with a meta magic feat added in. Sorcerors get a -2 to the DC because they are used to spontaneously casting spells.

Plus this is a check, not really a save, so I allow them to add their level only, since this is pure skill only, and the level of the PC is the most direct interpretation of their skill. Plus it keeps the failure rate high enough that players aren't doing this all the time. Let them add in ability modifiers and it becomes too safe and gets used way too often. Besides, attribute modifiers to not reflect your skill, just your knowledge in appplying that skill to situations and research questions.

Failure means the spell is lost. Crit or back lash tables are also a good add in, but I don't do it.

A check to cast metamagic spells? Bring back Concentration, please! (Or as I prefer, rename it as discipline.) I actually like you're idea. In my campaign, we took on a similar route, but with a twist.

1. To cast a metamagic feat, the caster must make a Spellcraft Check (DC15 + Spell Level + Spell Slot Cost). [We used Spellcraft, because Paizo dumped Concentration. If Concentration were to come back, it'd go back to Concentration].

2. As a twist, we added a little extra "Dresden" flavor. Namely, in any 24 hour period, without resting, to cast a number of metamagic-augmented spells that exceed the Caster's Con Mod, the Caster must make a Fortitude Save v. the above DC or become fatigued. To attempt this again, upon failure v. fatigue, the caster becomes exhausted. Only an 8 hour rest (or restoration) offsets this.

I like the journal. I think it gives the DM and the player a perspective of the world that couldn't be had as easily through roleplaying out an adventure along the same premise. You see personalities, experience regions and events, that lend flavor to future adventures.

That's how I read it. Raven gets good perception and sucks in everything else. Well, maybe that's an overstatement, but hopefully you get my gist.

No. It'd have to be au natural. No sunscreen. No sunglasses. No clothing. Make sure the fescue or xerrascaping is completely in house. Oh, and do it regularly enough to call it a hobby.

Anyhow, I am afraid that in today's world, your options for having a 100 % patriotic hobby (whatever it is) are fairly limited.

Walk bare foot and naked in your backyard.

...assuming you live in the country.

Our home game has some house rules that have really reduced reliance on magic items.

1. Base Defense Bonus (BDB). +1/2 BAB to AC, assuming you are wearing armor with which you are proficient.

2. Damage. +1/2 BAB to melee (and ranged) damage. Also, two-weapon wielding allows double (not 1.5) Str damage.

3. Criticals. Natural 20 = Instant critical. To roll your d20 and it comes up in your critical threat range = critical IF the attack hit. Roll again and score a critical = death.

4. Action Points.

5. Revive. Heal Check. Trained only. Requires healer/medical kit. Full round action, DC25 check within 1 round of creature's death. Creature is stable at -9 on success.

6. Condition Track (and Massive Damage Threshold or MAS). Take damage equal to your MAS (Con Score + Sz Mod) = Fort Sv v Damage Taken. Failure = -1 to Atk, Svs, and Checks. Must receive healing above your MAS to remove (or Restoration). Stacks.

...I'm sure more will come to mind in time. But these have all worked to speed the game up astronomically AND move away from the need for bigger and better magic for attacks, damage, and armor. They also lend to a sense of realism.

I haven't given up on the iterative attacks just yet, but am willing to do so. I really like how Star Wars Saga Edition handled them, i.e., via feats. But the gaming group has not yet spoken on this one yet.

6. And this is the real kicker that finally pushed me over the edge -- 4th edition, it turns out, is being printed in the U.S., while Pathfinder is being printed in China. If given a choice, I will support a company which supports American families rather than the People's Liberation Army slave-labor sweatshop factories.

Honestly, this "anti-China" mentality just seems old world.

The Chinese are keeping our economy from sinking totally in the toilet, as they are the ones who are buying and keeping our American dollar afloat.

Besides, trying to get the biggest bang for your buck is the American capitalist system at its best, isn't it?

I know this is a bit late in the game, seeing that Beta is already at the printers, but it just occurred to me that given a human's versatility, having 1 bonus class skill makes MUCH more sense than having 1 bonus trained weapon.

Having read the various posts here, I've seen the problem with what does it mean to have a 1 bonus trained weapon. And unless you are a class that doesn't allow the weapon you want to be trained in, then it's a pretty pointless addition. Moreover, having additionally trained weapons IS available as a feat.

It just seems that having 1 bonus class skill would carry much more weight for ALL human characters, unlike the bonus trained weapon.

The Adventure Path series are collections of extended adventures?

Yes. Like the Dungeon Adventure Paths of old. Also, don't forget the Gamemastery/Pathfinder Modules.

The Chronicles series are background information on the setting?

Yep. Picture Golarion like Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, and other campaign settings and the Chronicles give you background on the land, the people, politics, history, and regional feats, equipment, spells, critters, and so forth.

And the main RPG product is the game itself?

Yep. Pathfinder is being primed to replace the PHB and DMG, which are no longer being published. So, starting with Beta (as a test version), and then the final release in August 2009, the Pathfinder RPG will be the "3.5 Core Rulebook" ... or rather, the 3.5 Replacement.

Also, a quick question. There are a number of products coming out in the next few months that I'm interested in. The Pathfinder Chronicles: Campaign Setting ... and the Pathfinder Chronicles: Gods & Magic, for example. But I was wondering: Have these items already been updated to conform to the upcoming RPG game release? Or will they be re-issued later, after the game comes out in 2009?

That I can't even attempt to answer. Sorry.