Sebastian's page

I would be interested in hearing from those wanting to debate/discuss the points concerning Time. Actually, I'd be interested in hearing from those wanting to debate/discuss period, provided they don't disagree with me, because that would make me feel persecuted.

I'm reminded of another problem with VII.

The summons.

It's not just that you can't skip past the animations. It's that they are so stupidly epic. They looked really cool at first, but they grew old after repeated viewing, and their scale never really matched up with the scale of the characters (e.g., hitting people with comets pulled out of the sky). And, they set the bar for future Final Fantasies to have their own epic, over the top summons.

This sounds really cool - I'm a big fan of these types of set ups. I have a more typical sized group, but I was thinking of having them make multiple characters like this ( but coming in as they get to be higher level, with the new characters at 1st level).

Usualy, when I see troupe, I think multiple/rotating dms. Have you done anything like that or do you plan to?

Flagged for misleading title and lack of pictures.

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Sebastian wrote:

I'm generally okay with a non-Frank Miller Batman style vigilante.

I would have figured you for a pro-police kind of guy -- you could give them ponies instead of motorcycles... but, "Quickly, Robin, to the Bat-Pony!" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

There. I linked it for you.

Sebastian wrote:

I'm generally okay with a non-Frank Miller Batman style vigilante.

I would have figured you for a pro-police kind of guy -- you could give them ponies instead of motorcycles... but, "Quickly, Robin, to the Bat-Pony!" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

If you're okay with vigilantes determining who should get punished for crimes, then I'm all for allowing police to be funded by a voluntary contribution. Of course, then the rule of law goes right out the window.

Pretty much any real cool combo that gets found by the optimizers gets nerfed by WotC errata in a fairly timely manner. In fact if you do have an obscure game breaking combo you had best guard that secret and never breath a word of it - if your babbling on about it high and low its going to come to WotCs attention and you can pretty much bank on your combo being nerfed.

Oh, FFS, make a new PHB3 thread.

Sebastian wrote:

For Christ's sake, just ignore the f&!!ing pot shot in the first place and have a conversation about 4e with the people who want to talk about 4e (myself included). And when someone who doesn't like 4e offers to leave because they just don't have anything nice to say - LET THEM f&!!ING LEAVE. These 4e threads would be a lot better if you could just act like adults and ignore the barbs that are designed to get under your skin.

I can only assume that they don't want this argument to stop.

sighs

Quoth Charlie Brown "Good grief."

I mean, come on. The dude shows up, posts a pretty heavily qualified IMO type opinion with a minor pot shot against 4e. Lord knows the edition warriors can't let a minor pot shot against 4e stand unanswered, so the 4e Hero Corps swoop in and, surprise, surprise, when confronted, the guy gets a little more aggressive in his dislike of 4e. Then, he basically backs off and says "oh yeah, this thread didn't start out in the 4e section, so I'll just leave unless people keep responding to me."

And what happens?

You keep responding to him?

Hooray, edition warrior, this one goes out to you.

For Christ's sake, just ignore the f*~%ing pot shot in the first place and have a conversation about 4e with the people who want to talk about 4e (myself included). And when someone who doesn't like 4e offers to leave because they just don't have anything nice to say - LET THEM f*~%ING LEAVE. These 4e threads would be a lot better if you could just act like adults and ignore the barbs that are designed to get under your skin.

Oh man, rules for a montage would be freaking sweet!

Montage: By strumming a song, the bard can inspire his comrades to rapidly accomplish a task that would otherwise be insurmountable or train in a new skill, either granting +4 to a single skill or adding 2d4 BP to the kingdom's total. At 10th level, the bard can grant a 1d4 phantom bonus levels to a single participant in a montage. These bonuses last until the purpose of acquiring such skills is achieved. The BPs must be spent immediately or are lost.

Alrighty, thanks for the encouragement guys. I volunteered for the non-morning slots.

How much is 124.7 square miles of pavement in Golarion?

Also, what bonus does the world's largest parking lot grant a kingdom?

Is it worthwhile to volunteer if you've never done anything with PF Society before? Maybe for a Saturday/Sunday slot after I've had a chance to play a few games myself?

As for cross posting across EVERY thread once we reach the 5000 post mark on this thread... ~shrugs~ I don't know. How upset do you really want to make Gary Teter?

In fact, Gary, you should make a counter for that on the website. Now that wish lists are implemented, you've got all sorts of free time, right?

I'm glad that Kellen is doing so much better.

I was discouraged about how things went with Bryce's meeting. But I just have to remember that it wasn't totally pointless. We were at least able to rule some things out. The school can't really do any more for us than they already have, so now we have to try and find some other resources. At least the school was able to help us with the super expensive testing.

Good luck with finding a camp. I know what you mean about them being expensive. It seems like most extracurricular activities are.

My wife had a funny story about my son's IEP meeting. She's a special education lawyer, so she represents families of kids with special needs all the time. However, she's been very cooperative with our school district because litigation is time consuming, painful, and ultimately not the best solution for the problem at hand. According to her, parents are frequently bullied/misinformed at these meetings.

At the last one, they forgot she was a lawyer and threatened to do something they can't legally do. Her response was "Okay, just give me notice because I will file for due process against you within 24 hours." That got their attention again and helped get the meeting back on track.

Anyway, good luck to you and yours.

WTF? Did you guys kill another FAWTL thread?

And why did it take me this long to notice.

Also, are we aggregating together the thread posts across all the FAWTL threads to see if we reached the 5,000 post goal (or whatever the hell it was that we were trying to do back when this thing went crazy)?

Sebastian wrote:

DMcCoy1693 wrote:

underling wrote:

Critical and fumble decks?

Doh! Oh yea. I own both and I bring them with me to our current game. Adding.

I need to get myself a new set of those.

A new set?!? You Crit and Fumble that often that you wore out the decks?!? OMG!

(Actually, it was a player in my game who had the decks, and his attendence has decreased dramatically since he had a child. But I love the idea of wearing them out...)

Argh! The stupid, it burns, it burns.

They had a racial weapon that was a combo staff and sling and they could taunt monsters and make them attack.

It's a more annoying version of the halfling. Picture a 6 year old kid hopped up on pixie sticks with no sense of personal property and whose entire purpose is to annoy and irritate the other players. That's a kender. They are from Dragonlance.

OKAY, SERIOUSLY, SHUT THE f!!# UP ABOUT THE EDITION WARS. GO FIND SOME PLACE ELSE TO HAVE THIS STUPID f!!#ING DEBATE FOR THE 982ND TIME.

GOOD GOD, AM I SICK OF THIS s&&!. IT'S BEEN TWO YEARS, YOU EITHER LIKE IT, OR DON'T. NO ONE CARES HOW YOU FEEL, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO CHANGE ANYONE'S MIND, SO JUST KEEP IT TO YOURSELF.

Nah, the Essentials line coming out this fall is 4.5

A player in my game last night mentioned the concept of Forest Gump, the paladin. He doesn't really understand what's going on, but has a lot of folksy wisdom and seems to end up in the right spot at the right time. That could work. I never like easily distracted halfing rogues - reminds me too much of kender. Plus, making mistakes like attacking your shadow instead of an enemy strikes me as result of low Wisdom rather than low Intelligence.

I usually announce it just as the die stops spinning.

One time this Rogue named Black Leaf died from a trap. I did not allow the players in my game to even acknowledge the existence of Marcy, the girl who played Black Leaf.

Unfortunately Marcy couldn't take it any more and hanged herself before she even got a chance to read some Christian literature.

Personally, I don't call death until after I have an NPC examine the corpse and announce "he's dead, Jim." I find that heightens the drama.

I've been thinking the same thing. Bloodstone Vale is probably my favorite module and it seems like there's a lot to steal from it for Kingmaker.

I'm probably also going to relocate the dungeon from Crown of the Kobold King to the area as well.

underling wrote:

Critical and fumble decks?

Doh! Oh yea. I own both and I bring them with me to our current game. Adding.

Papa-DRB wrote:

My preference also. Also, do something like the old Greyhawk maps and the rows are labeled with letters, and the columns are labeled with numbers.

We came VERY close to labeling the hexes in Kingmaker with rows of letters and numbers like the Greyhawk maps. We decided not to when I realized that the hexes we're using are more than big enoguh to hold that information right there in the map without obscuring details. It's a lot easier to find encounter area "H" when it's clearly marked on the map, after all, than it is to find encounter area "H42" by running fingers down and across hex rows.

Thanks James. That's the type of information I was hoping to get from you. I'm glad to know that the plot is mostly focused in AP6. It sounds very cool, but I have been beating the "prime material plane shifted into another plane" horse for about a decade now and really want to give it a break. I'm sure I can modify the adventure or run something completely different, I just wanted to get the big picture so I can start dialing back some of the fey based encounters.

In the campaign I'm running, the PC's home plane is actually exiled to an alternate prime material where the illithids rose up and destroyed humanity (and demi-humanity), but there's also an eladrin city going in and out of the feywild. It's definitely not a perfect match-up, but there's enough similarity that I worry my players will say "Oh god, not this again." I'm probably going to pull out the kobolds and replace them with goblins for a similar reason (kobolds being yet another trope that I beat to a grimy paste).

Edit: Also, call it parallel design, coincidence, or whatever else you want, just make out my royalty payments to "cash," send them on a quarterly basis and we're cool. ;-)

If you haven't already bought the books, I'd recommend going with the subscription over purchasing the PHB II and III (and possibly the MMs). Those books are just compendiums of stats. If you get the subscription, you can print out the cards for the relevant abilities and then not have those books at the table, which saves space and reduces your reference time. Plus, you get access to the other content on the compendium with a subscription. The MMs have slightly more value because they include info that isn't available in the compendium (the knowledge checks for information about the creature, typical encounters, and the art), but I find the player oriented books (PHBII, PHBIII, X Power) to be a complete waste of money.

Personally, I can't imagine purchasing any of the player oriented books for 4e instead of getting a subscription. There really isn't enough value in them for me as the DM (or, for that matter, for my players, who typically use 3-5 feats/powers/etc. from such books, print them on cards, and don't reference those books again).

All that said though, the errata tweaks have been relatively light with the exception of the revisions to skill challenges. Those changes are pretty substantive and should probably be printed.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some Kingmaker. But, as I was reading the summary I began to get the sneaking suspicion that the overall plot arc was strikingly similar to one I just ran in my 4e campaign. It sounds like the BBEG of the AP is planning on exiling the whole area into the First World. Is that correct?

I'm hoping not, because if it is, I'll probably want to do some reworking of Kingmaker. If I go that route, I'll probably replace the fey with some type of undead menace, but not zombies/skeletons. I'm thinking more of a corrupter of nature undead menace that focuses on more primal non-human centric undead.

Oddly enough, this is the third or fourth time this has happened to me - where an AP overlaps one of our existing campaigns. Maybe I just run iconic games (or focus too much on the trivial similarities).

Or, maybe it's Paizo's orbital mind lasers stealing my ideas...

We haven't set them up yet. What would folks prefer? My preference would be to have the maps without the majority of the tags (probably just tags for Pitax and Restov and the major terrain features) along with hexes. That way you can show them to the PCs and let them wander around on them; they'll get to see the terrain features ahead of time but won't know where the actual encounters are.

Why don't you have a seat over there...

Mass Combat rules aren't going to be out until Pathfinder #35 first of all. But you COULD put anything in charge of an army; all that matters is that their HD + their Cha mod is higher than the army's CR that they command, basically. And you'll need the commander's Charisma modifier handy. That's all you need to know about an army commander.

Am I saying D&D (and RPGs) in general should come with "Warning Labels"? Honestly, yeah, I wish they did. Not for me, but for the people that heavily invest in, say, 3rd Edition and hoping it will still be supported despite the rise of a new edition. A "This game may change completely upside-down at any moment, etc." so "grognards" won't jump ship the minute the game structure collapses and rebuilds on them. That would actually garner some respect from consumers and increase the consumer base, I believe.

I was reading Kingmaker last night and saw that at one point scalemail +1 was included as treasure. However, looking at the armor stats I was reminded that the only advantage scalemail has over chainmail is its lower cost. They're both medium armors, so any class that can wear scale can also wear chain. I'd like to avoid a pure math based argument, so instead of asking whether scale is ever better than chain, I'd like to ask about everyone's experience with chain/scale. When you play, do you ever stick with scale once you can afford chain? Do your players always sell scale?

Anyone have any suggestions on how to shrink down the hex sizes on the map? I'd really like to add in some additional hexes of my own and give the pcs more to explore.

THAT SAID: Pathifnder #37, the first adventure in the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path, has a VERY strong "survival" element to it and will feature rules for surviving in the wild while at the same time keeping some NPCs alive. But that's still quite a ways off.

Sebastian wrote:

Blazej wrote:

If one were trying to force the plants to attack one of their friends.

Wait...plants have friends?

Yes, this is one of the few traits that seperate them from lawyers. Well that and someone feels sad when you hit a plant with an axe. :P

Interesting. Will the hexes in the lower half of the greenbelt be populated in #32? Will there be any new icons in the upper half, or are those basically set?

Given that the rules are oriented towards colonization, does that mean there aren't rules for, say, finding wood, food, or a secure camp site?

I'm skipping around in the volume, but noticed that text states that the quests don't contain spoilers and can be provided to the PCs to help them track their progress. However, they seem to be pretty spoiler-y to me (e.g., the Quest: Temple of the Elk has information the characters will only receive if they succeed in a Diplomacy check). Am I missing something?

Cool. Thanks Jason.

Sebastian wrote:

Hmmm...

Will there be a more detailed set of exploration rules? I was hoping there might be rules for finding/harvesting resources, finding defensible shelters, etc. No big deal if those aren't included, just wanted to check before I started working them up myself.

I think this is intended for James, but for folks without the PDF yet, the exploration rules that I've looked at so far are geared specifically to movement and looking around; not an expansion of the survival skill.

Hmmm...

Will there be a more detailed set of exploration rules? I was hoping there might be rules for finding/harvesting resources, finding defensible shelters, etc. No big deal if those aren't included, just wanted to check before I started working them up myself.

Sebastian wrote:

Woot Kingmaker! Everyone loves to play in the sand!

Sebastian!!

I'd been hoping to catch you in a conversation about Kingmaker.

I've been looking for San Diego Paizo-ers to form a group for the campaign (here) and thought you might either have an open seat or be in search of an open seat.

Sorry to interrupt. You all may now get back to your anticipation.

Sorry about that, I didn't notice the other thread. I am in the San Diego area, but unfortunately I've got a pretty full group at the moment. I wish I could commit to more gaming, but I barely make my current group on a regular basis. I'll let you know if we lose anyone, but we haven't had a new player in 3+ years.

If they didn't want you to look, they wouldn't dress that way.

If one were trying to force the plants to attack one of their friends.

Maybe this is another reason the two spells seem weird. It seems like most plant monsters have animal level intelligence (if that). It seems like it'd be a pretty rare situation where you'd want to command a plant creature to attack its friend.

Sebastian wrote:

So, maybe the underlying question is: why is Charm Plants 3 levels higher than Charm Person?

I would say that it is because command plants can effect a number of targets and it has a much longer duration.

Okay, that makes me happier.