Shadowborn's page

You didn't get randomly mad, he actually did say something that pissed you off ;)

In answer to your question; though I am rather new to both sides of the table I’ve found the most helpful thing I can do in portraying a woman (I am a man) is to just do what I do with every other character and toss out stereotypes in favor of giving the person some pressing, close to the surface motivations that are sure to come up during an adventure and a distinctive personal habit or two. Doing so seems to make the character much more memorable all around then just focusing on a single aspect of them and their gender doesn’t get forgotten, just rolled into the greater whole of who the other players think the character is.

Florida: America's insane wang.

Fixt.

I had sex once. No it is not that great. In fact it is downright boring.

And no offense, but if sex is boring, you're doing it wrong.

Like anything else it's a skill. It gets better with practice.

The forgotten realms introduced in after the time of troubles i beieve. I think the basic idea is it means gods cannot ignore their worshippers.

Lazy halfling wizard with an earth elemental familiar in the shape of an easy chair so it can carry him around.

Why do I get an image of Rygel from Farscape?

I think you are playing your character properly, and your GM should have been more aware before putting you in this spot.

A velocichicken.

That sounds like a Saturday night movie on the SyFy channel.

Jessica Alba at her hottest. Nuff Said!

"Religion is a form of life, that seems to those who inhabit it to be comprehensive, incapable of abandonment, and of central importance." Paul J. Griffiths

In both cases, it's hard to explain to the uninitiated exactly what the point is.

witchwolf wrote:

For me my go-to authors tend to be:

Elizabeth Moon
Emily Gee
Kristen Britain
Mercedes Lackey
Maria v. snyder

At least thats the bulk of what fills my bookcase :)

WOMAN AUTHORS.

I assume you've never read anything by a man.

Glen Cook
William Gibson
China Mieville
Margaret Weis
Brandon Sanderson
Iain M. Banks
Dan Abnett

Entropyrat, I assume you are aware that Margaret Weis is, in fact, a woman.

Enough to kill the enemy.

Because:

Style > Substance.

Talking ravens have a pedigree going back to Tolkien, and have been in the game for a long time. And as noted, parrots can't actually talk.

Doctor Dolittle's familiar Polynesia wants to have words with you. :D

BaCon

Paladin steps around a corner and looks in. He rolls a natural 1 on his perception check, and has the total result is below 5.
"All clear guys! It looks totally safe."
He moves in deeper. A dire boar charged him from the darkness. He takes a great amount of damage.

"Do I see him now?" Rolls again just for kicks, natural 1.

"Still safe guys! I just ran into something is all!"

I love this idea. Other things Ameiko could do:

She could try for the antagonist boon from the PC while he is trying for her companion boon. (I've been in that relationship.)

Convert to Evangelical Shelynism, and talk about nothing but Shelyn every chance she gets. Every sentence ends with the words, "by the beauty of Shelyn" or "if Shelyn wills it." "Have you accepted Shelyn as your personal savior?"

In Hongal, start talking about how much she liked the Prince's ruling style. The two of them take long walks and discuss the "proper" way to treat servants.

She starts wearing cat ears everywhere and making little heart shapes with her hands whenever she looks at the character in question. In Kalsgaard, she starts spending a lot of time in leather shops and asks the character "which whip he likes more," for no apparent reason. She encourages him to get "Constitution bumps" at every opportunity.

(Stealing from Jason Aaron): "You should know that I do not plan to have many children. Five should do. And I would like to get started soon, but I must be married first. Obviously, however, as Empress, I will have many duties. You do not mind being a stay-at-home father, do you? No royal consort has ever been an 'adventurer.' We will simply rule Minkai together, and our friends will tell us of their adventuring lives."

Or go exactly the opposite direction: Ameiko "tries for the companion boon" with all the PCs, if you know what I mean. "It is acceptable for an Empress to have many consorts. They, of course, are dedicated to her for life. Stop being a consort? Of course. Where do you think eunuchs come from?"

In my campaign, Ameiko sings constantly, about every little thing she does. "I'm riding in a wagon, bumping down the road. Riding in a wagon, with a heavy load." "It's my turn to wash the dishes, cuz the barbarian always breaks them and the ninja is no where to be seen at cleanup time, yeah, yeah, yeah." She's basically Zooey Deschanel, turned up to eleven.

Hey, you don't need to kill her off. Just drive *him* off!

• Have her start spending hours telling the PC about the boring parts of how her day went, or a bunch of gossip about people he doesn't know, and then get all grumpy when he doesn't show any interest.

• Or he says something to her, and she gets angry at him, and he can't figure out why, and she won't tell him because he should already know.

• Or she starts to get jealous about all the time he's spending with the other PCs, and decides they need to sit down and have a long talk about where this relationship is going and how he needs to decide where his priorities are.

I'll bet your bad role-player won't be up for handling much of that action. ;)

According to the government Athiesm is a religion complete with a church. I'm not sure how much more official you would like to get.

now giants need potions of enlarge person.

Relevant Video.

YOU"RE NOT MAD SCIENTISTS! YOU'RE A BUNCH OF HIPPIES!

I'm in enough games as it is, but your deity selections make for some rich, rich cleric potential. A soft-spoken 'wise man' cleric of Mimir, with Magic and Rune (and Improved Unarmed Strike as their 'favored weapon proficiency') sounds both thematic and effective, as does an authority-flouting 'wild man' cleric of Kurnan, with Travel, Animal and / or Trickery and a longbow!

Don't worry everyone, this issue will go away very soon. Obama told me a secret, he said.....

"This is my last election, and after my election I have more flexibility"

I told him I will transmit this to my people in Chicago.

Curse Wards

Brilliant sir. Brilliant. Don't tell my ref, mind you, but brilliant. So using this in my next campaign.

Cartoon came to me this morning.

Big panel of various barbarians protesting outside the Paizo office. Holding signs like "Wee can Reed two! "Barbarains for legitimacy" "Books, not just for starting fires!" etc etc. Bonus if some of the protester look like Krusk, Arnold-Conan, Momma-Conan etc etc.

Second panel is Sajan and Amri* looking out from inside the office. Sajan is asking "Friends of yours?" and Amri is doing a facepalm.

I can see it clearly in the mind's eye, but I can't draw to save my life.

Bonus panel would be Lem and Gimbal painting the signs and selling them to the barbarians.

*

Annoying that it seems like NOBODY remembered there was a prison there. I'd thought Rick might have since he's a cop, and Herschel might have since he lives in the area.

In all fairness, to the folks who have an issue with no one knowing about the prison being there. Do you know of every prison within 50 or so miles of your home? I know of 2 within that radius from where I live, but I did not know of one of them until about 5 years ago (and I had been here for 8 years at that point). In this day and age I am sure there is probably at least one more; prisons are big business after all.

Rick is a cop, but not from this area, and he is a county cop as well (from a different county), so it is not surprising that he does not know about it.

Additionally, they had been fleeing down back roads (translate to 2 lane low traffic roads). It is entirely possible that the folks form the area may have know of the existence of the prison, but may no realize how close they are due to the route they took to get there.

Besides, would a prison really be on the top of your list as a place where you would want to hole up? Would it be something most people would really consider, or even think of as a possibility, right off the bat?

Deleveling and having no catch up mechanism = Suck & Not Fun

Therefore it was horrible... and good riddance. May it never return.

I guess the answer lies in how you see the role of a Royal Assassin. If it’s only function is to execute people then I guess any captured deadly creature can act in this role. Personally I see the Royal Assassin as giving the council and ruler advice on who can or should be assassinated. I see him in a similar role to the CIA in the USA. Sometimes targets are terrorists and in the minds of the US can and should be assassinated. The CIA gives advice to the president and the president makes the decision. In my campaign captured enemies were given to the royal assassin to extract information. And the Royal Assassin decided if the captured enemy should be released, imprisoned, tortured, and/or executed. The royal assassin gave advice if an enemy city should be penetrated and if the assassination of a target would be worth the risk and what the result would be.

I still remember one time I took too long to do Minsc's subquest and he went nuts on my party. I reloaded my save game and he did it again. I had to roll back to an earlier save and go find his subquest.

I did that once my first time through because I couldn't find the screen that had Jaheira in it. (The directions were pretty vague -- gnolls somewhere to the southwest, as I recall.) Then, I finally got there and was actually in the middle of combat with the gnolls holding Jaheira when he turns on me for not finding Jaheira fast enough! While we are literally standing twenty feet from her and fighting the gnolls we have to kill to get her. Freaking moron. I was screaming at the monitor, "She's right there! We're killing the gnolls right now!"

Had to reload from when I entered the screen and go straight to the pit before his timer ran down.

I suppose you meant Character/PC not Player.

It sounds like you played your paladin as a paladin.

Call of Cthulhu

The Beast is on trial for the three crimes you mentioned in the first post. Nothing else. As you said, they picked these three crimes because they had the most evidence. It's a bit odd that they're not prosecuting the Beast for the damage at the university, too, but as Windspirit said, they are specifically going for the death penalty.

If the party succeeds, the town could always try to re-capture the Beast and put him on trail for the university, if they wanted.

And more importantly, it's a much better story if the PCs find the evidence and make their rolls and against all odds the beast is acquitted. Bear in mind the townspeople don't have to accept that, and may well mob in with pitchforks and torches.

My read on the Beast was, from the first, that he's a useful scapegoat or boogyman for everything that goes wrong in the area, and isn't actually guilty of anything. The narrative is classic Frankenstein; the misunderstood monster. The beast may have killed someone, sure, but the PCs have likely killed far more people at this point in more suspect circumstances ;)

Now if you want the story to be about the hopelessness of the judicial system and the futility of proving innocence, you can have him executed anyway. That's pretty dark but is definitely in keeping with the overall tone of this adventure path. Just make sure your players are on board with that, because it can be pretty disheartening to find your efforts have been futile. :)

It's not an exploit. Trying to give golems or undead or something else better "vision" than the rules allow is a "narritive exploit." You know what, why waste my time arguing about it, when Sean K. Reynolds himself already vigorously described why you shouldn't be giving freebie immunities and abilities out just because you can't comprehend how some [creature have never and can never possibly encounter, ever, in real life] could be affected by X.

Premise #2: Many undead don't have eyes.

True, and it's obvious by observation, at least as much as we can't in the real world: a skeleton doesn't have eyes, and a rotting corpse's eyes are usually in no shape to be used for vision. While we have no incorporeal creatures in the real world, it's not much of a leap to say that creatures that don't have physical bodies don't have physical eyes.

Conclusion #2: Since they don't have eyes to receive light, they must be sensing things in other ways,

This conclusion is somewhat shaky. Nothing in the descriptions of the undead presented in the Monster Manual say anything about them sensing things any differently than living creatures.* In fact, Sage Advice in Dragon Magazine clarified** that unless otherwise stated, all creatures have the normal five senses of humans (sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste). None of their descriptions say they have any unusual sense (unless they have something like blindsense or blindsight listed). In fact, no creature in the MM that lacks eyes (like elementals) is listed as having any special form of sight ... why is it that only undead get this "other ways" sense?

D&D is written for humans. It's written by humans from the perspective of humans, and when comparisons are made, they're made to a baseline human. Things that aren't outright stated in the D&D should be assumed to be human-normal. Huge parts of the game are built around the human as the standard, from armor class (the default AC of 10 is the AC of your average unarmored human) to attack rolls (your average unarmed human with no special training has about a 50% chance -- 10+ on a d20 -- of hitting another average unarmored human with a punch) to saving throws (default DCs are set according to what your average human could resist, dodge, or survive) to skill checks (DC 10 is something your average unskilled guy could succeed at about 50% of the time). With this humanocentric view, it should be clear that if there is no listed answer to a question, the answer almost certainly is the same as asking the question about a human.
How do bugbears poop? Just like a human.
Where do gnomes have body hair? In the same places humans do.
How good is an aboleth's sense of smell? About as good as a human.
How spicy is too spicy to an aasimar? About as much as a human would consider too spicy.

Of course, this comparison doesn't hold up to creatures that obviously resemble nonhuman real-world creatures. If asked about the sense of smell or taste preferences of a pegasus, I'd compare it to a horse. If asked what sort of meat owlbears prefer, fish or chicken, I'd find out what real bears like. But for undead, the closest comparison is to humans, since most undead are made from humans (or other humanoids, which bring the comparison back to humans again).

This is really an aspect of Occam's Razor:
"The simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable and that an explanation for unknown phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already known." - Dictionary.com

So, in this case, if one explanation is "undead senses default to the human norm through some process that mimics human senses" and the other is "undead have some strange method of sensing their environment, even though no part of the rulebooks says that undead have this ability", clearly the first explanation is the simpler one and is probably correct. When backed up by Sage Advice's statement that creatures have normal human senses unless otherwise stated, the evidence is strongly in favor of the familiar human senses rather than the kooky they-have-it-but-it's-not-mentioned-and-only-described-under-one-undead-cre ature sense.

One more comment on this point: Of course, all undead do have a special sense that humans don't have--darkvision. You know this not only because the undead type entry says they have it, but all undead in the MM do (or at least should) have darkvision listed. But the rules also say that darkvision is "black and white only, but is otherwise like normal sight." "Normal," of course, means "like a human's" in D&D. And if undead have a special sense, why would they need darkvision which works like human sight? If they have senses that aren't like human senses and yet have another sense that is like human sight, isn't that strange? Again, the simplest answer is that their senses work like human senses and darkvision is a supplement to that, just like dwarves have humanlike senses with darkvision as a supplement.

Great sword damage from soup? Thenceforth the barbarian did not wield a greatsword into battle, but instead dual wielded twin pots of hot soup enchanted to be ever filling with the most delicious stew imaginable.

I think these versions beat the originals.

Firefly (2002)

Just think of how much fur we waste every year because people don't feel comfortable using cat or dog fur. I mean we put millions of dogs and cats to death every year in our "humane" centers and destroy their bodies. What a terrible waste, if we are going to kill them we might as well make some good come out of it. I think somewhere a native american is crying.

I would have gone with Champions instead of M&M but different strokes for different folks.

Auric sighs.
"I doubt it's going to work, but I guess I'd better talk to them so we can at least say we tried. Sound as it may be, dropping Ba'al's favored people in the gorge won't endear me to my god. Nor will it help the Hand to have a dead patrol on their hands to rile up the Thanes. I'll go out and try to speak with them... if I get a crossbow bolt in my gut, I'm relying on you to pull me out, though."

Auric pulls up his hood, sheathes the Duke's sword and walks outside into the storm. Approaching the bridge, he holds his right hand up to show it's empty... though his shield is still strapped to his left arm.

Initiative: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (15) + 2 = 17

"Hold, if Ba'al's justice means anything to you.", he calls,"We are not your enemies, even if you are set on making us so. A true threat to the Iron Marches dwells in these mountains- and you can serve your Thane far better apprehending them, if you will but listen."
Diplomacy: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (7) + 7 = 14
Paladins have to try.

stuff

It's an exercise in futility to second-guess the judges in this contest. There is no court of appeals. They also won't be writing any items for the community to simply copy-and-paste as an entry.

They also do not owe it to contestants to offer feedback- that is what makes not winning great- you get a small glimpse into the process. Why pry that window open? There is no complete formula for winning, besides maybe "mojo + follow the template = keep".

It seems you're casting your net into an over-fished lake.

Entries will be FIAC, SAK, SIAC, break rules, all that 'no-no' stuff, but as has been said, the item might still be Superstar.

In under 300 words.

Can Neil have his thread back now?

When I describe something, I try to include things like color and odor and possibly other senses as well.

I don't mind if they know that they are up against a red dragon. Knowing that red dragons are fire breathers seems like it should be common enough. Knowing that the red dragons can melt stone or manipulate flames is going to require a Knowledge check.

I look at it this way, most people know that rattlesnakes are poisonous. That's pretty common knowledge. Knowing that the sidewinder's venom is hemotoxic and that essentially causes your muscles to be digested would require a Knowledge check.

So I had a potential player approach me the other day telling me that he was going to roll a level 8 Shadow Dancer/Assassin/and something else, thus breaking the game. I know he comes from a mechanic breaking heavy background, apparently.

What do I do about this? From a GMing pre and during game stand point?

Let him play. In areas of bright light, you shut down his hide ability. With nowhere to run and hide, the assassin abilities will be next to useless.

A desert-dwelling dragon can chase him down across the burning sands...

Break my game? Don't get too attached to your character...

Kevin Mickelson wrote:

Pharasmian Tomb Stone

*So, it's a ghost touch SIAC. With a crappy name. Meh.

*Should be "tombstone"...

*Vote to Reject.

*Isn't it "Pharasmin" anyway?

*Reject.

*Agreed. Reject.

*Rejected.

Oh well, you can't win 'em all...even if your contribution was entirely brilliant and "tomb stone" is two separate words for a reason and-

*ahem*

Can't win 'em all! A big congratulations to the winners out there, and thanks to Neil for taking the time to fish out the judge's feedback. I'm looking at this as an opportunity to learn how to accept defeat with dignity and poise.

Hitler, however, is going to need a minute...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y_3NqrYrP0

Hulk disagree, but respectful of your opinion.

Well, sure, if they bothered to pay attention during their confirmation classes. Some people just get queasy after hearing about the 95 theologians he nailed to the church door and just tune out everything afterwards.

** spoiler omitted **

"May the Force be with you."

Also, you know, that page in the GMG isn't exactly discouraging us, Paizo. ;)

First edition played completely differently. We would sit around the table with our friends and make jokes about Monty Python and the Holy Grail, nothing like the way the game is played today.

In defense of some folks (possibly myself included), I think it can be a little hard for an individual to determine if a word is obscure. Obviously if you're searching through a thesaurus and pick the word that seems the strangest or most archaic, then you might think to yourself "Hey - maybe nobody will know what heck I'm talking about here." And I'm sure some people pick such a word on purpose. However one might know a word and just assume that it's common knowledge.

To use JaceDK's examples, I know what a phlebotomist is. I have acquaintances in various medical professions, including one who is, in fact, now a phlebotomist by trade. I have also had the word used with me in a hospital visit in regards to bloodwork being done. Type the word into google and all sorts of education, training and employment opportunities come up.

"Ephemera" or "ephemeral" comes up all the time in fantasy and horror literature in regards to ghosts and spirits, so I don't know that it's obscure for the genre - that said, I do find "viscous ephemera" to be clunky but very Lovecraftian, traits which often seem to go hand in hand to me.

Now, if you don't know any medical types or don't get regular bloodwork done, then you might not be familiar with the word phlebotomist - but does that make the word obscure? I spent my whole life not knowing what a neti pot was until I met someone who had used one all her life; I would like to say that it was because they're obscure, but I have a hard time applying that word to a category of tool/appliance that you can buy at any department store. Until today I had no idea who Dr. McNinja was (and thank you for enlightening me, Standback) - though I still don't know if the character is considered obscure amongst internet-savvy gamers.

In the end, I guess my point is that esoteric doesn't necessarily equal obscure, and it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference.