This post makes me marvelously happy. As has been mentioned by a variety of other people, it's inclusive in a way that deliberately permits some interpretation; it doesn't condemn Shandra's parents or make them out to be non-supporting in the end; it's inherently positivist across a very broad spectrum and that's fantastic.
People who are bothered by 'tokenism' really need to thrash their way through the frequently-repeated statements by the devs and authors that Golarion is far less bigoted and far more inclusive. In that sense, Shardra is not a token but is a representative of an extant and perceived-to-be-normal part of Golarion's population.
As she should be!
Therefore, Paizo's decision to give that population some attention shouldn't be diminished by claiming that it is in any way political. It's a part of the game's setting.
Goodness, that's a half-dozen. "Enough players interested" doesn't seem to be a question.
Dug out the rules and re-acquainted myself with them, though I can't say I am 100% as I've never played MG before.
I am thinking about a rather scouty Tenderpaw, but I'm totally open to negotiations on the idea, as this definitely seems the sort of game where a mutually-discussed and created party will work together better.
Posting tentative interest in Dark Heresy, provided there's room (I haven't counted exactly how many of who was interested in what). I've been on a tech-priestess-ish bent of late.
I have some CoC experience and the rules, but I've never played/read Delta Green. I'm assuming it's in the same vein as Warehouse 13 and the SCP Foundation, but (from what you said) agent cells aggregated from different branches/services based on 'contact and experience' with the supernatural?
Would an NSA surveillance expert/technician be a useful role? Or would that be 'too removed' from the usual 'hands-on' detective sort of thing?
Since there's been some talk about 'How much combat is too much?' and it has been noted that Ironclaw has Very. Very. Lethal. Combat. I thought I would put together a few quick examples as to how it works:
I'm going to utilize two of the characters provided at the back of the book and put them through a simple melee and ranged exchange. I'm going to use Deirdre and Hendrick because they both have low-end Body traits (d4 and d6 respectively) and there's a pistol involved, so I can show the difference between gun-type ranged weapons (which have the Slaying characteristic...Very nasty!) and other weapons.
I'm not going to bother with Hendrick's Springing Strike gift since these aren't exchanges, they're single attacks. I'm also not going to fuss with initiative because I want to set up some deliberate examples of 'X attacks Y with Z', but be aware of the chart on the bottom right of p.114. In most games Initiative rolls just decide who goes first. In IC either one side or the other goes first depending on who started the fight (so if combat is inevitable, throwing the first punch is a good idea!), a botched Initiative roll can seriously screw you up...And an overwhelming success can not only let you go first but let you have a free action via Focus, or interrupt someone else's action (which will be DIFFICULT to handle in PbP, if not impossible. Ideas for that, UF?). Focus is important in general, it's at the top of p.116, but my goal here is to demonstrate lethality so I'm going to skip it for the moment.
In IronClaw, 5 wounds will kill anyone. ANYONE. Also, an awful lot of things will send a character 'Reeling,' which ends your turn and gives anyone else a d8 bonus to hit them. A full explanation of damage levels is on p.129.
You get two actions/round (usually). They must be different, you can't attack twice (two weapons lets you use either one, not both, so the fencing style of having an attacking weapon and a parrying weapon is nicely represented here.) One of those actions can be Aiming, which grants you an extra d8...And apparently you can Aim melee strikes. I assume this represents taking a moment to line up your thrust or whatever.
In Ironclaw, a defender can respond various ways to various attacks: dodge, parry, or counter (a counter is a countering attack...You take the enemy's attack and hope it won't hit, you aren't doing anything to stop it, but you get an attack against them). I suggest that we get used to making combat declarations like 'I'm going to do blahblahblah this turn, and if X attacks me, I will parry, if Y attacks, I will dodge.'
Example 1: Melee, defender attempts to parry.:
Hendrick is the real melee monster of this pairing, so I'm going to begin with him. He has a Rapier, which is a rather nice weapon that gives Dmg +2 and Critical. Critical means that if you score two full successes, the weapon does one bonus damage. The Dmg +2 means after all damage is determined from successes, from critical, and from Slaying, the weapon does 2 more points of Damage.
Assuming Hendrick hasn't Aimed (he has used his first action to get close), he rolls d8, d6 to attack with his rapier. Deidre rolls 2d4 to parry with her sword. Dice aren't cumulative in Ironclaw, so the maximum Deidre can roll is a 4, and the maximum Hendrick can roll is an 8. Let's assume Deidre sees Hendrick coming and has used one of her actions this turn to Guard - granting her an extra d8 on defense. She is now rolling d8, 2d4 against Hendrick's d8, d6.
Hendrick rolls 4, 5...Good thing Deidre was on Guard. The 5 would have beaten anything she could manage otherwise.
Deidre rolls 4, 4, 3...And Hendrick hits anyway.
Deidre is hit...Which automatically sends her reeling. For the rest of this turn, and until she recovers next turn, attacks against her will get a bonus d8.
Only one of Hendrick's dice rolls higher than Deidre's highest die (the 5 v. the 4) so his attack only does 1 base point of damage. He doesn't get the bonus from his rapier's Critical because he didn't get a second success (if he had, it would've added 1 damage for the success...And a bonus critical point for having two natural successes). But the rapier Hendrick is using grants Dmg +2, so he has now caused 3 points of damage.
Deidre has a d4 soak die, but she is also wearing leather armor (d6) so her soak roll is d6, d4. She needs 4s or better to soak the damage. She rolls a 3, 2 and soaks none of it.
Deidre takes 3 points of damage. She is now Hurt, Afraid and Injured. This means she will take 1 extra damage point from being hit for the rest of the fight; she is too afraid to attack (but she can Counter! Very risky...); and being Injured she takes another extra damage point (stacking with the one from Hurt).
If Deidre suffers 1 more point of damage she will be dying, and unable to take any action...But the odds are good, due to Hurt and Injured, that if she takes any damage, it will NOT be just one point.
And that's how lethal combat in Ironclaw is. Now as a Player Character, Deidre would get a Combat Save unavailable to an NPC. This is a Gift that can be used to negate a Dying, Dead or Overkill result from any one attack...But it can only be used once in a fight, then she would need 8 hours of rest and a decent meal to refresh it. She would have been better off using her Dodge (d10, 2d8) but I wanted to make a point...
Some alternative outcomes: If Deidre's parry had been successful she would have been completely uninjured. If she had tied Hendrick, she would have had to choose either to retreat a step (Forcing Hendrick to use an Action next turn to close the distance before attacking again), or stay where she was and be hit (bad idea).
Example 2: Melee, defender attempts to counter.:
Assuming a fresh Deidre attacking Hendrick with her short sword. The Short Sword has Dmg +1, and it is Impaling. That means on a successful hit, the defender can choose to retreat and suffer damage as normal, OR if they stand their ground, the Short Sword is treated as having Dmg +2.
Assuming Deidre has chosen to Aim, she gains a d8 to her usual 2d4 Sword Attack roll. Hendrick will be choosing to Counter-attack USING Parry... When you counter, you select a defense (either Parry or Dodge), and roll using that defense. It happens that Hendrick is parrying using the same d8, d6 he would roll for a normal attack with his rapier (he isn't using a second weapon which might have better parrying characteristics, for example).
Deidre rolls 5, 4, 3 to attack. That Aim clearly helped.
Hendrick counter-attacks, rolling 6, 6.
Deidre didn't beat Hendrick's highest die, so Hendrick isn't hit. But Hendrick did beat her highest die, so Deidre is hit.
Alternative outcomes: If Deidre had beaten Hendrick's dice, he would have been hit. If they had TIED, both of them would have been hit.
Countering is a risky proposition. In this case, it pays off for Hendrick.
Hendrick has beaten Deidre's roll with TWO of his dice. His Counter does 2 base points of Damage AND gets the bonus from the Rapier's Critical for a third point, AND gets the Dmg +2 which normally accrues to a Rapier...So Deidre has a d6, d4 to soak against 5 points of damage. At best, she will come off in the same state she did in the first example.
At worst, Deidre takes 5 points of damage and she's DEAD. Did we say something about lethality?
Example 3: Ranged, using a pistol.:
The squirrel isn't making a very good showing, but she's a ranged specialist. Let's assume this began as a close-quarters struggle and somehow Deidre managed to lift Hendrick's pistol from his belt...A good thing, because her bow isn't really usable at Close range.
A pistol does Slaying damage. That means for every successful hit die, it does TWO points of damage. Ouch. A pistol also has the Spark characteristic, which means a d10 is rolled to see if it even goes off. On a botch, it hang fires, its spark die is reduced and...You can see the rest on p.103. Point being, it's slightly iffy...But that doesn't make up for how lethal it is if it hits.
Realizing the squirrel now has a loaded gun, Hendrick attempts to get away. This is a sane move in more ways than one. A good Dash will put him 5 paces away...And just barely out of Near Range. That gets him an extra d8 to roll in an attempt to dodge the shot.
Unfortunately, Deidre has Sharpshooter, which reduces Range penalties by 1 step. Hendrick doesn't get the bonus die.
Deidre Aims, which gets her a bonus d12 due to her Veteran Gift.
Deidre rolls d12, d10, d8 and Hendrick tries to Dodge using D10, 2d8.
Deidre rolls the Spark die and gets a 2...Close! But the pistol DOES go off. She then rolls 11, 8, 8. Ouch.
Hendrick's Dodge dice come up 7, 7, 1, and it's a sad day for the Weasel.
Because of the Pistol's Slaying characteristic, each of Deidre's 3 successes does TWO Wounds, for 6 wounds...And the Pistol also has Dmg +2 for a total of 8 wounds.
Hendrick has a single d6 Soak die and Leather Armor for another d6. The best he can Soak is two wounds.
That leaves 6.
Hendrick is SO VERY messily dead from this single attack that he is considered Overkilled. All of his allies within 4 paces become Afraid. If someone doesn't Rally them, they can only Counter, not Attack.
It's amazing what you can accomplish with Weasel brains if you spread them around a bit.
So, yes. Combat in Ironclaw == Really, really deadly. The Player Character Combat Save gift would allow Deidre and Hendrick to negate (completely) the damage they took in Examples 2 and 3...But it can only be used once per fight. Generally, anything but the lightest wound will put a character out of the fight until they can be healed. Starting level White Magic (p.87) allows the removal of the Hurt condition (not Injured!) in combat, and allows Dying to be replaced by Fatiged. First Aid takes 5 minutes to apply (for the Hurt condition), so by that time the odds are everyone on one side or the other will be dead or in retreat...It isn't a 'mid-fight' option! The Journeyman Level White Magic spell Healing (p.306) can (potentially!) remove Injured as well as Hurt.
Which makes me ask...Do we have anyone planning to play a healer?
1) More than a little, but optimally most of it should avoid lethality (on all sides). I would vote for real risks for the really important stuff, but handle things that aren't plot critical on a more swashbuckling/cinematic level. This is probably no surprise given the nature of my character app...
2) Lots of both. For me, one of the more nifty things about Ironclaw is its division socially of the different roles of the nobility and the commoners in diverse societies, and of course when that division breaks down and one has disenfranchised rakes slumming among desperate types, it creates further backlash when said rakes try to deal with nobility again. I'm a literary pain, I know, but consider the relationship between Falstaff and Young Prince Henry in Shakespeare's Henry IV...Living the low life as drunkards and highwaymen because the kingdom doesn't need a prince and a knight. (Actually, if you cross Prince Henry with Lady Brett Ashley from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, you've got about 90% of my character concept, right there.) So anyway, yes. Lots of roleplay, both low intrigue and high intrigue.
3) A bit. Some is good. It becomes problematic if the entire campaign grinds to a halt because nobody can figure out the puzzle, though.
4) Some. I don't like Disneyland, but I don't feel a need for description of the charmingly typical medieval trend towards using the streets as open sewer systems or other such unpleasantness.
5) Some. I don't really go for 'The PCs save the world.' kind of things, but they still should have heroic potential that they can rise to.
I'd have to say I'd go for about a 60/40 ratio of Grit/Epicness. The ugly side of town is ugly, life can be nasty, brutish and short, but at the same time you have paladins who are the equivalent of medieval superheroes...Enough grit to make it really obvious who the pure and noble (of intent, not blood) people are, while still maintaining elbow room for antiheroes, nasty villains, and corruption.
6) Bunches. I agree with Natalia on this. But I'd also note that I have a tendency to front-load characters with tons of potentially usable hooks via background situations and ready-made NPCs, and you sure as heck shouldn't be expected to use all of them!
Wait. Octopus cat-burglar? Mammals! Gotta stick to mammals. Primarily European mammals, though some of the ones on the list would've been extinct (in Europe) by the Renaissance era...
And I imagine you could use the standard Weasel template to generate a honey-badger, but I'm not sure where one'd be from. Probably Akoma, though, either way, it would be a foreign critter, like wolverines are... And thus way off its normal beat. IC is biased more towards European critters, it's true, but then again it's emulating a late medieval/early renaissance Europe model, socially.
On the other hand, there are definitely rules for bears. They trend towards Nordic civilization in terms of background but the description does more than just 'suggest' that some of them have become civilized in terms of Triskellion.
...And a bear would make a GREAT Marv.
And yes, Galrion, we're using the Second Ed. Omnibus. :) Welcome everybody, it's nice to see more interest.
Now, you said 'guild war'. Is that a fairly high-end and wealthy guild (where a court intrigue character might be applicable) or are we talking about mayhem, arson and burglary where such a character wouldn't be reasonably involved at all?
I'm looking at the difference here, career-wise, between Dilettante and Rake.
My initial character concept leans towards the former, but it's adaptable. :)
Although technically, I suppose either of them could be up to their necks in the latter, while the Rake is less likely to be tied to the high-end, so I could just run the Dilettante and opt (if appropriate) for a 'more fallen than not' sort of background.
That would certainly make life easier! My purse got stolen Friday and I'm waiting for my bank to replace my credit card. So I can't order a copy myself until that comes in the mail, sometime this week. :6
It seems likely (given how rare IC players are) that we're looking at a small group if any.
But this actually provides opportunities. Provided the GM's interest drifts that direction, you can do all sorts of unorthodox things with a small group. Merchant representatives, finding out why (or making sure as to why)a given deal doesn't go through, Court intrigues and diplomacy, the small team of rogues, or my own favorite, a blending of the lot, being deniable 'agents'. The medieval Retief, James Bond or Jim DiGriz gig is sorely underestimated and lost against the usual backdrop of cutpurses, second-story rogues and trap-finders.
Thoughts? Do you have something particular in mind, UF? You've got a character already I see, Craig? Any particular direction you feel that character is inclined to go?
Craig, you still around? I'd rather not order a new gamebook for a game that might not even take off...IC games are not exactly thick on the ground. If you'll run with two, or if we can find three, or whatever...
(And yeah, I KNOW how ludicrous it is to try to guarantee a PbP game will happen, but since you only have two possible players now -- and a random elf -- I'm a little leery of committing my lunch money without knowing if things will work out if we only have two players.)
I guess d20 modern is what most people own, so we just stick with that-Anyway, I'd recommend planned generation, or are you keen on rolling stats?
As much as I hate to break up the Slavic-Finnish dialogue here, I would go with d20 modern. I have many of the d20 books, however, so I am flexible.
Also, I tend to prefer point-buy. I have freaky online chargen dice. They revert to standard probability once RP starts but I've made dice generators on multiple forums gout out amazing strings of below-average-and-minimum numbers before. I can think of one D&D campaign where the GM allowed me two rerolls, then rerolled my character himself, then went offline and used his dice and came back with the numbers, because there wasn't a single score in the first three sets over eight.
A friend has some joke dice which are basically marbles with '1' painted on opposite sides. He offered to let me use them once and I suggested that might be bad, because they'd probably crack in half to give me a 0.5...
Currently looking at a German-Jewish occult scholar who fled first to France, then to the UK to escape Reich pressure to work for some dark program or else. Emphasis on languages (modern and ancient), mythology, etc. Has some experience bluffing and forging credentials (which is how she escaped). If time was available before deployment but after agreeing to work with this SF group, may have had some limited martial training, otherwise is liable to know which end of a gun one doesn't want pointed at them and not much else (your usual SOE/SIS recruits were given some minimum but time pressure didn't always permit for much training of 'specialists')! Which would be more appropriate?
Just because TURKEY was strictly neutral doesn't mean a TURKISH individual was similarly neutral. Even in Turkey's government there were a number of different groups with different objectives and lack of cooperation with each other.
For a good example of just how CF'ed it could be, take a look at the various internal movements involved in Turkey's WW1 relationships with Germany and other nations. Lots of underhanded backstabbiness and near-coup material going on.
Sign me up as potentially interested, though I'd prefer to know era (pre- or early- war, or 60s as the last post mentioned) before trying to define a specific character. There seem to be a lot of shooters already so I'd probably lean towards someone who was a mystic information specialist on the hairy edge of 'unsolved cases and Things The Public Must Not Know'.
Has anyone else here run across the RPG 'Cold City' by Contested Ground Studios? The game actually describes itself as "Think ‘Hellboy’
meets ‘The Third Man’ meets ‘The Manchurian Candidate’."
Conflicted ally secret groups cleaning up after Cthulhu-esque Nazi experiments in partitioned early Cold-War Berlin. Deliciously evil. Nazis, ex-Nazis, KGB and GRU, SAS, OSS, MI5, SIS, MI6, CIA, Réseau AGIR, Red Orchestra, NCS, etc., etc., etc., etc...All creeping around cold war Berlin in the late 40s/early 50s hunting things that come out of the walls and dark remnants of weird Teutonic and Slavic rituals.
If anyone has ever read Tim Powers' [u]Declare[/u] with its mystical secret services hidden within secular secret services, etc., it's a lot like that.
Not suggesting the use of the system mind you, just pointing out another similarly impinging 'mid-20th c. supernatural espionage' setup. :)
As there is a cleric and druid, that is a lot of magic; so I will build my guy on the rogue base, but the city rogue doesnt really make sense so I would like to use the wilderness rogue changes from the Unearth Arcana which is more along the outside pirate goblin theme.
I don't know if there's an official 'engineer' class, but earlier you were talking about doing an 'engineer' and the GM surely didn't sound against the idea.
(And Whosi is hilarious, also I dunno if I'm accepted yet and even if I am party balance isn't as important as unbalanced nuttiness probably. :) I just posted here cuz I saw you ask about how to make an engineer)
"The locals still tell tales of it. The pirate ship, sitting there in the middle of the desert, no water for hundreds of miles in any direction. Of course, they say, that's not the strangest part of it. The skeletons found on it, bleached white and scoured by wind and sand, were goblins... No one knows how it happened, but the locals have theories. And they're all, one and all, universally mad..." - The Pathfinder Chronicles, Book XXIV written by Orsius Crumbbottom, Pathfinder
I just got done skimming my new copy of the Goblins of Golarions, and the artwork of the pirate ship with goblins at the helm, both scared and delighted me. I'd be willing to run this with some caveats:
1. This would be a chaotic game, not necessarily an evil one. Expect light comedic evil, but no baby eating.
2. No maps. No grids. Don't ask. All combat is expected to be slightly madcap. Rules will be bent. There's no crying in Pathfinder Goblins.
3. I usually post once per weekday. I may need to slow or quicken this pace. I warned you.
4. Frickin' goblin piracy. Yep.
5. The game would start in the Shackles. Plan accordingly. You'll all be members of the dwindling in number Gullchoker tribe.
6. 15 point buy, 1st level. 2 traits, etc. Minimum starting gold. You're desperate little scavengers, remember?
7. Your character may die. If you die in comedic fashion, so much the better. You can make another character.
8. There is no number 8.
If you agree to the above, start making characters. And remember: stupid little freaks. Enjoy!
Magic:
Domains: Evil (Touch of Evil: Sickened creatures count as 'Good' for purposes of spell descriptors for (1/2 cleric lvl min. 1) rds, 3+2/day), Oceans (Surge: Make CMB check against target using Lvl+Wis Bonus to pull/push creature as if using Bull Rush or Drag maneuver, 3+2/day)
Orisons: Detect Poison, Guidance, Virtue
1st Level: Cause Fear, Doom, Protection from Good (D)
Statistics:
Str 8, Dex 13, Con 10, Int 12, Wis 15, Cha 13
BAB 0, CMB -2, CMD 9
Feats: Channel Smite, Command Undead
Traits: Big Ears, Flounderer
Skills: Profession: Sailor +6, Heal +6, Craft: Ships (rafts!) +5
Combat Gear: Small Leather, Cobbled Small Lt. Wooden Shield (Platter), 6 Darts, Cobbled Sickle, Cobbled Small Barbed Vest
Other Gear: Artisan's Tools (shipbuilding, crude), Tribal Fetish (Hunk of dead, pitted coral that looks something like a large seagull skull, Shriga tends to ornament it with seaweed tassels and bits of colorful shell and strap it atop her head), Jar of Pickled Eels, Ball of bits of String, Twine and Yarn, Bag of Bits of Sea-Polished Glass and Slippery Rocks, One Dead Seagull (usually replaced when she gets hungry) with a Crude Noose Around its Neck (worn on back, wings out), Spare Fish, a Bedraggled ex-Halfling Ball Gown (Originally Hot Pink), Various Fish Bones (Many Sharpened), Rather a Lot of Seaweed, Pet Crab ("Cuddles"), Assorted Tide Pool Slime
Background:
Spoiler:
Shriga was born into the Gullchoker tribe and earned her name well prior to being uncaged for her incessant attempts to mimic gull calls. On a good day, this performance actually brought food on the wing. On a bad day, it didn't make anyone's headaches any more bearable. She is more skilled than most goblins of the tribe when it comes to the art of salvaging Things That Float and assembling them into Still Larger Things That Float, at times even taking raftbuilding and ship-repair to a level that could even be considered craft. Her other hobbies appear to involve faceplanting in tidepools and licking semi-toxic marine life. When she fell off a raft one evening, the more ingrogulated locals deemed it a relief. Unfortunately, a few days later as the tribe was engaged in breaming a larger captured hull, she flopped out of the shallows with a wide-eyed glassy look, a face full of urchin spines, and an almost inarticulate announcement that she had Spoken To Lady Lastbreath. Subjected to several days of alternately breathing dried stonefish smoke and attempts by the existing priestess to drown her, Shriga finally was reluctantly admitted as an apprentice. That incident occurred over a year ago, and at the last Spring tide, the priestess booted her out again, having announced to all and sundry that she'd taught Shriga 'as much as she needed to know' while grudgingly admitting that Shriga was 'a priestess' but certainly not 'The Priestess' and that anything else was 'between her and the goddess'. Shriga has spent a fair amount of time engaged in her disconcerting pastime of lying face-down in tidepools since then, a habit made even more disturbing since now she seems to be able to do it for extensive periods of time. When not apparently drowning inland, she is often seen wandering about with various bits of salvaged flotsam, small buckets with captured toxic sea creatures, and either glaring or looking with hungry cunning in the direction of The Priestess's raft.
IF it should turn out that you have an opening, should I sort of pre-prep a character bio and sheet, and if so, do you have any suggestions as to what roles the group is 'light' on? I notice in EP very often one ends up with 'fighter, hacker, tech, scientist' and misses out on having a 'face or a medic.
I'm seeing in this thread:
Kassil------------------Uplift Octomorph/Mercurial - Scavenger/Xenobio
Mark Sweetman-----------Infomorph/Argonaut - Arachnid, Computer Interface/Hacking
Balodek-----------------Ultimate Merc/Fury - Fighter type, Merc template
Jonasty-----------------OSG/Argonaut - Bouncer, Salvage artist
J. Christopher Harris---Uplift Simian/Mercurial - Fighter type
Sure enough, seems like a lack of a 'face or a medic. :)
And if I'm asking too soon, I apologize if I sound like a pest. I don't mean to be. Just wandered by Paizo, saw it had been a week, and thought I would check in.
Preferably with some horror/intrigue/espionage/in-system (rather than a gatecrashing run), and with more opportunities to use cleverness and social engineering/finagling than to use railguns.
Norman Cohn's "The Pursuit of the Millenium: Revolutionary messianism in medieval and Reformation Europe and its bearing on modern totalitarian movements".
Believe it or not, there's a huge lot of interesting and useful setting elements in it for anything from a standard medieval fantasy setting to something Cthulhoid. It's all about how nigh-impossible it has been to stomp out various cults and heresies down through the ages from pre-Christian times.
The party's resident 'I can do anything better than you.' ninja decides to go scout around while the rest of the party are at a crossroads inn trying to obtain some information about a nearby ruin.
The ninja falls into a hole by GM fiat. (Your dice rolls! They do nothing!)
Several of us go out looking for the ninja (cue laughter). They all fall into the hole as well.
My character, the dwarf, finally goes to find the rest of the party. Notes a few party members' horses standing around the edges of 'a clearing in the trees'.
Dwarf climbs a tree to see better into the clearing.
The tree falls over and the dwarf Falls Into The Hole.
There's one small tunnel leading out of the hole. While we're debating ways to get out of the hole via magic and rope and similar shenanigans, the hole arbitrarily starts caving in.
At this point I handed my character sheet to the GM and said 'Here, you know where you're going to make him go, you know what you're going to force him to do, have fun playing with him.'
I ran into another of the players a few days later who told me that 'they really had fun' and I 'should have had more patience'.
I told him that my patience had fallen into the hole without a saving throw.
Very much don't buy into the 'trap the evil path' concepts. You don't want someone who will try to be more sneaky and careful in doing evil. If your goal is to test their evilness, the system should constantly reward and encourage them for doing evil things while good becomes more and more difficult to pursue.
When they crawl out ragged on their hands and knees, having been offered the possibility of physical perfection and wealth, you know you're dealing with someone with some serious moral determination.
Create a custom magic item along the lines of the synthesizer from Star Trek, able to create any food I want, whenever I want. Research a spell to prevent me from ever getting fat. Design a chair of magical comfort.
Market them.
Live cheerfully off the profits without having to even bother with more than the occasional spellcast.
Between "Wall of XXXXXXX", Portable Holes, Bottomless Pits, and things like Decanters of Endless Water, you should be able to completely ruin any neighboring kingdom's water table, wash away all their topsoil, flood their cities, etc., etc.
But that's just it... if a poster has lost their temper or resorted to fallacious tactics, all his/her valid and ration points and opinions cease to matter.
Disagree.
If someone has made several valid, supportable, well-argued points, and that someone then suddenly throws a temper tantrum, their latest action does not cause me to immediately invalidate any prior valid points.
Although it will make me very cautious about reading them carefully in future.
(Alternately, if you'd prefer to dismiss and invalidate this, your mother snorts gooseberries.)
