SirUrza's page

Frankly, this route, while probably the "safest" in regards to annoying customers who don't want to feel like we're trying to "trick" them into buying a new version, feels hollow to me.

In any case, if you guys were to add stuff I can't say repeat myself enough about how much I want to see feats and traits reprinted if they need to be updated from the 3.5 APs. If they don't need reprinting then there needs to be something, perhaps a Web Enhancement listing Pathfinder RPG "approved" feats/traits and "incompatible" and/or "obsolete."

I'll take two feats from Curse of the Crimson Throne as an example.

Crossbow Mastery... great feat for crossbow people right? Compatible? Obsolete? Needs updating? I don't know.. mostly because I'm not a crossbow person.. and don't care to find out. But there might be someone that cares because they want to make a character.

Sable Company Marine... pretty iconic feat for that region right? Compatible? Obsolete? Needs updating? I know it isn't Obsolete, but I couldn't answer the other two and I'd want to know if I ever play/dm in that area.

If folks are indeed asking for an arcane ranger or something like that, then I think that it's only a matter of time before we build a base class along those lines. In my experience, though, this is NOT what folks are asking for.

I was ALWAYS unhappy with how the Bladesinger turned out in 3.x

The concept of a graceful sword wielding spellcaster is much most desirable then an arcane paladin to me. And I don't mean dancing graceful, I mean elven graceful. :P

While we're on the discussion of things to add into it. I'd say anything feat/prestige class from the 3.5 Adventure Paths that "need" updating. This way people with the old 3.5 APs can use the PRPG to up convert the Paizo content.

Saying it's an updated edition book is much better then calling it the "Player's Guide to Pathfinder" and still requiring use to keep (or in the case of new customers) buy the old book.

Yes.. I'm talking about the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. It irks me that the book is 3.0 and that I needed a second book that did A LOT more then just update it to 3.5 (it added a whole lot of crunch that wasn't necessary.)

I wish there was an Ask A Goblin by Paizo. :P

Here's hoping Paizo never EVER becomes a publicly traded company. I'd hate to see what would become of it if some mega toy making conglomerate's bean counters were to suddenly have a say in it's product line design.

One of my DMs had an interesting way of settling a hold "stand-off." Turned out we were close to a nest of Wyvern and two of them attacked the PCs and NPCs.

you think we will get an iconic anti-paladin and/or templar?

I certainly wouldn't allow it. Clerics and Paladins are supposed to be devoted to a god or an ideal. To stray from that god/ideal means your faith has come into question and they fall into the "Ex-" category. Not to mention the problem of high level healing.

HOWEVER..

If you're asking, if you have multiple gods whose faiths closely work together to fight common causes, whose deities even share the same plane/house/whatever and want to be devoted to their causes but not to a singular deity in the group, then the answer is yes, you can. The answer is yes because the issue is a ROLEPLAYING thing, not a mechanical thing.

So you're going to ask me, how do you reflect that on paper. It's simple. A cleric of "like-gods" should be built to be devoted to their alignment. This way they can champion the causes of those gods without the doctrine of their religious orders.

I'm going to use the Forgotten Realms as an example of this. Tyr, Torm, and Ilmater often work together. They're called the House of the Triad. Together they represent Justice, Guardians, and Heroic Martyrs. A lawful good cleric could be devoted to the ideals of all 3, but follow the doctrine of none of their orders.

But you might not know much about the House of Triad if you're not a Realms fan, so I'll take a more generic example...

The cleric of moridan has doctrine that keeps him from asking corellon for help while fighting orcs, while a lawful good cleric might ask corellon to help guide his arrow and three rounds later ask moridan to protect his allies.

Side note, even if you ignore all that, remember 7 cure light wounds means nothing at higher levels. Enemies hit harder, a multiple classed cleric doesn't have the cleric spells they need to keep up with the damage being done in 1 round.

Calling a bard broken because he can't hold his own in melee combat the same way a fighter can is just ignorance at work, in the same way calling a fighter broken because he can't provide bonuses to everyone else's combat powers as good as a bard can.

James just reinforced why I love him.

Broken has 3 "urban" meanings I've encountered...

1) Overpowered
2) Sucks
3) Not working as intended

Overpowered is self explanatory. Sucks is the person doesn't like it. And not working literally is doesn't work right.

Nerfed is a common word whose origins need no explanation. When something gets nerfed it usually means something has been depowered, for better or worse is a matter of opinion.

SirUrza wrote:

I think the only feat we ever used at my table from the books was the "Spellcasting Prodigy" but my understand is that it also appeared in a Forgotten Realms release. The races data and monster stats were the most important things I pulled from those books aside from the fluff.

Yeap it was a Realms feat and you'll remember Archmage was a Realms prestige class. There was also a two weapon fighting feat that was pretty good.. gave you that dodge bonus equal a buckler if I remember right.

I suppose when the series of novels come out you will have what you wish for

When they come out is a long way away still. :(

We'll be doing a new series of "Meet the Iconics" for all six of the new base classes in a few months—these posts will not only show off the final full-color artwork for each, but will also reveal their backstories and heritage and history and personality.

One of the ideas I'd heard was that WotC weren't happy with the STAR WARS line editors poaching their authors (and then paying them a lot more money), like Troy Denning, but how much truth there is to that is not clear. Interestingly the problems between WotC and Kemp flared up just after he'd delivered his first STAR WARS novel to Del Rey.

And then there's poor Elaine being out of the Realms too.

The longer 4e goes on, the more I believe WOTC needs to release an "Age of Chosen" line or something, pre-spell plague. I mean, that'd be the solution for Dragonlance right? Release 3 books... War of the Lance, the children age (sorry don't know what it's called), and a Player/Accessory book. They should just release 2 pre-spell plague books for the Realms, a Core and PH book.

Believe it or not, but James Jacobs wrote a book like this back in the day. :)

http://www.amazon.com/Villains-d20-Guidebook-System/dp/0971439230/

Granted it's only Villains, but wasn't a bad book.

I have a feeling WOTC wants to do a spell plague to Dragonlance but doesn't know how yet so they're doing Dark Sun.. wtf.. instead.

SirUrza wrote:

I like it this way to be honest. I think it's ridiculous for a PC to be running around with a different sword for every occasions. Golf bag anyway?

Thing is... I've never seen this pop up in games I play with the exception of archers, who carry different arrows. Which is kinda cool in a Hellboy sort of way. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention... but carrying a lot of weapons is a long-standing RPG tradition anyway.

I like it this way to be honest. I think it's ridiculous for a PC to be running around with a different sword for every occasions. Golf bag anyway?

Written when the Alpha rules first came out..

A sunny day. Children laugh and play. The adults gather and celebrate their good fortunes. Harvest had been good.

No one noticed the stranger enter town. He walked to the center, disturbing none. The figure halts, he utters a dark word to his god. Town folk around him fall to the ground, dead and silence. Dark energy emanates from the figure, crackling the air like static [Channel Energy].

The towns folk look at the figure and the children fall silent. Their celebration and good fortune forgotten. Outrage begins to build within the townsfolk. Foolish courage fueled by fear prompts the less prudent into action, taking up stone and club.

The figure looks around at the gathering mob. Anger and hate fills their hearts. They curse and spit at the figure but none dare advance. The mob is silenced as the figure tilts back his head and laughs. A dreadful laugh. His hood slips back, it does not reveal his face, only his eyes. Those eyes.. those glowing yellow eyes.

The figure stops laughing and gestures speaking two dark words. The bodies of the dead begin to twitch and rise [Quicken Desecrate & Animate Dead]. Panic replaces courage, terror replaces fear. The dead have returned.

Smoke rises from the town. A lone figure walks the road. The children laugh no more.

Yes, the Serpentfolk are very cool. Totally reminded me of Set worshippers. :)

I have gone ahead and deleted my own post that I'm typing right now in response to the OP deleting his post. You can no longer read this post.

** spoiler omitted **

Because it's an attack action and dual wielding imposes it's penalty whether you use both weapons or not.

SirUrza wrote:

Is it wishful thinking to hope that the Iconics will have a full page each with expanded backgrounds? (I know i'm asking again but it wasn't answered!)

The iconics are not going to be in this book.

The only other difference may be the favored class mechanic, which if you declare one of your two classes you should get it at 1st but not at 2nd.

I'd love to see it Seeker, I'm a big fan of these rules.

I can't be the only one that liked the apprentice rules from the 3.0 DMG that weren't carried over to 3.5. Has anyone tried to convert them to Pathfinder?

If thats the case whats the point of having more than one player.

While we're at it, let's give Magic Missile an attack roll. :P

The fighter might have a high charisma and spend most of his limited skill points on skills like Diplomacy and Bluff, but if the wizard memorised Charm Person that day then that's a more reliable option.

Yes, it's completely unreasonable for people to be upset that their choice of character is relatively useless compared to someone else's choice of character.

But I guess those of use that don't spend 3 hours rolling attack roles aren't having fun either.

Why would James want to meet this? Clicky

Someone need to give Rob some Welcome cookies!

The kindle has picked up A LOT of steam. Though it could just be a fad and be dead in a year, who knows.

Will Planet Stories ever adopt an ebook format? I'm not talking PDFs here like the Pathfinder stuff, but legitimate ebook distribution.

But I'm getting fed up with proclamations that things are broken, overpowered, underpowered, imbalanced, et al.

That's the nature of 1e, 2e, and 3e. Classes were designed to do what they do.

Today's generation of player unfortunately has been convinced by WoW and other computer games that all classes should be equal, hence 4e.

You can't just tell people to stop doing it, it's how they play, character envy. The idea of gimping your character at creation is frowned on by MANY.

Guess what? Not the real cover. :)

*face palm*

TENTACLES!

How embarrassing.

No offense intended to Mr. Salvatore, but sometimes not every name can fit on the cover... and I'm sure that Salvatore himself would agree that folks like Ben "I've Been A Science Fiction Badass Since Before Your Parents Were Born" Bova deserve top billing. :)

Sweet thanks.

Has anyone taken the Pathfinder character sheet and turned it into a form that can be filled out in Word, Excel, or Acrobat?

It's happening!

BTW.. Seoni + Testicles = Win (temp cover I know)

I think they were on the way to another thread, but got locked out.

Interesting choice not to put R. A. Salvatore's name on the cover of Giants.

Set wrote:

and one of the neutral gods, Mystra, was replaced with a good god.)

Actually the "Midnight" Mystra eventually drifted to true neutral once she got her humanity weeded out. Not that she lasted that long, in the end, Cyric killed her in an alliance with Shar who made an ill-fated attempt at capturing Mystra's Weave for her own use, triggering the change to 4th edition. She failed in this goal however, and both the Weave and the Shadow Weave were destroyed in the process. Shar however has prevented any successor to the Goddess of Magic from taking her place.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it until Wizard proves me wrong and retcons the Realms back to pre-spellplague.

Now that Mystra's gone, that ban on time travel doesn't exist anymore you know.

--

Personally though, if 3 setting products a year are WOTC's plans for their 4e campaign settings, I think they should just release 3 "Forgotten Realms: Age of the Chosen" products that are set before the spellplague for those that want to play pre-spellplague with 4e shoe horned into the setting. I never understood why "power sources" can't just be tapping into the Weave.

There's no reason for world devastation when rules change, you just say this is how mechanics work with fluff (the Weave) now and always has. What about spell levels you ask? Well "Mystra doesn't allow spell beyond level 9 to exist in the Realms" was a stupid explanation for game mechanic limits anyway.

We're willing to take risks on products that might not make money. A much bigger factor is the fact that we simply CAN'T do everything. We don't have the manpower.

SirUrza wrote:

I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not. I'm comparing my 3.0 MM to the Bestiary and they're comparable.

This accusation of trolling is completely despicable.

He's been told he doesn't understand the product line in way more politer terms then I would have put it.

Chronicles = Campaign setting (where fluff is necessary.)
RPG = Core gaming mechanics (where fluff is unnecessary.)

The expectation for it to be the same was his first mistake. Ordering it not grasping the point of the product was his second mistake. Coming here and comparing it to chronicles fluff was his third mistake.

Chronicles is for Golarion.
The RPG is for anything.

For this "argument" I blame TSR and Paizo.

TSR is the one that brought campaign setting material into AD&D to try to give things like Clerics (Gods) and Monsters (mythology) example fluff that was taken as core.

I fault Paizo for continuing to use the word Pathfinder and not making a marketable separation between their Roleplaying game and their Campaign Setting.

Now yes Paizo did release the RPG to support their campaign setting because if they didn't eventually people wouldn't have "new" rule books to buy if they were new to "the world's most famous roleplaying game" Dungeons & Dragons and in turn new to the pathfinder campaign setting, but it should have been fairly OBVIOUS to anyone with some rpg pen & paper experience from the Core Rulebook that the roleplaying line was going to be setting neutral so that ANYONE could use it for ANY fantasy setting.

When you take all that in, that's how you get a "I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not." I didn't point and say look a troll, I said I can't tell if he is or isn't.

That's exactly what he's complaining about; he wants the Bestiary to be built off the chassis of books like the Monster Manual V, not the 3.0 MM.

Besides which MM5 wasted space, yes wasted it, on telling me how to fit the monster in the Realms and Eberron. Some may like it, but others well let's look at the others. What about all those D&D players that HATE the Realms (from before 3e) and what about all those players that HATE Eberron (because it's Eberron.)

And I really hope he's not wanting a book like MM5, existing Monsters with player classes.. ugh. That was even more space wasted.

I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not. I'm comparing my 3.0 MM to the Bestiary and they're comparable.

I'll just keep saying it, the Revisited books are where you should be going for monster manuals with fluff. I bet if Lisa, Eric, and everyone at Paizo thought they could release a 250 page Revisited hardcover every year and make money on it they would.

If I want stat blocks I go to my "monster manual." If I want monster fluff I got to my "ecologies."

Hey look mom, Paizo has me covered..

Monster Manual.. Bestiary
Ecologies.. monster Revisited

Sweet!

Oh my and PDFs that I can print out and have only the monsters I need at the table... EVEN BETTER!

It's like AD&D all over again.. without the 300 page manuals. :)

I hate pack rats. Like regular run of the mill towns are going to have the gold to buy 5 suits of armors.. and blacksmiths sure as hell aren't going to buy someone else's work.

I went into my local B&N yesterday and they had 4 copies of it. Good stuff. Check you big bookstores if you're still looking for it.

Is it wishful thinking to hope that the Iconics will have a full page each with expanded backgrounds? (I know i'm asking again but it wasn't answered!)