Snorter's page

Maybe its me, but I make my players ASK to roll sense motive. As in, I roleplay in a manner which conveys I'm shifty, or has inconsistencies, etc., and they ask to sense motive.

So, I suppose the difference really is that I see it more as an active skill (say like using perception to search at a dead end wall because I think there there must be something there)

I do it the opposite way round; roll Perception/Sense Motive/relevant Knowledge skills/etc for the players, before they interact, then play out the encounter based on those results.

If no-one rolls well, I'll play the NPC straight, and answer any queries re Sense Motive, with 'You see no reason to suspect him.", without having to break the fourth wall, with the clatter of dice and waiting for the player to search for a skill bonus, before we can all resume speaking.*

If someone scores high enough, I'll describe the NPC as being jumpy when they walk into his room, tell one of them he saw the NPC hurriedly slip an object out of sight, inform another that the guy's accent seems to slip for a moment before recovering his usual manner. Or anything else that makes sense given the skills involved.

This allows me to get into character, and decide what sort of clues could realistically be let slip, and avoids the situation where an NPC is played with a poker face, but then has to rapidly screw up halfway through the conversation, because someone jumped in with a high roll.

*Occasionally, I do have to roll a few extra checks during the conversation, if they keep the NPC talking for long, or veer off into unexpected territory. However, the goal is to reduce this to a minimum, and step into the NPC's shoes with as little fuss as possible.

So-- using detect evil in the middle of a conversation is totally giving away the fact that you're using a spell-like ability in the presence of somebody.

Its a move action. Its more like a silent stilled no focus no material component spell. It probably does give a look in someones eyes like they're doing math in their head or just realized they forgot to take the iron off their best shirt before leaving home, but its not nearly as obvious as someone chanting latin.

Or they look constipated for a few seconds.

GM: "A dark stranger approaches you in the corner of the inn."

Paladin: "Hey, guys, I think I need to go to the little boys' room... <Hnnng>...<Hmmmmm>....okay, no need, I'm good. How can we help you, dark stranger?"

Dark Stranger: "o_0? Errr...never mind."

Can I have a Sense Motive check?

(I'd hate to miss something obvious.)

I wanna Easter Egg! I wanna Easter Egg! I wanna Easter Egg! I wanna Easter Egg! I wanna Easter Egg! I wanna Easter Egg! I wanna Easter Egg! I wanna Easter Egg!

Khellek, Auric and Tirra are the Basic D&D iconics, from 1983.

The Hermit from B2 turns up in Kingmaker.

How's them eggs?

'Free' checks? What does that even mean?

What I'm hearing is that I need to call for Sense Motive checks every five minutes so I don't miss something. If you don't mind that as a DM, great. Me, I find that distracting and wasting game time when I DM.

Can I have a Sense Motive check?

What's to stop the community converting material?

Would that require signing up to the Compatibility Licence, if it were homebrew material on these boards?

This kind of situation becomes quite funny if your PC has an ability allowing him to always act in the surprise round.

If you get the initiative, your PC-sense is tingling but you have no idea what shape the threat will take, nor where it will come from :-)

In a case like that, the player could declare a readied action, or try to slip that concealed dagger into their palm (Sleight of Hand), or simply take a step back and be on their guard.

The latter could be blatant ("Woah, now everyone, can we stop crowding each other? Let's respect my personal space", etc), or subtle ("Well, I think it's about time for a break. Who's up for a drink? They're on me." <reaches for 'purse', ie dagger...roll Sleight of Hand/Bluff vs NPC>).

That the "Stormwind Fallacy" is an actual logical fallacy.

You saying it's not?

You must be thinking of a different Stormwind Fallacy than I am, since the one I'm familiar with is thoroughly discredited on around a thousand threads per year.

That Stormwind Fallacy is a logical fallacy, since it can only be held by people who don't know the difference between causation and correlation, and that the only reason there can ever be an illusion of correlation, is if one deliberately chooses to surround oneself with people who are poor roleplayers.
Rather than getting out of their rut, and meeting any one of the millions of players out there, who manage to share the fun and enjoyment of playing in a group of realistically portrayed characters who happen to, strangely, be good at the tasks their lives depend upon. Any of whom, merely by their very existence, manage to unknowingly and effortlessly kerbstomp the Stormwind Fallacy into a bloodied, obsolete pulp.

Logical consistency. Most encounters don't happen in tombs where traps would make sense. Scythe traps on your front door would get tedious.

Plus the difficulty in making them meaningful. 'You get shot with an arrow.' 'Okay, pop a CLW, move on.' When they're just a tick off the sheet, it just doesn't make much sense.

Mostly they get used as hazards in combat, where trapfinding doesn't really come into play.

Traps have been totally de-clawed these days, and they ridiculously over-estimated their CR in 3.5.

At least in the days before infinite cantrips, it actually was a meaningful decision, to use one of your daily spells to detect for magic, or else spend 7.5gp for each charge off a wand.

Players still checked for traps magically, but it was less of a no-brainer, and tended to be done in places where it would make sense.
You could concentrate on it, but every time your concentration was broken, it meant expending a new slot or charge.

No-one wants to be responsible for the party being TPK'ed because you blew the last charge from the detect wand, on the toilets in the inn.
And it puts a crimp in your budget, if you're routinely spending say, an unnecessary 45gp per day.
WBL is supposed to be guide to the GM for what give out, given reasonable expenses; he's under no obligation to increase the loot to bail out any frivolous waste.

Frankly, in this industry these days, companies are pretty lucky if they can cover their costs on release. Generally, profits come from the "long tail."

Who's ready for "'Boogie Nights': The RPG"?

Given that Monte is taking over the "design musings" column from Mearls, I somewhat doubt he's working on anything [setting]-related.

Friends don't let friends say, "fluff."

"Fluffer on set; he's losing wood!"

One thing remains a constant; no matter what system you pick, once the players find out, they'll game the hell out of it.

On a tangent topic, have Timitius or Liz enquired after including a print copy of Wayfinder 5 in this delivery?
(On behalf of Charles 'Ask A Succubus' Evans, a fellow UK contributor who doesn't have a subscription.)

If not, it can always go in the one next month.

You believe that the designers have made a mistake, in leaving UMD off the class skill for wizards, as their ability to provide mundane healing (via the Heal skill) is so poor (which is a topic in itself).

what the hell are you talking about???

Seriously, I have no clue. Where do you think I said anything about whether wizards not getting UMD is a mistake?

I must obviously be misinterpreting your intent, when you wrote;

A 1st level fighter with UMD has a 75% chance of failing his UMD roll off a wand (assuming 0 Cha and that trait which makes UMD a class skill). A 75% chance of doing nothing during a round is terrible, particularly at first level. Go ahead and deny it, but you'll still be wrong.

Substitute 'fighter' for any class without CLW on its spell list.

Such as the wizard, the topic of this thread.

it led you to write three paragraphs on a completely different skill (UMD) and about how, you think, I might better understand UMD if I understood the game history better than you think I do. What I'm confused about is what, if anything, you wrote about UMD is relevant to my comments about the heal skill.

I fail to see how me being on topic constitutes 'writing about a completely different skill'.

The topic of this thread is 'why do wizards not get UMD as a class skill'.

If you enter a thread with that topic, complaining that the Heal skill is ineffective, and the chance of succeeding at the UMD skill is too low, then you cannot complain, if readers interpret that to mean that you believe the chance of success with UMD should be much higher.

My post (or "the hell I am talking about") explained why the current low chance of success was deliberate.

It was a post addressed to all the posters to that point, who had expressed several ideas, that a) wizards (among others) should get UMD as a class skill, and b) not having it as a class skill made any PC's chance of successfully using wands and scrolls non-viable, c) that UMD is essential to all non-divine classes since they are unable to keep up with the expected level of healing without frequent use of UMD to take up the slack, and d) that this could not possibly be the designers intent.

Your post was simply the nearest to have expressed one or more of those ideas.

If it is, however, not your intention to engage in a discussion of whether wizards should have UMD as a class skill, then may I respectfully request that you remove yourself from a thread devoted to the subject of whether wizards should have UMD as a class skill, rather than engaging in an increasingly nasty threadjack about the value of performing healing during combat, the need for a dedicated healer, or any other off-topic irrelevancies, so that those who wish to discuss the actual topic, of whether other classes should have UMD as a class skill, can be allowed to get on with it?

As ever,
politely yours,
Snorter.

I am confused by your post. Apparently, when I wrote,

Darkwing Duck wrote:

I think the first problem is that the healing skill is worthless.

it led you to write three paragraphs on a completely different skill (UMD) and about how, you think, I might better understand UMD if I understood the game history better than you think I do. What I'm confused about is what, if anything, you wrote about UMD is relevant to my comments about the heal skill.

Your thread is based on your belief that UMD should be more reliable, for more classes.

One of your justifications for that position, is that, without UMD being a class skill, the chance of success at activating, for example, a wand of CLW is rather low.

You believe that the designers have made a mistake, in leaving UMD off the class skill for wizards, as their ability to provide mundane healing (via the Heal skill) is so poor (which is a topic in itself).
Therefore, you conclude that leaving UMD off class skill lists must be a mistake, and the designers must have intended for more classes to be popping charges off CLW wands with a greater chance of success than ended up in the RAW.

My reference to the legacy ability was to illustrate the evolution of the ability, from its highly-restricted origins (open only to a single class, at high-level, scrolls only, limited lists, capped at 75%, secret tables in the DMG for mishaps).
This was never an ability for low-level PCs to count on, but for high level Thieves only (maybe Assassins, too, I forget).
10th level isn't remotely impressive nowadays, but back then, it was hardcore. You had to play for months, maybe years to earn the xp for that, given that most DMs threw out the 'xp for gp' assumption.
Most classes were expected to have settled down into semi-retirement by level 9, built a castle or home base, and had subjects to rule. A level 10 Thief would be the Godfather of a small town.

Which all points to the fact that, though the ability has had many of its restrictions loosened, it still remains an ability that is intended to pay off in the long-term, and that far from being a typo, or not playtested, the low chance of success with UMD, at low levels, is totally intentional.

I think the first problem is that the healing skill is worthless. It forces somebody in the party to play a class they may not want to take. Even with dangerously curious, without a charisma based class, first level party has a 75% chance of wasting a charge and it screws with WBL.

To put this in perspective, the skill recreates the ability of the Thief class from 1st Edition, who gained the ability to use most scrolls (wizard, illusionist and druid, but not clerical - the gods know you're a fake, after all) at 10th level (not a moment before), and even then, had a 25% failure chance, that never improved.

The 3rd Edition UMD skill is far, far more generous than that 1st/2nd Edition ability ever was, being accessed much earlier, applicable to a wider variety of items, opened up to every class (though it was restricted in 3.0), able to be improved via stat boosters/skill focus, and possible to eventually buy off all chance of failure.

If you're not aware of that legacy ability, that is being recreated, it's perhaps understandable that your impression is 'That skill sucks, it doesn't give reliable results until higher level', whereas the older, shall we say, more grognard members of the boards, see the current iteration, and remark 'My God, they let people do that, at 9th level or below?'.

<rolls over for his tummy tickled>

What if, instead of turning 1s into 2s, the feat allowed the rerolling of 1s?

And the Deadly version allowed the rerolling of 1s and 2s, with a minimum of 2?

What would that do for the DPR? And would that be enough to compensate for the -2 to attack rolls?

I'd work it out myself, but I'm supposed to be working.

I sent a reply to customer services on 21:41 Friday evening GMT (so roughly lunchtime, PST).

I wanted to cancel my rules subscription for the duration of the Beginners Box.

Content of message as follows;
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Feather
To: customer.service@paizo.com
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 9:41 PM
Subject: Re: Paizo Order # 1834317

Hello,

Please may I unsubscribe from the Rules subcription, for this order, and the remainder of the month?

Like several other posters, I am wary of being hit with import taxes for the Beginners Box, which would likely double the cost of the shipping.

I do think it looks a great product, and I may well buy a copy from my local games store at some point, but I can't justify that cost right now.

I still look forward to the other contents in the order.

Robert Feather ('Snorter')

I haven't received a reply to that mail, and today, I've had a further mail, telling me the same products are being shipped.
A further mail has been sent a few minutes ago.

Please can that order be intercepted? Every other product is still fine, just not the Beginners Box.

I do think it's a worthwhile product, and I may get it from my games shop in the future, but I can't face the increased shipping and possible duties.

I sent a reply via e-mail rather than create a thread on the boards, as I didn't want to add to the (IMO) frankly silly negativity I was seeing.
I've commented on those threads, that customers are given an easy way to opt out of any product they don't want.
Please don't let me have egg on my face.

Thanks
Bob

For those wondering, here's a link to the article on Ivory Tower Game Design.

I must say, I agree. How many threads devolve into arguments over the RAI vs RAW?
Why not just tell the reader what you intend?

Undead can make good foes for a campaign, because, apart from any mechanical considerations, such as immunities to many plot-spoiling abilities, they can justifiably be placed in so many settings.

As GM, you don't have to worry about awkward questions, like "There's nothing to eat here. What does this monster live on?", or "Wouldn't they get bored sitting around all day, waiting for PCs to pass by?".

And they can be the bane of metagamers everywhere;
"What does it look like?"
"Like a skeleton."

I'll add my voice to those above; it does take a second pass to understand the options.
I get it, and many others get it, but given the advice threads on these boards over the last few years, there is definitely potential for (deliberate?) misunderstanding. A prime one being "If I take a -2 penalty, then buy a trait that gives me a +2 in the same stat, that means my -2 turns into a +2. Right?"

Players who look at your new race will be judging it on the final modifiers, not on how you came to calculate them.
And so, a set of mods should be costed on what benefits it gives, regardless of how its creator came to calculate them.
There shouldn't be an option to game that system, by choosing one route over another (whether that be starting with high array then trading down, vs starting with low array and buying up).
Nor should people be penalised for not spotting a non-intuitive method.
It's not intuitive to start by deliberately hobbling or ignoring a stat you intended your race to be good in, then hauling it back into positives with another trait.

Is there a reason the method doesn't more closely resemble character point-buy? You want a +6 to a stat, it should cost exponentially more than a +4/+2, which costs more than a +2/+2/+2, etc.

Could we get some guess the artwork blogs like we did for B2?

I will guess Erol Otus for the back painting of the keep! Oh yeah and the Mad Hermit!

The Cover is definitely Jim Roslof.

LOL

Did you see the homage to that guy, in Kingmaker?

How doesn't matter. If the DM is asking that question, it's because he's trying to stop you, and then it's not a rules question, it's a conflict between player and DM.

Not necessarily; I can see this thread as an attempt to test the legality of a scenario setup.

GM: "The PCs are contacted by the spirit of an NPC whose body is still trapped in the demiplane..."Save me, save me, stop their awful plot, woe, woe...I escaped by suicide to warn the mortal realm..."..."

Player: "How did he do that then?"

GM: "Oh, bugger."

Still they are problematic. I didn't realize smite evil was double level damage with the first strike ONLY until I read the Undead Slayer in the APG. I thought it was double level damage for any undead, outsider, or dragon EVERY strike. Yeah it made for some upset undead creatures in Curse of the Crimson THrone.

That wasn't an error, though, that was a "upon further consideration of this class ability, with feedback from the community, we realize this ability is too powerful and is being toned down."

An error would be "Correction: The paladin should get 2 skill ranks per level, not 20." :)

Have you ever thought of a career in politics?

Also the email is great for letting everyone know what is coming, but not everyone checks their emails regularly. Some people (like me) have an email that is used for work, and part of my job is to stay on top of it. I use a second email for other stuff. I check my work email so often, that it habit, but not so with my others. I have to stop and go to another page to check it, and sometimes I don't think of it for a few weeks. it take a secondary importance.

I once forgot to check my email for a few days, and I missed out on the chance to claim £250,000.00 from the Finance Minister of Nigeria.

I won't be making THAT mistake again, I'll tell you.

Has anyone actually confirmed what the tipping point is, for being charged import duty to the UK?
Or how it's calculated in a package of mixed 'books' and 'games'?

Would it be more clear if you broke RP into separate pools? Standard, Advanced, and Monstrous? Maybe breakup the costs of higher abilities and have them require standard abilities?

Example:

You have 10 Standard RPs and 10 Advanced RPs.

An Advanced ability that costs 6 points in the current system could instead be split into a Standard and an Advanced ability, each of which cost 3 points from their respective catagory, and the Advanced ability has the Standard ability as a prereq.

Having a Standard/Advanced/Monstrous variants of increasing power could work, especially for changes that are merely (or mostly) cosmetic.

Eg, Horns;
GM: "I just want my race to look slightly 'devilish', with some stubby blunt protuberances. I don't want or intend them all to be goring people to death, or tossing them into next week. I don't want them to be razor-sharp, dealing 2d100 bleed, with an 11-20 threat range.
I just want some flavor to justify their Intimidate bonus, that's all."

No, not quite; I was specifically looking for ways to protect against positive energy.

Desecrate is helpful, as are other spells that boost saves in general, but they only go so far.
With undead having good Will saves, any undead that desperate for a save bonus are likely to be of such low HD that they still get obliterated by the halved damage.

1) I fail to see how the ability to Channel does more vs undead than the ability to cast any spell from the wizards list.

2) Channel Resistance.

3) Take advantage of evil clerics mixted into groups of undead (or give an intelligent undead levels in evil cleric) and channel dark energy to heal them.

While having an evil cleric does help to restore the hp of their undead allies/minions, in practice I find it less than ideal, as the undead need to be able to weather the initial assault of positive channeling (plus any other AoE spells).

This means neither Channel Resistance, nor negative channeling do anything for the 'Master of Many Minions' model of necromancer, but only works for a group of already-beefy undead, which makes building an encounter of appropriate ECL rather tricky.

Channel Resistance is okay, but all it does is improve the save bonus. Those that still fail, still take full damage, those that rolled just enough for the bonus to make a difference, take half damage, and those that would have saved anyway, gain nothing.
I.e. it helps in only [bonus x 5%] of rolls, being utterly irrelevant otherwise.
Obviously, you could say the same for other save bonuses, but vs many other direct damage effects, the targets can pursue a second line of defence, namely elemental damage reduction, via resist energy, et. al.
That's a part that's missing; some way to reduce the final damage total, regardless of the saving throw roll.

Another tactic that's missing, is a means to bolster one's undead prior to battle. Previous editions allowed for this, with the evil cleric's Rebuke roll re-setting the difficulty of Turning those undead, as though they were a more powerful creature (a Hit Die mechanic in 3.0/3.5, and a cross-referenced table, in 1st/2nd Edition).

In PF, there's no way to bolster your troops, before the positive energy starts flying; you can't heal damage that hasn't been taken yet.

Therefore, I propose that negative channels convert any excess healing into temporary hit points, which last several minutes.

This allows the GM to still make use of the lower-CR undead, for a longer portion of the campaign, makes such encounters more of a team effort (the cleric is reducing the enemies' hp back to their default level, so the other PCs can finish them off, rather than the other PCs stand back while the cleric deals with the encounter), and it brings a new aspect into play, where the two opposing clerics can actually be seen to oppose each other, one building the undead up, the other bringing them down, taking their battle to the spiritual realm, their heads bulging like Michael Ironside, in 'Scanners'.

The thread title asked those people who hate to stay away, yet they came in droves to steal as thieves do, steal the fun, steal the love, leaving only hate in their wake... ;)

We're not stealing your fun.

We're 'handling' it.

I would have ruled the same way, in the belief that it fits the spirit of the rule. Healing should be impeded; having the 9th-level High Priest failing to cure the afflicted, while his level 1 altar-boy saves the day with a channel, doesn't appear to fit the intent.

I also thought one of the aims of PF was to do away with the strict need for certain rigid classes; making tracking and trapfinding available to all, opening up new spellcasting classes, that play differently (spontaneous divine caster? Cool! Holy warrior for alignments other than LG? About time!) while still filling a necessary role.

Clerics already provide far more healing than other classes, and can do so without preparation (spont cures, channeling). So much so, that many groups already always fill the divine caster role with a cleric, at the expense of other healing classes, who are 'allowed' in as fifth, sixth, etc member.
Having clerical healing also able to bypass effects that specifically hinder everyone else (eg Infernal Wounds and Mummy Rot), is not needed, not easily explained, and simply means the alternate healing classes are even less likely to be played.

The DM had to raise the power bar of the game to compensate, and the OP isn't munchkining as as well as the other munchkins so he is lagging behind.

Unless we are going to advise him how to subvert the rules equally to his wizard friend, I don't see what advice would be useful.

He is playing in a rigged game.

Ciretose, can you PLEASE read the original post.

To the original poster; you still haven't clarified whether you see the rolls.

Do you see the GM roll natural 20 after natural 20, vs your spells (the only conceivable way most appropriate CR creatures, run straight out of the book, would pass their worst save),
Or, do you declare your action, GM rolls secretly, and says 'he saves'?

Does he sometimes forget to roll?
Does he roll, and forget to look at the result?

<roll>
"Yawn. Whatever. He saves."

I've always allowed it in my home games; the very idea that it is even contentious is an eye-opener to me.

If you allow it, it resolves so many of those issues that keep cropping up on the 'Fighters suck, cos they can't protect their backline' threads.

Or to put it another way;

"Zombies! More adept at tactics than a level 20 Fighter!"

There's certainly a ban on evil PCs, so you'd need an explanation of how your character 'venerates' such a deity, without actually perfoming acts that would corrupt him.

While I think it's possible, for a lay-worshipper to be oblivious to the big picture, many GMs would say it strains credibility for an actual cleric, who communes far closer with the deity, gets the dirty jobs, and sees the effects of their worship, to remain untainted for long.

There is a guide out there that used to come with the Masks set - can't remember it so I am hoping some one else does (Markus Thurston Society?) but having the players (not characters read it) may help a bit... then again it also de-mystifies some of the game and was targeted more at experienced players who could tighten up their playstyle/survivability.

It's the 'Guide to the Theron Marks Society',and came as the removable middle section of Chaosium's 'Terror from the Stars' (a pair of South American adventures), that I ran in the mid-80's, during the 2nd and 3rd Edition Chaosium/Games Workshop partnership era. It may have been reprinted elsewhere since.

good stuff

That's a great campaign option. What were's actually talking about is a campaign neutral rulebook though.

Which is exactly why Common should be removed as a default language; it presupposes a setting where the whole gameworld was once under the control of one empire, or where explorers have already set up trade routes accross the whole of the globe.

That is far from being the only model for a campaign, and so, should be dependent on the setting-writers making that an explicit feature of their world, not having it be a means for players to bypass the theme of an 'Explore the New World', 'Repel the Foreign Interlopers', or 'Slaves of the Alien Overlords' game.

Here is a great opportunity to get some Pathfinder-specific monsters and Iconics in mini-form. Sandpoint Devil, Chupacabra, Devilfish, Pugwampi, Karzoug the Runelord, Skinsaw man, Sin-spawn, (the never produced in PPM) Peryton, & Mimic.

You'll probably see more than a few of them in the specific ROTR set.

I do agree with your basic request, though; there are some archetypes that have been done to death. They do need to cover those bases, but not to the extent they've been done in the past.

Though this was posted in the Race Builder thread, I am reposting it here for discussion purposes. Do you think this is a good example of what the new races subsystem can do? Does it appear balanced? etc.

** spoiler omitted **...

I can't get that link to work; it sends me back to the Flip-Mat Blog post.

But mark me down as one who'd love to see a playable Myconid, ever since I saw the Slavelords series as a kid.

In response to the gender debate, a case could be made that rather than one gender, or two (just to make the table fit), that each tribal role serves the purpose of a 'gender', with divergent development to fit its intended role.

I meant that myconids, not having sex themselves, would tend to dress like caricatures of sex.

And if they grew themselves into sexual forms based on their perceptions of what other species had for sex? I can't see them budding puffballs under Dolly Parton size.

You do realise, you've just caused the Rule 34 site to explode, don't you?

But this archetype immediately made me look at my pistolier Warhammer minis. It's a character I *need* to play.

Just to save you some future pain; that guy on the clockwork horse?

He's probably not legal, either.

;)

I have a celestial black bear mini from the DnD sets that sees allmost zero play due to the stupid gold highlights.

But that's just me.

Torger

Got your solution for that, right HERE.

But seriously, I agree; I'd rather see different natural shades of animals, than metallic 'angel' effects, or suchlike.

And if I want a 'frost' wolf, I'd rather it be a surprise for the players, when my normal pale wolf deals cold damage, than if I place an electric-blue canine on the table, and they all chug a potion of resist cold...

On a related note; please, please, please, keep up the good work with dire animals being represented by larger versions of their base creature, rather than the D&D 3E practice, of having meaningless and unworkable spikes jutting out all over the place?

A realistic large wolf can represent a druid's companion, enlarged or evolved.
A wolf with ice-cream cones stuck to its head, not so much.

Metropolis?

Are all the dice rolled in the open, or hidden?

If it's there in plain view, that they just roll better saves vs you than him, there's not much you can do about it.

That's not to say there aren't other possibilities, like the GM not understanding how to calculate save bonuses, or deliberately including enemies who are specifically vulnerable to the sorcerors tactics, but we don't have enough info work with.

With newer game systems, people tend to earn the same amount of XP, or very close to it, but back in the days of each character class leveling up at a different amount of XP and the old 10% bonus XP with a high enough primary stat, it was rare for characters to have the same amount of XP. Plus, back in my earlier days, groups I was in tended to award only half XP to the characters of absent players, which happened to be the same amount an NPC traveling with the party earned.

When Thieves needed 1200 xp to level, while his mage buddy needed 2500; and the Thief had far more opportunities to practice his skills than the mage with his one spell per day, it was common for the Thief to be level 3 before the mage had left level 1.

While that probably sounds awful to today's players, that was considered a feature of the system, not a bug. A hazing period for the mage, to justify why so few people took up the path to ultimate power.

We tended to houserule away the +10% bonus, for having a high stat, on the basis that high stats were their own reward, and having one already allowed you to gain xp faster.
While we didn't have point-buy, back then, there was the option to cannibalise a stat to raise another, on a 2:1 rate, and IMO, players didn't need another reason to build lopsided freaks, than they had already.

Thread's back!

Get posting, you slackers!

Does anyone remember the old Dragon magazine article about Valley Elves, after they appeared in the 1e Monster Manual II. "My ears are like SOOOOOOOOO POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOinty!"

Through the Valley, of The Mage,

Minions, never seem to age.
See them scowl, see them pout.
See them keep trespassers out.

(Valley Elves, they are Valley Elves)
(Valley Elves, they are Valley Elves)

Hands up, who wants to see James' balls?

If it's a small library, the GM has fun picking amusing titles, or running one of the many generators that can be found on the Net.

It's an extensive library, if the players ask what's in it, and you think "**** that, I'm not listing the whole inventory.".