Sutekh the Destroyer's page

A few absolutes that make it hard to challenge a party of adventurers
(and the fixes for them in Pathfinder)

Paladin's Immunity to Fear
--So, the 1st level Sir Galahad, faced with the Queen of Dragons Tiamat, doesn't even feel a bit afraid, secure in his faith(and his immunity to fear). Tough to stomach as a DM, harder to role play properly as a character.

Fix: Add Paladin as a bonus to all STs v. Fear.

Death Happens at -10 HP
--So, a character who has hundreds of hit points, fights for hours against epic evil, and then drops down to 12 hp. He takes one solid blow taking him to -11 and he is dead? Automatically. As damage values for attacks get higher, the 'survivable buffer' necessary becomes larger when death is an absolute at -10.

Fix: Make Death the result of a failed Fortitude Save where the DC is equal to the # of negative HPs. That way, a heroic fighter has more survivability than his arch-mage companion and both have a fighting chance of staying alive after taking a blow from some epic opponent. (Note: This doesn't unbalance the game either, since even a 1st level character has a good chance of making the save from -1 through -10 HP.

Immunity to Energy
--So, a Fire Giant is so tough, he can stand in the center of the fires of Mount Doom, bathing calmly, while any character who even approaches the flames would find their skin melting like the Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Arc? Tough to accept that a Fire Giant is as immune to fire as a Red Dragon who is as immune as a Fire Elemental. After all, the Red Dragon is a creature of magic power as well as physical toughness and the Fire Elemental is actually made of Fire. Isn't this one abstraction too many?

Fix: Make Immunity to into Resistance 25, 35, or 50, depending on how much an aspect of the energy the creature is able to tap.

In each of these cases, the absolutes help make the D20 system tough to sustain at higher levels and against greater challenges.

I don't know if this made it into the Beta but as my playtest is now operating at levels 15+, I can vouch absolutely that these adjustments have proven necessary to keep my games compelling.

In the end, isn't playing out these big ideas in a hypothetical world the reason we do FRPG?

In my world, I hypothesize a society that is totally feminized by 'radical feminism' in the form of the drow, both good and evil. I hypothesize a world of 'John Wayne' masculinity through the dwarves, ruined by reproduction to a society without enough women.

Now that I have the root words for weamen and women, I can add that to the mix.

I agree. Having WOTC go the way they have elected to go gives me the freedom to run my campaign in the realms (circa 1364) without having to worry about my players calling for me to use the new stuff. They are so turned off by the annihilation of the Realms they knew, I can now build the game forward using my 1st, 2d, and 3d edition supplements (all bought on the cheap since they have no utility in the current setting) as I see fit.

I have already decided to retrofit the Time of Troubles a bit by having Bane impersonated by the arch-fiend Asmodeus (completely unknowable to the PCs just flavor for me) and ignoring all the 'Return of the Archwizards' stuff.

Now it really is my Realms as a DM. :)

It is true that with Mystra gone, time travel again becomes a challenge for the Forgotten Realms. It is such a challenge that I would argue that the most civilized Realmsian mages would likely open a one-way time gate to the distant past and set up shop then. In fact, that could be the root of Netheril or the Imaskari in the first place.

How's that for a role-playing hook? Survivors of the spellplague from Halruaa (or the like) prepare a gate back in time and discover, only after years of work, that they have become the hated Imaskari or the Netherese arcanists. Reminds me of Julian May's outstanding SF series and milieu about the impact of psychic powers among humanity (wherein the first-generation of immortals create a rebellion against alien overlords, are exiled to the distant past and, impliedly, become those alien overlords through the operation of time thereby giving rise to their own exile. :) )

Sutekh the Destroyer wrote:

Viewed with that in mind, is it truly ridiculous for a female drow to use her sexuality as a method of maintaining control over the weaker, less favored males of her species (who somehow also drew the further weakness of still being as sex-driven as males of other humanoid races)? Is Seoni really that foolish for dressing herself in a way that maximizes the likelihood that her male companions will sacrifice themselves to protect her survival because they believe her provocative dress indicates interest in mating with them? Especially when you consider that her ability to cast spells would be retarded by wearing something more practical (like full plate armor)?

Okay. First off, the use of sexuality to achieve control is done to gain power when more traditional avenues to power are not available. So, the drow men should be the ones tarting themselves up to get power, wearing the ridiculous shoes and uncomfortable and revealing clothing. I'll be looking to see what art choices are made in the next AP to see if the editors and CEO take the politics of their art as seriously as they take the political implications of their text.

(Consider that Don Juan and James Bond are represented it as doing it for the adventure and fun, not simply to survive. This is opposed to virtually all female sexual adventurers, who may have fun, but the purpose is rarely represented as that; namely, they're scheming to get power that they can't have.)

Dispensing for a second with the side-track Krissbeth's argument (ad hominem, non-sequitir, and full of claims to authority that I don't know anyone has yet validated) seems to have provoked, I want to take a moment to consider the two points made by roguerouge:

1) That sexuality would be used to gain power only when more traditional avenues of power are not available.

I concur that, in our historical experience, that has been the case. That is largely because violence has been available to obtain sex and to legitimize the taking of sex. In the fantasy drow culture, that could also be the case given the depictions of how females use males. On the other hand, the existence of the male warrior societies, male mage guilds, and other, sexually segregated institutions of power and violence seem to indicate that rape does not enjoy the social acceptance in drow culture that it does in ours. On the contrary, it seems to indicate that while females are the dominant sex in every way, that dominance is somehow tempered as regards male drow. In fact, it appears sociologically that the drow are more racist than sexist since there are no equivalent power centers in drow culture for members of other races.

As a brief example: A male drow adult, belonging to a Noble House and/or a Warrior Society resists the sexual advances of a female drow adult. The male has options besides submission and resources to defend his choice.

That reality justifies the argument that male drow need not tart themselves up in order to obtain power. Instead, he could demonstrate martial skill, magical talent, or sexual utility as a means of achieving power.

As a second point, I wonder to what degree does having a demon like Lolth as your society's guiding star imposes hyper-sexuality on the females of the species. Elistraee's cult also appears to place a high premium on sexual power. Perhaps the Drow are the case study that invalidates that argument?

Perhaps the argument that sexual power is an option of last resort, an avenue of desperation, is itself a marker of the puritanical/Augustinian mindset that has so long damaged our human pysche in the West?

2) I don't think you can argue that Lara Croft adventures as she does out of desperation. Instead, it seems that her character adventures for the same reason James Bond does. And, she utilizes an atypical power source just as (Sean Connery's) James Bond does. Both have access to the typical power source (Lara Croft could easily use her sex appeal to get the job done/James Bond could easily use his combat training and Q's devices to overcome obstacles) but they, instead, reach for the power source that is most appealing to them, free of the preconceptions of what is preferred or weaker in the eyes of the larger society.

As a final aside, please note that I am not arguing for or against more depictions of scantily-clad females. I am arguing that the rationales we apply to such depictions are often themselves rooted in cliche understandings of what such depictions mean. In the 21st century, can we not consider sexual power as one more path to power that can be used, or not used, according to the design of the individual seeking to apply it? That is the most modern feminist view of such questions, free of stereotype and prejudice.

Krissbeth has done an admirable job of challenging both the humourous posters and the serious posters to see if they can take being insulted for millenia of oppression of women with which they had no involvement.

She does an even more impressive thing when she manages to ignore the serious discussion of the dialectic between power and sexuality in human society and whether or not it currently reflects a feminization and imbalance in favor of women.

That she can do all that while simultaneously claiming that men do not and can not understand the burdens she faces is almost so sophisticated a piece of sophistry as to make one wonder why she bothers interacting with any Y chromosome bearers at all.

Except that,

in the end, she is stuck with the same biological imperative we all have--how can my cells make more cells like mine?

She is also stuck with the fact that gamers really are a tolerant, thoughtful bunch of humans, who wrestle with statistics and history and attempt to weave them into imagination and fantasy. That is a powerful community to associate with, even if all you can muster is the equivalent of psychic vampirism.

EnWorld refugee turned off by a discussion stretching over several months that takes seriously the question of how we can visually use images to both promote the hobby and refrain from denigrating our own common humanity? Wow, how on Earth can someone responding like that handle the commercials for Carl's Jr? Or watch the nightly news with its benign patriarch anchor and coquette co-anchor? Or purchase a calendar for the new year from anything but the university women's studies department?

For my money, education and reflective thought is essential to improving oneself and our society. That is why I have taken the classes in women's studies, and african american studies, and european studies, and anything else I can get my hands on that offers me the chance to re-examine assumed truth. To grow, we must question. I humbly suggest that Krissbeth take a second look at this thread and notice just how many humans of good will and intent have put time and effort into this topic.

Or, just try smiling once in a while, as the smiley in the topic thread suggests. :)

Please also recall that the argument of the sexualization of a woman's body as denigrating is not actually a closed topic in the academic world of women's studies.

Showing women as 'damsels in distress' or the object of desire/reward/moral uplift/corruption is fairly conclusively, seen as denigrating.

But, it is not such a clean call saying that sexualizing women when they are also shown as actors in the drama and power players in the milieu is sexually denigrating. Consider carefully the historical proof that women have used sexual power for the entire history of the species as a means of compensating for having less physical power. In prehistory, entire societies were matriarchal primarily because men couldn't understand that their sexuality was just as necessary to reproduction of the species as women's sexuality.

Viewed with that in mind, is it truly ridiculous for a female drow to use her sexuality as a method of maintaining control over the weaker, less favored males of her species (who somehow also drew the further weakness of still being as sex-driven as males of other humanoid races)? Is Seoni really that foolish for dressing herself in a way that maximizes the likelihood that her male companions will sacrifice themselves to protect her survival because they believe her provocative dress indicates interest in mating with them? Especially when you consider that her ability to cast spells would be retarded by wearing something more practical (like full plate armor)?

I concur that the depiction of women warriors in impractical garb fails to succeed logically in a society where the sexes are evaluated solely on their ability to deliver their primary product (for warriors--the ability to kill another being with force of arms). In that hypothetical society, a woman warrior with the same genetics as a modern human is at a huge disadvantage from the get-go because she has approximately 25% less muscle mass and 20% less bone density as well as being approximately 10% smaller. Her only real advantage biologically is not apparent in a medieval setting (greater blood volume producing reduced risk of lost consciousness at high-G maneuvers). Worst of all, her secondary sexual characteristic (breasts) interfere with the use of most melee and ranged weapons (why Amazons performed mastectomies to support archery in myth) and her reproductive organs render her vulnerable to scent-based predation one week every 28 days for her entire physical prime. For that reason, women warriors can not be plausibly evaluated solely on their ability to deliver their primary product.

This is demonstrated in fantasy gaming by three adjustments to reality:
1) Removal of sex-based difference in game mechanics. It only exists for flavor (height/weight/beard, etc.) but has no impact on the playability of the character.
2) Emphasis of feminine sexuality in marketing depictions and miniature designs to encourage role-playing that provides the advantage sexuality provides women in the power game with men in our human society.
3) Determined relegation of the sexual component of human relations to the side-line of the game or complete exile altogether, thereby confirming female sexual power as a 'secret magic' to be used, as desired by those playing female characters. When my female halfling rogue needs to get out of a tough scrape, she can flirt her way out of it with a ton more credibility than a male character. (BTW, thats part of what makes Sean Connery's James Bond so fascinating to academia--he's the first male protagonist to get his way primarily through deploying his sexual power and not his competence at his primary purpose.)

I would highly recommend we try and consider, as modern feminism does, the power that sex offers women and recognize just how much we have feminized all of our society, in part, by being selective about the biological realities we emphasize and which realities we suppress.

As a final example, I would offer the portrayal of Guinevere in the recent movie King Arthur. In that movie, a thin, pretty Guinevere arches arrows with equal strength as her burly Celt warriors and, when hard pressed by a Saxon warrior in hand-to-hand combat, holds her own despite giving up more than 100 pounds in weight and a ton of muscle mass. That was popularly accepted, not viewed as sexist, and hailed as a fine depiction of a woman warrior.

How sexist was it to insult the male warrior with this ridiculous presentation?

While many argue that Lara Croft is a 'fanboy fantasy' she is also a totally unrealistic depiction of the degree to which a female of her age and physique could engage in hand-to-hand combat with steroid-enhanced martial artists who spend their entire lives focusing on combat in the most desperate straights without becoming a smear on the wall. This is a way of society as a whole endorsing the idea that male power is matched and superceded by female power; after all Lara Croft wins in these battles while also retaining her sexual power and feminine beauty.

In the end, there is a lot more to this than a simple 'chain mail bikinis are cool' or 'Red Sonja is a fanboy fantasy' can depict.

Basic D&D--Out of the box and into the role play in under twenty minutes.

AD&D--Out of the book, onto the simple lined paper and into a cliche character in under twenty minutes with some complicated and occassional illogic for the roll-playing but plenty of room for role play. Playing half-elves all the time.

AD&D 2nd--Out of the books, onto the preprinted character sheet in about an hour with even more complicated and frequent illogic to cover more roll-playing, even more cliches, and some pretty heavy scenario information for role play. Playing elves, half-elves, and dwarves all the time.

AD&D Skills and Powers--Out of the books, onto the preprinted character sheet with seven pages of supplemental scratch paper in about two hours with a ton of options to avoid the cliche in roll-playing but no way for a new role player to learn how to play. The beginning of munchkinitis.Playing anything but a human, including a dragon (Council of Wyrms).

D&D 3rd--Out of the books and onto a computerized character sheet in about forty minutes with your human/dwarf fighter, elf/gnome wizard, and half elf rangers disappear completely from play. Logical roll-play and such a temptation to let go of role-playing thanks to prestige classes and a skill system for which every task has a roll associated.

D&D 3.5--Out of the books, into the supplements, then the campaign supplements, then the D20 books, and onto a computerized character sheet in about three hours to map out an epic character build that will stop playing at about level 9. The ranger returns but the half-elf stays lost. Logic works in roll-play, but only so far. DM's are now all bald and hunched from having done way too many monster builds by hand and template. Base classes are good for 2 levels and only until a Player can beat down a DM into letting in something 'cool' from somewhere else.

Pathfinder--Out of the books and onto the sheets in the same way as 3.5, with the benefit that a base class can stay in the game past level 2. A shot at role playing because the system has been around long enough that DMs have evolved to do descriptive roll playing within the D20 system.

D&D 4th--A system where everything before is wiped out and we can all begin again with an empty bookshelf, for the good of WOTC.

My 2 eps. :)

I strongly agree that WOTC should have conceived of a new world for their 'points of light' default setting for 4th Edition.

Now, instead of selecting when in the chronology of the Realms you want to set your campaign there is an arbitrary line in the chronology for either the Forgotten Realms or the Four-gotten Realms. All the fun a DM could have using source material stretching back to late AD&D first edition is pointless as it is canon now that the way the Realms work after the Weave is torn off Toril is completely different.

Even worse, Maztica is gone completely and it is replaced by an entire continent whose origin has no place in the sweep of Toril, at least after the Age of Giants and Dragons (-25000 DR). If anything, they could have put 4th Edition into that distant past and done less violence to the general direction of the campaign world. Now that I think of it, that would really have given meaning to the term 'Forgotten Realms'.

Consider: The default setting of D&D 4 is Abeir-Toril of 26,000 years in the past. Civilizations as advanced as the 3.5 era but without any of the baggage of the Zhentarim, Cormyr, or anything else. This era, potentially 5000 years long (or more depending on how much you trust the scribes at that vast distance of age) really was an era of 'points of light' where great and epic challenges await the small and puny mortal races.

Wow, a way to set 4th Edition in the Forgotten Realms that doesn't
a) destroy existing campaigns completely
b) force conversion into an entirely new world when not desired
c) gives life to the term 'Forgotten Realms'
and
d) doesn't obliterate whole nations and continents just for the sake of clearing some globe space.

Does anyone know if the folks at WOTC considered going back in time rather than forward for their FR 4th Ed setting?

Eliminate 'Immune to' class features as it hurts high level play. (low level Paladin immune to fear caused by Ancient Wyrm dragon?) Instead establish an increasing ST bonus as a class feature.

Dump Spellcraft, resurrect Concentration.

Love the PFG, working great for my Lvl 10 campaign right now. :)

I notice that almost all of the problems listed are combat-specific. Is that because other people don't find exploration to be problematic? Or because their games become progressively combat-heavy at higher levels? The latter, to me, is a problem in and of itself.

I have to agree. The problem I have seen is that we seem to believe combat should be as common at higher levels as it is at the lower levels. We think this despite the fact that the higher level iconic figures of fantasy (even Conan) fought less and less as they hit higher levels--each combat was significant. Consider:

King Arthur--Almost never unleashed Excalibur but his climactic struggles with Launcelot/Guinevere and Mordred/Morgan absolutely set the scope of his kingdom in his hands. A fighter forced to rule and reign, with the power to defeat any warrior and yet, so rarely was the sword available as an answer.

Gandalf--This mightiest of wizards in fantasy actually only had two battles in his time orchestrating the War of the Ring--with Saruman an equally powerful archmage and on the fields of Pelennor with the Witch King of Angmar. He applied his knowledge and insight constantly but wasn't slinging fireballs left and right, such simple conjurations being beneath the Stormcrow.

Achilles--In the whole of the Iliad, Achilles participates in three battles. He lands with the Greeks, he fights one battle sweeping away the Trojan defenders, and he fights Hector one on one. This mightiest of warriors spends the tale struggling with his ego, vanity, and not with decimating the horde of enemies. He is no king or commander, and yet the war hinges upon the times when he deigns to give battle.

I am sure there are many more examples to consider but the core is this:
combat at high levels is slow and complex because we are talking about tremendously potent powers. Such battles should be rare and epic.

When we DM games as if each session should involve the same 6-9 encounters as a low level game, we fail to embrace what a high level game can do. I think the lack of high level modules reflect the inability of game designers to present open-ended conundrums for a hero to solve rather than a series of combats to face. A truly high level module would tend to take on some 'choose your own adventure' tones as the designer presents decision trees where each main course selected results in significantly different outcomes, long before a blade is drawn or a spell cast. A module isn't really up to that task.

For that, you need a DM.

One other suggestion: at higher levels, it is essential for a DM to be comfortable winging it. Because the players have more options, no amount of prep work is going to be able to keep up with them.

I love higher level campaigns because the players have had enough levels/treasure/equipment to truly express their character concept without the limitation of scarcity. It is at the higher levels that the personality of a character is revealed, as well as the fatal flaws of that character that a DM can exploit for endless amusement.

I strongly encourage bringing back Concentration and making it a class skill for all classes (like Craft and Profession). The reason is primarily to make role-playing a part of roll-playing and having the mechanic of the game impact and encourage using dice as an arbiter of player choices.

To that end, I also want to encourage keeping skill checks as the focus of role-playing action resolution rather than shifting to saving throws. The saving throw is designed to represent luck and conditioning, rather than a player's steady application of a character's time and energy to specific skills. As such, the progression is much more uniform across similarly situated characters (i.e. all 8th level dwarf fighters will only see a +/- 3 variance on Fort saves). Skills on the other hand are one of two places where the player can really personalize his character (every level giving him between 2 and 12 points to allocate; feats being the other, more rare, opportunity). As such, it is in skill choices that a player shows mechanically the role he wants his character to fill.

As a result of this, as a DM, it is in the skill roles that I find the most fertile ground to allow the player to impact the game regularly and in line with his character concept. Rather than arbitrarily ruling on success or failure (as I did in AD&D 1st) or being able to predict without specific reference to his character sheet (as I can do in 3.5 on anything involving a saving throw), I almost always conceive of a skill DC and then discover, with the player, whether or not his character's choices bear fruit in the game.

The skill system is terrific, especially if it is applied to support better role playing. It is one of the three big benefits of 3.5 (the ohters being the d20 resolution system and the simplification/rationalization of saving throws).

As for revising it, please keep in mind what happens when you adjust the skills list:
reducing skills disproportionately helps those classes that are skill point poor, reducing the advantage of skill-intensive classes (like the Rogue) and classes with the primary attribute of Intelligence (like the Wizard)
increasing the number of skills disproportionately disadvantages skill poor classes in the same way (like the Fighter)
Which class skills are consolidated has a similar impact:
Perception disproportionately helps Rangers and other scout-type classes
Acrobatics disproportionately helps Rogues
Reducing Spellcraft/Concentration disproportionately helps Wizards/Sorcerers

Given these realities, I strongly encourage the following in light of how Pathfinder spools up the rogue and sorcerer to where they are no longer splash classes:
1) Maintain the skill consolidations as they are needed to help the Fighter retain some competitiveness with the other classes.
2) Bring Concentration back as a class skill for all classes, dropping Spellcraft entirely (Knowledge Arcana fills the niche quite nicely)
3) Give Fighters the option of adding a couple of class skills like Acrobatics, Intimidate, Diplomacy, Knowledge (dungeoneering), as a class feature (perhaps at every 3 levels?)
4) Focus whenever possible on enhancing the role-playing application of skill checks as a DM training point.

Just an EP or two from an old grognard.
In general, I love the Pathfinder improvements (except for everyone getting a feat every other level--it takes too much distinction from the fighter class)

Death in 3.5 is rough, especially for high level characters where the killing blow could reduce a character to -20 in one strike.

I propose a new rule on death:

To die, a character must fail a Fortitude saving throw where the DC is equal to the negative hit points the character currently has.

This has the following beneficial gaming impacts:
1) Death itself becomes an opportunity for luck to take a hand.
2) A character's fortitude save (and by extension Constitution score) becomes terrifically relevant to survivability, favoring those characters who are traditionally considered hard to kill: dwarves, warriors, etc.
3) As a character increases in level, his ability to avoid death heroically also increases.

I have playtested this rule for 4 years and found it to be a much-appreciated and enjoyed house rule. (Initially I tried the standard DC mod of 10+, but found that it made death more common than desired and have adjusted it to this formulation with very good effects.)
It has not proven unbalancing at all.

I vote to keep favored classes, and allow multiclassing only when a favored class is one of the classes. I love the carrot of +1 hp, especially if your favored class is a low hp class.

I am a fan of AD&D, where a class represented the career ambitions of your character's preadventuring life, and such a choice was not taken lightly.

Okay, this is for the Alpha 3 discussion on fighters.

I have been playtesting the rules on fighters for the last two sessions. I have two offerings that increased the likelihood my players (randomly pulled in one session from the local game store--munchkin tendencies; from the other a strong group of role-players who are helping me playtest Pathfinder but are veterans of AD&D 1st through 3.5)

1. Restoring the general feat progression to what it was under the SRD increases the likelihood of selecting a fighter as a PC. In economics terms, it makes the fighter's comparative advantage better in the area of having the best opportunity to gather an impressive number of feats. It makes the fighter more distinctive.

2. Adding a CMB bonus of +1/2 the fighter's class level adds enough flavor, along with the added features of Pathfinder, to make a fighter 20 an appealing build when compared with other combat-oriented base classes.

Neither adjustment harms backward compatibility nor interferes with the niches carved out for other classes.

Levels Tested: 6, 12, 18
Hours of Play: 5 hours each session, or 30 hours total
PCs involved in groups: 4 (role players) 8 (munchkins)