Tal_Akaan's page

I think why it's attacking can be used to answer the question. If it’s attacking for a reason where the PCs death is not required in order to get the desired outcome, then there is no reason for it to kill the PC.

If you're looking for a truly generic setting with just enough detail to run a few games or so, then "Goodman Games" has a complete setting you might want to check out. It covers all 5 points of the criteria you listed.

It was originally published as a boxed set, and was the default setting they used for their "Dungeon Crawl Classics" line of adventure modules back in 3.5...

The whole setting, maps and all, is available here on Paizo on PDF for $40. Here's a link: Gazetteer of the Known Realms

Gave this a look, and I'm very interested. I'm going to do a bit more research on it before I just hand over my money, but this looks good.

Actually I did mean setting, but I am open to using an area from Golarion, if it fist some of my criteria. Is Isga the only one that would?

Also, which Greyhawk book should I look for? I know there's a Living Greyhawk Gazeteer for 3.0, is that what I should get if I wanted to run in Greyhawk?

I’m looking for a campaign setting for an upcoming game I’ll be running, and would appreciate some suggestions.

Things I’m looking for:
1. Easily digestible:
I would like something that isn’t overly detailed. I only need to know about stuff that happened 500 years ago if it’s relevant to the current state of the setting.

2. Reasonable land size:
I don’t want a land mass that is too big. The game I have envisioned has a good bit of travel, but I don’t want the party spending months getting from the human lands to the dwarf mountain, if that makes any sense?

3. Iconic:
Actually I might even go as far as to say a stereotypical fantasy world. My group doesn’t really go for the off the wall stuff, they like the classic fantasy tropes, like LotR. Plus I find it’s easier for them get immersed in a setting they are familiar with.

4. Environments:
I would like something that has a few different environments; forest, snowy, desert, etc.

5. Availability:
I would prefer to buy either a print or PDF version of it. so try to steer clear of really old hard to find stuff.

Obviously I’m not going to find exactly what I’m looking for, so there is wiggle room. Though, I would like to get as close to number 3 as possible. So if I have to sacrifice on the others, so be it.

Thank you for any help you offer.

dot

I went ahead and googled the reference made in the first post.
Greywulf version

I see what it's trying to do, but i don't think it works with out as simply as intended.

I would leave inspiration as is. It’s really all they get. Almost every class feature they get cost inspiration points.

iPhone 3GS
iPad (original)

As far as apps I would like and what I would want them to do...

Combat Tracker:
-Buffs, de-buffs, and conditions. The information that is provided should be bonuses, type of bonus, and source. I should be able to select haste from a list and have its bonuses listed with the initiative slot I designate.

-Encounter saving. I would love to be able to save encounters within the tracker so I can get most of my encounters set up before I even reach the table. Just select the encounter I want from the menu and we’re good to go.

I don’t want the Combat tracker to store and display full monster stat blocks. This just creates too many issues if I want to run a custom monster or NPC.

Character Sheet:
Please note I did not put Character Generator. I do not need or want a character generator. My group plays with enough house rules that a generator would be very hard, if not impossible, to use. Or time intensive to alter if it was set up like Hero Lab.

-Math. I would like the sheet to do math for me, not because I can’t, but because it would be a big pain to have to touch 2-3 input boxes for every entry every time I level. Things like saves, skills, AC, and possibly attacks (if this can be done in such a way that you can modify if you need to).

-Notes. Every line should have a collapsible notes area so you can denote where your numbers are coming from, reference pages from books, or full descriptions of abilities if desired.

-Resource Management. The more help I can get keeping track of my resources, be they spells, class abilities, daily use items, or potions the better.

-Buffs, de-buffs, and conditions. This would be amazing. If all I had to do was select a condition and it changed my numbers on my sheet until that condition was unchecked I would be in heaven. I realize this one might be a little hard to do but it would be amazing.

Spell Management:
There are a few spell book apps out there but I think they can be done better. It would be nice if they actually helped you track your spell usage and maybe even help with applying metamagic feats.

-Multiple Spell Books. Obviously you should be able to save multiple spell books/known spells lists with an app like this.

-Calculate damage and effects based on caster level. It would be nice if I could input a caster level for a spell book/spell list and have the app calculate the effect and damage for me. Maybe even have alternate caster level fields that you can apply if you caster level is considered higher for a specific type of spell.

-Custom Spells. This would be nice, but for me not anywhere near a necessity for the app.

Here's a big one:

The more these apps can work with eachother, if that's even possible, the better.

There might be more ideas floating around in my head somewhere. If I think of anything else I’ll post it up.

This is purely speculation, but someone above said Amazon had a release date of April 18th for the book. So to Amazon it looks like all these people have been waiting for a book that was supposed to come out in April. Maybe be it’s an automatic thing that happens if customers have been waiting X amount of days for their orders.

Like I said purely speculation, and I’m not trying to justify it for Amazon, just throwing in my 2 coppers.

Tal_Akaan wrote:

I can honestly say that I probably will never use the physical copy of the character folio that I will be getting as part of my subscription, but I will probably take the time and make the pdf fallible as I play mostly from my iPad.

Are you going to make it fallible? Or fillable? :)

If the later could you post it up assuming Paizo doesn't object so the rest of us could fill one out as well. Though if you make it fallible, well I can make mistakes on my own so i don't need help there. :)

I haven't decided which on yet. I figure I’ll just keep the internet in suspense.

I can honestly say that I probably will never use the physical copy of the character folio that I will be getting as part of my subscription, but I will probably take the time and make the pdf fallible as I play mostly from my iPad.

I have been a PFRPG subscriber for some time now and recently, today actually, became a GameMastery Maps subscriber and I had a question about bundling my subscriptions to save on shipping.

If I bundle my maps subscription with my PFRPG subscription will waiting for the maps hold up my PFRPG items? One of my favorite things about my PFRPG subscription is getting my books a little early, but I don’t want to miss out on that because I bundle my two subscriptions together.

subscribers can download the PDFs when the books are shipped.

Yes we can, and while I have only had a cursory look through the book, I must say I like what I have seen.

I would say just use Star Wars Saga Edition and keep the Mass Effect wiki ready.

with some simple reflavoring I'm pretty sure you could get a really good Mass Effect game out of SAGA.

Thank you. The description in my book did not specify.

-Tal

Is a Doppelgangers change shape ability limited to the duration of alter self spell that it's based on.

Matthew Morris wrote:

Insecticon?

I see someone watches Transformers Prime. :)

They had Insecticons back in the original series.

Actually come to think of it, it might have been G2.

If I recall rest is not defined as sleep in the book, I think it's just not taking part in any strenuous activity. So if your 4 man party takes 2 hours to after setting up camp to eat and unwind from your long day of orc killing, and then 2 hour watches each you would have still rested 8 hours.

I could be wrong though, I might be thinking of a house rule, or a different game entirely.

-Tal

I think I would have to CalebTGordan on the look of the app. It feels more like a novelty than a powerful player tool with the way it looks. I think I understand what you were going for, but I think you can achieve that and still tone it down a bit.

Well then that sounds amazing. Sign me up to help test it. ;)

Well if you want my honest opinion.

The meta gaming issue matters very little, even if they strictly play this out in character at the table I don’t think it would take the other players very long to figure out what is going on. Beside that fact that there is no way that I can think of for you to have you character take control of another character without the rest of the players thinking something is up.

Have you thought about being straight with the other players and say “this is how I would like to play this character, it seems really fun and if I do take control of you I won’t deliberately make bad decisions and I’ll play him just as if he were my character.” Trying to be sneaky about automatically raises red flags, and that might be why the GM told them about it to begin with. He might just be trying to prevent his game from turning into a PC vs. PC battle royal.

Just my opinion, and you know what they say about those.

-Tal

edit: I haven't read the posts above mine, but I feel as though I just got crazy ninja'd.

This is sounding more like a character creation app than just an interactive sheet.

It sounds like the player will select a class and a level and the app will populate the class features and other info. This brings me to my question. What about if someone wanted to play a homebrew class or something from 3.5?

Otyugh, that happens to me sometimes also. Eventually I am able to check the box or close the pop up though.

Although I do feel the need to warn you, since it just happened to me a couple weeks ago. While I was inputting a new character the app crashed. It had happened before and while frustrating not the end of the world, although this time when I start up the app again all my characters had been erased. This event was enough to make me not want to use the app again until I get an update saying this bug has been fixed. I am running it on a first gen iPad so I don’t know if this is an issue with the app, or running it on my iPad. I just wanted to give you the heads up that it might happen to you as well.

I will say that once this issue is resolved I will be very happy to use this app again. I loved using it, it’s just a big risk to lose your character, possibly in the middle of the game.

Thanks for the reply.

Thanks for letting me know about the knowledge skill. I never even tried to enter in a skill. When I saw that there was only one slot I just found another way to handle it, but the way you have it working is a very nice feature. Now I don’t have space being taken up by knowledge skills I don’t use.

As for the notes feature, yeah it is personal preference, I like to include as much info about my racial abilities and class features as I can, and when I try to shorten it I usually end up leaving out something important.

The app functions almost exactly the way I want a digital character sheet to function. Between this app, my $.99 pdf reader for my digital books, and my $1.99 spell book app, I have quite an impressive device for gaming. If I didn’t prefer to roll my own dice all I would need to bring to my gaming sessions is the iPad.

-Tal

I got the d20 and 4e versions earlier this week. I’ve only had time to start inputting my most recent Pathfinder character, and I must say that I like it. I got my iPad mostly for gaming, granted I had other reasons, but let’s be honest they were just used to try and justify it to the fiancé. Any way this is the kind of app that I want from the beginning. I like that it’s just a digital character sheet that auto calculates, I don’t need it to link to the SRD or anything, that tends to make things much more rigid and more likely to not work right.

Here are a few thoughts, ideas, and questions I had:
1.Knowledge Skills: there’s only one slot for knowledge skills. There are quite a few different knowledge skills, there should be more than one slot.

2.The racial abilities and class feature fields, I would have liked them to have been done like the feats field, lined with the notes button off to the right.

3.Attack bonuses for weapons: If I have more that 1 attack can I only enter my highest attack in the to hit box? I realize there is a place for number of attacks. I know you can roll by double clicking the to hit box, but after the first attack I have to do additional math after the first attack. It’s not that big of an issue just something I was questioning.

4.It would be nice if you could paste into the notes fields.

That’s all for now, just a few things that hit me during my initial use of the app. Still though, I really enjoy the simplicity and layout of it.

-Tal

From what I remember reading, in any one of the many threads on this topic, certain members of the development staff want to do epic/mythic rules. Though as far as I remember, there has been nothing said about actually doing it. I think there are just other things that they feel are more important to produce than epic/mythic rules.

Thank you very much. I will be resubscribing for Bestiary 3, I just have no use for the Beginners Box.

Thanks again.

I did not know that the Beginner Box was part of my subscription, is it possible to cancel my order, but keep my subscription.

Thank you.

Sorry if this has been covered already, but I'm in a bit of a hurry.

I'm a little confused about the selected target word. Can I cast words restricted to the selected target word on myself? The wording suggests no, but I can't help but think you should be able to cast some of them with the range of personal. Especially as I am playing a magus and there are a few spells I would like to use on myself.

Anyone know where I could purchase pre-painted mini's?

I would like to use painted mini's for my characters, I have pre-painted plactic one for enemies, but I want the metal ones for my characters.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Just wanted to let everyone know that the situation has been resolved...so far. We'll need to wait until i get my book for complete resolution.

But Jeff sent me an e-mail expressing that he acknowledges that more could have been done, and that is all I REALLY wanted. I just wanted to know that the company was as concerned as I was that I had not received my book after almost 2 months.

So again thank you Jeff for taking the time to deal with the issue.

As I mentioned, in my previous post, I did not expect 2 day shipping, or a refund. The first instance on these forums where I asked, as I mentioned, because I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask. At the time I really wanted my book to bring into my game, so I thought I would see if I could speed up the process.

Even earlier today on the phone with one of your representatives I did not ask for 2 day shipping, I simply requested a different shipping method so I would be able to track my package. After two failed attempts to receive my order, regardless of who was at fault, I didn’t think my request was uncalled for.

As for what lengths you should go to in order to keep a customer happy, I firmly believe it is for the company to decide what they will do to ensure customer satisfaction. To be honest I have not seen you go to any lengths to ensure a pleasant experience. I did not receive my initial order, so you said you would send me another one, perfectly acceptable. When the second book never gets shipped due to an error in your system, you do the same, send me the book that I ordered and have paid for. I would classify this as doing the bare minimum of customer service.

I never “expected” any more then receiving a book that I paid for almost 2 month ago. I did however hope for more from a company that I wish to support and truly enjoy their products, and have heard has remarkable customer service. If you truly feel that expectation is too high then I am not doing business with the same company that produces a product that I love so much.

Edit:

I took awhile to draft this response and did not see Windquake and Boerngrim's post. So thank you Windquake and Boerngrim. Not for saying I should have been upgraded, but for saying my request was not above a minimum standard of customer service. I never asked for a free copy I just presented an example of someone that I thought went above and beyond what they needed to in order to ensure customer satisfaction.

there is no need to get accurate numbers.

I was mainly just wondering if any one else has had an experience like this. It has been my experience working in customer service, and dealing with them, that when there is a problem that is 100% to fault of your company (speaking of the replacement book, would expect this for an order that the post office flubs up) then you should do something to try to make up for the customers unpleasant experience. Again this is just the kind of customer service I have grown accustomed to in similar situations.

Example:

I ordered an RPG book from a 3rd party company through Amazon that I hadn’t received by a week after the estimated arrival date. I e-mailed Amazon, they e-mailed the company, then company e-mailed me telling me that they looked in to it and for some reason the book never left the UPS warehouse. They asked if I wanted a refund or if I would like them to expedite me a new book. I told them that I still wanted the book and they had already charged me so just send me another copy. No big deal.

Two days later I had my book and an e-mail from the company saying they had refunded my money for the inconvenience and to keep the book.

This in my opinion is great customer service, they made sure I got was I ordered and even went above and beyond to refund my money.

I don’t expect a refund or anything I really want my book, but I was just a little put off by getting told that I already had my pdf, and being made to feel like they shouldn’t have to do anything to try to make my buying experience with this company any better because I already have a digital copy of the book.

Edit: I felt I should specify that I do not expect this kind of customer service from every company I deal with. I just thought hearing such great things about Paizo CS on the forums I would get more than just bare minimum.

I don't think it was deliberate. I just feel like CS doesn't really care that I am having an unsatisfactory experiance with my first subscription book because I already have my pdf copy.

So here’s how it breaks down.

I signed up for the Pathfinder RPG subscription shortly after the APG came out and on Aug 10th I received an e-mail saying that my book was being shipped and I could go download my pdf copy of the book. I was stoked. Weeks passed and no book, I got the cheapest shipping but it was already past the suggested time period. I went ahead and e-mailed customer service to see if they could find out why I hadn’t received my book yet.

I was told that it was only a couple days past the suggested time period for the shipping I paid for and that because the book had shipped my pdf copy was available and I should wait a few more days.

Another week passed and I began sending more e-mails, which I got no response from. We are now up to Sep 13th. Finally I decide to post something in the customer support forums to see what I could get done. I got a very quick response letting me know that my book was in fact late if I still didn’t have it, and that CS was running behind because they were preparing for their monthly AP subscriptions. Never the less I was told that another book was being shipped to me and I was once again happy. (I did see if I could get bumped up to quicker shipping but was told it would be sent via the same shipping method. No big deal just trying to get a little something extra.)

It is now Oct 4th, still have no book, but this time I called CS myself to find out what the deal is. So I was told that they didn’t know why I hadn’t received my original copy, but the replacement copy never shipped due to some kind of bug in their system. At this point it is their fault that I never received my replacement book, oh and did I mention that I was told yet again that I’ve had the pdf of the book the whole time, like that makes up for me not getting what I paid for. Any way I was told that the replacement would be shipped out today and I would get a confirmation e-mail when it did. This time I asked if I could get my shipping upgraded so I would be able to track the order, but again was told no and was reassured that the book would be shipped today and I would get an e-mail.

I don’t know about you, I don’t like being given the impression that because I got the pdf free it’s not that big of an issue that I have yet to receive my book. I just feel like because I have the pdf I was being back burned. From what I understood the pdf was a free gift for being a subscriber, not an alternative to good customer service and accurate shipping.

This ended up being much longer than I expected, but I was wondering if anyone else has had this kind of problem. I’m not so much mad as I am confused that a company that produces such great products would have (IMO) such bad customer service.

EDIT: We rotate GMs each week (we each have our own campaign). None of the other GMs do this kind of thing, yet when they are all players, like me, they all side with the GM on the inane rolls. Why might that be?

Possibly because it’s really not worth getting worked up about, I mean really how long does it take to make a perception check. I don’t really see this as a problem.

Can someone give an actual review of the character sheet, what it does, how well it works, stuff like that. I don't want to pay to get numbers on my iPad and not know how well this character sheet works.

Thanks

Thank you for the quick response. Will the new shipment be sent via the same shipping method, or will it be expidited to me?

My order was shipped on 8/10, and I still have not received it. Worst of all I have e-mail customer service about it multiple times and was told to wait longer the first time and have gotten no response the others. I just want the book that I paid for, or at least a response from you saying that you are looking into why I have not received my book. I don't think this is too much to ask.

I've looked at that one and my only problem is, for me, $10 is too much to pay to "try" something.

I just got my iPad a few weeks ago and have only famed with it twice, but i do like it and it does wht i need it to do.

That being said here's what i would like it to be able to do.

I would like a PDF reader that support editable fields, as far as i know one doesn't exist as of yet. I don't need a character builder, i allow too many books in my game, and there will never be a builder that supports all that content.

I would also love a good combat tracker, one that would be utilized from a player and gm point of view. For the gm i would like it to track initiative, hit points, conditions, number of rounds, and maybe a spot for a few notes about the encounter. For a player i hit points, conditions, equipment, and maybe some way of keeping track of limited use items, abilities, consumables.

That does seem like a lot, but it seems like it shouldn't be too hard to do.

I have a player that wants to play a goat folk in an upcoming game and was wondering if anything on it needs to be updated to pathfinder.

Thanks for any help.

Thanks for the help. I got it covered now.

Thanks again.

I'm having a bit of confusion trying to make doppelganger fighter.

If I am making a 4th level doppelganger how many d10's do I roll for hit points?

How many feats do I get? I thought I understood this, but I went to make the character and it just doesn't seem right.

Thanks for any help.

You know.. there is this marvelous thing called a pencil that, when used with a piece of paper, can keep track of you HP and Initiative. Heck, I've even heard you can use them to make entire character sheets!

[/joke]

Woah, whoah, whoah. What operating system does this pencil you speak of use? And this P-A-P-E-R, thing, I'm new to this concept, please elaborate.

As for initiative tracker I got it last night mid game and really liked it.

Anybody know of a good way to track hit points on an iPad?

Thanks

Tal_Akaan wrote:

Well there goees another $40.

Was there any doubt it would go?

Not ever.

Although I like explaining to my girlfriend that i have basically spent $120 on things that as far as i know don't have a physical form yet. Actually my girlfriend is very supportive of my Paizo addiction, technically she's the one that got me hooked (got me the Core Rulebook).

I actually like that they're not trying to split the catagories too much. Like WotC did by splitting divine and arcane magic in the complete series.

Well there goees another $40.

I want one!

I'm really interested to see the Rage Prophet.