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Howdy all! I'm a player in this campaign. We're toward the end of the first chapter, and the player of our party's only even remotely social character recently had to quit. No-one else in the party has a charisma higher than 12, and no-one has any ranks in diplomacy, bluff, or intimidate. Question: is completing this campaign without a socially adroit character going to be extremely difficult?
Innocence means you are unaware of something. Ignorance means you are aware of something, but disregarding that awareness (from the root 'ignore'). So, every time you tell someone something they legitimately weren't aware of, you cause "loss of innocence". Innocence can mean lacking knowledge, but no definition of ignorance is similar to this. Ignore and ignorant share a root, but they both mean 'to not have knowledge of' (In = not; gnarus = to know). The 'to not pay attention to' meaning of ignore is (relatively) modern. As for the OP, I would say that it depends on motives. Doing something that inadvertently causes the loss of innocence may not be, while intentionally attempting to inure someone to the evils of reality is probably evil.
A basic-level explanation of what a theory is. Another source that provides an explanation of where GWL's thinking is going south. A third source just to drive it home. A law is absolutely not a "proven" theory, or an idea with more support than a theory.
The book The Carpet Makers is essentially a 300 page meditation on this. I won't spoil it, becuase the book is awesome. But it has some pretty spectacular out of the box torture.
I largely like the new system, with one caveat: I don't like the names of the action types and subtypes. Specifically, I don't like that "Simple" is the name of actions that require 1 (or no) actions to complete, but "complex" is a subtype that can be applied to any type of action, even a simple one. I don't relish explaining to new players that a desired action is a "simple complex action."
I'm just spit-balling these answers, apologies if they aren't what you had in mind. Lore:
Lore is pretty similar to knowledge, so my suggestions here are influenced by the Knowledge unlocks.
5 Ranks: Your focus has given you insight into other subjects related to your field of expertise. You can make lore checks on items related to your specialty, even if you are untrained in the subject. For instance, if you have ranks in Lore (Dagon), you can make untrained lore checks on other Demon lords. 10 Ranks Given time to think, you can sometimes recall a bt of lore. Once per day, you may take 20 on a lore check. This takes a mimimum of 10 minutes. 15 Ranks When you fail a lore check, you can reroll at a -10 penalty. You automatically succeed on "easy" knowledge checks (DC 10 or lower) without having to roll. 20 Ranks Whenever you attempt a Lore check, you can roll twice and take the higher result.
Artistry: Artistry has admitted influence from Craft, Perform, and Profession, so I used those to inspire these. 5 Ranks You do not ruin any of your raw materials unless you fail by ten or more. 10 Ranks When in an area where you have successfully used Artistry in the past, you can attempt an Artistry check to receive preferential treatment. The DC is 15 if you have produced a "masterful work" inthe region, and increase by 5 for every category lower. For instance, if your most successful artistry check in an area was "pedestrian," the DC is 35. If you succeed, your target's starting attitude is one step higher than it would normally be. If you surpass the DC by 10 or more, their starting attitude is two steps better than it would normally be. This cannot be retried—people recognize you, or they don’t—and cannot be used on hostile targets. 15 Ranks When casting a Figment or Glamer, you can attempt a DC 30 artistry check to increase the DC by 2. 20 Ranks Rolls of 10 or less on Artistry checks are always treated as 10. In addition, even your blunders are revolutionary. Once per month, you can treat a failed Artistry check as a “Masterful work.”
My table top is a 4'x8' sheet of melamine (sometimes called showerboard) which works as a dry-erase surface. I cut a 1" gride into this with a straight edge and a razor knife. It's great for drawing huge maps in colored DE markers. Additionally I use the reaper bones and bones II props and Itar's Workshop dungeon pieces that arrived recently. Finally, I enjoy making set pieces when I'm expecting epic fights. Kadance and I played together for years, until I moved away. The melamine board not only does a great job, it's a LOT cheaper than an equivalent amount of dry erase board from an office supply store. You should post some prop pics, man. I'll see if I can find any of the Bal-Hamatugn piece you did for our Shackled City game.
I'm on Sissyl's side on this, though I may be well beyond her on her side. I actively enjoying swearing. I enjoy well crafted utterances of anger and irritation. Of course, I am fascinated by language–it's my life's work–and my favorite deadly sin is wrath, so... It is important to be able to shift registers, but I think condemning a person for occasionally slipping back into a casual register is a far worse sin than is the register shift itself. This is especially true since "swear words" aren't objective, even within a specific group. Some families in the church in which I grew up considered crap to be a swear word, while others didn't. Some English speakers consider jeez to be blasphemous. Demanding your interlocutor conform to your linguistic style without careful explanation leaves them in a mine field, and that's not cool. Those who say that it isn't a problem not to use swear words miss my point above. I.e.: Whose swear words? Dang, golly, and darn are all consider bad words by some. The average American knows to avoid the big four-letter words in public settings, but knowing what your neighbor will take as offensive can lead you down a pretty labyrinthine path. It gets really weird when people start claiming that the words themselves have power. My mother once tried to tell me that the "f-word" was inherently wrong, offensive, and sinful–even from the lips of a person who neither knows nor has ever encountered English. Amusingly enough, the Arabic word for "only" sounds, to an English speaker, very close to "f-word it." I suppose that whole part of the world is offending God and nature every time they say "I want the shawarma only...no fries." :-P
The real complaints seem to have more to do with breaches of social contract than they do anything else, and that is a trust issue. I'd be in Usual Suspect's camp, for instance, in the case of a party that PVPs a lot. Vincent, on the other hand, seems like he'd be ok with it, even if he wouldn't necessarily prefer it. I don't think that it has anything to do with the PF's ruleset or the proliferation of technology or anything else. It's just coming to terms with the fact that various groups want various things. I've been in groups that were ok with metagaming, and others that weren't. I've been in groups that were ok with powergaming, and groups that weren't. People that expected serious commitment to the game and group, and beer and pretzels tables. I'm not going to say that any of these are objectively better than others. I have my preferences, but I don't want to force them on anyone. I think a major problem arises when groups don't communicate those preferences or, in a worse scenario, when individuals assume that their subjective preferences are objective truths. In such a case, a GM who, for instance, allows lots of PVP in the game isn't just going against a hypothetical player's personal preferences, they are possibly, in that player's eyes, perverting the hobby itself. It's the same thing that most of these threads come down to. Talk with the people you play with. Try, if it is possible, not to play with people that you wouldn't share a beer with. Express your desires in calm, respectful ways, and seek the input of others in a similar manner. Or, you know, just don't be a jerk.
I'm with thejeff on this too. I'd like people who want to play a collaborative storytelling game. You can be a minmaxer, you can theorycraft, you can bring crazy ideas, but give me something to work with. If you don't want to give reasons outside "the rules are the final arbiter and they said I could" then I probably wouldn't enjoy playing with you, and you probably wouldn't enjoy playing with me. And that's fine. What's not fine, but what's been done a lot on this thread, is claiming that people with different preferences about non-factual concepts are simply wrong. Some people allow magic-hating barbarians to, when they level up, suddenly have always had a spellbook in their bag and become spellcasters. That wouldn't be fun for me, or for the groups I play with. It's also one of the reasons that I don't play as often as I'd like, because I'm not going to play a game I don't enjoy–I'm going to wait until I've found a group of like-minded players. Someone up-thread asked why the DM should even care. I honestly have a hard time even grokking the question. It implies, to me, that the DM's campaign and the players' characters are completely independent of each other, instead of deeply intertwined with each other's fates. I can't speak for other DMs, but I care because I'm there to have fun too. And my fun is not 100% rules, 0% novel. (Though it would, admittedly, make a terrible novel, full of irrelevant digressions, over-used tropes, and hackneyed pop-culture references.) My fun is closer to 60% rules, 40% novel. Wanting there to be a coherent and internally consistent story in a collaborative storytelling game is not the mark of a frustrated or impotent would-be novelist. It's a valid style of play for many tables, including mine. But, luckily, no-one is going to make someone who would find that distasteful play in my game. To answer the OP, I feel that your questions are bound entirely by the group's social contract. Since written social contracts are generally a terrible idea, it sometimes becomes a little murky, but that's when communication comes in. If you are unhappy with your group's style, but they are all having a blast, perhaps you should find a different table. If everyone is unhappy with the current game except for the DM, maybe y'all need a new DM. Or maybe you just need to voice your displeasure. The only universal answer to your question is "A DM should engage in X% of tampering with character choices and history" where X is a number between 0 and 100, inclusive.
Not to pile on, but I agree with what everyone else has said. DMing is hard. It is a learned skill. Very few people have a natural knack for it that doesn't require cultivation. A lot of really good DMs forget the fact that they used to suck at it too. Talking is going to be key. If your friend is receptive to POLITE and KIND correction on what they are doing wrong, then there's hope. I personally disagree with The Alkenstarian on the forum–I think a lot of people will react poorly to being confronted by the whole group at once–but the general idea is still the same. I've found that Snejjj's suggest of a table "rules-lawyer" is a great one for new DMs, but only if the person filling that role really is impartial–i.e., they need to point out things to the DM that are going to badly hurt the party just as much as they point out things to the party's advantage. At the end of the day, make sure that the conversation really is calm, polite, and kind. They're your friend, so you should know what will work, but if they feel attacked, put-upon, or harassed, it will make things worse, not better.
They posted yesterday that there's been some issues with their emails. Hopefully this is a better way to get through. :-)
The CRB, page 459 says: "A humanoid-shaped body can be decked out in magic gear consisting of one item from each of the following groups, keyed to which slot on the body the item is worn" "Hands" is one of the slots listed. So it would seem that you may wear one (1) item that takes the "hands" slot.
Pro-war, in my definition, has less to do with the need or necessity for war as it does the EAGERNESS and zealousness with which one does so. Couple that with the casual dehumanization and racism toward an enemy and a lot of pro-war types just leave a very bad taste in my mouth.And that's all well and good when you keep that inside your head and don't project it by assuming that other people who use the term mean the exact same thing you do. Clearly not everyone agrees, as Aberzombie gave a great example of. But there's people on all sides too who do the projecting things, and many unnecessary fights are the result from both sides believing the other to think something opposite of what they do. So I though about this quite a bit, and I honestly don't think I've ever heard anyone self-identify as "pro-war." I've heard people describe their opponents as pro-war, but those being described as pro-war are generally more like Aberzombie - or myself, for that matter. I.e.: A person who either supports a specific conflict because other options have failed or are not realistic or who does not put war completely off the table (depending on who the interlocutor is.) I think that if I ever heard anyone self-identify as pro-war, I would assume their meaning was similar to what Shin describes, and I would be very much disturbed by them, and feel compelled to seek clarification on their stance.
It'd be nice if we could get a FAQ stating that a standard or move action that progresses to a swift action can still be used as a standard or move action. I house-rule it to allow the choice, but I think this FAQ would be helpful.
I guess I don't really understand your question. The race builder is a useful heuristic to help determine how powerful a given PC race is, not for recreating a monster from the Bestiary. A minotaur as written would be a pretty darned OP for a PC at first level. The numbers in the race builder reflect that.
Lied huh? Or everybody lies on these. *shrugs* Anyhow, playing along: STR:13
Which amuses me, because they're pretty close to the stats I chose for myself for the Character Sheet part of the Paizo profile page.
Are the sharks evil? If not, protection from evil does not stop them from attacking. Third, the spell prevents bodily contact by evil summoned creatures. This causes the natural weapon attacks of such creatures to fail and the creatures to recoil if such attacks require touching the warded creature. Summoned creatures that are not evil are immune to this effect. The protection against contact by summoned creatures ends if the warded creature makes an attack against or tries to force the barrier against the blocked creature. Spell Resistance can allow a creature to overcome this protection and touch the warded creature.
Stop. Don't be that guy. The rules don't state that you can no longer take actions once you are dead. The devs can't possibly define every common concept. Being "that guy" is intentionally misunderstanding things or being obtuse.
Not my own, but this one is sourced. Hanoi Grilled Chicken Banh Mi Recipe From: The Banh Mi Handbook: Recipes for Crazy-Delicious Vietnamese Sandwiches by Andrea Nguyen Ingredients: 1½ pounds (675 g) boneless, skinless chicken thighs
Method: Trim and discard big fat pads from the chicken thighs.
In a bowl, stir together the sugar, salt, pepper, fish sauce, garlic, serrano, and lime juice. If needed, tweak the flavor to get a slightly tart-sweet, salty finish. Add the oil, then the chicken, coating the pieces well. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes. To grill the chicken, preheat a gas grill to medium or prepare a medium-hot fire, or use a stove-top grill pan heated over medium-high heat with a little oil brushed on. Cook the chicken for 6 to 10 minutes, turning several times, until clear juices flow out when you pierce the flesh with the tip of a knife. Cool for 10 minutes before cutting across the grain. Tumble in the cooking juices to include extra flavor in the sandwich.
The herbs are super cheap at gardening stores (assuming you can grow them where you are) and the fact that this uses thighs instead of breasts keeps the meat cheap. Load the sandwiches up with the pickles and cucumbers to stretch your dollar a bit further.
I found this online. I don't remember where. South Asian food has an expensive initial investment (the spices) but everything else is super cheap. Curried Lentils 2 tablespoons canola oil
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and cook the onions for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. ADD the garlic, ginger, ground coriander, cumin, turmeric and chili and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. ADD the potato and lentils and stir to coat with the spice mixture. ADD the tomatoes, coconut milk, stock, garam masala, salt and sugar, bring to the boil and cover with a lid. REDUCE the heat to medium and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. WHILE the curry simmers, cook the rice. ADD the peas to the curry and simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes. REMOVE from the heat and stir in the cilantro and lemon juice. SERVE on a bed of rice. *edit* if you use the heavy cream, add it at the end after you've taken it off of the heat but while the mixture is still piping hot. I forgot I had that in there for my friend with coconut allergies.
Bean dip Refried beans
Crumble and brown the chorizo in a heavy bottomed pan
*This recipe goes really well with fresh pico or other sharp, crisp dip
Cucumber Raita (tzatziki; jajik) Approximately 2 cups yogurt
Mix all ingredients, refrigerate 4 hours to 2 days. Serve with pita/naan/crusty bread/vegetables crudités
I really don't get this "it's passive aggressive" and "bad DMing." First, we din't know exactly how things went down. The OP didn't say how the conversation went, just that the child rules were invoked. That's not passive aggressive. That's certainly not giving a child poison and telling them it's water. That's "this is what the rule will be if you do this." The DM could very well have said "No, I don't want this in my campaign. I don't want child soldiers in my game-world. But if you insist on doing it, these are the rules you must use." It would be passive aggressive if the DM said "sure you can play a child" and left it at that, and then, once play was going, sprung the NPC class switch on the player. If you describe what the rules would be if the player makes the choice they have suggested, it's not pettiness - failure to explain the consequences is pettiness. "If you X then Y, are you sure you want to X?" should not be denigrated. "If you X then Y, and though you didn't know about Y you mentioned X therefore you are stuck with it hahaha!" should be. And clearly, this wasn't a case of the DM preying on a person with poor system mastery to ruin their character concept, which I agree would be bad form. As for the idea that no character concept/roleplaying choices should have in-game effects, that is, IMHO, patently absurd. If a player who chose to describe their character as so hideous in appearance that adults gasped and children screamed, would they be justified in their irritation when the DM had people react poorly to his character?
The tower shield is based vaguely on the roman Scuta, which is twice as heavy and considerably more unwieldy than your friend Ulfgar's round shield, even assuming it is a wooden shield and not foam rubber.
Would you add it to the schedule if we asked really really nicely?
The bolded above is mine. I wouldn't allow this, especially if you believe him to be overpowered. My common practice is to keep a copy of the full character sheet of each person on hand, in case they miss a session or leave theirs behind or some other mishap happens. That way you are all on the same page and someone cannot "remember" some stat or item that they don't have incorrectly. Some people cheat, and some people have faulty memories; either way, this prevents that. Absolutely, positively, 100% this. No-one should ever be playing without a full character sheet with them. I'm not going to say that your player is a dirty stinking cheater, but I can't think of a way to finish this sentence...
I have a question... Is it really necessary to jump in and tell someone you'll never meet that they're doing it wrong if they never asked for input? I'm almost positive that very little of what is said on the Paizo forums is necessary. Luckily, necessity is not a requirement.
Listen, murdering a player character because they are freaking annoying is NOT wrong. Give the little s*+@ a few warnings, tell him what hes doing wrong and if he continues,murder his character. I see NOTHING wrong with showing a person what happens when you piss people off repeatedly. Don't let him back into your game untill he knows the pathfinder lore,I would NEVER tolerate someone like that for more than six seconds. Why not have a conversation with the offending individual? I mean, I'm fully with you if conversations haven't worked - actually, no, even then, I'd rather just kick them out than 'show them what happens when you piss people off' - but why not start by being kind and talking to the person as another equal and person? Talking to people is hard, but brings growth. Passive aggression is easy, but helps no-one. At the very least, as Hama said, just boot the person, though it would be better to boot them and tell them why you are booting them - kindly, if you can manage it. Years of hanging out with the weird, socially inept misanthropes that make up a large section of our hobby has convinced me that many players honestly don't realize that they are being pains in the butt.
C'mon guys, no need to continue chastising the OP, he got the message and responded well. Personally, I did a lot of this sort of thing when I was a new DM. Obviously, lots of other people did too, or there wouldn't be so much written on the idea of "psycho" DMs and DM vs Player games. It's a learning experience. For years, I was a killer DM. I made my players come to the table with at least one extra character prepped. I believe in one nightmare session of the 3.0 campaign "City of the Spider Queen" I killed 5 PCs. But the game simply wasn't fulfilling. There was never character development - who would bother when the character life expectancy was 2 sessions? There was never trust - why would there be when I repeatedly thrust the PCs into unwinnable situations? There was never plot development - none of the characters cared about the story. I took a break from DMing for over a year. I thought and read and talked, and I came to the realization that there is no real reward in winning a contest between the DM and the PCs. How can there be when the DM has all of the power? I'm not saying you should never kill a PC, or never let them do something stupid and get themselves killed. But you should trust your players and they should trust you. It's always better to have honest conversations with you players than to use in game power to punish out of game choices. It spreads the hobby and earns you a reputation as a fair and thoughtful game master. I don't really like Kitsune either, so I feel you, but almost every player I know would much rather be told by the DM that they simply arbitrarily are banning certain items beforehand than to have a character killed arbitrarily. Anyhow, I hope that you and the player both continue to enjoy the game. It's a great pastime! And kudos again, as Drakeroberts said, on your gracious response. :-)
I've had enough of this from "dudebros" in my games that I am now reflexively opposed to players playing cross sex/gender. I know that that is the wrong reaction, and I try to suppress my suspicion of new players who want to play cross sex/gender, but it is very difficult. Well, this went off a particularly squicky cliff. Agreed So changing the subject back to bad/ridiculous characters: I played in a game where the DM used the 2nd Ed table for Reincarnate. When the bard/rogue† died, we had him reincarnated and the DM rolled…Bear. The player decided he was going to keep playing the now bear bard/rogue. For inspire courage he pranced. For thieve's tools, he had one of his claws carved into a lock pick. The game took a decidedly silly turn, but it was a lot of fun. †This player played the bard end of his bard/rogue as though he thought that Elan from Order of the Stick was the apotheosis of bard-dom, vice a mockery of it. Luckily, we had 6 players, so some extra weight didn't hurt us. :-)
Lord Synos: I plan on responding to your response, it's just taking me a bit to formulate my answer. Thank you for the awesome and thoughtful repartee.
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