Threeshades's page

Thanks all :)

@Kobold Cleaver
I'll check it out.

Since I didn't find any other forum to post this on, I thought I'd post it here.

A while ago I started a little picture inspired by the Pathfinder goblins. So, yeah, here is the picture.

You can also check the rest of my deviantart page for other artworks, if you like.
Comments and criticism are welcome. Here or on dA.

I will also post some updates about other pictures here.

When we were still playing 3.x we always had the players taking potty breaks as part of morning and evening rituals. Since 3.x we havent been playing but when i finally get the PF round started I'll be sure to have the PCs do their business regularly.

I remember our GM from back then telling about a game he had where he was a player and got killed by a monster while his only party mate was peeing, because he couldn't hold it any longer.

Whirling Blade ... who thought a wizard with a greatsword could be just freaking vicious ...

So what is my favourite spell. I think until I explored them further I'll just say change shape. Never has greater fun been had!

Our party wizard always used it just to mess with random npcs.

Threeshades wrote:

But until then what they gave us in the Bestiary has to be, and will be enough.

There's no such law :)

While we are at it, in the Core Rulebook in the opening art work for the Spells section there are these "tentacle-faced hounds", are there any riles for those somewhere, and if so, where?

pres man wrote:

minkscooter wrote:

Is the re-imagined goblin something like a Paizo mascot now? And who was the concept artist? Are we the goblins in this analogy?

Obviously not as we are not meant to play monstrous races, duh.

No you may play monster races. But now it is wholly in the hands of the GM. I myself loved the fact they killed LA. For one it did not work, and for 2 it gave the players and entitled feel that they had a givin right to play such races.

No a GM must look and go" Humm does this fit?, is t too powerful? should I give the other players a bit of extra gear or a feat to balance? or leave it alone."

Not a bad thing if ya ask me.

I am really hoping there will be some exotic races written by paizo some day, and I'm willing to wait for it, if it comes out at all. But until then what they gave us in the Bestiary has to be, and will be enough.

Threeshades wrote:

I think it's sad though that you have to come up with house rules to get all of the interesting races balanced. Especially on this otherwise greatest RPG system of them all.

I think if they were that interesting, they'd be core. I suspect rather that what makes them interesting is that they're not core. People who like playing monstrous races (myself included) tend to enjoy something different from the norm. If lizardfolk were balanced with humans, dwarves, elves and tieflings, well... then they'd be dragonborn, and boring. :)

All this discussion is why the Bestiary says, "Monsters are not designed with the rules for players in mind" (313). From a mechanical perspective, I'd say house rule whatever you and your group feel to be balanced. That may well have to be handled on a case-by-case basis such as nerfing the lizard and buffing the kobold. From a roleplaying perspective, I'd make the player come up with a darn good backstory, and a reason why the other PCs would allow a cannibal (195) to adventure with them.

Agreed, but I don't consider that +5 NAB as coming from the racial hit dice. I consider that to be part of the race itself. If they never had racial hit dice, they'd still have natural armor. Nothing in their growing up transforms them so they have the armor, it's part of their bodies. In other words, it's biological, not cultural. If you took a baby lizardfolk in the egg and raised him up amongst humans so he took Adept levels instead of racial hit dice, he'd still have the armor.

That's why I personally cut the CR in half for lizardfolks, I figure half their CR comes from racial bonuses and half from racial hit dice. Then replace the racial hit dice with class hit dice as appropriate. Then their CR = class level +1 (class level - 1 + 2 really). I run a monster game, and so far it's working nicely. The PC's are in the swamps now,...

Unless... If i would still go down this road start with a class-less lizardfolk warrior and instead of giving him an extra level at level 2 and 3 i would convert one of his HD into a class, say Fighter, and only on level 4 he would start actually advancing....
Would this mount up, to what you have been describing? I think I could work with that. Then he would actually stay behind in skills feats and everything.

Feats always go off hit dice. So, a lizardfolk with 3 fighter levels would have 5 levels of hit dice, and thus have 3 feats (1st, 3rd, 5th). BAB, saves, etc always go off hit dice as well. Mainly because racial hit dice don't really give you much in the way of boosts, they tend to be like commoner levels.

One thing I do for players playing monstrous races is let them convert racial hit dice to class levels in a class instead, as if the monster in the book were the commoner/adept/etc version (like a sheepherder would be vs a human pc). Then I recalculate the CR to see if there is an adjustment. For lizardfolk I usually drop the CR to 2 from 4, and turn the 2 racial hit dice into class levels. Seems to work so far.

Threeshades wrote:

On an only partly related note: Do you guys at Paizo really hate Kobolds so much or are their features really so powerful that it would justify a -4, +2, -2 ability array in a game where a standard race usually has +2, +2, -2?

Actually, we quite like kobolds. In fact, for some time "Pathfinder" was going to be called "Kobold" as a play on going from the toughest monster (dragon) to the weakest but still notorious monster (kobold), back when we lost the D&D magazine licenses. And that's also why our first module was all about kobolds.

Kobolds are SUPPOSED to be among the weakest monsters in the game. They're not PC races. They're monsters. You can certainly play a kobold in a game, but frankly, part of the draw to play a kobold is the fact that you're a scrappy underdog who perseveres despite the fact that you're less powerful than most races.

As for figuring out monster racial adjustments, all you need to do is subtract 10 from the even-numbered stats and 11 from the odd-numbered stats and presto, there's your ability score modifiers.

I have a new question, how do you handle features, such as Feats, BAB, Skills and all on a monstrous PC whose ECL is smaller than his number of Hit Dice.
For example a Lizardfolk Fighter with 3 Fighter levels (+ CR 1 makes him ECL 4, but with his racial HD he has 5 HD altogether), do you count in all of these features like he was Level 4 or like he was level 5?

If you count every hit die it would come up to 3 Feats (not counting Fighter bonus feats) a BAB of +4 and gotten skill points 5 times.
If you count his ECL he would have only 2 Feats, 4 times skill points and I'm not actually sure what his BAB would be.

James Jacobs wrote:

I wouldn't say tons at all. My ranger character got hit by a finger of death spell last Saturday, and she only went down to -2 hit points when she failed her save. Of course... she was at max hit points of 168 at the time, but still... she was only out of the battle for a round.

Save or die per say is for the most part gone,

though there are still lots of spells that give you a very similar effect:

Baleful Polymorph (Save or be a snail)
Flesh to stone (Save or be a statue)
Phantasmal Killer (Save or save again or die)
Cloudkill (Be high level or save or die)
Dominate Person (Save or I'll have you kill yourself)
Feeblemind (Save or wish your wizard was dead)
Circle of Death (Actual save or die)
Trap the soul (Save or worse than death)
Imprisonment (Save or die and I hide the body too)
Weird (Save or I'll make you save again!)
Temporal Stasis (Save or die while I go broke at 5,000 a shot)

For starters...

@Murphy
That's horribly weak, considering they supposedly descended from dragons. Well I was thinking about adding +2 Charisma and an extra +2 Dexterity (or remove the Con penalty)

@Jacob
Thanks. I didn't really bother to check out the sutff i thought i knew already before.

By the way, generally I really like what happened with the Monster character level system, now that not every single hit die counts as a +1 to ECL and some extra level adjustment is waiting right around the corner too. I've been wondering in 3.x why would a creature, that amounts to a mediocre challenge for a lvl 5 character only be playable in a party of level 8 or higher. So on that part kudos to Paizo!

Hello there, I finally got my Bestiary, after Amazon and the Amazon Marketplace repeatedly failed me and I managed to grab a copy at a local store.
Now I'm preparing to GM a campaign with some friends, I know that at least one of the players is going to want to play a monstrous race. Most likely Lizardfolk. So I checked the Bestiary and the guidelines for monstrous PCs out and found almost all I needed, except for one thing:
How do I figure out the Ability modifiers for each monstrous race?

Is it the same technique as in 3.5? To round down all uneven ability scores to the next even number and then substract 10?
For some races that seems to check out, while others (from between the list of recommended powerful monster PCs in the core book) seem unusually powerful. Of course I know that the Bestiary races aren't balanced out like the core book races, but it still seemed a bit too much.

PS:
On an only partly related note: Do you guys at Paizo really hate Kobolds so much or are their features really so powerful that it would justify a -4, +2, -2 ability array in a game where a standard race usually has +2, +2, -2?

As I should have expected, my Bestiary will arrive last. I could kick the people at amazon in the face right now. My people are pestering me about when we will finally start playing.

I would have thought they would learn from their first mess-up with the core book. But no, why learn when nobody burned down your house for the first time you screwed up royally?

Step up.

If she's a melee druid, she'll thank me for it.

Ah, Natural Spell good for 5th level. Other than that and Augement Summoning, I'm not sure. She's big into hitting things, and with a 17 Str she does it well.

Her stats are as follows (generated by rolling 3d6)

Elf Druid

Str 16
Dex 17 +2 racial
Con 14
Int 19 +2 racial
Wis 18
Cha 14

Ah yes i wasnt thinking about the wild shape starting only from level 4.

For a clobbering druid not yet able to wild shape I cannot really think of any feat other than something very generic, like a combat feat or something like skill focus.

Oh yes item creation also is nice.

Natural Spell.

Still the number one feat for druids I guess.

Other than that it would be helpful to know if she specializes in something or just goes with a generic all-round druid.

I am not sure where to post this or send, so I put it here, and will let someone do what they need to do with it.

Page 459 of PDF (Dunno about book)
Damaging Magic Items
Second paragraph, Last sentance

Magic items that take damage in excess of half
their total hit points, but not more than their total hit points,
gain the condition, and might not function properly (see the
Appendix).

seems to be missing the word broken between the and condition.

Jared Bobadilla wrote:

How about Scarlett Johansson as Merisiel?

Scarlett Johanssen is, like, two feet tall!

I think if we're going to have people who have had plastic surgery, let's at least take the ones that aren't surgical failure. Hearing things like Charlize Theron, Scarlett Johansson and Devon Aoki for Seoni gives me the creeps.

My revised list:

Valeros: Patrick Swayze Unless he has let himself go, he has the physique for the roll more than Hugh Jackman. Not to mention, he isn't as overplayed.
Seoni: Selma Hayek A good "gypsy" type vibe from her. As an alternate, if you aren't going for the gypsy/Rom angle - and don't mind a British accent, Layla Kayleigh has the... physique to pull off a fine Seoni.
Kyra: Eliza Dushku
Merisiel: Summer Glau
Ezren: Sam Elliott
Seelah: Angela Bassett
Harsk: Jack Black With all of the hair on Harsks' head and face, we would need a good facial expression actor. And Jack Black can fill that role. As long as he isn't allowed to "run rampant" with the comedy - which he pulled off well in Kung Fu Panda - he can play a good "straight man" funny.
Lem: Heath Ledger ideally, but Alan Tudyk in reality.
Sajan: Jason Statham
Lini: Karen David
Seltyiel: Karl Urban
Amiri: Michelle Rodriguez

I have a question.

I was thinking of creating a necromantic spell that blocked or hindered the use of raise dead.

Does anyone know of an existing 3.5/OGL spell that already does that?

Mine has too, yesterday :DDD

Threeshades wrote:

As it seems rangers don't have the same choice of animal companions. The list in the Ranger entry leaves out things such as Big cats and crocodiles.
Is there any particular balancing reason behind that? I thought especially things like tigers make awesomely stylish companions for rangers. Are they too powerful for rangers for some reason, or do their abilities work too powerfully in combination with Rangers?

Rangers are combat characters, whereas druids are more spellcastery. Since a druid is, in theory, not supposed to be the combat focus, we felt it was okay to give them more combat-focused larger animal companions. For the ranger, you have a class that's built to be a combat class. His animal companions are smaller and used more often as scouts or messengers or support; they're not supposed to be big combat elements of the class. Put simply, giving a ranger a strong combat pet makes them too good, since that adds on top of a ranger's already quite good combat powers.

That said, letting a ranger get any of the druid's larger list of companions is a really simple house rule to put in play, and I wouldn't be surprised to some day see us produce a feat or a variant class ability that grants rangers better companions (perhaps at the cost of losing another class feature if they're not spending a feat to get the power-up).

Threeshades wrote:

Next thing is Two-Weapon fighting:
The feat is effectively still the same. I thought it deserved some major changes. Have there been made improvements to followup feats from the TWF tree or does it really still suck so bad that you'd run as well without all those feats spent at all and a two-handed weapon?

We did a lot of work to try to make the three melee styles (dual weapon, two-handed weapon, and weapon & shield) be viable choices. But that said... they're not all intended to do the same thing. If you want just raw damage, then you SHOULD be looking at using a two handed weapon. If you want defensive powers, look at the...

About the two-weapon fighting some of my grief is about Rangers, they've always come with the Archery or TWF options, and TWF was almost always discarded, because archery has always beaten it in every respect. It granted the same amount of extra attacks, with only one weapon needed (so all the expensive magical enhancement could be focused on one weapon and still spread on several attacks), had range, could do d8 damage on both the normal and extra attack at a penalty of only -2, while TWF had to go with a light off hand weapon reducing it to d8 and d6 dices at best and didn't pose any need for a high strength score or en extra Weapon Finesse feat. The only advantage the TWF variant really ever had is a flanking bonus and attacks of opportunity, that ranged combatants don't get.

anyway Thanks a lot for explaining!

Hey people I finally got my Core Book today. Man I thought I was going to explode if it didnt arrive soon. But finally it's in my claws.

Well I've been skimming some parts and focussing mostly on a few points that I have been looking forward to most.
And now that I've seen them, I have a few questions mostly to understand the motives about why they are the way they are now.

Let's start with Ranger animal companions:
As it seems rangers don't have the same choice of animal companions. The list in the Ranger entry leaves out things such as Big cats and crocodiles.
Is there any particular balancing reason behind that? I thought especially things like tigers make awesomely stylish companions for rangers. Are they too powerful for rangers for some reason, or do their abilities work too powerfully in combination with Rangers?

Next thing is Two-Weapon fighting:
The feat is effectively still the same. I thought it deserved some major changes. Have there been made improvements to followup feats from the TWF tree or does it really still suck so bad that you'd run as well without all those feats spent at all and a two-handed weapon?

That's it for now, but I might come up with more questions later.

Thanks in advance for answers.

well the ebay seller told me he shipped out the book a week ago, but still no sign of it arriving. I think the withdrawal symptoms are starting...

You know what else we're missing? Half-Owlbear.
I'm just sayin'...

I cancelled my order with amazon.de and ordererd the books from amazon.com, hoping to receive them mid september. On the bright side, it's more than 10 euros cheaper, including expedited international shipping.
I just hope that amazon.de didn't make the same mistake ordering the bestiary.

Still no news on my copy. But at least I just put on a fresh pair of pants from my cabinet and found a 5 euro note in the pocket.

@Gentle Giant
Well except for myself I only know one person interested in getting the book. And I think neither of us has a credit card, which rules out international amazon orders. And ordering it directly from paizo doubles the price of the book with the shipping cost.

EDIT: I cancelled my amazon.de order now and ordered it from ebay somewhere in the US.

Sucks. Amazon.de still doesnt say anything and ordering it from abroad is risdiculously expensive :(

So i dont have my book yet because it has not yet been released?

I went to the stores yesterday to see if I can grab a copy there and just cancel the order from Amazon. But they said they ran out of stock. So it should have been released already.

I'm still displeased and afraid I will not get my book ever. :(

EDIT:
Okay I also started pestering amazon about it now.

I preordered it in mid july from Amazon Germany and no sign of them having sent me a copy. They only say the book'S out of stock. And i'm not happy.

Im running dry o______________o that stupid amazon didn't send me my pre ordered copy. They just wasted their whole stock on everyone else. Why does everything i pre-order go wrong? Must... go... rampage!

I think I will go to the stores today and see if I can have me a copy there. And if i can I can tell amazon to go away

I'll lock myself in my bedroom build a pillow fort around me in the corner of my bed then crack open the sealing, open it somewhere in the middle and take a deep breath that new-book smell. 'cept for the fort and the locking that's my standard ritual when aquiring a new book, especially a long awaited one. After I'm done getting high on page printing fumes I will proceed reading it from start to end.

I preordered my book today, along with the bestiary. Actually i wanted to wait for the german version to become available but I just cant wait that long anymore!

I'm glad to have basically the PHB and DMG in one tome, but my back groans at the thought of hauling this around to conventions, friends' houses, etc. along with all my other gaming books. I guess I'll just have to convince them all to get one!

That was awesome! I love the commoner's pig already. I'll have that one pig appear at least twice in every campaign I'll GM.

Threeshades wrote:

Also German is the best and most powerful language in the world. It is after all the language that destroyed latin.

Strictly speaking, and depending on how you mean "destroyed" either Gothic, French, or English destroyed Latin.

Are you still taking me seriously?

Okay before i get kicked out of here something on topic:

I think it's pretty bad form to use "Ghoul" and "Ghul" or "Demon" and "Daemon" for two different things. They are the same words and it just causes confusion and is straight away wrong. Im sure there is something better to come up with to call your NE outsiders.

Threeshades wrote:

Mairkurion {tm} wrote:

Grumbles:
Chaotic Germans...

It's not our fault that you messed up your language when mutating it out of ours!

We spell it Dämon and its pronounced entirely differently. And we originally didn't even have the word Ghoul/Ghul.

There's a new book whose argument is that English is essentially not a germanic language, but a Celtic one with germanic (and latinate) vocabulary . I'm gonna go with that. Not even the English could improve a germanic language that much...

If that doesn't offend you enough, feel free to give a listen to what Sir Kenneth Clark has to say about the German language at the end of his Civilization series. :)

Also German is the best and most powerful language in the world. It is after all the language that destroyed latin.

Grumbles:
Chaotic Germans...

We spell it Dämon and its pronounced entirely differently. And we originally didn't even have the word Ghoul/Ghul.

Saurstalk wrote:

Personally, I think Fly should use Acrobatics.

I agreed, but what do you think about keeping fly to allow casters the same maneuverability while using this common spell type?

Threeshades wrote:

The first idea I have, would to be write in full sentences and/or punctuate so that the reader can differentiate between questions and statements.

Are you kidding ? Now I'm actually more interested in what else you could possibly think I was asking ;)

but thats ok, seem no know knows of any way to add WIS to AC without taking a level of Monk so I'll just let this one die ;)

And I absolutely couldn't make any sense out of that opening post.

Now that there are some answers I even know what this is about and I can also just point to Ninjas and Swordsages, making it a feat would be a bad idea. It's a bit too tough just like that. Alternatively you could get your intelligence modifier to AC through levels of invisible blade.

The first idea I have, would to be write in full sentences and/or punctuate so that the reader can differentiate between questions and statements.

Every creature is automatically proficient with all their natural weapons, and feats such as weapon focus and specialization can also be applied to natural weapons.

Threeshades wrote:

Jhonn007 wrote:

please, stop it with the dark elf reason. is just a quick & swifth batle tactic, you attack faster & more times. is usefull on an ambush, is a fact on history, the more closest thing in real life to a ranger, to me are the native-american scouts & pathfinders. so just obliterate of your minds the thing with the drow.

actually the reason for fighting with two weapons generally is to control the enemy's weapon while still hitting back hard. (a guy with one sword can only parry one sword at a time, and thus is disadvantaged if he suddenly has to stand against someone with two of them)

And Drizzt really has nothing to do with it. If someone wanted a drizzt-style ranger they could still whip up some feats (also, seriously Drizzt learned TWF-ing from fighter training, the first day on, because he was ambidextrous anyhow, not from becoming a ranger, which happened a lot later)

Drizzt has everything to do with the decision by TSR to tie the ranger class to 2-handed fighting

But so does the Charisma penalty, because everyone knows that short people suck. As do tall people.

My extensive research shows that charisma peaks at a height of about five feet eleven and a half inches.

Daeglin wrote:

I'm not sure if they've really decided on one iconic monster yet for Golarion, though (ahem) the goblin certainly comes to mind. Something along the line of the My Little Cthulhu Vinyl Figure for it would be cool.

or Plush Goblins?

@OP
Well for action figures of the iconic characters i'd say removable weapons and shields and such. The druid girl should definately come with her animal companion, to make up for the size already. Though what would make up for the Bard's small size?

Also I think those figures should have the quality of McFarlane action figures and should be close to the Wayne Reynolds pictures of them.

I'd probably get the sorceress, druid and barbarian.

please, stop it with the dark elf reason. is just a quick & swifth batle tactic, you attack faster & more times. is usefull on an ambush, is a fact on history, the more closest thing in real life to a ranger, to me are the native-american scouts & pathfinders. so just obliterate of your minds the thing with the drow.

And Drizzt really has nothing to do with it. If someone wanted a drizzt-style ranger they could still whip up some feats (also, seriously Drizzt learned TWF-ing from fighter training, the first day on, because he was ambidextrous anyhow, not from becoming a ranger, which happened a lot later)

If you want your dwarves to still be the gruff, unsociable thugs you like so much, why not just giving them a penalty to diplomacy and bluff checks?