Vigil's page

Linkified for the lazy!

From our first playtesting session last Wednesday, we used the flat bonus (+6 hp). Everyone seemed happy with their hit points. In fact, the wizard was extatic. He actualy felt safe enough to do some risky stuff with those hit points. Talking to him afterwards, had we gone with the racial method (he was an elf), he'd have played much more conservatively or else played a half-elf instead. Those two hp were that big of a deal.

So, from my perspective, racial WILL actively discourage people playing elves or other "frail" races, and that's bad.

Bards, clerics, and rogues CAN still identify stuff, though. Anyone can train in Appraise (either as a class skill or cross-class), and all of those classes have some access to detect magic in some form or another.

Rogues can take the minor magic talent to cast some 0- and 1st-level spells, or use wands with UMD checks.

I'm Super now too!

Just FYI, I was holding off on the Chronicles and Companion lines while waiting for a decision from Paizo on 3.5/4e. Now that I have that decision, and it's one I like, I'm happy to give Paizo more money every month. I hope there are enough people out there like me to make up for all of the people unhappy with Paizo's choice that drop their subscriptions.

From my side of the screen:

A lot of Mordulin's post was from our post-game discussion, but I can still add some anecdotes and opinions.

First, my cleric DMPC didn't contribute much to the fights. The fighter, rogue and wizard could all consistently hurt foes, while my best trick was the Touch of Chaos. Which means I could make a foe suck at his next roll.

Second, the positive energy turning as healing brings some changes to how the game is played. I couldn't use it in combat with living foes, because I'd heal them too. Heck, I had to tell the fighter to make sure everything was dead after the fight was over. I didn't want to bring anything that was just in the negatives back, ya know. We never worried about coup de gras'ing downed foes before. Now we do.

Third, a d6 as healing isn't anywhere as good as a d8+1. Frankly, each time I used turning as healing, I had to blow two turn attempts just to generate enough healing to do any good. At least it affects the whole party, so I'm sure that it's balanced overall. It just seems like turning attempts are going to be used up quickly.

As far as running the adventure is concerned, I didn't have to do much differently. HP's for NPC's were easily adjusted and CMB's for medium creatures were basically their grapple checks. I rolled skill checks as printed rather than checking to see if the bonus listed matched the formula. Granted, this is low level stuff. High level conversions will likely be a lot harder.

The arrow miss thing is in the DMG. A full page sidebar in chapter one, IIRC. (Full page sidebar? Is that even possible? I guess so.) The short answer, explicitly stated at the end of te passage, is that it's overly complicated, slows down game play, and so rarely matters that you should just not worry about it.

And a mayor really has no power to enact human rights legislation. Up here in America, a lot of city councils have passed resolutions to impeach Bush. They have no power to be enforced, so they are ignored and ultimately were a waste of time and taxpayer money. Such people were hired (and elected officials are just that, our employees, up for firing every few years) to protect the quality of life of the citizens, nothing else.

Ultimately, trying to dry up your town impacts the daily life of the townsfolk, and is far more important to them than if you dislike the war in Iraq. You want to take a personal choice away from people "for their own good." Such hubris. Such elitism.

If I were in your town, I'd vote against you. I'm not in your town, and I still hope you lose.

Out of curiosity, Mary, what was a TPK in AoW? My group was on the rocks a couple of times, and I certainly saw several deaths over the course of the entire campaign, but nothing came close to a TPK.

Anybody spend as much time playing Diablo II as me? Where if you beat normal mode, you can play through again on Nightmare, and then on Hell? And Leather armor becomes Serpentskin armor, then Wyrmhyde?

Sounds a bit like the leather/feyweave/unicorn-giggles stuff. Feyweave looks just like leather, but is better in every way and only available at Paragon level of play.

If they re-worked their publishing schedule like that, then what shiny new stuff could they show at GenCon in August?

That's a serious question, BTW. GenCon is a big deal, and having product unveiled at GenCon goes a long way to building hype for it.

If you have any DDM, the yuanti sorcerer should do. It's only medium, but is easily proxyable. If size is that much of an issue, DDM also has a lillend, maralith, and yuanti abomination for large snake-people.

1) Do you plan to convert to the new edition of D&D?

Nope. At least, not until I'm out of 3.5 material. And that includes Shackled City, Crimson Throne, Second Darkness (assuming it's 3.5), countless Dungeon adventures and Gamemastery module, and even Runelords (my group is still in Skinsaw Murders). We're taliking two years minimum.

2) If Paizo converts its RPG products to 4.0, how will that affect your purchasing patterns for our products?

I'll end my subscriptions when the switch is made. If and when I do switch, maybe I'll seek out the stuff I missed. Maybe I'll just start up again without regard for the missing volumes. I don't know.

3) If Paizo does not convert its RPG products to 4.0, how will that affect your purchasing patterns for our products?

My habits will remain as they are. I'll continue my Pathfinder and Gamemastery subscriptions, and pick up the odd items of interest from time to time (such as the crit deck, the harrow deck, and the odd Planet Stories).

Hope that helps!

If one of the pre-reqs for being a munchkin is that they never lost a fight, then, yeah, Drizz't is up there. I don't think I've ever been concerned that he might fail, let alone die, in any of his books.

Raistlin isn't on that list, though. A strong breeze could kick his ass. I mean, he had 9 hit points IIRC at level 5. He just had an attitude to hide his vulnerability.

Conan lost, too. On multiple occasions. He succumbed to a vitality stealing spell, losing his kingdom to a wizard and later fled an ancient Setite vampire he realized he had no chance of beating. All in one story, the Hour of the Dragon.

And Xanesha's a shapechanger. Who says she and Ironbriar aren't meeting somewhere a little less dreary than the tower?

Best guess? Low hit points and low armor class on a class that needs to get in melee. Rogue players do have to be at least a little careful and smart to live very long.

You know, it just hit me.

This fine gentleman (Lamm, not Logue) has a lot in common with the Sewer King, a one-off villain from the Batman animated series. Alligator pet, street urchin slaves, lives in the sewer.

I don't know if that's coincidence or inspiration, but it's all cool with me. That's one of my bud's favorite episodes, and now I know just how to run him.

Also check out if you can the english actor, Robert Lindsay in a british tv version of Oliver Twist. He played f#*in and made the character his.

Gotta love yet another example of Unnecessary Censorship!

Apparently, my group got along OK with the Ravens. There was some antagonism between Tolin and my pc's, mostly because Tolin has a stick shoved up his... burro.

Beguilers get an expanded knowledge class feature that lets them add sor/wiz spells to their list every couple of levels. I usually go with Phantasmal Killer myself, just for the high saving throw dc gnome beguilers can generate. However, tongues would probably be just as good of a choice.

A house. With a big spare room. I'm out of storage, and uninterested in storing away my current collection. Since that isn't going to change, I'm afraid I'll be staying where I am.

Bloodsworn Vale. I loved running this adventure, and would love to re-visit this region (and those characters).

The real cover is pretty swanky! I like the red cover, goes nicely thematically with the Crimson Throne adventure. And while we'd seen the Iconic, and the WAR splash page before, seeing it all together is still very cool, and brings home the fact that this is shipping out right around the corner.

Started AoW in January of '05, finished it in Nov '07. We tried to play weekly, for about 4 hours each session. When we were on our game, we'd complete even heavy crawl modules (like Gathering of Winds) in a month. Then we'd hit a wall and take close to three months to make it through some of the modules.

...when I switched my shipping option to hold products for one monthly shipment?

Well after I made the switch, I got billed for J2 all by it's lonesome (order #854141), but I still haven't seen it. Okay, maybe your holding it for Pathfinder. That's cool. Odd that I'd receive seperate order numbers if their supposed to ship together, but hey, as long as their system works. But I haven't been charged for Pathfinder #5 yet, either.

Is J2 coming separately (and just taking a long time) despite my preference to hold items for one shipment? Is it and Pathfinder 5 being held for another module expected before month's end? And if so, why have I been billed for J2 (and gotten acces to the pdf) and not Pathfinder 5?

Wikipedia has a pretty good summary, but I'm lazy, soo....

Germany has a program for films produced by German citizens. Basically matching investment funds, no need to pay back. I guess they want to encourage a local film scene.

Boll owns his own production company, and makes his movies free of Hollywood studio interference. He snaps up videogame licenses cheap (since they do so poorly, mostly his fault BTW), gets around 5 million from other investers, then another 5 in matching funds from the government. Spending all ten million to produce and distribute the film, if the movie only does 15 million (a huge flop), he's made 10 mill after paying back his investors. Heck, if the movie does really poorly and only makes 5 million, Boll can pay his investors back and move onto his next travesty.

It's a video game license directed by Uwe Boll. It's trash.

Incidentally, I have a friend who went to see it anyway. After about thirty minutes, he thought about movie-hopping into Vegitales to get away. He decided to stick it out, only to discover it wasn't an 1-1/2 hour bad movie (which is tolerable). but an 2-1/2 hour bad movie.

It is fun to remind him that I told him so, though.

1. Inattentive players.

2. Looking up spell descriptions (which really goes back to #1, they should be paying enough attention to know what spell they're going to cast and looked it up already).

3. Summoning.

He has so few hp and such a low AC for his CR, I just assumed he was bonus xp. And loot. A hand-delivered crown of teleportation is nothing to sneeze at.

Huh. I enjoy running high level games, and I think I know why now. Mary, don't take offense, but I think your stress is mostly self-induced. It's not your fault, it's the RAW.

But here's my fix: stop paying attention to spell durations.

If it lasts rounds or minutes, it lasts the whole fight. At that level, the fight's only going to last 4 rounds, 6 if you're lucky, so even the short duration spells will last the whole fight. And by the time loot has been collected and healing magics performed, the durations have expired. That'll cut down on the buffing and rushing from room to room, since all that buffing would only help in one fight.

By these levels, the long duration stuff is good all day (stuff like mage armor), so don't bother tracking those durations either.

Haiku is easy
Sometimes it doesn't make sense
Refridgerator

Hey! If the paparazzi left Britney alone, she wouldn't have her current boyfriend!

Really, she thought one of them was cute and took him home, long criminal record and everything.

Besides, some of us want Britney dead. Just not until after January 9th. Or she won't count for the Ghoul Pool!

Perhaps you could take two mechanics and combine them; the concentration rules for casting a spell while distracted and the Rules Compendium ruling on hiding your spellcasting by muttering the verbal components and hiding the somantic gestures using the sleight of hand (soh) skill.

It takes a little skill to cast a spell without being noticed. If you are being observed, roll soh vs spot. If you are unobserved (hiding, invisible, etc) then you roll soh vs dc 10 + spell level. Otherwise you mangled the words and lose the spell without any other effect.

Absalom isn't.

Korvosa is. Kinda like Venice.

He may have left that out for brevity's sake.

And actually, each class has a different way of regaining manuevers.

Crusaders don't do anything. They gain a manuever each round.

Warblades either make a single attack or a flourish as a full-round action to regain all of their manuevers.

Swordsages meditate for one full round to regasin one manuever.

The feat you mentioned lets an initiator re-select his prepared manuevers, making them immediately available. It's most useful to swordsages, which otherwise have the worst method of regaining their abilities. IIRC, the feat can only be used a limited number of times per day.

What's really funny is that if you check out the OP's profile, he claims his alignment is legal good!

Let me guess
#1: Razz
#2: DangerDwarf
#3: CrossWiredMind

Do I get a prize?

There were cries of "foul!" when the Hag Countess was first introduced. She wasn't a baatezu. Heck, she wasn't even a devil. She was a Night Hag, and they arise (and are predominantly) NE. What was this pretender doing with control over one of the nine layers of Hell?

Glasya has a long history in Hell. She's Asmodeus's daughter. She's been in adventures and supplements in editions past. Seeing an established LE power replace the Hag Countess makes a great deal of sense from that standpoint.

Besides, a layer of rolling boulders is a lot less interesting than a layer made out of a living night hag turned inside out and expanded and grown to hideous proportions.

Still curious... is it Fort Rannick? Is it? Is IT? IS IT?

*hyperventilates*

Okay, I'm calm now. Still very curious about whether this is going to be a flip mat of the fort in Hook Mountain Massacre or not.

And whether there will be any (other) flip mats of key scenes from your Pathfinder AP's.

So it's normal to babble to mannequins?

There was plenty of Will Smith going crazy from being alone in the movie. It wasn't even subtle.

Sounds like the poster child Varisian (think human Gypsy instead of elf or half-elf). I'd probably take exotic weapon proficiency (bladed scarf)(see the RotRL Players Guide for details) and weapon finesse when you can, followed by combat expertise, improved disarm and improved trip.

Ranks in Perform (dance) for bardic music and you have a decent support character.

For +2 or better items, one trick for oversized weapons is to have a wizard add the "Sizing" property from MIC. For a flat +5000 gp, that +3 adamantine gargantuan warhammer is wieldable. Also, sellable.

That came up in my AoW game actually. Krathanos had that very item, and I said that there was no buyer for the item (I mean, how many people need a gargantuan magic hammer). So the party was stuck with it. One of my players found that enhancement, and actually used the hammer for a while, before selling it.

Yep, their prices are higher.

Nope, they don't need to lower them.

See, Ebay can be a scary place. A lot of folks have gotten ripped off going through Ebay, and won't try shopping there again.

Paizo isn't run out of somebody's garage (and even if it was, I'm sure Vic and Lisa's garage is really nice, considering their Star Destroyer Bridge Movie Room!).

Where was I? Right!

Not a garage, but instead a reputable business. There is a degree of security when buying from Paizo that isn't there on Ebay. That security is manifest in the higher prices.

Besides, supply and demand works. If no one is buying, prices will come down. Because prices haven't come down, I'm sure people are buying.

Don't go! I mean they DO have cake. But cake alone is not enough to change the fact you will be the only man in the room.

Sitting in a corner not talking to anyone while the women oggle baby clothes.

Eating cake.

Just ask your wife to save you a piece, stay home, and play video games.

Old news. Pops Racer is John Goodman. They are using a real chimp for Chim-Chim. They also have a Ma Racer (Speed's mom) in the cast. First time I think Speed's mom has even been mentioned.

From past blog entries we've learned that levelling your character is fun, so levels should come faster. I recall reading once per session.

Today we learned when a magic item is good for. It's listed level, and maybe two levels beyond.

Many groups get together weekly. I know my group does.

Which means your magic items expire in three weeks.

Tops.

Kinda like milk.

Huh.

Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey

Herman Melville's Billy Bud, Sailor

I just can't stand the bombastic, pompous writing styles.

Catcher in the Rye is up there, mostly because Holden is an idiot. If you need to be "going through" stuff like Holden to like the book, then I hope I'll despise it forever.

I ran that adventure converted to Eberron back shortly after Eberron came out.

Fun adventure.

I doubt it'll be that helpful to you, but I made the natives the scorpion-obsessed drow native to Xen'drik instead of humans, and I kept the assaults limited to night-time raids. Fewer, but slightly more difficult fights.

I think that was the only substantial change I made. Everything else was just flavor. (The Heart is a dragonshard, the ruins are from the giant's fallen empire, etc.)

Considering Star Wars Saga Edition is an "extensive preview" of fourth edition, I'm willing to bet action points will work just like force points.

Which work just like Eberron's action points.

This is a DnD board. Has anyone here NOT read Dante's Divine Comedy? (Or at least his Inferno.)

All you need to know about Golden Girls.